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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Dan Sullivan suit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Experts skeptical

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

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

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

California noncitizen case appealed

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

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

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

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

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

Case ‘exceedingly weak,’ critics say

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeffries, Schumer sign on 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Homeland Security called the lawsuit a “political stunt.”

Dozens of states unsuccessfully sued by DOJ

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

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

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

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

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

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

New blitz in California

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Fearmongering and intimidation’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republican Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney is waging his second challenge against Wisconsin's Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul on Nov. 3.

The post Trump looms large in rematch for Wisconsin attorney general between Kaul, Toney appeared first on WPR.

More elected leaders including both U.S. Senators from Wisconsin have reported their offices received packages containing a suspicious substance.

The post More Wisconsin lawmakers receive ‘suspicious’ substances by mail appeared first on WPR.

The U.S. Department of Justice is intensifying its campaign against voter fraud with a spree of arrests in the final weeks before Election Day, an effort that voting rights advocates warn risks instilling fear among voters.

Over the past week, the Justice Department unveiled election-related criminal charges against 28 noncitizens in California and threatened state and local election officials with prosecutions. 

It’s now asking a federal judge to immediately order California election officials to not count the ballots of voters it suspects are noncitizens until their citizenship can be verified — citing the new wave of arrests as justification.

Federal prosecutors’ focus on alleged voter fraud comes as President Donald Trump stares down an increasingly dire political landscape in the midterm elections. 

As his approval ratings sag, Democrats are favored to retake the U.S. House and possibly the Senate, an outcome that would trigger a wave of congressional investigations into the president and his administration.

Feds and states

The Trump administration’s confrontation with California is quickly developing into a last-minute showdown over the limits of the federal authority in elections. 

The Justice Department failed to force states to turn over sensitive voter data and the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail. The pressure on California marks a new front in the federal government’s push to assert influence over how elections are run, a responsibility assigned to the states by the U.S. Constitution.

“The Trump administration’s decision to launch a highly publicized federal sweep just two weeks before Election Day is the latest escalation in a coordinated campaign meant to sow fear and confusion amongst voters,” Jonathan Paik, executive director of OC Action, an Orange County, California, civics group, told reporters on Tuesday.

On Monday, the Justice Department announced the arrests of 11 noncitizens and criminal charges against 28 noncitizens in total in California. The DOJ said all 28 individuals are lawful permanent residents. 

The Los Angeles Times reported that some expressed confusion over the charges as they made their initial appearances in federal court in Los Angeles, saying they had no recollection of registering to vote.

The same day, the DOJ filed court papers asking a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order requiring California to not count ballots cast by roughly 20,000 registered voters that the department says are likely noncitizens unless they can confirm their citizenship. 

The request comes after the DOJ first sued California last week, after giving state and local officials 48 hours to investigate the names.

In the court documents, the DOJ says that without court action, a significant risk exists that American votes will be diluted. It notes that all 28 individuals charged were on the list of suspected noncitizen voters given to state officials.

“California is mailing ballots to noncitizens, and they are refusing to comply with federal law, which makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote. The voting rights of American citizens must be protected,” Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney in California, said in a statement.

Election officials warned

The Justice Department recently raised the prospect that election officials who stand in its way could face prosecution. In a Friday letter to Los Angeles County, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter wrote that if people knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals “identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime.”

While the DOJ’s actions appear concentrated in California, Aaron Reitz, the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Texas, said in a Monday statement that local election administrators have a duty to prevent illegal voting “and I’m here to make sure they do their job.”

David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, predicted the Justice Department’s California lawsuit would fail. 

Becker, a former senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Voting Section during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said election officials are not committing crimes but he anticipates that the Trump administration may raise the “noise level” as Election Day approaches.

“I think there is just a lot of garbage being thrown at the wall because they don’t have any other tools left and they appear to have given up on persuading the electorate in this election,” Becker said on a press call Tuesday.

California election officials have begun to fight back in federal court. Lawyers for California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat in court filings on Tuesday urged the court not to let the Justice Department effort proceed.

Weber’s lawyers argue that no barrier exists to the Justice Department enforcing federal prohibitions against noncitizen voting. They note that since August, the California Secretary of State’s office has received federal grand jury subpoenas for about 300 people. Monday’s arrests, they say, actually underscore that federal prosecutors can already work through existing rules and procedures to combat alleged fraud.

“At best, this litigation is a reckless political stunt. At worst, it threatens to disenfranchise thousands of Californians this election,” lawyers for Weber wrote.

In a declaration filed in court, Aman Bhullar, a high-ranking official in the Los Angeles County Assistant Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s Information Technology Bureau, warned that the Justice Department’s request raised the possibility of a “catastrophic impact” to voting within the county, the most populous in the nation. 

The consequences, Bhullar wrote, range from halting all vote counting to halting the ability of voters to cast a ballot in person. 

Additionally, Bhullar wrote that his team had analyzed a sample of 200 of the 20,000 names provided by the DOJ. They found that nearly 43% had canceled voter registration records and that 86 of the 200 had been mailed a ballot — and that every voter not mailed a ballot had a canceled or inactive record. 

Of the 200 names analyzed, about 71% had never voted.

Dramatic voter fraud arrests

The Justice Department has said that the Department of Homeland Security identified the names after analyzing the state’s publicly available voter roll data and checked them against immigration records and other sources of federal information. Justice Department lawyers say Homeland Security didn’t use the SAVE system, a computer tool that can verify citizenship that Democrats and other critics say falsely flags U.S. citizens. 

DOJ lawyers are separately fighting with the watchdog groups Common Cause and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington over whether the actions in California violate a federal judge’s order in Washington, D.C., blocking the department’s efforts to obtain state voter roll data and feed it to Homeland Security.

Amid dueling court filings on Tuesday, the Justice Department posted to social media a video montage of voter fraud arrests in California set to rock music. Several clips show Homeland Security Investigations agents in tactical gear leading away a handcuffed man who appears to be wearing red pajama bottoms.

Kevin Lainez, the mayor of Commerce, California, where one person was arrested in the Justice Department’s anti-voter fraud operation, told reporters on Tuesday that the charged individuals must go through the appropriate legal process.

“But let me be clear,” Lainez said. “The timing of the operation and the way it was run was nothing short of political theater.”

After the U.S. Department of Justice sued California over its refusal to remove voters the federal government alleges are noncitizens, voting rights advocates fear the Trump administration is violating a court order blocking it from rooting out noncitizens with states’ voter data.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan on Oct. 9 ruled against the Justice Department’s year-long project to obtain state’s unredacted voter rolls, which include sensitive personal data, and share them with the Department of Homeland Security to identify possible noncitizens. The DOJ on Friday said it plans to appeal the decision.

In letters sent on Oct. 13, the Justice Department gave California officials 48 hours to review and remove a list of some 20,000 registered voters that the Trump administration believes are noncitizens. 

Many are concentrated in the Los Angeles area, and state and local elections officials both refused to act on the list. The DOJ immediately sued after its deadline passed on Thursday.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit, coming less than three weeks before Election Day and with voting underway in California, amounts to the latest development in President Donald Trump’s efforts to assert authority over elections, which under the U.S. Constitution are administered by the states. Trump faces a deluge of investigations and pushback if Democrats retake one or both chambers of Congress in November.

Democrats and voting rights groups have previously raised alarms about the possibility of the Trump administration attempting to interfere with voting. For some, the legal action against California only exacerbates their concerns. 

Letter sent, hearing requested

On Thursday, several Democratic senators wrote to U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche to demand that the DOJ confirm it won’t seize ballots or other election materials.

The watchdog groups Common Cause and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, which represents voters who sued to block the DOJ’s voter data sharing, have asked Sooknanan to hold a hearing to look into whether the Trump administration’s actions violate her order. They said the DOJ has adopted an “exceedingly narrow view” of her decision.

“By attempting to superintend voter roll list maintenance and prohibit registered voters from exercising the franchise without adequate consideration of the reliability of the underlying data, DOJ’s October 13 letters and the actions described in the California (lawsuit) appear to implicate — and perhaps outright violate” Sooknanan’s order, lawyers for the groups wrote in a court filing.

On Friday, Sooknanan ordered the Justice Department to respond to the request for a hearing in District of Columbia federal court by Monday.

Email exchange

Common Cause and CREW filed in court a late Thursday email exchange with Christian Dibblee, a Justice Department trial attorney, in which Dibblee writes that Homeland Security obtained a publicly available voter roll of California voters — as opposed to the full, unredacted roll that DOJ has sued states over — and that DHS didn’t use the SAVE system to identify possible noncitizens. 

SAVE, a computer system operated by DHS, combs through government databases to verify citizenship, but critics point to examples of the program falsely flagging U.S. citizens. The U.S. Supreme Court in September ruled that states could continue accessing SAVE ahead of the midterm elections, but most states are currently prohibited from conducting mass purges of voters because it’s too close to the election.

Sooknanan’s order “does not extend to using other methods, nor does it prohibit taking enforcement actions based on those other methods,” Dibblee wrote, adding that Homeland Security also wasn’t a party to the lawsuit challenging the DOJ’s voter roll effort.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit against California offers a broad overview, but few specifics, of how Homeland Security compiled its list of suspected noncitizens. It says that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, compares “information about voter rolls” with “its internal data” to identify possible noncitizens. Additional investigative steps, not described, are used to assign a confidence level — low, medium or high — to each match.

ICE then connects high confidence matches with an “alien number” and those individuals are compared against internal records regarding naturalization and parental citizenship. Records from the State Department and Social Security Administration are also reviewed, the DOJ says in its lawsuit.

Individuals that ICE still believes to be noncitizens are then sent to Homeland Security Investigations, a sub-agency of ICE, according to the Justice Department. HSI conducts an “analytical data enrichment process” before sending data to HSI criminal investigators in the field.

In a statement Friday, DHS said it uses multiple data sources, from both government and commercial third-party sources, to supplement public information.

Mullin slams ‘unlawful voting’ 

In a Thursday statement, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called the number of alleged noncitizens registered to vote in California “completely unacceptable.” He said even one noncitizen vote cancels out the ballot of a U.S. citizen and undermines elections.

“DHS is committed to identifying unlawful voting, protecting the integrity of federal elections, and ensuring that only eligible American citizens elect America’s leaders,” Mullin said.

Democrats and voting rights experts have questioned the Justice Department’s decision to file the lawsuit with the election underway. The DOJ previously lost a lawsuit seeking to force California to turn over its unredacted voter roll — one of 23 similar lawsuits over state voter data that the Trump administration has lost.

The Trump administration’s efforts to identify large numbers of noncitizen voters have, up to this point, also fallen short of its own standards. Over the summer, the federal government claimed that California had upwards of 190,000 noncitizens on its voter roll. 

By contrast, Thursday’s lawsuit alleges only roughly 20,000 noncitizen voters — about 0.08% of the nearly 23.2 million registered voters in California.

DHS said Friday that 190,000 remains the number of potential noncitizen voters but that 20,000 represents a subset who have gone through a manual verification process so far.

“Every count, recount, hand count, lawsuit, and audit has found that there’s no widespread voter fraud in the U.S.,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, wrote on social media. “The Trump Admin’s last-minute demands are meritless, and we look forward to making our case in court.”

Gov. Tony Evers toured a new Milwaukee juvenile facility on Wednesday along with Department of Corrections leaders, closing another chapter in the troubled history of the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons. The sleek, colorful new facility looked like  a well-resourced though highly secure school. The Southeast Regional Care Center for Youth, or SERC, will house 32 boys who are in the DOC’s custody. 

While serving their sentences the boys will have access to educational programs, a gym, a greenhouse and other opportunities to help prepare them to return to their communities. Since many of the boys will be from the Milwaukee area, the new $65.6 million facility will make it easier for their families to visit compared to Lincoln Hills, hours away in Irma, Wisconsin. 

“This new facility marks a historic milestone for our state and is the beginning of what I hope is a real, meaningful transformation of not only juvenile corrections in our state but of corrections in Wisconsin,” Evers said. “Not only will this new facility allow us to safely move our kids closer to their homes, their families, and their support systems, but it will give kids and families hope for a brighter future. With evidence-based strategies, this new facility will provide young people the role models, educational opportunities, and support needed so they can grow, be better, and do better, all while helping to reduce crime, prevent violence, and keep our kids, families and communities safe.”

SERC is located on Milwaukee’s North Side, tucked away a few blocks  from a busy roadway just north of Good Hope Road. At first glance the tan brick building resembles a small school, but a closer look reveals  large tinted windows and a few State Patrol vehicles parked outside. Walking through the front door, visitors come to  a metal detector station in a  front lobby with light colored walls, tiled floor and chairs. 

Wednesday’s official  tour of the new facility began with a visit to the SERC’s chapel. Next, Evers was guided by DOC Sec. Jared Hoy and DOC juvenile corrections administrator Lance Horozewski to an outside area surrounded by a high brick wall and security gate, where Evers viewed a basketball court and a large greenhouse next to  raised garden beds — one for each boy which the facility will house.

Heading back inside, Hoy and Horozewski showcased medical facilities with individual exam rooms and areas where youth can access needed dental care. There was also a large kitchen, and spaces where youth could learn welding and woodworking. Evers also looked over visiting areas complete with games and kiosks for video visits, a large indoor gym and basketball court and classrooms. Evers also checked out a creative room where the boys will be able to make and record music, and even make videos using a large green screen.

The area where the boys will be housed was  behind a door, which will be controlled by staff monitoring from an adjacent room. A common space contained couches, tables, a couple of phones and games. Down the hall were dorm rooms with wood floors and gray metal furniture, with one bed per room, a toilet, desk, and a window with a view of the outdoors, with a blind the boys can open or close. 

The design of SERC is intended to forge a new direction for juvenile incarceration in Wisconsin. For years, the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools were  notorious for reports of abuse and suffering for both youth housed there and the staff responsible for their care. Earlier this year, a federal judge ended mandatory oversight of Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake after the DOC had been found to be in “substantial compliance” with reforms mandated after a 2018 class action settlement.

Lincoln Hills’ troubled history led the Legislature to spend years planning to close the 500-bed facility, convert it to an adult prison, and open up smaller and safer juvenile facilities which would also be closer to home for the youth housed there. 

Evers appeared to approve of SERC as he walked through its halls. “But our work is not over — far from it, ” he said in a statement. “Our state is decades behind in how we think about corrections, and this new facility is the first step, but it is only a step. We must continue our work to modernize our corrections system into the 21st century and close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools for good.”

Hoy said that looking around SERC “you see a school, not a prison.” He went on to say in a statement that “that’s because it is a school and even more. It’s a place to learn and to heal. There’s no barbed wire. No towers. There are big windows, color, space. And it’s all secure both for the youth and for the neighborhood. The design supports what we now know about adolescent development, and the programming offered here will follow suit with staff using evidence-based techniques to help youth make better choices and support rehabilitation.”

Hoy said at the beginning of November the first group of youth will be moved into SERC, with more to come over the following months into the holidays. “We’ve been recruiting for staff starting back in the summer,” said Hoy. “And so we’ve had two graduating classes already. We’ll have more than adequate staff. Not just safety staff — so your youth counselors that are here  — but education, treatment, all of those different functions are already on board…And then we will continue to staff up. We have another class graduating, I think at the beginning of November.”

Staffing shortages had long plagued Lincoln Hills and other DOC facilities. Hoy told the Wisconsin Examiner that the DOC has paid particular attention to staff-to-youth ratios for the SERC to help prevent burnout among staff, and has established staff wellness spaces. Hoy also said that “the space itself lends to a sort of feeling of wellness and calmness.”

Another Type 1 facility is being constructed in Dane County which is designed to hold 32 boys and eight girls. The DOC is also pushing for a third facility to be opened in northern Wisconsin in order to serve youth from that region of the state. Hoy told the Examiner that having multiple facilities would allow the DOC to cross-train and pull staff from one facility to another in order to help fill any gaps and prevent burnout.

Many of the staff who will work at the new facility are from the Milwaukee area, and theoretically might have an advantage in  relating with the youth there. Kashunda Brown, 37, one of SERC’s youth counselors, explained that she grew up on the North Side of Milwaukee where she learned what it’s like to experience poverty and living in a single parent home. Brown also has two boys of her own which “resonates with the youth that we encounter here,” she told the Examiner. 

Keana Berkhalter, 32, a licensed counselor who will be working with the facility’s Psychological Services Unit, is also from Milwaukee. “I’ve seen the complex issues and challenges that we have here, as well as the strengths that Milwaukee has,” Berkhalter told the Examiner. Berkhalter said that it’s important that youth know that the staff understand them because it helps them feel safe. “As human beings, it’s easier to connect to people that look like us, or at least that we have some sort of similar commonality.” 

The experiences the counselors share with the youth help them to connect. “I think that gives me leverage to connect to the youth, as well as help them feel safe and to talk to me and to want to trust and confide in me, to talk about things that maybe they don’t want to talk to anybody about.”

Brown said the greenhouse, raised beds, and creative spaces are especially important for the boys SERC will house. To anyone who questions whether the facility should feel more punitive, Brown says, “I think the punitive is them being away from their family.” 

She continued, “this should be, and is, a space where they can have different things that they don’t experience on the outside. A lot of people don’t have access to a basketball court at home. A lot of people don’t have access to gardening.” These translate into coping skills the boys can take home with them to avoid getting in trouble. 

Youth who learn that they enjoy woodworking, cooking, growing food in the garden or other activities available at SERC could take that with them and become more productive members of society, Brown said. “I think all the skills that they will get here, they can use on the outside. The punitive is them being in here.” 

The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding California not count ballots from voters it says are suspected noncitizens, a move by the Trump administration to apply last-minute pressure as voting begins in the midterm elections.

The Justice Department on Tuesday gave California election officials 48 hours to remove voters on a list contained on a thumb drive provided to Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the country. The DOJ also wants election officials to withhold mail ballots from these voters. 

The demand appeared in letters to the California Secretary of State’s Office and the Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. The DOJ gave the state until noon Eastern on Thursday to comply, threatening legal action if that deadline is not met.

The letters set the stage for a courtroom confrontation between the Trump administration and the largest state in the country ahead of Election Day. The Justice Department’s demand marks an extraordinary effort to dictate to state officials who will be allowed to cast a ballot even as voting is underway.

“The United States hopes that you share our commitment to ensure that only American citizens participate in our federal elections. Allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes,” R. Trent McCotter, an acting deputy U.S. attorney general, wrote in a letter to California Democratic Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan said in a statement that his office received the thumb drive, along with a handwritten note containing a password. Workers in the office did not seek to open the thumb drive, which would have violated data security protocols, he said.

He said he would work with Weber and the state attorney general to determine next steps.

“Maintaining accurate voter registration records is a fundamental responsibility of our office,” he added. “Federal and state laws are clear on how voter eligibility is established – and any action to remove a voter from eligibility must be based on verifiable information, not assertions of unconfirmed data matching.”

In a statement late Wednesday, Weber said the DOJ’s actions “only serve to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections.”

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press account on social media called the Trump administration’s actions “completely unacceptable and inappropriate.” 

Questions linger

It’s not clear whether the Justice Department plans to send letters to additional states. The Justice Department provided copies of the letters to States Newsroom on Wednesday but didn’t answer a question about whether other states would receive them.

In the letters, McCotter asked California election officials to segregate the mail ballots of the suspected noncitizens until their citizenship status is determined. The individuals shouldn’t be sent mail ballots if they haven’t already been sent one, McCotter added, and any returned ballots should not be tabulated until citizenship can be determined.

McCotter did not say how many individuals are on the DOJ’s list or how the federal government came to believe they aren’t citizens. He wrote that the Justice Department would “seek emergency relief” if California didn’t comply. 

Voter roll changes prohibited during election season

Federal law prohibits most states from conducting systematic purges of voters less than 90 days before an election. If the Justice Department sues to force California to remove the suspected noncitizen voters, a judge would likely grapple with whether the DOJ-provided list represents the kind of mass removal that’s not currently allowed.

Voting rights groups and Democratic election officials, as well as some Republicans, have warned that Trump may try to interfere in the midterm elections. If Democrats retake control of the U.S. House or Senate, the final two years of the president’s term could be mired in investigations and legislative gridlock.

Federal courts have uniformly blocked the department’s efforts to force states to turn over their voter rolls, including sensitive personal information such as driver’s license and Social Security numbers. And a federal judge last week ruled against the DOJ’s use of voter data even from states that voluntarily provided the information.

The U.S. Supreme Court also blocked Trump’s attempt to restrict voting by mail through the U.S. Postal Service, leaving the president with few remaining avenues to assert authority over elections, which are administered by the states under the U.S. Constitution.

“Donald Trump’s attempt to invalidate votes in California is an attack on every voter across the country. The president is abusing his position in a callous attempt to take away the power of everyday people, but here in California we’re not going to let him,” Jonathan Paik, a leader with Can’t Stop California, a nonpartisan voter mobilization group, said in a statement.

Trump has long complained about California elections, especially the speed of ballot counting in the state. California’s long count is a well-known feature of its elections, with election officials given about a month to process and tally all ballots and doesn’t indicate fraud.

The Justice Department has followed Trump’s lead in scrutinizing California’s elections. The top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles has linked suspicions about California’s elections to the state’s refusal to turn over its unredacted voter roll.

Milwaukee County is a step closer to getting rid of Flock automatic license plate reader cameras. On Monday, joined by county board members, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley signed a resolution directing the removal of Flock cameras from county parks.

“Today is about our commitment to protecting the rights and privacy of our residents,” said Crowley, who is running for governor against Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany.  “Across the country, the use of Flock cameras and automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, has sparked a fierce backlash that defies traditional partisan lines. Residents and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are asking whether the convenience of this technology is worth the cost to our privacy, and who is accountable for how it is used.”

Flock cameras store images of traveling vehicles and their license plates in a database which can be searched by law enforcement using license plate numbers or vehicle descriptions. 

Although police can use the AI-powered cameras to investigate crimes such as homicide, kidnapping and theft, they have also been used to track protesters and women suspected of crossing state lines to seek an abortion. There have also been numerous cases in Wisconsin and elsewhere of officers or police staff using Flock to track romantic partners and exes. In some areas, local police chiefs and elected officials have expressed a distrust of Flock Safety, the multi-billion dollar company behind the cameras. 

Both Crowley and Tiffany have criticized Flock, though Tiffany said just months ago that he did not know what the cameras were. Since then Tiffany has proposed prohibiting shared revenue funds from being used for Flock cameras, and has labeled Crowley as an advocate of constant surveillance. Police surveillance cameras were  adopted in Milwaukee as the city and county sought to tamp down reckless driving and car theft with the support of  Republican lawmakers. 

Crowley said that in Wisconsin, “Flock executives have shown a pattern of misleading the public about their business practices, their safety record, their commitment to privacy, and their efforts to protect vulnerable populations.” He added that, “nationwide, we have seen documented cases of law enforcement officials misusing this data for personal and often malicious reasons.”

Though Crowley said that none of those cases involved Milwaukee County employees, but two officers with the city’s police department have been charged or sentenced for misusing Flock. 

Crowley said that while he appreciated the sheriff’s office work on a policy framework to address concerns about Flock, “even the strongest policy framework is only as trustworthy as the company behind the technology, and a good relationship with the vendor does not safeguard our residents’ data.” 

“‘It hasn’t happened here yet’ is not a good enough reason to keep this technology in place,” he said. “We cannot wait until data is breached, privacy is compromised, or information is misused before we act. When it comes to our residents’ rights and safety, we must be proactive.”

Milwaukee County’s contract with Flock expires in December, and the proposed 2027 budget does not include funding for Flock. Last week, teams of Milwaukee County Park workers began covering the cameras to prevent them from collecting data. In recent public meetings, the sheriff’s office pushed against the cancellation of Flock, attributing a 43% decline in certain crimes within county parks to the camera’s arrival, and warning that crime will rise should they be removed. Recently, the Milwaukee Police Department signaled that it would renew its own contract with Flock while also employing new auditing and other guardrails to detect further signs of misuse.

“Our residents should be able to enjoy our beautiful parks without wondering whether their presence is being logged in an AI-powered surveillance system run by a company that has already lost the trust of local governments and law enforcement agencies across the country,” Crowley said. “Today, Milwaukee County is choosing to put our residents first. And I will keep making that choice, every day, in every decision.”

As candidates debate public safety ahead of the midterm elections, a new assessment of the nation’s historic homicide decline suggests there is no single explanation for the drop — and that some widely discussed enforcement strategies may have played little role.

A survey of nearly 50 crime scholars convened by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice found the strongest support that the top contributing factors to the drop in homicide rates have been community violence intervention programs, the easing of pandemic-related disruptions, and focused deterrence strategies that pair law enforcement with social services.

The findings come amid a historic national decline in homicide. In 2025, the estimated U.S. murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate fell 18.1% compared with 2024, which equates to about 4 killings per 100,000 people. It tied the lowest rate recorded since national estimates began. The FBI recorded the same rate in 1955 and 1956. 

But a national decline does not mean every community has experienced the same drop.

The decline has unfolded in cities with different public safety strategies, economic conditions and political leadership, complicating efforts to credit any one approach, according to the council’s report.

The researchers rated 48 potential explanations for the decline between 2022 and 2026. Six factors received support from more than two-thirds of respondents as contributing either substantially or to a limited degree:

• Expanded community violence intervention programs, which work directly with people at highest risk of violence, were rated as either a major or a limited contributor contributing by 91% of researchers. 
• The pandemic recovery was rated as a major or a limited contributor by 83% of respondents. It was the only factor that a majority of respondents, 57%, rated as a major contributor.
• Eighty-three percent of the crime scholars gave credit to the increased use of focused deterrence, an approach that targets high-risk individuals and groups directly with a carrot-and-stick approach through social support and law enforcement.
• Researchers also pointed to increased local government capacity to provide social services, with 75% rating it either a major or limited contributor.
• Greater public safety and support resources relative to demand earned a rating of 68%.
• And more proactive policing was likewise named as a major or limited factor by 68% of the scholars.

Researchers largely dismissed more than half of the potential explanations, including National Guard deployments, increased immigration enforcement and increased pretrial detention. 

Other factors thought to have contributed little included homeless encampment removals, improved housing stability, electronic monitoring, GLP-1 medications, declining cash use, presidential public safety signals, DNA databases, neighborhood crime alerts and increased incarceration.

The findings do not establish that any one strategy caused homicide to fall. The ratings reflect researchers’ professional judgments, not definitive findings, and multiple factors may have overlapped or reinforced one another, according to the council’s report. 

The council also cautioned that a factor judged to have contributed little to the recent decline could still help reduce violence in the future.

But understanding what drove the decline could help policymakers determine how to sustain the progress, according to the council’s report. 

“Theories and claims abound, and sorting among them is essential if we’re going to sustain the progress. This diverse array of researchers took the challenge seriously, testing competing explanations, debating the evidence, and making tough judgments,” Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of the council, said in a news release. “Their effort leaves the country with a much clearer picture of what likely contributed, what probably did not, and what we still need to learn.” 

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

Three weeks before Election Day, the Trump administration’s sprawling project to send sensitive personal information on millions of voters to the Department of Homeland Security has been declared illegal by a federal judge.

The blistering court decision comes after the Department of Justice pressured or sued states for their voters’ information and then, according to court records and federal documents, turned over the data it obtained to Homeland Security Investigations — a sub-agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

The decision, issued late last week, marks the latest rebuke of the Trump administration during more than a year of legal confrontations with dozens of states and voting rights groups over President Donald Trump’s efforts to assert authority over voting ahead of the midterm elections. 

If Republicans lose control of one or both chambers of Congress, Trump’s final two years in office could be consumed by Democratic-led investigations into his administration and opposition to his legislative agenda.

The Justice Department’s legal arguments suggested that “every American citizen who registers to vote is the subject of a voter fraud investigation underway in the (Justice Department’s) Civil Rights Division simply because they registered to vote,” wrote Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of District of Columbia District Court, an appointee of President Joe Biden.

“Behind all the window dressing, the challenged policy represents the federal government’s attempt to decide who gets to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “But Congress has left that authority where our Constitution has always placed it: with the states.”

SAVE program

The Justice Department has already lost at least 23 district court lawsuits seeking to force states to provide voter data. The U.S. Supreme Court also blocked Trump’s plans to use the U.S. Postal Service to restrict voting by mail. 

While the Supreme Court cleared states to use a supercharged Homeland Security computer program called SAVE to seek out noncitizen voters, its effects on the midterms have been minimal because most states are restricted by federal law from conducting mass purges of registered voters so close to an election.

SAVE’s opponents point to multiple examples of the program falsely flagging Americans as possible noncitizens. Sooknanan previously ruled against SAVE’s use in a June decision, which the Supreme Court overturned in September when it allowed states to access the program.

Asked about Sooknanan’s latest decision, Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels in an email to States Newsroom said only that the department was “reviewing the ruling.”

More noncitizen voting charges

In recent weeks, the Justice Department has filed a series of cases alleging noncitizen voting, which studies have consistently shown rarely occurs. The DOJ on Monday announced voter fraud charges against 16 individuals, including 13 noncitizens. In September, prosecutors secured grand jury indictments against 10 noncitizens in Minnesota.

“The law is clear, only American citizens may vote in American elections, and enforcing this law is fundamental to our democracy. That should not be a partisan concept,” U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a late September news conference.

Sooknanan’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed in April by the voting rights group Common Cause and a group of voters. While both Republican and Democratic-led states had fought the Justice Department individually, the new lawsuit targeted the entire voter roll collection project — a choice aimed at protecting voters living in states that had shared or might share their data with the Trump administration voluntarily.

“This is a victory for voters and yet another loss for the Department of Justice. It’s time the Trump administration stop these desperate attempts to seize voters’ private data and take control of our elections,” Virginia Kase Solomón, Common Cause president and CEO, said in a statement.

16 states provided voter rolls

Despite the courtroom losses, the Trump administration still obtained records on tens of millions of voters. At least 16 states voluntarily provided the Justice Department with their voter rolls, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which has tracked the DOJ’s actions.

Those states include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

Court filings and internal government documents show the Trump administration put the information to use. Last week, the watchdog group Democracy Forward released internal HSI reports showing the agency received nearly 51 million Justice Department records as part of its “election integrity” investigations.

The HSI reports didn’t describe the nature of the Justice Department records. But Sooknanan wrote the DOJ had given records on millions of voters to ICE. Sooknanan ruled the transfers violated the Privacy Act, a federal law that restricts how federal agencies collect and share information on individuals.

Sooknanan referenced a letter from the acting director of ICE to the Justice Department asking for the state voter lists as part of an initiative to combat voter fraud. In the March 6 letter, Todd Lyons asked for the data “in order for HSI to conduct appropriate investigation of potential violations of federal election law.”

DOJ attorney Eric Neff replied to Lyons on March 12 to confirm the data sharing. He wrote that Homeland Security and the Justice Department would “take reasonable efforts to limit impacts to the privacy and civil liberties of United States citizens.”

However, Sooknanan found that the DOJ sought to investigate every registered voter without a specific reason to believe they committed voter fraud or that their states violated federal election laws. She warned that the department cannot evade the free speech protections within the Privacy Act by launching a “dragnet” investigation of the whole country.

‘Not only ill-conceived, but illegal’

Justin Levitt, who served as senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House and is now a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, said not much in Sooknanan’s decision will directly affect the 2026 elections. 

Writing in Election Law Blog, Levitt noted that most states never turned over their voter files to the Justice Department, and of the states that did, only a few appeared to have pledged to act on whatever “unreliable garbage” data the DOJ sent back.

“But even without a direct impact on anything happening in the next month, this is an important declaration that the whole program was not only ill-conceived, but illegal,” Levitt wrote.

The Trump administration may still be allowed to compile lists of voting-age citizens in each state as part of a sweeping executive order on voting by mail signed by Trump in March. But court-mandated notice requirements mean the lists won’t be available before the midterms.

The so-called state citizenship lists are the only major element of the executive order not currently blocked by the courts. The order directs Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration to develop the lists and provide them to state officials, though it doesn’t require states to do anything with the information.

Maryland judge to consider citizenship lists

U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis, an appointee of President Barack Obama in Maryland District Court, is set to decide what the Supreme Court’s Sept. 25 decision allowing the use of SAVE means for the fate of the citizenship lists. 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, a public interest research organization, sued the Trump administration over the lists in August. While Xinis hasn’t ruled in the lawsuit, she has ordered the DOJ to provide at least 30 days notice of any effort to move forward with the initiative or provide the lists to states.

With less than a month before Election Day, the notice requirement effectively means the lists won’t be available before the midterm elections, even if they are upheld in court. Still, the eventual outcome holds potential consequences for future elections if states use the information to purge registered voters.

EPIC and the Justice Department have submitted dueling briefs to Xinis on what the SAVE decision means for the citizenship lists.

Lawyers for EPIC argue that key differences exist between the state citizenship lists and the SAVE system. While the SAVE system discloses information on requested individuals, they noted, the executive order mandates providing information on all U.S. citizens by state.

“Critically, states or localities must initiate a request for verification of specified individuals’ citizenship status in order to utilize” SAVE, the attorneys wrote.

Lawyers for the Justice Department called the argument a “red herring.” In their brief, they argue that state officials would have to log into a federal portal to download the citizenship data.

“That affirmative conduct would be materially similar to sending a request to DHS: either way, the State would itself initiate the transfer of data,” the DOJ brief says.

Xinis could rule at any time.

A $3 million capital investment to equip Dane County sheriff’s deputies with body cameras has been included in the proposed 2027 county budget. Dane County Executive Melissa Agard and Sheriff Kalvin Barrett praised the move as an investment in public safety. 

“Public Safety is one of the most fundamental responsibilities we have in county government, and our residents deserve to feel safe and have confidence in the people and institutions that serve them,” Agard said last week. “This $3 million investment is about strengthening safety, transparency, and public trust. Body-worn cameras can provide greater clarity when questions arise, strengthen accountability, and help protect both members of the public and the deputies who serve them.”

A county press release states that a Wisconsin Department of Justice Survey found that 88% of responding law enforcement agencies reported using at least one form of recording device. The survey found 12% of responding agencies reported using neither body cameras nor dash cameras. 

Sheriff Barrett called body cameras “an important resource that supports accountability, transparency, and trust.” Barrett added that “this investment will enable us to build on the work we began with our pilot program and move Dane County forward. The funding reflects what can be accomplished when we collaborate with our community partners and elected officials toward a shared goal. I especially appreciate County Executive Agard’s leadership and support in making this possible.”

The sheriff’s office is also finalizing policies for the cameras including how to use them, how long footage is retained and when it can be released.

Body cameras became a hot topic in Dane County after the shooting of Corey Ruiz by a Madison police officer. The officers involved in the shooting were not wearing body cameras, leaving bystander video as the main public video evidence of the incident. The Madison Police Department, despite being one of the state’s largest, does not have a uniform body camera program. After the Ruiz shooting, community members called on city officials to equip all officers with body cameras.

“Technology alone does not create trust,” said Agard. “It matters how that technology is used and whether the public understands the policies surrounding it. As we make this investment, we are committed to ensuring transparency and accountability remain at the center of implementation.”

Candidates running in the race for Wisconsin Attorney General sparred on a myriad of topics during a debate Sunday, including adequate resources to address crime.

The post AG debate highlights criticism from tribal leader on number of drug investigators appeared first on WPR.

Madison's police chief sees body cameras as a way for the department to "dissect" each use of force to make improvements.

The post Madison police chief wants officers to think critically about use of force appeared first on WPR.

For weeks, a stream of ads has attacked Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the Democratic candidate for governor, for allowing  access to tablets in the Milwaukee County Jail. In some high-profile cases, incarcerated people used the tablets to harass people on the outside. The ads, which recycle footage of a disgruntled local judge, have kept Crowley on the defensive while casting his Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, as a protector of crime victims. 

The ads focus on individual cases of people using their jail-issued tablets to harass witnesses and victims. Many feature Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge David Borowski, who asked,  “Why is the sheriff’s office handing laptops and iPads to defendants?” Borowski was presiding over a hearing involving Thomas Zollicofer, who is accused of killing three people in a spree. Zollicofer used his tablet to tell a witness to “stop lying,” WISN 12 News reported. Some of the ads also mention Ameir Jones, who is also accused of homicide and of attempting to call a victim in his case over 1,500 times, with prosecutors saying 300 of those calls were answered.

Over a short span of time, the anti-Crowley ads have made tablet access a big issue in the governor’s race. Late last week, Crowley suspended instant messaging on digital tablets at the Community Reintegration Center. The facility, formerly known as the House of Correction, is under more direct oversight by Crowley and the county board than the jail, which is overseen by the sheriff’s office. 

On Monday Brian Schimming, chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, issued a press release accusing Crowley of protecting himself from a scandal. “This program should’ve never been allowed in the first place, and Crowley resisted ending it for months after victims were threatened and laws were broken,” said Schimming, going on to call Crowley “a craven politician who only cares about his own political future, not the safety of our state’s citizens.”

Milwaukee-based Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC), which supported Crowley when he re-entered the race for governor and won the primary race, expressed disappointment at the suspension of messaging services. “We have to be careful in giving in to the narrative of Republicans and their methods to make incarcerated people as uncomfortable as possible,” their statement warned. The group added that “this form of communication seems to be the best and safest form that there is currently.”

As the political controversy over tablets grew, the sheriff’s office attempted to clear the air. Joshua Briggs, director of the Milwaukee County Jail, said that the devices are not iPads but a “generic tablet.” Briggs explained that the tablets cannot be used to make calls out of the jail, and are not connected to the internet. The devices use a network maintained by the vendor, ICSolutions, which allows for keyword flagging and other guardrails. Briggs estimated that 98% of the people held in the jail use the tablets responsibly.

The ads don’t mention that Republican-dominated counties including Waukesha and Ozaukee also give people housed in their jails access to tablets. 

The tablets are important, advocates say, because they allow incarcerated people to maintain connections with loved ones and others on the outside. 

“I understand what it means to have a connection to home,” Marianne Oleson, co-executive director of Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing, told the Wisconsin Examiner. Oleson, who spent four years in prison before being released in 2017, explained that tablets give incarcerated people access to recovery resources, employment preparation, parenting classes, and other rehabilitative services. 

Tablet use  has become commonplace in jails and prisons. “This technology is being used on a significant scale,” Oleson said. “Edovo reports that its educational platform was available in 1,483 correctional institutions across 47 states in 2025, with participants completing 46 million hours of learning. Those are the provider’s reported numbers, but they show how much programming can be delivered through these tools.”

Shannon Ross, a founding member of Justice Forward, wrote in August in an op ed for Wisconsin Watch that tablet-type devices are used in 48 state prison systems, the federal prison system and in county jails nationwide. “Correctional officials have credited tablets with reducing violence and disturbances inside correctional facilities,” Ross wrote. “Some jurisdictions have reported declines of up to 40%, and the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons described the agency’s tablet program as reducing administrative burdens and allowing staff to focus more on institutional safety, not as a security risk it was forced to accept.”

“Providing tablets is an established practice today,” Oleson told the Examiner. “Wisconsin DOC says that each person residing in an adult facility will be issued an ICS tablet as its transition moves forward. Ozaukee County’s own website says that personal letters, pictures and drawings are delivered digitally through tablets available in all living units. This is happening across jurisdictions, regardless of politics.”

Other criminal justice advocates raised similar points about the use of tablets in jails and prisons. “Allowing tablets inside jail facilities is particularly important because it allows more in-depth communication with family and friends,” BLOC said in a statement to the Examiner. “Inmates can see messages and pictures from their families and loved ones. It enables them to maintain a closer connection than that of regular phone use. Sometimes, persons in custody need their families to advocate for them for their health, treatment and more that the jail staff cannot assist with immediately.”

Oleson was also disappointed by Crowley’s move. “My reaction to Crowley’s decision is concern for the people and families who are losing legitimate communication because of someone else’s misuse,” she wrote. “Victim harassment and witness intimidation are serious, and they must be addressed. We support holding people accountable for that behavior and holding facilities and vendors accountable for enforcing protections.”

Roy Rogers, a minister, board member of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative, and leader of the Onesimus Group of Milwaukee, wrote in a statement to the Examiner that electronic communication is one of the main ways his ministry can keep in touch with incarcerated people. “For us, a message is an opportunity to encourage someone, share our faith, or help them think through their next steps,” wrote Rogers. “For families, it means maintaining a connection with a parent, spouse, or child. We say ‘reentry begins with relationship’ because those connections need to grow before someone comes home.” 

Rogers said that he cares about the safety and security of victims. “No one should have to fear threats or harassment through this technology,” wrote Rogers. “My understanding is that Crowley’s action pauses messaging at the CRC until stronger safeguards are in place, rather than eliminating tablets altogether. My hope is that those protections allow safe communication to continue. These tools have a meaningful place in family connection, ministry, daily facility operations, and preparation for reentry.”

“If a suspension is necessary while those changes are made, there should be a clear timeline and an explanation of what must happen for access to resume,” wrote Oleson. “I am concerned when the needs of incarcerated people and their children become talking points in a political campaign. These decisions affect real families. They should be guided by evidence, safety, and what will help people return home successfully.”

 

Clarification: An earlier version of this story used the words “cancellation of jail tablets” in the headline to describe Crowley’s decision to disable the use of the messaging feature on jail tablets in Milwaukee. The article makes clear that it was the messaging feature, not the tablets themselves, that was suspended, so the headline has been updated to clarify that fact.

 

A former Cornell University student’s allegations of gang rape in 2024 have renewed attention on a difficult area of sexual assault law.

A person can be awake, responsive and even able to move during a sexual encounter while still being so intoxicated or impaired that they cannot understand what is happening or make an informed decision about sex.

But whether that person is considered legally incapable of consenting can depend on the state and, in some cases, on how the person became intoxicated. 

“There are a lot of very good laws on the books,” said Renée Williams, CEO of the National Center for Victims of Crime. “The problem is that nobody knows how to enforce them, including district attorneys, and enforcement varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, even within the same state.”

In New York, where Cornell is located, criminal law distinguishes between mental incapacitation caused by a substance administered without a person’s consent — such as being “roofied” — and other forms of intoxication. That can leave prosecutors relying on other provisions of the state’s sexual assault laws when someone voluntarily drinks alcohol or uses drugs and later becomes severely impaired.

The legal debate comes amid years of scrutiny over sexual assault and safety on college campuses, particularly around fraternity and sorority life, where alcohol and drugs are often part of the social environment. The Cornell case has brought those broader concerns back into focus while New York state lawmakers consider changes to the state’s sexual assault laws.

Across the country, sexual assault statutes vary in how they define incapacity, what level of impairment can make someone legally unable to consent and what prosecutors must prove about the accused person’s knowledge of the victim’s condition. 

Nineteen states, including New York, currently have statutes that limit the definition of mental incapacity in sexual assault law only to cases of involuntary intoxication, such as when someone is drugged against their will, according to experts. 

More than half of states also set time limits for prosecuting sexual assault. But those statutes of limitations vary by state and offense, and they can make prosecution more difficult when a case is reported years after an alleged assault, according to a review of state laws by NBC News.

Legislation on the issue has been before New York lawmakers for years, but the Cornell case has renewed attention on proposed changes to the state’s sexual assault laws. Two measures that passed the state Senate unanimously earlier this year would broaden how the law addresses intoxication and incapacity, and change the definition of “physically helpless.” 

The legislature has already adjourned for the year, but both measures were stalled in the Assembly after they failed to garner enough support for passage. Since the case came to light, the Assembly has formed a 15-member working group to examine the state’s sexual assault laws ahead of the 2027 session.

Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has assigned the state’s attorney general to investigate the case independently, has said lawmakers could consider changes to state law early next year. 

Some possible changes have drawn pushback from some criminal defense attorneys, including the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, who have raised concerns about whether the proposed language would provide enough guidance about when someone is too intoxicated to legally consent. 

“Claims that a loophole exists are not supported by the law, and proposals based on that premise risk creating confusion while eroding fundamental due process protections and increasing the risk of wrongful convictions,” the organization said in an emailed statement to Stateline. 

What happened at Cornell

The allegations date to October 2024, when the young woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, was a student at Cornell. She alleged that she was sexually assaulted by members of the Chi Phi fraternity, naming seven men in connection with the incident.

She said in her lawsuit that she drank alcohol at a local bar, then felt pressured by two of the defendants to snort ketamine while at a party at the fraternity chapter house, and that it was her first time doing the drug. She also wrote that she was “plied” with marijuana and “Jamaican Liquor.”

All of the men have denied the allegations, according to hundreds of pages of confidential investigative files obtained by The New York Times. Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit in September naming the fraternity members, the fraternity, Cornell University, a local bar and her sorority, Tri Delta, as defendants. A Snapchat screenshot in the lawsuit shows a message to all Chi Phi fraternity members encouraging them to join the encounter.

Jane Doe reported the alleged assault to Cornell police in November 2024. In an interview with police, she described being severely intoxicated and said she was confident she had been raped. The subsequent criminal investigation did not result in charges.

Tompkins County, New York, District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has defended his office’s decision, saying the evidence available to prosecutors did not establish a prosecutable case under New York law, and that his office had not received the full transcript of the woman’s interview with police. The New York Times reported last week that a condensed version of the police statement sent to the DA’s office omitted that she reported being raped.

Under Cornell’s disciplinary process, two of the men were expelled, two suspended, two given lesser sanctions and one, a graduate, barred from campus. The Chi Phi fraternity chapter was closed in 2024.

But university proceedings and criminal prosecutions operate under different standards. For prosecutors, the issue is whether they can establish the elements of a specific sexual offense under New York’s criminal statutes.

That makes the state’s definitions of consent and incapacity central to the case.

Defining incapacity

The details of New York’s penal law offer a window into how seemingly narrow distinctions in legislative language can have significant implications for the outcome of a sexual assault case. 

The state’s criminal code identifies several circumstances in which a person is considered incapable of consenting to sexual activity.

One is physical helplessness. A person is physically helpless when they are unconscious or otherwise physically unable to communicate unwillingness to an act.

Another is mental incapacitation, which New York defines as being temporarily incapable of appraising or controlling one’s conduct because of an intoxicating substance administered without the person’s consent.

Those definitions can create challenges in cases involving intoxication. Erin Murphy, an expert on sexual assault laws and a law professor at New York University, said the physical-helplessness standard can be difficult to apply to someone who is severely intoxicated but still conscious.

“The failure to express unwillingness continuously means that they were not physically helpless,” Murphy said, describing current law. “Someone can kind of fall through the cracks.”

New York law also raises questions about what the person accused of the crime knew about the other person’s condition. And a defendant’s own intoxication can also be relevant.

One of the men accused in the Cornell case said he was “a victim of sexual misconduct” because Jane Doe had performed oral sex on him when he was “too incapacitated” to consent, according to the university’s investigative files obtained by The New York Times.

Voluntary intoxication

One of the most significant distinctions in New York’s law is that its definition of mental incapacitation only applies when an intoxicating substance was administered without the person’s consent, such as when someone is unknowingly drugged. 

That does not make sex with a voluntarily intoxicated person automatically legal. Other provisions of New York’s sexual assault laws address forcible compulsion and cases in which a person clearly expresses that they do not consent.

Still, the distinction has fueled what some lawmakers and victim advocates call a “voluntary intoxication loophole.” But others, including the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, deny there is a loophole.

“Proposed legislation that would brand someone a rapist if their partner is voluntarily intoxicated and later claims a crime was committed because they were “incapable of appraising or controlling their conduct” is simply too vague to be fairly enforced,” the association said in an emailed statement.

Murphy said the challenge for lawmakers is drawing a line between someone who is intoxicated but still capable of making consensual decisions and someone whose impairment leaves them unable to consent.

“Any indication they were conscious or unwilling kind of works against them under physical helplessness,” Murphy said, referring to how New York’s laws are currently written.

That line can be particularly difficult to establish when a person has little or no memory of a sexual encounter. Alcohol, marijuana and ketamine — substances Jane Doe said she consumed before and during the alleged assault — can affect memory, judgment and perception. 

Prosecutors will likely have to rely on text messages, photographs, videos, witness accounts and other evidence to establish Jane Doe’s condition, Murphy said.

Dr. Chinmoy Gulrajani, a psychiatry professor at the University of Minnesota who has studied intoxication and consent laws across the U.S., said a person’s effort to reconstruct an incident afterward can also introduce another complication. Talking with friends or other witnesses about what happened may help fill gaps in memory, but those conversations can also influence how a person remembers or interprets the encounter, and, in turn, how they report it to authorities.

“To actually figure out what actually went down and what the exact facts were can be a challenge for the legal system,” Gulrajani said.

Because a person’s condition can change during an encounter, prosecutors and juries may have to assess the evidence moment by moment, including what the accused person knew about the other person’s condition.

Varied approaches across the states

New York is also not the only state wrestling with this issue.

A national comparison is complicated because states define consent, incapacity, intoxication and sexual offenses differently. Some statutes focus on whether the victim was “mentally incapacitated.” Others use terms such as “incapable,” “impaired” or “unable to resist.” Some expressly address intoxication, while others rely on broader definitions or case law.

A 2022 research article published in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law found significant variation among state statutes and cautioned that courts can interpret similarly worded laws differently.

In 2021, when the review of state statutes was conducted, 21 states appeared to limit mental incapacity to involuntary intoxication only — though two states, Michigan and Texas, have since changed their laws. 

Another 25 states now recognize incapacity from either voluntary or involuntary intoxication. And six states address the issue through case law rather than statutory language, according to the research article.

“Lawmakers need to understand that a person who is mentally incapacitated due to intoxication is a vulnerable person,” said Gulrajani, the Minnesota psychiatry professor and an author of the research article. “It does not matter whether they ingested the chemical of their own volition, or it was forced on them, or they were deceived into taking it.”

Minnesota changed its law in 2021 after its Supreme Court overturned a sexual misconduct conviction involving a victim who had voluntarily become intoxicated. 

The state legislature amended the law so that the victim’s intoxication could establish incapacity regardless of whether the alcohol or drugs had been voluntarily consumed. 

Michigan adopted similar language in 2023, following years of pressure to pursue other major legislative changes to better support survivors of sexual violence.

In Texas, lawmakers added a provision in 2025 that expressly defines as sexual assault a situation in which a person knows someone is so intoxicated or impaired by a substance that they are incapable of consenting.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

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When I first entered Wisconsin’s prison system in 2013, I did not understand how much of the punishment extended outside the walls. One part can trap people long after release: extended supervision and the rule that erases progress when supervision is revoked.

Under Wisconsin’s truth-in-sentencing law, a judge sets an initial confinement term and a separate term of extended supervision, which requires following at least 18 standard rules, including regular reports to a supervision agent and blanket consent to searches. You serve the confinement. Then you serve the supervision. If your supervision is revoked, you return to prison with no credit for the years you spent. People call that lost “street time.”

Here is the math in plain terms. Say someone gets 10 years of initial confinement and 10 years of extended supervision. They get out, stay incident-free for eight years, then get revoked for a supervision violation or after being charged with a new charge. Those eight years do not count as sentencing credit. They go back to prison, and they can still walk out facing the same years of supervision they already lived. Progress on the street does not count the way many people assume it should.

I lived a version of that trap. After opioid addiction and drug charges in my early 20s, I left prison on strict extended supervision. A relapse put me on a hold. An administrative process, not the original sentencing judge, determined whether to revoke my supervision. I went back behind bars. Freedom on paper felt temporary because one slip could restart the clock on my extended supervision.

Thousands of people are revoked from post-prison supervision in Wisconsin each year. At the end of 2024, Wisconsin had 22,240 adults on parole or other forms of post-prison supervision, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics — 473 people per 100,000 adults, compared with 250 nationally. During 2024, 5,770 people exited post-prison supervision in Wisconsin. Of those, 1,720 — nearly 30% — returned to prison after having their supervision revoked, compared with 18.5% nationally. The BJS data doesn’t show why each revocation occurred. It does show how many people move through the system. 

Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections has said it wants fewer revocations for technical violations. That goal matters. So did Gov. Tony Evers’s August 2025 veto of Assembly Bill 85, which would have required the DOC to recommend revocation for people charged with a new crime. The Legislative Reference Bureau estimated that the bill would have sent thousands of people back into prison each year at a projected cost of more than $330 million in the first two years, with hundreds of millions in additional ongoing annual costs. While the veto kept agents’ discretion intact, it did not fix street-time forfeiture.

And revocation is only part of the picture. A federally funded Wisconsin data snapshot found that people released from prison in 2020 after serving time for violent offenses had spent an average of 6.3 years incarcerated, compared with 5 years nationally. That excludes later returns on the same sentence. We should know how much prison time a judgment of conviction actually produces from beginning to end.

Other states handle street time differently. Minnesota cuts one month from active supervision for every two compliant months, subject to its rules and a public-safety review. Michigan counts time on parole as time serving the sentence, except for certain violation periods. Both systems distinguish between time spent following the rules in the community and time connected to a violation.

A fairer rule is not soft on crime. It is honest about time already served in the community without a new conviction. Wisconsin should credit street time on revocation for technical violations, and it should require a clear, public accounting when street time is stripped after a new conviction. Agents should keep their discretion. Lawmakers should stop proposing automatic-revocation shortcuts that fill prison cells without making neighborhoods safer.

Wisconsin once led on rehabilitation: early parole, the Huber Law and belief that people could return as neighbors. Street-time erasure pulls the other way. It turns supervision into a revolving door with a disappearing calendar. If the state wants successful reentry after prison, it must stop erasing the years people already spent trying to rebuild their lives.

Andrew Drasen is the author of “A Vision of Hope: A Story of Redemption and Purpose” and the founder of ReturnPath, a reentry curriculum. He lives in Franklin.

Guest opinion: Wisconsin should stop erasing ‘street time’ after prison is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Pressure has been building to expand the use of body cameras after a city of Madison police officer shot 38-year-old Corey Ruiz in July.

The post Dane County deputies could get body cams in next budget appeared first on WPR.

The Milwaukee Police Department intends to renew its contract with Flock Safety, the multi-billion dollar producer of controversial AI-powered license plate reader cameras. In a statement, an MPD spokesperson said that the contract will be renewed “to maintain the investigative and public safety benefits the system provides.”

Flock cameras store images of traveling vehicles and their license plates in a database which can be searched by law enforcement. While police say that the cameras are valuable tools used to investigate serious crimes like gun violence, theft and kidnapping, Flock surveillance has been criticized as an invasion of privacy. Numerous cases of officers misusing the cameras for personal reasons to surveil people have emerged around the country, including in Wisconsin. 

Two of those cases played out in Milwaukee over the last year. Former Milwaukee police detective Tehrangi Chapman pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to felony misconduct in public office and misdemeanor misuse of a GPS device. Chapman is accused of  using Flock to track the movements of two people 20 times for personal reasons, and also of placing a GPS device on one of their vehicles. He’d kept tabs on these individuals even before Milwaukee adopted Flock in 2022. 

As an internal affairs detective, Chapman was involved in the investigation of Josue Ayala, a former Milwaukee officer who used Flock to track an ex-girlfriend and her new partner over 170 times. Ayala was given probation and avoided prison time. 

Both Chapman and Ayala were reported by the people victimized by their use of surveillance technology. Websites like haveibeenflocked.com helped them determine that they had been tracked. Two other cases of officers or sheriff’s deputies being charged for Flock misuse have also appeared in Kenosha County and the city of Menasha. 

As opposition to Flock grew in the community, Milwaukee PD has gone through a couple of phases of tightening and restricting the cameras. The department restricted access to the system to supervisors only, and limited the kinds of crimes that can trigger Flock use. Following a trend among some other agencies, MPD created a transparency portal describing how Flock is used, and restricted its network to use by outside agencies including  other local jurisdictions. One of the main appeals of Flock is the ability to conduct searches across a network composed of thousands of law enforcement agencies. 

MPD has also increased auditing of the system to flag suspicious uses. The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors voted last week to remove Flock cameras from county property. In arguing to keep the cameras, the sheriff’s office attributed a 43% decline in certain crimes around county parks between 2023 and 2026 to the cameras. 

Their removal from county property follows a cascade of cities and towns across Wisconsin canceling their Flock contracts. Stevens Point, Fond du Lac County, Winnebago County, Sheboygan, Verona, Stoughton, Dane County, Sturgeon Bay, Appleton, Manitowoc, and  other  local governments have worked to cancel contracts and disable their cameras.