A federal court ruling could challenge the constitutionality of part of the Wisconsin state law that bans AI-generated child pornography.
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Three states this year have enacted laws that require or allow schools to use panic alarms to quickly summon emergency responders. Ten other states have such laws and a dozen more are considering them. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)
Three states this year have enacted laws that require or allow schools to use mobile, wearable, wireless or silent panic alarms to quickly summon emergency responders.
The new laws in Illinois, Virginia and West Virginia bring the number of states with such laws to 13, with 10 of them acting since 2023. Another dozen states have legislation pending.
Known as Alyssa’s Law, the measures are named for 14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff, one of 17 people killed during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Make Our Schools Safe, a nonprofit founded by Alhadeff’s mother, has advocated for the legislation.
Although all the laws are grouped under the Alyssa’s Law name, they involve different technologies. While some of the laws require schools to use a particular device, others just allow schools to consider implementing some sort of emergency alert system.
Texas, for example, requires silent panic alert technology in classrooms, while Utah mandates that certain members of the school staff wear mobile alert devices. Virginia allows school boards to equip employees with wearable silent panic alarms, but doesn’t require it. The laws also differ in how the devices connect with police or other emergency responders. Funding mechanisms also differ from state to state.
The cost of such systems varies. But several years ago, the school board in Gwinnett County, Georgia, the largest in the state, approved $7 million to purchase the CrisisAlert system from CENTEGIX, an Atlanta-based technology company that provides emergency response systems to schools and hospitals. The CrisisAlert system provides school staff members with a wearable button that can be used to call for help.
A report released earlier this year by CENTEGIX found that 88% of the more than 346,000 alerts generated by its wearable panic-button systems during the 2025-2026 school year involved everyday issues such as fights and students leaving campus without permission.
Ten percent of the alerts were medical emergencies and 2% were for suspicious behavior or a campuswide emergency.
“Wearable incident response badges help reduce delays by enabling staff to discreetly initiate alerts from anywhere on campus,” the report states. “Their value comes not only from speed, but from their ability to deliver clear, reliable communication.”
But Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm, said the fact that relatively few of the alerts were for emergencies suggests that schools should not be mandated to use panic buttons or similar technologies.
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A federal judge ruled Monday that New York cannot enforce its landmark “climate Superfund” law. (Photo by Anne-Marie Caruso/New Jersey Monitor)
A federal judge ruled Monday that New York cannot enforce its landmark “climate Superfund” law, a measure that sought to charge fossil fuel companies $75 billion over 25 years to help the state deal with the costs of climate change.
While the legal battle is far from over, the ruling could give pause to lawmakers in many other states who have been considering similar legislation.
Chief Judge Brenda Sannes of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York ruled that New York’s 2024 law is preempted by the federal Clean Air Act, calling the measure “simply beyond the limits of state law.” Fossil fuel companies have long argued that federal regulations governing emissions supersede states’ authority to punish companies for their role in causing climate change.
“It is precisely because the (state) Climate Act operates within an area of law ‘in which the federal interest is so dominant’ that it cannot be enforced,” Sannes wrote in her ruling.
The case against New York’s law was brought by fossil fuel companies and the attorneys general of 22 Republican-led states.
“This is a major victory in the fight against liberal states, trying to balance their budgets on the backs of our hard-working men and women in the coal, oil and gas industries,” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey said in a statement.
Environmental advocates called on New York Attorney General Letitia James to appeal the ruling.
“The fossil fuel industry would like nothing more than for one district court ruling in New York to scare lawmakers across the country into backing down, but this decision doesn’t bind other states or stop them from passing their own laws,” Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for Make Polluters Pay, an advocacy campaign supporting climate Superfund bills and lawsuits against fossil fuel companies.
“New York should fight this ruling, and every other state should keep moving until we make polluters pay their fair share.”
New York was the second state to pass a climate Superfund law, following a measure in Vermont. A lawsuit against Vermont’s law is still pending.
The laws are modeled on the federal Superfund program, which requires polluters to pay for the cleanup of toxic waste sites.
Lawmakers in at least 12 other states have proposed similar bills this session, although none has advanced so far. While the policy has gained significant attention and support in recent years, experts said that some legislators were likely waiting to see how the legal battles over the New York and Vermont laws would play out.
Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A Dane County judge says Wisconsin's Department of Corrections is complying with a 2025 ruling that ordered the prison system to implement a program for incarcerated moms and their infants.
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Billionaire businessman Elon Musk at the KI Convention Center on March 30, 2025, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he handed out checks to voters as part of his advocacy for Brad Schimel's state Supreme Court race. A local prosecutor assigned to investigate whether Musk violated Wisconsin law with the stunt said this week he would not prosecute Musk. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
David Crowley, the Democratic nominee for governor of Wisconsin, said at an event Tuesday in Madison that he’s “kind of befuddled” by the decision of the La Crosse County district attorney not to charge Elon Musk with election bribery over the two $1 million checks he gave to voters during Wisconsin’s 2025 state Supreme Court race.
In July, the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 5-1 to refer two complaints to the Brown County District Attorney’s office, alleging that Musk’s handouts — which he announced went to people who could prove they had already voted in the election — amounted to bribery.
During the 2025 election, Musk pumped more than $20 million into the race on behalf of conservative Brad Schimel. Schimel lost to Justice Susan Crawford partially because of backlash to Musk’s involvement at the peak of opposition to his DOGE effort to cut federal government spending for President Donald Trump.
La Crosse County DA Tim Gruenke was appointed as a special prosecutor to decide if charges should be brought against Musk, the world’s richest man.
In a letter released Tuesday, Gruenke said that while Musk posted on X, the platform he owns, that the checks he handed out at a political rally in Green Bay would go to people who had cast absentee ballots, he said in a later post that entrance to the rally was limited to people who had signed a petition opposing “activist judges.”
“In this case, without the famous name attached and the large dollar amounts involved, it is a simple case of a poorly worded statement that was corrected and brought into compliance with the law,” Gruenke wrote. “Because the original post was poorly worded and ambiguous about who would receive money, and the second post corrected the problem relatively quickly, I do not believe a jury would convict Elon Musk of a crime.”
At the Tuesday event, Crowley said he hadn’t read Gruenke’s reasoning but that Musk had “publicly talked about giving a million dollars to folks to actually go vote, which is absolutely against the law in Wisconsin.”
A person works on a condominium in Chicago. Some U.S. cities are trying to modernize the housing permitting process by adopting AI tools. (Photo by Robbie Sequeira/Stateline)
New housing projects can sometimes stall out as a developer applies to city or county planning boards and goes through cycles of inspections, reviews and approvals.
Now, cities are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to address one of the most persistent sources of housing permitting delays: incomplete applications. And two new streams of federal money aim to help them.
AI can handle time-intensive tasks such as scanning applications and flagging errors. The aim, some city officials say, is to eliminate repeated rounds of corrections that can add weeks or months to the process — but to leave final decisions in the hands of human reviewers.
The sweeping new federal housing law enacted last month creates an Innovation Fund with $200 million annually for local efforts to speed up permitting. And the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is offering up to $3 million in grants for local governments to deploy automated building code permitting systems.
Syracuse, New York, applied for one of the HUD grants, along with cities across the country, including Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Mobile, Alabama; and Richland, Washington.
Vincent Scipione, chief information officer for Syracuse, told Stateline that if the city wins the grant, it would open up a competitive bidding process for vendors and ask them about two big topics: data governance and algorithm design. The city wants to install an AI system to assist developers to file more complete applications upfront thus reducing time needed for revisions.
“Who owns the data that is being handled, and how is it being handled? That’s important,” Scipione told Stateline. “If it ends up being an AI-based solution, then algorithms that are involved and we need to ask what they are going to be handling?”
Large cities including Baltimore, Denver and Los Angeles have recently launched AI tools to streamline housing permitting, and smaller cities such as Everett, Washington; Lebanon, New Hampshire; and Naples, Florida, are following suit.
Texas’ Harris County, which includes Houston, this month put $750,000 toward an artificial intelligence program meant to speed up the permitting process for new construction projects.
The Denver City Council voted in March to approve a five-year contract for an AI Guided Plan Review platform to reduce permitting backlogs, for around $4.6 million. A city official said only about 37% of applications are accepted on the first round, and the goal is to increase that to 80% with the new tool.
The lone dissenting vote — council member Flor Alvidrez — raised concerns about the inaccuracies of AI systems generally. She also said local architects and developers raised concerns with her that AI may not be ready to handle the complexity of zoning codes and site-specific conditions.
Matt Mudd, press secretary for Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Craig Greenberg, told Stateline the city is testing an AI-assisted residential permitting system aimed at reducing delays caused by incomplete applications. The pilot uses property information, Geographic Information System (GIS) data and local permitting requirements to flag missing or incomplete information before an application reaches a reviewer, with early testing capable of reducing “avoidable” resubmissions by 50% or more, Mudd said.
The project is in the testing phase with a small group of builders and has not yet launched publicly. Mudd said employees remain responsible for permit reviews and final decisions.
Honolulu was one of the first cities to introduce AI into its permitting process with a tool called CivCheck. That program examines building permit applications to check applications against local codes and bylaws, flag missing information and guide applications through corrections.
Dawn Takeuchi Apuna, director of the city and county of Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting, said the better the quality and completeness of the applications, the better and faster the department’s review.
Prior to agreeing to work with CivCheck, Takeuchi Apuna said, city officials made sure the vendor knew that they weren’t looking to replace staff. She wanted AI to replace time spent by city planners reading incomplete applications and sending them back, and free them up for more face-to-face meetings with developers.
The rollout of Honolulu’s overhaul of its decades-old permitting process, which included a cloud-based platform called HNL Build as well as CivCheck, wasn’t entirely smooth, however. An anonymous survey of more than 150 employees — half the staff — in the weeks after HNL Build launched provided almost universally negative feedback and many urged a return to the old system, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported.
The median wait time to obtain a new building permit dropped to 2.5 months from August through April — a 40% decrease compared with the same period a year earlier, a Civil Beat review found.
So far, Honolulu has reported that CivCheck pre-screening has dropped permit reviews from an average of 3.4 review cycles per application to 1.4 cycles for single- and two-family residential projects. A single review cycle is the time spent by a planner examining a permit application, identifying problems or incomplete information, sending it back to the applicant for corrections, and then reviewing the revised application.
CivCheck applications averaged 7.7 corrections, compared with 23.5 corrections for applications that did not use CivCheck, and the average time an applicant spent going through the city’s permitting process decreased from 73 days to 32.5 days, both officials from the city and county of Honolulu and CivCheck told Stateline.
“We want to get back to just the face-to-face and the more complex part of the review,” Takeuchi Apuna said.
She added that AI “doesn’t necessarily catch or know how to make the decision on” the grayer areas of a project — where a proposal might meet basic requirements on paper but have unusual site conditions or neighborhood impacts — while a planner knows the context and ambiguities to determine how a rule or code applies.
Seattle also crunched the numbers during its pilot of CivCheck and found it was 87% accurate on application completeness checks and 92% accurate on design-compliance checks. CivCheck showed an approximate 50% reduction in average days for intake review of permits and a 35% reduction in correction cycles per review.
However, Seattle officials noted in their reports that while CivCheck showed promise, the city was not ready to adopt it fully. As of its June 2026 report, the city was still exploring funding and logistical support for tools such as CivCheck.
CivCheck told Stateline it was working with more than 20 cities, ranging from pilot projects to full implementation.
“When you can remove three, four or five review cycles of feedback and turn that into one review cycle, that’s where you start to see material improvements in permit turnaround times,” said Cyrus Symoom, co-CEO of Clariti Software, a community development and permitting solutions provider that acquired CivCheck.
Their tool, Symoom said, is solely to be used as a fact-checker but isn’t meant to replace or take the place of human decision making on permits. Ultimately, if a mistake is made, it’s up to the planner to properly vet that information.
“If you’re just gonna take the existing (permitting) process and bring it digital without an idea of what part of the process you want to fix, you’re not gonna see any real change,” he said.
Zhenia Dulko, a planner and researcher with the educational and membership organization American Planning Association, said that group has identified more than 70 state and local cases of AI being used across planning functions, including 13 for zoning and development.
While automation can take technical and onerous work off planners’ plates, Dulko believes it allows planners more time for the work AI cannot perform such as talking to residents, connecting stakeholders to projects and front-facing public engagement.
“AI will help speed up some of this work but there’s a lot of this planning work that doesn’t need AI because humans want to talk to humans about their ideas and visions, and find a way to finish that project.”
Dulko said planners also consider factors such as the surrounding community, inclusion and equity goals that may be harder for an automated system to replicate.
“Efficiency in terms of numbers is important but in terms of time it’s even more important,” Dulko said. “But we just should not miss these very other important things. We should remember that this is just one part of the permitting equation.”
An August 2026 Journal of Urban Economics paper looked at Los Angeles data on development timelines for all multifamily housing projects permitted by the city between 2010 and 2022. The analysis estimated that reducing approval times by 25% could have increased the rate of housing production by almost 24%, if the researchers accounted for both already-started projects that would have been finished sooner and the effect of incentivizing new development.
But some city officials caution that while AI can help speed the permitting process, applicants are responsible for some of the delays.
“I think a lot of people assume that it’s all on the local permitting agencies, and think we’re this big black box that no one can figure out what we’re doing and that we’re just sitting on applications,” said Takeuchi Apuna. “It’s important to educate people and let them know that the applicant plays a major role. CivCheck helps address that role, but permitting is really a back-and-forth process. Applicants account for at least 50% of that whole dance and the actual review time.”
Saf Rabah, CEO and founder of Govstream.ai, an AI tool that has contracted with Louisville and Bellevue, Washington, says the permitting process is a two-way street that relies on both city and developer. He said the process could use more guidance from cities to help applicants who may not be well-versed with building permitting.
“A lot of people end up applying for the wrong permit and go down this rabbit hole when they upload their plans. There is no validation. There is no guidance. There is literally nothing. It is a minefield of ‘gotchas’ in front of a builder,” said Rabah.
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
The prediction market company Novig is preemptively suing Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul in hopes of keeping him from taking legal action to enforce state gambling laws.
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A $140 million grant to Wisconsin and other states will pay for upgrades to 41 Amtrak Charger locomotives used on passenger trains. (Amtrak photo/Copyright National Railroad Passenger Corp.)
Wisconsin rail service to Chicago and the Pacific Northwest will share in a $140 million upgrade from the federal government.
The investment, awarded by the Federal Railroad Administration, will be used to overhaul 41 passenger locomotives that pull trains on the popular Hiawatha route connecting Milwaukee and Chicago and trains that pass through Wisconsin enroute to Washington state.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) announced the award Wednesday. The contract was a joint application involving the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and corresponding agencies in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon and Washington, all of which will also have passenger routes that will be served by the upgraded motive power.
“Investing in this rail line is an investment in the Main Streets that will get more customers, in families’ safety, and in our state’s future,” Baldwin said.
“This grant will help keep the locomotive fleet in a state of good repair, enhancing rail line resiliency, and preventing unplanned outages,” said Wisconsin DOT Secretary Kristina Boardman.
The funding came from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law enacted in the first year of former President Joe Biden’s term. Baldwin’s office noted that the law was enacted without the votes of any Wisconsin Republicans in Congress.
Tech giant Oracle is dropping its lawsuit against Wisconsin utility regulators over financial support requirements for data centers in southeastern Wisconsin.
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The Douglas County District Attorney is not filing charges against a Superior police officer who shot and killed a man in April.
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A veteran born in Oshkosh is suing the state over a law that limits when transgender and intersex people can change the sex on their birth certificates.
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A lawsuit from conservative groups claims Wisconsin's new online sports betting law is unconstitutional and must be struck down.
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Migrants wait through the night on May 10, 2023, in a dust storm, on land between the Rio Grande and the U.S.-Mexico border wall, hoping they will be processed by immigration authorities before the expiration of Title 42, a public health order used to expel migrants. (Photo by Corrie Boudreaux/Source NM)
WASHINGTON — The Department of Health and Human Services plans to award a $150 million contract to a small Texas firm — with no specialty in immigration law and run by a former Trump official — to provide legal services to tens of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children, according to a Wednesday pre-published notice in the Federal Register.
The notice, which HHS is scheduled to officially publish Thursday, comes after the department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, which cares for unaccompanied children, let a contract with the Acacia Center for Justice for such services expire. The center has a network of roughly 100 organizations it works with that provided legal aid and representation to immigrant children across the country, including in immigration court appearances.
Lawyers from Acacia said the Trump administration did not renew the contract because attorneys refused to hand over sensitive information about their clients.
Burke Law Group, a Houston-based law firm founded in 2023, “advises companies on complex environmental, regulatory, and enforcement matters,” according to its website.
The firm will be tasked with representing as many as 24,000 unaccompanied immigrant children through their court proceedings.
The founder, Marcella Burke, during the first Donald Trump administration worked at the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Interior. From 2017-2018 she served as the deputy general counsel for EPA and from 2018 to 2020 worked at Interior as deputy solicitor and senior counsel, according to her LinkedIn profile.
The Burke Law Group did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
Of the nearly 30 lawyers on the law firm’s website, only two list experience in immigration and asylum law.
The multi-million-dollar contract is set to start Aug. 15 and run through August 14, 2027. Because it’s a “single-source cooperative agreement” contract, it gives the law firm the flexibility to subcontract work out to other firms at its discretion.
Since Monday, unaccompanied minors have lost access to their legal representation. Without it, fewer than 10% of immigrant children win the right to remain in the United States while their case goes through immigration court.
A handful of legal organizations have been able to dip into savings to continue legal coverage. But some have had to stop altogether, especially after the Trump administration since December has refused to reimburse more than $65 million in completed legal work.
A federal judge on Thursday is set to hear arguments whether to hold the Trump administration in contempt for violating an April 2025 court order that ordered the government to continue funding legal representation for unaccompanied children.
The Big Four Bridge over the Ohio River, connecting Louisville, Kentucky, and Jeffersonville, Indiana. (Photo by Sarah Ladd/Kentucky Lantern)
WASHINGTON — The stopgap spending bill supported by an overwhelming majority of U.S. senators does not address tens of billions in expiring transportation funding, leaving states facing a massive effective budget cut starting Oct. 1.
The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, which authorized highway and transit programs for five years, expires Sept. 30. Roughly $38.6 billion per year in extra federal transportation funding is set to expire with it, even if the continuing resolution the Senate advanced 89-4 Monday becomes law.
The stopgap measure, a version of which has also passed the House, would keep the government funded mostly at current levels, and reauthorize highway and transit programs through Dec. 11.
But it would not renew the advance appropriations that provided $184 billion over five years for a host of transportation programs under the infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed in his first year in office.
Ben Gilsdorf, an associate legislative director for transportation at the National Association of Counties, said in a Tuesday interview that the advance appropriations funded many of the group’s top transportation priorities.
“It’s not all of the programs under (the infrastructure law) that would stop without an extension,” he said. “But for us, it’s several of the most impactful ones.”
The National Association of Counties was part of a broad range of advocacy groups representing business, labor, cities, state departments of transportation and every mode of transportation that signed a letter last month asking Congress to extend the supplemental funding.
Funding for Transportation Department programs makes up a bit more than half of the total advance appropriations in the infrastructure law, which also includes major funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Energy Department and telecommunications program.
The total advance appropriations for fiscal 2026 were about $66.2 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The DOT funding largely flows to state departments of transportation.
Returning to pre-2021 baseline infrastructure spending would leave every state with less federal funding to cover varied transportation needs.
About 30%, $10.8 billion per year, of the extra transportation funding is determined by formula, meaning the amounts sent to each state vary based on population, highway miles and other factors.
California is the only state that would lose 10 figures worth of funding, at nearly $1.1 billion.
But even Vermont, the state with the lowest total funding lost, would see $55.6 million less in formula funds if the funding is not extended, according to data Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray of Washington sent to her fellow Democratic senators last month.
A total of 10 formula programs representing different modes of transportation would be affected, according to the fact sheet from Murray’s office.
More than half of the formula funding, $5.5 billion, is slated for the Federal Highway Administration’s bridge repair program.
Airport construction funds represent the next-greatest funding at $3 billion per year. The Federal Transit Administration’s grant program to maintain transit system infrastructure would lose $950 million and state transportation departments would lose another $900 million in federal funding for electric vehicle charging stations.
Other affected programs are for highways in Appalachian states, truck safety inspections, ferry boats and terminals, FTA grants for senior passengers and those with disabilities and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration programs.
In addition to formula funds, the remaining 70% of advance appropriations is distributed via 25 competitive grant programs, according to the Murray document.
Grant programs to fund ports, large highway and rail projects, transit station upgrades, roadway safety and other projects would be among those losing funding.
While the law that initiated the additional funding was bipartisan, there are indications an extension could be a more partisan issue.
Murray said ahead of the Senate floor vote Monday that Republicans did not “agree to our efforts to extend critical advance appropriations for infrastructure” and vowed to continue pursuing the additional funds.
Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, did not reference advance appropriations in a press release announcing a deal on the stopgap bill.
Republicans, who hold majorities in both chambers of Congress, may prefer to settle the future of the funding through a long-term surface transportation bill or full-year appropriations measure, Gilsdorf said.
Even if the Senate bill is enacted, there will be an opportunity when it expires to revisit the issue, he said.
“There’d be another bite at the apple,” he said.
A person familiar with negotiations who was not authorized to speak on the record said Tuesday that the advance appropriations in the 2021 law were meant to be one-time funding, and that extending them in a stopgap measure meant to preserve the status quo would be inappropriate.
The funding is part of a larger policy debate than is usually considered in a continuing resolution, the person said.
The issue could hang over negotiations for full-year spending bills, likely to begin in earnest after November’s elections.
Senate appropriators have not reached a deal for top-line spending levels for fiscal 2027.
Republicans, at President Donald Trump’s urging, are seeking a massive boost to defense programs.
Democrats historically seek parity between non-defense and defense spending, but have relaxed that stance while the extra infrastructure funds have been flowing. Without that additional funding, Democrats might be less amenable to compromise.
Detention data released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week show that ICE is detaining more and more people in Wisconsin jails — and most of the people detained have no criminal convictions.
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Ultimately, it will be up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to decide whether to grant the suspension, as well as how long the suspension should be.
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Wisconsin and a coalition of states have secured a win in a lawsuit that sought to force the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to implement strengthened Biden-era standards for soot pollution.
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A 10-year-old Honduran immigrant who came into the United States as an unaccompanied minor carries her baby cousin on April 25, 2021, after reuniting with extended family in Sellersburg, Indiana. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — As many as 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant children are at risk of losing their federally funded legal representation due to the Trump administration withholding appropriated funds, immigration attorneys warned Tuesday.
For more than six months, the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement has not released $65 million Congress appropriated for legal representation of unaccompanied children in immigration cases. That means children may have to press their immigration claims on their own, vastly raising the probability they will be deported, the attorneys said.
“Children are now facing the real possibility of representing themselves alone against experienced government attorneys,” Ana Devereaux, an attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, said during a virtual press conference.
Shaina Aber, the executive director for Acacia Center for Justice, a national group that partners with at least 100 legal organizations to provide services to children, said the lack of funding is already being felt. Several of the group’s partners have declined to continue the partnerships because they have not been reimbursed, she said.
Aber said the funds were withheld because attorneys refused to hand over to the administration sensitive case data from the unaccompanied children, such as medical records and the types of legal relief the minors are seeking.
“These children should not, and should never be, leveraged in a political game,” she said.
HHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
Without a lawyer, fewer than 10% of immigrant children win the right to remain in the United States while their case goes through immigration court, said Elizabeth Young, a former immigration judge.
Some children going through the courts are too young to speak, she said during the press conference.
“A legal system that values fairness cannot expect children to carry that burden alone,” Young said.
Devereaux said the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center is operating on reserves and has continued to provide legal services for about 1,100 children.
“Children are children, regardless of their nationality,” Devereaux said.
Stripping away the legal services for children, Aber said, is “yet another system of mass deportations.”
Additionally, the Trump administration does not plan to renew its contract with Acacia, which ends July 31, Aber said.
Instead, the administration is eyeing a small Texas state commission that aids low-income people with criminal defense to provide legal services for immigrant children. The commission does not have experience handling immigration cases or unaccompanied minors, Aber said.
Democratic members of Congress have also called on the Trump administration to release the funds, which Congress approved.
Last month, more than 70 lawmakers demanded that ORR reimburse the legal groups.
“Ultimately, we are concerned that these payment delays may be an attempt to circumvent requirements that ORR continue funding legal services for unaccompanied children,” they wrote. “The federal government must meet its obligations under the law.”
Congress created the Unaccompanied Children Program, which, among other things, provides funding for legal representation of migrant children. Free legal representation is not generally provided for immigrants but there is a carveout for unaccompanied children.
There are about 100 organizations across the U.S. that provide those legal services.
The move from the Trump administration to withhold funds has sparked several lawsuits. Last year, a preliminary injunction was put in place that ordered the federal government to continue funding legal services for unaccompanied children.
But advocates have not received any funds since December and were back in court this month.
Last week, federal Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California probed whether the Trump administration should be held in contempt over the withholding of funds after 11 groups claimed they have still not received any reimbursements, according to El Paso Matters.
Those groups are the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, Estrella del Paso, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, National Immigrant Justice Center, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, Social Justice Collaborative and the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project.
Graham Platner, then the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Maine, unveils an anti-corruption policy plan outside the Portland office of incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Collins on June 25, 2026. (Photo by Emma Davis/ Maine Morning Star)
A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision makes it easier for political parties to put their stamp on the most important campaigns, just as the struggle heats up for control of Congress in the midterm elections.
Simply put, the ruling “gives the parties more money to spend,” said David Kolker, senior counsel at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.
In a 6-3 decision on June 30, the court struck down limits on how much political parties could spend in coordination with specific candidates.
But will it make a difference, particularly in mega-money Senate races in Ohio, Maine, Texas, Iowa and elsewhere?
In sheer dollars from big donors, maybe not. In strengthening the role of political parties and how they use those dollars to help campaigns, yes.
“The idea there will be an explosion of money that’s not already going to be there, I don’t really see that. The super PAC money is already there,” said Brendan Glavin, director of insight at OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan group that tracks and analyzes money in politics. Super PACs can spend unlimited sums independent of campaigns.
Don Levy, Siena Research Institute director, saw evidence in July of how eagerly the parties could spend money — or yank it back.
Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner’s now-defunct campaign was rocked by new allegations of sexual abuse, which he has denied. Siena conducts polls in Maine.
When the scandal broke, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, both of New York, issued a terse three-sentence statement in response.
One of those sentences was: “The DSCC will not invest in the Maine Senate race if Platner remains on the ballot.”
That indicated “money is top of mind” for the party, Levy said. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is seeking reelection in a state that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris won in 2024 by 7 points.
The Supreme Court has been methodically tearing down barriers aimed at limiting big money in politics.
In 2010, the Citizens United decision overturned decades-old restrictions on corporate independent expenditures, allowing them to spend unlimited sums from their corporate profits to support the candidates of their choice.
The ruling led to the creation of super PACs, allowing special interests to raise and spend unlimited funds to boost political candidates.
An analysis by Daniel Weiner, director, elections and government at the Brennan Center for Justice, found that their funding “largely comes from a small group of the very wealthiest donors.”
From 2010 to 2022, super PACs spent about $6.4 billion on federal elections. They spent an estimated $2.7 billion in the 2024 election.
There were, and are, limits on contributions to specific candidates and political parties. Super PACs cannot coordinate with campaigns.
Until the Supreme Court ruling, there were limits on how much the parties could coordinate. Not anymore.
Parties have “complained about being outspent by the outside super PACs. Whether that’s true or not you could debate,” said Kolker.
The court decision, though, makes it easier for big donors to funnel money to the parties, knowing the parties can now seamlessly direct the funds to candidates they feel need it most.
Republicans pushed for the ruling, with many in the GOP believing that Democrats had the advantage of obtaining more, often smaller, contributions to their candidates, while Republicans relied on bigger donors who felt more bound by contribution limits and restrictions.
Republicans hailed the decision.
“By striking down these unconstitutional caps on coordinated spending, the Court has restored core political speech and ensured parties can compete on a level playing field,” said a joint statement from Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who chairs the GOP’s House campaign committee.
Democrats saw things much differently. The ruling “is a win for billionaire donors and special interests who want more influence over the GOP agenda and an invitation for corruption,” said a joint statement from Democratic Party Chairman Ken Martin, Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., who heads the party’s House campaign committee, and Gillibrand.
Democrats need a net gain of four Senate and three House seats in November’s elections to win control of those chambers.
The biggest money is likely to pour into a handful of Senate races.
Maine has been a top Democratic target, though the turmoil over Platner’s candidacy makes it unpredictable.
It had been a competitive race. In the Siena/New York Times/Portland Press Herald poll June 19-26 poll, before the latest Platner controversy erupted, he led Collins by 2 points. Trump’s approval rating was 36%.
Maine Democrats have until July 27 to choose a replacement for Platner, who left the race July 8.
The court ruling is “not going to be a huge game changer for the amount of money flowing into a competitive race. They already have super PAC money, and already have megadonors giving to parties,” said Glavin.
Money could matter more in Ohio, where big spending in 2024 – a non-presidential election record of $483.4 million, according to AdImpact – helped Republicans paint incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, as out of touch with the GOP-trending state. Brown lost to Republican businessman Bernie Moreno by 4 points.
“I think money made a difference last time as they drove up Brown’s negatives,” said Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Brown now will be able to tap more party expertise and funding as he runs this year against Sen. Jon Husted, a Republican appointed to the seat in 2025 to replace Vice President JD Vance.
Iowa is a different sort of money battleground. “Money could make a big difference if Democrats spend there,” Taylor said. Democrats are trying to win the seat now held by Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican who is not seeking reelection. State Rep. Josh Turek, a Democrat, is running against U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, a Republican.
Levy offered this example of where shifting party money could matter. Suppose polls hold up and former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, remains favored to win a North Carolina Senate seat now held by Republican Thom Tillis, in his campaign against Republican Michael Whatley.
“The national party could say we’ll write off North Carolina because Cooper has a big lead and is extremely well known in the state. It would be difficult to beat him,” Levy said. Maybe they’d direct more money to Texas, where state Rep. James Talarico and Attorney General Ken Paxton were tied in last month’s Siena poll.
The court ruling gives “a lot more power to party leaders who control how these funds are spent,” said Kolker, and probably more clout to Congress itself, making it easier to impose party discipline.
Experts are quick to warn that big money is no surefire guarantee of success.
There are just too many moving parts influencing voters – their economic situation, their views of President Donald Trump and their disillusionment with the political establishment, to name a few.
“You want to have a robust TV program but the political environment is still going to matter in a lot of these races,” said Taylor.
What often matters most for a candidate and a political party is building an image and reputation and sustaining it, which is why in election after election, incumbents usually win.
“There is still an incumbent advantage. There are cycles where voter discontent and frustration reaches a point where the only way to express your frustration is to vote against whoever is in power,” said Todd Eberly, professor of political science at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Maine provides a strong example of the advantages and disadvantages of money.
Collins has been a senator since 1997. “Collins will play to her strength. The people of Maine, regardless of what the left may say, they feel she has good moral character and is in touch with the values of Mainers,” Levy said.
Democrats will undoubtedly try to tie her to Trump and the Washington establishment. At the same time, he said, “Maine is an inexpensive state and money will fly in there to say Susan Collins is in tune with Maine.”
The race will be a test of all the factors that influence a race, financial and otherwise.
“Candidates who spend more, their probability of winning has increased significantly,” said Eberly. “With one exception. If you’re an incumbent, it (big spending) doesn’t make much of a difference.”
A judge is set to sign off on Northland College's plan for doling out what's left of its restricted endowment. The college in northern Wisconsin borrowed $22 million from its endowment to fund operations before it closed last year, and some donors accuse them of violating the law.
The post A northern Wisconsin college spent down its endowment before it closed. Some donors think it broke the law. appeared first on WPR.
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