A man closes the entrance to Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine on Oct. 3 in Baltimore because of the federal government shutdown. States are currently covering costs of some federal programs, but it’s unclear whether they will be repaid once the government reopens. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

States are doing what they generally do during a federal government shutdown: continuing to operate programs serving some of the neediest people.

That means schools are still serving federally subsidized meals and states are distributing funding for the federal food stamp program. For now.

If the shutdown drags on and federal dollars run out, states can only keep programs going for so long. States may choose to pay for some services themselves so residents keep their benefits.

But this time, state leaders have new worries about getting reimbursed for federal costs once the federal spending impasse is resolved. That’s traditionally been the practice following a shutdown, but the Trump administration’s record of pulling funding and targeting Democratic-led states has some officials worried about what comes after the shutdown.

Many states already struggled to balance their own budgets this year. And some fear going without federal reimbursement for shutdown costs could force states to make painful cuts to their own budget priorities.

Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine, a Democrat, said the administration has not made good on its word to states in recent months — freezing some congressionally approved funding and cutting already awarded grants. So it’s likewise unclear whether the federal government will follow previous practice and reimburse states for covering shutdown costs of crucial federal programs such as food assistance.

“I think everything is a risk with this administration. … We in the states are kind of left holding the bag yet again as the federal government tries to sort out what it wants to be when it grows up,” he told Stateline.

Nevada entered the shutdown with more than $1.2 billion in reserves. Last week, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office said in a statement that state funds would be adequate to cover “a short period of time with minimal disruption to services.”

But the governor’s office said a shutdown of more than 30 days would cause more significant challenges for the state.

Lombardo’s office did not respond to Stateline’s questions. But last week, it released a three-page document on the shutdown, saying it expected the federal government to reimburse states once the budget stalemate is resolved.

“As D.C. works through its issues, our administration will continue to support Nevadans in any way we can throughout this unnecessary federal government shutdown,” Lombardo said in the statement.

While mandatory programs such as Medicaid and Social Security continue to send funds to beneficiaries during the shutdown, funding for other safety net programs such as food assistance are more uncertain. The federal government told states there were enough funds for the food stamp program to cover October benefits, though the special food program for women, infants and children may run out of money sooner.

By furloughing workers and halting federal spending, the shutdown could cost the national economy $15 billion per week, President Donald Trump’s economic advisers estimated.

The White House says a prolonged shutdown will affect the economies of every state by reducing employment, federal benefits and consumer spending. White House estimates say this could cost Michigan $361 million per week in lost economic output, for example, while Florida could lose $911 million each week.

‘Fend for themselves’

Some federal services are shuttered during a shutdown: The Environmental Protection Agency has ceased many research, permitting and enforcement efforts, and official jobs data is no longer being released. Federal funds for other programs, including food assistance, are expected to last through the end of the month. But states can elect to spend their own funds on these programs, which were previously authorized by Congress and state legislatures.

Before the shutdown, states were stockpiling reserve funding. The National Association of State Budget Officers reported most state budgets this year maintained or increased rainy day funds. At the same time, state and local governments are borrowing record amounts: As much as $600 billion in municipal bonds is projected to be issued by the end of 2025.

“So states and localities are kind of getting the message they really need to fend for themselves much more than they ever had,” said William Glasgall, public finance adviser at the Volcker Alliance, a nonprofit that works to support public sector workers.

Since January, the Trump administration has stripped states and cities of billions of dollars that Congress approved for education, infrastructure and energy projects. Glasgall said that record leaves states with legitimate concerns about getting repaid for their shutdown-related expenses — a prospect that would likely spark even more lawsuits from Democratic-led states.

“They’ve already, before the shutdown, started rolling back federal funding, and I don’t see any reason why they would stop now,” he said. “The recissions that have been announced are pretty harsh, and it’s money we’re expecting and not getting.”

The last shutdown, which lasted five weeks during Trump’s first term, delayed billions in federal spending and reduced gross domestic product — the value of all goods and services produced — by $11 billion, the Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2019. Experts say states were repaid for costs they incurred providing federal services during that shutdown.

In Minnesota, State Budget Director Ahna Minge said staff have been studying previous shutdowns. But at a news conference with Democratic Gov. Tim Walz last week, she characterized this shutdown as “unpredictable.”

“The current federal administration may not follow the historic playbook,” she said.

Walz said farmers would be among the first hit as the federal Farm Service Agency has ceased operations in the middle of the state’s harvest season. Among other duties, that agency works on disaster assistance and processes loans during harvest to protect farmers against commodity price fluctuations.

Minge said Minnesota officials think programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children have enough existing federal funds to operate through October. But she said the state budget cannot backfill all the commitments made by federal programs.

“What we know is that the longer a shutdown lasts, the greater the impact to state programs and services,” she said.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, has pledged to use state dollars to keep WIC afloat if needed, The Associated Press reported. And Colorado lawmakers set aside $7.5 million just before the shutdown to keep WIC running.

Already under strain

In Maryland, the shutdown is compounding the economic instability from Trump’s ongoing efforts to shrink the number of federal employees, agencies and spending.

With more than 160,000 federal employees, Maryland’s economy relies heavily on the federal workforce. The Trump administration has said it may deny back pay to hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal workers, despite a law he signed in 2019 guaranteeing such back pay.

Chief Deputy Comptroller Andrew Schaufele told lawmakers last week that a shutdown could cost the state $700,000 per day in lost tax revenue.

Democratic Gov. Wes Moore pledged to continue funding some federal programs, but said the state would not tap into its rainy day funds to do so.

“We’re going to continually evaluate how long we can go,” he said at a news conference.

As for getting repaid, Moore spokesperson David Turner told Stateline that the state had received no indication that the federal government would deviate from past practice, “but we are monitoring closely.”

This fiscal uncertainty hits states as they are already struggling to respond to the strain of federal agency layoffs and cuts in the major tax and spending law Trump signed this summer. The law slashed billions in social service funding and created costly new bureaucratic burdens for states, which administer Medicaid and food assistance programs.

“There’s no way, really at this point, to sort of assess with any level of confidence what’s going to happen when you also have these massive layoffs that were going on pre-shutdown,” said Lisa Parshall, a professor of political science at Daemen University in New York. “There’s just a real sense from states and localities — and I think rightly so — that that kind of reliability of the federal government is now in question.”

It may not be a question of whether states are reimbursed for their shutdown expenses, but which states are reimbursed, Parshall said. The Trump administration has publicly targeted funding of liberal-led states and cities over policy disagreements, raising the possibility it could do something similar with the shutdown.

“Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, you know, you could argue,” she said. “But it’s definitely a thing that seems to be adding to this level of uncertainty — this shutdown feels different.”

In California, officials just closed a nearly $12 billion shortfall when negotiating the budget that was approved in June. The budget deficit is expected to grow to more than $17 billion next year, said H.D. Palmer, spokesperson for the State of California Department of Finance, which advises the governor and state agencies on budget issues.

“There isn’t a long-term, open-ended line of credit available if this drags out,” he said of the federal government shutdown.

The depth of reserve funds available varies by federally funded program, he said. CalFresh, California’s name for its Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, has enough funds to cover food stamp benefits for this month, but anything beyond that is uncertain.

“If the duration of this is in the matter of days, it will be an inconvenience, but should not pose a massive problem,” he said. “However, if it does drag out for an extended period of time, then clearly it’s going to be a problem.”

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

Military personnel enter Broadview ICE facility Thursday | Photo by Andrew Adams/Capitol News Illinois

CHICAGO — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from deploying 500 National Guard troops to Chicago as the administration’s immigration enforcement actions have intensified — along with protests against them.

U.S. District Judge April Perry noted the ongoing protests outside a local immigration processing center have never exceeded 200 demonstrators. She said the demonstrations fall far short of the high legal bar needed to be characterized as a “rebellion” that would allow the administration to take control of the Illinois National Guard and deploy troops from Texas and California to Chicago.

“I have seen no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” the judge said as she issued her oral ruling late Thursday afternoon.

While Perry acknowledged protesters have assaulted immigration agents and damaged federal property — namely vehicles belonging to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol — the judge said there was far more evidence that the feds actually escalated or even caused clashes with activists.

More than a dozen protestors have been arrested in recent weeks outside an ICE processing center in the suburb of Broadview, approximately 13 miles directly west of Thursday’s hearing in Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse.

The ICE facility has been the epicenter of protests against the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement actions in the last month. The Department of Homeland Security claims “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago and its suburbs has resulted in the arrests of more than 1,000 people.

Read more: Court scrutiny of ICE mounts as judge rules warrantless arrests violated order

National Guard would add ‘fuel to the fire’

DHS claims the federal troop deployment is necessary to protect the facility, along with federal immigration agents working in and around it.

But the judge agreed with arguments put forth by the state and city of Chicago in its lawsuit that deploying the National Guard was more likely to lead to civil unrest than be a force for peacekeeping, as guardsmen are “not trained in de-escalation.” Throughout nearly three hours of arguments in her courtroom, she continually pushed back on U.S. Department of Justice lawyers’ claims that Chicago-area immigration protests had grown out of control due to violent agitators.

Perry noted that for 19 years, weekly prayer vigils outside the Broadview facility occurred without incident. But she said most of the evidence pointed to federal agents — not protesters — as the catalysts for violence. She recounted recent incidents in which agents used chemical agents and nonlethal rounds against crowds “as small as 10 people.”

Deploying the guard “will only add fuel to the fire that the defendants themselves have started,” she said.

The judge will publish a written decision on Friday. But after giving her a verbal ruling Thursday, she agreed to use the widest possible wording to prevent the Trump administration from deploying troops from other states while her 14-day temporary restraining order remains in place.

For now, the feds won’t be able to order troops to perform their “federal protective missions” anywhere in Illinois.

That includes members of the Texas National Guard, who made their first appearance Thursday morning at the Broadview facility.

Texas Guard is already here

The Trump administration dispatched National Guard troops to Illinois from Texas earlier this week, even after the judge on Monday urged them to wait for Thursday’s hearing. Fourteen members of California’s National Guard were also sent to the Chicago area in order to train Illinois troops. Eric Wells, a top lawyer for Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, argued the move was a harbinger of “wanton tyranny.”

“I can only say that what I think what we heard from the United States Department of Justice was startling, unbounded, limitless and not in accord with our system of ordered liberty of federalism, of a constitutional structure that has protected this nation and allowed it to prosper for hundreds of years,” Wells said as he began his final arguments.

Raoul sat front-row throughout Thursday’s arguments in the courtroom and grew emotional while answering reporter questions after Perry’s ruling. He called the attorneys who worked on the case “true American heroes.”

“This is an important decision not just for the state of Illinois but for the entire country,” he said. “The question of state sovereignty was addressed in this decision. The question of whether or not the president of the United States should have unfettered authority to militarize our cities was answered today.”

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Trump administration to appeal

The Trump administration is poised to appeal Perry’s decision, just as it challenged a decision from Trump-appointed federal judge in Oregon who also blocked the National Guard’s deployment to Portland over the weekend. The 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday heard the case, during which two other Trump-appointed judges appeared amenable to arguments that a president should be given deference in matters of national security, according to reporting from POLITICO.

DOJ lawyer Eric Hamilton also pushed for deference in his arguments to Perry Thursday. He said it wasn’t up to the judge to decide whether there was a risk of rebellion or even whether Trump was “relying on completely invalid evidence,” as Perry put it.

Hamilton painted a much darker picture of the protests in Broadview and Chicago, claiming that “sustained violence” in recent weeks was preventing DHS from “executing federal law.”

“They are not protesters,” he said. “They are the violent resistance of duly enacted immigration laws.”

Hamilton said dozens of agents have been “injured, hit, punched” — one even had his beard ripped off by a protester, he alleged.

“How — how did that happen?” Perry asked at one point. “Like an entire … not pieces of hair? His whole beard?”

“I believe that’s what the declaration says,” Hamilton said, referring to a filing in the case.

‘DHS’ version of events are unreliable’

In delivering her ruling, Perry said the DOJ’s arguments in the National Guard case seemed to add to “a growing body of evidence that DHS’ version of events are unreliable.” She said the administration’s characterization of immigration protests “cannot be aligned” with the accounts of local and state law enforcement submitted in legal filings.

For example, Hamilton referenced recent arrests of protesters, including a couple who were arrested for allegedly assaulting officers and happened to be carrying their licensed concealed weapons. But a federal grand jury this week declined to indict the couple, along with a third person, all of whom had already been released on bond.

Over the weekend, a Customs and Border Protection agent shot a woman in Brighton Park on Chicago’s Southwest Side during an altercation with agents. DHS officials allege the woman was one of 10 drivers who were following federal agents’ vehicles Saturday morning and eventually boxed them in.

But her attorney told a federal judge this week that body-camera footage contradicts that narrative and shows an officer shouting “do something b—-,” according to reporting from the Chicago Sun-Times. She and another driver were arrested over the weekend but the judge ordered them released.

Hamilton also referred to the incident several times, claiming drivers were “ramming” into immigration vehicles.

None of the other protesters arrested by either federal or local authorities in recent weeks remain in detention, with most arrestees handcuffed and immediately released after receiving a citation.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday dropped charges against one of the arrested protesters, one day after a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order against ICE barring agents from arresting peaceful protesters or journalists covering immigration demonstrations. It also bars federal agents from using harsh crowd control methods such as tear gas and other non-lethal weapons and ammunition.

The judge pointed out the Trump administration activated the National Guard the same weekend a federal immigration official stationed in Broadview described as a “great weekend” in an internal email late Sunday night. The official said the relative calm was due to the Illinois State Police, which last week formalized cooperation with Broadview Police and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office into a “unified command” and put up fencing around the building.

Perry cited the dropped charges for protesters this week, the First Amendment restraining order won by journalism groups, and another federal judge’s ruling Tuesday that ICE violated a consent decree restricting warrantless arrests.

“So to summarize, in the last 48 hours, in four separate unrelated legal decisions from four different neutral parties, they all cast doubt on DHS’ version of events,” the judge said.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Sen. Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) speaks at a press conference Wednesday morning about the Senate Democrats' "Affordable Wisconsin Agenda." (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

If there’s one word at the top of Democratic Party political discourse this year, it’s “affordability.”

Whether focused on a particular issue — child care, health care and housing are the most frequent examples — or on the cost of just about everything, making goods and services and life “affordable” figures high in the opening pitches of candidates across the state.

“I think the No. 1  issue that we need to focus on is affordability,” said Mitchell Berman, a Racine County nurse, when he announced in August he would seek the  Democratic nomination to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District.

Trevor Jung in Racine launched his state Senate campaign in September with a focus on “affordability” and “good-paying jobs.” Corrine Hendrickson, a former child care proprietor in New Glarus, said “affordability” is the top issue for her state Senate bid — and she wasn’t just talking about child care.

Democrats campaigning to be the party’s nominee for governor as diverse as David Crowley, Missy Hughes, and Francesca Hong have all uttered the word in introducing themselves to the public.

On Wednesday, the State Senate Democratic Committee had a press conference outside the Capitol to announce the Democrats’ focus on affordability, both for their upcoming legislative agenda and with an eye on the 2026 elections.

“Right now in Wisconsin, 65% of families are saying they are just getting by or they are struggling,” said Sen. Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton), the Senate minority leader. A spokesperson said the July Marquette University Law School poll was the source for the survey finding.

State Senate Democrats plan to spend the next few weeks traveling Wisconsin and hearing from state residents. Hesselbein said those conversations will become fodder for “tangible policy solutions that will help working families keep more of their hard-earned money, and we’re calling it the Affordable Wisconsin Agenda.”

Nathan Kalmoe, a University of Wisconsin political scientist, said via email that emphasizing poor economic conditions could be risky for Wisconsin Democrats running in state elections. While Republican lawmakers “may take some blame, the governor is a Democrat,” and voters tend to hold the chief executive responsible for economic conditions, he said. 

Kalmoe added that focusing on the economy exclusively at the expense of concerns for the most marginalized or concerns about Trump administration actions that threaten democracy would be “disturbing, and dangerous.”

Nevertheless, polling trends in the last several months suggest why Democrats nationwide have been focusing on inflation and the economy, said John D. Johnson, a research fellow and political analyst at Marquette University.

In Marquette polls shortly after President Donald Trump was elected to a second term in November, and again before he took office in January, 41% of adults nationally said they believed his policies would reduce inflation.

In Marquette’s most recent national poll, conducted in mid-September and released Oct. 2, “that had fallen to 25%,” Johnson said in an email to the Wisconsin Examiner. “Meanwhile, the share believing Trump’s policies would increase inflation grew from 45% to 60%.”

In the September poll, 40% of adults named “inflation and the cost of living” as the top issue in the U.S. “Another 19% chose ‘the economy’ more generally,” Johnson said.

“Overall, 29% of adults approved of Trump’s handling of ‘inflation and the cost of living’ while 71% disapproved,” Johnson said. (On “border security,” meanwhile, 55% of those polled approved Trump while 45% disapproved.)

In May, 68% of Republicans and 23% of independent voters told the Marquette pollsters they approved of how Trump was handling “inflation and the cost of living.” By September, Republican support had slipped to 57%, but among independents, support had plummeted to 14%.

“In other words, this is (1) an issue where there is a lot of daylight between how Republicans and Independents rate Trump, and (2) an issue where Trump is falling with both Democrats and Independents,” Johnson said.

At the Senate Democrats’ news conference Wednesday, a succession of senators — along with one state representative who is a Senate hopeful — spoke of how the issue of affordability cuts across a wide range of topics. And each laid blame for inaction on their Republican rivals.

“Senate Democrats have already been leading the fight to lower the cost of housing, whether trying to expand the homestead tax credit or preventing hedge funds from buying up available housing stocks, but undoubtedly more needs to be done,” said Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick).

Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon), who has the endorsement of the Senate Democrats as she seeks the party’s nomination in the 17th Senate District next year, pointed to “reckless federal policies” hitting farmers and hiking grocery bills.

Democratic state lawmakers have proposed a free school meal bill along with grants for farmers who provide food to food pantries, replacing a federal program cut by the Trump administration, she said; both are “examples of some of the kinds of policies that we can advance to lower everyday costs.”

Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) warned of coming spikes both in health insurance costs and in the rates of people without health insurance because of the expiring Affordable Care Act premium subsidies at the center of the federal shutdown fight in Congress. “We need Congress to get to work and renew these ACA subsidies,” she said.

Meanwhile, bills in the state Legislature to lower prescription drug costs and cap the price of asthma medication “haven’t even gotten a public hearing,” Dassler-Alfheim said. “We could be doing more here in Wisconsin to make life a little bit more affordable for everyone.”

Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) said Wisconsin continues to face “a child care crisis,” with too few options for working families. Care is increasingly costly, “not because child care providers are making huge profits,” she said. “It’s because we can no longer underpay those doing the child care work, mostly women.”

Democrats have been pushing for expanding child care support, “yet Republicans in Madison stand in the way every single time,” Keyeski said.

Hesselbein said that the Senate Democrats hope that they can follow up on their conversations with voters across the state by “bringing those ideas back to the state Legislature, working on them and hopefully being able to pass them in a bipartisan manner.”

At the same time, however, she blamed inaction on Republican lawmakers who “are mired in internal conflict, unwilling to cross the aisle and get stuff done for Wisconsinites.” The  2026 election will enable voters to “turn the page,” she said, “and vote for a vision that puts Wisconsinites first, that puts you and your families first.”

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U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) speaks about impending insurance price increases due to the sunset of enhance subsidies for health insurance policies purchased at HealthCare.gov. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Sometime in the next 10 days, Wisconsin residents will see directly what the stakes are in the ongoing standoff in Washington over the federal shutdown, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) said Wednesday.

That’s when people who buy health insurance through the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will find out their likely premiums for 2026.

“In the next probably 10 days, we’re going to have a lot more information,” Pocan said at a press conference in the state Capitol along with small business owners and state lawmakers. “Health care is going to start getting very expensive for everyone beyond what it costs now — but for some people it’s going to be so cost prohibitive that they’re going to actually wind up losing their health insurance.”

Most Democrats in the U.S. Senate have refused to vote to advance a Republican continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded and have said they won’t do so if Republicans won’t negotiate with them on the bill.

In demanding changes to the stopgap spending bill, Democrats have focused on enhanced premium tax credits that provide subsidies for most people who buy health insurance on the federal marketplace.

The enhanced subsidies, enacted in 2021 and extended in 2022, will expire at the end of this year, driving up the premium cost for health insurance policies sold on the marketplace.

Pocan said that with the premiums on ACA policies going up and losing the additional subsidies, “a couple 60 years old making $85,000 in my district could see somewhere between a $16,000 and $17,000 increase next year in their premiums.” The projections are the product of KFF, the independent health research, policy and news organization.

Macy Buhler owns a child care center. She said her own health insurance comes through her husband’s job, but some of her employees have relied on the ACA and HealthCare.gov to buy insurance. With the possibility that they won’t be able to afford those plans any more, she said, she’s been inquiring with insurance companies about their potential options.

“I’m doing the best I can,” Buhler said. “But when people don’t see that this is going to affect our workforce, it frustrates me. It will absolutely affect our workforce. It will absolutely affect families who are middle class and lower. It will affect our farmers.”

Kyle LaFond, who  owns a custom manufacturing business, said he and his team of eight employees have relied on the ACA for health insurance.

“The ACA really leveled the playing field in terms of being able to provide coverage,” LaFond said.

Among his employees, the projected increases for health insurance will range from $2,000 to about $12,000. “For a growing family, those price hikes are almost insurmountable. It’s unconscionable,” La Fond said.

With the increased subsidies expiring, “I might lose some good people,” he added. “So I’m talking about the future of my business.”

Democrats tried to make extending the subsidies part of the tax- and spending-cut megabill that President Donald Trump signed in July, but the procedure Republicans used to pass that legislation allowed them to move it through the process without Democratic votes.

Pocan said the Democrats are not willing to trust the Republican majority to  negotiate on the ACA subsidies if the Democrats first agree on the GOP bill and simply reopen the government.

Previous deals in December and in March on stopgap spending bills fell apart, he said. “Then Donald Trump did recissions, which are against the law, and started taking away funding that we did. Article 1 of the Constitution gives the power of the purse to Congress and he took it away. So they get all of that.”

Pocan said the recurring Republican claim that Democrats are holding out “because they want to give hundreds of billions of dollars of health benefits to illegal aliens — PolitiFact gave that an outright false.”

Pocan refrained from using a barnyard epithet for the claim. “Manure is what it is,” he said, glancing around at the ornately decorated Assembly parlor. “It’s a pretty room. I got to talk pretty.”

But, he said, “by federal law, not one dime can go directly to someone who’s an undocumented person — I’m going to use that terminology — from Medicare, Medicaid, or the Affordable Care Act. So, nothing. So, it’s not true.”

Public awareness about the shutdown could be lagging. Pocan said his office had 85 calls last week about the shutdown.

By contrast, in the last nine months, his office has taken 14,435 calls about health care. “So this is something that people really care about.”

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Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) speaks before a vote on a housing-related bill in the state Assembly Tuesday. (Screenshot/WisEye)

A group of housing bills that Republican lawmakers have fast-tracked since they were first announced two weeks ago made it through the Wisconsin Assembly Tuesday — most with unanimous support, but not without criticism from Democrats.

In a floor speech before the Assembly began voting Tuesday, Rep. Kalan Haywood (D-Milwaukee), assistant minority leader, said the GOP housing package fell short of what might have been possible with bipartisan discussion.

“While there is support for many of these bills on our side, we are by no means satisfied,” Haywood said.

Haywood complimented the Republican chair of the Assembly’s Housing and Real Estate committee, Rep. Robert Brooks (R-Saukville), for his “willingness to listen and work together.”

He described bills enacted in the 2023-24 session as “a bipartisan housing package that we could build on this session,” and said that in the spring, bipartisan work had begun on a new round of bills, accompanied by “honest communication with both sides and with stakeholders.”

Those discussions stopped abruptly in June, Haywood said, and when the bills came out two weeks ago the results were “half baked.”

“There are some good things in these bills that may help create some additional housing, but we could have done much more,” Haywood said.

A series of procedural votes on the floor Tuesday surrounding one bill — AB 455, creating a grant program for condominium conversions from multi-family homes — was emblematic of the gap between how Democrats and Republicans viewed not just the legislation but the larger issue of housing.

In the Housing and Real Estate Committee meeting Friday, Oct. 3, Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) managed to persuade three Republicans to join the panel’s Democrats to pass an amendment that expanded the bill to include housing cooperatives, not just condominiums.  

After the amendment was adopted, Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) sent an email written in red to all state lawmakers of both parties, mocking Clancy’s amendment as applying to “communes” and criticizing its Republican supporters.

When the bill reached the floor Tuesday, the original author, Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Greenville), submitted a rewrite, known as a substitute amendment.

The rewrite included another amendment, from Democrat, Rep. Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh), giving tenants of a building being converted to condos the right of first refusal to purchase their residence. But it omitted the Clancy amendment.

“We had a brief and awesome moment of bipartisanship this last week, and then we had an all red email from Senator Nass,” Clancy said on the Assembly floor. “I did not realize that my Republican colleagues were beholden to him and not even their own leadership there.”

The substitute amendment, Clancy said, would “strike out this bipartisan amendment and just turn it into another handout to developers.”

Brooks, the housing committee chair, had announced at the Republican press conference before the floor session that cooperatives would be stripped out, calling the approach “very difficult to manage because of the financing mechanisms and other things.”

Clancy said he would vote for the legislation despite the removal of his amendment. “But it is so disappointing to have to do that because we had something better in front of us,” he added.

The bill, like most of the bills up for a vote Tuesday, passed on a voice vote.

Others that passed with broad support included AB 424, updating requirements for the rental of mobile and manufactured homes; AB 451, allowing cities and villages to designate residential tax incremental districts to help fund infrastructure improvements; AB 452, allowing land subdividers to certify their designs and public improvements comply with state requirements; and AB 456, making a variety of changes to real estate transaction practices.

A handful of measures labeled as housing bills passed with little or no support from Democrats.

AB 453 would require local communities to grant rezoning requests for housing developers if they meet certain conditions, including that the area is projected as residential in the community’s comprehensive plan. The party-line vote was 55-39.

Rep. Mike Bare (D-Verona) said the measure fell short of what could have been done and that it lacked funding for local governments that would have to bear the cost it would impose. The bill’s author. Rep. David Armstrong (R-Rice Lake) vowed to seek funding in the next state budget.

AB 450 would put off the effective date of Wisconsin’s updated commercial building code until April 1, 2026. Originally blocked in 2023, the new code was reinstated by the the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) after a state Supreme Court ruling this July held that state laws allowing the Legislature to block executive branch administrative rules indefinitely were unconstitutional.

The current effective date is Nov. 1.

Rep. William Penterman (R-Hustisford) said delaying the code further was needed “for clarity” because builders had been planning projects under the previous code.

After the GOP majority rejected an attempt by Democrats to replace the bill with language that increased funding for DSPS on a 54-41 party-line vote, the legislation passed on a voice vote — but with substantial, audible cries of “No” from Democrats.

AB 366 would allow landlords to demand a written statement from a licensed health professional attesting to a tenant’s need for an emotional support animal.

“There are numerous people that have contacted us about the fraudulent means of how you can get a service dog,” state Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), said at a Republican press conference before the floor session.

On the floor, Clancy criticized the bill for potentially harming people for whom emotional support animals are a necessity but who are unable to see  a health professional.

“To the extent that there is a problem, where we want to actually certify that some animals are supportive and some are not, we can fix that problem,” Clancy said. “But that requires actually talking to the stakeholders before taking pen to paper.”

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Jerome Dillard, executive director of Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) (left) holds book discussion with author and activist Bianca Tylek (right). (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

“We’re talking about a major, major industry in our society today,” activist and writer Bianca Tylek told a group of about 20 people who packed a room at Madison’s Lake City Books Monday night. At the Q&A and book signing event, hosted by Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO), Tylek — described as a leading expert in the prison industry — discussed her new book The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits, offering her insights into what she called a $80-90 billion industry in America. 

“This is just a massive industry of folks who are using the correctional system to essentially extract either wealth or resources either from public coffers, or from low-income … communities that are directly impacted by incarceration,” said Tylek, who also founded and leads the non-profit organization Worth Rises, which works to confront and reform the prison industry. Tylek’s book delves into multiple aspects of the prison industry from food distribution to telecommunications and examines privatization, who profits and the lives of the people who are directly affected. 

The discussion was moderated by Jerome Dillard, EXPO’s executive director, who sat beside Tylek asking  questions. Dillard called Tylek “my daughter in the movement,” and spoke of his admiration for her work and her spirit in fighting for change within the prison system. 

Dillard described attending an event in Appleton last week with Tylek where he was invited to receive an award, “not knowing what we were going into,” and realizing it was a Wisconsin Correctional Association conference. 

“I just couldn’t believe all the industries that were there with tables, and tabling the event with new devices and all this,” said Dillard. “I left there really broken and heavy. These conferences opened my eyes to how big this industry is … that individuals are capitalizing on human misery.” Conference tables displayed new kinds of spit masks and shock gloves to prospective correctional customers, some of whom made joking comments about using the devices on the job. “It just blew me away, you know, that she’s bragging about punishing and torturing people in their care,” said Dillard, recalling a woman who made such remarks. 

Tylek said that there are over 1,400 manufacturers of correctional and policing equipment nationwide. “Every single state has a correctional conference,” said Tylek. “Every single state has a sheriff’s association,” as well as conferences and associations dedicated to jails, parole and other aspects of the correctional system. Tylek recalled attending the American Correctional Association conference, one of the largest in the nation, where she saw an exhibit hall “with hundreds of corporations” with their own exhibit tables. 

“And not just tables,” Tylek told the crowd. “Probably the wildest thing I saw was one company drive a full bus into the convention center, where staff from correctional institutions could step onto the bus and play with all the equipment and trinkets that they were selling. And they gave out free raffle tickets and all these things, and probably the grossest thing that I experienced was all the tickets to private events. And I made my way up to a private event for Securus.” Tylek said that the company is one of the nation’s two largest prison telecommunication companies, and was one of the largest sponsors of the conference that year. “And they had a happy hour that involved a full open bar,” said Tylek, “a full swing dance performance, everyone just having the most joyous time of all. All while on the walls there were the kiosks, the tablets, the phone devices that you could go and speak to a Securus representative while you have your cocktail. And all of this built on about 2 million people who are sitting in a cage somewhere who will never see this, who don’t get to enjoy these luxuries in any of this. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s repulsive, I think, more than anything.”

Later, Tylek elaborated more on how companies use things like gifts and luxury vacations to grow their relationships with correctional and law enforcement leaders. “At conferences, you would get these private event tickets,” she said. At one such event, she recalled, attendees were given hand-rolled cigars. “That’s just the legal stuff that looks gross,” said Tylek. There are also “questionably legal” practices, such as offering “training cruises” in the Caribbean for prison and sheriff staff in brochures distributed during contract bidding processes. 

On the dark end of the spectrum is bribery, such as the case of a Mississippi prison commissioner who was involved in a bribery and kickback scheme with private prison companies. Tylek highlighted how in Mississippi, a prison commissioner went on to work for a private prison company as a lobbyist. Similar revolving doors exist between the prison industry, especially private prisons, Homeland Security and immigration agencies, said Tylek.

Tylek described the rise of  the prison industry as a relatively new phenomenon in America. Prior to the abolition of slavery, she said, the prison population was predominantly white, and only shifted to being predominantly Black in the decades after abolition — a move  to “re-confine and re-enslave” Black people. Prison populations continued to grow into the 1970s and 80s, leading into the War on Drugs. “Really around the 1980s is when you start to see industry recognize a potential opportunity,” said Tylek. 

That’s the  era during which most of the private prison companies featured in her book began to emerge. Private prison industry representatives helped craft some of the nation’s most punitive laws such as three-strikes laws, truth in sentencing and mandatory minimums, which helped grow the prison population. “Those three pieces of model legislation were drafted by the prison industry, and specifically by private prison executives,” said Tylek. 

The consequences have been devastating for individuals and families, and also ripple out into society. “The impact of the prison industry bleeds far beyond prison walls,” Tylek said. Among those ripple effects are the cost borne by families that put money on the books for incarcerated loved ones to have food and hygiene supplies or simply to communicate, incarcerated people who work long hours for 14 cents an hour on average, missed child support payments from incarcerated parents and victims who don’t receive restitution. In addition, many small towns which once saw prisons as economic saviors now see them as burdens. 

“In the end, all of us are impacted,” said Tylek. “When we exploit people who are incarcerated, or we have a system that wants to put more people behind bars and for longer because a few stand to benefit, then socially we are all harmed by that.” 

Yet a space ripe with so many problems also invites solutions. In several states, Tylek has been involved in movements to make phone calls to incarcerated people free and in more than one of those places, that effort succeeded. “Something that everyone can understand is what’s the importance of a phone call home,” Tylek told her bookstore audience. Families of incarcerated people often face significant financial challenges, including debt, income loss and unemployment. 

In 2017, Tylek began to focus on the prison telecommunications industry. “We led the first successful campaign to make communication completely free in a jail system,” said Tylek. That was in New York, and affected the infamous Rikers Island jail. From 2019 to 2023, Tylek’s organization Worth Rises pushed for free jail calls in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Massachusetts, free prison calls in Connecticut, California, Colorado, Minnesota. Free prison calls were enshrined in the CARES Act as a result of that work. “We’ve been able to save families $600 million to date,” Tylek said, “and generate over 3 billion additional call minutes between people who are incarcerated and their loved ones.”

Dillard recalled celebrating some of those victories with Tylek, but the fight continues. “We’re in a dozen more states trying to fight for the exact same legislation to make communication free in our prisons and jails,” said Tylek. “The outcomes that we get are life-changing. In Connecticut we saw phone volume increase by over 120% overnight. In New York just recently, first data’s coming back and we are north of 40% increases in calling.” Some of that difference is also due to inconsistent call rates across different states, with incarcerated people being charged 2.8 cents per minute in New York versus people in Connecticut who were paying 32.5 cents per minute. 

“No matter where it happens, the change is substantial,” said Tylek. “These are real people with real lives. We have talked to families whose autistic child stopped speaking when her father went to prison. And when phone calls became free and he could call home again she started speaking again, her child development changed, she started engaging more in school, and now she’s flourishing, all off a simple phone call.”

Those kinds of victories can be replicated elsewhere. A campaign was launched earlier this year to make jail calls free in Racine County, and La Crosse became the first Wisconsin county to provide free jail calls earlier this year. 

“What I love about the examples in Wisconsin is that we had nothing to do with them,” Tylek said, drawing laughter from the audience in Madison. “My biggest goal has been for this movement to take itself.” 

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Boxes of ballots wait to be counted at Milwaukee's central count on Election Day 2024. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

A Waukesha County judge on Monday issued a temporary partial stay of his ruling in a case over how state election authorities verify the citizenship status of people registering to vote. 

The partial stay was issued after the state Department of Justice had requested that Judge Michael Maxwell hold up the entirety of his order pending an appeal. Oral arguments will be held Oct. 31 to determine if the rest of the order should be stayed. 

Maxwell ruled Friday that the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Department of Transportation have a duty to match citizenship records with the state’s voter registration system to determine that non-citizens are not registering to vote. In his order, he also required that state and local election officials stop accepting new voter registrations without checking citizenship status and that the parties in the lawsuit meet to determine a plan for checking the existing voter rolls for non-citizen voters. 

The Monday order that partially stayed the decision put a pause on the halt to accepting voter registrations. 

DOJ had argued that Maxwell’s order would require a “massive overhaul” of the state’s voter registration system and take months to implement, that the ruling doesn’t make clear what the citizen verification requirement actually entails and potentially violates state law requiring the elections commission to maintain the electronic voter registration system. 

Non-citizens are not allowed to vote. Current law requires that people seeking to register to vote attest under penalty of imprisonment that they are U.S. citizens. In Wisconsin, immigrants without legal documentation are unable to obtain a driver’s license and a state-issued photo ID is required to register to vote. 

Despite little evidence that non-citizen voters are casting ballots in large numbers, the issue has been repeatedly raised by Republicans in recent years — particularly since President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and among Republicans who are already skeptical of the election system as a whole.

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A PFAS advisory sign along Starkweather Creek. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

More than two years after $125 million was set aside in the 2023-25 state budget to fund the remediation of PFAS contamination across Wisconsin, legislators are again trying to pass two bills to get that money out the door. 

At a Senate public hearing Tuesday, the bills’ Republican authors said they’re “all ears” for reaching a compromise on final language. However in the last legislative session, initial hopes that a deal could be reached went unfulfilled after Republicans, Democrats, business groups and environmental organizations dug into their positions and the bill was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers.

As was the case in the last effort, the dispute is over who and how the state will hold entities responsible for PFAS contamination. 

PFAS are a class of man-made chemical compounds commonly known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment. The chemicals, which were used for decades in goods such as non-stick pans, fast food wrappers and firefighting foams, have been connected to causing cancer, thyroid diseases and developmental problems. Communities across Wisconsin have found PFAS contamination in their water supplies. 

Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), one of the bills’ co-authors, said at the Tuesday hearing he’s trying to make sure people don’t have to choose between “their health and financial ruin” by testing for contamination and potentially being held responsible for paying for the clean up under the state’s spills law — which allows the Department of Natural Resources to force “responsible parties” to pay for the testing and remediation of chemical contamination. 

“We are transitioning from a medical and legal paradigm where a widely used substance was not considered hazardous, to a paradigm where it is considered hazardous, it’s imperative we don’t sweep up those who are not responsible and treat them as though they are,” he said. 

Wimberger and Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz) have proposed Senate Bills 127 and 128, which establish the exemptions under which people won’t be held responsible for PFAS contamination on their property and create a number of grant programs to spend the $125 million. 

The challenge is that Republicans and industry have different definitions of who counts as responsible for contamination than Democrats and environmental groups. Constructing exemptions to the spills law that are too narrow could result in people being forced to pay for remediation they didn’t cause. But writing the exemptions too broadly could result in polluters passing the cost of remediation on to taxpayers. 

Across the state, municipal wastewater treatment utilities sell or give away the byproducts of their plants to use as fertilizer on farm fields. The DNR grants permits to allow the spreading of these byproducts, known as biosolids, which for years was seen as an environmentally responsible source of fertilizer because it was recycled. However biosolids from places with PFAS contamination in the water are contaminated, which can pollute the water near the field where they’re spread. 

Wimberger wants to make sure these farmers aren’t on the hook with the DNR to pay for contamination they didn’t know was happening and the DNR gave them a permit to create. 

But environmental advocates don’t want the exemptions to be so vague that they’re available to entities such as paper mills or chemical manufacturers. 

“We’re just asking you to understand that the way that you word an exemption is going to matter,” Christine Sieger, director of the DNR’s remediation and redevelopment bureau, said in her testimony. “I implement the spill law all day, every day, and I can tell you, people are crafty when it comes to getting out of liability. They will come up with all sorts of ways for how they can get themselves off the hook. And I just, I don’t want you to help them do that. Let’s make sure that they can take care of our people and clean up the mess that they’ve made.”

After the proposed PFAS bill was vetoed by Evers last session, Wimberger complained that opponents raised concerns about the exemptions being too broadly worded without naming specifics. On Tuesday, he said people objected with “platitudes” rather than specific language that could be corrected and that he hoped opponents could be more constructive this time around. 

Erik Kanter, director of government relations for Clean Wisconsin, said Tuesday the organization couldn’t support the proposal without amendments, proposing specific line-by-line changes for the bill authors to make. 

Kanter pointed to a line in SB 128 that states “a person that spreads biosolids or wastewater residuals contaminated by PFAS in compliance with any applicable license or permit” is exempt from being held responsible for PFAS contamination under the spills law. However, he said, that line is so vaguely worded that an industrial manufacturer could purchase and spread biosolids on its property as a way to gain an exemption from being held responsible for contamination it caused by creating PFAS as a byproduct of manufacturing. 

“The Legislature created the PFAS trust fund 29 months ago,” Kanter said. “Marinette, Peshtigo, the Town of Campbell, the town of Stella and communities and individuals throughout the state have waited and waited and waited for state government to create the programs through which the PFAS trust fund can be allocated. They don’t deserve to wait another day. They don’t deserve a bill that doesn’t meet their needs or lets polluters off the hook and saddles taxpayers with the bill. We believe that compromise is possible and essential. We value the bill authors’ partnership to find compromise on this bill. Clean Wisconsin shares their goal in getting a bill to the governor’s desk for his signature this session, and we will continue working in good faith toward that end.”

Both Mursau and Wimberger expressed hope that they could write an amendment that would get enough support to be signed into law.

“It’s my intention to take the feedback here … and bring forward the amendment that can earn the support of the Legislature to be signed into law by the governor,” Mursau said. “I also want to take this opportunity to thank the groups and individuals who have come to us, not just with criticisms, but with constructive ideas. Those who are willing to engage in dialogue, not just opposition, have been instrumental in helping us shape the legislation that can actually pass and deliver results. In a divided government like ours, meaningful progress requires compromise. I’m grateful for those who recognize that and continue to work with us in good faith.”

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Attorney General Josh Kaul speaks to residents of Marinette during a visit in 2019. (Photo by (Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Attorney General Josh Kaul announced Tuesday he will run for reelection in 2026 — taking his name off the list of potential Democratic contestants in the race for governor.

“This is a pivotal time for our nation,” Kaul said in a written statement. “Some of our most basic rights are under threat. Severe cuts have been made to programs that provide opportunities and have helped communities move forward. It’s critical that we continue to have an AG who will stand up for our freedoms and the rule of law.”

Kaul was first elected to the office in 2018, when Tony Evers won his first term as governor. Both won second terms in 2022, although Kaul by a narrow margin.

After Evers announced in July that he would not seek a third term, turning the 2026 race for governor into a wide-open contest, Kaul was among the Democrats who were widely assumed would seek the nomination to succeed him. In his first press conferences after the Evers announcement, Kaul demurred when asked about his plans.

In the months since Evers said he would step aside, more than a half-dozen Democrats have announced they would campaign to be the state’s chief executive, while Kaul remained on the list of “potential” candidates.

“In Wisconsin, we’ve made meaningful progress, and we need to build on that progress,” Kaul said in his announcement statement. “As my track record shows, I’m committed to working to protect public safety and to looking out for the interests of Wisconsinites.”

“Josh Kaul has been a champion for Wisconsin and a bulwark against the MAGA extremist politicians and the Trump administration who have been trying to subvert our democracy, attacking our personal freedoms, and stealing from everyday working people,” Devin Remiker, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin said in a statement. “Wisconsinites are fortunate to have Josh Kaul as Attorney General, and our state will be lucky to have him serve another four years.”

 So far the Democrats who have announced they will run for the open governor’s seat include Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, former economic development CEO Missy Hughes, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison). Milwaukee factory worker and baseball stadium beer vendor Ryan Strnad and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

The voting rights focused firm Law Forward and former Democratic U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold filed an amicus brief Monday in a lawsuit brought by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to strike down a law that limits the amount of money political parties can contribute to individual candidates for office. 

The lawsuit was initially brought in 2022 by two Republican candidates, including then-Sen. J.D. Vance. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Republican argument and now that decision is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court is expected to hear the case during its 2025-26 term, which began on Monday. 

In the amicus brief, Feingold and Law Forward argue that the weakening of campaign finance laws over the past few decades has deeply harmed American democracy — making elected officials more responsive to the needs of their wealthiest donors, in or out of their states and districts, rather than their constituents. 

“We don’t have to guess what will happen if additional campaign finance rules are torn up, we’ve already witnessed it in Wisconsin. Striking down these federal limits will remove guardrails that are necessary for a representative democracy to thrive,” Feingold said in a statement. “The erosion of regulations is responsible for an alarming increase in the amount of money flowing through elections, giving wealthy donors an outsized voice in the political process, reducing the public’s faith in their elected representatives, and diminishing voters’ willingness to continue participating in the political process.”

During his 18 years in the Senate, Feingold regularly focused on campaign finance issues, including the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which is commonly known as McCain-Feingold and instituted a number of rules guiding the use of “soft money” by outside groups running ads to influence elections.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC decision in 2010 weakened the law and the brief filed Monday argues the erosion of campaign finance rules has damaged the country’s politics and made its government vulnerable to corruption. 

“For a representative democracy to thrive, elected officials must be responsive to their constituents and avoid even the appearance of corruption,” the brief states. “Campaign finance regulation exists to reinforce these guardrails. Yet, for years, opponents of regulation have persistently chiseled away at the limits established to prevent excessive campaign cash from corrupting our elections.” 

The brief uses Wisconsin as an example, which since 2015 has not placed a limit on the amount political parties can give to candidates. That change has resulted in wealthy donors from Wisconsin and across the country giving maximum contributions to candidates’ campaigns while giving much larger donations to each candidate’s party — essentially using the party committee as a middleman to funnel millions of dollars into candidate accounts. 

“With each election cycle, the total contributions made, especially for statewide candidates, grows at a shocking rate, incentivizing candidates to court the wealthiest donors,” the brief states. “And, as Wisconsin elections have drawn more and more national attention, the pool of prospective donors has expanded to include increasing numbers of millionaires and billionaires residing in other states. Thus, the cycle continues. The flood of money into Wisconsin’s elections has bred accusations of corruption and threatens to drown out — if not completely silence — the voices of average voters.”

The brief argues that the decision by Wisconsin Republicans in 2015 to weaken the state’s campaign finance laws resulted in a downward spiral that opened the floodgates to money pouring into high profile races — most notably campaigns for governor and state Supreme Court. 

“Wisconsin’s experience shows exactly what happens when we eliminate these crucial guardrails,” Law Forward attorney Rachel Snyder said. “The wealthiest donors route massive contributions through political parties, effectively buying themselves significant access to and influence with both political parties and elected officials. This isn’t about partisan politics — it’s about preserving a democracy where average citizens’ voices aren’t drowned out by billionaires’ checkbooks.”

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AG Josh Kaul speaks at a town hall in Green Bay in April 2025. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Trump administration has backed away from a threat to demand that states cooperate with federal immigration enforcement if they want access to federal funds to aid crime victims, according to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul.

Wisconsin was one of 20 states and the District of Columbia that sued the administration in August over a demand that states join in federal immigration enforcement efforts if the wanted access to Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grants.

Fees, fines and penalties collected in federal court proceedings  are distributed under VOCA to states to use on victim services, including operating community-based organizations such as domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers and victim-witness offices within county district attorneys’ offices. 

The Wisconsin Department of Justice estimated the state would have lost more than $24 million in grant funds if the threat had been  carried out.

The U.S. Department of Justice abandoned the plan after the lawsuit was filed, Kaul said Monday.

“This is funding that helps make a difference for victims of crime,” Kaul said in a statement. “The Trump administration shouldn’t have tried to tie states’ access to this funding to their assistance with immigration enforcement.”

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Judge Lisa Neubauer | judgeneubauer.com

Lisa Neubauer, an appeals court judge and former candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, announced Monday she plans to retire at the end of her term next year. 

Neubauer, 68, has sat on the District II Court of Appeals for 18 years after being appointed to the seat in 2007. Prior to joining the bench, she was a private practice attorney at Milwaukee-based Foley and Lardner. 

She ran unsuccessfully for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2019 and was last elected to a six-year term on the appeals court in 2020, winning 54% of the vote in the 12-county southeastern Wisconsin district that is based in Waukesha County. 

She is also the mother of Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine). 

As the judicial liberals have slowly gained control of the Supreme Court over the past five years, District II has become the most reliably conservative appellate district. Neubauer is the only liberal on the four judge panel. 

“In these trying and divided times, our courts must protect our democracy, our liberty, and our rights, by maintaining judicial independence and upholding the constitution and the rule of law. I have attempted to do that with every single decision,” Neubauer said. 

Last week, conservative District II Judge Maria Lazar announced she is  running for the Supreme Court in next year’s April election.

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The Dirksen Federal Courthouse is pictured in Chicago. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Hannah Meisel)

CHICAGO — Illinois and Chicago filed a federal lawsuit Monday to block the Trump administration’s planned deployment of National Guard troops to the state — a move Gov. JB Pritzker called an “invasion.”

Trump pushed forward with the plan to activate hundreds of National Guard soldiers, including some from Texas, despite monthslong opposition from state and local leaders, as well as objections from civic and business groups in the city.

“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion,” Pritzker said in a statement Sunday night. “It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”

Read more: Over Pritzker’s objections, Trump sending 300 National Guardsmen to Chicago, governor says

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deploy troops to Illinois to protect federal immigration officers and facilities. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview, a near-west suburb of Chicago, has been the site of several clashes between ICE agents and demonstrators in recent weeks.

But Pritzker, who said Saturday that he refused the Trump administration’s “ultimatum” to activate the National Guard himself, has insisted there is no emergency necessitating guardsmen on the ground. He also warned that White House officials would use any conflict between immigration agents and civilians as a “pretext” for military occupation.

“It will cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police,” the lawsuit said.

The suit, filed in the Northern District of Illinois, names Trump, Noem and Hegseth as defendants.

Texas National Guard also activated

Illinois filed its lawsuit hours after Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he will send 400 guardsmen to cities around the country, including Chicago, and after a federal judge in Oregon blocked National Guard deployments to Portland.

The order is “effective immediately for an initial period of 60 days” and subject to extension, according to the memo, signed by Hegseth. It comes a day after Pritzker confirmed Trump’s intention to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard.

“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the lawsuit reads. “To guard against this, foundational principles of American law limit the president’s authority to involve the military in domestic affairs. Those bedrock principles are in peril.”

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The promised deployment comes as ICE has ramped up activity in Chicago and its suburbs as part of “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has so far resulted in more than 800 arrests according to the Department of Homeland Security.

There have also been two shootings since the clashes began. On Saturday, the governor called the administration’s National Guard activation a “manufactured performance” and not about protecting public safety.

Though the Trump administration insists ICE is targeting undocumented immigrants who have criminal backgrounds, reports have mounted of agents arresting those with no history of illegal activity, detaining children along with their parents and even handcuffing U.S. citizens and children with zip ties. Immigrant and civil rights groups have alleged ICE is arresting people without warrants in violation of a federal consent decree.

The lawsuit also alleges ICE activity in Chicago and its suburbs has already subjected Illinois “to serious and irreparable harm.”

Read more: ‘We are not backing down’: Feds ramp up immigration raids in Chicago area | DHS Secretary Noem defends ICE tactics in second Illinois visit

“It also creates economic harm, depressing business activities and tourism that not only hurt Illinoisians but also hurt Illinois’s tax revenue,” the complaint said.

That argument echoes one made by a group of Chicago business and civic groups over the weekend.

“National Guard troops on our streets, like those reportedly being ordered here by the federal government, have the potential to sow fear and chaos, threatening our businesses’ bottom lines and our reputation,” the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Civic Federation said in a joint statement Saturday.

Read the lawsuit here.

Order violates states’ rights

Attorney General Kwame Raoul argues the troop deployment violates Illinois’ rights as sovereign state to carry about its own law enforcement, as well as 1878 Posee Comitatus Act that bans the military from participating in domestic law enforcement.

The lawsuit also claims the Trump administration failed to meet any criteria that could allow the president to federalize the National Guard. The president can federalize the National Guard to stop a foreign invasion, when the president can’t execute the laws of the country or to stop a rebellion.

Raoul and state leaders have argued for weeks that Trump would use protests in Broadview as a “flimsy pretext” to claim a rebellion.

Read more: Pritzker says feds seeking Chicago troop deployment. ‘What I have been warning of is now being realized’

Several protestors have been arrested near the facility in recent weeks on charges of assaulting officers. Federal agents have sprayed tear gas and fired nonlethal ammunition into crowds that have gathered there.

Over the weekend, a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot a woman on the city’s Southwest Side in a confrontation with protesters. Prosecutors eventually charged the woman and another protestor with attempting to “assault, impede, and interfere with the work of federal agents in Chicago.” According to the Chicago Sun-Times, agents fired “defensive shots” when they saw the woman was allegedly “armed with a semi-automatic weapon,” and she was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment before she was charged.

Further, the lawsuit argues the Trump administration has entirely manufactured any public safety crisis in Illinois that would require military intervention. It cites a 2013 social media post by Trump, two years before he announced his candidacy for president, that suggested the military should be deployed to Chicago. It lists several other derogatory comments Trump made about the city, state and their leaders over the years, including as president.

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Read more: As Trump declares ‘we’re going in,’ Pritzker says ‘terror and cruelty is the point’

The lawsuit argues that animosity culminated last week with Trump claiming during a speech to military generals that there was an “invasion from within” and suggesting cities like Chicago should be used as “training grounds” for the military.

How soldiers will be deployed

The lawsuit includes new details about how federal officials communicated with state leaders and gave Pritzker an ultimatum.

DHS sent a memo to the Illinois National Guard on Sept. 28 stating troops “would integrate with federal law enforcement operations, serving in direct support of federal facility protection, access control, and crowd control.”

On Saturday morning, Illinois National Guard Adjutant General Rodney Boyd received a formal email from the Defense Department National Guard Bureau saying Trump asked for at least 300 soldiers, and if Boyd did not activate them within two hours, Hegseth would federalize them. Boyd responded that Pritzker declined to activate the guard. Defense officials sent a new memo late Saturday saying the guard was federalized.

Illinois National Guard leaders received another memo on Sunday informing them soldiers from Texas would be sent to Chicago beginning Monday.

Read more: As Illinois congressional delegation seeks answers, ICE cancels meeting

Abbott, a Republican and ardent Trump supporter, has been a frequent foil of Pritzker, bussing thousands of asylum-seeking migrants from the border to Chicago in 2023 and 2024 and criticizing the Illinois governor for welcoming Texas Democratic legislators who fled their state this summer amid a partisan redistricting fight. He said in a social media post that Pritzker “can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let the Texas Guard do it.”

Prior to this year, the last time a president federalized a state’s National Guard without a request from a state’s governor was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent federal troops to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama without the cooperation of segregationist Gov. George Wallace.

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Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A few dozen protestors and reporters gathered outside an immigration enforcement facility in Broadview on Saturday, Oct. 4. The facility has become a focal point of protest since ICE officials expanded their immigration enforcement in Chicagoland. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)

CHICAGO — After weeks of threatening to do so, President Donald Trump is taking command of 300 Illinois National Guard troops and sending them to Chicago over Gov. JB Pritzker’s objections, the governor announced Saturday.

“This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will,” Pritzker said in a statement. “It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.”

The promised deployment comes as federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, activity has ramped up in Chicago and its suburbs as part of “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has so far resulted in more than 800 arrests according to the Department of Homeland Security.

There have also been two shootings, including one Saturday on the city’s Southwest Side.

Though the Trump administration insists ICE is targeting undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds, reports have mounted of agents arresting those with no history of illegal activity, detaining children along with their parents and even handcuffing U.S. citizens. Immigrant and civil rights groups have alleged ICE is arresting people without warrants in violation of a federal consent decree.

The wave of raids and arrests has spurred large protests in recent weeks, especially outside of an ICE processing center in Broadview, a suburb eight miles west of Chicago. The demonstrations have spurred clashes between immigration agents and activists, leading to the arrests of several protestors last weekend on charges of resisting and assaulting officers. Agents have sprayed chemical agents and fired nonlethal rounds into the crowds outside the facility.

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On Monday, Pritzker announced DHS was seeking 100 Illinois National Guard troops to protect ICE facilities and immigration agents in Illinois, warning the Trump administration would use any confrontation resulting from its Chicago-area immigration crackdown as a “pretext” for a military deployment.

On Saturday, the governor called the administration’s National Guard activation a ”manufactured performance” and not about protecting public safety.

“I want to be clear: there is no need for military troops on the ground in the State of Illinois,“ Pritzker said, pointing to the Illinois State Police’s announcement this week that it had joined forces with Broadview Police and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office to form a “Unified Command” to coordinate law enforcement activity outside the ICE facility.

One of ISP’s first acts in Broadview was designating demonstration areas, also known as “free speech zones.” Pritzker on Saturday said the combined efforts of state and local law enforcement protected “people’s ability to peacefully exercise their constitutional rights.”

The Unified Command reported the arrests of at least five protesters on Friday, and five more on Saturday night, as of 8 p.m. The area was quiet Saturday afternoon with only about a dozen protesters gathered, at times outnumbered by members of the media.

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“I will not call up our National Guard to further Trump’s acts of aggression against our people,” the governor said in his statement.

But shortly before Pritzker’s announcement about the National Guard deployment Saturday, a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot a woman in an altercation between immigration agents and protesters on Chicago’s Southwest Side.

According to reporting from the Chicago Sun-Times, the woman was alleged to have been driving one of 10 cars that “rammed” and “boxed in” nearly three dozen immigration agents in the city’s Brighton Park neighborhood. Agents fired “defensive shots” when they saw the woman was allegedly “armed with a semi-automatic weapon,” according to the paper. She was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. The woman was one of two people charged by federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois with using their vehicles to “assault, impede, and interfere with the work of federal agents in Chicago.”

Trump and Pritzker have spent weeks trading barbs over the president’s threats to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, with the governor alleging Trump’s apparent backing off from the idea last month was a sign of dementia.

The governor has already vowed legal action against the Trump administration if and when the president activated the National Guard. After the president sent 1,400 National Guard troops to Los Angeles this summer — the first time since the 1960s that the feds deployed the National Guard without a governor’s consent — a federal judge last month ruled the move violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the power of the federal government to use military force for domestic matters. But the ruling only applies to California.

The National Guard’s presence in Los Angeles has dwindled to roughly 250, but there are still a couple thousand troops on assignment in Washington, D.C., where the federal government has more power over law enforcement. Since their August deployment to the nation’s capital, guardsmen have been reportedly picking up garbage, as they are only authorized to assist with arrests if asked by local law enforcement.

Trump has also threatened to federalize the National Guard in Portland, Oregon, though troops had not yet been sent as of Saturday evening. Tennessee’s Republican governor has welcomed the president’s recent suggestion that he’d deploy guardsmen to Memphis, but that has also yet to happen.

Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Washington, D.C. and Shelby County, Tennessee, where Memphis is situated, have all adopted so-called “sanctuary city” policies wherein local law enforcement are barred from assisting in federal immigration enforcement. Trump has targeted cities and states that have adopted such laws, and last week a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled the administration cannot withhold emergency funding from Illinois and other states based on those states’ refusal to participate in immigration enforcement.

But this week, Attorney General Kwame Raoul said he learned of another attempt by the White House to divert disaster relief funding from Illinois with four days remaining in the fiscal year “without any notice or explanation.”

Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem visited Illinois again on Friday. Noem has traveled to the Chicago area and Springfield several times this year, including last month when she oversaw an early morning raid in Elgin, where at least one U.S. citizen was arrested.

“Secretary Noem should no longer be able to step foot inside the State of Illinois without any form of public accountability,” Pritzker said in a statement.

On Friday, Noem appeared with Gregory Bovino, commander-at-large of the U.S. Border Patrol, at the Broadview ICE facility with a camera crew, according to Chicago’s ABC 7.

Late Friday, Pritzker also said he’s making state resources available to people affected by a Sept. 30 raid on a South Shore apartment building.

In Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, masked federal agents deployed a chemical irritant outside of a grocery store as people and cars lined up to block their advancement, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

State Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado, D-Chicago, condemned the action, which happened around the corner from an elementary school in her district. Chicago Ald. Jessie Fuentes also alleges she was handcuffed by immigration agents while questioning them at a Humboldt Park medical center.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Federal police push towards a crowd of demonstrators at an ICE processing facility south of downtown Portland on Sat., Oct. 4, 2025. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)

California on Sunday joined Oregon and the city of Portland in suing over the Trump administration’s latest attempt to deploy federal troops to an American city.

More than 100 members of the California National Guard, on orders from President Donald Trump, flew to Oregon overnight against the wishes of elected leaders in both states, and without those leaders’ knowledge. More are expected.

“At the direction of the President, approximately 200 federalized members of the California National Guard are being reassigned from duty in the greater Los Angeles area to Portland, Oregon to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal personnel performing official duties, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property,” said Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson.

The move came just hours after Oregon and Portland won a temporary restraining order against Trump’s attempt to deploy 200 Oregon Guard members to Portland. Federal Judge Karin Immergut — a Trump appointee — said on Saturday that the federal government was violating the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which effectively guarantees that states retain police power within their borders.

Immergut scheduled an emergency hearing at 7 p.m. Pacific time Sunday on a second restraining order, but a public access line for the hearing still wasn’t live by 7:30. Shortly before the hearing was scheduled to begin, plaintiffs filed with the court a Sunday memo from U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordering 400 Texas National Guard troops to mobilize to Oregon, Illinois and other locations.

Kotek and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker both said they received no explanation from the federal government about that order. It’s unclear how many Texas soldiers would be sent to each location and what mission they would carry out, Kotek added.

“This is a continuation and escalation of the president’s dangerous, un-American misuse of states’ National Guard members and hard-earned taxpayer dollars,” Kotek said.

In her Saturday opinion, Immergut also found that protests at an ICE processing facility in Portland were not by any definition a “rebellion” nor do they pose the “danger of a rebellion.”

“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Immergut wrote in her opinion. “Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”

Late Saturday, attorneys for the federal government filed a notice that they would ask the  Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to put a halt on her order. On Sunday Oregon’s Attorney General Dan Rayfield in turn filed a motion opposing the federal request, saying the issue could be decided by Immergut as early as Monday.

“What was unlawful yesterday is unlawful today. What was unlawful with the Oregon National Guard is unlawful with the California National Guard. The judge’s order was not some minor procedural point for the president to work around like my 14-year old does when he doesn’t like my answers,” Rayfield said at a news conference late Sunday afternoon. He was joined by Gov. Tina Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson.

If the stay is denied, Oregon troops will be sent home from Camp Rilea in Warrenton, where they’ve been waiting for about a week under orders from Trump and U.S. Northern Command, a joint federal military command based in Colorado.

“They are pawns in this situation, political pawns in this situation. And I would like to send our troops home to their families, to their jobs,” Kotek said.

The newly arrived California Guard troops are currently waiting at Camp Withycombe in Happy Valley, Kotek said, and she expects 99 more will come to the camp Sunday about 20 miles from the ICE processing facility where mostly small and peaceful protests have gone on for months. If they are ordered to the ICE facility Sunday night where protests are ongoing, Kotek said, she cannot do anything to stop it absent a court order. Oregon, California and Portland also asked the federal district court on Sunday for a Temporary Restraining Order barring those troops from being activated, which could take several days to be decided by Immergut.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement early Sunday that up to 300 soldiers were being sent to Oregon on Trump’s orders. Those troops are also under the orders of U.S. Northern Command. Kotek said she does not know what their mission is, and Trump and his administration have not communicated with her at all about the deployment.

“This afternoon, I sent a message to Northern Command, directing them to obey the Oct. 4 court ruling from yesterday and take no further action regarding Oregon,” Kotek said. “I also directed that those troops that will be at Camp Withycombe should be restricted to that facility and that the California National Guard troops should be sent home as soon as possible.”

Protests have continued outside the ICE facility in Portland, with about 100 people on the streets Saturday night.

At one point during the evening, federal agents used chemical irritants to push protesters a block away from the facility onto city street, far from the federal property where the officers’ enforcement authority is limited.

Unknown individuals were also allowed onto the property by federal officials to film cell phone videos from the ICE building’s roof, as protestors were sprayed with chemical gases indiscriminately.

A Portland Police spokesperson said local law enforcement were not aware of or assisting with the federal agents’ actions.

The ramping up of federal pressure on Portland has coincided with a similar display of force in Chicago over the past few days. During a speech to military officials last week, Trump said he wanted to use Democratic cities as “training grounds” for the military.

Wilson, Portland’s mayor, said the actions by federal troops at the ICE facility Saturday evening were “beyond the pale.”

“We saw unjustified uses of force; We saw the shoving of peaceful veterans and elderly people to the ground; Indiscriminate use of impact munitions to disperse an otherwise peaceful crowd; Indiscriminately discharging pepper spray. We saw a sniper on the roof of the ICE facility,” he said at the news conference. He said the city would file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Department.

“I’m so disappointed that we’ve had to spend our valuable time on this matter. We have so many hard and important challenges in Portland and in Oregon and the United States, and this is a situation that we didn’t ask for,” Wilson said. “It certainly wasn’t invited.”

Editor-in-Chief Julia Shumway contributed to this report. 

Federal police push towards a crowd of demonstrators at an ICE processing facility south of downtown Portland on Sat., Oct. 4, 2025. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)

Hours after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from mobilizing 200 Oregon National Guard troops in Portland, the federal government began sending California National Guard troops to Oregon. 

Gov. Tina Kotek said Sunday that she’s aware that 101 California troops arrived in Oregon via plane overnight and that more were on their way. She received no official notice or correspondence from the federal government. 

Up to 300 soldiers from California are being sent to Oregon on Trump’s orders, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement Sunday.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email that Trump, “exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement. For once, Gavin Newscum should stand on the side of law-abiding citizens instead of violent criminals destroying Portland and cities across the country.”

Kotek said the move, “appears to (be) intentional to circumvent yesterday’s ruling by a federal judge. The facts haven’t changed. There is no need for military intervention in Oregon. There is no insurrection in Portland. No threat to national security. Oregon is our home, not a military target.”

Late Saturday afternoon, Trump-appointed federal Judge Karin Immergut approved a temporary restraining order to block the mobilization of Oregon troops until Oct. 18, with another check-in scheduled for Oct. 17. Attorneys for the federal government promptly filed a notice that they would appeal Immergut’s temporary order to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Immergut wrote. “Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield signaled Sunday that the state is ready to sue again to prevent the deployment of troops from California or anywhere else. 

“This president is obviously hellbent on deploying the military in American cities, absent facts or authority to do so,” Rayfield said. “It is up to us and the courts to hold him accountable. That’s what we intend to do.”

Newsom said California will also pursue legal action to stop Trump’s “breathtaking abuse of the law and power.”

“The commander-in-chief is using the U.S. military as a political weapon against American citizens,” Newsom said. “We will take this fight to court, but the public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the president of the United States.”

Protests have continued outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, with about 100 people on the streets Saturday night. 

At one point during the evening, federal agents used chemical irritants to push protesters a block away from the facility, further than protesters who have been out for weeks said they’ve been forced back before. A Portland Police spokesperson said local law enforcement were not aware of or assisting with the federal agents’ actions.

The ramping up of federal pressure on Portland has coincided with a similar display of force in Chicago over the past few days. During a speech to military officials last week, Trump said he wanted to use Democratic cities as “training grounds” for the military. 

Senior reporter Alex Baumhardt contributed to this article. 

Federal officers atop the ICE building in Portland on Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from federalizing and deploying Oregon National Guard troops to Portland following a challenge from the state and the city of Portland.

Judge Karin Immergut of the U.S. District Court in Portland granted the city and the Oregon Department of Justice a temporary restraining order Saturday afternoon, stopping for now Trump’s and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s plan to deploy 200 Oregon Guard troops to Portland to guard federal buildings.

The order expires Oct. 18, and the parties will discuss Oct. 17 whether the order should be extended for another two weeks. Federal lawyers have until Oct. 17 to argue for a preliminary injunction to block the temporary restraining order. Late Saturday, attorneys for the federal government also filed a notice that they would appeal Immergut’s temporary order to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In her 30-page opinion, Immergut issued a powerful rebuke of Trump’s perception of his executive power and found he violated the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees police power within the states resides with the states. Immergut said protests in Portland were not by any definition a “rebellion” nor do they pose the “danger of a rebellion.”

“Furthermore, this country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote. “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”

Oregon Guard members have in recent days been training at Camp Rilea in Warrenton in preparation for a potential activation to Portland. They now go back under the command of Gov. Tina Kotek, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said in a Saturday evening news conference.

“Today’s ruling halts what appears to be the president’s attempt to normalize the United States military in our cities,” Rayfield said. “Mobilizing the United States military in our cities is not normal, it should not be normal, and we will fight to make sure that it is never normal.”

Portland’s Mayor Keith Wilson at the same news conference said the state “won through peace.”

“I’ve said from the very beginning, the number of federal troops that are needed or wanted is zero,” he said.

Kotek in a statement Saturday evening said the ruling meant “the truth has prevailed.”

“There is no insurrection in Portland,” Kotek continued. “No threat to national security. No fires, no bombs, no fatalities due to civil unrest. The only threat we face is to our democracy — and it is being led by President Donald Trump.”

Oregon’s senior U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, said in a statement Trump was provoking, not quelling, conflict by trying to deploy federal troops.

“I will keep working with local and state officials to ensure Trump does not keep wasting millions of taxpayer dollars to make Portland the center of his perverse fantasy about conducting assaults on U.S. cities,” Wyden said.

Trump at a Tuesday speech with military leaders said “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds” for the U.S. military. In the same meeting he described Portland as “like World War II.”

By Saturday morning, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Trump had notified him that he would soon federalize 300 National Guard troops in Illinois to guard federal property in Chicago, against Pritzker’s wishes. It’s unclear yet what bearing Immergut’s ruling in Oregon could have on any lawsuits brought against Trump in Illinois over the attempted deployment there.

Trump has claimed in posts on his social media site TruthSocial that the ICE processing facility south of downtown Portland is under attack by anti-fascists and domestic terrorists. He used the site to announce on Sept. 27 that he’d attempt to deploy troops to Portland.

The facility has drawn weekly protests of just a couple dozen people in recent months, and they have remained mostly peaceful. The local U.S. attorney has brought charges against 26 people since early June for crimes at the protest site, including arson and resisting arrest.

Protests last weekend grew to a couple hundred following Trump’s call for federal reinforcement. The protests have stayed mostly peaceful, with Portland Police arresting several men throughout the week for fighting, including a right-wing influencer, according to reporting in The Oregonian. The U.S. Justice Department said Friday it’s launching an investigation into the Portland Police Department over that influencer’s arrest.

On Saturday, as hundreds protested at the ICE facility, federal agents used chemical sprays on the crowd and several people were arrested, according to reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Later in the evening, after Immergut’s ruling, federal agents used chemical irritants to push protesters back a block from the building, farther than protesters said they had been pushed back prior. A Portland Police Bureau spokesperson said the agency did not assist or have any knowledge of their actions and that the bureau has not had any discussions about jurisdiction.

Federal forces inexplicably tried to move all protestors out a city block using chemical irritants.

— Alex Baumhardt (@alexbaumhardt.bsky.social) 2025-10-05T03:51:26.440Z

“I call on all federal law enforcement to meet the high standards set by the Portland Police Bureau,” Wilson said. “We need them to focus on transparent use of force, clear officer identification, strict limits on chemical munitions and mandatory body worn cameras. The Federal Protective Services’ core values are service, integrity, honor and vigilance. Now is the time to live up to those principles, not erode them with masks and violence.”

Oregon’s U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, who represents the state’s 3rd Congressional District that includes parts of Portland, said she peacefully protested in the city’s Lloyd District on Saturday, and that she is concerned about the excessive force she saw federal officers using against protestors in videos taken at the ICE facility south of downtown.

“It is absolutely antithetical to your First Amendment rights, and we know that the administration is not encouraging restraint at this moment, so please continue to stay away from the ICE facility,” she said.

In a two-hour hearing over the temporary restraining order Friday, senior assistant Oregon attorney general Scott Kennedy called the attempted federal deployment “one of most dramatic infringements on state sovereignty in Oregon’s history.”

Eric Hamilton, a lawyer for the federal government, called protestors outside the ICE facility in Portland “vicious and cruel” and said federal police, ICE agents and Department of Homeland Security agents were overworked and needed Guard reinforcement.

Rayfield requested the restraining order motion on behalf of the state and the city of Portland as part of their broader lawsuit filed against Trump, Hegseth, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

That suit, also filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, alleges the federal leaders and their agencies by attempting to send troops to Portland are violating the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees police power within states resides with the states. They also allege the federal government is violating the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally forbids military members from conducting domestic law enforcement. The state and Portland also allege the city is being singled out for political retaliation.

Oil pumpjacks are seen in a field near a wind turbine in April in Close City, Texas. Weak oil prices have led to recent energy layoffs in Texas and North Dakota. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Friday’s jobs report is missing in action because of the federal shutdown, but economists are finding other ways of measuring apparent job losses concentrated in Midwestern states and oil country.

Unemployment could continue to rise, especially for Black people, who have borne the brunt of recent job losses.

Friday’s jobs report for September was missing because of the federal government shutdown. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics staff responsible for collecting, analyzing and releasing the data have been furloughed since Wednesday.

The jobs report is useful to economists, government agencies such as the Federal Reserve, and investors trying to gauge the state of the economy, said Elise Gould, senior economist for the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. If the data is missing for an extended time, it could distort such forecasts, she said.

“We still have some information on the economy from other sources, yes. None of the other indicators predict perfectly. There’s no replacement for the data,” Gould said.

Still, other groups are using their own measuring tools and sharing that information. ADP, a private payroll processing company, showed a decline of 32,000 jobs for the month of September.

The result “further validates what we’ve been seeing in the labor market, that U.S employers have been cautious with hiring,” ADP’s chief economist, Nela Richardson, said in a statement.

Austan Goolsbee, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said in an appearance on CNBC Friday morning that the available data shows weakness in both the labor market and in attempts to control inflation, making the Fed’s job difficult in deciding whether to stimulate the economy or rein it in.

“You’re seeing deterioration on both sides of the mission,” Goolsbee said. “The BLS data is the best in the world, and it does create difficulties when you’re kind of putting up a screen and you can’t see the data.”

Indiana, while gaining some new jobs in the Kokomo area for car parts and batteries factories, saw September layoffs of more than 1,600 workers, according to state figures. That includes 248 hospitality workers at a convention center in Evansville, 200 warehouse workers at a Target distribution center in Indianapolis, 123 layoffs at a security guard firm that lost a federal contract, and layoffs at two automotive parts factories totaling 189 workers.

Ohio also saw layoffs of 768 workers starting in September at a Kohl’s e-fulfillment in Middletown.

Black unemployment, which has spiked from 4.8% in April 2023 to 7.5% in August, has likely increased again, said Joseph Dean, who monitors it for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which encourages more investment in underserved communities.

“If there were a jobs report, I’d expect a rise in the Black unemployment rate,” Dean said. “It’s likely due to a combination of factors: federal layoffs earlier in the year, anti-DEI efforts, and now primarily, stagnation in industries that employ large numbers of Black workers — like transportation and professional/business services.”

Another indicator of labor market trouble, initial claims for unemployment, were up 85% in North Dakota and 44% in Texas from August to September, according to numbers through the week ending Sept. 20 from the U.S. Department of Labor. Weak oil prices have led to recent energy layoffs in those states.

In another private survey that could help gauge the health of the labor market, outsourcing firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas reported Thursday that companies have reported more than 54,000 job cuts in September. That’s a slower rate than August but brings the total this year to 946,000 job cuts, the highest since the pandemic in 2020 and up 55% from the first three quarters of 2024.

The leading reason for job cuts has been actions by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency task force, the firm said, including cuts to government jobs and “downstream impacts” of the federal cuts, such as loss of funding to nonprofits.

There were also about 7,000 technology jobs lost to AI disruption in September, making it harder to land entry-level jobs, the firm said.

“Right now, we’re dealing with a stagnating labor market, cost increases, and a transformative new technology,” said Andy Challenger, a labor expert at the firm, in a statement.

In August, some of the largest increases in the unemployment rate over the previous year were in Texas cities on the border with Mexico: 2 percentage points each in Brownsville-Harlingen (to 7.5% from 5.5% in 2024) and Eagle Pass (to 8.9% from 6.9% last year). Those metro area estimates for August were released Oct. 1.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, saw a 1.8-point increase in unemployment from 3.6% to 5.4%, and there were 1.7-point increases in Blacksburg, Virginia (from 4% to 5.7%), and Grants Pass, Oregon (from 6.1% to 7.8%).

Unemployment fell the most in Kokomo, Indiana, (down nearly 4.5 points from 10.7% to 6.2%) where Stellantis has been adding jobs in its automotive parts and batteries plants.

An earlier Stateline analysis showed New Jersey and Virginia were among the states most impacted by job losses in the second quarter of the year as federal cuts and corporate restructuring took a toll.

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

Dairy cows huddle at sunset on a farm in Manitowoc County. Advocates and farmers say an ICE raid that took 24 migrants into custody Sept. 25 poses a threat to the state’s dairy farms and the immigrant workers that keep the industry afloat. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)

The morning of Sept. 25, federal agents and immigration authorities swept into Manitowoc to arrest people alleged to be in the country without proper documentation. Agents first went to a Walmart parking lot where dairy workers are known to meet up before driving to the farms where they work. The action then moved on to private residences, where migrants were arrested as they left the house. 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claims the ICE raid in Manitowoc was aimed at dismantling an international sex and drug trafficking ring, but has so far provided little evidence to support that claim. Federal authorities initially said 21 migrants had been arrested in the raid, before later saying 24 had been picked up. 

On Tuesday, DHS released the names of six of the 24. Only one individual named in the release has been charged with a sex crime — Jose Hilario Moreno Portillo, who was charged in Manitowoc County court in May with the 2nd degree sexual assault of a child. However, Moreno Portillo has not yet been convicted and court records show he’s been in ICE custody since July. 

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on why Moreno Portillo was named as being arrested in the Manitowoc action when he was already in ICE custody. 

The five other named individuals have been convicted of identity theft, hit-and-run, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, possession of narcotic equipment, traffic offenses and a failure to appear charge. 

In Wisconsin, immigrants without documentation aren’t able to obtain driver’s licenses, which often causes them to wrack up several criminal traffic offenses when they’re pulled over and ticketed for driving without a license. 

With little proof that ICE actually broke up a ring of sex traffickers, immigration advocates and farm groups see the raid as a direct threat to the state’s dairy farms and the immigrant workers that keep the industry afloat. 

Farmers and immigrant advocates in Wisconsin have been watching ICE’s actions on dairy farms across the country closely. In March, ICE raided a dairy farm and petting zoo in New York. In April, a raid on a dairy farm in Vermont resulted in eight arrests. And in early June, ICE arrested 11 immigrants in a raid on a dairy farm in New Mexico. 

But so far, enforcement against undocumented people on dairy farms had been sporadic and far from the Midwest. In June, President Donald Trump announced and then retreated from guidance that ICE would not aggressively target farms and the hospitality industry. 

While last Thursday’s raid in Manitowoc didn’t take place on a dairy farm, most of the individuals arrested were dairy workers. Beyond that, they were dairy workers in the county with the highest concentration of dairy factory farms in the state. Manitowoc County and its northeast Wisconsin neighbors are the epicenter of the modern farming powerhouse that maintains Wisconsin’s status as “America’s Dairyland.” 

“It’s just sending an economic ripple effect across the dairy industry, which is Wisconsin’s rural economy,” says Luis Velasquez, statewide organizing director for immigrant advocacy group Voces de la Frontera. “And then also there’s the symbolic and political dimension to it as well. We are America’s Dairyland, and so this enforcement is not just an administrative matter, but it threatens the industry’s well being. Who are we going to be after all of this? Are we still going to be America’s Dairyland?”

Velasquez says the raid sent a “big anxiety wave” through immigrant communities across the state. 

“These views have just spiraled out of control in terms of the rumors that have been sent out across the community, rumors of ICE coming into their neighborhoods, to their homes, to their schools,” Velasquez says.  

“I have had serious conversations since the raid in Manitowoc of folks who are planning to leave after many years of being here,” he adds. “They just don’t feel like this is a humane lifestyle anymore. They’ve given many years of their lives, and many of them have children here.” 

Michael Slattery, a Manitowoc County farmer who grows grain and raises Holstein steers, points to data that shows 70% of the labor on Wisconsin’s dairy farms comes from immigrants and estimates that the dairy industry is the driver of 20% of Manitowoc County’s economy. 

Slattery says farmers can’t survive without that migrant labor because no one else is willing to do the work.

“Do you want to get up at 3 a.m. seven days a week to go out in the cold, the heat, to get kicked by cows when you’re putting the suction cups on, to be shat upon, pissed on, pushed around by 1,400 pound cows? People don’t want that,” he says. “I’ve tried to hire part time labor here, I cannot get people, they don’t want to do this sort of stuff.”

Simply expecting farm families to pick up the slack isn’t the answer, he adds.  “These dairy farms, they don’t have enough family members that can come out and replace immigrant labor, both documented and undocumented, that are leaving,” Slattery says. “They’re in a money-losing situation now.” 

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Losing the dairy labor force would have ripple effects across the economy in Wisconsin and the country. 

“What do they do in that situation? If your cows cannot be milked, in two, two and a half weeks they’ll go dry,” he says. “The cows get milk fever, get ill, that’s your cheap hamburger in the stores. They’re selling the cows at a loss, that’s what they’ll do. There’s less milk in the market, that will drive up prices for cheese, milk and butter.”

Danielle Endvick, executive director of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, says if Wisconsin’s immigrant workers leave the state — either from being arrested by ICE or leaving on their own to avoid arrest — farms could close and prices could increase. 

“Immigration raids and mass deportations can shrink rural economies, are terribly destabilizing for communities and can harm schools, churches, just the fabric of our rural communities too,” Endvick says. “Our rural spaces, our farmers can’t thrive if we’re treating a key workforce like they’re disposable. I think that immigrant workers are essential to Wisconsin dairy, and that when they are threatened, farmers in our rural communities are threatened too.”

A bill restricting referendum proposals comes as school districts continue to rely on funding raised from property taxes through referendum requests, requiring voter approval. A rally calling attention to schools' reliance on referendums in the Capitol in 2025. Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner.

Wisconsin Republicans want to restrict school districts’ ability to seek referendums if they haven’t turned in financial reports to the Department of Public Instruction on time. 

At a public hearing Thursday, the Assembly Education Committee Thursday heard testimony on a bill drafted in reaction to the historic referendum that voters approved for the Milwaukee Public Schools last year, and that was followed by the revelation that the district was months late in submitting financial documents to the state.

The school district’s tardiness has led to upheaval throughout the district, including the decision to replace the MPS superintendent and additional audits ordered by Gov. Tony Evers.

The education committee also took testimony on a bill that would allow education students to complete their student teacher requirements during the summer and a bill to change curriculum requirements for human development classes if districts offer them. 

Rich Judge,  assistant state superintendent in the Division of Government & Public Affairs for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), registered against each bill, but did not provide testimony. The agency has not yet responded to a request for comment from the Wisconsin Examiner about its opposition to the bills.

AB 457, coauthored by Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) and Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), would require DPI to certify schools are in compliance with all applicable requirements to submit financial information to DPI. 

If a district is not in compliance, the school board would be prohibited from adopting a resolution to hold  a referendum. A resolution adopted or a referendum passed without the certification would be void.

“If a district cannot even meet its minimal statutory reporting duties, how can voters trust them to be responsible?” Nedweski asked rhetorically during her testimony. “This bill places no additional cost or burdens on school districts. It simply reinforces accountability and transparency… Trust is the foundation of strong schools and strong communities, and AB 457 helps ensure that that trust is never taken for granted.” 

MPS sought a $252 million recurring operating referendum in April 2024 to assist with staff pay and educational programming costs. The measure passed narrowly, and by the end of May 2024, DPI announced that the district was months late in submitting required financial reports. 

The DPI was still withholding about $42 million from the district as of June of this year due to its late financial reports. 

Nedweski said she didn’t know how many other districts might be late in their financial reporting to DPI. School districts need to be in compliance before they seek a referendum so that voters have adequate information, she said 

“If you’re going to pass a $252 million dollar recurring referendum, I think you should be able to make an informed decision,” Nedweski said.

The legislation comes as school districts continue to rely on funding raised from property taxes through referendum requests, requiring voter approval.

Democratic lawmakers on the committee expressed concern about the potential barrier the legislation could pose.

Rep. Angelina Cruz (D-Racine) noted that there have been a record number of referendum requests t in recent years and that the state Legislature opted not to provide any additional general aid in the 2025-27 state budget. School district leaders have said the lack of state aid will put them in tough positions when it comes to funding, even with the additional aid that the state is providing for special education costs. 

“With the state Legislature putting zero dollars in state [general] aid forward in this last budget to local school districts, we’re going to see that pattern of referendum continuing,” Cruz said. “I’m just concerned that we are creating another barrier in terms of our local public school districts having access to choosing to… fill the gaps that the state is intentionally creating.”

Even with the recent referendum, MPS is still looking at a $100 million budget shortfall and newly hired Superintendent Brenda Cassellius is looking for ways to tighten its budget.

This is not the only bill lawmakers have introduced that would place additional barriers and limitations on school districts seeking referendums. A bill introduced in March would eliminate the ability for school districts to seek recurring referendums, which are ongoing into the future, in part due to Milwaukee’s referendum. 

“Are you saying that people shouldn’t have access to the financial data for school districts before they make a decision to raise their own taxes?” Nedweski replied. 

“Absolutely not,” Cruz said. “I’m seeking clarity in terms of are we trying to create an additional barrier for public school districts, local communities to fund their schools? [The financial reports are] already a requirement by law.” 

Changing human development requirements 

The committee also took testimony on AB 405, also authored by Nedweski, which would change requirements for school districts that offer human development education.

Wisconsin doesn’t require public schools to teach human growth and development, or sex education. If they opt to do so, the state makes recommendations for the curriculum and state law imposes some requirements. Those include presenting abstinence from sex as the preferred choice of behavior for unmarried students, providing instruction in parental responsibility and the socioeconomic benefits of marriage for adults and their children, and explaining pregnancy, prenatal development and childbirth. 

Nedweski’s bill would add to those requirements. If it is enacted, students would have to be shown a “high-definition ultrasound video that shows the development of the brain, heart, sex organs, and other vital organs in early fetal development” and a “high-quality, computer-generated rendering or animation that shows the process of fertilization and every stage of fetal development inside the uterus and that notes significant markers in cell growth and organ development for every week of pregnancy until birth.”

Nedweski said that allowing students to “actually see the real life process of fetal development in action will be more tangible to them than simply reading in a textbook or seeing it in the still diagram or drawing.” 

“We have the resources at our disposal to bring this science into the classrooms, and we should use it to our advantage to give students a stronger educational experience,” she added. 

Nedweski’s bill would also require schools to include a presentation on each trimester of pregnancy and the physical and emotional health of the mother if they opt into teaching on recommended topics. She said this would help address mental health concerns.

“This bill simply builds off of those existing requirements to incorporate more scientific resources, such as the ultrasound video as well as lessons pertaining to the mental and physical health of the mother,” Nedweski said. “This bill is not a mandate because school districts are not required by law to offer human growth and development instruction. It merely makes modern enhancements to the topics required of districts that choose to teach it.” 

Nedweski was the sole person to testify on the bill. 

Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) asked Nedweski whether she consulted public health officials, noting that the Wisconsin Public Health Association and Wisconsin Association of Local Health Departments and Boards are registered against it, according to the Wisconsin Ethics Commission lobbying website.

Nedweski said she didn’t speak to any public health officials or either statewide group in the process of authoring the bill, but spoke to a member of one of the local health departments in her district. 

Cruz asked about how much the curriculum would potentially cost. 

“There are all kinds of free materials available to any school district that would be wanting to utilize the video portion or the high resolution animation,” Nedweski said. She added that the curriculum decisions would ultimately be made at the local level.

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