From left to right, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attend a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 30, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump released a budget request Friday that would dramatically slash some federal spending, the initial step in a monthslong process that will include heated debate on Capitol Hill as both political parties work toward a final government funding agreement.

The proposal, for the first time, details how exactly this administration wants lawmakers to restructure spending across the federal government — steep cuts to domestic appropriations, including the elimination of dozens of programs that carry a long history of bipartisan support, and a significant increase in defense funding.

Trump wants more than 60 programs to be scrapped, some with long histories of assistance to states, including Community Services Block Grants, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities within the National Institutes of Health, and the Sexual Risk Avoidance and Teen Pregnancy Prevention programs.

Congress will ultimately decide how much funding to provide to federal programs, and while Republicans hold majorities in both chambers, regular funding bills will need Democratic support to move through the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.

White House budget director Russ Vought wrote in a letter that the request proposes shifting some funding from the federal government to states and local communities.

“Just as the Federal Government has intruded on matters best left to American families, it has intruded on matters best left to the levels of government closest to the people, who understand and respect the needs and desires of their communities far better than the Federal Government ever could,” Vought wrote.

The budget request calls on Congress to cut non-defense accounts by $163 billion to $557 billion, while keeping defense funding flat at $893 billion in the dozen annual appropriations bills.

The proposal assumes the GOP Congress passes the separate reconciliation package that is currently being written in the House, bringing defense funding up to $1.01 trillion, a 13.4% increase, and reducing domestic spending to $601 billion, a 16.6% decrease.

Many domestic cuts

Under Trump’s request many federal departments and agencies would be slated for significant spending reductions, though defense, border security and veterans would be exempt. 

The cuts include:

• Agriculture: – $5 billion, or 18.3%
• Commerce: – $1.7 billion, or 16.5%
• Education: – $12 billion, or 15.3%
• Energy: – $4.7 billion, or 9.4%
• Health and Human Services: – $33 billion, or 26.2%
• Housing and Urban Development: – $33.6 billion, or 43.6%
• Interior: – $5.1 billion, or 30.5%
• Justice: – $2.7 billion, or 7.6%
• Labor: – $4.6 billion, or 34.9%
• State: – $49.1 billion, or 83.7%
• Treasury: – $2.7 billion, or 19%

Increases include:

• Defense: + $113 billion, or 13.4% with reconciliation package
• Homeland Security: + $42.3 billion, or 64.9% with reconciliation package
• Transportation: + $1.5 billion, or 5.8%
• Veterans Affairs: + $5.4 billion, or 4.1%

The budget request also asks Congress to eliminate AmeriCorps, which operates as the Corporation for National and Community Service; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides some funding to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service; the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences; and the 400 Years of African American History Commission.

What if Congress won’t act on the cuts?

Debate over the budget proposal will take place throughout the summer months, but will come to a head in September, when Congress must pass some sort of funding bill to avoid a partial government shutdown.

A senior White House official, speaking on background on a call with reporters to discuss details of the budget request, suggested that Trump would take unilateral action to cut funding if Congress doesn’t go along with the request.

“Obviously, we have never taken impoundment off the table, because the president and myself believe that 200 years of the president and executive branch had that ability,” the official said. “But we’re working with Congress to see what they will pass. And I believe that they have an interest in passing cuts.”

The 1974 Impoundment Control Act bars the president from canceling funding approved by Congress without consulting lawmakers via a rescissions request, which the officials said the administration plans to release “soon.”

The annual appropriations process is separate from the reconciliation process that Republicans are using to pass their massive tax cuts, border security, defense funding and spending cuts package.

Huge boost for Homeland Security

The budget proposal aligns with the Trump’s administration’s plans for mass deportations of people without permanent legal status, and would provide the Department of Homeland Security with $42.3 billion, or a 64.9% increase.

The budget proposal suggests eliminating $650 million from a program that reimburses non-governmental organizations and local governments that help with resettling and aiding newly arrived migrants released from DHS custody, known as the Shelters and Services Program.

The Trump administration also seeks to eliminate the agency that handles the care and resettlement of unaccompanied minors within Health and Human Services. The budget proposal recommends getting rid of the Refugee and Unaccompanied Alien Children Programs’ $1.97 billion budget. The budget proposal argues that because of an executive order to suspend refugee resettlement services, there is no need for the programs.

A federal judge from Washington state issued a nationwide injunction, and ruled the Trump administration must continue refugee resettlement services.

The budget proposal also calls for axing programs that help newly arrived migrant children or students for whom English is not a first language.

For the Education Department, the budget proposal suggests eliminating $890 million in funding for the English Language Acquisition and $428 million for the Migrant Education and Special Programs for Migrant Students.

Key GOP senator rejects defense request

Members of Congress had mixed reactions to the budget request, with some GOP lawmakers praising its spending cuts, while others took issue with the defense budget.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., outright rejected the defense funding level, writing in a statement that relying on the reconciliation package to get military spending above $1 trillion was unacceptable. 

“OMB is not requesting a trillion-dollar budget. It is requesting a budget of $892.6 billion, which is a cut in real terms. This budget would decrease President Trump’s military options and his negotiating leverage,” Wicker wrote. “We face an Axis of Aggressors led by the Chinese Communist Party, who have already started a trade war rather than negotiate in good faith. We need a real Peace Through Strength agenda to ensure Xi Jinping does not launch a military war against us in Asia, beyond his existing military support to the Russians, the Iranians, Hamas, and the Houthis.”

The senior White House official who spoke on a call with reporters to discuss details of the budget request said that splitting the defense increase between the regular Pentagon spending bill and the reconciliation package was a more “durable” proposal.

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, wrote the panel will have “an aggressive hearing schedule to learn more about the President’s proposal and assess funding needs for the coming year.”

“This request has come to Congress late, and key details still remain outstanding,” Collins wrote. “Based on my initial review, however, I have serious objections to the proposed freeze in our defense funding given the security challenges we face and to the proposed funding cuts to – and in some cases elimination of – programs like LIHEAP, TRIO, and those that support biomedical research. 

“Ultimately, it is Congress that holds the power of the purse.”

Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote in a statement she will work with others in Congress to block the domestic funding cuts from taking effect.

“Trump wants to rip away funding to safeguard Americans’ health, protect our environment, and to help rural communities and our farmers thrive. This president wants to turn our country’s back on Tribes—and let trash pile up at our national parks,” Murray wrote. “Trump is even proposing to cut investments to prevent violent crime, go after drug traffickers, and tackle the opioids and mental health crises.”

A press release from Murray’s office noted the budget request lacked details on certain programs, including Head Start.

House Speaker Mike Johnson R-La, praised the budget proposal in a statement and pledged that House GOP lawmakers are “ready to work alongside President Trump to implement a responsible budget that puts America first.”

“President Trump’s plan ensures every federal taxpayer dollar spent is used to serve the American people, not a bloated bureaucracy or partisan pet projects,” Johnson wrote.

Spending decisions coming

The House and Senate Appropriations committees are set to begin hearings with Cabinet secretaries and agency heads next week, where Trump administration officials will explain their individual funding requests and answer lawmakers’ questions.

The members on those committees will ultimately write the dozen annual appropriations bills in the months ahead, determining funding levels and policy for numerous programs, including those at the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, State and Transportation.

The House panel’s bills will skew more toward Republican funding levels and priorities, though the Senate committee has a long history of writing broadly bipartisan bills. 

The leaders of the two committees — House Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., House ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., Senate Chairwoman Collins and Senate ranking member Murray — will ultimately work out a final deal later in the year alongside congressional leaders.

Differences over the full-year bills are supposed to be solved before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, but members of Congress regularly rely on a stopgap spending bill through mid-December to give themselves more time to complete negotiations.

Failure to pass some sort of government funding measure, either a stopgap bill or all 12 full-year spending bills, before the funding deadline, would lead to a partial government shutdown.

This round of appropriations bills will be the first debated during Trump’s second-term presidency and will likely bring about considerable disagreement over the unilateral actions the administration has already taken to freeze or cancel federal spending, many of which are the subject of lawsuits arguing the president doesn’t have that impoundment authority. 

Two years ago, Ram introduced the 1500 REV at the 2023 New York Auto Show. It was originally slated to arrive in the fourth quarter of 2024, but has now been pushed back to 2026. That’s a heck of a delay and it appears Ram was also working on an electric heavy duty pickup. The truck was slated to join the lineup in time for the 2027 model year, but the program was reportedly axed in 2024.

More: Ram Confirms 25 New Models In 18 Months And It Starts With A Bang In June

This is an interesting development as heavy duty trucks are known for diesel-power and huge towing capabilities. The latter is a significant weak spot for EVs, leading us to question who in their right mind would want an electric heavy duty pickup.

Ram appears to have answered that question with ‘no one’ as the truck was quietly killed off. However, we’re learning about it today thanks to a lawsuit discovered by Auto News.

According to the publication, Valeo is suing American Axle & Manufacturing for refusing to cover “sunk costs” related to the vehicle. Valeo reportedly spent millions developing electric motors and inverters that would be used in e-beams from American Axle.

American Axle announced a contract with Stellantis in 2023 and said the upcoming model – which was a mystery at the time – would have “both front and rear e-Beam axles that include AAM’s integrated 3-in-1 e-Drive technology.” They added the vehicle would arrive late in the decade and feature a motor, inverter and gearbox integrated into a single assembly.

While it would have been interesting to see what Ram came up with, the two suppliers are now fighting over a reported $25  (£18.6 / €21.9) million. Valeo reportedly wants to be paid for their work, while American Axle is said to be claiming the two firms never had an enforceable contract.

White House Border Czar Tom Homan talks with reporters on the driveway outside the White House West Wing on March 17, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — White House border czar Tom Homan on Monday blamed the parents of U.S. citizen children the Trump administration sent to Honduras over the weekend.

At a Monday morning press conference, Homan defended the government’s actions to remove three young children from two different families alongside their mothers who were in the country without legal authorization but participated in a program that allows otherwise law-abiding migrants to stay in their communities.

“If you enter this country illegally, it’s a crime,” Homan said. “Knowing you’re in this country illegally, you put yourself in that position. You put your family in that position.”

The children, all under the age of 10, were placed on deportation flights to Honduras on Friday after their mothers checked in with a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in New Orleans as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which allows immigrants to stay in their communities while undergoing immigration court proceedings.

An attorney for one of the children, Gracie Willis at the National Immigration Project, said the 4-year-old U.S. citizen with Stage 4 cancer was deported without access to his medication.

Homan has argued the mothers requested to be deported with their children, but attorneys for the families argue they were “denied access to legal counsel, and swiftly deported without due process.”

Due process concerns

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, whom Trump appointed to a seat on the Louisiana federal bench in 2018, expressed concern that a 2-year-old U.S. citizen had been deported, despite her father’s wishes she remain in the U.S., according to court filings.

Doughty scheduled a May 16 hearing because of his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

“The government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Doughty wrote in his order. “But the court doesn’t know that.”

Willis, from the National Immigration Project, raised concerns about a lack of due process and how the deportations have separated families.

“What we saw from ICE over the last several days is horrifying and baffling,” she said in a statement. “These mothers had no opportunity to speak with their co-parents to make the kinds of choices that parents are entitled to make for their children, the kinds of decisions that millions of parents make every day: ‘what is best for our child?’”

Homan has argued the children were deported at the request of the mothers and that the Trump administration was “keeping families together.”

“What we did is remove children with their mothers who requested their children depart with them,” he said. “When a parent says, ‘I want my 2-year-old baby to go with me,’ we made that happen. They weren’t deported. We don’t deport U.S. citizens. The parents made that decision, not the United States government.”

Wisconsin judge

Monday’s remarks from Homan come the day before President Donald Trump will mark the 100th day of his second term. His early days in office have centered on carrying out his campaign promise of mass deportations of millions of people in the U.S. without permanent legal status.

Trump will sign two executive orders on immigration late Monday: one relating to border security and another to require the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to publicly list so-called sanctuary cities that do not coordinate with federal immigration law enforcement.

Homan also stood by the Trump administration’s decision to arrest a federal judge in Wisconsin on the grounds she obstructed immigration officials from detaining a man attending his court hearing. It marked an escalation between the Trump administration and the judiciary branch, raising concerns from Democrats.

The arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan was highly publicized after she was handcuffed in public and FBI Director Kash Patel bragged about the arrest on social media.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Fox News that the Trump administration was going to continue to go after judges who “think they’re above the law.”

“When you cross that line to impediment or knowingly harboring, concealing an illegal alien from ICE, you will be prosecuted, judge or not,” Homan said. 

 

White House Border Czar Tom Homan talks with reporters on the driveway outside the White House West Wing on March 17, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — White House border czar Tom Homan on Monday blamed the parents of U.S. citizen children the Trump administration sent to Honduras over the weekend.

At a Monday morning press conference, Homan defended the government’s actions to remove three young children from two different families alongside their mothers who were in the country without legal authorization but participated in a program that allows otherwise law-abiding migrants to stay in their communities.

“If you enter this country illegally, it’s a crime,” Homan said. “Knowing you’re in this country illegally, you put yourself in that position. You put your family in that position.”

The children, all under the age of 10, were placed on deportation flights to Honduras on Friday after their mothers checked in with a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in New Orleans as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which allows immigrants to stay in their communities while undergoing immigration court proceedings.

An attorney for one of the children, Gracie Willis at the National Immigration Project, said the 4-year-old U.S. citizen with Stage 4 cancer was deported without access to his medication.

Homan has argued the mothers requested to be deported with their children, but attorneys for the families argue they were “denied access to legal counsel, and swiftly deported without due process.”

Due process concerns

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, whom Trump appointed to a seat on the Louisiana federal bench in 2018, expressed concern that a 2-year-old U.S. citizen had been deported, despite her father’s wishes she remain in the U.S., according to court filings.

Doughty scheduled a May 16 hearing because of his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

“The government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Doughty wrote in his order. “But the court doesn’t know that.”

Willis, from the National Immigration Project, raised concerns about a lack of due process and how the deportations have separated families.

“What we saw from ICE over the last several days is horrifying and baffling,” she said in a statement. “These mothers had no opportunity to speak with their co-parents to make the kinds of choices that parents are entitled to make for their children, the kinds of decisions that millions of parents make every day: ‘what is best for our child?’”

Homan has argued the children were deported at the request of the mothers and that the Trump administration was “keeping families together.”

“What we did is remove children with their mothers who requested their children depart with them,” he said. “When a parent says, ‘I want my 2-year-old baby to go with me,’ we made that happen. They weren’t deported. We don’t deport U.S. citizens. The parents made that decision, not the United States government.”

Wisconsin judge

Monday’s remarks from Homan come the day before President Donald Trump will mark the 100th day of his second term. His early days in office have centered on carrying out his campaign promise of mass deportations of millions of people in the U.S. without permanent legal status.

Trump will sign two executive orders on immigration late Monday: one relating to border security and another to require the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to publicly list so-called sanctuary cities that do not coordinate with federal immigration law enforcement.

Homan also stood by the Trump administration’s decision to arrest a federal judge in Wisconsin on the grounds she obstructed immigration officials from detaining a man attending his court hearing. It marked an escalation between the Trump administration and the judiciary branch, raising concerns from Democrats.

The arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan was highly publicized after she was handcuffed in public and FBI Director Kash Patel bragged about the arrest on social media.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Fox News that the Trump administration was going to continue to go after judges who “think they’re above the law.”

“When you cross that line to impediment or knowingly harboring, concealing an illegal alien from ICE, you will be prosecuted, judge or not,” Homan said. 

 

A doctor holding T-shaped intrauterine birth control device. (Getty Photos) 

WASHINGTON — The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday challenging the Trump administration’s decision to withhold Title X family planning grants.

The 35-page filing alleges the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the reproductive health program with funding approved by Congress, has withheld $65.8 million over disagreements about organizations’ “opposition to racism” and “providing care to undocumented immigrants.”

“The Affected Members and their subrecipients operate hundreds of Title X service sites across these states, which together provide family planning care to hundreds of thousands of low-income patients, many of whom would not otherwise be able to afford such care,” the complaint says. 

“Depriving these individuals of the high-quality, essential health care provided by Title X-funded health centers reduces access to (sexually transmitted infection) screening and treatment, cancer screening, and contraception, threatens the health and wellbeing of the individuals who rely on Title X for care, and undermines public health.”

The lawsuit contends California, Hawaiʻi, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, and Utah have been completely cut off from Title X family planning grants, while Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia have had their access to the funding reduced.

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia but hadn’t been assigned to a judge as of Thursday afternoon.

HHS did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Another suit

The lawsuit is the latest filed by organizations and Democratic state attorneys general challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to freeze funding for dozens of programs.

Some, but not all, of the cases are subject to injunctions from district courts that so far have prevented the spending cuts from taking effect while the cases proceed.

The Impoundment Control Act, a 1970s-era law that requires the president to spend the money Congress appropriates, is the subject of many of the disagreements between those filing lawsuits and the Trump administration.

The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association wrote in the lawsuit that it represents nearly 900 members, including state, county and local health departments.

Its members “operate or administer more than 3,000 health centers that provide family planning services to more than 2.2 million patients each year.”

HHS sent letters to some of the association’s members in late March, notifying them that their Title X family planning grant funding was “being temporarily withheld based on possible violations of the terms and conditions set forth in the notice of award,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges HHS’ decision to freeze the funding stems from its members having statements on their websites “indicating support for diversity, equity, and inclusion and opposition to racism, which, HHS claims, ‘suggests’ that the Affected Members are or may be engaged in conduct that violates federal civil rights laws.”

The federal government also chose to withhold the Title X funding over “a single public statement that HHS claims gives it ‘reason to believe’ that some of the Affected Members may be providing care to undocumented immigrants, in violation of Executive Order 14218 ‘Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders.’”

The lawsuit says that HHS never actually told any of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association’s members that they had violated federal regulations, executive orders, or the law. The letters from HHS referenced only “possible violations.” 

Stacey and Tenzin Botsford at Red Door Family Farm in Athens.

STEVENS POINT – Red Door Family Farm in Marathon County will probably survive the Trump administration’s latest punch – the failure to honor grower contracts that supported schools, pantries and also boosted local foods in grocery stores. But the owners of Red Door aren’t so sure about some of their fellow local food growers.

The administration recently eliminated the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program and the related Local Food for Schools Program, and in the process reneged on funds already committed for this year, leaving almost 300 farmers across the state holding the bag, or, in many cases, the seeds.

At Red Door, owners Stacey and Tenzin Botsford won’t be planting the carrot seeds they ordered. “It would be bad business for me to do that,” says Stacey. “Some seeds are already planted, all the onions are, but there’s no reason for me to plant all those carrots.”

Like many other local growers, Red Door actually raises food that people eat. They’re the farmers you know at farmers markets all over the state. They’re also the farmers who help stock super markets with local foods. And, until now, they provided nutritious, locally grown fruits and vegetables to food pantries and schools.

What gets under their skin, Stacey Botsford says, is the arbitrary and capricious cutoff of funds already committed, funds that many farmers were promised and that caused many to invest in infrastructure and hire employees. “The part that really bothers me is, if next year they said, ‘We don’t value that program,’ that’s fine, but you can’t break the contract everyone signed. Now I can’t trust government contracts anymore. I cannot imagine the widespread mistrust of government from this.”

Red Door is probably diversified enough to weather the loss of up to $50,000 in anticipated income, but on a recent chilly spring day, rather than planting carrots, Stacey was searching for new markets.

She says she’s angry and heartbroken about the impact on other growers, including many Hmong farmers who invested in hoop houses and in some cases greenhouses based on projected income. “Greenhouses, you don’t own one unless you have enough to fill it. Heating those suckers is a lot of money. The LSP people were encouraging all the Hmong to build hoop houses and greenhouses. Those are huge investments.”

Local and regional foods are mainstream in most parts of Wisconsin and across the country these days. It’s been a success story of remarkable growth in the past few decades, built on the backs of farmers, many of them young, from a variety of  ethnic backgrounds. Some government assistance was available for hoop houses and other improvements, but for the most part, the growth was organic, from the ground up, without commodity payments or other government support. 

And while the local food programs were buffeted by the recent breach of contract, large commodity growers got a big boost from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to buffer them from the impacts of the Trump administration tariffs. USDA recently announced it will provide $10 billion in direct economic assistance to agricultural producers through the Emergency Crop Assistance Program EECAP for the 2024 crop year. The local foods programs were projected to cost $1 billion nationally.

The payments to commodity growers, notes Botsford, will reward farmers not to grow crops like corn and soybeans. “Government has always subsidized farms. We’ve been subsidizing farmers for years – all the commodity crops – and now they’re paying farmers not to grow crops,” while local commodity growers take their losses, she said. “So, they’re making it impossible to sell what you’ve committed to and giving conventional farms $10 billion not to grow.”

Red Door and hundreds of other farms rely on the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative in Waupaca to source and transport their produce. The Food Hub Cooperative is a farmer-owned business supporting the local food system. 

Tara Roberts-Turner, general manager of the Food Hub, likened the suspension of the programs and promised funding to a natural disaster. “This almost happened as fast and as crazy as a hailstorm. It pulls the legs right out from under you, and you’re left saying ‘Whoa, did that really happen?’” she says.

The Food Hub serves more than 400 Wisconsin farmers, providing transportation and distribution services, along with other grower assistance. Under the LFPA program and its committed funding, the cooperative rented trucks, expanded staff, and coordinated with farmers for supply in preparation in 2025.

The food hub and its growers are working to get the program restored, but there have been few good signs. “If the LFPA is not restored, years of building the local farmer-to-market infrastructure that the Food Hub Cooperative has built for farmers with government investment will be completely thrown out the window,” says Turner-Roberts. 

The cooperative and farmer members are all businesses, Roberts-Turner says. They have business plans, investments, overhead and bottom lines. The programs eliminated by the Trump administration were built on other government efforts to support local food security, she adds. That was an investment in local businesses and communities. “If you were to look at this from a business perspective, they would realize it’s not a very sound decision. They lose all the investment they put in and cut off a bipartisan plan to make the state’s food systems more stable. I think back to when these programs were kicked off, and it was supported by both sides of the aisle,” she says, adding that their farmer members span the political spectrum.

And it’s not just food pantries and schools. Supermarket chains like Kroger, Roundy’s and other grocers buy local foods produced across the state. “Food Hub growers supply over $3 million of produce to larger grocery stories and grocery distribution in the state,” Turner-Roberts says. If the growers don’t survive, local foods will dissipate. “We’re shipping to them year-round, everything from potatoes and apples to crops like zucchini and yellow squash,” she says. “The local Piggly Wiggly here (in Waupaca) has always been about supporting local. The premise is everyone knows this is important, right? When you ask farmers to buy seeds and implements and hire employees and then cut them off, it’s going to make them less likely to participate in those programs. These farmers are members of their communities, but they’re also business people.”

Like cooperative member Stacey Botsford, Turner-Roberts says it’s a heartbreaking time, even as spring planting is under way across the state. Are there any positives? U.S. Sen. Cory Booker has sponsored legislation to honor farmer contracts. “We have not seen any Republicans who have signed on to that,” Turner-Roberts says. “I find it curious. The food hub is not a political program. Food is not political. It’s not just farmers we’re worried about. We’re two to five years into a seven-year project we have with a bunch of partners in state that have basically created middle-of-the-road infrastructure to sustain ourselves as a state, whether it’s schools, pantries, whatever. What this means is that, next emergency we have that threatens our ability to feed ourselves, we’ll have to start all over. In Wisconsin, Meanwhile, at the Food Hub, “We’ve got truck leases three years out. We have to sign leases and find a way to pay for them and hire staff.”

The food hub has farmer cooperators in all 72 counties in the state. As Botsford at Red Door notes, a lot of them are left scratching their heads. “Margins are so narrow in farming, you don’t plant $50,000 in food and not have anywhere to sell it,” she says. “I’m talking to distributors all over the U.S., in the southeast and in bigger cities. There’s a fairly significant food shortage coming, with the California fires and people who work on farms leaving because they’re scared. People are concerned about the price of food.”

These days, she’s working with neighboring Amish farmers. “I tell them I will sell their food and take a cut.” Those neighbors don’t have coolers for food storage, but Red Door does. “I say, ‘I can move your food, and I have a cooler, so bring it to my house and put it in the cooler.’ I feel very responsible to help these folks …  these people need to sell their produce.”

Tenzin Botsford is on the board of directors for Neighbors Place, a Marathon County nonprofit that was established in 1989 by several churches trying to address needs in the community. “They don’t know what to do now, how to make up the difference,” Stacey Botsford says. 

Red Door does cooperate with Cattail Organics, a neighboring farm, to supply farm-to-family food boxes through the Hunger Coalition, operated by United Way in Marathon County. But the past few weeks have been rough. “The seeds are already in the ground for a lot of the producers. We are diverse enough to pivot, but I am concerned with the smaller farms, especially the Hmong farmers in our area who were encouraged to expand, make investments, and put all their trust in this one basket of eggs. My heart is breaking for all the families who will not get the produce and I’m perplexed at how starving the poor of nutrition and gutting the farmers who are producing food is going to propel the country in a positive way. It’s not good on such a big scale.” 

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A doctor holding T-shaped intrauterine birth control device. (Getty Photos) 

WASHINGTON — The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday challenging the Trump administration’s decision to withhold Title X family planning grants.

The 35-page filing alleges the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the reproductive health program with funding approved by Congress, has withheld $65.8 million over disagreements about organizations’ “opposition to racism” and “providing care to undocumented immigrants.”

“The Affected Members and their subrecipients operate hundreds of Title X service sites across these states, which together provide family planning care to hundreds of thousands of low-income patients, many of whom would not otherwise be able to afford such care,” the complaint says. 

“Depriving these individuals of the high-quality, essential health care provided by Title X-funded health centers reduces access to (sexually transmitted infection) screening and treatment, cancer screening, and contraception, threatens the health and wellbeing of the individuals who rely on Title X for care, and undermines public health.”

The lawsuit contends California, Hawaiʻi, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, and Utah have been completely cut off from Title X family planning grants, while Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia have had their access to the funding reduced.

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia but hadn’t been assigned to a judge as of Thursday afternoon.

HHS did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Another suit

The lawsuit is the latest filed by organizations and Democratic state attorneys general challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to freeze funding for dozens of programs.

Some, but not all, of the cases are subject to injunctions from district courts that so far have prevented the spending cuts from taking effect while the cases proceed.

The Impoundment Control Act, a 1970s-era law that requires the president to spend the money Congress appropriates, is the subject of many of the disagreements between those filing lawsuits and the Trump administration.

The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association wrote in the lawsuit that it represents nearly 900 members, including state, county and local health departments.

Its members “operate or administer more than 3,000 health centers that provide family planning services to more than 2.2 million patients each year.”

HHS sent letters to some of the association’s members in late March, notifying them that their Title X family planning grant funding was “being temporarily withheld based on possible violations of the terms and conditions set forth in the notice of award,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges HHS’ decision to freeze the funding stems from its members having statements on their websites “indicating support for diversity, equity, and inclusion and opposition to racism, which, HHS claims, ‘suggests’ that the Affected Members are or may be engaged in conduct that violates federal civil rights laws.”

The federal government also chose to withhold the Title X funding over “a single public statement that HHS claims gives it ‘reason to believe’ that some of the Affected Members may be providing care to undocumented immigrants, in violation of Executive Order 14218 ‘Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders.’”

The lawsuit says that HHS never actually told any of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association’s members that they had violated federal regulations, executive orders, or the law. The letters from HHS referenced only “possible violations.” 

Stacey and Tenzin Botsford at Red Door Family Farm in Athens.

STEVENS POINT – Red Door Family Farm in Marathon County will probably survive the Trump administration’s latest punch – the failure to honor grower contracts that supported schools, pantries and also boosted local foods in grocery stores. But the owners of Red Door aren’t so sure about some of their fellow local food growers.

The administration recently eliminated the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program and the related Local Food for Schools Program, and in the process reneged on funds already committed for this year, leaving almost 300 farmers across the state holding the bag, or, in many cases, the seeds.

At Red Door, owners Stacey and Tenzin Botsford won’t be planting the carrot seeds they ordered. “It would be bad business for me to do that,” says Stacey. “Some seeds are already planted, all the onions are, but there’s no reason for me to plant all those carrots.”

Like many other local growers, Red Door actually raises food that people eat. They’re the farmers you know at farmers markets all over the state. They’re also the farmers who help stock super markets with local foods. And, until now, they provided nutritious, locally grown fruits and vegetables to food pantries and schools.

What gets under their skin, Stacey Botsford says, is the arbitrary and capricious cutoff of funds already committed, funds that many farmers were promised and that caused many to invest in infrastructure and hire employees. “The part that really bothers me is, if next year they said, ‘We don’t value that program,’ that’s fine, but you can’t break the contract everyone signed. Now I can’t trust government contracts anymore. I cannot imagine the widespread mistrust of government from this.”

Red Door is probably diversified enough to weather the loss of up to $50,000 in anticipated income, but on a recent chilly spring day, rather than planting carrots, Stacey was searching for new markets.

She says she’s angry and heartbroken about the impact on other growers, including many Hmong farmers who invested in hoop houses and in some cases greenhouses based on projected income. “Greenhouses, you don’t own one unless you have enough to fill it. Heating those suckers is a lot of money. The LSP people were encouraging all the Hmong to build hoop houses and greenhouses. Those are huge investments.”

Local and regional foods are mainstream in most parts of Wisconsin and across the country these days. It’s been a success story of remarkable growth in the past few decades, built on the backs of farmers, many of them young, from a variety of  ethnic backgrounds. Some government assistance was available for hoop houses and other improvements, but for the most part, the growth was organic, from the ground up, without commodity payments or other government support. 

And while the local food programs were buffeted by the recent breach of contract, large commodity growers got a big boost from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to buffer them from the impacts of the Trump administration tariffs. USDA recently announced it will provide $10 billion in direct economic assistance to agricultural producers through the Emergency Crop Assistance Program EECAP for the 2024 crop year. The local foods programs were projected to cost $1 billion nationally.

The payments to commodity growers, notes Botsford, will reward farmers not to grow crops like corn and soybeans. “Government has always subsidized farms. We’ve been subsidizing farmers for years – all the commodity crops – and now they’re paying farmers not to grow crops,” while local commodity growers take their losses, she said. “So, they’re making it impossible to sell what you’ve committed to and giving conventional farms $10 billion not to grow.”

Red Door and hundreds of other farms rely on the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative in Waupaca to source and transport their produce. The Food Hub Cooperative is a farmer-owned business supporting the local food system. 

Tara Roberts-Turner, general manager of the Food Hub, likened the suspension of the programs and promised funding to a natural disaster. “This almost happened as fast and as crazy as a hailstorm. It pulls the legs right out from under you, and you’re left saying ‘Whoa, did that really happen?’” she says.

The Food Hub serves more than 400 Wisconsin farmers, providing transportation and distribution services, along with other grower assistance. Under the LFPA program and its committed funding, the cooperative rented trucks, expanded staff, and coordinated with farmers for supply in preparation in 2025.

The food hub and its growers are working to get the program restored, but there have been few good signs. “If the LFPA is not restored, years of building the local farmer-to-market infrastructure that the Food Hub Cooperative has built for farmers with government investment will be completely thrown out the window,” says Turner-Roberts. 

The cooperative and farmer members are all businesses, Roberts-Turner says. They have business plans, investments, overhead and bottom lines. The programs eliminated by the Trump administration were built on other government efforts to support local food security, she adds. That was an investment in local businesses and communities. “If you were to look at this from a business perspective, they would realize it’s not a very sound decision. They lose all the investment they put in and cut off a bipartisan plan to make the state’s food systems more stable. I think back to when these programs were kicked off, and it was supported by both sides of the aisle,” she says, adding that their farmer members span the political spectrum.

And it’s not just food pantries and schools. Supermarket chains like Kroger, Roundy’s and other grocers buy local foods produced across the state. “Food Hub growers supply over $3 million of produce to larger grocery stories and grocery distribution in the state,” Turner-Roberts says. If the growers don’t survive, local foods will dissipate. “We’re shipping to them year-round, everything from potatoes and apples to crops like zucchini and yellow squash,” she says. “The local Piggly Wiggly here (in Waupaca) has always been about supporting local. The premise is everyone knows this is important, right? When you ask farmers to buy seeds and implements and hire employees and then cut them off, it’s going to make them less likely to participate in those programs. These farmers are members of their communities, but they’re also business people.”

Like cooperative member Stacey Botsford, Turner-Roberts says it’s a heartbreaking time, even as spring planting is under way across the state. Are there any positives? U.S. Sen. Cory Booker has sponsored legislation to honor farmer contracts. “We have not seen any Republicans who have signed on to that,” Turner-Roberts says. “I find it curious. The food hub is not a political program. Food is not political. It’s not just farmers we’re worried about. We’re two to five years into a seven-year project we have with a bunch of partners in state that have basically created middle-of-the-road infrastructure to sustain ourselves as a state, whether it’s schools, pantries, whatever. What this means is that, next emergency we have that threatens our ability to feed ourselves, we’ll have to start all over. In Wisconsin, Meanwhile, at the Food Hub, “We’ve got truck leases three years out. We have to sign leases and find a way to pay for them and hire staff.”

The food hub has farmer cooperators in all 72 counties in the state. As Botsford at Red Door notes, a lot of them are left scratching their heads. “Margins are so narrow in farming, you don’t plant $50,000 in food and not have anywhere to sell it,” she says. “I’m talking to distributors all over the U.S., in the southeast and in bigger cities. There’s a fairly significant food shortage coming, with the California fires and people who work on farms leaving because they’re scared. People are concerned about the price of food.”

These days, she’s working with neighboring Amish farmers. “I tell them I will sell their food and take a cut.” Those neighbors don’t have coolers for food storage, but Red Door does. “I say, ‘I can move your food, and I have a cooler, so bring it to my house and put it in the cooler.’ I feel very responsible to help these folks …  these people need to sell their produce.”

Tenzin Botsford is on the board of directors for Neighbors Place, a Marathon County nonprofit that was established in 1989 by several churches trying to address needs in the community. “They don’t know what to do now, how to make up the difference,” Stacey Botsford says. 

Red Door does cooperate with Cattail Organics, a neighboring farm, to supply farm-to-family food boxes through the Hunger Coalition, operated by United Way in Marathon County. But the past few weeks have been rough. “The seeds are already in the ground for a lot of the producers. We are diverse enough to pivot, but I am concerned with the smaller farms, especially the Hmong farmers in our area who were encouraged to expand, make investments, and put all their trust in this one basket of eggs. My heart is breaking for all the families who will not get the produce and I’m perplexed at how starving the poor of nutrition and gutting the farmers who are producing food is going to propel the country in a positive way. It’s not good on such a big scale.” 

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President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 20, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Only refugees who were closest to arriving in the United States are covered by an order the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued last month partially blocking the Trump administration from suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the court clarified in a filing Monday.

A three-judge panel wrote that its earlier order only pertains to people whom immigration officials had conditionally approved as refugees before Jan. 20 and had arranged travel to the United States.

The March order from the Ninth Circuit panel upheld part of a Washington state federal judge’s order blocking President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

The Trump administration sought clarification on the appeals court’s March order. The higher court had denied part of the administration’s request to halt the lower court’s earlier preliminary injunction.

On Monday, the appeals court panel said the government and the refugee advocacy groups challenging Trump’s executive order had overstated what the panel’s March order required.

Rather than admit all of the roughly 130,000 conditionally approved refugees, as the government claimed, or “tens of thousands” of refugees the groups said the order applied to, the court only required the government to allow those who “needed only to complete their arranged travel to the United States.”

“Under these definitions, the parties have construed our carveout broadly enough to swallow the entire stay order,” the judges wrote Monday.

The judges used the example of a refugee family in Kenya that was forced to shelter in the parking lot of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi after their travel was abruptly canceled as the type of people who would still be allowed to settle in the United States under the March order.

Inauguration Day order

Consistent with the Jan. 20 executive order, the administration withheld funds appropriated by Congress for those services — drawing swift legal action.

The International Refugee Assistance Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Church World Service, Lutheran Community Services Northwest and several refugees and others impacted by the order in February.

In its March order, the appeals court denied the administration’s motion “to the extent the district court’s preliminary injunction order applies to individuals who were conditionally approved for refugee status by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services before January 20, 2025.”

“The preliminary injunction remains in effect for these individuals only, and the government must resume their processing, facilitation of travel to the United States, admission, and provision of resettlement benefits after admission,” the judges wrote Monday.

The panel noted that when it issued the order in March, it “did not define conditional approval.”

Melissa Keaney, senior supervising attorney in the litigation department at the International Refugee Assistance Project, said “the Ninth Circuit reiterated that the U.S. government must end the state of limbo for refugees like our client Pacito who were ready to travel and had their lives turned upside down by President Trump’s suspension of the refugee program,’’ in a statement shared with States Newsroom.

“We will hold the government accountable to actually process those refugees immediately, and we will continue to defend the refugee program as a whole in court,” Keaney said. 

Opponents of President Donald Trump’s executive order indefinitely halting refugee resettlement in the U.S. rally on the steps of the federal courthouse in Seattle on Feb. 25, 2025, after a judge issued a ruling blocking the president’s order. (Photo by Jake Goldstein-Street/Washington State Standard)

WASHINGTON — State and local leaders and advocates from across the country called on the Trump administration Monday to immediately restart the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, saying the program’s suspension has harmed communities.

President Donald Trump signed an order suspending the program on his first day back in office and the administration withheld funds appropriated by Congress for those services. Federal courts have partially rejected that order, but the Trump administration has still not resumed the program, the advocates said.

By indefinitely halting the program and subsequently defunding its infrastructure, Trump “stranded” more than 100,000 refugees “who had already been interviewed by Homeland Security and received written notices from the U.S. government that they were eligible for resettlement,” Mark Hetfield, president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, said at a press conference hosted by several refugee advocacy groups Monday.

‘More than a program’

Aisha Koroma, a Refugee Congress delegate for Washington, D.C., said the Refugee Admissions Program “is more than a program.” Refugee Congress is a national organization advocating for people who are forcibly displaced. 

“It represents lives, dreams, resilience, hope — it is a gateway for future change-makers, doctors, engineers, artists, tradespeople — people who are ready and eager to become assets to America’s workforce and to contribute meaningfully to its economy and communities,” Koroma said. 

“Pausing this program doesn’t just delay paperwork, it delays possibilities, it ensures tragedies, it tears families apart, and it leaves people vulnerable, but most importantly, it sends a painful message that America is closing its doors, not only to those who need it most, but also those who fill jobs, those who open stores and people who sat on our school boards,” Koroma added.

Rev. Noel Andersen, national field director at Church World Service and faith leader with the United Church of Christ, said the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program “has signified a space of refuge and hope for the world as a beacon of light for democracy.”

“Now, because of the increased discriminatory attacks on all immigrants, including refugees, we’re in a dire place for this program, even as it is clearly represented in our laws written by Congress and with a recent court order to resume the refugee program, yet it has not happened, and now our own democracy is in danger,” he said.

Legal challenge ongoing

The International Refugee Assistance Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of HIAS, Church World Service, Lutheran Community Services Northwest and refugees impacted by the order in February.

A federal judge in Washington state granted a nationwide injunction in February requested by the groups who challenged Trump’s executive order suspending the program and the withholding of funds for those services.

The faith groups then asked the federal judge for an emergency hearing after the U.S. State Department terminated their contracts despite the earlier injunction. The court ordered in March that the administration offer a status report on their efforts to resume the processing of refugees.

The administration quickly appealed the judge’s subsequent order requiring the State Department to restore contracts to nonprofits that help with resettling refugees. An appeals court denied part of the administration’s request to halt the lower court’s earlier preliminary injunction. 

The federal judge on April 11 granted the groups’ motion to enforce the first preliminary injunction issued. 

Hetfield said the administration defied the February injunction effectively ordering the administration to restart the program and the federal appeals court upholding the part of that order focused on admitting more than 100,000 conditionally approved refugees.

“Yet two months later, the administration has continued to defy the court order, noting in its filings last week that it intends to admit only a fraction of a fraction of conditionally approved refugees, and, in fact, has taken no visible steps yet to even do that,” he said.

Trump’s January executive order also instructed officials at the State and Homeland Security departments to submit a report to Trump 90 days from the order — April 20 — “regarding whether resumption of entry of refugees into the United States under the (U.S. Refugee Admissions Program) would be in the interests of the United States.”

Trump also instructed the departments to submit further reports every 90 days thereafter until he determines that resumption of the program “is in the interests of the United States.”

Advocates said Monday they have yet to hear whether the administration’s first 90-day report regarding the potential resumption of the program was delivered to the White House.

Asked for a comment on the issue, a White House spokesperson acknowledged receiving the inquiry but did not immediately provide a substantive response.

Child care providers, parents and advocates arrive at the state Capitol Wednesday, April 16, 2025, for a rally in support of child care funding. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Hundreds of child care providers and parents rallied outside the state Capitol Wednesday, then headed inside to buttonhole lawmakers of both parties, urging support for a $480 million provision in the next state budget for Wisconsin’s child care providers.

“Child care is not a luxury, it’s not a nice-to-have,” said Claire Lindstrom, an Eau Claire parent who addressed the rally. “It is infrastructure.”

“We’re here today because the people who are doing this very important work can no longer afford to hold up a broken system,” said Toshiba Adams, an instructor and instructional chair in early childhood education at Milwaukee Area Technical College.

The rally and afternoon visit with legislators followed a morning gathering of the participants at the nearby Concourse Hotel that included talks by lawmakers, parents and providers. At noon 350 or more people — the largest action by child care advocates in recent memory — marched from the hotel to the rally, with chants of “Kids first, families first, invest in child care now.”

The crowd massed on the Capitol building’s west steps for a half hour of speeches.

Lindstrom broke down the average cost for child care. A single parent paid the minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, “would have to work 43 full-time weeks just to cover one year of infant care,” she said. A family making the median income in Wisconsin — about $75,000 a year — will probably spend 20% of their earnings on care for a single child.

“If they have two kids, an infant and a 4-year-old, they’re spending over a third of their income just to go to work,” Lindstrom said. “This is not a personal budgeting issue. That’s a broken system.”

Gov. Tony Evers has proposed $480 million in the state’s 2025-27 budget that would go to licensed child care providers, replenishing the state’s Child Care Counts program funded from federal pandemic relief. Without that, Child Care Counts will expire for good in June.

At its height between 2021 and 2023, Child Care Counts was credited with stabilizing Wisconsin’s providers, who shared in payments totaling $20 million a month. Providers reported that with the money they were able to raise wages for child care workers while holding down increases in the fees that parents paid.

“Our early childhood educators are trained in how to support brain development, emotional regulation, and school readiness,” Lindstrom said. “We expect them to do this important work and yet we pay them less than workers at Kwik Trip and Culver’s.”

Evers, a Democrat, was unable to persuade the Legislature’s Republican majority to extend the program in the state’s 2023-25 budget. He repurposed other federal funds, and the total payment was reduced to $10 million a month. That will run out in June.

Providers, advocates and early childhood education experts have argued that only with an ongoing investment like Child Care Counts can providers pay child care workers adequately without pricing care out of reach for the average family.

“We need child care for our communities to function,” Lindstrom said. “We can no longer afford to treat this like a personal problem. It’s a public domain. And the solution is clear. We need to fund child care.”

A survey report released April 10 found that up to 25% of Wisconsin providers said they might close without continued support along the lines of Child Care Counts. More than one-third said they might have to reduce the number of children then could serve for lack of staff.

Large majorities said they might have to cut pay and that they expect to have more difficulty recruiting workers. More than half said they expect some employees to quit and that providing high quality care would become more difficult.

“We will see dramatically less care available in virtually every single county in the state,” Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, told the crowd. “Is that acceptable?”

“No!” the crowd roared back in reply.

“Is it acceptable that moms will have to consider leaving the workforce in record numbers because you cannot work if you cannot afford or find child care? Is it acceptable that stressed out parents doing the best they can will have no support from the state to ensure that they can work and contribute to our tax base?”

With each question the rallygoers responded with resounding shouts of “No!”

Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc, told the crowd that businesses should support state funding for child care.

His company pays employees with young children $400 a month toward their child care costs, he said. When the crowd applauded, he thanked them, then added, “but I also feel very embarrassed. … That’s so little, and the cost of child care is, you know, several thousand dollars a month, and this is just barely scratching the surface.”

Shivaram pointed out the state manufacturing tax credit that his company receives, along with all Wisconsin manufacturers.

“And guess what? We have to do absolutely nothing to get that tax credit,” he said. “We don’t have to invest in any capital equipment, we don’t have to train any workers, we don’t have to give back to the community, nothing. You know, how about we make that tax credit contingent on helping the child care situation?”

In an interview after the legislative visits Schmidt of WECA said the hundreds who took part went to almost every state Senate office and about 90% of the Assembly members’ offices as well. WECA organized the event along with Wisconsin Head Start Association and Raising Wisconsin — an advocacy campaign that WECA and allied groups launched in 2022.

“We really wanted this to be nonpartisan,” Schmidt said — “just an opportunity to tell stories and share, from a real perspective, from the heart what’s going on with this industry.”

Some of those conversations — with leaders in the Legislature who advocates have already spoken to about the budget request — were “not necessarily a surprise,” she acknowledged.  

With other lawmakers, she added, including some of the 30 first-term Assembly members elected in November as well as others who have not served on committees where child care has been an agenda item, “there was a lot of interest in just learning,”

The visits were an opportunity for personal testimony to reach lawmakers and their staff, Schmidt said. “The power of having parents tell their stories, and the power of having educators tell their stories about how they’ve been using the public funding when it’s available — it was very compelling.”

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Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) speaks about how advocates can convince Republicans to fund the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program at the Great Lakes Audubon Society's 2025 advocacy day. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said Wednesday the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program is “on life support,” adding that some of his Republican colleagues give it a 20% chance of being extended in this year’s budget debate before its expiration next year. 

Kurtz, Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine), Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Secretary Karen Hyun spoke Wednesday to a gathering of members of local Audubon Society chapters and staff of Audubon Great Lakes ahead of the organization’s advocacy day to lobby legislators to support conservation funding. 

The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program was established in 1989 to help preserve local natural environments. Throughout its history, the program has enjoyed mostly bipartisan support as it has provided grants through the DNR to help local governments and nonprofits fund the acquisition, restoration and maintenance of public land, parks and wildlife habitats. 

In recent years, the program has become a flashpoint in the fight over the boundary between the executive and legislative branches of state government. Until a decision by the state Supreme Court last year, any member of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Committee on Finance had the authority to hold up a project funded through the stewardship program by placing an anonymous hold on that spending. 

The Court’s decision entirely removed the Legislature’s oversight of the program, a change that further turned Republicans against its continued existence. 

“We could make that process better, where it was not just one individual not liking something and being able to kill a project. I agree with that,” Kurtz said. “When the court case came in and basically took that entire process away, that was not good either, because there was no oversight. And I understand some of you believe whatever the DNR does is fine. That’s great. Some of my colleagues don’t believe that.”

Especially in the northern part of the state, Republicans have objected to stewardship funds being used to conserve land that then gets taken off of local property tax rolls — taking money away from already struggling small local governments. In other cases, Republicans have complained that proposals for projects under the grants rely too heavily on the state funds without the local governments providing enough of their own money. 

In his proposed 2025-26 budget, Gov. Tony Evers has requested the stewardship program be increased from its current funding of $33 million per year to $100 million per year for 10 years. 

Kurtz said he’s working on a bill that would return some oversight authority over the program to the Legislature without the anonymous objection provision. He added, though,  that if the Audubon members went to Republicans Wednesday saying, “‘It’s the governor’s budget or nothing,’ you already lost.” 

“I don’t need you to do that, because, I’m being very sincere, I’m trying to keep this alive, and if you go over there [saying that], there’s a good chance it’ll die,” he said. “So don’t do that. Let them, especially when you’re meeting with my colleagues, ask them what [their] concerns are. ‘Why don’t you like this? What is it about the program that we can do better so we can have another day to make sure we protect all our wonderful birds and animals.’”

Habush Sinykin noted that 93% of Wisconsinites support the program and said that in her purple district covering Milwaukee’s northwest suburbs, the stewardship program is hugely popular. She said the anonymous hold of a project in the district drew the ire of community members of both parties. 

“There’s a lot of understanding at the legislative level that in these uncertain times, with these newer maps, that our state representatives and senators, including those on the Joint Finance Committee, have to be wary and strategic about issues like this that are bipartisan,” she said. “They’re actually non-partisan. They are successful community building issues. So I think that’s a little bit where your leverage is to lean in hard. How popular these are.”

Aside from the stewardship program, the society members lobbying in the Capitol Wednesday were pushing for the state to increase protections for wetlands and grasslands, advance sustainable practices in the state’s agriculture and forestry industries and grow renewable energy production. 

On Wednesday morning, the administration of President Donald Trump announced a proposed rule that would rescind habitat protections for endangered species across the country. 

Marnie Urso, Audubon Great Lakes’ senior director of policy, said that with the federal government retreating from conservation efforts, state level efforts have become more important. 

“With that uncertainty, this kind of work is even more important, for state lawmakers to be on the path to conserving our natural resources,” Urso said. “The Knowles Nelson project program is bipartisan. It always has been a permanent foundation. So we know it has wide, widespread bipartisan support.”

Urso said leaning into that popularity could help advance the group’s priorities. 

“Even Trump voters like the Knowles Nelson Conservation Fund,” she said. “So we’re confident that by coming and talking, telling our story and getting to understand what’s important to our lawmakers, we can inform those decisions. And now it’s more important than ever to have state conservation programs continue.”

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

A news report that the Trump administration is considering ending the federal government’s Head Start program has alarmed providers and parents who rely on the child care and early education program.

“It would be absolutely devastating,” said Jen Bailey, executive director of Reach Dane, which operates 14 Head Start centers in Dane and Green counties. “The children and families we work with are some of the most vulnerable folks in our communities. The parents in those communities rely on the care we provide to stay employed.”

USA Today reported Friday that the Trump administration “is considering a budget proposal that would zero out funding for Head Start.” The news report quoted an anonymous administration official who said the White House funding blueprint for the 2026 fiscal year doesn’t allocate money for Head Start.

The president’s budget is a wish list, and Congress decides how to appropriate federal funds. An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson told USA Today that “no final funding decisions have been made.”

Project 2025, the agenda drafted by Russell Vought prior to his confirmation as OMB director, calls for eliminating Head Start.

Responding to the report Monday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) tied the proposal to President Donald Trump’s goal of extending the 2017 tax cuts enacted in his first term.

“Shutting down Head Start — taking care away from kids, firing teachers, and making child care even more expensive for parents — all so President Trump can hand out new tax breaks for the wealthy and well-connected is flat out wrong and you can be sure I will fight this proposal at every turn,” Baldwin said.

Head Start was founded in 1966, part of the War on Poverty undertaken by President Lyndon Johnson. It provides child care and preschool for families with incomes up to the federal poverty guideline. Children living in foster homes are also eligible for Head Start.

In Wisconsin more than 15,000 children are enrolled in more than 300 Head Start child care centers across the state, according to the Wisconsin Head Start Association. With more than 4,300 employees, Head Start ranks in the top 100 employers in Wisconsin, said Jennie Mauer, the association’s executive director.

“At least 70% of our families have a parent who is either working or in school full time,” Mauer said Monday. The remaining families include grandparents who are retired but full-time caregivers for their grandchildren as well as families unable to work due to disabilities or who “are working through some very, very significant challenges.”

She predicted that the impact from ending the program wouldn’t stop with the families who rely on Head Start.

“If Head Start isn’t there, if this program were to shut down, surely there’ll be tremendous cascading economic impacts in our communities,”  Mauer said. “I think for most of the families, it would create a huge labor disruption. With no safe place to have your kids while you’re at work, it’ll create a disaster.

Child care already a crisis

Fears for the survival of Head Start are escalating as the state’s overall child care sector is increasingly under strain. As many as 25% of child care centers in a survey released April 10 said they could close without continuing support in the next state budget.

April Mullins-Datko is Head Start director for ADVOCAP, a social service agency serving Fond du Lac, Winnebago and Green Lake counties. She said that the agency’s four Head Start centers would likely not survive the loss of federal support.

“We would lose services for the 202 children we serve,” Mullins-Datko said. “It would exacerbate the child care crisis we have in our communities, which then has negative impacts on our available workforce.”

ADVOCAP’s centers include three in Fond du Lac County and one in Green Lake County, with 193 families relying on the program for the care and early education of their children.

“Ninety-three percent of my families are working or going to school full time,” Mullins-Datko said.

The agency’s Head Start federal contract is supposed to be good through Dec. 31, 2028, Mullins-Datko said, but with reports of defunding she fears that won’t be honored: “There just doesn’t seem to be any kind of adherence to law and contracts.”

Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council provides social services in Buffalo, Jackson, Trempealeau and Eau Claire counties in West Central Wisconsin. The agency’s programs include nine Head Start centers enrolling 442 children. Of those, 382 children are in preschool and 60 are in Early Head Start, for children from birth to age 3, said Thanh Bui-Duquette, Western Dairyland’s Head Start director.

Three centers are in cities — two in Eau Claire and one in Altoona — but the rest are in rural communities.

“We meet the needs of each individual community,” Bui-Duquette said. “The needs of the urban Eau Claire area look very different from rural Trempealeau County.”

Even with jobs, 96% of the families with children in Western Dairyland’s program have incomes below the federal poverty guideline. For children from those families, she said, Head Start has been demonstrated to improve long-term outcomes — increasing the chances of graduating from high school and going on to higher education, and reducing the chances of ending up in the criminal justice system.

“It’s important to have that solid foundation early on, especially for children from disadvantaged families,” Bui-Duquette said.

Payments delayed, offices closed

The news that Head Start is in the crosshairs of budget-writers in the Trump administration follows other jolts to the program in the last two months.

In late January and early February, Head Start operators reported widespread problems in their efforts to collect standard payments from the federal government. Under Head Start contracts, programs incur an expense then submit documentation through a federal online portal to get reimbursed. Head Start programs reported that payments stalled, for nearly two weeks in some cases, without explanation.

Payments have since resumed, but Mauer said directors are reporting demands for more information holding up payments.

“They’re getting substantial delays for things that are accepted expenses, which is concerning,” she said.

On April 1, Head Start operators learned that the program’s five regional offices across the country were closed without any advance notice, including the Chicago office that serves Wisconsin and five other states in the Upper Midwest.

Those events and the report that the program could be defunded have rattled Head Start employees and the parents who have counted on the program, operators say.

“Families and staff are both really scared and concerned,” said Bailey, the Reach Dane director. “Families are reaching out, worried the program is going to close, asking, ‘Is my child still going to be able to go to school?’”

Reach Dane’s human resources staff has been interviewing applicants for teaching jobs in the coming school year, and applicants are nervous about whether the job will exist, she added.

Bailey said the program is trying to be transparent with employees and families about the uncertainty and fight for the program’s survival, all without sparking panic.

“Trying to figure out how to navigate and inform folks when there’s no communication is a hard place to be,” she said.

This report has been updated.

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President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 20, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Only refugees who were closest to arriving in the United States are covered by an order the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued last month partially blocking the Trump administration from suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the court clarified in a filing Monday.

A three-judge panel wrote that its earlier order only pertains to people whom immigration officials had conditionally approved as refugees before Jan. 20 and had arranged travel to the United States.

The March order from the Ninth Circuit panel upheld part of a Washington state federal judge’s order blocking President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

The Trump administration sought clarification on the appeals court’s March order. The higher court had denied part of the administration’s request to halt the lower court’s earlier preliminary injunction.

On Monday, the appeals court panel said the government and the refugee advocacy groups challenging Trump’s executive order had overstated what the panel’s March order required.

Rather than admit all of the roughly 130,000 conditionally approved refugees, as the government claimed, or “tens of thousands” of refugees the groups said the order applied to, the court only required the government to allow those who “needed only to complete their arranged travel to the United States.”

“Under these definitions, the parties have construed our carveout broadly enough to swallow the entire stay order,” the judges wrote Monday.

The judges used the example of a refugee family in Kenya that was forced to shelter in the parking lot of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi after their travel was abruptly canceled as the type of people who would still be allowed to settle in the United States under the March order.

Inauguration Day order

Consistent with the Jan. 20 executive order, the administration withheld funds appropriated by Congress for those services — drawing swift legal action.

The International Refugee Assistance Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Church World Service, Lutheran Community Services Northwest and several refugees and others impacted by the order in February.

In its March order, the appeals court denied the administration’s motion “to the extent the district court’s preliminary injunction order applies to individuals who were conditionally approved for refugee status by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services before January 20, 2025.”

“The preliminary injunction remains in effect for these individuals only, and the government must resume their processing, facilitation of travel to the United States, admission, and provision of resettlement benefits after admission,” the judges wrote Monday.

The panel noted that when it issued the order in March, it “did not define conditional approval.”

Melissa Keaney, senior supervising attorney in the litigation department at the International Refugee Assistance Project, said “the Ninth Circuit reiterated that the U.S. government must end the state of limbo for refugees like our client Pacito who were ready to travel and had their lives turned upside down by President Trump’s suspension of the refugee program,’’ in a statement shared with States Newsroom.

“We will hold the government accountable to actually process those refugees immediately, and we will continue to defend the refugee program as a whole in court,” Keaney said. 

Opponents of President Donald Trump’s executive order indefinitely halting refugee resettlement in the U.S. rally on the steps of the federal courthouse in Seattle on Feb. 25, 2025, after a judge issued a ruling blocking the president’s order. (Photo by Jake Goldstein-Street/Washington State Standard)

WASHINGTON — State and local leaders and advocates from across the country called on the Trump administration Monday to immediately restart the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, saying the program’s suspension has harmed communities.

President Donald Trump signed an order suspending the program on his first day back in office and the administration withheld funds appropriated by Congress for those services. Federal courts have partially rejected that order, but the Trump administration has still not resumed the program, the advocates said.

By indefinitely halting the program and subsequently defunding its infrastructure, Trump “stranded” more than 100,000 refugees “who had already been interviewed by Homeland Security and received written notices from the U.S. government that they were eligible for resettlement,” Mark Hetfield, president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, said at a press conference hosted by several refugee advocacy groups Monday.

‘More than a program’

Aisha Koroma, a Refugee Congress delegate for Washington, D.C., said the Refugee Admissions Program “is more than a program.” Refugee Congress is a national organization advocating for people who are forcibly displaced. 

“It represents lives, dreams, resilience, hope — it is a gateway for future change-makers, doctors, engineers, artists, tradespeople — people who are ready and eager to become assets to America’s workforce and to contribute meaningfully to its economy and communities,” Koroma said. 

“Pausing this program doesn’t just delay paperwork, it delays possibilities, it ensures tragedies, it tears families apart, and it leaves people vulnerable, but most importantly, it sends a painful message that America is closing its doors, not only to those who need it most, but also those who fill jobs, those who open stores and people who sat on our school boards,” Koroma added.

Rev. Noel Andersen, national field director at Church World Service and faith leader with the United Church of Christ, said the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program “has signified a space of refuge and hope for the world as a beacon of light for democracy.”

“Now, because of the increased discriminatory attacks on all immigrants, including refugees, we’re in a dire place for this program, even as it is clearly represented in our laws written by Congress and with a recent court order to resume the refugee program, yet it has not happened, and now our own democracy is in danger,” he said.

Legal challenge ongoing

The International Refugee Assistance Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of HIAS, Church World Service, Lutheran Community Services Northwest and refugees impacted by the order in February.

A federal judge in Washington state granted a nationwide injunction in February requested by the groups who challenged Trump’s executive order suspending the program and the withholding of funds for those services.

The faith groups then asked the federal judge for an emergency hearing after the U.S. State Department terminated their contracts despite the earlier injunction. The court ordered in March that the administration offer a status report on their efforts to resume the processing of refugees.

The administration quickly appealed the judge’s subsequent order requiring the State Department to restore contracts to nonprofits that help with resettling refugees. An appeals court denied part of the administration’s request to halt the lower court’s earlier preliminary injunction. 

The federal judge on April 11 granted the groups’ motion to enforce the first preliminary injunction issued. 

Hetfield said the administration defied the February injunction effectively ordering the administration to restart the program and the federal appeals court upholding the part of that order focused on admitting more than 100,000 conditionally approved refugees.

“Yet two months later, the administration has continued to defy the court order, noting in its filings last week that it intends to admit only a fraction of a fraction of conditionally approved refugees, and, in fact, has taken no visible steps yet to even do that,” he said.

Trump’s January executive order also instructed officials at the State and Homeland Security departments to submit a report to Trump 90 days from the order — April 20 — “regarding whether resumption of entry of refugees into the United States under the (U.S. Refugee Admissions Program) would be in the interests of the United States.”

Trump also instructed the departments to submit further reports every 90 days thereafter until he determines that resumption of the program “is in the interests of the United States.”

Advocates said Monday they have yet to hear whether the administration’s first 90-day report regarding the potential resumption of the program was delivered to the White House.

Asked for a comment on the issue, a White House spokesperson acknowledged receiving the inquiry but did not immediately provide a substantive response.

Child care providers, parents and advocates arrive at the state Capitol Wednesday, April 16, 2025, for a rally in support of child care funding. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Hundreds of child care providers and parents rallied outside the state Capitol Wednesday, then headed inside to buttonhole lawmakers of both parties, urging support for a $480 million provision in the next state budget for Wisconsin’s child care providers.

“Child care is not a luxury, it’s not a nice-to-have,” said Claire Lindstrom, an Eau Claire parent who addressed the rally. “It is infrastructure.”

“We’re here today because the people who are doing this very important work can no longer afford to hold up a broken system,” said Toshiba Adams, an instructor and instructional chair in early childhood education at Milwaukee Area Technical College.

The rally and afternoon visit with legislators followed a morning gathering of the participants at the nearby Concourse Hotel that included talks by lawmakers, parents and providers. At noon 350 or more people — the largest action by child care advocates in recent memory — marched from the hotel to the rally, with chants of “Kids first, families first, invest in child care now.”

The crowd massed on the Capitol building’s west steps for a half hour of speeches.

Lindstrom broke down the average cost for child care. A single parent paid the minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, “would have to work 43 full-time weeks just to cover one year of infant care,” she said. A family making the median income in Wisconsin — about $75,000 a year — will probably spend 20% of their earnings on care for a single child.

“If they have two kids, an infant and a 4-year-old, they’re spending over a third of their income just to go to work,” Lindstrom said. “This is not a personal budgeting issue. That’s a broken system.”

Gov. Tony Evers has proposed $480 million in the state’s 2025-27 budget that would go to licensed child care providers, replenishing the state’s Child Care Counts program funded from federal pandemic relief. Without that, Child Care Counts will expire for good in June.

At its height between 2021 and 2023, Child Care Counts was credited with stabilizing Wisconsin’s providers, who shared in payments totaling $20 million a month. Providers reported that with the money they were able to raise wages for child care workers while holding down increases in the fees that parents paid.

“Our early childhood educators are trained in how to support brain development, emotional regulation, and school readiness,” Lindstrom said. “We expect them to do this important work and yet we pay them less than workers at Kwik Trip and Culver’s.”

Evers, a Democrat, was unable to persuade the Legislature’s Republican majority to extend the program in the state’s 2023-25 budget. He repurposed other federal funds, and the total payment was reduced to $10 million a month. That will run out in June.

Providers, advocates and early childhood education experts have argued that only with an ongoing investment like Child Care Counts can providers pay child care workers adequately without pricing care out of reach for the average family.

“We need child care for our communities to function,” Lindstrom said. “We can no longer afford to treat this like a personal problem. It’s a public domain. And the solution is clear. We need to fund child care.”

A survey report released April 10 found that up to 25% of Wisconsin providers said they might close without continued support along the lines of Child Care Counts. More than one-third said they might have to reduce the number of children then could serve for lack of staff.

Large majorities said they might have to cut pay and that they expect to have more difficulty recruiting workers. More than half said they expect some employees to quit and that providing high quality care would become more difficult.

“We will see dramatically less care available in virtually every single county in the state,” Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, told the crowd. “Is that acceptable?”

“No!” the crowd roared back in reply.

“Is it acceptable that moms will have to consider leaving the workforce in record numbers because you cannot work if you cannot afford or find child care? Is it acceptable that stressed out parents doing the best they can will have no support from the state to ensure that they can work and contribute to our tax base?”

With each question the rallygoers responded with resounding shouts of “No!”

Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc, told the crowd that businesses should support state funding for child care.

His company pays employees with young children $400 a month toward their child care costs, he said. When the crowd applauded, he thanked them, then added, “but I also feel very embarrassed. … That’s so little, and the cost of child care is, you know, several thousand dollars a month, and this is just barely scratching the surface.”

Shivaram pointed out the state manufacturing tax credit that his company receives, along with all Wisconsin manufacturers.

“And guess what? We have to do absolutely nothing to get that tax credit,” he said. “We don’t have to invest in any capital equipment, we don’t have to train any workers, we don’t have to give back to the community, nothing. You know, how about we make that tax credit contingent on helping the child care situation?”

In an interview after the legislative visits Schmidt of WECA said the hundreds who took part went to almost every state Senate office and about 90% of the Assembly members’ offices as well. WECA organized the event along with Wisconsin Head Start Association and Raising Wisconsin — an advocacy campaign that WECA and allied groups launched in 2022.

“We really wanted this to be nonpartisan,” Schmidt said — “just an opportunity to tell stories and share, from a real perspective, from the heart what’s going on with this industry.”

Some of those conversations — with leaders in the Legislature who advocates have already spoken to about the budget request — were “not necessarily a surprise,” she acknowledged.  

With other lawmakers, she added, including some of the 30 first-term Assembly members elected in November as well as others who have not served on committees where child care has been an agenda item, “there was a lot of interest in just learning,”

The visits were an opportunity for personal testimony to reach lawmakers and their staff, Schmidt said. “The power of having parents tell their stories, and the power of having educators tell their stories about how they’ve been using the public funding when it’s available — it was very compelling.”

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Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) speaks about how advocates can convince Republicans to fund the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program at the Great Lakes Audubon Society's 2025 advocacy day. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said Wednesday the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program is “on life support,” adding that some of his Republican colleagues give it a 20% chance of being extended in this year’s budget debate before its expiration next year. 

Kurtz, Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine), Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Secretary Karen Hyun spoke Wednesday to a gathering of members of local Audubon Society chapters and staff of Audubon Great Lakes ahead of the organization’s advocacy day to lobby legislators to support conservation funding. 

The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program was established in 1989 to help preserve local natural environments. Throughout its history, the program has enjoyed mostly bipartisan support as it has provided grants through the DNR to help local governments and nonprofits fund the acquisition, restoration and maintenance of public land, parks and wildlife habitats. 

In recent years, the program has become a flashpoint in the fight over the boundary between the executive and legislative branches of state government. Until a decision by the state Supreme Court last year, any member of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Committee on Finance had the authority to hold up a project funded through the stewardship program by placing an anonymous hold on that spending. 

The Court’s decision entirely removed the Legislature’s oversight of the program, a change that further turned Republicans against its continued existence. 

“We could make that process better, where it was not just one individual not liking something and being able to kill a project. I agree with that,” Kurtz said. “When the court case came in and basically took that entire process away, that was not good either, because there was no oversight. And I understand some of you believe whatever the DNR does is fine. That’s great. Some of my colleagues don’t believe that.”

Especially in the northern part of the state, Republicans have objected to stewardship funds being used to conserve land that then gets taken off of local property tax rolls — taking money away from already struggling small local governments. In other cases, Republicans have complained that proposals for projects under the grants rely too heavily on the state funds without the local governments providing enough of their own money. 

In his proposed 2025-26 budget, Gov. Tony Evers has requested the stewardship program be increased from its current funding of $33 million per year to $100 million per year for 10 years. 

Kurtz said he’s working on a bill that would return some oversight authority over the program to the Legislature without the anonymous objection provision. He added, though,  that if the Audubon members went to Republicans Wednesday saying, “‘It’s the governor’s budget or nothing,’ you already lost.” 

“I don’t need you to do that, because, I’m being very sincere, I’m trying to keep this alive, and if you go over there [saying that], there’s a good chance it’ll die,” he said. “So don’t do that. Let them, especially when you’re meeting with my colleagues, ask them what [their] concerns are. ‘Why don’t you like this? What is it about the program that we can do better so we can have another day to make sure we protect all our wonderful birds and animals.’”

Habush Sinykin noted that 93% of Wisconsinites support the program and said that in her purple district covering Milwaukee’s northwest suburbs, the stewardship program is hugely popular. She said the anonymous hold of a project in the district drew the ire of community members of both parties. 

“There’s a lot of understanding at the legislative level that in these uncertain times, with these newer maps, that our state representatives and senators, including those on the Joint Finance Committee, have to be wary and strategic about issues like this that are bipartisan,” she said. “They’re actually non-partisan. They are successful community building issues. So I think that’s a little bit where your leverage is to lean in hard. How popular these are.”

Aside from the stewardship program, the society members lobbying in the Capitol Wednesday were pushing for the state to increase protections for wetlands and grasslands, advance sustainable practices in the state’s agriculture and forestry industries and grow renewable energy production. 

On Wednesday morning, the administration of President Donald Trump announced a proposed rule that would rescind habitat protections for endangered species across the country. 

Marnie Urso, Audubon Great Lakes’ senior director of policy, said that with the federal government retreating from conservation efforts, state level efforts have become more important. 

“With that uncertainty, this kind of work is even more important, for state lawmakers to be on the path to conserving our natural resources,” Urso said. “The Knowles Nelson project program is bipartisan. It always has been a permanent foundation. So we know it has wide, widespread bipartisan support.”

Urso said leaning into that popularity could help advance the group’s priorities. 

“Even Trump voters like the Knowles Nelson Conservation Fund,” she said. “So we’re confident that by coming and talking, telling our story and getting to understand what’s important to our lawmakers, we can inform those decisions. And now it’s more important than ever to have state conservation programs continue.”

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

A news report that the Trump administration is considering ending the federal government’s Head Start program has alarmed providers and parents who rely on the child care and early education program.

“It would be absolutely devastating,” said Jen Bailey, executive director of Reach Dane, which operates 14 Head Start centers in Dane and Green counties. “The children and families we work with are some of the most vulnerable folks in our communities. The parents in those communities rely on the care we provide to stay employed.”

USA Today reported Friday that the Trump administration “is considering a budget proposal that would zero out funding for Head Start.” The news report quoted an anonymous administration official who said the White House funding blueprint for the 2026 fiscal year doesn’t allocate money for Head Start.

The president’s budget is a wish list, and Congress decides how to appropriate federal funds. An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson told USA Today that “no final funding decisions have been made.”

Project 2025, the agenda drafted by Russell Vought prior to his confirmation as OMB director, calls for eliminating Head Start.

Responding to the report Monday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) tied the proposal to President Donald Trump’s goal of extending the 2017 tax cuts enacted in his first term.

“Shutting down Head Start — taking care away from kids, firing teachers, and making child care even more expensive for parents — all so President Trump can hand out new tax breaks for the wealthy and well-connected is flat out wrong and you can be sure I will fight this proposal at every turn,” Baldwin said.

Head Start was founded in 1966, part of the War on Poverty undertaken by President Lyndon Johnson. It provides child care and preschool for families with incomes up to the federal poverty guideline. Children living in foster homes are also eligible for Head Start.

In Wisconsin more than 15,000 children are enrolled in more than 300 Head Start child care centers across the state, according to the Wisconsin Head Start Association. With more than 4,300 employees, Head Start ranks in the top 100 employers in Wisconsin, said Jennie Mauer, the association’s executive director.

“At least 70% of our families have a parent who is either working or in school full time,” Mauer said Monday. The remaining families include grandparents who are retired but full-time caregivers for their grandchildren as well as families unable to work due to disabilities or who “are working through some very, very significant challenges.”

She predicted that the impact from ending the program wouldn’t stop with the families who rely on Head Start.

“If Head Start isn’t there, if this program were to shut down, surely there’ll be tremendous cascading economic impacts in our communities,”  Mauer said. “I think for most of the families, it would create a huge labor disruption. With no safe place to have your kids while you’re at work, it’ll create a disaster.

Child care already a crisis

Fears for the survival of Head Start are escalating as the state’s overall child care sector is increasingly under strain. As many as 25% of child care centers in a survey released April 10 said they could close without continuing support in the next state budget.

April Mullins-Datko is Head Start director for ADVOCAP, a social service agency serving Fond du Lac, Winnebago and Green Lake counties. She said that the agency’s four Head Start centers would likely not survive the loss of federal support.

“We would lose services for the 202 children we serve,” Mullins-Datko said. “It would exacerbate the child care crisis we have in our communities, which then has negative impacts on our available workforce.”

ADVOCAP’s centers include three in Fond du Lac County and one in Green Lake County, with 193 families relying on the program for the care and early education of their children.

“Ninety-three percent of my families are working or going to school full time,” Mullins-Datko said.

The agency’s Head Start federal contract is supposed to be good through Dec. 31, 2028, Mullins-Datko said, but with reports of defunding she fears that won’t be honored: “There just doesn’t seem to be any kind of adherence to law and contracts.”

Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council provides social services in Buffalo, Jackson, Trempealeau and Eau Claire counties in West Central Wisconsin. The agency’s programs include nine Head Start centers enrolling 442 children. Of those, 382 children are in preschool and 60 are in Early Head Start, for children from birth to age 3, said Thanh Bui-Duquette, Western Dairyland’s Head Start director.

Three centers are in cities — two in Eau Claire and one in Altoona — but the rest are in rural communities.

“We meet the needs of each individual community,” Bui-Duquette said. “The needs of the urban Eau Claire area look very different from rural Trempealeau County.”

Even with jobs, 96% of the families with children in Western Dairyland’s program have incomes below the federal poverty guideline. For children from those families, she said, Head Start has been demonstrated to improve long-term outcomes — increasing the chances of graduating from high school and going on to higher education, and reducing the chances of ending up in the criminal justice system.

“It’s important to have that solid foundation early on, especially for children from disadvantaged families,” Bui-Duquette said.

Payments delayed, offices closed

The news that Head Start is in the crosshairs of budget-writers in the Trump administration follows other jolts to the program in the last two months.

In late January and early February, Head Start operators reported widespread problems in their efforts to collect standard payments from the federal government. Under Head Start contracts, programs incur an expense then submit documentation through a federal online portal to get reimbursed. Head Start programs reported that payments stalled, for nearly two weeks in some cases, without explanation.

Payments have since resumed, but Mauer said directors are reporting demands for more information holding up payments.

“They’re getting substantial delays for things that are accepted expenses, which is concerning,” she said.

On April 1, Head Start operators learned that the program’s five regional offices across the country were closed without any advance notice, including the Chicago office that serves Wisconsin and five other states in the Upper Midwest.

Those events and the report that the program could be defunded have rattled Head Start employees and the parents who have counted on the program, operators say.

“Families and staff are both really scared and concerned,” said Bailey, the Reach Dane director. “Families are reaching out, worried the program is going to close, asking, ‘Is my child still going to be able to go to school?’”

Reach Dane’s human resources staff has been interviewing applicants for teaching jobs in the coming school year, and applicants are nervous about whether the job will exist, she added.

Bailey said the program is trying to be transparent with employees and families about the uncertainty and fight for the program’s survival, all without sparking panic.

“Trying to figure out how to navigate and inform folks when there’s no communication is a hard place to be,” she said.

This report has been updated.

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President Donald Trump holds up an executive order after signing it during an indoor inauguration parade at Capital One Arena on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. The executive order canceling refugee resettlement funding was among those Trump signed on his first day back in office. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday appealed a federal judge’s order that the State Department restore contracts to nonprofits that aid in refugee resettlement.

In a late Monday written order, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead of the Western District of Washington found the department unlawfully canceled contracts to the group, saying executive branch management of a refugee resettlement program did not extend to an order virtually eliminating it.

“While the Government enjoys significant discretion in administering (U.S. Refugee Admissions Program), that discretion does not extend to abandoning statutory obligations or rendering the program effectively inoperative,” Whitehead, whom President Joe Biden appointed to the bench, said in the order.

Whitehead gave the government until March 31 to submit a report showing that it is complying with the order.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed an appeal Monday that will be heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

Melissa Keaney, the lead attorney for International Refugee Assistance Project, the group representing the religious organization challenging the cancellations, said in a statement that “it’s time for the government to live up to its moral and legal obligations by fully restoring funding and access to this lifesaving program.”

“The court has been clear yet again,” she said. “The government’s efforts to dismantle the refugee resettlement system are unlawful and harming refugees whose lives have been thrown into limbo.”

Written order follows verbal

The additional injunction came after the State Department seemed to ignore a verbal injunction Whitehead granted from the bench last month ordering the Trump administration to restore the refugee processing services.

The department terminated its contracts with several religious groups providing refugee services just one day after Whitehead’s verbal order.

The lawsuit was filed by the International Refugee Assistance Project on behalf of Church World Service, Lutheran Community Services Northwest and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS. The suit also includes nine individuals who are affected by the pause in services, such as refugees who had their resettlement flights canceled, a local refugee sponsor and families trying to reunite.

The suit stems from President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, as well as the administration’s withholding of funds appropriated by Congress for those services.

That order directed officials at the State Department and U.S. Department of Homeland Security to submit a report every 90 days to the White House about refugee resettlement. From that report, the president will then determine whether refugee resettlement is “in the interests of the United States.”

Juli and Katie McGuire pack apples at Blue Roof Orchard in Belmont, Wisconsin. Blue Roof is among the producers that took part in the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, now canceled by the Trump administration. (Photo by Sharon Vanorny/Courtesy of Wisconsin Farmers Union)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has abruptly stopped a program that has helped more than 280 Wisconsin farmers move their products to local food banks around the state, to the consternation of participating farmers.

On Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers in a press release berated the administration of President Donald Trump for “trying to walk back promises to Wisconsin’s farmers and producers” and urged the administration to restore the 2025 Local Food Purchase Assistance program.

Funding for the program was approved and signed into law “years ago,” Evers said.

Over the past two years, 289 Wisconsin farmers took part in the program, distributing $4 million worth of food products across the state, said Julie Keown-Bomar, executive director of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, and participants were looking forward to continuing for a third season.

“It’s very disturbing that the federal government would renege on a federal contract that was already approved by Congress,” Keown-Bomar said in an interview.

“It was an enormous benefit to the farmers who counted on those purchases,” Keown-Bomar said. The program helped farmers have some certainty about their income, she added, and some hired new employees to handle the added production and distribution of goods.

“It really helped strengthen the food distribution system and create local food networks that were not there before,” she said.

Along with the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, the USDA told school nutritionists on Friday it would end a companion program that connects farmers with local schools. Politico reported Monday on the cancellation of both programs.

Politico quoted a USDA spokesperson who said funding announced in October “is no longer available and those agreements will be terminated following 60-day notification.” The unnamed spokesperson said the programs “no longer effectuate the goals of the agency.”

Evers’ office said the loss of the two programs would cut off farmers nationwide from more than $1 billion in support and would cut “Wisconsin’s promised funding by nearly $6 million.”

“The Trump Administration must stop turning their backs on America’s Dairyland and betraying our farmers, producers, and agricultural industries by trying to gut funding Wisconsin’s farmers and producers were promised,” Evers said.

He also took the administration to task for  tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, now on hold until early April.

“With President Trump’s 25 percent tariff taxes that are going to cause prices to go up on everything from gas to groceries and his escalating trade wars that could affect our farmers’ and producers’ bottom lines, these reckless cuts to critical federal programs couldn’t come at a worse time,” Evers said.

The local food programs marked the second time in less than a month that Wisconsin politicians have pushed back on Trump administration agriculture policies.

On Feb. 26, U.S. Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin wrote to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins demanding that the department restart suspended grants for dairy farmers under the Dairy Business Innovation initiative. The program, begun in the 2018 Farm Bill, provides aid to dairy farmers to diversify and market products as well as expand their businesses.

“The uncertainty surrounding DBI funding is incredibly alarming because it threatens the future of many dairy businesses that were promised this support to grow and remain competitive,” Baldwin wrote in her letter to Rollins. She added that the “unnecessary and ill-advised disruption could have widespread economic consequences, particularly, for small dairy operations in Wisconsin that drive our rural economies.”

The suspension put 88 Midwestern dairy businesses on hold for $6.5 million in funds that had been appropriated in 2023, Baldwin said, including 30 in Wisconsin.

On Friday, Baldwin announced that USDA had restarted the program.

Evers noted Tuesday that complaints from his office, Baldwin and dairy industry leaders had successfully reversed the suspension, and called on the Trump administration to also reverse its decisions on the food bank and school food programs.

The governor’s office also criticized Trump for having “threatened to cut thousands of jobs from USDA,” including firing about 6,000 federal employees who were subsequently reinstated.

Evers’ 2025-27 budget proposal has been relying on the local food program funding, and includes a request for $770,000 over two years in conjunction with that money. His office said Tuesday that the loss of the program heightens the importance of a $30 million initiative in his budget proposal to help Wisconsin farmers and producers distribute their products across the state, and called on the state Legislature to approve that, among other items. 

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