U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a chart while speaking during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

This story was updated at 6:55 p.m. EDT.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump rolled out sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs Wednesday on trading partners and allies across the globe.

Declaring that foreign trade practices have created a “national emergency,” the president unveiled a baseline 10% levy on all international imports, plus what he described as additional “kind” and “discounted” tariff rates that will increase but not match the rates other countries apply to American imports.

The levies will hit U.S. industries from agriculture to manufacturing to fashion.

The 10% universal tariffs become effective April 5, with higher levies set for April 9, according to Trump’s executive order. Trump’s remarks Wednesday about the start dates varied from the order’s language.

Trump is the first president to enact tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — something he already did in March when slapping levies on China, Canada and Mexico over the production and smuggling of illicit fentanyl.

According to a table distributed at Trump’s speech, U.S. tariffs will reach 34% on imports from China, 46% on products from Vietnam and 20% on European Union imports, among other increases.

Canada and Mexico will not see additional tariffs on top of the already imposed 25% on goods (10% on energy and potash) not compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. All compliant goods can continue to enter the U.S. levy-free.

The new 34% duties on China are set to stack on top of older 20% tariffs, according to some media reports, though Trump did not specify in his remarks or order.

Countries that levy a 10% tax on American goods — including Brazil and the United Kingdom — will only see a 10% match.

The increased levies come as 25% tariffs on foreign cars kick in at midnight.

Business owners who purchase goods from outside the U.S. will have to pay the increased duty rates to bring the products over the border, unless Trump carves out exceptions for certain industries.

The president did not mention carve-outs in his remarks, but language in his subsequent executive order details exceptions for steel, aluminum, cars and auto parts already subject to tariffs under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. Any products designated in the future under Section 232 will also be exempt from the new levies announced Wednesday.

Other goods not subject to the “reciprocal” tariffs include copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, lumber, and “energy and other certain minerals that are not available in the United States,” according to the order.

Trump introduced the taxes on imports with fanfare Wednesday in the White House Rose Garden, where he said, “This is Liberation Day.”

“April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn,” Trump said.

“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump said.

Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, attended the event alongside several of Trump’s Cabinet members and representatives from the United Auto Workers.

Not all Republicans have signaled support for tariffs. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said at an event in his home state of South Dakota in August 2024 that Trump’s trade policy is a “recipe for increased inflation.”

The White House has circulated figures claiming the U.S. will raise up to $600 billion in revenue per year as a result of the tariffs. The figure was met with skepticism by economists because the amount of imports will likely change under higher levies.

The U.S. is the largest importer of goods in the world, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The country’s top suppliers in 2022 included China, Mexico, Canada, Japan and Germany.

Economists: Americans will pay

Since Trump began campaigning on tariffs, economists have warned that increased costs for businesses will be passed onto consumers.

Rising prices under Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff scenario are likely to cost an extra $2,400 to $3,400 per family, according to the Yale Budget Lab, with most of the financial burden falling on the lowest-income households.

An analysis from the Peterson Institute on International Economics estimated the typical American household would lose over $1,200, just from the 25% tariffs already imposed on China, Canada and Mexico.

Several small business owners told States Newsroom Tuesday they’re worried about increasing production costs and whether higher prices will chase away customer demand.

Erica York, of the center-right Tax Foundation that advocates for lower taxes, said in an interview with States Newsroom Tuesday that the levies will be “the largest peacetime tax increase we’ve seen in history.”

State officials worry over impact

Democratic state officials sounded the alarm Wednesday over losses for key industries that drive their local economies.

New Mexico State Treasurer Laura Montoya said her state’s energy and agriculture sectors would be victims in a trade war.

“New Mexico is a key player in this conversation, because the non-negotiable reality is that New Mexico is, like the United States as a whole, dependent on trade with our international partners particularly Mexico,” Montoya said on a virtual press briefing hosted by the state economic advocacy group Americans for Responsible Growth.

Montoya said oil and gas production accounts for 35% of the state’s budget and that the industry relies on machinery imported from Mexico.

Additionally, New Mexico, a largely rural state, relies heavily on agricultural trade. It processes a third of the cattle coming across the southwest border, and Montoya said farmers and ranchers will “face blows as tariffs on cattle and produce will result in slow food production.”

Washington state, a top U.S. agricultural exporter, sources 90% of its fertilizer from Canada.

Treasurer Mike Pellicciotti said the state would be “completely squeezed” by “reckless economic decisions.”

“He is crushing the free exchange of goods, and making it much more difficult and much more burdensome on working families. So of course, he needs to call it ‘Liberation Day,’ because he knows he’s doing the complete opposite, and he is trying to frame it in a way that is completely the opposite of what is being accomplished today,” Pellicciotti said.

Dems predict consumer stress

Democrats on Capitol Hill seized on Trump’s new trade policy as a way to push their message that the president is abandoning middle and working class households.

Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland said the White House is “tone-deaf” in dubbing the tariff announcement as “Liberation Day.”

Trump has said in media interviews, “‘You know, there’s going to be a little pain, some minor pain and disruption.’ But the people that I represent don’t regard increasing costs of groceries, increasing costs of owning a home, increasing costs of owning an automobile, as a minor disruption,” Alsobrooks said.

In back-to-back Democratic press conferences Wednesday, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia slammed Trump’s use of emergency powers in March to justify a 10% duty on Canadian energy and 25% on all other imports.

Kaine warned about the effect on his state’s sizable shipbuilding industry. Approximately 35% of steel and aluminum used to build U.S. ships and submarines comes from Canada, he said.

Senators approved, 51-48, a joint resolution Wednesday evening on a bill, sponsored by Kaine, that would undo Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports triggered by an emergency declaration targeting illicit fentanyl coming over the northern border.

Four Republicans joined the Democrats in passing the largely symbolic legislation, which will now head to the House. The GOP senators included: Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Earlier Wednesday, Kaine pointed to a report in Canadian news outlet The Globe and Mail that found the White House grossly overstated the amount of fentanyl smuggled through the northern border.

“Canada stood with us on 9/11, Canada has stood side-by-side with U.S. troops in every war we have been in. They have fought with our troops. They’ve bled with our troops. They’ve died with our troops in every war since the war of 1812, and yet we’re going to treat them like an enemy,” Kaine said.

Kaine’s bill, co-signed by eight Democratic and independent senators, drew one Republican co-sponsor, Paul of Kentucky.

The bill gained statements of support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and former Vice President Mike Pence’s advocacy group Advancing American Freedom, among numerous organizations across the political spectrum.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries criticized Trump’s anticipated tariff announcement Wednesday morning at his weekly press conference.

“We were told that grocery costs were going to go down on day one of the Trump presidency. Costs aren’t going down in America. They’re going up, and the Trump tariffs are going to make things more costly,” Jeffries, of New York, said.

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

Head Start child care providers in Wisconsin and five other Midwestern states were stunned Tuesday to learn that the federal agency’s Chicago regional office was closed and their administrators were placed on leave — throwing new uncertainty into the operation of the 60-year-old child care and early education program.

“The Regional Office is a critical link to maintaining program services and safety for children and families,” said Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, in a statement distributed to news organizations Tuesday afternoon.

The surprise shutdown of the federal agency’s Chicago office — and four others across the country — left Head Start program directors uncertain about where to turn, Mauer said.

“We have received calls throughout the day from panicked Head Start programs worried about impacts to approving their current grants, fiscal issues, and applications to make their programs more responsive to their local communities,” Mauer said.

The regional offices are part of the Office of Head Start in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 

In an interview, Mauer said there had been no official word to Head Start providers about the Chicago office closing. Some program leaders learned of the closing from private contacts with people in the office. 

“We have not seen official information come out” to local Head Start directors, who operate on the federal grants that fund the program, Mayer said. “It’s just really alarming. For an agency that is about serving families, I don’t understand how this can be.”

The National Head Start Association issued a press release Tuesday expressing “deep concern” about the regional office closings. 

“In order to avoid disrupting services for children and families, we urge the administration to reconsider these actions until a plan has been created and shared widely,” the association stated.

Katie Hamm, the deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at HHS during the Biden administration, posted on LinkedIn shortly before 12 noon Tuesday that she had learned of reduction-in-force (RIF) notices to employees in the Administration for Children and Families earlier in the day. 

RIF notices appear to have gone to all employees of the Office of Head Start and the Office of Child Care in five regional offices, Hamm wrote, in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Seattle in addition to Chicago. 

“Staff are on paid leave effective immediately and no longer have access to their files,” Hamm wrote. “There does not appear to be a transition plan so that Head Start grantees, States, and Tribes are assigned to a new office. For Head Start, it is unclear who will administer grants going forward.”

Hamm left HHS at the end of the Biden administration in January, according to her LinkedIn profile. 

Mauer said regional office employees “are our key partners and colleagues,” and their departure has left Head Start operators “incredibly saddened and deeply concerned.” 

Regional employees work with providers “to ensure the safety and quality of services and to meet the mission of providing care for the most vulnerable families in the country,” Mauer said. 

The regional offices provide grant oversight, distribute funds, monitor Head Start programs and advise centers on complying with regulations, including for child safety, she said. They also provide training and technical assistance for local Head Start programs.

“The Regional Office is a critical link to maintaining program services and safety for children and families,” Mauer said. “These cuts will have a direct impact on programs, children, and families.”

In addition to Wisconsin, the Chicago regional office oversees programs in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota. 

Head Start supervises about 284 grants across the six states in programs that  enroll about 115,000 children, according to Mauer. There are 39 Head Start providers in Wisconsin enrolling about 16,000 children and employing about 4,000 staff.

The federal government created Head Start in the mid-1960s to provide early education for children living in low-income households. Head Start operators report that the vast majority of the families they serve rely on the program to provide child care so they can hold jobs.

The regional office closings came two months after a sudden halt in Head Start funding. Head Start operators get a federal reimbursement after they incur expenses, and program directors have been accustomed to being able to submit their expenses and receive reimbursement payments through an online portal.

Over about two weeks in late January and early February, program leaders in Wisconsin and across the country reported that they were unable to log into the system or post their payment requests. The glitches persisted for some programs for several days, but were ultimately resolved by Feb. 10.

Mauer told the Wisconsin Examiner on Tuesday that so far, there have not been new payment delays. But there has also been no communication with Head Start operators about what happens now with the unexpected regional office closings, she said.

“No plan for who will provide support has been shared, and the still-existing regional offices are already understaffed,” Mauer said. “I’m very nervous to see what happens. With no transition plan this will be a disaster.”

In her statement, Mauer said the regional office closing was “another example of the Federal Administration’s continuing assault on Head Start” following the earlier funding freeze and stalled reimbursements.

She said closing regional offices was undermining the program’s ability to function.

“We call on Congress to immediately investigate this blatant effort to hamper Head Start’s ability to provide services,” Mauer stated, “and to hold the Administration accountable for their actions.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

French wine on display in a District of Columbia shop on March 13, 2025, the day President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on European wine and French Champagne. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — American business owners and consumers are bracing as President Donald Trump teases, with few details, the announcement of sweeping tariffs expected Wednesday afternoon.

Trump has dubbed April 2 “Liberation Day,” his self-imposed deadline to fulfill his campaign promise of taxing imported products from around the globe.

The White House confirmed Tuesday that Trump had made a decision on tariff levels but would not provide further details.

“He’s with his trade and tariff team right now perfecting it to make sure this is a perfect deal for the American people and the American worker, and you will all find out in about 24 hours from now,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday afternoon at the daily briefing.

The new tariffs come as Trump already imposed 25% duties on imported steel and aluminum, as well as 25% levies on foreign cars and vehicle parts set to begin Thursday.

But the anticipation of more tariffs on numerous imported goods has stopped business owners in their tracks as uncertainty about costs and consumer reaction clouds day-to-day decisions.

Stockpiling coffee cups

Gabe Hagen, owner of Brick Road Coffee in Tempe, Arizona, said small business owners are feeling “whiplash.”

“Are we going to have a tariff? Are we not? It’s not easy for me to change my prices overnight. But at the same time, if all of the sudden I have my cost of goods going up, it’ll put me into a loss territory.”

Most disposable beverage cups are produced in China, so Hagen made the decision last year to purchase and store $26,000 worth of coffee cups in anticipation of tariffs.

He also had to pull back $50,000 in capital for development on a second shop location, he said.

“The main thing we’re asking for is stability,” said Hagen, who also sits on the Small Business for America’s Future advisory council.

Walt Rowen, owner and president of Susquehanna Glass Company in Columbia, Pennsylvania, said “there’s no clarity at this point at all.”

“Everybody is in a holding pattern. We’re stuck wondering what is going to happen,” Rowen said. “We can sort of know that we’re gonna have to increase prices if the tariffs come into effect. But what we don’t know is if we increase prices, how much does that affect demand?”

Rowen’s historic 1925 three-story production facility right in the middle of the southeastern Pennsylvania town employs anywhere from 35 to 65 workers, depending on the season.

Through a variety of decorating techniques, his employees engrave or imprint screened paint logos, names and other messages on wine glasses he sources from a manufacturer in Italy and mugs made in Vietnam.

Rowen’s production rooms buzz, especially in the months leading up to the holidays, when his employees laser engrave and hand paint personalized ornaments sourced from China for the Lenox Corporation.

“My Christmas ornament business is huge for us in the fourth quarter, and I would normally be planning to bring in 20 to 30 people to work in that category of business. But if those prices increase by 30, 40, 50%, I don’t know how many we’re going to sell this year. So I can’t even plan production. It’s frightening,” he said.

States to feel economic pain

Economists are warning the rollercoaster tariff policy coming from the Oval Office is undermining economic growth and trust in the U.S. as a stable trading partner.

Trump told reporters as recently as Sunday that he was planning to slap tariffs on “all countries.”

His administration’s mid-March levies on aluminum and steel imports sparked retaliation from the European Union and Canada, which beginning in mid-April will enforce taxes on hundreds of American products crossing their borders, including iconic Kentucky bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Unless Trump carves out exceptions on certain products, more states can expect to feel economic pain, said Mary Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“For example, a state like Washington state is very export dependent, not just obviously aircraft, but also apples and a wide variety of other manufacturing and agricultural (products). That state will be really hard hit if there are retaliatory tariffs, both from Canada, which is a market, but also from Asia,” Lovely said.

Trump’s tariffs on products from Canada, China and Mexico could cost the typical American family at least an extra $1,200 annually in price increases, according to a report Lovely co-authored. The dollar amount increases when calculating for universal tariffs on all imported goods, and when accounting for retaliation from other countries.

European Union President Ursula von der Leyen already made clear in a speech Monday that the bloc wants to negotiate with Trump but will apply more levies on American products given no other choice.

“Europe has not started this confrontation. We do not necessarily want to retaliate, but we have a strong plan to retaliate if necessary,” she said.

Tariffs on Canada

On Capitol Hill, Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota introduced a resolution to block the president’s tariffs on Canada, which he triggered under his emergency powers.

Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Power Act to slap 25% tariffs on products out of Canada and Mexico marked the first time a president had ever done so.  

“We think that the economic chaos that’s being caused and markets being roiled and consumer confidence dropping, and some predicting recession, together with a bipartisan vote might convince the White House — ‘Hey, look, there’s a better way to treat American citizens and customers,’” Kaine told reporters outside the U.S. Capitol Tuesday.

Kaine said his message to Republicans is “stand up for your constituents and say no tax increase on them.”

The Senate is expected to vote on the legislation late Tuesday or Wednesday.

Bill Butcher, founder of Port City Brewing in Alexandria, Virginia, spoke alongside the senators Tuesday, expressing concern about the price of Canadian Pilsner malt that he’s used for 14 years.

“It’s a very specific strain of high quality barley that grows in the cold climate of Canada, and there’s not a suitable U.S. substitute that we can get at the same quality to make our beer,” he said. “If there’s a 25% tariff on this basic ingredient, it’s going to slow our business down.

“By the time it goes from us to our distributor to the retailer to the consumer, this $12.99 six-pack of beer is going to end up at $18.99. How many people are still going to want to buy a six-pack of great-tasting beer but at $18.99? People are going to start looking for a different substitute,” Butcher said.

White House defends tariffs

In an emailed statement Tuesday to States Newsroom, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said Trump used tariffs “to deliver historic job, wage, and economic growth with no inflation in his first term, and he’s set to restore American Greatness in his second term.”

“Fearmongering by the media and Democrats about President Trump’s America First economic agenda isn’t going to change the fact that industry leaders have already made trillions in investment commitments to make in America, and that countries ranging from Vietnam to India to the UK have already begun to offer up trade concessions that would help level the playing field for American industries and workers,” Desai said.

Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior counselor on trade, told “Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream” Trump’s new tariffs will raise $600 billion a year for the U.S., plus another $100 billion from the 25% duty on foreign cars that will launch this week.

The government would gain that revenue from U.S. businesses who will need to pay the duty rates to get their purchased goods through the U.S. border.

Erica York with the Tax Foundation, a center-right think tank that advocates for lower taxes, said Tuesday that number is “very, very wrong” because Navarro is basing the math on the current level of imports.

“If we put a 20% tax on imports, people are not going to buy as many imports, so that reduces how much revenue you get,” York said. “Also, mechanically, if firms are making all of these tariff payments, that reduces their revenue. They don’t have as much to pay workers (and) to return to shareholders.”

U.S. stocks showed their biggest losses since 2022, according to Monday’s report on the first quarter of 2025.

Both Moody’s Analytics and Goldman Sachs warned on Monday that they’ve raised their forecasts for an economic recession to 35%.

Jack Kelly of Wisconsin Watch waits with reporters outside the state Capitol for a press conference to begin in September 2023. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Journalists at Wisconsin Watch — a nonprofit news organization that includes the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service — have ratified their first union contract.

The agreement, signed on Friday, March 28, includes minimum salary guarantees and annual cost-of-living increases along with layoff restrictions, severance pay and benefits as well as “just cause” protections against arbitrary terminations, according to the Wisconsin Watch Union. The contract also includes provisions for medical, parental, caregiver and bereavement leave.

The union is a subunit of Milwaukee NewsGuild Local 34051, which also represents newsroom employees at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“I’m really proud of the outcome,” said Jack Kelly, a Wisconsin Watch reporter and union bargaining team member. Staffers represented by the union were active in advocating for their priorities during contract negotiations, giving personal testimony about issues important to them, he said.

“They put some faces and names to the numbers we were asking for,” Kelly said in an interview Monday.  “I think the contract is going to make Wisconsin Watch and Neighborhood News Service better places to work.”

Kelly also commended Wisconsin Watch management’s handling of the bargaining process.

“We certainly had meetings that were long and stressful, but I think in general we were able to engage a collegial approach to bargaining,” Kelly said.

“We’ll continue to do great journalism knowing our workplace is more structured, secure and protected,” said Phoebe Petrovic, a Wisconsin Watch investigative reporter who was among those who initiated the union organizing effort, in a statement released by the union.

Wisconsin Watch journalists announced their union organizing campaign in October 2023, and the organization’s board subsequently agreed to voluntarily recognize the union. Protection against arbitrary firings was among the goals employees cited.

Wisconsin Watch was founded in 2009 as the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, still its legal name. The Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service became part of Wisconsin Watch in July 2024 and its employees became part of the bargaining unit.

Devin Blake, a Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service reporter who joined the bargaining team, said that in addition to tangible gains the union brought him closer to coworkers. “I have such a clearer sense of what matters to their lives and work,” Blake said in the union’s statement.

Digital news outlets and nonprofit news organizations have seen growing union representation in the last several years, with outlets including ProPublica and The Marshall Project joining the ranks of unionized newsrooms. 

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

A new Wisconsin Hospital Association report finds continued challenges for hospitals seeking health care workers. In this January 2024 photo, an information screen for visitors at Sauk Prairie Hospital displays a recruiting message directed at health care workers. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

As more Wisconsinites need more hospital care, the supply of health care workers to provide that care remains slim — and to change that outlook will take concerted effort, according to a new report released Monday.

“Wisconsin’s health care workforce must grow faster,” says the 2025 Wisconsin Health Care Workforce Report, produced by the Wisconsin Hospital Association (WHA).

“Health care employers are working hard to retain current employees, re-recruit those who left for what they thought might be greener pastures and attract new talent to health care fields in Wisconsin,” the report states.

The report finds some glimmers of improvement and promising pathways for hospitals to further address their need for more trained staff. Over the last two years hospital job vacancies have fallen slightly and employment has increased.

But filling jobs remains a challenge and will remain that way for years, the report states. It suggests  a combination of strategies to overcome current trends.

Some of the strategies involve  how hospitals themselves structure jobs and hiring practices. But the report contends other sectors — government, educational institutions, and the insurance companies and government programs that pay the lion’s share of health care bills — will also need to shift their policies.

Reimbursement rates are not keeping up with increased costs as hospitals and other providers weather rising payroll and supply expenses, for example, the report finds.

By far the dominant contributor to the workforce challenges hospitals and health systems face, however, is demographic, according to the report. Wisconsinites continue to get collectively older.

“Only Wisconsin’s population over 65 has grown between the 2010 and 2020 census,” said Ann Zenk, senior vice president of workforce and clinical practice for the hospital association. The working-age population ages 18 to 65 decreased in that same period.

Those younger than 40 go to the hospital once a year on average. From ages 40 to 65 that ticks up to three times a year. After 65, “it doubles to six visits a year,” Zenk  said.

“As we age, we need more health care,” she said. “That is going to be a double challenge for hospitals because our available workers are a smaller pool and our demand is even greater.”

The population preparing to enter the workforce — people ages 19 and younger — “is not large enough to replace retiring baby boomers,” the report states. “Growing the health care workforce needed to respond to this demographic challenge will require increasing in-migration, ensuring access to career pathways and increasing interest in hospital careers.”

That starts with giving students in high school or even earlier “the opportunity to have exposure — you’re walking in the shoes of what it’s like to be a health care professional,” Zenk said.

Then there’s the education process itself — “making sure that educational pathways remain accessible,” Zenk said. The report urges policymakers not to add requirements to training programs that would make them longer, more complex or more expensive.

One promising training innovation, said Zenk, is the use of an apprenticeship program to prepare new registered nurses, pioneered in the last few years in Wisconsin by UW Health and the state Department of Workforce Development.

While the program stretches over four years for the equivalent of a two-year associate degree, she said, it also allows the participating students to “earn while you learn.” The concept is being expanded to prepare respiratory therapists.

The report also identifies generational shifts in what people expect from their jobs. Zenk said addressing demands for more flexible and family-friendly schedules can make it possible to hire and retain more successfully. But those changes may also mean demand for even more personnel.

“So where you need a roster of 10 nurses, you need 15 now to cover the exact same shift,” Zenk said.

The report also sees technology offering some relief.

Some of that might be replacing people for tasks such as registering at the front desk for a medical visit, Zenk said. But another example is monitoring equipment that could go home with a patient and be checked remotely, with nurses and clinicians visiting the patient at home every day, she observed.

Zenk said some regulations in health care can be reexamined and streamlined without endangering safety or the quality of care.

Physician assistants, for example, collaborate with and are overseen by a medical doctor. Zenk said in the past a physician could supervise no more than four PAs. That has since been relaxed, making it less burdensome for both doctor and PA alike, she said.

Zenk said another form of regulation has gotten worse, however: When health insurers interpose an increasing number of steps for them to sign off on the care a doctor or hospital provides.

“That requires staff to make those phone calls or enter that data, or requires physicians to document more and more and more to justify the care that they want to provide and that the patient needs,” she said.

She’s seen insurer-driven requirements increase in the last five years.

“That’s a major tug-of-war on clinicians’ time,” Zenk said, “and for patients also very frustrating.”

In the end, however, there’s no single silver bullet to resolve what is likely to be a persistent challenge for hospitals or their employees.

“There’s no one answer. We’re more than likely not going to be able to grow ourselves out of this one fast enough,” Zenk said. “But anything we can do to grow the workforce faster is going to help.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

President Donald Trump speaks at the Justice Department on March 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to impose a 25% tariff on imported cars and light trucks.

Trump, who campaigned on bringing down consumer costs, said during an Oval Office signing event the additional tax on foreign goods would spur U.S. production.

Asked if, like other tariffs Trump’s threatened, trade partners could do anything to avoid the fee on cars and trucks, Trump answered no. This tariff will remain in place until he leaves office, he said, and was meant to protect the U.S. industry.

“I think our automobile business will flourish like it’s never flourished before,” he said.

The tariff will go into effect April 2, he said. It will add to – not replace – any other applicable existing tariffs, he said.

“We’re going to charge countries for doing business in our country and taking our jobs, taking our wealth, taking a lot of things they’ve been taking over the years,” he said. “They’ve taken so much out of our country, friend and foe alike. And frankly, friend has been oftentimes much worse than foe.”

The measure could bring in $100 billion in tax revenue, a White House aide said during the Oval Office event.

Trump said the administration would have “very strong policing” to enforce the tariffs.

Trump said he did not seek advice from White House adviser Elon Musk, the CEO of U.S. electric carmaker Tesla, because “he might have a conflict.”

Trump said the tariffs may be good or neutral for Tesla, which he noted had large plants in Texas and California.

“Anybody that has plants in the United States it’s going to be good for,” he said.

President Donald Trump and Congress have until August or September to reach agreement and act on the debt limit, the Congressional Budget Office forecast Wednesday.  (Stock photo/Getty Images Plus)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Congress have until August or September to reach agreement and act on the debt limit, the Congressional Budget Office forecast Wednesday.

Otherwise the United States would default for the first time in history, likely leading to a global financial crisis.

The nonpartisan CBO projection is similar to an estimate published earlier this week by the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, which expects the X-date will occur between mid-July and early October.

The previous debt limit suspension expired in January, but the Treasury Department has been able to keep paying all the government’s bills through accounting maneuvers called extraordinary measures. When those run out, the country would hit the X-date and a default would begin.

The four-page CBO report says the default range “is uncertain” because how much money the federal government brings in as well as how much it spends at a given time is difficult to track. 

“If the government’s borrowing needs are significantly greater than CBO projects, the Treasury’s resources could be exhausted in late May or sometime in June, before tax payments due in mid-June are received or before additional extraordinary measures become available on June 30,” the report states. “Conversely, if borrowing needs fall short of the amounts in CBO’s projections, the extraordinary measures will permit the Treasury to continue financing government activities longer than expected.”

GOP bill on tap

Republicans in Congress are hoping to approve a massive bill in the months ahead that would extend the 2017 tax law, creating $4.5 trillion in new deficits. The package is also supposed to appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars to the Department of Defense and border security initiatives.

GOP lawmakers hope to pay for some of those increases in the deficit through spending cuts, but are far from agreement on how best to do that.

The debt limit allows the Treasury Department to borrow money to pay all of the country’s bills in full and on time. The federal government must borrow money to pay for spending that Congress has approved that isn’t funded by taxes or other fees.

During the last full fiscal year, that imbalance between revenue and spending, also called the deficit, totalled $1.8 trillion. Over decades, annual deficits have added up to a $36.2 trillion national debt.

Congress failing to raise or suspend the debt limit before the default date would limit the Treasury Department to spending only the cash it had on hand, a scenario with much broader implications than a partial government shutdown.

A default could lead the federal government to delay or simply never make payments on thousands of federal accounts, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, troop pay, federal employee salaries and much more.

The Treasury Department writes on its website that not raising the debt limit by a specific dollar amount or suspending the debt limit through a future date “would have catastrophic economic consequences.”

A Government Accountability Office report lists off several negative repercussions of a default, including that it could trigger runs on banks and money market funds, that it would likely reduce lending to households and businesses, that it would lead to a substantial downgrade to the country’s sovereign credit rating and that it would likely lead to a significant and potentially long-lasting recession.

Treasury projection in May

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent plans to send his department’s default date projection to Congress in May, though he wrote in a March letter that lawmakers should get to work sooner rather than later.

“The period of time that cash and extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty due to a variety of factors, including the unpredictability of tax receipts and the normal changes of forecasting the payments and receipts of the U.S. government months into the future,” Bessent wrote. “We expect to provide an update during the first half of May, after the majority of receipts from the April income tax filing season have been received.”

Bessent then urged lawmakers “to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

Republican leaders in Congress and the Trump administration have just a few more months to decide how they want to handle this year’s debt limit debate.

House Republicans included a proposal in their budget resolution to raise the debt limit by $4 trillion later this year, when GOP lawmakers draft the bill to extend the 2017 tax cuts. But the Senate has yet to agree to that blueprint.

Republicans raising the debt limit through the complicated budget reconciliation process would require support from nearly every GOP lawmaker in Congress, since the party holds a paper-thin majority in the House and just 53 seats in the Senate.

Nearly two years ago, when Congress sent the last debt limit bill to the White House, 71 House Republicans and 31 GOP senators voted against approval.

The other option is for Republicans and Democrats to negotiate a bipartisan agreement on the debt limit that can get the support of at least 60 senators to move past the legislative filibuster.  

Frankie Miranda, the president of the Hispanic Federation, speaks at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol on March 25, 2025, with representatives from 130 nonprofits that advocate for Latino communities. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — In a Tuesday press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, members of the Hispanic Federation detailed how the first three months of the Trump administration’s policies have harmed the Latino community rather than addressing economic concerns.

Frankie Miranda, the president of the federation, a nonprofit that focuses on civic engagement in the Latino community, said the president’s immigration crackdown has instilled fear and failed to tackle economic issues that influenced Latino voters in the 2024 presidential election, such as inflation and housing costs.

He said the revocation of legal status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants — many of them with work permits — will harm not only the Latino community but the economy overall.

“We want to ensure that our elected officials understand that this is going to have a negative impact on industries, on the economy,” he said. “This is going to have an impact on everyday Americans when you remove workers and people contributing and paying taxes to the economy.”

Grants yanked

Miranda, along with representatives from 130 nonprofits, will spend Wednesday meeting with lawmakers to talk to them about the economic contributions of Latinos and how President Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations harm the community.

Miranda said the groups will also stress to lawmakers how the cancellations of federal grants, which were already approved by Congress, have led to staff layoffs and undercut services for the Latino community, from job training to legal aid.

Federation members were joined by Democratic Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida and Chuy Garcia of Illinois for Tuesday’s press conference.

“We saw that this election, the economy was the number one concern of voters across this entire country,” Frost said.

Some of the groups at the press conference included the Carolina Migrant Network of North Carolina and the Orlando Center for Justice, of Florida.

Stefanía Arteaga, who co-founded the Carolina Migrant Network, said the nonprofit is the only organization in North Carolina that provides free legal services for immigrants who are in immigration detention centers.

She said many of those people who have called her organization had their legal statuses revoked.

“This is part of a larger systematic failure and strategy by this administration to put people in deportation proceedings and use them as scapegoats,” Arteaga said.

Frost decried the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and the revocation of the legal status of more than 530,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

He said those immigrants, along with more than 350,000 Venezuelans who have lost Temporary Protected Status, “now will face deportation,” by April 2.

“These are our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends and our loved ones,” Frost said.

Garcia also slammed the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. High-profile raids have taken place in his district in Chicago. 

“Raids are terrorizing our communities, and this is a show of the abuse of state power,” Garcia said.

Federation contracts in limbo

In an interview with States Newsroom, Miranda said the Hispanic Federation has about $105 million in federal contracts that were approved by Congress but are now pending or on hold under the Trump administration.

The Trump administration has cancelled many federal contracts, zeroing in on those that address diversity, equity and inclusion. The White House has also canceled contracts with nonprofits that provide services for refugees and immigrants, from resettlement to legal services for unaccompanied minors.

Miranda said some of the contracts from the Hispanic Federation that are now frozen would award $1 million for legal services, $58 million for solar panel projects in Puerto Rico and $16 million to help people obtain digital skills for the workforce.

He said he believes these programs were targeted because they either aim to provide equity or promote environmental justice.

“We want to ensure that elected officials understand that in these efforts of efficiency, what you are creating is more chaos, disruption of essential services and (losing) the opportunity for the country to continue moving forward in the right direction and avoid the effects of falling into a recession,” Miranda said.

Karina Ayala-Bermejo, president of the Instituto Del Progreso Latino in Chicago, said for decades the nonprofit has provided free legal services for lawful permanent residents seeking to become naturalized citizens.

She said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services cut her nonprofit’s federal contract worth $450,000.

“It is having us reconsider a fee-for-service model, that we know is going to create a substantial financial barrier on families who merely seek to be able to fully participate in the U.S. democracy,” Ayala-Bermejo said.

President Donald Trump spoke Thursday, March 20, 2025, to a crypto industry conference. (Photo illustration by Namthip Muanthongthae / Getty Images)

President Donald Trump signaled his continued support for cryptocurrency, saying at an industry conference Thursday morning he wanted to see the United States lead the world in digital asset technology.

In a brief recorded video broadcast to the Digital Assets Summit in New York, Trump, who launched his own meme coin in January that held an overall market value of $2.3 billion Thursday, noted some steps his administration has taken to encourage crypto. He positioned himself as a leading advocate for the technology but was vague about future policy proposals.

“It’s an honor to speak with you about how the United States is going to dominate crypto and the next generation of financial technologies,” he said. “And it’s not going to be easy, but we’re way ahead.”

Trump noted he held the first ever White House digital assets summit this month, appointed a White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar and created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile.

The reserves would allow the government to retain the value of digital currencies, he said, adding that was impossible under his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Reversing policy

Trump said his administration would seek to loosen regulations, in a reversal from Biden policy.

“We’re ending the last administration’s regulatory war on crypto and bitcoin,” he said. “Frankly, it was a disgrace. But as of Jan. 20, 2025, all of that is over.”

He also said he’d asked Congress to create “simple, commonsense rules for stable coins and market structure.”

Despite looser regulations, the framework would lead to “greater privacy, safety, security and wealth for American consumers and businesses alike,” he said, calling the decentralized finance system “one of the most exciting technological revolutions in modern history.”

Trump’s ties to industry

The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency allows anyone to launch a currency, which has led to a series of so-called meme coins fronted by celebrities or tied to internet trends that form a particularly volatile segment of the crypto market.

Trump has a vested interest in the success of the crypto market, with a reported 80% stake in his own token.

Trump’s coin peaked at a value of $14.5 billion the day before his inauguration but has since lost nearly 85% of its value. The financial news service Reuters reported last month that firms generated nearly $100 million in trading fees associated with the Trump coin, even as its market value plummeted.

French wine on Washington, D.C., store shelves on Thursday, March 13, 2025. (Ashley Murray/States Newsroom) 

WASHINGTON — Wine and spirits are front and center in President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with European allies.

Just after sunrise Thursday, Trump threatened in a social media post to slap a 200% tariff on all wine, Champagne and other alcohol products from France and other European Union countries.

“This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S.,” Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social.

French Foreign Trade Minister Laurent Saint-Martin responded on X by saying Trump “is escalating the trade war he chose to unleash” and that France “will not give into threats,” according to a translation.

Alcoholic beverages ranked 11th on the list of top European products exported to the United States in 2024, according to the European Commission.

U.S. imports of European wine, vermouth, spirits and beer approached $13 billion last year, according to International Trade Centre data.

U.S. bourbon and whiskey

Trump said the U.S. would be imposing the tax “shortly” if the EU does not immediately drop its plans to impose levies next month on hundreds of American products, including a 50% tariff on the country’s iconic Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey.

The EU announced Wednesday forthcoming taxes on a lengthy list of American goods, also including beer, clothes, makeup and motorcycles, in response to Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum that took effect the same day.

The latest round of tit-for-tat tariffs is not the first time American alcohol producers have been impacted by a trade war.

A new analysis by the center-right Tax Foundation shows American distillers lost hundreds of millions after tariffs imposed during Trump’s first presidency sparked 25% retaliatory levies from the EU and the United Kingdom.

American whiskey imports to the EU and UK fell 27% from 2018 to 2019, and another 15% from 2019 to 2020, according to the analysis published Thursday. The foundation calculated that domestic distillers lost about $649 million in exports, assuming the imports would have remained flat at previous levels. The industry did not rebound until 2023.

Rebuilding spirits exports

Chris Swonger, CEO and president of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, said Wednesday the return of EU tariffs “will severely undercut the successful efforts to rebuild U.S. spirits exports in EU countries.”

“Many spirits products are recognized as ‘distinctive products’ by the U.S. and EU and can only be made in their designated countries. As a result, the production of these spirits products, including Bourbon, Tennessee Whiskey, Cognac and Irish Whiskey, cannot simply be moved to another country or region,” Swonger said in a statement.

“Reimposing these debilitating tariffs at a time when the spirits industry continues to face a slowdown in U.S. marketplace will further curtail growth and negatively impact distillers and farmers in states across the country,” Swonger continued.

The transatlantic spirits trade increased by nearly 450% from 1997 to 2018 when the U.S. and EU agreed to reciprocal zero-to-zero tariffs on alcohol beverages trade, according to the council.

Lee Enterprises, which owns newspapers across the country including in Wisconsin, is facing financial difficulties, a class action settlement for providing subscriber data to Facebook, and a threatened takeover. | Getty Images

More than 1.5 million subscribers could be part of a class-action settlement by the newspaper company Lee Enterprises, for sending personally-identifying information to the parent company of Facebook in order to target content, including advertising.

According to a settlement reached in a federal court in Iowa, where Lee Enterprises is headquartered, the company will pay $9.5 million for releasing personal information to Meta without customers’ consent.

In Wisconsin, Lee owns a dozen newspapers, including dailies in Chippewa Falls, Racine, Kenosha, La Crosse and the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, among its 85 daily newspapers across the country.

In addition to the class-action lawsuit settlement, Lee has also reported that it will likely be financially impacted due to a recent cybersecurity ransomware attack. Also, a private investor who has recently been critical of the management team after it projected profits, but instead saw a loss of $17 million, says he wants to purchase the company.

Facebook settlement

As part of the court filing, the company says it doesn’t agree with all the conclusions, but is settling the class-action lawsuit, which could reach more than 1.5 million current or past subscribers. According to its most recent 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as of Sept. 29, 2024, Lee reported that had a combined 1.1 million print and digital subscribers.

It also reported that 51% of its revenue comes from digital advertising in February 2025.

The court filings say that Lee voluntarily installed an invisible online tracker from Meta/Facebook that allowed the disclosure of a “Facebook Identification Number” to the social media giant. That, the group of plaintiffs said, violated federal law that guarantees privacy protection. The goal of the software, according to the lawsuit, was to build profiles of the Lee subscribers or content users “with the hope of improving the effectiveness of advertising targeting those users.”

If the deal is approved by the court, former and current subscribers who were affected would be sent a class-action settlement notice and be eligible for a portion of the amount, which will be estimated to be around $5.7 million for the approximately 1.5 million people — or around $3.80 per person. For subscribers or customers with an invalid email address, postcards may be sent.

In court documents, Lee and a group of plaintiffs agreed to settle the dispute, saying that a protracted lawsuit could take years and millions to resolve. Furthermore, Lee maintains that it did nothing wrong, although other companies who used such tracking tools have been found liable for using the same technology that discloses personal information.

Ransomware attack

It is not the only piece of bad financial news for the newspaper company based in Davenport, Iowa. In SEC filings earlier this month, it announced that a ransomware attack on the company that shut down some printing and electronic edition publications, as well as threatened to release sensitive financial information, was likely to have a material impact on the company’s bottom line.

On March 6, Lee confirmed the attack, which began on Feb. 3. Hackers encrypted many of the “critical applications” the company used while “exfiltrating” or taking financial data. Lee said that many of the company’s functions have been restored, but that the business processes of the company have been delayed.

“Additionally, certain back-office functions remain delayed including billing our clients, collections, and payments to vendors. We anticipate the business processes to be fully restored in the coming weeks,” the company said.

Lee confirmed it had cybersecurity insurance, and also that its sole lender, Berkshire-Hathaway Finance, had waived an interest payment as well as lease payments, which the newspaper company said added $3.7 million of additional capital.

As of Friday, many of the Lee publications still had notices on their websites that warned customers of problems, delays or interruptions.

New owner?

Even as courts and cyberattacks were occupying headlines about Lee, on Thursday, the chain of newspapers also reported that a billionaire investor who had recently purchased a chunk of the publicly traded stock had submitted a letter to the company’s board of directors wanting to purchase the company outright.

Hoffmann Companies, which owns a diverse number of companies including dairies, investment properties and manufacturing facilities, says it wants to buy Lee Enterprises. The same company has recently purchased an interest in the Dallas Morning News, as well as purchasing former Lee-owned newspapers in California, including the Napa Register. In a letter to Lee’s board, David Hoffmann said that other hedge-fund investors have not been concerned with the journalism of the company, rather just squeezing profits from the newspapers.

“We believe this commitment represents a sharp contrast to other potential acquirors such as non-local hedge funds and investment firms primarily concerned with increasing profits over jobs, local concerns, and the power of quality journalism,” the letter said. The letter and a news story about the offer was published on Lee newspaper websites on Thursday.

Hoffmann is already Lee’s second-largest shareholder. Lee currently has nearly $450 million in debt, largely from the acquisitions of other newspapers that has more than doubled the company’s reach. In its most recent earnings report, Lee’s profits were down year-over-year, but it did note that digital revenue has now eclipsed print revenue, a sign that the Hoffmann interest letter noted.

After news of the potential deal broke, Lee stock shot up nearly $1 per share and as of Friday, the value of Lee stock hovered around $10.66 a share, a 6% increase in value.

Editor’s note: The reporter of this story was formerly a Lee employee from 2004 to 2020.

Erik Gunn of the Wisconsin Examiner contributed to this report

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com.

The Blatnik Bridge under construction in 1958. (Minnesota Department of Transportation)

Gov. Tony Evers is leaning on U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to release stalled federal highway money along with $78 million in promised funding to build out a network of electric vehicle charging stations in Wisconsin.

The governor’s office on Thursday released a letter Evers sent Duffy last week, urging the former Wisconsin congressman “to take immediate action to end the unlawful and harmful obstructions to federal approvals and federal funding for crucial transportation projects across the nation and here in your home state of Wisconsin.”

Federal delays will slow down projects across the state, Evers wrote, including a railroad bypass in Muskego, outside Milwaukee, that is planned for improved freight movement; a grant for highway improvement in Menominee County that will help forestry shippers; and numerous rural road and bridge projects in Wisconsin.

A pause in the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program — part of the bipartisan infrastructure law enacted during the Biden administration — is “threatening at least 15 already-approved electric vehicle infrastructure projects for private entities, utilizing approximately $7 million in NEVI funding, including multiple projects located in the congressional district you used to represent in the U.S. Congress,” Evers wrote.

Duffy represented Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, covering the northwestern part of the state, until he stepped down in late 2019.

“More than $56 million that Wisconsin has been allocated in future rounds of the NEVI program is also at risk due to the uncertainty caused by unnecessary delays at USDOT,” Evers wrote.

“These delays and obstructions hurt Wisconsinites and Wisconsin communities,” he added. “As a fellow Wisconsinite, I urge you to end these obstructions and support states in implementing lawful federal funding and needed approvals.”

Evers’ letter follows one written March 4 from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials also calling for an end to the delays.

Federal dollars awarded to states according to established federal formulas are “legally binding obligations,” wrote the association’s president, Garrett T. Eucalitto.

The funds go to repay states for expenses they’ve already incurred under the terms set by the federal highway program. That letter demands reimbursement requests “be paid immediately for construction and related costs already incurred.”

After President Donald Trump took office Jan. 20, he issued executive orders halting the distribution of funds as well as other federal administrative actions across a wide range of federal programs. The orders have led to a raft of lawsuits challenging them.

Highway programs are among those caught up in the Trump administration’s freezes. In addition to financial payouts owed the states, the administration has also put a hold on issuing approvals, such as environmental reviews required by law, related to pending projects.

“These interruptions—whether directly or indirectly related to funding—have the effect of freezing essential construction and planning activities including those involving roadway and bridge projects,” wrote Eucalitto, who is also the Connecticut transportation commissioner. “Delays like these leave state DOTs at serious risk of losing the upcoming construction season for many projects. This will not only add to overall costs to the American people but also deprive communities from receiving those economic, safety, and quality of life benefits.”

Child care worker Marci Then helps her daughter, Mila, 4, put away toys to get ready for circle time at the Little Learners Academy in Smithfield, R.I. A new study highlights the high cost of child care. (Photo by Elaine S. Povich/Stateline)

The cost of child care now exceeds the price of college tuition in 38 states and the District of Columbia, according to a new analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute.

The left-leaning think tank, based in Washington, D.C., used 2023 federal and nonprofit data to compare the monthly cost of infant child care to that of tuition at public colleges.

The tally increased five states since the pandemic began. EPI’s last analysis relied on 2020 data, which showed child care costs outstripped college costs in 33 states and Washington, D.C., said EPI spokesperson Nick Kauzlarich.

The organization released a state-by-state guide on Wednesday showing the escalating cost of child care. Average costs range from $521 per month in Mississippi to as much as $1,893 per month in Washington, D.C., for households with one 4-year-old child, EPI found.

The analysis also found child care costs have exceeded rent prices in 17 states and the District of Columbia.

In Wisconsin, the average annual cost of care was just under $17,000, EPI reported. The average in-state college tuition cost was $9,129 and average annual rent cost was $13,088.

EPI leaders said child care is unaffordable for working families across the country, but especially for low-wage workers, including those who provide child care.

“This isn’t inevitable — it is a policy choice,” Katherine deCourcy, EPI research assistant, said in a news release. “Federal and state policymakers can and should act to make child care more affordable, and ensure that child care workers can afford the same quality of care for their own children.”

The organization highlighted New Mexico as a case study on the growing challenge facing families.

There, the average annual cost of infant care exceeds $14,000 — or nearly $1,200 a month, the group said. Care for a four-year-old costs nearly $10,000 per year — or over $800 a month.

While experts often consider housing as a family’s single largest expense, EPI found New Mexico’s annual infant care costs outpace rent by over 10%. Child care is out of reach for about 90% of New Mexico residents, according to the federal government’s definition of affordability, which is no more than 7% of a family’s income.

Advocates often call for universal preschool programs as a way to provide quality, free child care. EPI noted a 2022 constitutional amendment approved by New Mexico voters guaranteeing a right to early childhood education. That created an annual fund of about $150 million to help subsidize early childhood programs.

“New Mexico’s investments mark an important step toward affordable child care, but investments like this are needed across the country,” EPI argued in a Wednesday blog post. 

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

José Tlaxcala worked framing houses in Salem, Oregon, until he sustained a spinal injury and moved back to San Juan Texhuácan. People will continue crossing the border to work in the U.S., regardless of what politicians say, because of 'economic necessity' he says. | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

VERACRUZ, MEXICO — President Donald Trump’s threats to deport millions of Mexicans who are working in the U.S. without authorization does not have a large number fleeing the U.S. in fear, nor will it stop Mexican citizens from crossing the border to find work, according to many residents who shared their stories with the Wisconsin Examiner.

“Yes, it has put the brakes on things a bit, I know people who were thinking of going and now they’re waiting,” said Fatima Tepole, who worked on a dairy farm in Minnesota for four years, earning money to build her house and start a school supply store in San Juan Texhuácan. “Of course it caused people to pause. It now costs $15,000 to cross the border. If they send you back? Of course you are going to stop and think about that.”

But, she added. “They are going to try again when things calm down. It’s inevitable.”

Tepole’s friend Blanca Hernández, a teacher at a bilingual Spanish/Nahuatl school, agreed. She crossed the border to work in the U.S. three times, smuggling herself in the trunk of a car and nearly suffocating on her way to take a factory job in North Carolina and returning two more times to milk cows in Wisconsin. She saved enough money to build her house and buy a car before returning home. “Yes, there are people who are afraid now,” she said. “But Mexicans are stubborn. They are going to keep immigrating.”

José Tlaxcala says no politician in either country has changed the underlying drivers of immigration. “People in Mexico continue to think about going to the U.S. to work because of economic necessity,” he said.

In his opinion, that’s the Mexican government’s fault. “The Mexican government isn’t doing enough. There’s not enough good work for the people,” Tlaxcala said. In the area where he lives, around San Juan Texhuácan, most people work in agriculture, growing coffee and corn, partly for subsistence and partly to sell. But the prices for agricultural products are very low. “It’s not enough to support a family,” Tlaxcala explained

A Stateline analysis of U.S. Census community survey data in 2018 found a sudden drop in the Mexican immigrant population in the U.S. between 2016 and 2017. More than 300,000 people went home that year, which experts attributed to deportation threats in the first Trump administration as well as improving job prospects in Mexico. Mexicans still represent the largest group of immigrants living in the U.S., but their numbers have been declining for more than a decade, from a peak of 11.7 million in 2010 to 10.91 million in 2023.

It’s too soon to tell if the second Trump administration, with its even more aggressive focus on rooting out immigrants, pushes down those numbers more.

But anecdotally, at least among dairy workers in the Midwest, that doesn’t seem to be the case — at least for now. 

“The concern was significantly more in the last Trump administration,” says Wisconsin dairy farmer John Rosenow, who has 13 employees from Mexico. “Especially people with families were afraid of being deported and separated from their children. Farmers were typically running three or four people short … I haven’t seen that this time.” 

High-profile immigration raids in the second Trump administration have so far focused on major cities, including Chicago, New York, Denver and Los Angeles. Some people who worked in restaurants have been deported, and have been able to return to the villages Rosenow recently visited in rural Veracruz.

“I have a friend who was deported,” said Tepole. “He went to get food one day and they grabbed him and sent him back, just like that, after eight years. Luckily, he had already built his house.”

As Rosenow traveled among mountain villages, meeting family members of his dairy workers, he stopped to see a large cement house one of his current employees was building. Guadelupe Maxtle Salas was plastering a wall inside. He showed us the attached garage where Rosenow’s employee intends to set up shop as an auto mechanic when he finally returns. 

Maxtle Salas worked in the U.S. from the age of 14 until he was 19, he said. He milked cows on a dairy farm not far from Rosenow’s. He is thinking about going back to the U.S. after he finishes helping to build the house. He had applied for a work visa and then, when Trump took office, the app that allowed him to get the visa was abruptly cancelled. “I lost my chance,” he said. Now he thinks he might go illegally. “If I get there, I’ll look for you,” he told Rosenow.

Tlaxcala, 30, won’t be going back because of an injury that prevents him from resuming the heavy labor he did when he was in the U.S. He came back home one year ago. He was working in construction in Salem, Oregon, framing houses, when a beam fell on his back, fracturing two disks in his spine. 

He had been working abroad for five years, sending home money to support his family in San Juan Texhuácan. After the accident, he decided it was time to come home. 

He doesn’t blame his employer for what happened.

“After I hurt my back I couldn’t work. That’s the risk I took,” he said. “Unfortunately, I was working without insurance – illegally. My employer was not going to be responsible if I was hurt. I knew that.”

His employer paid the hospital bill. But Tlaxcala wasn’t eligible for unemployment benefits. Since returning home, he  hasn’t been able to afford medical attention to deal with continuing problems with his spine.

Immigrant workers who don’t have authorization in the U.S. are barred from receiving unemployment benefits even though they pay into the system through tax withholdings. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, workers without authorization paid $1.8 billion into unemployment insurance, a joint federal and state program, in 2024. During the COVID-19 pandemic, 12 states created programs to temporarily provide unemployment benefits to excluded workers. Only Colorado has made its program permanent.

Asked if the risk he took to work without protection in the U.S. was worth it,  Tlaxcala laughed. “Maybe yes, maybe no,” he said.

“It depends on your situation. If you’re lucky nothing happens to you.”

It cost Tlaxcala $11,000 to cross the border, he said. “Obviously it was a big risk. You have to deal with organized crime in the north of the country to go through the desert. The cartels are still in control. Every person who crosses the border puts his life in the hands of the organized crime syndicates. It seems necessary to us. I know a lot of people who have died trying to cross.”

Like Tepole and Hernández, he doubts the deportation threats will have a big impact on Mexican workers. 

“It’s just politics,” he said. “It’s the same as in Mexico. Politicians say lots of things they don’t follow through with. Mexicans understand that.” For example, he said, for generations, Mexican politicians have said they are going to end poverty. “They don’t,” Tlaxcala said.

“When I was growing up I felt that I didn’t have things that I needed.” he added. “I had to go to school in broken down shoes. Sometimes I didn’t have shoes. I didn’t have a backpack, and I wore old, worn out clothing – for lack of money. I was determined to do something about that.”

Before he went to the U.S., Tlaxcala worked as a truck driver in Mexico. But the only way to get ahead, he said, is to start a business and it was all he could do to come up with the initial investment to get his store going. “I had to use all of the money I earned to pay off the bank. By working in the United States, little by little I could get ahead.”

After working abroad for five years, he was able to afford to pay off his debts, buy a house and finance his business, a small store. “Bank loans, credit — you can’t cover those things with a regular salary here,” he said.

Another reason Tlaxcala doesn’t believe millions of Mexicans will be deported, he said, is the sheer number of immigrants he saw when he was living in the U.S. “In Salem 30-40% of the population is Latino. I’d go to Walmart and see people from my village,” he said. “Plus, it’s very heavy work — construction, roofing — and it doesn’t pay well. They need people.”

In the U.S., 1 in 4 construction workers is an immigrant, according to a National Association of Home Builders report that emphasizes the industry’s reliance on immigrant labor as well as a significant labor shortage. “The concentration of immigrants is particularly high in construction trades essential for home building,” the report found, including plasterers and stucco masons (64%) drywall/ceiling tile installers (52%), painters, (48%) and roofers (47%).

By building houses in the U.S. so they can send home money to build houses in Mexico, Mexican workers are fueling the economies of both countries.

“I understand that there are people who do bad things and those people should be sent back,” said Tepole. “But the manual labor force that is strengthening the country? Most of them are Mexicans.”

This story is Part Three in a series. Read Part One: Amid Trump’s threats to deport workers, Wisconsin dairy farmers travel to Mexico and Part Two: A deceased farmworker’s son finally returns to Mexico to meet his father’s family

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Mercedes Falk, executive director of the nonprofit Puentes/Bridges, which takes Midwestern dairy farmers to Mexico to meet their workers' families, talks with Teresa Juarez Tepole in her home | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

VERACRUZ, MEXICO — John Rosenow climbed into a pickup truck in Zongolica, a small city in rural southern Mexico, squeezing into the front with several friends and relatives from Wisconsin and Minnesota. In the back of the truck, six more people crowded onto benches, holding onto each other as the truck bounced over rutted dirt roads, climbing into the clouds as it traveled among little mountain villages in the state of Veracruz. The truck slowed down for a girl herding goats across the road and passed tiny wooden houses perched on the steep mountainside, with chickens in the yard and a few cows tied up by their horns.

“This never gets old,” said Rosenow, a 75-year-old dairy farmer from Waumandee, Wisconsin, who has made the same trip every winter since 2001, often joined by other dairy farmers who come to visit the families of their Mexican workers. He warned the group he might cry when he met up with some of his former employees. One current employee he’s particularly close to, Roberto, was contemplating moving home in December, but decided against it. “Man, that was the best Christmas present,” he said.

Along the way, the group saw wooden shacks with no indoor plumbing, dirt floors and tin roofs sitting next to big brick houses with shiny tile floors — the bigger houses built with money sent home by Mexican workers laboring in the U.S.

Economic interdependence and decades-long relationships have long bound dairy farmers in Wisconsin and nearby Minnesota to Mexican workers and their families. 

Of Rosenow’s 18 employees, 13 are from Mexico. That’s not unusual. Latin American workers, most of them from Mexico, perform an estimated 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms. The money they send home has lifted many of their families out of poverty. And without them, dairies like Rosenow’s would go belly-up. Yet almost all of the immigrant workers who milk cows in the U.S. lack legal status. That’s because, while the U.S. government provides visas for migrant workers who pick seasonal crops and for immigrants with specialized technical skills, there is no U.S. visa program for low-skilled labor in year-round industries like dairy.

In San Juan Texhuacán, about an hour up the mountain from Zongolica, Rosenow and the group visited Fatima Tepole, 42, who milked cows on a farm in Minnesota for four years, from 2012 to 2016, saving enough money to build a house next door to her parents and siblings and to start her business, a little school supply store. 

“Here the average worker can make 300 pesos a day,” (about $15) she said. “There you can make that much in an hour.” (Her estimate is close to what Mexican government data shows: Mexico’s average monthly salary is the equivalent of $297 U.S. dollars, or about $15 per day for a five-day workweek. Subsistence farmers in rural Veracruz generally make less and work longer hours.)

The visitors from the U.S. gathered in Tepole’s parents’ kitchen to learn how to make tortillas on a wood-burning stove. Then Tepole and her family served them a feast – meat stewed in green chili sauce with fresh tortillas and cheese and bean tostadas. Tepole had hosted many other Bridges groups over the years, including the farmer she worked for in Minnesota. “You’re the first Americans deported by Donald Trump!” she joked. 

Building a house — ‘our biggest dream’

Tepole’s sister-in-law, Celeste Tzanahua Hernández, 31, stood near the stove while the group ate. “We thank you for visiting us,” she said. “It’s good that other people know that we’re not all bad people — that people know and can value the work and sacrifices we are making.”

Tzanahua Hernández’s husband, who previously milked cows and now works at a sawmill, has been away from his two children, ages 5 and 12, for the last three and a half years while working in the U.S., she said. They expect him to return in a few months.

Waiting for him has been “a heavy emotional burden,” she said. But with the money he sends home, supplemented with her earnings as a preschool teacher, they’ve been able to build a home — a spacious, open-plan living area and modern kitchen attached to the compound where the extended family lives — buy a used car and afford school tuition, music lessons, tae kwon do, dental work and doctor’s appointments for the children.

When he comes home, her husband is planning to buy some equipment and set himself up in business as a builder.

Lately the family has been worried about Trump’s deportation threats.

“My husband saw ICE at a restaurant. It scared him a lot. That would not be the best way to have to come home,” Tzanahua Hernández said. “He has a car there. He wants to sell it. My dad is worried about what will happen if he goes to jail, or if he has to leave with no money — and how they treat immigrants on the border.”

The family has urged him to send home his valuables: “If he has some good shoes, good things, start sending them home so he doesn’t lose them,” Tzanahua Hernández said.

“He comforts us by saying that the situation is not so dangerous,” she added. “But we see the news reports — the young men who had recently arrived and now have been deported. … He says he feels better knowing that now our house is built, which was our biggest dream.”

Tepole and other Mexican workers estimated that it costs $25,000 to $35,000 to build a small house — the goal of many who are sending home money from jobs in the U.S. The strength of the dollar means the money people earn in the U.S. goes much farther in Mexico.

“For the first year you work there, you pay off your debt to cross the border,” Tepole said. Border crossings can cost between  $11,000 and $15,000, workers told the Examiner. “If you work really hard you can do that in seven or eight months,” Tepole said. “After another year, you have enough to start building. But you are also covering expenses for your family. So it depends on those expenses how far you get. After that, in two or three more years you can finish your house if you give it your all.”

“Young people can do it faster,” she added. “It takes more time if you are paying expenses for your kids.”

Money sent home to Mexico by workers in the U.S. is the country’s largest single source of foreign income — more than Mexico brings in from tourism, exports of manufactured products or petroleum sales. In 2023 Mexico received $63.3 billion in remittances from its citizens who labor in the U.S. — about 4.5% of total GDP — according to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Mexico ranks second only to India for the size of the contribution made by people working abroad to their home country’s economy. And the amount of money sent home by Mexican workers in the U.S. has increased dramatically in recent years, by roughly 32% between 2019 and 2023, according to the same report. Beyond covering families’ basic expenses, remittances drive economic development, “providing households with the means to save money and make investments in education, upskilling, and community improvement,” the report found.

On the U.S. side, undocumented workers pay about $97 billion in total taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. About $26 billion of that goes to fund Social Security and $6 billion for Medicare — programs from which those workers are excluded. “We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking immigrants are taking money out of the pot,” says David Kallick, director of the Immigration Research Initiative in New York. His group has done a lot of research over the years “to show how immigration is a big contributor to the overall economic success of this country,” Kallick adds. “But the economic damage done by tearing people away from their jobs is even bigger.” 

“You’re talking about 19% of the labor force and $4.6 trillion in economic output,” Kallick says of immigrant workers’ overall contribution to the U.S. economy. Deporting the estimated 11 million workers in the U.S. without legal status would have devastating ripple effects from the loss of farms, restaurants, construction projects, home health care and child care, he says. “We have a broken immigration system that has made it possible for people to become very much part of the economy across the board, and yet to be trapped in the lowest wage jobs in every sector.” 

“The reality,” he adds, “is there are not enough U.S.-born people to take the place of millions of people doing these jobs who are undocumented.”

One unintended consequence of the militarization of the U.S./Mexico border is that workers without authorization who would otherwise go home to Mexico have stayed in the U.S. for longer stints in recent years, knowing that once they go home they might never be able to cross the border again to come back.

‘When they go, it’s sad’

Up the hill from Fatima Tepole’s house, her friend Teresa Juarez Tepole, age 48, has four adult children between the ages of 26 and 33 who are working in the U.S, while she takes care of their children. Mercedes Falk, a translator on about 20 dairy farms in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the director of the nonprofit group Puentes/Bridges, which organized the trip to Mexico, told Teresa that the farmer one of her sons works for in Minnesota is “an incredible person,” who wants to give her son special training so he can advance in his job. Teresa was glad to hear it. “He has confidence in my son,” she said, smiling.

When her children were very small their father died, Teresa said, and she barely scratched out a living by taking in washing and making tortillas. Sometimes the family was hungry.

She couldn’t afford to send the children to school beyond the early grades. From the time they were little, they helped with the washing and making tortillas. Her oldest son started working in a bakery as a teenager. “They’d give him four or five loaves of bread and he would bring them home, because I couldn’t afford to buy bread,” she said.

Now they’ve all gone to the U.S. “to see their kids grow up, to give them an education, too, because here there’s no money.”

Her granddaughter is in secondary school. “I can’t read or write well, but I tell my granddaughter she has to study hard because her mother is suffering so she can study,” she said. 

Teresa’s 30-year-old daughter has been in the U.S. for the last three and a half years. She picked fruit for the first year and a half and for the last two years has been milking cows on a dairy farm in Minnesota.

“When they go, it’s sad,” Teresa said. “You don’t know how long it will take them, when they’ll arrive, how they’ll be treated … I cried a lot.”

Even though she is proud of her children, she misses them, she said. “When they were growing up, at dinner time we always sat down together.”

And now, on top of the loneliness, there is more worry, she said. “With the president there, I start thinking of my kids and, my God, there they are and what if he throws them out? What if they’re mistreated? … There’s nothing to do but put ourselves in God’s hands, may he protect us.”

Hoping there aren’t mass deportations

At each stop on the Puentes/Bridges trip, people asked about Trump’s planned deportations.

Rosenow told several families that Brooke Rollins, Trump’s agriculture secretary, has said that deportations won’t hurt dairy farms. Rollins testified during her confirmation hearings that she supported Trump’s plan for mass deportations but that she would work with the administration to “make sure none of these farms or dairy producers are put out of business.”

“I’m counting on that,” Rosenow said. During the trip, his wife called with another worry: Trump’s tariffs were reportedly about to wreak havoc with exports of butter to Canada and drive up the price of the peat moss they import to make the compost they sell on their farm.

At a stop outside the little town of Astacinga, the conversation again turned to deportation. Rosenow stopped to visit the family of his favorite employee, Roberto, 45, and Kevin, Roberto’s 21-year-old son, who came North a few years ago to work with his dad on the farm. 

In the kitchen, Rosenow told Roberto’s mother, Concepciona Acahua Macoixtle, 62, , with Falk translating, “Roberto is my best friend. He gets along with anybody. And he has become a better golfer than me.” The two men golf together every week during the season, and Roberto has become something of a local celebrity on the golf course in Buffalo County.

Rosenow got out his phone to show a picture of Roberto playing golf.

Roberto’s wife, Veronica, asked how her son Kevin was behaving. Assured by Rosenow that he was “a delight,” she then turned to her other worry. “Is there a lot of immigration enforcement up there?” she asked.

“There are a lot of rumors, but I have a lot of confidence in the secretary of agriculture,” Rosenow said, once again explaining that he’s relying on Rollins’ assurance that farms won’t go out of business because of immigration enforcement. 

“If not, tell my husband to come home,” Veronica said. “Or his boss should get him a visa.”

“I’d do it in a moment,” Rosenow said, as Falk translated.

Falk explained that six-month visas are for seasonal work and dairy farmers can’t apply for them for their workers. Roberto’s mother nodded. “You have to work every day.”

“Some people are getting grabbed by immigration,” she said. Restaurant workers from nearby Astacinga were deported to tent cities in the north of Mexico, she said, adding, “that’s why we’re worried about our children.”

Veronica’s son Aaron, 15, wanted to go up North, too, but Kevin calls and lectures him about staying in school, his mother told the group. Now he’s going to high school in Astacinga and will graduate in a couple of years, Veronica said. 

Concepciona’s grandchildren have vastly different lives from her own life growing up, or that of her children. Her mother died when she was 4 and she never went to school. Instead she tended the family’s sheep when she was young and met her husband at 18, when both were working in the fields cutting sugar cane.

When they were raising their children, Concepciona said, “We all lived together in one kitchen room. Sometimes there wasn’t enough food. They didn’t have shoes sometimes. They didn’t always have tortillas.”

As a teenager, Roberto went to work and took care of his little siblings, sending home money from jobs in Mexico City and later Kentucky, so they would have enough to eat. He first went to the U.S. when he was 16, but returned several times — the last time was when Meagan, 10, was born. He hasn’t been home since she was 3 months old.

“I told him to come home, but he doesn’t,” Concepciona said. “It’s not that he doesn’t want to. The problem is here there’s no money. There, he can earn money to help with his kids’ education. Ten years he’s been there.” She began to cry. 

“My mother- in-law has lost all five of her sons. They’re all up there,” said Veronica. 

During the years Roberto has spent in the U.S., he has built a home for his parents, and Veronica has overseen the excavation and building of their own two-story home with a carport, which looks like it was transplanted to the mountainside from a U.S. suburb. Brick pillars frame a heavy metal gate, behind which a manicured grass lawn is surrounded by a low rock wall and a garden full of fruit trees, palms and rose bushes. 

Veronica and Roberto also purchased more land nearby, where they keep a flock of sheep. With some of his earnings Roberto has helped his nieces go to college. One is finishing up studying to be a teacher and lives with Veronica, she said.

Meagan, a fifth grader, has always gotten good grades, Veronica said proudly. Meagan gave the U.S. visitors an impromptu performance of the Mexican national anthem in Nahuatl — she’d been practicing for a competition at her bilingual Spanish/Nahuatl school.

As the Puentes group got ready to leave, Concepciona said, “Tell my boys to take care. Ask when they are coming. They always say August, December. Then the next December comes and they don’t arrive.”

“The problem is the risk if they don’t have papers,” said Veronica, “so they can’t come back.”

This article is Part One in a series. In Part Two, the U.S.-born son of a deceased Mexican dairy worker meets his extended family in Mexico for the first time. 

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

An Eau Claire County farm. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Seven western Wisconsin Republican lawmakers did not appear at an event hosted by the Wisconsin Farmers Union in Chippewa Falls Friday as farmers from the area said they were concerned about the effect that President Donald Trump’s first month in office is having on their livelihoods. 

Madison-area U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth), state Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Eau Claire) and state Reps. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) and Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) were in attendance. 

U.S. Reps. Tom Tiffany and Derrick Van Orden, state Reps. Rob Summerfield (R-Bloomer), Treig Pronschinske (R-Mondovi) and Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and state Sens. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and Rob Stafsholt (R-New Richmond) were all invited but did not attend or send a staff member. 

“All four of us want you to know that there are people in elected office who want to fight for you,” Phelps said. “Because I think there’s a lot of fear that comes from the fact that we’re seeing a lot of noise and action from the people who aren’t and some of the people that didn’t show up to this. So I hope that you will also ask questions of them when you get a chance.” 

Multiple times during the town hall, Pocan joked that Van Orden was “on vacation.” 

Emerson, whose district was recently redrawn to include many of the rural areas east of Eau Claire, told the Wisconsin Examiner she had just been at an event held by the Chippewa County Economic Development Corporation where a Van Orden staff member did attend, so she didn’t understand why they couldn’t hear about how Trump’s policies are harming local farmers. 

“I get that a member of Congress can’t be at every meeting all the time, all throughout their district,” Emerson said. With 19 counties in the 3rd District, “it’s a big area. But I hope that they’re hearing the stories of farmers and farm-adjacent businesses, even if they weren’t here. There’s something different to sit in this room and look out at all the farmers, and when one person’s talking, seeing the tears in everybody else’s eyes, and it wasn’t just the female farmers that were crying, the big tough guys, and I think that talks about how vulnerable they are right now, how scary it is for some of these folks.”

Carolyn Kaiser, a resident of the nearby town of Wheaton, said she’s never seen her congressional representative, Van Orden, out in the community. Despite Van Orden’s position on the House agriculture committee, Kaiser said her town needs help managing nitrates in the local water supply and financial support to rebuild crumbling rural roads that make it more difficult for farmers to transport their products.

“When people don’t come, it’s unfortunate,” Kaiser said. 

Emmet Fisher, who runs a small dairy farm in Hager City, said during the town hall that he was struggling with the freeze that’s been put on federal spending, which affected grants he was set to receive through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Fisher told the Examiner his farm has participated in a USDA program to encourage better conservation practices on farms and that money has been frozen. He was also set to receive a rural energy assistance grant that would help him install solar panels on the farm — money that has also been held up.

The result, he said, is that he’s facing increased uncertainty in an already uncertain business.

“We get all our income from our farm, young family, young kids, a mortgage on the farm, and so, you know, things are kind of tight, and so we try to take advantage of anything that we can,” he said. “[The] uncertainty seems really unnecessary and unfortunate, and it’s very stressful. You know, basically, we have no idea what we should be planning for. The reality is just that in farming already, you can only plan for so much when the weather and ecology and biology matter so much, and now to have all of these other unknowns, it makes planning pretty much impossible.”

A number of crop farmers at the event said the looming threat of Trump imposing tariffs on Canadian imports is alarming because a large majority of potash — a nutrient mix used to fertilize crops — used in the United States comes from Canada. Les Danielson, a cash crop and dairy farmer in Cadott, said the tariffs are set to go into effect during planting season.

“How do you offer a price to a farmer? Is it gonna be $400 a ton, or is it gonna be $500 a ton?” he asked. “I’m not even thinking about the fall. I’m just thinking about the spring and the uncertainty. This isn’t cuts to the federal budget, this is just plain chaos and uncertainty that really benefits no one. And I know it’s kind of cool to think we’re just playing this big game of chicken. Everybody’s gonna blink. But when you’re a co-op, or when you’re a farmer trying to figure out how much you can buy, it’s not fine.”

A recent report by the University of Illinois found that a 25% tariff on Canadian imports — the amount proposed by Trump to go into effect in March — would increase fertilizer costs by $100 per ton for farmers.

Throughout the event, speakers said they were concerned that Trump’s efforts to deport workers who are in the United States without authorization  could destroy the local farm labor force, that cuts to programs such as SNAP (commonly known as food stamps) could cause kids to go hungry and prevent farmers from finding markets to sell their products, that cuts to Medicaid could take coverage away from a population of farmers that is aging and relies on government health insurance and that because of all the disruption, an already simmering mental health crisis in Wisconsin’s agricultural community — in rural parts of the state that have seen clinics and hospitals close or consolidate — could come to a boil.

“Rural families, we tend to really need BadgerCare. We need Medicaid. We need those programs, too,” Pam Goodman, a public health nurse and daughter of a farmer, said. “So if you’re talking about the loss of your farming income, that you’re not going to have cash flow, you’re already experiencing significant concerns and issues, and we need the state resources. We need those federal resources. I’ve got families that from young to old, are experiencing significant health issues. We’re not going to be able to go to the hospital. We’re not going to go to the clinic. We already traveled really long distances. We’re talking about the health of all of us, and that is, for me, from my perspective as a nurse, one of my biggest concerns, because it’s all very interrelated.”

Near the end of the event, Phelps said it’s important for farmers in the area to continue sharing how they’re being hurt by Trump’s actions, because that’s how they build political pressure.

“Who benefits from all the chaos and confusion and cuts? Nobody, roughly, but not literally, nobody,” he said. “Because I just want to point out that dividing people and making people confused and uncertain and vulnerable is Donald Trump’s strategy to consolidate his political power.”

“And the people that can withstand the types of cuts that we’re seeing are the people so wealthy that they can withstand them. So they’re in Donald Trump’s orbit, basically,” Phelps said, adding  that there are far more people who will be adversely affected by Trump’s policies than there are people who will benefit.

“And you know that we all do have differences with our neighbors, but we also have a lot of similarities with them, and being in that massive group of people that do not benefit from this kind of chaos and confusion is a pretty big similarity,” he continued. “And so hopefully these types of spaces where we’re sharing our stories and hearing from each other will help us build the kind of community that will result in the kind of political power that really does fight back against it.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Justin Hubly, executive director of the Nebraska Association of Public Employees, speaks at a news conference in December 2023 in Lincoln, Neb., about Republican Gov. Jim Pillen’s executive order mandating state employees return to offices. Leaders in several other red states are following President Donald Trump’s lead on scaling back working from home for government workers. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)

A yearslong conflict over whether Nebraska’s governor can unilaterally force state workers back to the office will ultimately be sorted out by the state’s highest court.

The Nebraska Association of Public Employees, which represents more than 8,000 state employees, challenged Republican Gov. Jim Pillen’s November 2023 order requiring workers in offices full time. The group argues that Pillen cannot do so without labor contract negotiations.

Justin Hubly, executive director of the union, said most of Nebraska’s state employees would continue working from physical offices, as they did before the pandemic. But he said many state jobs could be performed remotely.

“Who cares where our IT application developers are working, what time of the day they’re working, as long as their assignments are done in a timely matter?” he said.

Hubly said the issue has become needlessly politicized in Nebraska and across the country. In recent weeks, Republicans in states nationwide have echoed President Donald Trump’s skepticism that government work can be effectively done remotely.

“It seems that everything in America today has to become a political issue and then immediately has to be chosen to be a conservative red-state issue or a liberal blue-state issue,” Hubly said.

Last week in the Oval Office, Trump repeated his rationale for requiring federal workers to be in the office, part of his push to shrink the workforce. He claimed without evidence that many of them are balancing two jobs and only devoting 10% to 20% of their government time to working.

“Nobody’s going to work from home, they’re going to be going out, they’re gonna play tennis, they’re gonna play golf,” Trump told reporters.

Experts say the president’s push has turned the work-from-home debate into a partisan fight.

“I would analogize it to many states launching their own DOGE commissions, to sort of signal affinity with what’s happening in Washington,” said Peter Morrissey, senior director of talent and strategy at the Volcker Alliance, a nonprofit that works to support public sector workers.

Earlier this month, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine ordered state employees back to their offices starting March 17. Similarly, Oklahoma GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt signed an order in December that requires employees to work full time from offices as of this month. And Republicans who control Wisconsin’s legislature are pushing legislation and pressuring the state’s Democratic governor over the issue.

In Nebraska, a labor court last July ruled against the public employees union, though the union has appealed the decision to the Nebraska Supreme Court. The July decision came down on a Thursday, and Pillen said he expected state workers to be back in offices the next Monday.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is long over, and it is likewise long overdue that our full workforce is physically back,” he said at the time.

Before Pillen’s executive order, 2,250 employees in Nebraska’s 25 largest agencies were working remote or hybrid, said Pillen spokesperson Laura Strimple. She said 1,100 — or 8% of those agencies’ workers — are now working remotely or hybrid and that the state is “still evaluating available space in the future to return even more public servants.”

The politicization of remote work

Like private employers, states have been grappling with the complications of remote work since the COVID-19 pandemic. But nearly five years later, the issue is as political as ever.

Trump is requiring a return to office in part to have federal employees quit as his administration seeks to shrink the government workforce, according to a November Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Department of Government Efficiency task force head Elon Musk and his then-DOGE partner, Vivek Ramaswamy.

Morrissey noted that state, local and federal governments compete with the private sector for workers. And with less competitive pay in many government roles, a lack of flexible work arrangements could prove a competitive disadvantage — particularly for some of the most specialized workers.

He added that legitimate debate over worker productivity and taxpayer savings related to remote work should not be an excuse to use “the public workforce as a culture war item or a punching bag.”

Morrissey expects state political leaders will leave flexibility for agency directors and department management to craft hybrid or remote work arrangements.

Even the White House’s order allowed agency leaders to “make exemptions they deem necessary.”

Research has found slight productivity dips from remote work, though it can help with employee recruitment and retention, said Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who researches remote work.

Fully remote workers also can deliver employers significant cost savings through reduced office expenses and less employee turnover. But evaluating the performance of remote employees is tricky, particularly so in government work. Bloom said hybrid arrangements — such as requiring workers to come into the office three days a week — might make the most sense for governments to maximize productivity, employee satisfaction and office savings.

“This is why 80% of Fortune 500 companies have managers and professionals on a hybrid schedule,” he said.

But Bloom views the Republican return-to-office trend in government as a way to reduce staffing. Employees often prefer to work remotely and view hybrid schedules as providing the equivalent benefit of an 8% pay increase.

“This is clearly all about reducing headcount,” Bloom said. “By making work more unpleasant, the hope is employees quit.”

Republicans rethinking remote shift

Long before the pandemic, the Utah government embraced remote work as a way to cut costs.

Then-Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, called himself a “televangelist for telework” in 2019, after a successful pilot program. As governor, Cox in 2021 signed an executive order requiring state agencies to review whether work could be performed remotely. The order said remote work saved taxpayers millions, improved Utah’s air quality by cutting commutes and improved employee satisfaction.

But last month, Cox said the state is reevaluating its framework.

He said remote work could lead to increased productivity — if it’s accompanied with specific oversight and training. But those guardrails weren’t always implemented when the pandemic suddenly sent state workers home, he said.

“You don’t just send people home with a computer. It’s much more detailed than that,” Cox told reporters.

Cox said the state had been bringing more workers back into offices over the past few years as the administration weighs both employee productivity and taxpayer savings.

“Remote work has its place, but so does being together,” he said.

In Wisconsin, the remote work debate has split state leaders along partisan lines.

In November, Republican House Speaker Robin Vos proposed as part of the budget requiring all state workers to return to offices three or four days per week.

“A lot of employees aren’t working or they’re working only from home and not doing it very well with very little supervision,” he told a local television station.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers pledged to veto any such requirement. He noted that Wisconsin in recent years made significant efforts to hire workers across the state outside the major population centers of Madison and Milwaukee.

More than a dozen state agencies have already consolidated office space as the administration sought to develop a work environment better suited to help with employee recruitment and retention, Evers’ office said in a statement to Stateline. In recent years, Wisconsin’s government has shed 230,000 square feet of office space with nearly 400,000 more planned, according to a January report.

The governor’s office said reversing course now would drive up costs and negate millions of expected taxpayer savings. Implementing in-office work arrangements would require more private lease arrangements or reopening buildings that are slated for closure and sale.

Aside from ongoing budget negotiations, Republican lawmakers introduced stand-alone legislation that would require employees who worked in offices before the pandemic to return by July 1.

State Republican Rep. Amanda Nedweski, who leads the state Assembly’s new committee on Government Operations, Accountability, and Transparency, or GOAT — mirrored after Trump’s DOGE effort — testified last week in favor of a Senate return-to-work bill. But she said the majority caucus isn’t against remote work entirely.

In an interview, Nedweski pointed to a 2023 legislative audit on remote work that found the state lacked data on the extent of remote work and recommended more detailed monitoring.

Nedweski said there may be potential efficiencies from telework, but said the state needs “to get a handle on who’s doing what and from where and why.”

“And what are they missing out on by not having that opportunity to collaborate with co-workers on a regular basis?” she said in an interview. “We miss out on the opportunities to innovate when people are isolated and not working together.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Around Madison, supporters of UW Health nurses seeking union representation have posted yard signs expressing their position. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

A campaign for union representation by nurses working for UW Health reached the Wisconsin Supreme Court Wednesday with an argument over whether state law grants them collective bargaining rights or has definitively taken those rights away.

Tamara Packard, the lawyer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), argued that the employees of UW Hospital and Clinics Authority — the corporation that operates as UW Health — have union rights under the Wisconsin Employment Peace Act.

“The language that’s in the statute now incorporates all employers except those that are excluded,” Packard said — and the hospital system authority is not one of those.

An attorney for the hospital authority asserted that the UW Health employees’ union rights were explicitly removed as part of the 2011 law known as Act 10, however.

Act 10, enacted early in Scott Walker’s first term as governor, stripped public employees — except for most police and firefighters — of all but the most rudimentary union rights.

But it also made changes related to the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Authority — a corporate entity that was spun off in 1996 from the University of Wisconsin under 1995 Act 27. The law created a public authority with connections to the state but getting no direct state funding.

Act 27 specified that the hospital system authority was an employer under the Peace Act and included a guarantee of union rights for the hospital system’s employees, who were represented at the time. But Act 10 undid both of those provisions, said James Goldschmidt, of Quarles & Brady, representing UW Health.

The law repealed legal language “expressly stating that the authority is a covered employer,” Goldschmidt said, along with  language “expressly obligating the authority to engage in collective bargaining.” And it repealed all references to the hospital authority in the Peace Act, along with all references to the Peace Act in the law creating the authority.

“Repeal, repeal, repeal,” Goldschmidt said. “You cannot read this act [Act 10] that the Legislature enacted without seeing those changes. Those are part and parcel of the law itself.”

Widespread assumption

For 11 years after Act 10’s passage, virtually everyone involved — union and hospital officials alike — assumed that the law barred collective bargaining for UW Health employees. When nurses employed by the hospital system announced in December 2019 that they wanted to be represented again by SEIU, they framed their demand as a request for voluntary engagement with hospital system management to discuss wages and working conditions.

In 2021, that changed, starting with a legal opinion — also written by Packard, an attorney for the Madison law firm of Pines Bach — that Act 10 didn’t bar collective bargaining at UW Health. A subsequent opinion by state Attorney General Josh Kaul said that UW Health might fall under the Peace Act, but sidestepped a firm declaration on that point.

In September 2022, as nurses demanding union recognition were on the verge of a three-day strike, SEIU and UW Health officials reached an agreement brokered by Gov. Tony Evers that included a joint petition to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC).

In the petition, the union argued that the hospital should be considered an employer under the Peace Act, while UW Health argued that Act 10 barred collective bargaining at the hospital system. WERC sided with UW Health, and Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost subsequently affirmed the employment commission’s conclusion.

That was the ruling before the Supreme Court Wednesday.

Justice Brian Hagedorn noted — as UW Health’s lawyers did in their brief on the case — that in a federal court challenge to Act 10 more than a decade ago, SEIU had itself stated the union lost bargaining rights at UW Health.

Packard acknowledged as much, but said the union’s position now was “based on, largely, the law that has developed in the last 13 years.”

Defining an ‘employer’

The argument centered on wording in the Employment Peace Act defining an employer, and whether Act 10’s provisions applying to the UW Hospital and Clinics Authority clearly excluded the hospital system from that definition.

Packard said that the Peace Act defines a “person” in the corporate sense as an “employer” with workers who have a right to collective bargaining.

The Court has previously affirmed that UW Hospital and Clinics Authority is a “person” in another legal context. For that reason, Packard said, “the plain language” of the law requires treating the hospital authority as an employer under the Peace Act.

Act 10 repealed language in Act 27 explicitly declaring that the hospital system is a Peace Act employer. But that didn’t change how the act defines an employer, she said.

The Legislature explicitly excluded public employees and unions from the Peace Act’s definition of an employer. “The Legislature . . . if it meant to, could have included the hospital and clinics authority in that list of exceptions, and it did not,” Packard said.

Goldschmidt countered that the Peace Act’s definition of person “does not include a special entity, like the [hospital and clinics] authority, which is a legislatively created public body.”

When Act 27 was passed, the Legislature defined the new hospital and clinics authority as an employer subject to the Peace Act because “it was neither fish nor fowl — it was neither fully public nor fully private,” Goldschmidt said. Act 10 took away the Peace Act’s coverage, he reiterated.

Justice Rebecca Dallet questioned treating the hospital authority as a distinctly different entity, however.

“It’s a private corporation,” Dallet said, and has been treated as one in unrelated court decisions. When the Legislature passed Act 10, she said, “regardless of what they were repealing . . . the words on the page still say ‘employer’ and that a corporation is an employer.”

Packard argued that the language in the Peace Act is unambiguous, making no exception for UW Health as an employer. She called that a sufficient reason to declare the act covers the hospital and clinics authority without delving into the history of the law.

Two of the Court’s three-member conservative wing took exception to that argument.

Statutory history “is part of the way we make sense of the text,” said Hagedorn. “It seems that your argument is entirely premised on sort of a myopic focus on text and ignoring the statutory history context.”

Justice Rebecca Bradley agreed. “Act 27 was quite explicit in including the [hospital] authority in the definition of employer,” she told Packard. “Act 10 repealed that language. You can’t win unless you ask us to disregard that statutory history. That’s enacted law.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

State Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) testifies on Tuesday, Feb. 11, in favor of legislation to require state employees to work in the office five days a week starting July 1. (Screenshot/WisEye)

State employees who worked in the office before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 would have to return to working in person starting July 1 under a proposed bill that went before a state Senate committee Tuesday.

“The pandemic is now over and has been for quite a while,” said State Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie), testifying at a public hearing on SB-27 in the Senate Committee on Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs. “Yet a high volume of state duties that required in-person execution prior to 2020 are still being performed in locations outside of the state offices in which they were long housed prior to the pandemic.”

Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee), the bill’s Senate author, cited decisions by major U.S. employers to return to at least partial in-office schedules. “Returning to work in person makes sense and forces accountability,” Tomczyk said.

Nedweski and Tomczyk were the only witnesses to testify at Tuesday’s hearing. There is not an Assembly companion bill, but Nedweski is the lead Assembly co-sponsor of the Senate legislation. She also chairs the Assembly’s new Committee on Government Operations, Accountability, and Transparency.

Republican state lawmakers have been pushing for state employees to end remote work for most of the last four years.

Meanwhile, the Department of Administration (DOA) and the administration of Gov. Tony Evers have been moving forward with a plan, Vision 2030, to reduce the state’s real estate footprint.

No administration representatives testified at Tuesday’s hearing. But in a memo to reporters Tuesday afternoon, Evers’ communications director, Britt Cudaback, said Vision 2030 is based on moving to a “modern and hybrid work environment” mixing remote and in-office work “in order to continue to be a competitive employer and bolster our efforts to recruit, train, and retain workers statewide.”

If SB-27 is enacted, she said, returning to in-office-only work would require more private leases for office space or reopening buildings that are to be closed and sold, or both. The administration has projected savings of more than $7 million in occupancy costs and more than $540 million in deferred maintenance costs.

Reversing those plans “would neither be pragmatic nor fiscally prudent,” Cudaback said.

At the hearing, Nedweski emphasized that the bill’s intent is not simply to bar all remote work, but she argued that the state hasn’t systematically evaluated its impact.

“We don’t have a handle on what’s going on,” she said. “So the idea would be, everybody, please come back and let’s figure out what the best situation is.”

Two years ago the Legislature’s Joint Audit Committee commissioned the Legislative Audit Bureau to review remote work and space allocation in state government. The resulting report said the state lacked comprehensive data on the extent of remote work and recommended more detailed monitoring and documentation of remote work agreements and practices.

Democrats on the five-member Senate committee balked at the legislation, calling it inflexible and a potential deterrent to the state’s ability to hire.

Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) noted with remote work more state employees have been able to work from counties across Wisconsin, not just in its two largest cities. “If those people are going to have to keep their jobs and be in the office, which I assume would be Madison, are they going to be forced to give up their jobs?” he asked.

Nedweski and Tomczyk said that employees who were hired to work remotely or had employment agreements allowing remote work before the pandemic would not be required to return to an office five days a week.

But Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee), said the legislation’s wording appeared to be more narrowly written. “I am worried about this being wildly inflexible, and you’re talking about a level of flexibility that is not contained within the bill,” he said.

Nedweski said she “would be more than happy” to add language “that underscores that we already have DOA policy in place to allow for flexibility.”

Larson replied that the bill “would be a law that would override the policy.”

In an email message, Nedweski’s office staff member Tami Rongstad told the Wisconsin Examiner that there would be an amendment to exempt the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics from the bill “and clarify that the requirement to return to onsite work would not apply to duties that were performed off-site prior to March 1, 2020.”

Rongstad said Nedweski “was open to considering adding clarifying language to the bill related to future telework options for state employees beyond the July 1, 2025, return to in-person work date,” based on existing terms for remote work in the state human resources handbook. 

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Khalyl Mosley listens closely as Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers reads “The Rabbit Listens” when he visited Acelero Learning in Racine, one of three Head Start child care providers he toured in Wisconsin Monday, February 10.(Photo by Mark Hertzberg for Racine County Eye/republished by permission. Not available for republication.)

This report is republished by agreement with the Racine County Eye, where it originally appeared.

RACINE — Governor Tony Evers visited Acelero Learning, a Head Start program in Racine, on Monday, observing classrooms and meeting with staff while raising concerns about the potential consequences of federal funding cuts to early childhood education.

His visit was the last of a statewide swing to highlight the importance of the state’s Child Care Counts program and the vital role that affordable child care plays in Wisconsin’s economy.

Evers’ visit followed a week in which a number of Wisconsin Head Start programs reported they were unable to collect grant funds they had been awarded from the federal payment system. Head Start provides early education and child care for children from low-income families, many of whom are working. 

On Monday, Jenny Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, said programs that made draws from the federal portal last week that were not fulfilled have now received their funding. “We are waiting to see how things go this week,” Mauer told the Wisconsin Examiner.

During his Racine visit, Evers stressed that programs like Head Start are essential not just for children’s development but also for keeping families economically secure. He warned that without reliable funding, both child care staff and the families they serve could face serious economic hardship.

“This program has been here for 60 years, and there is bipartisan agreement that it’s needed and it works,” Evers told Acelero Learning staff after his tour of the facility. “But there’s no guarantee it’s going to be here much longer if Congress doesn’t act. We’re already seeing delays and funding freezes as they try to decide whether the program works — it does.”

Staff at Acelero Learning shared with Evers how federal funding has helped them recover from pandemic-related setbacks. Initially forced to reduce classroom capacity and staff, the program was able to reopen classrooms and raise wages with federal support.

Still, the threat of further cuts looms large. Federal funding made it possible to pay infant and toddler teachers livable wages, which has been crucial for attracting and retaining qualified candidates.

A growing crisis for families and the economy

The potential closure of Head Start programs could have far-reaching economic consequences. Thousands of child care staff could lose their jobs, while parents—especially those in low-income households—may be forced to leave the workforce if they have to pay for the rising cost of full-pay child care.

Evers framed the issue as both an economic and social crisis, pointing out that child care is often the deciding factor for families with two working parents.

“If mom and dad both want to work, they need reliable, affordable child care. Otherwise, someone is staying home, and that hurts families and businesses,” Evers said.

Economic implications of losing Head Start

A recent report from ReadyNation found that nearly a quarter of parents who lost access to steady child care were fired from their jobs as a result. In rural areas, where Head Start programs represent a significant portion of child care options, the situation is even more dire.

Job loss for child care staff: Head Start programs employ thousands of teachers, aides, and support staff. If the program is defunded, staff could find positions with local school districts, but many could face permanent job loss, further weakening the already fragile child care workforce.

Reduced workforce participation: Parents who rely on affordable child care to stay employed could face having to leave their jobs if they can’t afford full-pay child care, leading to reduced family income and increased financial strain.

A survey by ReadyNation found that 23% of parents reported being fired from their jobs due to the lack of stable child care options.

Increased financial burden on families: Without subsidized care, families could see child care expenses consume a significant portion of their income.

In some areas, Jeff Pertl noted during the governor’s visit, child care costs already represent up to 24% of the median household income, making it difficult for families to manage other essential expenses like rent and food. Pertl is secretary-designess of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.

Disproportionate impact on rural communities: A report from the Center for American Progress lists rural Head Start programs as up to 22% of the overall child care supply in rural areas. Losing these programs would worsen an already severe shortage and stifle economic growth.

Slowed economic growth: With fewer parents able to work, local businesses may face a shortage of employees, further slowing regional economic growth.

The loss of reliable child care disrupts productivity, as parents are forced to juggle work and child care or drop out of the workforce entirely.

Wider social impact on children: Beyond economics, cutting Head Start would reduce access to early learning opportunities for tens of thousands of children. These early experiences are crucial for long-term educational success and overall development.

Tanya Wooden from the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association points to the science to support why early childhood education is so important. “Nearly 80% of brain development happens before the age of three, so supporting early childhood education now tells the story for later,” she said. “What do you want the future to look like?”

Evers talks about limited state options

When asked whether the state could reallocate federal funds to fill gaps if Head Start funding disappears, Evers said Wisconsin’s pandemic relief funds have already been exhausted.

“We don’t have any extra federal funds left from the pandemic to shift toward these programs,” he explained. “It’s on Congress to act. They own this issue.”

He encouraged Wisconsin residents to hold their congressional representatives accountable, particularly Republican lawmakers.

“We have several Republican members of Congress in this state. They need to do their jobs and ensure that programs like Head Start continue.”

Pertl joined Evers in calling for swift action, emphasizing the potential fallout if Congress fails to act.

“If Congress defunds Head Start, tens of thousands of children across Wisconsin will lose their child care,” Pertl said. “This crisis is already severe, and that would pour gasoline on the fire. We can’t let that happen.”

Securing Wisconsin’s future

Despite the uncertainty at the federal level, Evers reaffirmed his commitment to supporting early childhood education in Wisconsin.

He has proposed a $480 million budget for the Child Care Counts program over the next two years to stabilize the sector and support working families.

“This is our future,” Evers said. “We can’t abandon 60 years of quality early education. We’re going to have to fight for it every day, but it’s worth it — for the kids, for families, and for our state’s economy.”

Erik Gunn of the Wisconsin Examiner contributed to this report.

Reports republished from Racine County Eye are not available for republishing elsewhere.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE