Mural depicting workers painted on windows of the Madison-Kipp Corp. by Goodman Community Center students and Madison-Kipp employees with Dane Arts Mural Arts. (Photo by Erik Gunn /Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin’s jobs and employment numbers showed a slightly softening economy in July, following national trends, the state labor department reported Thursday.
“The Wisconsin labor market has cooled a bit along with the national economy. Unemployment remains historically low,” said Scott Hodek, section chief in the office of economic advisors for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD), in a briefing on the July numbers.
Private-sector jobs dropped slightly in July from June, DWD reported. Employment and labor force participation edged down slightly, too, as did the state’s unemployment rate.
“What we’re seeing is that Wisconsin seems to be following the national trend,” Hodek told the Wisconsin Examiner. While the economy is cooling down, “we’re actually still seeing historically low unemployment rates,” Hodek said. “So you’ve got kind of a mix of up and down indicators.”
He pointed to national economic uncertainty as well as the longstanding challenge of Wisconsinites aging out of the workforce faster than younger residents are entering it as likely contributors to the economic cooling.
DWD pegged the number of Wisconsinites working in July at 3.05 million, a drop of 4,500 from June and down 32,500 from July 2024.
The number of people who were unemployed in July was projected at 98,600 — down 2,200 from June, but up 5,400 from July 2024. The unemployment rate for July was 3.1%.
The labor force shrank in July to just under 3.15 million, a decline of 6,700 from June and a decline of 27,000 from July 2024. The labor force is defined as people 16 or older who are working or seeking work, excluding people in the military or who are in institutions such as nursing homes or prisons.
Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate was 65% of the state’s population 16 or older in July — down 0.1% from June and down just under 1% from July a year ago. Labor force participation remains ahead of the U.S. as a whole, while unemployment is lower, DWD reported.
Employment and labor force participation numbers are projected from a monthly survey of households. A separate survey, polling employers, produces data on the number of jobs in the state.
Wisconsin counted just under 3.06 million nonfarm jobs — an increase of 1,800 over June and 20,200 over July a year ago. Private sector jobs in July totaled more than 2.6 million, a decrease of 3,800 from June but still 15,100 ahead of July 2024.
Construction jobs fell by 500 from June, Hodek said, but remained 3,100 ahead of July 2024. Manufacturing jobs fell by 500, and are down 1,800 from a year ago.
Rosier picture in Wisconsin than broader U.S.
Wisconsin’s jobs report Thursday lacked the drama of the national jobs numbers reported two weeks ago that prompted President Donald Trump to fire the nation’s chief statistician.
On Friday, Aug. 1, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)reported the U.S. gained 73,000 jobs in July, below analysts’ estimates. The BLS also updated national job numbers for May and June, dramatically reducing both: in June, a gain of 14,000 jobs instead of previously reported 147,000, and in May, an increase of 19,000 instead of the previously reported 125,000.
The national unemployment rate of 4.2% was in line with economic forecasts, CNBC reported. Other indicators nationally added up to “a slow but persistent cooling trend,” the North America regional president at Manpower Group, Ger Doyle, told CNBC.
Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to declare without evidence that the numbers were “RIGGED.” He summarily fired the director of the BLS,replacing her this week with an economist from the far-right Heritage Foundation who has called for a broad overhaul of the agency.
Hodek told the Wisconsin Examiner Thursday that DWD has not received any communications about changes in procedure from the BLS.
“We’ve certainly seen the news and we’re monitoring the situation, of course,” Hodek said. “But we do have confidence in our data and we can’t really speculate on what could possibly happen. We’ll just need to wait and see what the Bureau of Labor Statistics actually does down the road.”
Hodek said that revisions of previous months’ reports are “a normal part of the data process.” The first round of data isn’t inaccurate, but “as you take more time, the data become more accurate,” he said.
“Ideally you want a combination of both — something that kind of gives you the current edge of where you’re headed, and then as more and better data come in, you get a better sense of what has been happening,” Hodek said.
For example, a quarterly collection of information from the unemployment insurance system “actually covers most employers and it’s very solid data,” he said. “But it lags by half a year.”
Information from that report can be used to further refine the calculations and assumptions that go into the state’s monthly reports.
The monthly numbers for the nation as a whole and for each state go through different calculations and formulas, Hodek said, so it’s not possible to draw direct connections between the state jobs numbers and the national jobs numbers.
It’s also too soon to explain the seemingly dramatic differences between the national jobs picture and Wisconsin’s, he added: “We’ve only got a couple of data points where we saw those large revisions, so that doesn’t really make a trend necessarily yet.”
Hodek doesn’t think Wisconsin is somehow “diverging from the national economy,” however, he said. “In fact, it’s fairly unlikely in general, just because what happens to the national economy and the global economy is going to impact us as well. We tend to follow the national and global trends.”
Gov. Tony Evers signs AB 257 into law Friday. The bill creates a credential and pathway for advanced practice registered nurses to practice independently. (Photo courtesy of Office of Gov. Evers)
As expected, Gov. Tony Evers signed legislation Friday that clears the way for nurses with advanced training to practice independently.
“Nurses play a critical role in our healthcare workforce, and I’m proud of our work to expand opportunities for nurses to not only grow their career but create a system that allows for more advanced practitioners here in Wisconsin,” Evers said in a statement released Friday announcing his plans to signAB 257, the advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) legislation, now Wisconsin Act 17.
The bill creates a new license category and a professional pathway for nurses who qualify to practice independently.
Evers vetoed two other closely watched bills — one that would have carved out app-based drivers from protections under state employment laws and one that would require the state Department of Corrections to recommend sending back to prison people charged with a crime while they are on probation, parole or extended supervision.
Altogether the governor signed 16 of the 21 bills that the Legislature formally presented to him on Thursday and vetoed five.
Advanced practice nursing bill wins approval
The Wisconsin state nursing board will oversee the credentialing of advanced practice nurses, a group that includes certified nurse-midwives, certified registered nurse anesthetists, clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners.
Advocates said the measure will increase the availability of health care providers, particularly in parts of Wisconsin where doctors are scarce.
The bill he signed Fridayadds those requirements — increasing the amount of supervision that an APRN must have under a physician to 3,840 hours before practicing independently; adding additional supervision requirements for certified registered nurse anesthetists who specialize in pain management; and including language to restrict the titles APRN practitioners use so patients aren’t confused about their credentials.
The Wisconsin Medical Society cited those issues in opposing APRN bills in previous legislative sessions, and with the 2025 revision shifted its stance to neutral.
Infloor votes in June, lawmakers from both parties stressed the bipartisan compromise reflected in the measure that was presented to Evers this week.
In his announcement, Evers thanked lawmakers for their work on the measure, including Republican state Sens. Patrick Testin and Rachael Cabral-Guevara, Republican state Rep. Tony Kurtz and Democratic state Rep. Lisa Subeck.
He also thanked “the many nursing and physician groups that we worked with to get this bipartisan bill across the finish line to help bring more folks into the healthcare profession and ensure that Wisconsinites get the high-quality care they need when they need it while setting our nurses up for success.”
Bill classifying gig drivers vetoed
Evers vetoed AB 269, legislation that would have blocked drivers from app-based rideshare and delivery businesses from being declared employees.
The legislation would have automatically classified drivers for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and similar businesses as independent contractors, bypassing current Wisconsin laws that differentiate independent contractors from direct employees.
It would have categorically excluded app-based drivers from coverage under the state’s unemployment insurance, workers compensation and minimum wage laws.
“I object to the bill’s definition of independent contractor status in the absence of any guaranteed benefit for workers,” Evers wrote in his veto message.
In a campaign pushed most prominently by DoorDash and other app-based businesses that enlist drivers, advocates focused on the bill’s provisions that would permit — but not require — those businesses to establish portable benefits for drivers.
Evers acknowledged in his veto message that app-based drivers “are a growing segment of Wisconsin’s workforce.” But he said changing the state’s independent contractor definitions “demands substantive conversations among several parties,” with management and workers both at the table.
Evers wrote that while the bill was moving through the Legislature, his staff asked lawmakers and groups with an interest in the measure to allow time for “robust dialogue and engagement to reach consensus and compromise” over the legislation.
“Unfortunately the Legislature declined to meaningfully provide that opportunity, choosing instead to send this bill to my desk anyway,” he wrote. “My veto today will allow time for these important conversations to occur so Wisconsin can find a path forward.”
The Wisconsin AFL-CIO praised the veto. “Legislation that makes the loss of important worker rights a certainty while holding out the possibility of flexible benefits if and when the employer chooses to provide them is a bad deal for workers,” President Stephanie Bloomingdale said.
Bill pushing revocation for offenders rejected
Evers vetoed AB 85, legislation that would require the Department of Corrections to recommend automatically returning a person to prison who is charged with a crime while on extended supervision, parole or probation. Evers vetoed a similar bill in 2019.
Evers wrote in his veto message that the legislation was “an unfunded mandate” likely to cost the state more than $330 million in the first two years, according to the fiscal estimate, “and hundreds of millions in unknown, ongoing costs.”
In addition, he wrote, it would likely require building more prison facilities and would be expected to impose new costs on local governments, while he blamed lawmakers for “significantly underfunding existing operations at the Department of Corrections in the most recent state budget.”
The bill “would move Wisconsin in the wrong direction on criminal justice reform without improving public safety,” Evers wrote.
Instead, he urged lawmakers, “Wisconsin should be investing in data-driven, evidence-based programming that addresses barriers to reentry, enhances educational and vocational opportunities for individuals who will be released after completing their sentence, and provides treatment for mental health and substance use issues, which will help to reduce recidivism and save taxpayer money while improving public safety.”
In a message posted on Facebook the bill’s author, state Rep. Brent Jacobson (R Mosinee), criticized the veto. “It is unacceptable to give repeat criminals the opportunity to continue to put our families and neighbors at risk again and again without facing consequences,” he wrote.
The bill was opposed by criminal justice reform organizations, including the national prison reform group Dream.Organd Wisconsin-based Ex-incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO).
“This harmful bill would have led to more people being revoked from community supervision and incarcerated, making it harder to build safe and thriving communities in Wisconsin,” Dream.Org posted on Facebook. The organization credited campaigning by advocates and community groups with persuading Evers to veto the measure.
Primary care medicine measure falls
Evers vetoed SB 4, legislation that would specify that subscription-based direct primary medical care arrangements are not subject to the state’s insurance laws.
While the legislation had some bipartisan support in concept, it foundered at the governor’s desk on the issue of anti-discrimination language.
Evers listed in his veto message a number of provisions in the legislation that forbid primary care providers from refusing to treat patients.
Nevertheless, he wrote that he objected to “the Legislature failing to provide sufficient protections for patients receiving care under direct primary care agreements from being discriminated against and potentially losing access to their healthcare.”
Evers did not specify what additional protections he believed the measure should include. “I previously raised similar concerns when I vetoed earlier iterations of this legislation five years ago — concerns the Legislature has declined to satisfactorily address in the bill that is now before me and despite having ample opportunity,” he wrote.
In 2020, when Evers vetoed the version of the legislation on his desk at the time, he wrote that he objected to an amendment in which lawmakers had removed language protecting patients from being refused treatment on the grounds of “genetics, national origin, gender identity, citizenship status, or whether the patient is LGBTQ.”
In his veto message Friday, Evers wrote, “Every Wisconsinite should be able to get the healthcare they need when and where they need it — and without fear of discrimination. I welcome the Legislature revisiting this legislation and the opportunity to enact a version of this bill that sufficiently addresses my concerns.”
the Von Ruden farm sits on a hill overlooking Vernon County. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
State Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Rep. Jenna Jacobson joined Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden on his Vernon County farm Thursday to criticize the economic and agricultural policies of President Donald Trump as bad for Wisconsin’s small and medium farms.
The event at the farm in Westby came as Wisconsin Republicans have ignored or disputed the cumulative effect on farmers of tariffs on foreign imports, cuts to programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and an immigration policy that has scared away some farm laborers who are afraid to show up to work.
“The tariffs coming out of Washington D.C. are hurting our farmers across Wisconsin and across the country, and you don’t have to just take this from me,” Pfaff said. “All you have to do is look at the economic indicators, those troubling signs that are coming across from Washington, D.C. Job growth is stagnating, prices are rising, and the agriculture sector is taking a hit. Sadly, my Republican colleagues in Madison seem to be turning a blind eye to all of these concerns.”
Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden speaks about the affect of Trump tariffs as state Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon) listen. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), whom Jacobson is challenging in next year’s midterm elections, recently said that “farmers aren’t concerned” about the potential damage of Trump’s policies. At a telephone town hall earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said that through actions such as raising the estate tax exemption for farms and the establishment of trade agreements with countries around the world, Wisconsin farmers will be able to benefit from “free markets.”
But Von Ruden told the Wisconsin Examiner he doesn’t see how Wisconsin’s farmers can benefit when the federal government is cutting programs that directly help them find markets for their products while tariffs only make it harder to export. Trump and Republicans have made massive cuts to USDA programs that help schools and food banks buy food from local farmers. The recently enacted Republican reconciliation law makes large cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, which low-income residents have been able to use to buy food from producers at local farmer’s markets.
“That’s hundreds of millions of dollars that farmers are going to lose because the government’s not going to be purchasing [food] to take care of the most needy people in this country,” Von Ruden said. “The other thing is, because we’ve allowed so many loopholes in the USDA, fewer people are getting bigger dollars from the government or insurance subsidies and things like that. So that’s taking money away from the small producers, because we don’t have the capabilities to hire an attorney to make sure that we get that $5 or $6 million check from Uncle Sam. Our members and myself, I would much rather get my income from the marketplace versus depending on a government check.”
Von Ruden’s kids are the fourth generation to work on his family farm. He said that with Trump’s tariffs, his costs are going up. Canadian fertilizer is more expensive. The John Deere tractor he uses will soon be unaffordable.
“We need to make sure that we’re growing agriculture, not decreasing it. Looking at how tariffs are going to affect this farm, we’re going to see the trickle down effect from that in the commodity markets,” Von Ruden said. That trickle down effect is the biggest concern for farmers, he added.
“The president has said that he’s going to make sure that farmers are taken care of,” Von Ruden said. “Tariffs aren’t going to do that. So let’s stop all the rhetoric.”
The Von Ruden farm has been in the family for four generations. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Jacobson pointed to a number of proposals in the Wisconsin Legislature meant to help farmers respond to Trump’s trade wars that Republicans have blocked.
“Wisconsin Republicans had three chances to support our farmers, and three times they voted no,” she said. “Howard Marklein and Republicans in both chambers have failed to support our family farmers, failed to invest in our agricultural industry and made it harder for those in need to buy food. This is completely unacceptable.”
The driftless region of western Wisconsin is set to become a major target for Democrats in next year’s midterm elections as the effects of Trump administration and Republican policies hit the purple swing region. In addition to Jacobson’s challenge of Marklein, Democrats are targeting U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s 3rd Congressional District seat.
Some American companies have agreed to comply with new, voluntary AI standards from European Union regulators, in advance of new regulations set for 2027, but others have decried them as overreach. (Photo by Santiago Urquijo/Getty Images)
American companies are split between support and criticism of a new voluntary European AI code of practice, meant to help tech companies align themselves with upcoming regulations from the European Union’s landmark AI Act.
The voluntary code, called the General Purpose AI Code of Practice, which rolled out in July, is meant to help companies jump-start their compliance. Even non-European companies will be required to meet certain standards of transparency, safety, security and copyright compliance to operate in Europe come August 2027.
Many tech giants have already signed the code of practice, including Amazon, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, Cohere and Fastweb. But others have refused.
In July, Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a statement on Linkedin that the company would not commit.
“Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI. We have carefully reviewed the European Commission’s Code of Practice for general-purpose AI (GPAI) models and Meta won’t be signing it,” he wrote. “This Code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.”
Though Google’s President of Global Affairs Kent Walker was critical of the code of practice in a company statement, Google has signed it, he said.
“We remain concerned that the AI Act and Code risk slowing Europe’s development and deployment of AI,” Walker wrote. “In particular, departures from EU copyright law, steps that slow approvals, or requirements that expose trade secrets could chill European model development and deployment, harming Europe’s competitiveness.”
The divergent approach of U.S. and European regulators has showcased a clear difference in attitude about AI protections and development between the two markets, said Vivien Peaden, a tech and privacy attorney with Baker Donelson.
She compared the approaches to cars — Americans are known for fast, powerful vehicles, while European cars are stylish and eco-friendly.
“Some people will say, I’m really worried that this engine is too powerful. You could drive the car off a cliff, and there’s not much you can do but to press the brake and stop it, so I like the European way,” Peaden said. “My response is, ‘Europeans make their car their way, right? You can actually tell the difference. Why? Because it was designed with a different mindset.”
While the United States federal government has recently enacted some AI legislation through the Take It Down Act, which prohibits AI-generated nonconsensual depictions of individuals, it has not passed any comprehensive laws on how AI may operate. The Trump administration’s recent AI Action Plan paves a clear way for AI companies to continue to grow rapidly and unregulated.
But under the EU’s AI Act, tech giants like Amazon, Google and Meta will need to be more transparent about how their models are trained and operated, and follow rules for managing systemic risks if they’d like to operate in Europe.
“Currently, it’s still voluntary,” Peaden said. “But I do believe it’s going to be one of the most influential standards in AI’s industry.”
General Purpose AI Code of Practice
The EU AI Act was passed last year to mitigate risk created by AI models, and the law creates “strict obligations” for models that are considered “high risk.” High risk AI models are those that can pose serious risks to health, safety or fundamental rights when used for employment, education, biometric identification and law enforcement, the act said.
Some AI practices, including AI-based manipulation and deception, predictions of criminal offenses, social scoring, emotion recognition in workplaces and educational institutions and real-time biometric identification for law enforcement, are considered “unacceptable risk” and are banned from use in the EU altogether.
Some of these practices, like social scoring — using an algorithm to determine access to certain privileges or opportunities like mortgages or jail time — are widely used, and often unregulated in the United States.
While AI models that will be released after Aug. 2 already have to comply with the EU AI Act’s standards, large language models (LLMs) — the technical foundation of AI models — released before that date have through August 2027 to fully comply. The code of practice released last month offers a voluntary way for companies to get into compliance early, and with more leniency than when the 2027 deadline hits, it says.
The three chapters in the code of practice are transparency, copyright and safety, and security. The copyright requirements are likely where American and European companies are highly split, said Yelena Ambartsumian, founder of tech consultancy firm Ambart Law.
In order to train LLMs, you need a broad, high-quality dataset with good grammar, Ambartsumian said. Many American LLMs turn to pirated collections of books.
“So [American companies] made a bet that, instead of paying for this content, licensing it, which would cost billions of dollars, the bet was okay, ‘we’re going to develop these LLMs, and then we’ll deal with the fallout, the lawsuits later,” Ambartsumain said. “But at that point, we’ll be in a position where, because of our war chest, or because of our revenue, we’ll be able to deal with the fallout of this fair use litigation.”
And those bets largely worked out. In two recent lawsuits, Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta, judges ruled in favor of the AI developers based on the “fair use” doctrine, which allows people to use copyrighted material without permission in certain journalistic or creative contexts. In AI developer Anthropic’s case, Judge William Alsup likened the training process to how a human might read, process, and later draw on a book’s themes to create new content.
But the EU’s copyright policy bans developers from training AI on pirated content and says companies must also comply with content owners’ requests to not use their works in their datasets. It also outlines rules about transparency with web crawlers, or how AI models rake through the internet for information. AI companies will also have to routinely update documentation about their AI tools and services for privacy and security.
Those subject to the requirements of the EU’s AI Act are general purpose AI models, nearly all of which are large American corporations, Ambartsumain said. Even if a smaller AI model comes along, it’s often quickly purchased by one of the tech giants, or they develop their own versions of the tool.
“I would also say that in the last year and a half, we’ve seen a big shift where no one right now is trying to develop a large language model that isn’t one of these large companies,” Ambartsumain said.
Regulations could bring markets together
There’s a “chasm” between the huge American tech companies and European startups, said Jeff Le, founder and managing partner of tech policy consultancy 100 Mile Strategies LLC. There’s a sense that Europe is trying to catch up with the Americans who have had unencumbered freedom to grow their models for years.
But Le said he thinks it’s interesting that Meta has categorized the code of practice as overreach.
“I think it’s an interesting comment at a time where Europeans understandably have privacy and data stewardship questions,” Le said. “And that’s not just in Europe. It’s in the United States too, where I think Gallup polls and other polls have revealed bipartisan support for consumer protection.”
As the code of practice says, signing now will reduce companies’ administrative burden when the AI Act goes into full enforcement in August 2027. Le said that relationships between companies that sign could garner them more understanding and familiarity when the regulatory burdens are in place.
But some may feel the transparency or copyright requirements could cost them a competitive edge, he said.
“I can see why Meta, which would be an open model, they’re really worried about (the copyright) because this is a big part of their strategy and catching up with OpenAI and (Anthropic),” Le said. “So there’s that natural tension that will come from that, and I think that’s something worth noting.”
Le said that the large AI companies are likely trying to anchor themselves toward a framework that they think they can work with, and maybe even influence. Right now, the U.S. is a patchwork of AI legislation. Some of the protections outlined in the EU AI Act are mirrored in state laws, but there’s no universal code for global companies.
The EU’s code of practice could end up being that standard-setter, Peaden said.
“Even though it’s not mandatory, guess what? People will start following,” she said. “Frankly, I would say the future of building the best model lies in a few other players. And I do think that … if four out of five of the primary AI providers are following the general purpose AI code of practice, the others will follow.”
Editor’s note: This item has been modified to revise comments from Jeff Le.
Workers install solar panels on the roof of a low-income household in California. On Thursday, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers wrote a letter to the EPA urging the Trump administration not to cancel the Solar for All program. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Gov. Tony Evers wrote to the federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, urging the Trump administration not to cancel Wisconsin’s $62.4 million grant to install solar energy systems for low- and moderate-income households.
Evers’ letter to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin followed aNew York Times report earlier this week that the agency was preparing to cancel the $7 billion federal “Solar for All” grant program. “Solar for All” was part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act passed by congressional Democrats and signed by then-president Joe Biden.
“To be clear, attempting to terminate Solar for All grants has no legitimate purpose or justification,” Evers wrote. “Beyond that, doing so will also negatively impact Wisconsinites and our state, causing increased energy bills for Wisconsinites and hurting efforts to improve air quality, boost resilience, and create good-paying jobs.”
The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. has put out arequest for proposal seeking an implementer for the state’s program, called “PowerUp Wisconsin.” Bidders were to submit a notice of their intent to bid by this past Monday, Aug. 4, and final proposals are due on Friday, Aug. 29.
According to the WEDC’swork plan for the project, Wisconsin’s grant would add rooftop solar power systems to 1,038 households in single-family homes and 2,200 more households in 24 multifamily homes. The plan also calls for 10 community solar projects that could serve an additional 4,239 households.
Evers told Zeldin in the letter that since Wisconsin’s $62.4 million grant wasawarded in April 2024, the WEDC has worked with local governments, solar installers, utilities and housing developers to draw up the state’s program guidelines. The program would reduce Wisconsin’s reliance on out-of-state energy and save households up to $500 a year on their energy bills, Evers wrote.
The governor wrote that lowering costs has been “a top priority” for his administration.
“While the Trump Administration claims to share this priority, terminating Wisconsin’s Solar for All grant would have the exact opposite effect, preventing Wisconsin families and households from seeing the direct savings offered through PowerUp Wisconsin,” Evers wrote.
The Evers administration and the Wisconsin Department of Justice have joined a number of lawsuits to block Trump administration executive orders and unilateral actions to cut funding approved by Congress.
Evers’ letter appeared to leave open the prospect for more litigation. “At a time when energy demand continues to increase, it is unfathomable for the Trump Administration to unnecessarily — and potentially illegally — terminate funding for a program designed to deploy affordable, renewable energy systems,” Evers wrote.
The building that houses video game company Raven Software is shown in Middleton, Wis. A group of quality assurance testers at the company have ratified their first union contract — more than three years after launching the first union at a major U.S. gaming studio. (Photo by M.P. King/Wisconsin State Journal)
Video game testers at Middleton-based Raven Software have ratified their first union contract, more than three years after making local and national headlines by launching the first union at a major U.S. studio.
Ratified on Aug. 4, the contract gives employees a 10% raise while limiting mandatory overtime and preserving remote work options.
The deal is the latest development in a saga involving some of the video game industry’s lowest-paid workers. It comes after Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard, Raven Software’s parent company, leaving the roughly two dozen testers to negotiate with one of the world’s largest tech companies.
“I think we pretty much got everything we aimed for,” said Erin Hall, a seven-year veteran at Raven and one of two workers who negotiated the contract. As a quality assurance tester, she checks for bugs in the blockbuster Call of Duty franchise and works with developers to fix them.
Studios nationwide employ testers to play new video games and identify problems before release.
Raven’s testers make around $21 an hour, and they’re frequently required to work overtime in weeks-long “crunch time” stretches ahead of a game’s release. The volatile nature of their industry prompted the workers to organize.
The testers walked off the job to protest layoffs of a dozen colleagues in December 2021. They announced the formation of a union the next month — the first at a AAA studio that makes high-budget games. The Game Workers Alliance represents the workers, organized with support from Communications Workers of America.
Lessons from three years of negotiating
For Hall and fellow bargaining committee member Autumn Prazuch, contract negotiations required intensive lessons on bargaining and labor laws. Neither had joined a union before launching their own.
“We had no idea it would be this difficult, or that it would take three-and-a-half years, or that it’d be this stressful, that we would be giving up so many nights and weekends,” Hall said. “We felt like it was the right thing to do, and we did it, and we learned as we went.”
The process took about twice as long as a norm that has grown longer in recent years. Newly unionized workers between 2020 to 2023 spent an average of 17 months negotiating their first contract, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis.
The contract negotiations overlapped with a change of ownership: Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard. In 2022, while waiting for regulators to approve the deal, Microsoft committed to remaining neutral on the workers’ unionization efforts.
Prazuch said negotiating with leaders at Activision and Microsoft made her feel like “a little fish in a big pond.”
“You’re sitting across from tech billionaires, and this is a huge company … and we’re 19 people at Raven QA in Middleton, Wisconsin,” she said.
But in that process, Prazuch discovered strengths she didn’t know she had.
“I’ve learned that I have more determination than I initially thought, that my voice is louder than I thought it was,” Prazuch said.
She also learned that the same focus that helps her identify glitches in games allowed her to flag subtle wording changes that would shift the terms of the deal.
The deal they reached limits mandatory overtime to half the weeks in a quarter, and it gives testers the flexibility to choose their schedules when working overtime. Workers who currently work remotely can continue to do so under a contract that also promises 10% raises over the two-year contract period, with potential for additional raises.
Hall said she’d encourage other workers to start unions — if they’re in it for the long haul.
“I would not want to take it back for anything, but it was really hard work,” Hall said. “If people want to unionize at their workplace, just know it’s going to be really difficult, and you have to be committed to seeing it through to the end.”
More video game workers are unionizing
While Microsoft’s promise to not oppose employees’ union efforts contrasts with many other major companies, the process has still had moments of controversy. Communications Workers of America, for instance, criticized Microsoft this summer when it announced plans to lay off around 9,000 workers across the company. That included its gaming division, where it halted production of several games.
Raven’s quality assurance team escaped those layoffs, along with a previous round, Hall said. Having a contract doesn’t guarantee the testers won’t be laid off, but it requires the company to offer notice and bargain over severance and benefits.
Keith Fuller, a former Raven Software employee who is now a Madison-based workplace culture consultant, called collective bargaining “one of the few levers that game developers have” as video game companies tighten their belts and as the Trump administration redefines workers’ rights.
“The power imbalance that’s inherent in capitalism shows up very easily in game development,” Fuller said. “I think that this is something that will benefit workers across the industry.”
In the years since Raven workers unionized, workers at some other major studios have followed their lead. Communications Workers of America says it now represents 2,000 video game workers at Microsoft.
“When we started [our union campaign], we were kind of ambitiously hoping that there’d be anyone that would do this too, and now there’s so many,” Hall said.
Photo by Architect of the Capitol | U.S. government work via Flickr
The July jobs report released last Friday wasn’t pretty. It showed weaker than anticipated U.S. job growth in July, and there were substantial downward revisions of jobs numbers for May and June as well. Economists predicted a slowdown. The chaos of tariff threats has created substantial uncertainty, which is bad for the economy, and the tariffs that have gone into effect have raised prices. It’s no surprise, then, that we’re seeing a slowdown in jobs.
Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi noted on social media, “It’s no mystery why the economy is struggling; blame increasing U.S. tariffs and highly restrictive immigration policy. The tariffs are cutting increasingly deeply into the profits of American companies and the purchasing power of American households. Fewer immigrant workers means a smaller economy.”
But instead of reflecting on mistakes in economic policy or offering some austerity suggestion, like limiting U.S. children to two dolls each , President Donald Trump blamed the messenger, firing the government official in charge of the data release, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Erika McEntarfer. He baselessly asserted that the bad news was “concocted” and suggested that he knows better than the data. The economy is great, according to him, and he will find a commissioner to tell him so.
Trump’s approach is a disaster for economic decision making and for public trust. The BLS is an independent agency with a strong legacy of providing the data that businesses, analysts and policymakers need. Good economic decisions require reliable data. As the American Economics Association wrote: “The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity. Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions.”
The BLS monthly jobs report provides a timely snapshot of labor market dynamics which inform investing and hiring decisions as well as policy choices. BLS data also measures the rate of inflation through the consumer price index. The rising price of goods is not only a key economic indicator but also the scale by which Social Security payments are adjusted and a point of reference in private and union wage negotiations.
BLS data are essential to understanding what is going on in the economy, when a slowdown is emerging, and the cost of daily life. The independence and integrity of the agency, long assumed and supported by both parties, is now under attack.
Wisconsinites lived through something like this more than a decade ago. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker promised to create 250,000 jobs in his first term. He focused on the goal relentlessly, at least until it became clear that he would not meet it. (In fact, the Wisconsin economy didn’t even meet Walker’s first term goal across his two terms – adding just 233,000 jobs by the time he left office after serving for eight years.)
In the first years of Walker’s “relentless focus on jobs” under his administration’s tagline “Wisconsin is Open for Business,” the monthly numbers showed that Wisconsin’s economy was growing more slowly than the national labor market and neighboring states.
Walker blamed the data. He insisted that we wait instead for a federal source which was more reliable, but had a substantial time lag. As someone who watches this data, I can assure that this was the only time in my three-decade career when differences between monthly and quarterly sources of federal jobs data were a policy talking point.
But in the end, the data issue was just a distraction from the truth. Wisconsin was growing more slowly, and no amount of complaining about the data or waiting for another source on jobs could change that fact. Eventually, the Walker administration went silent on both the data and the promised 250,000 jobs.
Trump’s approach is worse than waiting for another source of data. His firing of the commissioner suggests that he’ll only accept data that confirms his narrative. And that makes it harder for any of us to trust any data the federal government is willing to release.
That’s bad for the economy and bad for democracy. As narrow and nerdy as this topic may seem, we all have an interest in facts and reliable data. We have had a government infrastructure capable of producing it. We lose it at our own peril.
A container ship arrives at the Port of Oakland on Aug. 1, 2025 in Oakland, California. President Donald Trump announced that his Aug. 1 deadline for trade deals will not be extended and sweeping tariffs will be imposed on certain countries beginning that day. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pushed ahead with his promise to raise tariffs on foreign goods by Aug. 1, signing an order late Thursday increasing import taxes on products from nearly every U.S. trading partner.
Trump’s directive, and new data on weaker job growth, sent markets tumbling Friday.
The president imposed a 15% base tariff on products imported from nearly three dozen nations across five continents, plus the 27 trading nations that comprise the European Union. Trump slapped higher rates on select other countries, ranging from 18% on goods from Nicaragua to 30% on South Africa and 50% on Brazil.
The White House hailed the “reciprocal” tariffs as “a necessary and powerful tool to put America First after many years of unsustainable trade deficits that threaten our economy and national security,” according to a press release accompanying the executive order.
Trump describes the tariffs as “reciprocal” because they are his response to countries that have trade deficits with the U.S. — meaning that country sells more products to the U.S. than it buys.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer called the new rates “historic.”
“Over the past few months, the President’s tariff program and the ensuing ‘Trump Round’ of trade negotiations have accomplished what the World Trade Organization and multilateral negotiations have not been able to achieve at scale: expansive new market access for U.S. exporters, increased tariffs to defend critical American industries, and trillions of new manufacturing investments and purchases of goods that will create great American jobs and help reassert American leadership in key strategic sectors,” Greer said in a statement Wednesday.
The tariff announcement, combined with a weaker-than-expected jobs report Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, caused sell-offs Friday from the three major U.S. stock indexes, according to financial media reports.
Trump fumed Friday afternoon about report adjustments that significantly decreased jobs numbers for May and June, even calling for the commissioner for labor statistics to be fired.
Tariffs and lawsuits
Trump made history earlier this year when he became the first president to trigger tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The move sparked legal challenges from small businesses and Democratic-led states, and the plaintiffs faced the Trump administration Thursday in federal appeals court.
Tariffs are taxes on imported products that U.S. companies and other buyers pay to the U.S. government.
Trump announced staggering tariffs under an emergency declaration on April 2, what he referred to as “Liberation Day,” but delayed the new import taxes after global markets plummeted in response to the shock announcement.
Trump also separately announced Thursday a 35% levy on imported products from Canada that fall outside the bounds of an already established trade agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
Trump continued a 25% tariff on certain Mexican goods, but paused any rate increases to allow for 90 days of negotiations, according to media reports. The U.S. is continuing negotiations with China, whose products face a base import tax rate of 30%.
Marc Noland, executive vice president and director of studies for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said Trump’s latest tariff rates are “unfortunate.”
“It will contribute to higher prices and slower growth here in the United States,” Noland said, adding there’s “a question about how sustainable they are legally here in the U.S.”
“And it’s particularly unfortunate, because I’m looking at the entire list of countries and see that the countries with the highest rates are the countries that are in the worst shape — Laos gets 40%, Syria got 41%, Myanmar gets 40%. It’s the poorest, most desperate countries that are getting hit with the highest tariffs. So it’s bad for us and it’s bad for the world,” Noland told States Newsroom in an interview Friday.
The 15% rate on imports from dozens of countries mirrors the deals Trump announced in recent weeks with Japan, South Korea and European Union — though many details remain unknown.
“There are real questions about what exactly did anybody agree to,” Noland said. “And you know this, these don’t have the force of law that a treaty negotiated and passed by our Congress and somebody else’s national legislature have like, say, the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, which, as we see, was unilaterally abrogated.”
‘Predictable’ trade agenda urged
Trade and industry advocates have also reacted to the new tariffs.
Gary Shapiro, CEO and vice chair of the Consumer Technology Association, issued a statement Thursday saying Trump’s new rates “highlight the uncertainty American innovators face in today’s trade environment.”
“CTA continues to urge the Administration and Congress to pursue a predictable, forward-looking trade agenda rooted in fairness and collaboration with trusted partners,” said Shapiro, whose organization hosts the annual CES trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada. “American innovation thrives when markets are open, trade rules are clear, and businesses are free to focus on creating jobs and bringing groundbreaking technologies to market.”
The National Foreign Trade Council warned that “Whatever progress that’s ultimately achieved as part of these new trade deals will come at the steep price of significant U.S. tariff increases and the erosion of trust with America’s key partners.”
The statement Thursday from the industry group’s president, Jake Colvin, continued: “Institutionalizing the highest U.S. duties since the Great Depression, coupled with ongoing uncertainty, will ultimately make American businesses less competitive globally and consumers worse off while harming relationships with close geopolitical allies and trading partners.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, pictured July 31, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Judges on the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit questioned the legality of President Donald Trump’s sweeping emergency tariffs Thursday as the White House pushes on with its Aug. 1 deadline for import taxes at levels not seen since the 1930s.
The case originated from consolidated lawsuits brought by a handful of business owners and a dozen Democratic state attorneys general who argued the president does not have the authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.
Through nearly two hours of questioning Thursday, the 11-judge panel probed whether the president could use IEEPA authority to set tariffs without approval from Congress.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Brett Shumate argued the law is “one of the most powerful tools” to protect the economy and national security during emergencies.
Oregon Solicitor General Benjamin Gutman, who argued on behalf of the Democratic states challenging the tariffs, maintained Trump’s reason behind declaring the unilateral emergency tariffs — U.S. trade deficits with other nations — did not actually merit a national emergency.
Trump became the first president to trigger tariffs under the 1977 law when in February and March he ordered punitive import taxes on products from Canada, Mexico and China after declaring illegal fentanyl smuggling from those countries a national emergency.
The president took his tariffs worldwide in an April executive order that declared trade deficits an emergency and slapped what he described as “reciprocal” import taxes on nearly all foreign goods.
In late May, the U.S. Court of International Trade sided with Democratic attorneys general from Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon, as well as the business owners from across the country, including in New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.
The word ‘tariff’
Judges on the panel grilled Shumate about how IEEPA grants the authority to impose tariffs.
“A major concern that I have is IEEPA doesn’t even mention the word tariffs,” said Judge Jimmie V. Reyna, adding that Congress “certainly was aware about tariffs” when it wrote the law.
Existing laws already create “a highly structured … framework” for tariffs, said Reyna, who was appointed to the bench in 2011 by President Barack Obama. “You would agree with me that those statutes do pertain to tariffs?”
“Correct,” replied Shumate, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
Pressed again by Reyna on “tariff” not appearing in the statute, Shumate said “I don’t think that’s unusual.”
“There are at least two examples of statutes that authorize tariffs that don’t use the word ‘tariff’ — Sections 232c and 122, which authorize the president to restrict imports,” Shumate said.
Judge Leonard P. Stark, who was appointed in 2022 by President Joe Biden, jumped in with skepticism.
“Both of those are part of the code that deals expressly with customs and duties, unlike IEEPA, which is not in that chapter,” Stark said.
Dependence on deficits probed
The panel also quizzed legal counsel for the businesses and states, including on the weight and content of Trump’s emergency declaration that launched his April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs.
The states ignored arguments in Trump’s executive order that an emergency existed because of a hollow manufacturing base, a threat to national security, supply-chain disruptions and other issues, Judge Richard G. Taranto said to Gutman, of Oregon.
“Your arguments in your brief to us are devoted to the more narrow question of trade deficits alone as not amounting to unusual and extraordinary threat,” Taranto, who was appointed by Obama in 2013, said.
Gutman replied that all other matters the order cites are related to trade deficits.
“You can look at the executive order itself, the justification, the unusual and extraordinary threat that it is identifying, is what it calls persistent trade deficits,” he said. “Everything else that’s discussed there is either mentioned as a cause or an effect.”
Stark followed up with, “Is that the only fair reading of the executive orders, though? Can it be read as there are some recent consequences, some recent effects of the long and persistent trade deficit that now are unusual and extraordinary?”
Gutman said those effects are mentioned “in about a sentence in the executive order.”
Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore fact-checked that answer.
The executive order “goes on for paragraph after paragraph,” Moore said, mentioning production capacity, military equipment, national security concerns and other threats to the U.S. economy, she said.
“How could you stand here and say to me that the president said it’s all about the deficit, and it’s one throwaway sentence at most in this whole order about the rest of these things constituting a threat?” Moore, who was appointed by George W. Bush, asked.
After back and forth, Gutman said, “I will walk back that it was a single sentence. But I think if you read this, the fairest reading of this executive order is that it is about the large and persistent trade deficits.”
Debate continues
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said after oral arguments the U.S. Department of Justice had a “monster flop” during the arguments when at one point Shumate told Moore that the court did not have authority to review the tariffs.
“I think for those in the audience today, they are concerned when the federal government comes in and says that (judges) have absolutely no role to review what the president does under IEEPA. You actually heard laughter in the room,” Rayfield said.
During the White House daily briefing following the arguments, press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended tariffs as a success, citing that the duties have raised $150 billion in revenue since Trump took office.
“Those revenues will skyrocket even further, starting tomorrow, when new reciprocal tariff rates take effect,” Leavitt said.
Tariffs are paid to the U.S. government by American businesses and individuals who purchase foreign goods.
Critics across the spectrum
The case against Trump’s sweeping emergency tariffs has attracted support from various points on the political spectrum.
Democratic members of Congress filed an amicus brief on behalf of the state attorneys general and small businesses arguing the president’s import taxes under IEEPA usurped Congress’ tariff powers and violated the Constitution.
Congress has “explicitly and specifically” delegated tariff-raising powers to the president, but not under IEEPA, according to the lawmakers.
“Unmoored from the structural safeguards Congress built into actual tariff statutes, the President’s unlawful ‘emergency’ tariffs under IEEPA have led to chaos and uncertainty,” the lawmakers wrote.
The libertarian CATO Institute also filed an amicus brief raising several issues with Trump’s emergency tariffs, including that IEEPA contains “no textual support for tariff authority” and that it violates tariff power granted to Congress in the Constitution.
Brent Skorup, legal fellow at the CATO Institute, said it’s hard to predict the outcome of the case and whether a longstanding judicial branch deference to the executive branch will “win out” over a recent trend of skepticism of the president’s plans.
“In some ways I think this case has many analogies to President Biden’s attempt to forgive student loans,” he said in an interview with States Newsroom. “I mean, almost an identical issue — a vague statute, a president using it in a way that had never been used before for an economically major event.”
U.S. consumers bear costs
Economists are cautioning that the costs of the tariffs will fall on the shoulders of U.S. consumers.
The Yale Budget Lab’s most recent estimate shows the overall average effective tariff rate is 18.4%, the highest since 1933. The analysis, released Wednesday, included Trump’s latest trade announcement that he will impose a 25% duty on goods from India.
The overall price level and distributional effects of the tariffs are projected to cost American households roughly $2,400 in 2025 dollars, Budget Lab projected.
The analysis shows tariffs are expected to disproportionately affect clothing and textiles, with the prices of shoes increasing by 40% in the short run.
The Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank that advocates for lower taxes, found that Trump’s Aug. 1 tariff regime will affect nearly 75% of imported foods, with products from the European Union seeing the worst of it.
The five food imports that would be most affected, barring any deal changes, include liqueurs and spirits, baked goods, coffee, fish and beer, according to the foundation’s July 28 review.
Economists and some lawmakers also warn that Trump’s constantly evolving tariff policy is perpetuating an air of uncertainty for businesses.
Sameera Fazili, the deputy director of the National Economic Council during the Biden administration, said the rapid changes are “undermining our economy.”
“You can see it in CEO surveys, where the Conference Board CEO Sentiment Survey for Q2 reported that a quarter of CEOs now plan to cut back on capital investments,” Fazili, now a senior fellow at the liberal think tank the Roosevelt Institute, said Tuesday during a press call organized by the Economic Speakers Bureau.
The same can be said for mid-sized and small businesses, said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
“When I go home, I’ve yet to come across a businessman or -woman who says, ‘Oh, I love the tariffs.’ It’s the opposite,” Paul said at an event Wednesday at the CATO Institute.
Of the court case, Paul said he thinks the administration is “going to lose.”
“I think there’s a constitutional reason against it,” he said. “And I think there’s, in addition, a statutory reason they may fail.”
At a news conference Tuesday in the state Capitol, Rachel Smith of New Berlin speaks in favor of a bill that would make app-based drivers independent contractors and allow the businesses they drive for to provide some benefits. The bill was authored by Sen. Julian Bradly, on the right. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Backers of legislation that would block drivers from app-based rideshare and delivery businesses from being declared employees are making a full-court press to persuade Gov. Tony Evers to sign the measure into law.
If enacted,AB 269 would automatically classify drivers for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and similar businesses as independent contractors — bypassing current Wisconsin laws that differentiate independent contractors from direct employees. It would exclude those drivers from Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance, workers compensation and minimum wage laws.
The bill would also allow those businesses to set up payroll plans to fund benefit programs for drivers, but it would not require them to do so.
Along with other bills that passed both houses after May 8, the Legislature’s calendar requires the independent contractor measure to go to Evers on Thursday, Aug. 7. Evers hasn’t spoken publicly about the bill, but opponents contend it deprives drivers of worker protections in return for meager benefits.
“It just seems to be a PR move to entrench drivers’ status as independent contractors,” said state Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), who drives for Lyft and who voted against the bill in the Assembly.
A heavy lobbying campaign for which DoorDash has been the most visible sponsor has put all the attention on the benefits provision. On Tuesday, Chamber for Progress, a tech business lobbying group, organized a press conference in the state Capitol to urge Evers to sign the bill.
State Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin), the bill’s Senate author, said it would allow the driving-app companies “to voluntarily contribute to portable benefit accounts that travel with the worker and allow them to use the funds for health care, sick time or retirement without stripping workers of their independence.”
Gig workers “want to be independent,” said Ruth Whittaker, of Chamber for Progress. “We should protect their independence and the flexibility of gig work, and we should also give them access to benefits.”
Joe DeRose, a retired state employee, said his work driving for DoorDash provided “flexible income to help with rising costs” without tying him to a fixed schedule.
“I strongly support portable benefits,” DeRose said. “These accounts would let app-based workers save for unforeseen events or retirement without giving up the flexibility that makes this work so appealing.”
Rachel Smith of New Berlin said she delivers for DoorDash while building an online wellness business.
“The reality is, like many entrepreneurs and independent workers, I don’t have access to traditional benefits, so this portable benefits legislation would change that,” Smith said. “Portable benefits would let me plan for my future without giving up the freedom that makes this work possible in the first place.”
“Without this offer, there are no portable benefits,” said state Rep. Sylvia Velez-Ortiz (D-Milwaukee), who cast the only Democratic vote for the bill in the Assembly. “This is something that the platforms are wanting to do on their own, and government should not stand in their way of doing what they know is right.”
While Evers hasn’t said whether he’ll sign or veto the bill, its passage with only Republican votes — besides that of Ortiz-Velez — has almost always been a precursor to a veto.
Wisconsin labor laws include a series of tests to determine if a worker is an independent contractor or an employee.
An employee is covered by unemployment insurance, workers compensation insurance and state labor standards that include minimum wage, work hours and overtime regulations. An independent contractor is not.
The worker-business relationship must meet each one of nine qualifications to be exempt fromworkers comp law. It must meet 6 out of 9 qualifications to be exempt fromunemployment insurance. And it must meet all six qualifications to be exempt from the state’swage and hour laws.
The bill would make the app-based rideshare and delivery companies automatically exempt from all three areas of employment law.
They could lose the exemption only if they flunked all four parts of a new four-part test — by prescribing when drivers must be logged in; terminating a driver for turning down an assignment; restricting drivers from working for other app-based companies; and restricting drivers from any other lawful job or business.
“This is a dangerous bill for working people,” Stephanie Bloomingdale, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, said Tuesday.
“It is a bill that will carve out our existing tests to determine unemployment, workers’ comp, wage and hour [standards] with a very simplistic four-part test that would forever remove drivers’ ability to access those kind of benefits that we fought for for decades,” Bloomingdale said in an interview.
“They could offer benefits without taking away these tests,” she added. “And what they’re really after is taking away these tests.
Although Bradley described the bill as giving Wisconsin gig drivers “access to benefits like health care, dental and retirement savings,” critics say that those kinds of benefits are unlikely to accrue under the system the law describes.
In Pennsylvania, DoorDash has established a trial benefits program without a law in place there. A report commissioned for the program found that participants on average were able to save about $400 over the course of a year.
“It’s just a savings account with a very meager contribution from the companies,” said Laura Padin, director of Work Structures at the National Employment Law Project (NELP), who sent a letter to Evers urging him to veto the bill. “Real employment-based benefits are worth so much more than that.”
Children, with one of their teachers, at the Waunakee child care center operated by Heather Murray. (Photo courtesy of Heather Murray)
I have owned and operated a child care center for the past 19 years. Not only do I make sure staff and the bills are paid, I clean toilets, clean windows and change diapers. I have devoted my life to educating and caring for young children. I didn’t go into this profession to line my pockets with money. But everyone in my field deserves a living wage and to know they are supported in their community. My goal is to create a safe and nurturing learning environment for the children who enter my center. My belief is that their parents have decided to partner with us to make sure their children are getting the best possible environment to learn and grow.
Creating this high-quality environment for children has become increasingly hard over the years for child care providers in Wisconsin. Parents can’t pay more and providers need to keep qualified staff and pay them a liveable wage. For my center, wages for employees went up by $4 an hour recently to keep up with the other businesses in my community.
I started advocating and organizing around child care and early education right before the latest state budget cycle. I found there were some pretty big hurdles to jump over to get our legislators to listen to child care providers.
I’ve heard legislators tell providers “all you want is money.” I’ve heard them say “these women just need to learn how to run their business.” My favorite observation is: “We don’t need child care. Women should just stay home and take care of their children.” It wasn’t easy to get anyone at the Capitol to take providers seriously. In the last state budget child care received no funding. Wisconsin was one of six states that did not put any state money into child care or early education. Gov. Evers did find a way to support providers with direct payments using federal money, which helped keep many providers’ doors open throughout the state.
Meanwhile, advocates and early educators kept coming to hearings, talking about what we do on a daily basis and how that is important to our communities and the state.
Providers across Wisconsin held Community Conversations and Day Without Childcare events. Many elected officials from both sides of the aisle received tours of centers. Providers also sent letters to the editor and talked with every type of news outlet that would listen. I am so proud of all the providers who stepped up and continued to push this message that what we do is important and we deserve support. As a result, ideas at the Capitol started to shift.
I spoke to legislators from both sides of the aisle. I heard legislators starting to talk about the “child care crisis” and realize that it wasn’t happening just because we didn’t know how to run our businesses. They started to say out loud that parents shouldn’t have to pay 25% of their income for child care. Legislators who previously wouldn’t have said they supported child care investment said they would try and get something done.
In the end, the new state budget wasn’t ideal but it did do two things: Direct payments will continue to go to providers for the next year and early education is finally funded with state dollars in the Wisconsin budget.
Does this budget solve everything? No. Does it provide the $330 million Evers sought in direct payments to providers? No. Did Wisconsin for the first time put state money into early education? Yes — including $110 million in direct payments to providers Does it deregulate child care, increasing the number of infants and toddlers one staff person can care for and allowing 16-year-olds to count as full-time assistants? Yes.
Child care center operator Heather Murray and some of the children in her care look out over the neighorhood outside Murray’s center in Waunakee. (Photo courtesy of Heather Murray)
I absolutely do not think deregulation is the answer to the child care crisis. I believe it is harmful to children. I will not be participating in the deregulated infant/toddler program outlined in this budget. I know I cannot get staff in my center to continue work when I ask them to take care of three more toddlers on their own. A single teacher in this proposed program would take care of seven toddlers ages 18 months and up. Right now that same teacher is expected to care for four toddlers that age. Even though some states have this ratio, the National Association for the Education of Young Children clearly states best practice is 1:4 for this age group.
I would also not hire a 16-year-old as an assistant teacher to add to my staff. I don’t believe 16-year-olds are ready to handle large groups of small children and provide the quality time and interaction they need; 16-year-olds are still children themselves. And since they are in school themselves, they are not that much help with the labor shortages centers experience all day long.
I’m grateful that Gov. Evers made child care a priority, and that our state finally joined the majority of other states in providing some support for this essential resource in the state budget.
Advocating for policy changes is a constant back and forth. Much of the time you don’t get what you want. This means that we must go back in two years, to make Wisconsin’s child care support better and more durable. Child care advocates have created a strong network and we are not done advocating for the change needed for providers to keep their doors open and for educators to earn a living wage. I believe child care is infrastructure and a public good. Together with other child care providers, I will continue to advocate and educate our leaders about how a well supported child care system is essential to our community and our economy.
Heather Murray (seated at the lower right, in the dark gray shirt) along with some of the children from her child care center, joined state legislators in the Wisconsin Capitol to show their support for a child care investment in the state budget. (Photo courtesy of Heather Murray)
President Donald Trump and European Union leaders announced a trade framework over the weekend that will set 15% import taxes on EU goods. (Photo by Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and European Union leaders announced a trade framework over the weekend, just days ahead of Trump’s self-imposed Friday deadline to increase import taxes and his emergency tariffs come under scrutiny in federal appeals court Thursday.
Under the agreement, a 15% tariff will be applied to all products, with some exceptions, coming into the U.S. from the 27 member nations that make up the EU.
The 15% rate will also apply to automobiles, down from the 25% levy on foreign vehicles that Trump ordered in April. Trump’s 50% sectoral tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum will remain unchanged for the EU. The deal exempts certain products, including aircraft, from tariffs altogether.
Tariffs are import taxes paid to the U.S. government by businesses and other buyers that import foreign goods.
“Fifteen percent is not to be underestimated, but it was the best we could get,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters during a press conference Sunday.
Similar to the deal Trump announced with Japan on July 23, the EU has agreed to invest $600 billion in the United States over Trump’s term. The bloc of nations has also agreed to purchase $750 billion in U.S. energy, including liquid natural gas, over the next three years as a way to wean off of Russian fossil fuels.
‘Fundamentally rebalancing’
The White House touted the deal as “fundamentally rebalancing the economic relationship between the world’s two largest economies,” in a press release issued Monday.
The U.S. imported more goods from the EU than it exported by about $235.8 billion in 2024, according to Census data.
Trump had threatened to raise what he describes as “reciprocal” tariffs — tariffs on products outside sectoral categories of steel, aluminum and vehicles — to 30% by Aug. 1 on products from Europe, Japan and numerous other trading partners.
Trump set the date as the new deadline for his “Liberation Day” tariffs to take effect. The president announced the tariffs in early April and then promptly paused them after markets plummeted around the globe. The episode triggered a trade war with China, during which U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods peaked at 145% before the two parties agreed to negotiate.
Appeals case looms
President Donald Trump holds up a chart while speaking during a trade announcement event in the White House Rose Garden on April 2, 2025. Trump dubbed the event “Liberation Day.” (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
On what the president described as “Liberation Day” on April 2, Trump heralded a universal 10% tariff on all foreign products, plus staggering additional so-called reciprocal import taxes on countries across the globe that carry trade imbalances with the U.S.
Trump justified the steep duties by declaring trade imbalances a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
In February, Trump became the first president to trigger tariffs under the 1977 emergency powers law when he increased import taxes on Canada, Mexico and China in response to illegal fentanyl smuggling.
The emergency tariffs are at the center of a case that will go before the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit Thursday.
The case stems from two lawsuits, now consolidated, filed by a handful of businesses and a dozen Democratic state attorneys general who argued the president doesn’t have authority to impose tariffs under the emergency law.
The U.S. Court of International Trade struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs as unconstitutional on May 28.
Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among the states that brought the suit.
V.O.S. Selections, a New York-based company that imports wine and spirits from 16 countries, led the business plaintiffs. Others included a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.
Upon appeal from the White House, the Federal Circuit allowed Trump’s tariffs to remain in place while the case moved forward.
David Sacks, U.S. President Donald Trump's "AI and Crypto Czar", speaks to President Trump as he signs a series of executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 23, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Trump signed a range of executive orders pertaining to issues including crypto currency and artificial intelligence. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The administration’s action plan, called “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” released on Wednesday, is a result of six months of research by tech advisors, after Trump removed President Joe Biden’s signature AI guardrails on his first day in office. The plan takes a hands-off approach to AI safeguards, and invests in getting more American workers to use AI in their daily lives.
“To win the AI race, the U.S. must lead in innovation, infrastructure, and global partnerships,” AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks said in a statement. “At the same time, we must center American workers and avoid Orwellian uses of AI. This Action Plan provides a roadmap for doing that.”
The action plan outlines three major pillars — accelerate AI innovation, build American AI infrastructure and lead in international AI diplomacy and security.
The Trump administration says that to accelerate AI in the U.S., it needs to “remove red tape,” around “onerous” AI regulations. The plan recommends the Office of Science and Technology Policy inquire with businesses and the public about federal regulations that hinder AI innovation, and suggests the federal government end funding to states “with burdensome AI regulations.”
The plan does say that these actions should not interfere with states’ ability to pass AI laws that are not “unduly restrictive,” despite unsuccessful attempts by Congressional Republicans to impose an AI moratorium for the states.
The plan also says that free speech should be prioritized in AI, saying models must be trained so that “truth, rather than social engineering agendas” are the focus of model outputs. The plan recommends that the Department of Commerce and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), revise the NIST AI Risk Management Framework to eliminate references to misinformation, DEI and climate change.
The Trump administration also pushes for AI to be more widely adopted in government roles, manufacturing, science and in the Department of Defense, and proposes increased funding and regulatory sandboxes — separate trial spaces for AI to be developed — to do so.
To support the proposed increases in AI use, the plan outlines a streamlined permitting process for data centers, which includes lowering or dropping environmental regulations under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and others. It also proposes making federal lands available for data center construction, and a push that American products should be used in building the infrastructure.
The Action Plan warns of cybersecurity risks and potential exposure to adversarial threats, saying that the government must develop secure frontier AI systems with national security agencies and develop “AI compute control enforcement,” to ensure security in AI systems and with semiconductor chips. It encourages collaboration with “like-minded nations” working toward AI models with shared values, but says it will counter Chinese influence.
“These clear-cut policy goals set expectations for the Federal Government to ensure America sets the technological gold standard worldwide, and that the world continues to run on American technology,” Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio said in a statement.
The policy goals outlined in the plan fall in line with the deregulatory attitude Trump took during his campaign, as he more closely aligned himself with Silicon Valley tech giants, many of whom turned Trump donors. The plan paves the way for continued unfettered growth of American AI models, and outlines the huge energy and computing power needed to keep up with those goals.
In an address at the “Winning the AI Race” Summit Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump called for a “single federal standard” regulating AI, not a state-by-state approach.
“You can’t have three or four states holding you up. You can’t have a state with standards that are so high that it’s going to hold you up,” Trump said. “You have to have a federal rule and regulation.”
The summit was hosted by the Hill & Valley Forum, a group of lawmakers and venture capitalists and the All‑In Podcast, which is co-hosted by AI Czar Sacks,
In addition to discussing the AI action plan, Trump signed executive orders to fast track data center permitting, expand AI exports including chips, software and data storage, and one that prohibits the federal government from procuring AI that has “partisan bias or ideological agendas.”
He spoke about the need for the U.S. to stay ahead in the global AI race, saying that the technology brings the “potential for bad as well as for good,” but that wasn’t reason enough to “retreat” from technological advancement. The U.S. is entering a “golden age,” he said in his speech.
“It will be powered by American energy. It will be run on American technology improved by American artificial intelligence, and it will make America richer, stronger, greater, freer, and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said.
During the address, Trump addressed his evolving relationship with tech CEOs, calling out Amazon, Google, Microsoft for investing $320 billion in data centers and AI infrastructure this year.
“I didn’t like them so much my first term, when I was running, I wouldn’t say I was thrilled with them, but I’ve gotten to know them and like them,” Trump said. “And I think they got to like me, but I think they got to like my policies, maybe much more than me.”
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI — one of the tech giants that stands to flourish under the proposed policies — spoke Tuesday about the productivity and innovation potential that AI has unlocked. The growth of AI in the last five years has surprised even him, Altman said. But it also poses very real risks, he said, mentioning emotional attachment and overreliance on AI and foreign risks.
“Without a drop of malevolence from anyone, society can just veer in a sort of strange direction,” Altman said.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared his view of the promise and peril of advanced artificial intelligence at a Federal Reserve conference in Washington, D.C. on July 22, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
For as much promise as artificial intelligence shows in making life better, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is worried.
The tech leader who has done so much to develop AI and make it accessible to the public says the technology could have life-altering effects on nearly everything, particularly if deployed by the wrong hands.
There’s a possible world in which foreign adversaries could use AI to design a bio weapon to take down the power grid, or break into financial institutions and steal wealth from Americans, he said. It’s hard to imagine without superhuman intelligence, but it becomes “very possible,” with it, he said.
“Because we don’t have that, we can’t defend against it,” Altman said at a Federal Reserve conference this week in Washington, D.C. “We continue to like, flash the warning lights on this. I think the world is not taking us seriously. I don’t know what else we can do there, but it’s like, this is a very big thing coming.”
Altman joined the conference Tuesday to speak about AI’s role in the financial sector, but also spoke about how it is changing the workforce and innovation. The growth of AI in the last five years has surprised even him, Altman said.
He acknowledged real fear that the technology has potential to grow beyond the capabilities that humans prompt it for, but said the time and productivity savings have been undeniable.
OpenAI’s most well-known product, ChatGPT, was released to the public in November 2022, and its current model, GPT-4o, has evolved. Last week, the company had a model that achieved “gold-level performance,” akin to operating as well as humans that are true experts in their field, Altman said.
Many have likened the introduction of AI to the invention of the internet, changing so much of our day-to-day lives and workplaces. But Altman instead compared it to the transistor, a foundational piece of hardware invented in the 1940s that allowed electricity to flow through devices.
“It changed what we were able to build. It became part of, kind of, everything pretty quickly,” Altman said. “And in the same way, I don’t think you’ll be talking about AI companies for very long, you will just expect products and services to use this technology.”
When prompted by the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman to predict how AI will continue to evolve the workforce, Altman said he couldn’t make specific predictions.
“There are cases where entire classes of jobs will go away,” Altman said. “There are entirely new classes of jobs that will come and largely, I think this will look somewhat like most of history, and that the tools people have to use their jobs will let them do more, achieve things in new ways.”
One of the unexpected upsides to the rollout of GPT has been how much it is used by small businesses, Altman said. He shared a story of an Uber driver who told him he was using ChatGPT for legal consultations, customer support, marketing decisions and more.
“It was not like he was taking jobs from other people. His business just would have failed,” Altman said. “He couldn’t pay for the lawyers. He couldn’t pay for the customer support people.”
Altman said he was surprised that the financial industry was one of the first to begin integrating GPT models into their work because it is highly regulated, but some of their earliest enterprise partners have been financial institutions like Morgan Stanley. The company is now increasingly working with the government, which has its own standards and procurement process for AI, to roll out OpenAI services to its employees.
Altman acknowledged the risks AI poses in these regulated institutions, and with the models themselves. Financial services are facing a fraud problem, and AI is only making it worse — it’s easier than ever to fake voice or likeness authentication, Altman said.
AI decisionmaking in financial and other industries presents data privacy concerns and potential for discrimination. Altman said GPT’s model is “steerable,” in that you can tell it to not consider factors like race or sex in making a decision, and that much of the bias in AI comes from the humans themselves.
“I think AIs are dispassionate and unemotional,” Altman said. “And I think it’ll be possible for AI — correctly built — to be a significant de-biasing force in many industries, and I think that’s not what many people thought, including myself, with the way we used to do AI.”
As much as Altman touted GPT and other AI models’ ability to increase productivity and save humans time, he also spoke about his concerns.
He said that though it’s been greatly improved in more recent models, AI hallucinations, or models that produce inaccurate or made-up outputs, are possible. He also spoke of a newer concept called prompt injections, the idea that a model that has learned personal information can be tricked into telling a user something they shouldn’t know.
In addition to the threat of foreign adversaries using AI for harm, Altman said he has two other major concerns for the evolution of AI. It feels very unlikely, he said, but “loss of control,” or the idea that AI overpowers humans, is possible.
What concerns him the most is the idea that models could get so integrated into society and get so smart that humans become reliant on them without realizing.
“And even without a drop of malevolence from anyone, society can just veer in a sort of strange direction,” he said.
There are mild cases of this happening, Altman said, like young people overrelying on ChatGPT make emotional, life-altering decisions for them.
“We’re studying that. We’re trying to understand what to do about it,” Altman said. “Even if ChatGPT gives great advice, even if chatGPT gives way better advice than any human therapist, something about kind of collectively deciding we’re going to live our lives the way that the AI tells us feels bad and dangerous.”
New Nissan cars are driven onto a rail car to be transported from an automobile processing terminal located at the Port of Los Angeles on April 3, 2024 in Wilmington, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said late Tuesday he struck a “massive” trade deal with Japan, lowering his threatened tariffs on Japanese products.
The deal, according to Japanese negotiators, will include a lower rate on the country’s top export: automobiles.
Trump’s declaration of a new framework comes as a legal fight over a large portion of his tariff policy will be heard in federal appeals court next week.
The president announced via Truth Social Tuesday evening that Japan had agreed “at my direction” to invest $550 billion in the United States and will open its markets to more American products, including cars, trucks, rice and other agricultural goods.
In exchange, Trump agreed to lower what he calls “reciprocal” import taxes on Japanese products to 15%, down from the 25% rate he threatened in early July.
Tariffs are import taxes paid by U.S. companies and individuals who purchase goods from other countries.
While some details remained unclear, Trump said the agreement is “the largest Deal ever made,” and continued in a post on his online platform that “there has never been anything like it.”
Japan’s government confirmed the new deal Wednesday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the parties agreed to a 15% tariff on Japanese vehicles and auto parts imported into the U.S. without any volume restrictions — down from the blanket 25% U.S. tariff on foreign cars that went into effect in April. Hayashi delivered the remarks through an English translation during a morning press conference.
Jeff Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said securing $550 billion in investment from Japan would set the agreement apart from other trade deals.
“There isn’t a lot of information about over what period of time this would cover, and how it would be financed, and things like that, but the headline number of $550 billion is certainly notable, if it’s believable and if it’s achievable,” Schott said Wednesday in an interview with States Newsroom.
While specifics are unknown, possible investments from Japan might include Nippon Steel’s takeover of U.S. Steel, or a joint venture to export liquified natural gas from Alaska.
Schott said the trade deal “is likely going to set a template” for trade talks with other nations, including ongoing negotiations this week in Washington, D.C., with South Korean officials.
Aug. 1 deadline set
The news of a deal with Japan came just after the White House announced new trade arrangements with Indonesia and the Philippines ahead of a self-imposed Aug. 1 deadline, when steeper tariffs are set to trigger on trading partners around the world.
Trump had threatened Japan in a letter earlier this month with a 25% “reciprocal” tariff on all Japanese goods set to begin Aug. 1, in addition to special sectoral and national security tariffs on foreign automobiles, at 25%, and imported steel and aluminum, which now sit at 50%.
The president shocked global markets in early April when he announced a universal 10% tariff on every foreign good coming into the U.S., plus staggering additional “reciprocal” import taxes on major trading partners based on the country’s trading relationship with the U.S.
Trump initially slapped a 24% reciprocal tariff on Japan, which imports less from the U.S. than U.S. entities buy from Japan. The U.S. ran a $69.4 billion trade deficit with Japan in 2024, according to the Census Bureau.
Trump has twice delayed his so-called reciprocal tariffs on other economies as his administration attempts to leverage the threats into agreements. The administration has yet to strike a new deal with the European Union, another major trading partner.
Court hearing
The U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit is set to hear oral arguments July 31 over Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which he triggered by declaring international trade a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The U.S. Court of International Trade struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs as unconstitutional in a May 28 decision, following two legal challenges brought by a handful of business owners and a dozen Democratic state attorneys general.
Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among the states that brought the suit.
V.O.S. Selections, a New York-based company that imports wine and spirits from 16 countries, led the business plaintiffs. Others included a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.
Upon appeal from the White House, the Federal Circuit allowed Trump’s tariffs to remain in place while the case moved forward.
Corrine Hendrickson addresses a gathering of parents and child care providers outside the state Capitol on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
For 18 years Corrine Hendrickson has been taking care of young children in her New Glarus home.
At the end of August she’ll send the last of those children home, shut the doors of “Corrine’s Little Explorers” and clean up for a final time. She hadn’t planned for it to be this way.
“It’s really difficult,” Hendrickson says. “I’m not closing on my terms. I’m not closing because I was ready to close. I’m closing because it’s the decision that I need to make for myself and my family.”
It’s a decision, she says, forced by what the 2025-27 state budget didn’t do for child care.
“It will affect our community as a whole,” says Devon Kammerud, whose children were among the first that Hendrickson had in child care when she began the business. “I knew a few of my friends who were having babies they were hoping to go there. Now they won’t have that.”
Hendrickson says that even with provisions that were hailed as an unprecedented state investment in care, the budget fell short of what would have been required for her to afford to stay in business.
In the months leading up to the budget’s passage, Hendrickson was one of the leading voices for a substantial state investment in child care. As a co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), she helped lead rallies and round tables to call on lawmakers to set aside nearly half-a-billion dollars to send directly to child care providers across Wisconsin.
Ongoing state investment
Providers and advocates have been seeking an ongoing state budget line item for child care for years. Without that continuing outside support, they argue, it will either be impossible to pay child care teachers adequately or impossible for anyone beside affluent families to afford quality child care.
Child care wages have been historically low. A 2023 report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found that in Milwaukee, lead teachers’ pay averaged between $12 and less than $15 per hour — less than retail employees at big box stores or warehouse workers.
Parents, the policy forum report found, were paying in Milwaukee County more than $16,000 a year for infant care and more than $12,000 a year for a 4-year-old. Providers, teachers and families are all “struggling at the same time,” according to the report.
Elliot Haspel, a fellow at Capita, a family policy think tank, contends that child care should be considered a public good. He compares it to public schools, libraries, fire departments and park systems, because “the benefits are so widespread they go beyond the users of the service.”
In addition to providing children with early education opportunities, the availability of child care has benefits “for the overall health of families and the ability of families to stay in communities,” Haspel told the Wisconsin Examiner in aninterview in May.
Pandemic relief and financial stability
The COVID-19 pandemic gave Wisconsin an opportunity for proof of concept for a state investment. Federal pandemic relief funds “gave us the most financial security we’ve ever had,” Hendrickson says.
From left, Corrine Hendrickson and Brooke Legler take part in a panel discussion on child care and the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget in the state Capitol on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
She and Brooke Legler, who owns a group child care center in New Glarus, started WECAN about the same time. They had been traveling Wisconsin, hosting showings of thedocumentary “No Small Matter” about the importance of early childhood education. They started WECAN to bring activist muscle to advocating on behalf of providers and parents and increase respect and funding for child care.
Congress enacted the first COVID-19 pandemic relief funding programs in 2020. They culminated with the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), enacted in March 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden took office. ARPA made it possible for Wisconsin to send $20 million a month to child care providers across the state for two years under the Child Care Counts program instituted by the Department of Children and Families under Gov. Tony Evers.
“We really pushed hard to get that funding to come to our state,” Hendrickson says. “And then we also pushed hard to make sure that our state did allocate it directly to all of us [providers] that were regulated.”
The monthly payments made it possible for providers to raise wages for child care teachers without having to further increase the fees parents were already paying.
After failing to persuade the Republican majority in the Wisconsin Legislature to extend Child Care Counts with state funds in 2023, the Evers administration extended the program with repurposed federal money for another two years, reducing the monthly payout to $10 million. The money ran out early this month.
When Evers introduced the 2025-27 budget in February, he once again proposed extending Child Care Counts, asking for $480 million over two years. A survey of providers found that as many as 25% said they could close without continued support.
The only way to stabilize the child care sector, providers and their allies argued, was to provide a sustained, substantial state investment. Hendrickson and countless other advocates — the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, Democratic lawmakers, innumerable providers and some business leaders as well — spent most of the first half of this year advancing that message.
Weighing the odds
The odds looked steep from the start. The Republican majority on the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee pulled Gov. Tony Evers’ $480 million line item for child care along with more than 600 provisions from the draft budget at the committee’s first budget meeting in the spring.
As the budget debates dragged on, advocates kept up their demands. During that time, Hendrickson was weighing her own future. She asked herself, she says, “what were the odds of us getting what we needed in this budget, and what I would need to get put in the budget in order for me to be able to operate and not outprice my parents?”
Hendrickson almost closed her child care service in the fall of 2024, when three of the eight openings for kids were unfilled until the end of September. “And I didn’t want to have to go through that again this next year — and the prices were only going to be higher,” she says.
By June, it wasn’t looking good. Initially Hendrickson expected her program to have no openings in the fall. Then three families told her they would be dropping out.
One was a mom who qualified for the Wisconsin Shares subsidy program for low-income families. The subsidy is supposed to cover 75% of the cost of care, but as child care fees have increased Wisconsin Shares has not been able to keep up. The mother said she could no longer afford her part of the bill.
The woman moved with her child to another county, and Hendrickson said she’s heard from her that she’s “trying to work from home with her 2-year-old also there at all times, because she just can’t afford her child care anymore.”
Another family was moving out of state at the end of the summer — but then changed their plans and left in June.
Weeks before the budget negotiations concluded, Hendrickson had gotten word that a direct funding program was still possible, but that insiders thought it would get only about $100 million, less than one-fourth of what providers and Evers had been seeking.
With that in mind, Hendrickson calculated a rate increase and gave that estimate to a third family. They had been driving every day from Madison to New Glarus because her center was a good fit for their child and because her rates were lower.
The new rates were closer to what they would expect to pay in Madison, the family told her, and they decided to look closer to home.
The tipping point
Subsequent inquiries for care came from families who were expecting a child or who had a child under 2 years old. But Hendrickson was already at her limit for that age group under the terms of her family child care license and couldn’t add more.
On July 1, Evers announced a budget deal with funding for child care, including $110 million that would be distributed to providers along the same lines as Child Care Counts — not as a long-term program, but as a bridge to an undefined future. “A bridge to nowhere,” says Sarah Kazell, a child care teacher and advocate who has worked with Hendrickson.
Child care provider Corrine Hendrickson addresses a rally in front of the state Capitol Friday, July 11, demanding a re-do on the state budget to increase child care funding. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Kazell says the failure of lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle to follow through on the message throughout the last six months for child care funding has left her “deeply disappointed and angry.”
It’s not just the absence of funding, she says, but also the last minute addition of a pilot program to increase the ratio of children to providers, but only in the low-income subsidized part of the child care system. “It just seems specifically harmful to the kids that are most vulnerable,” Kazell says.
Hendrickson had already privately calculated that she could get by if the lawmakers approved about $240 million — half what Evers had sought originally. But with a single year at a still smaller amount, increasing her rates by $60 a week “just wasn’t going to work,” she says.
Taking into account the cost for property taxes, liability insurance, homeowner’s insurance and utility rate increases, “I just couldn’t continue to justify keeping my business open while struggling and hurting my own family,” Hendrickson says.
And she knew she would need to decide sooner rather than later, so families would have time to find a new provider.
“I didn’t want the families in my care to have to worry about where their kids would go if I continued to try and struggle — and then what would happen to those kids, and where would they go?” Hendrickson says. “And I didn’t want to feel guilty and have to stay open while also bankrupting myself.”
Corrine’s Little Explorers will remain open through the end of August. Working with Legler, Hendrickson arranged for the children to be able to transfer to Legler’s center, The Growing Tree, starting in September if their parents want that.
From provider to advocate
Hendrickson graduated from University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2001 with a degree in early childhood education, but in the recession after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks there were no jobs, especially in early education, she says.
She went to work at a Bath & Body Works store, working her way up to store manager. After her oldest son was born in 2006, “I had three very pregnant friends who were talking about how they couldn’t find care and how they were trying to figure out who would have to quit their job,” Hendrickson says.
Chatting during a weekly get-together, she brought up her college degree. “I said, ‘What if I quit my job and I opened up a child care?’” she recalls.
“That was a way I could meet the needs of my community, use my teaching degree, and start a small business,” Hendrickson says. “How hard could it be? This can’t be that bad, right? Yeah, I was naive.”
She had been paying for child care herself and “saw how much I was paying,” she says — not understanding the costs that providers have to bear.
Children play at Corrine’s Little Explorers family child care in 2011. (Photo courtesy of Corrine Hendrickson)
She started with the infants of two friends and her own son, 10 months old at the time. Three months later another infant joined the group. Wisconsin allows child care providers who are caring for three children unrelated to them to operate without a license.
In the midst of the Great Recession of 2008, her husband, Kevin got laid off from his job at a landscape contracting company. “We were trying to figure out how do I stay open,” Hendrickson recalls. “We went on food stamps. We went on BadgerCare … We did everything we could to keep my business floating and him trying to find a part-time job.”
A volunteer firefighter for New Glarus, her husband was able to take a part-time firefighting job in Verona and has since risen first to a full-time position and more recently to fire chief.
Within a couple of years, Hendrickson got licensed from the state as a family child care provider. “We weren’t really making a lot, but it was what I loved,” she says.
The couple renovated their home, adding a lower level that opens to the outdoors and serves as the child care space. Hendrickson qualified for the state’s highest quality rating, five stars, in 2012 and has maintained that since.
When she encountered a child with special needs, Hendrickson asked about help from state officials in the administration of then-Gov. Scott Walker. She recalls one who told her that she could turn away the child. “I didn’t think that was right,” Hendrickson says.
‘We need people … that actually care’
All three of Bekah Stauffacher’s children have spent time in care at Corrine’s Little Explorers. “She’s had such a positive impact on all three of them,” Stauffacher says. “We feel so lucky that we got to know her and have our children with her.”
Stauffacher’s middle child, who’s now 12, has severe developmental delays due to a genetic disorder. Hendrickson threw herself into finding some additional support for the girl during her years in child care.
“It was impressive,” Stauffacher says of Hendrickson’s advocacy on behalf of her daughter. “It was more than we could have handled ourselves — we were grateful that she took it on.”
For a special needs child covered under the Wisconsin Shares subsidy program, a care provider can get additional funding for an aide, special materials or training. She got to know Democratic state Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who later introduced legislation that would have expanded that additional funding for all special needs children in child care, whether they were part of Wisconsin Shares or not.
Although the bill died in committee, “going through that process really empowered me, and helped me understand what your representatives are supposed to do,” Hendrickson says.
Kazell has spent the last few years subbing for Hendrickson in the child care program when Hendrickson has gone on the road to press the case for child care support or lead workshops on advocacy. She’s also been active in WECAN’s advocacy and organizing work.
“She’s a mentor to me, and I think the most meaningful and most important mentor in my life,” Kazell says — both in early childhood teaching and in the work of organizing for change.
“She definitely was that person that helped me gain such a deep appreciation for the need for actual activism and organizing,” Kazell says — critical, she adds, to bring about the cultural change to elevate society’s value for child care and the political change to translate that value into concrete policy.
“She can talk a mile a minute and she knows a lot of stuff, but she’s also the type of person who’s keyed into where the other person is coming from,” Kazell says.
As she considers what she’ll do next, Hendrickson expects to stay involved in advocacy work, providing training in grass-roots organizing. It’s something she’s been doing already for several years.
She’s also contemplating whether to run for the state Legislature.
“We need people in there that actually care and understand the consequences of their inaction or their action,” Hendrickson said. “Taxes aren’t necessarily bad. It’s just we need to use them in ways that the people paying them feel that they’re getting something back for it.”
Corrine Hendrickson describes the challenges of being a child care provider during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the importance of government support to the survival of her business, during a Congressional hearing Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023. (Screenshot via YouTube)
As power-hungry data centers proliferate, states are searching for ways to protect utility customers from the steep costs of upgrading the electrical grid, trying instead to shift the cost to AI-driven tech companies. (Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
Regular energy consumers, not corporations, will bear the brunt of the increased costs of a boom in artificial intelligence that has contributed to a growth in data centers and a surge in power usage, recent research suggests.
Between 2024 and 2025, data center power usage accounted for $9 billion, or 174%, of increased power costs, a June report by Monitoring Analytics, an external market monitor for PJM Interconnection, found. PJM manages the electrical power grid and wholesale electric market for 13 states and Washington, D.C., and this spring, customers were told to expect roughly a $25 increase on their monthly electric bill starting June 1.
“The growth in data center load and the expected future growth in data center load are unique and unprecedented and uncertain and require a different approach than simply asserting that it is just supply and demand,” Monitoring Analytics’ report said.
Data centers house the physical infrastructure to power most of the computing we do today, but many AI models and the large AI companies that power them, like Amazon, Meta and Microsoft use vastly more energy than other kinds of computing. Training a single chatbot like ChatGPT uses about the same amount of energy as 100 homes over the course of a year, an AI founder told States Newsroom earlier this year.
The growth of data centers — and how much power they use — came on fast. A 2024 report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission in Virginia — known as a global hub for data centers — found that PJM forecasts it will use double the amount of average monthly energy in 2033 as it did in 2023. Without new data centers, energy use would only grow 15% by 2040, the report said.
As of July, the United States is home to more than 3,800 data centers, up from more than 3,600 in April. A majority of data centers are connected to the same electrical grids that power residential homes, commercial buildings and other structures.
“There are locational price differences, but data centers added anywhere in PJM have an effect on prices everywhere in PJM,” Joseph Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics said.
Creeping costs
At least 36 states, both conservative and liberal, offer tax incentives to companies planning on building data centers in their states. But the increased costs that customers are experiencing have made some wonder if the projects are the economic wins they were touted as.
“I’m not convinced that boosting data centers, from a state policy perspective, is actually worth it,” said New Jersey State Sen. Andrew Zwicker, a Democrat and co-sponsor of a bill to separate data centers from regular power supply. “It doesn’t pay for a lot of permanent jobs.”
Energy cost has historically followed a socialized model, based on the idea that everyone benefits from reliable electricity, said Ari Peskoe, the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program. Although some of the pricing model is based on your actual use, some costs like new power generation, transmission and infrastructure projects are spread across all customers.
Data centers’ rapid growth is “breaking” this tradition behind utility rates.
“These are cities, these data centers, in terms of how much electricity they use,” Peskoe said. “And it happens to be that these are the world’s wealthiest corporations behind these data centers, and it’s not clear how much local communities actually benefit from these data centers. Is there any justification for forcing everyone to pay for their energy use?”
This spring in Virginia, Dominion Energy filed a request with the State Corporation Commission to increase the rates it charges by an additional $10.50 on the monthly bill of an average resident and another $10.92 per month to pay for higher fuel costs, the Virginia Mercury reported.
Dominion, and another local supplier, recently filed a proposal to separate data centers into their own rate class to protect other customers, but the additional charges demonstrate the price increases that current contracts could pass on to customers.
In June, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission convened a technical conference to assess the adequacy of PJM’s resources and those of other major power suppliers, like Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc., ISO New England Inc., New York Independent System Operator, Inc., California Independent System Operator Corporation (CAISO) and Southwest Power Pool (SPP).
The current supply of power by PJM is not adequate to meet the current and future demand from large data center loads, Monitoring Analytics asserts in a report following the conference.
“Customers are already bearing billions of dollars in higher costs as a direct result of existing and forecast data center load,” the report said.
Proposed changes
One of the often-proposed solutions to soften the increased cost of data centers is to require them to bring their own generation, meaning they’d contract with a developer to build a power plant that would be big enough to meet their own demand. Though there are other options, like co-location, which means putting some of the electrical demand on an outside source, total separation is the foremost solution Bowring presents in his reports.
“Data centers are unique in terms of their growth and impact on the grid, unique in the history of the grid, and therefore, we think that’s why we think data centers should be treated as a separate class,” Bowring said.
Some data centers are already voluntarily doing this. Constellation Energy, the owner of Three Mile Island nuclear plant in central Pennsylvania, struck a $16 billion deal with Microsoft to power the tech giant’s AI energy demand needs.
But in some states, legislators are seeking to find a more binding solution.
New Jersey Sen. Bob Smith, a Democrat who chairs the Environment and Energy Committee, authored a bill this spring that would require new AI data centers in the state to supply their power from new, clean energy sources, if other states in the region enact similar measures.
“Seeing the large multinational trillion dollar companies, like Microsoft and Meta, be willing to do things like restart Three Mile Island is crazy, but shows you their desperation,” said co-sponsor Zwicker. “And so, okay, you want to come to New Jersey? Great, but you’re not going to put the basis (of the extra cost) on ratepayers.”
New Jersey House members launched a probe into PJM’s practices as the state buys its annual utilities from the supplier at auction this month. Its July 2024 auction saw electrical costs increase by more than 800%, which contributed to the skyrocketing bills that took effect June 1.
Residents are feeling it, Smith said, and he and his co-sponsors plan to use the summer to talk to the other states within PJM’s regional transmission organization (RTO).
“Everything we’re detecting so far is they’re just as angry — the other 13 entities in PJM — as us,” Smith told States Newsroom.
Smith said they’re discussing the possibility of joining or forming a different RTO.
“We’re in the shock and horror stage where these new prices are being included in these bills, and citizens are screaming in pain,” Smith said. “A solution that I filed in the bill, is the one that says, ‘AI data centers, you’re welcome in New Jersey, but bring your own clean electricity with them so they don’t impact the ratepayers.”
Utah enacted a law this year that allows “large load” customers like data centers to craft separate contracts with utilities, and a bill in Oregon, which would create a separate customer class for data centers, called the POWER Act, passed through both chambers last month.
If passed, New Jersey’s law would join others across the country in redefining the relationship between data centers powering AI and utilities providers.
“We have to take action, and I think we have to be pretty thoughtful about this, and look at the big picture as well,” Zwicker said. ”I’m not anti-data center, I’m pro-technology, but I’m just not willing to put it on the backs of ratepayers.”
A federal judge has ordered Wisconsin to stop denying unemployment insurance to applicants who are also on Social Security Disability Insurance. (Getty Images creative)
Updated Wednesday, 7/16/2025, 2 p.m.
Wisconsin residents who receive federal disability benefits and also work will no longer be denied unemployment compensation if they get laid off under a federal court order issued this week.
The order effectively ends enforcement of a 12-year-old state law that disqualifies people from unemployment insurance coverage if they collect Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) payments.
The order, released late Monday, comes a year after U.S. District Judge William Conley found that the Wisconsin law barring unemployment insurance for SSDI recipients unlawfully discriminates against people with disabilities.
The Department of Workforce Development (DWD) issued a comment Wednesday, after this report was initially published, stating, “The Department of Workforce Development did not oppose a prospective preliminary injunction in this case from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin but cannot provide additional comment at this time due to ongoing litigation.”
The law blocking unemployment compensation for SSDI recipients was passed in 2013 with only Republican support in the Legislature and signed by then-Gov. Scott Walker. It was based on thepremise that most SSDI recipients didn’t work and that when they filed UI claims they were “double-dipping” and probably committing “fraud.”
That impression is false, according to Victor Forberger, whose legal practice is almost exclusively focused on unemployment insurance claims.
Many people with disabilities who qualify for SSDI are still able to do some kinds of work, and they often want and need to, Forberger said Tuesday.
“They need to do this work to support themselves,” Forberger said. The typical monthly SSDI benefit “is a bare minimum, and in some cases not even that.”
Forberger, working with two other law firms, filed a lawsuit in 2021 against Amy Pechacek, secretary-designee at the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD). The suit charged that banning SSDI recipients from filing for unemployment compensation when they lose work violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Conley’s new order, filed late Monday, instructs Pechacek and DWD to stop enforcing the UI ban for people on SSDI.
The lawsuit was filed as a class action. In an order June 11, Conley certified two classes of people with claims under the litigation: Those who applied for unemployment benefits in Wisconsin after Sept. 7, 2015 and were denied because they received SSDI benefits; and those who had received UI benefits after that date, but then were ordered to pay them back because they also were on SSDI.
The plaintiffs and DWD still differ on how to handle remedies for the two classes of people.
DWD wants to reprocess their claims from the start, and argues in a court brief that some of them might still not qualify for unemployment insurance for other reasons. The plaintiffs want the order to include a provision for supplemental filings and hearings.
Conley’s order requires both sides to work out a remedy agreement by Aug. 18, and if they can’t, to each submit a proposed order and identify their differences.
The judge rejected two other proposed classes: UI claimants who were penalized after failing to report their SSDI income, and SSDI recipients who never filed for unemployment insurance after losing a job.
The penalties in the law were not part of the lawsuit, Conley wrote. Identifying who might have applied for UI and did not was “unknown and unknowable,” he added.
Forberger said Tuesday that there may be several thousand people who were on SSDI and were denied unemployment compensation as a result. Once the remedy details are resolved, he expects that notifying everyone who qualifies for payment will be a complicated and time-consuming task.
“We’ve got to do a lot of outreach and a lot of explanation,” Forberger said.
Federal immigration authorities face off against protesters during an ICE raid at Ambiance Apparel in Downtown Los Angeles on June 6, 2025. (Photo by J.W. Hendricks for CalMatters)
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Carlos was pulled out of a deep sleep by a series of frantic phone calls one Friday morning in June. By the time he arrived at a downtown Los Angeles garment factory sometime after 10 a.m., his brother was in chains.
Agents from a constellation of federal agencies descended on the Ambiance Apparel factory and storefront on June 6, detaining dozens of people. It was the first salvo of the Trump administration’s prolonged engagement in Southern California, where masked federal agents are filmed daily pulling people off the street as part of what the president has promised will be the largest deportation program in American history.
Carlos’ brother, Jose, 35, was shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles. Carlos watched as agents in Immigration and Customs Enforcement vests led Jose and 13 other garment workers into a waiting white Sprinter van. Carlos hasn’t seen his brother since, though he did confirm that Jose is being held at an immigration detention center in Adelanto.
“We had just lost our other brother, he died,” said Carlos, whom CalMatters is only identifying by his first name because of his own fears of deportation. “Then, for our family, losing Jose, it was like someone died again.”
Worksite raids like the one at Ambiance are an attention-grabbing component of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, one that it remains committed to despite a brief reversal in mid-June. They’re unfolding across California, from Los Angeles’s Fashion District to farm fields in the San Joaquin Valley and a restaurant in San Diego.
While one stated purpose of worksite raids is to remove illegal competition from the labor marketplace, the reality is far messier: Studies have found that immigration raids don’t do much to raise wages — and actually deflate them. Even after a raid, employers are no more likely to use federal immigration verification tools like E-Verify during hiring.
Nevertheless, on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump focused on the threat of illegal competition as the political and emotional lynchpin of his deportation plans.
“They’re taking your jobs, they’re taking your jobs,” Trump told a crowd in Wilmington, N.C., on Sept. 21. “ Every job produced in this country over the last two years has gone to illegal aliens, every job, think of it.
“We’re going to save you. We’re going to save you. We’re going to save you.”
Every new job between 2022-2024 was not, in fact, filled by undocumented immigrants. Studies show actually deporting workers en masse from industries that rely on undocumented labor does little for U.S. workers. Giovanni Peri, a UC Davis economist who has studied the economic impacts of deportations in the 1930s and during the Obama administration, has found doing so actually reduces job opportunities for American-born workers.
That’s in part because many American workers, even those outside of immigrant-heavy industries, rely on the services generated by low-wage, undocumented labor — the costs of which would rise with mass deportations.
“Losing some of these workers and jobs that Americans are moving out of, it shrinks the local economy and there’s a reduction in jobs for Americans,” he said.
There is no evidence, Peri said, that in the face of mass deportations, immigrant-heavy industries would raise their wages to hire American workers instead.
“If there is such a world, it has not been the reality in the U.S. in a long time,” he said.
What does tend to happen, according to a study last year by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is that raids lead to more job turnover while showing little net change in the employment rate.
“Actions that target employers — audits, investigations, fines, and criminal charges — have larger effects than raids, which target workers,” the study authors wrote.
The impact to the families can be long-term and devastating. Absences, suspensions, expulsions and rates of substance abuse and self-harm increased among Latino students in a Tennessee town that was raided, even among students whose families were not directly impacted. Property crime dropped but violent crime increased in a small northeast Iowa meatpacking town after a massive 2008 raid. Infants born to Hispanic mothers in that same Iowa town had a 24% risk of low birth weight compared to the same population one year before the raid.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents face off against protesters during an ICE raid at Ambiance Apparel in Downtown Los Angeles on June 6, 2025. (Photo by J.W. Hendricks for CalMatters)
“Our mom is devastated, and she’s scared for herself, too,” Carlos said. “A lot of us are from the same (Zapotec Indigenous) community in Mexico, a lot of people kidnapped in the raid, so it’s like a whole bunch of families had a death.”
In his first term, Trump’s worksite raids focused on the South and the Midwest, when more than 1,800 people were detained, mostly at manufacturing plants and meat and poultry processing facilities. That’s a tiny segment of the estimated 1.5 million people deported under Trump from 2017 to 2021, but it played a significant role in another of the administration’s goals: To create enough fear and mistrust among undocumented immigrants that they self-deport.
But this time, Trump’s focus is on California.
‘There’s no money’ after raid
Employees at Ambiance Apparel told each other that immigration enforcement was likely coming to their garment factory. Employees who did not want to be identified told CalMatters that people in Department of Homeland Security jackets were on site at least twice this year, most recently in April. Those workers say they were told by the company not to worry about a raid.
Ambiance Apparel, through an attorney, denied that the company had any advance warning or involvement with the raid and the company declined to comment further.
The garment industry is a logical target for immigration enforcement because so much of the workforce is undocumented. The same is true of agriculture. Estimates vary, but anywhere from one third to more than one half of California farmworkers are undocumented immigrants.
William Lopez, a University of Michigan public health professor who has written a book on the impact of immigration raids on mixed-status families, said he learned in interviews of people present at six immigration raids in the Midwest and South in 2018 that people “haven’t developed the language” to capture the impact of large-scale immigration raids on a community.
After a raid, “people don’t drive, there’s no money because everyone’s paying bond, no one’s going to school anymore,” Lopez said.
He continued, “the comparisons were, there was hurricanes, there was tornadoes, there was war, some people compared it to a public execution. Some people described it like the death of a grandchild.”
Congress made it illegal to knowingly hire workers who don’t have authorization in 1986, as part of an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system. The overhaul also legalized about 2.7 million undocumented immigrants.
Still, false Social Security numbers have been fairly easy to obtain, and employers are largely able to duck liability with only a cursory review of the documents workers present when they’re hired.
Employers have had little incentive to get stricter, even after the high-profile raids of meat and food processing plants during the second term of the George W. Bush administration. Demand for labor has remained high, fines for those caught have been lax and the use of contractors and subcontractors has proliferated, spreading out the risks of hiring..
“The number of employers who have been fined or imprisoned under the statute is very low compared to the number of employees who have been rounded up as a result of these (workplace) raids,” said Leticia Saucedo, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law. “The idea behind all of these was, yes, to target the employers, but employees were collateral damage.”
Saucedo said workplace raids and the deportation of workers highlight tensions between two wings of the Republican Party. Nativist groups want to curb immigration because they believe it displaces American workers, while business interests want access to a stable, legal pool of immigrant workers.
Farmworkers work in a field outside of Fresno on June 16, 2025. (Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local)
California farmer ready to demand a warrant
California farmers are especially sensitive to potential immigration raids. The Border Patrol conducted a sweep in Kern County just before Trump took office in January that previewed its approach in the new administration. In June, agents swept through farms in Ventura County, conducting immigration raids. iIndustry groups implored the administration to reconsider such tactics.
“To ensure stability for our farm families and their communities, we must act with both common sense and compassion,” Bryan Little, policy director at the California Farm Bureau, said in a statement. “The focus of immigration enforcement should be on the removal of bad actors or lawbreakers, not our valuable and essential farm employees.”
In an interview, Little said he hasn’t seen evidence of widespread enforcement at farms. But reports of any ICE sightings or arrests in agricultural areas have spread on social media, spreading fear among the workforce.
“The way this is all being handled, it’s interfering with food production,” he said.
In Ventura County, federal agents ultimately arrested more than 30 immigrants in June, said Hazel Davalos, director of the local farmworker advocacy group CAUSE.
Lisa Tate manages three of her family’s eight ranches in the county, where they grow citrus, avocados and coffee. Depending on the day, anywhere from five to 100 directly hired and contracted workers plant, trim or harvest on the land.
They were not among the farms visited by immigration agents, but Tate said she held a meeting with her workers to communicate a longstanding company policy: if agents ever show up, “nobody’s to be on our farm without proper authorization.”
Tate said the raids have put employers like her in a tough position. She said she has never knowingly hired any undocumented workers. She said she reviews the employment documents her workers present, fills out the I-9 form and follows the rules.
Still, she called it a “well-known secret” that many in the industry don’t have valid work permits.
She’s tried to use the guest worker visa program before, but it comes with costly requirements to provide housing and transportation, and to guarantee the guest workers have enough paid hours for the months they’re here. That was hard to budget for on a smaller farm like hers, she said, so she prefers hiring contracted workers locally as needed.
“We need an immigration program that allows for longer-term workers,” she said. “Until we have a solution in place, we shouldn’t take action because the whole system is built on what it is. And if you start picking it apart, there’s all kinds of fallout.”
This story was updated to clarify that President Trump has promised in his campaign to carry out the largest deportation program in American history. The largest mass deportation event took place during the Eisenhower administration in 1954 and 1955.
People gather for a "Save the Civil Service" rally hosted by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) on Feb. 11, the day President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling on DOGE to cut federal jobs. The Supreme Court said Tuesday those cuts could proceed, for now. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
The U.S. Supreme Court late Tuesday lifted lower court injunctions that had blocked attempts by President Donald Trump and his DOGE Service to restructure the federal government.
Labor unions, advocates and local governments that sued to block the cuts said the president exceeded his authority with the executive order by moving to dismantle the federal government without congressional approval.
A U.S. District Court judge in Northern California agreed and issued preliminary injunction to stall the executive order while the case was heard. A divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision.
But the White House pressed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, arguing that Trump’s executive order did not restructure the government but merely called for reductions in force, which it said is within the president’s power.
The Supreme Court agreed in a one-page order Tuesday, saying the government was likely to prevail on its claim and the injunction should be stayed while the case proceeded.
In a sharp, 15-page dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the district court judge had determined that the administration plan would not just cut jobs but would “fundamentally restructure” the federal government. He made a “reasoned determination” that the order should be stayed while the case was heard, she wrote.
“But that temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this Court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture,” she wrote.
“At bottom, this case is about whether that action amounts to a structural overhaul that usurps Congress’s policymaking prerogatives — and it is hard to imagine deciding that question in any meaningful way after those changes have happened,” she wrote. “Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a brief concurrence, said she agreed with Jackson that the president does not have the authority to remake government without congressional approval. But she said the executive order and an implementing memo from the Office of Management and the Office of Personnel Management call for the changes to be “consistent with applicable law,” and it’s for lower courts to determine if they are.
A White House spokesperson called the decision a “another definitive victory” for the Trump administration.
“It clearly rebukes the continued assaults on the President’s constitutionally authorized executive powers by leftist judges who are trying to prevent the President from achieving government efficiency across the federal government,” the spokesperson, Harrison Fields, said in a written statement.
But labor unions, advocates and political leaders say that the decision undermines the value of federal employees, threatens the operation of federal services, and could even endanger American citizens.
In a statement Tuesday evening, the American Federation of Government Employees, along with the rest of the coalition of unions, nonprofits and municipalities bringing the suit against the administration, decried the Supreme Court’s decision as a “serious blow to our democracy.”
The coalition said the decision put “services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy.”
For some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.
– Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
“This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution,” the statement read. “While we are disappointed in this decision, we will continue to fight on behalf of the communities we represent and argue this case to protect critical public services that we rely on to stay safe and healthy.”
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said that as a state with a high concentration of federal workers, “any action against our federal employees is a direct strike against Maryland’s people and economy.”
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling on AFGE v. Trump will embolden President Trump in his mission to dismantle the federal government and threatens to upend the lives of countless public servants who wake up every day to deliver essential services and benefits that people rely on,” Moore said in a written statement. He noted that thousands of Maryland residents have already been laid off from federal agencies under the Trump administration.
In a post to X on Tuesday evening, U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-5th) wrote that Trump and OMB Director Russell Vought are continuing to “vilify and traumatize the patriots serving our nation, unconstitutionally reorganizing the federal government.”
“The Supreme Court’s decision today demonstrates that federal employees, their families and livelihoods, and the vital services they provide to the American people are of no concern to the Trump Administration,” Hoyer wrote. “I stand with our federal employees against these attacks.”
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-8th) said in an X post that the ruling “will give Trump’s wrecking crew more awful ideas about sacking critical federal workers,” referencing layoffs at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who help notify state and local agencies about impending dangerous weather.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) added that layoffs could also put Americans at risk by “decimating essential public services” like food inspections and Social Security.
“As Justice Jackson put it in her dissent, ‘this was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground,’” Van Hollen said in a statment. “She is right. The Court’s decision to allow this damage to be done before ruling on the merits shows how detached they are from the reality of the moment.”
Van Hollen said the administration’s plan “isn’t about efficiency, it’s about rigging the government to only benefit the wealthy and powerful special interests.”
“We are not done fighting in Congress, in the courts, and in our communities to defend the dedicated public servants who go to work on behalf of the American people day in and day out,” he said.
The Feb. 11 executive order directed federal agencies to prepeare for “large-scale reductions in force” and to work with members of the Department of Government Efficiency — the DOGE Service that was run at the time by billionaire Elon Musk — to develop a plan to reduce the size of the workforce. Military personnel were exempted, but virtually every other federal agency was affected.
The order was quickly challenged in court by labor unions, taxpayer and good government groups and by a hafl-dozen local governments: Harris County, Texas, Martin Luther King Jr. County, Washington, and San Francisco City and County, California; and the cities of Chicago, Baltimore, and Santa Rosa, California.
They argued that the goals of the executive order far exceeded the president’s authority to reduce the size of agencies. Under the DOGE plan, they argued to the Supreme Court, “functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost, and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs.”
“There will be no way to unscramble that egg: If the courts ultimately deem the President to have overstepped his authority and intruded upon that of Congress, as a practical matter there will be no way to go back in time to restore those agencies, functions, and services,” their court filing said.
That was echoed by Jackson, who said the district court judge was in the best position to determine if the president’s order consisted of “minor workforce reductions” or whether it was a massive reorganization that overstepped executive authority.
“With scant justification, the majority permits the immediate and potentially devastating aggrandizement of one branch (the Executive) at the expense of another (Congress), and once again leaves the People paying the price for its reckless emergency-docket determinations,” she wrote.
Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org.
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