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• Some of the state’s fastest-growing jobs are in the health care and green energy fields. 

• Jobs projected to have the most openings tend to have high turnover and pay lower wages, according to state and federal data. 

• Many jobs that are shrinking the fastest are based on outdated technologies or practices. 

• Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development keeps a list of the “Hot Jobs” statewide – jobs that pay above the median wage, are expected to grow faster than average and have the most projected openings.

When Wisconsin Watch this spring launched a new pathways to success beat focused on jobs and job training, we set out to learn how Wisconsinites are building family-sustaining careers and what’s standing in their way. 

Doing that required knowing how the job tides are changing in Wisconsin. What jobs are growing the fastest? Which are shrinking? What will be the most common jobs in the coming years, and what do they pay?  The six charts below use state and federal data to answer those questions.

To learn more about any of these jobs, including what the work entails, how much it pays and how to get trained, click on the links in the article or visit a website like careeronestop.org, onetonline.org or skillexplorer.wisconsin.gov.

We’re planning follow-up coverage related to some of the growing fields on these lists. Which job or jobs would you like to learn more about? What questions do you have? Fill out this short Google form to let us know.

Which jobs are growing the fastest in Wisconsin?

Some of Wisconsin’s fastest-growing jobs are jobs in health and green energy fields, as you might expect. That includes the top four: 

• Wind turbine service technicians, projected to grow by 75% in Wisconsin from 2022 to 2032, adding 30 jobs.
• Nurse practitioners, projected to grow by 51%, adding 2,530 jobs.
• Computer and information research scientists, projected to grow by 44%, adding 40 jobs. 
• Data scientists, projected to grow by 43%, adding 1,230 jobs.

Others on the list seem more surprising. Despite the prevalence of online booking platforms and travel influencers hyping up their favorite spots, the ranks of travel agents are growing as Americans resume travel post-pandemic and want someone else to do the planning. In Wisconsin, the number of travel agents is projected to increase by 350, or 38%. The state is also projected to add 430 jobs for animal trainers, a 36% increase that comes as Americans own a growing number of pets and spend more on them.

Six of the jobs that ranked in the top 10 fastest-growing have median salaries of $85,000 or more. Seven of the top 10 typically require a college degree, and four typically require a graduate degree.

Of the jobs that ranked in the top 10, just two (nurse practitioner and data scientist) are projected to add more than 1,000 jobs. Several are projected to add fewer than 200. By comparison, the state’s most common job, home health and personal care aide, is projected to have 14,150 annual openings, in part because of high turnover among those workers. 

Three jobs were tied with physician assistants for 10th place. One is rail yard engineers, also known as hostlers or dinkey operators, who inspect train equipment and drive small locomotives to move railcars. The others are aircraft service attendants, who re-fuel planes and service them between flights, and administrative law judges or adjudicators, who rule on government matters. But while all three are projected to grow by 33% in Wisconsin, the number of physician assistants is projected to grow by 970, and the ranks of aircraft service attendants are projected to grow by just 50. Administrative law judges and rail yard engineers are projected to grow by just 10. 

One note: These projections may not account for the latest developments in the job landscape, including how artificial intelligence might change the way Americans work, or what kinds of workers are needed. Gov. Tony Evers in 2023 appointed a task force to study how AI might transform Wisconsin’s labor market. The group found that bookkeepers, data entry keyers, credit analysts and insurance claims processors are among those whose work most overlaps with AI capabilities. They note that that doesn’t mean those workers will necessarily be replaced by AI; they could instead end up using AI tools to make their jobs easier or more efficient.

The task force also did the same analysis for the state’s 10 most common jobs. It found all had “middling” levels of AI exposure, suggesting they may not experience as much change with AI as some occupations will. 

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s administration has taken steps to reverse renewable energy initiatives, a move that could threaten the projected job growth for wind turbine service technicians. Twice this year the federal government halted construction of offshore wind farms.

Which jobs will have the most openings in Wisconsin?

Some occupations have lots of openings each year not because the industry is growing but because turnover is high. The jobs projected to have the most future openings in Wisconsin also pay some of the lowest wages. The top four have median annual salaries of less than $35,000 a year, and all of the top 10 have salaries under $46,000. None require education beyond a high school diploma, and most don’t require any formal education.

One in 10 Wisconsin workers holds one the top five jobs on this list, all with a 2022 median wage under $46,000. About 215,000 of those people work in jobs with a median wage under $35,000.

Of the 10 most common jobs, two stand out for higher average wages: registered nurse ($86,070) and truck driver ($57,380). 

The state’s most common job involves caring for older adults or people with disabilities in their homes, helping with tasks like bathing, medication and grocery shopping. Across the country, demand for these workers is growing as more Americans choose to age in their homes rather than in assisted living or nursing facilities. In Wisconsin, the number of residents over 65 is expected to almost double by 2040, increasing demand. Industry leaders and disability advocacy groups say they already struggle to hire and retain enough workers as wages in other entry-level jobs rise, and they’ve called on the state to raise the Medicaid reimbursement rate, which pays for most of this care. The 2025-27 state budget allocates $19 million to raise that rate, less than half of what Evers requested.

Declining employment

Many of the jobs shrinking the fastest are ones you might expect: those based on outdated technologies or practices. About one in four positions held by telemarketers, switchboard operators, couriers, door-to-door salespeople and street vendors is projected to vanish by 2032.

Of the top 10 fastest-shrinking jobs, nine don’t usually require a college education. 

Secretaries and administrative assistants are expected to lose the most jobs (2,420), followed by couriers and messengers (1,990), customer service representatives (1,550) and tellers (1,290).

Nursing assistant ranks are projected to shrink, too (by 720, or 3%), though that field will remain big in Wisconsin, with estimated 26,510 nursing assistant jobs in 2032.

‘Hot Jobs’

Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development keeps a list of the “Hot Jobs” statewide and in each of 11 regions. These jobs pay above the median wage for the state or region, are expected to grow faster than average and have the most projected openings. Visit this website to see the data and sort it in various ways. 

One major caveat about this data: It compares 2032 to 2022, when COVID-19 was still disrupting the economy, so it favors jobs that have rebounded after shrinking during the pandemic. 

For example, registered nurses don’t appear on the “Hot Jobs” list. The job pays well and it’s growing quickly, but few nurses lost their jobs in the pandemic. That means the field isn’t growing as much as those that saw major pandemic layoffs, said DWD Senior Research Analyst Maria del Pilar Casal. She expects registered nurses will make the list next time.

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success in Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

The future of work in Wisconsin, in six charts is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Northeast Wisconsin’s fastest-growing jobs span a variety of industries, including health care and logistics.  

• Jobs in the region with the most openings tend to have low barriers to entry and tend to pay relatively low wages. 

• While the paper industry has a strong foothold in the northeast, paper goods machine operators are expected to lose the most positions.

What are the roughly 450,000 workers in northeast Wisconsin doing for a living? And how will that change in the next decade? We pored over state workforce data to find out. 

Below are six charts you can use to make sense of which jobs are growing and shrinking across the region. 

Wisconsin Watch also published a version with data that encompasses jobs across the entire state.

This article is solely focused on job trends in northeast Wisconsin. As we continue to build our new northeast Wisconsin bureau, you can expect us to provide more stories tailored to the region. 

Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development — the state agency from which we sourced this data — defines the “Bay Area” as Brown, Door, Florence, Kewaunee, Manitowoc, Marinette, Menominee, Oconto, Outagamie, Shawano and Sheboygan counties. 

To learn more about any of these jobs, including what the work entails, how much it pays and how to get trained, visit a website like careeronestop.org, onetonline.org or skillexplorer.wisconsin.gov.

Jobs growing rapidly

Home health and personal care aides are the fastest-growing occupation in the region, expected to add nearly 1,200 jobs by 2032. Wisconsin will need more workers to assist older adults as the state’s population continues to age significantly, with the number of residents over the age of 74 expected to increase 41% between 2020 and 2030.

Several of the occupations on this list are already some of the most popular in the region, so the hundreds to thousands of jobs they’re expected to add represent a smaller share of the area’s overall workforce. When looking at growth by percentage, some other occupations are expected to add a smaller number of jobs, but they will constitute a larger share of the workforce.

The occupations expected to grow most percentage-wise include:

• Nurse practitioners, projected to grow 62% by adding 450 jobs.
• Data scientists, projected to grow 47% by adding 148 jobs. 
• Physician assistants, projected to grow 41% by adding 128 jobs.
• Actuaries, projected to grow 41% by adding 49 jobs.
• Information security analysts, projected to grow 41% by adding 115 jobs.

Jobs with the most openings

Some occupations have lots of openings each year — not necessarily because the industry is growing but because there are more people leaving their roles.

Many of the jobs projected to have the most future openings have low barriers to entry, meaning they don’t require formal education or certification to obtain. They also pay relatively low wages — for example, topping the list is fast food counter workers, who made an average salary of $27,890 in the region in 2024. 

Most common jobs

Many of the jobs that have the most openings each year are also the most common jobs for northeast Wisconsinites to hold. 

The 10 most common occupations in the region span largely essential jobs, including the workers who treat you at the hospital, those keeping the region’s restaurant industry alive and the people who make sure your packages are safely packed and delivered. 

The most rapidly shrinking jobs

While the paper industry has a strong foothold in the northeast, paper goods machine operators top the list for anticipated job loss. This includes workers who tend paper goods machines that convert, saw, corrugate or seal paper or paperboard sheets into products.

Other industries are expected to lose fewer jobs, but those losses will make a larger dent in the profession. Some of the occupations expected to lose the most percentage-wise are:

• Broadcast technicians, expected to lose 35 jobs, a 60% decrease. 
• Word processors and typists, expected to lose 10 jobs, a 37% decrease. 
• Nuclear engineers, expected to lose eight jobs, a 23% decrease. 
• Pressers, textile, garment, and related materials, expected to lose 18 jobs for a 20% decrease.
• Data entry keyers, expected to lose 72 jobs, a 19% decrease. 

Most of these occupations — telemarketers, typists and data entry keyers — are based on outdated technologies or practices, so the fact that they’re shrinking quickly may not be surprising. 

Northeast Wisconsin’s ‘Hot Jobs’

Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development keeps a list of the “Hot Jobs” in every region of the state. To be classified as such, the occupation must pay above the state’s median salary, have an above-average growth rate and top the list of projected job openings.

Use the table to explore what education and training northeast Wisconsin’s “Hot Jobs” provide, what they pay and how they’re expected to grow. 

Note: This data may be slightly skewed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The department says it accounts for pandemic impacts “as accurately as possible.” Some occupations that regularly have large growth rates didn’t make the cut if they didn’t show a significant decline in 2020 followed by a notable recovery, the department notes.

See how any job is expected to change

Is there a job you’re curious about that didn’t make one of our charts? Use this searchable database of hundreds of occupations to see how each is expected to change in the northeast region by 2032. 

We’re planning follow-up coverage related to Wisconsin’s fastest-growing fields. Which jobs would you like to learn more about? Fill out this short Google form to let us know.

Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Connect with her on X, Instagram or Bluesky. Email her at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success in Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

Job hunting in northeast Wisconsin? Check out these charts is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Detail of a mural inside the Madison Labor Temple building celebrating unions and worker rights. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

“This fight is all of labor’s fight,” Kevin Gundlach, president of the South Central Federation of Labor, declared at a “solidarity dinner” for 43 immigrant workers who recently lost their jobs at a Monroe, Wisconsin cheese factory. “Even Wisconsinites who don’t know about the story, should know in a cheesemaking state we should support cheesemakers.” 

The workers, some of whom labored for more than 20 years at W&W Dairy, were told in August they would have to submit to E-Verify screening and confirm their legal status in order to continue their employment after a new company, Kansas-based Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), bought the cheese plant. They walked off the job to protest, hoping DFA, which has a policy of subjecting new hires to E-Verify screening, would exempt them because of their many years of service. The company declined, but asked the workers to return to help train their replacements, one worker said. 

The cheese plant employees I spoke with said they were still in shock, worried about supporting their families as they face the loss of pay and benefits at the end of the month.

Workers who pulled long shifts, kept the plant going through the pandemic and took pride in producing high quality, Mexican-style cheeses — queso fresco, queso blanco, quesadilla and panela — now feel betrayed. 

Their goal is no longer to return to their old jobs. Instead, they are focused on getting severance pay from W&W Dairy, which is still technically their employer until Sept. 1 — Labor Day — when DFA assumes control of the plant.

On Thursday, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of the immigrant workers’ rights group Voces de la Frontera, wrote to W&W president Franz Hofmeister to ask that the dairy show appreciation for its longtime workers by offering them a severance package. A Labor Day picnic organized by community members to support the workers, “would be an excellent opportunity to announce that the workers and the company have resolved their differences and that workers are being given some compensation,” Neumann-Ortiz wrote. “This would give the workers a chance to thank you publicly and provide some healing and closure.”

W&W’s success was propelled by its loyal workforce — fewer than 100 people who knew how to do multiple jobs in the plant and switched roles to keep things running smoothly. The quality of the product attracted a high-profile buyer. 

“The growth trajectory for the Hispanic cheese market is more than three times that of the cheese category,” Ken Orf, president of DFA’s Cheese, Taste and Flavors Division, told the trade publication Cheese Reporter, in an article about the benefit to the company of its “strategic acquisition” of W&W, which puts it in a “stronger position for growth with this important dairy category.”

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Hispanic employees of the plant.

Bibiana Gonzalez, a child care provider and community leader in the Monroe area, said she liked the term “essential workers” when she first heard it. The W&W workers felt they were essential to their employer’s success, and put in long hours during the pandemic, when other people were staying home to protect their health. But “unfortunately, people confuse essential workers with workers who can be exploited,” Gonzalez said.

“They want to toss these workers in the street just for being immigrants,” said Voces de la Frontera organizer Pablo Rodriguez.

DFA wants to distance itself from any thorny political issues around immigration. In a statement to WKOW Channel 27 news, the company asserted it had a goal “to retain 100% of the W&W workforce,” but that “as part of the hiring process to become DFA employees, all W&W workers and other applicants were notified of the need to provide documents to complete both an I-9 form and the E-verify process.” Failing to produce the proper documents, unfortunately, would mean “DFA’s ability to offer employment was impacted.”

Using cold, passive bureaucratic language, DFA casts it as a regrettable accident that its E-Verify policy rendered nearly half the cheese plant’s employees ineligible to continue working there. But as a cooperative with 5,000 dairy farm members, it’s impossible DFA leadership is unfamiliar with its industry’s heavy reliance on workers who don’t have papers.

In Wisconsin, where DFA has 399 member farms and four dairy manufacturing plants, an estimated 70% of the dairy workforce is made up of immigrants who cannot get E-Verifiable legal work papers.

In dairy, as in other year-round, nonseasonal industries, immigrants who make up the majority of the work force are ineligible for U.S. work visas. Congress has simply failed to create a visa for year-round jobs in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, food service and other industries that rely on immigrant labor.

Far from being a drag on the economy, immigrant workers who lack legal authorization are heavily recruited by U.S. employers and “supercharge economic growth,” according to a new Center for Migration Studies research brief. The research brief shows that 8.5 million undocumented workers in the U.S. contribute an estimated $96.7 billion annually in federal, state and local taxes, “filling roles vital to critical industries.”

The brief also warns that mass deportations could cause critical workforce shortages. No one knows that better than Wisconsin dairy farmers, who would go out of business overnight if their mostly immigrant workforce was deported.

Union members who came out to support the W&W workers Tuesday night embraced the idea that all workers are in the same boat, are ill served by an authoritarian, bullying Trump administration, and will do better if they band together.

That’s the whole idea of solidarity: Working people need to unite to protect their common interests against the rich and powerful, who will run roughshod over all of us if they can. Expanding on that unifying message, Al Hudson, lay leader of the Union Presbyterian Church in Monroe, whose congregation supports the W&W workers, brought his social justice gospel to the union hall.

“We are proud to be a gathering place for the Green County Hispanic community,” Hudson said of his church. “We’re proud to do our part to be a Matthew 25 church,” he added, referring to the Bible verse in which Jesus calls on the faithful to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, care for the sick and visit those in prison. “This is what churches are supposed to do,” Hudson said. “I admire your courage,” he told the displaced W&W workers, pledging to continue to “walk with you and support you in your struggle as long as you want us there.”

The union members in the hall cheered. They applauded the W&W workers, they applauded speeches about solidarity among working people of every race and ethnic background. They seemed enlivened by the chance to do something to help.

The warm feeling of pulling together to resist the violent bigotry of the anti-immigrant Trump administration, recognizing the common struggle among all working people, was uplifting.

“Solidaridad!” shouted Gundlach, and the mostly gringo crowd of unionists shouted back, “Solidaridad!” 

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U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy rides on a FrontRunner train in Salt Lake City during a media event on Monday, April 7, 2025. (Photo by McKenzie Romero/Utah News Dispatch)

Three states are at risk of losing some federal transportation funding because they are not enforcing President Donald Trump’s executive order that commercial truck drivers must be proficient in English, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday.

New Mexico, Washington and California will have 30 days to comply with the order or risk losing funding from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration — among the smaller of the Transportation Department’s agencies — Duffy said, standing behind a lectern with an “America First” banner on it at the department’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

California stands to lose $33 million, Washington could lose $10.5 million and New Mexico would lose $7 million, Duffy said. He urged the states to comply with the executive order, which Trump signed in April and took effect in June, or face increasingly draconian penalties.

“We don’t want to take away money from states,” Duffy said. “But we will take money away and we will take additional steps that get progressively more difficult for these states. There’s a lot of great tools that we have here that we don’t want to use.”

All three states contributed to a Florida crash this month in which three people were killed, Duffy said. The truck driver involved had a commercial license from California and Washington, and had been pulled over for speeding in New Mexico prior to crashing in Florida, Duffy said.

“So this one driver touched all three states,” he said.

The Florida driver, an immigrant from India who did not have permanent legal authority to be in the country, made an illegal U-turn on the Florida Turnpike, according to local reports.

Duffy said the Florida driver did not understand road signs, but did not further specify how his lack of English comprehension led to the crash, which reportedly involved making a U-turn across lanes of traffic. But Duffy repeatedly said the issue was one of safety.

Duffy said that when the Trump executive order went into effect, it received negative publicity.

“There was a lot of press that complained to us that we were being unfair to people, that we were being mean to people,” he said. “And what we said was, ‘No, this is a safety issue.’ Making sure drivers of very heavy, 80,000-pound rigs can speak the language is truly a critical safety issue. And some complained about it.”

Newsom hits back

On social media, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office said the federal government approved a permit for the Florida driver.

“This is rich,” Newsom’s office wrote on X. “The Trump Administration approved the federal work permit for the man who killed 3 people — and now they’re scrambling to shift blame after getting caught. Sean’s nonsense announcement is as big a joke as the Trump Administration itself.”

A DHS spokesperson denied the federal government issued the driver a work permit and blamed Newsom.

“These innocent people were killed in Florida because Gavin Newsom’s California Department of Motor Vehicles issued an illegal alien a Commercial Driver’s License—this state of governance is asinine,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to States Newsroom.

Newsom has increasingly over the past few months used his social media channels to mock Trump. 

Washington State Patrol spokesman Chris Loftis wrote in an email that the agency was “reviewing the matter with our state transportation partners” and would soon have a more detailed response.

A spokesperson for Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, said he had not received Duffy’s letter. 

“We will review it when we receive it and carefully evaluate next steps,” the spokesperson, Brionna Aho, said. 

That state’s Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, made a defiant statement last week about complying with the Trump administration’s demands on immigration enforcement.

“Washington State will not be bullied or intimidated by threats and legally baseless accusations,” he wrote to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

He has amplified that message several times since.

The New Mexico Department of Transportation deferred a request for comment to the state’s Department of Public Safety, which did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Investigating testing

Duffy said he was puzzled by commercial drivers who were able to pass a skills test without understanding English, and said the department was investigating that issue.

“This is something we’re looking at and working on when someone, an individual, comes in to take their test to become a commercial driver, and then they do a skills test… at that point, it would be clear that this driver doesn’t understand all the road signs and doesn’t speak the language, but miraculously, they’re passing the skills test,” he said. “I think any common-sense analysis would say, well, that doesn’t make sense.”

The federal department would be looking at whether the skills tests are being correctly administered and whether there is “some gaming of the system that we have to address.”

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• A judge’s order promises compensation to potentially thousands of disabled workers who were denied unemployment benefits under a state law struck down as discriminatory.

• The invalidated law prevented recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) from collecting unemployment insurance.

• Two classes of workers may be eligible for compensation: those denied unemployment benefits after Sept. 7, 2015, and before July 30, 2025, under the invalidated law, and those who had to repay benefits they received during that period for the same reason.

A federal judge has ordered Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development to compensate disabled workers who were denied unemployment benefits under a state law struck down as discriminatory.

U.S. District Judge William Conley’s order promises relief to potentially thousands of workers affected by a 2013 Wisconsin law that banned recipients of federal disability aid from collecting unemployment compensation when they lost work. 

But many details remain to be ironed out, including how quickly the state will reprocess a decade’s worth of denied claims and whether any claims should draw priority.

“Some work needs to be done yet to put the order into practice, and counsels for the class are working diligently to get to that point,” said Paul Kinne, one of the attorneys representing plaintiffs.

Conley issued his order Wednesday following a hearing in which attorneys representing workers and the state discussed remedies for denials under a law that Conley ruled violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. 

The overturned law prevented recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) — a monthly benefit for people with disabilities who have worked and paid into Social Security — from collecting unemployment insurance.

Republican lawmakers who approved the law claimed in 2013 that simultaneously collecting disability and unemployment benefits represented “double dipping.” But SSDI guidelines have long allowed and even encouraged recipients to supplement their income with part-time work, so long as their earnings remain below the threshold of “substantial gainful activity.” 

Conley’s order covers two classes: workers who were denied unemployment benefits after Sept. 7, 2015, and before July 30, 2025, due to receiving SSDI, and those who had to repay benefits they received during that period for the same reason.

Not every class member is automatically entitled to benefits, Kinne said, and it may take time to determine eligibility. That’s due to a variety of factors, including potential difficulties in retrieving and analyzing past claims data — and locating the claimants. Still, Kinne expects an  “overwhelming majority” of class members to be compensated.

In addition to receiving compensation for past denied claims, class members can file certifications for subsequent weeks in which they were told they were ineligible to file. These certifications should be submitted within 90 days of receiving notice from the department, the order said. 

The order also states that claimants who were charged with unemployment fraud for not properly disclosing their SSDI status will be eligible for benefits they had to repay. 

Class members who received federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — aid for people who lost work during the COVID-19 pandemic but didn’t qualify for regular benefits — will not receive additional benefits for weeks in which they already received pandemic aid. PUA claims were paid at a higher rate than regular benefits, Conley’s order states, and federal law bans the collection of both.

The Department of Workforce Development will begin notifying affected workers by Oct. 1, the order said. The parties must still agree on the language for those notifications, which should inform affected workers about the outcome of the lawsuit and how to claim benefits to which they should be entitled.

“I was generally pleased with the order,” Kinne said. “There is now light at the end of the tunnel for disabled people to receive the unemployment compensation that they should have received in the past.” 

Wisconsin to compensate workers with disabilities for wrongfully denied unemployment claims is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Protesters show support for immigrant workers in Monroe, Wisconsin, who walked off the job at a cheese-making plant to protest changes in policy made by the operation's new owners. (Photo by Bryan Pfeifer/Wisconsin Bailout the People Movement)

Known as the “Gateway to Cheese Country” and the “Cheese Capital of the USA,” the community of Monroe is a central part of Wisconsin’s dairy history. Besides this fame, the town of 10,000 or so also shares a lot with other small towns in the Midwest. Drive around the city’s courthouse square and you’ll see the offices of local lawyers, some banks and a few bars.

One thing that sets Monroe apart is the area’s relatively recent influx of immigrants.

According to the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Green County, where Monroe is located, has experienced a 229% increase in Latinos from 2000 to 2019. That growth has not been accompanied by a surge in murders, robberies, pet-eatings or any other crimes that the current administration has leveled against migrants. Instead Monroe has seen a rise in the number of Mexican restaurants and bilingual masses at the local Catholic church, as well as hardworking community members hoping to make a better life for themselves. 

Which makes the recent events at Monroe’s W&W milk processing plant especially infuriating. Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) acquired W&W earlier this month , and workers describe an  ownership philosophy vastly different from the positive work environment and commitment to employees they experienced under  the previous owners. Short of formally firing the workers employed there, DFA instituted the E-Verify system as part of their management plan, possibly to avoid the Trump administration’s destructive crackdowns. While this system allows employers to confirm the employment authorization of new hires, employees taking part in the walkout say that in contrast to the previous owners, DFA is requiring verification of all employees, even those who have been there 10-plus years. Not surprisingly, DFA’s decision has triggered a strike and the formation of a legal assistance fund for workers who most likely will lose their jobs after years at the plant.

Across rural America

It’s not an isolated instance; immigrants are being unjustly targeted in similar ways elsewhere in rural America. In Long Prairie, Minnesota, a town much like Monroe, meat processing workers, many of whom received legal status to work with the humanitarian parole program that the Biden administration created for people experiencing potential violence or harm in Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, or Haiti, had their permits revoked by Trump. Hundreds of workers also lost the legal right to work in the United States at a JBS pork production facility in Ottumwa, Iowa, as the current government ended their Temporary Protection Status (TPS). Like humanitarian parole, TPS, which began in 1990, grants people from certain countries work permits who flee disasters like hurricanes or wars.

Throughout the Midwest, milk processing and meat packing firms in rural areas constitute an agro-industrial archipelago where workers, many of whom are immigrants, play a key role in making our food system operate. But instead of being rewarded for years of hard work, immigrants face persecution. Insisting on programs like E-Verify — a voluntary system with documented shortcomings — and removing legal protections terrorize hardworking people. Immigrants and their families deserve better, including legal pathways to remain and work in the country.

In a nutshell, revoking legal protections unfairly turns workers into criminals by making them ineligible to work here. More to the point, these tactics are par for the course when it comes to the current administration’s cruel, underhanded and racist approach to enforcing our country’s outdated immigration system.

This toxic mix of cruelty and racial profiling is on display when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrest immigrants at courthouses after their asylum cases are dismissed, making them vulnerable for deportation. The racial profiling is even more blatant when migrants are stopped outside schools or at Home Depot parking lots because of how they look and where they are. Some get thrown to the ground and handcuffed just because they question the reason they are being detained.

An endless vicious cycle

The problem with such tactics — aside from the ethical and legal problems of encouraging government agents to trample on people’s constitutional rights — is efficiency. Immigration hardliners and Trump loyalists like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller made it a goal for ICE to fill the for-profit deportation complex with 3,000 arrests per day, having no qualms separating families, arresting children or people who have been model citizens for decades.

ICE has a sordid history of workplace enforcement actions in the past that have proven widely unpopular and non-productive.

We can go back to the Bush administration’s mass raids in places like Worthington, Minnesota, and Postville, Iowa, to show how ICE agents’ large-scale enforcement actions in rural communities tear families apart and leave communities with a long process to heal culturally and economically. What we know over a decade later is that arresting and deporting hundreds of people in such ways does not lead to U.S. citizen workers taking the positions formerly  held by immigrants, but the deported people being replaced by, well, another round of immigrants.

But for Trump 2.0, plans for the agro-industrial archipelago are different. Instead of staging mass actions to arrest workers, the government is doing this work digitally. Put otherwise, a faceless bureaucracy revokes programs and permits, giving a contrived legal pretext for ICE to enter communities and arrest people.

Let’s be clear — immigrant workers at these places were trying to “do it the right way.” But this government effectively took the legal carpet from under them as they were trying to scrape a living together for themselves and their families. To threaten these people with deportation is the ultimate in punching down, terrorizing hardworking and community-building people we should be welcoming instead of demonizing.

Real immigration policy reform does not underhandedly manufacture undocumented people, or target people who contribute to the economy, but involves doing the hard work of creating fair, workable policy in Congress. Nor should immigrants be welcomed on a whim of the administration as was the case when white South Africans were given refugee status while suspending protections for thousands of others. Why this special treatment? Most people seeking refugee status are people of color — the South Africans are white.

There are various serious initiatives currently in Congress that could actually improve the lives of immigrants. The bipartisan Dignity Act provides a pathway for citizenship for DREAMers (youth who came to the U.S. without authorization and either attend college or plan to do so) and a work permit system for all other undocumented people. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act puts farm workers and their families on a pathway to legalization. California U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla’s more sweeping Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929 grants lawful permanent resident status —  green cards — to people who have lived in the U.S. continuously for at least seven years and  do not have a criminal record.

Immigrants come to this country for a variety of reasons, including suffering the effects of flawed trade deals, as well as experiencing war and famine. Many continue to suffer here, working jobs that are ill-paid and dangerous in places like Monroe and Long Prairie. Our current government oppresses them further with draconian and dishonest tactics, scoring cheap political points instead of engaging in actual law enforcement. 

Those among us who really care about public security should think long and hard on how this government is entrapping immigrants instead of reforming and enforcing the law.

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• A 2013 state law prevented recipients of federal Social Security Disability Insurance from collecting state unemployment insurance after losing part-time work.  

• A federal judge struck down the law, ruling that it had “disparate impact on disabled workers seeking unemployment insurance benefits.”

• A hearing will explore whether and how the state should compensate workers for past denied claims.

Wisconsin has stopped blocking laid-off workers who receive disability benefits from collecting unemployment insurance — a response to court rulings that the practice violated federal discrimination law. 

Now U.S. District Judge William Conley will consider whether and how the state should compensate workers for past denied claims. Attorneys representing the state and affected workers plan to propose remedies ahead of a hearing on Wednesday. 

“In my eyes, we deserve all of it,” James Trandel, a longtime seasonal worker who faced denials for years, told Wisconsin Watch. “The law should have never been.”

The state law in question prevented recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) — a monthly benefit for people with disabilities who have worked and paid into Social Security — from collecting unemployment insurance after losing work. 

In proposing the law under Gov. Scott Walker in 2013, Republican lawmakers claimed that simultaneously collecting disability and unemployment benefits represented “double dipping” that “may constitute fraud.”

That overlooked the fact that SSDI guidelines have long allowed and even encouraged people on disability to supplement their income with part-time work, so long as their earnings remain below the threshold of “substantial gainful activity.” 

Eight SSDI recipients, with help from attorneys, challenged the law in 2021 by filing a class action lawsuit.

Conley ruled in July 2024 that the law violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, citing its “disparate impact on disabled workers seeking unemployment insurance benefits.”

But the ruling was not immediately implemented. The state’s Department of Workforce Development continued denying unemployment claims until Conley ordered it to stop in July.

DWD spokesperson Haley McCoy said the department did not oppose Conley’s order to stop enforcing the law he struck down, but she declined further comment due to pending litigation.

The lawsuit covers two classes: workers who were denied unemployment benefits after Sept. 7, 2015, due to receiving SSDI, and those who had to repay benefits they received for the same reason.

Conley will now consider who in those classes qualifies for benefits and how much they should get. 

Both parties will exchange proposals before Wednesday’s oral arguments to address such questions, said Victor Forberger, an attorney for the plaintiffs who has helped many SSDI recipients pursue their claims. The plaintiffs want the state to fairly compensate those who faced discriminatory denials, he added. 

The discussions may also involve how to address past claims for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — aid for people who lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic but didn’t qualify for regular benefits. The state initially denied PUA claims from workers on disability, but it reversed course in mid-2020 following Wisconsin Watch and WPR’s reporting on the denials.

“No one’s asking to get paid benefits twice. They’re just asking to get paid to be treated just like everyone else,” Forberger said.

Fighting for future generations 

Trandel, who has used a wheelchair since a 1983 fall left his legs paralyzed, filed for unemployment for years during the off-seasons of his job as a gate chief for the Milwaukee Brewers, where he helps with tickets and security. He has since hit retirement age, now 67, allowing him to switch from SSDI to Social Security retirement benefits. The state allowed him to collect a couple of weeks of state unemployment pay for the first time this spring because he was no longer on SSDI.

Although Trandel managed to get by without the state fulfilling his past claims, he believes that compensating workers for past denials would offer a measure of justice.

But even if that doesn’t happen, he’s proud of what the lawsuit has accomplished so far. 

“If I get nothing, that’s fine,” Trandel said. “At least the law’s changed so the future generations won’t have to go through what we went through the last 12 years.”

Judy Fintz, a seasonal worker and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, hopes that allowing SSDI recipients to collect unemployment like others will eliminate one of the many barriers they face in interacting with a long-outdated system that’s undergoing an overhaul. 

Fintz spends the school year cleaning tables, windows and soda machines part time at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse dining hall. She applied for unemployment during the off months from school, when she relies on SSDI while her bills pile up. That experience was far from smooth, even outside of the denials. She faced the difficulties of having to file claims by phone rather than online due to a severe learning disability, and she said she was treated poorly.

“This should really change everything around,” Fintz said of the court proceedings. “We should be able to get (unemployment insurance) without issue, so we can pay our bills.”

Reentering the workforce

As they await the outcome of litigation, some SSDI recipients are looking for more work that accommodates their disabilities.

Eugene Wilson of Madison is one such person. He deals with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder — conditions that make him easily overwhelmed by tasks and make repetitive work difficult.

Wilson found part-time work years ago before being laid off during the pandemic. He was denied regular unemployment and PUA during a process that took an additional toll on his mental health, he said.

He now receives about $1,500 a month in SSDI benefits and affords his apartment with the help of rental aid. He barely gets by.

He has tried for years to return to the workforce, but he rarely hears back after filing applications and sending thank-you messages. 

“It’s like nobody wants to hire anybody on disability,” Wilson said.

“I just want to get out there and do it and show people that people on disability can do this.”

Jessica Barrera of Eau Claire has a similar goal. Wisconsin Watch followed her in 2020 as she navigated life as a single mother who lost her job during the pandemic and depended in part on SSDI to survive. She spent six months fighting to receive her PUA claim after being denied regular unemployment insurance, initially unaware of the 2013 state law. 

“It really made me feel less than others,” Barrera said. 

That pushed her toward a new goal: “to be equal” by earning a degree and returning to the workforce full time. Barrera is just two semesters away from earning her bachelor’s degree in social work at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She works part time as a peer and parent support specialist, supporting families with mental health challenges  — including those who face similar barriers to hers.

She lives with a rare disorder that makes her blood too thick, causing clots and severe fatigue that can make it hard to even get out of bed. Her current job gives her the flexibility to handle her frequent medical appointments and other challenges with the disease. Working full time will require finding an employer who understands her situation.

Barrera, who is not a plaintiff, encourages those seeking justice in court to stay hopeful and persistent.

“When I got the denial, had I just been like, ‘Well, I’m denied. I’m just out of luck’… Would we be where we are now?” Barrera said. “You have to sometimes be patient, but keep (up) the good fight.”

Wisconsin ends unemployment aid ban for workers with disabilities. Now they want compensation for past denials. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many businesses closed or laid off workers, a massive influx of 8.8 million unemployment claims overwhelmed Wisconsin’s aging unemployment insurance system. 

That created a backlog of hundreds of thousands of claims. Many potential applicants weren’t able to connect to the department’s call center to complete the process, and some Wisconsinites waited months without receiving a single unemployment payment. 

Following those backlogs, the state has made strides to update the system and move away from outdated, decades-old computer systems, said state Department of Workforce Development Secretary Amy Pechacek. 

She said DWD now has a digital portal for people to file unemployment claims and send documents online. The department also uses online chatbots to respond to questions in multiple languages, as well as uses artificial intelligence tools to assist with data entry.

“With these enhancements, the department is now paying 88% of all claims filed within three days or less,” Pechacek said. “That other 12% of claims that go a little bit longer are typically just because we have to do investigations if there’s some discrepancies between what the claimant and the employer are saying.”

In a letter to the Trump administration on Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers said the administration is blocking nearly $30 million in federal funding to Wisconsin, which could prevent the state from finishing the project and potentially leave it vulnerable to cyberattacks and fraud.

“If the Trump Administration does not reverse course and provide the $29 million Wisconsin expected to receive, the state will not be able to complete its UI system modernization project,” Evers wrote to U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

That funding was part of the American Rescue Plan Act, a pandemic recovery law signed by former President Joe Biden, and was being primarily used on anti-fraud measures, according to the governor’s office. Evers’ letter says the U.S. Labor Department “suddenly terminated” the funding in late May. 

The termination halted work on identity authentication tools, a digital employer portal, artificial intelligence enhancements, fraud prevention and cybersecurity tools, according to Pechacek. She said the employer portal was the DWD’s next major rollout and would have made it easier for employers to provide information to the state.

“The employer portal is really one of the largest losses from this federal action,” Pechacek said. “Our employers … have to submit quarterly wage information (and) verify claim information, and some of those components are still very antiquated.”

Evers wrote that the Department of Labor “cited no objections” to those initiatives beyond “an unsupported assertion that they ‘no longer effectuate the Department’s priorities.’”

Pechacek said the state has already spent “slightly over half” of the $29 million. She said those grants were “reimbursement-based,” meaning the state first had to spend the money and then be paid back by the federal government.

“There are seven projects that have now been paused in a variety of different states of completion, so those are sunk costs,” she said. “Without realizing the full modernization effort, we can’t roll those projects out.”

The state appealed the Labor Department’s termination and received a letter from the federal government in late July that “acknowledged the appeal while restating the Department’s earlier basis for termination,” the governor’s letter states.

“The people of Wisconsin deserve systems that function, state of the art, with high integrity and accuracy,” Pechacek said. “We are also going to pursue litigation to reclaim the funds which were rightfully awarded to us already and improperly rescinded.”

In addition to the $29 million in lost funding, the project was using $80 million from a different program under the American Rescue Plan Act, according to a report sent to the Legislature’s budget committee. The document states that the $80 million has not been impacted but is “insufficient to support the full modernization work.”

Pechacek said DWD has also asked the state Legislature to allocate additional state funds toward finishing the effort but said there hasn’t been much movement on that front.

Wisconsin isn’t the only state that’s had federal funding to upgrade unemployment systems clawed back by the Trump administration. In May, Axios reported the White House terminated $400 million of that funding across the country. A July report from state agencies said $675 million in grants awarded to unemployment programs in over 30 states and territories had been terminated.

The U.S. Department of Labor did not immediately respond to WPR’s request for comment. In May, the federal agency told Axios in a statement that the unemployment modernization funding was “squandered” on “bureaucratic and wasteful projects that focused on equitable access rather than advancing access for all Americans in need.”

In the letter, Evers also said failing to complete Wisconsin’s modernization effort would put the state’s unemployment system at risk of becoming overwhelmed again during any future economic downturn. He says that would “create acute hardship for Wisconsin families.”

“It is our obligation to prevent this scenario from coming to pass,” Evers wrote. “I urge you to reverse the decision to defund these critical government efficiency and fraud prevention initiatives.”

Pechacek said the state isn’t reverting back to old technology in the pieces of the modernization that have already been completed in “major areas.” But she said failing to fully finish the effort poses a risk to Wisconsinites because there are still aspects of the system running on an outdated coding language.

“Any time we don’t fully invest in upgrading and reach the programmatic goals that we have set to get fully off of the antiquated systems, we are at risk to be overwhelmed again,” she said. “All of that leads us to be more vulnerable, in a time of significant increase of accessing the system, to the cyber attacks, to fraudulent efforts, to being compromised.”

This story was originally published by WPR.

Federal funding cut endangers Wisconsin unemployment system update is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Former U.S. Rep. Billy Long testifies before the Senate Finance Committee at his confirmation hearing as Internal Revenue Service commissioner on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will remove former Missouri Republican U.S. Rep. Billy Long from his post as head of the Internal Revenue Service less than two months after his confirmation, according to the White House Friday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will step in as commissioner of the agency tasked with enforcing tax law and collecting revenue, according to a White House official. Long’s sudden departure was first reported by the New York Times.

Long wrote on social media that Trump will now appoint him to be U.S. ambassador to Iceland. The White House confirmed Long’s statement.

“It is a honor to serve my friend President Trump and I am excited to take on my new role as the ambassador to Iceland. I am thrilled to answer his call to service and deeply committed to advancing his bold agenda. Exciting times ahead!” Long wrote.

The former lawmaker’s ouster comes as the IRS must begin to implement changes to the tax code championed by Senate Republicans and signed into law by Trump just last month. Those include temporary tax relief for some tipped and overtime workers, as well as permanent changes to the child tax credit and several clean energy tax credits.

The agency, which collects the lion’s share of the country’s revenue from individual taxpayers, lost more than 11,000 employees, or 11% of its workforce, either through deferred resignations or mass firings of probationary workers since Trump began his second term, according to a May 2 report from the agency’s inspector general.

Confirmed in June

Long, who represented Missouri in the U.S. House from 2011 to 2023 and then worked many years as a talk radio host, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a 53-44 vote on June 12.

The former lawmaker and media personality faced scrutiny during his confirmation process from Senate Democrats who demanded an investigation into Long’s work with two companies, Capital Edge Strategies and White River, where he allegedly peddled fake tax credits.

Senate Democrats also scrutinized donations Long received to his defunct Senate campaign after Trump announced in December he intended to install the former congressman at the helm of the IRS.

Long denied any wrongdoing, and received the support of all Senate Republicans, including Senate Committee on Finance Chair Mike Crapo, of Idaho, who praised Long’s promise to “implement a top-down culture change at the agency.”

‘One corruption bombshell after another’

Sen. Ron Wyden, the committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement Friday that “it was obvious this would end badly, but every Senate Republican voted to confirm his nomination anyway.”

“He didn’t even last two months on the job. Let’s not forget that there wasn’t a vacancy at the time Trump announced Long’s nomination. Danny Werfel, a skilled leader with fans among Democrats and Republicans, had years left on his term,” the Oregon lawmaker said.

Upon Long’s confirmation, Wyden said the vote should have been an “easy no” for Republicans.

“It’s one corruption bombshell after another with former Congressman Billy Long,” he said in June.

States Newsroom reached out to what appeared to be Long’s phone number for comment.

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 sign AB 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.

Evers vetoed previous versions of the bill in 2022 and 2024. Both times he expressed support for the concept but insisted nurses should meet tighter qualifications before they can practice on their own.

The bill he signed Friday adds 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.  

In floor 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.Org and 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 announcement issued by the governor’s office Friday includes a complete list of bills that the governor signed and vetoed, with links to the enacted measures and to Evers’ veto statements.

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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.

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• A provision of President Donald Trump’s big bill creates Workforce Pell grants, available to students who demonstrate “exceptional financial need” and lack a graduate degree. 

• The new grants can be used to pay for qualifying workforce training that can be completed in less than a semester.

• The grants are supposed to be available starting in fall 2026, but questions loom about whether the U.S. Department of Education will be ready. 

• Tech college leaders say a range of people could benefit, including working parents and the formerly incarcerated. They say the grants may lead to new training opportunities that help plug persistent labor shortages.

The federal budget bill that passed this month has drawn much attention for polarizing Medicaid work requirements, cuts to food aid and new funding for immigration enforcement. But one item tucked into the lengthy bill has been on bipartisan wish lists for more than a decade. 

It allows eligible Americans to use Pell grants, the federal government’s largest grant program for undergraduates, to pay for shorter workforce training courses than what previously qualified. 

Such courses could train a range of workers, including welders, truck drivers, emergency medical technicians and cybersecurity analysts, though exactly which programs will be eligible for funding hasn’t been decided. 

In Wisconsin, where many such jobs regularly go unfilled, proponents say the grants could set low-income residents on a path to better jobs, while also aiding the employers and the communities that rely on those workers. Meanwhile, a small group of critics say the new program could lead some students down a dead end road of low wages. 

Who qualifies for the grants? 

Like existing grants, the new Workforce Pell grants are available to students who demonstrate “exceptional financial need.” Funding will vary based on the number of hours or credits of the training, hovering below the maximum annual Pell grant of $7,395, according to Jobs for the Future, a national nonprofit focused on education and workforce issues. 

Unlike the existing grants, Workforce Pell is open to people who already have a bachelor’s degree, as well as those without. People who hold graduate or professional degrees are still barred. Students apply by filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

The grants, which can be used for qualifying courses of eight to 14 weeks and are expected to serve 100,000 students a year, are supposed to be available starting in fall 2026. Jobs for the Future calls that timeline “aggressive” and warns that the Department of Education, which the Trump administration has sought to dismantle, may need more time to implement the program. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the administration may follow through with plans to fire nearly 1,400 education department employees, with plans to assign duties to other agencies.

Leaders at the state’s 16 technical colleges have pushed for such a Pell grant expansion for years, said Layla Merrifield, president of the Wisconsin Technical College System.

“It’s a good idea to expand access to workforce credentials and help entry-level employees who are trying to join a career and get themselves into a better place economically,” Merrifield said. “This could be really important for moving folks into careers.”

Boost for in-demand jobs like truck driving

The funding could allow tech colleges to train more students for in-demand jobs like truck driving, Merrifield said. Wisconsin truck drivers earn a median salary just over $50,000, and Wisconsin employers are projected to hire more than 6,000 of them in each of the next seven years. That puts truck drivers at the top of the state’s “Hot Jobs” list. 

But training those drivers is expensive, Merrifield said, so colleges can’t necessarily afford to enroll more students. 

“You start to see employers starting their own (commercial driver’s license) programs because there’s such a tremendous need for folks with this credential out in the industry,” Merrifield said. 

Roger Stanford saw those challenges during his time as vice president of instruction at Chippewa Valley Technical College, where students had to pay around $5,000 up front for truck driving training, no matter their income. 

Thirty-two states directly fund short-term credential programs by supporting students or schools, but Wisconsin isn’t one of them, according to a report by higher education consulting firm HCM Strategists.

Students in some programs can apply for federal student loans, and all students can apply for scholarships if their college offers them. 

“When you’re coming out of poverty or you’re a single parent, it’s just impossible to come up with the cash. And so we were really limiting how many people could go into that program,” Stanford said. 

Still, some experts worry about using federal aid to fund such programs. A 2016 analysis by the left-leaning think tank New America found two in five adults with a short-term credential didn’t have jobs, and half of those who did earned $30,000 a year or less. 

“Obtaining only a short-term certificate is not a likely vehicle towards economic mobility for the average student,” the authors wrote. Earnings were particularly low for Black and Latino adults. 

The Workforce Pell legislation requires programs to meet wage and employment benchmarks to qualify, but experts disagree about whether that sufficiently protects students and taxpayers. 

More options for working parents and ex-incarcerated

A 2011 experiment previews the potential effects of the new grants. In the pilot program, the U.S. Department of Education offered Pell grants for short-term training for students who wouldn’t otherwise qualify and compared their outcomes to those without grants. The study found people who were offered the grants were more likely to enroll in and complete training, but long-term wages and employment rates were similar across the groups. 

Chippewa Valley Technical College was part of that pilot. Suddenly, Stanford said, more students started signing up to become truck drivers. 

“It makes people go, ‘Oh my gosh, if I can get financial aid for this, I’ll go into truck driving.’ It helps you fill those programs which are all tied to good jobs,” Stanford said. 

Today, Stanford is president of Western Technical College in La Crosse. Western Tech doesn’t train truck drivers, but the college predicts a handful of its programs will be eligible for the new grants. That could include training in welding, emergency medical services, auto repair, advanced manufacturing and dental care.

Workforce Pell grants will be especially helpful for adults returning to school while working or taking care of children, Stanford said.

“We probably all know some people that just can’t commit to a two-year program right now … Or they look at a two-year program and say, ‘I’ll take three credits each term.’ That puts them on a trajectory of five or six years, and they never finish,” Stanford said. Data show that students who attend school part-time are less likely to graduate than their full-time counterparts. 

“If we can put them on a trajectory to get them a credential in eight or 10 weeks, people can get their life around it,’” Stanford said, like by tapping relatives to watch their kids for a couple months. 

“They can say, ‘Wow, this is going to be hard, but I know at the end of it, there’s 24 bucks an hour, and I can do that,’” Stanford said. 

Another group that can benefit from access to shorter courses: recently incarcerated people.

“When you’re coming out of jail, you don’t have two years,” Stanford said. “If we could turn around and say, ‘We can take you right from the jail and give you 10 weeks and put you into a job that has life-sustaining wages, that helps (lower) recidivism.”

Pathways in construction, IT, auto repair and more 

The new grants will encourage colleges to expand their short-term training opportunities to fill other workforce gaps by parceling longer academic programs into stand-alone “stackable” courses, which would let students earn a credential, get a better job and then decide whether to pursue a technical diploma or associate degree, Stanford said. 

That model could work well for most of the building trades, Stanford said. About 15 students finished Western Tech’s yearlong program in building construction and cabinetmaking last year, but local construction companies need about five times that, Stanford said. He estimates a “modularized” approach could prepare 60 to 80 students to start working sooner.

Stanford also sees promise for fields like information technology, where the college could offer stand-alone courses in cybersecurity, programming or networking. The same could apply in machining, auto repair or mechatronics, an automation-related field that combines multiple types of engineering. Colleges could prepare students to start in operator jobs making $40,000 or $50,000 a year, with the potential to double that pay after earning a degree, Stanford said.

“I think in the next decade, you’re going to see probably less emphasis on diplomas and associate degrees and more on direct job credentials and certifications that get people (on the job) quicker, and then pathways to associate degrees,” Stanford said. “This is a really, really big opportunity for us … I think it really will help change the economic mobility of so many people that are struggling.”

Filling rural EMT gaps

The grants could help Wisconsin address some of its most serious labor shortages, including in health care. Rural Wisconsin communities have struggled for years to maintain adequate emergency medical services. 

Western Tech trains students to work as emergency medical technicians, providing life-saving care and transporting patients to hospitals. The median EMT salary in Wisconsin is just over $43,000, according to federal data, though many rural departments rely on volunteers. 

Western Tech’s EMT program trained more than 100 EMTs last year. The region could use far more. 

“Say we offer four sections a year right now. We could easily offer eight, and they would all have work, because there’s just so much demand,” Stanford said. 

Sometimes rural fire departments or hospitals wait months for new recruits to start training because the college can’t afford to run a class for just a couple students. Stanford expects the new grants will encourage more students to join the field.

“That’ll help across the whole country,” Stanford said. “EMT (training) is needed everywhere.”

Wisconsin lawmakers have also sought to fill the gap. The budget Gov. Tony Evers signed earlier this month includes $3.5 million to reimburse tech colleges for emergency medical services training.

Other Pell changes off the table for now

An earlier version of Trump’s bill would have allowed Workforce Pell grants to be used at unaccredited training providers, stirring fears that unscrupulous entities might take advantage. 

Lawmakers removed that provision, leaving existing accreditation requirements in place. 

Meanwhile, other headline-grabbing Pell proposals didn’t make the cut. House Republicans previously proposed raising the credits required to receive the maximum award and making students enrolled less than half-time ineligible.

Merrifield, the Wisconsin Technical College System president, was relieved to see those provisions removed from the final bill. She estimates around 7,000 students would have lost all aid and thousands more would have seen their aid amounts cut. 

“While Workforce Pell would be helpful on the margins, ending part-time Pell would be tremendously harmful to technical colleges and our students,” Merrifield said. 

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success in Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.

New financial aid for career training: What to know in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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.

“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.

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.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. To republish, go to the original and consult the CalMatters republishing guidelines.

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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.”

“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.

Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin's East Side Madison clinic. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

A union organizing campaign has turned into a contentious conflict at a Madison-based health care nonprofit.

The organizing drive at Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin has gotten mired in a mountain of litigation before the National Labor Relations Board.

There have been disputes over who should be included in a union representation vote as well as dozens of unfair labor practice charges that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has filed against Group Health management.

Most recently, the NLRB’s regional director has issued an order blocking the election after the union argued that the charges against the co-op would taint the outcome. Group Health is denying the charges, and co-op executives say they want a vote to take place as soon as possible.

The Group Health co-op was founded nearly 50 years ago as a health maintenance organization. Members, who include its employees, say the nonprofit’s focus on primary care and wellness has been central to its appeal. Those who support the union contend that the co-op’s response to the union drive is betraying its progressive roots.

“Everyone involved are gut-wrenched by the animosity that has developed,” said Susan McMurray, a former public employee union lobbyist and Group Health member for nearly 20 years. McMurray spoke at  a union rally outside Group Health’s clinic on Madison’s far East Side on June 20.

“There’s a multitude of reasons many of us chose a cooperative model over a for-profit shareholder model for our health care and insurance over the past almost 50 years,” said retired state employee Ruth Brill, a Group Health member, at a May 13 rally for the union.

“Some of our fellow GHC members have chosen to form a union. A union is like a cooperative in almost every way,” Brill said. “I’m calling on GHC to uphold the cooperative principles that it was founded on.”

In an interview, Marty Anderson, Group Health’s chief strategy and business development officer, rejected the accusation that the co-op has engaged in union-busting.

“GHC is not opposed to a union here at the cooperative,” Anderson said. “I think our position all along has been that we want our employees to have a voice — all of our employees, to have a voice in that choice.”

But Group Health co-op members who support the union see the management’s response — challenging the union’s proposal for who would vote as well as distributing messages to workers criticizing the union — more critically.

Paul Terranova, a community organizer, said he got involved in trying to persuade the co-op’s board to take a different approach earlier this year after a conversation with his Group Health doctor.

Terranova put together a group of members and asked for a board meeting in March.

“They gave us 20 minutes on the agenda to speak,” he told the Wisconsin Examiner. “It was just us making a presentation to them and them saying ‘thank you.’”

Terranova said his group asked the board and the management to “stop the anti-union messaging [and] anti-union activity” and to “get a second opinion” from other nonprofits that work cooperatively with union-represented employees.

“They refused to engage and they denied that there was any anti-union activity or messaging going on,” he said.

Terranova is also part of a member campaign that has endorsed, with the union, four candidates for the Group Health board in elections that concluded this week.

Update: All four were elected to the board. Election results were announced at the co-op’s annual meeting Thursday evening. 

Staffing struggles

The pro-union employees and SEIU filed a petition in December 2024 for a union representing Group Health clinic doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and nursing staff in three departments: primary care, urgent care and dermatology. They also included physical therapists, occupational therapists and health educators.

According to union supporters, nearly 70% of the workers in those jobs and departments had signed cards asking for union representation.

Union supporters say that in those departments, issues including employee turnover and increased workloads prompted the campaign.

“We’re calling for equitable wages, safe provider-to-nurse ratios, meaningful ways to ease the crushing workloads we face and real strategies to improve retention,” said Dr. Ira Segal at the June 20 rally.

“There’s been a lot more turnover in our staffing, and that has increased over the years, which negatively impacts our ability to provide excellent care,” said Dr. Nisha Rajagopalan, a family physician. “The increasing turnover in our staff is unsustainable.”

Staffing crunches in health care have been widespread in the last five years, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There just aren’t enough care providers and folks that assist those care providers within the [health care] system in total,” said Anderson, the Group Health executive. “We’ve had to flex with the changing health care environment.”

Julie Vander Werff, a physician assistant and union supporter, said she understands the health care workforce challenge. Despite that, she said, she’s experienced a shift in the co-op’s culture that is contributing to the problem.

“They used to be a very respectful employer, and they’ve really gotten off track in terms of how respectful they have been,” Vander Werff said in an interview. “And they’re being really punitive, and we’re losing staff as a result with high, high turnover rates.”

Who’s in, who’s out

The bargaining unit called for in the union’s original petition did not include other Group Health departments: optometry, behavioral health, radiology and pharmacy. It also did not include physical therapist techs, lab techs and interpreters, social workers, receptionists and maintenance staff.

Addressing the June 20 rally, Vander Werff explained that “other departments who are not under primary care leadership are happy with their jobs” and not interested in unionizing. “But primary care is not.”

From the start, Group Health challenged the bargaining unit described in the petition, according to a letter that employees leading the union drive sent to the Group Health board of directors on Feb. 10.

“Federal labor law says that to form a union, workers need petition only for ‘an’ appropriate bargaining unit — not ‘the’ most appropriate bargaining unit (however that would be determined), and certainly not the unit their employers would most prefer,” the employees wrote. “Rather than accepting a unit of GHC workers’ rightful choice, however, administration and counsel have chosen to contest our bargaining unit.”

Still at an impasse after two days of hearings before an NLRB hearing officer, the union amended its election petition to focus on a single Group Health facility, the Capitol Clinic on Madison’s near West Side. The employees wrote in the Feb. 10 letter that the change was made at the NLRB official’s suggestion.

Group Health challenged that, too. After an additional hearing, the Minneapolis-based NLRB regional director rejected the union’s petition for a single-clinic vote. The decision directed an election covering all clinical departments at Group Health — the bargaining unit that the co-op management sought.

Group Health’s position is that the bargaining unit the employees sought “didn’t include classes or employees that do go between our clinics,” Anderson said. “And because we are an integrated care delivery system, we need to make sure that all the appropriate employees are in the bargaining class.”  

While some Group Health members see the response to the union drive as a turn from the co-op’s roots, Anderson defended it. 

“We were formed by a vote of our members, our board is elected by our members, and I think this goes right along with our ethos as a cooperative to allow our employees the opportunity to vote,” he said.

Pro-democracy, or diluting support?

Employees involved in the union campaign and their allies among the co-op’s members argue that the management claim is disingenuous, however.

“While the administration claims they’re fighting us in order to give everyone a voice, this is a union-busting tactic to prevent workers from winning in a fast and fair election of our choosing,” the Group Health workers wrote. “Anti-union organizations do this to flood the unit with people that they hope will vote against our union.”

According to an NLRB report on union representation elections in 2023, 89% of employers didn’t challenge the workers’ proposed bargaining unit. 

Group Health member Paul Terranova rejected the idea that expanding the vote to include people in jobs and departments who weren’t interested in the union was “just trying to be democratic.”

 “If folks in Madison decided we wanted to put something on a referendum, and the state Legislature said ‘No, everyone in the state has to vote on it,’ everyone would know right away what they were doing,” Terranova said. “People would call BS. It’s the same thing here, right?”

“The right of workers to unionize and to decide what our union looks like . . .  doesn’t belong to administration,” Sarah Spolum, a physician assistant, said at the May union rally. “It doesn’t belong to lawyers. It belongs to us, the workers.”

Anderson said Group Health stands by its position. “We have no idea how our employees are going to vote,” he said. “That’s why we want to get to a vote — because we want that certainty and we want to know what our employees are feeling.”

Unfair labor practice charges

Throughout the campaign, the union has filed charges with the NLRB accusing Group Health management of numerous unfair labor practices. The allegations include changes in pay practices due to union organizing, surveillance of employees for union activity, prohibiting employees from displaying union-related materials, firing union supporters and a variety of other actions.

Group Health has denied all the charges.

After the co-op management’s bargaining unit petition was granted, however, the union petitioned the NLRB to block an election. The agency’s regional director granted the petition, ordering the election to be suspended until all the unfair labor practice charges are resolved.

The union, wrote regional director Jennifer Hadsall, “provided sufficient offers of proof which describe evidence that, if proven, would interfere with employee free choice in the election.”

Group Health, through its lawyer, has demanded a hearing on the allegations in the blocking charge, contending that it’s a smokescreen for diminished support.

At the union’s June 20 rally, Susan McMurray read from a letter she sent to Group Health’s CEO.

“Nothing good will come of this decision,” she said of the co-op’s stance during the union campaign. “It will in my view ruin GHC’s reputation in our community, cause irreparable harm to staff, as well as jeopardize patient care.

“And it didn’t and it doesn’t have to be like this,” she added. “In the past few weeks, I have communicated to management repeatedly that we could find a way through the strife and give everyone a graceful way out, a path going forward and something positive to announce at the annual meeting.”

This report was updated Friday, 6/27/2025, with the outcome of board elections at Group Health that were announced Thursday evening.

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Immigration officials questioned and detained contractors working on apartment buildings in Tallahassee, Fla., on May 29. Construction employs more immigrant laborers, many likely living here illegally, than any other industry, and the industry is starting to draw more attention — even in conservative states — as the Trump administration pushes for more deportations. (Photo by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix)

As President Donald Trump sends mixed messages about immigration enforcement, ordering new raids on farms and hotels just days after saying he wouldn’t target those industries, he has hardly mentioned the industry that employs the most immigrant laborers: construction.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration is going after construction workers without legal status to meet its mass deportation goals — even as the country has a housing shortage and needs new homes built. A shortage of workers has delayed or prevented construction, causing billions of dollars in economic damage, according to a June report from the Home Builders Institute.

Almost a quarter of all immigrants without a college degree work in construction, a total of 2.2 million workers as of last month, before work site raids began in earnest. That’s more than the next three industries combined: restaurants (1.1 million), janitorial and other cleaning services (526,000) and landscaping (454,000), according to a Stateline analysis of federal Current Population Survey data provided by ipums.org at the University of Minnesota.

Within the construction industry, immigrant workers are now a majority of painters and roofers (both 53%) and comprise more than two-thirds of plasterers and stucco masons. U.S. citizens in construction are more likely to work as managers and as skilled workers, such as carpenters.

Many immigrant workers are likely living here illegally, although there are some working legally as refugees or parolees, and others are asylum-seekers waiting for court dates. There’s also a small number of legal visas for temporary farmworkers, construction workers and others.

The pool of immigrant workers Stateline analyzed were employed noncitizens ages 18-65 without a college degree, screening out temporary workers with high-skill visas.

About half of the immigrant laborers in construction are working in Southern states, including conservative-leaning Florida, North Carolina and Texas, where there is more building going on, according to the Stateline analysis. Another 584,000, or one-quarter, are in Western states, including Arizona, California and Nevada.

In recent months, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, has conducted construction worksite raids in Florida in Tallahassee and near Ocala, and in South Texas and New Orleans, as well as more immigrant-friendly California and Pennsylvania.

Roofers may have been the first targeted by new workplace raids because of their visibility, said Sergio Barajas, executive director of the National Hispanic Construction Alliance, a California-based advocacy group with chapters in five other states.

“That’s the first place we heard about it. Roofers are right out there where you can see them,” Barajas said. He added that all segments of construction work have been targeted for ICE raids, and that even some legal workers are not showing up for work out of fear.

“Six or eight weeks ago, I would have said we weren’t affected at all. Now we are. There’s a substantial reduction in the number of workers who are showing up, so crews are 30%, 40% smaller than they used to be,” Barajas said.

In residential construction, a system of contractors and subcontractors opens the door to abuses, said Enrique Lopezlira, director of the Low-Wage Work Program at the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center. Lopezlira said contractors hire workers, often immigrant laborers, for low-wage jobs and pay them in cash, to save money on benefits and make the lowest possible bid for projects.

“It becomes a blame game. The developers can say, ‘I hired this contractor and I thought he was above board and paying people a decent wage.’ And the contractors can say, ‘I rely on subcontractors,’” said Lopezlira. “It becomes a race to the bottom.”

In many places, residential construction draws more immigrant labor because of looser state and local regulations and lower pay. But in some states with weaker unions and rules that are less strict, such as Texas, the commercial construction industry also employs many immigrants who are here illegally.

Commercial construction labor costs are 40% lower in Texas than they are in large Northeastern cities where unions are more powerful, said David Kelly, a lecturer in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan.

“The large difference [in cost] suggests workers and their employers in some regions are not paying for income taxes, overtime, Social Security or unemployment insurance,” Kelly said in an email. “Since undocumented workers have limited employment options they may be more willing than others to accept these conditions.”

Despite political claims that Democratic policies result in immigrants taking jobs others need, noncitizen immigrant laborers were about 7% of jobholders nationally as of May — about the same as 2015, according to the Stateline analysis.

That share has hardly budged over the past 10 years, including in 2019 under the first Trump administration, dipping to 6% only in 2020 and 2021.

In construction, however, the share of jobs held by immigrant laborers has increased from 19% in 2015 to 22% in 2024, according to the analysis. Immigrant laborers have gotten more than a third of the 1.5 million jobs added between 2015 and 2024, as home construction reached historic levels.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the full name of  the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center and to clarify David Kelly’s remarks on regional labor costs. Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

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

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer's badge is seen as federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court in New York City on June 10, 2025. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  President Donald Trump announced late Sunday that he was directing U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers to conduct immigration raids in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, the nation’s three most populous cities that are all led by elected Democrats in heavily Democratic states.

The announcement escalates a week-long conflict in Los Angeles, where large protests started after immigration officials began arresting day laborers at Home Depot stores across the city. Trump directed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to LA amid the protests without California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s consent.

“I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role,” Trump wrote on social media, referring to cities that don’t coordinate with federal immigration officials for civil enforcement. “You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”

Trump’s Sunday social media post to target immigration enforcement in cities came after a June 12 post in which he acknowledged that his immigration crackdown was harming the tourism and agriculture industries. Republican-leaning states generally have fewer big cities and more rural areas.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote last week.

The president directed ICE to pause raids on farms, after speaking with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, according to the New York Times.

The Agriculture Department has estimated that roughly 40% of farm workers do not have legal authorization.

However, advocates for farmworkers, such as United Farm Workers, said that immigration officials have not paused on enforcement.

“If President Trump is actually in charge, he needs to prove it: stop the sweeps on hardworking Californians,” UFW said in a statement.

A June 10 immigration raid at a meat processing plant in Omaha, Nebraska, where roughly 80 workers were detained, set off several protests in the city.

Trump wrote in his social media post that it should be taken as a presidential directive.

“ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” he wrote.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to States Newsroom’s request about details on the president’s Sunday directive to ICE officers.

Noncitizen voting

Trump took aim at Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, saying during an interview at the G7 Summit with world leaders in Canada on Monday that Chicago was “overrun with criminals.”

“They think they’re going to use them to vote,” Trump said of people without citizenship who live in cities run by Democrats.

The president, without evidence, claimed in his Sunday post that the “Core of the Democrat power center” of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York allowed people without citizenship to vote in federal elections, which is not true. The practice is illegal and, according to studies, exceedingly rare.

A federal judge last week blocked Trump’s executive order that would have required states to mandate voters in federal elections provide documents proving their citizenship.

Last week, Pritzker and the Democratic governors of Minnesota and New York testified before Congress for eight hours on their states’ policies to not coordinate with federal immigration officials.

House Republicans brought in the mayors of Boston, Chicago and Denver in March on the same issue.

Focus for protests

The president’s directive to ICE followed a weekend military parade to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary that also coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday and sparked anti-Trump protests.

Millions of people across the country held “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration, according to estimates from organizers. The protests often included rebukes of ICE’s aggressive immigration crackdown.

The protests in LA, which have led to a legal standoff between the administration and the state, have been over immigration raids.

Since returning to the White House, the Trump administration has given immigration officers expanded authority to rapidly deport immigrants.

In Trump’s second week in office, DHS reinstated a 2019 policy known as expedited removal, meaning that immigrants without legal authorization anywhere in the country who encounter federal enforcement must prove they have been in the U.S. continuously for more than two years.

If they cannot produce that proof, they will be subject to a fast-track deportation without appearing before an immigration judge for due process.