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      Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers Is Not Afraid of Trump Administration Immigration Warning

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      Thomas Homan, the border czar, had said, “Wait to see what’s coming,” when asked about guidance sent to state workers about interacting with ICE agents.A dispute over a memo about how Wisconsin state workers should interact with federal immigration agents escalated this week into sharply worded warnings from the president’s border czar, Thomas Homan, and the state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers.Mr. Evers and others interpreted comments by Mr. Homan to suggest that he and other elected officials could face arrest over local immigration policies, leading the Wisconsin governor to say he was “not afraid” of what he described as “chilling threats.”The Wisconsin dispute was the latest chapter in a long-running fight between President Trump’s administration and Democratic-led cities and states over whether local officials must cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.In Wisconsin, Republicans had for days pushed for Mr. Evers to rescind a message to state employees, issued on April 18 by the state’s Department of Administration. The single-page memo instructed workers to call a state lawyer if an ICE agent or other federal official visited their workplace. The memo told state workers to stay calm and notify their supervisors, to not immediately answer an agent’s questions and to not give them access to nonpublic areas. Chicago officials issued similar guidance to city workers earlier this year.Read the Memo to Wisconsin State WorkersRead Document 1 pageThe disagreement over the memo intensified outside the White House on Thursday when a person who identified himself as being from The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website, asked Mr. Homan why the government was not simply arresting “the leaders who are harboring and shielding” people who should be deported.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wisconsin Supreme Court Says Governor’s 400-Year Edit Was Within Veto Authority

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      Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, used his veto power to increase school funding limits for four centuries longer than Republican lawmakers in the state had intended.The sentence, dull but clear, was buried 158 pages into Wisconsin’s budget.“For the limit for the 2023-24 school year and the 2024-25 school year,” the sentence read when it was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, “add $325” to the amount school districts could generate through property taxes for each student.But by the time Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and his veto pen were finished, it said something else entirely: “For the limit for 2023-2425, add $325.”It was clever. Creative. Perhaps even a bit subversive, extending the increase four centuries longer than lawmakers intended. But was it legal?On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said yes. In a 4-to-3 ruling in a lawsuit challenging Mr. Evers’s use of his partial veto authority, the court’s liberal majority said the governor had acted legally. The three conservative justices on the court dissented.“We uphold the 2023 partial vetoes, and in doing so we are acutely aware that a 400-year modification is both significant and attention-grabbing,” Justice Jill J. Karofsky wrote in the majority opinion. “However, our Constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable.”The proposed state budget had outlined two years of revenue limit increases, for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years. By editing out the text in red, Mr. Evers allowed increases until 2425.State of WisconsinWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republicans Invoke Newsom in a Hearing on Transgender Sports

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      California Democrats rejected two Republican bills that would have banned transgender athletes from female sports. In a rare turn, Republicans tried to use the Democratic governor’s own words to challenge Democrats.It was a discussion of a kind rarely, if ever, seen in the California State Capitol. For hours on Tuesday, Republicans repeatedly invoked the views of Gov. Gavin Newsom, while the governor’s fellow Democrats took pains to avoid saying his name.At issue were two Republican bills that would have banned transgender athletes from female sports, just days after Mr. Newsom had reiterated his personal belief that their participation was unfair to those who were born as girls.“For the first time ever, Gavin Newsom and I agree,” said Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute, a conservative advocacy group.Democrats, who control the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism, ultimately quashed the bills after dozens of people spoke in a packed hearing room. The debate brought into stark focus an extraordinary rift among California Democrats on the issue of transgender participation in female sports.Mr. Newsom, a longtime supporter of expanding L.G.B.T.Q. rights, publicly broke with his party last month when he said on his new podcast that he thinks it’s “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to compete in female sports. The governor repeated that position Friday during an interview on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” in which he also said the Democratic Party brand is “toxic.”Mr. Newsom has not publicly weighed in on the transgender sports bills, and his office declined to comment on Tuesday. But his recent comments have scrambled the conventional coalitions in California’s Capitol, where Democrats hold a supermajority in the Legislature and occupy every statewide office. While it is common for Democrats to split on bills concerning the environment, economy, crime or education, divisions over L.G.B.T.Q. rights are rare.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      CUNY Removes Palestinian Studies Job Listing on Hochul’s Orders

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      The language in the listing included terms — like “settler colonialism,” “apartheid” and “genocide” — that Jewish groups said were offensive when applied to Israel.When Nancy Cantor became president of Hunter College last fall, she asked faculty, students and staff what they wanted from the school. One answer was more attention to Palestinian studies.Faculty members began working on possible approaches. They came up with a plan for two tenure-track faculty positions that would cross several departments and began drafting job descriptions.The Hunter College job listing for Palestinian studies called for scholars who could “take a critical lens” to issues including “settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid” and other topics.When the listing was posted last weekend, Jewish groups protested the inclusion of words that they said are antisemitic when applied to Israel. Their objections were first reported in The New York Post.By Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul demanded that the college, a part of the City University of New York, take down the listing.“Governor Hochul directed CUNY to immediately remove this posting and conduct a thorough review of the position to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom,” a spokesperson said in a statement, adding, “Hateful rhetoric of any kind has no place at CUNY or anywhere in New York State.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Passed Up for the Ticket, Josh Shapiro Tries to Deliver Pennsylvania for Harris

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      Pennsylvania’s governor may not be on the verge of the vice presidency, but he says he has everything — including his “heart and soul” — riding on a Kamala Harris victory.Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania bounded off a big blue bus on Saturday afternoon with the other two governors of the critical “blue wall” states — Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tony Evers of Wisconsin — and headed down a steep hill to greet a gathering of Democratic canvassers in a park outside Pittsburgh.It was the third of four stops that unseasonably warm, clear day for their Blue Wall bus tour. Though all three governors lead political battlegrounds critical to Vice President Kamala Harris’s chance at winning the presidency, only Mr. Shapiro came within a whisper of being on the ticket that they are now trying to elect.But if there were any lingering resentments, or even disappointment, it was not obvious that day, nor is it evident in his punishing schedule of campaign appearances, interviews, advertising shoots, fund-raisers and behind-the-scenes outreach efforts for Ms. Harris and fellow Democrats.Mr. Shapiro, his voice straining for emphasis, stressed what he sees as at stake in the election, for the nation, for his state and for him personally.“I want to be really clear about something: This is not just about the politics of winning a race,” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview in Baldwin Township, a suburb nestled in the wooded hills just south of Pittsburgh.Speaking of his own experience repeatedly suing the Trump administration as the commonwealth’s attorney general and then battling the Trump campaign as it tried to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. Shapiro called former President Donald J. Trump “a dangerous guy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Orders DeSantis Administration to Stop Threats Over Abortion-Rights Ad

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      The administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida must stop threatening television stations with criminal prosecution for airing a political ad in favor of enshrining abortion rights in the state’s Constitution, a federal judge ordered on Thursday.Judge Mark E. Walker of the Federal District Court in Tallahassee ruled in a temporary restraining order that the threats by the Florida Department of Health to stations across the state likely amounted to “unconstitutional coercion” and “viewpoint discrimination.”“The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false,’” Judge Walker, who has frequently ruled against the administration, wrote in his 17-page order. “To keep it simple for the state of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”The order followed an emergency hearing on Thursday after Floridians Protecting Freedom, the organization behind a campaign for an abortion-rights ballot measure known as Amendment 4, sued on Wednesday.This month, the state’s health department sent several television stations a cease-and-desist letter urging them to stop airing an ad, titled “Caroline,” that is part of the “Yes on 4” campaign. It features a woman named Caroline Williams discussing how she had been diagnosed with stage four brain cancer when she was 20 weeks pregnant.“Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine,” Ms. Williams says in the ad.The state called the ad “false.” At least one station stopped airing the ad after receiving the department’s letter, the suit said.“This critical initial victory is a triumph for every Floridian who believes in democracy and the sanctity of the First Amendment,” Lauren Brenzel, the director of the “Yes on 4” campaign, said in a statement on Thursday. “The court has affirmed what we’ve known all along: The government cannot silence the truth about Florida’s extreme abortion ban.”Mr. DeSantis has vowed to defeat Amendment 4 and has leveraged the power of the state to oppose the measure, leading to several legal challenges. The courts had declined to intervene in prior cases.Julia Friedland, Mr. DeSantis’s deputy press secretary, said in a statement that Judge Walker had “issued another order that excites the press.”“The ads are unequivocally false and put the lives and health of pregnant women at risk,” she said. “Florida’s heartbeat protection law always protects the life of a mother and includes exceptions for victims of rape, incest, and human trafficking.”The campaign is seeking a preliminary injunction against the state. Judge Walker scheduled a hearing for Oct. 29.A separate lawsuit, filed by opponents of Amendment 4 and seeking to toss the measure from the ballot, is pending in state court. More

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      Tim Walz Calls for Abolishing the Electoral College, Going Beyond Harris

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      Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota on Tuesday called for abolishing the Electoral College as a means of electing American presidents, reiterating a position he has articulated in the past while he and Vice President Kamala Harris are in the heat of a campaign for the White House.Twice during campaign fund-raisers on the West Coast, Mr. Walz said he would prefer that presidential candidates did not have to focus on a few political battlegrounds and could instead focus on winning votes from across the country.“I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a, we need a national popular vote,” Mr. Walz told donors at the Sacramento home of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. “So we need to win Beaver County, Pa. We need to be able to go into York, Pa., and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nev., and win.”Abolishing the Electoral College is generally a popular position with voters but is something that would either require a constitutional amendment or more states agreeing to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.Mr. Walz’s support of the position — in deep-blue West Coast states no less — with less than a month before Election Day risks rocking the boat for the Harris campaign as it tries to deliver a message focused on economic concerns, abortion rights and the threat of former President Donald J. Trump.Teddy Tschann, a spokesman for Mr. Walz, said that Ms. Harris’s campaign did not support abolishing the Electoral College.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More