Democrats win Wisconsin, Republican margins sag in Florida

USA Today

02-04-2025

Democrats win Wisconsin, Republican margins sag in Florida | The Excerpt
On Wednesday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: A liberal won Wisconsin's Supreme Court election Tuesday, while two Florida Republicans won their special elections to fill U.S. House vacancies. USA TODAY Domestic Security Correspondent Josh Meyer discusses cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services. Cory Booker breaks the record for the longest known Senate speech. The Trump administration acknowledges an 'administrative error' led to one deportation to El Salvador. USA TODAY National News Reporter Jeanine Santucci explains how cuts to the Department of Agriculture are hitting food banks. Val Kilmer dies at 65.
Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to [e-mail].
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, we recap elections in Wisconsin and Florida, plus mass layoffs hit the Department of Health and Human Services, and how Department of Agriculture cuts are impacting food banks.
♦
Wisconsin voters elected Susan Crawford to the State Supreme Court yesterday, maintaining the court's four-three liberal majority. The election was widely seen as an early referendum on President Donald Trump's presidency, and the campaign became the most expensive judicial contest in US history, with more than $90 million spent by the candidates, the state parties and outside groups, according to New York University's Brennan Center.
But in another test of Trump's presidency, two Florida Republicans won their special elections to fill US House vacancies created by Trump's cabinet picks, though the GOP's margin in the solidly red districts was slashed compared with just five months ago. Republicans had been expected to easily hold both seats. Republican State Senator Randy Fine, defeated Democrat Josh Weil, a public school educator, and Republican state chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis defeated Democrat Gary Valimont, a gun violence prevention activist. Margins of victory in those same districts were essentially cut in half for Republicans compared with results there from November. Republicans now have a House majority of 220 to 213.
♦
Mass layoffs began yesterday at the Department of Health and Human Services. I spoke with USA TODAY Domestic Security Correspondent, Josh Meyer, for more.
Thanks for joining me, Josh.
Josh Meyer:
As always, a pleasure.
Taylor Wilson:
So Josh, we saw mass layoffs yesterday, Tuesday, at the Department of Health and Human Services, which positions, which sectors, were really slashed in particular?
Josh Meyer:
Taylor, it's hard for us to keep track of all this, as one person from the Food and Drug Administration said, it's a bloodbath. So we're talking about thousands of people across HHS, we're talking about the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control. The HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Did say that he wanted to, quote, "Eliminate sprawl and cut costs there." But even if people were expecting something like this, they never really envisioned it to be something of this magnitude. And I think that there's a lot of criticism and complaints about the way this was handled. A lot of people showed up for work, and because everybody was ordered to show up for work, there was waits of sometimes one or two hours and people didn't know that their jobs have been cut, or at least that they've been put on administrative leave, until they tried to check in for the day and their badges didn't work.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, in terms of criticisms, I know we heard a lot from even Capitol Hill, just in general, how was this landing in Washington yesterday, Josh?
Josh Meyer:
A lot of the lawmakers, especially House of Representatives members who have to get elected every two years, they're facing a lot of feedback at home. There was a memo that went out to them saying, "Don't even hold town hall meetings, because you're just going to get an earful from people." But I think the way the cuts are coming down and some of the programs affected are really going to be hard for them to sell to the public. You're even talking about research for brain cancer, for making sure that our food supply and our drugs are safe, pharmaceutical drugs. This really goes across the board, and it reminds you of how sweeping the government is when it comes to protecting health and human services for people.
Taylor Wilson:
In terms of the Trump administration view on these cuts, Josh, are they holding a similar line to previous job slashing in recent weeks? Just what are we hearing from them?
Josh Meyer:
Yeah. They're saying that this is part of the effort by Trump and billionaire, Elon Musk, to shrink staffing levels in federal government and say that this is exactly what we were elected to do. But there's one thing, I think this is what critics are saying, and the public is speaking out too, and a lot of people that were laid off... And again, what happens is these people are not technically laid off, they're put on administrative leave, and then after a certain period of time, then they can be laid off, according to federal government rules, so that's what's happening here.
But it's one thing to lay off a lot of people, but I think that there's a sense that this is not being done strategically, certainly not being done surgically, and that they're just wiping out massive programs and nobody can really understand how they're deciding what stays and what goes. So I think that they're going to probably end up having to explain at least some of this to the public. Elon Musk just did an interview on Tuesday, and he said that DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, is the most transparent in government, and I think that that's not exactly the case. But whether it is or not, they're going to have to articulate these decisions and show why they made them.
Taylor Wilson:
Amid all this, Josh, House Democrats have launched a probe into HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s response to the bird flu. Is there anything you can tell us here?
Josh Meyer:
Kennedy has been a long-time vaccine skeptic. He has said that he doesn't support a bird flu vaccine for poultry, and has instead suggested that the virus be allowed to spread among chickens to identify those with natural resistance. And not only have health experts said that this approach wouldn't work, but it could be potentially catastrophic and trigger a pandemic. And so, I think these House members just want to know what's going on here, they want to know what exactly he's doing, and they say that allowing avian flu to ravage flocks around the country is both dangerous and reckless. So they want to know what's going on, and I think they're trying to put the brakes on this.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Josh Meyer covers domestic security for USA TODAY. Thanks, Josh.
Josh Meyer:
My pleasure. Thanks, Taylor.
♦
Democratic Senator Cory Booker yesterday delivered the longest recorded floor speech in Senate history, breaking the record set by segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond in 1957. Booker said that he decided to undertake the marathon speech because Democrats have a responsibility to do something different in the face of the unprecedented changes taking place in the first few months of Trump's second term as president.
Senator Cory Booker:
These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such.
Taylor Wilson:
The Trump administration this week acknowledged an administrative error led to the deportation of a native of El Salvador, but the government has no interest in returning him to his wife and child with a disability, according to court documents. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a resident of Beltsville, Maryland, was among the hundreds of alleged members of crime gangs, MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, the government expelled from the US to El Salvador last month. But he had won a court order from an immigration judge in 2019 that was supposed to prevent his removal. His wife and child, who are both US citizens, filed a lawsuit calling for his return.
In filings earlier this week, government officials acknowledged the administrative mistake that sent Garcia to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Still, government lawyers said he has been found to be a danger to the community, so the public interest is against ordering the government to orchestrate his return to the United States. Abrego Garcia was ordered deported in 2019 after a confidential informant testified that he was an active member of the MS-13 gang, according to government lawyers. He then applied for asylum, asking for protections under the UN Convention against Torture if he were returned to El Salvador. An immigration judge found he was deportable, but withheld his removal. You can read more with the link in today's show notes.
♦
Cuts to Department of Agriculture programs that provide food for schools and food banks have communities across the country worried about hunger. I spoke with USA TODAY National News Reporter, Jeanine Santucci, to learn more.
Jeanine, thanks for hopping on today.
Jeanine Santucci:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So starting here, Jeanine, just tell us about the cuts to government funding for programs that help food banks. What sorts of slashing have we seen here in recent weeks?
Jeanine Santucci:
There have been cuts to a couple of US Department of Agriculture programs that help food banks. The first one is the Emergency Food Assistance Program, and that involves the USDA purchasing food from farmers and food producers and sending it to food banks so that they can be distributed in low-income areas. Some of those organizations have told the USA TODAY network that they're expecting fewer food shipments under that program going forward. The other program, which is called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement, and yes, that is a mouthful, works by creating non-competitive agreements for the purchasing of fresh food from local farmers to go to food banks. So they both essentially are working to get food from farmers into the food banks so that they can be distributed to people who are hungry, and together, that's over $1 billion in funds that was cut.
Taylor Wilson:
So how is this really functionally impacting food banks, as some already strapped banks turn to their local communities for help? And really, Jeanine, can you help us understand where food banks expect to get their food from typically?
Jeanine Santucci:
Food banks typically get the food that they give out in one of three ways, generally. The first is through donations from people in their communities, from individuals, or donations from grocery stores, companies, et cetera. The second is through food that's purchased using USDA funding, like the programs we're talking about. And the third way is food that they purchase themselves with pretty limited resources, and that's a minority of the food that they give out. That's according to Vince Hall of the nonprofit Feeding America. He says that food banks right now are facing record high demand because of inflation making the bills that people are paying difficult across the country. Organizations that give out food and the farmers who grow it and have benefited from these programs have told the newspapers within the USA TODAY network all over the country, from Arizona to Iowa to Delaware, that the cuts are going to impact them, and one of the things that they'll just have to do is hope that community members will step up their donations, because otherwise, there's just going to be less food.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, as you said, Jeanine, this is really a nationwide conversation, but how does this hit rural communities in particular?
Jeanine Santucci:
Rural communities are more spread out, and Hall said it's harder for them to make up the difference because it's not as easy to divert the extra food that would otherwise be thrown away from grocery stores, warehouses, food producers, that will sometimes end up in food banks. But rural food banks can sometimes count on USDA programs for half the food they distribute.
Taylor Wilson:
And what is the impact here when it comes to access to healthier food specifically?
Jeanine Santucci:
The main point of these programs to begin with is to provide a source of fresh, healthy, more nutritious options to people who need them, so they'll have access to fresh produce, meat and dairy products that they might not otherwise. And the other thing is that locally grown food is fresher and keeps its nutritional value, so the program specifically that partners food banks with local food producers and farmers, those people might not be able to see locally grown food. Now, Kelly Saxon, who's the farm head at Agritopia Farm in Arizona, told the Arizona Republic that donated food, while still obviously welcome in food banks, might be sitting longer in transit before it's donated, and therefore would lose some of its nutritional value.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, I'm happy you brought up farmers and food producers here because they're a big part of this conversation, what do we hear from them, what does the shakeup of funding sources mean for them?
Jeanine Santucci:
It's really a source of income from them. The LFPA programs, those were introduced as a way to counter the disruption to the food supply chain that we saw at the start of the COVID pandemic and bolster farmers and really give them that source of income that they can depend on and don't have to necessarily worry about competing for contracts and things like that.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow, all right. So on the government side here, Jeanine, how do they argue or defend these cuts?
Jeanine Santucci:
So one of the main things that the USDA has said and told to us is that they believe that these cuts are, quote, "A return to long-term fiscally-responsible initiatives." So they say that they're focusing on long-term programs, and that these programs didn't provide long-term solutions, and that they're looking past the pandemic now. And Hall said that the USDA does intend to shore up other types of funding to help food banks, but it's not going to fill the $1 billion gap created by these cuts, so he's hoping that Congress can step in with funding in a farm bill in the future.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Jeanine Santucci covers national news for USA TODAY. Thank you, Jeanine.
Jeanine Santucci:
Thank you.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
Val Kilmer has died. The actor was known for roles in everything from Top Gun to Batman. He also starred as rockstar Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's 1991 drama, The Doors. Kilmer died from pneumonia. He had publicly battled throat cancer for much of the past decade, permanently losing his voice to a tracheotomy, but continuing to act and write. Val Kilmer was 65.
♦
Author Laurie Woolever, who worked with celebrity chefs Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali, found herself doing damage control when Batali was accused of assault.
Laurie Woolever:
It felt a little jarring and slightly unfair to have to take any responsibility for harassment and alleged abuse and things that I didn't really feel that I had any part in.
Taylor Wilson:
My colleague, Dana Taylor, sat down with Laurie to discuss her new memoir, Care and Feeding. Hear that conversation right here on The Excerpt today, beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time. And thanks for listening to The Excerpt, you can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.