8th Annual !  |
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| 8th Annual ! |
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President Donald Trump said late Sunday that he has ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to stop producing pennies.
Pennies famously cost more than a penny to produce, putting them in the crosshairs of Trump and DOGE’s government efficiency push.
"For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents," Trump wrote on TruthSocial, his social media site. "This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.
Let's rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it's a penny at a time," Trump added.
DOGE posted on X last month critical of the penny’s cost, hinting at its fate.
"The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023," DOGE wrote on X. "The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced. Penny (or 3 cents!) for your thoughts."
According to the U.S. Mint’s latest report, the cost of all coins is on the rise. From the Mint’s 2024 report:
"FY 2024 unit costs increased for all circulating denominations compared to last year. The penny’s unit cost increased 20.2 percent, the nickel’s unit cost increased by 19.4 percent, the dime’s unit cost increased by 8.7 percent, and the quarter-dollar’s unit cost increased by 26.2 percent. The unit cost for pennies (3.69 cents) and nickels (13.78 cents) remained above face value for the 19th consecutive fiscal year."
(The Center Square) – A group of Wisconsin lawmakers have filed legislation to protect sturgeon spearing in the state.
The bill would exempt Wisconsin from any listing of lake sturgeon under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The group, including Republican Congressmen Glenn Grothman and Mike Gallagher filed what they called the Sturgeon Protected and Exempt from Absurd Regulations Act.
Reps. Tony Wied, Grothman and Tom Tiffany introduced the legislation on Friday.
The bill is in response to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducting a status assessment of lake sturgeon after the group was sued by an animal rights group in 2018 attempting to have lake sturgeon listed as threatened.
“Sturgeon-spearing is crucial to maintaining Wisconsin’s lake sturgeon population which is why we must take proactive steps to ensure that we are exempt from any action to list the lake sturgeon under the Endangered Species Act,” Tiffany said about the bill. “Wisconsin is a global leader in sturgeon management, and the SPEAR Act will protect this unique and long-standing tradition for years to come.”
https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-118hr7037ih
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will not add the lake sturgeon to the endangered species list last year.
A bipartisan group of Wisconsin lawmakers sent a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December 2023 pointing out the impact a listing could have on Wisconsin and how the state has worked to manage the lake sturgeon population.
The letter was signed by Gallagher and Grothman along with Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil, Tiffany, Scott Fitzgerald and Derrick Van Orden.
“Wisconsin does not list lake sturgeon endangered nor threatened in state waters, and has in place a sturgeon program considered a world model for effective management and recovery, and as such should be exempt from any Federal ESA listing of the species”, said Dr. Ron Bruch, former Chief of Fisheries and Leader of the statewide Sturgeon Management Team for the WI Department of Natural Resources.
(The Center Square) – A pair of Wisconsin legislators are pushing for more transparency in the school referendum process in the state.
The proposal comes after 169 out of 241 school ballot referenda in 2024 elections were approved by voters at a cost of $4.4 billion to taxpayers.
Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, R-Appleton, and Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha, proposed bills that would require local governments and school boards to include information on the ballot about how much the difference in taxes would for a median-valued home in the community resulting from the referendum.
“Referendums are opportunities for voters to make important decisions about how their tax dollars should be spent,” Allen said. “Good decision making requires transparency in the information provided to voters.”
A second bill would protect school districts from losing state funding when other districts go to referendum.
“It was a shock to many to learn that the massive school referendum passed in Milwaukee would take away vital state funding from over 300 other school districts,” Allen said. “It’s only fair that large referendums in one district should not negatively affect other school districts.”
A Legislative Fiscal Bureau report last year analyzed by Badger Institute showed that a $252 million Milwaukee referendum would cost Madison, Waukesha and Racine $2 million a year in state funding while Appleton and West Bend would lose more than $1 million each year.
The impact is due to tax base equalization, which means that “a school district's property tax rate does not depend on the property tax base of the district, but rather on the level of expenditures.”
The bill states that any school referendum of over $50 million dollars should be paid for by the district that votes for the referendum instead of taking away money from shared school funding.
Late last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting “transgender” procedures on youth, including puberty blockers and surgeries such as mastectomies and penile reconstruction. In response, many medical providers including some of the top in the nation for performing them have announced they will comply with the EO.
The EO states that “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called 'transition' of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
Last year, nonprofit Do No Harm unveiled a database reporting that between 2019-2023, there were 13,000 gender reassignment procedures performed throughout the nation on minors; those procedures included both surgeries and prescriptions. Among the top states in the nation for those procedures was Ohio, which has since enacted legislation banning such procedures.
The Center Square reached out to more than two dozen medical providers throughout the country based on data provided by Do No Harm regarding their total billing, prescriptions, and surgeries performed, asking them how they planned to respond to Trump’s EO.
Among those to announce they were suspending all procedures was Seattle-based UW Medicine, which stated in an email that it was “committed to supporting the clinical care needs and well-being of all our patients, as well as complying with state and federal law. We are currently in compliance and are also continuing to provide our full spectrum of services.”
Seattle Children’s Hospital ranked among the top in the nation for puberty blocker prescriptions; though it did not respond to request for comment, there have been reports that it has suspended those services, and its webpage for gender affirmation surgery has since been removed.
MultiCare Mary Bridge Children's Hospital located in Tacoma wrote in an email that while it does not perform gender-affirming surgeries, “we are aware of the executive order that calls for an end to gender-affirming medical treatments for children and adolescents under 19 and are continuing to monitor the situation. Executive orders are directives to federal agencies on how they will operate. Much of what’s been issued has not yet become rules for us to evaluate.”
D.C.-based Children’s National Hospital released a statement that it will no longer prescribe puberty blockers or hormone therapy, noting that prior to the EO it did not perform gender affirming surgeries.
Coolie Dickinson Hospital based out of Massachusetts wrote in an email that it “is reviewing to see what, if any, actual impact the executive orders might have and would follow up, if there is any impact. In the meantime, the care we provide to our community continues as normal at this time.”
University of Michigan Health stated that its “teams are assessing the potential impact of this executive order on our healthcare services and the communities we serve. Our priority remains delivering high-quality, accessible care to our patients while ensuring compliance with the law."
Another medical provider to cease gender transition services for anyone under 19 is VCU Health and Children’s Hospital of Richmond, Virginia, which wrote in a statement that it was “in response to an Executive Order issued by the White House on January 28, 2025, and related state guidance received by VCU on January 30, 2025. Our doors remain open to all patients and their families for screening, counseling, mental health care and all other health care needs.”
UCSF’s Gender Affirming Care in San Francisco has also ended services for patients under 19, a policy also adopted by Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.
Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York simply wrote in an email that “we will keep you posted once we have an update on this matter.”
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia both said they were reviewing their services.
Several hospitals and hospital systems who performed these procedures on minors did not respond to The Center Square's requests for comment on the executive order. The Center Square will continue to seek clarification on whether they plan to comply with the order.
