FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky lawmakers completed their work Tuesday to reduce the state’s individual income tax rate, delivering on a top Republican priority just five days into this year’s session.

Final passage came on a 34-3 Senate vote to lower the tax to 3.5% from 4% at the start of 2026. The bill goes to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who has said he supports the tax cut. It continues a downward trend in the personal income tax since the GOP gained full control of the legislature in 2017.

“It’s been said that there are only two things in life that are certain -– it’s death and taxes,” Republican Sen. Chris McDaniel said Tuesday. “We’ve added another thing that’s fairly certain — which is the General Assembly is going to do everything in its power, and frequently with success, to lower your taxes. And that’s what House Bill 1 is all about.”

Supporters say the lower tax rate will promote long-term economic growth and population gains in Kentucky by enabling people to keep more of the money they earn.

The tax cut push in Kentucky comes as President Donald Trump has proposed tax cuts for individuals and businesses, while governors and lawmakers in some states are seeking to cut more. The movement for more tax cuts comes after most states already have slashed income, sales or property taxes in recent years, and it’s pressing ahead even though state revenue growth has been slowing or stagnating.

In Kentucky, Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, one of three Senate Democrats voting against the tax cut bill, said the results would be lopsided, with wealthy Kentuckians benefiting disproportionately from it.

The Democratic lawmaker said she values putting money back in Kentuckians’ pockets, pointing to options she’s supporting to help struggling families most in need of tax relief — a refundable child tax credit for low-income families and a sales tax exemption for diapers.

That brought a response from Republican Sen. Michael Nemes, who touted the relief for Kentuckians from the income tax cut. “They earned it,” he said. “It’s their money, not ours.”

The latest income tax cut is expected to save taxpayers another $718 million annually, supporters said.

House budget committee Chairman Jason Petrie said last month there’s a “tremendous amount of room to keep the budget balanced” with the lower income tax rate in 2026.

The measure won united support from Senate Republicans, while Democrats were divided.

Sen. David Yates, among Democrats backing the bill, said it “feels safe” to lower the income tax in the current economic climate but added the state should maintain a diverse tax structure. If the personal income tax keeps dropping until being eliminated, other taxes will increase, he said.

“Because you have to have taxes in order to run a system of government,” Yates said.

Cutting the state’s personal income tax has been a recurring priority for Republican lawmakers.

Since the passage of a tax overhaul in 2022, the individual income tax in Kentucky has gradually been reduced by increments of a half-percentage point, conditioned on meeting benchmarks to ensure revenues are sufficient to meet state spending needs.

As part of that tax overhaul, the state sales tax was extended to apply to more services. Critics say lower-income families were hurt the most by putting sales tax on more services.

The House overwhelmingly passed the latest income tax cut on the third day of this year’s session in early January. Lawmakers met four days last month before heading home for the rest of January, which is customary in 30-day sessions in odd-numbered years.

The Senate took up the bill Tuesday, the first day that lawmakers reconvened since the January break. Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers.

With the latest personal income tax cut headed to the governor’s desk, the next question will be when the rate will be reduced again and by how much.

Several Senate Republicans said Tuesday that the latest cut is another step toward what they hope is the ultimate result — eliminating the individual income tax.

GOP Sen. Gex Williams raised the prospect of making deeper incremental cuts in the income tax in future years, perhaps by three-quarters of a percent or a full 1%. Williams said he hopes that begins in the 60-day legislative session in 2026, when lawmakers will craft the state’s next two-year budget.

“I am looking forward to this next session, that we will be able to strive for a greater than one-half percent cut,” Williams said.

Bruce Schreiner, The Associated Press

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador has offered to take in people deported from the U.S. for entering the country illegally and to house some of the country’s violent criminals — even if they’re American citizens.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after a meeting Monday with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, proclaimed it the most “unprecedented, extraordinary” offer the country has yet received during the ongoing wave of global migration.

Details on the deal are scant, and immigration and constitutional experts question its legality. Here’s what you need to know:

What’s El Salvador offering?

Bukele, who took office in 2019, says he’s offering a release valve for America’s vast prison system.

Writing on X, he said the Central American nation will allow the U.S. to “outsource” part of its inmate population, but it will only take in convicted criminals.

The U.S. would have to pay El Salvador to house the prisoners, though he did not disclose an asking price.

Bukele said the going rate would be “relatively low” for the U.S., but significant for his country — enough to make its “entire prison system sustainable.”

Where do they want to house U.S. criminals?

Bukele has proposed housing U.S. criminals in the mega-prison his administration opened in 2023 to tame MS-13 and other powerful street gangs.

The maximum-security facility is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) southeast of the capital city of San Salvador and is known as CECOT, a Spanish acronym that translates to “terrorism confinement center.”

The facility can house up to 40,000 people across eight sprawling pavilions, where each cell holds up to 70 prisoners.

Human rights organizations say the bare-bones setting is overly harsh. Inmates are not allowed visitors or time outside.

They are served just one meal a day and are not offered educational or reintegration programs typically found at other prisons, save for the occasional motivational talk or exercise regimen under strict supervision.

The prison’s dining halls, break rooms, gym and board games are for guards only, and administration officials have said inmates will never return to their communities.

Is this even legal?

Deporting foreign nationals to countries other than their native land is legal, but deporting American citizens is almost certainly not.

Under U.S. immigration law, a country such as El Salvador can accept someone deported from the U.S. who isn’t a citizen of that country if the person’s homeland refuses to accept them, says Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former homeland security official under the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

What’s more, she noted, deportation is a legal term that applies only to someone physically removed from the country because they have violated some provision of the immigration act, which applies only to “aliens.”

So what about American citizens?

Naturalized U.S. citizens, in rare cases, can be denaturalized and revert to green-card status, such as if they lied on their initial immigration forms or committed a serious crime such as funding a terrorist group, according to Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert and retired Cornell Law School professor.

Green card holders can then be deported if they’re convicted of any number of crimes, including murder, assault, burglary, tax evasion, domestic violence and illegal firearms possession, he said.

Natural-born U.S. citizens, however, maintain their citizenship through the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which outlines the rights guaranteed to all citizens, such as due process and equal protection under the law.

“So, just as President Trump can’t eliminate birthright citizenship by himself, so too the U.S. government cannot deport U.S. citizens, even if they have committed crimes,” Yale-Loehr said.

Why is El Salvador doing this?

El Salvador is attempting to turn the page on decades of civil war and violence from MS-13 and other street gangs that long made it one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

Under Bukele, the country of 6 million residents declared a state of emergency in 2022, suspending constitutional rights and launching a fierce crackdown on gangs that’s led to the arrest of more than 80,000 people.

Bukele’s popularity has soared as crime plummeted to a record low of 114 homicides last year, but human rights groups have complained that many people are being unjustly detained without due process rights.

Has this been done before elsewhere?

The U.S. and other nations have reached deals to deal with migrants but nothing quite like what El Salvador’s leader proposes.

Britain has an agreement with Rwanda to send asylum-seekers to the East African country, though the accord has been stymied in the U.K. courts.

Trump also struck agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to take in U.S. asylum seekers in 2019, during his first term as president.

Guatemala was the only one of the three agreements that took effect. More than 900 people from El Salvador and Honduras were sent, but few sought asylum and instead continued on to their own countries in what became known as ” deportation with a layover.”

President Joe Biden canceled the three agreements in 2021.

What are the next steps?

Trump praised the offer Tuesday, saying it would serve as “great deterrent” but acknowledged it might not pass legal muster.

“I’m just saying if we had a legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” he said in the Oval Office. “I don’t know if we do or not. We’re looking at that.”

Rubio similarly called El Salvador’s offer “generous,” but stressed that the Republican administration will need to study the proposal before making any commitments.

“There are obviously legalities involved,” he said Tuesday at a news conference in San Jose, Costa Rica, with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves. “We have a constitution. We have all sorts of things.”

That hasn’t stopped Bukele from making the most of the renewed attention.

He’s joked El Salvador would even take in disgraced former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who was sentenced last week to 11 years in federal prison for accepting bribes of gold and cash and acting as an agent of Egypt.

“Yes,” Bukele wrote on X, “we’ll gladly take him in.”

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Marcelo reported from New York. Associated Press reporters Elliot Spagat in San Diego, Matthew Lee in San Jose, Costa Rica, and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this story.

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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.

Philip Marcelo And Marcos Alemán, The Associated Press

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky lawmakers completed their work Tuesday to reduce the state’s individual income tax rate, delivering on a top Republican priority on just the fifth day of this year’s session.

Final passage came on a 34-3 Senate vote to lower the tax to 3.5% from 4% at the start of 2026. The bill goes to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who has said he supports the tax cut. It continues a downward trend in the personal income tax rate since the GOP gained full control of the legislature in 2017.

“It’s been said that there are only two things in life that are certain -– it’s death and taxes,” Republican Sen. Chris McDaniel said during the debate Tuesday. “We’ve added another thing that’s fairly certain — which is the General Assembly is going to do everything in its power, and frequently with success, to lower your taxes. And that’s what House Bill 1 is all about.”

Supporters say the lower tax rate will promote long-term economic growth and population gains in the Bluegrass State by enabling people to keep more of the money they earn.

Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, one of three Senate Democrats voting against the bill, said the results would be lopsided, with wealthy Kentuckians benefiting disproportionately from the tax cut.

The Democratic lawmaker said she values putting money back in Kentuckians’ pockets, pointing to options she said would help struggling families most in need of tax relief. She touted a refundable child tax credit for low-income families and a sales tax exemption for diapers — proposals she is pushing.

That brought a quick response from Republican Sen. Michael Nemes, who touted the relief for Kentuckians provided in the income tax cut. “They earned it,” he said. “It’s their money, not ours.”

The latest income tax cut is expected to save taxpayers another $718 million annually, supporters said.

House budget committee Chairman Jason Petrie said last month that there’s a “tremendous amount of room to keep the budget balanced” with the lower individual income tax rate in 2026.

The measure won united support from Senate Republicans, while Democrats were divided on the issue.

Sen. David Yates, among the Democrats backing the bill, said it “feels safe” to lower the income tax in the current economic climate but added that the state should maintain a diverse tax structure. If the personal income tax keeps dropping until being eliminated, other taxes will increase, he said.

“Because you have to have taxes in order to run a system of government,” Yates said.

Cutting the state’s personal income tax has been a recurring priority for Republican lawmakers.

Since the passage of a tax overhaul in 2022, the individual income tax in Kentucky has gradually been reduced by increments of a half-percentage point, conditioned on meeting benchmarks to ensure revenues are sufficient to meet state spending needs. State officials announced last year that the state had met the financial conditions needed to set in motion another cut in the tax rate for 2026.

As part of the tax overhaul three years ago, the state sales tax was extended to apply to more services. Critics say lower-income families were hurt the most by putting sales tax on more services.

The House overwhelmingly passed the latest income tax cut on the third day of this year’s 30-day session in early January. Lawmakers met four days last month before heading home for the rest of January, which is customary in 30-day sessions in odd-numbered years.

The Senate took up the bill Tuesday, the first day that lawmakers reconvened since the January break. Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers, and the importance of the tax cut was reflected in it being designated as HB1, signifying its top-priority status.

With the latest personal income tax cut headed to the governor’s desk, the next question will be when the rate will be reduced again and by how much.

Several Senate Republicans said Tuesday that the latest cut is another step toward what they hope is the ultimate result — eliminating the individual income tax.

GOP Sen. Gex Williams raised the prospect of making deeper incremental cuts in the income tax in future years, perhaps by three-quarters of a percent or a full 1%. Williams said he hopes that begins in the 60-day legislative session in 2026, when lawmakers will craft the state’s next two-year budget.

“I am looking forward to this next session, that we will be able to strive for a greater than one-half percent cut,” Williams said.

Bruce Schreiner, The Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — A day after Georgia Republican House Speaker Jon Burns unveiled school safety legislation, Democrats and families from Apalachee High School said they want more — namely, gun safety laws.

Both efforts to curb the gun violence come months after a mass shooting at Apalachee, the school northeast of Atlanta where a 14-year-old boy stands accused of killing two teachers and two students and wounding several others last Sept. 4.

The morning of the shooting, senior Isabel Trejo was fretting about an upcoming test while in math class with teacher Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall. He died later that day, one of the four fatal victims. When the shooting started, Trejo told lawmakers at the Capitol on Tuesday, “the minutes that followed felt like an eternity.”

“I huddled under a desk mentally preparing myself for the shooter to come into my classroom and start firing,” Trejo said.

Trejo joined with Apalachee families and Ishmael “Junior” Angulo, whose brother Christian Angulo died in the shooting, to support Johns Creek Democratic Rep. Michelle Au and others who are calling for greater gun regulation in a state with some of the nation’s most permissive gun laws.

They praised Burns’ efforts but said the state needs gun safety laws to prevent another tragic shooting.

“Speaker Burns’ plan focuses on what happens when a firearm is already in a school. Dr. Au’s bill ensures that firearms are secure so they don’t get there in the first place,” said Layla Renee Contreras, a former Apalachee student with Change for Chee, a community group created after the shooting to advocate for school safety.

According to research from Johns Hopkins, Georgia had the eighth-highest gun homicide rate in 2022 and firearms were the leading cause of death for young people ages 1-17.

Democrats have pushed for gun control with little success. Republicans, who control the state House and Senate, have resisted most of those efforts. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s loud support for gun rights helped him win his election and brought him national attention. In 2022, he signed a law allowing people to carry a handgun without a state-issued permit.

All of this went on before the shooting at Apalachee, though. Some Democrats hope the tragedy will spur enough Republicans to heed their call for action.

“The families of Apalachee and Barrow County have not moved on, and we owe it to them to give this issue the attention and the work it deserves, even in an environment where the challenges to progress seem daunting,” Au said.

Au proposed tax credits up to $300 for purchasing safe storage devices, such as gun safes and trigger locks. Burns says he supports tax incentives. A bipartisan group of lawmakers passed those credits in the House last year and the Senate passed a similar bill, but neither made it through the other chamber.

Au also proposed processes for background checks, which are unlikely to gain Republican support.

Another bill she introduced would make it a crime to allow a child access to a gun, including failing to safely secure it or leaving it out somewhere — a proposal also made by Sen. Elena Parent, an Atlanta Democrat. It also requires businesses to put up signs about those regulations. That bill has one Republican co-sponsor, Rep. Sharon Cooper of Marietta. The 14-year-old arrested in the Apalachee shooting, Colt Gray, allegedly got the semiautomatic assault rifle used in the attack from his father. Father and son are both facing murder charges.

Parent also has proposed barring anyone convicted of family violence from having guns. She also introduced a bill that would require a hearing process if someone who had been involuntarily hospitalized wants to get their records wiped. Right now, Georgia’s crime information center wipes that information five years after hospitalization.

Decatur Democrat Sen. Emanuel Jones introduced a bill to create an emergency alert system and database for threats. Schools would have to provide mental health services for students who make threats. He also proposed a statewide program to share information about gun safety.

On Monday, the father of the slain teacher Aspinwall’ stood behind Burns at the capitol to support his proposals. The plan calls for greater information sharing by schools and police about reported threats as well as students with disciplinary or mental health records at risk of committing violence. The proposal also calls for new ways to connect students with counseling.

The governor last month proposed giving public schools an additional $50 million for school safety, but it did not include money for school counselors and mental health counseling that officials have requested.

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Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Kramon on X: @charlottekramon.

Charlotte Kramon, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Outraged Democrats are testing the limits of their diminished power as they try to stop the stunning power grabs of President Donald Trump and his chief lieutenant, Elon Musk.

Musk’s maneuvers, which include the hostile seizure of taxpayer data and the apparent closure of the government’s leading international humanitarian aid agency, have energized many Democrats, who have been mired in a post-election funk and struggled to identify a cohesive strategy in the earliest days of Trump’s presidency.

Democratic members of Congress threatened to try to bring Trump’s agenda, including his Cabinet nominations, to a grinding halt. Operatives assembled a new war room in their party headquarters. And average Americans, backed by a sudden influx of elected officials, warned of a looming constitutional crisis at ballooning protests across the nation’s capital.

“With one voice, we can push back and resist the excesses and extremes of the Trump administration,” newly elected Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in an interview. “Only two weeks in, Elon Musk is already our worst president ever.”

It’s unclear, however, if such attempts at obstruction would realistically stop Trump and Musk.

Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, while the Supreme Court is led by a 6-3 conservative majority. And Republicans who control Congress, so far at least, have cheered Trump and Musk’s provocative moves.

Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday shared one of the billionaire’s social media posts in which he claimed to have discovered roughly $700 billion in government fraud.

“When Elon and the team started I was very supportive but thought the waste and fraud would top out at $250 billion,” Vance wrote. “The real number will end up much higher.”

Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, oversees a team of people at the Department of Government Efficiency in Washington. With Trump’s blessing, the billionaire CEO is moving to fire or sideline career government officials, gain access to sensitive databases and dismantle agencies he disfavors.

On Monday, some of Musk’s agents were spotted at the Department of Education, which Trump has vowed to abolish. And on Tuesday, Musk called for National Public Radio to be stripped of federal funding.

None of it is happening with congressional approval, inviting a constitutional clash over the limits of presidential authority.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, a rising star in her party, said no elected Democrat should help Republicans govern in the GOP-controlled House, even if that leads to a government shutdown.

“I don’t know that there’s anything in modern day history that comes close to the moment we’re in,” Crockett said. “As we typically say in the Black community, the hoods are off.”

In the Senate, some Democrats said they would break personal tradition and oppose all of Trump’s remaining Cabinet nominees.

“I plan to oppose every cabinet level nominee that is considered on the Senate floor going forward,” said Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del. “The administration has carried out unlawful budget freezes, massive civil servant layoffs and unconstitutional firings, directed federal funding specifically to places with ‘higher birthrates,’ allowed an unelected and unchecked billionaire to determine what our tax dollars are worthy of funding, and more.”

“This is unacceptable and dangerous,” Blunt Rochester added.

The growing outcry from Democrats extends well beyond Washington, where some rank-and-file Democrats are upset that their representatives in Congress are not doing enough.

Ezra Levin, who leads the Democratic activist group Indivisible, said that 50,000 people joined a call on Sunday to pressure senators to take a tougher stand against Musk. He was pleased that Democrats in Washington seem to have rallied since last week’s unilateral grant freeze, but he contends that the party can take more steps, especially in the Senate.

“We don’t even have them issuing ongoing opposition to Trump’s nominees while a coup is happening,” Levin said on Tuesday, noting 22 Senate Democrats voted to confirm Trump’s nominee for secretary of veterans affairs, Doug Collins. “This isn’t about any individual program, this is about whether we have a constitution.”

Democrats have few options.

Philip Joyce, a public policy professor at the University of Maryland, noted that the Trump administration has been more than willing to work around Congress during its latest round of executive actions.

“Since the administration doesn’t seem concerned with doing things that have been viewed as illegal or unconstitutional in the past, I can’t see any other option other than taking the administration to court,” Joyce said.

Indeed, Democrats at this point hope the courts will provide the checks and balances that Trump’s Republican allies in Washington will not.

Democratic state attorneys general and nonprofit groups successfully filed lawsuits last week that led to separate court orders halting Trump-ordered funding freezes that triggered panic among nonprofit organizations, including hospitals and social welfare groups. On Monday, federal worker unions sued to block Musk and his staff from accessing the Treasury payments system. Multiple groups have also sued to prevent Trump from stripping civil service protections from a swathe of federal workers.

At the same time, Democrats and their allies are increasingly concerned that Trump may ignore court orders altogether. Already, the term-limited president is bypassing laws that establish federal funding levels and worker protections.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the AP that his union is already preparing for Trump to ignore a court order.

“We won’t give up. We’ll keep fighting until justice prevails,” he said.

In one apparent silver lining, Kelly noted that Trump has been good for union participation in recent weeks. The American Federation of Government Employees expanded its ranks by 8,693 members in January and another 3,000 people have joined so far in January, he said.

Government workers were among the hundreds who protested outside federal offices on Tuesday. And more than a dozen members of Congress were on the speaking program of a late-afternoon rally outside the Treasury building, where Musk’s team last week gained access to the U.S. Treasury payment system.

The system is responsible for 1 billion payments per year totaling $5 trillion and includes sensitive information involving bank accounts and Social Security payments.

Protesters outside the Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday targeted Musk almost more than Trump.

“Elon, Elon, stop the coup! Nobody elected you!” they chanted, as some waved signs that read, “Musk must go. Get out! Now.”

“It’s one thing to downsize the government. It’s one thing to try to obliterate it,” said Dan Smith, a Maryland resident whose father was a farmer, a USDA research scientist, and “one of the hardest working federal employees I knew.”

He called the Trump administration’s moves “frightening and disgusting.”

“My only hope is that they’re going to push too far, and there’s going to be a response and a retaliation — and we’re going to come out this thing with more and stronger belief in democracy,” Smith said.

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Peoples reported from New York. AP writer Chris Megerian contributed.

Steve Peoples And Nicholas Riccardi, The Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A new television attack ad in Wisconsin’s hotly contested Supreme Court race features a doctored image of the liberal candidate, a move that her campaign claims could be a violation of a recently enacted state law.

The image in question is of Susan Crawford, a Dane County circuit court judge. It appeared in a new TV ad paid for by the campaign of her opponent Brad Schimel, a Waukesha County circuit court judge.

The winner of the high-stakes race on April 1 will determine whether the Wisconsin Supreme Court remains under a liberal majority or flips to conservative control.

The Schimel campaign ad begins and ends with a black-and-white image of Crawford with her lips closed together. A nearly identical color image from her 2018 run for Dane County Circuit Court shows Crawford with a wide smile on her face.

Crawford’s campaign accused Schimel of manipulating the image, potentially in violation of a state law enacted last year. The law, passed with bipartisan support in the Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, requires disclosure if political ads use audio or video content created by generative artificial intelligence. Failure to disclose the use of AI as required can result in a $1,000 fine.

“Schimel will try to manipulate images and the facts because he’s desperate to hide his own record of failure,” Crawford spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in a statement.

Schimel’s campaign spokesperson Jacob Fischer said the image was “edited” but not created by AI.

Peter Loge, the director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University, said images should never be changed to give a false impression.

“That said, as these things go, it’s not that egregious,” Loge said of the Schimel ad.

He pointed to numerous other examples of images being doctored for use in political ads, including one in 2015 by a political action committee supporting Wisconsin Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson. The image showed then-President Barack Obama smiling and shaking hands with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. In 2020, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, posted the fake image again on social media.

Obama and Rouhani never met. The image was fake.

A doctored image was also used last year in a television ad in the Indiana governor’s race.

“A good rule of thumb is to take everything with a grain of salt,” Loge said. “Just because you see it on television or on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true.”

The Schimel ad attacks Crawford over the release of a convicted rapist in 2011 because the state’s office of criminal appeals missed the deadline to appeal to the state Supreme Court. Crawford headed the division at the time, but the error miscalculating the appeal deadline was made by another attorney in the office and by two secretaries, according to a report by the attorney general.

“Crawford didn’t bother filing the appeal in time, letting the rapist walk free,” the Schimel ad claims.

After that error was discovered, Crawford ordered a review of every pending appeal’s deadline and personally calculated the deadline for petitions for review to the state Supreme Court. Republican officeholders at the time who investigated what happened, including then-state Rep. Scott Walker, said the error was an isolated incident.

Schimel served one term as attorney general between 2015 and 2019 when Walker was governor. Walker appointed Schimel as a judge the day after Schimel lost reelection in 2018.

Scott Bauer, The Associated Press