MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers used his seventh State of the State speech Wednesday to urge the Republican-controlled Legislature to enact a wide range of proposals they have rejected in the past, including numerous gun control measures just a month after there was a school shooting not far from the state Capitol.

Here’s what to know about the speech from Evers, a Democrat who may run for a third term next year in the battleground state:

Evers, without mentioning President Donald Trump by name, said “there is a lot of angst about what may happen in the days, months, and years ahead.”

“I have always been willing to work with anyone who is willing to do the right thing for the people of Wisconsin,” Evers said. “And that has not changed. But I will not compromise on our Wisconsin values of treating people with kindness, dignity, empathy, and respect.”

Evers called for bipartisan efforts to address immigration and promised to fight any attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He also repeated his pledge to veto any bill that limits access to abortion, birth control, infertility treatments, or any other part of reproductive care.

Wisconsin is one of 22 states suing the federal government over Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship.

Wisconsin is one of the “blue wall” states that Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020. Trump carried Wisconsin in 2024 on his way back to the White House.

Evers called for a series of gun control measures five weeks after school shooting just six miles (9.66 kilometers) from the Capitol that left a teacher and 14-year-old student dead. The 15-year-old shooter shot and killed herself.

Evers called for universal background checks for gun purchases and restoring a 48-hour waiting period for gun purchases, a law that Republicans repealed in 2015.

He also called for banning the purchase of “ghost guns” and closing a loophole that allows for domestic abusers to own firearms.

Evers also called for incentives and new requirements to safely secure firearms and a “red flag” law that would allow judges to take guns away from people determined to be a risk to themselves or others.

Republicans have repeatedly rejected the proposals in the past.

“We cannot let common sense get lost in debates over whether basic policies could have prevented the most recent shooting, or the one before it, or the one before that,” Evers said. “We aren’t here in Madison to quibble about the semantics of the last shooting; we are here to do everything we can to prevent the next one.”

The governor last week created a state office for violence prevention, which Republicans vowed not to fund after federal funding runs out in two years.

Evers, a former teacher and state superintendent of schools, also called for spending $300 million to provide comprehensive mental health services in schools statewide. That would be 10 times the amount the Legislature approved for school mental health services in the last budget.

Declaring 2025 as “The Year of the Kid,” Evers called on Republicans to approve $500 million to lower the cost of child care. The bulk of that would go toward funding the Child Care Counts program, for the next two years. Without more funding, the program — which was created during the COVID-19 pandemic — is slated to end in June.

Evers also called for creating new programs designed to set price ceilings for prescription drugs and improve oversight of drug companies, removing the state sales tax on over-the-counter medications and capping the copay on insulin at $35.

He also repeated his previous call for them to allow for voters to place proposed law changes on the ballot themselves through referendums, something that Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos declared “dead on arrival.”

In an emotional moment, Evers welcomed the widow and parents of former state Rep. Jonathan Brostoff, who died by suicide in November. Evers, his voice cracking with emotion, talked about Brostoff’s death when introducing a new program that would allow people to temporarily and voluntarily register to prevent themselves from purchasing a firearm.

DEERFIELD, Ill. — The U.S. Justice Department is accusing Walgreens of filling millions of prescriptions in the last decade and more without a legitimate purpose, including for dangerous amounts of opioids, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the complaint says the drugstore chain’s pharmacists filled controlled substance prescriptions with clear red flags that indicated they were highly likely to be unlawful. Walgreens also systematically pressured pharmacists to fill prescriptions without taking the time to confirm their validity, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit says Walgreens filled “unlawful” prescriptions in violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act and sought reimbursement from federal health care programs for them in violation of the False Claims Act.

Walgreens, one of the country’s largest pharmacy chains, with over 8,000 locations, said in a statement that it stands behind its pharmacists. It said they say fill legitimate prescriptions for Food and Drug Administration-approved medications written by Drug Enforcement Administration-licensed prescribers in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.

Walgreens is also accused of ignoring evidence, including from its own pharmacists and internal data, that stores were dispensing unlawful prescriptions, according to the complaint. In addition, it allegedly deprived pharmacists of crucial information including by preventing them from warning each another about particular prescribers.

“This lawsuit seeks to hold Walgreens accountable for the many years that it failed to meet its obligations when dispensing dangerous opioids and other drugs,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement. “These practices allowed millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally out of Walgreens stores.”

The company said it is asking the court to clarify the responsibilities of pharmacies and pharmacists and to protect against the government’s attempt to enforce arbitrary “rules” that do not appear in any law or regulation and never went through any official rulemaking process.

“We will not stand by and allow the government to put our pharmacists in a no-win situation, trying to comply with “rules” that simply do not exist,” Walgreens said in the statement.

The company also said it has been a leader in providing education and resource, as well as implementing the best policies and procedures to help combat opioid misuse.

The DOJ filed a similar lawsuit against CVS in December. A spokesperson for that chain has said it strongly disagrees with the allegations and what it called a “false narrative” in the complaint.

Federal prosecutors have been trying to hold companies accountable for their alleged roles in the U.S. addiction and overdose crisis, with opioids tied to over 80,000 annual deaths in some recent years.

During the past decade, most of those deaths have mostly been attributed to illicit fentanyl, which is laced into many illegal drugs. Prescription pills were the primary cause earlier.

Over the past eight years, drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies have agreed to approximately $50 billion in settlements with governments, with the majority of the money going toward fighting the crisis.

WASHINGTON — The kids seen by Dolores Mejia around suburban Phoenix have been growing heavier in recent years. Their parents, too, she says.

Mejia, a 75-year-old retiree, says she’s also had her own weight struggles on the scale.

That’s why Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s pledge to “Make America Healthy Again” as he campaigned alongside Donald Trump caught her attention. She liked the questions Kennedy raised about the role of processed foods in America’s obesity epidemic.

“I’m a junk food person,” said Mejia, an ardent Trump supporter. “I started wondering where those extra pounds came from.”

After hearing Kennedy out, she concluded: “We cannot trust the health organizations we’ve trusted for years to tell us that our foods are safe.”

Republicans such as Mejia have embraced Kennedy, whose alliance with the president-elect could make the prominent environmentalist and vaccine skeptic the nation’s top health official next year. Republicans hold an overwhelmingly positive view of Kennedy, with most approving of Trump’s decision to put him in his administration, according to recent polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters in the 2024 presidential election.

But Americans overall are less positive about Kennedy, and there isn’t broad support for some of his views, which include closer scrutiny of vaccines.

If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy will be charged with leading the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1.7 trillion agency that researches cancer, approves prescription drugs and provides health insurance for roughly half the country.

About 6 in 10 Republicans approve of Kennedy’s appointment to Trump’s Cabinet and only about 1 in 10 disapprove, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in December, while the rest aren’t familiar with him or didn’t have an opinion.

Kennedy’s talk of healthy foods is what captured the attention of Natalie Moralez, a 32-year-old engineer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who identifies as an independent.

She likes his promises to take on powerful companies. And she’s eager to see him challenge the ingredients they use in the food she finds on supermarket shelves.

“Even just buying foods from the grocery store, like what else is in there?” Moralez said. “That’s my main concern, and hopefully he can figure out what the underlying issues are and see if we can do better.”

Kennedy doesn’t fare as well among Americans overall, with about 4 in 10 U.S. adults disapproving and about 3 in 10 approving of his appointment.

Although Kennedy is a member of one of the most powerful Democratic dynasties in the country, most Democrats said they don’t like that he’s been named to Trump’s Cabinet. About 6 in 10 Democrats “strongly disapprove” of the pick, the December poll found. That’s a higher share of disapproval than other high-profile picks such as Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary or Marco Rubio for secretary of state.

Kennedy started his career as an environmental lawyer and won big lawsuits against companies over the chemicals used in weed killers and heavy metal smelters.

But in recent years, he’s attracted a sizable and loyal following over his claims that vaccines, recommended and championed by the nation’s public health agencies, are dangerous. That’s despite decades of research, laboratory testing and real-world use that shows childhood vaccinations have prevented millions of deaths.

“There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” Kennedy said on a podcast in July 2023. During a Fox News interview the same year, he said he believes a repeatedly discredited idea that vaccines can cause autism. In recent days, Trump has increasingly suggested that the link between autism and vaccines should be studied — although decades of research has already concluded there is no connection between the two.

Trump and Kennedy allies have promised not to take away vaccines, instead saying they oppose government mandates and want to conduct more research on the vaccines.

But about half of voters want the government to be more involved in ensuring children are vaccinated for childhood diseases, according to AP VoteCast.

About one-quarter said the government’s current involvement on this is “about right,” and only about 2 in 10 wanted the government to be less involved. But parents of school-age children were somewhat more likely to support a smaller government role: Roughly 3 in 10 parents of children under 18 wanted the government less involved, compared with about 2 in 10 voters without children under 18.

Among Trump’s voters, about one-third wanted the government less involved in ensuring children are vaccinated for childhood diseases.

A similar share wanted the government more involved, and about 3 in 10 said its involvement was about right. Roughly 4 in 10 Trump voters who are parents of children under 18 said they want the government less involved in ensuring children are vaccinated, while about one-third said they wanted it more involved.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them the AP, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

People who voted in the presidential race this November held divided views on Kennedy, according to AP VoteCast.

Kennedy had dropped out of the presidential race by that point, throwing his support behind Trump, but remained on the ballot in some states.

About 4 in 10 voters had a very or somewhat favorable opinion of Kennedy, and roughly 4 in 10 had a very or somewhat unfavorable view. Slightly more than 1 in 10 did not know enough about Kennedy to have an opinion.

Republican voters — about two-thirds — were more likely to hold a favorable view of Kennedy, much higher than the roughly 2 in 10 Democrats who viewed him positively. Meanwhile, about 7 in 10 Democrats had a negative opinion of Kennedy, with about half saying they had a “very unfavorable” view.

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,251 adults was conducted Dec. 5-9, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

AP VoteCast was a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News, PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. The survey of more than 120,000 voters was conducted for eight days, concluding as polls closed. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters drawn from state voter files; self-identified registered voters using NORC’s probability based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population; and self-identified registered voters selected from nonprobability online panels. The margin of sampling error for voters overall is estimated to be plus or minus 0.4 percentage points. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://ap.org/votecast.