Karen Hyun will be the state's next secretary of the Department of Natural Resources, a cabinet position that’s gone unfilled for more than a year.
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Sleeping regulates our immune system, gives our body time to restore cells and “cleans our brain out,” said licensed sleep psychologist Dr. Rick Blackburn.
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President-elect Donald Trump will face significant hurdles to enacting his campaign pledge to ban transgender youth from participating in school sports that align with their gender identity. (Photo by Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly said during the campaign that, if elected back to the White House, he would pursue a ban on transgender youth participating in school sports that align with their gender identity.
As he prepares to take office in January, experts and LGBTQ+ advocates told States Newsroom the effort would face significant delays and challenges as legal pushback from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups can be expected every step of the way.
Trump’s repeated vow to “keep men out of women’s sports” reflects his broader anti-trans agenda. Administration efforts would come as an increasing number of states have passed laws banning trans students from participating in sports that align with their gender identity.
The Trump-Vance transition team did not offer any concrete details when asked about specifics but shared a statement from spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Leavitt wrote. “He will deliver.”
The U.S. Education Department, under President Joe Biden, released updated regulations to Title IX in April that strengthen federal protections for LGBTQ+ students. The final rule does not explicitly reference trans athletes’ sports participation — a separate decision the administration put on hold.
The Education Department late Friday said it was withdrawing a proposed rule that would have allowed schools to block some transgender athletes from competing on sports teams that match their gender identities while also preventing across-the-board bans.
Title IX is a landmark federal civil rights law that bars schools that receive federal funding from sex-based discrimination.
The president-elect has pledged, while speaking about trans students’ sports participation, to reverse the Biden administration’s final rule for Title IX on his first day back in office.
The Biden administration’s final rule was met with forceful pushback from GOP attorneys general. A series of legal challenges in states across the country have created a policy patchwork of the final rule and weakened the Biden administration’s vision for enforcement.
But if Trump were to try to reverse the final rule, experts say the effort would take an extended period and require adherence to the rulemaking process outlined in the Administrative Procedure Act, or APA.
The APA rules how federal agencies propose and roll out regulations. That process can take months, creating a barrier for a president seeking to undo a prior administration’s rule.
Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy at the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said that while a subsequent administration can undo the current Title IX regulations, it would take “a tremendous amount of work because a regulation has the force of law … so long as the administration has complied with the APA.”
For the Trump administration to undo those regulations, it would need to start at the beginning, propose its own rules and go through the entire process.
“I think it seems fairly likely that that’s something that they’re going to pursue, but that’s not something that the president has the capability to do on day one,” she said.
Oakley noted that the updated regulations also have the force of law because they interpret a law that already exists — Title IX.
The Trump administration is “bound by Title IX, which in fact has these protections related to gender identity,” she said.
But any action from the Trump administration regarding trans athletes’ sports participation is sure to be met with legal challenges from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups.
Oakley said though “we have many real reasons to be concerned” about what the Trump administration would do when it comes to Title IX protections and in general for LGBTQ+ people, “we also need to be cautious that we do not concede anything either.”
“We need to be trying to ground ourselves in the actual legal reality that the president-elect will be facing when he comes into office and be able to fight with the tools that we have and not concede anything in advance.”
The U.S. Education Department under Biden never decided on a separate rule establishing new criteria regarding trans athletes.
Shiwali Patel, a Title IX lawyer and senior director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center, said “we could see some sort of announcement about changing the Title IX rule to address athletics” under the Trump administration.
“Given the rhetoric that has come out of the Trump administration and this continued focus on trans athletes, I think we very well should and could expect to see something from the Trump administration on this, which is very harmful,” Patel told States Newsroom.
The Trump administration could also try to pursue a national ban via legislation in Congress.
The U.S. House approved a bill last year that would prohibit trans athletes from competing in sports that align with their gender identity. And in July, the chamber passed a measure that would reverse Biden’s final rule for Title IX.
But Patel said she could not see how any measure in Congress could get through the U.S. Senate’s filibuster, which requires at least 60 votes to pass most legislation. There will be 45 Democratic senators in the incoming Congress, though independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont caucus with the Democrats.
Despite Washington soon entering a GOP trifecta in the U.S. House, Senate and White House, narrow margins could hinder any potential anti-trans legislation from the Trump administration.
Across the country, 25 states have enacted a law that bans trans students from participating in sports that align with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, or MAP, an independent think tank.
Logan Casey, director of policy research at MAP, said proponents of these sports bans are using them as a starting point to enact a broader anti-trans agenda.
“In many cases, these sports bans have been one of the first anti-trans laws enacted in recent years in many states, but then states that enact one of these sports bans then go on to enact additional anti-trans or anti-LGBTQ laws,” Casey told States Newsroom.
Casey described any controversy around trans people playing sports as “entirely manufactured.”
“In just five years, we’ve gone from zero states to more than half the country having one of these bans on the books, and that’s really, really fast in the policy world,” he said.
In March 2020, Idaho became the first state to enact this type of ban.
Rubi Patricia Vergara and her family loved to laugh. That was a central message at Vergara's funeral, held at City Church Madison on Saturday.
The post Madison community mourns and celebrates Rubi Vergara, victim of Abundant Life school shooting appeared first on WPR.
Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.
A 2024 RAND report and four experts in mass shootings said they know of no research concluding that the presence of armed officers deters school shootings.
The armed officers claim was made Dec. 19 by school safety advocate Ryan Petty in an interview about a mass shooting Dec. 16 at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin.
That school didn’t employ an officer.
Petty’s daughter was killed in the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, school, which did.
Petty said the connection is “proven.” He didn’t cite research to Wisconsin Watch.
Whether arming school resource officers “leads to net harms or benefits … could be addressed with strong scientific research designs or observational studies,” RAND said.
A 2023 University at Albany-RAND study found school resource officers reduce some violence and increase weapon detection, “but do not prevent gun-related incidents.”
A 2021 U.S. DOJ-funded study said “data suggest no association” between armed officers and deterring mass shootings.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Has research found that armed officers deter school shootings? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
It's left tens of thousands of Wisconsinites wondering if they'll head into the holiday season without paychecks.
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A diesel mobile crane manufacturer in Manitowoc has reached a $42.6 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency over Clean Air Act violations.
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More than 100 Madison high schoolers marched to the state Capitol Friday where they denounced lawmakers' inaction on firearm legislation and funding for mental health support in schools.
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The Portage Municipal Airport is set to receive $300,000 biennially over the next several years from the U.S. Bureau of Aeronautics. The decision comes just one year after the region’s common council discussed whether to close the airport.
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Police Chief Shon Barnes has previously been revealed as a finalist for the Seattle position.
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Join WPR for the 2024-25 of Metropolitan Opera matinee broadcasts from Lincoln Center in New York City, airing every Saturday starting at Noon, through June 2025. Season highlights will include […]
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State regulators say nearby wells and waterways have so far not been impacted by around 70,000 gallons of oil that spilled from Enbridge's system in Jefferson County as the company and regulators face scrutiny over their response.
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Wisconsin businesses and farms have been notified their insurance will not pay for any injury or property damage tied to PFAS contamination.
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Madison, Wisconsin high school students march on the Capitol on Friday, Dec. 20 | Photo by Daphne Cooper
It was a brilliant, snowy Friday, the last day of school before winter break, as more than 100 students from high schools across Madison converged inside the Capitol. They gathered around the 30-foot balsam fir festooned with handmade ornaments, a model train chugging around the track at the base of the tree. At first it looked like a festive scene, but as the students poured into the first floor of the rotunda, then filled the second- and third-floor balconies, their shouting drowned out a group of Christmas carolers, who retreated, their songs giving way to chants of “No more silence! End gun violence!”
The Madison teens showed up to express their grief and outrage over the deaths this week of a 14-year-old student, her teacher and a gun-wielding 15-year-old girl who opened fire Monday in a classroom at the small private Abundant Life Christian School on Madison’s east side. It was the city’s first school shooting but, incredibly, the 323rd in the nation this year.
Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children and teens in the U.S. Shouting, chanting, demanding to be heard, the crowd of children came to the Capitol Friday demanding that we wake up and do something about this appalling fact.
Our nation is an outlier, with a rate of gun violence that dwarfs other large, high-income countries. Firearm homicides here are 33 times higher than in Australia and 77 times higher than in Germany, according to a report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington medical school. Not surprisingly, firearm injuries tend to be more frequent in places where people have easy access to firearms, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
What other country in the world could live with the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where 20 little children between 6 and 7 years old and six adult staff were gunned down, and respond by making no significant restrictions on firearms?
“My parents constantly talk about how, when Sandy Hook happened, they thought that would be the end of it,” said Danny Johnson, a first-year student at Madison West High School who joined the 3-mile march to the Capitol on Friday, carrying a sign scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper that said, “Thoughts and prayers until it’s your own child.”
“To constantly have to go through it — we shouldn’t have to be here. We should be in school not having to worry about it at all,” Johnson added.
Hanging over balconies and leaning against marble pillars, teens held up handmade signs that said; “Enough!” “You write your policies on a carpet of our dead bodies,” and “Graduations not funerals.”
In Wisconsin, the rate of gun deaths increased 45% from 2013 to 2022, compared to a 36% increase nationwide, according to the Giffords Law Center.
Every year since he was elected in 2018, Gov. Tony Evers and Democrats in the state Legislature have tried in vain to get Republican cooperation on ending the state’s current exemption from background checks for private gun sales. A proposed “red flag” law that would allow police or family members to seek an extreme risk protection order in court to take guns from gun owners who are found to be a danger to themselves or others has also gone nowhere. Both of these measures are broadly popular with voters across the political spectrum. Somehow that doesn’t seem to matter.
After this week’s school shooting. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos released a statement saying, “Today’s tragedy is shocking, senseless and heartbreaking. My thoughts and prayers are with the students, parents and faculty who will have to live with the trauma and grief of this day for the rest of their lives.” But Vos stopped short of saying he would make any effort whatsoever to protect kids and teachers from being shot to death at school. That phrase “thoughts and prayers,” rightly derided by the students who protested at the Capitol on Friday, is a pathetic substitute for action.
“Last year it was 12 years since Sandy Hook, 25 years since Columbine, and all our politicians can say from their cushy seats is that they’re sending out their thoughts and prayers about the leading cause of death for children in America!” yelled Ian Malash, a senior at Vel Phillips Memorial High School in Madison, pacing around the tree in the center of the rotunda. “We’re showing them right now and we are going to continue to show them that we are done with thoughts and prayers. We will make change happen because our lives depend on it.”
Vos, apparently recovered from his heartbreak over Monday’s tragedy and back to his old snarky self by Wednesday, mounted a robust defense of the status quo on X, retweeting a post from Wisconsin Right Now that mocked Democrats who “politicize this tragedy with cheap talking points.” The post claimed that, since it’s already illegal for a 15-year-old to possess a handgun, it’s ridiculous to connect the recent shooting to any effort to change gun laws.
But, as state Sen. Kelda Roys told the crowd on Friday, “We know that states that have passed gun safety laws like background checks, like red flag laws … they see gun deaths and firearm injuries go down. We can do that here in Wisconsin, too. We just need to change the minds or change the legislators — and the judges, too, by the way.”
“My generation and the people in this building have let you down,” Rick Abegglen, the parent of a West High School daughter who helped organize the protest, told the crowd in the Capitol. “I am so proud of each and every one of you for standing up for yourselves. A few moments ago I saw somebody close the doors of the Senate because they did not want to hear your voices. Think about it.”
As he spoke, the students yelled louder, their voices bouncing off the marble walls, becoming harder and harder to ignore.
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Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers address the Legislature in his 2024 State of the State message. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
Gov. Tony Evers announced Friday that Wisconsin’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, which is published by the Department of Administration, recorded a $4.5 billion positive balance in the state’s general fund at the end of the 2023-24 fiscal year.
In addition to the general fund, the state’s Budget Stabilization Fund — or “rainy day” fund — ended the fiscal year at the highest level in state history with a balance of $1.9 billion. The rainy day fund has set a new record every year since Evers took office in 2019.
“For thirty consecutive years, our state’s checking account ran at a deficit. Thanks to our efforts to pay down our state’s debt and work across the aisle to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, Wisconsin has never had a deficit since I took office,” Evers said in a statement. “This is great news for the people of Wisconsin and our state’s economy.”
The balance in the general fund — a budget surplus — will likely be a major point of discussion next year as Evers and lawmakers begin work on the state’s next two-year budget.
Writing the state budget is a process that will take several months as Evers first gets to present his budget proposal to lawmakers, then the state’s Joint Finance Committee will write its own version. The budget bill will need to pass the Senate and Assembly before going to Evers to be signed.
“As we begin the important work of deliberating our state’s next two-year budget, we have a responsibility to keep staying well within our means while still investing in needs that have long been neglected,” Evers said. “We must continue to make the smart, strategic investments we have for the last five years to maintain our economic momentum and ensure Wisconsin’s continued stability and success.”
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, seen at an April 2022 White House event celebrating her Senate confirmation, was President Joe Biden’s sole U.S. Supreme Court nominee. The 235 federal judges confirmed during Biden’s presidency set records for racial and gender diversity. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s number of lifetime appointments to the federal bench surpassed the first Trump administration’s Friday and set records as the most diverse selection of judges by any president in U.S. history, according to federal judiciary observers.
The U.S. Senate, late in its final session of the year, confirmed what are expected to be the final two of Biden’s nominations, bringing his total number of judicial confirmations to 235, just one more than President-elect Donald Trump’s first-term total.
Senators voted along party lines to confirm Benjamin J. Cheeks to be U.S. district judge for the Southern District of California, in a vote of 49-47, and Serena Raquel Murillo to be U.S. district Judge for the Central District of California, in the same vote breakdown.
Cheeks marks the 63rd Senate-confirmed Black judge appointed by Biden, and Murillo the 150th woman.
Four senators did not vote, including Vice President-elect J.D. Vance of Ohio, Trump’s secretary of State nominee, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, newly sworn Sen. Adam Schiff of California, and the outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Senate control will be in Republican hands after the new Congress is sworn in Jan. 3, almost certainly shutting the door on any Biden nominations before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
Among Biden’s appointments, 187 were seated on district courts, 45 on federal appeals courts, and one, Ketanji Brown Jackson, on the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as two to the Court of International Trade.
Biden issued a statement Friday night marking the “major milestone.”
“When I ran for President, I promised to build a bench that looks like America and reflects the promise of our nation. And I’m proud I kept my commitment to bolstering confidence in judicial decision-making and outcomes,” Biden said.
“I am proud of the legacy I will leave with our nation’s judges,” Biden said, closing out his statement.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer touted the “historic” accomplishment on the Senate floor following the vote.
“We’ve confirmed more judges than under the Trump administration, more judges than any administration in this century, more judges than any administration going back decades. One out of every four active judges on the bench has been appointed by this majority,” Schumer said.
He and members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary delivered a press conference immediately after.
Observers who monitor the demographics and professional backgrounds represented on the federal bench celebrated the “remarkable and historic progress” made under Biden, according to a Friday memo from The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Biden set records for appointing the most women and more Black, Native American, Latino and Latina, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander judges than during any other presidency of any length, according to the organization’s analysis.
The Senate confirmed 15 Black judges to the federal appeals courts during Biden’s term, 13 of them women. Only eight Black women had ever served at this level of the federal judiciary, according to the analysis.
On the district court level, Biden appointed the first lifetime judges of color to four districts that had only ever been represented by white judges. They include districts in Louisiana, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia.
Biden also appointed, and the Senate confirmed, 12 openly LGBTQ judges, three of them women; the first four Muslim judges ever to reach the federal bench; and two judges currently living with disabilities.
“Our federal court system has historically failed to live up to its promise of equal justice under the law,” the Leadership Conference’s Friday memo stated. “For far too long, our judges have disproportionately been white, cisgender, heterosexual men who have possessed very narrow legal experiences as corporate attorneys or government prosecutors. Judges decide cases that impact all of our rights and freedoms, and it is vital that our judges come from more varied backgrounds both personally and professionally.”
Nearly 100 of Biden’s appointments previously worked as civil rights lawyers or public defenders, according to the leadership conference, including Jackson who was the first former public defender elevated to the Supreme Court.
Biden’s confirmed judges stood in contrast to Trump’s picks who, the American Constitution Society noted, lacked gender and racial diversity.
According to data published by the Pew Research Center at the close of Trump’s first term, the now president-elect was more likely than previous Republican presidents to nominate women but still lagged behind recent Democratic administrations.
Pew also found that Trump had appointed fewer non-white federal judges than other recent presidents.
But not everyone praised the Senate’s advice-and-consent role in evaluating federal nominees. Adeel Mangi, the first Muslim American to be nominated for the appeals court level, criticized Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for asking Islamophobic questions.
In a letter to Biden, published by the New York Times and other outlets, Mangi slammed the process as “fundamentally broken” and questioned the reasoning behind three Democratic senators who joined Republicans in opposing him.
“This is no longer a system for evaluating fitness for judicial office. It is now a channel for the raising of money based on performative McCarthyism before video cameras, and for the dissemination of dark-money-funded attacks that especially target minorities,” wrote Mangi, of New Jersey, whom Biden nominated for a position on the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Other blocked nominations included Julia M. Lipez of Maine, nominated for the First Circuit, Karla M. Campbell of Tennessee for the Sixth Circuit, and Ryan Young Park of North Carolina for the Fourth Circuit.
U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks to members of the press at the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 20, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Congress finally approved a stopgap spending bill early Saturday that will keep the government open for a few more months, after a raucous 48 hours that served as a preview of what President-elect Donald Trump’s second term in office might look like.
The short-term spending package, the third version of a bill to be released this week, will give lawmakers until mid-March to negotiate agreement on the dozen full-year government funding measures and provide about $100 billion in natural disaster assistance.
Although it technically was passed by the Senate after the midnight deadline for a shutdown, deputy White House press secretary Emilie Simons said on X that agencies would continue normal operations.
The House passed the bill Friday evening following a 366-34 vote with one Democrat voting “present.” The Senate voted 85-11 shortly after midnight Saturday. President Joe Biden signed the bill Saturday morning.
The legislation did not include any language either raising or suspending the debt limit, rejecting a demand by Trump that it be addressed. Congress and Trump will have to deal with that next year when they control the House, Senate and the White House.
The 118-page bill will extend programs in the five-year farm bill through September, giving the House and Senate more time to broker a deal, even though they are already more than a year late.
The package would not block members of Congress from their first cost-of-living salary adjustment since January 2009, boosting lawmakers’ pay next year from $174,000 to a maximum of $180,600.
It does not include a provision considered earlier this week that would have allowed the year-round sale of E15 blended gasoline nationwide in what would have been a win for corn growers and biofuels.
The White House announced during the House vote that Biden supports the legislation.
“While it does not include everything we sought, it includes disaster relief that the President requested for the communities recovering from the storm, eliminates the accelerated pathway to a tax cut for billionaires, and would ensure that the government can continue to operate at full capacity,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote. “President Biden supports moving this legislation forward and ensuring that the vital services the government provides for hardworking Americans – from issuing Social Security checks to processing benefits for veterans — can continue as well as to grant assistance for communities that were impacted by devastating hurricanes.”
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., urged support for the bill during floor debate, saying it would avoid a partial government shutdown, provide disaster aid and send economic assistance to farmers.
“Governing by continuing resolution is never ideal, but Congress has a responsibility to keep the government open and operating for the American people,” Cole said. “The alternative, a government shutdown, would be devastating to our national defense and for our constituents and would be a grave mistake.”
Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, spoke against the bill and criticized GOP negotiators from walking away from the original, bipartisan version released Tuesday.
She rejected billionaire Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, seemingly calling the shots as if he were an elected lawmaker, though she ultimately voted for passage.
“The United States Congress has been thrown into pandemonium,” DeLauro said. “It leads you to the question of who is in charge?”
Democrats and Republicans reached an agreement earlier this week to fund the government, provide disaster aid, extend the agriculture and nutrition programs in the farm bill, extend various health care programs and complete dozens of other items. But Trump intervened, preventing House GOP leaders from putting that bill on the floor for an up-or-down vote.
Trump and Musk were unsupportive of some of the extraneous provisions in the original bill and Trump began pressing for lawmakers to address the debt limit now rather than during his second term.
House Republicans tried to pass their first GOP-only stopgap bill on Thursday night, but failed following a 174-235 vote, with 38 GOP lawmakers voting against the bill. That bill included a two-year debt limit suspension, but that was dropped from the version passed Friday.
Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said Friday before the vote that the GOP was united on its plan forward.
“We have a unified Republican Conference. There is a unanimous agreement in the room that we need to move forward,” Johnson said following a 90-minute closed-door meeting. “I expect that we will be proceeding forward. We will not have a government shutdown. And we will meet our obligations for our farmers, for the disaster victims all over the country, and for marking sure the military and essential services and everyone who relies on the federal government for a paycheck is paid over the holidays.”
A total of 34 House Republicans voted against the bill. No House Democrats voted against passage.
The House and Senate not agreeing on some sort of stopgap spending bill before the Friday midnight deadline would have led to a funding lapse that would likely have led to a partial government shutdown just as the holidays begin.
During a shutdown, essential government functions that cover the protection of life and property continue, though no federal workers would have received their paychecks until after the shutdown ends. That loss of income would have extended to U.S. troops as well.
“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under “TRUMP,” the president-elect posted on social media Friday morning. “This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”
In a separate post that went up just after 1 a.m. Eastern, Trump doubled down on his insistence that any short-term spending bill suspend the debt limit for another four years or eliminate the borrowing ceiling entirely.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling,” Trump wrote. “Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”
Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes delivers updates about the Dec. 16, 2024 school shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Madison's east side. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Just days after he was thrust into the national spotlight following the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School that killed two people, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes was announced as the new chief of the Seattle Police Department.
Barnes’ acceptance of the job in Seattle comes as the Madison police are still investigating the shooting on Monday and the motives behind the 15-year-old girl’s attack. Authorities have discovered that the girl was in contact with a 20-year-old California man who was planning his own attack on a government building.
Since the shooting, Barnes has been an outspoken critic of hardening the defenses of community schools. At his first press conference after the shooting, he was asked if the school had metal detectors and responded that schools shouldn’t have such measures installed.
“I’m not aware that the school had metal detectors, nor should schools have metal detectors,” he said. “It’s a school. It’s a safe space.”
Prior to the shooting, Barnes had been named a finalist for the Seattle job.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell noted in a statement that Barnes has successfully brought crime down in Madison and promised to continue to work to combat gun violence.
“Earlier this week, under tragic circumstances, the nation received its introduction to Chief Shon Barnes. We all saw firsthand what our team has known since we began this recruitment process — that Chief Barnes possesses the impressive leadership capabilities, compassionate approach, and dedication to effective police work needed to continue moving our Police Department forward,” Harrell said. “I’ve spoken with Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway to express my condolences and support as they process this week’s tragedy and to share my continued commitment to fighting for solutions to the gun violence epidemic that impacts every corner of our country through our shared work with the U.S. Conference of Mayors.”
Barnes took over as chief in Madison in early 2021 as the city responded to an increase in violent crime and the protests against police violence that occurred across the country in 2020. During his tenure, Barnes has overseen the department’s effort to equip officers with body cameras.
He was also named a finalist for the chief jobs in Chicago and San Jose, California, despite telling Isthmus in 2021 that he was committed to Madison “for the long haul.”
Rhodes-Conway said in a statement that Barnes’ collaborative approach was important to the establishment of Dane County’s Public Health Violence Prevention Unit and the Madison Fire Department’s CARES program, noting that the city is “safer and more resilient” because of his work.
“I would like to congratulate Chief Shon Barnes on his new opportunity in Seattle and thank him for his service to Madison,” Rhodes-Conway said. “The Chief has been a steady, forward-thinking leader throughout his tenure and he will be greatly missed.”
She also commended his work this week responding to the school shooting.
“The tragedy this week has been all-consuming, and we still have much healing to do as a community,” she said. “I’m grateful that the Madison Police Department responded to this unthinkable crisis with the utmost professionalism and compassion. Chief Barnes was at the center of coordinating local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies during an unprecedented moment. He did so admirably.”
The Madison Police and Fire Commission is responsible for finding Barnes’ replacement. Rhodes-Conway said in the coming weeks the commission will outline a search plan and during the recruitment process an interim chief will be named.
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