Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race could have spurred another bank-breaking election cycle. Instead, national super donors have kept their pocketbooks closed, and with only a month until the election, the liberal candidate appears to be sailing ahead in contributions.
Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, the liberal candidate, has raised more than $3.8 million over the past year, compared to the $438,000 conservative candidate Maria Lazar, who is also an appellate judge, has brought in.
The low-key nature of this year’s race is a sharp reversal from the 2025 state Supreme Court contest, in which the candidate campaigns, political parties, outside interest groups and mega billionaire Elon Musk combined to spend a record $144.5 million on the contest. Brad Schimel lost to Susan Crawford, maintaining the liberal majority on the court.
But the financial landscape of the election is not a done deal, both camps say.
“We can’t take anything for granted on our side,” said Sam Roecker, a Taylor adviser. “We know that there are supporters of (Lazar’s) who have the capacity to dump a lot of money in this race, and we saw what happened last time around when tens of millions of dollars got poured in.”
And as more voters start paying attention to the race, Lazar has a “window of opportunity” in the weeks leading up to the April 7 election, Republican strategist Bill McCoshen said.
“The truth is a lot of folks on the conservative side thought that our candidate wasn’t going to have a very strong chance a month ago. Now we think she could actually win,” McCoshen said.
Without big spending, this year’s state Supreme Court campaigns aren’t breaking through to voters like they did in 2025. Just 6% of voters said they had heard a lot about the election, compared to 39% at the same time last year, according to a Marquette Law School Poll released last month.
Despite Taylor’s wide fundraising advantage and outsize TV advertising, about two-thirds of voters are undecided, the same poll found. Taylor polled 5 percentage points higher than Lazar among voters who have made a decision, narrowly outside the margin of error.
“The real point is it’s not getting through to voters, or voters haven’t tuned into it. But you know, that’s more than a six to one greater awareness a year ago than it is today,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “I’m not saying that we’ll go into election day without anybody having heard anything, but it was an earlier campaign last year and with more resources behind it.”
Generally, liberal candidates have an advantage in spring judicial elections, Franklin said. College graduates and older voters, who have shifted leftward over the past several decades, are the primary voting blocs in spring court elections.
The stakes are different this cycle. The court’s liberal majority is secure. The winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. Still, losing this race would make it even harder for conservatives to regain power on the state’s high court. If they lose this year, they would have to retain the seats held by conservatives Annette Ziegler next year and Brian Hagedorn in 2029 and then flip seats held by liberals Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky in 2028 and 2030.
“Last year’s was to determine which ideological faction will have control of a majority of the court, and this year’s won’t change that. This year’s is to replace a conservative on a court that leans liberal already,” said Jeff Mandell, the co-founder of the progressive organization Law Forward.
Janine Geske. a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, said that liberal voters have been galvanized to turn out for judicial elections by hot-button national issues like abortion and gerrymandering that have taken center stage in the state’s highest court.
“Those issues became really the issues on the ballot versus the candidates themselves. As a result, I think we had more progressive candidates,” Geske said.
It’s a playbook that was adopted by Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who won Wisconsin’s high-profile race in 2023 on a platform of sharing her “values” regarding political issues that were likely to come before the court.
Lazar just might find success with that strategy, too, McCoshen said.
“Judge Lazar is doing a better job of at least tipping her hat to what her conservative leanings may be so that voters have a better understanding of what they’re voting for,” McCoshen said.
This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
One year after Elon Musk’s Wisconsin spending blitz, the state’s Supreme Court race falls quiet 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.
Over the past six months, dozens of immigrants held in Wisconsin jails awaiting deportation have challenged their detention in federal court. Judges ruled in their favor in more than half the cases, pushing back on new federal immigration enforcement practices.
Wisconsin’s federal courts have not seen comparable volumes of immigration-related habeas corpus petitions, which challenge the legality of a person’s detention, in at least a decade. More than a third of the petitions heard in Wisconsin since 2016 were filed in the past six months.
Two forces are driving the influx: the Trump administration’s effort to halt bond for virtually all detainees and its enforcement surge in neighboring Minnesota.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals ruled last September that all unauthorized immigrants in ICE custody are ineligible for bond, meaning they must remain in custody while their case plays out.
The ruling reversed a long-standing practice that previously enabled many immigrants to continue their cases while out on bond. In its wake, habeas petitions became one of few remaining paths to an exit.
Wisconsin’s growing tally of habeas petitions pales in comparison to national figures. Federal district courts nationwide have received more than 24,000 habeas petitions from detained immigrants since January 2025, with numbers surging after the Board of Immigration Appeals decision, overwhelming federal prosecutors tasked with defending the legality of ICE detentions.
Soon after the board’s ruling, the Trump administration targeted Minnesota in its immigration crackdown, deploying thousands of federal agents to patrol the Twin Cities and nearby rural communities. The White House claimed in early February that the campaign resulted in the arrests of more than 4,000 immigrants.
Since January 2025, ICE has transferred at least 108 immigrants from Minnesota to the Douglas County jail in Superior, Wisconsin. The sheriff’s office contracts with ICE for detainee housing, as do three other Wisconsin counties.
Source: Wisconsin Watch data analysis
At least 15 immigrants held in Douglas County have filed habeas petitions in Wisconsin’s Western District Court since September 2025. Judges have thus far sided with immigrants four times, including two Ecuadorian men arrested in a raid on a construction site in a Minneapolis suburb. Five of the cases remain pending.
Those detained in the Douglas County jail made up two-thirds of the Western District’s immigration-related habeas petitions between September 2025 and February 2026.
While arrest locations were not available for every case, available data indicates that 60% of immigrants who passed through the Douglas County jail between January and October 2025 were arrested in Minnesota.
The Madison-based court had not previously handled an immigration-related habeas case in over a decade.
Habeas petitions in the recent past were a “hodgepodge,” said Milwaukee immigration attorney Benjamin Crouse, and were often dismissed or denied by judges in Wisconsin’s Eastern District.
Prior to last September, many habeas petitions challenged the legality of detaining immigrants for months at a time without a clear end date. A Colombian man transferred into ICE custody after a drug arrest in 2014 filed a habeas petition after spending more than 20 months at the Dodge County Detention Facility in Juneau, arguing his detention had stretched beyond reasonable time limits.
Judge William Griesbach denied the man’s petition in 2016. Griesbach has ruled on 17 habeas petitions in the past decade, granting only one: a 2018 petition filed by a Mexican asylum seeker who spent more than two and a half years in the Kenosha County Detention Center without a bond hearing.
In some cases, Griesbach and other federal judges had no choice but to deny or dismiss habeas petitions: In at least 10 cases filed in Wisconsin’s Eastern District Court since 2016, federal immigration officials deported immigrants before the court could fully consider their petitions.
Nearly as many immigrants left ICE custody through other routes, including community supervision and asylum, before a judge could rule on their habeas petitions.
Despite the influx of new cases in the Western District, the Eastern District has still heard roughly two-thirds of the immigration-related habeas petitions filed since September.
Most federal district court judges who have considered habeas petitions since September have ruled against the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision prohibiting bond hearings for detained immigrants.
Wisconsin’s Eastern District judges are split. Griesbach called the board’s position “persuasive” in December, rejecting a habeas petition filed by a Venezuelan man arrested alongside his wife during a routine check-in at the Department of Homeland Security’s downtown Milwaukee office earlier that year. That man, Diego Ugarte-Arenas, left ICE custody after receiving asylum in January.
Judge Brett Ludwig also sided with the Trump administration’s position on detaining immigrants without bond. Trump appointed Ludwig to the Eastern District bench in 2020; then-President George W. Bush appointed Griesbach to the court in 2002.
Eastern District judges Byron Conway, a Biden appointee, and Lynn Adelman, a Clinton appointee, have both criticized the board’s ruling. “Courts have nearly universally rejected the conclusion of the Board,” Conway wrote in an October order granting the habeas petition of a Nicaraguan man arrested during an incidental run-in with ICE agents.
Western District judges have uniformly ruled against the Board of Immigration Appeals’ bond decisions.
Keeping cases in courts like Wisconsin’s Western District is a high priority for attorneys representing detained immigrants.
“It’s less about jurisdictions where you’re successful and more about avoiding jurisdictions where it’s more problematic,” said St. Paul immigration attorney Solomon Steen, who has represented two clients detained in the Douglas County jail.
Many of ICE’s largest detention facilities are in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — states within the jurisdiction of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which last month backed the Board of Immigration Appeals’ bond eligibility decision.
When a client arrested in Minnesota lands in a Wisconsin jail, Steen said, attorneys can find them within “hours or days.” Tracking clients’ locations becomes tougher once they are transferred to larger detention facilities elsewhere, he added.
With thousands of immigrants now bouncing between distant detention centers, Steen said many face pressure to give up on their legal cases. “You won’t know if you’ll be able to contact a lawyer if you get detained,” he said. “So wouldn’t it be easier to just take a voluntary departure or take a removal order in immigration court just so that you will know where you are and what’s happening?”
Steen and other attorneys are now working to keep clients’ cases in Midwestern courts — and out of the 5th Circuit’s jurisdiction — even when their whereabouts are unclear, preserving their chances of a successful habeas petition.
Even before the Board of Immigration Appeals blocked most detainees from seeking bond, voluntary departures — wherein an immigrant leaves the U.S. to avoid a deportation on their record — increased 21-fold between January and September of last year.
Meanwhile, an order from a federal district court judge in California has opened the door for many of Wisconsin’s current ICE detainees to request bond for the first time in months.
Judge Sunshine Sykes of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California initially ruled in November that the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of denying bond hearings to most immigrant detainees ran afoul of federal law.
DHS didn’t budge, maintaining that the Board of Immigration Appeals’ rulemaking authority takes precedence over a ruling in federal district court. Chief Immigration Court Judge Teresa Riley, a Department of Justice employee, later directed judges in immigration courts nationwide to continue denying detained immigrants’ requests for bond hearings.
Sykes doubled down last week, rebuking DHS for ignoring her earlier order.
“It is not the executive department’s province and duty to say what the law is,” she wrote.
Sykes vacated Board of Immigration Appeals bond rules in all states outside of the 5th Circuit, which still leaves most immigrants in ICE’s largest detention centers unable to request bond hearings.
Crouse recently observed one Chicago immigration court judge notify immigrants about Sykes’ latest order.
“They’re taking this a little more seriously now, but we still don’t know exactly what this looks like,” he said.
He and other Milwaukee-area immigration attorneys are again filing bond motions for their clients. “We’re getting hearings,” he added.
Aissa Olivarez, an attorney with the Community Immigration Law Center in Madison, confirmed that immigrants detained in Dodge County are receiving notice that they are eligible for bond. So far, she said, there is no indication federal immigration authorities are rushing to move Wisconsin detainees to holding facilities farther south.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Immigrants fight ICE detention in federal court — and increasingly win 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.
Two large-scale commercial poultry farms in southeastern Wisconsin have been hit with avian flu, each with roughly 1.5 million birds that will be culled.
The post ‘We’ve seen this before’: Bird flu again hits Wisconsin poultry farms appeared first on WPR.
Milwaukee Public Schools announced Friday it plans to cut 263 non-classroom staff positions to help reduce the $46 million budget gap the district is facing.
The post Milwaukee Public Schools planning to cut 260 positions to balance budget appeared first on WPR.
A Wisconsin early childhood literacy nonprofit is helping parents and children make reading part of their daily routine, teaming up with libraries and clinics to give out “prescriptions to read” during medical checkups.
The post Program aimed at nurturing infant-parent reading expands in Milwaukee appeared first on WPR.
The U.S. Department of Education has launched an investigation into the New Richmond School District in western Wisconsin for allegedly "allowing biological men to use female restrooms."
The post Trump administration investigating New Richmond School District’s gender policy appeared first on WPR.
As word spread across Brookfield that the U.S. Department of Education would arrive on Friday with its History Rocks! tour, some parents feared the event was part of what they see as a larger effort by the Trump administration to indoctrinate children.
The post Department of Education assembly at Brookfield high school rocks community appeared first on WPR.
A 20-year-old man has been sentenced to seven years in prison and seven years of extended supervision for setting fire to a Wisconsin congressman’s Fond du Lac office last year.
The post 20-year-old sentenced to 7 years in prison for setting fire to Wisconsin congressman’s office appeared first on WPR.
An empty high school classroom. (Dan Forer | Getty Images)
Gov. Tony Evers signed a pair of bills into law Friday that make grooming a crime and require school districts to adopt policies on appropriate communications.
“Keeping our kids safe, especially while they’re in our schools, must be a top priority for us, whether it’s addressing grooming, gun violence, bullying or other harmful behavior,” Evers said in a statement.
The bills were introduced last year after a report from the CapTimes that found there were over 200 investigations into teacher licenses stemming from allegations of sexual misconduct or grooming from 2018 to 2023, though bill authors, including Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie), said they had worked on the legislation for longer.
“After nearly two years of working to strengthen protections for children in Wisconsin, I’m grateful to see these two important bills signed into law,” Nedweski said in a statement. “This is a major step forward in protecting kids, supporting victims and ensuring that those who prey on children are held accountable.”
AB 677, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 88, defines grooming as “a course of conduct, pattern of behavior, or series of acts with the intention to condition, seduce, solicit, lure, or entice a child for the purpose of producing, distributing or possessing depictions of the child engaged in sexually explicit conduct.”
Some of the behaviors that could fall under the law include verbal comments, suggestions or conversations of a sexual nature directed toward a child, inappropriate physical contact or attempts to initiate such contact and communication via texts, emails, social media, or online platforms, meant to seduce, solicit, lure or entice a child.
Under the law, a person convicted of a grooming charge would be guilty of a Class G felony. The charge would increase to a Class F felony if the person is in a position of trust or authority, to a Class E felony if the child has a disability and to a Class D felony if the violation involves two or more children. A convicted person would need to register as a sex offender.
SB 673, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 89, requires public, private and independent charter schools to adopt appropriate communication policies for employees, volunteers and students. Policies will need to be in place by Sept. 1.
The policy will need to include a range of consequences for policy violations, apply to communications during and outside of school hours, including standards for appropriate content and methods of communication.
The Department of Public Instruction will need to develop and provide free training on professional boundary violations and identifying, preventing and reporting grooming. School boards will need to provide annual training to employees starting in the 2026-27 school year.
“We have an important obligation to make sure our kids can feel secure, supported, and cared for by educators and staff in our schools — adults they should be able to trust and depend on — while also providing more clarity about what interactions with students are inappropriate and unacceptable and enhancing punishments for adults who violate that sacred trust,” Evers said.
Evers also signed SB 466, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 93, that expands the Missing Child Alert program to include alerts about 10- and 11-year-olds.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
The U.S. Department of Education said Thursday it is investigating the New Richmond School District over its bathroom and locker room policies for transgender students. Transgender flags being held by people during a demonstration. (Getty Images)
A St Croix County school district that has become the target of right-wing politicians and activists for allowing students to use restrooms corresponding to their gender identity is now being investigated by the Trump administration Department of Education over the practice.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced in a press release Thursday it was investigating the New Richmond School District “based on reports that the District is allowing biological men to use female restrooms.”
The head of a Wisconsin LGBTQ+ rights group Friday called the administration’s action an attempt to “bully” school children.
“The law protects trans girls and their ability to use the girls’ bathroom,” said Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin. “A federal department’s press release does not, and cannot, change law. However, a federal administration can bully our kids, and that is exactly what this announcement of an investigation is.”
The New Richmond district superintendent, Troy Miller, was not available for comment early Friday afternoon.
The Trump administration’s action follows its increased targeting of states that allow students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity, including threatening to withhold federal funding. It also follows increasing attention on the New Richmond district’s policy from right-wing advocacy groups such as Moms for Liberty and Wisconsin Republican political campaigns.
A public discussion of the district’s policy arose at a Jan. 29 meeting of the district’s school board, the Hudson Star Observer reported, with community members speaking for and against allowing students to choose the restroom they use. Opponents of the policy included a school board candidate, the newspaper reported.
Videos posted from a meeting in February to the Facebook page NR Students Against Moms for Liberty show a handful of students speaking in favor of allowing students to use the restrooms they are comfortable with.
“I’m a woman at New Richmond High School who uses the women’s bathroom, and I ask that you hear my perspective. As a woman, I’m not afraid to use the bathroom with someone who is transgender,” one student said. “While fear around potential violence in bathrooms is totally valid, potential worries about what can happen in the bathroom are misplaced. Trans people are not scary or pedophiles. They are our community members.”
In a presentation prepared for that Feb. 10 meeting, legal counsel for the school board defended the policy respecting gender identity. A 2017 federal appeals court ruling
in the case Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education “defined ‘sex’ under Title IX to include gender identity,” according to the presentation slide — meaning that schools must allow students to use bathroom facilities consistent with their gender identity.
At a meeting in late February, Board President Bryan Schafer said district lawyers have told the board that the district is following current law and following case law, the Hudson Star Observer reported. School board members voted at that meeting to look into adding more school restrooms and rejected a call for an internal investigation.
A week after the issue first arose in January, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany posted on Facebook a demand that the district reverse its policy. Michael Alfonso, who is running in the 7th Congressional District race to succeed Tiffany, has posted on his campaign Facebook page at least five times in the last month about the policy, directing increased national attention to the district. State lawmakers from the area have also weighed in.
Alfonso is the son-in-law of Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy, who previously represented the 7th District, and recently was endorsed by President Donald Trump.
“I would expect this from Madison or Milwaukee or some crazy liberal place but not northern Wisconsin,” Alfonso said in a video he filmed with his wife, Evita Duffy-Alfonso, on the way to a school board meeting. “This is why it’s so important for conservatives to remember that elections have consequences. There’s no reason that we should have liberal lunatics on our school boards. We need to make sure we’re getting out to vote in April and August and November because we have a very good chance to take our state back.”
The Department of Education press release Thursday said the agency’s Civil Rights Office “will determine whether the District violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) by allowing students to access intimate facilities based on ‘gender identity,’ not biological sex.” The press release states that an unidentified student in the district has “fear, embarrassment, and anxiety” and no longer uses the restrooms while in school due to the district policy.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement that the department will investigate the complaint fully and address any violation promptly.
“Young women should never be forced to share intimate spaces with boys and men because school leaders care more about radical gender ideology than protecting girls’ safety, dignity, and privacy,” Richey said. “School board members who ignore these allegations are failing the families they serve.”
Swetz of Fair Wisconsin said in a statement to the Examiner Friday that the Whitaker v. Kenosha decision is “very clear when it comes to accessing bathrooms in schools” in its finding that Title IX protects gender identity.
“Wisconsinites and Americans are tired of this relentless bullying campaign against kids, families, educators, and schools,” Swetz said. These attacks are not only wrong, but also a significant misdirection of resources and focus.”
Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), who is the mother of a transgender adult child and a co-chair of the state Legislature’s Transgender Parent and Nonbinary Advocacy Caucus, issued a statement Friday defending respect for students’ gender identity.
“Every student deserves to feel safe, respected, and supported at school. Schools have a responsibility to create safe and welcoming environments where all students can learn without fear of discrimination,” Ratcliff said. “Policies that recognize and respect students’ gender identity are consistent with the spirit of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the values of fairness and inclusion we strive to uphold in Wisconsin schools.”
Ratcliff said the local school board’s decision should be respected.
“Local school boards are best positioned to make such decisions that reflect the needs of their schools while ensuring every child is treated with dignity and respect,” Ratcliff said.
Nevertheless, there have been ongoing legal challenges over school bathroom policies in Wisconsin, and some school districts in Wisconsin have adopted policies that restrict transgender students.
Just before Trump took office in January 2025, a federal judge overturned a Biden administration order extending Title IX to include protections for gender identity. On his first day in office, Trump reversed other Biden administration orders protecting gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights. Since then, the Trump administration has systematically erased references on federal websites to gender identity, labeling the concept as “gender ideology” and substituting “sex” in its place.
In addition to Moms For Liberty, the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) has also called attention to the New Richmond district. WILL recently put out model policies that would separate bathrooms based on sex.
“This is a welcome decision by the Trump Administration to enforce Title IX and protect girls’ privacy,” WILL Deputy Counsel Cory Brewer said in a statement. “For too long, school districts in Wisconsin have allowed policies that force young girls to share private spaces with biological males.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Stock market numbers are displayed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on March 6, 2026. All three major indexes continued to dip at opening as oil prices rose amid war with Iran and a weak jobs report. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The United States lost 92,000 jobs in February, edging unemployment up slightly according to the latest employment figures released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The report showed, for the third time in the last five months, losses among nonfarm jobs and highlighted a continued “trend down” in the information sector and federal government employment. The federal workforce is down by 11% from its peak in October 2024, according to the bureau. The report also noted a decrease in health care jobs, “reflecting strike activity.”
Unemployment ticked up to 4.4% from 4.3% in January, and rates remained higher for women, teenagers and non-white workers.
Administration officials blamed the job losses on winter weather on the East Coast and labor strife among West Coast health care workers.
But Democrats faulted President Donald Trump’s policies, including military action in Iran and reimposing tariffs after the U.S. Supreme Court said many of Trump’s taxes on foreign goods were illegal.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday’s report is a “blaring alarm that Donald Trump’s economy is deteriorating rapidly,” and speculated the nearly week-old war in Iran will only make things worse.
“Now we’ve seen job losses in two of the last three months and an economy teetering on the edge of recession,” Schumer said in a Friday morning statement. “Tariffs are increasing costs, gas prices are spiking, and jobs are evaporating: The Trump Republican agenda is failing the American people and without immediately changing course the economy may go over the cliff.”
The unexpected report, combined with uncertainty over the war with Iran, rattled U.S. markets Friday morning, sparking a drop across all indexes, according to a daily update from the New York Stock Exchange’s Eric Criscuolo.
Economists had estimated a February jobs gain for the U.S. to land around 59,000, according to Criscuolo. Additionally, the report is in stark contrast to January’s figures, which showed the economy gained 130,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But the administration is brushing off negative headlines, and attributing the weak report to ice and snow storms in February and a month-long strike by Kaiser Permanente health care workers.
“While record-breaking strikes and bad winter weather dragged down February nonfarm employment, the unemployment rate held steady, and there are several positive signs for our economy that continue to show American workers are recovering from the mess left behind by Biden,” Labor Secretary Lorie Chavez DeReemer said in a statement.
She added that the administration’s massive tax and spending cuts law enacted in July is positive for the economy.
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, told CNBC Friday, “I think what we need to start doing with these jobs numbers, at least on the payroll side, is take the average over a few months.”
“And if you take the average over a few months, we had a surprisingly positive one last month and a surprisingly negative one this one. But on average, it’s about what we expect to be seeing,” he said, adding that the sharp fall in immigration is leading to “break-even employment” in the U.S.
Economists cautioned the jobs report builds on a negative economic outlook for the country.
“While it’s never sensible to read too much into one month of data, this morning’s report showing a decline in nonfarm payrolls and an increase in the unemployment rate comes at a difficult moment, with inflation still above target and an oil price shock threatening to raise inflation further,” said Daniel Hornung, a fellow at Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research.
“The report complicates the Fed’s efforts to keep both unemployment and inflation low, and it makes it difficult for the Administration to argue heading into the midterms that their policies are leading to the kind of growth or improvement in living standards that they’ve long promised,” Hornung, the deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden, said.
David Kelly, JPMorgan Asset Management’s chief global strategist, described the report as “weak.”
“We’re not seeing any job growth at all, really, in this economy,” Kelly told CNBC Friday morning. “But because immigration has done such a 180 here, and we’ve got a huge drop in the labor force — and that’s keeping the unemployment rate from spiking here — but it’s a very, very slow economy.”
Bird flu, or H5N1, has disrupted the work of poultry farmers for years and has begun infecting dairy herds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA)
Flocks of poultry in Dane, Jefferson and Walworth counties have been infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza, according to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
The virus has been circulating across North America since 2021, infecting both wild and domesticated birds. The birds on the affected properties will be killed to prevent the further spread of disease, and DATCP has established a 10 kilometer control area around the infected premises in which the movement of poultry is restricted.
The infected birds in Dane County were in a backyard poultry flock while in Jefferson and Walworth counties the affected birds were in commercial flocks, according to DATCP.
Officials and farmers in Wisconsin have been managing avian flu infections since spring 2022 when outbreaks across the state shut down poultry shows, exhibits and swap meets. Last year, a dairy herd was quarantined after an infection was discovered.
DATCP said it is monitoring farm workers at the affected facilities for signs of infection and recommends biosecurity measures to protect flocks and herds near where the current infections were found.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
CILC senior program director Natalia Lucak teaches a community volunteer seminar at Christ Presbyterian Church, where the organization is based. (Photo Courtesy of Grant Sovern)
Like many churches, Christ Presbyterian Church on Madison’s near east side displays “welcome” banners outside its front doors. Unlike most churches, those doors are always locked to protect the clients and staff of the Community Immigration Law Center, which works out of offices in the church.
The locked doors are just one of the many ways CILC has been forced to change as the administration of President Donald Trump seeks to massively decrease the immigrant population in the United States.
The names of staff members are no longer publicly available on the organization’s website. Legal clinics to provide advice to asylum seekers are no longer being held because the administration has effectively stopped the asylum process.
Already bursting at the seams of its office spaces in the church, CILC is working this year to grow its staff from eight lawyers and four paralegals to 10 lawyers and 16 paralegals in an effort to fill the gaping need across Wisconsin for immigration attorneys.
The organization has also beefed up its rapid response capabilities, so when a community organization such as Voces de la Frontera hears about an immigration arrest, that person and their family can be quickly connected with an attorney through CILC.
Grant Sovern, one of CILC’s co-founders, says that until the last few months, the organization was doing pretty well keeping up with cases — about 300 detention cases since Trump took office. But with the Trump administration reversing protective orders that had been issued under President Joe Biden and continuing to upend longstanding policies, reinterpret rules and threaten the arrest of new classes of immigrants, CILC needs to do its best to make sure the government is adhering to the law and the Constitution, he adds.
“The only chance we have for due process is applying the legal system, because the Constitution is still almost working in most of the cases,” Sovern says. “But you can’t just do that on your own. And in immigration, that’s more true because the federal government has a ton of discretion in how they apply those laws and the day-to-day workings of this immigration court.”
CILC’s legal director, Aissa Olivarez, grew up in the Rio Grande valley near the U.S.-Mexico border. After five years teaching first grade, she attended law school at UW-Madison with the intention of practicing immigration law. She has stayed in Wisconsin because she saw a greater need here than in her home state of Texas, where there’s already robust infrastructure to assist immigrants.
Growing up Mexican-American near the “militarized border” prepared her for all the tactics that Trump’s ICE has spread across the country, she says. But over the last year, the fear that ICE has caused in Wisconsin’s immigrant communities — particularly as surges of federal agents in neighboring Minnesota and Illinois drew headlines — has put a heavy burden on the CILC staff to be there for their clients.
“How do we make this sustainable from an emotional point of view?” Olivarez says. She notes that she and her staff are often the first people detained immigrants meet with after their arrest. “And so oftentimes we get a long story or a lot of information that we may not need, but we know how important it is to listen, to lend an ear and to get the facts so that we can complete our mission of making sure that people get strong and good legal advice, but also the mission of just being a human in that space, and providing individuals with the space to talk, with the ability to discuss and ask questions and bring humanity.”
But, she says, that can mean “we are carrying a very large emotional load, especially watching the way that the dismantling of people’s rights and the dismantling of our immigration courts is happening. There’s a lot of grief involved, and a lot of grief that we have to navigate, knowing oftentimes what people are facing, what they’re going through, and also worry for our own families.”
Olivarez says it can be daunting to face the caseload, knowing there are about 1,000 days left in Trump’s term, understanding the pace is not likely to let up and trying to avoid burning out. But she feels CILC is playing an essential role for migrant communities across the state.
“Can we keep up with that in an emotional way? Because the stakes are so high, because it means permanent separation from a family member, permanent exile from the United States, that we are well enough so that we can do the work. But we also haven’t faced this as an organization before,” she says. “And it’s really easy — because of all of the stories we hear and the people we see in these facilities — to lose hope. But I can tell you, the people who are not losing hope are the people who are being impacted. You know, they want to keep fighting. They stay strong through months and years of detention, and it’s a complete privilege and honor to be able to be trusted by the community in that way.”
Natalia Lucak, the daughter of Czech immigrants, is CILC’s senior program manager. Lucak previously ran the organization’s asylum clinics, assisting asylum applicants with getting the proper paperwork filed to the right agencies.
Now, she’s working with immigrants in Wisconsin — many of whom have come to the country with legal status only to lose that status because of Trump administration policy changes — to prepare for what happens if ICE arrests them.
When Lucak started working in immigration law during President Barack Obama’s second term, “the goal and the hope was to help people stay here,” she says. Now she feels like she’s had her “wings clipped” because her job has become all about managing and assessing risk.
Her job has become “preparing people for the possibility of being detained and advising them that you know what could happen if they’re detained, the likelihood of success in their case,” Lucak says.
“Now it’s just a very different calculus, especially when I talk to families, and as they think about, you know, what would happen to their children if they’re detained?” she says. “How would prolonged detention impact the family? And how much risk are they willing to take to stay here and just hope that things are okay when we are seeing increased detention numbers across the country and certainly in Wisconsin in the last few weeks.”
For the first time, Lucak says she’s helping families weigh if it’s better to leave the country on their own before they get arrested and deported. There is a lot for her clients to weigh, all while they’re scared for the safety of their loved ones.
“This administration is random. It’s just by luck that you’ve avoided [arrest] so far And that luck may run out, and who knows when? And so let’s plan,” she says. “People are crying often doing these consultations, and especially if they have kids, maybe they have U.S. citizen kids.”
The questions can be endless.
“I’ve had various clients who have kids who are special needs, and so they’re U.S. citizens,” Lucak says. “They’re accessing certain programs here. And you’re kind of deciding, do we leave on our own? Do we uproot? Do I risk being deported and being separated from my child? Would my child stay here? My child go with me? How would my child come with me? Like even preparing, does your child have a passport? Like, does your child, if you’re gonna leave, or if you’re detained and deported, and your child needs to follow, that child needs a passport. There are all these documents you need to get in line. And so it’s really just like, do you have a family plan, who’s gonna pick up your kid if you’re detained there at school?”
Even amid all the uncertainty, all the stress and the burden of being a small staff working out of some church offices to thwart the full weight of the federal government, Lucak says she and her colleagues plan to just keep trying to figure it out.
“We are gonna find ways to fight and make them follow the law, make them follow due process, make them do these things,” she says. “And you know, they do have our back up to a wall because of all the power that they hold, especially when it comes to immigration.”
She adds that the staff has to be nimble “and not hold being too precious about things that worked under Biden. Like it’s not going to work anymore, and we just have to do it differently.”
Earlier this week, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) approved Akron Solar! This 200 Megawatt (MW) solar project will be located in Adams and Wood Counties and is planned for completion in the latter half of 2029. Projects like this have a wide range of local and statewide benefits. Thanks to everyone who helped make this project happen, especially those who submitted comments to the PSC and told them why Wisconsin needs more solar power!
Even though we’re only three months into 2026, we are excited about the amount of progress we have already made. That said, there’s plenty more for us to accomplish this year. We hope you’re just as excited as we are to keep the momentum up and help us create a future where everyone benefits from the renewable energy revolution!
The post Akron Solar Approved! appeared first on RENEW Wisconsin.
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.
Campaign finance records show Reid Hoffman is the largest donor to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
Hoffman, a venture capitalist and LinkedIn co-founder, has donated $15.4 million to the state party, according to campaign finance records.
The Wisconsin Ethics Commission confirmed in an email that online records reach back to 2008, though Hoffman only began donating to the state party in 2019. Wisconsin passed legislation in 2015 that allowed unlimited contributions to state parties.
State online campaign finance records show Hoffman’s name twice; he has profiles under different addresses.
Hoffman’s combined donations place him far above the second-highest donor, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, whose donations total about $5.9 million.
Hoffman’s name appeared hundreds of times in the latest release of files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Hoffman apologized in 2019 for his role in rehabbing Epstein’s image.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Is Reid Hoffman the largest donor to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin? 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.
Login