There have been five homicides so far this year in the police district that encompasses downtown Milwaukee.
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According to a Wisconsin clinical pharmacist, advancements in epilepsy treatment research include genetics, medical devices and prescription CBD.
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When can a judge be prosecuted? That question is front and centers as lawyers spar over whether the case against Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan should be allowed to proceed.
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A look at why the ancient Maya abandoned the cities they had lived in for centuries.
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The story of Lusotitan, a colossal, long-necked dinosaur, and its quest for love.
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Rock County leaders are hoping to upgrade their tornado warning sirens to improve response times and better target precise locations where disasters are happening.
The post Wisconsin counties wrestle with budget cuts and upgrading tornado warning sirens appeared first on WPR.
Vendors, exhibitors and volunteers are getting ready for Wisconsin’s 174th State Fair.
The post Wisconsin State Fair will kick off Thursday with longtime attractions and new cream puff flavors appeared first on WPR.
U.S. Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden testifies before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on July 30, 2025. (Photo via committee livestream)
Members of both parties on the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee chastised a U.S. Department of Agriculture official Wednesday for not consulting Congress before proposing to shift thousands of jobs out of the Washington, D.C., area.
USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden defended the sweeping proposal, which Secretary Brooke Rollins announced with a five-page memo last week, saying it would help bring the department closer to the people the government oversees and lower the cost of living for federal workers, while pledging to work with members of the committee over the next month of planning.
“The secretary’s memorandum was the first step, not the last step,” Vaden told Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the panel, who criticized several aspects of the plan.
The proposal calls for cutting 2,600 of the 4,600 USDA jobs in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia and expanding the department’s footprint in five regional hubs: Raleigh, North Carolina; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City.
Klobuchar said moving workers out of the capital region hurts the constituencies USDA serves. Agency officials should be nearby to meet with members of Congress, other executive branch offices and trade groups that are based in the nation’s capital, she said.
“Whittling down USDA’s resources to do this crucial work puts rural America at a disadvantage when they don’t have people in the room where it happens,” Klobuchar said.
“We have differences across the aisle,” she continued. “But I think every one of my colleagues understands that you need people that can meet with you, you need people that can go over to the White House so that you don’t have people that don’t have the interests of rural America in mind making all the decisions.”
Vaden said the USDA would keep employees in all of the department’s mission areas in the Washington area.
Even Republicans who said they generally agreed with the aims of the proposal indicated they did not appreciate the lack of notice before it was announced.
“I support finding cost savings where you can, I support the idea of moving people out of the D.C. area and out into the field and closer to the farmer,” North Dakota Republican John Hoeven said. “We support the goals, but we want it to be a process where you work with Congress, with the Senate, both the authorizing committee and the Appropriations Committee on it, and we achieve those results together. And I think that’ll help garner a lot more support for the effort.”
In an opening statement, Chairman John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, thanked Vaden for being available for the hearing on “very, very short notice”
Klobuchar took issue with that description.
“The reason it’s short notice is because the administration put out a half-baked plan with no notice and without consulting agricultural leaders,” she said.
Interest groups were not told ahead of the announcement, Vaden told Klobuchar, though the White House Office of Management and Budget did receive notice.
In response to complaints about the lack of engagement with Congress, Vaden said that lawmakers were notified at the same time as USDA employees, shortly before the announcement was public, and he emphasized that the announcement started a 30-day engagement period that would involve Congress.
He also compared the reorganization plan to the remote work that the department’s workforce used well past the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“From January 2021 to January 2025, the Biden administration, 2,200 employees left Washington, D.C.,” he said. “There was no congressional notice, there was no outcry, there was no committee hearing. For more than 1,700 days, extending well beyond any fair definition of the COVID pandemic, USDA was on a maximum telework footing.”
Some Republicans on the panel offered hearty endorsements to the proposal, including Jim Justice of West Virginia, who used his time to promote the plan instead of questioning Vader.
“I don’t have any questions,” Justice said. “All I’m telling you is, we absolutely need to move and do the very best that we can for these great people.”
But the issue transcended party lines in several cases. Some Republicans whose states were passed over in selecting the proposed hubs had sharp questions for Vaden, while some Democrats who would gain a federal presence under the proposal were less critical.
Hoeven questioned the proposed siting selections, noting Fargo, North Dakota, didn’t have a hub within 600 miles. Fargo is “in the heart of ag country,” Hoeven said.
“What’s magic about five hubs?” he asked. “How much agriculture is there in the state of Utah? We can go through all those things and whether, in fact, it’s actually easier or better for our farmers and our ranchers in North Dakota, given the five hubs you’ve selected.”
Utah ranked 37th in total agricultural income, according to the USDA’s 2023 statistics.
Nebraska Republican Deb Fischer said she had discussed with Vaden, prior to his confirmation hearing this year, the possibility of moving some of the USDA’s workforce outside the Beltway, and advocated for Nebraska as a suitable location.
Because of that, she was underwhelmed by the proposal and its introduction.
“I would have liked to see a process that allowed for Nebraska to demonstrate its strong value proposition,” she said. “So while I do agree with the overreaching goal here, I have to express disappointment in how this has been rolled out and the lack of engagement with Congress prior to the announcement.”
Meanwhile, Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet, whose state would see a regional hub that would also house a consolidated U.S. Forest Service office, said he agreed with the plan’s goals.
“I have long called for the idea of trying to relocate people from Washington, D.C., to parts of the country, to partly to get out of the insulation of this place, to just be closer to, in this case, producers, but others as well,” Bennet said. “So philosophically, that’s where I’ve been.”
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Aurora, operated by private prison firm GEO Group, is pictured on Jan. 30, 2025. U.S. Rep. Jason Crow said he was denied entry to the facility while attempting an oversight visit. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)
WASHINGTON — A dozen Democratic members of Congress filed a lawsuit Wednesday charging that the Trump administration is blocking lawmakers from conducting congressional oversight of federal immigration detention centers.
The suit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia argues that the Department of Homeland Security’s new policy to limit or block lawmakers from visiting immigrant detention facilities is unlawful. The members cite an appropriations law in effect since 2019 that grants a lawmaker the ability to conduct oversight of such centers without prior approval from the department or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“This oversight informs potential legislation on the subject of immigration detention, ensures that administration officials are carrying out their responsibilities consistent with federal law, and ensures that funds appropriated to DHS and ICE are being used appropriately on the ground,” according to the suit.
DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
As the Trump administration aims to carry out mass deportations, one of the few tools Democrats, who are in the minority in both chambers of Congress, have is oversight of immigration detention centers.
It’s already led to clashes between Democratic lawmakers and immigration officers after New Jersey Democrats protested the reopening of a detention center.
The lawmakers said that since June, they have tried to obtain information about conditions at DHS facilities “for the purpose of conducting real-time oversight of that facility” and each “of those attempted oversight visits has been blocked by” DHS.
For example, Colorado’s Jason Crow, who is part of the suit, said this month he was denied entry to an ICE facility to conduct oversight.
“As part of its campaign of mass deportation, the Trump-Vance administration has stretched the U.S. immigration detention system far beyond its capacity,” the suit said.
The suit cites the deaths of 11 people while in immigration custody in the past five months and the unlawful detainment of U.S. citizens, often without access to legal counsel.
“More people are being held by the United States in immigration detention than ever before, with many facilities housing more individuals than they were built to contain,” according to the suit. “Reports of mistreatment have been widespread and have included disturbing details of overcrowding, food shortages, lack of adequate medical care, and unsanitary conditions.”
The suit is being led by the advocacy group Democracy Forward, which is representing the House lawmakers, most of whom are in leadership roles or top Democrats on committees, such as Bennie Thompson of Mississippi on Homeland Security, Jamie Raskin of Maryland on Judiciary and Robert Garcia of California on Oversight and Government Reform.
The other Democrats include Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat and Dan Goldman of New York; J. Luis Correa, Jimmy Gomez, Raul Ruiz and Norma Torres of California; Crow and Joe Neguse of Colorado; and Veronica Escobar of Texas.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference with Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., demanding the release of the Epstein files at the U.S. Capitol on July 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats on Wednesday began charting a little-known legal path to force President Donald Trump’s administration to release the investigative files on the now deceased Florida sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, requested the “full and complete Epstein files” by Aug. 15.
“After missteps and failed promises by your Department regarding these files, it is essential that the Trump Administration provide full transparency. In 2024, President Trump stated on the campaign trail that he would declassify the Epstein files, with his political account on X stating, ‘President Trump says he will DECLASSIFY the 9/11 Files, JFK Files, and Epstein Files,’” according to the three-page letter led by Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee’s top Democrat.
“We call on you to fulfill those promises of transparency,” the letter, dated July 29, continued.
In addition to Schumer, other co-signers included Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Andy Kim of New Jersey and Ruben Gallego of Arizona.
The senators are invoking a nearly century-old law that compels the executive branch to comply if at least five senators on the committee sign on to a request, Schumer told reporters at a Wednesday press conference.
“While protecting the victim’s identities can and must be of top importance, the public has a right to know who enabled, knew of or participated in one of the most heinous sex trafficking operations in history,” Schumer said.
Blumenthal added that any notes and recordings of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s interviews last week in Tallahassee, Florida, with Ghislaine Maxwell should also be made public. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and is now serving a 20-year sentence in a Florida federal prison for conspiring with Epstein to secure and transport minors for sexual abuse.
Along with requesting all investigative materials by mid-August, the senators also demanded a briefing for committee staff by Aug. 29.
Schumer said committee Democrats are “still talking” to Republican colleagues to urge them to join the request.
“And that may help get this public, but if not, there’s recourse in the courts. This is the law,” Schumer said.
A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed to States Newsroom that it received the letter but declined to comment further.
The Justice Department’s decision in early July to keep what are described as the Epstein files out of public view sparked uproar and division among Republicans in Congress, administration officials and Trump’s base.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, issued a subpoena for an Aug. 11 deposition with Maxwell. Committee leadership rejected the convicted sex trafficker’s request Tuesday for the condition of immunity, according to media reports.
The continued noise led House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican and Trump ally, to release members early for the six-week August break to avoid votes related to compelling the release of Epstein material.
The DOJ’s unsigned memo on July 7 stated that a review of the files did not reveal an “incriminating ‘client list’” and that no further disclosure of the investigative materials “would be appropriate or warranted.”
Since the memo’s release, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Bondi briefed Trump in May that his name appeared in the Epstein materials. The context in which his name appears remains unknown.
The Journal also reported the existence of a 50th-birthday greeting that Trump drew and wrote for Epstein that featured the outline of a naked woman with Trump’s signature as pubic hair. Trump has denied he made the drawing and sued the Wall Street Journal.
The reports have further fueled calls for the files to be released.
Trump told reporters Tuesday that he had a falling-out with Epstein after the financier began “taking” spa workers, whom Trump said were young women, from his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump said Epstein “stole” Virginia Giuffre who worked at the Palm Beach, Florida, resort in 2000 at age 16, according to a 2016 deposition.
Giuffre alleged Maxwell and Epstein trafficked her as a teen for illegal sex with influential men, including Britain’s Prince Andrew, who settled with Giuffre and stepped down from his royal duties.
Giuffre became an advocate for victims of sex trafficking. She died by suicide in April.
The Justice Department concluded Epstein harmed more than 1,000 victims.
Epstein was found hanged in August 2019 in his New York City jail cell, where he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
This story mentions suicide. If you or a loved one are suffering with thoughts of suicide, call or text 988. An online chat option is also available at 988lifeline.org.
A SNAP sign at a farm market in St. Petersburg, Florida. A coalition of state attorneys general is suing the Trump administration to block it from mining personal data from SNAP accounts. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA).
A lawsuit filed against the Trump administration by a coalition of attorneys general, including Michigan’s Dana Nessel and Wisconsin’s Josh Kaul, alleges that personal data mined from federal agencies could be used illegally to build a surveillance state unlike the nation has ever seen – putting recipients for things like food assistance at risk if they are being targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The suit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the president’s U.S. Department of Agriculture is illegally demanding states turn over personal and sensitive information about millions of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, recipients.
SNAP, known as FoodShare in Wisconsin, is a state-administered, federally-funded program that provides billions of dollars in food assistance to tens of millions of low-income families. Personal information is provided to state and federal administrators in order to receive assistance, with an understanding that the information will only be used for SNAP purposes.
Moves by the Trump administration to force various departments to share that data with unrelated agencies, like ICE, sets up a system where the latter could potentially track deportation targets through information provided for SNAP. The USDA has also suggested that it would withhold state funding if states fail to comply with the information sharing mandate, effectively creating a gambit where states must choose residents’ privacy over vital assistance.
“Sensitive information about people shouldn’t be turned over to the federal government simply because they applied for or received assistance through SNAP,” Kaul said in a news release Tuesday. “It’s troubling that the federal government is working to compile this kind of information.”
Nessel, speaking to reporters in a news conference this week that included California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New York Attorney General Letitia James, said the episode was yet another attempt by the Trump administration to illegally use personal and sensitive data under the guise of fighting abuse and fraud.
“My colleagues and I will not allow this administration to trample on constitutional protections or unlawfully exploit the SNAP program in this way,” Nessel said. “Michigan families deserve to have their personal information protected, and I will keep fighting until they receive exactly that.”
Since taking office, reports have indicated that Trump is amassing a huge database of personal information on Americans using that data for undisclosed purposes, much like immigration enforcement. The USDA demands regarding SNAP information appear to be another step toward that goal, the lawsuit posits.
Bonta touched on the consequences of Trump’s White House having that much personal data on Americans at its fingertips.
“It’s a bait and switch of the worst kind,” Bonta said. “SNAP recipients provided this information to get help feeding their families, not to be entered into a government surveillance database or be used as targets in the president’s inhumane immigration agenda. That’s the reality here. This isn’t about oversight and transparency. This is about establishing widespread surveillance under the guise of fighting fraud.”
Bonta added that the attorneys general in the lawsuit are calling the issue what it is: An illegal data grab designed to scare people away from public assistance programs.
James said the entire framework of Trump’s immigration policies was cruelty on public display, but the new demand regarding SNAP was a new low.
“It is outrageous. It is unacceptable,” James said. “This is not for research or to improve a service that millions count on. They are basically trying to weaponize the SNAP program against immigrant communities in violation of the law, and we collectively will not stand for it. That is the administration’s plans, and they have made it abundantly clear.”
States participating in the lawsuit include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.
Erik Gunn of the Wisconsin Examiner contributed to this report.
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jon King for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.
The Waukesha County Sheriff Department, one of the agencies that participate in the 287(g) program. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The number of Wisconsin county sheriff’s offices participating in a collaborative program with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has jumped from nine to 12 this year, with other forms of cooperation with ICE growing across the state, according to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin.
The report shows more sheriff offices joining the 287(g) program over the last three years. The program carves out dedicated immigration operations within the sheriff’s offices, shares data with ICE and increases local participation in ICE detention requests.
The ACLU report, released Tuesday, is an update from its 2022 report on Wisconsin’s “Jail-to-deportation pipeline.”
“Immigrants have been an important part of the fabric of Wisconsin for many years,” said Tim Muth, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Wisconsin, in a statement released by the ACLU, along with the updated report. “They are a part of our families. They are our coworkers, friends, and neighbors, and the public should know what their local law enforcement agencies are doing.”
In 2022, there were eight law enforcement across the state participating in the 287(g). The program allows ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) to partner with state and local law enforcement agencies, who are empowered to dedicate their own resources to pursuing people living without legal immigration paperwork in the United States.
“ICE recognizes the importance of its relationships with law enforcement partners to carry out its critical mission,” states a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) webpage.
Agencies can participate in 287(g) under a few different models including a “jail enforcement” model that focuses on people without legal immigration status already in local jails on other criminal charges, a “task force” model that gives local law enforcement officers limited authority to enforce immigration law and a warrant service program which allows local law enforcement to serve administrative warrants to people without legal status within county jails.
The participants in 287(g) include the sheriff’s offices of Brown, Fond du Lac, Kewaunee, Manitowoc, Marquette, Outagamie, Sheboygan, Washington, Waukesha (which is listed twice on the DHS website’s “pending agencies” portion), Waupaca, Wood, and Winnebago counties.
A growing number of Wisconsin sheriffs continue to opt into this program, actively contributing to the jail-to-deportation pipeline.
– ACLU of Wisconsin
Six of those sheriffs (Kewaunee, Outagamie, Washington, Waupaca, Winnebago, and Wood counties) joined the program between from March to June of this year. The rest began participating in 287(g) in 2020, according to the ACLU report,
While some law enforcement agencies have joined the program, others have distanced themselves from immigration enforcement. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office does not participate in the 287(g) program, and both that office and the Dane County Sheriff limit or prohibit their participation in immigration activities. The Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) also has policies limiting its own involvement in immigration enforcement in the interest of preserving a trusting and cooperative relationship with the community, the policies state.
“The expansion of these agreements enables ICE to further embed its enforcement presence within local jurisdictions, often circumventing community-driven policies against immigration enforcement,” the report states. “These partnerships not only divert local resources from community safety initiatives but also significantly heighten the risk of racial profiling and erode trust between law enforcement and immigrant communities.”
The ACLU has also found that between 2021 and 2024, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC), along with 29 counties, received over $7 million in federal funds through the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP). The ACLU states that the funds were “in exchange” for data sharing with ICE. Wisconsin Examiner reached out to DOC, the story will be updated with any reply from the the state agency regarding data sharing.
That data is just part of a growing immigration enforcement and detention network across the state. From Oct. 2021 to June 2025, according to the report, ICE sent over 3,300 immigration detainers to Wisconsin. These are situations in which ICE requests that a local jail hold individuals for up to 48 hours beyond their scheduled release, the ACLU report states. “Although these detainers are often not accompanied by a warrant signed by a neutral judicial official and lack authority under Wisconsin law,” it explains, “most sheriffs across the state continue to honor them.”
Although over 3,300 individuals have been held between Oct. 2021 and June 2025, the biggest jump in detainer requests occurred this year. Between Jan. 1 and June 10, there were 1,065 ICE detainers in Wisconsin. By comparison there were 942 ICE detainers during all of 2024, 853 detainers during a 12-month period between October 2022 and September 2023 and 474 in the 12 months before that.
“These numbers demonstrate that even without a judge-signed warrant, ICE continues to issue these ‘requests,’ and a significant number of Wisconsin jails continue to comply,” the ACLU’s report states. “This practice is problematic as federal deportation proceedings are civil, not criminal, matters and Wisconsin law does not provide legal authority for law enforcement to act on civil immigration detainers.”
Some sheriff offices are even taking it a step further than 287(g) and SCAAP. New financial agreements have also been arranged with counties such as Brown, Sauk and Ozaukee. In Brown County, the sheriff maintains a $90,000 contract for detention and transportation services, carrying a $70.00 per detainee, per day reimbursement, and another $36.00 per hour, with mileage and funding, for transportation services. Sauk County receives a $106.00 per-diem rate for housing ICE detainees, and Ozaukee County gave ICE the ability to purchase cell space in its jail by building off an existing contract with the U.S. Marshall Service. The ACLU calls this a “concerning trend” of local sheriffs “not only passively complying with ICE requests” but also “actively entering into benefiting from direct financial arrangements to house and transport immigrants for ICE removal activities.”
The report also highlights recent legislation which would require more cooperation with ICE. Republican lawmakers have introduced bills that would compel sheriffs to work with ICE regardless of their own priorities, mandate citizenship investigations of jail detainees, mandate compliance with detainer requests, and other policies.
To counter these advancements, the ACLU is calling on community members to reach out to their local sheriffs and police chiefs to learn more about where they stand on ICE cooperation, push agencies to prioritize community trust over obedience, and engage with lawmakers on the proposed bills.
“These cozy relationships between ICE and many sheriffs are disrupting our communities and funneling immigrant community members into the federal deportation machine,” said Muth.
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At a news conference Tuesday in the state Capitol, Rachel Smith of New Berlin speaks in favor of a bill that would make app-based drivers independent contractors and allow the businesses they drive for to provide some benefits. The bill was authored by Sen. Julian Bradly, on the right. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Backers of legislation that would block drivers from app-based rideshare and delivery businesses from being declared employees are making a full-court press to persuade Gov. Tony Evers to sign the measure into law.
If enacted, AB 269 would automatically classify drivers for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and similar businesses as independent contractors — bypassing current Wisconsin laws that differentiate independent contractors from direct employees. It would exclude those drivers from Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance, workers compensation and minimum wage laws.
The bill would also allow those businesses to set up payroll plans to fund benefit programs for drivers, but it would not require them to do so.
Along with other bills that passed both houses after May 8, the Legislature’s calendar requires the independent contractor measure to go to Evers on Thursday, Aug. 7. Evers hasn’t spoken publicly about the bill, but opponents contend it deprives drivers of worker protections in return for meager benefits.
“It just seems to be a PR move to entrench drivers’ status as independent contractors,” said state Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), who drives for Lyft and who voted against the bill in the Assembly.
A heavy lobbying campaign for which DoorDash has been the most visible sponsor has put all the attention on the benefits provision. On Tuesday, Chamber for Progress, a tech business lobbying group, organized a press conference in the state Capitol to urge Evers to sign the bill.
State Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin), the bill’s Senate author, said it would allow the driving-app companies “to voluntarily contribute to portable benefit accounts that travel with the worker and allow them to use the funds for health care, sick time or retirement without stripping workers of their independence.”
Gig workers “want to be independent,” said Ruth Whittaker, of Chamber for Progress. “We should protect their independence and the flexibility of gig work, and we should also give them access to benefits.”
Joe DeRose, a retired state employee, said his work driving for DoorDash provided “flexible income to help with rising costs” without tying him to a fixed schedule.
“I strongly support portable benefits,” DeRose said. “These accounts would let app-based workers save for unforeseen events or retirement without giving up the flexibility that makes this work so appealing.”
Rachel Smith of New Berlin said she delivers for DoorDash while building an online wellness business.
“The reality is, like many entrepreneurs and independent workers, I don’t have access to traditional benefits, so this portable benefits legislation would change that,” Smith said. “Portable benefits would let me plan for my future without giving up the freedom that makes this work possible in the first place.”
“Without this offer, there are no portable benefits,” said state Rep. Sylvia Velez-Ortiz (D-Milwaukee), who cast the only Democratic vote for the bill in the Assembly. “This is something that the platforms are wanting to do on their own, and government should not stand in their way of doing what they know is right.”
While Evers hasn’t said whether he’ll sign or veto the bill, its passage with only Republican votes — besides that of Ortiz-Velez — has almost always been a precursor to a veto.
Wisconsin labor laws include a series of tests to determine if a worker is an independent contractor or an employee.
An employee is covered by unemployment insurance, workers compensation insurance and state labor standards that include minimum wage, work hours and overtime regulations. An independent contractor is not.
The worker-business relationship must meet each one of nine qualifications to be exempt from workers comp law. It must meet 6 out of 9 qualifications to be exempt from unemployment insurance. And it must meet all six qualifications to be exempt from the state’s wage and hour laws.
The bill would make the app-based rideshare and delivery companies automatically exempt from all three areas of employment law.
They could lose the exemption only if they flunked all four parts of a new four-part test — by prescribing when drivers must be logged in; terminating a driver for turning down an assignment; restricting drivers from working for other app-based companies; and restricting drivers from any other lawful job or business.
“This is a dangerous bill for working people,” Stephanie Bloomingdale, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, said Tuesday.
“It is a bill that will carve out our existing tests to determine unemployment, workers’ comp, wage and hour [standards] with a very simplistic four-part test that would forever remove drivers’ ability to access those kind of benefits that we fought for for decades,” Bloomingdale said in an interview.
“They could offer benefits without taking away these tests,” she added. “And what they’re really after is taking away these tests.
Although Bradley described the bill as giving Wisconsin gig drivers “access to benefits like health care, dental and retirement savings,” critics say that those kinds of benefits are unlikely to accrue under the system the law describes.
In Pennsylvania, DoorDash has established a trial benefits program without a law in place there. A report commissioned for the program found that participants on average were able to save about $400 over the course of a year.
“It’s just a savings account with a very meager contribution from the companies,” said Laura Padin, director of Work Structures at the National Employment Law Project (NELP), who sent a letter to Evers urging him to veto the bill. “Real employment-based benefits are worth so much more than that.”
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Like millions of other Americans, I have a loved one who faces substance use challenges. I can still remember the gut-wrenching feeling early in the pandemic whenever I encountered headlines describing rising rates of overdoses and fentanyl poisonings.
But around 2022, some of that news coverage contained hope. Millions of dollars from a national legal settlement with drug makers, distributors and pharmacies was headed to communities reeling from the opioid epidemic, with the potential to help families like mine.
I was immediately curious about how communities would spend the money. I’m from Nebraska, which has no public reporting requirements for opioid settlement funds, leaving the public in the dark. When I moved to Wisconsin last year, I was excited to see significantly more transparency.
Within my first few days at WPR and Wisconsin Watch, I pitched a story on how local governments were spending these dollars. My editors were interested, but that idea got buried under other pressing reporting — from seniors getting kicked out of nursing homes, to people losing health coverage.
May offered a fresh opportunity to revisit the settlement story. That’s when a legislative committee published a fresh batch of spending reports from Wisconsin counties and municipalities that received payouts.
A 2021 state law requires Wisconsin governments to report basic information about their opioid settlement accounts each year. But when I started looking at those reports, they weren’t easy to digest. They are published in massive PDFs. Some included handwritten responses, with occasional missing or incorrect information.
An assignment I thought would take a couple of weeks to report and write, lasted well over a month.
I used a tool called Google Pinpoint to scrape information from three years or reports submitted by 87 different local governments. It took multiple late nights to check, edit and combine information from each report into a set of spreadsheets. I spent hours each day calling county and municipal offices, listening to hold music as I tracked down missing or corrected spending numbers.
As a self-proclaimed “words person,” the toughest part was calculating each government’s total earnings, spending and interest from settlement payouts.
In response to my questions, seven governments filed reports that had been missing. Others corrected mistakes I identified on reports they had filed.
The exhausting process was worth it. We did our best to create a place where people can easily learn — without sifting through meeting minutes or long PDFs — how their county or municipality is spending dollars intended to address a crisis. Or in the case of nearly 30 governments, that they have yet to spend any of it.
I’m not done with this reporting. If you have questions about my process or findings, please reach out. I hope to hear from anyone with opinions about how their local government is spending these dollars, whether positive or negative. You can reach me here: acostello@wisconsinwatch.org.
Why we’re tracking opioid settlement spending 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.
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.
Violent crime, nationally and in major cities, is lower than 25 years ago.
Marquette University criminal justice professor Theodore Lentz charted rates for violent crime – murder, rape and sexual assault, robbery, and assault.
The overall rate was below 400 violent crimes per 100,000 people for the past decade, down from about 500 per 100,000 people 25 years ago.
The rates are based on FBI Uniform Crime Reporting figures, which track crimes reported to law enforcement.
The nonprofit Pew Research Center reported that between 1993 and 2022, violent crime dropped 49%, according to the FBI; and 71%, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, which surveys Americans.
In cities of 250,000 people or more, the violent crime rate was 771 per 100,000 people in 2023, down from 1,093 in 2000.
Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, who represents part of eastern Wisconsin, said July 14 that major-city violent crime is much higher than 25 years ago.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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Elections in Wisconsin are setting new spending records every year, but the U.S. Supreme Court appears set to allow even more money into political races across the country if it rules the way experts expect it to in a pending case.
A case brought to the court by Republican plaintiffs in December seeks to abolish limits on coordinated campaign expenditures – money political parties spend in collaboration with candidates. The court’s June decision to hear a challenge to its decades-old precedent speaks to the conservative majority’s distaste for regulating campaign finance, experts say.
“We know where this thing is going because of how the (Chief Justice John) Roberts’ court has dealt with campaign finance restrictions,” said Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at UW-La Crosse.
The Supreme Court will reconsider its 2001 decision, which ruled that limits on coordinated campaign expenditures are constitutional. The limits apply to shared expenses between party and candidate, such as advertising costs.
Undoing these limits “would open a new, significant way for political parties to spend in direct support of their candidates’ campaigns,” Chergosky said.
In Wisconsin, parties coordinating with U.S. Senate candidates can spend up to about $600,000 in a general election campaign before the limits kick in, according to the Federal Elections Commission. Nationwide, limits vary from $127,200 to $3,946,100 based on the state’s voting age population. For U.S. House nominees in states with more than one representative, which includes Wisconsin, the spending cap is about $63,000.
The Republican plaintiffs – which include the National Republican Congressional Committee, Vice President J.D. Vance and former Rep. Steve Chabot – filed their case in 2022 and went to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court upheld the spending limits.
The court will likely hear the case in the fall and release a decision in 2026 just as U.S. midterm elections kick into gear, according to a SCOTUSblog analysis. All eight of Wisconsin’s U.S. House members will face reelection, though neither senator will.
The limits the court will review only apply to federal elections for president or Congress, said Brendan Glavin, the research director for OpenSecrets, a Washington-based watchdog that tracks lobbying and campaign finance data. The limits do not apply to state-level candidates.
But “even with the limit, people can still give quite a lot of money to the party, and the party is still allowed to make independent expenditures,” Glavin said. “It’s not like anybody’s being shut down.”
Even if the Supreme Court struck down these limits, federal contribution caps would still apply. This year and next, the federal limits on how much an individual can give to a candidate committee is $3,500 per election. Individuals are also limited to a yearly donation of about $44,000 to a national party committee, according to the FEC.
But the coordinated campaign expenditure limits seal a loophole, Glavin said. The limits prevent donors from circumventing individual contribution caps by donating to a party that can essentially earmark the money for a specific candidate.
“When you take these coordinated limits away, then you’re essentially providing a bit of an end run around the contribution limits for an individual,” said Glavin. However, the Republican challenge “does fit into a broader trend of what we’ve seen over time.”
Campaign finance reform, including limits on coordinated campaign expenditures, were taken up in the 1970s and expanded in 2002, Glavin said. Since then, the reforms have been incrementally rolled back through court decisions like Citizens United v. F.E.C., the 2010 Supreme Court case that paved the way for unlimited political spending organizations called Super PACs.
Reversing the law isn’t likely to affect dark money or Super PAC spending, Glavin said. But you’d likely see more candidates and parties approaching a donor together.
“One ask, one check, that’s an easier way to get the donor,” Glavin said.
Thus, overruling precedent in this case would “tilt the balance of power back in favor of party committees,” Chergosky said. Though partisan loyalty is strong, Chergosky explained, party organizations have seen their influence weaken in light of outside groups like Super PACs.
Though none of Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate seats will be in play next year, Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District is set to be one of the most expensive House races in the 2026 cycle, Chergosky said.
The race will likely be a rematch between Republican incumbent Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Prairie du Chien and Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke of Eau Claire, both of whom are “exceptional fundraisers,” Chergosky said.
As the number of competitive seats continues to decline, an “enormous amount of money gets funneled into fewer and fewer districts,” Chergosky said. But regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, there won’t be a shortage of money spent in the 3rd District, he said.
Wisconsin law provides an interesting contrast, Chergosky said. Here, state law limits how much individuals can give directly to candidates, but it does not limit the amount individuals can give to parties, nor does it limit how much party committees can give to state-level candidates.
“The comparison to the Wisconsin law is interesting because that has really motivated donors to give to state parties in a way that we just haven’t seen at the national level,” Chergosky said.
The piles of cash that fuel state and national politics has encouraged some Wisconsin legislators to propose resolutions amending the U.S. Constitution.
A Republican-backed proposal calls for an amendment that would also allow states to regulate spending in elections. A Democratic proposal calls for an advisory referendum to appear on Wisconsin ballots; it would ask voters whether they approve of amending the Constitution in order to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United.
If two-thirds of the state legislatures in the country request it, Congress can convene to consider amending the Constitution. The joint resolutions, if successful, are necessary if Wisconsin wants Congress to convene a constitutional convention. A joint resolution must pass both chambers of the state Legislature; the governor’s signature is not required.
Lawmakers last acted on the Democrats’ proposal in May, and the most recent action on the Republican proposal was in June.
This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s cash-flooded elections could get even more expensive 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.
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