When Neenah resident Tom Frantz got a pair of identical emails last Friday, saying they were from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, he just shrugged it off at first, believing it was spam.
But then, he said, he read the email more closely and was “really bothered” by the content.
The email said Frantz — a 68-year-old retired college administrator and teacher and American citizen born in western Pennsylvania — was in the United States on humanitarian parole and his parole was being terminated.
“If you do not depart the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States,” the email stated.
“Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you,” it added. “Please depart the United States immediately.”
Frantz has never been on or applied for humanitarian parole. He’s lived in the Fox Valley since moving in 1981 for a job at what is now the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh at Fox Cities.
Because of the threatening nature of the email and the lack of information about what to do if you were a U.S. citizen who received the notification, Frantz said he decided to do some research. He discovered that an immigration attorney in Massachusetts received a similar letter from immigration officials.
“I thought, ‘Boy, if an immigration attorney is alarmed about this, then I should be, too, and I should pay attention to what is being said here,’” Frantz said.
He said he was worried about the possibility of immigration officials showing up at his home, arresting him and ultimately deporting him. As a retiree, he said he was also worried about a reference in the letter to losing benefits because he spent years paying into Social Security and Medicare.
“I was not naive enough to believe that the government never makes a mistake,” he said. “But my fear was that it could compound. And if it compounded, then what were the consequences for me?”
Frantz spent much of that Friday debating what to do about the letter. He ultimately decided his best bet would be to reach out to one of his representatives in Congress. On Monday morning, he said he left a voicemail with U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s office and received a phone call less than an hour later.
“After I contacted Sen. Baldwin’s office, they were working (on) it right away,” Frantz said. “I felt like I had an advocate, somebody who really understood my situation and knew the inner workings of government to try to address it.”
Baldwin’s office got in contact with the Department of Homeland Security and discovered the email was incorrectly sent to Frantz.
The notice that Frantz received went out to email addresses in the Customs and Border Patrol Home App, according to Baldwin’s office. The emails typically belonged to a person applying for parole or asylum, immigration lawyers, non-governmental organizations and financial supporters of applicants.
Frantz said he did not use the app or fit the description of those categories. He still isn’t quite sure why he received the email. Baldwin’s office says it has been in contact with federal immigration officials to ensure the issue was resolved.
While he says the Department of Homeland Security didn’t apologize to him directly, he says the department did apologize through Baldwin’s office. Frantz said the department reached out with a number of questions, and he got the sense “they were trying to figure out what went wrong.”
If Baldwin’s office hadn’t worked with him, Frantz said he planned to reach out to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s office and the office of Rep. Glenn Grothman.
“Had none of them responded … I probably would start carrying around different forms of identification, birth certificate and other stuff, to prove citizenship,” Frantz said.
The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Frantz’s situation and why he received the notification.
In a statement, Baldwin criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the situation, which could have resulted in the wrongful detention or deportation of a Wisconsin resident.
“This is completely illegal — President Trump is trying to deport an American-born, law-abiding citizen and has provided absolutely no justification,” Baldwin said in a statement. “The President cannot kick Americans out of the country just because he wants — no one is above the law, including the President.”
In reflecting on the situation, Frantz said he’s lucky because he knew how to find help. He said he expects that more U.S. citizens likely received similar emails by mistake.
“If I’m getting this, and that attorney in Massachusetts also got it, there’s probably a lot of other people who got this,” he said. “We don’t know how many people are on the distribution list.”
“I think it’s important that people stay vigilant and that they take emails seriously. Don’t click on the links, but investigate them,” Frantz added. “If it looks legitimate, I would definitely treat it as legitimate, and I would seek assistance from officials.”
This story was originally published by WPR.
‘The federal government will find you’: Immigration officials wrongfully told a Fox Valley man to leave the US 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.
Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ creative use of his uniquely powerful veto can lock in a school funding increase for 400 years, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The 4-3 ruling from the liberal-controlled court affirms the partial veto power of Wisconsin governors, which is the broadest of any state and has been used by both Republicans and Democrats to reshape spending bills passed by the Legislature.
Wisconsin is the only state where governors can partially veto spending bills by striking words, numbers and punctuation to create new meaning or spending amounts. In most states, governors can only eliminate or reduce spending amounts.
The court’s four liberal justices ruled Friday that the state constitution allows the governor to strike digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature.
“We are acutely aware that a 400-year modification is both significant and attention-grabbing,” Justice Jill Karofsky wrote for the majority. “However, our constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable.”
Justice Brian Hagedorn, writing for the three-justice conservative minority, said Wisconsin was now in a “fantastical state of affairs” that allows the governor to write new law through the use of his partial veto.
“One might scoff at the silliness of it all, but this is no laughing matter,” Hagedorn wrote. “The decision today cannot be justified under any reasonable reading of the Wisconsin Constitution.”
Evers called the decision “great news for Wisconsin’s kids and public schools.”
Brian Schimming, chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, said the ruling gives Evers “unchecked authority to override the will of Wisconsin voters.”
The ruling came in a case against Evers that was supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature. It is one of two lawsuits pending before the court dealing with vetoes by the governor. Republicans this year also introduced a constitutional amendment intended to curb veto powers.
Evers’ partial veto in 2023 increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.
Evers told lawmakers at the time that his partial veto was intended to give school districts increases in funding “in perpetuity.”
The Legislature and the state’s largest business lobbying group, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, argued that the court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare it unconstitutional. They argued that the Evers veto was barred under a 1990 constitutional amendment adopted by voters that removed the ability to strike individual letters to make new words — known as the “Vanna White” veto, named for the co-host of the game show “Wheel of Fortune” who flips letters to reveal word phrases.
Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, they argued.
But Evers countered that the “Vanna White” veto ban applies only to striking individual letters to create new words, not vetoing digits to create new numbers. Evers said that he was simply using the long-standing partial veto process allowed under the law.
Wisconsin’s partial veto power was created by a 1930 constitutional amendment, but it’s been weakened by voters over the years, including in reaction to vetoes made by former Republican and Democratic governors. The Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2020, then controlled by conservatives, undid three of Evers’ partial vetoes, but a majority of justices did not issue clear guidance on what was allowed.
Reshaping state budgets through the partial veto is a long-standing act of gamesmanship in Wisconsin between the governor and Legislature, as lawmakers try to craft bills in a way that is largely immune from creative vetoes.
Republican legislative leaders have said they were waiting for the ruling in this case and another pending case affecting the governor’s veto powers before taking up spending bills this session, including the two-year state budget.
The other case centers on whether Evers properly used his partial veto power on a bill that detailed the plan for spending on new literacy programs. The Legislature contends that Evers’ partial veto was unconstitutional because the bill did not appropriate money. Evers contends the Legislature is trying to control how the executive branch spends money and limit his partial veto power.
If the court sides with Evers in that case, it could greatly expand the kinds of bills subject to partial vetoes in the future.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Wisconsin governor can lock in 400-year school funding increase using a veto, state Supreme Court says 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.
In less than 10 years, three catastrophic floods ravaged northwestern Wisconsin and changed the way people think about water.
The most severe, in July 2016, slammed Ashland with up to 10 inches of rain in less than a day — a month’s worth of rain fell in just two hours. As rivers swelled to record highs, major highways broke into pieces, and culverts washed away. It took months for roads to reopen, with more than $41 million in damage across seven counties.
The Marengo River, which winds through forests and farmland before meeting the Bad River that flows into Lake Superior, was hit hard during these historic deluges. Centuries earlier, the upper watershed would have held onto that water, but logging and agriculture left the river disconnected from its floodplain, giving the water nowhere safe to go.
Today, the Marengo River stands as an example of a new kind of solution. Following the record floods, state leaders invested in opening up floodplains and restoring wetlands to relieve flooding. As the need to adapt to disasters grows more urgent, the Marengo River serves as an example that there’s a cheaper way to do so: using wetlands.
“We can’t change the weather or the patterns … but we can better prepare ourselves,” said MaryJo Gingras, Ashland County’s conservationist.
Wetlands once provided more natural flood storage across Wisconsin and the Mississippi River Basin, soaking up water like sponges so it couldn’t rush further downstream. But about half of the country’s wetlands have been drained and filled for agriculture and development, and they continue to be destroyed, even as climate change intensifies floods.
As the federal government disposes of rules to protect wetlands, environmental advocates want to rewrite the ecosystem’s narrative to convince more people that restoration is worth it.
Wetlands aren’t just pretty places, advocates argue, but also powerhouses that can save communities money by blunting the impact of flood disasters. A 2024 Wisconsin law geared at preventing such disasters before they happen, inspired by the wetland work in the Marengo River watershed, is going to test that theory.
“Traditionally, the outreach has been, ‘We want to have wetlands out here because they’re good for ducks, frogs and pretty flowers,’” said Tracy Hames, executive director of the Wisconsin Wetlands Association. “What do people care about here? They care about their roads, their bridges, their culverts … how can wetlands help that?”
Northern Wisconsin isn’t the only place paying the price for floods. Between 1980 and 2025, the U.S. was struck by 45 billion-dollar flood disasters, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with a cumulative price tag of nearly $206 billion. Many parts of the vast Mississippi River Basin receive up to eight inches more rain annually than they did 50 years ago, according to a 2022 analysis from Climate Central, a nonprofit organization that analyzes climate science.
Damaging floods are now so common in the states that border the Mississippi River, including Wisconsin, that the issue can’t be ignored, said Haley Gentry, assistant director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy in New Orleans.
“Even if you don’t agree with certain (regulations) … we absolutely have to find ways to reduce damage,” Gentry said.
Former Wisconsin state Rep. Loren Oldenburg, a Republican who served a flood-prone district in southwest Wisconsin until he lost the seat last year, was interested in how wetlands could help.
Oldenburg joined forces with Republican state Sen. Romaine Quinn, who represents northern Wisconsin and knew of the work in the Marengo River watershed. The lawmakers proposed a grant program for flood-stricken communities to better understand why and where they flood and restore wetlands in areas that need the help most.
Jennifer Western Hauser, policy liaison at the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, met with Democratic and Republican lawmakers to advocate for the bill. She emphasized problems that might get their attention — related to transportation, emergency services, insurance, or conservation — that wetland restoration could solve. She said she got a lot of head nods as she explained that the cost of continually fixing a washed-out culvert could vanish from storing and slowing floodwaters upstream.
“These are issues that hit all over,” she said. “It’s a relatable problem.”
The bill passed unanimously and was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in April 2024. Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature approved $2 million for the program in the state’s most recent budget.
Twenty-three communities applied for the first round of grant funding, which offered two types of grants — one to help assess flood risk and another grant to help build new wetlands to reduce that risk. Eleven communities were funded, touching most corners of the state, according to Wisconsin Emergency Management, which administered the grants.
Brian Vigue, freshwater policy director for Audubon Great Lakes, said the program shows Wisconsin residents have come a long way in how they think about wetlands since 2018, when the state government made it easier for developers to build in them.
There’s an assumption that wetland restoration comes only at the expense of historically lucrative land uses like agriculture or industry, making it hard to gain ground, Vigue said. But when skeptics understand the possible economic benefits, it can change things.
“When you actually find something with the return on investment and can prove that it’s providing these benefits … we were surprised at how readily people that you’d assume wouldn’t embrace a really good, proactive wetland conservation policy did,” he said.
About three-quarters of the remaining wetlands in the lower 48 states are on privately owned land, including areas that were targeted for restoration in the Marengo River watershed. That means before any restoration work begins, landowners must be convinced that the work will help, not hurt them.
For projects like this to work, landowner goals are a priority, said Kyle Magyera, local government outreach specialist at the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, because “they know their property better than anyone else.”
Farmers, for example, can be leery that beefing up wetlands will take land out of production and hurt their bottom line, Magyera said.
In the Marengo watershed, Gingras worked with one landowner who had farmland that wasn’t being used. They created five new wetlands across 10 acres that have already decreased sediment and phosphorus runoff from entering the river. And while there hasn’t been a flood event yet, Gingras expects the water flows to be slowed substantially.
This work goes beyond restoring wetland habitat, Magyera said, it’s about reconnecting waterways. In another project, Magyera worked on a private property where floods carved a new channel in a ravine that funneled the water faster downstream. The property now has log structures that mimic beaver dams to help slow water down and reconnect these systems.
Now that the first round of funding has been disbursed in Wisconsin’s grant program, grantees across the state are starting work on their own versions of natural flood control, like that used in Marengo.
In Emilie Park, along the flood-prone East River in Green Bay, a project funded by the program will create 11 acres of new wetlands. That habitat will help store water and serve as an eco-park where community members can stroll through the wetland on boardwalks.
In rural Dane County, about 20 miles from the state capital, a stretch of Black Earth Creek will be reconnected to its floodplain, restoring five and a half acres of wetlands and giving the creek more room to spread out and reduce flood risk. The creek jumped its banks during a near record-breaking 2018 rainstorm, washing out two bridges and causing millions of dollars in damage.
Nature-based solutions to flooding have been gaining popularity along the Mississippi River. Wisconsin’s program could serve as a “national model” for how to use wetlands to promote natural flood resilience, Quinn wrote in a 2023 newspaper editorial supporting the bill.
Kyle Rorah, regional director of public policy for the Great Lakes/Atlantic region of Ducks Unlimited, said he’s talking about the Wisconsin grant program to lawmakers in other states in the upper Midwest, and he sees more appetite for this model than relying on the federal government to protect wetlands.
And Vigue has found that stakeholders in industries like fishing, shipping and recreation are receptive to using wetlands as infrastructure.
But Gentry cautioned that voluntary restoration can only go so far because it “still allows status quo development and other related patterns to continue.”
Still, as the federal government backs off of regulation, Gentry said she expects more emphasis on the economic value of wetlands to drive protection.
Some of that is already happening. A 2024 analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that wetlands save Wisconsin and the upper Midwest nearly $23 billion a year that otherwise would be spent combating flooding.
“Every level of government is looking at ways to reduce costs so it doesn’t increase taxes for their constituents,” Gingras said.
John Sabo, director of the ByWater Institute at Tulane University, said as wetlands prove their economic value in reducing flood damage costs, taxpayers will see their value.
“You have to think about (wetlands) as providing services for people,” Sabo said, “if you want to get people on the other side of the aisle behind the idea (of restoring them).”
And although the Wisconsin grant program is small-scale for now, he said if other states bordering the Mississippi River follow its lead, it could reduce flooding across the region.
“If all upstream states start to build upstream wetlands,” he said, “that has downstream impacts.”
This story is part of the series Down the Drain from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting collaborative based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.
Framing wetlands as a flooding solution won bipartisan support in Wisconsin. Could it work elsewhere? 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.
The March 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse and its aftermath, which included a flood that claimed the lives of more than 400 people.
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A 167-year-old statute requires trans people to publish their old and new names in a newspaper. Families and advocates worry the requirement now poses a risk as President Donald Trump has attacked transgender rights.
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Sen. Eric Wimberger, co-chair of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” for a discussion about the released and forthcoming audits.
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Orienteering, which originated in the late 19th century as a Swedish military exercise, involves physical and mental exercise, as participants are tasked with finding markers on an unknown course using only a map and compass.
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The Milwaukee School Board is considering taking legal action against paint manufacturers in response to the ongoing lead crisis in the district.
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Wisconsin's education department won’t sign or submit documents to the Trump administration certifying the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, state Superintendent Jill Underly told WPR on Friday.
The post Wisconsin superintendent: Schools won’t comply with Trump administration’s DEI demands appeared first on WPR.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has upheld Gov. Tony Evers’ partial budget veto that extended a temporary school funding increase by 400 years, despite justices previously calling it “extreme” and “outrageous.”
The post Wisconsin Supreme Court upholds Evers’ veto boosting school funding for 400 years appeared first on WPR.
Children at The Playing Field, a Madison child care center that participates in the federal Head Start program. (Courtesy of The Playing Field)
Federal payments to Wisconsin’s Head Start programs in the first three and a half months of 2025 are half what they were a year ago, exacerbating worries about the future of the program that provides child care and early education to low-income families.
The Office of Head Start’s payments to Wisconsin program operators from Jan. 1 through April 15 of this year were down by $35 million from the same period in 2024, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) said this week.
Nationwide, Head Start program operators have received $943 million less during that period this year compared with the period a year ago, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), who published a table of calculations comparing disbursements for every state in a press release. The table shows Wisconsin disbursements of $34.5 million as of April 15, compared with $69.5 million in the 2024 period.
Baldwin contrasted the potential impact with the pledge by the White House and the Republican majority in Congress to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term.
“The idea that the president is actively working to give the biggest corporations and wealthiest Wall Street guys a new tax break while taking away preschool and child care from Wisconsinites is beyond the pale,” said Baldwin, vowing to fight actions of President Donald Trump she described as “defunding Head Start.”
The calculations in Murray’s table are based on Head Start disbursement data that Senate Democrats pulled from the Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
While most states in Murray’s table had lower disbursements compared with a year ago, Alabama, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia all showed increases.
The calculations put the big-picture numbers on funding disruptions that Head Start providers have been experiencing in the last three months, said Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association.
Those disruptions first surfaced after Trump took office, with delays of up to two weeks in late January and early February for Head Start programs seeking authorized payment for their expenses.
More recently, the disruptions have continued as providers who have submitted the required documents for payment have been confronted with unexpected demands for “more information” Mauer said Friday.
“The [federal] administration is really messing around, pulling out the foundational blocks of grant operation,” Mauer said.
In order to get approved for a grant, recipients must provide a detailed accounting of how it will be spent, she said. To get payment, providers must submit detailed documentation that the expense it covers has already been incurred.
“This is a highly regulated system,” Mauer said. “There’s a very rigorous initial grant application process, and then on an ongoing basis grantees are demonstrating, ‘We told you what we’re going to spend the money on. Now based on what I told you, I’m asking for that money.’”
The disclosure of the drop in Head Start funding comes a week after a published report raised the possibility that Head Start will be zeroed out of the next federal budget.
It also comes as some providers wait for information about their upcoming grant replenishments, Mauer said.
Head Start grants are provided under multi-year contracts signed with providers. The money itself, however, does not come to providers in large lump sums but in smaller amounts paid upon the submission of documented expenses, Mauer said.
Every six months, an allotment from the provider’s grant is made available, she said. Those funds are not paid directly to the provider, however. The money is set aside for the provider to draw on after submitting expense documents through the federal online payment system.
Providers’ grant cycles start on the first of the month. In Wisconsin, providers whose grant cycle started Nov. 1 have now received confirmation of their next grant allotment for the six months starting May 1, Mauer said Friday.
But with the previous funding access problems and then the sudden closing three weeks ago of half of Head Start’s national offices, including the Chicago Region 5 office that served Wisconsin and five other states, providers were apprehensive.
“The level of uncertainty and chaos is so dramatic,” Mauer said — in contrast not only to the Biden administration, but also the previous Trump administration. Until this year, “these kinds of questions and uncertainties didn’t exist.”
Three providers whose grant cycle started Dec. 1 are waiting to learn whether their next allotment will become available starting June 1 as scheduled.
Mauer said the Senate Democrats’ calculations appear to be “showing the cumulative effect” of the access to HHS funding streams by the team working for DOGE, an agency directed by billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk.
DOGE is the acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency, although the office is not a cabinet department, and many of its claims of government savings have been questioned.
The hold-up on information is having “a tremendous negative effect on our programs and it’s alarming,” Mauer said. “When we think of what are the impacts of Region 5 closing and that we continue to have very, very minimal and slow communication from the Office of Head Start — they need to start communicating with grantees in a much more substantive way.”
The Wisconsin Examiner contacted the federal Department of Health and Human Services using the HHS website for journalists’ inquiries and has not yet received a response. This report will be updated when a response is received.
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State Superintendent Jill Underly said "Washington, D.C. should not dictate how schools educate their kids." Underly pictured with Madison La Follette High School Principal Mathew Thompson and Madison Public School District Superintendent Joe Gothard in the hallway at La Follette in September 2024. (Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction rejected the Trump administration’s request to certify compliance with a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion in K-12 public schools.
State Superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement that Wisconsin schools are following the law.
“We’ve put that into writing to the USDE,” Underly said. “We believe in local control in Wisconsin and trusting our local leaders – superintendents, principals, educators – who work together with parents and families every day to support students. They know their communities best. Washington, D.C. should not dictate how schools educate their kids.”
The U.S. Department of Education sent a letter earlier this month to state agencies across the country requesting that agencies check with local school districts to ensure they don’t have diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
The federal administration is trying to apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, which said race-based programs in higher education violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, to K-12 education. The administration said state agencies needed to ensure compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Supreme Court decision.
Wisconsin is one of several states, mostly led by Democrats, that have pushed back on the request. The Trump administration, which has been targeting diversity efforts in K-12 schools as well as in higher education and other sectors, has threatened that it could pull funding from states that don’t comply with the request.
Wisconsin schools receive $841.9 million from the federal government, making up about 8% of the total funding for schools across the state. Funding from the Department of Education makes up $568.2 million of that, and according to DPI, this is equivalent to 6,106 educator jobs.
According to the letter, DPI provided the Department of Education with copies of previous certifications of compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
The agency said that its repeated requests for additional information about the new certification request went unanswered. In an April 9 letter, DPI asked for clarification on why the federal government was requesting another certification and asked the Department of Education to answer questions including whether the requested certification seeks to enforce any requirement beyond what is required by federal law and regulation and what legal authority the Education Department is using to make the request a condition of federal aid.
“If the certified assurances are insufficient to meet the conditions of federal funding imposed by USDE, please articulate the basis in law for imposing these conditions, as well as an explanation as to why these assurances do not fulfill those requirements,” DPI General Counsel Benjamin Jones wrote to the Department of Education.
Underly said the new certification is a way for the federal government to “directly control the decisions in our schools by conditioning federal dollars. This is a serious concern – not just for the DPI, but for anyone who believes in lawful, transparent government.”
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Gov. Tony Evers after signing the 2023-25 budget bill with 51 partial vetoes on July 5, 2023. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
A split Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto in the last state budget extending school funding increases for an additional 400 years was within his constitutional powers.
The executive partial veto powers granted in the Wisconsin State Constitution are uniquely expansive, though they have been limited in the past through Supreme Court decisions and constitutional amendments passed by the Legislature and approved by voters.
In the 2023-25 state budget bill, Evers used his partial veto power striking two digits and a dash from the years to extend the annual increases through 2425, saying the action would help provide ongoing financial support to schools. The initial bill had included a $325 increase to schools’ revenue limits for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.
Justice Jill Karofsky wrote in a majority opinion that the partial veto was within the power given to Evers in the state constitution, which says “appropriation bills may be approved in whole or in part by the governor.”
“We uphold the 2023 partial vetoes, and in doing so we are acutely aware that a 400-year modification is both significant and attention-grabbing,” Karofsky wrote. “However, our constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable.”
The case challenging the partial veto was brought by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce on behalf of two Wisconsin taxpayers, Jeffery A. LeMieux, a retired professor, and David T. DeValk, a Fox Valley substitute teacher — arguing that the action was unconstitutional and undemocratic.
WMC Executive Vice President of Government Relations Scott Manley said they were disappointed by the ruling, and that Evers “exceeded his authority at the expense of taxpayers, and now our great-great-great-great-grandchildren will still be paying the price for his reckless disregard for the law.”
Karofsky laid out several options that lawmakers could take if they want to address the issue further, including by addressing it in a future budget — such as the 2025-27 budget that is being worked on now, by passing a constitutional amendment or by drafting bills separate from appropriation bills to avoid the governor’s partial veto or trying to anticipate how the power might be used.
Lawmakers have introduced a couple of proposed constitutional amendments. One, which passed last session, would bar the governor from using the veto power to create or increase any tax or fee. Another introduced in January would replace current language that says a partial veto may “not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences” to say the governor may “only reject one or more entire bill sections.”
Those proposals have to pass in two consecutive sessions of the Legislature before they could go to voters for ratification.
Karofsky wrote that the Court “takes no position regarding these measures. We merely outline them to illustrate legislative alternatives to the action before us.”
The three conservative justices on the Court slammed the majority opinion, saying that by upholding the veto the Court has given the executive the power to make law separately from legislators.
“How does a bill become a law?” Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote in the dissenting opinion. “According to the majority, one option looks like this: The legislature passes a bill in both houses and sends it to the governor. The governor then takes the collection of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks he receives from the legislature, crosses out whatever he pleases, and — presto! — out comes a new law never considered or passed by the legislature at all. And there you have it — a governor who can propose and enact law all on his own.”
Hagedorn wrote that the majority’s opinion makes “a mockery of our constitutional order. This is a mess of this court’s making, and it is long past time for us to fix it.”
In an opinion concurring with the majority, Justice Rebecca Dallet said the precedent set forth in other cases before the court have “emphasized that a partial veto may affirmatively change the policy of the original bill.” Dallet said that she is “open to revisiting” that, but “this case is not a ‘clear opportunity’ to do so.”
“Petitioners do not ask us to overturn any of our prior decisions, let alone reimagine completely our approach,” Dallet wrote.
Republican leaders were critical of the decision, saying that the Court had granted the governor unchecked power and that the decision would lead to tax increases for Wisconsinites.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said that the decision was evidence of the Court being partisan and “should worry every Wisconsinite.”
“Is any Wisconsin citizen surprised that the liberals on the Wisconsin Supreme Court are now a rubber stamp for liberal ally Tony Evers?” Vos asked. “The liberal Justices’ decision itself describes the effects of this decision as ‘significant and attention-grabbing.’ Modest words for a tortured reading of our Constitution that will hurt Wisconsin taxpayers for hundreds of years to come, all in the name of supporting their ally in the Governor’s office.”
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said that the Court “proved again that they will rule based on partisanship and politics rather than the rule of law” and that the veto was “an unprecedented overreach that will impact generations of Wisconsin taxpayers.”
Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) said that the state cannot afford to provide money for the increases, calling it “wildly unrealistic” and “fiscally unsustainable,” and that increases would be felt by property taxpayers.
The partial veto applied to increases to schools’ revenue limits, meaning that school districts will have more leeway to bring in funds through property taxes or state funds. The partial veto did not allocate additional state dollars for the increases, though lawmakers could decide to provide state funds for the increases. The partial veto also did not automatically mean school districts would raise taxes, though they would have the option.
Wisconsin has limited school districts’ ability to raise funds through property taxes since 1993. Schools originally received regular adjustments to their limits on an inflationary basis, but that was eliminated in 2009 and since then increases have relied on lawmakers or school districts going to taxpayers for permission to increase taxes.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s via property taxes or income taxes, this money is going to come out of the pockets of Wisconsinites from Tomahawk to Racine,” Felzkowski said. She called on Evers to “come to the table to find a solution to this problem that he created, otherwise average Wisconsinites will be forced to take on the financial burden that he has put on them.”
Evers said in a statement that schools deserve “sustainable, dependable, and spendable state support and investment” and said the decision was great news.
“For over a decade, the Legislature has failed to meet that important obligation. Importantly, this decision does not mean our work is done — far from it,” Evers said. “Today’s decision only further underscores the urgent need for Republican lawmakers to approve the K-12 investments I’ve proposed to ensure our kids and our schools have the resources they need now and into the future.”
Evers has called for an additional $3 billion in investments for the state’s K-12 schools, funded with the state’s $4 billion budget surplus. Lawmakers have said the decision would be influential in the shape of education funding in the 2025-27 state budget.
Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Jill Underly echoed Evers’ sentiment, calling the decision a win.
“The broader need remains: real, usable investments in our schools. That means fair special education reimbursement, meeting the mental health needs of our kids, stronger support for our educators, and access to nutritious school meals at no cost for every child,” Underly said. “These priorities must be reflected in the upcoming state budget. Without meaningful investment and an aid commitment from our Legislature, the burden continues to fall on local property taxpayers.”
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U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, right, meets with Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador on April 17, 2025. Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, had been seeking a meeting with Abrego Garcia after the administration said it mistakenly deported him to a mega-prison in his home country. (Photo via Van Hollen on X.)
This story was updated at 6:01 p.m. Eastern.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident the Trump administration erroneously deported to his native El Salvador, appeared to be in good health and had been moved from a notorious mega-prison to another detention center, as his case tests the limits of executive power to override due process rights in the United States, Sen. Chris Van Hollen told reporters Friday.
Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, met Thursday with Abrego Garcia and briefed reporters on the visit after landing Friday afternoon at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C.
The meeting with Van Hollen was Abrego Garcia’s first contact outside of the U.S. and El Salvador immigration and legal systems since he was deported in March, the senator said.
“His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anybody outside a prison since he was abducted,” Van Hollen said Friday.
Accompanied by Abrego Garcia’s wife, mother and brother at Dulles, Van Hollen said he’d been preparing to catch his plane out of El Salvador Thursday evening when he got word from the U.S. embassy that he would be able to meet with Abrego Garcia.
The meeting came at the end of Van Hollen’s second day in the country, where he faced difficulties securing an in-person meeting or phone call with the Salvadoran citizen. The second-term senator traveled to the Central American country this week to urge the Salvadoran government to release Abrego Garcia and to meet with him.
Abrego Garcia told Van Hollen he’d been taken to a detention center in Baltimore, Van Hollen said Friday. From there, he was transported to Texas and then flown to El Salvador, where he was detained at the notorious mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.
Abrego Garcia was moved on April 9 from CECOT to another El Salvador detention center, Van Hollen reported. The conditions at the new prison were better, but Abrego Garcia was still denied access to the outside world, including communication with his family or lawyers, which is a violation of international law, Van Hollen said.
The meeting occurred under close supervision from Salvadoran officials, Van Hollen said, but Abrego Garcia appeared in adequate health.
“On a very cursory examination, he appeared OK,” Van Hollen said.
Van Hollen on Thursday shared a picture on social media of his meeting with Abrego Garcia, who appeared in civilian clothes.
While he said Abrego Garcia’s individual case was tragic, Van Hollen said it had even larger implications for the strength of constitutional rights to due process.
“This should not be an issue for Republicans or Democrats,” he said. “This is an issue for every American who cares about our Constitution, who cares about personal liberty, who cares about due process and who cares about what makes America so different, which is adherence to all of those things. This is an American issue.”
Noting that the administration has ignored federal courts at every level — including a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that President Donald Trump’s administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States — Van Hollen said officials at the U.S. embassy in El Salvador told him they had not received any instruction from the administration to seek his release.
“It’s very clear that the president, the Trump administration, are blatantly, flagrantly disagreeing with, defying, the order from the Supreme Court,” he said.
The Trump administration, which has admitted in court that Abrego Garcia’s deportation stemmed from an “administrative error,” continued Friday to be steadfast in refusing to return him.
The Trump administration has criticized Van Hollen’s advocacy for Abrego Garcia, and the White House targeted the senator on social media Friday.
“Oh, and by the way, @ChrisVanHollen — he’s NOT coming back,” a post on X from the official White House account read. The post included an illustration of a New York Times headline on the meeting, with two sections crossed out and replaced with administration claims about Abrego Garcia.
The administration has claimed there are logistical reasons it cannot repatriate Abrego Garcia, but some — including a Reagan-appointed federal appeals court judge on Thursday — have said the executive branch is defying the Supreme Court order.
Van Hollen said the Trump administration has promised to pay El Salvador up to $15 million to detain the prisoners, but noted that Democrats in the U.S. Senate are not “totally powerless” to stop those payments.
“Appropriations need to go through the Congress, and that $15 million, you can be sure we’re going to be looking for where it is because that wasn’t authorized in previous appropriations,” he said.
He said that while Democrats are in the minority in both houses of Congress, they could block any Senate funding bill that included payments for detention in El Salvador.
“You can be sure that I won’t support the use of one penny of taxpayer dollars to keep Abrego Garcia illegally detained in El Salvador,” he said.
Jay O. Rothman, president of the University of Wisconsin System, speaks during the UW Board of Regents meeting hosted at Union South at the University of Wisconsin–Madison on Feb. 9, 2023. (Photo by Althea Dotzour / UW–Madison)
Federal funding cuts and national culture war politics cast a long shadow over a state legislative committee hearing Thursday as Wisconsin’s higher education leaders asked lawmakers for additional investments in the next state budget — warning that disinvestment by the state could damage public universities’, private nonprofit schools’ and technical colleges’ ability to serve students and the state.
Lawmakers working on the 2025-27 state budget are gathering feedback from agency heads and members of the public just as higher education institutions across the country are facing an onslaught of threats from the Trump administration.
As Republican lawmakers on the Assembly Colleges and Universities Committee grilled Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman and other higher education leaders on their budget goals, they appeared skeptical about providing additional funding. They pointed to current levels of spending and diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which state Republicans have demanded be cut from the UW. Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, expressed concerns about federal cuts to research and recent targeting of international students whose visas have been revoked.
Rothman asked lawmakers whether the state is going to let its public universities “atrophy.” If not, he said, new investments need to be made. The UW system has requested an additional $855 million, with the support of Gov. Tony Evers, in the upcoming budget.
The money would be used to keep college affordable and accessible for Wisconsinites, invest in retaining talented staff and support innovation, Rothman said. He told lawmakers the money would help UW maintain its two-year campuses and avoid raising tuition.
“We are at a state that without additional support from the state, student successes that we are seeing across our universities are at risk,” Rothman said. He noted that the state’s investment in the system has not kept up with inflation, and the money would put Wisconsin at the median nationwide. This would be up from Wisconsin’s current position of 43rd out of 50 when it comes to state investment in public universities.
This is not the first time Rothman has testified to lawmakers about the system’s request, having addressed lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee, which is in charge of writing the budget on April 1.
Committee Chair Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Greenville) asked Rothman where he thought the money would come from.
“That is a challenge for the Legislature… This is an investment in the future of the state. We are returning $23 for every dollar that is invested in the Universities of Wisconsin,” Rothman said, citing a number that comes from a 2018 study.
Murphy told Rothman that he was “leery” of that number.
“If we’re increasing the money to the university by $855 million, are you telling me that I can expect $20 billion?” Murphy asked.
Rothman pointed out that lawmakers and their constituents have benefited from the existence of UW schools.
“At this table, you represent districts that have 9,000 students currently in school at the Universities of Wisconsin… More than half of you have attended one of our universities and hopefully you have benefitted from that,” Rothman said.
Murphy attended UW-Fox Valley from 1972 to 1974, according to his legislative biography. The school was merged with UW-Fond du Lac and UW-Oshkosh in 2018, and is now known as UW Oshkosh-Fox Cities. That campus is set to close in June.
Trump administration threats hanging over college campuses across the nation were central to the discussion over whether lawmakers should provide universities additional state funding.
Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) brought up diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at UW institutions. An audit released last week found campuses haven’t been tracking their spending on these efforts. The audit was part of Republican lawmakers’ ongoing targeting of DEI, and comes as the Trump administration has also ramped up efforts to try to eliminate diversity programs in education.
Republican lawmakers used staff pay and capital projects funding during the last legislative cycle as a negotiating tool with the UW system to get concessions on DEI efforts, including a reduction in positions focused on DEI.
“We’re trying to see more of an effort to see in money savings, and I know there’s been reductions in positions, but there’s also been requests to add more,” Nedweski said. “We had a deal on DEI. Would you say that the UW system kept up their end of the deal?”
“Yes,” Rothman said.
“I wouldn’t say that’s what the audit says,” Nedweski said.
Rothman responded that the UW has gone above and beyond the terms of the deal, having reduced staffing by 43 positions even though the agreed upon deadline won’t arrive until December 2026.
“We were on our way when the [Legislative Audit Bureau] did its field work in May of 2024,” Rothman said. “Since that time, we have made significant progress, and we are in compliance with the agreement as it relates to the positions. We’ve exceeded what we said we were going to do.”
Nedweski said she was concerned about being able to measure the outcomes of the investments in DEI programs.
“We now have a pattern within the UW system and our other state agencies where taxpayers are making investments in things like employees teleworking without knowing if there’s productivity. We’ve heard repeatedly from the UW system that we don’t really know their actual impact,” Nedweski said.
Rothman noted that nearly 36,000 students graduate with degrees from Universities of Wisconsin schools each year.
“I think that is an extraordinary [return-on-investment] for our state,” Rothman said.
Murphy asked Rothman about a letter from the Trump administration sent to over 60 schools, including UW-Madison, warning that they could face consequences if they don’t address “antisemitism” on campus. UW-Madison is one of many schools where students joined encampment protests against the war in Gaza last spring. The Trump administration has said the university didn’t properly protect Jewish students.
“How do we control this antisemitism problem on our campuses?” Murphy asked.
Before Rothman answered the question, Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) interjected, asking what the topic had to do with the budget.
Murphy shot back that, as chair of the committee, he could ask what he wanted.
“If you think this isn’t a budgetary issue, I think you should talk to Columbia University and see what they would say about that,” Murphy said. Columbia became a target of the Trump administration after large student protests there and has had over $400 million in federal funding, mostly for medical and other scientific research, terminated, despite agreeing to police student protesters and place the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies under scrutiny.
Rothman said the UW system is navigating First Amendment issues and being inclusive, but that the UW has done a lot of work to ensure that all students, including Jewish students, those with conservative beliefs, veterans, those who are disabled, “feel they are part of the campus community.”
Democrats on the committee expressed concerns about federal cuts to research funding, potential threats to Pell Grants and student loans and the targeting of international students.
Emerson asked about the impact of federal cuts to research. The Trump administration has been targeting funding for higher education institutions across the country, including cutting over $12 million in research funding to UW-Madison. The flagship campus has laid off six employees so far.
Rothman said he is deeply concerned about the federal cuts. UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee are both tier one research institutions and the federal government invests about $1 billion annually in UW schools for research, Rothman said.
“It’s not like we can start five years from now, six years from now… These research engines were built over generations,” Rothman said. “If they are not maintained, that’s gone.”
Rothman said the impact would be felt in sectors across the state including as research would be lost and researchers even in the private sector could be affected as many are educated at public universities.
Rothman said that philanthropic support would be incapable of filling the gap that would be left from federal funding cuts.
Nedweski said she thought there is skepticism among taxpayers about the federal funding of research. She asked whether the UW system is expecting Wisconsin taxpayers to pick up the cost.
“I don’t think that the state could afford to pick up what could be lost,” Rothman said. “I think what’s going to happen if that occurs is that research capacity is going to decline, research infrastructure is going to decline and that will be our new reality going forward.”
Emerson also asked Rothman whether the Trump administration’s move to cancel foreign students’ visas is having a “chilling effect” on prospective international students. Dozens of UW students and alumni, including 26 at UW-Madison, have had their visas cancelled by the Trump administration in recent weeks as a part of an unprecedented nationwide move by the federal government targeting international students.
“Do we have fewer applications from international students for next school year?… Are there international students who are thinking of finishing their bachelor’s or higher education back home?” Emerson asked.
Rothman said that it was too early to know as most applications have already been submitted. He said that about 10,000 international students attend UW schools.
“We may have a number of international students who might be accepted into our universities that will not come because of this. We know there is anxiety among our international students just generally, for reasons that are understandable,” Rothman said, adding that the university is seeking to support students, but is not providing legal representation to them.
Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities President Eric Fulcomer told lawmakers the top priority for private nonprofit colleges and universities is doubling the funding for the Wisconsin Grant (WG-PNP) Program, which provides assistance to undergraduate, Wisconsin residents enrolled in a degree or certificate program at non-profit, independent colleges or universities based in Wisconsin, from $57 million to $114 million.
Fulcomer’s organization represents 22 private nonprofit colleges and universities in Wisconsin, including Marquette University, the Medical College of Wisconsin, Beloit College and St. Norbert College. It also includes Northland College, which was founded in 1892, but announced in February the school will be closing after this year’s graduation due to financial hardships.
There has been no additional investment in the grant program in the last two state budgets. Private, nonprofit schools don’t receive state funding to sustain their operations, but many students rely on the funding to be able to attend the schools.
Among its neighboring states, Wisconsin ranks last when it comes to the amount of need-based grants awarded to students attending private nonprofit schools. The investment would not bring Wisconsin to the top, but would bring it to the middle among states in the Midwest. Currently, Wisconsin can give a maximum amount of $4,400.
The schools’ request is more than the governor’s budget request; Evers proposed a 20% increase.
“I would prefer a larger increase,” Fulcomer said. “20% would be welcomed but it’s not enough to move the needle.”
If there is no increase in the budget, Fulcomer said the award will need to be reduced to $3,850, bringing Wisconsin even further below its peers.
Nedweski asked if he had suggestions for where the money for the budget request could come from. The state has a $4 billion budget surplus, which Evers wants to pull from to fund many priorities in his budget.
Fulcomer noted that about a quarter of all bachelor’s degrees and a third of all master’s degrees come from Wisconsin’s private, nonprofit schools and that students are providing millions in revenue to the state via taxes.
“It’s a good investment, but I’m not in a position to tell you where you might find those dollars,” Fulcomer said.
“We are not operating with a lot of extra money in the next biennium. If you get more, it has to come out of somebody else’s bucket,” Nedweski said.
Rep. Rob Kreibich (R-New Richmond) commented that he thinks lawmakers “should reward success” and he admires the retention and placement rates for the private schools.
Emerson asked about what would happen if the Pell Grants were reduced or eliminated — a question that comes as the federal grants face a shortfall and as there is also uncertainty surrounding the future of student loans.
“Potentially we’d be looking at a 27% cut to enrollment,” Fulcomer said. “Cutting the Pell Grant or eliminating the Pell Grant would be devastating for our sector.”
Wisconsin Technical College System President Layla Merrifield asked for about $60 million from the state, including $45 million that would go toward general aid for its 16 colleges. The technical college system’s budget for 2024-25 totaled about $1.3 billion with $592.9 million coming from state aid.
“There’s almost no better investment that you could make in Wisconsin’s economy, in its workforce and its people than the technical college system,” Merrifield said. “Our outcomes are well documented. We are transparent with our data, both our failings and our successes.”
Murphy thanked Merrifield for her approach to the budget.
It is “a little bit what we were looking for from the UW today…,” Murphy said. “They want $855 million, but it’s taken nine months, and we still don’t have very much detail around what they expect to do with that money.”
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A surveillance van or "critical response vehicle". (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin has issued a letter asking elected leaders in Milwaukee to temper the acquisition and use of surveillance technologies by the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). On Thursday evening, the police department went before the Fire and Police Commission (FPC) to push for the use of facial recognition technology. This, along with the common council’s recent approval of drone usage by the MPD, has spurred the ACLU to call for a two-year pause on the adoption of new surveillance technologies, and craft frameworks to regulate the technology MPD already has “with meaningful opportunities for community input.”
Although it acknowledges that many on the council and within MPD “care deeply about the safety and well-being of our city,” the ACLU’s letter also warns that “history has shown time and again, authoritarianism does not always arrive with flashing lights and villainous speeches — it often comes wrapped in routine procedure, paperwork, and people ‘just doing their jobs.’”
“We are already seeing how surveillance technology is being weaponized in real time,” the ACLU continued, citing data-gathering, automatic license plate readers, artificial intelligence (AI), and other tools that are used to “target and detain individuals.”
The MPD has long denied that it uses facial recognition technology. As part of an investigation into surveillance technologies which the department obtained ahead of the 2020 Democratic National Convention (DNC), Wisconsin Examiner reviewed “investment justification” records from the state’s Homeland Security Council which suggested that the Southeastern Threat Analysis Center — a homeland security-focused aspect of the MPD’s intel-gathering Fusion Center — utilized Clear facial recognition technology. It was described as a “mobile device” that would allow police to “conduct timely identification of individuals in the field to prevent terrorist attack.”
By contrast, MPD PowerPoint presentations prepared for the April 17 FPC meeting openly advertise the use of facial recognition. The PowerPoint details two examples of arrests made using facial recognition software. One “case study” from March 2024 involved a fatal gun violence incident where the suspects fled. The PowerPoint said that they were later seen at a gas station, and that facial recognition software provided leads to both suspects. Noting that “facial recognition results are advisory in nature and are to be treated as investigative leads only,” the PowerPoint states that a Department of Corrections agent confirmed the software’s results, leading to arrests the next morning.
One of the PowerPoint slides shows in-custody photographs of the arrested men above pictures of them masked in a gas station. The slides showed that the facial recognition software had a “similarity” rating of 99.7% for one man, and 98.1% for another. Both men are waiting for a trial. The other case study focused on a sexual assault incident involving a gun. Like the other example, surveillance footage of the suspect from a gas station helped lead to the arrest. MPD sent out a facial recognition request to local agencies. It was answered by the Wauwatosa Police Department, which returned two pictures of the same individual. The pictures had similarity ratings of 99.1% and 98.9% respectively. The arrested man was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The PowerPoint presentation lists 14 cases from the North and South Sides of Milwaukee. It states that MPD “would be diligent in balancing the need for effective, accurate investigations and the need to respect the privacy of others,” and that facial recognition does not establish probable cause to arrest someone or obtain a warrant. “It may generate investigative leads through a combination of automated biometric comparisons and human analysis,” the PowerPoint states. “Corroborating information must be developed through additional investigation.”
PUBLIC Facial Rec for FPC
A PowerPoint presentation detailing the Milwaukee PD’s plans for facial recognition software.
MPD has reviewed procedures for the technology’s use nationwide, and stated that “oversight of the system will consist of an audit report showing information requested, accessed, searched, or disseminated.” All requests for facial recognition must be approved by a supervisor, and the department will keep a log of each search and the type of crime involved. Biometrica is the chosen facial recognition vendor. The PowerPoint states that the company has worked with the NAACP and the ACLU to provide anti-bias training for users of the software.
The reassurances, however, do little to quell the concerns of privacy advocates. In their letter to the MPD and common council, the ACLU of Wisconsin highlighted ongoing immigrant roundups by the Trump administration, and the deportation of Milwaukee residents to a notorious maximum security terrorism prison in El Salvador. “It is being used to monitor and prosecute political protesters, people seeking reproductive health care, LGBTQ+ individuals, and doctors trying to provide care,” the letter states. “These are not projections — these are present-day realities carried out by bad actors within the federal government and local jurisdictions.”
The ACLU letter warns, “while we trust that our local leaders and police officers have good intentions, history reminds us how quickly larger systems can override those intentions.”
In recent years MPD has expanded its network of surveillance cameras and other activities such as its phone surveillance operations remain shrouded in secrecy. MPD has also built up its social media surveillance footprint using AI-powered software, after downplaying the very existence of those activities in years past.
“Data collected in Milwaukee does not stay in Milwaukee,” the ACLU states. “Once it enters a federal pipeline, it can be accessed, shared, and used in ways we cannot predict — or stop. That’s why now, more than ever, we must choose restraint. The rule of law at the federal level is unraveling before our eyes.”
The same set of concerns came up during a March 20 FPC meeting, where commissioners discussed the MPD’s use of drones and facial recognition technology. Police officials claimed that complaints about law enforcement using drones lagged behind the rate of agencies acquiring the technology, suggesting that the public approves. Police officials said that MPD’s “Airborne Assessment Team,” which is attached to the department’s Specialized Patrol Division, would help increase situational awareness, de-escalate dangerous situations, aid search-and-rescue, help manage major events and offer unique opportunities to “positively engage” with the community. In protest situations, drones would allow MPD to monitor an area while not physically placing officers nearby, whose presence could trigger an escalation among the protest crowd.
MPD said that its drones do not have facial recognition capabilities. Still, the growth of MPD’s surveillance powers have worried some community members. Commissioner Bree Spencer said during the meeting that it would be nice for a community-based tech advisory board to be established to help review MPD’s surveillance requests. Spencer said that nationwide and historically, it’s not unheard-of for law enforcement surveillance programs to get out of hand.
“I get it for water rescue, I’m very worried about things like protests,” said Spencer. “I think for very good reason. Our federal government is doing some very funky things right now with protesters. So I get what you’re saying, and I see in the SOP that you’re like, ‘We’re not going to do that.’ I don’t know if that’s sufficient in terms of a protection, particularly for people who are skeptical about the use of these technologies.”
Police officials said that drones are a crowd management tool, and that during the Republican National Convention (RNC) they helped monitor protest movements to ensure opposing groups didn’t come into contact with one another. Spencer reiterated, “I think I just worry about the cost to individual civil rights and, like, how that’s going to just keep growing in our society…I wish the public had more input into whether or not the use of this type of technology is happening here. Talking to the community is not the same as letting them have a decision about whether or not they want drones in their city being run by police.”
MPD spokespeople said the department based its drone usage procedures on best practice guidance from the ACLU, and that the department is “very late” to the drone game. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, for example, officially announced its drone program in 2021.
Ahead of the DNC nearly five years ago, the MPD acquired large white vans called “critical response vehicles”, which are also attached to the Specialized Patrol Division and came equipped with their own tethered aerial drones. Wisconsin Examiner found that the sheriff’s drones were used to monitor police accountability protests, with the number of flights dropping significantly once the protests subsided.
In its letter Thursday, the ACLU stressed that police abuse of surveillance “is not ancient history” but rather “it’s living memory for many in our city.” Some may remember the reign of police chief Harold Breier, who surveilled civil rights activists, LGBTQ+ communities, and Black Milwaukeeans. “And those who carried out that surveillance often believed they were ‘just doing their jobs.’” The ACLU’s letter questions what a personality like Chief Breier would do with today’s surveillance powers.
“We’re not calling for a ban,” the letter states. Instead, the ACLU calls for a two-year pause on acquiring new surveillance technologies, especially facial recognition technology, “while we assess the potential risks.” In the meantime, the letter urges city leaders to “pass a framework for regulating existing surveillance technology, such as adopting a Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) Ordinance to bring accountability to these decisions before it’s too late.”
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