“In the history of our country, this is a defining moral moment,” U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) told a crowd outside Cargo Coffee in downtown Madison Friday, as he stood on stage with Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin. 

Warnock has been traveling across the country to support Democratic candidates as his party tries to flip control of the U.S. House of Representative and Senate. He made a detour to Wisconsin, he told the Examiner, because he believes Crowley is a “good man” and because the stakes are high in Wisconsin, like they are in Georgia, due to both states’ history of Republican gerrymandering. “The next governor will preside over the next reapportionment,” he said, “and I think it’s important to have somebody like David Crowley in office.”

“We are seeing gerrymandering supercharged in the South and all across our country with this latest Callais decision,” he said, referring to a Supreme Court ruling  legal experts have called a severe blow to the Voting Rights Act. 

“Politicians are turning elections on their head, so that rather than the people picking their representatives, the politicians are cherry-picking their voters. It’s clear to me that Tom Tiffany will represent that same kind of approach,” Warnock said. 

Warnock, in addition to serving in the U.S. Senate, is the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia – the same pulpit once occupied by Martin Luther King, Jr. On the stage set up outside Cargo Coffee, he praised Crowley as a “man of faith” and a proven leader who has united voters across Milwaukee County. He recounted asking Crowley about his margin of victory in his last election as county executive. “And he answered, with a lot of humility, 85%” 

“Think about how divided our country really is,” Warnock said. “And this man won by 85% because he knows how to bring people together, how to get us to work together, because he understands that at the end of it all, the only way to rise is to rise together.”

He contrasted Crowley’s unifying vision with the divisiveness of the “people at the highest levels of our government.” 

After the event, Warnock told the Examiner he believes that when the midterms are over, after what he expects will be big midterm losses for Republicans, President Donald Trump “will feel the bruises and the humiliation of that,” making him dangerous.  “We need strong governors who will hold the line to protect their people.” 

For years, billionaire Republican donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein have given a lot of money to right-wing causes and Republican politicians. The Washington Post recently reported they rank second only to Elon Musk among the biggest donors in the current election cycle. While they live across the border in Lake Forest, Illinois, they take a special interest in Wisconsin. Yet the millions of dollars in donations they’ve given to the Wisconsin Republican Party look like chump change compared to the massive amount of money they’ve showered on the state since Tom Tiffany announced his run for governor.

The Uihliens upped their contributions to the state party from $20,000 in 2014 to $500,000 in 2017 and more than $1 million in 2018, according to campaign finance data published on the Wisconsin Ethics Commission’s Sunshine website.  Altogether, they gave about $3.6 million to the party between 2016 and 2024. But in 2025 and 2026, as Tiffany launched his campaign for governor, the Uihleins gave exponentially more —  about $34.8 million. 

Thanks to a loophole created under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, donors can sidestep limits on their contributions to particular candidates by giving unlimited money to political parties, which can then pass the money directly to the candidates. And the Republican Party of Wisconsin has funneled the Uihleins’ money directly to Tiffany. Almost all of the money Tiffany raised in the most recent reporting period came from the Uihleins and one other billionaire, Diane Hendricks.

The Uihleins support a lot of Republican candidates and causes, and would likely have supported the Republican no matter who was running for governor this year. But they have a special relationship with Tiffany. 

Back when he was serving in the Wisconsin state Senate, Tiffany’s district included Manitowish Waters, the small town where the Uihleins opened a resort, restaurant, spa, condominium complex and other businesses, turning the sleepy, lakeside community into a fancy tourist destination. 

Tiffany, who lived 30 miles away in Hazelhurst, was very helpful to the Uihleins when some local residents and environmentalists asked the DNR to study the damage caused by a dam on Rest Lake in Manitowish Waters. The dam kept water levels low in the fall so lakeshore property owners didn’t have to take in their piers and high in the spring, just in time for them to take out their boats. According to the River Alliance of Wisconsin, partially closing the dam’s gates in the spring, “to raise the levels back up in time for boating season” meant ”starving the Manitowish River of water at a time when fish spawn. Downstream river property owners would find mud flats where water had been the day before.”

A 2015 article, “Requiem for a River,” posted by the River Alliance, describes how Tiffany slipped a few sentences into the 2015-17 state budget undercutting regulation of the dam and pronouncing a “death sentence” for the Manitowish River, essentially turning Rest Lake, where the Uihliens owned a condominium complex, into a private lake. 

The tiny provision Tiffany added to the budget (#49 in a long list of last-minute budget tweaks), is titled “Dam Water Level Orders” and specifies that the Legislature must approve changes to a dam in Vilas County. With that deft maneuver, Tiffany killed a years-long effort by citizens to save the Manitowish River and rendered moot an environmental study by the DNR.

“What happened to the Manitowish River is a case study of how far we have fallen in resource conservation,” the River Alliance article concludes. “The Manitowish River now has upstream winners – well-connected and wealthy people who know how to use their influence to get what they want – and downstream losers without the same clout. Tiffany’s bill practically makes the Rest Lake chain a private waterway, in a state that prides itself on managing water in the public interest.”

“My constituents elected me to get results,” Tiffany said by way of explanation, in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report on his budget maneuver.

Tiffany’s constituents, of course, included the Uihleins.

His intervention in the matter of the Rest Lake dam was no small favor to the most well-connected and wealthy of all the constituents in his northern Wisconsin district. For the Uihleins, the transformation of Manitowish Waters was a special, personal cause.

Elizabeth Uihlein’s intense focus on funding improvements and reshaping even tiny aesthetic details of Manitowish Waters to her liking divided residents, according to a 2015 article in the Journal Sentinel. Some people appreciated the big investment in the community. Others did not like being left out of decisions about public spaces and objected to how their community was forced to conform to one wealthy woman’s tastes. 

Elizabeth Uihlein herself told the Journal Sentinel, “It’s like a little Aspen. It’s beautiful, but it’s dying.” She suggested that local residents should be grateful for her generosity in providing for them, since they would never make it on their own. “The whole thing is dying up there,” she said. “The money had to come from elsewhere.”

The Uilheins, founders of the packing supply company Uline, are among the richest people in the U.S. They were also some of former Gov. Walker’s biggest donors, a fact that was mentioned in news coverage of the sweetheart deal they got on a swath of lakefront property in Manitowish Waters in 2016. Walker’s DNR gave the Uihleins a stretch of Rest Lake shoreline in exchange for a parcel of state forest land the couple owned in a different part of the state. DNR officials came up with the land swap, the AP reported, after critics objected to the state’s proposal to sell the lakeshore property to Elizabeth Uihlein for more than $100,000 less than its appraised value. 

Long before the deal went through, the Uihleins started making unauthorized improvements on the public land they planned to buy. Some local officials were shocked to discover the extensive paths along the shoreline. Elizabeth Uihlein waved away their concerns. Later, with Walker’s help, she was able to claim the property as her own.

The section of Rest Lake shoreline the Uihleins received from the state gave lake access to their condominium complex. Tiffany’s deft tweak to the state budget ensured that boating conditions remained perfect in the spring, and in the fall the Uihleins and residents of their condo complex never had to go through the hassle of taking in their docks. 

It’s worth asking what kind of return on investment the Uihleins expect to receive from their hyperscale donations to Wisconsin Republicans this year.

“The Uihleins wanted to take over a city. Tom Tiffany gave them their law change,” says Democratic analyst Scot Ross. “A decade later the Uihleins give his campaign $35 million. The dam man wouldn’t have a damn campaign without the Uihleins’ millions.”

In addition to the $34.8 million they funneled to Tiffany through the state party, The Uihleins have also given millions of dollars this cycle to try to elect Republican majorities in the state Legislature. In some cases, they’ve provided almost all of the campaign cash those Republican candidates have raised. 

As the progressive group A Better Wisconsin Together put it in a statement on the politicians who received those donations, “it certainly raises questions about who they’re really looking out for.”

MADISON – About 1,000 people gathered at 2 p.m. on a sunny Saturday afternoon for a No Kings protest in James Madison park near Lake Monona in downtown Madison. The crowd swelled to about 1,500 as protesters marched to the Capitol in a long line with police stopping traffic at intersections along the way. The Forward Marching Band played “Solidarity Forever” on tubas, horns and drums as marchers carrying signs protesting the Trump administration rounded the square and converged in front of City Hall to listen to speakers who urged everyone to vote early in the 2026 midterm elections.

Gina Idsinga came to the rally from her home in McFarland with a homemade sign that displayed the names of her five grandchildren and the statement: “I need to be able to tell my  grandchildren I did not stay silent.” 

“I feel very strongly about what is going on and we just need to band together and keep community in mind,” she said. “No country is a good country without taking care of its people and this administration is definitely not taking care of its people.”

Beside her, Idsinga’s friend Dee Reid carried a sign that said “No crowns for clowns.” She said she came out to support “all the things that this country has worked hard to keep,” including abortion rights, Social Security and Obamacare. She has been thinking about retiring soon, she said, but the cost of living is making her worry about whether she will be able to stop working. Her kids are also struggling with high costs, she said. “Both have really good careers and can’t buy a house. Interest rates are high, housing is not affordable and things are going in the wrong direction, so we need to focus on what’s good for us and not on starting wars in places we really don’t need to right now.”

Dineen Seymour-Nahn, a retired public school teacher in Madison said, “We have to vote in Crowley and Josh Kaul, and just vote in Democrats up and down the ticket, because really, if we don’t win this, who knows what will happen in 2028? With Tom Tiffany in there, he’ll undo everything we’ve done even in the last two years with some really good Supreme Court races. All that will come back – gerrymandering, anti-abortion laws, so that’s why we’re here.”

Sue Jennik, the president of the  League of Women Voters of Dane County stood behind a table in front of City Hall with information on the candidates running in Wisconsin in 2026, the proposed constitutional amendments voters will see on on their ballots and instructions on how to register, vote early and use a ballot drop box: “Everything people need to know to protect their right to vote,” she said.

“Don’t trust an email that tells you you’re registered to vote if you just moved to Wisconsin,” said Melissa Markquart, a singer in the protest group the Raging Grannies. “We have grannies out registering people to vote, and they’ve had people tell them they got emails that said they were already registered – but there’s no automatic registration in Wisconsin,” she added.

Ajak Johnson, one of the march organizers, ran back and forth along the line directing marchers throughout. “These national events keep happening and we keep organizing things here on the ground,” she said. “I think it’s important for people to come together.” 

Early voting starts in Wisconsin on Oct 20, she added, “and I would just hope that people would leave here with a plan to early vote.”

It was a dreary, rainy Thursday morning when the state education department announced some depressing news: According to the final, official numbers, 62% of Wisconsin school districts will receive less money in state general aid this year than they did last year. 

Schools are struggling because, for the third year in a row, the state budget put no new money into general school aid, the Department of Public Instruction pointed out in an Oct. 15 press release. That’s after more than 15 years during which annual adjustments to per-pupil general operating revenue in Wisconsin schools has failed to keep pace with inflation. The latest school funding data arrived from DPI under the header: “Nearly two-thirds of districts will receive less aid due to flat state funding, antiquated funding formula.” 

About an hour later, a press release from Gov. Tony Evers’ office cheerfully announced that Wisconsin has ended the fiscal year with a $3.3 billion budget balance and a record  $2.1 billion in the state’s “rainy day” fund. The top line from the governor’s office message was upbeat: “Despite continued national economic turbulence, Wisconsin maintains strong fiscal position, reaching seven consecutive years of record-high General Fund balances during Gov. Evers’ tenure.”

These two announcements, although dramatically different in mood, are directly connected. The reason Wisconsin has a big budget surplus is largely because the state has abandoned its commitment to fund its public schools. 

A slide presentation by Anne Chapman, research director for the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, graphically illustrates the decline in annual adjustments to per-pupil general operating revenue for Wisconsin public school districts since the 2008-2009 school year. Using Legislative Fiscal Bureau data, Chapman shows the steadily widening gap between the annual adjustment in general operating dollars schools would have had each year if revenue had kept pace with inflation and what they actually got. This year the shortfall reached $3,571 per kid. 

At the same time, schools have been carrying about $1.29 billion in special education costs that are not reimbursed by state or federal aid.

Schools have never bounced back from the drastic cuts to education spending during the administration of former Gov. Scott Walker. But the current budget situation is unprecedented 

“The 2025-27 state budget provided no increase to general school aids. This was an extremely unusual policy choice, especially in light of the fact that the state had a $4.3 billion surplus going into the budget process,” she says. “The last instance of flat or negative general aids across both years of a biennial budget was the 2009-11 budget, at which time the state was facing a deficit.”

In other words, in a historic act of stinginess, the Legislature, while staring at a sizeable budget surplus, chose not to add any money to general school aid, the largest form of state support for K-12 schools. That was a deliberate policy choice, not some sort of emergency measure taken under duress. 

Wisconsin’s school funding formula is complicated —  a mix of state and local funds divvied up based on school districts’ property wealth, enrollment numbers and spending patterns. Different districts get different amounts of funding from the state — and some get none at all. When funding is flat, statewide, some districts get more and some get less. This is the “antiquated” system DPI referred to in its press release. It uses outdated metrics, and doesn’t account for the effects of high poverty or large numbers of English language learners. 

State schools superintendent Jill Underly expanded on this in her State of Education speech in September: “The formula places value on the wrong things. It values enrollment, district spending, and property value, rather than student needs. It fails to ask the most essential question: how much does it actually cost to educate the students who live in a district so that they have an equal opportunity to succeed? A student’s opportunity for success should not depend on their zip code. If we are going to improve the academic outcomes for ALL students, then the funding formula must prioritize student need.”

Because of the complexity of school finance, and the patchwork of have and have-not districts, it’s hard to figure the exact amount Wisconsin has underfunded its schools since 2009, when overall per-pupil spending stopped keeping pace with inflation. But you can get a rough, back of the envelope estimate by taking the three-year rolling average for calculating revenue limit and per pupil categorical aid  from 2025-26  — 781,367 students — and multiplying it by a calculation derived from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s data on the cumulative shortfall in annual adjustments to per-pupil general operating revenue, which was $3,468.60. The number you get is $2.7 billion in combined state aid and property tax levies. If the state returned to its much-discussed commitment to fund two-thirds of the cost of public schools, that would mean we’d have to allocate $1.8 billion of the current $3.3 billion surplus to make schools whole. Add to that the $1.29 billion in special ed costs the state has sloughed off on the schools, and it reaches $3 billion.

One of the main effects of the state deciding not to fund schools is that the burden has fallen instead on local property taxpayers, who are confronting another surge in referendum requests from their local school districts in the voting booth this fall.   

Gov. Evers has proposed, by his own estimate in an address to the Wisconsin Public Education Network, $7 billion in new funding for schools that was rejected by the state Legislature over his two terms. He was bitterly disappointed when the state Senate rejected a $1.8 billion deal he struck with Republican legislative leaders that included some money for increased special education funding and property tax relief along with income tax cuts. 

But in his latest message, the governor embraces the unspent money sitting in state coffers as “damn good news.” 

“We’ve ended every fiscal year I’ve been governor with a positive balance,” he says. “We’ve shown that state government can work, and work better for the people we serve, and I’m incredibly proud of our efforts.”

Along with the surplus, the governor’s office celebrates the “largest balance in the ‘rainy day’ fund in state history” — at $2.1 billion, it’s six times larger than when Evers took office.

Meanwhile, schools are in worse and worse shape, and all over the state, people are struggling to keep up with the cost of housing as property taxes rise. 

Whatever feeling of satisfaction there is in knowing the state has squirreled away a fat rainy day fund, when you look outside, it’s raining. 

U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil’s investments helped make him millionaire, nearly doubling his net worth from $812,000 to nearly $1.9 million since he went to Congress, Wisconsin Watch reports. According to the financial data tracking platform Unusual Whales, Steil’s stock portfolio was the fourth most profitable among members of Congress in 2025, outperforming the S&P 500 by 62.5%. Yet Steil is running as a watchdog on congressional stock trading. 

“You deserve a Congress you can trust, that’s working for you. … I’m leading the charge to ban members of Congress from trading stocks,” Steil says in a campaign ad now running in Wisconsin’s suddenly competitive 1st Congressional District.

The ad refers to Steil’s Stop Insider Trading Act, which failed in the Senate this week. Steil blamed Democrats for blocking his attempt at “ethics reform” and vowed to keep fighting.  But Wisconsin’s Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin called the bill a “sham,” pointing out that there are much stronger bills that, unlike Steil’s, require members to divest their stock holdings.

Steil’s bill allows members of Congress to keep and sell stocks. It places no restrictions on their purchases of cryptocurrency holdings, betting in prediction markets or trades in industry-specific mutual funds or private stock offerings from corporations. 

These giant loopholes drew the attention of Steil’s colleague U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, who grilled Steil on the shortcomings in his bill during a House Rules Committee hearing on July 20. 

“There are many bills that have been introduced … that would ensure that the sale and the purchase of stocks is banned, and this bill does not do that,” Neguse pointed out. He and Steil debated whether a disclosure rule in Steil’s bill is a sufficient safeguard (Neguse didn’t think so), and why the bill didn’t cover prediction markets. 

The Senate unanimously passed a ban on members and staff participating in prediction markets, just one week after a U.S. special forces soldier was charged with using classified information to bet on the capture of the Venezuelan president. Members of Congress have access to all kinds of sensitive information they could use for personal gain by placing bets on wars, economic crises or elections, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned. Why can’t the House pass the same ban, Neguse asked. Steil replied that he has been working on a separate bill concerning prediction markets, which are a “new and novel technology.” 

“It took the Senate a day!” Neguse shot back. “It’s a one-page resolution. It literally is a paragraph. It just says members of the Senate are banned from participating in prediction markets.” Neguse suggested that the House adopt the Senate’s language and pass the same resolution immediately. 

Instead, Steil has crafted a narrow bill that imposes fines on members and their families if they bet on specific government policy matters that come to their attention through their congressional work. Like his narrow stock-trading bill, which avoids making members give up lucrative investments, the Stop Lawmakers from Predicting Act takes a permissive view of members interested in playing in prediction markets unless there is a specific, demonstrable conflict of interest that a member’s colleagues on the House ethics panel deem worthy of a fine.

At best, that’s a different goal than the “Congress you can trust” Steil talks about in his campaign ad. Instead of protecting the public from corrupt public officials who seek to profit from their privileged perch, Steil is intent on not making things too uncomfortable for his fellow members sitting on cushy portfolios.

It says a lot that Steil’s prediction market bill and his Stop Insider Trading Act both have the full support of President Donald Trump. As Baldwin points out, Trump is exempt from Steil’s proposed restrictions on stock trading, even though Trump made 21,000 stock trades and added $2.2 billion to his personal wealth in just the first year of his second term.

This is the real hole in Steil’s claim to be an ethics watchdog in Congress. His compromised reform proposals don’t come close to making up for the heavy lifting he has been doing in office carrying water for Trump. He has been a chief enabler for a president who is setting new records for unethical behavior as he uses his office to enrich himself. Along with his weak efforts at “ethics reform,” Steil has been pushing new voting restrictions dear to Trump’s heart. His proposed national Voter ID Act is even more restrictive than Wisconsin’s toughest-in-the-nation voter ID law, barring the use of student IDs to vote and potentially disenfranchising millions of eligible voters who don’t meet the requirements. 

Steil does not present as a rage-filled MAGA warrior. Like his mentor, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, he has repeatedly won reelection by comfortable margins while projecting a friendly, thoughtful image in his home district, even as his work in Washington diverges from his constituents’ interests. But as crises pile up, it’s getting harder to put a pleasant gloss on loyalty to an administration that is rapaciously devouring the nation’s wealth while trying to disenfranchise its citizens. 

Wisconsin’s 1st CD has attracted national attention recently as the political landscape gets tougher for Republicans even in solidly red House districts. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added Steil’s reelection race to its Red to Blue list and an internal DCCC poll conducted Sept. 21-23 — with a margin of error of 4.4% — found the race is a dead heat between Steil and his challenger, former VA hospital nurse Mitchell Berman, with the two candidates tied 48-48 among likely voters, a plurality of whom identified as Republicans.

A new Berman campaign ad, paid for in part by the DCCC, which now sees Steil as a target, emphasizes Steil’s stock portfolio. In it, Berman declares, “Public service shouldn’t be about getting rich.” Steil couldn’t have said it better himself.

The Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, has been a reliable ally of President Donald Trump in Congress. He objected to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, voted repeatedly against reining in Trump’s war in Iran, supported the massive healthcare cuts that are hitting rural Wisconsin particularly hard, and cast the deciding vote in the House for a measure that, had it not stalled in the Senate, would have banned all AI regulation by the states for the next 10 years.

But recently Tiffany has softened his tone, distancing himself from some of Trump’s most unpopular positions. Just this month he conceded that Biden won the 2020 presidential election and said it’s time to wind down the war in Iran. He also claims he wants to “preserve Medicaid for our most vulnerable” and is campaigning on preventing AI data centers from eating up Wisconsin’s farmland.

A recent text to voters from the Tiffany campaign strikes a friendly, moderate tone, declaring “it’s time to fix problems.”

“When I’m governor, we’ll raise academic standards. We’ll make health care more transparent, stop Wall Street from buying our homes, and lower property taxes. Kids who can read, prices you can see, and a home you can own. That’s a Wisconsin that works for everyone, and that’s the commonsense governor I’ll be.”

But this week, the mask slipped. 

On Thursday, Tiffany’s campaign blocked two reporters from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel from covering a campaign event. Taking a page from Trump, who yanked White House press credentials from CNN, POLITICO and MS NOW this week because he doesn’t like their reporting, Tiffany and his campaign staff called the Journal-Sentinel’s coverage “slanted” and said only journalists who produce what the campaign deems “balanced” coverage will be allowed to report on his candidacy. 

Tiffany’s effort to keep out journalists whose reporting he doesn’t like violates the same constitutional principle protecting the free press that a federal judge cited when he ordered the White House to restore press passes to the three news outlets Trump banned.

When he was asked about Trump’s White House press ban earlier this week, Tiffany claimed to be a believer in an “open, free press” and said he was not planning to restrict journalists’ access. But, as Henry Redman reports, his campaign not only blocked Journal-Sentinel  reporters Mary Spicuzza and David Clarey from covering Tiffany’s event Thursday, it followed up with a personal attack on Spicuzza from the campaign’s official  social media account, calling her a “liberal activist” and doubling down on the Trump-like threat to ban journalists whose stories Tiffany doesn’t consider “balanced.”

Those stories likely include Spicuzza’s report this week on campaign finance records showing that three billionaires are responsible for about two-thirds of the campaign cash Tiffany has raised so far. 

Spicuzza’s serious, factual journalism raises real questions about whose interests Tiffany would represent as governor — the millions of ordinary Wisconsinites whose problems he says he wants to solve, or his three ultra-rich donors, Diane Hendricks and Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein — two of whom live in Illinois —who have given him close to $10 million. Richard Uihlein’s Restoration of America PAC has separately spent another $11.3 million to boost Tiffany, Spicuzza and her colleague Eva Wen report. All that money has given Tiffany a massive financial advantage in the governor’s race, they point out.

By banning journalists and ducking multiple debates, Tiffany reinforces the impression that he prefers to remain in a bubble with like-minded Republicans and high-dollar donors, instead of making himself available to the public and the reporters whose job it is to shine a light on public officials and keep voters informed. That does not bode well for a potential Tiffany administration.

In addition to Tiffany’s Trump-like aversion to criticism and his attacks on a widely respected reporter, his coziness with the conspiracy-minded fringe elements of the Republican party are cause for concern. 

This week, Examiner reporters Redman and Baylor Spears published an investigative report on Tiffany supporter Leonard Boltz, the pilot who crashed while flying Tiffany in a private plane earlier this month. Boltz, the chair of the Langlade County Republican Party and a retired major in the U.S. Air Force, has spent a lot of time flying Tiffany around the state in his small, private plane during the current campaign season. He is also deeply involved in promulgating election-related conspiracy theories and, Spears and Redman report, has said that if Tiffany loses in November it will be because of “cheating” by Democrats. 

Unlike Tiffany, Boltz does not present as a friendly, folksy rural Wisconsinite. Nor has he backed away from the more paranoid edges of MAGA world. In a video of a speech he gave to the Langlade Republican Party in June, linked in Redman and Spears’ story,  he paces and rants, spewing dark warnings about cheating Democrats whom he says are engaged in rampant voter fraud. He gave that speech in front of a poster proclaiming the heroism of Harry Wait, the Racine County election conspiracy theorist who was convicted of breaking the law by impersonating Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Racine Mayor Cory Mason to request absentee ballots in their names. Boltz, like Wait, wanted to drive Vos out of office for not doing enough to overturn the 2020 election results. 

It’s sobering to contemplate the possibility of a governor of Wisconsin who is close to the most out-there conspiracy theorists in the state party and who has championed their preposterous claims. 

It’s even more concerning if that governor considers himself above scrutiny by the press. When Spears and Redman traveled to a Tiffany campaign event this week to try to get a comment from Tiffany for their story about Boltz, a campaign staffer intervened physically to block the question and adopted an aggressive posture that appeared to be designed to intimidate them. 

That’s not an atmosphere consistent with press freedom, democracy, or a healthy Wisconsin.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin, is skipping multiple debates with his Democratic rival, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. 

Asked why he decided to break the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association’s 36-year streak of hosting gubernatorial candidate debates, Tiffany said, “We agreed to do one debate. In my experience in Congress as well as the state Legislature, doing one debate is sufficient.”

That’s absurd. In this high-stakes election, as Wisconsinites confront skyrocketing costs, healthcare cuts, struggling public schools, questions about election integrity, the threats posed by artificial intelligence and data centers, among many other issues, a single one-hour forum hosted by WISN on Oct. 21 cannot possibly cover their concerns in depth.

Another planned debate, hosted by the Milwaukee County Intergovernmental Cooperation Council, featuring questions gathered from mayors and community leaders around the state, was also called off this week after Tiffany indicated he would not participate.

The jilted hosts expressed their dismay in a joint statement, saying they are “deeply disappointed” and hope that the next governor will take seriously the local government issues the candidates will not be discussing on the debate stage Oct. 8.

The loss of these debates means Wisconsinites won’t have the opportunity to get answers to real people’s questions. Instead, they’ll have to settle for scripted talking points and millions of dollars in depressing negative ads.

The moderator of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association debate, journalism professor Jill Geisler, has for years helped gather questions that are important to voters in different parts of the state. “We had someone who came from a community that had been using bottled water because of PFAS … we had someone asking about climate change’s effect on the wild rice harvest in Wisconsin,” she says, recalling some recent debate questions.

“I do think that we’re living in a more siloed era where people prefer to speak through the channels that they know are friendliest to them,” says Geisler, a professor at Loyola University Chicago. “I think what I worry about is that people think of truly well researched debates, you know, where people are asking researched questions, evidence-based questions, that that’s some kind of gotcha trap, and it’s not, you know, it is simply not that.”

The WBA team had already been hard at work planning the debate logistics and gathering issues important to local communities across the state when the debate was canceled. Before every debate, a point person does copious research on each topic, its history, legal background and the candidates’ positions and voting records. “Then we lock up for the last two days to workshop the questions,” Geisler says. After the debate, WBA publishes its questions online with links so people can read more about the issues. “We put all that out there because we think that we can’t cover it all in an hour,” Geisler says. “And people might want to do their own research, but they could see what we used.”

The broadcasters and the local government officials who were painstakingly putting together questions were planning to ask the candidates not just what they have to say about hot-button issues, but what specifically each would do as governor to address SNAP cuts, rural hospital closures, the childcare shortage and other urgent matters confronting Wisconsinites.

All of this serious, in-depth discussion has now been lost.

As President Donald Trump’s approval numbers crash and once-safe Republican congressional districts appear to be in play, Tiffany might want to avoid tough questions about his record of supporting Trump between 93% and 100% of the time while in Congress.

He seems to be leaning on an ad campaign to recast himself from MAGA warrior to folksy midwestern moderate, while relying on his supporters to attack his opponent. 

“In Wisconsin and other states, it is more often Republicans than Democrats who avoid debates,” says University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden. “There are sometimes exceptions, as when Mandela Barnes resisted doing more than one debate with Ron Johnson in the 2022 Senate race, but it tends to be GOP candidates who are distrustful of journalists or being they have something to lose by taking part.” 

“The irony is that candidates who lost probably could have helped themselves with additional debates,” Burden adds. “Barnes’ narrow loss to Johnson might have been turned into a victory had there been another debate or two. Tiffany is currently trailing in the polls and might also benefit from more face time and opportunities to question his opponent.”

While Crowley is slightly ahead in the latest polls, Tiffany is outspending his Democratic rival on advertising by a margin of  3-to-1, according to J.R. Ross of WisPolitics. Republicans and the outside groups that support them are outspending Democrats by more than $8 million. 

Even that huge financial advantage might not be enough to help Tiffany overcome his record of voting for and defending Trump’s cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, his support for the U.S. military entanglement in Iran and all the other Trump policies dragging down Republican politicians across the U.S.  

It will be interesting, in the single candidate debate next month, if the candidates are pressed to talk about data centers and Flock cameras — two issues where Tiffany has, interestingly, moved to capture some of the energy that animated supporters of Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist candidate Crowley narrowly defeated at the end of the chaotic Democratic primary. Crowley has not taken as strong a stance as Hong opposing either AI data centers or Flock surveillance. Tiffany’s position sounds more assertive, but his record is complicated, since he voted for Trump’s ban on AI regulation in Congress and seems more concerned with blocking wind and solar development that might fuel data centers than the data centers themselves. On Flock, it would be interesting to hear him square his support for local law enforcement with his proposal that local government be forbidden from using state revenue for Flock contracts. 

None of those nuances are going to get much airtime. Instead we will have the barrage of political advertising by shady groups, featuring grainy images and ominous music, shedding more darkness than light. 

“To have something that isn’t about sloganeering … to try to have civil discourse … I think that’s what we’ll have less of,” says Geisler.

For most of us that’s a big loss.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin, made an emergency landing in Lake Wausau Saturday night after his plane lost power while he was on his way home from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner. Tiffany and the pilot of the four-seat Bonan aircraft exited the plane and swam to a shallow area, where they were rescued by boat by emergency responders, Tiffany said in a statement. 

“I want to express my deepest gratitude to the pilot, the Wausau Fire Department, and all of the first responders who came to our aid so quickly,” Tiffany said. “They got us safely off the water and transported us to Aspirus Wausau Hospital, where we received excellent care. Thankfully, both the pilot and I sustained only minor injuries.”

“God was watching over us tonight,” he added in the statement released late Saturday evening. 

On Sunday morning, Tiffany’s campaign released another statement thanking “everyone across Wisconsin and around the country who has reached out with prayers and kind words.” 

Tiffany suffered a laceration above his right eye that required stitches and both he and the pilot were was released from the hospital Saturday night, according to the campaign.  

Tiffany and the pilot were the only two people on board the Beechcraft K35, according to the campaign. An investigation into the accident will be handled by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the Democratic candidate for governor, released a statement saying, “I’m grateful to God that Congressman Tiffany and no one else was hurt in this horrifying incident, which could have been a tragedy if not for the heroism of the pilot. I wish them and the Congressman a quick recovery and that they can find solace with their loved ones.”

Vice President JD Vance is promoting a Trump administration plan to siphon off federal money that helps working parents afford childcare and use it to subsidize parents who stay at home. The man who ran for office mocking “childless cat ladies” is now trying to stir up a cat fight between working and stay-at-home moms. That’s not remarkable coming from a federal government run by social media trolls. But the main effect of the actual policy Vance is promoting will be to make the lives of already stressed working class families, especially in Wisconsin, even harder, more expensive and noticeably worse than before.

Childcare funding has been in crisis in Wisconsin ever since the pandemic relief money that briefly stabilized providers ran out. Without that money, which “prevented system collapse” according to the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, supporting more than 430,000 children in nearly 6,000 programs, parents are priced out of care and one in four providers say they will likely have to close their doors. 

Unlike Massachusetts and Vermont, Wisconsin does not treat childcare as a state budget priority. Ours is one of only a handful of states including Idaho, Indiana, Nevada and Ohio that failed to spend any money on childcare beyond what was required to draw down federal dollars, according to a 2025 report by the advocacy group ChildCare Aware. In 2026, the state created a new school readiness program for 4-year-olds. It was a first step toward acknowledging the needs of preschoolers and their parents. But it did nothing to address the massive shortage in care for infants and toddlers.

That’s all fine with JD Vance, who wrote on X that “normal Americans care more about their families than their jobs, and want a family policy that doesn’t shunt their kids into crap daycare so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.”

But Vance is not offering to do anything about the fact that the U.S. is the only wealthy nation on Earth that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, even though 68% of mothers with children under 6 are employed. Nor is he promoting the kind of high-quality early childhood education system that allows parents in Denmark, after their six months of paid parental leave, to enroll their preschoolers in beautiful, enriching childcare programs they don’t have to feel guilty about.

Instead, what Vance is proposing is to take an already paltry federal childcare subsidy and make working parents fight over crumbs with nonworking parents. Mainly, his aim seems to be to punish single parents. That’s not going to leave anyone in good shape — least of all children. 

One of the saddest aspects of the attack on childcare is that very recently parents, educators, business leaders and politicians of both political parties were finally coming together around the idea that childcare is an essential public good that requires public support.

The “mommy wars” attack Vance wants to revive is long out of date. It has been decades since most American families had the luxury of subsisting on a single wage-earner’s income, trad wife fantasies notwithstanding. 

Another major recent breakthrough is policymakers’ realization that the magic of the free market is not going to provide childcare parents can afford. 

“It was the Biden administration that put a ton of money into childcare during COVID, and we learned from that,” says Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. “The lesson was not just the importance of keeping childcare open so that essential workers could work, but the other piece that’s really interesting is that it demonstrated what can positively happen in childcare when you put a little more money into it.”

Thanks to direct payments to providers during the pandemic, center closures dropped off, the number of teachers leaving the workforce slowed down, tuition stopped climbing and, Schmidt says, “this industry for the first time was finally able to say, ‘Our work is important. It is essential to the functioning of our country. It’s worth investing in, because if you invest in it, these positive things can happen.”

Then came Trump. 

Schmidt calls the rollout of Trump policies that slashed supports for families “death by 1,000 cuts.” During the second Trump administration, cuts to food assistance, Medicaid and Head Start, along with the federal government’s move to loosen safety standards and increase staff ratios in childcare centers have taken a huge combined toll on Wisconsin families.

If it were just ideological — if the Trump administration were actually pursuing the kinds of pronatalist policies that make getting married and having children more attractive, as Vance likes to claim, it wouldn’t be as bad. But instead, while spouting rhetoric about valuing families, this administration is subjecting little kids and their parents to more and more misery.

Wisconsin could do more to protect vulnerable kids. Before leaving the Capitol to hit the campaign trail, state legislators failed to pass a bill that would have used state money to fill the gap after federal childcare stabilization funds lapsed. That set off a vicious cycle, says Paula Drew of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. Subsidies for families were cut and their out-of-pocket payments skyrocketed, so cash-strapped parents withdrew their kids from care. Under-enrollment meant less revenue for childcare centers, so they raised their rates. “It just sort of snowballed,” Drew says. “Programs said things like, ‘We’re gonna have to lower salaries for staff.’ … so I think we’re going to lose our educators, and in fact I think we’ve already lost a big percentage of our skilled, seasoned educators.”

An unintended consequence of the state’s investment in 4-year-old pre-K is that it creates a disincentive to provide care for infants and toddlers, which is already more expensive, Drew says. “Wisconsin serves very few infants and toddlers in regulated care,” she says. “And now, with additional funding going into the Get Kids Ready pre-K program, we expect that to be even lower a year from now.”

To make matters worse, the state no longer has a surplus of federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds, which it has used to cover some childcare costs for low-income families. 

Sooner or later, Wisconsin is going to have to start dedicating state revenue to childcare. Schmidt and Drew hope that, with a new governor and a new Legislature, Wisconsin will use the state surplus, payroll taxes or a tax on hemp products and gambling, as Louisiana has done, to subsidize childcare. Only then can Wisconsin reduce the astronomical tuition rates that parents pay ($13,000 for home care and $17,400 for center-based care, according to state data), give providers a better wage (currently $13.55 per hour), and stop the wave of childcare closures. 

They especially want the state to shore up disappearing infant and toddler care and retain experienced teachers — not just by giving them a raise but also by allowing them to continue to get higher education “and make this a profession, not just a fleeting step to something else,” says Drew. 

“We need supply of care; supply means educators that can work in programs. And then we want to help parents pay for care on the demand side. … You can’t do one and not the other, because it simply won’t work,” says Drew. “You can’t just help parents pay for care, but not tend to the supply of care available. And you can’t just tend to the supply of care available, but pretend you don’t see that parents are literally going into poverty to try to pay for childcare.”

“Childcare is infrastructure,” says Schmidt. “If we turned around and said to parents with 5-year-olds, you’ve got to start paying $17,000 a year for your child to be in school, we would see empty classrooms, right? We treat these as two very dramatically different concerns. But all of it is about families’ ability to work outside the home, impact the economy, all those kinds of things. “ 

It’s also about having a decent society that values families and takes good care of children. That’s the kind of society we need to come together and focus on, instead of being distracted by the rage-baiting bluster of internet trolls. 

Gov. Tony Evers is taking his final back-to-school tour of the state, visiting K-12 classrooms across Wisconsin to meet students, families and staff and tout his record as the “Education Governor.”

If you don’t happen to live in one of the 72 Wisconsin school districts that went to referendum last spring, begging local property taxpayers to cover basic costs the state is not meeting, you might get the impression from Evers’ valedictory tour that he is leaving office having solved the urgent problem of chronic underfunding of Wisconsin schools. 

“After a decade of disinvestment, Gov. Evers has spent the last almost eight years working to invest in public education at every level,” a statement released this week by the governor’s office declares. “During his time in office, Gov. Evers has enacted budgets to restore two-thirds funding for public schools for the first time in over two decades, provide the largest special education aid increase in state history, and bring per pupil aid to its highest level ever.”

Sounds like a strong record of accomplishment!

But wait, why does a lawsuit filed this year by the Wisconsin PTA, students, parents, teachers and communities across the state charge that Wisconsin “has seemingly abandoned its commitment to the education of Wisconsin’s public school children” and is violating its own constitution by failing to adequately fund public schools? 

The short answer is that Evers, along with the Republican legislative leaders who are the targets of the lawsuit, are using misleading language to pass off austerity for schools as generosity.

Take Evers’ claim about restoring the state’s long-abandoned commitment to two-thirds funding for schools. That two-thirds number is based on counting money in the state budget that schools are not allowed to spend. While the money is technically allocated for education, the state did not lift school revenue caps, so it can only be spent for property-tax relief. 

“Meeting the state’s two-thirds funding commitment doesn’t put a single new pencil in a classroom when you provide zero dollars in new spending,” explains Heather DuBois Bourenane of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, “and the current budget provided zero dollars in new spendable aid for both years of this biennium.”

Far from reaping a historic investment, students and teachers are starting the year in Wisconsin with no new money for schools. 

The state’s share of special education funding, which fell from a high of 70% in the 1970s to hover around 30% in recent years, did get a bump in the last budget, reversing a dire drop-off. But the “largest special education increase in state history” only amounted to a jump from 30 to 35% last year — considerably less than the 42% reimbursement rate state officials originally projected. 

Finally, in a sense, Evers did bring per-pupil aid to its highest level ever, but like his other claims, this is more a rhetorical victory than a concrete benefit to schools. Using his line-item veto, Evers extended school districts’ ability to raise $325 in revenue per pupil from local taxpayers for the next 400 years. This move infuriated Republicans, and they used it as a reason for not giving schools any new money in the current budget. But the $325 per pupil increase is not hard cash, it’s just revenue-raising authority granted to districts, which are allowed to raise property taxes by that amount if they choose to. Some, having exhausted the good will of local taxpayers with repeated referendum asks, have not done so. 

All in all, schools in Wisconsin are in bad financial shape, and property taxpayers are weary of filling the gap left by the state abandoning its obligation to kids. 

“The Legislature is selling kids short,” says Jeff Mandell of Law Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs in the school funding lawsuit. The Wisconsin Constitution guarantees every child an equal opportunity for a sound, basic education. But for years, the plaintiffs argue, the state has been breaking that promise.

Adams-Friendship school district, one of the parties in the lawsuit, used to have five elementary schools within its 500 square miles. Now, because of school closures due to low enrollment and shrinking budgets, it has only one K-12 school. Kids spend hours riding the bus to a single school building with aging infrastructure where many classrooms are unusable on hot days. 

Huge challenges are also facing urban districts. In Beloit last year one in eight students was homeless. 

“There is this fictitious idea that everyone has budgets, the schools just have to tighten their belts,” says Mandell. The reality is, even as the challenges schools face pile up, the state has steadily decreased funding, to the point where many now face an existential crisis.

The current lawsuit is not the first challenge to Wisconsin’s school funding formula based on the idea that the state is not meeting its constitutional obligation to provide a basic, free education to all children. 

Back in 2000, a divided Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a similar argument in the Vincent v. Voight case. 

In that case, “the Court said the system is not bad enough right now to violate the constitution,” Mandell says. But since then, two full generations of kids have completed kindergarten through 12th grade, and conditions have deteriorated dramatically.

When Vincent v. Voight was decided, school revenue limits were still automatically pegged to inflation. A state law, abolished in 2003, still held that two-thirds of school funding should come from the state.  A popular program, abolished in 2018, still kept class sizes small and offered extra supports to children living in poverty to help them succeed academically.  Overall, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, school funding has not kept pace with inflation in Wisconsin since 2009, a major reversal from the early 2000s, when Wisconsin schools were among the best funded in the nation. 

“The situation keeps getting worse and worse and worse, and we’re saying the court needs to give this another look,” says Mandell.

This is where the hopeful part comes in. Like the gerrymandering lawsuit that prompted the Legislature and the governor to pass fair voting maps in Wisconsin, Mandell believes the school funding lawsuit could trigger major legislative reform. As in the gerrymandering case, “the court’s job is to tell the Legislature, ‘What you have here is not good enough,’ and then give them a short window to fix it,” Mandell says.

It’s not the court’s job to come up with a new funding formula, but if the governor and the Legislature can’t agree, it could impose its own solution.

As the November elections approach, ushering in a new Legislature and a new governor, there’s a real opportunity for change. 

“There is growing momentum and understanding of what the problem is, and what the issue is, on both sides of the aisle,” says DuBois Bourenane. 

She and the other public school advocates in her organization are deeply disappointed that the governor and the Legislature failed to hammer out a deal to give more money to schools, after dangling the idea at the end of the last session. “It’s just criminal that they’re even willing to entertain the idea of sending these kids back to school with nothing again,” she says. “We’ve got 70-plus districts going to referendum again this fall … over a third of our districts went to referendum this calendar year.” 

DuBois Bourenane agrees with Mandell that the lawsuit could spur a breakthrough. 

“I’m just glad that everybody’s talking about it,” she says, “and I hope that they’re paying very close attention to what’s actually possible if we elect people who all agree that we have to fix this broken problem.”