Activists marched from the Capitol to the DNR Monday to demand the agency rescind its permit for Enbridge Line 5. | Photo courtesy Ian Phillips

A group of about 50 activists occupied the lobby of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Monday to protest the agency’s approval of a permit to construct a 41-mile reroute of Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline through northern Wisconsin.

Several members of the group tried to enter further into the building and one activist was arrested and put in jail, according to a news release from the coalition of indigenous and environmental groups who planned the protest. Two others were warned they’d be arrested if they tried to enter the building again.

For years, the Bad River band of Lake Superior Chippewa have fought against the pipeline, 12 miles of which crosses the tribe’s reservation, raising concerns about the pipeline’s effect on local water and the broader effects that fossil fuels have on the environment.

After declining to renew the easement that allowed the pipeline to cut across their land, the tribe sued in federal court to have it removed. In 2022 a judge ruled that Enbridge was trespassing and would have to reroute the pipeline. 

The tribe is opposed to the proposed route for the new pipeline because it would be directly upstream of the reservation.

Late last year, the DNR granted a crucial permit approval for the relocation just days after another of Enbridge’s pipelines, Line 6, was found to have leaked more than 69,000 gallons of oil in the Jefferson County town of Oakland.

On Monday, the group of activists marched from the state Capitol to the DNR offices to deliver a letter demanding that the agency revoke its permit approval and support the decommissioning and removal of Line 5.

“Enbridge Line 5 abets mayhem all around the world: deforestation and water pollution in Alberta, where companies scrape tar out of sand; oil spills across Wisconsin and Michigan; and the global heating equivalent of detonating hundreds of atomic bombs in the atmosphere every single day,” Greg Mikkelson, an organizer with the Cross Border Organizing Working Group, said in a statement. “The proposed expansion of this pipeline would lock in dependence on this disaster-genic source of energy for decades to come. Meanwhile, Wisconsinites consume virtually none of the oil or gas carried in Line 5. Shame on the DNR for approving the expansion, even while covering up a brand-new spill from Line 6, another Enbridge pipeline in Wisconsin.”

A doctor takes a blood pressure reading for a pregnant woman. Wednesday is the deadline for signing up for individual health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. (Getty Images)

Wednesday is the final deadline this year for people who want to sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

Wisconsin has already set a new record for enrollment, according to preliminary information from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The health care marketplace, https://healthcare.gov, was established as part of the Affordable Care Act for consumers who don’t have affordable health insurance through work or through government programs such as Medicaid. Individuals and families can purchase health insurance policies at Healthcare.gov.

The most recent federal data from CMS shows sign-ups through Jan. 4. On Friday, Gov. Tony Evers announced that in Wisconsin, 306,470 residents had signed up as of that date — an all-time high for the state.

Through 2025, plans purchased through the marketplace are also supported by enhanced federal subsidies, lowering their monthly insurance premium cost depending on a family’s income.

The future of the subsidies beyond this year is uncertain. Advocates are trying to pressure Republicans in Congress to maintain them as they negotiate other tax changes in the coming months.

Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) have introduced legislation to extend the enhanced subsidies and make them permanent.

The ACA advocacy group Protect Our Care cheered the legislation when it was introduced last week. “If Republicans succeed in taking away these tax credits, health care costs will increase by an average of $2,400 for working families, and five million people will lose their health care altogether,” said Leslie Dach, the group’s chair.

For people seeking guidance in how to choose coverage, Covering Wisconsin, at https://coveringwi.org/, is a federally funded navigator to help people to assess their health insurance options, including through the federal health insurance marketplace.  

The Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI) and the Department of Health Services (DHS) also outline options through WisCovered, a joint website. OCI also has a website that consumers can visit to find which ACA-approved insurers are operating in their region of the state: https://oci.wi.gov/Pages/Consumers/FindHealthInsurer.aspx.

Former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum participates in a swearing-in ceremony of state lawmakers on Dec. 2, 2024, in Bismarck, North Dakota, shortly before completing his term as governor. (Photo by Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)

WASHINGTON — Utah Sen. Mike Lee announced Monday he had postponed the confirmation hearing for two days for President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department.

Lee, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, delayed former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s hearing, which had been scheduled for Tuesday, until Thursday.

“Governor Doug Burgum has been fully cooperative throughout the confirmation process, promptly submitting his paperwork to the Office of Government Ethics,” Lee wrote in a statement. “Despite his compliance and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee noticing the hearing in accordance with all rules, OGE has yet to complete its review. This bureaucratic delay is unacceptable.”

Lee wrote the extra 48 hours was meant to give the Office of Government Ethics a bit more time to wrap up its work, but cautioned the agency should work quickly. 

“To ensure transparency and uphold the integrity of this process, the committee will postpone Governor Burgum’s hearing until Thursday,” Lee wrote. “However, we expect OGE to act with urgency and complete its review without further unnecessary delays. The American people deserve a government that operates efficiently to advance their priorities, and we remain committed to ensuring these critical confirmations move forward as quickly as possible.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., both raised concerns last week about Burgum’s hearing taking place before certain paperwork was filed with the committee.

“The Senate has a constitutional duty to advise and, if it determines, consent to the President’s nominees. This requires careful consideration of each nominee,” Heinrich wrote in a statement released last week. “To achieve this, for decades, nominees that have come before the ENR Committee have submitted responses to a standard questionnaire and a completed financial disclosure form, approval from the Department’s ethics office, and completion of an FBI background check. Until these steps have been completed, I will not consent to notice of nomination hearings.

“Every nominee, every party, every administration should be subject to the same standards. I would urge Chairman Lee to reconsider his decision.”

Heinrich and seven other Democrats on the committee and one independent released a letter Monday morning, urging Lee to delay the hearing until the panel received “the standard financial disclosure report, ethics agreement, or the opinions from the designated agency ethics officer and the Office of Government Ethics stating that the nominee is in compliance with the ethics laws.”

“In view of the fact that the Committee still does not have these documents, which are essential for us to faithfully discharge our constitutional advice-and-consent responsibilities, we respectfully request that you postpone the scheduled hearing on Governor Burgum’s nomination for at least a week to give Members sufficient time to receive and review these materials,” the lawmakers wrote.

Those lawmakers included Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Angus King, a Maine independent, Alex Padilla, D-Calif. and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, led by Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran, later on Monday postponed its Tuesday hearing for Trump’s pick to lead the VA, citing an uncompleted background check.

“Congressman Doug Collins has submitted all his paperwork in a timely manner and has been transparent and forthcoming with the committee,” Moran wrote in a statement. “At this time, the FBI has not completed its customary background check of Congressman Collins. In accordance with long-standing practice, the committee should have an opportunity to review Congressman Collins’ FBI file before the confirmation hearing. I expect the FBI to complete its review quickly so that the committee can move forward with its role of evaluating the President’s nominee.”

Trump announced in November that he had selected the former Georgia congressman to lead the VA. 

Young girl staring out her window | Getty Images creative

Hannah Brecke, a youth leader and student at Port Washington High School, said she has dealt with mental health issues for “as long as I can remember,” but her troubles were exacerbated in middle school when her mother was placed in the hospital due to an illness. She said she started attending school less because of her anxiety about her mom, and when her mother passed two weeks later, she didn’t know how to handle it.   

“I cried every night for my mom for two years. I wanted to die… I slept all day, didn’t talk to anybody and disappeared from society. I didn’t want to get better. I wanted to suffer like this because if I didn’t, I felt that it meant I didn’t miss and love my mom,” Brecke said.

It wasn’t until her sophomore year, Brecke said, that she realized she “wanted to live” for her mom. It was then she said that she started attending therapy and was prescribed medication to help her with her mental health. 

“Even if the meds didn’t help, at least I could say, I was trying. About six months into taking my meds, I began to notice that I wanted to do things more. I wanted to talk to people more,” Brecke said. “My grief will never go away, but at least now it is manageable.” 

Brecke and Kayla Winston, a student at Case High School, told their stories of dealing with mental struggles during the Office of Children’s Mental Health (OCMH) annual briefing Friday. 

Brecke and Winston are just two Wisconsin youths, who have dealt with mental health struggles in recent years. This year’s annual briefing provided an opportunity to assess 10-year trends in youth mental health and to discuss solutions Wisconsin could try to address ongoing challenges. The Office of Children’s Mental Health was created by 2013 Wisconsin Act 20 and launched its work in early 2014 to help coordinate mental health initiatives across the state and track data about children’s mental health to inform its efforts.

OCMH Director Linda Hall said listening to young people’s stories and their answers about how to address what’s happening with youth mental health is essential for tackling ongoing concerns. 

“Our young people are living through so much and it’s very different from the world that most of us grew up in,” Hall said during the briefing. 

Amy Marsman, OCMH’s senior research analyst, highlighted a number of concerning trends to notice over the last 10 years. They included a 42% increase in the number of youth reporting symptoms of depression, a 29% increase in those reporting anxiety with two-thirds of female

high school students reported having problems, a 21% increase in those reporting self-harm and a 41% increase in those reporting that they’ve considered suicide. 

“Sometimes, in an effort to diminish emotional pain, people purposely hurt themselves. It may be cutting, burning or bruising oneself without wanting to die, and these self-harm rates have increased statewide since 2014,” Marsman said. 

Other areas of concern highlighted by the report include half of children age 3 to 17 with a mental health condition not receiving treatment; an increase in the number of young adults age 18 to 25 with mental health illnesses; the majority of doctors not asking parents with children age 0 to 5 about learning, development or behavioral problems; a decline in the number of teens with a trusted adult at school and a decline in the number of teens who feel like they belong in school. 

Winston of Racine Case High School highlighted some of the ways she was able to find support when she began having mental health problems after starting high school a couple years into the COVID-19 pandemic. She said joining band helped give her a sense of belonging at the school. She said her peers helped support her through some of the struggles that she dealt with and that having a trusted adult in school was also important. 

Winston said that she also eventually started therapy to help with her depression. 

“I had to do a lot of learning about myself,” Winston said. 

Hall highlighted some of the stressors affecting Wisconsin youth, including academic pressures, gun violence, political divisiveness, racism and discrimination and climate change. 

The annual briefing highlighted some areas of improvement over the last five years, including that the number of psychiatrists in Wisconsin and the number of school-based mental health professionals have increased. 

“Though the number of school-based mental health professionals has increased, totals are still below recommended levels and their services are not reimbursed at sustainable rates,” Marsman said. “Fixing school mental health reimbursement rates is key to addressing Wisconsin’s youth mental health crisis since the majority of Wisconsin kids who receive services get them at school.” 

Potential policy solutions

At the briefing, Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston), who chairs the Assembly Children and Families Committee and sits on the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Prevention Committee, along with Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) highlighted several potential policy proposals that could help address ongoing mental health issues among children. 

One proposal, which Snyder said he spoke with a pediatric psychologist about, is implementing universal wellness screenings starting at the age of 5. He said a screening could serve as a “great opportunity” to allow young children to speak to someone, and that if they continue until the age of 18, the program could be connected to schools. 

“As we’ve seen from the data, a lot of the data points we get come from kids that just go through puberty or in their teens, but what was going on before that? Snyder said.

Snyder added that he is interested in providing more mental health funding for schools as well as investments in adult care.

“If somehow we get the child back on the road to recovery, you don’t want to send them back into an environment that hurts the work you were able to accomplish,” Snyder said. 

Snyder and Johnson both discussed creating psychiatric residential treatment facilities — or PRTFs — in Wisconsin. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau has described them as long-term facilities that typically offer treatment for children diagnosed with psychiatric conditions, including bipolar disorder, disruptive behavior disorders, substance use disorders, severe emotional disturbance or post-traumatic stress disorder.

The lawmakers participated in a study committee in 2024 that examined the current state of Wisconsin’s emergency detention and civil commitment laws as they applied to children and came up with some suggestions for improvement. The creation of these facilities was one major point of discussion, along with the issue of youth being sent out of state for treatment. 

Wisconsin does have three youth crisis stabilization facilities, but those are short-term facilities with a maximum of eight beds. There are currently no residential psychiatric treatment facilities in the state.

“We need to do better of ensuring that we have these residential treatment centers right here in this state where [youth are] closer to home, they’re closer to their families and once they get out, they can continue that continuum of care without it being piecemealed and in some cases just missed all together,” Johnson said. 

Johnson said she also wants to see more mobile crisis response teams across Wisconsin to take some of the burden of dealing with mental health crises off law enforcement.

“Mental health is a crisis, but it’s a crisis that’s too often met with law enforcement — individuals that don’t necessarily have the training to adequately address these issues due to no fault of their own.” Johnson said. “It puts a strain on our police department, but it also teaches our minors that having mental health [struggles] isn’t necessarily in some cases acceptable.” 

Johnson said resources for these initiatives need to be statewide and not just concentrated in one part of the state. 

“In some cases,…we may do a good job in Milwaukee but not necessarily a good job in the rural areas and our kids matter, no matter where they’re at,” Johnson said.

Education software company PowerSchool is the latest major American company to be targeted by hackers, who accessed the personal data of millions of parents and students. (Photo illustration by seksan Mongkhonkhamsao/Getty Images)

The sensitive data of millions of American adults and children have been compromised after hackers targeted California-based education software company PowerSchool, the company confirmed last week.

The breach happened at the end of December, and new information confirmed by TechCrunch Thursday morning says that hackers were able to access student addresses, Social Security numbers, grades and medical information on the platform, which schools use for student records, grades, attendance and enrollment.

The names, phone numbers and emails of parents and guardians were also potentially compromised, the company said. Hackers were able to use a stolen credential, or login, to access the internal customer support portal, the company said. PowerSchool currently has 16,000 customers, and is used by more than 50 million students across North America, the company confirmed.

The incident is the latest large-scale data breach in the U.S., as year after year, the number of cybercrimes continues to rise. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 880,418 complaints in 2023, a 10% increase from the complaints registered the year prior, and nearly double the number of crimes reported in 2019. The agency estimates potential monetary losses due to cybercrime since 2019 to be $37.4 billion.

PowerSchool’s breach is an example of how cyber criminals profit — the company said it was extorted into paying a sum to prevent hackers from leaking the stolen data, though it did not say how much.

The hackers’ method of using legitimate credentials to access the internal software is much more common than you might think, said Rob Scott, Dallas-based managing partner of technology law firm Scott & Scott LLP. When people think about hacking, they likely picture automated attacks that pass through logins and passwords, he said.

Many breaches come from accounts purchased on the so-called Dark Web, a vast expanse of the internet that is inaccessible to most conventional browsers, Scott said.

“Or employee negligence situations … poor password management, or IT policies around managing and keeping passwords safe and confidential,” he said.

This incident was not an example of a ransomware attack, where hackers use software or malware to encrypt data on a computer, and prevent users from accessing their device. There were 2,835 ransomware crimes in 2023, and healthcare, manufacturing and government facilities were most targeted.

But the motivation for the majority of cyber crimes is financial, Scott said.

“People used to pickpocket, right? People used to rob banks,” Scott said. “Cybersecurity is the modern equivalent of those types of activities.”

As these data breaches become more common, you’re likely right in assuming that your data has been compromised in some way by now, said Chandler, Arizona-based Kiran Chinnagangannagari, cofounder and chief product and technology officer at cybersecurity firm Securin.

The advancements of generative AI systems have made the internet a data hungry place, Chinnagangannagari said, because these systems need tons of information to learn and get better.

While about 20 states have consumer data privacy laws, and all 50 states have data breach notification laws, Chinnagangannagari and Scott said they don’t find legislation is a big help in fighting this growing problem. Many of the laws put responsibility on the company to inform consumers, Scott said, but it places extra burden on a company that was just the victim of a crime.

Chinnagangannagari said laws that encourage proactive safeguarding against unnecessary data collection are more helpful. HIPAA, for example, sets strict rules on how healthcare providers can collect, store and share health data. The California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, includes purpose limitation and data minimization rules.

While there’s little an individual can do in the wake of these large-scale attacks on a corporation or organization, users can take some actions toward proper “cyber hygiene,” Chinnagangannagari said.

Be protective of where you are putting your information, and learn what you can about terms and conditions of large platforms or apps you sign up for. You should set up a system of not reusing passwords, and utilize multi-factor authentication when you can. There are also services that will seek out your data and warn you when it’s been part of a widespread breach, the cybersecurity pro said.

And while it can feel helpless, Chinnagangannagari admits, taking these actions and keeping your eye on your accounts for strange online or financial transactions will prepare you well for our “new reality.”

“It’s not something we were taught growing up,” he said. “It’s a very different world. And so we just need to still adapt and live within this ecosystem.”

Dairy cows gather at a farm on July 5, 2022 in Visalia, California. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

An infectious disease expert says the relatively mild cases of avian influenza detected so far among dairy workers don’t warrant making a vaccine available to them, even as they work to contain and prevent spread of the contagious virus among herds.

Dr. Shira Doron, an epidemiologist and chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine in Boston, said the minor spread of the H5N1 among humans – and no reported instances of human-to-human transmission – makes any widespread administration of a vaccine premature right now.

“There are also many logistical issues that would be associated with deployment of vaccine to farm workers – language barrier, undocumented status, compliance – so that is not the plan at this time, “ Doron said Friday morning during an Infectious Diseases Society of America teleconference.

H5N1 has circulated globally for decades, she said. Analysis of the strains currently circulating shows them to be poorly suited for transmission between humans and with low pandemic potential, according to Doron.

Human patients have also responded well to antiviral treatments such as Tamiflu, the doctor said.

The current avian flu strains have led to two severe cases in humans. One involved a 65-year-old person from Louisiana who contracted the virus from exposure to a combination of a non-commercial backyard flock and wild birds, state health officials said. It was the nation’s first ever fatal human case of avian flu, though the patient was reported to have underlying conditions that worsened after they contracted H5N1.

The other severe case was a teen in Canada who had to be admitted to a hospital’s intensive care unit. That patient contracted the virus from wild birds, Doron said.

Dr. Julio Figeroua, LSU Health chief of infectious diseases and a professor at Louisiana State University’s medical school in New Orleans, also took part in the IDSA teleconference. There have been no secondary avian flu cases related to the patient in Louisiana who died, he said.

“We have people who do hunting, hunting of geese and ducks, and so advisories have been put out to those for proper handling of those particular animals,” Figeroua said. “A lot of backyard flocks that are here and in urban and suburban areas are potentially also potential sources for transmission.”

In addition to 919 dairy herds in 16 states, the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu has impacted more than 133 million poultry farms in all 50 states as of Wednesday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus has turned up in two backyard flocks in Louisiana and 49 total across the country, the CDC reported.

Coordination about the various federal and state agencies responding to avian flu outbreaks will be crucial to containing its spread, especially as the incoming Trump administration takes over, Doron and Figueroa said.

Asked to provide an estimate for when the current H5N1 outbreak might be contained or peter out on its own, Doron said it’s difficult to determine at this point.

“I think it really is going to depend on how long immunity lasts, and it’s too early in the outbreak to know that,” she said. “… If the immunity doesn’t last more than a few months, then we could have ongoing spread indefinitely.”

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

ALTADENA, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 08: A person uses a garden hose in an effort to save a neighboring home from catching fire during the Eaton Fire on January 8, 2025 in Altadena, California. Over 1,000 structures have burned, with two people dead, in wildfires fueled by intense Santa Ana Winds across L.A. County. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

This story originally appeared in CalMatters.

As climate change warms the planet, wildfires have become so unpredictable and extreme that new words were invented: firenado, gigafire, fire siege — even fire pandemic. California has 78 more annual “fire days” — when conditions are ripe for fires to spark — than 50 years ago. When is California’s wildfire season? With recurring droughts, it is now year-round.

Nothing is as it was. Where are the worst California wildfires? All over. Whatever NIMBYism that gave comfort to some Californians — never having a fire in their community before — no longer applies to most areas. 

Los Angeles County is the latest victim. The fast-growing Palisades Fire, whipped by vicious Santa Ana winds, ignited along the coast in Los Angeles Tuesday morning, destroying homes and forcing evacuation of about 10,000 households. Within hours, another wildfire, the Eaton Fire, erupted to the northeast, in Altadena, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, where wind gusts were clocked at almost 100 mph. And then late Tuesday night, a third Los Angeles County fire ignited in the San Fernando Valley area of Sylmar, and by Wednesday morning, a fourth, this one in the Sepulveda Basin.

Fire officials reported that more than 1,000 homes in just Pacific Palisades have been destroyed and many people were injured, including five fatalities from the Eaton Fire. Nearly the entire county is shrouded in smoke advisories. All of Southern California is experiencing drought conditions, with close to zero rainfall since July.

Southern California’s coastal fires typically have to be driven by desert winds. But no longer. Vegetation along the usually moist coast is often so parched that it doesn’t need winds to fan wildfires. 

Also, in the far north, California’s so-called “asbestos forests” have lost their immunity. Massive fires tore through dense, moist rainforests where climate change chased away the region’s protective layer of fog and mist. 

What causes California’s wildfires? Arson and power lines are the major triggers. A 2022 audit showed that utilities aren’t doing enough to prevent fires. But lightning-sparked fires, like the one that burned Big Basin park, are a fairly recent trend. Unpredictable and hugely powerful lightning storms — tens of thousands of strikes in a span of days — bombard already dry and vulnerable landscapes. Scientists say to expect more lightning as the planet warms. And, aided and abetted by drought, more than 163 million trees have been killed by drought or insects.

The job of battling these larger, more stubborn California wildfires has become more complicated, fearsome and deadly, straining the state’s already overworked firefighters.

And much, much more costly. The Legislative Analyst’s Office provided this sobering calculation: CalFire’s total funding for fire protection, resource management and fire prevention has grown from $800 million in 2005-06 to an estimated $3.7 billion in 2021-22.

As the impacts and costs surge, homeowners are still finding that insurance companies are canceling their policies — even if they fire-harden their property.

More attention is being paid to the unhealthy smoke lingering in communities. Even California’s crops are harmed, with concerns about a smoke- tainted grape harvest and impacting the state’s $58 billion wine industry.

California’s landscape evolved with fire. What remains is for its inhabitants to adapt to the new reality.

And that requires yet another new term: Welcome to the “Pyrocene,” coined by fire scientist Stephen J.Pyne. The age of fire.

Artist's rendering of the planned new UW-Madison College of Engineering building. (Continuum SmithGroup rendering/UW-Madison)

A plan to redirect $70 million in Universities of Wisconsin system funds that includes $29 million for the UW-Madison’s new engineering building moved forward Friday, three weeks after Republicans on the State Building Commission blocked the measure the week before Christmas.

The money comes from a series of projects at the UW-Eau Claire that came in under budget.

On Dec. 19, the commission, with membership consisting of four Republican lawmakers and four Democrats — Gov. Tony Evers, two lawmakers and a citizen appointed by the Evers administration — deadlocked on approving the transfer, which put it on hold.

The commission met again Friday and approved reallocating the money.

“While it’s unfortunate that these reallocations to help support UW campuses across our state were unnecessarily delayed, I’m glad they were finally approved today to ensure these critical projects can move forward,” Evers said in a statement Friday.

The $29 million directed to the planned new UW-Madison engineering building will help expand enrollment and infrastructure for the school, enabling it to increase enrollment, according to the university. The $197 million project had earlier been stalled in a pitched partisan battle that was supposed to have been resolved in early 2024.

Redirected funds will also go to projects at UW-Whitewater ($10.5 million), UW-Stout ($5.4 million) and assorted university repair and maintenance projects ($25 million).

In December, Sen. Andre Jacque (R-DePere) and Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Racine) said they had voted against the transfer because they hadn’t been consulted about it. Jacque questioned why the original estimate for the Eau Claire projects had exceeded the costs based on the final bids.

Neither responded to an inquiry Friday about their decision to change their votes.

Michigan Democratic U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, left, speaks at a press conference hosted by immigrant youth, allies and advocates outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — With a little over a week before the end of President Joe Biden’s term, his administration extended humanitarian protections for nationals from four countries Friday before President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised an immigration crackdown, returns to the White House.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security extended Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for another 18 months for 103,000 Ukrainians, about 600,000 Venezuelans, and 1,900 Sudanese, which is until October 2026. DHS also extended TPS for 232,000 Salvadorians until September 2026.

Roughly 1 million people have TPS, which allows them to live and work in the U.S. because their home country is deemed too dangerous to return to for reasons including war, environmental disasters or violence. It’s up to an administration to determine whether or not to renew a status. TPS does not lead to a long-term path to citizenship.

Immigration advocates have pushed the Biden administration to extend TPS status before a second Trump administration. The former president has expressed his intent to not only enact mass deportations, but to scale back humanitarian programs.

During Trump’s first term, he tried to end TPS designation for migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Sudan, but the courts blocked those attempts in 2018.

Sarah Baus of Charleston, South Carolina, left, holds a sign that reads "Keep TikTok" as she and other content creators Sallye Miley of Jackson, Mississippi, middle, and Callie Goodwin of Columbia, South Carolina, stand outside the U.S. Supreme Court Building on Jan. 10, 2025, as the court hears oral arguments on whether to overturn or delay a law that could lead to a ban of TikTok in the United States. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

U.S. Supreme Court justices on Friday questioned why they should intervene to block a law forcing the sale of TikTok in nine days, saying the short-form video platform’s Chinese parent company does not enjoy First Amendment rights.

Lawyers for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, and a group of the platform’s users faced sharp questions from justices on both sides of the court’s ideological split about how any party other than ByteDance would have its rights restricted.

Under the bipartisan law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden, ByteDance must divest TikTok by Jan. 19 or the wildly popular platform will be banned from app stores in the United States.

ByteDance holds the intellectual property rights to the algorithm that powers what content TikTok users see. If severed from the parent company, as required by the law, TikTok would lose access to the proprietary algorithm, which the company argued was a form of speech.

But the justices suggested only ByteDance — which, as a foreign company, they said, does not have the presumption of First Amendment rights — would be the only party directly harmed by the law.

The law targets ownership and potential control of the platform, including access to user data, by the Chinese Communist Party, Chief Justice John Roberts said. The law designates the Chinese government a foreign adversary.

“Congress doesn’t care about what’s on TikTok, they don’t care about the expression,” Roberts, a member of the court’s conservative majority, said. “That’s shown by the remedy: They’re not saying, ‘TikTok has to stop.’ They’re saying, ‘The Chinese have to stop controlling TikTok,’ so it’s not a direct burden on the expression at all.”

Lawmakers when the law was debated said the platform was dangerous because ByteDance is subject to Chinese national security laws that can compel companies to hand over data at any time.

“Are we supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent is, in fact, subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government?” Roberts said.

Justice Elena Kagan, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, also noted the law would mainly affect ByteDance, not its U.S.-based subsidiary. Separated from its Chinese parent company, TikTok would be free to pursue its own algorithm to compete with Meta’s Instagram and other video-based social media, she said.

“The statute only says to this foreign company, ‘Divest or else,’ and leaves TikTok with the ability to do what every other actor in the United States can do, which is go find the best available algorithm,” Kagan said.

National security vs. free speech

Noel Francisco, who represented TikTok and ByteDance, argued that the law’s true aim was to stop “manipulation of content” by the Chinese government, which he said amounted to censorship in violation of the Constitution.

“The government’s real target, rather, is the speech itself, it’s fear that Americans, even if fully informed, could be persuaded by Chinese misinformation,” Francisco said. “That, however, is a decision that the First Amendment leaves to the people.”

The law burdens TikTok’s speech, Francisco said, “shutting down one of the largest speech platforms in America” that boasts about 170 million U.S. users.

He asked the court to analyze if that burden on speech was “content-based,” which he reasoned it was, noting the government’s national security argument speculated that TikTok could be used to misinform Americans.

The singling out of TikTok presents a particular problem, he said.

The law “says there’s one speaker we’re particularly concerned about, and we’re going to hammer home on that one speaker,” he said. “One of the reasons they’re targeting that speaker is because they’re worried about the future content on that platform  — that it could, in the future, somehow be critical of the United States or undermine democracy.”

Jeffrey Fisher, an attorney for TikTok creators, said a law to prevent content manipulation — the government’s argument that TikTok users were vulnerable to being force-fed content approved by China — was not permitted by the First Amendment.

“That argument is that our national security is implicated if the content on TikTok is anti-democracy, undermines trust in our leaders — they use various phrases like that in their brief,” Fisher said. “That is an impermissible government interest that taints the entire act. … Once you have an impermissible motive like that, the law is unconstitutional.”

TikTok lawyers react

Lawyers for TikTok and several creators expressed confidence in their case following the arguments.

“We thought that the argument went very well, the justices are extremely engaged. They fully understand the importance of this case, not only for the American citizens of this country, but for First Amendment law, generally, the rights of everybody,” Francisco said at the National Press Club Friday afternoon.

Francisco also defended the ownership makeup of ByteDance as a company incorporated in the Cayman Islands that “is not owned by China” — though 21% is owned by a Chinese national who lives in Singapore, he said. Francisco also said TikTok’s source code for the algorithm is stored on servers in Virginia.

Three TikTok users shared stories about the livelihoods they’ve built through their presence on the platform.

Chloe Joy Sexton of Memphis, Tennessee, said TikTok allowed her to jump-start her baking business after a job loss and difficult family circumstances.

“I have now shipped thousands of cookies all over the world and even published a cookbook. As a small business without a lot of capital, I rely almost entirely on TikTok to market my products. To say TikTok changed my life is an understatement,” Sexton said.

Cows at a Dunn County dairy farm. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

A Polk County judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby, challenging an ordinance enacted by the town of Eureka regulating how factory farms, known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), operate. 

Under the ordinance, CAFOs must establish plans for how they will deal with manure disposal, air pollution, road use and other effects of a large farm’s operations, before being allowed to open or expand within the town. Similar ordinances have been passed in eight towns and three counties — including the Pierce County town of Maiden Rock, which passed its ordinance last month. 

While many of the state’s largest factory farms operate on the eastern side of the state in and around Kewaunee County, communities across western Wisconsin have been fighting the expansion of farming operations in the Driftless Region because of the effect CAFOs can have on smaller farms in the community, water quality and the environment. 

“WMC’s lawsuit against Eureka is part of a three-prong strategy by this industry with one goal — no regulation,” Lisa Doerr, a Polk County farmer who helped develop Eureka’s ordinance, said in a statement. “They use lawsuits to intimidate local officials who pass legal ordinances. At the same time, they have a lawsuit challenging any state authority. Finally, their Madison lobbyists are pushing state legislators to ban all local control.”

WMC has filed a number of lawsuits in recent years challenging state authority to protect water quality. A lawsuit filed by the group in Calumet County challenged the state Department of Natural Resources’ authority to require CAFOs to obtain permits regulating their effect on local water supplies. A circuit court judge ruled against that effort last year; the ruling is pending in the state Court of Appeals. 

Next week, the state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case from WMC challenging the DNR’s ability to use the state’s toxic spills law to force polluters to clean up PFAS contamination.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump appears remotely for a sentencing hearing in front of New York State Judge Juan Merchan at Manhattan Criminal Court on Jan. 10, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Brendan McDermid-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday in his New York hush money case just days before his inauguration, making him the only past and future U.S. president with a criminal record.

Trump has faced four criminal prosecutions but the New York state case was the sole one that went to trial. A jury convicted him in May on 34 felonies for falsifying invoices, checks and ledger entries that amounted to a $130,000 reimbursement to his lawyer for paying off a porn star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

New York Justice Juan Merchan sentenced the president-elect to an “unconditional discharge,” handing down no jail time or fines but cementing a mark on Trump’s record 10 days before he takes the oath of office to become the 47th president.

Speaking during the virtual proceeding from his Mar-a-Lago residence, Trump said he was “totally innocent” and defended the description of his payments to his lawyer in business records as “legal expenses.” As he has in the past, he accused the federal government of being involved in the New York state case.

“It’s been a political witch hunt that was done to damage my reputation so that I’d lose the election, and obviously that didn’t work. And the people of our country got to see first hand because they watched the case in your courtroom,” the president-elect said, according to audio published by C-SPAN. Cameras were not allowed in the courtroom during the trial or sentencing.

The courtroom contains limited space for the public and journalists.

Merchan called the case “extraordinary” but said “The same burden of proof was applied and a jury made up of ordinary citizens delivered a verdict.”

After Merchan explained the sentence, he told Trump, “Sir, I wish you Godspeed as you pursue your second term in office.”

Trump was represented Friday morning, and at trial, by his personal lawyer Todd Blanche, whom he’s chosen to be the nation’s next deputy attorney general, the No. 2 position at the U.S. Justice Department.

Trump last-minute attempt

Following months of delays, the sentencing went forth despite Trump’s eleventh-hour request that the U.S. Supreme Court halt the proceeding. The justices denied Trump’s application late Thursday, though the order noted that Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would have granted it.

ABC News reported Thursday that Trump had spoken with Alito by phone just hours before submitting the application to the court’s emergency docket. Alito told the network that the two did not speak about the application.

The sentencing, lasting less than 30 minutes, was a brief disruption in Trump’s barreling preparations for his second presidency. The president-elect was set to host members of the House Freedom Caucus, a contingent of far-right House Republicans, at his Florida property later on Friday. Trump huddled with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill Wednesday and with Republican governors on Thursday.

Trump slammed his sentence on his Truth Social platform as a “scam,” “hoax” and “despicable charade” that he will appeal, a process that will likely drag on for years in New York.

“The real Jury, the American People, have spoken, by Re-Electing me with an overwhelming MANDATE in one of the most consequential Elections in History,” Trump wrote.

The 12 jurors in New York that convicted Trump were also U.S. citizens, or “American people,” as required by law.

Immunity argument

Trump had challenged his New York conviction on the grounds that last summer the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents enjoy criminal immunity for official acts while in office, and presumptive immunity for acts on the perimeter of their formal duties.

Merchan ultimately denied Trump’s immunity argument, saying that the trial and evidence “related entirely to unofficial conduct entitled to no immunity protection.”

Trump has also been occupied with another legal battle in recent days as he cheered a court order to block the release of Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s final report detailing federal criminal charges against Trump for mishandling and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office, and for scheming to subvert the 2020 presidential election results.

Smith ended both cases following Trump’s election victory, as the Justice Department has a long-standing protocol against prosecuting sitting presidents.

A federal appeals court Friday denied requests to block the report in full, leaving only protections for the portion of the report dealing with the classified documents case following an appeal by Trump’s two co-defendants in the case.

People gather in New Orleans for Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, 2023. (Greg LaRose | Louisiana Illuminator)

A federal district court judge in Kentucky has struck down President Joe Biden’s effort to protect transgender students and make other changes to Title IX, ruling the U.S. Department of Education violated teachers’ rights by requiring them to use transgender students’ names and pronouns.

The ruling issued Thursday, which applies nationwide, came as a major blow to the Biden administration in its final days and to LGBTQ+ advocates. It comes less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, when the rule was likely to face more scrutiny from a candidate who took aim at transgender people in a culture-war focused campaign.

The Biden administration rule was released last April and aimed to protect LGBTQ+ students in K-12 schools, colleges and universities. The rule also conferred protections for pregnant students. The update to Title IX, the federal law that forbids sex-based discrimination in education, was expanded to include gender identity and sexual orientation.

In his opinion, Chief Judge Danny Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky wrote that the education department could not expand Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. Reeves was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush.

Gender identity refers to the gender that an individual identifies as, regardless of their sex assigned at birth.

“The entire point of Title IX is to prevent discrimination based on sex — throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless,” Reeves wrote.

Louisiana was among the states that sued the Biden administration over the rule. Its case was pending in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals at the time of the ruling in Kentucky, which came in the case Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti brought.

“Louisiana is honored to have litigated this issue alongside Tennessee and our sister States,” Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement to the Illuminator. “This is a great day for America!”

Gov. Jeff Landry also praised the decision in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“Biden’s attempt to rewrite Title IX is dead!,” Landry posted from his personal account. “It’s a shame this even had to go to court, but pleased to see this win for women and girls across our Nation.”

Prior to Thursday’s decision, the rule had been temporarily blocked in nearly half of U.S. states, including Louisiana and Tennessee, as litigation played out.

While Reeves’ opinion references a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that limits the regulatory authority of federal agencies, it also notably rejects the rule on First Amendment grounds.

“The First Amendment does not permit the government to chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,” Reeves said, referring to sections of the law that could be interpreted as defining deadnaming and misgendering of students as harassment.

Deadnaming is when someone uses a transgender or nonbinary person’s birth name or “dead name” against their wishes. Misgendering occurs when someone refers to an individual by a gender they do not identify as.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

Donald Trump walks to speak to the media after being found guilty following his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30, 2024, in New York City.  Trump, the president-elect, is set to be sentenced on Friday, Jan. 10. (Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court late Thursday denied President-elect Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour attempt to stop his sentencing in his New York hush money trial from going forward Friday morning.

Trump appealed to the court’s emergency docket late Tuesday to intervene in his forthcoming sentencing for 34 felony convictions, arguing that presidential immunity should protect him in the days before he takes the oath of office, and, as he has in the past, that evidence introduced at trial violated the immunity doctrine.

The court denied Trump’s request, in part, because his concerns over evidence introduced in state trial court can be dealt with on a state-level appeal, and because the burden the sentencing will place on him as a president-elect amounts to “a brief virtual hearing,” according to an unsigned order entered on the docket Thursday evening.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh “would grant the application,” according to the order.

Trump spoke by phone with Alito just hours before Trump submitted his request to the court, ABC News first reported early Thursday. Alito told the network the two spoke about a different topic.

New York Justice Juan Merchan scheduled Trump’s sentencing for 10 a.m. Friday, making clear that he would not seek jail time or fines for the president-elect. Rather, Trump will receive an “unconditional discharge,” meaning he’ll retain a criminal record in New York but face no other punishment. Merchan also agreed to give Trump the option for a virtual sentencing.

Immunity ruling

A jury convicted Trump in May after a weeks-long trial focusing on his bookkeeping maneuvers to hide a $130,000 payment made by his personal lawyer ahead of the 2016 presidential election to silence a porn star about a past sexual encounter. The conviction cemented Trump’s place in history as the first American president to become a convicted felon.

Trump fought the conviction after a Supreme Court ruling last summer that former presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for official duties, and presumptive immunity for duties on the outer limits of the office.

Merchan last month denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the case based on presidential immunity, writing that the evidence introduced was  “related entirely to unofficial conduct entitled to no immunity protection.”

Manhattan DA slams Trump’s request

In his response to Trump’s request to the Supreme Court, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argued the high court lacks jurisdiction because Trump has not exhausted his appeals at the state level. Jurisdiction aside, he argued, neither of Trump’s claims “comes close to justifying a stay of the forthcoming sentencing.”

In the application to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, Trump’s lawyers argued that New York state committed a “grave error” in holding that a president-elect is not protected by immunity. 

Bragg called this argument “extraordinary” and “unsupported by any decision from any court.”

“It is axiomatic that there is only one President at a time. Non-employees of the government do not exercise any official function that would be impaired by the conclusion of a criminal case against a private citizen for private conduct,” Bragg wrote.

He also wrote that the trial court has taken “extraordinary steps to minimize any burdens” on Trump. Bragg wrote that Trump “has provided no record support for his claim that his duties as President-elect foreclose him from virtually attending a sentencing that will likely take no more than an hour.”

“The current schedule is also entirely a function of defendant’s repeated requests to adjourn a sentencing date that was originally set for July 11, 2024,” Bragg wrote.

Trump’s lawyers rebutted Bragg in a reply Thursday, saying that the Manhattan district attorney “downplays the importance of the Presidential transition and the need for an energetic executive.”

Trump reaction

In a post on his online platform Truth Social Thursday night, Trump criticized Merchan as “highly political and corrupt” and said he plans to continue to fight the conviction.

“For the sake and sanctity of the Presidency, I will be appealing this case, and am confident that JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL. The pathetic, dying remnants of the Witch Hunts against me will not distract us as we unite and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!,” he wrote.

A Wisconsin barn in winter. | Photo by Gregory Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner

President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants shortly after he takes office on Jan. 20 has triggered a flood of calls to advocates and local officials in Wisconsin. 

“There is palpable fear and anxiety with our clients,” said Carmel Capati, managing immigration attorney for the Catholic Multicultural Center in Madison. Capati and another immigration attorney, Aissa Olivares of Dane County’s Community Immigration Law Center, gave a presentation during a Dec. 27 community forum on immigrant rights organized by former state Rep. Samba Baldeh (D-Madison).

“As we anticipate a change of national leadership, immigrant communities across our state are fearful of what may be coming,” Baldeh said.“It is essential that we as elected officials address that fear, stand up for the rule of law, and advocate for human rights-based policies that acknowledge the contributions of immigrants — who are our neighbors, co-workers, and friends.”

“There is still a lot of uncertainty,” Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett said during the forum, which was held on Zoom. “No one knows what’s going to happen.” But, Barrett assured participants, “We will not be proactively involved in any sort of round-ups, any sort of immigration enforcement.”

During their presentation, the immigration attorneys addressed the concerns of university students, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, refugees and people from countries eligible for Temporary Protected Status during the administration of President Joe Biden — a status they said they expect Trump to revoke. Wisconsin’s immigrant residents should apply for benefits still available to them under the Biden administration, the lawyers said, to get their identity documents in order, and to make an emergency plan in case they are detained, including designating someone to pick up their children from school.

“It’s very important that we do avoid situations where we might be subject to arrest,” said Olivares. “And if unknown people are knocking on your door, don’t open the door.”

‘How in the hell will we continue to be the Dairy State?’

Nowhere would mass deportation have a bigger impact than on Wisconsin’s dairy farms, where an estimated 70% of the workforce is made up of immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Central America. Because Congress has never created a year-round visa for low-skilled farm workers, almost all of Wisconsin’s immigrant dairy workers are undocumented. Without them, experts say, the whole industry would collapse.

At a Jan. 3 press conference in the Capitol, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers called the threat of mass deportation “illogical,” and said “we will do everything in our power to prevent it.”

“The bottom line is, in Wisconsin, 70% of our farms … 70% of the people may be part of the federal government’s idea to move them elsewhere, out of our country,” Evers said. “Think about that. How in the hell will we continue to be the Dairy State with no one to milk the cows and do the other important work?”

Yet, despite the existential threat posed to dairy workers and Wisconsin’s marquee industry by Trump’s proposed roundups, during a recent reporting trip to rural Buffalo County — a heavy dairy producing area in Western Wisconsin — workers, farmers and local law enforcement officials told the Examiner they were not scrambling to prepare for raids.

“What are we going to do? We can’t do anything,” said a dairy worker from Mexico who goes by the nickname Junior and who works for Buffalo County dairy farmer John Rosenow. “We can’t hide. All we do is work, go home, go back to work, back home, back to work.”

“We all came here not for fun but out of necessity,” he added, speaking about the estimated 10,000 immigrant dairy workers in Wisconsin. 

Junior, 19, has been working on Rosenow’s farm for the last year and a half, sending home money to help support his 3-year-old daughter. Like many of his co-workers, he came north to milk cows because the average wage for dairy workers, at $11 per hour, is far more than he could earn in Mexico, where a factory job pays the U.S. equivalent of just $20 per week. For decades, Mexican workers on Rosenow’s farm and other farms in the area have saved enough money to build houses, start businesses, and put their children through school back in Mexico.

The risks these workers have taken to come here include walking across the desert at night, evading kidnappers, and nearly suffocating while being smuggled in the trunk of a car. It can take a full year of work, rising at 4 a.m. to milk cows and shovel out barns, just to pay off a typical $12,000 debt to smugglers for a border crossing. Compared to all of that, workers say anti-immigrant political rhetoric does not seem like the biggest threat many of them face — especially those from Mexico who came to Wisconsin to build a better life, not, like many asylum-seekers, to flee violent persecution in their home country.

“I haven’t heard any workers ask about what might happen in the new administration,” said translator Mercedes Falk, who travels among about 20 farms in the Buffalo County area, interpreting for farmers and workers. “Farmers and workers are continuing to work side by side because they know that they are the ones that will make sure the cows are taken care of and the farms run smoothly. I think they both have been doing the work for so long that they understand that no one else is going to step in to do the work if it’s not them.”

“In our area, which is typical of most any dairy farm area in the country, most all farms with over 100 cows have immigrants working for them,” Rosenow said.

Rosenow, an outspoken advocate for his workers, helped found the nonprofit Puentes/Bridges, which takes dairy farmers from Wisconsin and Minnesota on an annual trip to rural Mexico, to see the homes and businesses their workers are building with the money they earn in the U.S. Falk, the translator, leads these trips. 

“Trump says Mexico is not sending us their best,” Rosenow said during one such trip in 2019. “These Mexican towns are sending us their best when they send their young men up north.” His former workers, he said, have returned home to become leaders in their communities, local employers, and important supporters of two economies — in Wisconsin and in Mexico. 

Mexican workers sent home $51.6 billion from U.S. jobs to help the Mexican economy in 2021, accounting for 4% of Mexico’s GDP (oil and gas only accounts for 3.3% of GDP for this petroleum producing country).

But while former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called those workers “living heroes,” Trump has called them criminals and rapists and promised to send them all home.

In rural Wisconsin, which voted heavily for Trump, some farmers who support Trump have told the Examiner they don’t believe he intends to deport their hardworking employees — that his real targets are criminals. But Trump made all undocumented immigrants a priority for deportation in his first term, unlike Biden, whose immigration policy has focused on deporting those who committed crimes or posed a threat to national security.

Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, whose district ecompasses a large swath of Western Wisconsin, including Buffalo County, sits on the House Agriculture Committee. Van Orden made cracking down on “criminal illegal aliens” a centerpiece of his 2024 reelection campaign. At a press conference in September, he highlighted a violent attack on a woman by a Venezuelan immigrant to denounce U.S. immigration policy. Van Orden acknowledged at that event that dairy farmers in his district rely on immigrant labor, but then went on to praise the H2A seasonal farmwork visa, which is not applicable to dairy farm work. 

“I’m 100% behind making sure that we get as many people into the country lawfully to help support our industries,” Van Orden said. “I’m absolutely, adamantly opposed to letting a single known criminal enter this country, because this is what happens.” 

Campaign rhetoric about crimes committed by immigrants runs counter to studies that show lower crime rates among immigrants in the U.S. than among U.S.-born residents.

During Evers’ press conference earlier this month, a reporter pressed the governor on whether he believed undocumented immigrants who commit crimes should be deported. 

“What crime, speeding?” Evers asked. “Violent crimes,” the reporter clarified.

“It shouldn’t be treated any differently,” Evers said. Both immigrants and U.S. citizens should be prosecuted and put in prison if they were guilty of crimes, he added. “Serving that time is equally important for someone that is documented and someone that is not.”

The view from Buffalo County

In Buffalo County, local law enforcement officers told the Examiner they have not seen more crime among the immigrant population than among U.S. born residents of the area. Instead, police say, they can often be the victims.

Recently, Buffalo County Deputy Sheriff Aarik Lackershire got a call from Rosenow’s dairy farm.  A worker there had asked Rosenow to lend him $1,500 to pay off a U.S. official who was demanding money and telling the worker he had to pay or be prosecuted for a crime.

Rosenow suspected his employee, Junior, was being scammed. Instead of loaning him the money, he called the sheriff. Lackershire arrived on the farm, Rosenow recalled, “with coke-bottle glasses, wearing full riot gear — leather, with a gun on his belt … I swear he was 18 at the most.”

Relations between local law enforcement and the immigrant workers on Wisconsin dairy farms have become strained in recent years because of workers’ fear of deportation. During the first Trump administration, high-profile raids and a hostile political climate caused some workers to return to their home countries while others simply stopped going out. Many live on the farms where they work and avoid contact with the police. Rosenow has fewer than a dozen employees and most of them, young men and a few women, came up from Mexico without their families and live in a barracks on the farm to save money and send more home.

Lackershire did not come to Rosenow’s farm to arrest Junior. Instead, the deputy spent a long time talking to him in Rosenow’s office, next to the milking parlor, listening carefully and explaining to Junior that he had been the victim of a scam. 

“He obviously wanted to help,” said Rosenow. “The next day I was in Alma, so I stopped at the sheriff’s office to thank them for doing such a great job.” 

Farmers and workers in rural Wisconsin say they hope the national anti-immigrant climate will blow over, and that they can’t afford to abandon an economic relationship both groups depend on for their livelihoods. Throughout rural Wisconsin, immigrant workers and the state’s U.S.-born residents continue to coexist and, in many cases, try to help each other, as Lackershire did for Junior.

‘They don’t know who they can trust’

At first, when Lackershire showed up at Rosenow’s farm, Junior was reluctant to talk. “It’s a person you don’t know, and you’re telling him things — you feel nervous,” he said in an interview later, in Spanish, recalling the scene. But Lackershire spent a lot of time listening patiently to Junior’s story, with the assistance of Falk, the interpreter, whom Rosenow called and put on speaker phone. Lackershire explained to Junior that the person who called him demanding payment could not have been a U.S. official, since the call came from outside the United States.

“After that he warmed up a little bit,” Lackershire recalled in an interview, sitting at the dining room table at his home in Durand. It was a convoluted extortion scam involving three different callers, one posing as a woman with a sick child who needed help, one as a law enforcement officer, and one as a friend of Junior’s from Mexico. Lackershire said he’s encountered many similar scams, but this was “probably the most layered one I’ve dealt with.”

“He’s telling me about three different people, three different stories, and none of it’s making sense,” Lackershire recalled. “Wow. So that was an obstacle. And obviously, doing all this through translators, some stuff gets lost in translation.”

Falk said she was impressed with Lackershire’s patience. “I never got a sense of any ounce of frustration from him even though it was a long interaction at 9 p.m.,” she said. The whole experience, she added, “gave me a newfound appreciation for humanity and how empowering it is to connect on a human level in spite of speaking different languages and being from different cultures.”

Scammers target people of all backgrounds, Lackershire said. But immigrants are particularly vulnerable and, in his experience, are more frequently shaken down for large sums of money.

“It seems like they take more advantage of immigrants because they don’t know the legal system of the U.S.,” Lackershire said. 

“This group of people obviously has a fear of being sent back to where they came from,” he added. “They don’t know who they can trust.”

That lack of trust makes it harder for law enforcement to do its job.

“We have to go to every 911 call, and we’ve had hang-ups at worker barracks at 4 in the morning,” Lackershire said. “And obviously going around knocking on doors as a police officer at 4 in the morning on a primarily illegal population stirs everybody up and they get nervous. The intention is to see if somebody needs help, and a lot of people aren’t even willing to talk.”

Over time, Lackershire feels he has gained the confidence of people who used to avoid him. Some will now translate for him on occasion. Lackershire himself grew up in the area and went to school with the children of immigrant farm workers. “They are just trying to support their families, which I respect,” he said.

‘We treat the immigrant workers and nonimmigrant workers the same’

When, in October 2023, Minnesota stopped requiring proof of legal residency to get a driver’s license, Lackershire began carrying around handouts from a Minnesota immigrant rights group to give to the unlicensed immigrant drivers he pulls over, encouraging them to get a Minnesota license. (The Wisconsin Legislature changed state law in 2007 to bar undocumented immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses.)

Lackershire said he sees a lot of immigrant drivers in Wisconsin who have registered and insured their vehicles in Minnesota, “trying to do the best they can.” But he still hands out a lot of tickets in Wisconsin for driving without a license. “That’s not something we typically make an arrest for; that’s usually a traffic ticket,” he said. But after they get too many tickets, unlicensed drivers in Wisconsin are treated as though their licenses have been revoked, Lackershire explained, “and then it’s a driving after revocation. And that’s actually a criminal charge.” Criminal charges can trigger an immigration hold and deportation proceedings.

Having a lot of unlicensed drivers on the road creates a public safety hazard.

Lackershire’s boss, Buffalo County Sheriff Mike Osmond, said in a phone interview that he and his deputies often come upon abandoned cars that are registered to people with no driver’s license and left in a ditch after a crash. “If they are immigrant workers, they tend to not stick around,” he said. 

“We treat the immigrant workers and nonimmigrant workers the same,” Osmond added. “If you’re the victim of a crime, I want our deputies to spend time and educate you. We’re not out there looking for immigrant workers.”

As for the possibility that his department might be asked to help with mass deportations, Osmond said he’s not worried. “I guess I’ll figure it out when it happens, if it happens,” he said. He’s not prepared to say what his department policy will be on cooperating with federal immigration agents. 

“In my entire career I don’t know I’ve ever had a request from a federal agency to help with immigration, except once when there was an ICE hold on someone in the jail,” he said. That was during the first Trump administration.

“If President-elect Donald Trump was sitting in the passenger seat of my truck right now, I’d tell him to deport the people out of the jails and prisons — these are folks who’ve come here and committed a crime.”

‘I have a lot of goals, a lot of dreams’

Falk teaches a regular Monday night English class on Rosenow’s farm. 

On a recent December evening, she greeted Junior as he came out of Rosenow’s milking parlor, as three people in their early twenties — two young men and one young woman — arrived for class. The three students laughed and teased each other as they took turns translating the sentences Falk wrote on a white board.

Junior, standing off to the side, said he had taken Lackershire’s advice and blocked the people who scammed him. He was glad he’d only given them $600.

Junior’s father also clocked out of the milking parlor while the English class was going on. He had been on the farm for the last four years, he said, and was planning to go home to Mexico next year.

“It’s always next year,” one of Falk’s students said, laughing. His father, who also works on the farm and sends home money to the rest of the family, says the same thing every year, he added.

As for Junior, “I just have a couple of years left. That’s enough for me, then I’ll go back,” he said.

In that time, he hopes he’ll have enough money to build a house. “I have a lot of goals,” he said, “a lot of dreams.”

This is the first installment in an Examiner series on immigration in Wisconsin.

Technologists say the hazy definition of “artificial intelligence” leaves a wide opening for companies to over-promise or over-market the capabilities of their products – or even render “AI” more of a marketing gimmick than a real technology. (Photo illustration by tolgart/Getty Images) NOTE: The lowercase on “tolgart” in photo credit is CQ per Getty site.

In his college courses at Stanford University, Jehangir Amjad poses a curious question to his students: Was the 1969 moon landing a product of artificial intelligence?

It might sound like a work of science fiction, or time travel, he said, but understanding the history of AI answers the question for them.

“I would actually argue, yes, a lot of the algorithms that were part of what put us on the moon are precursors to a lot of what we are seeing today as well,” said Amjad, a Bay Area technology executive and a computer science lecturer at Stanford. “It’s essentially precursors to the same kind of similar sort of ‘next, next, next generation’ algorithms.”

Amjad poses the question to his students to underline how hard it is to actually define “artificial intelligence.” This has become even more difficult as the technology explodes in sophistication and public awareness.

“The beauty and the dilemma is, ‘what is AI?’ is actually very hard to define,” Amjad said.

That broad definition – and public understanding – of “artificial intelligence” can make it difficult for both consumers and the tech industry to parse out what is “real” AI and what is simply marketed as such.

Swapnil Shinde, the Los Altos, California-based CEO and cofounder of AI bookkeeping software Zeni, has seen it through his investment firm Twin Ventures. Over the last two years, Shinde has seen a huge uptick in companies seeking funding that describe themselves as “AI-powered” or “AI-driven.” The AI market is very saturated, and some “AI companies” in fact just use the technology in a very small part of their product, he said.

“It’s very easy to figure out after a few conversations if the startup is just building a wrap around ChatGPT and calling that a product,” Shinde said. “And if that’s the case, they are not going to survive for long, because it’s not really deep tech. It isn’t solving a very deep, painful problem that was driven by humans for a long period of time.”

The rush to build AI

Since early 2023, Theresa Fesinstine said she has observed a race in the corporate world to introduce AI technologies in order to stay competitive and relevant. It’s when she launched her AI education company, peoplepower.ai, in which she leads workshops, teaches organizations about how AI is built and consults them on which tools might be a good fit for their needs.

In a time where everyone wants to claim the most cutting edge tools, some basic education about AI can help both companies and their employees navigate the technology landscape, the Norwalk, Connecticut-based founder said.

In an effort to look more innovative, companies may tout basic automations or rule-based alerts as exciting new AI tools, Fesinstine said. While these tools do use some foundational technologies of AI, the companies could be overstating the tool’s abilities, she said, especially when they throw around the popular buzzword term “generative AI,” which uses complicated algorithms and deep learning techniques to learn, adapt and predict.

The pressure on companies to keep up with the latest and greatest may also lead some organizations to buy new AI software tools, even if they don’t have a strategy to implement and train their employees how to best use it.

“It’s predatory, I would say,” Fesinstine said. “For companies, especially those that are feeling unsure of what AI is going to look like, what it should be, people have a fear of being left behind.”

Some technologists argue that ambiguity around what is or isn’t AI allows for all kinds of tech products to be sold as such. Predictive analytics, for example, which uses data to forecast future outcomes, may be “borderline” AI, said Ed Watal, the Reston, Virginia-based founder of IT and AI strategy consultancy firm Intellibus.

True AI systems use algorithms to sort, analyze and review data, and make informed decisions on what to do with it, based on what humans prompt it to do. The “learning” aspects of these systems are how AI gets smarter over time through neural networks which take feedback and use history to get better at completing tasks over time.

“But the purists, the purists, will argue that AI is only machine learning and deep learning,” he said.

“AI washing”

Though there seems to be an AI-powered company promising to do pretty much any task for you, technologists warn that today’s “real” AI has its limitations. Watal said the industry has seen some “AI washing” or over-promising and over-marketing the uses of AI.

A company that promises that its AI tool can build a website from the ground up could be an example, he said. While you could get ChatGPT or another AI algorithm to generate the code, it can’t create a fully functioning website, he said.

“You wouldn’t be able to do things which require, let’s say, something as simple as sending an email, because sending an email requires a [simple mail transfer protocol] server,” Watal said. “Yeah, you could ask this AI tool to also write the code for a mail server, but you’d still have to host it and run it somewhere. So it’s not as simple as, oh, you click a button and you have an entire app.”

Amjad, who is also the head of AI Platform at generative AI company Ikigai, said companies sometimes over-promise and over-market the ability of AI to perform original, creative tasks.

While artificial intelligence tools are great at pattern recognition, data sorting and generating ideas based on existing content, humans remain the source of original, creative tasks and output, he said.

“People would argue that in the public imagination, AI is creating a lot of things, but really it’s regurgitating. It’s not creating, right?” Amjad said. “And we should doubt wherever we start seeing claims of originality coming from AI because originality is a very human trait.”

It’s definitely not the first time that a new technology has captured the public’s attention and led to a marketing frenzy, Watal said. About a decade ago, the concept of “Web3,” or a decentralized internet that relies on blockchain technology, quickly grew in popularity, he said.

Blockchain technology operates as sort of a public ledger, where transactions and records are kept in an accessible forum. It’s the basis of many cryptocurrencies, and while it has become more mainstream in recent years, it hasn’t taken over the internet as was predicted about a decade ago.

“The cloud” is another example of a technology marketing makeover, Watal said. The concept of remote servers storing information separately from your hardware goes back decades, but after Apple’s introduction of the Elastic Compute Cloud in 2006, every technology company competed to get their claim to the cloud.

Only time will tell if we are overusing or underusing the term artificial intelligence, Amjad said.

“I think it’s very clear that both the hype and the promise, and the promise of applications is actually pretty real,” Amjad said. “But that doesn’t mean that we may not be, in certain quarters, overdoing it.”

Amjad suspects the interest in AI will only continue to rise, but he feels Ikigai’s technology is one that will prove itself amid the hype cycle.

“Yes, it’s come and captured the public imagination. And I’m absolutely thrilled about that part, but it’s something that builds upon a very long tradition of these things,” Amjad said. “And I wish that would help temper some of the expectations … the hype cycle has actually existed in AI, at least a couple of times, in the last, maybe, 50 years itself.”

Gov. Tony Evers, pictured speaking with reporters in 2023, declared an energy emergency Thursday. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order Thursday, declaring an emergency in Wisconsin that is meant to allow for quick and efficient delivery of residential heating fuel, including heating oil and propane, throughout the state. 

Winter Storm Blair brought extreme icy, snowy and cold conditions to states in parts of the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic over the last week, leading to multiple deaths as well as power outages, flight cancellations and road closures. Parts of southeast Wisconsin were under a winter weather advisory earlier this week. 

Evers said in a statement that Winter Storm Blair has “impacted residents and industries alike” across the country. 

“This has increased demand for heating fuel and caused strain on delivering essential products across our state, including fuel for home heating, which is critical for the health and safety of folks during the Wisconsin winter,” Evers said. “Getting residential heating fuel like propane and heating oil moving now to those who need it will help Wisconsinites remain safe as we continue to face cool and freezing temperatures in the coming months.”

The executive order states that demand for residential heating has been heightened due to winter weather and that residential heating fuel distribution terminals have reported limited supplies of product on hand, on allocation or loading off of the pipelines. According to the Public Service Commission’s Office of Energy Innovation, this has resulted in long wait times and drivers traveling longer distances to obtain fuel. The situation is making it difficult for transporters to meet demand while complying with state and federal hours-of-service requirements.

The emergency declaration will allow for a 30-day waiver of certain state and federal hours-of-service restrictions to allow suppliers to get caught up from weather-related delays.

Migrants wait throughout the night on May 10, 2023, in a dust storm at Gate 42, on land between the Rio Grande and the border wall, hoping they will be processed by immigration authorities before the expiration of Title 42. (Photo by Corrie Boudreaux for Source NM)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans gained more than enough Democratic support Thursday to advance a bill that would greatly expand immigration detention, following a presidential election in which border security was a main theme for President-elect Donald Trump.

In an 84-9 procedural vote, 32 Senate Democrats and one independent backed the bill, S. 5, sponsored by Alabama’s Katie Britt. With the 60-vote threshold met, the legislation now can advance for debate and a final vote.

The only Democrats who voted against the procedural motion were Sens. Tina Smith of Minnesota, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Andy Kim and Cory Booker of New Jersey, Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, also opposed it.

Hours before the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that he planned to vote to allow the bill to proceed because Democrats want a debate on the measure and an amendment process.

“This is not a vote on the bill itself,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday. “It’s a motion to proceed, a vote that says we should have a debate and should have amendments.”

Petty crimes targeted

The bill, named after 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, would expand mandatory detention requirements for immigrants — including some with legal status — charged with petty crimes like shoplifting.

María Teresa Kumar, the president and CEO of the civic engagement group Voto Latino, said in a statement that the bill “is a chilling first step toward widespread family separation while dismantling critical protections for due process.”

“The legislation’s broad detention requirements would impact even those legally permitted to enter the United States to seek asylum, subjecting them to immediate incarceration based on accusations of minor offenses such as theft, burglary, or shoplifting,” she said. “Such measures not only undermine due process but also disproportionately target migrants who are already fleeing violence and instability in search of safety.”

The legislation would also give broad legal standing for state attorneys general to challenge federal immigration law and bond decisions of immigration judges.

It would include not only immigrants in the country without documentation, but also those with a discretionary legal status such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

Georgia murder

Riley was out on a run when her roommates became concerned after she did not return home. Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela, was charged and convicted of her murder last month. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ibarra allegedly entered the country illegally in 2022.

Ibarra was previously arrested on a shoplifting charge and released, so the bill Republicans have pushed for would require the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to detain an immigrant charged or arrested with local theft, burglary or shoplifting.

“Her killer, who came to this country illegally, should have never been in the United States, and once he had been arrested for multiple crimes before committing the most heinous, unimaginable crime, he should have been detained by ICE immediately,” Britt said on the Senate floor.

Trump often spoke of Riley’s murder on the campaign trail and blamed the Biden administration’s immigration policies for her death.

GOP trifecta

The House passed its version of the bill, H.R. 29, on Tuesday, with 48 Democrats joining Republicans. The measure also passed the House on a bipartisan basis last Congress, with 37 Democrats voting with the GOP. It stalled in the Senate, where Democrats maintained a slim majority.

With a Republican-controlled trifecta in Washington after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, and only seven Senate Democrats needed to break the 60-vote threshold, the bill has a decent chance of becoming law once it gets to a final vote, drawing concern from immigration advocates.

“With just days before Trump’s inauguration and what we know will be an onslaught of more attacks against immigrants, there is no excuse for complicity in the hateful demonization of immigrant communities and violent expansion of the detention and deportation apparatus,” Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, the deputy director of federal advocacy of the largest youth immigrant advocacy group United WeDream Action, said in a statement.

Democratic backers

Democrats, still reeling from the losses of the November election, have shifted toward the right on immigration.

The bill gained votes from senators from swing states that Trump carried, like Arizona freshman Ruben Gallego and Michigan freshman Elissa Slotkin.

“Michiganders have spoken loudly and clearly that they want action to secure our southern border,” Slotkin said in a statement.

She said that while the bill “isn’t perfect,” she’s hopeful for an amendment process.

Gallego and Slotkin both voted for the bill last Congress when they were members of the House.

Both Georgia Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff — who is up for reelection next year — and Raphael Warnock voted for the procedural motion. 

“I’m voting to begin floor debate on the Laken Riley Act because I believe the people of Georgia want their lawmakers in Washington to address the issues in this legislation,” Warnock said in a statement before Thursday’s vote.

Michigan’s Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, who is also up for reelection next year, also voted for the procedural motion. 

The late President Jimmy Carter’s casket is pictured leaving the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 9, 2025, before it was transported to Washington National Cathedral. (Photo by U.S. Army Spc. David A. Carvajal/Department of Defense)

WASHINGTON — On a wintry Thursday morning, mourners and dignitaries gathered at Washington National Cathedral to honor the life of former President Jimmy Carter.

Speakers at Carter’s state funeral, including President Joe Biden and the sons of Carter’s political contemporaries delivering eulogies written by their fathers, described the Georgia native and U.S. Navy veteran as a man committed to civil and human rights who led a courageous life of faith and service.

In his eulogy, Biden said Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, established “a model post-presidency,” depicting the Georgian as a man of “character” who held a “deep Christian faith in God.” 

“Jimmy Carter’s friendship taught me, and through his life, taught me, that strength of character is more than title or the power we hold — it’s the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect — that everyone, and I mean everyone, deserves an even shot,” he said.

Carter died at 100 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, on Dec. 29. Thursday’s funeral marked his final memorial in Washington after his body arrived in the nation’s capital Jan. 7.

The former Peach State governor lived the longest of any U.S. president. Despite serving just one White House term from 1977 to 1981, his presidency featured key diplomatic deals and energy policy initiatives, among other achievements.

After leaving the White House, he established the Carter Center in Atlanta. He authored books and spent a great deal of time volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that works to build affordable homes.

The many state funeral attendees also included the four living former U.S. presidents: Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

A life of service

Biden said his fellow Democratic president’s life was “the story of a man who never let the tides of politics divert him from his mission to serve and shape the world.”

Steven Ford delivered a eulogy written by his late father, former President Gerald Ford.

“Honesty and truth telling were synonymous with the name Jimmy Carter,”  Gerald Ford wrote. “Those traits were instilled in him by his loving parents, Lillian and Earl Carter, and the strength of his honesty was reinforced by his upbringing in the rural South poised on the brink of social transformation.”

Carter won the presidency against Gerald Ford, the Republican incumbent, in 1976. The two were dear friends, Steven Ford said. 

Andrew Young, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter administration, offered the homily.

“I don’t mean this with any disrespect, but it’s still hard for me to understand how you could get to be president from Plains, Georgia,” Young jokingly remarked as he paid tribute to Carter.

“I’ve known President Carter for more than half of my life, and I never ceased to be surprised, I never ceased to be enlightened, I never ceased to be inspired by the little deeds of love and mercy that he shared with us every day of his life,” said Young, who also served as mayor of Atlanta and represented Georgia in Congress.

“It was President James Earl Carter that, for me, symbolized the greatness of the United States of America.”

Ted Mondale, son of Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, read the eulogy written by his late father.

Though he and Carter only had four years in the Oval Office, Carter “achieved so much in that time —  it stood as a marker for Americans dedicated to justice and decency,” Walter Mondale wrote.

Three of Carter’s grandsons — Josh, James and Jason — honored their late grandfather during the service.

Josh Carter said his late grandfather spent the entire time he knew him helping people in need.

“He built houses for people who needed homes, he eliminated diseases in forgotten places, he waged peace anywhere in the world, wherever he saw a chance,” Josh Carter said.

“He loved people, and whenever he told these stories in Sunday school, he always said he did it for one simple reason: He worshiped the Prince of Peace, and he commanded it.”

Country stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who are among Habitat for Humanity’s most recognizable volunteers, sang John Lennon’s “Imagine.” 

Back to Plains

Carter, who was a peanut farmer, and his late wife, Rosalynn Carter, hailed from the small southwest Georgia town of Plains, where they returned after living in the White House.

Rosalynn Carter died in November 2023 at the age of 96. She and Jimmy Carter were married for 77 years.

The state funeral followed Carter’s body lying in state at the U.S. Capitol throughout this week. Mourners paid their respects to the former president in a public viewing that began Tuesday night and ended Thursday morning. Biden declared Jan. 9 a national day of mourning to honor the former president.

Carter’s body will make its way to Georgia on Thursday, where he will have a private funeral service and interment in Plains.

Rainbow LGBTQ heart on hands, Getty Images

Since 2018, Marc Herstand has been on the forefront of a campaign to ban mental health professionals in Wisconsin from counseling clients with the goal of changing their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“Conversion therapy” has been denounced by mainstream professional organizations for doctors, psychiatrists, social workers and counselors. “People likened it to child abuse and torture,” says Herstand, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers Wisconsin chapter. “LGBT kids who are not accepted have a much, much higher rate of suicidality and mental health issues.”

Twenty states — and several local communities in Wisconsin — have banned the practice. And since late April 2024, the state professional licensing board for therapists, counselors and social workers has labeled conversion therapy as unprofessional conduct.

“It has no place whatsoever in the mental health professions, frankly, in our society,” Herstand says.

The provision banning the practice is precarious, however. Twice it’s been blocked by one of the Wisconsin Legislature’s most powerful committees. And advocates for the LGBTQ community fear it could be blocked again.

“Undoing this rule would overturn the work of the state’s mental health experts and expose young people and their families to unnecessary and lasting harms,” says Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the national LGBTQ advocy group The Trevor Project.

Next week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear arguments in a lawsuit that could determine whether the conversion therapy ban survives — and whether that legislative body has been overstepping its bounds in overriding state regulations that address everything from environmental quality to public health.

The Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) has been a thorn in the side of  the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers since he took office in January 2019. The committee’s power under Wisconsin law to stymie regulations enacted by the executive branch was one of three issues that Evers identified in a lawsuit the governor filed in October 2023 charging that Republican leaders of the Wisconsin Legislature were exercising an unconstitutional “legislative veto” to thwart his administration from carrying out its duties.

The lawsuit went straight to the Supreme Court. This past July the Court ruled 6-1 in Evers’ favor on the first of those three issues, throwing out state laws that had allowed the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to block how the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources spends money budgeted for the Knowles-Nelson stewardship fund.

In October, the Court dismissed the lawsuit’s second issue, an objection to actions by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) that had held up raises for University of Wisconsin system employees to pressure the UW into eliminating its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. A deal between Vos and the UW Board of Regents ended the delay in December 2023.

The Court also said it would take up the third issue: the power that JCRAR has exercised to block regulations, sometimes repeatedly.  Over the last six years, the 10-member committee’s six Republican lawmakers have voted to block or rewrite rules drawn up by state agencies on matters including environmental regulations, vaccine requirements and public health protections.

Two rules blocked

The Evers lawsuit identifies two JCRAR actions. One was the committee’s vote in January 2023 blocking the conversion therapy ban. The second was a committee vote blocking a state building code update. Both measures were produced under the umbrella of the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS).

The building code revision was developed over three years in a series of meetings and hearings following national and international model documents under the direction of a statewide professional building code body. Brian Flannery, a veteran building inspector who was part of the code revision process, told the Wisconsin Examiner in a 2023 interview that at two hearings, there were no objections to the code change brought to the group.  

In August 2023, however, a Senate committee voted along party lines against approving the new building code following a hearing in which objections were raised by business lobbyists. JCRAR held a vote Sept. 29, 2023, approving an “indefinite objection” — blocking DSPS from reintroducing the code update unless the Legislature passes a bill authorizing it.

The JCRAR vote was 6-4 on party lines, with only Republicans supporting the motion, and was conducted by paper ballot, without a hearing and without the committee meeting in person.

Therapists’ ethics rules

The rule opposing conversion therapy for LGBTQ persons was part of an ethics revision by the Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board.

Herstand of the National Association of Social Workers said he first appealed to the examining board in 2018 to ban conversion therapy. Later that year the board began the process of revising the state professional code and added to the list of actions considered “unprofessional conduct” a provision that began, “Employing or promoting any intervention or method that has the purpose of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity…”

“When I talk to survivors of conversion therapy, I hear their struggles with loss of trust — trust for family members, trust for licensed medical professionals and the entire health care system,” Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, an LGBTQ advocacy group, tells the Wisconsin Examiner. “Conversion therapy really erodes that ability to trust, and that makes interacting with the health care system in the future more difficult.”

A study from the Trevor Project also shows “a significant increase in suicide attempts, and not only that, but also a significant increase in multiple suicide attempts,” Swetz adds.

After hearings and the board’s unanimous vote to advance the rule change, however, JCRAR voted 6-4 to put the change on a temporary hold until the end of the 2021-22 legislative session.  

At the end of November 2022, the examining board republished the new ethics code, effective Dec. 1 of that year. Six weeks later, JCRAR convened again, holding a public hearing.

Mental health professionals and LGBTQ advocates urged the committee to allow the new code to stand. Herstand was among them, describing conversion therapy as “Child abuse. Torture. Major mental health and suicidal risk. Unprofessional conduct. Fake therapy.”

Testifying in favor of throwing out the rule, Julaine Appling, executive director of the conservative Wisconsin Family Council, said the ban violated professionals’  freedom of speech and religion.

JCRAR again voted 6-4 to suspend the rule for the rest of the 2023-24 legislative session. The committee co-chair, Rep. Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee) said that “the merits of any conversion therapy or any other type of therapy” was “a question for the Legislature as it is public policy and deals with speech issues.”

Nine months later, Evers filed his lawsuit, calling both of the committee actions examples of an unconstitutional legislative veto that hampered the executive branch from doing its job.

In April, with the Legislature wrapped up for the rest of 2024, the examining board reinstated the code banning conversion therapy. 

Sending rules to limbo

Under Wisconsin law, JCRAR can object to a rule after it is promulgated, either temporarily — for the balance of a legislative session — or indefinitely. State law also holds that if lawmakers introduce legislation that codifies a rule objection, the rule stays blocked until the legislation is vetoed by the governor.

Instead, however, lawmakers have introduced such legislation and referred it to committee, where it has remained dormant for the rest of the legislative session in order to avoid a veto that would restore the blocked rule.

The Evers administration argues that by blocking regulations, JCRAR is taking over the power that the Wisconsin Constitution confers on the governor to carry out the laws.

“In other words, when JCRAR vetoes a proposed rule, it effectively amends the statute under which the executive agency proposed that rule,” a brief filed on behalf of Evers argues.

“By proposing the conversion therapy rule, the [therapy licensing board] exercised that statutory authority. By objecting to that rule, JCRAR effectively withdrew a share of the statutory authority the Legislature had granted to the Board” — in essence, the brief argues, unilaterally rewriting the state law that authorizes the licensing board to set the profession’s ethical standards.

“JCRAR does not have that power—only the full Legislature does,” the brief states.

The committee’s action — and the state laws that empower it — undercut the legal right of the profession to set its standards, Herstand tells the Wisconsin Examiner.

“It’s an issue of the ability of professions, which is delineated in the law, in statute, to set their own ethical standards, when some in the Legislature are trying to prevent that,” he says. “To me, that’s a violation of statute.”

A brief filed on behalf of the Legislature’s Republican leaders argues otherwise. A 1992 state Supreme Court ruling upheld the right of the committee and the Legislature to suspend rules as part of its oversight of the executive branch. While the Evers administration argues that the earlier decision was wrong and should be overturned, the legislators’ brief contends it should be honored as legal precedent.

In defense of JCRAR’s powers, the legislators’ brief describes regulations as the product of power “delegated” by the lawmakers — an argument that lawyers for the governor reject.

A friend of the court brief by a group of legal scholars, including Miriam Seifter and Bryna Godar of the University of Wisconsin Law School, sides with the administration. The power that Wisconsin law grants to JCRAR is unlike that found in other states and unconstitutional, the brief argues.

“Wisconsin’s anomalous statutory scheme allows a handful of legislators to determine whether administrative rules are lawful; to suspend otherwise final rules forever or rescind them once in force; and to act without deadlines or judicial review,” the brief states. “The Constitution readily permits other forms of agency oversight, but it precludes these committee overreaches into the domains of the executive branch, the judiciary, and the people.”