Rioters are shown inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin on Thursday urged Americans to demand President-elect Donald Trump justify each Jan. 6 defendant pardon if he issues them on his “first day” in office, as promised.

The Maryland congressman, who sat on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, said it would be an “extraordinary event in the history of the republic to have a president pardon more than 1,000 criminal convicts who were in jail for having engaged in a violent insurrection incited by that very president.”

“And if it is actually going to happen, people should demand a very specific accounting of how there is contrition and repentance on part of each of the people being pardoned,” said Raskin, who will be the top Democrat this Congress on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

Raskin spoke alongside other panelists for a virtual event hosted by the State Democracy Defenders Action, a nonpartisan advocacy group that describes its mission as fighting against “election sabotage and autocracy.”

Trump promised on the campaign trail to pardon those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a violent effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory. Trump has repeatedly characterized the rioters as “patriots,” “warriors” and “hostages.”

The president-elect, who will be sworn into office on Jan. 20, said during a December interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker” that he will act “very quickly” to pardon the defendants on day one — though he indicated he might make exceptions “if somebody was radical, crazy.”

More than 140 police officers were assaulted during the attack, and the rioters caused roughly $2.8 million in damage to the Capitol.

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged approximately 1,572 people in connection with the attack, including charging 171 defendants for using a deadly or dangerous weapon to inflict serious bodily harm on a law enforcement officer.

Raskin highlighted the case of a 56-year-old New York man who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for assaulting an officer during the riot. Thomas Webster, a former Marine and police officer, tackled and choked a Washington Metropolitan Police Department officer while other rioters kicked him.

“That’s just one example,” Raskin said. “The press has gotten to know several police officers who’ve been outspoken about the outrageous, medieval-style violence that was trained on them.”

According to the latest Justice Department figures, approximately 996 defendants have pleaded guilty — 321 to felony charges and 675 to misdemeanors.

About 215 defendants have been found guilty at contested trials in federal court, including 10 who were convicted of seditious conspiracy.

Sign for the Wisconsin Elections Comission. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted Thursday to investigate how nearly 200 absentee ballots cast in Madison were overlooked and not counted on Election Night.

“This was such a serious oversight that I didn’t want to wait for a complaint,” the commission chair, Ann Jacobs, said at a special meeting the commission held Thursday.

The investigation findings will be summarized to commissioners, who will “provide further direction” at a future meeting.  

The uncounted ballots didn’t affect the outcome of any state or local elections, according to the elections commission staff.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said Thursday that the city welcomed the investigation.

“I fully support this independent review, and look forward to WEC’s findings and recommendations, which will inform any changes we make to prevent a similar situation from occurring in the future,” Rhodes-Conway said in a statement.

The Madison City Clerk’s office told the elections commission in a memo Dec. 20 about the overlooked Nov. 5 ballots in two Madison wards. A bag containing 68 unprocessed absentee ballots from two wards was found Nov. 12 in a tabulator bin, the memo stated. During reconciliation of ballots on Dec. 3, clerk employees found two sealed envelopes contained a total of 125 unprocessed absentee ballots from another ward.  

The mayor’s office announced the unprocessed ballots Dec. 26. In a public statement the same day, the clerk’s office said that in future elections, “every polling location will receive a list of absentee envelope seal numbers that will be verified as counted on Election Day.”

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., is pictured amid fog on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024.  (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement agencies in the nation’s capital were closely monitoring security Thursday following a terrorist attack in New Orleans and a vehicle explosion outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.

The violent incidents took place just ahead of several high-profile events in Washington, D.C., including the swearing-in of the new Congress on Friday, the certification of the Electoral College vote on Monday, former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral next week and the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on Jan. 20.

Matthew Young, assistant special agent in charge at the U.S. Secret Service, said in a statement the agency would “adjust our security plans as needed.” 

“While we cannot comment on protective means or methods, what we can say is that we will continue to work with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners in assessing the ever-changing threat landscape and will adjust our security plans as needed,” Young said. “Our mission is to provide a safe and secure environment for our protectees, and all individuals involved in these events.”

The Secret Service has already designated Congress’ certification of the Electoral College, Carter’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 9 and the inauguration as National Special Security Events, which puts the agency in charge of planning and security logistics.

Those special security events are somewhat common for major political events, like the Republican and Democratic national conventions this summer and for presidential inaugurations.

This is, however, the first year the certification of the Electoral College on Monday will hold that designation after a mob attacked the U.S. Capitol during the last certification.

‘An abundance of caution’

The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., posted on social media that while “there is no known threat to the District of Columbia, out of an abundance of caution, MPD has heightened its security posture across the city in light of recent events.”

“Whenever an incident occurs in the country, MPD closely monitors the situation, evaluates intelligence and assesses our security posture,” MPD wrote in the statement. “As the nation’s capital, we maintain a heightened level of security at all times to ensure the safety of our residents, businesses and visitors.”

The U.S. Capitol Police said in a written statement that they “have already been ramping up security, as planned, ahead of a busy month at the U.S. Capitol.”

USCP had to close off several streets near the building on Thursday after someone drove on a sidewalk a few blocks away.

“Before 10 a.m., our officers spotted a car that had been driving along the sidewalk, near Peace Circle, and into the grassy area near Third Street, NW, & Constitution Avenue,” USCP wrote on social media. “Officers took the man into custody. Please continue to avoid the area while we investigate the car.”

The person was later charged with reckless driving after the USCP bomb squad determined there was no explosive device inside the car.

At least 15 people died and 37 were injured in New Orleans early Wednesday after a man drove a truck onto Bourbon Street in what law enforcement has declared a terrorist attack.

Local and federal law enforcement agencies are also investigating the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, is a close Trump associate.

Officials say they have not found any link between the two attacks, though they are investigating further. 

Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, introduces Sen. Tammy Baldwin at her victory celebration Thursday. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)

The Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, is backing Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler in his bid to lead the national party. 

In a statement released Thursday, Schumer said he is “enthusiastically supporting Ben Wikler to be the next Chair of the Democratic National Committee.”

Schumer called Wikler “a tenacious organizer—one of the best organizers in the country—a proven fundraiser, a sharp communicator, and able to reach out to all segments of the Democratic Party.”

“Most importantly,” he added, “he knows how to win.”

Wikler assumed leadership of the state party after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers defeated former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2018. Since that time, he has led the party as state Democrats slowly clawed back power, holding the governorship and winning key state Supreme Court races to flip the ideological balance of the court. Those victories led to the elimination of gerrymandered voting maps that had locked in disproportionate Republican control of the state Legislature. In the 2024 election, Democrats flipped 14 previously Republican-held legislative seats, narrowing GOP majorities and, Wikler says, setting Democrats on a path to win control of at least one chamber in 2026 for the first time since 2010.  

“Since becoming the state party chair in 2019, Ben has led Wisconsin Democrats to victory after victory, up and down the ballot,” Schumer said. “Under his leadership, Wisconsin Democrats have become one of the most formidable fundraising and organizing machines in the entire country. I am confident he will bring that same record of success to the national party.”

Local officials including Rep. Shelley Berkley, Metro Sheriff Kevin McMahill, and Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford during a briefing on the Cybertruck exploding. (Dana Gentry | Nevada Current)

The sheriff of Clark County, Nevada, has called the apparently intentional New Year’s Day explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside Pres.-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel an isolated incident, but says law enforcement is investigating any connection with a suspected terrorism incident that killed at least 15 and injured dozens hours earlier in New Orleans.

Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference late Wednesday that he doesn’t know if the events in the two tourism capitals are related. “But what I can tell you is we’re absolutely investigating any connectivity to what happened with New Orleans, as well as other attacks.”

Musk posted on X that the two vehicles were rented from the same online company.

Pres. Joe Biden, in a televised address Wednesday, confirmed officials are investigating a link between the incidents.

FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge Jeremy Schwartz said the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is made up of federal and local law enforcement, is working to determine the identity of the driver, and whether the explosion was an act of terrorism.

“We believe this is an isolated incident,” Schwartz said. “We do not believe that there’s a bunch of folks out there supporting this or helping, and don’t believe that there’s any other danger to the community right now.”

Law enforcement is also investigating whether the type of vehicle rented and the location of the explosion were intentional.

“It’s a Tesla truck,” McMahill said at the news conference, where he was flanked by state and local officials, including Attorney General Aaron Ford. “We know that Elon Musk is working with President-elect Trump, and it’s the Trump Tower. So there’s obviously things to be concerned about there.”

The bed of the Cybertruck was laden with mortar-style fireworks, gas cans and other explosives, according to McMahill, who says he’s unaware of how they were detonated.

Law enforcement, he said, cannot yet identify the driver “with 100% certainty.”  The individual was killed in the blast, which was captured on hotel security video. He also declined to release the name of the individual who rented the truck in Colorado, pending confirmation and notification of relatives.

License plate readers detected the truck in Las Vegas around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, about an hour before it pulled into valet parking at the Trump International Hotel and exploded about 15 seconds later, McMahill said. He thanked Tesla founder Elon Musk for assisting law enforcement by providing information and video from charging stations along the truck’s route from Colorado.

He also praised the vehicle’s engineering, which “limited the damage that occurred inside of the valet” because the force of the blast went upward, not outward, and did not break the hotel entrance’s glass doors.

McMahill said a review of security procedures on the Las Vegas Strip, which hosted some 400,000 New Year’s revelers hours before the blast, is in order.

“We were very successful the night before,” McMahill said.“I’m surprised this happened, to be quite frank with you, and that’s certainly something we’re going to have to look at and target.”

“I just want to make sure that our community understands we believe this would be an isolated incident, and it is now over, as far as the danger,” he said, but added that out of an abundance of caution he’s extending his New Year’s staffing plan of 1,000 officers in the tourism corridor and the community.

Gov. Joe Lombardo, who McMahill succeeded as sheriff, was not at the news conference. His spokeswoman declined via email to say whether Lombardo believes security protocols on the Strip should be reviewed.

Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com.

The family of Kenneth Taylor says the city of Black River Falls and its police department brushed off their concerns when he was reported missing and in the years since his death. (Graphic by Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner, Photos courtesy of City of Black River Falls, U.S. Geological Survey, Joy Taylor)

On the night of Sept. 9, 2022, 20-year-old Kenneth Taylor called his aunt, Cheyenne Taylor, asking if she could drive three hours south from Hayward to Black River Falls to pick him up — something she says happened regularly. 

Cheyenne’s boyfriend answered the phone and he said they could come down to get him in the morning from the motel where he was staying. Kenneth, a member of the St. Croix Chippewa tribe, had spent the night hanging out with his girlfriend, who told police they’d been drinking. That night, he posted on Facebook asking for help with his depression.

The couple left Hayward around 8 a.m. but, Cheyenne says, as they got on I-94 near Eau Claire, she got a “sick feeling” in her stomach because her nephew wasn’t answering his phone. 

Cheyenne spent much of the day driving the unfamiliar streets of Black River Falls looking for him. Soon, other members of the family got involved in the search. 

During the first day Kenneth was missing, multiple family members turned to the police for help. But Cheyenne and Kenneth’s stepmother, Joy Taylor, say they were told by an officer that “maybe he didn’t want to be found,” and that as an adult he had the right to choose to disappear.

As the family got more desperate, a police report notes that officers weren’t concerned. 

“Kenneth was not entered as missing due to there being little to no evidence to support that he was in immediate danger to himself at that point in time,” the report, filed by Black River Falls Police Officer Charles Smart, states. 

Eventually, the family turned to resources offered by the state’s missing and murdered indigenous people (MMIP) task force. With that help, Kenneth was finally officially reported missing and search and rescue teams were on the ground in Black River Falls by the morning of Sept. 11 — two days after his aunt last heard from him. 

Around 4:30 p.m. on the same day the search began, Kenneth was found dead, hanging from a tree by his backpack strap in a small patch of woods in Black River Falls. 

For family members and advocates for missing and murdered indigenous people, the official response in Kenneth’s case once he went missing and during the investigation into his death exemplify the ways in which a bureaucratic system dismisses the concerns of Native American families even as Wisconsin works to improve its response to these types of cases. 

“Families are in a process of grief, taking care of their loved ones, in a state of traumatic shock, they are navigating through a system that is not being supportive of their needs,” says Rene Ann Goodrich, a Bad River tribal member who serves on the Wisconsin MMIW Task Force.

In the years since Kenneth’s death, his family has tried to process the grief and trauma while continuing to search for answers about what happened — without much help from local officials. 

Several members of the family remain unconvinced that Kenneth’s death was a suicide, saying they believe there was “foul play” involved. Other family members believe the coroner wasn’t entirely thorough in her assessment of the scene where his body was found. They also have questions about the results of the autopsy, which was conducted by a lab in Minnesota. Aside from their questions about the conclusions made in Kenneth’s case, family members told the Wisconsin Examiner they feel as if they’ve been “brushed off” by city officials. 

Contemporaneous notes taken by MMIP advocates and complaints filed by family members alleging their rights as victims have been violated highlight the family’s numerous unsuccessful attempts to speak with Black River Falls officials. The state Department of Justice dismissed the family’s complaints against the city because Kenneth’s death was ruled a suicide and therefore his relatives do not qualify as crime victims. 

“Throughout the death of my son, Black River Falls Police Department has shown little regard for what happened to my son based on the investigation and unwillingness to speak with the family,” Kenneth Taylor Sr. wrote in a 2023 letter to the Wisconsin Crime Victims’ Rights Board. “[We] have tried constantly to get answers and meetings. There are many discrepancies in the information the family has received from involved agencies.” 

According to several members of the Taylor family, they were told by multiple Black River Falls law enforcement and city officials that they’d been advised by the city attorney not to speak with them. 

“No one would ever talk to us,” Joy Taylor says. “They would cancel the appointments. I even went as far as calling the mayor, and he stated that no one was going to talk to me about this case, that they have been advised not to talk to anyone. Why, on a suicide case, would you not talk to someone if it was so cut and dried? Why wouldn’t you talk to me?”

Black River Falls officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story. 

Goodrich, who still has questions about her own daughter’s death, says it’s difficult for families when their relative’s cause of death is identified as a suicide or overdose because from law enforcement’s perspective, that ends the case. Yet families still have questions about what led up to their loved one’s death. 

“Families need to feel that they are included and at that table in the investigative process, and right now they are not feeling that support,” Goodrich says. “It doesn’t help assure families that justice will be served when they’re told ‘Well, we can’t talk to you anymore, we can’t share any more information with you, you’re going to have to talk to the county attorney.’ That is closing conversations and the door to families as they are sharing their valid concerns and information. Families really don’t need that type of grief as they’re trying to navigate the system and make sense of what happened. This contributes to and creates more trauma.”

Goodrich adds that what will help state and local governments in Wisconsin better handle MMIP cases is the creation of a new statewide office to help train local law enforcement and coordinate investigations.

Kristen Welch, a member of Wisconsin’s Task Force for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women who worked with the Taylor family, says the government response to Kenneth’s case fits a pattern. 

“It’s a patterned response. So what they experienced, like the delay in filing the initial report, is very common,” Welch says, adding that some of that treatment stems from bias against Native Americans but also from a lack of training and standardized practices across law enforcement agencies. “[This] sort of really rude treatment, those are all common responses for family members that are just trying to get case information. I don’t know why they feel that that’s OK, and they could really solve a lot of their own problems if they just sat down with this family, answered questions and shared the case information with them. I think a lot of the frustration would have been put to ease, but it again, is a training and protocol issue within their departments.”

Welch says that in hearings on MMIP issues that have been held across the state and country, this was a common theme. 

“That was like the common pattern — treatment of response — and at the federal level too,” she says. “So that was from Alaska all the way to the Midwest. We held hearings, and you heard the same story from our family members, the mistreatment and just lack of compassion and respect for families who are going through an incredible trauma and carry that, and just want someone to show them a little compassion.”

In the years since Kenneth’s death, the family had used the tree where he was found as a makeshift memorial, bringing food, flowers and tobacco to the site. But this year, the whole area was clear cut, adding to the family’s distress. 

“It was like where his soul left his body pretty much,” Kenneth’s aunt, Cheyenne, says. “And then they went and cut it down. Why?”

But Cheyenne says she’s trying to keep moving forward for her own children, while trying to remember how cheerful and outgoing Kenneth was and how much he loved his kids — one of whom never got to meet him. 

“It took me this long to finally accept that he’s gone and he’s not coming back,” she says. “He was always there for me, just like I was for him. And there was nothing in this world I would never do for him. And he knew it.”

At least 10 people were killed and 35 injured when a pickup truck was driven into a crowd on Bourbon Street early Jan. 1, 2025, near the intersection of Conti Street. (Photo by Theron Sapp/Courtesy WVUE-TV)

NEW ORLEANS — At least 10 people were killed and 35 injured early Wednesday after a pickup truck tore through Bourbon Street where crowds were celebrating the arrival of the New Year.

The driver of the truck, who the FBI identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar of Texas, was killed after a shootout with police in which two officers were wounded, New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.

Weapons and a “potential IED,” or improvised explosive device, were founding inside the truck, and an ISIS flag was placed atop a pole on the truck’s trailer hitch, according to the FBI.

The police officers who were shot were taken to University Medical Center and were in stable condition, according to the police chief. She said the same facility is also treating 26 of the injured people, and others have been taken to other local hospitals.

At around 3:15 a.m., the driver of the truck steered around a police barricade at Canal Street meant to keep vehicles off of Bourbon Street and sped into a crowd, New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said. It appears the truck was able to travel three blocks before colliding with a lift vehicle near Conti Street.

“He was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” the police chief said.

Alathea Duncan, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge for the New Orleans district, said it is believed Jabbar did not act alone, and agents are looking into possible accomplices.

One of the people killed has been identified as 18-year-old Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux of Gulfport, Mississippi, The Times-Picayune reported. She had accompanied her cousin and friend to the French Quarter for New Year’s Eve, her mother said.

Protective bollards weren’t deployed

Steel bollards that rise from the street were installed along and near Bourbon Street in 2017 to protect pedestrians, but they were not deployed and are in the process of being replaced according to the city’s Department of Public Works website.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the bollards were being replaced in advance of the Super Bowl, which New Orleans will host Feb. 9. Kirkpatrick said police vehicles were in place at the bollard sites, but Jabbar was able to drive on the sidewalk around those barriers.

The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of terrorism. Bomb squad personnel were seen entering the French Quarter, where the FBI said other “potential” explosive devices were located. Several small booms were heard blocks away, which City Council members said were controlled detonations to clear possible IEDs.

An eight-block stretch of Bourbon Street remains closed to traffic, and some hotels in the French Quarter have been evacuated as a precautionary measure. The public is being asked to avoid a large portion of the historic neighborhood, which typically sees crowds larger than typical weekends for New Year’s Eve.

Hospitality and service industry employees reporting for work Wednesday morning were being turned away from cordoned-off areas.

New Orleans is hosting fans of the University of Georgia and Notre Dame for the Sugar Bowl. The college football playoff quarterfinal was scheduled for 7:45 p.m. Wednesday night at the Superdome, but the game has been postponed for 24 hours, Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley said.

Landry said he planned to attend the Sugar Bowl, emphasizing the event will be held safely, and he will order flags at state buildings flown at half staff in memory of the lives lost Wednesday morning.

University of Georgia President Jere Morehead confirmed on social media that a student. from the school “was critically injured in the attack and is receiving medical treatment.”

Multiple news sources reported the Superdome was locked down Wednesday morning for a security sweep. The venue will also host Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9.

At a news conference Wednesday afternoon in New Orleans, Gov. Jeff Landry said he has signed an executive order to declare an emergency in order to expedite state resources to New Orleans to assist local and federal investigators. A military police company of 100 soldiers from the Louisiana National Guard is also being assigned to New Orleans, the governor said.

President-elect Donald Trump called the incident “pure evil” in a post on his Truth Social platform.

The NOPD is asking anyone trying to connect with family who they believe were in the area to call 311, and not 911, for more information.

This is a developing story that will be updated.

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.

Wisconsin State Capitol on a snowy day. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

Depending on your perspective, some of the most anticipated or dreaded parts of Wisconsin’s climate are winter snows and cold. This year, a blanket of snow around the holidays had all but melted away by the new year. In the future, holiday seasons accompanied by white, glittering snowfall will be less and less common. 

That’s according to a report by Climate Central, a recipient of funding by the Bezos Earth Fund and the Schmidt Family Foundation which describes itself as a policy-neutral, independent group of scientists and communicators.  The report found that over the last decade Wisconsin has seen more winter days above freezing. Those warmer temperatures have ripple effects on snowfall, winter recreation and ecosystems. Climate Central researched the effects of climate change in Wisconsin using meteorological data from 2014-2023, with a focus on the winter months from December to February. The analysis found that during those months over the last decade, nearly 40% of Wisconsin’s 72 counties added a week’s worth of above-freezing winter days. 

Wisconsin was one of 50 states and 123 countries and territories included in the report. Data for  901 cities covered observed average temperatures from 2014-2023, as well as estimates of what temperatures would have  been without human-induced climate change due to fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. The report found “locations across the globe where cold winter days are disappearing in a warming world, compared to a world without climate change.” 

For individual Wisconsin counties, that meant significant increases in the average number of days above freezing. The report found that Milwaukee County, for example, added an average of 13 days above freezing, the most of any county. Ozaukee and Kenosha counties added 12 days, while Door, Racine, and Manitowoc added 11 days. The counties of Kewaunee, Waukesha, Sheboygan, and Washington all added an average of 10 more winter days above freezing over the last decade. 

The numbers across other Wisconsin counties showed a similarly dramatic shift.  In Wood County between 2014-23, according to the report, there was an average of 10 days above freezing during the winter months, with five days added by climate change. In Marinette County, there was an average of 10 days above freezing, with five attributed to climate change. In Brown County, there were 12 days above freezing, with six of them added by climate change, according to the report. 

But in a state known for its harsh winter weather, is milder weather really all that bad? “I like to call these strangely warm winter days delight-mares,” Kristina Dahl, vice president of science at Climate Central, told  Wisconsin Examiner in an email. “Having a relatively warm winter day can be a delightful break from the coldest, darkest season of the year. But if you take a half step back and think about why that day is so warm – or what it might mean for your local economy or ecosystems – you’re confronted with the reality that human-caused climate change is altering so many aspects of our daily lives.”

Addressing the effects of climate change has been a growing concern statewide. Some regions experience greater shoreline erosion, crops grown by agricultural communities struggle because of  volatile winters, unpredictable springs and dry summers. 

Noticeable swings in weather patterns have increasingly made headlines in Wisconsin. In 2021, there was  severe summer flooding in parts of Milwaukee, and strong winds downed hundreds of trees. In mid-December of the same year, temperatures in Milwaukee and Madison reached the low 60s. States across the Midwest experienced a rash of tornadoes which killed dozens of people. In January 2022, the previous year’s record-setting warm weather was replaced by arctic cold. During that summer, lives were lost in Milwaukee due to extreme heat and flooding. Extreme heat was a concern again in 2023, when a wildfire in Waushara County burned over 800 acres.  

The warmer winter weather has also started to change traditional recreation in Wisconsin. Last winter, some snowboarding and skiing spots closed due to lack of snow. The same thing happened during the winter of 2022. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has long highlighted the effects of climate change on activities like ice fishing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, boating, hunting and other outdoor activities which Wisconsin is known for. Fishing alone represents a $2 billion industry in Wisconsin.

“Warming winter days, like those we document in this report, have repercussions throughout our society,” said Dahl. “When days are above freezing, any precipitation will come in the form of rain rather than snow, and snow on the ground begins to melt. That means that winter sports and recreation – an important facet of staying active in the winter months and an important source of revenue for our economy – are threatened. It also means that traditions and cultures can be impacted, for example, through the loss of access to traditional Indigenous hunting grounds. And because many crops, including apples, require a certain amount of chilling time in the winter in order to produce fruit come spring or summer, warming winter days can translate to reduced crop productivity.” 

As cold and inconvenient as snow can be, its disappearance changes many things which have come to define Wisconsin. 

Getty Images creative

Schools, the environment, health, criminal justice and the economy — those were some of the topics in the news in 2024. Here is a selection of the year’s most important stories and how they were covered in the Wisconsin Examiner.

A landmark election year

Wisconsin marked more than one milestone in the 2024 election.

The state helped return Republican former President Donald Trump to the White House — the second president in history to be elected to two non-consecutive terms and the first to win the Oval Office with a felony conviction.

Despite Trump’s victory, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin eked out a third term, as Erik Gunn reported, besting her Republican challenger, banker Eric Hovde, by close to the same 29,000-vote margin by which the Democratic presidential contender, Vice President Kamala Harris, lost in the state.

With newly drawn districts ordered by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that ended the lopsided gerrymandered control of the Legislature Republicans have commanded since 2011, Democrats ended a Republican super-majority in the state Senate and gained seats in the Assembly. While still in the minority, Democrats hoped the outcome would help them make some deals and advance their agenda in the Capitol, while Republicans indicated they don’t expect their priorities to change.

Baldwin’s victory, the strong Democratic showing in the Legislature and Harris’ narrow loss in Wisconsin have helped buoy the state’s Democratic Party chair, Ben Wikler in his campaign to lead the national Democratic Party.

Criminal justice

In mid-December Wisconsin’s capital city and the rest of the state were shocked after a 15-year-old student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison shot and killed a fellow student and a teacher and wounded a half-dozen others at the private school before killing herself. “I’m feeling a little dismayed now, so close to Christmas, every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever,” said Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes hours after the deaths. Henry Redman reported from the scene.

Republicans chose Milwaukee for their national nominating convention as part of their campaign to return Wisconsin to the GOP column. There, they were confronted with raucous but peaceful protests. The whole Examiner team was there, reporting both inside and outside the convention.

Fears of violence were largely unrealized with one grim exception: Police from Columbus, Ohio, who were among thousands from out of state deployed to keep order at the convention, shot and killed an unhoused man with two knives who was fighting with another man in a local park that had become a camping site for homeless people. The Examiner’s Isiah Holmes and Henry Redman broke the story.

Supported by a grant from the Public Welfare Foundation, the Wisconsin Examiner expanded its coverage of the state’s criminal justice system in 2024, with reporters Isiah Holmes, Henry Redman, Frank Zufall and Andrew Kennard probing police misconduct, the state Department of Corrections and law enforcement surveillance practices.

Immigration

Echoing his first presidential run eight years ago, Trump centered his 2024 campaign on immigration and undocumented migrants in the U.S., with false claims of widespread criminal activity among immigrants and promising mass deportations if elected.

The Examiner examined the much more sober reality for undocumented immigrants our state’s economy depends on, some of whom are trafficked and abused. Editor Ruth Conniff wrote about labor trafficking on Wisconsin farms, and also took a closer look at  how a large immigrant presence in  communities such as Whitewater has become distorted by right-wing demagoguery.

Reproductive rights

Reproductive health care and the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning a national right to abortion enshrined  half a century ago in Roe v. Wade loomed large in 2024. Reporter Baylor Spears followed the issue in Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments late in the year over whether an 1849 Wisconsin law was a widespread ban on elective abortion or actually only applied to feticide.

And while Democrats generally ran on restoring abortion rights, the issue was most prominent  in the 8th Congressional District, where Democratic ob/gyn Dr. Kristin Lyerly included it as part of her broader campaign but lost to Republican Tony Wied.

Environment

American Stewards of Liberty, an out-of-state right-wing group that opposes public land use conservation policies, made significant incursions into Wisconsin policymaking, including influencing Oneida County’s rewrite of its comprehensive plan. Reporter Henry Redman broke the story.

Redman covered a variety of pressing environmental stories throughout the year,  including a  Wisconsin initiative to address PFAS contamination in the state, including $125 million invested from the state budget, ran aground as the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican leaders in the Legislature deadlocked on how to move forward.

Throughout the year, local residents and government leaders grappled with how to address the spread of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in their communities

Economy

Political analysts have said that a spike in the prices for gas, groceries and other goods in the first couple of years of President Joe Biden’s term played a key role in the Democrats’ election-year losses, notwithstanding that inflation had cooled in most of 2024.

But the Biden administration’s hefty investments in the economy — funding technology innovation, boosting clean energy, expanding broadband access, replacing lead water pipes and supporting unions — appeared to get less traction with voters.

Erik Gunn reported on the economy throughout the year and along with other staff members continues to do so as new economic concerns hover on the horizon. Those range from persistent housing problems covered by Isiah Holmes to strains on the child care infrastructure, a significant challenge for families as well as employers who have struggled to fill job openings.

Education

In a large majority of referendum votes held in the spring and fall, voters agreed to raise their property taxes to increase funding for their local public school districts. The trend sets the stage for what could be a contentious state budget battle in 2025 as public school advocates push for more support from the state.

After Milwaukee Public Schools voters narrowly approved their district’s $252 million referendum request in the spring, however, the state Department of Public Instruction announced it was holding back some of the district’s state funds because MPS had failed to file required financial reports on time. District Superintendent Keith Posley, resigned under fire, and Gov. Tony Evers ordered an audit of the district.

Spears, who covers the education beat for the Examiner, reported on Evers and DPI, who spent much of 2024 at odds with Republican lawmakers who refused to  release money budgeted for new reading programs in Wisconsin schools.

Spears also did significant reporting into the use of seclusion and restraint policies in student discipline, practices that are supposed to be a last resort but remain widespread, according to advocates and families of children — frequently autistic children — who are subjected to these disciplinary measures.

Health

As COVID-19 remains an ongoing health concern, old respiratory illnesses such as pertussis have been on the rebound in Wisconsin in 2024, while new ones — most notably avian influenza — lurk around the corner. Erik Gunn reports that  a contributing factor has been a decline in vaccination rates, a trend that state health officials have been urging Wisconsinites to take seriously and reverse.

The importance of vaccination was highlighted in May when Wisconsin reinstituted a meningitis vaccination requirement that had been temporarily blocked by state lawmakers. A Fort Atkinson mother told Gunn the story of why she has for decades been urging the adoption of the meningitis vaccine requirement.

Jerry Huffman behind jail bars installed at a local TV station in rural Uzbekistan in the late 1990s. The local government ordered jail bars to be put up at the station as a security measure. The next day, firefighters ordered the bars taken down as fire hazards. Contradictory orders were a common form of government harassment of independent media. The faces of everyone in the group except Huffman are blurred more than two decades later out of concern for government reprisals. (Courtesy of Jerry Huffman)

New Year’s Eve. The traditional time to look back on the year that’s been and toward the year that will be. Unless you’re a journalist Trump is targeting.  

Donald Trump will live out his ultimate political fantasy, being inaugurated as president for a second time. His BFF, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, is  likely counting on an easier year with less interference from Washington with Trump in the White House. Both men —  long time media manipulators — can be expected to continue their history of attacks on a free press.

I know. For a couple of years, I worked as a correspondent and a journalism instructor in states that were once part of the former Soviet Union.

The thought of Trump launching a nationwide media attack in America leaves my soul cold. As a journalist who has worked worldwide, I’ve reported from countries where there is no such thing as a free press, as well as in formerly Communist countries — including Russia — where the “wrong story” can land you in jail or get you killed.

Trump learned media domination from his cadre of autocratic sidekicks around the world. Especially Vladimir Putin, Russia’s longest-serving leader, who set the gold standard for media control.

The Berlin Wall collapsed 35 years ago, and Putin has been either president or prime minister of Russia for the last 25 of those years. His own media lessons came from the leader of Russia’s  1917 Communist Revolution: Vladimir Lenin, who famously said, “Ideas are more dangerous than bullets.” 

Today Russian journalists are banned from calling the Ukraine conflict a war or an invasion. They also risk 15 years in prison for spreading what Putin considers “fake news.” 

Although technically the old empire is gone, Putin still pulls strings across the former Soviet states. Working for a non-governmental organization as I did across Russia and Central Asia, we often hired local workers as support staff. Today Russia and its  satellites (Yes, countries surrounding Russia that remain under its influence are still satellites, even if the USSR is no more) have passed new laws saying any local worker accepting pay from an NGO that brings outside money into Russia must first declare themselves a “foreign agent.”

Since NGO funding routinely comes from outside Russia, if you take your weekly pay you will carry the self-professed tag of foreign agent. A 21st century Scarlet Letter, if you will, making a local journalist or even the  janitor who sweeps the newsroom an easy target for arrest.

The thought of a government-orchestrated media control enrages me. There is nothing more integral to a functioning democracy than an independent media.

My father fought in two wars, in Europe and in Korea, defending democracy. To not stand for his sacrifices would be an insult to his memory.

In the beginning

Hired by Internews, a California-based NGO, I moved from Wisconsin to Kazakhstan in 1999. My job was to teach journalists from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to do fact-based reporting instead of  parroting government-controlled state propaganda.

But even in the post-USSR, interference was common. In Uzbekistan, one station was ordered to put jail bars up to protect from terrorist threats. The next day safety inspectors ordered the bars taken down as a fire hazard. The ping pong harassment of up and then down continued for weeks.

A station manager might get a call from a governor, the mayor or anyone who had the illusion of power and be told to bench a reporter for a few weeks because he or she seemed “tired” on the air. 

If the power brokers didn’t like the news, your spouse would lose their job. Your children might be suspended from university. Tax audits were routine.   Every day was a battle between what the government and journalists considered news. If a story upset local leadership, the list of potential violations was long and often imaginary.

The most insidious type of censorship was the media’s own self-censorship. Most news organizations would simply ignore stories they knew would upset the government. Without lifting a finger it meant the government would win, because critical stories would never see the light of day.

Some situations had the air of the ridiculous — a Laurel and Hardy feature — but nevertheless, they point to the larger issue: Trump, like Putin, likely doesn’t need to invent a new army (remember the Space Force?) to throw his weight around. All it takes are MAGA loyalists with shiny badges to harass immigrants, chase protestors or try to stop the media. 

Give them a gun and they are instantly convinced of their own power.

My own case in point:

One spring day my boss, Eric Johnson, a fellow Midwesterner, and I set out to visit some remote broadcast stations in the region. For a week we traveled the same Silk Road Marco Polo had centuries ago.

Our first sign of trouble was when we tried to cross the border between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Under the old Soviet Union we would have needed a transit visa to cross the border, but no longer.  When we tried to drive across the border, however, the guys with the guns said, “not so fast.”

The Tajik border police insisted the visa was still necessary. We had the choice of paying or being arrested.

Despite a passionate argument by Eric, the one fluent in Russian, we lost. We were right, but the Tajiks had the guns. On the other hand, we had a car: We ended up driving the two guards, at their insistence, back to the jail so we could be locked up.

At the jail the border police had a courtroom of sorts. I wasn’t allowed to attend our hearing because I couldn’t speak Russian. Instead, they locked me into the commander’s empty office.

Imagine the look on his face finding a foreigner in his office. In a moment of unexpected kindness, he flipped on an ancient television and we passed the time watching cartoons.

Eventually Eric came back to the office grinning. We were free to go, but only because a local judge who knew that the visa law had been eliminated insisted on abiding by the country’s new rules. I am well aware that only this one honest man kept us out of jail.

And for the final act in this nonsensical drama? They asked and we gave the border guards a ride back to their post so they didn’t have to walk. 

A final thought

Could censorship happen here? In some ways it’s already started. Last November major newspapers pulled routine political endorsements just before Election Day. 

Trump screams bias if the media criticizes him instead of singing his praises;  some less-than-stellar media dropped the traditional editorials to avoid potential legal threats, or perhaps just the fear of losing access to the incoming administration. In the end, when the voice of a community — the media —  goes silent, viewers and readers lose yet another source of information. 

A Washington Post or 60 Minutes may have the resources to fight the federal government, but local news outlets can’t. At some point, the cost of battling administration lawyers with bottomless pockets becomes financially pointless. 

Battles that could cost each of us a piece of our freedom, one story at a time.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks as former President Donald Trump looks on at a press conference at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on April 12, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump, who won November’s presidential election, endorsed Johnson to remain speaker Monday. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — As U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson vies to keep his gavel, President-elect Donald Trump on Monday gave the Louisiana Republican a major boost with his “Complete & Total Endorsement.”

Trump’s coveted backing — just days ahead of Friday’s House vote to elect a speaker — came as Johnson sat in the hot seat over a government shutdown quarrel earlier this month that exacerbated public dissatisfaction from several of his GOP colleagues over his leadership.

The spending fight also put a spotlight on his vulnerabilities in securing the votes to win the speakership again.

“The American people need IMMEDIATE relief from all of the destructive policies of the last Administration,” Trump said in a Monday post on Truth Social.

The soon-to-be president described Johnson as a “good, hard working, religious man,” noting that “he will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN.”

In a post on X shortly after the endorsement, Johnson said he was “honored and humbled” by Trump’s support. “Together, we will quickly deliver on your America First agenda and usher in the new golden age of America,” he added.

Tensions flare

But Johnson has failed to secure the backing of every House GOP colleague — which will be critical in a chamber Republicans will hold by a razor-thin margin. His opponents include Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who said he would not be voting for the incumbent.

In a post on X, Massie said: “I respect and support President Trump, but his endorsement of Mike Johnson is going to work out about as well as his endorsement of Speaker Paul Ryan.”

“We’ve seen Johnson partner with the democrats to send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans, and blow the budget,” he added.

In an earlier Monday post on X, Massie noted he was the only Republican to not vote for former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s reelection to the speakership in 2017.

“Mike Johnson is the next Paul Ryan,” Massie said. He urged his colleagues to join him in voting against the Louisiana Republican “because history will not give America another ‘do-over.’”

Massie has not said whom he would prefer for the position.

In another post on X, Massie said he thinks no one will run for speaker until “Johnson concedes that he can’t be Speaker” and “Trump weighs in.”

“To step up before then, or to nominate someone before then, is to doom that candidacy,” he said.

Indiana GOP Rep. Victoria Spartz has also been vocal in her dissatisfaction of Johnson’s leadership and so far has refused to commit to voting for his reelection. 

On Monday, Spartz laid out several demands for whoever becomes the next leader, saying: “Our next speaker must show courageous leadership to get our country back on track before this ‘Titanic’ strikes an iceberg at any moment.”

“We must have a vision and a concrete PLAN to deliver on President Trump’s agenda for the American people, which I have not seen from our current speaker despite countless discussions and public promises,” she added, comparing federal spending to the iceberg that caused the infamous nautical disaster.

Spokespeople for House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York did not immediately respond Monday to a message seeking comment.

Braedyn Locke #18 of the Wisconsin Badgers throws a pass in the second quarter during the game against the Minnesota Golden Gophers at Camp Randall Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 29. (John Fisher | Getty Images)

This article was originally published by Capital News Service and The Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism

Carbon dioxide emissions from Big Ten football team travel for regular-season conference games more than tripled in 2024 compared to 2023 after after the addition of a quartet of West Coast schools, a Capital News Service analysis found.

Carbon dioxide is one of the major contributors to global warming. It is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps heat in the planet’s atmosphere. Global air travel was estimated to be responsible for 2.5% of all carbon emissions and 4% of global warming, according to a study published by Our World in Data in April.

“As the Big Ten grows and its carbon-intensive activities increase, they’re contributing to higher levels of carbon emissions, so they’re fueling the heating of the planet,” said Joseph Nevins, a professor of geography at Vassar College and one of the pioneers of Flying Less, a project aimed at reducing air travel in higher education. “They’re making contributions to increasing forest fires in the U.S. Southwest and Canada, growing levels of air pollution, which have direct impacts on people’s bodily well-being.”

The Big Ten did not mention environmental impact as a consideration in making its football schedule.

“Our priority in football scheduling is to balance geography and travel to create compelling matchups in a flexible format that maximize opportunities for Big Ten teams to access the expanded College Football Playoff and win National Championships,” the Big Ten said in a statement to CNS in August.

In 2010, the Big Ten consisted of 11 schools: Ohio State, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Penn State, Michigan, Northwestern, Purdue, Minnesota and Indiana. Nebraska joined the contingent of Midwest schools in 2011. Maryland and Rutgers officially became members in 2014, which allowed the Big Ten to expand its footprint to the East Coast. Carbon emissions from Big Ten travel rose 6% when Maryland and Rutgers joined the conference, per an Arizona State study published in May.

In 2024, the Big Ten added USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, which brought its buffet of schools to 18 and expanded the conference’s geographic footprint across the country. USC and UCLA are more than 2,400 miles away from Rutgers. When UCLA football traveled to New Jersey to face Rutgers on Oct. 19, its travel emitted more than 150,000 kilograms of carbon. Six days later, the Scarlet Knights took their own cross-country trip to face USC for a nationally televised game that started at 11 p.m. on the East Coast. Those two trips emitted the most carbon dioxide of any Big Ten games.

Each of the Big Ten’s new members is traveling at least twice as much this season as the year before, with UCLA and Washington traveling more than three times as much in 2024 for regular-season conference games as they did in their final Pac-12 seasons.

Of the 18 Big Ten schools, 17 will see an increase in carbon emissions from last year. Purdue is the outlier, emitting nearly 14,000 less kilograms of carbon this year in comparison to 2023.

The four West Coast schools are the Big Ten’s highest emitters. Washington is emitting more than 500,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide, the highest in the conference. USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon increased emissions of carbon dioxide by at least 250,000 kilograms in their first year in the Big Ten compared to their final year in the Pac-12. Penn State is projected to emit more 275,000 kilograms, Rutgers above 260,000, while Maryland is above 238,000 to take up the next three spots.

“Is it necessary? Are there alternative ways of doing things that would not only radically cut our carbon emissions, but produce a more socially and environmentally just world?” asked Nevins, who got his doctoral degree from UCLA.

The Seattle Seahawks of the NFL will travel an average of 3,227.62 miles round-trip for road games this season, the most in the league, according to Bill Speros of Bookies.com. The University of Washington football team, which plays its games less than seven miles from the Seahawks, will average 100 miles more per trip than its NFL neighbors.

CNS calculated distances from nearby major airports to find the carbon emissions total. For example, UCLA’s Oct. 19 game against Rutgers, CNS used the distance from Los Angeles International Airport to Newark Liberty International Airport. For games where teams likely used bus travel, CNS used the distance between stadiums.

CNS focused on football team travel for this analysis due to the sport’s once-a-week travel patterns. Most other sports play multiple times a week and may have less predictable travel schedules.

In 2023, the conference announced that each Big Ten football program would face all other programs at least twice in a four-year span. Between 2024 and 2028, the Big Ten has scheduled 33 cross-country trips among the seven schools on the East and West Coast (Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland, Washington, Oregon, USC, UCLA).

“We develop our scheduling formats with input and feedback from school administrators, faculty representatives, medical professionals and head coaches looking at the potential impact on academics, health, safety, rest, recovery, and overall competitive equity,” the Big Ten stated in August. “We continue to evaluate our formats and evolve as needed.”

Kerry Kenny, the chief operating officer of the Big Ten, told ESPN in 2023 that a divisional model restricted the regularity of compelling football games. Oregon and Penn State, the two teams who met in the Big Ten title game on Dec. 7, are scheduled to play each other three times in the next four seasons, which would not have been the case with East and West divisions.

In its first season with the four new schools, the Big Ten had four teams qualify for the College Football Playoffs, the most of any conference. After an undefeated regular season and Big Ten title, Oregon is the top seed in the 12-team tournament.

An Oct. 12 matchup between Oregon and Ohio State, two of the top three teams in the nation at the time, averaged 10.4 million viewers and peaked at 13.4 million in the final minutes of what was an eventual Oregon victory. It was the most-watched Big Ten primetime regular-season game since 2008, according to a press release from Comcast. Team travel for the game resulted in more than 125,000 kilograms of carbon being released.

“The ultimate variable, in my opinion, is the games are better, the matchups are better, and certainly far more important,” said Tim Brando, a longtime broadcaster for Fox Sports.

Included in Brando’s 2024 slate was a Sept. 27 matchup between the University of Washington and Rutgers. Washington emitted nearly 149,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide in its flight for the game. The Friday night matchup peaked at 2.5 million viewers as Rutgers, who made the game its annual blackout, escaped with a three-point victory.

“That was probably the most intensity and the greatest crowd [Rutgers] had for a home game in Piscataway in years,” said Brando. “In large measure, it was because Washington was the opponent, a team that was playing for the National Championship just a year before.”

What’s happening in the Big Ten is representative of the new age of college football. Division-less conferences are the new norm. The only FBS conference split into divisions this season was the Sun Belt Conference.

“The only option to get to most of these competitions is to fly, which means that necessarily there are more flights,” said Madeleine Orr, an assistant professor of sport ecology at the University of Toronto and University of Minnesota graduate. “It’s a growth strategy, as opposed to a reductionist strategy and a climate strategy.”

As awareness around the impact of air travel grows, more major sports teams and organizations are investing in carbon offsets. Carbon offsets have become a trendy way for major corporations to compensate for emissions. They do so by investing in efforts that lower gasses released into the atmosphere, essentially covering the carbon dioxide they emit.

In 2019, the NHL purchased the equivalent of more than 3.8 million pounds (more than 1.72 million kilograms) of carbon offsets to counter its playoff travel. In the five years since then, the NFL’s Houston Texans, English soccer giant Manchester United and even the Australian national men’s and women’s soccer teams have bought offsets to make up for travel.

“In order for that offset to work effectively, the offset has to immediately cancel out … (those) emissions I’ve generated,” Nevins said. “You also have to be able to verify that it’s taking place and that the cut in emissions persists over time.”

Most colleges and universities have sustainability departments that evaluate the schools’ practices and how to lessen their environmental impact. In the Big Ten, in addition to sustainability departments, schools such as the University of Illinois and Michigan have programs focused on sustainable aviation.

The University of Maryland has a pledge to offset all air travel. While Maryland is offsetting all its travel, according to a school dashboard, the number of miles athletics traveled via commercial and chartered flights from 2021 to 2023 increased by 51%. The dashboard has not been updated for 2024, the first year that would include the West Coast teams in the Big Ten.

“What we should be concerned with is: What are they teaching their students, right? What are they teaching the communities in the world?” Nevins asked. “They are normalizing a behavior that is counter to the direction you need to be heading, and they are opening themselves up to accusations of hypocrisy.”

On Nov. 20, the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Studies released a paper looking at the impact of the school’s football travel. Paige Greenberg and Molly Russell, the authors, found conflict between the university’s messaging and the school’s athletics travel.

“While U-M has positioned itself as a leader in sustainability within higher education, the recent Big Ten expansion contradicts this image and poses significant challenges to the University’s commitments,” the paper said.

The 2024 season is the second of media contracts that the Big Ten has with CBS, Fox and NBC, which total more than $8 billion and will run through the 2030 season, according to the Sports Business Journal. In the 2023 fiscal year, the conference paid most of its members more than $60 million, a 3% increase from the previous year, according to USA Today.

“That seems to fall into a larger pattern where, in general, more wealth leads to more emissions,” said Seth Wynes, a professor at the University of Waterloo who has published research on the relationship between sports and climate change. “Richer individuals produce more emissions than poorer individuals. The same is true generally for nations. So as leagues or teams become more affluent, it’s not a surprising result.”

The immediate future of Big Ten football is set. Major media contracts have been signed, and games are scheduled through 2028.

Multiple experts mentioned making college sports regionally organized again would alleviate some of the problem. In the Big Ten, doing so would place the four former Pac-12 schools in a West division. That would lean into the decades-long rivalries of these programs and lessen the environmental strain of travel.

But re-implementing the East and West divisional format likely can’t be done until 2029 at the earliest, meaning the 2024 bump in emissions is likely to remain steady for the next four years.

“We should be going in the direction of more regional, not less,” Orr said. “Let’s crunch this smaller, not let’s blow it up bigger.”

Mekhi Abbott, Henry Brown, Keelin Brown, Shaela Foster, Alexa Henry, Steven Jacobs, Caroline Koutsos, Matthew Neus, Joshua Panepento, Brandon Schwartzberg, Laura Van Pate, and Matthew Weinsheimer contributed to the report.

ATLANTA - OCTOBER 10: Former President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalyn converse prior to the start of Game Three of the NLDS of the 2010 MLB Playoffs between the Atlanta Braves and the San Francisco Giants on October 10, 2010 at Turner Field in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

President Jimmy Carter, the only Georgian to ever occupy the White House, died Sunday Dec. 29, 2024, after spending over a year in hospice care.

Carter, who turned 100 on Oct. 1 and is the longest-lived president in American history, died at his home in Plains Sunday surrounded by family, according to the Carter Center.

“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” Chip Carter, the former president’s son, said in a statement. “My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”

Public services are planned for Atlanta and Washington, with a private burial service following in Plains. A full schedule has not yet been released.

President Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter were beloved residents of Plains, the small town in southwest Georgia where the couple grew up. Rosalynn Carter died Nov. 19, 2023 at 96.

Their affection for one another never seemed to fade during their 77-year marriage, which spanned Carter’s ever-changing career, from peanut farmer to state senator, governor and president, as well as his post-White House roles as diplomat, humanitarian and volunteer.

The former president’s passion for helping others and devotion to his faith, family and country garnered praise from Georgia’s political leaders.

In a statement, Gov. Brian Kemp praised Carter’s dedication to the state and the nation as well as his humanitarian work and love for the former first lady.

“Their family continues to be in our prayers as President Carter is reunited with his beloved wife and the world mourns this native Georgian, former state and national leader, and proud peanut farmer from Plains,” Kemp said.

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock called Carter a hero, a friend and one of his favorite people, who moved the country “closer toward our highest ideals.”

“A former president, he got his hands dirty, literally building people’s homes while helping them build their lives. President Carter was a Matthew 25 Christian. He believed, as I do, that the true test of your faith is the depth of your commitment to the most marginalized members of the human family. I believe he passed that test and has now graduated into immortality. Democracies around the world are stronger and children across the globe are alive today because of President Carter’s work—what a legacy to leave.”

U.S. Sen Jon Ossoff said Carter will be remembered for “his commitment to democracy and human rights, his enduring faith, his philanthropic leadership and his deep love of family.”

“From Plains to across the State of Georgia, the United States, and around the world, millions will forever admire and appreciate all that President Carter did for the United States and for the global community,” Ossoff said. “The State of Georgia and the United States are better places because of President Jimmy Carter.”

As president, he helped broker the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt, established diplomatic relations with China, and oversaw the creation of the departments of Energy and Education, among other accomplishments.

But he would serve only one term as president, losing to Ronald Reagan in 1980 amid a struggling economy and the Iranian hostage crisis.

His popularity increased after leaving the White House, becoming the face of Habitat for Humanity – and even showing up at his namesake build after suffering injuries in a fall – and taking on global crises and strife with his Atlanta-based Carter Center.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

Carter was also a prolific author who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for a memoir about growing up on a Georgia farm in the rural South after the Great Depression and before the civil rights movement. He has won a Grammy three times for his audio books and was nominated another nine times.

The Carters returned to their hometown after leaving the White House, moving back into the same modest ranch-style home they first purchased in 1961. A devout Christian, Carter famously continued to teach Sunday School class at Maranatha Baptist Church until 2020, ending a four-decade run that became part of Georgia political lore.

The Atlanta-based Carter Center announced Feb. 18, 2023 that Carter had decided to enter hospice care and spend his remaining time at home with his family. The announcement triggered an outpouring of tributes and fond remembrances from Georgians on both sides of the aisle.

Carter overcame brain cancer in 2015 and several accidents in recent years.

The former president also continued to wield influence in politics – especially in Georgia. He continued to endorse candidates in high-profile races, including Vice President Kamala Harris. His grandson Jason Carter told reporters he was hanging on to cast a ballot for Harris.

Carter also threw his endorsement behind top Democrats including Sen. Raphael Warnock and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams – and hosted the Bidens at their home in Plains in 2021. Back in 1976, Biden, then a senator, was one of the first elected officials outside Georgia to back Carter’s presidential run.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

Amanda Zurawski, Josh Zurawski, Kaitlyn Joshua and Hadley Duvall speak at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Ill., on Aug. 19, 2024.  (Andrew Roth for Michigan Advance)

Galvanized by a pivotal election almost two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections, patients, doctors, and activists in 2024 fought for renewed and expanded reproductive rights, while others pushed for more restrictions. These are some of the people and organizations that had an impact on reproductive health law and abortion access this year.

Women with wanted pregnancies affected by abortion bans

In state legislatures, before Congress, in court, in presidential campaign ads, and on stage at the Democratic National Convention, women all over the country have been reliving some of the worst moments of their lives in an effort to roll back abortion restrictions that have changed reproductive health care in America.

The year after Kentucky banned abortion, Hadley Duvall started talking publicly about how she was raped at 12 by her stepdad, who got her pregnant. She advocated for abortion rights in re-election campaign ads for Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in 2023 and this year appeared in national campaign ads for Democrats.

Kaitlyn Joshua, of Baton Rouge, represented many Louisiana women at this year’s Democratic National Convention, telling what’s becoming an increasingly common story of not being able to access miscarriage treatment after the state passed a strict abortion ban. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill subsequently challenged Joshua’s story on social media.

Kristin Lyerly, an OB-GYN from Wisconsin, is one of many doctors across the country who have sued over state abortion bans they say have changed medical practice. Lyerly this year participated in a civic engagement experiment in Madison, where strangers came together and shared the life experiences that inform their abortion views. Even when abortion rights were protected under Roe v. Wade, Lyerly said she was almost forced to give birth to a stillborn, in lieu of a less invasive abortion procedure. She also ran a reproductive-rights-focused campaign as a Democrat in a conservative-leaning congressional district, a race she lost.

Allie Phillips ran as a Democrat for a seat in the Tennessee legislature after the state’s abortion ban kept her from terminating a nonviable pregnancy in her home state, leading her to travel to New York City for care. She lost the race but said in November that she plans to continue fighting for reproductive rights, and announced her new pregnancy. Phillips is a plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit with other affected women and physicians to clarify the state’s medical health exceptions. A three-judge panel ruled in October that doctors cannot be penalized for performing an emergency abortion to save a patient’s life.

Amanda Zurawski developed sepsis in Texas after her water broke at 18 weeks and doctors waited for days to terminate her pregnancy, fearing prosecution under the state’s strict abortion ban. She’s since become an outspoken abortion-rights advocate. She campaigned heavily for abortion-rights candidates this year and said she wants to continue working in politics.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute

The high-profile federal lawsuit over medication abortion was made possible in part by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the anti-abortion political powerhouse Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Data from the institute featured prominently in the plaintiffs’ case for revoking the federal drug approval of mifepristone and was directly used as part of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s reasoning for granting the doctor-plaintiffs’ standing. The researchers found a significant jump in Medicaid-funded emergency room visits following a medication abortion over two decades, which also corresponds with an increase in access to medication abortion overtime. Public health experts told States Newsroom that the researchers inflated their findings, and appeared to conflate all emergency department visits with serious adverse events like sepsis. Their conclusions contradicted a large body of research showing a low rate of serious adverse events after taking mifepristone, prompting further scrutiny from curious scientists, as well as the academic publishing house that published it.

In February, Sage retracted three studies produced by Charlotte Lozier researchers and published in the journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology between 2019 and 2022, after a reader-prompted investigation found flaws in the studies’ methodology and data representation. The team behind the studies included Charlotte Lozier vice president and director of data analytics James Studnicki and longtime anti-abortion researchers, including the then-CEO of one of the plaintiff groups in the medication abortion lawsuit. They sued Sage, saying the retractions were unjustified and politically motivated.

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the abortion medication lawsuit this past summer — not on the merits of the case, but on the issue of the doctor-plaintiffs’ standing. Anti-abortion activists vowed to find a different plaintiff who could potentially persuade the court that abortion pills are too dangerous. After the Supreme Court remanded the case to the lower court, in October, intervening states Idaho, Kansas and Missouri amended their complaint, which no longer cites the retracted studies papers but instead cites a new paper from Studnicki and fellow Charlotte Lozier researchers, making similar claims.

The Alabama Supreme Court

A common fertility treatment, in vitro fertilization, was thrust into the national spotlight in February after the Alabama Supreme Court decided, 8-1, that frozen embryos should be considered children, in a wrongful death lawsuit over the embryos’ accidental destruction.

A lower court had dismissed the claim, ruling that embryos do not meet the legal definition of children. But in the majority opinion siding with the couples who sued the Mobile fertility clinic, Justice Jay Mitchell cited a 2018 state constitutional amendment ensuring “the protection of the rights of the unborn child.” He also cited an 1872 law allowing for civil lawsuits for the wrongful death of children, and argued that it does not explicitly include an exception for frozen embryos. Mitchell reasoned that the law “applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation.” Chief Justice Tom Parker, an influential conservative Christian activist, cited biblical texts in his concurring opinion, writing, “even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

Soon after, many IVF clinics in Alabama shut down until the state legislature passed a bill in March that extended criminal and civil immunity to IVF clinics for operations. This created major issues for families spending tens of thousands of dollars on a time-sensitive treatment. Alabama’s ruling also created a fear among families struggling to conceive in other states with abortion bans and showed that the fertility treatment is broadly supported by voters from both political parties. Republicans updated their national party platform to include support for IVF access. During his presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised: “your government will pay or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for all costs associated with I.V.F. treatment” — something he likely couldn’t do without congressional action. Meanwhile, GOP members of Congress have largely opposed IVF protections and access bills.

Mark Lee Dickson and Jonathan Mitchell

This year, attorney Jonathan Mitchell and pastor Mark Lee Dickson together experimented with ways to prevent out-of-state abortions, using their home state of Texas as the primary testing ground. Mitchell, a former solicitor general of Texas, used a little known state rule to depose abortion funds, doctors, and women who left the state for an abortion. As the Texas Tribune reported, the actions created fear and confusion but have not resulted in charges. Mitchell previously filed a wrongful death lawsuit against women who allegedly helped their friend obtain medication to terminate a pregnancy, which has since been dropped.

Through their Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn project, Dickson and Mitchell helped pass approximately 80 ordinances in cities and counties, mostly in Texas, but also in strategically located cities in abortion-access states, like Illinois and New Mexico. Some of the ordinances say a doctor in a state where abortion is legal cannot perform an abortion on a resident who lives in a town that has passed one of these laws. Some of the ordinances ban the use of that town’s highways to drive someone to an out-of-state abortion clinic. And some invoke a dormant federal anti-obscenity law known as the Comstock Act, which they say the federal government should enforce to mean that abortion pills cannot be transported through the mail.

Just like Texas’s 2021 six-week abortion ban that Mitchell and Dickson helped design, many of these ordinances are unenforceable by the governments that pass them, instead allowing for private citizens to sue other residents or medical professionals for “aiding and abetting” an abortion. The activists experienced a major loss on Election Day with the majority of voters in conservative Amarillo, Texas, voting down a ballot measure blocking abortion-related travel on its highly trafficked roads. But just before the end of the year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion drugs to a Texas resident, which Dickson told States Newsroom is a win for the anti-abortion movement. He said that in 2025 he plans to push for local anti-abortion ordinances in Arizona and Missouri, which reversed their abortion bans in November.

Donald Trump, then the GOP candidate for president, gave a keynote speech on the third day of the Bitcoin 2024 conference at Music City Center on July 27, 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee. He had previously dismissed cryptocurrency as a “scam” but embraced it in his latest bid for a second term in the White House. (Jon Cherry | Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump’s recent appointments and cabinet nominees are pointing to a four-year stint of deregulation in the tech industry, and lots of potential for competitive growth within the industry and globally, tech executives predict.

Trump has made a handful of recent selections, both to existing positions, like chair of the Federal Trade Commission and chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and he has created new positions for his term, like the “AI and crypto czar.”

“There appears to be much more cohesion and support from within his camp to support a range of geopolitical, technology and innovation issues that were relegated in importance during his first term,” software founder Yashin Manraj said.

Trump has chosen FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson to be the agency’s next chairman, replacing Lina Khan, who fought Big Tech overreach during her tenure. He’s slated to be joined by antitrust specialist Mark Meador in his former position. Together, the pair will likely continue to scrutinize Big Tech agencies, but for issues of “censorship” which was a Republican talking point during the election.

Earlier this month, Trump named cryptocurrency advocate and former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins as his pick for chair of the SEC, and appointed former PayPal executive David Sacks to a new role of “AI and crypto czar,” PBS reported.

The move comes as Trump’s view on digital currencies has evolved. During his first presidency, Trump called it “highly volatile and based on thin air,” but has since changed his tune. In September, he rolled out a new venture to trade crypto, called World Liberty Financial, and said during his 2024 campaign, that he aims to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.”

And on Dec. 16, Trump met with Japanese-based investment firm SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who announced a $100 billion investment into U.S. projects over the course of Trump’s term, many of which will focus on artificial intelligence.

Appointees setting the tone

These tech industry appointees and connections lean toward “traditional Republican deregulatory instincts,” said Dev Nag, Bay Area-based founder and CEO of AI automation company QueryPal.

It’s a shift toward something Nag calls “techno-pragmatic nationalism,” or a mixture of these Republican deregulation instincts with industry policy that focuses on maintaining the U.S.’ status in the global tech economy.

Ferguson’s appointment to the FTC will likely result in policies that continue to allow large U.S. tech companies to thrive while addressing specific competitive issues.

We’ll also probably see harder barriers against foreign tech competitors, especially China, Nag said.

Manraj, the Eagle Point, Oregon-based founder and CEO of software company Pvotal Technologies, also sees Trump’s appointments as an attempt to focus on growing the local tech economies, rather than the global one.

“These policies will weaken the tech industries of the European Union and many emerging countries, which were hoping for the heightened regulation under Harris to prevent further brain drains and promote [foreign direct investment] in their startup ecosystems,” Manraj said.

There was a lot of technical advancement during President Joe Biden’s term, but stronger tech regulations created some “confusion and hesitation” within the industry, Manraj said.

“Based on the track record of these appointees, we’re likely to see a significant rollback of AI safeguards implemented under the Biden administration, replaced with a framework emphasizing rapid deployment and commercialization,” Nag said.

SoftBank’s investment is a sign that the industry is feeling ready to develop, and that investment dollars are more likely to flow under a Trump administration, Manraj said.

Differences from Trump’s first term

The appointments and tech-industry relationships Trump has developed for his second term appear to make him more prepared to be supportive of tech innovation and growth than his first term, Manraj said.

He’s relying on “a new generation of technocrats,” to enact change, Manraj said, rather than politically driven cabinet advisors from his first time in office.

“The crypto world is reacting positively to it, and many projects treading water for years are finally ramping up hiring and growth locally in the U.S.,” Manraj said.

Nag predicted several potential technological advancements we may see under Trump’s second term, including the relaxation of AI restrictions paired with lots of investments into tech. That may allow for AI to integrate across lots of industries and infrastructures faster than it would have under a Kamala Harris administration.

Nag also noted Trump’s change in attitude toward crypto, saying a friendlier regulatory environment for the digital currencies may position the U.S. as a global leader in the space. We may also see more advancement in semiconductor manufacturing and computing capabilities under more relaxed regulations.

All of these advancements come with important governance considerations, though, Nag said. AI advancements that go so far without safety frameworks can create future problems that we can’t come back from.

“The key challenge for this administration will be maintaining the delicate balance between fostering rapid innovation and ensuring long-term technological resilience,” he said.

Adolphe Duperly’s painting depicting the destruction of the Roehampton Estate in Jamaica during the Baptist War in January 1832. Wikimedia Commons

During the era of slavery in the Americas, enslaved men, women and children also enjoyed the holidays. Slave owners usually gave them bigger portions of food, gifted them alcohol and provided extra days of rest.

Those gestures, however, were not made out of generosity.

As abolitionist, orator and diplomat Frederick Douglass explained, slave owners were trying to keep enslaved people under control by plying them with better meals and more downtime, in the hopes of preventing escapes and rebellions.

Most of the time, it worked.

But as I discuss in my recent book, “Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery,” many enslaved people were onto their owners and used this brief period of respite to plan escapes and start revolts.

Feasting, frolicking and fiddling

Most enslaved people in the Americas adhered to the Christian calendar — and celebrated Christmas — since either Catholicism or Protestantism predominated, from Birmingham, Alabama, to Brazil.

Consider the example of Solomon Northup, whose tragic story became widely known in the film “12 Years A Slave.” Northup was born free in the state of New York but was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana in 1841.

In his narrative, Northup explained that his owner and their neighbors gave their slaves between three and six days off during the holidays. He described this period as “carnival season with the children of bondage,” a time for “feasting, frolicking, and fiddling.”

According to Northup, each year a slave owner in central Louisiana’s Bayou Boeuf offered a Christmas dinner attended by as many as 500 enslaved people from neighboring plantations. After spending the entire year consuming meager meals, this marked a rare opportunity to indulge in several kinds of meats, vegetables, fruits, pies and tarts.

There’s evidence of holiday celebrations since the early days of slavery in the Americas. In the British colony of Jamaica, a Christmas masquerade called Jonkonnu has taken place since the 17th century. One 19th-century artist depicted the celebration, painting four enslaved men playing musical instruments, including a container covered with animal skin, along with an instrument made from an animal’s jawbone.

In the 1861 narrative of her life in slavery, abolitionist Harriet Jacobs described a similar masquerade in North Carolina.

“Every child rises early on Christmas morning to see the Johnkannaus,” she wrote. “Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its greatest attraction.”

On Christmas Day, she continued, nearly 100 enslaved men paraded through the plantation wearing colorful costumes with cows’ tails fastened to their backs and horns decorating their heads. They went door to door, asking for donations to buy food, drinks and gifts. They sang, danced and played musical instruments they had fashioned themselves – drums made of sheepskin, metal triangles and an instrument fashioned from the jawbone of a horse, mule or donkey.

It’s the most wonderful time to escape

Yet beneath the revelry, there was an undercurrent of angst during the holidays for enslaved men, women and children.

In the American South, enslavers often sold or hired out their slaves in the first days of the year to pay their debts. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, many enslaved men, women and children were consumed with worry over the possibility of being separated from their loved ones.

At the same time, slave owners and their overseers were often distracted — if not drunk — during the holidays. It was a prime opportunity to plan an escape.

John Andrew Jackson was owned by a Quaker family of planters in South Carolina. After being separated from his wife and child, he planned to escape during the Christmas holiday of 1846. He managed to flee to Charleston. From there, he went north and eventually reached New Brunswick in Canada. Sadly, he was never able to reunite with his enslaved relatives.

Even Harriet Tubman took advantage of the holiday respite. Five years after she successfully escaped from the Maryland plantation where she was enslaved, she returned on Christmas Day in 1854 to save her three brothers from a life of bondage.

‘Tis the season for rebellion

Across the Americas, the holiday break also offered a good opportunity to plot rebellions.

In 1811, enslaved and free people of color planned a series of revolts in Cuba, in what became known as the Aponte Rebellion. The scheming and preparations took place between Christmas Day and the Day of Kings, a Jan. 6 Catholic holiday commemorating the three magi who visited the infant Jesus. Inspired by the Haitian Revolution, free people of color and enslaved people joined forces to try to end slavery on the island.

In April, the Cuban government eventually smashed the rebellion.

In Jamaica, enslaved people followed suit. Samuel Sharpe, an enslaved Baptist lay deacon, called a general strike on Christmas Day 1831 to demand wages and better working conditions for the enslaved population.

Two nights later, a group of enslaved people set fire to a trash house at an estate in Montego Bay. The fire spread, and what was supposed to be a strike instead snowballed into a violent insurrection. The Christmas Rebellion — or Baptist War, as it became known — was the largest slave revolt in Jamaica’s history. For nearly two months, thousands of slaves battled British forces until they were eventually subdued. Sharpe was hanged in Montego Bay on May 23, 1832.

After news of the Christmas Rebellion and its violent repression reached Britain, antislavery activists ramped up their calls to ban slavery. The following year, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which prohibited slavery in the British Empire.

Yes, the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day offered a chance to feast or plot rebellions.

But more importantly, it served as a rare window of opportunity for enslaved men, women and children to reclaim their humanity.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The debate over the debt limit will likely flare tensions between centrist and far-right Republicans the closer the country gets to the real deadline sometime later in the year. (Photo by Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — When Republicans won unified control of government during the November elections, they also won the responsibility to address the country’s debt limit after the current suspension expires on Jan. 1.

Lawmakers will have a few months of wiggle room thanks to accounting maneuvers to broker a deal before the country would default for the first time in history — which most economists believe would kick-start a global financial crisis.

How long the Treasury Department will be able to use what’s known as extraordinary measures to give Congress more time to find agreement will lead to a high-stakes guessing game on Capitol Hill.

The debate will also likely flare tensions between centrist and far-right Republicans the closer the country gets to the real deadline sometime later in the year.

“That is always a tortured path,” West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said during a brief interview. “A lot of people that are here probably never voted for a debt limit increase, so I think it’s probably going to be a negotiated settlement with some, maybe constraints on spending and other things that would go along with that.”

Capito, who will become the Republican Policy Committee chair next year, said she doesn’t anticipate Congress will simply raise or suspend the debt limit without caveats.

President-elect Donald Trump threw a curve ball into those negotiations in late December when he publicly announced he wanted the party to suspend the debt limit for at least four years or eliminate it entirely before he takes office.

GOP leadership tried to suspend the debt limit for two years as part of a larger spending package, but ultimately withdrew that provision to avoid a government shutdown.

The 48-hour fiasco set the stage for considerable Republican disagreement next year.

“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling,” Trump posted on social media. “Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”

What is the debt limit, and why does it matter?

The debt limit allows the Treasury Department to borrow money to pay all the country’s bills in full and on time.

That borrowing authority is necessary because Congress has established a tax code that brings in far less revenue than the federal government spends on hundreds of programs.

During fiscal year 2023, the federal government brought in $4.4 trillion in revenue and spent $6.1 trillion, leading to an annual deficit of $1.7 trillion, according to data from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

When the difference between taxes and spending, or the deficit, is added up over decades, it accounts for the country’s $36 trillion-plus debt.

Congress requires itself to regularly give the Treasury Department more borrowing authority to pay for all the spending not covered by revenue. Lawmakers failing to take action to raise or suspend that debt limit would lead to a default.

How to reduce the deficit?

There are several ways for lawmakers to reduce the annual deficit of nearly $2 trillion, though most experts agree it will take a combination of tax increases and spending cuts.

Congress would also need to take a look at the major drivers of government spending — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

At the moment, Republicans are talking about using their unified control of government to pass two major packages on their own.

The first would focus on border security, defense and energy policy. The second package the GOP plans to move through the complex budget reconciliation process is aimed at cutting taxes.

One of the biggest questions GOP leaders will face in the new year is whether to go at it alone, relying solely on their members to raise the debt limit, or to negotiate with Democrats, which would require major concessions.

The debt limit has become something of a political hot potato for GOP lawmakers during the past couple decades, with many in the party viewing it as an inflection point to press for spending cuts. 

That’s not likely to change next year, though Republicans won’t be able to rely on Democratic votes to carry the bill across the finish line like they have in the past, if they choose to move it through the budget reconciliation process.

If, alternatively, the GOP moves a debt limit bill through the regular process, they’ll need the support of Democrats to get past the Senate’s legislative filibuster, which requires at least 60 senators to move bills toward a final passage vote.

Tax increases and spending cuts

Douglas Elmendorf, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, told the House Budget Committee during a hearing in December that getting the country’s borrowing under control in the long term will require both tax increases and spending cuts.

Elmendorf testified that stabilizing the country’s deficit over the next three decades would “require policy changes totaling a little more than 2% of (gross domestic product), which amounts to about $600 billion per year today.”

“Cutting spending that much would require large cuts to popular and important government programs and raising taxes that much would require large tax increases for many people,” Elmendorf said. “So the only realistic way forward is through a combination of those changes.”

California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock rebuked his own party during the hearing for not approaching reconciliation as a genuine way to reduce the deficit by bringing revenue and spending into alignment.

He argued that Republicans misused budget reconciliation when they had unified control of government during 2017 and 2018, the first two years of Trump’s last presidency.

McClintock said GOP leaders at the time “squandered this authority to chase shiny political objects — repealing Obamacare, then tax reform.”

“And because of the fiscal constraints of reconciliation, Obamacare ended up in this mangled mess that collapsed in the Senate and the tax cuts had to be made temporary,” McClintock said. “And we seem to be poised to repeat the same mistakes that got us here and that would be an immense national tragedy.”

Instead, McClintock said the Budget Committee should focus its attention next year on making the types of tough choices that would begin to reduce the annual deficit and then use the reconciliation process to put those in place.

Drivers of debt

Reconciliation is typically used only when one party controls the House, Senate and White House as a way to implement policy changes without getting the bipartisan support required to get past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.

When Republicans hold that power, they typically use it to cut taxes, but don’t always pay for those reductions in revenue, further exacerbating the deficit.

Georgia Republican Rep. Buddy Carter said during the same Budget Committee hearing that Congress must address the largest drivers of government spending, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, if it wants to bring spending closer to revenue. 

“If we don’t address that, we can do away with everything else and still not balance our budget,” Carter said. 

He also cautioned his party against going at it alone, saying “it would be political suicide for one party to try to do it by themselves.” That would mean the GOP needs to negotiate with Democrats, likely eroding some of the party’s goals.

‘Mortgaging our children’s future’

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson said during a brief interview the debt limit is “supposed to concentrate everybody’s minds on the fact that we are mortgaging our children’s future and that we ought to stop the madness.”

Johnson said Republicans could use the reconciliation process they’re planning to use to address defense priorities, border security, energy policy and taxes to cut spending, but he said deficit hawks will be constrained by the rules that govern the special legislative process.

“I’m completely supportive of doing two separate reconciliations — do something pretty simple, primarily focused on the border with real spending cuts. I don’t want to see any gimmicks in this thing. So, you know, I’ll approach it that way,” Johnson said.

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said in an interview before Trump’s announcements that GOP lawmakers have begun to discuss how exactly to address the debt limit next year, though he said no agreements have been reached.

“Some people want a separate debate on it and some people want to put it in reconciliation,” Grassley said. “I prefer reconciliation, but I guess whatever we decide to do, we’re going to have to do it.”

Then-U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, speaks at the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 17, 2024 in Milwaukee. The U.S. House Ethics Committee released a report Monday finding "substantial evidence" of misconduct by Gaetz. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump’s first choice for attorney general in his second presidency, former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, paid for sex, including with a minor, used illegal drugs and sought to obstruct investigators, according to a U.S. House Committee on Ethics report released Monday.

The 42-page report, the culmination of a years-long committee investigation, found that Gaetz, who denies the allegations, “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him,” used cocaine and ecstasy on multiple occasions between 2017 and 2019, accepted gifts including a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, and lied to the Department of State to obtain a passport for a woman he was sexually involved with and who he falsely claimed was his constituent.

“Representative Gaetz took advantage of the economic vulnerability of young women to lure them into sexual activity for which they received an average of a few hundred dollars after each encounter. Such behavior is not ‘generosity to ex-girlfriends,’ and it does not reflect creditably upon the House,” the report stated, noting the former congressman violated Florida prostitution and statutory rape laws.

Gaetz has not been criminally charged.

But the panel cited “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl whom they refer to as “Victim A.” Evidence included “credible testimony from Victim A herself, as well as multiple individuals corroborating the allegation.”

“Several of those witnesses have also testified under oath before a federal grand jury and in a civil litigation,” the report continued.

“Representative Gaetz denied the allegation but refused to testify under oath. He has publicly stated that Victim A ‘doesn’t exist’ and that he has not ‘had sex with a 17-year-old since I was 17.’ The Committee found that to be untrue and determined that there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz had sex with Victim A in July 2017, when she was 17 years old, and he was 35. Representative Gaetz’s actions were in violation of Florida’s statutory rape law,” according to the report.

Gaetz was chosen by Trump in November as his nominee to run the U.S. Department of Justice, even though Gaetz was previously the target of a department sex trafficking investigation that never yielded charges. Gaetz resigned from the House hours after Trump named him for the position.

After criticism from lawmakers and a spotlight on the House Ethics Committee’s probe, ongoing since April 2021, Gaetz bowed out of the running for attorney general.

Gaetz continues to deny the allegations outlined in the committee report and sued the panel Monday. In the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Gaetz calls the committee’s decision to release the report “unconstitutional” because it does not have jurisdiction over a private citizen.

“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” Gaetz wrote on X Monday.

Gaetz declined an opportunity to present his version of events to the committee, refusing an invitation to sit for a voluntary interview, the report said.

Debate over release

The committee wrestled with the decision to release the report, blocking the decision after meeting on Nov. 20 before reversing course in a Dec. 10 vote.

Committee Chair Michael Guest said in a statement Monday that he opposed the report’s release.

“I believe, have publicly stated, and remain steadfast in the position that the House Committee on Ethics lost jurisdiction to release to the public any substantive work product regarding Mr. Gaetz after his resignation from the House on November 14, 2024,” Guest, a Mississippi Republican, said.

“While I do not challenge the Committee’s findings, I did not vote to support the release of the report and I take great exception that the majority deviated from the Committee’s well-established standards and voted to release a report on an individual no longer under the Committee’s jurisdiction, an action the Committee has not taken since 2006,” Guest’s statement continued.

Dr. Karen Hyun will be the next secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. (Office of Gov. Tony Evers)

Gov. Tony Evers announced Monday that Dr. Karen Hyun will be appointed as the next Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Hyun currently serves as chief of staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

The DNR secretary position has been unfilled for more than a year after the resignation of former Secretary Adam Payne in October 2023. In a news release, Evers said that Hyun’s career working on environmental issues makes her “a great asset.” 

“Dr. Hyun’s extensive science background and expertise working in fish and wildlife, shoreline restoration, and coastal management and resilience will make her a great asset to the Department of Natural Resources and to our administration,” Evers said. “Having spent most of her career working in environmental policy, Dr. Hyun brings a wealth of experience navigating many of the issues the department is charged with managing every day, and I’m so excited for her to get started.”

Hyun, who lives in Madison, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Earth Systems from Stanford University before getting her doctorate from the University of Rhode Island in marine science. 

Before joining NOAA, the federal agency that forecasts weather and tracks oceanic and atmospheric conditions — including on the Great Lakes — Hyun worked at the National Audubon Society as director of water and coastal policy before becoming the vice president of coastal conservation in 2018. 

She started her career in 2009 working as a staff member of the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee. She then worked in the administration of former President Barack Obama as senior policy advisor to the secretary of Commerce and deputy assistant secretary of fish, wildlife, and parks at the Department of the Interior in 2015. 

“I’m honored to accept this appointment from Gov. Evers to lead the DNR,” Hyun said. “Wisconsin is known for its abundance of natural resources, wildlife, and outdoor recreation opportunities, and I have spent much of my life dedicated to understanding, conserving, and promoting the natural resources and spaces that we all know and love. I look forward to working alongside the dedicated DNR staff to ensure that Wisconsin’s ecosystems, wildlife, natural spaces, and resources remain accessible, safe, and available for generations of Wisconsinites to come.”

Hyun’s appointment is effective Jan. 27.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the White House Rose Garden Nov. 7. Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

President Joe Biden commuted the sentences on Monday of 37 death row inmates, citing his conscience as a force behind the decision. He also left the death sentences unchanged for three men charged with hate-motivated mass shootings and terrorism.

Biden, who imposed a moratorium on federal executions during his administration, commuted the death sentences to life sentences without the possibility of parole, saying in a statement that he’s dedicated his career “to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system.”

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said.

“But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

The three men Biden left on death row Monday include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, sentenced in 2015 of bombing the Boston Marathon in 2013; Dylann Roof, sentenced in 2017 of fatally shooting nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina; and Robert Bowers, sentenced in 2023 for the deadly shooting in 2018 that killed 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The president’s commutations Monday come after he commuted the sentences on Dec. 12 of 1,500 people who were placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic. He also granted pardons for 39 individuals convicted of nonviolent crimes.

Biden received criticism from Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and others for including among the mass commutations a Pennsylvania judge convicted in 2011 of sending children to prison in exchange for millions of dollars in kickbacks from a private jail — a crime that became known in the commonwealth as the “Cash for Kids” scheme.

Advocates for abolishing the death penalty and some U.S. House Democrats had pressured Biden to commute death penalty sentences ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Trump expedited some executions during his first term.

In a statement, Trump transition spokesman Steven Cheung blasted the commutations.

“These are among the worst killers in the world and this abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones,” Cheung wrote. “President Trump stands for the rule of law, which will return when he is back in the White House after he was elected with a massive mandate from the American people.”

According to the White House, the names of the death row inmates whose sentences were commuted Monday are:

• Shannon Wayne Agofsky

• Billie Jerome Allen

• Aquilia Marcivicci Barnette

• Brandon Leon Basham

• Anthony George Battle

• Meier Jason Brown

• Carlos David Caro

• Wesley Paul Coonce, Jr.

• Brandon Michael Council

• Christopher Emory Cramer

• Len Davis

• Joseph Ebron

• Ricky Allen Fackrell

• Edward Leon Fields, Jr.

• Chadrick Evan Fulks

• Marvin Charles Gabrion, II

• Edgar Baltazar Garcia

• Thomas Morocco Hager

• Charles Michael Hall

• Norris G. Holder

• Richard Allen Jackson

• Jurijus Kadamovas

• Daryl Lawrence

• Iouri Mikhel

• Ronald Mikos

• James H. Roane, Jr.

• Julius Omar Robinson

• David Anthony Runyon

• Ricardo Sanchez, Jr.

• Thomas Steven Sanders

• Kaboni Savage

• Mark Isaac Snarr

• Rejon Taylor

• Richard Tipton

• Jorge Avila Torrez

• Daniel Troya

• Alejandro Enrique Ramirez Umaña