Wisconsin’s crazy rollercoaster of a Democratic primary is finally over. After staying up all night waiting to see David Crowley declared the winner by one-half of one percentage point at 2:30 Wednesday morning, a lot of voters are feeling dizzy and seasick. 

Many Francesca Hong supporters are angry. Their grassroots campaign, the best organized, most energized, with the boldest vision throughout the race, was big-footed by Gov. Tony Evers’ last-minute endorsement of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. Adding insult to injury, Crowley had already dropped out when Evers urged him to jump back in with a big boost from late campaign cash, apparently for the sole purpose of thwarting Hong. 

Crowley supporters are relieved. They saw Hong as an inexperienced candidate who would lose a winnable general election to Republican Tom Tiffany, a Donald Trump enabler and election denier who has plans to sell off public lands and bring back a total abortion ban. 

National media viewed the Wisconsin primary as a test of the left which, according to the New York Times, the left clearly failed with Hong’s “stunning” loss. 

But feverish punditry about the significance of Wisconsin’s primary has distorted the real meaning of the results. Polls showing Hong was on track to win by double digits were less accurate than the anecdotal experience of voters who knew their friends and neighbors were fretting about how to vote and hadn’t made up their minds right up until Election Day. Those voters moved to Crowley in big numbers at the very end of the race, as he came to seem like the safe alternative. But Hong’s near-miss is hardly a stunning defeat. On the contrary, it showed real strength for a candidate who, when she started, was counted out.  

If your main exposure to Hong was the video of her appearance on Fox News, where she talked in circles about an old tweet in which she recommended canceling Thanksgiving, refusing to either disavow or endorse the idea, the worry made sense. 

It wasn’t just old, establishment types who felt it. “A lot of our members had to be talked down off the fence, they were so worried about electability,” says Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, which endorsed Hong. 

For those voters, the big struggle in the primary was a contest between hope and fear. Kraig sees this as a natural phenomenon. “People are hard-wired to be risk-averse,” he says. Especially when the stakes are high, people’s fears, and the sense that they have to protect what they have, overcome their aspirations for something better. Kraig spent time trying to persuade people that they needed to be more imaginative, to consider that many candidates who once seemed improbable, including President Barack Obama and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, changed people’s views of “electability.” 

Hong’s priorities — free childcare, a massive expansion of healthcare, a big minimum wage hike, fully funded schools paid for with a tax increase on the rich — and her assertive, take-it-to-the-hoop attacks on Tiffany, whom she called a “traitor,” resonated with a lot of Wisconsin Democrats. It was the fear that she was not ready for prime time, that she would lose regular voters by speaking the lingo of the academic left, more than her socialist policy positions, that caused them to jump ship. That doesn’t mean the Hong movement failed, or that Democrats can afford to ignore it now that Crowley pulled off his narrow win.

As Kraig points out, voters are not particularly attached to “moderate” policy positions. Progressive ideas can generate big support among a cross-section of voters. Hong’s campaign demonstrated that. 

It makes sense that people who were the most fed up, who felt they had the least to lose, supported Hong. Some were young DSA members. But also, Kraig says, some of his group’s organizers who are “standard liberals” — doctors who are deeply concerned about the systemic failures of healthcare — pushed hard for the group to endorse Hong because of her recognition of the need for radical change in the healthcare system.

The night before the election, I watched Hong fire up canvassers at her campaign office on the east side of Madison. A young, excited group of volunteers clearly felt like they were part of something historic. That movement energy has not been lost. It’s up to Crowley to tap it and to Democrats to recognize its significance. It would be a huge mistake for the Crowley campaign, having pulled off its narrow victory, not to try to connect seriously with the grassroots energy that animated Hong’s supporters. 

Kraig and Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the executive director of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, which also endorsed Hong, both hold out hope that Crowley, a former community organizer, will not just talk about “unity” with Hong voters, but will listen seriously to them and adopt some of their positions. 

Kraig suggests that Crowley take a page from President Joe Biden, who invited the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic party to help him shape policy after he won in 2020. “It would be good to be credible. To take some positions. Not just call for unity. He could do events with Fran on some issues he wants to lean in on,” Kraig says.

Crowley could make inroads with an energized voting base by taking a stronger position against rapacious AI data centers — one of the issues that animated the Hong campaign. That could be complicated for him with his trade union endorsers. But Hong was the first to recognize what others now see: Voters are demanding a stronger stance.

“It’s going to be really important to connect to those organizer roots and to be bold, not to be timid and move to the center or the right,” says Neumann-Ortiz. 

Voces embraced Hong because she was deeply engaged in defending immigrant rights, including through the Statewide Community Defense Network. “People are coming together to support immigrant families being persecuted by ICE,” Neumann-Ortiz says. Crowley could do more to connect to that, taking a clear stand in support of measures that protect immigrant families.

 “We are in a period of growing authoritarianism — people see that, and growing economic inequality — people feel that,” says Neumann-Ortiz. “We need a movement that brings working people together and challenges the divisions of the right and Tom Tiffany. That’s what’s needed; not to lose that fighting spirit.” 

People are fed up with the lesser-evil argument that “you have no choice,” she adds. And they aren’t putting up with it. “We have seen the emergence of candidates that are much more progressive,” she says. “They come out of a community organizing culture and are willing to demand more.”

More progressives are going to continue to run for office, Neumann-Ortiz predicts. Real political power, she says, “comes from that organized community. They are doing the real democracy work, not just in elections, but the ongoing work of people coming together.” 

Crowley won with a boost from Evers, although he dismisses the idea that he is a creature of the “establishment.” Kraig thinks that’s silly – of course he got a big establishment hand up. But that doesn’t have to be how he governs. 

“Progressive Era champions put into office by the political machines turned against them and became reformers,” Kraig points out. He holds out hope that Crowley, connecting with his organizer roots, might follow in that great Wisconsin tradition. 

It’s hard not to get caught up in the increasingly contentious Democratic primary battle that’s mostly being waged online this week. But outside of the social media echo chambers, people who are taking the brunt of a vicious, authoritarian regime are asking deeper questions about how to build political power.  

Union and immigrant-rights organizers in Wisconsin held a joint press conference Thursday to talk about their efforts to get Latinos, newly naturalized citizens and struggling workers to the polls to elect people who will take a stand against the Trump administration’s terrifying crackdown on immigrants as well as Trump administration policies driving the crushing cost of living.

Roselia Navarro, a naturalized citizen who leads Voces de la Frontera’s New American program, helps guide other immigrants through the process of becoming citizens. She gave a touching account of how much citizenship and participating in American democracy means to her. She described it as a privilege to help other immigrants, many of whom have waited as long  as 20 years to obtain their naturalization papers and become eligible to vote. 

“I’m very proud to say I’m the first person that is able to vote within my family,” she said. “And that feels rewarding because when I vote, I feel that I’m not only making decisions for something that would benefit my kids, but it also inspires my family to see that I’m motivated and I’m involved.”

“I want to also invite the people in our community, especially the Hispanic community, that we can come together and we need to vote,” she added. “It’s extremely important for us to be part of the decisions that are being made in our state.”

First-time voter Yondo Borrera, who sat next to Navarro on the panel at the Voces office in Milwaukee, told reporters, “I will be voting to make a change in my community. I don’t like how everything is super expensive right now — gas, food, housing, rent. And I don’t like how ICE is in the community snatching people up, deporting people, taking people away from their families, and that’s something that I’m trying to change.”

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Voces’ executive director, described the power of Latino voters in Wisconsin, a tippy purple state where elections are often decided by razor-thin margins. Over the last decade, “the Latino population, including the Latino voting population, has continued to grow in force statewide,” she said. She cited data from the 2024 election that showed high turnout among registered Latino voters about 84.9%  of whom voted, “yet this only represents 63% of the estimated eligible Latino citizen voting age population statewide,” she said. 

Immigrant rights’ organizers aim to drive the participation rate higher.

There is something poignant about that aim, which, in other election years, would seem like a run-of-the-mill exercise in civics. This is no ordinary election year, however. 

Armed federal agents have been dragging people out of their cars in Milwaukee. A young mother with no criminal record who fled violence in Colombia and was going through the U.S. asylum process, checking in with the government regularly as her case progressed, was grabbed along with her 8-year-old son out of their home in the Wisconsin Dells and is now incarcerated along with her little boy in an ICE detention facility in South Texas. 

This is just one case of the thousands across the country. Neumann-Ortiz described a few more in Wisconsin. “We’ve seen mothers and fathers and children and the larger community traumatized by the violence and the persecution and the racism, which is completely unchecked right now,” she said.

People who have full legal status are wary of being grabbed by rogue ICE agents looking to fill quotas in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Going to the polls in this environment is fraught. And yet, advocates say, it’s more important than ever. 

“We are in an unprecedented time of income inequality, with unwanted wars in the Middle East, and a quarter of a trillion of our national budget being used for the violent persecution and racial profiling of Black and brown people, Asian people, and shifting away these critical resources from healthcare and public schools and childcare and things that people need,” Neumann-Ortiz said. 

The only way to change all that is for people who are suffering under this terrible regime to grab control of their government.

Adrian Bracy, a worksite representative for the Service Employees International Union, spoke on the panel to people who feel that their vote doesn’t matter, that the system is too broken to be fixed at the ballot box. 

“Working for a union for 20 years, I know that uniting and standing strong and fighting firmly for what we believe in, it can make the difference,” she said. “It can definitely change things.” She urged people to encourage their friends and neighbors to vote.  “Let them know how important it really is, and that they do matter,” she said. “It does matter. It makes a difference …  in spite of the tactics they may use to intimidate or discourage or discredit our voters.”

As it happens, the effort to discourage and discredit voters is led by Wisconsin’s representatives in Congress. U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville), who chairs the House Committee on Administration, is demanding information from the state Department of Corrections on voting by felons. The case that prompted Steil’s letter to DOC Secretary Jared Hoy involves a man convicted of theft who was one day shy of having served his full sentence on community release. Had he voted the following day, his ballot would have been legal. This single case, which did not affect the outcome of any election, is fodder for a campaign Steil is spearheading to cast doubt on the legitimacy of elections and disenfranchise likely Democratic voters by making them jump through hoops before they can vote, all in the name of rooting out exceedingly rare cases of voter fraud.

The main targets of this campaign are, of course, the supposed masses of noncitizens casting ballots and tilting elections to Democrats. 

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Prairie du Chien), like Steil an enabler of election conspiracy theories, also took a big stand this week, demanding that Gov. Tony Evers turn over the personal data of FoodShare recipients in an effort to root out “fraud.” People who get food assistance in Wisconsin are already seeing their benefits cut, just as grocery prices skyrocket, under the massive tax cut and spending bill both Van Orden and Steil supported.

These attacks are related. After voting for policies that make life much worse for the people they represent, our Republican members of Congress are trying to make sure voters can’t hold them accountable. 

“The challenges facing our economy and our democracy are inseparable,” says Taifa Smith Butler, president of Demos, a nonprofit progressive public policy organization. Demos rolled out its 2026 national policy agenda this week:  “Power Policies: How to Get and Keep People Power in the United States.” 

“For too long, public debate has centered on short term wins, but the more important question is what happens after power shifts,” Smith Butler said at a press conference announcing the new report. “History shows that periods of political upheaval can also create opportunities for transformative change. Previous generations have used these moments to advance civil rights, expand democracy, and build economic security.”

Rising authoritarianism is linked to the erosion of both economic and political power for most people, Alix Gould-Werth, Demos’ chief of programs and strategy, said at the same event. It’s important to stop that erosion in order to fight back.

The solutions the group lays out in its progressive policy plan include affordable housing, universal childcare and a robust national wealth tax, as well as nonpartisan redistricting and automatic voter registration.

Rebuilding democratic institutions in the current environment seems like a huge hill to climb. But starting on the state and local level, it’s possible to protect “laboratories of democracy” that will serve as models for a larger shift, Gould-Werth said. 

Community housing grants and low-cost loans are one example Demos offers.

Here in Wisconsin, which long ago served as the laboratory for New Deal programs and progressive reforms that grew into lasting federal institutions, there is an opportunity to stand up and defend a better vision of society. 

It’s scary. And it’s challenging. But it’s a relief to see advocates at both the local and national level light a torch and keep us focused not just on the short-term crisis we are enduring, but how it fits into the long-term fight for a better world. 

A rock concert sized crowd packed the Overture Center in downtown Madison on Friday, July 17, eager to hear former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler talk about his new book, “This is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy.”

People are desperate for a little optimism and a sense of direction and Wikler offers both, served with a big smile and a hefty dose of energetic encouragement. To enthusiastic applause, he described, during an hour-long conversation on stage with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, how Wisconsin has played a starring role in the fight against authoritarianism and the destruction of democracy by a greedy, corrupt elite. He cast the long battle against former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in heroic terms, connecting it to progress during Gov. Tony Evers’ two terms in office, the end of Republican gerrymandering, the defeat of Elon Musk’s preferred candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the election of a new liberal Court majority and, prospectively, a Democratic sweep of state government this fall. 

The Walker fight was a warmup for the battle against Donald Trump and the unprecedented destruction of society he unleashed, Wikler said. Our state is an example to the nation, leading the way in a people-powered fight to restore a more humane, civilized society.

Listening to him you could forget for a moment how tenuous Wisconsin’s political situation is, and how rocky the Democratic primary has been right up to the eve of an election that will determine who faces Trump’s choice for governor, Tom Tiffany, in November.

But the lesson Wikler is offering is not that political victory is a sure thing. The “plan” he’s devised involves a lot of hard work and a difficult fight. The outcome is far from certain. But he makes a solid case that organizing is the best antidote to despair and has resulted in some impressive victories here in Wisconsin.

It took years after the massive, historic protests of 2011 to defeat Walker, who survived a recall effort and went on to be elected to a second term before Evers beat him by a narrow 1-point margin in 2018. 

Evers hasn’t unwound all the damage Walker and the Republican Legislature did to workers, state agencies and, most of all, public schools in Wisconsin, but in Wikler’s opinion he did a great job playing defense against an arrogant, destructive Republican majority in the Legislature and put the state on the right path. Now that we have fair maps, the days of Republican supermajority control are over and Wisconsin is on its way to restoring labor rights and a once-great school system, Wikler says. Some public schools advocates who feel deeply disappointed by the “education governor” might disagree. Schools all over Wisconsin are in desperate financial shape and the ever-expanding private school voucher program, which is draining their resources, coupled with austerity budgets passed by the Republicans and signed by Evers, have left Wisconsin public schools in desperate shape. Advocates are angry that Evers didn’t get more done.

But broadly, Wikler makes a good case for optimism. And that is not just helpful, it’s necessary. Reminding people of past triumphs and encouraging them to fight for something better is the only way out of our current fix.

We are living in dangerous times. We need leaders to help bring us together. 

In the governor’s race, we saw yet another top candidate drop out this week under a cloud of damaging allegations. 

Meanwhile Wisconsin is reeling from a horrible police shooting, and a powerful tornado just leveled several communities days after wildfire smoke blanketed parts of the state, a reminder of the existential threat of climate change.

In the face of these challenges, and under a violent authoritarian regime, it’s easy to see how things can spin out of control. People are angry, desperate, divided.

Wikler offers a better vision. We could pull together and recommit to a peaceful, generous and unifying vision. It’s helpful to reflect on how we’ve done that before.

In the primary, ultimately voters have to come together behind a single candidate or just accept losing a high-stakes race.

But the same idea applies to communities buffeted by natural disasters. Politicians who deny what’s happening are betraying all of us, regardless of political party. We need to prepare and protect ourselves from the undeniable bad weather that’s going to continue to come our way and we need to organize ourselves to stop destroying the planet before there’s nothing left to protect.

On a smaller scale, Madison leaders need to engage with the protesters on Willy Street, take meaningful steps to address the series of appalling police killings in that neighborhood, and figure out how to allow the life of the neighborhood to go on, as tempers fray over an indefinite encampment on the site where Ruiz was shot.

Division and fear are part of what plagues the Madison neighborhood where a police officer killed Ruiz by shooting him in the head after knocking him off a bicycle in a shocking, broad-daylight encounter. Well-meaning neighbors and local officials have blocked streets and canceled community events in part to show solidarity with the protesters and mourners who set up the encampment, but also out of fear that those protesters will disrupt more events after they shut down the Concert on the Square, the Dane County Farmers’ Market, and a city press conference following the shooting. The fear is a symptom of our mutual isolation of an anxious, segregated city that wants to be progressive but has a long way to go toward fostering real inclusion. It ought to be possible to accommodate political speech and healthy public dialogue about racism, violence and injustice right in the same common space where local businesses remain open and we hold inclusive community events. The shutdown and the silent standoff with no visible movement by either the city or the protesters is becoming dysfunctional and driving people further apart. 

In a way it’s not surprising that the wheels are coming off the wagon in local communities as we face more rage, despair and bleak news every day. We are living in a click-bait world. We need to get out of fight-or-flight mode and connect with each other, discover our common interests and organize to build the society we want. 

That’s Wikler’s vision. It beats the hell out of being divided and conquered.

Small wonder nearly half of voters haven’t decided who to back in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s next governor. If you sent in your ballot early, you might have voted for the candidate who won the straw poll at the Democratic party convention only to flail her way through a dramatic public scandal, run out of money and quit. The latest Marquette Law School poll, released this week, still had her name as a candidate, but didn’t include the candidate who dropped out two weeks ago before getting back in the race with Gov. Tony Evers’ endorsement. 

Meanwhile, the frontrunner in poll after poll, as Baylor Spears reports, is Francesca Hong. 

Some Democrats are so sure Hong, as a democratic socialist, will lose in a general-election matchup with Republican Tom Tiffany they’re desperately hopping from horse to horse, searching for an alternative. One of those horses, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, stumbled badly and collapsed. Now we’ve got Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, whose late endorsement by Evers generated a backlash against the “Democratic establishment.”

Whoever’s running the “establishment’ might be overbearing, but they sure don’t seem to be adept at picking winners. Days after his reentry, Crowley is struggling with negative stories about crude posts to an old Twitter account.

The problem Democrats in Wisconsin face is less about party bosses behind the scenes calling the shots than it is lack of any organization. A little leadership from Evers earlier in the process might have staved off disaster.

At a minimum, he could have made up his mind to back Crowley before Crowley dropped out. He could have had painful but necessary conversations with Joel Brennan, Sara Rodriguez and Missy Hughes, the other members of his administration who campaigned at least partly on their association with him. “Look, I see a bright future for you in politics, but I’ve decided to go with Crowley in this race,” he might have said. Then Crowley (or whoever Evers decided to support) could have built some strength over the course of the campaign.

Instead, we have the current mess.

Wisconsin’s messy primary is also a symptom of Democrats’ general disarray. Unable to come up with a plan to effectively counter the frightening power of a violent, kleptocratic regime in Washington, they are waffling between trying not to alienate swing voters by sounding too radical versus tapping into the energy and outrage of the anti-Trump electorate.

Looking over their shoulders at the Republicans, several Democratic campaigns point to the millions of dollars in TV ads the Republican Governors Association bought featuring light criticism of Hong. The ads appear to be a transparent effort to boost Hong in the primary, since Republicans think they can beat her in the general election. So what? Hong appears to be winning the primary anyway, with or without the RGA boost, through her straight talk, superb social media strategy, grassroots ground game and the enthusiasm she’s generating, especially from young voters who don’t trust normal politicians and institutional Democratic party politics. 

That doesn’t mean she’s the best candidate to beat Tiffany. But instead of buying into the Republican political analysis, or as one Democrat did, running an ominous attack ad trumpeting that Hong is a “proud socialist!” (the horror!), Democrats should be trying to steal a page from Hong. That ugly ad, featuring photos of the three candidates of color, labeling them all unelectable, and then toggling to Joel Brennan, the only white guy in the race, is a good example of what Democratic primary voters want to reject.

It’s no surprise Hong is catching fire. People like candidates who say what they mean and aren’t afraid to be themselves, as opposed to candidates who seem to be trying to tell them what they want to hear or pretending to be just like them. They want to see courage and conviction in the face of bullying and corruption. They do not particularly like seeing Democrats tearing each other apart — especially not by drawing on the kinds of smug, bigoted attacks made by the other side. 

Imagine a Democratic party that includes democratic socialists and more middle-of-the-road candidates, promoting an uplifting message about protecting a decent society, functional government and human rights. 

That’s the vision people are hungry for. Wisconsin Democrats should not be afraid to serve it up. 

In a strongly worded letter to federal prosecutors, Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke rejected the U.S. Department of Justice demand that he provide assurances by Friday that neither he, the Milwaukee Police Department nor any other city entity would enforce an ordinance prohibiting law enforcement officers from wearing masks and concealing their identities.

“The only assurances I can offer you,” Goyke wrote in his July 17 letter to Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate and First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin Brad Schimel, “are that [the ordinance] is a vital public safety measure, that I will not advise my clients to exempt federal law enforcement officers from enforcement of the Ordinance against them, and that my office will prosecute any validly issued citation for acts in violation of the Ordinance.”

Masked and unidentified law enforcement officers endanger public safety, Goyke wrote, by undermining accountability and police-community relations, stoking confusion, fear and intimidation and heightening the risk that “bad actors will harm others by impersonating officers” and also that “individuals might resist legitimate law enforcement actions where they otherwise would not due to the fear that they are facing an imposter.”

“You express great concern for the safety of federal law enforcement officers throughout your letter,” he added, “but not once do you express any similar concern for the safety of the public.” 

The ordinance, Goyke wrote, does not restrict the federal officers’ ability to perform their lawful duties while protecting the safety and welfare of residents and visitors of Milwaukee.

“the City and the public have a right to know if masked, armed, and unidentified men seizing people on our streets are who they say they are,” he wrote, objecting to the federal government’s insistence that immigration officers be allowed to conceal their identities “at their discretion.”

“Unfortunately, in the case of federal immigration officers, in particular, that unbounded discretion, coupled with guns and a lack of accountability, has had tragic consequences in cities across the country, most recently in Houston, Texas and Biddeford, Maine,” Goyke wrote, referring to recent fatal shootings by immigration officers in those cities. He also described “unnecessarily aggressive tactics” used by ICE officers in Milwaukee, including “boxing in cars, pointing guns and Tasers at people, breaking car windows, and pinning people on the ground.

“Many drove in unmarked vehicles and wore face coverings,” he added.

Goyke disputed the federal government’s claim that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution makes ordinances such as Milwaukee’s illegal, citing a 1988 circuit court ruling that held “the Supremacy Clause was not intended to be a shield for ‘anything goes’ conduct by federal law enforcement officers,” as well as the 1920 federal court ruling that held “An employee of the United States does not secure a general immunity from state law while acting in the course of his employment.”

He acknowledged that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued an injunction pending appeal of California’s law enforcement identification requirement, but said he does not agree with that ruling, adding that no federal court has issued a final ruling on the matter.

The letter closes by stating “this office approved the Ordinance as legal and enforceable. Neither the preliminary court rulings in other jurisdictions nor your letter convince us to change that opinion.”

Last week, for a brief, beautiful span of days, all three of our young-adult daughters were immersed in nature, reveling in the delicious freedom of summertime. One, a camp counselor, was leading a group on a two-week trek through Yellowstone National Park. She sent us photos of the mountains, campfires, sweaty, grinning campers, a herd of bison they encountered by the side of the road. The other two sisters were on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. They paddled from lake to lake, fell asleep to the sound of loons, woke up early to plunge in the crystal clear water.

Just as all three girls were ending their trips, more than a dozen wildfires swept through the Superior National Forest, prompting the Forest Service to close all entry points to the Boundary Waters. Some visitors were stranded. Eight Forest Service rangers paddled in to rescue people throughout the 150-mile stretch of wilderness on the U.S.-Canadian border. Our daughter who led the trip to Yellowstone returned to her base camp in Grand Marais, Minnesota, to learn that further trips have been canceled. A group of campers who were stuck in the Boundary Waters had to be rescued by helicopter. The smoke was chokingly thick. “It feels like the apocalypse,” she texted.

In Madison we woke up Thursday morning to the stinging haze of wildfire smoke blanketing the city, drifting down on us from the same forest fires.

The abrupt end of summer’s idyll is a heartache, not just for the immediate shock, but for what it means — a world on fire, a feeling of dread of the losses to come. There is no escape from the rapidly accelerating disasters caused by climate change. All of us are touched by it in our interconnected world. Yet somehow, we can’t get our act together to respond. As a country, we seem determined to kid ourselves about what we are seeing with our own eyes. Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor, has called warnings about extreme weather triggered by climate change “doomsaying, sky-is-falling rhetoric.”

Last summer, Tiffany and fellow Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, along with three of their Republican colleagues from Minnesota wrote a letter to the Canadian embassy to complain that wildfire smoke was ruining summer across the Midwest.

“In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things,” Tiffany and his colleagues wrote, demanding to know what the Canadians planned to do about it. Tens of thousands of Canadians were being displaced by raging fires at the time. “With all the technology that we have at our disposal, both in preventing and fighting wildfires, this worrisome trend can be reversed if proper action is taken,” Tiffany and his colleagues wrote.

Wildfires are getting worse because of climate change. The problem is particularly acute for Canada, where the Arctic region is rapidly warming and hotter, drier summers are turning forest land into a tinderbox, where a stray lightning strike can start a conflagration. The same thing is happening in the Superior National Forest this summer, where the fires are caused by lightning and the hot, dry conditions that are not letting up.

Instead of working to mitigate the threat, the Trump administration has dismantled the arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that researches wildfires and other climate-related threats, as well as the Forest Service’s firefighting teams. In 2025, the Forest Service lost nearly 6,000 employees. Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget aims to cut the Forest Service budget by 75%. 

Tiffany’s scolding letter to Canada aside, the policies he has supported under Trump have directly increased fire hazards. To the eight rangers now searching the Boundary Waters for people trapped by the fires, the Forest Service office in Minnesota is hoping to add back some of the staff they’ve lost to Trump’s ill-advised reorganization and cuts. 

“We are actively trying through our existing staff to reach out to former staff that have retired or moved to another position off-forest that still have firefighting skills and credentials,” Forest Service spokesperson Christine Kolinski told the Minnesota Star Tribune. 

This summer’s fires are more than just a wake-up call. They are a five-alarm emergency alert. We are losing so much so fast. We all have a stake in facing it and acting now. It does no good to pretend the disaster isn’t happening or to blame our neighbors, as if they could fix things for us by getting out their rakes. The least we can demand of our political leaders is that they stop dismantling the only tools we have to fight the incineration of our world. We owe that much to every kid who looks forward to every future summer.

I’m no political consultant, but I don’t think I would make “fraud” the theme of the Trump administration’s midterm election campaign push. 

At least not while the reflecting pool disaster remains in the news, the White House is doubling down on sticking with its no-bid contract for the company that oversaw the algae-infested, peeling pool mess, and President Donald Trump is making headlines for raking in $2.2 billion since he came back into office, including $1.4 billion from the Trump family’s cryptocurrency scheme.

“We have got to have a governor who takes fraud as seriously as the President of the United States,” Vice President JD Vance declared Wednesday in Milwaukee during a speech apparently intended to boost Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany.

Vance’s remarks, delivered ahead of a $10,000-per-couple fundraiser ($35,000 if you wanted a photo with the VP), could be read in different ways. 

One way is in the context of the poster-sized photo Vance displayed of a Black woman “with the smug look and a Louis Vuitton bag,” as Vance put it —  one of the people who owned prenatal care coordination businesses that a 2022 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found had defrauded Medicaid, costing the state more than $15.5 million among them between 2019 and 2022. 

Vance, although he was elaborately praised by other Republicans at the Wednesday event in Milwaukee for leading the Trump administration’s crackdown on healthcare fraud, had nothing to do with uncovering the prenatal care scandal in Milwaukee. That was the dogged work of the Journal Sentinel reporters whose efforts led the state Department of Justice to investigate, cut off Medicaid to the fraudulent businesses and pursue criminal charges — all of that years before Vance took office. But Vance saw an opportunity in Milwaukee to connect various Trump administration claims about fraud to a picture of someone Ronald Reagan would have called a “welfare queen.” In his speech, Vance moved directly from that photo to the Trump administration’s efforts to “kick illegal aliens out of our country.” 

Black people, immigrants and people who receive food assistance and Medicaid are the “fraudsters,” according to Vance and Republican Reps. Tiffany, Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil, who joined Vance on stage in Milwaukee. They denounced Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for not sharing sensitive personal data on SNAP recipients with the Trump administration. Vance called Evers’ refusal “borderline criminal.” 

“Why won’t Tony Evers turn over the SNAP rolls? ‘Cause he’s cooked the books!” Van Orden hollered.

Steil connected claims about fraud in SNAP and Medicaid to discredited allegations of voter fraud, calling the federal takeover of elections Trump has been trying to force on Congress as “total common sense.” 

When a reporter asked Vance about Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s request to talk to him about the harassment of election workers by FBI agents deployed to Milwaukee to “investigate” nonexistent voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, Vance implied that Johnson is trying to cover up the fraud. 

All of this hype about fraud and repeated assertions by the GOP chorus in Milwaukee that the Trump administration had saved the taxpayers of Wisconsin billions of dollars by rooting it out, is meant to cover up a much, much bigger problem.

Medicaid cuts pushed by the Trump administration and supported by Tiffany, Van Orden and Steil, coupled with the same Republicans’ refusal to renew Affordable Care Act tax credits, have already pushed about 22,000 Wisconsinites off their health insurance. A new KFF report shows that insurers on the ACA marketplace are planning another double-digit increase in rates this year, driven by inflation and the loss of the tax credits, which will cause even more people to lose coverage. Altogether, more than 258,000 Wisconsinites will lose health coverage by 2034  because of Trump administration policy changes, according to an analysis by the Joint Economic Committee Democrats using data from the Congressional Budget Office. 

While Van Orden was yelling from the stage in Milwaukee about people who are ineligible for SNAP allegedly signing up for the program and “literally taking the food out of the mouths of hungry babies,” Wisconsinites know that he voted for SNAP cuts and changes to eligibility rules that led to 15,500 Wisconsinites losing food assistance. 

Instead of adequately funding healthcare, food and a decent society, Republicans pushed through trillions of dollars in tax giveaways to corporations and the very rich, tens of billions of dollars for a domestic paramilitary organization that is conducting violent arrests of people who pose no public safety risk, and hundreds of millions of dollars for an obscene White House ballroom and no-bid contracts for Trump’s vanity projects on the national mall. That is the real fraud.

Republicans are screaming about “waste, fraud and abuse” to try to distract voters from all of this destruction and graft. But their “fraud” talk just reminds people of the stunning theft of public resources they’ve enabled and are now trying to cover up with flimsy, slanderous lies.