U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the northern Wisconsin Republican running for governor in the Nov. 3 election, has rarely diverged from supporting President Donald Trump since Trump began his second term in January 2025.
UCLA/Voteview found Tiffany’s support for Trump at 93% in 2025 House of Representatives votes.
The methodologies varied on the number of votes reviewed.
In 2026, Tiffany’s votes supporting Trump included opposing a measure that would have blocked Trump from ordering more strikes on Iran. Tiffany also backed Trump in voting against a bill to provide aid to Ukraine and sanction Russia.
On statements, Tiffany diverged from Trump in August. Tiffany said he opposed moves to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” and import cheaper ground beef.
In September, he supported Trump’s proposed $5,000 “dividend.”
This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
We’ve partnered with Open Campus, a nationwide nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education, to organize an event on how credentials impact Wisconsin’s workforce.
And we’d love for you to join us on Oct. 6.
I enjoy editing the “pathways to success” beat because it’s where K-12, higher ed and workforce training stories intersect. I spent years covering K-12 and higher ed, and the stories I most loved reporting focused on how students took the skills they learned in the classroom into their careers.
Credentials have expanded in recent years, and it feels like the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been for students, educators and employers.
So we want to know:
What credentials are employers actually hiring against?
Which community colleges are leading the shift — and which are stalling?
Where are students getting left behind by a system still designed around the four-year degree?
The event will feature a panel discussion moderated by Wisconsin Watch and Open Campus reporter Natalie Yahr. The panelists include:
Becky Kikkert, director of development, Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin
Layla Merrifield, president, Wisconsin Technical College System
Nathan Roberts, owner, G.D. Roberts
Then, we’ll hear how Wisconsin fits into the national landscape during a conversation between Wisconsin Watch and Open Campus reporter Miranda Dunlap and Kermit Kaleba, strategy director for credentials of value for the Lumina Foundation.
The event is free to attend. Here are the details:
When is it? 8-10:45 a.m. Oct. 6
Where is it? TruStage, 5910 Mineral Point Road, Madison
Will there be food? Yes, we’ll serve a complimentary continental breakfast.
What else is there to know? Registration is required. Attendees will be required to show a photo ID when they arrive at TruStage.Register here.
We hope to see you there!
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The American Transmission Company (ATC) refiled an application on Monday for a sweeping series of grid upgrades in eastern Wisconsin, restarting the state’s six-month review of a project to plug the new Port Washington data center into the grid.
ATC, the state’s largest transmission utility, initially sought Wisconsin Public Service Commission permission last September, with plans to break ground as early as May 2026. Its initial application outlined a more than $1.3 billion infrastructure package, including a high-voltage transmission line and five new substations across Fond du Lac, Ozaukee, Sheboygan and Washington counties, needed to “reliably serve” the new data center by December 2027.
But the commission sent ATC back to the drawing board last month after the company repeatedly adjusted the project’s design, leaving the public with a hazy picture of the proposal, according to commission staff and ratepayer advocates.
But the utility’s first application underwent multiple redesigns, including the addition of temporary bypass lines to avoid outages during construction. The PSC must review those changes and allow other parties, namely ratepayer advocates and affected landowners, an opportunity to weigh in.
“I don’t recall any other comparable cases in my experience with as many application material document revisions and ongoing design changes throughout the process,” PSC Environmental Affairs Coordinator Adam Ingwell wrote in testimony filed in July. “The sheer volume of documents and revisions, without adequate explanation, likely makes it more challenging than typical for a member of the public to find specific information about the project.”
ATC, by contrast, cast the revisions as “routine.”
“Every application develops during review,” company attorneys wrote last month. “Changes far larger and later than ATC’s have never cast doubt” on whether an application should move forward, they added, citing a Barron County solar farm the PSC approved last March despite an “eleventh-hour” overhaul that included “relocating an entire substation.”
“There is simply no principled basis on which to treat ATC’s lesser and earlier changes more harshly,” the attorneys wrote.
The three-member commission in August unanimously sided with ATC’s critics, directing ATC to submit a new application to give the public a better opportunity to assess the full package.
“This PSC is not opposed or hostile to data centers, construction, generation, (or) transmission,” PSC Chair Summer Strand said, calling the decision “an unfortunate outcome.” Nevertheless, she added, “this application represents a cautionary tale of when unrealistic and unreasonable speed-to-power expectations collide with a deliberative regulatory process.”
How latest application differs
ATC’s new application departs from the previous version in several ways, including removing a segment of transmission line through Trenton in Washington County and Saukville in Ozaukee County.
“The need for this project has not changed, but the application has,” Jared Winters,
ATC executive vice president and chief assets officer, said in a Monday press release.
The PSC will hold a new round of public comment on the project before determining whether it can move forward. That review will begin once the commission determines the new application is “complete.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
In 1998, the Madison School Board adopted an important academic goal: “that all students complete the 3rd grade able to read at or beyond grade level.”
Flash forward 28 years to a July 29 Rotary Club event. Madison Superintendent Joe Gothard highlighted recent improvements in literacy in district schools. But he pointed out that proficiency rates still hovered around just 40% at the elementary, middle and high schools he listed.
“We should not be sitting in a place where we can say 60% of our students are not proficient at their grade level in reading,” Rebecca Kundert, the district’s senior executive director of curriculum and instruction, said in follow-up remarks.
“It’s complicated,” one retired teacher said at the Rotary talk. Many factors add complexity, including readiness to learn, distractions, leadership turnover, attention spans and civic malaise.
Nearly three decades have passed without Madison reaching that goal, even as the district spends substantial money. It has a total budget equivalent to about $26,000 per enrolled student — far above average.
But Wisconsin doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Other states have significantly improved their reading proficiency.
What should Madison and other school districts learn from other states?
1. Stick with it
In 2011, Wisconsin lawmakers approved one of Massachusetts’ teacher-content-knowledge requirements for early literacy. Beginning in 2014, the law required applicants for a broad assortment of teaching licenses to pass the Foundations of Reading test, just like Massachusetts educators, before they could teach early learners.
But the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) allowed many who failed to keep teaching on temporary licenses. First-time pass rates were often in the mid-60% range.
Consider the message this sends to teachers, schools of education, administrators, students and parents.
2. Commit real effort
Former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale and his wife, Sally, donated $100 million in 2000 to improve early literacy in Mississippi, which ranked 49th nationally in fourth grade reading.
Wisconsin ranked above average at that time.
The funds helped retrain teachers, update curriculum and teacher preparation, and provide classroom coaches. Mississippi also passed SB 2347 in 2013, requiring “intensive intervention for any K-3 student with a reading deficiency, notice to parents, and no promotion past third grade for children whose deficiency is not remedied, subject to good-cause exemptions.”
In 2019, Alan Borsuk, writing in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, noted that Mississippi “was the only state where fourth grade reading scores improved.” He cited a “strong requirement that teachers be well-trained in reading instruction,” similar to what Massachusetts previously implemented.
National Assessment of Educational Progress results in 2024 showed Mississippi fourth graders at 219, outscoring the national average for the first time. Wisconsin, at 215, was statistically indistinguishable from the national average of 214.
The New York Times published a district-by-district test-score lookup in May 2026. Columnist Nicholas Kristof reported that “a Black fourth-grader in Mississippi is now two and a half times as likely to test proficient in reading as a Black fourth-grader in California.”
“Mississippi is kicking our ass in education and for way less money.” he said.
3. Use an honest scorecard
Wisconsin has shown weak academic transparency and changed the goalposts when convenient.
In 2003, for instance, 80% of Wisconsin fourth graders scored proficient or advanced on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) in reading, but just 33% scored at the proficient or advanced level on the NAEP.
In 2008, DPI officials went so far as to state: “Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum.”
Wisconsin has a fresh opportunity to get it right
In 2023, the Wisconsin Legislature passed and Gov. Tony Evers signed Act 20, modeled on Mississippi reforms, after he vetoed the two previous attempts to address Wisconsin’s literacy disaster.
Act 20 shifted reading instruction from 4K through third grade toward phonics and the science of reading, bans the “three-cueing” method beginning in the 2024-25 school year and requires universal early-literacy screening, reporting of results to parents and personal reading plans for struggling readers.
Wisconsin Act 20 requires school boards to have adopted a written policy specifying criteria for promotion from third to fourth grade by July 1, 2025. Then, beginning Sept. 1, 2027, a school board may not promote a third grader to fourth grade unless the student satisfies the criteria in that district’s policy.
The law also created an Office of Literacy at DPI, authorized up to 64 literacy coaches and created a Council on Early Literacy Curricula to vet curricula for a program that reimburses schools for part of the cost of approved materials. The $50 million earmark for literacy initiatives in the Joint Finance Committee’s supplemental appropriation became the subject of litigation involving DPI, the Legislature and Evers.
Citizens, parents, teachers, politicians and administrators now have an unprecedented view of 4K-through-third-grade literacy skills through Act 20’s early-literacy screener requirement. The screener is administered three times annually in kindergarten through third grade and twice to students in 4K.
Nearly 97,414 4K-through-third-grade students, or 37%, scored below the 25th percentile in a national comparison group during the 2024-25 school year. Madison lagged the state, with 3,888 students, or 43.7%, scoring below the 25th percentile.
What can you do?
Understand your school district’s total spending, staffing and student enrollment. Review early-literacy screener data and ask elected officials what they are doing about it. Track changes over time.
Packers President Dominic Olejniczak hired Vince Lombardi after the team’s disastrous 1-10-1 season in 1958, its 11th consecutive season without a winning record.
Lombardi won a title in 1961, his third year, and again in 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967.
We can do much better, quickly.
Jim Zellmer is part of the team that created Fast Lane Literacy by SEDSO, a research-based early literacy box designed to accelerate foundational reading skills for nearly anyone attempting to learn to read.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
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James Gray, Estelle Moncada and their three children have been homeless for the past five years.
Federal data shows that 561 Wisconsin families with children were homeless in 2025, but because of the way homelessness is counted, the figure could be much higher.
They sleep in their vehicle at Safe Place Parking hosted by Wise Women Gathering Place in Green Bay.
Annette Rivera also uses Safe Place Parking and told Wisconsin Watch what it was like to park elsewhere when the safe parking lot was closed.
Despite the challenges they’ve faced, Gray, Moncada and Rivera maintain hope that their situations will turn around, and they’ll find stable housing.
Like any other family, James Gray and Estelle Moncada love to play with their kids at the park. Their twin girls, Maewahniw and Mataeqsak, are 5 years old and chase each other around, falling down in the grass laughing with their 3-year-old brother, Mahwaew.
But the park isn’t just a place they visit — it’s also their home.
The family spends most days hopping between parks, sleeping on a mattress in their van at night. Their five years of homelessness have taken them to hotels, shelters and parking lots around rural northeast Wisconsin, northern Michigan and finally Green Bay, where they hope to stay while their kids go to Starr Elementary School.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in 2025 over 5,200 people in Wisconsin experienced homelessness, which has risen 16% over the past five years. Of those, nearly 1,900 were people in families with children – accounting for 561 families.
Because of the way homelessness is counted, that number could actually be much higher. Volunteers have to search for unsheltered people on a single night in January and confirm each person is homeless to add them to the point in time count. The process means it’s often hard to see the “hidden homeless” population living in their vehicles.
The count indirectly ties to the amount of federal funding each region receives for homeless support services — which means there simply aren’t enough resources for homelessness service organizations to provide for the entire homeless population. People like Gray and Moncada have spent years on the waitlist for housing programs meant to help homeless families.
Adding to funding uncertainty, the Trump administration announced major changes to federal homelessness grants and an overhaul of the Head Start early childhood education program for low-income families, where Gray and Moncada sent their twin daughters and enrolled their son this year.
Trying to find housing, work while raising children
The family became homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic, around the time when their twins were born. When the anti-poverty nonprofit Newcap opened a shelter in Shawano, they were one of the first families accepted and stayed there for almost two years. Gray and Moncada said a Newcap employee made false promises about securing them a rental apartment that never came through.
Navigating a system with limited resources while taking care of young children can force families to make hard decisions. They eventually ended up at Abundant Life Mission, a shelter in Menominee, Michigan, near the Wisconsin border, but Gray said he left because he didn’t want the kids to interact with people staying there who struggled with addiction.
That meant going back to living in their car and waiting to be pulled from the waitlist for housing programs. A system called Coordinated Entry prioritizes and matches people with housing resources based on their level of need.
“You feel hopeless, you know what I mean?” Gray said.
Estelle Moncada, left, and James Gray, right, pose for a photo with their children Maewahniw, Mataeqsak and Mahwaew in Green Bay, Wis., on Sept. 6, 2026. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
Newcap called once a month to ask where the family slept the previous night, part of the process of Coordinated Entry, which the organization led for 10 northeast Wisconsin counties before officials filed for bankruptcy this year. Newcap staff did not contact Gray to tell him the nonprofit closed, even though all of his mail had been going to the Newcap office in Green Bay.
Every weekday for a year, Gray and Moncada drove their daughters to and from the Oneida Nation’s Three Sisters location for Head Start, no matter where they had slept the previous night.
“I think it’s hard for people to understand that I’m over here taking care of three kids, you know what I mean?” he said. “If I had known I’d be taking care of three kids at this age, I would have done some things a little different in my past, too.”
Both Moncada and Gray have to balance the struggles of raising three children without stable housing and securing the employment needed to financially support them. Through the Oneida Nation and Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Gray earned a traffic control certificate and began working for ANASA Traffic Control Services. But the job required him to drive long distances without reimbursement, knowing his kids needed the car to sleep at night.
“They would never assign me a job in Green Bay,” Gray said. “It was always Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Milwaukee or in Sturgeon Bay, and I’d say, ‘I can’t go to these places, I don’t have gas.’”
So Gray would get marked down for calling in to work, and the next day, he’d be asked to work again in a different city. He was eventually fired in April.
“It’s like, nothing has changed since yesterday. I still have no gas … But I didn’t tell them my situation, that my family needed my car, because I was embarrassed to tell them,” he said.
James Gray, right, stands alongside his kids while talking to homeless outreach case coordinators for the city of Green Bay. The family spent nearly two years living in Newcap’s Shawano shelter. They say a Newcap employee made false promises about securing them a rental apartment that never came through. Newcap filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Searching for a new job was hard since he couldn’t find people to look after the kids so he could go to a job interview. Moncada was working at Burger King at the time.
“I’m worried about them during the day: where they’re going, if they have gas, if they have food. It’s such a struggle, and it’s a lot of stress on him,” Moncada said.
After a few months of searching, Gray recently got a job as a forklift operator in Appleton. The family is trying to work out how they’ll balance Gray commuting to Appleton for third shift while still sending the kids to Starr Elementary School and Green Bay’s Head Start program.
“It’s so hard to have that stability with employment when you don’t have a stable place to live,” Moncada said. “You don’t have gas to go to work the next day because you’re out riding around because you got nowhere to go.”
Safe Place Parking offers ‘peace of mind’
Programs like Safe Place Parking, hosted by Wise Women Gathering Place, provide a potential solution — a reliable place for people living in their cars to park at night without fear of being woken up and asked to leave. Gray and Moncada park there almost every night.
Beverly Scow is the executive director of Wise Women Gathering Place, a nonprofit that provides Native American culturally specific services related to domestic violence and historical trauma. Even though they only account for 1.1% of the U.S. population, Native Americans make up 3.8% of the unsheltered homeless population.
“Part of our resilience is as Native Americans, there was a lot of harm done to our communities, our people, and we survived,” Scow said. “And some of the survival patterns were unhealthy, and some of them were beautiful, right? The culture helped us keep strong and healthy, and so we’ve got a mix of those that have echoed forward.”
Annette Rivera poses for a portrait next to her car. Rivera parked at the YMCA at night before she found Safe Place Parking. Police came to her car twice in the middle of the night at the YMCA. “Once you’re in that situation, you don’t sleep 100%,” she said. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
The organization originally created Safe Place Parking in response to unhoused people not being able to stay with friends or family during COVID-era social distancing.
“We knew about the hidden homeless who were couch surfing, and most landlord guest policies are up to two weeks,” Scow said. “People would stay under the radar and couch surf between friends and family (for) about two weeks, which totally collided with our understanding of COVID transmission at the time.”
Scow soon realized there was a legitimate need for Safe Place Parking to continue for the many people who live out of their cars. The organization now provides portable toilets, electrical outlets, Wi-Fi, heated blankets in the winter and fans in the summer for up to 46 cars each night.
“There’s a lot of people who are living in their cars and deal with the anxiety of being shooed off a residential street or shooed off a business parking lot, and at Safe Parking, they could have peace of mind to know I belong here, this is my place where I can get a restful night’s sleep,” Scow said.
Last year, Scow said she found out Wise Women’s insurance wouldn’t cover the Safe Place Parking program. The organization had to close the parking lot for four months while searching for an insurance company that would cover the scope of the parking lot for the homeless.
Eventually, Scow found one, but it was five times the price of what Wise Women had been paying. To make things worse, the organization lost two major grants while the parking lot was closed. So the community raised $60,000 in individual donations so the parking lot could reopen in December 2025.
“We saw how important it was to the parkers,” Scow said. “They were so appreciative … and it was such a gap. There’s no one else doing it, so it was important to us to keep it going.”
Glow in the dark stars and moons adorn the roof of Annette Rivera’s car. Rivera sleeps in her car and parks at Wise Women Gathering Place’s Safe Place Parking. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
Annette Rivera can attest to that. She lost her housing in 2024 while Safe Place Parking was temporarily closed. She worked out an arrangement to park at the YMCA at night, but said police came to her car twice in the middle of the night.
“Once you’re in that situation, you don’t sleep 100%,” she said. “You’ve got to sleep with one eye open and one closed, if anything.”
She stopped taking her nighttime medicine so she would be alert. Rivera still wakes up every hour or two at night to adjust her sleeping position in the cramped car.
“It’s uncomfortable,” she said. “You’re not sleeping stretched out. I sleep (in) like a fetus position or an L. Especially at a certain age, it hurts.”
She’s been using Safe Parking for two years now. At 57 years old, she doesn’t meet the age requirement for most subsidized housing for older adults.
Holding out hope
Still, Rivera is grateful for Safe Place Parking and sees her situation as temporary.
“God is good,” she said. “It could be worse.”
Rivera can also relate to Moncada and Gray’s challenges in raising young children while grappling with the daily realities of sleeping in a car. She spends her days watching her three grandchildren while her daughter works as a dental assistant. At Safe Place Parking, Rivera feels for the parents she sees and once spoke to Moncada.
Annette Rivera sits on the couch at her daughter’s apartment in Green Bay, Wis., on Sept. 3, 2026. Rivera watches her grandchildren while her daughter is at work. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
“I was wondering, hoping, praying,” Rivera said. “I told her, I said, ‘I really hope you find a place for the kids.’”
Moncada said she tries to give the kids the best life she can. They play with kites, go swimming, play baseball and forage for mushrooms. Along the way, she tries to teach them about the natural world.
“They’re really, really into bugs,” she said. “So, if we go somewhere, they’re over there lifting up rocks and stuff, trying to find whatever millipedes, centipedes, everything … they’re so fascinated by everything, and curious to learn about so many things.”
Moncada, a member of the Oneida Nation, dreams of one day owning land on the reservation and building a house. She thought about advocating for herself through the General Tribal Council, but she worries about speaking in front of thousands of others who might need help more than her.
Estelle Moncada said she dreams about the day when the family will have a house of their own. “I can almost feel the happiness in me when I think about it. That’s a good thing, and I don’t want anything to ever take that away,” she said. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
“That’s all I want, it’s all I dream about,” Moncada said. “I imagine what it would be like if we did have our house finally, and how that life would be, if our relationship would be better, or how happy our kids would be, what they would be doing, where they would put things, you know?”
She feels hopeful that one day, it’ll happen. In the meantime, she wants to be there for her kids while she and Gray work toward getting their own place and not having to rely on anyone.
“I can imagine us getting there. I have a whole vision of it, and I can almost feel the happiness in me when I think about it,” she said. “That’s a good thing, and I don’t want anything to ever take that away.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A plane carrying Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany was forced to make an emergency water landing in Wausau Saturday night.
Tiffany, who represents Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, said the small aircraft lost power during its final approach for landing at the Wausau Downtown Airport.
During a press conference at the Wausau Fire Department Sunday, Tiffany said he believes the pilot, Leonard Boltz, attempted to restart the plane, but was unsuccessful.
“At that point, he just said, ‘Hang on, Tom, and buckle up because we’re going to go down,’” Tiffany told reporters. “It was just real shortly after that, I would guess 10 seconds, we hit the water.”
Boltz landed the plane in the middle of Lake Wausau on the Wisconsin River, according to information shared by the Marathon County Sheriff’s Office.
Tiffany said he lost his phone in the crash, but Boltz was able to call 911. He estimates they stood on top of the sinking plane for roughly 10 minutes, before beginning to swim toward shore. He said they discovered a sandbar after 150 feet and were able to wait there for emergency responders.
The sheriff’s office reported dispatchers received the call at 8:49 p.m. Saturday. Firefighters from the Wausau Fire Department rescued the two men using an airboat around 9:05 p.m.
Tiffany credited Boltz for pulling up the landing gear before hitting the water, which he said likely kept the plane from cartwheeling and may have saved their lives. He estimates the plane was going around 70 miles per hour at the time of the crash.
“It was quite a night, quite a day, and (I’m) just grateful for the Lord for sparing us to see another day,” said Tiffany, who became emotional when speaking to reporters Sunday.
Tiffany and the pilot were the only people aboard the aircraft. Both were transported to Aspirus Wausau Hospital with minor injuries.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany became emotional while reflecting on the emergency water landing and rescue from Lake Wausau. (Avery Martinez / WPR)
Tiffany said he received 12 stitches to close a laceration in his eyebrow after his head hit the dashboard. The pilot also sustained minor injuries. Both men were released from the hospital Saturday night.
The congressman repeatedly thanked the Wausau Fire Department and other first responders for their quick rescue.
He said the incident would not keep him from continuing his campaign for governor, adding that he planned to be back on the campaign trail Monday.
“I signed up for this job. We’re going to finish the job,” Tiffany told reporters.
An investigation into the loss of power on the Beechcraft K35 airplane will be handled by the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.
The aircraft remained in Lake Wausau, according to a statement from the Marathon County Sheriff’s Office. Officials asked boaters to avoid the area and use caution until crews can remove the plane.
David Crowley, the Democratic candidate for governor, wrote on X that he is grateful that no one was hurt in what he called a “horrifying incident.”
Airport manager praises pilot for ‘awesome flying’
John Chmiel, Wausau Downtown Airport manager, was among those to survey the waterlogged plane on Sunday morning.
Chmiel noted aircraft incidents like this are incredibly uncommon.
“You think about it, in your community there’s probably multiple car accidents a day,” he said. “In the United States of America, there are less than a half dozen (aircraft incidents) a day in the entire USA, so that kind of puts things in perspective.”
Chmiel said the pilot – in his opinion – had done everything right in identifying the area for the plane to land and guiding it into the water, especially after the sun had gone down.
“Which was a very difficult maneuver to execute safely,” Chmiel said. “And he was able to actually retract the landing gear, so he would have a better result of landing on the water.”
He’s also a pilot and owns Wausau Flying Service.
“Regardless of what happened leading up to the accident, once he knew he was committed to a water landing, he did every single thing right. It was awesome flying,” Chmiel said.
When asked by WPR if this is a normal procedure for an emergency, to look for a water landing, Chmiel said he’s always taught pilots to look for alternative landing areas.
“The beautiful thing about water is there typically isn’t obstructions or people or vessels in there that you have to worry about hitting,” he said.
That said, actually pulling it off safely is its own art, he added.
“We spend our whole careers trying to prevent that from happening, and sometimes things slip through the Swiss cheese, as we call it,” he said.
When an aircraft accident happens at an airport, the process is different, Chmiel said. In this case, where the plane hit water off airport property – it wasn’t necessary for him to be involved, but he said he was Saturday night.
“It’s not a common occurrence, but we’re always prepared for it, if it does,” he said.
Wisconsin voters on Nov. 3 will decide whether to approve three Republican-led state constitutional amendments that GOP lawmakers say would limit government overreach and Democrats describe as unnecessary.
The general election referendums would limit the governor’s use of the partial veto to raise taxes and fees, prevent the government from stopping religious gatherings during future emergencies and ban discrimination by state and local governments and public education institutions.
To amend the state constitution, lawmakers must sign off on identical language during two consecutive two-year legislative sessions before putting the question to voters. Under Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, Republicans have often turned to constitutional amendments as a way to advance their priorities without confronting the governor’s veto pen.
State Rep. Dave Murphy, R-Hortonville, who led the ballot question on prohibiting government discrimination, said he sees a distinction between the types of issues addressed through legislation, which could reach the governor’s desk, and “fundamental” questions brought in a constitutional amendment. Murphy, who was first elected to the Assembly in 2012, is not running for reelection this year.
“There are lots of things that I would do that Tony Evers would have vetoed. There are very few things that I would bring as a constitutional amendment to try to get around that,” Murphy said. “I’m glad that I can take this to the people for a signing rather than to Gov. Evers because I think the people will support this, but I think he maybe would have vetoed it.”
Including the three this year, GOP lawmakers have put 12 constitutional amendments to voters during Evers’ nearly eight years as governor. Voters have approved seven of them. Nearly 63% of voters approved the most recent referendum in April 2025 on requiring photo identification to vote.
Evers is encouraging voters to reject the Republican-led referendums.
“I think they’re all frankly off base, and I’m encouraging people to say no,” Evers told Wisconsin Watch. “I mean, if we want our legislators to look like that and do stupid things like that, then vote yes. But I think most people are fine with what it is.”
Milwaukee County executive and Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Crowley is also splashing cold water on the amendments. He said he would “absolutely not” vote for the governor’s veto amendment. He said the DEI amendment threatens government efforts to help older adults, veterans, people with disabilities and “individuals of all races, genders and religions.” On the amendment to allow religious gatherings during emergencies, he said “under extreme circumstances, leaders must make difficult decisions for the greater good of our state.”
“But let’s be clear: This is a bad faith argument from far-right extremists to distract from the fact they caused an affordability crisis for Wisconsin families,” Crowley said.
Republican nominee and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said he plans to support all three questions.
“No governor, Republican or Democrat, should have unchecked power to raise taxes or fees with the stroke of a pen, especially for the next 400 years. While David Crowley wants to preserve that power, I support ending it regardless of who holds the governor’s office,” Tiffany said. “I also support constitutional protections for places of worship. Our constitutional rights should never be conditional, and our government should never be allowed to discriminate.”
Here is what you need to know about the three constitutional amendments.
The governor’s partial veto
Text on the ballot: “Shall section 10 (1) (c) of article V of the constitution be amended to prohibit the governor, in exercising his or her partial veto authority, from creating or increasing or authorizing the creation or increase of any tax or fee?”
The background: Republicans advanced this question as a constitutional amendment after Evers used his veto pen during the 2023-25 budget to raise school revenue limits by $325 a year for the next 400 years. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority in 2025 sided with Evers in a lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of the 400-year veto.
Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, who led the ballot question through the legislative process, said voter approval will reset the separation of powers between the Legislature, the executive branch and the courts.
“It’s always about separation of powers,” Kapenga said in an interview. “This is a mechanism put in place specifically for this reason, so that if we feel that those other two branches breached their authority in that separation, we say we’re going to go directly to the people and let them make that decision.”
Republicans running for office this year have claimed incorrectly that the veto raises property taxes for the next 400 years. The veto actually raises annual revenue limits, not a specific tax or fee.
The revenue limit caps how much school districts can receive in revenue from a combination of general state aid and property taxes. Local school boards decide how much property taxes to raise and are not required to levy the maximum allowed amount, though historically most have. Under the revenue limit, the Legislature and governor can reduce local property taxes by significantly increasing general state aid to schools, but that rarely happens.
What groups support it?: Groups including the Wisconsin Property Taxpayers, Americans for Prosperity, the Wisconsin Realtors Association and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce all registered in support of the resolution during the 2023 and 2025 legislative sessions.
Who is opposed?: State lobbying records show the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union, and the League of Women Voters registered in opposition to the question.
Crowley told reporters in August he would be willing to use the partial veto if elected.
“They want to eliminate the power of the governor, and so what they’re trying to do is just rig the system,” Crowley said. “This is not about rigging the system. This is about listening directly to constituents and figuring out how we can deliver on their behalf.”
Gathering in places of worship during emergencies
Text on the ballot: “Shall section 18 of article I of the constitution, which deals with religious liberty, be amended to prohibit the state or a political subdivision of the state from ordering the closure of, or forbidding gatherings in, places of worship in response to a state of emergency, including a public health emergency?”
The background: When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Wisconsin, the Evers administration’s “Safer at Home” order limited what businesses and activities could remain open in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.
The order limited religious gatherings to fewer than 10 people. It categorized liquor stores as essential businesses allowed to remain open, which state Rep. Ron Tusler, R-Harrison, said sent a bad message to Wisconsinites.
A constitutional amendment on the November ballot would prohibit the government from closing churches during health emergencies. Yante Turner of Sun-Seeker MKE is shown speaking to the crowd as dozens of community members attended the 24th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Justice Program on Jan. 20, 2025, at the St. Francis of Assisi Church in Milwaukee. (Julius Shieh / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2020, under a conservative majority at the time, struck down Evers’ “Safer at Home” order. But Tusler, who led the question during the 2025 session, said a constitutional amendment would prevent the government from controlling people’s access to places of faith in the future.
“Many of us, you know, dedicate our entire lives toward our faith, and in a situation like COVID, there’s a lot of fear, and there’s a lot of uncomfort, and there’s a lot of strangeness, things we’re not used to,” Tusler told Wisconsin Watch. “When we’re in a situation like that, people of faith need their faith at that moment more than ever, and to deprive people of it is a particularly heinous sin that our government shouldn’t commit.”
What groups support it? Pro-Life Wisconsin and Wisconsin Family Action, Inc. registered in support of the ballot language during the 2023 and 2025 legislative sessions.
Who is opposed?: The League of Women Voters opposed the constitutional amendment, according to state lobbying records.
“Closing places of worship does not prevent any person from worshipping God, as such worship can and is practiced on an individual basis in one’s own home during an emergency,” the organization wrote.
Prohibiting DEI in government
Text on the ballot: “Shall section 27 of article I of the constitution be created to prohibit governmental entities in the state from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, public contracting, or public administration?”
The background: Murphy, the Republican state representative from Hortonville, said the idea for the ballot question stemmed from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, which found considering race in admissions to higher education institutions is unconstitutional. Murphy said he saw an opportunity for a broader question that covered discrimination and giving preferential treatment to certain populations across all levels of government and education.
“I’m just very much of a supporter of the idea that when people put government in charge of something, they want it to be the best it can be,” Murphy said. “One of the ways to do that is not to put a bunch of things that get in the way of picking based on merit.”
Republicans are supporting a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would end government programs with preferential treatment by race. In this photo, Tia Richardson speaks in front of the mural she painted during a mural unveiling at the Community Development Alliance on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Responding to criticism that the referendum could end programs that help disadvantaged groups in Wisconsin, Murphy said governments and schools can continue those efforts as long as everyone is able to participate.
“People that are disadvantaged are disadvantaged,” Murphy said. “If programs help disadvantaged people, then they will still be helped. It can’t exclude anybody.”
What groups support it? The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty won a case before the state Supreme Court, which found an undergraduate financial aid program for minority students was unconstitutional.
The case was decided unanimously by the liberal-controlled court, though liberal justices broke from conservatives to point out that the country’s history of racial discrimination continues to be entrenched in societal outcomes. The case advanced to the court as lawmakers were considering putting the constitutional amendment before voters.
The conservative law firm registered in support for the constitutional amendment during the legislative process. WILL Managing Vice President and Deputy Counsel Dan Lennington said the referendum will “end discriminatory DEI programs throughout Wisconsin and ensure our government serves all citizens equally.”
Who is opposed?: Opponents have claimed the amendment would limit opportunities for disadvantaged groups. The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters opposed the constitutional amendment during the legislative process, according to lobbying records.
The League said the amendment intends “to weaken the individual rights and liberties of Americans who have been guaranteed protection by the Civil Rights laws of our country.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Although the Milwaukee Police Department halted its use of facial recognition technology in February, there are still cases being prosecuted in Milwaukee County in which the technology was used at some point in the investigation.
This means concerns about the technology – and the potential errors it can introduce – still remain, community members told NNS.
Facial recognition technology uses artificial intelligence to identify someone by comparing a photo of an unknown face to a database of images of known faces.
“The reliability of these systems is certainly in question, and particularly the disproportionate risk of inaccuracy when identifying non-white faces,” said Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.
Questions also remain about whether defendants and their lawyers have always been told when facial recognition technology played a role in an investigation.
MPD and facial recognition
In April 2025, the Milwaukee Police Department acknowledged it had, for two to three years, used other agencies’ licenses to obtain facial recognition search results without having a written department policy governing the practice.
At the same time, MPD was considering expanding its access to facial recognition technology through an agreement with the company Biometrica.
Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman announced in February that MPD would prohibit its members from using facial recognition technology and would not consider acquiring the technology until after the department develops a policy with the Fire and Police Commission.
However, the moratorium did not eliminate the technology from criminal cases in which it had already been used.
MPD did not respond to questions about its policies and practices relating to disclosing the use of facial recognition to the DA’s office.
What happens at the DA’s office?
Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern said his office treats facial recognition technology as an investigative lead.
“It is not, in and of itself, probable cause,” Lovern said. “It’s not, in and of itself, the sole basis for gaining a search warrant.”
Lovern said information his office receives about the use of facial recognition in an investigation gets turned over to the defense as part of the case file.
Deputy District Attorney Matthew Torbenson described a 2021 home invasion and sexual assault case prosecuted by the DA’s office in which another law enforcement agency used facial recognition technology to develop about five potential suspects from surveillance footage.
Investigators pursued these leads and focused on one person based on additional evidence, including an identification by his former spouse.
The five individuals who it came back with as a potential match were all turned over to the defense, Torbenson said.
Torbenson said the potential errors would be more concerning if just facial recognition were being used to directly identify a suspect.
“That is not at all how we’re using it,” he said.
Technology creates challenges
Connor Romenesko, a forensic science practice coordinator with the Wisconsin State Public Defenders Office, said defense attorneys can obtain the image submitted for a facial recognition search and some information about the software used but may not have the information needed to evaluate the system as a whole.
“The biggest concern I have with these services is that they’re provided by private companies who don’t necessarily provide information about how these systems are trained,” Romenesko said.
This can make challenging a facial recognition result “extremely difficult,” he said.
Federal research has found that facial recognition systems can have higher false-positive rates for some racial and ethnic groups, including Black, Asian and American Indian people.
‘Still a big unknown’
Another question is whether prosecutors and defendants have always been told when MPD used facial recognition technology.
The ACLU of Wisconsin reviewed police reports from more than a dozen cases MPD had identified as examples of facial recognition use.
“In many of those cases, there was just no mention of (facial recognition technology) use at all,” Merkwae said.
She said it still isn’t known how many total cases in recent years – or ever – MPD used facial recognition technology in any step of an investigation.
“And of that total – was that information turned over to the defendant in discovery if that person was charged?” Merkwae asked. “I think that’s still a big unknown.”
Romenesko said facial recognition information is sometimes included in initial discovery but sometimes must be requested from law enforcement or prosecutors.
Public defenders are trained to spot vague language such as “investigative lead” that can indicate facial recognition technology was used, Romenesko said.
“Our lawyers are all trained, so that if they see that language, they’re going to go up to kind of alert to the fact that maybe this hasn’t been disclosed up front, which we also see in some cases,” he said.
Jeffrey Altenburg, Milwaukee County’s chief deputy district attorney, said there are instances in which leads or suspects developed early in an investigation are not initially shared with prosecutors.
“However, once those leads are corroborated using standard investigative techniques, those details are included in the reports that are provided to our office and turned over to the defendant if they are criminally charged,” Altenburg said.
This story is part of the Cap Times seriesDeadly Divide, investigating Wisconsin’s ongoing Black infant mortality crisis. The reporting is supported through a National Fellowship from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.
Click here to read highlights from the story
Wisconsin’s Black infant mortality rate remains more than twice the rate for white infants. Nearly 850 Black babies died before their first birthdays from 2015 through 2024.
Five women in the Wisconsin Legislative Black Caucus call the crisis deeply personal, citing their own experiences with premature births, frightening pregnancies and unequal treatment in health care.
Black Caucus lawmakers last session introduced a seven-bill Birth Equity Act addressing doula care, maternal mental health, dental care, postpartum support and other needs — but none of the bills received a committee hearing before the Republican-controlled Legislature adjourned.
Republicans who control the Legislature have declined to advance similar legislation for years.
Black Caucus lawmakers say reducing Black infant deaths requires policy changes and greater trust in the medical system, including culturally competent care.
For decades, Wisconsin’s Black infant mortality crisis has been measured in painful numbers: babies who die before their first birthdays, families left grieving and an enormous racial disparity that never relents.
Wisconsin regularly ranks among the worst in the nation when it comes to the rate at which Black babies die before reaching age 1. In 2024, the most recent year for which the Wisconsin Department of Health Services has publicized data, the state had an infant mortality rate of 12.5 deaths for every 1,000 live births among Black babies. For white babies, that rate was 4.8.
Between 2015 and 2024, nearly 850 Black babies died in Wisconsin before turning 1, according to state data. Over the first half of that decade, nearly 25% of the deaths of Black infants were caused by being born into this world too early and too small to survive.
But for the five women in the Wisconsin Legislative Black Caucus who have pushed awareness of the issue year after year, the crisis is not abstract or statistical. It is personal.
Rep. Margaret Arney, from left, Rep. Sequanna Taylor, Sen. Dora Drake and Rep. Shelia Stubbs are among members of the Wisconsin Legislature’s Black Caucus. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Wisconsin’s notorious peril for Black pregnancies is a fear and a pain they have known in their own bodies, and one they have returned to the Capitol session after session determined to change.
One legislator delivered her daughter nearly eight weeks early. Another, state Rep. Margaret Arney of Wauwatosa, was born prematurely alongside her twin. State Rep. Sequanna Taylor of Milwaukee was told she was unlikely to carry her pregnancy to term, but not why. And this year, one of the lawmakers carried that same fear throughout her first pregnancy.
“Being a senator that knows all the data I think has made it more nerve-wracking,” said Sen. Dora Drake, D-Milwaukee, while holding her pregnant belly during a listening session with the Cap Times in July. Drake delivered her baby without complications in early September.
Wisconsin continues to face one of the nation’s highest rates of Black infant mortality in the nation, a crisis these five women say cannot be separated from the lived experiences of the families and babies behind the numbers.
But session after session, they say they have run into resistance from Republican leaders who have declined to give any one of their proposals even a committee hearing.
“We encountered nothing but struggles in this building,” said Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee.
Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, said she made the decision to have only one child because her first pregnancy was so traumatizing. Johnson delivered her daughter about 8 weeks early. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Last spring, Rep. Shelia Stubbs, D-Madison, worked with members of the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness in Madison to develop the latest version of the Birth Equity Act — a package of seven bills aimed at improving birth outcomes and connecting expecting and new mothers with resources that increase their chances of carrying healthy pregnancies to term and managing the postpartum period with greater support.
The proposals were based on what the foundation has heard from community members about what would help Black mothers, babies and families the most.
“These bills came directly from Black women,” Stubbs said.
Assembly Bill 1082 would have created a sales tax exemption for breastfeeding equipment.
Assembly Bill 1083 would have barred the state from seeking recovery or reimbursement of birth expenses from a new mom covered by the state’s Medicaid program.
Assembly Bill 1084 would have ensured the Medicaid program covers services by a dentist or dental therapist and stipulated that pregnant patients should be able to receive timely dental care during pregnancy.
Assembly Bill 1085 would have required Medicaid plans to cover care provided by a doula before, during and after delivery.
Assembly Bill 1086 would have required Medicaid to cover maternal mental health screenings and required the state’s health department to develop — in consultation with advocates and providers within the Black community — a set of standards to ensure cultural competency in maternal mental health screening practices.
Assembly Bill 1087 would have allowed for a pregnant person to enroll in a health insurance plan outside of a standard enrollment period after becoming pregnant to ensure prenatal care is covered by a health plan.
Assembly Bill 1088 would have required hospitals to provide a postpartum home visit to a new mom and baby, if requested, within the first few weeks after giving birth. The bill also would have required health insurance plans to cover these visits. The visits could be conducted by a doula, midwife, nurse-midwife or other licensed health care provider who is certified to provide postpartum care.
But none of the bills introduced last February received a public hearing before the Republican-controlled Legislature adjourned its session early, Stubbs said.
That included bills assigned to the committees she said were best suited to consider them, like the Assembly Committee of Health, Aging and Long-Term Care where she holds a seat.
The proposals were aimed at shrinking disparities and improving maternal and infant health in Wisconsin through a variety of approaches ranging from insurance-covered doula care to ensuring pregnant women get adequate dental care.
“Of all of the bills we introduced, absolutely none of them received a hearing, which is very shameful (and) unacceptable in the state of Wisconsin,” Stubbs said. “So even serving on a committee that’s most appropriate to have these bills, we still couldn’t get these bill hearings.”
Republican Rep. Clint Moses, who chairs the Assembly health committee and holds gatekeeping power over which bills receive hearings, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Committee chairs often decide which bills receive hearings in line with party leadership priorities.
For Drake, the lack of movement comes down to a simple conclusion.
“It’s not a priority for them, honestly, and that’s really the bottom line,” she said.
A crisis measured in lives
Wisconsin’s Black infant mortality crisis has persisted for generations. And the women pushing for change say the disparities cannot be explained by income or individual behavior.
Rep. Margaret Arney, D-Wauwatosa, said this fight against the state’s high rate of Black infant mortality is personal because she and her twin sister were both delivered prematurely. Premature birth and low birth weight are the leading cause of death for Black infants in Wisconsin. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Arney, a Democrat from Wauwatosa, knows that personally.
“This is a generational issue,” Arney said. “I am a twin. My twin sister and I were born prematurely. Our lives were at risk.”
Her mother was college-educated, she said, but that did not erase the risks associated with being a Black mother in America.
“It’s more than just social class,” Arney said.
Johnson, the senator from Milwaukee, said she has encountered resistance to policies specifically designed to address racial disparities based on an argument that helping Black families reduce disproportionate harm is discrimination itself.
“A lot of the feeling in this building is that if something is targeted specifically, then it’s somehow discriminatory,” said Johnson, the lawmaker who delivered her daughter two months early.
But, she said, the nature of the crisis demands a targeted response.
“It’s not discriminatory that it’s kids who look like us that are dying, but it’s discriminatory because we want to fix it?” Johnson said.
The lawmakers pointed to policies that have passed as examples of what can happen when the Legislature works together.
Johnson cited Act 102, signed by Gov. Tony Evers earlier this year, which extended the period of time Medicaid covers postpartum services. About 76% of Black women who give birth in Wisconsin are on Medicaid, making this law particularly important to fight to save Black babies, she said.
“That bill will disproportionately impact Black women, which in this case is a good thing,” Johnson said. “That will be one piece of legislation that will start to uncover the core of what’s really taking place.”
But the lawmakers say broader changes — including greater access to doulas and culturally competent care — are still needed.
“Several of us were working on trying to have that coverage provided, because the research shows that having doulas and midwives helps mitigate some of those harmful factors,” Drake said.
Having that kind of support was important to her personally, she said, because “that was something that I really wanted to ensure I had someone I could trust.”
Sen. Dora Drake, D-Milwaukee, delivered a healthy baby in early September. Drake, pictured here in August in Madison, said the dismal data surrounding Black infant mortality haunted her mind throughout her pregnancy. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
When the statistics become your own
Before Johnson’s daughter was born — a few days shy of 32 weeks — a midwife recognized that Johnson and her pregnancy could be in danger.
“My midwife went to the doctor and said ‘Look, she’s high risk. She needs another level of care other than what I can provide,’ and I didn’t get it,” Johnson said.
Johnson spent two weeks in the hospital before her daughter was born, receiving steroid shots to help develop her baby’s lungs, she said.
Her daughter was born on June 3 and went home on June 22, Johnson’s birthday.
Johnson quickly returned to work, without giving herself time to recover from giving birth because she felt driven to make sure she could pay the bills as a single mother.
“So when (my daughter) got home, she had a place to come home to,” Johnson said.
But she later learned something about her pregnancy that she said doctors had not told her at the time: She had contracted an infection that caused premature delivery.
“There was things I didn’t realize about my own pregnancy until I got a copy of the medical records,” Johnson said. “My experience was so horrible. I remember saying I would never have another baby.”
Rep. Sequanna Taylor, a member of the Wisconsin Legislative Black Caucus, is pictured at The Center for Black Excellence and Culture in Madison. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Her daughter survived and is now in her 20s.
“The fact that my daughter made it to her first birthday was a luxury that a lot of these Black babies are not afforded,” Johnson said.
Rep. Taylor’s experience was different, but it left her with many of the same questions and a similar, lingering pain.
During her pregnancy with her youngest daughter, Taylor said, her doctor told her she was unlikely to carry her baby to term. He never explained why.
“They were so cold,” she said. “I know as doctors they can’t be emotional because they deal with so many people. But to tell me ‘There’s nothing you can do to help. This baby won’t go to term. Go home. If you start bleeding or something, come back…’’’
The interaction left Taylor feeling unable to connect to her pregnancy because she was so convinced she would lose it.
Taylor, who is from Milwaukee, did carry her daughter to term. But after delivery she was rushed to emergency surgery because she couldn’t successfully deliver her placenta, a complication that can lead to serious infection.
Taylor now wonders whether her medical team failed to adequately screen her for complications because they already assumed her pregnancy would fail.
The fear of not being heard
For the lawmakers, the problem is not only access to care. It is whether Black women are believed, listened to and treated with dignity when they seek it.
“There’s this notion of who gets to have access to health care,” Drake said, adding that she has experienced that dynamic herself.
Two years ago, she went to a hospital in Milwaukee with a broken arm. When she told the staff she had state insurance — the coverage provided to her as a Wisconsin legislator — the hospital assumed she meant Medicaid.
During Stubbs’ pregnancy, a nurse mistakenly gave her the test results of another Black patient.
“It wasn’t stressful carrying my child,” Stubbs said. “It was stressful going to the doctor.”
Arney said she has seen the same pattern play out over generations.
Years ago, she participated in a focus group of Black women discussing their experiences giving birth. Arney said she was fortunate. Her sister, who is a doctor, was there. She had a doula, a midwife, an obstetrician and her husband supporting her.
Nearly every other woman in the group, Arney said, described a traumatic birth experience.
“Different years. Different times. This is what I’m talking about with the generational thing,” Arney said. “It’s like these kinds of things are not moving. This is not budging. This needs attention. It needs focus and it needs urgency.”
A crisis of trust
The lawmakers say those experiences have contributed to a broader lack of trust between Black women and the medical system.
“People can go through history on how hospitals and medical professions have used Black women’s bodies for experimentation,” Drake said. “This is not hidden. This is known. This is documented.”
One of the more egregious examples of this is by 19th-century physician James Marion Sims, the so-called “father of gynecology” who developed techniques in the field by performing dozens of experimental surgeries without anesthesia on three enslaved women without their consent. The women — Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey — have been memorialized in the Mothers of Gynecology sculpture in Montgomery, Alabama.
That pain haunts the medical profession and is a traumatic history providers must intentionally work to move beyond, reestablishing trust among Black women, the lawmakers said.
This work, Arney said, must go beyond individual providers.
“I know there’s some health systems that are trying to take this on, but I hate to say it’s baked into our culture that there’s this callousness towards Black women,” Arney said.
That distrust can make pregnancy itself more frightening, regardless of the resources you have sought for yourself. The data and statistics surrounding Black birth outcomes in Wisconsin have remained in the back of Drake’s mind throughout her pregnancy. Despite the fact that she is a college-educated professional social worker and a member of the Wisconsin Senate. “Those are still the realities we have in our state,” she said.
Rep. Shelia Stubbs, D-Madison, has proposed legislation every session for the past seven years to address Wisconsin’s Black infant and maternal health crisis. None of her bills has received a committee hearing. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Inside the Capitol
The women of Wisconsin’s Legislative Black Caucus say the political resistance to their proposals is part of the same struggle.
Stubbs said her white Democratic colleagues have been supportive, often signing on as co-sponsors to her legislative proposals and allowing the Black Caucus to lead on issues they view as particularly tied to the Black community.
That support matters, she said, because the Black lawmakers bring lived experience that their white colleagues don’t have in the same way.
“It’s helpful, because nobody knows our struggle the way that we do, and they’re not going to understand,” Stubbs said.
But there is a limit to simply standing behind the Black Caucus, she said. It’s not enough to simply sign onto legislative proposals or attend press conferences during Black History Month or in June, when Juneteenth falls.
“Sometimes it’s harmful to just be like ‘You got it,’ you know?,” Stubbs said of the type of support she gets from other Democrats.
Stubbs said she has also had conversations with white lawmakers who choose not to believe the evidence showing racial disparities in health outcomes.
“In that building, we have many of our colleagues that don’t believe in diversity, equity or inclusion,” Stubbs said. “We have a federal government that doesn’t believe in that. So we’re fighting already systems that don’t believe in us.”
Some lawmakers, she said, see the Black Caucus’ efforts as blowing an issue out of proportion.
“They don’t want to believe the data,” Stubbs said. “They think it’s us coming one more time with another inequity, but it’s a fact, and so it is our responsibility as a state to address this.”
The five legislators say they have heard about the pain and trauma of this crisis from constituents. They have lived it themselves; in premature births, frightening pregnancies, traumatic deliveries and the persistent pain of being made to feel less than.
That’s why the fight is much more than a political one, they said.
The stakes are measured in whether a baby gets to come home.
“We have these stories,” Stubbs said, “and we are telling them because we want to save the next life.”
Erin McGroarty is a health and policy reporter for the Cap Times in Madison. She can be reached atemcgroarty@captimes.com.
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to reflect uncertainty about when Consumers Energy will close the J.H. Campbell plant.
Wisconsin ratepayers may no longer be on the hook to keep a Michigan coal plant running past its retirement date.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday overturned a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) order keeping the 60-year-old J.H. Campbell power plant online. The plant’s operator, Consumers Energy, approached the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2025 for permission to bill ratepayers across the Midwest for the plant’s operating costs.
The Energy Department intervened to block the western Michigan plant’s scheduled retirement last spring, arguing the closure could exacerbate an “emergency” electricity shortfall in the region. Its operator, Consumers Energy, has since spent at least $295 million to operate the plant as the department repeatedly extended its life.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers urged Energy Secretary Chris Wright in July to allow the plant to close, citing a projection that Wisconsinites alone could spend $117 million on the facility over “the next few years.”
Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board joined a coalition of ratepayer advocacy groups in a December amicus brief supporting Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s lawsuit challenging the extension orders.
The court ruled unanimously for Michigan Friday, questioning the federal agency’s authority to invoke emergency powers to keep the plant open.
“The Department’s position would empower it to pick its preferred power sources in Michigan — or, presumably, any other state — and order them to operate without regard to the multiple procedural and substantive constraints built into state reliability planning processes,” Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote.
Nessel applauded the ruling in a Friday press release.
“By forcing its continued operation, DOE tried a never-before-used tactic to illegally prop up the aging J.H. Campbell coal plant that nobody asked to keep, sticking ratepayers with a bill for a facility that should have been retired more than a year ago,” Nessel said. “I am relieved that the Court saw through this facade.”
Consumers Energy told reporters on Friday it is reviewing the ruling but does not plan to immediately close the plant.
The Energy Department has not made similar efforts to block the retirement of Wisconsin coal plants, though the agency plans to spend $425 million to shore up 13 coal plants in 10 states, at least $19 million of which may be used to extend operations at Alliant Energy’s coal-powered units at the Columbia Energy Center near Portage.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin ratepayers still owe more than $1 billion in costs tied to retired coal plants. The Citizens Utility Board estimates that We Energies would collect more than $100 million in returns from those retired assets over the next two years under a rate proposal pending before Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
It took mere minutes for conspiracy theorists to seize on a Milwaukee election error after the August primary, when officials initially forgot to extract election results from five of the city’s nine absentee ballot tabulators. They lobbed baseless accusations that election officials had switched votes or otherwise tampered with the results.
But audit logs from those five tabulators show no evidence of tampering between the time officials initially left the facility and returned again to correctly extract results, experts told Votebeat.
“I don’t see a ‘there’ there,” said Duncan Buell, a chair emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina who has been analyzing election data and voting systems since 2010.
Ryan Macias, an election consultant who previously worked for the arm of the Election Assistance Commission that certifies voting machines, agreed there were “no signs or evidence that anything was done outside the norm” between the initial error and the successful extraction of the results.
More than three weeks after the primary election, city officials released audit logs from all nine tabulators to the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the public on Sept. 4. The files detail every action on the nine Milwaukee tabulators used to count absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 election.
On each of the five affected tabulators, the logs tell the same story: Officials mistakenly selected “export audit log” instead of “export files” during the initial extraction, which happened between 10:15 p.m. and about 10:40 p.m. Then, officials locked the machines.
Officials began turning the machines back on at around 11:30 p.m., after they realized they had made a mistake. They extracted the correct files shortly after midnight. The audit logs show no ballots being scanned, votes being deleted, or that the data contained on the tabulators was manipulated in any way.
The error didn’t change the vote count at all. It just delayed election results by a couple hours.
When Macias first learned of the issue, he assumed that the problem was human error and would be resolved.
“Now, looking at the audit log, I can tell you with a 100% fact that what I assumed happened (is what) happened,” he said.
Other experts agreed.
Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group, said she reviewed the audit logs with her team of experienced election experts.
“From what I see, those logs match the public account exactly,” she said.
“In the roughly two hours between those two exports, there’s no scanning or counting activity recorded in the logs on any of those five machines,” she said. “And just as importantly, the ballot counts on every machine match the officially reported.”
Conspiracy theories percolated well before Milwaukee released audit logs
Conspiracy theories about what may have transpired in Milwaukee on Election Day began circulating almost immediately after Milwaukee officials announced the mistake. Popular social media accounts questioned the credibility of election officials, and others suggested that officials were directly involved in fraud.
Three days after the election, Votebeat requested the audit logs — the records that could show exactly what happened on the tabulators during the period conspiracy theorists were questioning. Milwaukee did not release them until Sept. 4, more than three weeks later, and after the Wisconsin Elections Commission also asked the city to make them public.
Experts said that delay was not unusual.
“Releasing audit logs — these machine logs — that’s not a typical part of the documentation that election offices normally produce,” Morrell said, adding that it’s likely that Milwaukee would have needed legal approval before releasing the logs. “The fact that they did make them public, I think that’s a responsible process — not a cover-up.”
More important, she said, is that the officials retained the records in the first place.
“The fact that the log is there, the fact that these things are recorded should be seen as a positive even though it was slow for them,” she said. “I think the more concerning thing would be if the log just didn’t exist at all.”
Milwaukee plans better documentation for the future
In response to the error, Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez outlined several changes meant to prevent similar problems.
Written instructions for extracting results will now include images showing election officials which options to select on screen, Gutiérrez said in a letter to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Those instructions will also be made available to observers at the city’s absentee ballot facility.
Before the results are downloaded, she said, the extraction teams will be briefed on the process. As workers move through the steps, they will verbally identify each selection they make so other members of the team can confirm they have followed the correct procedure.
“In this instance, an error occurred during the results-download process,” she told the commission. “At the same time, the safeguards surrounding the election worked as intended: The discrepancy was identified, the underlying election results remained intact, the correct files were retrieved, and Milwaukee’s accurate election results were ultimately reported.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
But one alcohol-related danger receives far less attention — and it doesn’t end when someone hands over the car keys: walking while intoxicated.
Police reported suspected alcohol use among nearly 1 in 5 pedestrians killed in Wisconsin crashes between 2017 and 2025. Because pedestrians are not routinely tested, researchers say the true share may be higher.
The pattern is not unique to Wisconsin. Nationwide in 2024, 27% of pedestrians killed in traffic crashes were alcohol-impaired, compared with 15% of drivers involved in fatal pedestrian crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The figures do not make the danger of walking drunk comparable to driving drunk: An impaired driver controls a fast-moving vehicle and endangers others. But they underscore the risks intoxicated pedestrians face.
“We always hear somebody talking about having a safe plan home, have one sober driver. Maybe you should have a sober walker if you’re walking home,” said Vera Elle, a researcher at Wellbrook Recovery, a Brookfield-based alcohol and substance recovery rehabilitation center. She and her colleague Shimmy Stregosky wrote a series of reports on the topic and brought the issue to Wisconsin Watch’s attention.
Alcohol-related pedestrian crashes fall from 2019 peak
The number of annual crashes involving drunk pedestrians dropped from a 2019 peak of 126 to 101 in 2025. Annual deaths in those crashes plunged from 15 to five during the same period.
That trend coincided with lower reported binge drinking, defined as four or more drinks for women and five or more for men on a single occasion, said Maureen Busalacchi, director of the Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
She cautioned that the data cannot establish that changing drinking habits caused fewer pedestrian crashes. Traffic volume, remote work and vehicle speeds also affect crash frequency.
“The use of alcohol is going down, and then you start to see changes in perceived health effects. So more people are starting to see it as bad for health than they have in the past,” Busalacchi said.
Nationally, Gallup found that 54% of adults reported consuming alcohol in 2025, a record low in its polling. The share of adults ages 18 to 34 who considered moderate drinking harmful rose from 34% in 2018 to 66% in 2025.
In Wisconsin, the state’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System estimates a similar trend: The share of adults reporting binge drinking fell from 21.9% in 2019 to 19.1% in 2024.
Alcohol-related crashes span age groups
From 2017 through 2025, 16 pedestrians ages 35 to 39 were killed in Wisconsin crashes in which police suspected they consumed alcohol, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of Wisconsin Department of Transportation data.
That was the highest death toll of any five-year age group. Pedestrians ages 30 to 34 had the second-highest total, with 11 deaths, followed by those ages 25 to 29 and 50 to 54, with 10 each. Overall, 78 of the 96 pedestrians killed were ages 20 to 59.
Across crashes of all injury severity, pedestrians in their 20s accounted for the most cases involving suspected alcohol use. The total was highest among those ages 20 to 24, followed by those ages 25 to 29. But the numbers remained relatively high across most age groups from 30 to 59. Most pedestrians in those crashes suffered injuries.
The data showed a stark difference in injury severity: 44.6% of pedestrians suspected of alcohol use were seriously or fatally injured, compared with 21.1% of those without suspected alcohol use.
However, the connection does not establish that alcohol alone caused the difference. Nor can the data show how much more likely an intoxicated person is to be struck because no reliable count exists of how many intoxicated and sober people walk Wisconsin’s roads.
The figures are also likely to understate how many pedestrians involved in crashes had been drinking, said Richard Blomberg, vice president of the research firm Dunlap Research.
His research found that police generally identified alcohol use reliably when they checked the “had been drinking” box on crash reports. But an unchecked box did not mean a pedestrian was sober because police were less likely to document alcohol use when signs were unclear.
Research shows alcohol’s role in pedestrian crashes
Adults who had been drinking, especially those doing so excessively, were heavily overrepresented among pedestrians struck by vehicles, Blomberg found in a study he designed in the 1970s. About half of the adult pedestrian victims had been drinking, and nearly one-quarter had a blood alcohol level of 0.20% or higher.
Blomberg also compared crash victims with a random sample of pedestrians walking on the street near the crash sites. The researchers assembled three control groups. Some pedestrians were sampled at the same locations, days and times as previous crashes, while others were sampled at 112 randomly selected locations across New Orleans. The comparisons allowed Blomberg to estimate the extent to which alcohol was overrepresented among crash victims.
Blomberg also found alcohol-involved victims were disproportionately middle-aged men and more likely to have arrest records. Their crashes clustered at night and on weekends.
Blomberg cautioned that findings in one city did not represent the entire country, even if New Orleans was reasonably similar to other urban areas. Almost half a century later, he found the same demographic overrepresented in an analysis of crash data from five states from 2007 to 2017.
Later studies examined a related but different question: whether alcohol was associated with more severe injuries once a pedestrian was struck. In a study published in 1995, Dr. James Williams of Memorial Medical Center in Savannah, Georgia, reviewed autopsies of 223 pedestrian fatalities. He found that alcohol-involved pedestrians were more likely to suffer more severe injuries than sober pedestrians when struck by vehicles. Because the study included only fatalities, it did not measure whether intoxicated pedestrians were more likely to die after being struck.
A Florida analysis published a year later, however, found that pedestrians classified by police as under the influence had four to five times the adjusted odds of dying from a collision as pedestrians not classified as such. Rebecca Miles-Doan, the analysis’ author, cautioned that the finding might overestimate the association because police tend to conduct more intensive investigations into fatal cases.
Using more recent data from 2011 to 2016, University of Tennessee researchers found that alcohol was identified in about 7% of Tennessee pedestrian crashes but in 22% of pedestrian fatalities. The researchers pointed to limitations of their study: Few crashes had BAC readings, and alcohol classifications relied heavily on police judgment.
Experts point to public health solutions
Unlike impaired driving, walking while intoxicated generally is not a crime in Wisconsin. The Legislature eliminated the crime of public intoxication in 1973, which critics said created a “revolving door” through the criminal justice system for lower-income people and did little to improve rehabilitation — and sometimes worsened it.
Experts interviewed for this story also do not view criminalization as a principal solution.
Poster and flyer from Baltimore’s Walk Smart program, circa 2000. Reproduced in a U.S. Department of Transportation report; original phone number redacted.
Cities elsewhere have experimented with less punitive measures to improve safety. Baltimore launched the “Walk Smart Baltimore” campaign at the turn of the century. Blomberg participated as a researcher.
The campaign tested measures that did not depend entirely on intoxicated pedestrians making safe decisions. The city distributed reflective hats and used television, radio, billboards and flyers to warn pedestrians of dangers.
The evaluation reported fewer pedestrian crashes in the target area, although Blomberg said the program required resources that made it difficult for other communities to replicate.
“We can wrap them in cotton and potentially keep them from being injured in a crash or in a fall, but the health effects of that excess alcohol use are still there,” Blomberg said. “If we solve the underlying alcohol problem, everything else goes away.”
Addressing excessive alcohol use is the long-term goal, Blomberg said, but communities should not wait to reduce immediate risks through other efforts including safer vehicle designs, separating pedestrians from traffic or other measures.
If a street redesign, safer ride home or other intervention reduces alcohol-involved pedestrian crashes by even 5% or 10%, he said, “then of course we should do it.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley gave final approval to a 2022 contract requested by the Sheriff’s Office and approved by the Board of Supervisors that provides communication tablets to county jail and House of Correction inmates.
Crowley, the Democratic candidate for governor, also approved a three-year extension in 2025.
Generally all inmates can access tablets, which can be used for text messages. People who want to message with inmates must create an account.
The tablets cannot access the internet. They can access the contractor’s “intranet,” which includes entertainment and educational material.
The goal is to help inmates “stay connected to family, loved ones, and legal and support services,” the county executive’s office said.
The tablets became an issue in the gubernatorial campaign after a judge Aug. 28 raised questions about their use for witness intimidation, victim harassment and child pornography access.
This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Milwaukee County Legislative Information Center: File 21-1004
Milwaukee County Legislative Information Center: File 250222
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin filed a new lawsuit challenging Wisconsin abortion restrictions Thursday, just days after the Wisconsin Supreme Court returned to work with a newly cemented 5-2 liberal majority in place.
The lawsuit, filed in Dane County against Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, argues that two Wisconsin laws violate the state constitution’s guarantee of personal liberty.
One of those laws requires people seeking abortions to wait 24 hours between requesting an abortion and receiving one. The other states that only licensed physicians may provide abortions; this limits a person’s ability to self-administer abortion drugs through telehealth.
“This case asks our court to recognize … that our constitutional freedom includes the ability to make deeply personal decisions about our reproductive health care without unnecessary government interference,” said Tanya Atkinson, the president of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, during a press briefing announcing the lawsuit.
The case names Ozanne as a representative of all Wisconsin district attorneys because they would prosecute violations of the rule that only physicians can administer abortions, said Diane Welsh, a lawyer for Planned Parenthood.
“Anywhere in the state where an abortion would be provided, there could be criminal charges for a person who’s not a physician,” said Welsh.
Lawsuits challenging Wisconsin’s abortion restrictions have been anticipated since Roe vs. Wade — which federally protected abortion access — was overturned in 2022, effectively throwing the issue back to the states. The most significant challenge was over a Civil War-era statute that had been interpreted as banning abortion in Wisconsin and that went back into effect when Roe was overturned.
That law was at the heart of campaigns to elect liberal justices to the state Supreme Court, and last year, the high court overturned the statute, allowing abortions to be administered within the state under certain restrictions.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court found that the 19th-century law had been superseded by a series of additional restrictions passed in the ensuing decades. Immediately, abortion advocates signaled they might challenge those restrictions.
Thursday’s announcement makes good on those possibilities. In the briefing, attorneys for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin argued that requiring a physician to be present during abortions and requiring a person to receive counseling and wait a full day before receiving abortion care are unnecessary and illegal barriers to health care access.
“Through this case, we are asking Wisconsin courts to recognize that these restrictions conflict with the freedoms and protections guaranteed to each of us under our state’s constitution,” said Atkinson. “It’s about whether our constitutional freedoms belong to each of us, or whether the government can make our most personal decisions for us.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Wisconsin Right to Life said Planned Parenthood is seeking a “permanent constitutional shield” for abortion access.
“This lawsuit isn’t about access,” said Samantha Craig. “It’s about removing the last few guardrails standing between a woman and the procedure table. It is incredible to us that such basic protections for informed consent and women’s safety are disregarded for the sake of protecting Planned Parenthood’s abortion-first business model.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court, which would have the final say in the case, has a definitive liberal slant that is all but guaranteed to be in place for years to come. Liberal Justice Chris Taylor, whose 10-year term began in August, was once a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood. Liberal Justice Susan Crawford, who was sworn in a year earlier, once represented the group as a private attorney.
It took until the early morning hours to call the Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin. When the counting ended at 3 a.m., Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley had beaten state Rep. Francesca Hong by fewer than 4,000 votes, closing a gap that public polling had put at double digits in Hong’s favor. Hong, a democratic socialist, made a moratorium on new AI data center construction a signature of her campaign. Crowley had a different data center answer: build, but make sure the data centers provide real benefits to surrounding communities.
The postmortems have treated the race as a proxy war between the party’s establishment and its left flank, which is certainly a theme. But it was also a statewide primary in which data centers became a defining issue, and it is worth asking why an issue that appears so popular at first glance was held by the candidate who underperformed at the polls.
Dig beneath the surface, and the anti-data center position seems politically weaker. While national polling can’t explain the results of a statewide race, it suggests voters’ views on data centers may be more nuanced than a simple for-or-against debate. In the Rainey Center’s May national survey of 1,010 registered voters, data centers sat underwater, 29% favorable to 48% unfavorable, and the sharpest hostility was exactly where Hong was strong: 41% of very liberal voters held a very unfavorable view, the most intense opposition of any ideological group.
But when you look closer the picture changes. Black voters were the most favorable group in the electorate, 36% favorable to 30% unfavorable, with a third saying they were not sure. White voters ran 29% to 53%. None of this makes Black voters cheerleaders for AI, but it is a long way from the revolt a moratorium presumes, and the rest of the survey shows why.
Hong’s dismissal of data centers excites populists, but most voters are interested in a more thorough understanding of the issue. It’s worth understanding what voters are actually worried about and how Crowley defused those concerns. In our polling, Black voters are most concerned that data centers will destroy jobs: 19% named AI destroying jobs as their top concern, and another 12% said the projects do not create enough permanent jobs. Jobs are justice, and Black voters want to see a data center policy that creates jobs in their communities.
And while data centers sound scary in the abstract, their impact can be enormously positive. Loudon County, home of more than 250 data centers, will see $1.3 billion in tax revenue next year from data centers, enough that property taxes have been slashed by 30% in the last decade.
Data centers are still controversial, and advocates for America leading the world in technology will need arguments that persuade voters. The pro-data center coalition is unions, blue-collar workers, rural communities looking for economic development, and Black voters. Accountability can strengthen data center support with these voters and expand the coalition.
Requiring data center operators to sign a community benefits agreement, committing to local hiring, infrastructure upgrades, and payments to the community before construction begins, drew 66% support overall and 60% to 14% among Black voters. And 61% want ratepayer protections, the industry pledge that data centers cover their own power costs, written into binding law.
Crowley has embraced the principles of Donald Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge (though he would surely plead ignorance as to the policy’s provenance). He has said data center companies should cover the full cost of the grid upgrades they require, use union labor and sign community benefit agreements. His position aligns with Black voters, union voters and non-college voters who want jobs and accountability.
Rob Smith is a fellow at the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy and a commentator on American public policy, culture, leadership, and national priorities. His work focuses on issues including energy independence, U.S. competitiveness and the policies shaping America’s future.
Devan Patel is the Visiting Fellow for Tech Ethics & Democracy at the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy and a lawyer and political strategist focused on artificial intelligence, technology and public policy. He is also an adjunct professor of law at Notre Dame Law School and has worked at the intersection of AI ethics, national security and democratic governance.
TheJoseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, named for the first Black House member, is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit think tank formed in 2018 to examine public policy issues. Its advocacy positions span the partisan divide.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
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Wisconsin Watch spoke to three small business owners who put their businesses on hold to serve the community after the July 27 tornado.
Destiny Antuna of Fox Valley Meal Prep, Lora Glasel of the Recyclist Bicycle Co. and Shane Rosenow of Rosenow Customs talked about the support they found throughout the Fox Cities.
They also shared how they will continue to support relief efforts even as they turn their attention back to their businesses.
For a few weeks, countless donations piled up on Destiny Antuna’s shop floor.
Stacks of canned food, water bottles, Band-Aids, toilet paper, paper plates, work gloves, dog food and boxes of diapers made it almost impossible to walk through the store. Her business in Kaukauna, Fox Valley Meal Prep, usually sells handmade meal kits. But last month, it became a hub for delivering care packages to neighboring Appleton, Neenah and Menasha.
Ever since the July 27 tornado that damaged homes and businesses in the Fox Cities, community support has poured in. Classified as an EF3, the tornado caused an estimated $8.2 million in damages to over 2,300 structures. With 84 structures destroyed and 412 majorly damaged, many residents were left without shelter, transportation or basic needs.
Emersyn Banda, a 20-year-old Menasha resident, described the experience of the tornado as life-altering.
“I remember instantly just crying when I had seen it, because I mean, houses were completely down. All of our trees are down. All of the power lines, people looking lost,” she said. “It looked like a nuke had hit our town. It was just in shambles. Everyone was on the phone trying to contact people.”
In the chaos, community members’ overwhelming desire to help often came without knowing where to direct their efforts. That’s where small business leaders stepped in, putting their daily operations on hold and organizing large-scale efforts to direct volunteers and donation requests. Now, they’re navigating how to continue helping while keeping their businesses afloat.
Meeting the needs of tornado victims in real time
Antuna was in Menasha during the tornado, completing renovations on a new location she had planned a grand opening for in the next week. She had to shelter in place during the storm.
“Luckily, we’re kind of tucked into a corner, so there wasn’t any major damage,” Antuna said. “It was just a lot of debris hitting that corner, but renovations were, for the most part, done there Monday while we were there, and we were hoping to do a soft opening that Sunday.”
About an hour later, she immediately drove home to Kaukauna and made a post on Instagram letting people know she was accepting donations to distribute. A loyal customer in Menasha let Antuna turn his lawn into a hot food station and take requests for donations.
Homes and local businesses in Menasha, Wis., are seen on Aug. 10, 2026, two weeks after an EF3 tornado left widespread destruction. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
“It was very shell-shocking to walk around and see some houses be totally fine and some others where it’s just their personal belongings just everywhere,” Antuna said. “Like, I have a little kid, that could have easily been like all of my kids’ toys.”
Antuna and other business owners started going door to door with wagons, which she said was vital in getting the most up-to-date requests from affected residents.
“I felt like everybody on the outside, in terms of help, was almost a day or two behind,” she said. “So by the time you would get people water, the next day there’s businesses trying to drop off pallets of water, but everybody already has enough water.”
Lora Glasel, co-owner of Recyclist Bicycle Co. in Kaukauna, went door to door delivering food with Antuna. She soon realized that fixing up and donating used bikes would be helpful for people whose transportation had been destroyed.
“After the requests started rolling in for either people whose cars or bicycles or their kids’ bicycles were destroyed, we did not have enough bikes to accommodate the need,” Glasel said. “So we put a little bit of a call out to our community, and we’ve gotten a good amount of donations that over the next couple weeks we’ll be able to tune up and safety-check, and subsequently then deliver back to the affected area.”
Lora Glasel, co-owner of Recyclist Bicycle Co., in Kaukauna, Wis. Glasel organized a team of volunteers to fix and donate used bicycles to people affected by the tornado. (Courtesy of Lora Glasel)
She delivered over 70 bikes to residents who needed a reliable way to work or even just to relax after a stressful day. Glasel hopes to turn it into a long-term program to help families in need, regardless of whether they were affected by the tornado.
“To bring, maybe for some families, just a little semblance of normalcy of just being able to take their family on a bike ride in a time where their life is not normal at all is also pretty impactful,” she said.
In addition to fulfilling specific donation requests for families, Antuna began using the Kaukauna store as a home base to create general care packages with essential household items and food. She used social media to call out for drivers to fill up their cars with 20-plus bags and drop them off one by one on people’s porches in the hardest-hit areas.
“I will say, it definitely took over my life for the first week after (the tornado) … I do think the store got kind of neglected for the first week, so now we’re slowly trying to get back to a little bit of normalcy,” she said.
Antuna, who also runs Bad Batch Fitness in Little Chute, struggled to find a sustainable way to run her businesses long term while coordinating the influx of donations coming in, requests from affected residents and volunteer schedules.
“Once we started to gather a lot of volunteers and have people reach out, it made it a lot easier to delegate things and be able to give a little bit more focus to the businesses,” she said. “It’s definitely been a hard push and pull because if I could have everything run as normal and also be there, I absolutely would.”
As Antuna moves into the next phase, Fox Valley Meal Prep is no longer accepting donations other than gift cards for gas and groceries. Her plan for the remainder of the year is to have a “meal match week” every month, donating a meal to families in need for every one purchased in-store.
Donations for tornado victims pile up at Fox Valley Meal Prep in Kaukauna, Wis., on Aug. 10, 2026. Owner Destiny Antuna said she still plans to collect gas and grocery gift cards for people affected by the tornado, as well as donate meals. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
Contractors volunteer to clear tons of debris, protect houses
Cleaning up the widespread destruction from July’s tornado took a legion of volunteers working tirelessly to clear streets and repair homes. Shane Rosenow, owner of the exterior remodeling company Rosenow Customs in Neenah, became an unofficial leader of the cleanup efforts.
Rosenow said it all started with a post he made on Facebook with the office phone number and an offer to help with yard cleanup, tarping and assessing damage.
Shane Rosenow of Rosenow Customs in Neenah, Wis., takes a selfie while volunteering to clean up storm damage in Menasha, Wis. Rosenow organized relief efforts among local contractors. (Courtesy of Shane Rosenow)
“My phone just started ringing,” Rosenow said. “I had a band of I want to say 12 to 18 contractors that reached out and said, ‘Hey, let’s help. Let’s do this.’ And it was everything from people in the same trade that I do right now to people with heavy machinery, landscapers (and) home mold remediation people.”
For the next two weeks, he devoted all of his time to the efforts, sleeping only a few hours each night and putting normal business operations on the back burner. He estimates they protected up to 200 homes by clearing fallen trees and setting up tarps. His team of contractors loaded and dumped over 190 tons of debris.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before. Pictures don’t even do it justice,” he said. “I get emotional on this because Neenah’s my hometown, and Menasha’s like a sister town to us, and it’s going to take years, years (to rebuild).”
Restoring the St. Mary Catholic Cemetery sticks out to him as the biggest miracle. He started with a small group on the Friday after the tornado, but soon, a bus drove by with about 50 volunteers from the faith-based group Risen Men. After a few hours of careful work, the cemetery curator came by.
“He goes, ‘You guys, in three hours, have done more work here than five of us in the church have done all week. What made you come here?’” Rosenow said. “And I said, ‘God, you know, he just told us, go.’”
A look at St. Mary Catholic Cemetery in Menasha, Wis., which Shane Rosenow and a group of volunteers worked to clean up after the tornado. (Courtesy of Shane Rosenow)
He also had a colleague create two Facebook groups, one for volunteers and one for donations, so Rosenow wouldn’t have to keep fielding texts and emails himself. That way, people could make a post with what they needed — for example, two or three people to help clean up their yard — and other community members could message them directly to coordinate help.
“The goal behind that was to kind of divide and conquer and allow us to still go back to work, but still do some good in the community,” Rosenow said. “And it’s worked.”
Progress after such a large disaster isn’t always linear. Rosenow’s efforts were set back by a recent storm that blew the tarps off people’s roofs, meaning some homeowners had to start from scratch. The other contractors also needed to get back to work after the first two weeks, he said.
“Some of these guys, it’s just them,” Rosenow said. “And they’re like, ‘We don’t have any money, and we’re spending hundreds of dollars a day on fuel and maintenance on our vehicles and our equipment.’ So I said, ‘Get back to work. We will regroup.’”
Even though he’s started being recognized as a local celebrity, he rejects that label and says nothing would be possible without God and the other community members who devoted their time.
“It’s not me. If it wasn’t for the people that stepped up behind me, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now,” Rosenow said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Wisconsin Republican running for governor, moved to reverse Democrat Joe Biden’s win over Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Dec. 10, 2020: Signed a legal brief supporting Texas’ U.S. Supreme Court bid to overturn the results in Wisconsin and three other battleground states that backed Biden.
Jan. 5, 2021: Announced plans to vote against certifying the Electoral College results, claiming hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin votes were cast illegally, and later said he would have voted against certifying Wisconsin’s election results.
Jan. 6, 2021: Voted to object to counting electoral votes in Pennsylvania and Arizona, which supported Biden.
May 18, 2026: Backed an FBI probe of Wisconsin’s 2020 election.
August 2026: Said he didn’t regret voting against certifying the election.
Sept. 4, 2026: Told Wisconsin Watch that Biden won but he still welcomes law enforcement investigations into Wisconsin’s 2020 election.
This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Our newsroom’s investigation of “obscene” spending in state Supreme Court elections has won top honors at the 2026 Online Journalism Awards.
The awards, run by the Online News Association, have since 2000 honored excellence in digital journalism around the world. Judges awarded Wisconsin Watch first place for explanatory reporting in the small-newsroom division for its three-part series Supreme Costs.
The series — a mix of explanatory, accountability and solutions journalism — examined why Wisconsin set back-to-back national records for spending on state Supreme Court elections, culminating in a record $144 million in spending in 2025, and what can be done about it.
Edited by State Bureau Chief Matthew DeFour, with reporting by freelancer Larry Sandler and Data Investigative Reporter Hongyu Liu, video by Trisha Young and illustrations by freelancer Elena Delzer, Supreme Costs explained how races meant to select impartial judges transformed into extraordinarily partisan, expensive national political battles.
Why are Wisconsin Supreme Court elections breaking national records? Earlier this month, Wisconsin Watch published Supreme Costs, a three-part series by freelancer Larry Sandler that examined why Wisconsin Supreme Court elections have become so expensive — and what might curb those costs. The project included graphics by data reporter Hongyu Liu, illustrating just how unprecedented the $144.5 million spent on the 2025 race was compared with past elections. In this interview, Sandler sits down with Wisconsin Watch video journalist Trisha Young to break down why Wisconsin is an outlier in Supreme Court spending and what’s next for the state. Read Larry Sandler’s full series at wisconsinwatch.org. #wispolitics#wisconsinsupremecourt#wisconsin#springelections
“Judges were big fans of Supreme Costs — thorough, deep reporting paired with smart visualizations and mixed formats that made an otherwise impenetrable topic accessible, even enjoyable,” contest organizers noted. “They especially praised the comparative analysis and the architecture of the series, which anticipates readers’ questions and carries them through a complex story about campaign financing with remarkable clarity.”
Other finalists in the explanatory journalism category among small newsrooms included:
We don’t do this work for awards; we do it because we want our journalism to make a difference in Wisconsin. But it is especially gratifying to receive this kind of recognition from peers we respect so much.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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Wisconsinites have called or texted the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline more than 345,000 times since it launched in July 2022.
States including Illinois and Minnesota have implemented telecommunications fees on phone bills that fund 988 in their states.
Other states have allocated long-term funding through budget appropriations or by introducing legislation to fine AI companies when their chatbots fail to refer people in crisis to mental health resources.
Wisconsin officials say the line’s growth surpassed all projections they had, and the organization that coordinates the service is continuously recruiting counselors.
Despite bipartisan support for the lifeline, lawmakers have failed to enact a permanent long-term funding mechanism for it.
Every year, millions of people in crisis dial three numbers — not 911, but 988, the national suicide and crisis lifeline. People like Cadence Van Beek, who used the lifeline as a sophomore at Melrose-Mindoro High School in Melrose.
During a mental health crisis, Van Beek worried she would be placed on a waitlist or hurried through the process. Instead, a counselor patiently helped her de-escalate her feelings. At the end, she informed Van Beek about local resources in Jackson County.
“It didn’t feel rushed … She took her time with me, and she was very kind – just a kind soul,” she said.
Van Beek’s conversation is one of over 345,000 texts or calls to the state lifeline since its launch in July 2022. A recent JAMA study found that in the first two and a half years, suicides among 15- to 34-year-olds were 11% lower than expected, corresponding to nearly 4,400 fewer deaths.
Yet despite the line’s proven success and increased demand, long-term funding remains uncertain. Unlike other states, Wisconsin has not passed legislation to permanently fund the service. And Wisconsin trails most states in the share of calls answered in-state.
In May, Van Beek visited the state Capitol and presented lawmakers with a solution: Fund 988 like 911.
Since 2009, Wisconsinites have paid a telecommunications fee on their phone bills for 911, currently 75 cents per month. Twelve states, including Illinois and Minnesota, have enacted a 988 fee to fund the service.
Illinois and Minnesota had in-state response rates of 90% in July — compared with Wisconsin’s 81%. The rest of the calls are routed to a national backup center, which can mean less knowledge of local resources and longer wait times.
Cadence Van Beek presents her 988 funding recommendation at the state Capitol in Madison with the Office of Children’s Mental Health in May 2026. (Courtesy of Cadence Van Beek)
When Van Beek visited Madison with the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health, she set up a posterboard with her research and told legislators her peers rely on 988.
“988 has always kind of been a given,” she told Wisconsin Watch. “We always kind of assume that it’ll be there … The possibility that there might not be enough counselors on the line because of funding for 988 and funding for those counselors just makes me a little worried.”
State struggles to keep up with increased demand
Family Services of Northeast Wisconsin operates Wisconsin’s 988 line. Senior Vice President Tana Koss said the crisis team planned for a moderate to high level of calls when the three-digit number was launched in 2022.
“Still, Wisconsin has blown all numbers out of the water and continues to … The demand from Wisconsinites for this service has surpassed every model of projection that was available to us,” Koss said.
Family Services is still recruiting counselors to keep up with the need. Koss attributes the increase to lingering mental health effects from the COVID-19 pandemic and the lifeline’s accessibility. She celebrates more people using the service, which she views as a reflection of reduced stigma.
Even though Family Services of Northeast Wisconsin is located in Green Bay, the state’s 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline counselors work remotely from home offices across the state. (Courtesy of Family Services)
Wisconsin received over 11,200 calls in July alone – and responded to just over 9,000 of them in-state. Only eight states had the same or worse in-state response than Wisconsin.
“The longer a person waits on the line, the more likely they are to disengage … When you’re in queue, our primary center gets an opportunity to answer. If we’re not able to, then our backup center gets an opportunity to answer. And then, if they’re not able to, it goes to national backup,” Koss said. “So the sooner in that process you can have the staff available, the more likely you are to engage that caller.”
Still, the state has improved its answer rate over the past few months — growing from 74% in January to 81% in July as demand increased.
“Purely from the administration of the service … we want (the answer rate) to get to 90%, and had the growth not gone up even a little bit more than anticipated, we would have been there.” Koss said.
So, should Wisconsin officials enact a 988 fee, a recurring appropriation or even consider legislation that Ohio and Illinois lawmakers have introduced to fine AI companies for failing to address suicidal ideation? Koss doesn’t care, as long as it means Wisconsin won’t have to depend on federal funding or the state’s biennial budget cycle.
“I’m not personally attached to any route,” she said. “I think the request that I would have and advocate for is sustainability over the long haul because what we’re projecting is this growth hasn’t stopped.”
The case for state funding
Every two years, the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s Wisconsin chapter pushes for 988 funding in the state budget, said Julia Polk, the group’s advocacy coordinator. Last year, Gov. Tony Evers’ budget recommended $12.2 million for the lifeline, but lawmakers approved $7 million.
“What we would love to see is that we can educate our legislators on why 988 is so important and why it’s important to fund it long term, and get them in the next state budget to say, ‘we’re going to permanently fund this,” Polk said.
Polk also said delays from the Trump administration in making grants available are part of why advocates want to secure reliable state funding for the lifeline.
“It’s a lot of us and other advocates, and the 988 Lifeline and the state government having to just trust and hope that those grants will become available,” she said.
Family Services of Northeast Wisconsin operates the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for the entire state of Wisconsin. The organization is based in Green Bay but employs remote counselors throughout the state who respond to 988 calls, text messages and chats. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
Waiting for confirmation on an anticipated federal grant last year left officials fearing the funds had disappeared. In response, state Rep. Ben Franklin, R-De Pere, and state Sen. Jesse James, R-Thorp, authored a bill that would have required the state to provide grants to agencies that administer the 988 Lifeline.
“988 has proven to be highly effective and used frequently amongst Wisconsinites and is a vital service we should be funding,” Franklin said during a committee hearing on the bill in June 2025.
However, the bill included no funding attached. It failed to pass in the Senate and did not come up for a vote in the Assembly.
The federal government announced a grant funding opportunity in January and provided Family Services about $4.5 million per year for the next three years, according to Koss. But that still leaves a gap, since the state needs $12.2 million per year to fund the service.
Officials included $7 million for the lifeline in the 2025-27 biennial budget, but Koss said Family Services needs the next budget to match that. She knows a $6.195 million deficit is coming in 2028.
“We didn’t slow down with recruitment, but administratively, it’s stressful when you have these delays on giant parts of the funding,” Koss said.
Franklin’s Democratic opponent in the November election, Brandy Tollefson, is a De Pere School Board member. The issue is personal to her, and not just because she hears about the youth mental health crisis from school social workers, counselors and teachers.
“I myself went through the experience of having my stepbrother die by suicide years ago, so I know what happens to a family when this happens and the impact it has on families,” Tollefson said. “I fully support working with any Democrat or Republican who wants to get this permanently funded.”
Tollefson echoed other Democrats’ criticisms that Assembly Bill 303 lacked the critical funding needed to ensure 988 would get financial support. Franklin did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.
“There was a lot missing from it to make it a bipartisan bill that people could get behind, because the details just weren’t there,” Tollefson said.
Connecting with younger generations
Megan Zimmerman, NAMI Fox Valley’s outreach program director, educates local schools about mental health and promotes 988. She said many people hesitate to call 988 because they fear emergency services will get involved, but in reality, law enforcement or emergency services respond to only 0.4% of callers in Wisconsin. Counselors resolved the other 99.6% of calls by providing support, coping strategies and resources.
“Even outside of 988, I think when someone expresses that they have suicidal ideation – like they’re having thoughts about it – I think that scares people,” Zimmerman said. “They almost immediately triage to like, ‘OK, this person needs to be hospitalized.’”
Zimmerman noted the person who calls 988 doesn’t have to be the one who is in crisis, as she often calls 988 with her clients.
“If I can get an individual to agree to have that conversation on the phone with someone, and I’m there to support them in whatever way they need, that is just as good of an outcome as telling them to go home and call it themselves, which they may or may not follow through on,” she said.
Cards used to spread awareness about the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline are seen at the Family Services of Northeast Wisconsin’s office in Green Bay, Wis., on Sept. 3, 2026. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
Van Beek, who always considered herself the “therapist friend,” often recommends 988 to peers who confide in her. Once, when a friend shared distressing details about her home life, Van Beek quickly realized she wasn’t equipped to handle the conversation.
“I just realized I’m a high school kid, and I can’t take this on,” Van Beek said. “I don’t have the knowledge to help you get to where you need to be with the situation. So that’s an instance where I recommended calling or texting 988 and just going through with that. And she did.”
The 24/7 chat feature, introduced in 2024, particularly appeals to her generation and was helpful when she had to use it.
“Gen Z in general, we’ve always been behind a screen,” Van Beek said. “988 gives youth the option to text it, and I always have liked that, because talking or maybe even going in person can be overwhelming for youth, and I can personally relate to that.”
Amid increasing reports of generative AI enabling suicides, proposed legislation in Illinois would fine AI companies for not addressing suicidal ideation and deposit the money into a 988 trust fund. Companies under the legislation would face a penalty of up to $15,000 per day if they don’t refer users to crisis services like 988 when they express thoughts of self-harm.
Zimmerman said the chat feature of 988 has led her to encourage students to message the lifeline instead of an AI companion.
“Every suicide prevention presentation I give, especially in a school, I just always stress (that) I know it’s easy to bring up ChatGPT or your Claude or your Gemini or whatever it is, and start essentially texting or chatting that feature,” Zimmerman said. “But I always really encourage people to instead think about 988 … because then you’re getting a real live human being.”
Having graduated as president of her high school’s Raise Your Voice mental health advocacy club, Van Beek recently began studying psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she wants to continue raising awareness about mental health.
“The events that I participate in, whether it’s through NAMI or NAMIWalks — the mental health walk that we do — it has never felt like a chore to me,” Van Beek said. “I’ve always felt like that’s my purpose.”
Median wages have hit a record high in Wisconsin, but job growth has stalled and the state’s Black unemployment rate is rising.
Those are the main findings from “The State of Working Wisconsin 2026,” a new report on the state’s job market. The annual report is released by the High Road Strategy Center, a left-leaning “think-and-do tank” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The report found that after hitting a record high number of jobs — 3,051,000 — in November 2024, the state had just 3,042,900 jobs in July 2026.
“Job growth has ground to a halt, and though wages hit a new high in 2025, high inflation is undermining workers’ wages in 2026,” said Laura Dresser, author of the report and the associate director of the High Road Strategy Center.
“The (report) still shows some very bright spots, but the clouds are gathering on the economic horizon.”
Dresser told WPR the report’s findings showed a “mixed picture.”
“There’s some really great news still in this economy,” she said. “We’ve had a strong recovery from the pandemic lockdowns, it’s been sustained and we show again that we got a new high in median wages in 2025.”
Last year’s report found that the economy was softening, and Dresser said some of those trends have continued.
Report sees higher unemployment ahead
The state’s unemployment rate is at 3.3%. That is low but “drifting upward” compared to the 2.6% unemployment rate in 2023, the report found.
“With the state losing jobs, it is likely that the rate will continue to rise,” the report said.
And the state has been losing jobs since 2025.
“Wisconsin’s economy has grown slowly relative to the national economy for years, and now job growth has ground to a halt,” the report said.
It also found that Wisconsin’s economy “is riddled with inequalities by geography, race, education and gender.”
The report said the unemployment rate for Black Wisconsinites is, “growing much more rapidly than unemployment for other groups.”
Wisconsin’s Black unemployment rate was 7.2% during the first quarter of 2026, matching the national rate, according to the report. But the state’s unemployment rate for white residents was 2.3%.
“In 2023, when the unemployment rate was at its low and the labor market was strong, the gap between Black and white unemployment shrank,” the report said. “But as the overall rate has drifted up, the Black rate has grown much more swiftly.”
Wisconsin’s median wage hit a record $26.17 per hour last year. Data for this year are not yet available, “but the signs there are troubling,” the report said.
“Inflation has risen and wage gains have been weaker,” the report said. “As it did in 2022, inflation could wipe out the wage gains of 2026.”
State unionization rate plunges
The state’s unionization rate is also fell from 14% in 2011 to 7.5% in 2025.
“State trends in unionization reflect both state policy and industrial structure,” the report said.
Pam Fendt, president of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, pointed to the impacts of Act 10 on union membership in Wisconsin. She also said growing interest in unions makes her “hopeful for the future.”
“We do see a lot of interest in organizing,” Fendt said.
A new Gallup Poll found 71% of Americans approve of labor unions.
“An increase in the state minimum wage to $20 by 2030 would raise wages for more than 730,000 Wisconsin workers,” the report said.
“All the neighboring states except for Iowa are on a dramatically different path for minimum wages, and this state has (for) too long just not attended to the minimum wage and raising it for the state’s lower paid workers,” Dresser said.
Fendt said Milwaukee Area Labor Council also supports raising the minimum wage.
“Getting it to $20 an hour by 2030 is something that we support because, honestly, the minimum wage has been stagnant for way too long,” Fendt said.
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