Wisconsin became the 36th state to limit cellphones and other electronic devices in school Friday when its Democratic governor signed a bill requiring districts to prohibit phone use during class time.
The measure passed with bipartisan support, though some Democrats in the Legislature said controlling gun violence should be a higher priority than banning cellphones.
In signing the bill, Gov. Tony Evers said he believes that decisions like this should be made at the local level, but “my promise to the people of Wisconsin is to always do what’s best for our kids, and that obligation weighs heavily on me in considering this bill.”
Evers said he was “deeply concerned” about the impacts of cellphone and social media use on young people. He said cellphones could be “a major distraction from learning, a source of bullying, and a barrier to our kids’ important work of just being a kid.”
This school year alone, new restrictions on phone use in schools went into effect in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The push to limit cellphone use has been rapid. Florida was the first state to pass such a law, in 2023.
Both Democrats and Republicans have taken up the cause, reflecting a growing consensus that phones are bad for kids’ mental health and take their focus away from learning, even as some researchers say the issue is less clear-cut.
Most school districts in Wisconsin had already restricted cellphone use in the classroom, according to a Wisconsin Policy Forum report. The bill passed by the Legislature on Oct. 14 would require school districts to enact policies prohibiting the use of cellphones during instructional time.
Of the 36 states that restrict cellphones in school, phones are banned throughout the school day in 18 states and the District of Columbia, although Georgia and Florida impose “bell-to-bell” bans only from kindergarten through eighth grade. Another seven states ban them during class time, but not between classes or during lunch. Still others, particularly those with traditions of local school control, mandate only a cellphone policy, believing districts will take the hint and sharply restrict phone access.
Under the Wisconsin bill, all public schools are required to adopt a policy prohibiting the use of cellphones during instructional time by July 1. There would be exceptions including for use during an emergency or perceived threat; to manage a student’s health care; if use of the phone is allowed under the student’s individualized education program; or if written by a teacher for educational purposes.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Two federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must continue to pay for SNAP, the nation’s biggest food aid program, using emergency reserve funds during the government shutdown.
The judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island gave the administration leeway on whether to fund the program partially or in full for November. That also brings uncertainty about how things will unfold and will delay payments for many beneficiaries whose cards would normally be recharged early in the month.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net — and it costs about $8 billion per month nationally.
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat and the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture committee that oversees the food aid program, said Friday’s rulings from judges nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama confirm what Democrats have been saying: “The administration is choosing not to feed Americans in need, despite knowing that it is legally required to do so.”
Judges agree at least one fund must go toward SNAP
Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states, as well as the District of Columbia, challenged the plan to pause the program, contending that the administration has a legal obligation to keep it running in their jurisdictions.
The administration said it wasn’t allowed to use a contingency fund of about $5 billion for the program, which reversed a USDA plan from before the shutdown that said money would be tapped to keep SNAP running. The Democratic officials argued that not only could that money be used, but that it must be. They also said a separate fund with around $23 billion is available for the cause.
In Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell ruled from the bench in a case filed by cities and nonprofits that the program must be funded using at least the contingency funds, and he asked for an update on progress by Monday.
Along with ordering the federal government to use emergency reserves to backfill SNAP benefits, McConnell ruled that all previous work requirement waivers must continue to be honored. The USDA during the shutdown has terminated existing waivers that exempted work requirements for older adults, veterans and others.
There were similar elements in the Boston case, where U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled in a written opinion that the USDA has to pay for SNAP, calling the suspension “unlawful.” She ordered the federal government to advise the court by Monday as to whether they will use the emergency reserve funds to provide reduced SNAP benefits for November or fully fund the program “using both contingency funds and additional available funds.
“Defendants’ suspension of SNAP payments was based on the erroneous conclusion that the Contingency Funds could not be used to ensure continuation of SNAP payments,” she wrote. “This court has now clarified that Defendants are required to use those Contingency Funds as necessary for the SNAP program.”
For many, benefits will still be delayed after the ruling
No matter how the rulings came down, the benefits for millions of people will be delayed in November because the process of loading cards can take a week or more in many states.
The administration did not immediately say whether it would appeal the rulings.
States, food banks and SNAP recipients have been bracing for an abrupt shift in how low-income people can get groceries. Advocates and beneficiaries say halting the food aid would force people to choose between buying groceries and paying other bills.
The majority of states have announced more or expedited funding for food banks or novel ways to load at least some benefits onto the SNAP debit cards.
Across the U.S., advocates who had been sounding the alarm for weeks about the pending SNAP benefits cut off let out a small sigh of relief on Friday as the rulings came down, while acknowledging the win is temporary and possibly not complete.
“Thousands of nonprofit food banks, pantries and other organizations across the country can avoid the impossible burden that would have resulted if SNAP benefits had been halted,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, one of the plaintiffs in the Rhode Island case.
The possibility of reduced benefits also means uncertainty
Cynthia Kirkhart, CEO of Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington, West Virginia, said her organization and the pantries it serves in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia will keep their extra hours this weekend, knowing that the people whose benefits usually arrive at the start of the month won’t see them.
“What we know, unless the administration is magical, is nothing is going to happen tomorrow,” she said.
Kristle Johnson, a 32-year-old full-time nursing student and mother of three in Florida, is concerned about the possibility of reduced benefits.
Despite buying meat in bulk, careful meal planning and not buying junk food, she said, her $994 a month benefit doesn’t buy a full month’s groceries.
“Now I have to deal with someone who wants to get rid of everything I have to keep my family afloat until I can better myself,” Johnson said of Trump.
The ruling doesn’t resolve partisan tussles
At a Washington news conference earlier Friday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose department runs SNAP, said the contingency funds in question would not cover the cost of the program for long. Speaking at a press conference with House Speaker Mike Johnson at the Capitol, she blamed Democrats for conducting a “disgusting dereliction of duty” by refusing to end their Senate filibuster as they hold out for an extension of health care funds.
A push this week to continue SNAP funding during the shutdown failed in Congress.
To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a family of four’s net income after certain expenses can’t exceed the federal poverty line, which is about $31,000 per year. Last year, SNAP provided assistance to 41 million people, nearly two-thirds of whom were families with children.
“The court’s ruling protects millions of families, seniors, and veterans from being used as leverage in a political fight and upholds the principle that no one in America should go hungry,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said of the Rhode Island decision.
As Democrats across the country devise ways to match Republican redistricting efforts, a long-standing battle over congressional maps has been quietly progressing in one of the nation’s most competitive swing states.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is taking up two gerrymandering lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional maps after years of back-and-forth litigation on the issue. Over the summer, it appeared redistricting efforts would go nowhere before the midterms; the state’s high court in June rejected similar lawsuits.
But liberal groups have found new ways to challenge the maps that the state Supreme Court appears open to considering. This time, plaintiffs are requesting the court appoint a three-judge panel to hear their partisan gerrymandering case, and a new group has stepped into the fray with a lawsuit that argues a novel anticompetitive gerrymandering claim.
The jury is still out on whether those rulings will come in time for 2026.
“Could they be? Yes. Will they be? That’s hard to say,” said Janine Geske, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice.
Some developments in the cases in October indicate that the gerrymandering fight in Wisconsin is far from over.
The justices have allowed Wisconsin’s six Republican congressmen to join the cases as defendants. The congressmen are now looking to force two of the court’s liberal justices, Janet Protasiewicz and Susan Crawford, to recuse themselves from the cases. Both justices were endorsedby the Democratic Party of Wisconsin; Protasiewicz criticized the maps on the campaign trail, and Crawford’s donors billed her as a justice who could help Democrats flip seats.
Some are unsure why the Republican congressmen are entering the fight now, months after the liberal groups filed the new cases.
“They took their time to even seek intervention, and now they’re seeking recusal, and now they’re trying to hold up the appointment process. I’m sure their goal is to try to throw sand in the gears of this litigation,” said Abha Khanna, a plaintiff attorney in Bothfeld v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, the partisan gerrymandering case requesting that the courts appoint a three-judge panel to review the maps.
The offices and campaigns of the six Republican congressmen did not respond to requests for comment.
Khanna said her team filed the lawsuit with enough time to potentially redraw the maps, despite the congressmen’s recent actions.
“There certainly is time to affect the 2026 elections,” she said.
This lawsuit lays out a more familiar partisan gerrymandering argument, in which lawyers say Wisconsin’s congressional maps discriminate against Democratic voters. Six of the state’s eight House seats are filled by Republicans, even though statewide elections have been close partisan races. Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin — a Republican and Democrat, respectively — won their most recent statewide elections by a percentage point or less, while Gov. Tony Evers kept his office by more than 3 percentage points in 2022 (Evers will not be seeking reelection in 2026).
The plaintiffs believe they ultimately have a strong case because the state’s high court ruled in 2023 that the “least change” principle — which dictated the 2021 maps to be drawn “consistent with existing boundaries” of the 2011 maps — should no longer be used as primary criteria in redistricting. The state legislative maps were changed. But the federal district maps were not.
In effect, the maps that were proposed by Evers in 2021 continued on the legacy of Republican gerrymandering, Khanna said. The lawsuit, filed in July, requests the appointment of a three-judge panel to hear the case, after the state Supreme Court in June rejected the plaintiffs’ petition.
“It’s a judicially created metric that violates the principles of the (Wisconsin) constitution,” Khanna said. “This can be decided without any fact-finding at all. The court can decide it as a matter of law, and then we can proceed quickly to a remedial map.”
Not everyone involved is so optimistic that this will be resolved quickly. Jeff Mandell, a plaintiff attorney in the redistricting lawsuit alleging that the maps are illegally too favorable to incumbents — a new argument that hasn’t been tested in the state — said it is “exceedingly unlikely” that new maps could be drawn in time for the midterm elections. Primary candidates must file their nomination papers to the elections commission by June 1, 2026. The final district lines must be in place by spring for candidates to circulate their papers among the right voters.
“If we don’t have maps by the end of March or so, it’s very, very difficult to run the election next November,” Mandell said.
Even if the Wisconsin Supreme Court rules that the current maps are unconstitutional, the most likely scenario would punt the task of redrawing to partisan officeholders, he added — a process that could hinder easy consensus and potentially draw out the timeline for months.
Mandell’s lawsuit is arguably facing a bigger hurdle as it attempts to make the case that the districts are drawn in a way that makes it extremely difficult for challengers to have a real chance.
The exception is Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, where Rep. Derrick Van Orden has won by fewer-than-four-point margins and is currently facing three challengers, including the well-funded Democrat Rebecca Cooke, who lost to him in 2024.
The median margin of victory in Wisconsin’s remaining congressional districts is about 29 percentage points, according to a NOTUS review.
“Thirty points is not something you can overcome by having a really good candidate, it’s not something you can overcome by having a great campaign plan and executing it flawlessly, it’s not something you can overcome when there’s a swing election,” Mandell said.
The next months will prove whether the incumbent argument is convincing to Wisconsin’s justices, who have heard their share of redistricting cases.
This story was produced andoriginally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
As a 19-year-old election worker in Hennepin County, Minnesota, Lydia McComas discovered how meaningful it was to help voters navigate the process. Less than a decade later, she’s the city clerk in Madison, Wisconsin, overseeing one of the most scrutinized election offices in the state and working to rebuild trust after last year’s ballot mishandling scandal.
Between those two points, McComas followed an unusually direct path: a college internship supporting elections planning, then a full-time job in a county elections office along with a graduate program in election administration.
She’s part of an emerging generation of officials who set out early and very intentionally, through internships and university training, to make a career out of election work. Driving this movement toward professionalized election administration are veterans of the field who recognize the need to replace retiring clerks and have spent years creating a stronger, more sustainable pipeline.
Together they are transforming a profession once dominated by civic-minded volunteers and on-the-job learners.
“I’d love for more young people to get involved with election administration and explore it as a future career,” McComas told Votebeat in an interview.
For now, McComas is an outlier in Wisconsin: At 28, she’s among the youngest to hold a municipal clerk position — and one of the few who pursued the election profession, on purpose, from the outset. Nearly 80% of the state’s chief election officials are over 50, and fewer than half have a college degree or higher, according to the Elections & Voting Information Center.
Her rise comes amid historic turnover that highlights the urgency of developing the pipeline of election officials: Between 2020 and 2024, more than 700 of Wisconsin’s municipal clerks left their posts, the highest churn in the nation.
The new generation is fully aware that the job has changed since many of those veteran clerks started, said EVIC research director Paul Manson, with their work under closer public examination and intense political pressure.
McComas’ expertise will be tested
McComas’ new role is about more than elections — she’ll take meeting minutes, process licenses and handle business registrations, among other duties. But her expertise is connecting with voters, the media and community partners and explaining complex election procedures in layman’s terms.
That expertise will be tested immediately in Madison, where trust in the city’s election office is still mending after last year’s controversy over 193 missing ballots. The fallout — investigations, a civil lawsuit, and the suspension and resignation of longtime clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl — left voters demanding transparency.
“There’s pressure to make sure that everything works well, that the public trusts us,” McComas said. She knows the climb will be steep. Most of the staff who weathered that turbulent year remain, seasoned administrators now adapting to greater public scrutiny.
The glare of attention on Madison, she said, mirrors the national reality for election administrators everywhere — their jobs are increasingly under the spotlight of polarization and doubt.
“Last year was really tough, and next year is tough,” McComas said, noting the four statewide elections ahead in 2026.
An early start in the workings of elections
People take different paths into election administration. Milwaukee’s chief election official, Paulina Gutiérrez, came from public safety and legislative work, while Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys was the mayor’s chief of staff. Others arrive from outside government — teachers, bankers or longtime poll workers who worked their way up.
McComas’ journey into this world started early. As a kid in Minneapolis, she tagged along with her parents to the polls, filling out mock ballots and proudly wearing an “I will vote” sticker. She also joined them knocking on doors for get-out-the-vote drives. Those formative experiences led her to study political science at the University of Minnesota, volunteer on campaigns and intern for U.S. Sen. Al Franken.
Her time on campaigns confirmed that the partisan side of politics wasn’t for her. “I was used to talking to people regardless of their party,” McComas said. “Working for candidates and not doing that just felt wrong.”
Her first job in elections was a college internship with Hennepin County in 2017, supporting the election department on planning, updating training manuals and legislative priorities. McComas was struck by the precision required in running elections and wanted to devote her career to it, she said.
After graduating, she joined Hennepin County Elections full time, first as a general election administrator and then specializing in voter engagement for a jurisdiction of 700,000 voters in and around Minneapolis. She helped voters get registered and answered questions about voting during a pandemic.
She also oversaw compliance with election laws and developed training for poll workers.
Meanwhile, she pursued a graduate certificate in election administration from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
She was hired in Madison in August.
A new era for training for election officials
Academic programs like the one McComas followed, focusing on elections as a career path, are more common today, but still rare at most universities, where public affairs education focuses more on city management, emergency planning and public health, said Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the National Association of Election Officials and a longtime election administration educator.
The ones that exist are growing: The University of Minnesota’s election program had just over 50 enrollees in 2017. In 2025, there were over 200. In addition to the Humphrey School, Auburn University offers a graduate certificate in election administration, and Northern Arizona University now provides an undergraduate program.
Meanwhile, 43 states, including Wisconsin, have other types of programs to train local election officials, a Bipartisan Policy Center analysis found. Wisconsin is also among the 22 states offering training specific to new election officials. The Arizona Secretary of State’s Arizona Fellows program places students in county election offices, boosting interest in election work and helping offices engage younger, more diverse voters.
Patrick, who has taught at the Humphrey School since 2016, sees an urgent need to formalize the field and promote it to youth because so many older clerks are retiring.
“It’s just not on anyone’s radar as an option,” Patrick said, “and I think that that’s part of the work we need to do as a profession, which is particularly challenging in this environment, because now people are aware of election administration for all the wrong reasons.”
Formalizing the pipeline might be even harder for Wisconsin, where most municipal clerks work part time, and most who work full time spend much of the year working on things besides elections.
McComas said that both Madison and Hennepin County try to do local outreach to universities and have interns to promote election administration as a career path.
Still, she finds herself explaining to many people that running elections is a full-time job, not just a poll-working gig for several days a year.
McComas says she’s prepared for challenge in Madison
In Madison, McComas said her first goal is to rebuild trust.
She plans to draw on her voter engagement background to make that happen. Under interim clerk Mike Haas, the city overhauled many of the systems that failed in the 2024 election, but those improvements, she said, went largely unnoticed because there wasn’t a strong communications plan.
“Next year,” she said, “we will be able to show the public that we are transparent and that we are answering any questions.”
Although her career doesn’t go back decades, McComas said her experience has prepared her for this moment. Her graduate certificate program gave her a broader perspective, she said, and helped reaffirm her commitment to the role.
Beyond school, McComas said the work — and the people she met in Hennepin County — sparked a lasting passion for election administration. Surrounded by colleagues who shared her dedication and curiosity, she found a community she wanted to be part of for the long haul.
“I knew I wanted to devote my career to that work,” she said.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Reading Time: 4minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
ICE agents arrested roughly 75 immigrants at or near its Milwaukee office between January and July of this year, mostly those without a past criminal conviction or a pending criminal charge.
The arrests of one Venezuelan couple reflect an apparent shift in ICE’s interpretation of protections for asylum seekers. Officers are now detaining even immigrants who don’t have removal cases in immigration court.
A Venezuelan couple arrested Oct. 23 during a routine check-in at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s downtown Milwaukee office are attempting to continue their asylum cases while detained — one in ICE’s Dodge County detention facility and the other in a Kentucky facility.
The arrests reflect an apparent shift in ICE’s interpretation of protections for asylum seekers, posing new risks for those waiting for immigration officials to hear their cases.
Diego Ugarte-Arenas and Dailin Pacheco-Acosta fled Venezuela in 2021, crossing the border at Eagle Pass, Texas, by November of that year and encountering border patrol officers, according to an ICE spokesperson. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have made the same journey in the last decade, of whom at least 5,000 have settled in Wisconsin.
Milwaukee immigration attorney Ben Crouse, who took on the couple’s case after they were detained, told Wisconsin Watch that border patrol officers initially provided Ugarte-Arenas and Pacheco-Acosta with notices to appear in immigration court. Critically, those notices didn’t provide a date or time for their future hearing, preventing the immigration court system from opening removal cases against them.
“There was a lag time between the Supreme Court saying they had to have times and dates on the notice to appear and DHS actually communicating with (the Department of) Justice to put things on calendars,” Crouse noted.
The couple then made their way to Wisconsin and filed for asylum, a legal protection from deportation for immigrants fleeing persecution. Their joint application cited their involvement in the political opposition to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as grounds for asylum, Crouse said.
Immigrants can take two paths to claim asylum in the U.S.
Ugarte-Arenas and Pacheco-Acosta filed for “affirmative” asylum, managed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and generally open only to those without removal cases before an immigration court. Without complete notices to appear, Crouse noted, the couple’s cases had not yet reached the court, opening the door to this pathway.
Immigrants with open removal cases apply for “defensive” asylum with an immigration court judge.
At least 100 immigrants with Wisconsin addresses have entered the defensive asylum process between January 2020 and August of this year, court records show. Most came from Nicaragua, Colombia and Venezuela. Between 2019 and 2024, immigration court judges in Chicago — the court with jurisdiction over most Wisconsin cases — denied roughly 40% of asylum petitions, according to data collected by the nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Under the Biden administration, immigration authorities began correcting incomplete notices to appear, enabling them to move asylum applications from the affirmative process to the defensive process. That swap rarely landed asylum seekers in detention, Crouse said.
Ugarte-Arenas’ and Pacheco-Acosta’s arrests are part of a broader shift in ICE’s attitude toward asylum. Multiple Milwaukee-area immigration attorneys say the agency is now detaining immigrants after terminating their affirmative asylum case.
An ICE spokesperson did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s questions about its new approach.
“ICE does not ‘randomly’ arrest illegal aliens,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “Being in the United States illegal (sic) is a violation of federal law. All aliens who remain in the U.S. without a lawful immigration status may be subject to arrest and removal.”
Navigating the asylum process from ICE detention is logistically difficult, Crouse noted. Scheduling a brief phone call can take days, he said, and attorneys must rely on faraway sheriffs’ offices to ferry paperwork to and from their clients.
“Tiny little things take days to fix,” he added.
ICE’s shifting approach to asylum is not limited to affirmative cases.
In recent months, the agency has also begun filing motions to dismiss the immigration court cases of defensive asylum seekers, said Milwaukee immigration attorney Marc Christopher. Once the immigrants’ cases are dismissed, ICE can place them in “expedited removal” proceedings — a fast-moving process that does not require a hearing.
In some cases, Christopher said, “they dismiss a case in court and ICE is waiting right outside. Or they wait until they come to a check-in and arrest them there.”
ICE agents arrested roughly 75 immigrants at or near its Milwaukee office between January and July of this year, more than at any other Wisconsin site listed in agency arrest records during the period. Most of those arrested at the office, including Ugarte-Arenas and Pacheco-Acosta, had neither a past criminal conviction nor a pending criminal charge.
The Milwaukee office also includes a “holding room” in which an average of six people were detained at a time as of June, according to Vera Institute of Justice data.
Reading Time: 4minutesListen: An online database that tracks billion-dollar weather disasters throughout the United States is back. The Mississippi River Basin Ag and Water Desk’s Héctor Alejandro Arzate reports.
After months of uncertainty over its future, an online resource for tracking the financial cost of weather and climate disasters throughout the United States has been revived.
The U.S. Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database was previously managed by a team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Since 1980, the program has been responsible for analyzing wildfires, tornadoes, winter storms, and other disasters that cause at least $1 billion in damage. But it was retired in May, one among several NOAA products and services to get shuttered by President Donald Trump’s administration this year.
Now, a nonprofit called Climate Central, which communicates climate change science and solutions, has hired the scientist who led the project at NOAA, Adam Smith, and has taken on the responsibility of compiling and releasing the latest data.
In the first six months of 2025, there were 14 disasters with damages costing just over $101 billion in total. Many of them occurred throughout the Mississippi River Basin — states like Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee were among the hardest hit by severe storms and tornadoes, which caused just over $40 billion in damage.
Wisconsin saw $1.1 billion in severe storm damage in early 2025 — part of the more than $5 billion in such damage since 2021.
The January wildfires in Los Angeles resulted in approximately $60 billion in damages, making it the most expensive wildfire on record.
California’s January wildfires — the most expensive on record — are estimated to have done about $60 billion in damage. But many other states also saw damages from natural disasters in the billions of dollars. (Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk)
Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at Climate Central, said the Climate Central staff brought back the database because they “were hearing from every single sector how important this data is for decision-making and understanding areas that are increasingly at risk for billion-dollar disasters.”
Among those who have typically relied on the database are policymakers, researchers and local communities. It’s especially important for planning disaster relief and emergency management efforts “because they can focus resources on areas that are seeing big trends in the number of billion-dollars disasters,” Labe said.
Bryan Koon, the president and chief executive officer of the consulting firm Innovative Emergency Management, said the analysis is helpful. His company works with government agencies and other organizations to help with disaster preparedness, response and recovery.
“These kinds of data sets are very important in the broad scope, at least from my perspective, for trend analysis,” Koon said.
In states like Missouri, for example, he said his company and other interest groups can analyze previous billion-dollar disaster data on tornadoes and their frequency over the past decade or two. That information can be used to inform how insurance companies write their policy, how buildings are designed and how notification systems are structured.
“I want to make sure that we, as a nation, wrap our arms around as much information about these things as we can so that we communicate the threat of future disasters for Americans,” Koon said.
The Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative — a cooperative of more than 100 communities between Minnesota and Louisiana — pushed the Trump administration to keep the database open, according to the cooperative’s executive director, Colin Wellenkamp.
“It was a critical database that showed us where costs associated with disasters were most impactful. What sectors of the economy were hit the hardest by a disaster? Whether it be intense heat, flooding, drought, forest fire, named storm event, or otherwise,” Wellenkamp said.
From a cost-benefit analysis standpoint, said Wellenkamp, the database can tell cities, counties and states how to spend resources on mitigation to avoid incurring similar costs from future disasters. But industries like manufacturing, construction and agriculture also want to see the data, he said. That’s because the database’s financial impact analysis includes physical damage to commercial and residential property, losses associated with business interruption and crop destruction, damage to electrical infrastructure, and more.
Other stakeholders that see the value of the database are both the insurance and re-insurance industries.
Franklin Nutter is the president of the Reinsurance Association of America, one of the largest trade groups in the country. The goal of reinsurance is to provide insurance for the insurance companies, stabilizing the industry and playing a role in “the financial management of natural disaster losses,” according to the RAA’s website.
“It’s like an iceberg: the public is made aware of the impact of extreme weather by seeing the graphics (the tip of the iceberg) but most commercial users value the underlying data (the body of the iceberg),” said Nutter by email.
While the billion-dollar disaster data is valuable to various financial stakeholders, Nutter said he believes its greatest value comes from providing “public awareness of the increasing extreme weather risk.”
There are many factors that come together to make a billion-dollar disaster — such as weather, infrastructure, population, and location. Labe said that the number of events has been increasing since 1980.
“It’s very likely that 2025 will not be the costliest year on record when we look at the statistics, but it definitely falls into this long-term increasing trend,” he said.
Climate Central is not the only organization trying to pick up the pieces of a resource that was shut down by the federal government or is at risk.
But Wellenkamp said that there aren’t many states that can afford the response and recovery efforts from a billion-dollar disaster.
“These (initiatives) are not meant to be permanent solutions,” Wellenkamp said. “These are not meant to replace federal capacity. They are meant to put our cities in a relatively secure position until the federal questions are answered. And the sooner that those answers come, the better.”
For many, the answers will require data.
“Just because the federal government decided they’re not going to do it anymore doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing,” Koon said.
Update (Oct. 31, 2025): A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to tap into its reserves to partially pay for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is set to run out of funding on Saturday.
U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell heard oral arguments Friday in a case brought by various cities and nonprofits. After the hearing, the judge ruled from the bench that the Department of Agriculture “must distribute contingency money timely or as soon as possible for the Nov. 1 payments to be made,” The New York Times reported.
“There is no doubt — and it is beyond argument — that irreparable harm will begin to occur, if it hasn’t already occurred in the terror it has caused some people about the availability of funding for food for their family,” McConnell said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “That irreparable harm will occur if this injunction does not pass and if SNAP benefits are not paid consistent with the mandate from Congress.”
The Department of Agriculture initially said it planned to use the more than $5 billion in contingency funds that are legally intended “for use only in such amounts and at such times as may become necessary to carry out program operations” to cover SNAP benefits. However, the Trump administration later changed course, claiming it was illegal to use that money for SNAP, and quietly deleting the initial guidance from USDA’s website.
Despite the ruling, it’s likely that the 42 million people who rely on SNAP will miss at least part of their benefits, because the process of distributing the funds did not begin as early as usual due to the shutdown.
Update (Oct. 31, 2025): U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani issued an order Friday declaring that the Trump administration’s “suspension of SNAP benefits is unlawful.” This case was brought by a coalition of Democratic states that filed a lawsuit Tuesday, arguing that the government’s decision to not use contingency funds was “contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.”
A bipartisan coalition of state officials, including Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, sued the Department of Agriculture on Tuesday to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program partially funded through November.
In a press release obtained by NOTUS ahead of the lawsuit being filed, New York Attorney General Letitia James argued the administration is unlawfully allowing SNAP to run out of funding when it has “access to billions of dollars in contingency funds that Congress specifically appropriated to keep benefits flowing during funding lapses.”
The coalition of state officials, which includes attorneys general and governors, filed the lawsuit in a federal court in Massachusetts. They are asking for a court to immediately intervene to keep funding, which is set to run out at the end of the month, flowing. The program is facing the possibility of its first-ever pause in funding because of the government shutdown.
“Millions of Americans, including children, seniors, and veterans, are on the verge of losing access to the food assistance they rely upon,” Kaul said. “No one should have to go hungry because of dysfunction in our federal government.”
Politico first reported that dozens of Democratic attorneys general and governors were considering legal action. The coalition includes officials from New York, Nevada, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and California.
Nevada’s and Vermont’s attorneys general are part of the lawsuit, the only states listed that have Republican governors. In all, more than 24 states and the District of Columbia are involved.
“We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. Continue to hold out for the Far-Left wing of the party or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive timely WIC and SNAP allotments,” a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture said in a statement in response to the lawsuit.
In a memo Axios reported last week, the Department of Agriculture took the position that it would not tap into contingency funds and also argued that states that picked up the tab in the meantime could not be legally reimbursed.
The coalition of state officials is asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order mandating USDA to use all of the “available contingency funds toward November SNAP benefits for all plaintiff states.”
It’s one of several steps state officials are trying to take to preserve SNAP benefits, which nearly 42 million people across the country rely on. Outside of legal action, state officials have sought to tap emergency funding in their own states — though some have protested the lack of assurance that the federal government will reimburse their states and have argued that it’s the federal government’s responsibility.
“You’ve seen other local papers close and their communities really don’t have anything,” said Bob Van Enkenvoort, the school district’s communications coordinator and the paper’s editor. “So the district sees this as a valuable community service.”
It’s the (unfortunately rare) kind of story that shines a light on people making a real difference in their community by connecting with their neighbors. And it began by listening to readers like you.
Before I was hired last summer, our team conducted listening sessions, surveys and interviews with people across northeast Wisconsin to hear what kind of news they want as we prepare to tell more stories in the region. In one of those interviews, a director at the Pulaski Chamber of Commerce mentioned that Pulaski High School’s newspaper is the only source of consistent local news in the area.
Our “pathways to success” reporters want to talk to Wisconsin high school teachers who a) have taught dual enrollment courses or b) want to, but lack the proper training. We want to hear about the draws or drawbacks of teaching these classes. If you know someone who fits the bill, email mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org or nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
Joe and I spent several months learning how Pulaski News has become a trusted fixture of the community and a workforce development tool, which included several visits to the classroom the paper runs out of and a trip to Pulaski’s local museum.
We have reason to believe the final product resonated — as of Monday afternoon, people spent nearly 10,000 minutes with it, and over 80 accounts have shared the story on Instagram.
Listening to our readers in this way has helped me better understand the northeast region. As time goes on, you’ll continue to see more stories from this part of the state. So consider this an invitation to keep the ideas and feedback coming. What stories should be told? We’re listening. Email me at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org, or fill out my form.
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“I just hope that we’re able to help someone get through the grief process because it is a journey,” Allen said.
Her son, Amareon Allen, was shot and killed in 2021.
Processing loss and moving forward
Gathered outside on a warm morning in late September, boot camp participants received small envelopes and carefully opened them.
Butterflies emerged.
Each butterfly moved at its own pace, some eagerly taking off while others clung to the envelopes, grass, clothing or hands of the people releasing them.
The activitysymbolizes the act of releasing lost loved ones but also overcoming challenges, according to Kimber.
When Kimber lost her son, Maurice Grimes Jr., to gun violence in 2019 and went through a divorce, she said she felt angryand like she had nothing to live for.
“I found healing in spaces where I could connect with people that experienced some of the grief that I did,” Kimber said.
Trying to stay strong
Monette Harmon, a funeral director apprentice and certified death doula with Neka’s Funeral & Cremation Services, speaks during a mock funeral held as part of the Grinding & Grieving Bootcamp. (Meredith Melland / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
The boot camp combines the sharing of personal experiences with speeches and resources about mourning and financial planning.
“I’m here to turn my tragedy into triumph and to be around other people that’s going through something,” Kamid Everett said.
Everett’s 14-year-old son, Bryant Triplett, was shot and killed in December 2024 at North 21st Street and West Concordia Avenue in Milwaukee while she was already recovering from her mother’s death from lung cancer.
She said she tries to stay strong for her family, but things like the back-to-school season and trying Bryant’s favorite food, sushi, remind her of him.
“He didn’t get a chance to leave his mark on the world,” she said.
Techniques and tools for navigating grief
During the boot camp, participants used art therapy techniques to express their emotions, including coloring a mask to reflect how the outside world sees them versus how they actually felt inside.
Rochell Wallace, one of the event’s speakers, colors a jack-o’-lantern drawing as part of the art therapy activities at the Grinding & Grieving Bootcamp. (Meredith Melland / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
Some of the speakers created affirmations or “I” statements to comfort and empower the audience.
Monette Harmon, a funeral director apprentice and certified death doula with Neka’s Funeral & Cremation Services, led a mock funeral in front of a casket adorned with flowers, candles and photos.
She reminded attendees they had the right to grieve, to rest and practice self-care and to not lie about their feelings.
“People can’t help you if you can’t be honest,” she said.
Daniel Harris, a gospel and rap artist, wrote a bookabout griefand askedparticipants to record audio on their phones as they repeated messages like “I am a storm survivor” after him.
“There’s going to be times when you’re going to need words of encouragement when no one is around,” he said.
Everett said Harris’ message of surviving the storms of grief resonated with her.
“His whole message was just everything to me because you got to keep going, and then people don’t know what you’ve been through because we always try to hide what we’ve been through,” Everett said.
Monette Harmon, a certified death doula, speaks to attendees about her own experiences with grief at the Grinding & Grieving Bootcamp at The Missing Peace Community Collective in Milwaukee. (Meredith Melland / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
The organizations plan to continue to provide grief services and offer their own events.
Babett Reed, executive director of The Missing Peace Community Collective, said she hopes to open a rage room in the space. She thinks the community needs more events like the boot camp.
“Every month, we need to have a place where we can go and be healed and be able to talk to someone,” Reed said.
Butterfly’s Sacred Journey offers resources and events using art therapy, books and journals to support grieving children.
The Amareon Allen Foundation’s Next Chapter Resource Hub & Healing Circle meets from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. every fourth Saturday of the month at rotating locations. It also hosts Thanksgiving and Christmas givebacks for families impacted by gun violence.
Studies have identified a caregiver shortfall in the U.S., and higher immigration has been empirically linked to alleviating this.
Adults 65 and over made up 18% of the U.S. population in 2024, up from 12% in 2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Estimates suggest that this will rise to 23% in 2060. These increases mean an increased demand for caregiving.
Caregiving is often performed by immigrants. One study published in the American Journal of Health Economics finds that immigration increases nurse hours in nursing homes and leads to an improvement in the outcomes of residents. Another study by Tara Watson (Brookings), Kristin Butcher (Wellesley), and Kelsey Moran (MIT) estimated that a 10 percentage point rise in the share of the population that is foreign-born decreases the percentage of the elderly living in a care facility by 29%. This is due to a greater availability of home care.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
This fact brief was originally published by Econofact on October 27, 2025, and was authored by Gabriel Vinocur. Econofact is a member of the Gigafact network.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ sweeping plan to overhaul Wisconsin’s aging prison system, which includes closing a prison built in the 1800s, moved forward Tuesday with bipartisan support despite complaints from Republican lawmakers that their concerns weren’t being addressed.
The bipartisan state building commission unanimously approved spending $15 million to proceed with planning for the Evers proposal. Republicans objected, saying his plan was “doomed to failure,” but they voted for it in the hopes it could be changed later.
Evers voiced frustration with Republicans who said they weren’t part of development of the plan.
“We’ve got to get this damned thing done, that’s the bottom line,” he said.
Republicans have opposed parts of the plan that would reduce the overall capacity of the state prison system by 700 beds and increase the number of offenders who could be released on supervision. The GOP-led Legislature called for closing the troubled prison in Green Bay by 2029, but Evers vetoed that provision earlier this year, saying it couldn’t be done without getting behind his entire plan.
The building commission’s approval on Tuesday for spending the $15 million in planning money starts that process.
Republican members of the building commission complained that Evers was plowing ahead without considering other ideas or concerns from GOP lawmakers. Republican state Sen. Andre Jacqué objected to reducing the number of beds in the prison system that he said is currently “dangerously unsafe.”
He called it a plan “doomed to failure” and “not a serious proposal.”
“I feel like we’ve decided to plow ahead without the opportunity for compromise,” Jacqué said. “We’re merely asking that any ideas from our side of the aisle have the option of being considered.”
A GOP proposal to expand the scope of the plan was rejected after the commission, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, deadlocked.
Evers said any Republican who wanted to be involved in the process going forward could be. Republicans said ahead of the vote that they were not included in discussions that led to the current proposal.
“Those other options will be discussed,” Evers said.
Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy said that approval of the planning money was needed to keep the momentum going for closing the Green Bay prison, which Republicans support.
The entire plan, once fully enacted, would take six years to complete and cost an estimated $500 million. Building a new prison, as Republicans had called for, would cost about $1 billion. Evers is not seeking a third term next year, so it would be up to the next governor to either continue with his plan or go in a different direction.
The multitiered proposal starts with finally closing the troubled Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake juvenile correctional facilities in northern Wisconsin and building a new one near Madison at the site of a current minimum-security prison. The Lincoln Hills campus would then be converted into a medium security adult prison. The prison in Green Bay, built in 1898, would be closed.
The plan also proposes that the state’s oldest prison, which was built in Waupun in 1851, be converted from a maximum-security prison to a medium-security center focused on vocational training. The Stanley Correctional Center would be converted from a medium- to a maximum-security prison and the prison in Hobart would be expanded to add 200 minimum-security beds.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Affordable Care Act premiums, expected to skyrocket in 2026 unless enhanced subsidies are extended, have increased about 118% since coverage for individuals began in 2014.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., made the three-times claim Oct. 21, as the federal government shutdown continued.
To end the shutdown, Democrats want to extend the enhanced Obamacare subsidies, which made more people eligible. They expire Dec. 31.
Without enhanced subsidies, Wisconsinites could see 2026 premium increases of up to 800%, according to the state.
The average monthly premium for a benchmark Obamacare plan was $273 in 2014; it is expected to be at least $596 in 2026.
Premiums, initially so low that insurers lost money, jumped in 2017, stayed stable since 2018 but are expected to rise more than 18% in 2026, KFF Obamacare program director Cynthia Cox said.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Lake Pepin, the largest naturally occurring lake on the Mississippi River, is a beloved resource and important economic engine for the Wisconsin and Minnesota towns that border it.
In the summer, its calm, expansive waters are popular for sailing and water skiing — the latter of which was invented on the lake in 1922. In the winter, it’s an ice fishing hub.
But it’s got a big problem: Massive amounts of sediment are eroding from stream banks, bluffs and agricultural fields upstream and settling in the lake. Parts of it have become so shallow that boat travel is impossible, leaving some communities cut off. The upper one-third of the lake could be unusable for recreation by the end of this century.
A new yearlong project aims to understand how to curb an overlooked source of that sediment.
The Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance, a nonprofit organization working to improve the health of the lake, has launched an investigation into how erosion can be controlled in ravines and gullies. Ravines act like fast-moving highways, delivering soil into the Mississippi River and then the lake, according to the alliance. The analysis will be led by Norman Senjem, who retired from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in 2011 and has deep knowledge of the lake’s challenges with sedimentation.
Senjem plans to work with county conservationists and watershed groups in south-central Minnesota, which delivers large sediment loads to Lake Pepin, to identify the best ways to stop erosion from ravines.
Michael Anderson, executive director of the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance, said with results from Senjem in hand, landowners will be able to take action to stop sediment from ravines on their properties.
“We’re obviously not the people who will be the excavators,” he said. “We’ll help put the pieces together and start to push the snowball down the hill to get momentum going.”
‘Hidden’ ravines deliver massive sediment loads to Lake Pepin
Lake Pepin, which stretches 21 miles between Bay City and Nelson on Wisconsin’s western border, has always acted as a sort of settling pond for sediment. Once river water enters the top of the lake, its slower-moving waters allow silts and other particles to drop to the bottom, and the water that exits the lake and flows farther down the river is cleaner.
But sediment erosion has increased tenfold since before European settlement of the area. Each year, a sediment load as big as a 32-story building spanning a full city block enters the lake, according to the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance. At this rate, the entire lake could be filled in less than 350 years.
A large majority of that sediment comes from the Minnesota River basin, which covers nearly 15,000 square miles, including many areas that are heavily farmed. There are thousands of ravines that cut through the slopes on the sides of the river, ushering sediment from the farmed landscape quickly downstream.
“But they’re kind of hidden away,” on the edges of farm fields or wooded areas, Senjem said. “I’m going to try to shed some light on them.”
Built structures called water and sediment control basins can intercept sediment from ravines, Senjem said. But increased rainfall across the Midwest due to climate change is rendering the basins less effective. The expanded use of agricultural drainage tile in the Minnesota River basin, an underground pipe network meant to more easily drain farm fields, also contributes to water flowing faster down ravines.
Senjem expects to find that more work will be necessary to control the problem, such as building multiple control basins in a row to slow the sediment or adding so-called “buffer strips,” made of grass or permanent vegetation, to help catch more of it.
Over the next year, Senjem will study which options like these have been implemented across south-central Minnesota to limit sediment from ravines. Those might offer a road map to members of the Legacy Alliance as to which types are most effective. Since such projects can be costly, he’ll also include in his analysis what kinds of financial assistance are available to landowners to undertake them.
For landowners to want to take action to save a lake many miles away, there’s got to be local incentive, too, Senjem said — like if a restored ravine would protect a road or smooth out a farm field. He’ll prioritize potential solutions that do that as well.
The project is funded by a $15,000 grant from the Red Wing Area Fund, a community foundation on the north end of Lake Pepin.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin resumed scheduling abortions on Monday after a nearly monthlong pause due to federal Medicaid funding cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill that took effect at the beginning of October.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said it was able to resume scheduling abortions as of noon on Monday because it no longer fits the definition of a “prohibited entity” under the new federal law that took effect this month and can receive Medicaid funds.
The organization said it dropped its designation as an “essential community provider” as defined under the Affordable Care Act. Dropping the designation will not result in changes to the cost for abortions or other services or affect the organization’s funding, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin President and CEO Tanya Atkinson said.
“At this point, in all of our research and analysis, we really shouldn’t see much of an impact on patient access,” she said. “If relinquishing this does ultimately impact our bottom line, then we will have to understand what that path forward is.”
A national fight over abortion funding
Abortion funding has been under attack across the U.S., particularly for affiliates of Planned Parenthood, the biggest provider. The abortion landscape has shifted frequently since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that allowed states to ban abortion. Currently, 12 states do not allow it at any stage of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four more ban it after about six weeks’ gestation.
Planned Parenthood has warned that about half its clinics that provide abortion could be closed nationwide due to the ban in the new federal law on Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood for services other than abortion.
Wisconsin, where abortion is legal but the Republican-controlled Legislature has passed numerous laws limiting access, was the only state where Planned Parenthood paused all abortions because of the new federal law, Atkinson said.
Because of the complexities and varieties of state abortion laws, Planned Parenthood affiliates are responding to the new federal law in a variety of ways, Atkinson said. In Arizona, for example, Planned Parenthood stopped accepting Medicaid but continued to provide abortions.
The move in Wisconsin is “clearly aimed at sidestepping” the federal law, Wisconsin Right to Life said.
“Planned Parenthood’s abortion-first business model underscores why taxpayer funding should never support organizations that make abortion a priority,” said Heather Weininger, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life. “Women in difficult circumstances deserve compassionate, life-affirming care — the kind of support the pro-life movement is committed to offering.”
Impact on Wisconsin abortion clinics
In Wisconsin, pausing abortions for the past 26 days meant that women who would normally go to clinics in the southeastern corner of the state instead had to look for other options, including traveling to Chicago, which is within a three-hour drive of the Planned Parenthood facilities.
Affiliated Medical Services and Care for All also provide abortions at clinics in Milwaukee.
Atkinson said it was “really, really difficult to say” how many women were affected by the pause in services. She did not have numbers on how many women who wanted to have an abortion since the pause went into effect had to seek services elsewhere.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin serves about 50,000 people, and about 60% of them are covered by Medicaid, the organization said.
Given those numbers, the priority was on finding a way to continue receiving Medicaid funding and dropping the “essential community provider” status, Atkinson said.
Wisconsin is part of a multistate federal lawsuit challenging the provision in the law. A federal appeals court in September said the government could halt the payments while a court challenge to the provision moves ahead.
Ramifications for Medicaid
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin cited a Sept. 29 court filing on behalf of U.S. Health and Human Services that said family planning organizations could continue billing Medicaid if they gave up either their tax-exempt status or the “essential community provider” designation.
By giving up that designation, it no longer fits the definition of “prohibited entity” under the federal law and can continue to receive federal Medicaid funds, the organization said. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is not giving up its tax-exempt status.
The “essential community provider” designation was originally given to organizations to help make it easier for them to be considered in-network for billing with private health insurers, Planned Parenthood said.
Atkinson called it a “nuanced provision” of the law and she does not anticipate that giving it up will affect Planned Parenthood’s ability to continue providing abortions and other services.
Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of services including cancer screenings and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment. Federal Medicaid money was already not paying for abortion, but affiliates relied on Medicaid to stay afloat. Services other than abortion are expected to expand in light of the new law.
Planned Parenthood performed 3,727 abortions in Wisconsin between Oct. 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2024, the group said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ plan to overhaul Wisconsin’s prisons is set for a crucial vote this week that could determine whether the state can meet a 2029 closure of the Green Bay Correctional Institution and the long-awaited shutdown of Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth facilities.
The State Building Commission at a public meeting Tuesday is expected to vote on whether to release $15 million for advancing Evers’ plan, an amount the Legislature included in the 2025-27 biennial budget. Subcommittees will meet prior to the full commission Tuesday afternoon, which could signal how Republican members may vote on the money for Evers’ plan. Republican lawmakers were tight-lipped Monday morning about whether they have an alternative plan and whether they plan to roll it out Tuesday.
Evers in February announced what he called a “domino series” of projects that would include closing Green Bay Correctional Institution, converting Lincoln Hills into a facility for adults and turning Waupun’s prison into a “vocational village” that would offer job skill training to qualifying inmates. Evers describes the plan as the most realistic and cost-effective way to stabilize the state’s prison population.
The Green Bay prison has been roundly criticized as unsafe and outdated, Lincoln Hills has only in recent months come into compliance with a court-ordered plan to remedy problems dating back a decade, and Waupun has had lockdowns, inmate deaths and criminal charges against a former warden.
The $15 million would fund initial plans and a design report that would allow capital projects in Evers’ proposals to be funded in the 2025-27 budget, according to the governor’s office. It would also prevent delays of Evers’ plan while he is still in office. Evers is not seeking reelection next year, and Wisconsin will have a new governor in 2027.
But it’s unclear how the eight-member commission, which includes four Republicans, will vote on whether to release the $15 million for the governor’s plan. Sens. Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, and Andre Jacqué, R-New Franken, declined to comment while still reviewing the proposals. Reps. Rob Swearingen, R-Rhinelander, and Robert Wittke, R-Caledonia, did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch.
In addition to Evers, the commission includes Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska; Rep. Jill Billings, D-La Crosse; and citizen member Barb Worcester, who served as one of Evers’ initial deputy chiefs of staff.
Pfaff, who said he will support Evers’ request, said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the $15 million will get approved with the necessary bipartisan support for it to pass. It’s not a final policy decision, Pfaff said.
“I think it’s important to know that the proposal that’s being brought forward is a design and planning stage, so it’s not the end-all or be-all,” Pfaff said.
At least one Republican, Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard, has asked fellow party members on the commission to support Evers’ request. Howard represents a district near the Green Bay Correctional Institution.
“I believe that the release of the $15 million will be important in moving corrections planning forward in our state,” Steffen wrote in an Oct. 14 letter to the Republican commission members.
Corrections plans in the Legislature
The funding for Evers’ prison plan, which was included in the governor’s original budget proposal, totaled $325 million. During the budget process the Legislature approved just $15 million for corrections projects and a 2029 closure of the Green Bay Correctional Institution.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, criticized the governor for not including GOP lawmakers in the process and suggested the party would form its own plan.
“The idea of letting thousands of people out of jail early, tearing down prisons and not replacing the spots, I can’t imagine our caucus will go for it,” Vos told reporters in February.
A spokesperson for Vos did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about whether the party started a process for forming its own plan. Evers in July partially vetoed the 2029 deadline for the Green Bay Correctional Institution and criticized Republicans for setting a date without providing a plan to close the prison.
While lawmakers on the State Building Commission have since been tight-lipped about which way they plan to vote, leaders in both Waupun and Allouez — on whose land Green Bay Correctional sits — haven’t been shy to express their support for the plan.
Waupun Mayor Rohn Bishop said he favors any plan that will keep Waupun Correctional Institution open. With three prisons within its jurisdiction, Waupun has been called Prison City in honor of its major employers.
“We take pride in the fact it’s here,” Bishop said of the 180-year-old prison.
Under the proposal, Waupun’s prison would turn from a traditional, maximum prison to what’s been called a vocational village that would offer job-skill training to those who qualify. The idea is modeled after similar programs in Michigan, Missouri and Louisiana.
“The first and most important thing is to keep the prison here for the economic reasons of the jobs, what it does for Waupun utilities, and how our wastewater sewage plant is built for the prison,” Bishop said. “If it were to close, that would shift to the ratepayers.”
In recent years, complaints about dire conditions within the cell halls have mounted, with inmates describing a crumbling infrastructure and infestations of birds and rodents. Under Evers’ proposal, Waupun’s prison would have to temporarily close while the facility undergoes renovations.
Meanwhile, under Evers’ plan, Green Bay’s prison is slated to close. In Allouez, where the prison stands, village President Jim Rafter said the closure can’t come soon enough.
“I’m more optimistic than ever that the plans will move forward this time,” Rafter said, pointing to the bipartisan support he has seen on the issue.
For Rafter, his eagerness to close the prison is partly economic: The prison currently stands on some of the most valuable real estate in Brown County, he said, and redeveloping it would be a financial boon for the village of Allouez.
But it also comes from safety concerns for both correctional officers and inmates.
“GBCI historically has been one of the most dangerous facilities across Wisconsin, built in the 1800s, and it has well outlived its usefulness,” Rafter said. “Its design doesn’t allow for safe passage of inmates from one area to the other. So safety is a huge concern.”
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When a major infrastructure project comes to town, it can become a herculean effort to locate information about the development and its potential environmental impacts.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources hosts an online permitting database. The website serves as a public repository of documents related to projects like large livestock farms, mines and even mock beaver dams.
But queue it up and face an onslaught of records.
If it takes a grown professional to decipher the documents, what would it take for a teenager to care?
A student club in Stillwater Area Public Schools, located in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, is exploring methods to bring such esoteric data to life.
At a recent environmental forum in Hudson, Wisconsin, the youth showcased their work, including constructing a submersible robot that will assess water quality in area lakes.
Another project examined water quality in the St. Croix River watershed — spanning both Minnesota and Wisconsin — including the potential impacts of a proposed Burnett County hog farm.
That animal operation was the subject of a three-part Wisconsin Watch investigation, which found that the developers improperly designated some farmland for manure spreading without the property owners’ consent.
Wisconsin regulations require the owners of large farms to own or rent a sufficient land base on which to apply livestock manure, but Wisconsin Watch verified that at least 11 of 39 landowners listed in the farm’s plan were not contacted. Some hadn’t decided if they wanted manure on their land, while many objected outright.
Even after the developers proposed hauling excess manure to Minnesota, the Wisconsin DNR rejected their application.
The hog farm would have been constructed in the headwaters of the St. Croix River in the town of Trade Lake. Field runoff ultimately would have flowed downstream to Stillwater.
Livestock farming in the St. Croix River watershed introduces fecal waste equivalent to 3.25 million people, according to estimates produced by retired University of Iowa faculty member Chris Jones, who specializes in water quality monitoring.
Area drinking wells already exceed nitrate standards, and residents feared that manure from an additional 20,000-pig farm would be a toxic addition.
Michael Manore, founder and project lead of the “This is Stillwater” initiative, which partners with the student club, created the digital model of the watershed showcased at the forum. He said the visuals sharpened the scope of the hog farm’s possible impacts: widespread manure hauling, roadside spills and odor.
The school district’s Synergy Club, led by Julie Balfanz, encourages students to visualize data in novel ways, using tools like the computer game Minecraft.
“So many of these ideas came from the kids because this is what they’re into,” Balfanz said. “But they just don’t have adults that listen to their ideas and let them experiment.”
Manore and Balfanz hope their efforts inspire youth to respond to community challenges, including environmental sustainability and water quality.
In a digitized world, human attention is an increasingly valuable commodity, and Manore realized that more than a dozen state and federal agencies govern surface water and underground aquifers, producing an “insurmountable” puddle of data.
“So much of sustainability is checkmarks or checkboxes on a brochure,” he said. “I go out and stand in my environment and I sniff the air or I dig my feet into the ground or I swim in the water. I don’t have a clue what that checkmark box translates into the true raw health metrics of my community.”
Now Manore is pondering ways to dispense with screens altogether — or at least plant them in nature.
Could tech use DNR records to augment reality like an interactive game of Pokémon GO?
Manore sure hopes so.
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The average Wisconsin farmer is nearly 57 years old, and farmers are increasingly finding that their children don’t want to take over their operations.
Legislation introduced by Wisconsin lawmakers would create a state-run farmland link program to connect farmers who are interested in selling or renting out their land to beginning farmers.
Eight states, including Minnesota and Michigan, have land link programs run in whole or in part by government agencies.
While advocates say the need for this type of program is real, some feel the legislation needs to include funding to be successful.
Joy Kirkpatrick spends much of her time thinking about the future of Wisconsin’s farmland.
As a farm succession outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, she helps farmers figure out what to do with their farms when they’re ready to retire.
A flood of farmers will soon face that question. The average Wisconsin farmer is nearly 57, and a growing share are 65 or older.
For generations, the answer was simple: Hand off the land and operations to their kids. But farmers are increasingly finding their grown children have other plans.
To fund their retirement, today’s farmers will often weigh whether to rent or sell their land to larger agricultural operations, real estate developers, energy companies or even private equity firms.
Meanwhile, a new generation of aspiring farmers is struggling to get started. Many didn’t grow up on farms and don’t have the land they need. In surveys, beginning farmers nationwide say their biggest challenge is finding affordable farmland.
Nationally, nearly 70% of all farmland is expected to change hands in the next 20 years, whether through inheritance or sale, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. What happens to that land will determine whether Wisconsin’s farmers can retire comfortably, and whether small farms have a place in the state’s future.
“If we want land to be available to new or beginning farmers, figuring out ways that the land can be affordable for them and still provide the income that the owner generation needs is key,” Kirkpatrick said.
Experts say meeting those two goals will require a combination of strategies including tax incentives, conservation easements and loan assistance. But a group of Wisconsin lawmakers is looking to make a dent in the problem with a simple step: a website to connect those with farmland for sale or rent to those looking to start new farms.
A group of Republican lawmakers introduced Assembly Bill 411 and its Senate counterpart, SB 412, this summer. The legislation would direct the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to create a “farmland link” program to assist farmers with transferring property. Central to that effort, the bill instructs DATCP to build and maintain a website where farm owners could post land for sale or rent, and beginning farmers could inquire about the opportunities they’re looking for, including the chance to be mentored by an experienced farmer before taking the reins.
The legislation’s lead author, Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, grew up on a dairy farm and now runs a roughly 50-head beef operation. He’s watched farmland prices rise, much like home prices.
“It’s much, much more challenging than it was even five to 10 years ago,” Moses said.
It’s not just a cost problem, Moses said. In the past, farmers looking to pass on their land would talk to their neighbors to see who was interested. Today, those communities are often less connected, so prospective farmers need other ways to find land, Moses said. That’s the purpose of a farmland link website.
“It kind of allows them to not have to go out and sift through all the other real estate listings,” Moses said.
Eight other states, including neighboring Minnesota and Michigan, have land link programs run in whole or in part by state or local governments. In Wisconsin, where the previous state-run program shut down around a decade ago, only regional nonprofitorganizations now offer the service.
While some Wisconsin farm advocates are optimistic the bill could chip away at a tough problem, others say it lacks the funding and specifics to make it work.
Pair finds farm of their dreams
Les Macare and Els Dobrick of Racing Heart Farm in Colfax found their 36 acres in the Farmland Clearinghouse listings, published by the Minnesota-based nonprofit Land Stewardship Project.
It was 2016, and the two lived in Minneapolis and rented farmland in Stillwater, where they grew vegetables for Minneapolis farmers markets and a CSA.
But they were getting tired of commuting 40 minutes every morning and evening.
“We knew either we were going to start looking for land, or not farm,” Macare said.
Les Macare (pictured) and partner Els Dobrick own Racing Heart Farm. The pair previously lived in Minneapolis and rented farmland in Stillwater, Minn., which required them to drive 40 minutes one-way. They found the farm that would become theirs online. After an in-person tour, they knew “it was absolutely the perfect thing for our farm business, and for us,” Macare said. (Courtesy of Racing Heart Farm)
From the listing, the former sheep and vegetable farm in Dunn County sounded like a dream. The owners, a pair of sisters and their young families, were looking to move somewhere less rural. When Macare and Dobrick visited, the rolling hills and rocky outcroppings reminded Macare of their home state of Connecticut.
“We got back in the car and we looked at each other like, can we make this happen? Because it was absolutely the perfect thing for our farm business, and for us,” Macare said.
Getting financing took more than nine months, but the sellers waited. That, Macare said, is one benefit of this kind of listing service: The buyers and sellers know the farm business and its particular challenges.
Many landowners who advertise through the Clearinghouse are motivated by more than money, said Karen Stettler, who oversees the listings for the Land Stewardship Project. Many have cultivated their land organically for years and want to see their farms continue the same way.
“People have a lot of connection to land and to what they’re doing on farms and so are very good stewards and caretakers of their land, and they’re wanting to make sure that the next generation also has that same sort of value and vision around stewardship,” Stettler said.
Today, Macare is grateful for the opportunity to raise their vegetables and sheep on their own land.
“The cost of land has just gotten really astronomical,” Macare said. “I feel so lucky that we bought when we did because I don’t know that 10 years later I would be able to even consider spending what I think the value of this land is now based on seeing prices around us change.”
How would the program work?
If the proposed legislation passes, Wisconsin will offer a similar service to the one Macare used, but the one-page bill offers little detail on how it would work.
That might be a good thing, said Dan Bauer, program supervisor for the Wisconsin Farm Center at DATCP. His office would oversee the program if the Legislature passes the bill and it’s signed into law.
The broad nature of the bill could allow his team to create what they think will be most effective, Bauer said.
He first heard about the bill around the time it was introduced in August, when his department was asked to estimate its cost. They budgeted $66,800 in one-time costs for building the website and $100,300 a year for a full-time staff person to help design and promote it, as well as to provide “shoulder-to-shoulder, on-the-ground, wraparound farmland access services” to site users. They added another $5,000 for initial education, outreach and marketing efforts.
Wisconsin has two nonprofit-run farmland link programs that primarily serve farmers who use organic or “sustainable” practices. The proposed state-run program would serve all kinds of farms and farmers, said Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, lead author of the bill. (Courtesy of Racing Heart Farm)
For the plan to work, Bauer said, staff will need to reach out to farmers who are preparing to transition out of farming and encourage them to advertise their land. Farmers will also need expert help before, during and after any land transfer.
“A website by itself is not going to deliver the desired outcomes as a stand-alone,” Bauer said. “To really design and launch a program that the state would be happy with, I think it has to be a combination of the website and then also that on-the-ground coaching and advising and mentorship.”
The bill doesn’t include any appropriations, so if it passes, Bauer said the department “would have to explore its options” to cover the $172,100 total.
While Wisconsin’s two nonprofit-run farmland link programs primarily serve farmers who use organic or “sustainable” practices, the state-run program would serve all kinds of farms and farmers, Moses said.
Bauer and an agency spokesperson said they knew the Farm Center previously administered a similar program, but they did not know how it worked, when it operated or why it closed. Ryan LeCloux, a Legislative Reference Bureau analyst, said the prior program began in 1993 as part of DATCP’s Farmers Assistance Program and existed until at least 2015, before it was removed from the agency’s website.
In any case, Bauer said, his team would likely create the new program from scratch. “Even if we had really good information on how the last program was operated, I’m not even sure how relevant it would be when you consider just how much technology has advanced in the last 10, 15, 20 years.”
Need is real, advocates say
Before the bill was introduced, representatives of a handful of organizations that support farmers and aspiring farmers were already discussing such a possibility. A working group convened by the Farmland Access Hub began meeting last year after members identified the idea as a top priority.
“The big elephant in the room is that Wisconsin doesn’t have a (state-run) Farm Link program,” said Mia Ljung, a member of that working group and a community development educator for Outagamie and Winnebago counties through UW-Madison Extension.
“Not to say that it’s going to be a quick fix, but if you don’t have a Farm Link program in your state, it’s going to be much harder to make those connections between current land holders, land owners and land seekers.”
Els Dobrick (pictured) and partner Les Macare grow vegetables and raise sheep at their 36-acre farm in Colfax, Wis. (Courtesy of Racing Heart Farm)
Les Macare (pictured) said it took nine months to secure financing for Racing Heart Farm in Colfax, Wis. (Courtesy of Racing Heart Farm)
The group has been studying how such programs work in other states. That research is especially important as legislators consider the bill, Ljung said, calling the proposed budget “very slim.”
“If the initiative will be supported by enough infrastructure, funding and outreach, I am supportive because there’s a big need,” Ljung said.
The state’s biggest farm lobby has officially backed the bill. Jason Mugnaini, executive director of government relations at the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, said supporting Wisconsin’s current and future farmers will take a variety of strategies, from creating conservation easements to helping farm families get health insurance.
Creating a land link program would be a key step, Mugnaini said. “It’s a challenge for those young folks, so finding access to land is one of the easiest ways that they can start farming full time,” Mugnaini said.
Still, the proponents agree it will take much more to get land into the hands of a new generation of small farmers.
“It’s a good tool in the toolbox, but it’s just one part of a very difficult and challenging discussion that has to be had, not only just in Wisconsin, but throughout the United States: Who are the next generation of farmers going to be? Where are they going to find the ability to continue farming, and how are we going to continue to feed the United States of America?” Mugnaini said.
Among the other challenges to address are the reasons farmers may be reluctant to list their land. Many farmers invest nearly everything they have into their farms. This means that some don’t pay enough in Social Security taxes to qualify for payments, or the payments they receive are minimal.
Farmers often need their land to pay their bills after they retire, said Kirkpatrick, the farm succession outreach specialist.
Proponents say a state-run farmland link program can help farmers who want to sell or rent their land connect with farmers eager to start operations of their own. However, the proposed legislation doesn’t include funding for the program, which some worry will affect its success. (Courtesy of Racing Heart Farm)
Fearing a hefty capital gains tax bill, many farmers opt not to sell during their lifetimes. But the idea of renting to someone just getting started in a tough business may sound risky, and beginning farmers may not be able to pay as much as bigger players can.
“If the owner generation is dependent on the sale or some sort of income coming from farmland or other assets for their late years, they’re going to be making decisions that they perceive as less risky to them,” Kirkpatrick said, explaining that many will choose to rent to an established farm operation that’s looking to expand.
Beginning farmers need affordable land, Kirkpatrick said, “and we also need to make sure that that owner generation is able to live and age gracefully.”
A land link program won’t change the economics of the market, but Kirkpatrick thinks such a website, combined with proactive succession planning, could help farmers achieve their own goals for their land.
“I think there are a lot of farm owners that would love to see their farm used in a similar way of, you know, raising a family on it … And to be honest, it would be great for rural communities to still have those farms,” Kirkpatrick said. “If this linking program helps them realize that that’s possible, that’s great.”
“I think that we need to really think about what that generation of owners need and how we can help them plan in a way that feels right for them, and also give opportunities to others,” Kirkpatrick said.
Critics call bill ‘incomplete’
Meanwhile, several other farm lobby groups in the state have taken a neutral stance on the bill. That includes state associations of producers of cattle, corn, pork and vegetables, as well as Wisconsin Farm Credit Services and the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, a nonprofit that researches and promotes sustainable farming practices.
“This bill is incomplete as written and requires funding to be successful,” read the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute’s comments on the legislation. “However, we encourage the idea and want to explore this option further.”
Chuck Anderas, the institute’s policy director, said he’s worried that the bill doesn’t include any appropriations.
“That doesn’t mean that there’s no plans ever to include funding for it, but it needs to be funded enough to be successful,” Anderas said. “Otherwise, it could just be like a website that doesn’t really get used all that much.”
That could discourage farmers and land seekers who come to the site hoping for help, Anderas said.
“We’d rather see it not happen than happen in a way that sets it up to fail.”
Neither the Senate nor Assembly versions of the bill have any Democratic co-sponsors. Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska, serves on the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Revenue, which is currently reviewing the bill.
Pfaff said creating a farmland link program is “an excellent idea” but the bill is “incomplete.”
“Let’s hope that we can get some more meat on the bones here and be serious about the piece of legislation, and hopefully we can get it passed before the legislative session comes to an end.”
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Currently, Republicans have 53 seats. As of Oct. 23, they hadnot persuaded enough Democrats to support ending debate and vote on a House-passed bill that would end the shutdown with temporary funding.
The shutdown began when funding ended with the start of the fiscal year, Oct. 1. One potential effect: The Trump administration announced that funding might not be available in November for the 42 million people receiving SNAP food stamps. Wisconsin said it would run out of SNAP funding after Oct. 31.
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The number of seasonal workers hired by Wisconsin farmers through the H-2A program has increased six-fold over the past decade.
Although the surge began before President Donald Trump returned to office, farmers now consider the program even more critical during Trump’s crackdown on immigrants without legal status.
The Trump administration has introduced adjustments to program rules, including cuts to minimum wages and a pending $250 per-visa fee.
Mexican nationals made up over 90% of the H-2A workforce last year, but South Africans make up a growing share of workers as well.
The program does not offer visa holders a pathway to legal permanent residency in the United States.
By the time Monty Lilford received a call from the American consulate in Cape Town in February, he had only days to get from his home in South Africa’s Western Cape to Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. If all went according to plan, the 35-year-old mechanic would spend the next nine months as a do-it-all farmhand, joining the thousands of seasonal agricultural workers seeking better wages in Wisconsin through the H-2A visa program.
Lilford could not afford a last-minute flight halfway across the world. There’s a market for lending to H-2A workers crunched for time, he said — one dominated by “people doing scams to get your banking details.”
Lilford turned to his father-in-law for help. “I begged him,” he said. “I needed to go.”
The temporary visa program offers Lilford a chance to build a middle-class life back home, albeit one that requires spending much of the year sharing a modest ranch house with seven fellow farmworkers near Fountain City. His visa does not offer him a pathway to legal permanent residency in the United States, and he will be barred from the program if he overstays.
Mike Bushman, Lilford’s employer and the owner of B&B Agri Sales in Buffalo County, considers the program the only legal and reliable source of labor for his farm. While he could hire workers who lack legal status, Bushman is wary of the legal risks.
“You work your whole life to put something together and then take the risk of losing it all,” he said.
The H-2A program comes with higher up-front costs, he explained, but he considers it essential to keep his farm afloat amid a labor shortage.
Bushman is not alone. The number of seasonal workers hired by Wisconsin farmers through the H-2A program has increased six-fold over the past decade, according to 2024 state Department of Workforce Development data. The surge began long before President Donald Trump returned to office in January. Amid the White House’s ongoing immigration crackdown, however, some farmers now consider the program an even more critical alternative to workers without legal status.
The program is far from a flawless solution to the agricultural sector’s labor crisis.
For farmers, the H-2A application process is often an expensive, slow-moving headache – one they must relive year after year.
Workers, meanwhile, frequently report wage theft and other mistreatment, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division routinely uncovers violations of H-2A rules on Wisconsin farms. With inspectors stretched thin, patterns of abuse and fraud can go unpunished for years. Workers who walk away from a dishonest employer or dangerous workplace risk losing their visa.
The Trump administration has introduced a litany of adjustments to the program’s rules in recent months, including cuts to minimum wages and a yet-to-be-implemented $250 fee per visa. With some details still hazy, farmers and workers are awaiting clarity on what lies ahead.
Application process is ‘constant battle’
Farmers argue the program is rife with inefficiencies. Program staff are often difficult, if not impossible, to reach, the application process relies almost entirely on physical mail, and farmers regularly spend thousands of dollars on attorneys to help navigate the labyrinth of paperwork. Keeping an application moving on schedule is a “constant battle,” Bushman said.
The application requires approval from multiple federal and state agencies, often resulting in delays during handoffs from one agency to another. Those hurdles and screening interview backlogs at American consulates and embassies can leave workers stuck in their home countries past the planned start of their contract.
“Last year, the workers came almost three days late,” said Adam Lauer, co-owner of a pickling cucumber farm in Waushara County. “At three days late, you’re throwing a lot of pickles away.”
B&B Agri Sales owner Mike Bushman in his office in Buffalo County, Wis., on Oct. 6, 2025. (Paul Kiefer / Wisconsin Watch)
Bushman said such delays were responsible for Lilford’s last-minute rush to secure a plane ticket – a systemic flaw loan sharks exploit by charging desperate workers extortionate interest rates, he added.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration took steps to address some delays, allowing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to begin reviewing workers’ applications while the Department of Labor considers applications from employers. That could buy more time for workers to schedule screening interviews at consulates and embassies, said Tom Bortnyk, senior vice president and general counsel for Virginia-based másLabor, which provides H-2A recruitment and application services for farmers nationwide, including in Wisconsin.
Other hurdles are tougher to fix. Federal regulators can be slow to send crucial paperwork, said Ethan Olson, a labor contractor who works with Lauer. That can leave farmers without documentation required – at least in theory – to prove they comply with H-2A rules. “You’re at the government’s mercy,” he said.
The Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment during an ongoing government shutdown.
Remaking the workforce
Wisconsin’s H-2A workforce is smaller than those of its neighbors, in part because the seasonal visa program is largely off-limits to the year-round dairy industry, which plays an outsized role in state agriculture. Michigan farmers hired roughly 15,000 H-2A workers in 2024, compared to fewer than 3,000 in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s H-2A workers spent the summer picking celery near Janesville, driving farm equipment in Fond du Lac County and tending pheasants outside of Marshfield. Lilford spent an October afternoon bundling equipment in Bushman’s fabrication shop while another farmhand moved feed corn into storage.
In years past, at least some of those jobs went to workers without legal status. “We went down to Florida to recruit,” said Lauer. Between 2021 and 2022 – the most recent years for which Department of Labor survey data are available — roughly 42% of crop workers surveyed lacked work authorization.
Lauer noted practical reasons to switch to an H-2A workforce. “We were so short on people,” he said. “Multiple years, 20 to 30 people short.” By the time his farm needed workers in mid-summer, many undocumented farmworkers had already found jobs elsewhere.
Hiring undocumented workers also comes with legal risks. If caught, employers face fines of up to $3,000 per worker. Amid a nationwide immigration enforcement crackdown, Lauer said, “I wouldn’t take that chance.”
Elsewhere in Wisconsin, some farmers turned to the program as local alternatives slipped away.
Before 2019, Dan Hanauer largely hired in and around Shawano for seasonal jobs on his Christmas tree farm. Some local workers were out of high school; others arrived through a county jail employment program.
By law, employers must offer seasonal jobs to “qualified, eligible U.S. workers,” including past employees, before hiring H-2A workers. In the past six months, prosecutors in Mississippi and Washington state have scrutinized employers who allegedly prioritized H-2A workers over U.S. workers.
Hanauer argues he was forced to switch. His local workforce, he said, was dwindling and prone to missing shifts.
“The job description says you miss three days and you’re gone,” he added.
Workers with H-2A visas cut fir boughs on a plot rented by Hanauer’s Tree Farms near Shawano, Wis., on Oct. 8, 2025. (Paul Kiefer / Wisconsin Watch)
On a recent weekday morning, several H-2A workers cut boughs from the bases of fir trees to be sold as Christmas wreaths — a new product for his business made possible by a more reliable team of seasonal workers from Mexico, Hanauer said.
Most of the roughly 20 H-2A workers who spoke to Wisconsin Watch — all employed by either Bushman, Lauer or Hanauer — were from Mexico.
Upon returning to Mexico, “I take a week off to rest, and then it’s back to work,” said Israel Cruz, a construction worker who spent much of the summer picking cucumbers on Lauer’s farm in Waushara County.
Mexican nationals made up over 90% of the H-2A workforce last year, often traveling by van to and from farms in rural communities like Shawano. This year, a handful of Hanauer’s workers flew to Appleton instead.
South Africans make up the second-largest nationality in the H-2A workforce, as they have for much of the past two decades. They outnumbered Jamaican workers, the next-largest cohort, more than 3-to-1 last year.
Lilford, like the other members of Bushman’s crew, is an Afrikaner – a descendant of early Dutch, French and German settlers. Data on the nationalities of visa recipients does not specify ethnicity, but labor contractors who recruit in South Africa say most H-2A workers from the country are white.
Labor costs and pay cuts
To theoretically avoid undercutting U.S. farmworker wages, the Department of Labor sets a minimum wage for H-2A workers. This year, Wisconsin H-2A employers must pay at least $18.15 an hour, up from $14.40 in 2020. The program also requires employers to pay for housing and transportation and to reimburse travel to and from workers’ home countries, none of which is required when hiring local farmworkers.
The Department of Labor announced cuts to the program’s minimum wage in early October, responding to farmers’ complaints about rising labor costs.
In a preamble to the new rule, the agency argued that the cost of participating in the H-2A program has become “increasingly burdensome” — surpassing the cost of hiring U.S. workers if they were available. The agency also noted that a decline in the number of undocumented agricultural workers will “deprive growers of a relatively cheaper labor supply,” pushing more farmers to the H-2A program.
Roy Fernando Gonzalez Ramirez, an H-2A worker from Mexico, breaks for lunch during a shift at Hanauer’s Tree Farms near Shawano, Wis., on Oct. 8, 2025. (Paul Kiefer / Wisconsin Watch)
The new rules reverse a 2023 Biden administration decision requiring farmers to pay H-2A workers based on the specific duties they perform. Some roles, like veterinary medicine and truck driving, required higher wages than standard field work, and farmers were obligated to pay according to the highest-earning role employees performed, even if it was not their primary role.
Instead, the Department of Labor’s new rule divides H-2A workers into two “skill levels” based on the experience and training required for their job. It does not guarantee that workers who have spent previous seasons in roles deemed “entry-level” will be paid at the higher end of the scale.
The department will also now allow employers to deduct a portion of workers’ hourly wages to reflect housing costs, which the agency argues will even the playing field for domestic farmworkers.
Wisconsin workers classified as less-skilled could receive as little as $12 per hour next year under the new standards — a reduction of 34% from the current H-2A minimum wage.
“In the countries where they’re recruiting, people are desperate enough to take a job for less than the prevailing wage,” said Jose Oliva, campaign director with HEAL Food Alliance, a national group that organizes and advocates for food supply chain workers.
New H-2A minimum wages are higher in every state neighboring Wisconsin. In Michigan and Illinois, H-2A workers will be paid at least the state minimum wages, exceeding the federal program minimum.
Program wages have always varied from state to state, said Bortnyk of másLabor. The latest changes, however, create a “meaningful enough difference” to fuel steeper recruiting competition for Wisconsin farmers.
For Bushman, that competition is reason enough not to cut wages. The lower minimum “won’t save us anything,” he said, because retaining experienced crew members makes more business sense than training new hires.
Among other protections, those rules previously guaranteed that workers could invite guests like legal aid providers and clergy into employer-provided housing. In Wisconsin, H-2A workers retain that right through the state’s migrant labor law.
Wisconsin farmers are well aware of the opportunities for exploitation.
Lauer recalled discovering that a recruiter in Mexico had charged job seekers hundreds of dollars to apply for openings on his farm — a violation of program rules.
“It all happened in Mexico, so we never saw the money,” he added. Lauer says his business cut ties with the recruiter after consular officials in Mexico alerted him of the recruiter’s practices.
Dan Hanauer, right, with workers at Hanauer’s Tree Farms near Shawano, Wis., on Oct. 8, 2025. (Paul Kiefer / Wisconsin Watch)
None of the workers who spoke with Wisconsin Watch shared firsthand accounts of violations or mistreatment at their current workplaces. However, the Department of Labor has fined 23 Wisconsin H-2A employers for program violations in the past decade.
Auditors cited one labor contractor, Adams County-based J&P Harvest, for more than 650 violations of H-2A program rules between 2019 and 2023. The department approved J&P Harvest’s most recent application in March of this year. The company, which lists a Florida phone number in its contact information, did not respond to a request for comment.
In some cases, the Department of Labor can temporarily ban, or “debar,” farmers and contractors from participating in the program. J&P Harvest does not appear on the agency’s current list of debarred businesses, but Jan Enterprises, a flower-growing business near Green Bay, is currently banned from participating in the program for allegedly hiring H-2A workers in place of an American applicant. A related greenhouse is also on the department’s debarment list.
Inspectors have recorded H-2A violations by more than half of the 42 Wisconsin agricultural employers audited since 2015, not all of which employ H-2A workers.
“There are other places where you’ll work 10 hours and they’ll pay you for nine,” said Salvador Gonzalez Mosqueda, a veteran member of Hanauer’s crew, recalling warnings about dishonest employers from fellow seasonal workers during an earlier stint in Kentucky.
Some citations were for technical reasons. Lauer Farms, for instance, says it was fined in 2019 for missing date information on pay stubs.
Trump’s law brings new fees
The Trump administration’s signature “big beautiful” bill-turned law adds another potential hurdle for workers and employers: a new $250 fee for all nonimmigrant visas, including H-2A.
If federal rulemakers decide workers must pay the fee before entering the country, employers would likely be required to reimburse them. But Oliva warned that enforcement could be weak. “$250 is not chump change” for already vulnerable workers, he added.
It remains unclear whether employers will be eligible for reimbursement from the federal government once their workers return home.
“We’ll just eat another $30,000,” said Lauer, who often hires 120 or more H-2A workers over the course of the year – Wisconsin’s largest crew. While that expense alone won’t bankrupt him, Lauer considers the rising overall costs of participation unsustainable.
“They’ll eventually push us out of business,” he said.
Workers keep returning
Most H-2A workers who spoke with Wisconsin Watch worked on the same farms last season.
Gonzalez, the veteran member of Hanauer’s team, said that he has returned to Shawano for the past six years, turning down offers from other farms. At Lauer Farms, roughly 90% of last year’s crew returned for the most recent harvest season.
Some workers say they would prefer to settle in the U.S. rather than traveling back and forth from their home countries.
“Things in Mexico are very hard,” said Jesus Hernandez Robles, another member of Hanauer’s crew. Hanauer says he has researched sponsoring seasonal employees for green cards, but without a full-time job to offer, that option is out of reach.
But Robles considers the H-2A program preferable to entering the country without a visa.
“You can enter and leave, spend time with your family,” he said. “If you come here illegally, you have to work for a few years to pay off a coyote.”
South African workers may have a clearer path to legal residency through the Trump administration’s new refugee program for Afrikaners.
None of the members of Bushman’s crew who spoke to Wisconsin Watch had applied for refugee status as of early October. Anyone who did secure refugee status, Bushman said, “won’t be working in agriculture. There are just better opportunities.”
International workers continue to show interest in H-2A jobs, Bushman added. But when the federal government entered a shutdown earlier this month, the Department of Labor furloughed staff responsible for reviewing H-2A applications. If the shutdown continues into December and January — the busiest season for applications — Wisconsin farmers could be left high and dry next spring.
South Africans make up growing share of H-2A workers
A fast-growing share of H-2A workers come from South Africa, and they have made up the second-largest cohort within the program for much of the past two decades. That shift predates the Trump administration’s recent decision to prioritize Afrikaners — an ethnic group comprising the majority of South Africa’s white population — for refugee status.
The White House opened the door for Afrikaners to enter the U.S. as refugees in February, citing a recently enacted South African law enabling the state to seize land without compensation in limited circumstances. The law was the latest step in a long-running push to redistribute land from the country’s white minority, which owns much of South Africa’s farmland, to its Black majority. In his initial executive order, President Trump decried the law as “racially discriminatory” and accused the South African government of “fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”
The Trump administration now plans to lower the refugee admissions limit by more than 90% relative to 2024, though it cannot set a new limit without consulting with Congress – a step delayed by the ongoing federal shutdown. The administration has signaled that Afrikaners will receive preference for admissions. The first group of white South African refugees arrived in the U.S. in May.
The H-2A program provides nonimmigrant visas, so South African H-2A workers would need to apply for refugee status through a separate process.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Communism and socialism oppose capitalism but are different ideologies, despite the terms sometimes being used interchangeably.
Communism: Replacing private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and control of means of production and natural resources. Wealth divided equally, or according to need. One-party government oversees economy.
Socialism: Public, rather than private, control of property and natural resources, but allowing private property ownership. Socialism can seek to restrain capitalism through democracy or authoritarian control.
On Oct. 2, Wisconsin state Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, called Milwaukee state Rep. Ryan Clancy a communist. Clancy, like New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, identifies as a democraticsocialist.
Clancy’s positions include a right to legal counsel for people facing eviction, shifting funds from law enforcement to community services and eliminating property tax funding of schools.
Mamdani advocates for freezing rent, government-owned grocery stores and free child care.
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