Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s Madison office Tuesday to voice their concerns over potential cuts to Medicaid.
The Republican-led Congress is considering significant cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income households. In Wisconsin that includes programs like BadgerCare Plus, which serves children, pregnant people and non-disabled adults, and long-term care programs for people with disabilities and seniors.
The House budget proposal could cut more than $880 billion in mandatory spending from the committee that oversees Medicaid, according to reporting by KFF Health News. While the Senate’s proposal doesn’t specify exact cuts, they plan to offset over $300 billion in new spending, according to NPR.
Dane County resident Laurine Lusk organized the protest because her daughter Megan is disabled and relies on the government program.
“She’s not safe without this care,” Lusk said.
A Madison protester holds up a cardboard sign that says, “Answer your phone, Ron” while standing outside of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s Madison office on Feb. 25, 2025. (Addie Costello / WPR)
She wanted to voice her concerns over any cuts to her daughter’s care, but she says she struggled to get in touch with Johnson’s office.
In a response to questions from WPR and Wisconsin Watch about the protest and complaints that constituents were having trouble reaching him, Sen. Johnson provided a statement. He wrote: “It is difficult to respond to complaints and protests that have no basis in truth or fact. It is unfortunate that Democrat elected officials are lying to their supporters regarding the Senate Budget Resolution and encouraging them to take to the “streets.” I sincerely hope their actions do not result in violence. My primary goal is to keep my Wisconsin staff safe while enabling them to continue dedicating their efforts to help constituents.”
The Republican senator’s office was closed to visitors Tuesday due to “previously scheduled outside commitments,” according to a sign taped to the office door.
Protesters chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho Ron Johnson has got to go.” One protester held up a sign that said, “Answer your phone, Ron.”
Protest organizer Laurine Lusk stands in front of a large crowd chanting and singing together in front of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s Madison office. (Addie Costello / WPR)
Barbara Vedder holds a sign that says, “Fight Fascism” at a demonstration outside of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s office on Feb. 25, 2025. (Addie Costello / WPR)
U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman faced a hostile crowd last week at a town hall in Oshkosh. When asked about Medicaid, he said cutting the program “would be a mistake,” according to previous WPR reporting. Other Republican lawmakers have come out against cuts to Medicaid.
Dorothy Witzeling drove from Appleton to join the protest. “I am terrified of what I am seeing happening with our government,” she said.
Witzeling carried a sign with a photo of her brother who had Down syndrome and relied on Medicaid for care.
Former Madison alder and former Dane County Board member, Barbara Vedder said she attended the protest because she has a disability and couldn’t live without Medicaid.
“This is what democracy looks like,” Vedder said. “It brings my spirits up to see so many people speaking up because this needs to change.”
Experts said they know of no states that routinely audit insurance companies over denying health care claims.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said Feb. 18 he wants to make his state the first to audit based on high rates of claim denials and do “corrective action” enforced through fines.
The Wisconsin insurance commissioner’s office and expertsfrom the KFF health policy nonprofit and Georgetown University saidthey know of no states using claim denial rates to trigger audits.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners and the national state auditors association said they do not track whether states do such auditing.
ProPublica reported in 2023 it surveyed every state’s insurance agency and found only 45 enforcement actions since 2018 involving denials that violated coverage mandates.
Forty-five percent of U.S. adults surveyed in 2023 said they were billed in the past year for a medical service they thought should have been free or covered by their insurance.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced late Friday afternoon that some of its programs funding renewable energy projects are “operating as normal,” but left open the question of whether billions more in loans and grants promised to farmers, small rural businesses and electric cooperatives would be honored.
The day before, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had said the department would continue to review spending under the Biden administration’s sweeping climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, “to ensure that programs are focused on supporting farmers and ranchers” and not “far-left climate programs.”
Among those waiting for clarity are Travis and Amy Forgues of western Wisconsin. About two years ago, the couple bought the Hidden Springs Creamery, an 80-acre sheep dairy nestled in the hills of Westby, Wisconsin. Twice a day they milk 300 sheep to make cheese, including a creamy feta that last year won second place in the American Cheese Society’s annual competition.
As part of their effort to modernize the farm, the Forgueses decided to install a solar array to power their operation. To offset the $134,000 cost of installation, they applied for a $56,000 Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Last year, they got approved for the grant and built the solar array, never doubting that the USDA would pay once the project was completed, as outlined in the contract they signed with the feds.
In early January, Amy and Travis Forgues announced on Instagram that they had turned on the solar array at their Hidden Springs Creamery. Under a contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the project was to be financed in part by the Rural Energy for America Program. Now, the promised $56,000 federal grant is on pause, and the Forgueses say they don’t know when or if they will ever receive the money.
But last week, the Forgueses said they received an email from the USDA saying the program had been paused, leaving them scrambling to figure out how to pay for the rest of their new solar array.
“You can’t have people spend this kind of money and then just pull the rug from (them),” said Travis Forgues. “I didn’t spend the money thinking maybe I’ll get it back. I spent the money because we had a signed contract.”
The pause was the result of an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on his first day in office freezing hundreds of billions of dollars for renewable energy — including REAP.
At least 7,500 farms and rural businesses across the country have received REAP grants from the USDA since 2023, according to a Floodlight analysis of USDA grant data.
On Friday, a USDA spokesperson said some funding for REAP would operate as normal, but only if it came through the Farm Bill. That apparently won’t help the Forgueses or potentially thousands of other farmers like them who had more than 25% of their project paid for by the USDA. That’s the cutoff point where funding from the Farm Bill stopped and funding from the Inflation Reduction Act started.
Since 2023, when Inflation Reduction Act funding became available, the USDA has given or loaned approximately $21.3 billion through programs that could be used to support renewable energy in rural areas, according to a Floodlight analysis of agency data.
The legality of the continued freeze in federal funding remains unclear.
On Friday, a federal judge in Rhode Island kept in place a temporary restraining order from Jan. 31 that ordered the Trump administration to stop withholding federal funds appropriated by Congress. Attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia, led by New York, argued that the broad funding freeze violated the separation of powers and several other laws.
The lone attorney representing the Trump administration argued that the agencies were exercising their lawful discretion.
Rural electric companies also hit
Some programs, like REAP, go directly to farmers looking to place solar panels or wind turbines on their land. Others, like the New Era program, help rural electric cooperatives build renewable energy to lower members’ monthly bills. New Era was not among the programs cited by the USDA spokesperson as operating as normal.
The Yampa Valley Electric Association, which serves Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and parts of Wyoming, expected to get $50 million from the USDA’s New Era program, according to Carly Davidson, the co-op’s public relations specialist.
New Era is the USDA program dedicated solely to renewables that has allocated the most money, more than $4.3 billion in grants since 2023, according to a Floodlight analysis.
A crew from the Yampa Valley Electric Association, a rural electrical cooperative, prepares to respond to a power outage in Buffalo Pass, Colo., in December 2024. In February, the cooperative, which serves parts of Colorado and Wyoming, discovered a promised $50 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to add 150 megawatts (MW) of solar power and 50 MW of battery storage was frozen by the Trump administration. (Yampa Valley Electric Association Facebook page)
The Yampa Valley association was planning to use the money to purchase renewable energy to keep electricity costs low for its members, Davidson wrote in a statement. The project is still in the planning stages, but it would provide both solar generation and battery storage, according to Yampa Valley Electric.
Connexus Energy, Minnesota’s largest consumer-owned electric cooperative, was hoping to use its $170 million in New Era grants to build out its renewable generation portfolio, spokesperson Stacy Downs said. The co-op, which serves over 146,000 customers, still hopes the funds will come through so it can add solar, wind and hydropower, as well as battery storage, Downs said, adding, “We’re still hoping to be receiving them.”
Electric infrastructure program intact
The largest USDA energy program, the Electric Infrastructure Loan and Loan Guarantee Program, offers money to rural co-ops, which use it to expand or upgrade their power grids with new transmission lines and smart-grid technology. That program, which allows for the connection of more renewables, has loaned out $12 billion since 2023.
On Friday, a USDA spokesperson stated that the program was operating as normal, along with four other USDA programs that could potentially be used to reduce carbon emissions: Rural Energy Savings Program, REAP Program with funding appropriated through the Farm Bill, Guaranteed Underwriter Program, and High Energy Cost Grants.
Photovoltaic solar panels at City Roots, a family-owned local organic vegetable farm in Columbia, S.C., offset the farm’s carbon footprint. The 2022 project was financed in part by a $20,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, saving the farm more than $5,000 a year in electrical costs. (Lance Cheung / USDA Media)
“These freezes seem to be intentionally chaotic and unclear,” said Hannah Smith-Brubaker, executive director of Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, a nonprofit that helps farmers adopt sustainable practices and that also receives money from the USDA.
“We are fielding calls every day from farmers who are mid-project, and their contractor wants to know when they’re going to be paid.”
Rural businesses, farmers still waiting
Patrick Hagar, co-owner of Squashington Farm near Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, is feeling that uncertainty. Hagar and his wife purchased a 20-acre farm three years ago in southern Wisconsin, where they grow organic produce.
Last fall, they put money down to purchase a solar array that will end up costing them $50,000, he said. They were promised $15,000 back from the USDA through a REAP grant.
“The vast majority of the fossil fuel energy and carbon outputs are being put forth by a small (group) of really wealthy businesses,” Hagar said. “I don’t think that absolves small farms and small businesses from trying to do what they can.”
But, he added, “It’s frustrating to have a signed contract for something, and feel like, you know, you live in a country where a signed contract doesn’t mean what a signed contract has always meant.”
Squashington Farm near Mount Horeb, Wis., was expecting to get $15,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help pay for a $50,000 solar array to provide all of the electricity for the small farm, which produces organically grown vegetables and fruits. Farmer Patrick Hager says he’s already made a down payment on the installation. But he says the federal reimbursement is on hold, with no word on when — or whether — it will ever come. (Squashington Farm Facebook page)
And it’s not just farmers affected by the freeze. Small rural business owners who qualify for various USDA renewable grants and loans are also waiting to see what happens with USDA’s review of funding — money the agency has already agreed to pay.
Atul Patel, owner of the Holiday Inn in Frackville, Pennsylvania, planned to install a solar system on his hotel costing just over $360,000.
“We would like to be energy independent,” Patel said. “In this area, the lights flicker a lot.”
Patel said he put 20% down on the project and was planning to finish the installation once the weather improved in the spring.
He added, “Our fingers are crossed.”
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.
With years of continued gridlock between the Republican-controlled Legislature and Democratic governor, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has become the arbiter over some of the most heated election rule debates — from redistricting and drop boxes to the status of the state’s top election official.
That’s what makes April’s Supreme Court election a race to watch. It features two candidates with a stark ideological divide, competing for the seat of a retiring liberal justice and the chance to secure a majority in the current 4-3 liberal court. And it could determine how voters cast ballots in elections for years to come.
Conservative Brad Schimel is a Waukesha County judge and former Republican attorney general. Liberal Susan Crawford is a Dane County judge and former assistant attorney general under a Democratic administration. While the court is technically nonpartisan, both candidates are running with the support of their respective state parties, with partisan politicians providing endorsements on both sides.
“We don’t know what cases are going to come forward or what the facts or the arguments would be,” said Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor and founder of the Elections Research Center. “But Crawford versus Schimel being on the court does send it in a different ideological direction.”
There are several election-related disputes the new justice may help settle. Fights over electronic voting, Wisconsin’s membership in the multistate Electronic Registration Information Center, and election officials’ ability to access citizenship data are brewing in lower courts.
More lawsuits may yet be filed if conservatives retake control of the court. Since liberals gained a majority in 2023, they have overseen a case that led the Legislature and governor to redraw the state’s previous Republican-drawn legislative maps in a way that didn’t give either party a built-in advantage. They also legalized drop boxes, which the conservative court banned in 2022.
A victory for Crawford would probably give liberals the final say on election issues for the next two years. That’s because the next two seats up for grabs — one in 2026 and one in 2027 — are both currently held by conservatives.
A Schimel victory would give conservatives the majority, but not as much security. One of the justices providing that majority would be Justice Brian Hagedorn, a sometimes swing voter whom Burden called “the least predictable justice.”
So a court with Schimel wouldn’t be “as reliably conservative as a 4-3 liberal majority would be reliably liberal,” Burden said.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court could have an outsized role in the coming years given the apparent willingness of President Donald Trump’s administration to defy some federal court orders, said Eileen Newcomer, voter education manager at the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. That dynamic could send more issues to state instead of federal court, Newcomer said.
One of the most crucial roles the winning candidate may have during his or her tenure is participating if the court settles disputes over election results. In 2020, the then-conservative court narrowly rejected Trump’s lawsuit to overturn that year’s presidential election, which he lost.
Two candidates diverge on election law
The clearest difference between the candidates on election law is their stance on requiring photo IDs for voting. Crawford was among the lawyers to represent the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Network in its challenge to the requirement soon after it became law in 2011. She later called the law “draconian.”
If voters approve the question — which is likely given widespread support for the law and a muted campaign against the ballot measure — overturning the requirement would be all but impossible. Still, experts say, the court or Legislature may still be able to provide some exceptions to the requirement. That means the Supreme Court’s majority could decide just how broad those exceptions could be.
If voters elect Schimel and approve the measure, Burden said, the requirement would be secure. But if voters reject the proposal and elect Crawford, he added, “it’s very likely that some group brings a challenge to the voter ID law.”
Cases that the justices may weigh in on
One lawsuit that appears headed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court is over whether voters with disabilities should be allowed to receive, mark and return ballots electronically. Currently, that privilege is reserved for military and overseas voters. Voters with disabilities in Wisconsin allege that their lack of access to electronic voting violates their rights.
Another issue that could come before the court is the legality of ballot drop boxes. The court under a conservative majority banned them in 2022, but liberals lifted the ban after they took over the court. A conservative group could bring a case seeking to ban them again if Schimel wins, Burden said.
“They seem very willing to entertain new arguments about the same issue,” Burden said.
Newcomer, from the League of Women Voters, said revisiting settled issues and reversing precedent a third time would “undermine people’s confidence in the court.”
Still more battles are taking place over noncitizen voting, an issue that Republicans are seeking to draw attention to, despite scant evidence that it actually happens in any widespread manner. As part of their campaign, Republicans have been seeking access to Department of Transportation data showing the citizenship status of registered voters. Much of the department’s information is outdated, but some conservatives have sued for access nonetheless to understand the scale of noncitizen voting in the battleground state.
“If that’s what conservatives want, they’re going to be dissatisfied,” Burden said. “But they might still go to the court and try to get some kind of relief or action if they feel like a bunch of officials around the state are not doing all they can to weed out noncitizens from the voting rolls.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers unveiled his 2025-27 biennial budget proposal last week — a two-year plan totaling nearly $119 billion compared to the $100 billion budget currently on the books.
Republicans lawmakers who control the powerful budget writing committee immediately vowed to throw out the governor’s spending plan this spring. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said Evers’ proposals are “dead on arrival.”
Many of the governor’s recommendations have been reviewed and rejected by GOP lawmakers in previous budgets, like his plans to expand Medicaid or legalize marijuana.
But in this year’s budget address, he introduced several new items. Here are four examples from the governor’s fourth state budget proposal.
No tax on cash tips
“No tax on tips” quickly became a Republican mantra on the 2024 campaign trail after it was heavily touted by President Donald Trump. But Democrats have followed suit, coming out in support of the popular policy.
For the first time, Evers is seeking to eliminate income taxes on cash tips in the budget, a proposal that mirrors a Republican-authored bill in the Legislature. The plan would reduce state revenue by just under $7 million annually — a paltry amount compared to the roughly $11 billion in individual income tax the state expects to collect each year.
“Interesting. @GovEvers wants to eliminate tax on tips (great idea, swear I heard it somewhere before) but not a single Democrat co-sponsored the bill that Sen. (Andre) Jacque and I authored to create tax exemption for tips. I’m glad we can count on Evers’ support,” state Sen. Julian Bradley, R-New Berlin, wrote on X.
Service industry workers might shrug when they discover that the tax exemption would only apply to tips left in cash and would not exempt the majority of tips, which are left on a credit card. But that’s not the only reason why Jason Stein, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, says the proposal would have little impact.
“Many of the lower wage workers who receive tips may not have to pay any state income taxes as it is,” Stein told Wisconsin Watch. “There are other policies like the earned income tax credit that would benefit low-wage workers…they’re more industry-neutral. They’re profession-neutral.”
Free college tuition for Native American students
In another new proposal, Evers recommended providing full tuition waivers for any student who is a Wisconsin resident, a citizen of any of the state’s 11 federally recognized tribal nations and enrolled at a Universities of Wisconsin System or Wisconsin Technical College System school. The governor’s office could not confirm the cost of this specific proposal, but noted it is part of a $129 million effort to increase affordability in the UW System over the next two years.
The proposal mirrors the Wisconsin Tribal Education Promise already in place at UW-Madison, which covers all educational costs for Native students who are citizens of a tribal nation. That program began last fall, is not tied to household income and is funded in part by philanthropy rather than state funds.
The program was announced in December 2023, shortly after Universities of Wisconsin regents struck a deal with Republican lawmakers to end diversity hires across their campuses in exchange for previously approved employee raises and project funding. Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said the program is a testament to the university’s commitment to diversity.
Universities in other states have launched similar initiatives in recent years, granting in-state tuition for Native students.
Auditing health insurance companies
Evers wants Wisconsin to be the first state in the nation to audit insurance companies that frequently deny health care claims. But the details of this plan, such as how frequently an insurance company would have to deny claims to be audited, are slim.
“If an insurance company is going to deny your health care claim, they should have a darn good reason for it. It’s frustrating when your claim gets denied and it doesn’t seem like anyone can give you a good reason why,” Evers said. “If an insurance company is denying Wisconsinites’ claims too often, we’re going to audit them. Pretty simple.”
The plan would cost $500,000 in program revenue, potentially from new fines, for two full-time positions over the next two years “to establish a framework for auditing high rates of health insurance claim denials among insurers offering plans in the state over which the office has regulatory authority.”
The new office would set the percentage of claim denials that would warrant an audit. The office would then enforce “corrective action” through fines or forfeitures.
New tax bracket for millionaires
Evers is also seeking new ways to increase state revenue. This includes his plan to “ensure millionaires and billionaires in Wisconsin pay their fair share” through a new individual tax bracket of 9.8% that would apply to income for single and married joint filers above $1 million. For married couples filing separately, income above $500,000 would also fall under this tax bracket.
The new tax is estimated to generate nearly $1.3 billion over the next two years.
The current top income tax rate is 7.65%, covering married joint filers with an income above $420,420 and individuals with an income above $315,310.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
In 2020, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford sentenced Kevin D. Welton to four years in prison after a prosecutor requested 10.
Welton was charged with touching a 6-year-old girl’s privates in a club swimming pool in 2010 and with twice touching a 7-year-old girl’s privates in the same pool on one day in 2018.
Welton was convicted of three felonies, including first-degree sexual contact.
Crawford and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel are running in the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
An ad from an Elon Musk–funded group said Crawford could have imposed 100 years.
A 100-year maximum wasallowed, but highly unlikely, given the prosecutor’s request. Welton’s lawyer requested probation.
Crawford said the crimes occurring years apart made Welton a repeat offender, requiring prison, but were less serious than other sexual assaults, and 10 years was longer than needed for rehabilitation.
Addie Costello here, Wisconsin Watch reporter and WPR investigative reporting fellow. Most of my reporting focuses on issues related to health care, and my editor asked me to write a bit about how tips have shaped my stories.
First, you have to know that I have an unbreakable phone pacing habit. My family mocks the little circles I make — in and out of the kitchen and up and down the living room — when I get a call. Sometimes I spend hours a week pacing across our newsroom.
While walking back and forth in our office hallway as many as 20 times a day can get tiring, the reason I’m doing it always gets me excited, particularly when I’m calling people who filled out our tip form.
Still, many of the people I talk to don’t end up in my stories, at least not immediately.
That’s not because their stories aren’t interesting or important. Usually it’s just a timing issue. Sometimes my plate is already full with other stories, or another newsroom may have covered something similar. We strive to focus on stories other newsrooms haven’t told. But the conversations always prove helpful. Hearing about the same issue again and again helps us better understand it and realize how many people it affects.
So, if you’ve ever talked to me as I paced around the Wisconsin Watch office, thank you. And if you think you might have a story, send us a tip. It will do more than help me reach my step goals for the day.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Thousands of federal workers have been fired since late last week, including probationary employees with the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service in Wisconsin.
The mass layoffs come as the Trump administration takes sweeping steps to slash the federal workforce, with job cuts led by billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. The firings follow a Feb. 11 executive order issued by President Donald Trump to scale back the number of workers.
The U.S. Forest Service is firing 3,475 employees nationwide, said Matt Brossard, general vice president of the Forest Service Council with the National Federation of Federal Employees union. The Forest Service Council represents about 20,000 employees, including workers in Wisconsin.
“The U.S. Forest Service manages national forests, manages all the recreation areas, campgrounds, visitor centers, all of that is going to take a hit,” Brossard told WPR.
The agency did not immediately provide details on the firings in Wisconsin. WPR spoke with several Forest Service workers and a union representative in Wisconsin about the cuts. They requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation. The union official said a dozen probationary employees were fired in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest over the weekend, adding workers fear that layoffs are just beginning to ramp up.
One Forest Service worker in Wisconsin said they were called in on Saturday by their supervisor and notified their termination was effective immediately due to poor performance. They were directed to fill out paperwork, return federal credentials or access cards and log out of computers. The federal worker said they never had anything but excellent performance reviews.
“It’s not right,” the fired worker said. “It’s illegal. It’s a lie.”
Another U.S. Forest Service worker with knowledge of the situation corroborated the account. Agency workers say those affected include veterans, people who just purchased a home and another individual with a baby on the way.
One individual said they received no severance. The employee will receive a final paycheck, as well as any unpaid leave. While they’re eligible for unemployment, the worker said the maximum payment is nowhere near what they were making.
Some say they’re exploring appeals or potential legal challenges, which might include joining lawsuits filed by unions. Unions are seeking a court order to temporarily bar the Trump administration’s firing of federal employees, which they have said is unlawful. Brossard said union lawyers are seeking a ruling that would retroactively bar firings that began last week, and a federal judge planned to release a decision in the near future.
Wisconsin has about 2,200 workers across federal agencies that had been employed for less than a year, according to the most recent federal data. However, one Forest Service employee with knowledge of firings in Wisconsin said there’s a misconception that probationary workers are new to government work. Some staff members who were fired have been in federal service for 10 years or longer.
“We’re not nameless, faceless federal bureaucrats,” the federal worker said. “We’re people living in these communities, too.”
The Forest Service employee said some might be forced to leave rural northern Wisconsin to look for other jobs.
Elsewhere in northern Wisconsin, several federal probationary employees with Apostle Islands National Lakeshore have also been fired, according to Julie Van Stappen, the lakeshore’s former chief of resource management. The National Parks Conservation Association said Friday that 1,000 employees with the National Park Service are being laid off nationwide, but the agency plans to exempt 5,000 seasonal workers.
Van Stappen said probationary workers at the Apostle Islands received an email Friday, noting the lakeshore has more new employees than normal due to staff turnover in recent years. She said the Apostle Islands typically has an estimated 25 to 30 permanent employees each year and about 35 to 45 seasonal workers. It’s unclear how many workers might have been affected by cuts and whether they were permanent or seasonal staff.
“I don’t know if any of the seasonal employees are able to come back or be hired,” Van Stappen said.
Staff with the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and National Park Service did not immediately respond to a request for details on the firings. The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore has 21 islands spread over an area of Lake Superior that’s nearly 290,000 acres, which is larger than Rocky Mountain National Park.
The cuts come as Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany has proposed designating the Apostle Islands as the first national park in Wisconsin. While Van Stappen doesn’t think that designation would provide any advantage to the public, she questioned how resources and services would be maintained while staff is being cut.
She noted seasonal employees interact with the public on reserving campsites, providing safety information, conducting field work, managing natural resources, maintaining historic structures and aiding with search and rescue.
“I don’t have any idea how the park is going to function or how the resources will be negatively affected. But for sure, the public will be,” Van Stappen said.
WPR also verified firings at other agencies, including researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin expressed alarm over the mass firings.
“Trump and Republicans are finding every which way to make room in the budget for tax breaks for their wealthy friends – even cutting support for our veterans, aviation employees tasked with making flying safe, and nurses, doctors, and scientists who work to keep Wisconsin families healthy,” Baldwin said in a statement.
“A private sector entity in this financial condition could not survive and would employ no one. To avoid a destructive debt crisis, a dramatic reduction of federal spending must occur. We are witnessing the beginning of that process,” Johnson said. “Better we do it in a controlled manner instead of in an uncontrolled crisis.”
Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday decried what he called “irresponsible decisions in Washington” and “needless chaos,” saying his new two-year spending proposal was designed to prepare for drastic cuts from the federal government.
Evers released his budget as he considers seeking a third term in the battleground state that President Donald Trump narrowly won in November.
Evers’ budget is more of a wish list than a roadmap of what will actually become law. Republicans who control the Legislature promised to kill most of his proposals, as they have done on his three previous budgets, before passing it later this year.
“With so much happening in Washington that’s reckless and partisan, in Wisconsin we must continue our work to be reasonable and pragmatic,” Evers told the Legislature and other guests.
He urged lawmakers to leave $500 million available to respond to situations caused by federal decisions.
Here are highlights of Evers’ $119 billion two-year budget, which would increase spending by more than 20%:
Pushing back against Trump on tariffs, higher education
Evers said that Trump’s tariffs — or import taxes — could spark trade wars with Wisconsin’s largest exporters and hurt the state’s $116 billion agriculture industry.
“I’m really concerned President Trump’s 25% tariff tax will not only hurt our farmers, ag industries and our economy but that it will cause prices to go up on everything from gas to groceries,” Evers said.
Evers’ plan calls for creating a new agriculture economist position in state government to help farmers navigate market disruptions caused by tariffs. He’s also calling for increasing funding to help farmers find and increase markets for their products.
Tariffs are just one issue where Evers has fought back against the Trump agenda.
Evers also previously called for a bipartisan solution to immigration, while criticizing Trump’s move to deport people in the country illegally.
And Evers proposed the highest increase in Universities of Wisconsin funding in state history, citing concerns about federal cuts.
“Politicians in Washington don’t know a darn thing about what’s going on at campuses across Wisconsin,” Evers said. “They don’t know how important our UW System has been to our state’s success or how important it is for our future.”
Evers taps into the Republican priority of cutting taxes
Evers has clashed with Republicans over tax cuts in the past, gutting a $3.5 billion tax cut in the last budget, while approving a $2 billion tax cut in 2021. In his new budget, Evers called for cutting a variety of income, sales and property taxes by nearly $2 billion, while increasing the income tax on millionaires by $1.3 billion.
Republicans will almost certainly kill any tax increase. They have said they want to use the state’s entire $4 billion surplus on cutting taxes.
The Evers plan includes eliminating the income tax on tips and doing away with the sales tax on over-the-counter medications. He also proposed reducing income taxes for the middle class and creating a new incentive for local governments not to increase property taxes.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu discounted Evers’ tax cuts as “gimmicky,” called the budget “irresponsible” and said the GOP will deliver an alternative broad tax cut proposal soon.
Fighting water pollution caused by ‘forever chemicals’
Evers and Republicans have long been at odds over how to battle PFAS pollution, even as numerous Wisconsin communities struggle with contamination from the so-called forever chemicals and are forced to drink only bottled water.
Evers is calling for spending $145 million to fight the pollution through additional testing to find the pollution and researching ways to combat it.
PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are man-made chemicals that don’t easily break down in nature. The chemicals have been linked to health problems including low birth weight, cancer and liver disease and have been shown to make vaccines less effective.
Republicans unlikely to go along with Democratic plan
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said most of Evers’ plan was “dead on arrival” and said the GOP would start from scratch. Republicans have repeatedly rejected his calls to expand Medicaid and legalize recreational marijuana. They are also unlikely to increase funding for K-12 schools and the Universities of Wisconsin budget as much as Evers wants.
Evers also proposed making Wisconsin the first state in the country to audit insurance companies over denying health care claims.
However, Republicans did not summarily reject another major Evers proposal to close the 127-year-old prison in Green Bay as part of a massive overhaul of the state’s correctional system.
Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed to this report.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate in Wisconsin’s April 1 Supreme Court election, has supported Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law but also says voters should decide abortion questions.
The liberal candidate, Susan Crawford, claimed Schimel “wants to bring back” the law, which bans abortion except to protect the mother’s life.
Wisconsin abortions were halted, due to uncertainty over the 1849 law, after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, but resumed in 2023 after a judge’s ruling.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is deciding whether the 1849 law became valid with Roe’s reversal, said Marquette University law professor Chad Oldfather.
Schimel has campaigned supporting the law, asking “what is flawed” about it. He recalled in 2012 supporting an argument to maintain the law, to make abortion illegal if Roe were overturned.
Schimel said Feb. 18 Wisconsinites should decide “by referendum or through their elected legislature on what they want the law to say” on abortion.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Wisconsin’s Democratic-backed incumbent state schools leader will face a Republican-supported challenger after both advanced in Tuesday’s three-person primary.
The winner in the April 1 general election will guide education policy in the battleground state during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Jill Underly, currently serving her first term as state superintendent, and Brittany Kinser, an advocate of the state’s private school voucher program and public charter schools, both advanced in Tuesday’s primary. Jeff Wright, a rural school superintendent, was eliminated.
Jill Underly
Underly was first elected to head the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction in 2021 with the support of Democrats and teachers unions. She has tried to position herself as the champion for public schools.
She said her win shows that voters “love their public schools.”
“They are also committed to making sure their public schools stay viable and every kid has these opportunities to be successful,” Underly said.
She was endorsed by the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which also has given her campaign $106,000 this month, and a host of Democratic officeholders.
Brittany Kinser
But the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the statewide teachers union, did not endorse a candidate in the primary. The political action committee for the union had recommended Wright be endorsed.
Wright, a two-time Democratic candidate for state Assembly, tried to cut into Underly’s base of support. He won the endorsements of the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators and the Middleton-Cross Plains teachers union.
Kinser, an education consultant, invited Wright’s backers who were unhappy with Underly’s leadership to back her.
“I’m welcoming Jeff and his supporters to come and join our campaign so we can restore high standards for all children in Wisconsin,” Kinser said.
Wright is going to “take some time to think” before he endorses anyone, his spokesperson Tyler Smith said.
Kinser is backed by Republicans, including the state party, which has given her campaign $200,000 so far.
Underly accused Kinser of being “focused on expanding vouchers, and these policies put our public schools in a dangerous race to the bottom.”
Kinser countered that her campaign is focused on bolstering achievement for all students, no matter what type of school they attend.
Wisconsin is the only state where voters elect the top education official but there is no state board of education. That gives the person who runs the Department of Public Instruction broad authority to oversee education policy, which includes dispersing money to schools and managing teacher licensing.
Whoever wins will have to manage Wisconsin’s relationship with the Trump administration as it seeks to eliminate the federal Department of Education, which supports roughly 14% of public school budgets nationwide with an annual budget of $79 billion.
CLARIFICATION: The Associated Press updated this story to make clear that Kinser is an advocate for the state’s private school voucher program and public charter schools.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Several state lawmakers are working on a bill that would keep immigration officers out of “safe havens” throughout Wisconsin.
Their move comes as members of immigrant communities can no longer rely on places to be free from immigration enforcement, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the department that oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Reversing policy from the Biden administration, ICE officers can detain or arrest people for immigration violations inside churches, schools and hospitals.
“Given the recent executive orders and initiatives that the Trump administration has put forth, it is very harmful for our immigrant and migrant communities in various ways,” said state Sen. Dora Drake, D-Milwaukee, one of the co-authors of the bill.
“I’m a firm believer that families should be strengthened and not pulled apart.”
Federal policy
In 2021, the administration of former President Joe Biden issued guidelines about where immigration enforcement should be restricted — places referred to as “protected areas” — including schools, medical and mental health facilities, places of worship or religious study, locations where children gather, social service establishments, sites providing emergency or disaster relief, and venues for funerals, weddings, parades, demonstrations and rallies.
The guidelines stated that enforcement should be restricted in, or even near, these spaces so as not to discourage people from accessing essential services or participating in essential activities.
On Jan. 21, the day after President Donald Trump took office, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement about the cancelation of this Biden-era policy, effectively eliminating safe havens and allowing immigration enforcement, such as raids and arrests, to take place in these areas.
“We are protecting our schools, places of worship and Americans who attend by preventing criminal aliens and gang members from exploiting these locations and taking safe haven there because these criminals knew law enforcement couldn’t go inside under the previous administration,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary of public affairs, in an email.
Local response
The sorts of places identified by the proposed bill overlap with but are not identical to the ones in the policy of the Biden administration.
It identifies schools, places providing child care, places of worship, places providing medical or health care services, and state and local government buildings.
State Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, another co-author of the bill, said that he and his colleagues “wanted to hit the main ones right away that we were hearing from people.”
However, Carpenter, whose Senate district has the highest percentage of Hispanic residents in the state – more than 45% – said that he is open to amending the bill to include more places.
The sorts of spaces in Milwaukee currently mentioned in the bill are responding in varied ways.
Milwaukee Public Schools has taken quite a clear stance, reaffirming in January its own “safe haven” resolution adopted in 2017.
The resolution vows to oppose actions by ICE on school grounds by “all legal means available.”
The union representing MPS teachers, Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, fully supports the resolution as well.
In other types of places, the response is less clear-cut.
A spokesperson for Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin, one of the largest hospital systems in the state, said in an email that staff is “closely reviewing recent federal policy changes and discussing their potential impacts,” adding that they “remain focused on our commitments to delivering exceptional care with dignity and respect while achieving the best possible health outcomes.”
Places not identified in the initial version of the bill also are grappling with the changes in immigration policy.
Milwaukee Christian Center, for example, which provides social services such as housing support and violence prevention, intends to comply with the law in terms of a judicial warrant and would confer with counsel about what to do regarding an administrative warrant, said Karen Higgins, executive director of the organization.
Difference between warrants
This difference between types of warrants is crucial for the authors of the bill.
A judicial warrant is issued and signed by a judge, while an administrative warrant is issued by a federal agency specifically for immigration violations.
Unlike judicial warrants, administrative warrants do not require compliance from local law enforcement or private entities, including schools, churches and hospitals, unless they choose to comply.
The state bill, if it became law, would apply to administrative warrants rather than judicial ones.
No one is trying, Drake said, to provide havens for people who are being detained or arrested on a judicial warrant.
“We’re not saying that there aren’t individuals that are causing harm out there,” she said.
McLaughlin, of the Department of Homeland Security, described a thoughtful process when a safe haven is involved in immigration enforcement.
“Our agents use discretion. Officers would need secondary supervisor approval before any action can be taken in locations such as a church or a school.”
“We expect these to be extremely rare,” she added.
‘I am asking them to follow the law’
Rep. Sylvia Velez-Ortiz, D-Milwaukee, the main author of the bill, frames the issue in basic constitutional terms.
“I’ve never said the word ‘safe haven’ or ‘sanctuary,’” she said. “I am asking them (the federal government) to follow the law. I expect them not to do illegal searches and seizures.”
“And,” she added, “I expect them to pay for their own operations.”
What’s next?
Velez-Ortiz said that the bill has about 20 co-sponsors and was expected to be handed to the clerk Tuesday and posted online.
A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a Republican Party official lacked the standing to bring a lawsuit challenging the use of a mobile voting van in 2022.
The lawsuit sought to ban the use of mobile voting vans in any future election in the presidential battleground state. The court did not address the legality of mobile voting sites in its ruling, meaning mobile voting vans could be used in future elections.
A single van has been used only once — in Racine in a primary election in 2022. It allowed voters to cast absentee ballots in the two weeks leading up to the election. Racine, the Democratic National Committee and others argue that nothing in state law prohibits the use of voting vans. City officials said that in light of the state Supreme Court ruling, they plan to use the van again during the state’s elections in April, calling it an important tool for ensuring all voters can cast their ballots.
The court did not rule on the merits of the case. Instead, it ruled 4-3 to dismiss the case, with four liberal justices in the majority and three conservative justices dissenting.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Racine County voter who brought the lawsuit, the county’s Republican Party chairman, Ken Brown, was not “aggrieved” under state law and therefore was not permitted to sue.
Brown filed a complaint the day after the August 2022 primary with the Wisconsin Elections Commission, arguing that the van violated state law. He argued that it was only sent to Democratic-leaning areas in the city in an illegal move to bolster turnout.
Racine city Clerk Tara McMenamin disputed those accusations, saying it shows a misunderstanding of the city’s voting wards, which traditionally skew Democratic.
The elections commission dismissed the complaint four days before the 2022 election, saying there was no probable cause shown to believe the law had been broken. Brown sued.
Justice Rebecca Bradley, who wrote the dissent in Tuesday’s ruling, said the ruling means that the elections commission’s decision will be left unreviewed by courts “and the People are left, once again, without a decision on fundamental issues of election law enacted to protect their sacred right to vote.”
Bradley said the ruling will make it more difficult for any voter who believes election law has been violated to bring lawsuits.
“The majority, once again, refashions the law to its own liking as it shuts the doors of the courthouse to voters,” Bradley wrote.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative law firm, represented Brown. The firm’s deputy counsel, Lucas Vebber, said in a statement that the ruling prevents Wisconsin residents from holding government officials accountable.
Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, praised the ruling, saying the decision means that “in-person absentee voting will remain widely available and won’t be unnecessarily restricted.”
Republicans in this case argued that it violates state law to operate mobile voting sites, that their repeated use would increase the chances of voter fraud, and that the one in Racine was used to bolster Democratic turnout.
Wisconsin law prohibits locating any early voting site in a place that gives an advantage to any political party. There are other limitations on early voting sites, including a requirement that they be “as near as practicable” to the clerk’s office.
For the 2022 election, McMenamin, the Racine clerk, and the city had a goal of making voting as accessible to as many voters as possible.
Racine purchased its van with grant money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. Republicans have been critical of the grants, calling the money “Zuckerbucks” that they say was used to tilt turnout in Democratic areas.
The van was used only to facilitate early in-person voting during the two weeks prior to that 2022 election, McMenamin said. It traveled for two weeks across the city, allowing voters to cast in-person absentee ballots in 21 locations.
A Racine County Circuit Court judge sided with Republicans, ruling that state election laws do not allow for the use of mobile voting sites.
The elections commission argued on appeal that Brown did not have standing to seek an appeal in court of the commission’s decision. The law allows for anyone who is “aggrieved” by a commission order to seek judicial review, but the state Supreme Court said Brown failed to show how he suffered because of the commission’s decision.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
The ongoing tariff battle between the U.S. and its three largest agricultural trading partners is worrying Midwestern farmers.
President Donald Trump imposed an additional 10% tariffs on all imports from China. Soon after, China retaliated with tariffs on U.S. products. Trump also proposed 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico — which have been paused for 30 days.
The president said he’s using the tariffs to force Canada and Mexico to increase border security. In a statement from the White House, the Trump administration said previous presidents “failed to fully leverage America’s economic position as a tool to secure our borders against illegal migration and combat the scourge of fentanyl.”
Bryant Kagay grows corn and soybeans and raises cattle in northwest Missouri. He believes tariffs should be narrowly targeted and used sparingly. He said he fears the recent tariffs could hurt farmers.
“It just seems like a very heavy-handed approach towards negotiation, and I just fear it will impact our ability to have future trade negotiations with some of these countries,” Kagay said.
Kagay said ideally, tariffs would be used as a tool to enforce best trade practices, not as a tactic in immigration negotiations.
“The idea that we can use tariffs as a bargaining chip or leverage to get concessions that are really unrelated to the products and industries most affected by the tariffs, I can’t say I’m really comfortable using them that way,” he said.
According to the Missouri Department of Agriculture, the top agricultural exports from the state are soybeans, corn, pork and soybean meal. The state’s top agriculture export partners include China, Mexico and Canada — as well as some countries in Europe and Southeast Asia.
Approximately 16.2% of U.S. corn is exported, much of that going to Mexico. A larger share of the country’s corn crop is used domestically for livestock feed and ethanol production.
(Courtesy of Investigate Midwest)
Ben Brown is an agriculture economist with MU Extension and specializes in row crop policy and farm finance. He said about 86% of U.S. cotton is exported, as well as 50-60% of grain sorghum and approximately 45% of U.S. soybeans — with about half of that going to the Chinese market.
“It wasn’t that long ago that one out of every three rows of soybeans grown here in the United States was going to China,” he said. “Today, it’s probably more like one out of every four rows goes to China … still relatively large.”
American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall was alarmed when Trump announced tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China.
“Farm Bureau members support the goals of security and ensuring fair trade with our North American neighbors and China, but, unfortunately, we know from experience that farmers and rural communities will bear the brunt of retaliation,” Duvall said in a news release.
Duvall said the announced and proposed tariffs put farmers in a “tough spot.” “More than 20% of U.S. farm income comes from exports, which are dominated by these three markets,” he said. “Just last year, the U.S. exported over $30 billion in agricultural products to Mexico, $29 billion to Canada and $26 billion to China — our top three markets and nearly half of all exports by value combined.”
In a letter to the White House, the American Farm Bureau urged caution.
“We ask that you carefully consider the impact on American farmers and ranchers, associated businesses and rural communities when determining potential trade actions,” the letter stated.
The National Farmers Union, another group representing agriculture producers across the country, similarly asked the president to reconsider tariffs due to the economic impacts on farmers.
“The position that the Farmers Union has is pretty much identical to the position that the Farm Bureau has on tariffs,” said Richard Oswald, vice president of the Missouri Farmers Union. “It’s just not a good idea.”
Oswald farms in northwest Missouri with his family, growing corn and soybeans while his children raise livestock. He’s especially concerned about what retaliatory tariffs could mean for corn and soybean markets.
“We just don’t utilize those soybeans at home,” he said. “If we don’t sell them, we have nothing to do with them.”
Oswald said his farm is trying to reign in spending as much as possible given the unknown impacts tariffs may have on farm budgets this crop year, but, he said, there’s only so much that can be done.
“If we’re going to produce a crop, we still got to buy fertilizer, and we still got to buy seed, we still got to buy fuel, and that’s pretty hard to pare that back,” Oswald said.
Brown said tariffs can “play both ways” — meaning tariffs on U.S. products have the ability to disrupt the marketplace and it can take time for farmers to find new buyers. Tariffs on imports can make international goods more expensive for domestic consumers, potentially making a domestic version of the product more attractive, if it’s available.
“I will say that it’s more complex than just saying that tariffs are bad for U.S. agriculture,” said Brown. “They’re bad for products that we export to other destinations around the world.”
Tariffs increase the unknowns in an already somewhat volatile industry. Brown said commodity prices have been up and down throughout the month of January.
While yields for Midwestern staples like corn and soybeans have increased over the past two decades, so have the costs of the fertilizers, pesticides, fuel and equipment required to cultivate the crops. Brown said the 2023 crop was the most expensive ever in Missouri.
Fertilizer, ethanol spared for now
After the Trump administration announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico, each country retaliated with tariffs on U.S. products. The Canadian government is proposing 25% tariffs on $30 billion in goods the country imports from the United States. The implementation of those tariffs has been delayed while the countries’ leaders negotiate.
Brown said the agriculture industry was spared when Canada chose not to tax U.S.-produced ethanol.
“I think the U.S. corn industry breathed a little sigh of relief because they are our largest international buyer of ethanol, and ethanol was not included in that list,” he said.
Similarly, Canadian exports of potash — a fertilizer used in soybean production — was spared from the United States tariff list.
“There was a lot of concern from U.S. producers leading up to a potential implementation (of tariffs), that potash and fertilizer prices could increase drastically, just based on how much fertilizer and potash we get from Canada,” Brown said.
Tariff déjà vu
Tariffs implemented during the first Trump administration caused soybean prices to drop, affecting Midwestern farmers specifically.
Kagay is a Missouri Farm Bureau member and a fourth generation farmer who came back to the family business around six years ago. He experienced the impact of tariffs in the previous Trump administration and has watched the markets he sells to jump around the last few weeks as tariffs are proposed and implemented.
“It’s just frustrating to see the value of your product drop so substantially … mostly due to government policy,” he said.
On his farm, they are doing whatever they can to prepare and brace for potential impact this time around. Kagay said he filters every decision “through a lens of potential volatility and uncertainty in the market.”
Kagay purchased seed and fertilizer for this year’s crop prior to Trump taking office, “to be ahead of the game, ahead of any potential tariffs, and make sure we had those secured before the uncertainty came into office,” he said.
At the time, the federal government offered a “Market Facilitation Program,” or payments to farmers negatively affected by the trade war.
“It’s unclear what type of assistance would even be available this go around,” said Brown, the MU Extension agriculture economist.
“If those payments are made available to everyone, I probably won’t turn them away,” Kagay said. “But I really do not like receiving direct payments from the government when free trade would just increase the value of my product.”
Twenty-onestates, including Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia offered Election Day voter registration for the Nov. 5 election.
That meant eligible voters could both register and cast a ballot on Election Day.
North Dakota has no registration but requires proof of identification to vote.
Republican Eric Hovde claimed Feb. 12 that the number of states was six. He suggested fraud caused his Nov. 5 loss to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.
The margin was nearly 29,000 votes (49.3% to 48.5%).
Hovde didn’t reply to a call for comment.
He mighthave been alluding to the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which exempted six states. Wisconsin was exempted because it had Election Day registration.
Wisconsin requires proof of residency to register and photo identification to vote.
Its same-day registration can complicate verifying eligibility of certain voters.
Wisconsin’s spring election, featuring two candidates for Supreme Court, is April 1; the primary, featuring three candidates for state schools superintendent, is Feb. 18.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers unveiled his 2025-27 biennial state budget proposal. The nearly year-long process is now picking up speed, but the next two-year budget is still far from being finalized.
Over the next few months, the Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee, controlled by Republicans, will make significant changes to Evers’ proposals before approving a final budget bill. During this time, the politically divided executive and legislative branches will wrestle over funding for public schools, child care, higher education, Medicaid expansion and much more.
Another budget surplus expected
Wisconsin ended its 2024 fiscal year with a more-than-expected $4.6 billion budget surplus and is on pace to end the current fiscal year with a $4.2 billion surplus. Republicans want to reduce the surplus by passing income tax cuts before the budget debate begins, while Democrats are urging more funding for things like K-12 education.
The Legislature must pass a budget signed by the governor every two years in order to use up state revenues for government operations. A budget period begins on July 1 of each odd-numbered year and concludes on June 30 of the next odd-numbered year. The last two-year budget totaled nearly $100 billion.
Here’s what this hectic process will look like:
The process involves three main entities that work to both create and pass the budget: the governor, the Legislature and state agencies.
State agencies like the Department of Public Instruction and the Department of Natural Resources calculate their financial needs for the upcoming cycle and submit formal funding requests, which were due to the State Budget Office back in September. The Department of Administration then analyzes and compiles the requests for the governor.
The governor then spends months crafting an executive budget proposal based on these requests, and community listening sessions are held across the state in December. On Tuesday he will give his budget address, which he is legally required to deliver to the new Legislature. Proposed funding for state agencies will be made available.
Soon after that — likely in March — Evers will reveal his capital budget proposal, which includes spending plans for long-term projects like new UW System buildings.
Then, the Joint Finance Committee will review and revise Evers’ budget. Under a divided government since 2019, the committee has scrapped the governor’s proposals and written its own. In 2023, GOP lawmakers began this process by stripping nearly 550 of his proposals.
Lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee typically hold their own community listening sessions in April. The committee typically completes its revisions by the end of May.
Then, lawmakers in both houses of the Legislature — the Republican-controlled Senate and Assembly — have until the end of the fiscal year on June 30 to pass the budget before it heads to Evers’ desk for signing. Here, he can use his controversial partial veto power to remove specific appropriations from the budget bill, also allowing him to delete large sections of language and manipulate words or numbers.
In 2023, Evers made national headlines after he manipulated punctuation in the Legislature’s budget to extend school funding for 402 years. A case challenging the partial veto is pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In the meantime, Republican lawmakers have introduced a constitutional amendment that would strip away the governor’s partial veto power.
If the budget is not signed into law by July 1, the state will continue to operate under the previous budget passed in 2023 until the new one is signed.
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Gov. Tony Evers is proposing a “domino series” of changes to state prisons, culminating with the closure of Green Bay Correctional Institution in 2029. The total cost would be just shy of $500 million.
The plan calls for finishing a juvenile detention facility in Dane County in order to finally close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons in northern Wisconsin by 2029. The facility would be converted into an adult prison.
Waupun Correctional Institution would be renovated; Stanley Correctional Institution would be converted into a maximum-security prison; and Sanger B. Powers Correctional Center in Brown County would add 200 beds.
The plan also expands the number of inmates in the state’s existing earned release program by 1,000.
Gov. Tony Evers this week will propose a significant overhaul of Wisconsin’s corrections system, pushing a plan that would close one of the state’s two oldest prisons, renovate the other and convert the state’s youth prison into a facility for adult men.
The proposal, which totals just shy of $500 million, will be included in the governor’s budget proposal, which he will unveil on Tuesday night. The governor shared details of the plan with reporters Friday morning.
The “domino series of facility changes, improvements and modernization efforts,” as Evers described them, would take place between approval of the budget and 2031. The proposal is the solution to the state’s skyrocketing prison population, Evers said, adding there is “not an alternative to my plan that is safer, faster and cheaper.”
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers delivers his State of the State address on Jan. 22, 2025, at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis. He is set to propose an overhaul of Wisconsin’s corrections system. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The first step would be building a facility for youth offenders in Dane County, allowing the state to close its current beleaguered juvenile prison complex in Irma, home to Lincoln Hills School for boys and Copper Lake School for girls. The cost would be $130.7 million.
Completing the juvenile Dane County facility would be the latest step in a years-long effort to shutter Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. A similar facility opened in Racine County earlier this month, with another juvenile facility in Milwaukee poised to open next year. With the addition of the Dane County facility, the state would be able to move youth offenders out of Lincoln Hills in early 2029, according to the Evers administration.
The Lincoln County complex would then undergo $9 million in renovations to be converted into a 500-bed, medium-security institution for men.
Another key piece of Evers’ plan would be converting Stanley Correctional Institution into a maximum-security facility for $8.8 million. That would allow the state to renovate Waupun Correctional Institution, the state’s oldest facility, where at times inmates were confined to their cells for months and denied medical care, according to an investigation by Wisconsin Watch and The New York Times. Waupun staff also have faced criminal charges following the deaths of five inmates.
The estimated $245 million renovation would involve demolishing the prison’s existing cell halls and replacing them with new, medium-security facilities known as a “vocational village” — the first in Wisconsin based on a model used in other states. The facility would be “designed to expand job and workforce training to help make sure folks can be stable, gainfully employed and can positively contribute to our communities when they are released,” Evers said.
Under the plan, the John Burke Correctional Center in Waupun would also be converted to a 300-bed facility for women “with little to no capital cost,” said Jared Hoy, secretary of the Department of Corrections.
Green Bay Correctional Institution, constructed in 1898, would close under the proposal sometime in spring 2029 at a cost of $6.3 million. Many have pushed for the closure of the prison due to overcrowding, poor conditions and staffing issues.
To compensate for the lost beds, the last project in the “domino” series would add 200 beds to Sanger B. Powers Correctional Center in Brown County.
The governor’s budget will guarantee Green Bay staffers a role at another DOC facility to account for the prison’s closure, the Evers administration said. The facility would likely then be sold, the governor told reporters.
In totality, the plan aims to avoid building a new prison in Wisconsin, which the governor’s administration estimates would cost $1.2 billion and take a decade to construct. Evers said Friday that he had not discussed the plan with Republican lawmakers, but implied he was slated to meet with them over the weekend.
Protesters call on the short-staffed Wisconsin Department of Corrections to improve prisoner conditions and lift restrictions on prisoners’ movement during a protest on Oct. 10, 2023, at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Meryl Hubbard / Wisconsin Watch)
Waupun Correctional Institution, the state’s oldest prison, is shown on Aug. 29, 2024, in Waupun, Wis. A sweeping proposal by Gov. Tony Evers would allow for its renovation. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The state’s adult institutions were locking up more than 23,000 people as of Feb. 7. That’s more than 5,000 above the design capacity of Wisconsin’s prisons and more than 3,000 above levels four years ago when COVID-19 actions shrunk prisoner ranks.
Justice reform advocates have argued that Wisconsin can’t substantially improve conditions without decarceration, including releasing more inmates and diverting others to programs rather than prisons.
Other states — some led by Republicans and some by Democrats — have managed to close prisons by adopting rehabilitation-focused reforms that cut thousands from the population.
The governor is also seeking some policy changes that could trim the population. For example, he wants to expand the capacity of the state’s existing earned release program for nonviolent offenders with less than 48 months remaining on their sentences, allowing more inmates to access vocational training and treatment for substance use disorders.
Evers noted there are 12,000 inmates on a waiting list to access vocational programming, and expanding the earned release program would likely make another 1,000 inmates eligible for the program.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The Milwaukee public school district struggles with a “culture resistant to change” that has undermined its ability to function properly, disproportionately harming its most vulnerable students, an audit ordered by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and released on Thursday found.
Evers, who served as Wisconsin’s superintendent of schools before becoming governor, ordered the independent audit last year after it became known the district failed to submit financial reports to the state leading to the resignation of the district’s superintendent and the withholding of funding by state officials.
The audit found that the Milwaukee Public Schools district, which is the state’s largest, with more than 66,000 students, must make sweeping, high-level changes to be more transparent with parents and taxpayers.
“MPS must make systemic changes to ensure that students — particularly the most vulnerable — are at the center of every decision,” the audit by MGT of America Consulting said. “Ultimately, this work is in service of students, whose future success hinges on a district capable of delivering equitable, high-quality education.”
Auditors identified “critical issues stemming from leadership and staff turnover, fragmented planning, outdated systems, and unproductive reporting protocols, which have led to siloed operations and inefficient practices.”
Evers, in a statement, urged the district to quickly accept the audit’s 29 recommendations.
“This audit is a critical next step for getting MPS back on track and, ultimately, improving outcomes for our kids,” Evers said.
The school district said in a statement that the audit will serve as a guide for improvement.
“While acknowledging the need for focused support, the report makes clear that we have an opportunity to build on this momentum, strengthening our schools and communities while creating a more unified path forward,” the district said.
The audit was released two days after Milwaukee Public Schools announced it was hiring former Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius as its new superintendent. The audit also comes amid a race for the state superintendent of schools, in which school and student performance is a top issue.
Evers made $5.5 million in public funds available for a pair of audits. The first one cost $2.5 million, and Evers said the remaining $3 million will be used to help the district implement the audit’s recommendations. He is proposing that an additional $5 million be spent to address future audit results, including one pending related to instruction.
The money would only be awarded if the state is satisfied that the district is making progress, Evers said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Recent peer-reviewed studies connect water fluoridation with less dental decay in children.
A Feb. 4 post on a Wisconsin section of Reddit raised the issue.
The post alludedto a pediatrician’s 2019 statement that dental infections increased significantly after Calgary, Alberta, ended fluoridation in 2011.
Calgary aims to reintroduce fluoridation by March 2025.
In a 2021 study Canadian researchers found that seven years after Calgary ended fluoridation, 65% of Calgary second grade children had cavities, versus 55% in Edmonton, Alberta, which fluoridated.
Canadian researchers in 2024 reported more occurrences of general anesthesia dental treatments among children in non-fluoridated communities.
Israeli researchers in 2024 found treatment of dental problems among children doubled after Israel stopped fluoridation.
The American Dental Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control supportfluoridation.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. hasadvocated for ending fluoridation.
About 84% of Wisconsinites had fluoridated water in 2024, down from 87% in 2022, as more communities stopped fluoridating water systems.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
A liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court justice on Wednesday rejected a Republican request that she not hear a pending case that seeks to restore collective bargaining rights that tens of thousands of teachers, nurses and other state workers lost in 2011.
Her decision came at the same time the court, without comment, declined to hear the case as unions requested before it first goes through a lower appeals court.
Justice Janet Protasiewicz decided against recusing herself after Republican legislative leaders filed a motion saying she should not hear the case because she voiced opinions about the law during her 2023 campaign.
Her decision is a win for liberals who have fought for more than a decade to overturn the law known as Act 10, which effectively ended collective bargaining for most public unions.
Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn withdrew from the case on Jan. 30. Hagedorn helped write the law when he was serving as then-Gov. Scott Walker’s chief legal counsel.
The court’s decision not to immediately hear the case means it is almost certain not to consider it until after the April 1 election. That election will determine whether liberals maintain their majority on the court. Even if the conservative wins, due to Hagedorn’s recusal, the court would be split 3-3 between liberal and conservative justices when considering the case.
Christina Brey, a spokesperson for the unions that brought the lawsuit, said they were disappointed in the delay but they remained confident.
Wisconsin’s anti-union law has been challenged for years
Seven unions representing teachers and other public workers in Wisconsin filed the lawsuit seeking to overturn the anti-union 2011 law, known as Act 10. The law had withstood numerous legal challenges before a Dane County circuit court judge in December found the bulk of it to be unconstitutional, setting up the appeal to the state Supreme Court.
The Act 10 law effectively ended collective bargaining for most public unions by allowing them to bargain solely over base wage increases no greater than inflation. It also disallowed the automatic withdrawal of union dues, required annual recertification votes for unions and forced public workers to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits.
Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost in December ruled that the law violates equal protection guarantees in the Wisconsin Constitution by dividing public employees into “general” and “public safety” employees. Under the ruling, all public sector workers who lost their collective bargaining power would have it restored to what was in place before 2011.
The judge put the ruling on hold pending the appeal.
The union law divided Wisconsin and the country
The law’s introduction in 2011 spurred massive protests that stretched on for weeks. It made Wisconsin the center of a national fight over union rights, catapulted Walker onto the national stage, sparked an unsuccessful recall campaign and laid the groundwork for Walker’s failed 2016 presidential bid.
The law’s adoption led to a dramatic decrease in union membership across the state. The nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum said in a 2022 analysis that since 2000, Wisconsin had the largest decline in the proportion of its workforce that is unionized.
In 2015, the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature approved a right-to-work law that limited the power of private-sector unions.
If the lawsuit is successful, all public sector workers who lost their collective bargaining power will have it restored. They would be treated the same as the police, firefighter and other public safety unions that remain exempt.
Divisions remain over the effectiveness of the law
Supporters of the law have said it gave local governments more control over workers and the powers they needed to cut costs. Repealing the law, which allowed schools and local governments to raise money through higher employee contributions for benefits, would bankrupt those entities, backers of Act 10 have argued.
Democratic opponents argue that the law has hurt schools and other government agencies by taking away the ability of employees to collectively bargain for their pay and working conditions.
Republicans wanted Protasiewicz not to hear the case
Protasiewicz is the court’s newest member and ran in 2023 as an opponent of the union law. Her victory gave liberals the majority on the court for the first time in 15 years. That majority is on the line again in the April 1 Supreme Court election to fill the seat of a retiring liberal justice.
Protasiewicz said during her campaign that she believes Act 10 is unconstitutional. She also told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she would consider recusing herself from any case challenging the law. Protasiewicz participated in protests against it and signed the petition to recall Walker.
In her response to the Legislature’s request that she not hear the case, Protasiewicz said she could hear the case fairly.
“I am confident that I can, in fact and appearance, act in an impartial manner in this case,” she said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
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