In 2022, after living as a boy and going by a new name for several years, a 15-year-old from Madison, Wisconsin, wanted to make it official. Like most teenagers, he dreamed of getting his driver’s license, and his family wanted his government identification to reflect who he really was.

But Wisconsin law has a caveat: He would have to publish his old, feminine name and new name in the local newspaper for three weeks — essentially announcing to the world that he is transgender.

In many instances, if he had committed a crime, the law would afford him privacy as a minor. But not as a transgender teenager changing his name.

His parents worry the public notice now poses a risk as President Donald Trump has attacked transgender rights, asserted that U.S. policy recognizes only two sexes and described efforts to support transgender people as “child abuse.” The publication requirements endanger the community, lawyers working with trans people say, by creating a de facto dataset of likely transgender people that vigilantes and even the government could use for firing, harassment or violence.

Transgender people are over four times more likely to be victims of violence, research shows. Most transgender people and their families agreed to be interviewed for this story only if they weren’t named, citing safety concerns.

“Publication requirements really leave folks open and vulnerable to discrimination and to harassment more than they already are,” said Arli Christian, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It can put people at risk of violence and blatant discrimination simply because of who they are.”

Wisconsin’s legal process stems from a 167-year-old law, one of many statutes across the country that Christian said were intended to keep people from escaping debts or criminal records. Changing one’s name through marriage is a separate process that does not require publication in a paper.

Although the right to change one’s legal name exists in every state, the effort and risk required to exercise it vary. Less than half of states require people to publicize their name changes in some or all cases, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that tracks voting and LGBTQ+ rights. 

Wisconsin law grants confidentiality only if a person can prove it’s more likely than not that publication “could endanger” them. But the statute does not define what that means. For years, some judges interpreted that to include psychological abuse or bullying, or they accepted statistics documenting discrimination and violence against transgender people nationwide. 

In 2023, however, a state appeals court set a stricter standard after a trans teenager was denied a confidential name change in Brown County, home to Green Bay. The teen said he had endured years of bullying, in which peers called him slurs and beat him up. Court records show the Brown County judge asserted that publishing the teen’s name wouldn’t expose him to further harm because his harassers already knew he was transgender. 

The teen argued that a public process would create a record available to people he met in the future. While the appeals court conceded a “reasonable judge” could agree, it found the Brown County judge had not improperly exercised her discretion in denying the request. Crucially, the appeals court determined that “endanger” meant only physical harm. The case wasn’t appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The combination of Wisconsin’s public requirement, the restrictive ruling and the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies has dissuaded at least one person from going through with a name change.

J.J Koechell, a 20-year-old LGBTQ+ advocate from suburban Milwaukee, tried to change his name in November but decided against it after a judge denied his request for confidentiality, ordering him to publish his change in the local paper and create a public court record if he wanted to proceed. 

“That’s already dangerous,” Koechell said of a public process, “given our political atmosphere, with an administration that’s trying to erase trans people from existence completely, or saying that they don’t exist, or that there’s something wrong with them.”

At the end of March, Wisconsin Democrats announced plans to introduce a bill that would eliminate the publication requirement for transgender people, so long as they can prove they’re not avoiding debt or a criminal record. Republicans, who control the Legislature, will decide whether it will receive a hearing or vote. 

There has been a push in some states to make it easier and safer for transgender people to update their legal documents. Michigan and Illinois laws removing publication requirements took effect earlier this year. And a California lawmaker introduced a bill that would retroactively seal all transition-related court records.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, did not respond to emails and a phone call to his office seeking comment. Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica sought comment from four other Republican leaders in the Assembly and Senate. Of the two whose offices responded, a staffer for Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, R-Walworth, said, “It doesn’t look like something we’d consider a priority,” and a staffer for Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, said he was not available for comment.

Asked about the safety concerns people raised, a White House spokesperson said, “President Trump has vowed to defend women from gender ideology extremism and restore biological truth to the federal government.”

No exceptions for minors

Wisconsin’s law requires a transgender person to publish the details of their identity to change their name whether they are an adult or a child. The notice requirement makes no distinction based on age.

This is less privacy than the legal system typically affords young people, confirmed Cary Bloodworth, who directs a family law clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Bloodworth said both child welfare and juvenile courts tend to keep records confidential for a number of reasons, including that what happens in a person’s youth will follow them for a lifetime. 

“I certainly think having a higher level of privacy for kids is a good thing,” Bloodworth said, adding that she thinks the publication requirement is unnecessary for people of any age.

A mom living near the Wisconsin-Illinois border whose 11-year-old daughter recently went through the name-change process said these proceedings should automatically be private for children.

“The fact that we still have to fight to get something as simple as a confidential name change for a minor who is obviously not running away from criminal or debt charges is just so frustrating and overwhelming,” she said. 

The judge deciding their case seemed reluctant to grant confidentiality at first, questioning whether her daughter was being threatened physically, she said. The judge granted the confidential change. But the family remains shaken. 

“We live just in constant terror of the wrong person finding out that we have an 11-year-old trans child,” she said. “All it takes is one wrong person getting that information, and what we could end up going through, becoming a target, is horrifying.” 

Right before the pandemic, a teenager told her parents she was transgender. She spent much of that first year of her transition at home, attending virtual school like the rest of her peers in the Madison school district. She came out to only a few friends and wanted to keep her gender identity private, so she kept her camera off and skipped her high school graduation. 

When she decided to legally change her name, the prospect of publicizing her transition terrified her, according to her mom.

“I explained to her that it’s in tiny, tiny print, and it’s in some page of the paper that no one is going to read,” her mom said. “But it felt to her like she was just standing out there in public with a ‘TRANS’ sign on her.”

While fewer people read physical newspapers these days, much of their content gets published online and is easily searchable. The court case, too, becomes a public record that is stored online and sometimes aggregated by other websites that show up at the top of search results. 

The parents of the then-15-year-old boy who changed his name before getting his driver’s license discovered that happened to their son. When anyone — say, a prospective employer — searches the young man’s name, one of the first results shows his old name and outs him as trans.

“This is what somebody would use as their first judgment of him,” his mom said. “We certainly don’t want that to be something that people would use to rule him out for a job, or whatever it is he might be doing.” 

Like many other states, Wisconsin does not have laws that ban discrimination against transgender people in credit and lending practices or in public spaces like stores, restaurants, parks, doctor’s offices and hotels. However, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, issued an executive order in 2019 banning transgender discrimination in state employment, contracting and public services.

After Trump took office again and began issuing executive orders attacking trans rights, the boy’s family started to investigate how they could retroactively seal the court records related to the name change. It wouldn’t change what was in the newspaper, but it could help them remove the online records. The court records also contain sensitive information like their home address that someone could use to harass them.

A friend who was a retired attorney helped their son craft an affidavit describing his experiences. His mom read from it during an interview. “‘Because of recent political events, I fear violence —’” she said before breaking off. “Oh God, I hate even reading this. ‘I fear violence, harassment, retribution because of my status as a transgender person.’”

Her son, who is now 18, shared a statement over email. 

“At this moment in time I’m probably more scared about being a trans person than I ever have been before, with the public record if you have my first and last name you can easily find my deadname and therefore find out I’m trans,” he said. “I would love to say that I feel safe and valued in our society but unfortunately I can’t, at times I feel that my personhood is being stripped away under this government.”

Anne Daugherty-Leiter, who has guided transgender clients and their families through the name-change process as board president of Trans Law Help Wisconsin, said where a person lives in Wisconsin, and therefore what court they must petition, affects their likelihood of getting a confidential change.

Confidentiality is important, she said, because of how the state handles changes to birth certificates. Wisconsin birth certificates that are issued through a confidential name change show only the new name. But if a person has to announce their name change publicly, birth certificates are amended to list both the person’s old and new names. Any time the person has to use that document, at the DMV or while getting a loan, it outs them, she said.

‘This is not who I am’

Koechell, a trans man and LGBTQ+ activist, was unwilling to go through with the name-change process after being denied confidentiality by a judge late last year.

Koechell lives in Waukesha County, a Republican stronghold where multiple schools have enacted policies critics have called anti-LGBTQ+. 

In a letter to the judge, Koechell wrote that people had sent him multiple threats and posted his family members’ addresses online, all for “being an advocate and being transgender openly in my community.” 

“I do not want to publish my deadname for people to use against me,” he said in an interview, using a term common among transgender people to refer to their birth names. “I don’t see a reason why people who are not particularly fond of me wouldn’t show up at a hearing like that and try and cause trouble.” 

Court records show the judge denied Koechell’s confidentiality request and his request to reconsider. The judge’s order referred to Koechell, a trans man with a masculine voice and beard, as “she” and “her.”

Koechell decided the public process wasn’t worth the risk. But it’s hard, he said, to move through life with his old identification.

“When I go to a new doctor or new appointment or something, then that’s the name on my chart, and then I get called that in a waiting room full of people, and it’s super uncomfortable. I just want to disappear,” Koechell said. “Then eventually, I have to correct the doctors, and I’m like, ‘Hey, just to let you know, I don’t go by that name. This is not who I am.’”

Data from the latest U.S. Transgender Survey found that 22% of people who had to show an ID that did not match their identity experienced some form of negative consequence, including verbal harassment, discrimination or physical violence. 

If the U.S. Senate passes the SAVE Act, which would require voters to prove citizenship with a passport or birth certificate, those consequences could include disenfranchisement. Transgender people who can’t change the name on their birth certificate or passport would be ineligible to vote, according to the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and chief sponsor of the bill, has said the legislation directs states to create a process for citizens with a “name discrepancy” to register. “No one will be unable to vote because of a name change,” he said.

After Trump won in November, Trace Schlax, a 40-year-old IT project manager, decided to expedite changing his gender marker on his passport, figuring he could update his name later in state court. 

“It matters,” Schlax said. He loves to travel but has encountered extra scrutiny from airport security with outdated documents. “I get comments from TSA when I go through to travel domestically, about my hair, about how I look. I get extra pat-downs.”

He sent his application in early December and crossed his fingers. He received it back in February, rejected. By that time, Trump had issued an executive order banning trans people from changing the gender markers on their passports. 

Schlax decided to continue updating what records he could, like his birth certificate and driver’s license. He worries about having conflicting documents. Will he get accused of fraud? Will he have trouble flying? 

But in the end, he decided it was still important to change his name and update his license to improve his day-to-day experience. 

And he decided to go about it publicly. It felt less painful, he said, to accept the risks rather than detail his personal, traumatic experiences to a judge only to have them decide he hadn’t endured sufficient danger. 

“Me changing my name and my gender marker affects absolutely no one but me,” said Schlax, who has a court date to change his name in late April. “Why does this have to be so hard? Why do I have to prove myself so hard?”

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. 

Wisconsin’s name-change law raises safety risks for transgender people is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

If you want to understand how Wisconsin Supreme Court elections became so political — with a record $100 million spent on this year’s nasty contest — it’s helpful to trace the history of former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman.

Gableman’s career began full of promise, diligence and ambition. His cousin told Wisconsin Watch’s Tom Kertscher that at a young age Gableman “was always the adult in the room.”

But over the course of his career he became entangled in partisan politics.

Gableman was willing to travel hundreds of miles to take political appointments around the state, even receiving a Burnett County judgeship for which he didn’t apply. Gov. Scott McCallum acknowledged to Wisconsin Watch part of the reason he picked Gableman was he was a Republican supporter, bypassing two local finalists recommended by McCallum’s advisory committee for judicial appointments.

When Gableman ran for Wisconsin Supreme Court, he authorized a misleading, racially charged political ad against his opponent. At the time it was shocking enough to draw a formal complaint, but the Supreme Court couldn’t agree if it violated the judicial code of conduct. Now, you couldn’t turn on the TV or scroll social media before this year’s April 1 election without a faceful of misleading ads.

Despite his staunch Republican presence on the state’s high court, writing key opinions on Act 10 and dismissing an investigation into Gov. Scott Walker, Gableman fell out of favor with the party after he attended the 2016 Republican National Convention, in possible violation of judicial rules against partisanship. After causing disturbances in hospitality suites, he had to be escorted to his hotel. Party support for him waned. He decided, at age 50, not to run for a second 10-year term.

And yet, when President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Republicans called upon Gableman, who worked in Trump’s first administration, to investigate the results. Gableman found no evidence the election results were fraudulent and was called an “embarrassment” by the same Republican leader who hired him. The investigation ultimately cost taxpayers $2.8 million, four times more than its original budget. Now he’s facing a three-year suspension of his law license for his unprofessional conduct during the investigation.

The courts are not supposed to be subject to the same political whims of the legislative and executive branches. Supreme Court justices and judges run for office during nonpartisan spring elections for a reason.

As Kertscher’s account of Gableman’s career shows, raw power politics created this situation. It will be up to the public to decide if it wants something better.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Michael Gableman’s story is a study in how politics have infected Wisconsin’s courts is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin’s recent Supreme Court election, with its $100 million in record spending and wall-to-wall attack ads, spotlighted how politicized the state’s “nonpartisan” high court has become.

To understand how we got here, consider the rise and fall of former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who has agreed to surrender his law license for behavior unbecoming of a lawyer, let alone a former top judge.

Last November’s 10-count complaint filed by the Office of Lawyer Regulation, an arm of the very court he served on, is not the first time Gableman, 58, has been accused of an ethical lapse. But until now he has avoided public consequences. One example of Gableman’s actions, not previously reported, shows how closely intertwined an officially nonpartisan justice became with party politics.

Wisconsin Watch has learned that while a justice, Gableman attended the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland — in possible violation of judicial rules prohibiting attendance at party conventions — and while there, he appeared intoxicated and was escorted out of the convention hall after causing disturbances, according to two Wisconsin Republicans in attendance and a third briefed on the incident shortly after it happened.

Former longtime state GOP leader Steve King recalled then-U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy telling him that Gableman “has a problem and we need to get him back to his hotel.”

Gableman had established a solid legal career, having served in district attorney offices and courtrooms across the state. He made history winning election to the Supreme Court — the first candidate in four decades to defeat an incumbent justice.

But after the GOP convention in Cleveland, his career entered a downward spiral. His Republican support waned, and he decided not to run for a second 10-year term and disappeared from public life.

Then in 2021, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hired Gableman as a special counsel to investigate Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Wisconsin. 

At the time, it was not publicly disclosed that Gableman had worked a $170,000 executive branch job in the final year of Trump’s first administration.

According to newly obtained public records, Gableman’s compensation for the failed election probe was more than twice what was budgeted for his role. 

The entire investigation cost taxpayers nearly $2.8 million, a new figure that includes a $432,000 open records lawsuit settlement reached earlier this month. The total is more than four times the $676,000 that was budgeted for the project.

Gableman’s career — from his first major courtroom job in 1999, to the pivotal 2008 Supreme Court election, to perpetuating Trump’s debunked election conspiracies — is a case study in what can happen when partisanship entangles the government branch most shielded from political volatility.

‘Always the adult in the room’

Raised in Waukesha County as the youngest of five in a middle-class family, Gableman stood out for doing right, his cousin David Gableman told Wisconsin Watch. The former justice, through his cousin, declined to be interviewed and didn’t respond to other interview requests.

While growing up, “he was always the adult in the room,” David Gableman said. “Always the serious one, very focused. … He always wanted to have an impact, he always wanted to make a difference in life.”

A multiyear class president at New Berlin West High School, Gableman earned a bachelor’s degree in history and education from Ripon College. At Ripon, he was sports editor of the yearbook and a member of Beta Sigma Pi.

In earning his law degree in 1993 from the Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, Gableman made the dean’s honor roll.

Gableman, who never married and has no children, was aided in his career rise by Republican Party connections and a willingness to move to rural areas.

After working as a county government attorney and prosecutor in Langlade, Forest and Marathon counties in northern Wisconsin, in 1999 Gableman was appointed by GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson as district attorney in far-northwestern Ashland County.

Looking back, Thompson doesn’t see it as odd that he didn’t choose a local attorney, though he acknowledged he doesn’t recall even interviewing Gableman.

“I’m sure that Michael Gableman’s name came forward as an individual, that he was a Republican and that he was a good lawyer,” Thompson told Wisconsin Watch.

Gableman later described himself as an independent when Thompson appointed him. His first recorded campaign contribution in a Wisconsin election was to a Democrat — $500 in 1998 to then-state Assembly Rep. Greg Huber, who represented Marathon County.

Ashland County was something of a GOP launching pad at the time. Gableman was preceded as district attorney by J.B. Van Hollen, who went on to become Wisconsin’s attorney general, and succeeded by Duffy, now Trump’s transportation secretary. Van Hollen and Duffy also had been tapped for the job from outside the county.

Another GOP connection sets up a Supreme Court run

Running unopposed, Gableman was elected Ashland County district attorney as a Republican in 2000. District attorneys, unlike judges, can run with a partisan affiliation.

By then, Gableman chaired the county Republican Party. In 2002, he cut short his term as district attorney to take an administrative law judge position 260 miles away in Appleton under Thompson’s successor, GOP Gov. Scott McCallum.

The low-profile, largely bureaucratic position handles disputes within government agencies. But it gave Gableman the title of judge.

Just two months later, McCallum appointed Gableman to a vacant circuit court judgeship nearly 300 miles away in Burnett County. 

It played out in a partisan way.

Gableman had not applied for the Burnett County judgeship. Yet McCallum chose him over two local applicants recommended by McCallum’s advisory committee for judicial appointments.

Gableman contributed $2,500 to McCallum’s campaign in the months before the appointment and headed up some McCallum fundraising events.

Asked why he picked Gableman, McCallum told Wisconsin Watch he knew Gableman “as a supporter of mine” and considered him a good attorney and a hard worker.

“It came down to it, the other two were Democrats, I appointed Gableman,” he said.

It’s true that one of the finalists, then-Burnett County district attorney Ken Kutz, was a Democrat. But the other, Mark Biller, then district attorney in neighboring Polk County, was a Republican. McCallum didn’t respond to requests to clarify his recollection of Kutz and Biller.

McCallum made it clear when interviewing Kutz that the selection process was decidedly partisan. 

“The first question was, ‘Why the hell should I appoint a Democrat for judge in Burnett County?’” Kutz recalled to Wisconsin Watch.

Biller was in the right party, but he had lost his run for Polk County judge months earlier.

He said McCallum chose Gableman because McCallum was “looking for someone who could use that job for higher office and advance party goals.”

“He went out there and just campaigned to death,” Kutz recalled of Gableman’s run for Burnett County judge several months after being chosen by McCallum. “The guy is a politician like nobody’s business.”

Nasty ads taint 2008 race

Gableman “ran a real tight courtroom” and performed well as a Burnett County judge, said Kutz, who succeeded Gableman after Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle appointed him to the bench.

Gableman helped create the county’s Drug and Alcohol Court, one of the first in Wisconsin, its Restorative Justice Program that helps divert offenders from jail, and inmate and juvenile justice community service programs.

But in deciding to run for Supreme Court in 2008, he was virtually unknown outside of GOP circles. Republicans speaking on condition of anonymity said Gableman emerged as the candidate after better-known conservatives opted not to challenge the incumbent Justice Louis Butler.

Butler, a former Milwaukee County judge and the state’s first African American justice, had been appointed in 2004 by Doyle. Both he and Gableman were running statewide for the first time.

Gableman’s campaign, led by former state Republican Party executive director Darrin Schmitz, cast Gableman as a law-and-order candidate, drawing a contrast with Butler, who previously had worked as a public defender. In attack ads, Gableman’s supporters nicknamed Butler “loophole Louie” — suggesting Butler would use legal loopholes to help criminal defendants.

Gableman stayed on message, said David Gableman, who accompanied his cousin on many campaign trips. “It didn’t matter what the question was,” Gableman would always quickly pivot to how many sheriffs had endorsed him, his cousin said.

He also received heavy backing from business interests, especially Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which wanted a reliable conservative to flip what they viewed as an activist Supreme Court. 

The court had issued a series of controversial rulings, including one finding that individual manufacturers could be held liable for a child’s lead paint injuries, even without proof they were responsible. 

WMC and other conservative groups spent $2.75 million backing Gableman, nearly seven times what his own campaign spent, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign estimated.

At the time, the $6 million spent on the race — a fraction of the $100 million spent in the 2025 Supreme Court contest — passed the previous campaign spending record for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. That record had been set the previous year and was itself four times higher than the previous spending record.

Gableman defeated Butler by nearly 3 points, becoming the state’s first candidate to unseat an incumbent justice since 1967.

In his victory speech, Gableman declared a triumph for “judicial conservatism.”

William Bablitch, a former Supreme Court justice, said at the time: “Right now, the impression of the people of the state is justice is for sale, and some are going to get a fairer shake than others.”

Surviving accusations of misconduct 

In what would become a pattern, Gableman was accused of two ethical lapses during and soon after the 2008 campaign.

Liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now alleged Gableman had made campaign fundraising calls for McCallum from his taxpayer-funded Ashland County district attorney’s office in 2002. One Wisconsin Now produced records showing 55 calls had been made from Gableman’s office and from his government-issued cellphone to McCallum fundraisers and donors, McCallum’s campaign office and others.

One Wisconsin Now requested investigations, but several authorities, including Van Hollen, Duffy, the Government Accountability Board and the Office of Lawyer Regulation, refused.

The calls “sent the message that he was political,” said Sachin Chheda, who ran Butler’s campaign. “It also sent the message that he was willing to push the envelope.”

Gableman also faced a judicial oversight investigation for a misleading campaign ad he approved three weeks before the election.

The ad falsely implied that, as a public defender, Butler used a loophole to free imprisoned rapist Reuben Lee Mitchell, who later molested a child. In fact, Butler’s representation didn’t result in a reduced punishment and Mitchell committed the later crime only after serving his prison sentence.

“It just shows he was willing to do anything,” Scot Ross, former head of One Wisconsin Now, said of Gableman.

David Gableman noted there were harsh attack ads on both sides, recalling that another relative didn’t vote for his cousin after ads accused him of giving light sentences to sex offenders.

In October 2008, just two months after Gableman was sworn in, the state Judicial Commission filed a complaint against him, alleging his ad violated the state judicial code of conduct. 

The commission dropped the case in 2010 after the Supreme Court deadlocked 3-3 on what to do about the complaint. Gableman didn’t participate. The other three conservative justices said that while the ad was “distasteful,” its statements were “objectively true” and protected by the First Amendment.

Reliable conservative falls out of favor with his party

Gableman’s tenure on the Supreme Court was marked by controversy.

When Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused Justice David Prosser of putting his hands around her neck during an argument — an incident witnessed by four justices — Gableman’s account was the only outlier, characterizing the 5-foot-3 Walsh Bradley as looming over the 5-foot-9 Prosser, according to a sheriff’s report.

Gableman also claimed to sheriff’s investigators that Walsh Bradley had smacked him on the back of the head in the presence of their colleagues for calling Shirley Abrahamson, then the chief justice, by her first name. No other justice corroborated his story.

Ethics complaints were filed with two state agencies over Gableman’s acceptance of two years of free legal services, likely worth tens of thousands of dollars, in the case filed against him over the Butler ad. As a justice, Gableman did not recuse himself from cases argued by Michael Best & Friedrich, the law firm that provided his free legal aid. He ruled in favor of the firm’s clients five times, more than any other justice during his tenure on the court, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. No action was taken against him from those complaints.

A strong conservative on the court, Gableman wrote the court’s 5-2 opinion upholding Act 10, the 2011 law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most Wisconsin public employee unions. He also wrote the 4-2 decision that ended what was known as the John Doe II criminal investigation into Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s coordination with outside groups during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections that Act 10 triggered.

Then Cleveland happened.

Attending the Republican National Convention was problematic for a sitting justice. The state Judicial Code of Conduct directs judges to “avoid partisan activity” and says they may not “participate” in political party conventions. But what’s labeled as a comment on the rule says judges “may attend public events, even those sponsored by political parties or candidates, so long as the attendance does not constitute the kind of partisan activity prohibited by this rule.” In recent years, Wisconsin candidates for the Supreme Court and a justice-elect have spoken at state Democratic and Republican party conventions. 

One Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he witnessed Gableman being “loud and obnoxious” at the convention. Gableman appeared to be intoxicated before other attendees escorted him out of the convention hall and back to his hotel, the Republican source said.

That source and another Republican, who was not in attendance, said they were told by party colleagues that Gableman belligerently insulted Janesville U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, then speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in a hospitality suite, before Duffy became involved and whisked him away.

Spokespersons for Duffy and Ryan did not return messages seeking comment.

David Gableman said he drove to the convention with his cousin, though they didn’t attend all of the same events together. He said he wasn’t aware of any incidents. 

The Republicans who declined to be identified said the incident added to concerns about whether Gableman would be the best candidate to back in 2018. In June 2017, Gableman, then only 50, announced he would not run for a second term.

In 2020, Gableman was hired by the federal Office of Personnel Management at a salary of $170,800 putting him among the highest-paid 10% of employees in the agency. Gableman was involved in implementing a Trump executive order to curb diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training for federal employees, a precursor to what would happen this year with Trump’s second administration.

2020 election probe becomes new focus

When Trump lost the 2020 election and fought the result in court with baseless claims of voter fraud, Gableman, no longer working in government, became a lieutenant in Trump’s election fraud-fighting army.

Gableman, like Trump, “has always been kind of anti-establishment,” believes “the swamp” is deep and that politicians aren’t accountable, David Gableman said. “He’s been loyal to Trump not because he’s a blind soldier, but because he has similar political beliefs.”

Defending Trump also allowed Gableman to return to the public spotlight.

Four days after Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, Gableman suggested at a pro-Trump rally in Milwaukee that the election had been stolen.

In June 2021, Trump accused Vos, the state’s Assembly speaker, and other Wisconsin GOP leaders of “working hard to cover up election corruption.”

The next day, Vos announced at the state Republican Party convention that he had retained Gableman to investigate the 2020 election.

The move took pressure off Vos and other Wisconsin Republicans from Trump’s base. They were placating Trump by choosing a Trump-aligned former Supreme Court justice to lead the investigation.

Vos miscalculated.

It wasn’t widely known at the time that Gableman had been working for Trump’s administration in 2020. Asked if he knew, when hiring Gableman, that the former justice had been working for Trump, Vos said he didn’t think so.

Gableman began his first months of election investigation work at the New Berlin Public Library because he didn’t own a computer.

It didn’t go well. Gableman acknowledged having little understanding of how elections work. He also:

• Tried to jail the mayors of Madison and Green Bay for refusing to submit to depositions, which he had no authority to do.
• Endorsed various false claims about lawmakers’ power to decertify Biden’s election victory, which the New York Times reported had lended “credence to the conspiracy theories.” 
• Deleted records in violation of state regulations, leading Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn to say Gableman appeared to have “gone rogue” and “run amok” by refusing to comply with the state’s open records law.

His work did please one fan, however.

In April 2022, Gableman attended a party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where Trump praised him before an audience: “Michael, you’ve been unbelievable,” The Washington Post reported.

His efforts drew derision from Wisconsin legal authorities and even the party leader who hired him.

In June 2022, a year into the election investigation, Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington asked the Office of Lawyer Regulation in a court order to discipline Gableman. Remington found Gableman in contempt of court and fined him $2,000 per day for refusing Remington’s order to produce documents. Gableman also displayed “sneering” and mocking behavior in court, Remington wrote, and “destroyed any sense of decorum and irreparably damaged the public’s perception of the judicial process.”

Vos fired Gableman two months later, in August 2022, calling him an “embarrassment.” 

After the firing, Gableman’s name was removed from his law school’s list of notable alumni.

Gableman was paid $117,000, more than double the $55,000 that had been budgeted, according to a previously unreported document Wisconsin Watch obtained from the Assembly clerk.

“He paid no attention to detail, he delegated almost all the work to somebody else and very poor follow-through,” Vos told Wisconsin Watch. “It seemed like Mike Gableman was more concerned about the money he was earning as opposed to finding the truth.”

Reviews by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and The Associated Press found no evidence of uncounted, miscounted or fraudulent votes that would have had any bearing in Wisconsin in the 2020 election.

Election probe leads to lawyer regulation complaint

Gableman’s work was supposed to conclude within a few months. Ultimately, the nearly 14-month probe cost taxpayers $2.77 million, including $1.82 million for outside lawyers. Earlier this month, the state agreed to pay $431,843 in legal fees to American Oversight, a group that sued over destruction of records related to the investigation.

Less than a month after being fired, Gableman told a gathering of Outagamie County Republicans: “Our comfort is holding us back from taking the action that’s necessary. … It’s that very comfort that is keeping us from what our Founders knew to be the only way to keep an honest government, which is revolution.”

Even while under investigation for lawyer misconduct, he continued to advance his election conspiracies to sympathetic audiences.

The Wolf River Area Patriots promoted its January meeting by touting a Gableman speech on the importance of electing conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel to the state Supreme Court.

About 50 people turned out in tiny New London, two hours northwest of Milwaukee. The meeting was open to the public. Gableman spoke in his resonant baritone for more than an hour, stoking fear and spreading unproven theories about casting votes in the names of overseas military service people or the deceased, and saying Wisconsin elections “are only as secure as the worst criminally minded fraudster wants them to be.” 

Gableman said little about Schimel, who went on to lose the April 1 election, other than that he was superior to eventual winner Susan Crawford. He called Crawford “a particularly nasty piece of work.” 

At more than $100 million, the Schimel-Crawford race set a national record for spending on a state supreme court contest and featured droves of misleading attack ads that have become common since Gableman’s 2008 campaign.

The state Office of Lawyer Regulation’s case against Gableman, which includes allegations raised in a 100-page complaint from the Law Forward law firm in March 2023, said he violated 10 counts of Supreme Court rules of professional conduct for attorneys. He is accused of making false statements about a judge, an opposing attorney and two mayors; making false statements to the Office of Lawyer Regulation; disobeying a court order; and violating the state open records law and confidentiality rules. 

Gableman had gone from a top jurist sworn to uphold the constitution to a political player accused of lying in court and breaking laws. 

He initially denied the charges, which could have led to the permanent loss of his law license. 

But on April 7, he capitulated.

In the settlement filing: “Gableman hereby stipulates that he cannot successfully defend against the allegations of misconduct … and agrees that the allegations of the complaint provide an adequate factual basis for a determination of SCR (Supreme Court Rules) violations as alleged in each of  the ten counts of the complaint.”

He agreed with this admission to losing his license to practice law for three years.

The proposed settlement must be approved by two more authorities to become official: 

A lawyer serving as referee in the case.

And the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Some research for this article was provided by Audrey Nielsen of the nonprofit Sunlight Research Center, which assists newsrooms with investigative reporting.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has become hyper political. The rise and fall of Michael Gableman’s career shows how that happened. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

On a sunny spring day on a farm outside St. Louis, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin celebrated a new era for America’s wetlands. 

Flanked by farm equipment and a large American flag, Zeldin said federal rules about wetlands, long a source of frustration for people who want to drain them to grow crops or build homes, were going to relax. 

“The federal government doesn’t need to be regulating every puddle on every property everywhere in America,” he said to a group of local farmers, in a state that has already lost nearly 90% of its natural wetlands.

Zeldin said the Trump administration will once and for all solve the hotly debated question of which wetlands are federally protected — determined by the tricky term “Waters of the United States” — so farmers won’t be punished for draining them. 

That solution, Zeldin said, will come from a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared only wetlands connected to a “water of the U.S.” will be protected. That ruling, Sackett v. EPA, could remove safeguards from more than half of the nation’s remaining wetlands, which slow flooding, improve water quality and serve as important wildlife habitat. 

“There is nothing to debate anymore … we’re going to follow the Supreme Court,” Zeldin said. “It’s going to be simple.”  

But wetland protections have never been simple. 

To align with Sackett, the EPA will rewrite the definition of “Waters of the U.S.,” which spells out which water bodies and wetlands are subject to federal regulation in the Clean Water Act. The term has been caught in the crosshairs of litigation and politics for decades. Environmental advocates claim more expansive federal protections are needed to preserve the country’s natural resources, while some farmers and homebuilders argue the government is overstepping its authority to control their land. 

Zeldin’s proposed definition instructs the federal government to take a big step back from how many wetlands it protects, which conservationists have warned will further abuse a misunderstood ecosystem that has already experienced widespread destruction. 

The battle to save what’s left will fall to the states, which don’t protect wetlands equally.

The Mississippi River, of course, doesn’t heed any state rules on its long journey from Minnesota to the Gulf, and its millions of acres of wetlands control flooding and catch pollutants all along the way. An uncertain future for those wetlands means an uncertain future for the river and the people, animals and ecosystems that rely on it. 

Mississippi River wetlands are varied and vital 

Wetlands are places where land and water meet, and the Mississippi River Basin, which covers 40% of the contiguous U.S., hosts some 65 million acres of them. 

What they look like varies immensely. The prairie potholes of the upper Great Plains formed from retreating glaciers. Peatlands, most common in Minnesota, are characterized by a layer of dead plant material called peat. The swamps of the Gulf South are home to water-loving trees, like cypress and tupelo. And along the coast, freshwater from the river’s mouth and saltwater from the ocean mix in tidal marshes. 

Their common denominator is their great ecological diversity and their ability to relieve flooding, purify water, mitigate drought and provide rich wildlife habitat. Experts say in an era of increased storms, droughts and floods wrought by climate change, they’re needed now more than ever. 

During the river’s massive, long-lasting flood in 2019, Nahant Marsh, a protected wetland in Davenport, Iowa, held about a trillion gallons of water from the Mississippi that would otherwise have flooded downstream communities, according to Brian Ritter, executive director of the marsh’s education center. 

Wetland protections get political  

Despite their benefits, wetlands are in peril. Intentional destruction began in the country’s colonial days, when “drain the swamp” was a literal, not political, strategy to clear space for farmland and cities. They were also vilified, thought to harbor diseases, dangerous animals and even monsters and ghosts. 

The states that border the Mississippi River have lost at least half of the wetlands they once had, and in some states, like Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, nearly all are gone. In 2019, the latest year for which data is available, only about 116 million acres of wetlands remained in the contiguous U.S., roughly half of the pre-colonial landscape. 

In the last 50 years, societal views of wetlands changed as people learned more about their value. They also became a bipartisan issue. The 1972 Clean Water Act gave them federal protections; the 1985 Swampbuster provision in the Farm Bill penalized farmers who grew crops on converted wetlands; and former President George H.W. Bush declared “no net loss” of wetlands a national goal in the late 1980s. 

But they are still disappearing. The Mississippi River Basin lost 132,000 acres of wetlands between 2009 and 2019, according to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That’s the equivalent of about 100,000 football fields. 

And as efforts to protect wetlands picked up, so did the issue’s political charge, launching fights over the remains of a system that was once far more vast.  

“When people heard about wetlands, it was always, ‘There’s a wetland in between where I am now and what I need to do. And the goddamn government won’t let me fix that,’” said Tracy Hames, executive director of the Wisconsin Wetlands Association.

Before Sackett, the Supreme Court tried to lay down the law in Rapanos v. United States in 2006, when a developer in Michigan wanted to fill in wetlands on his property to build a shopping center. A majority of the justices agreed that the government had overstepped, but they offered two interpretations of which wetlands get federal protections. One was more restrictive, saying only wetlands that touch a protected body of water could be regulated, and one was broader, saying any wetlands that play a key role in improving downstream water quality could be regulated. 

In the years that followed, presidential administrations have flip-flopped between the broader and more restrictive approach to governing wetlands, continually redefining “Waters of the U.S.”

Former President Joe Biden’s administration issued a broader “Waters of the U.S.” rule. But 26 states sued to block his rule from taking effect. That means that while those legal battles play out, the country is using two “Waters of the U.S.” rules to determine which wetlands are protected — Biden’s amended rule and an older version in the states that sued. 

“Waters of the U.S.” has been a “pain in the side” for farmers and ranchers, Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in Washington March 12 after Zeldin announced his intent to revise the rule.  

“I need a rule that’s on one page, that’s sitting on the dash of my truck right beside my devotional book, and if I have a question about a ravine on my farm I can pick that one page up and read it and interpret it myself,” Duvall said. “It should be that simple.” 

And homebuilders say to fix the nation’s housing shortage, which is estimated to be at least 1.5 million housing units, developers will need wetlands. 

They’ve tried to avoid them because of the difficult permitting process over the years, said Tom Ward, vice president of legal advocacy for the National Association of Home Builders. 

“To get these 1.5 million units, we’re going to have to go back to some of those more difficult pieces of property,” Ward said. 

What’s next 

Speaking with reporters in Chesterfield, Zeldin said he’d end the ambiguity and back-and-forth with one word. 

“Sackett,” he said. “S-A-C-K-E-T-T.” 

On March 12 the EPA issued guidance that spells out what the new rule will do: Unless a wetland directly abuts another federally protected water, it will not get federal protections. 

Importantly, that guidance isn’t legally binding. Until the EPA issues its new rule, wetlands will still have Biden-era protections, meaning half of the country will be under one rule, and half will be under another. And the rule-making process contains lengthy steps that can take years — the Trump administration issued its first “Waters of the U.S.” rule in 2020 — although Zeldin has promised this one won’t take as long. 

That means the actual impacts of Sackett are yet to be understood, although some have attempted to predict them. Following the ruling, the EPA under Biden estimated that up to 63% of the nation’s remaining wetland acres could lose federal protections.  

Another way to examine the impact is by looking at the determinations the Army Corps makes when someone wants to drain or fill a wetland. After the Sackett decision, about 18% fewer of those determinations found the wetland was federally protected, according to Adam Gold, coasts and watersheds science manager for the advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund. 

Although the tool Gold created to track the change in these determinations has limitations, in part because of a small post-Sackett sample size, he said it gives a “sneak peek” at how federal protections for wetlands are waning. 

Even under a new rule that the Trump administration asserts will be more straightforward, wetlands will not have the same protections across the country because different states have different rules. Along the Mississippi River, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Mississippi have wetland protections that go beyond the arm of the Clean Water Act, an Ag & Water Desk analysis found. But Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas do not have more protective wetland laws on the books. Louisiana extends broader state protections to its coastal wetlands, but not inland ones.

In other words, it will be easier to develop wetlands for housing in Missouri, for example, than in Minnesota. That will likely cause confusion and variation across the country, said Mark Davis, founding director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy in New Orleans. “I think you’re almost guaranteed to have more confusion … we’re like everybody else. We’re reading tea leaves.”

Even the state laws are moving targets. Illinois is aiming to beef up its wetland protections, for example, while in Tennessee, lawmakers want to scale theirs back. 

Still, Zeldin intends to close the case on “Waters of the U.S.,” stepping back from decades of broad federal protections for wetlands and giving farmers and developers the certainty they’ve long asked for, with Sackett as his guide. 

But given the history of wetland regulation, certainty could still be an elusive target. 

After all, the Biden administration defended its amended “Waters of the U.S.” rule as being consistent with the Sackett ruling, too, said Abby Husselbee, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Energy and Environmental Law program. 

“To the extent that this EPA would proclaim to be the final arbiter of how Sackett applies to the definition of (Waters of the U.S.) — we see already that there are other interpretations,” Husselbee said. “I don’t necessarily know that those would go away forever.” 

Avery Martinez of KMOV, Estefania Pinto Ruiz of KWQC and Elise Plunk of the Louisiana Illuminator contributed to this story. It is part of the series Down the Drain from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting collaborative based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

A new era dawns for America’s disappearing wetlands as feds retreat from oversight is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Madison’s city clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, resigned Monday as the city and state continued to look into how she and her staff lost track of nearly 200 ballots that never got counted in November.

Witzel-Behl, who took the post in 2006, gained wide recognition for running elections in the state’s second largest city during the pandemic and multiple presidential elections. In all, she oversaw more than 60 elections.

But her reputation took a blow in the November 2024 election, when 193 ballots from two polling stations went missing on Election Day and never got counted. Clerks and the Wisconsin Elections Commission have criticized her for failing to promptly inform state and city officials about the issue.

“On behalf of city of Madison residents, I want to extend my gratitude to Maribeth for her commitment and dedication to public service,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said.  

Witzel-Behl was placed on leave in March, with Mike Haas, the city attorney and former commission administrator, acting as clerk in the interim. It’s unclear who will replace Witzel-Behl; Haas previously told Votebeat he does not want the job permanently. The city is undertaking a national search, officials said.

In addition to ongoing city and state investigations, the November error has also led to legal action, with a liberal election law group seeking $34 million in damages on the grounds voters were disenfranchised.

In its probe, the Wisconsin Elections Commission found that mistakes by the clerk’s office began well before Election Day, including printing poll books for the two polling sites earlier than recommended by the commission.

Had the poll books been printed later, they would have automatically indicated that certain ballots had been returned, making it clearer to poll workers on Election Day that some ballots had been received but not counted. 

Clerk’s staff found the first batch of ballots — 68 in total — in a previously unopened courier bag in the clerk’s office on Nov. 12, while Dane County was in the middle of certifying the election.

There are conflicting accounts of what happened next: An unidentified Madison election worker claimed that the county was informed about the ballots that day, but Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell has denied that. Witzel-Behl, who according to records obtained by Votebeat was on vacation for much of the time following Election Day, didn’t follow up with the county, and those ballots were never counted.

A second batch of 125 ballots was discovered in the clerk’s office on Dec. 3. However, staff didn’t relay that information to the Wisconsin Elections Commission until Dec. 18, well after the state certified the election. The commission then notified Haas about the error, and he relayed the news to the mayor’s office — which is when both learned of the problem for the first time.

Facing growing scrutiny, Witzel-Behl proposed procedural changes, including requiring clerk’s staff to verify all election materials received on election night and ensuring that each polling place receives a list of the absentee ballot courier bags it handles to prevent any from being overlooked.

Those measures were implemented fully in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, for which she was on leave. The city apparently didn’t have any significant oversights in that election. City officials say they’re still refining the procedural changes.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Madison city clerk resigns amid investigation into 2024 ballot snafu is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

At an April 1 hearing, in a sign of what the most contentious issues will be in this year’s state budget, the Republican-controlled budget committee only heard from two state agencies: Corrections and the Universities of Wisconsin system.

UW system President Jay Rothman told lawmakers he agreed with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ assessment that the 2025-27 biennial state budget is a “make it or break it” budget year for the public university system.

Evers’ budget request for the Universities of Wisconsin matched the agency’s ask of $856 million in additional funding over two years, which would be one of the largest increases in the university system’s history. Evers told reporters this funding, in addition to $1.6 billion proposed for capital projects, is essential even without the Trump administration’s threats to cut university funding.

Republican lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee asked Rothman to justify “administrative bloat” across the system’s 13 universities, as well as the sizable budget ask. Rothman said while the request is large, Wisconsin currently ranks 43rd out of 50 in state spending on public universities. Evers’ budget would add 214 state-funded positions to UW campuses. Rothman said that excluding UW-Madison, the universities have lost over 1,000 positions since 2019.

The share of the UW system budget that comes from state funds has decreased by about 15 percentage points in the last two decades, from 33% to 18%.

“If we get the budget funded, we will not have to raise tuition,” Rothman told the JFC. “If we don’t get funded at an adequate level, that’s one of the levers we have. We keep our branch campuses open, that’s another lever we have that I don’t want to have to use.”

But amid declining birth rates and enrollment in public schools across the state, Republican lawmakers questioned whether the $856 million ask is reasonable considering university enrollments may soon drop significantly. Five of the 13 campuses had enrollments shrink last year.

“You cannot cut your way to success,” Rothman told the committee. “You need to invest.”

State funding for UW-Madison — the state’s flagship university — in inflation-adjusted dollars was $644 million in 1974. Since then, it has declined by $93 million in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the university’s 2023-24 budget report. Figures aren’t available system-wide.

Republican Rep. Mark Born, co-chair of the committee, asked Rothman why the request called for 13 new staff positions — one on each campus — to support students who have aged out of the foster care system. He cited a UW system report that found there were 420 students in that program across nine of the campuses. He questioned why a position would need to be created at a school like UW-Platteville, which served nine of those students last year. The report also shows that the program didn’t serve all 570 students who qualify, including 23 on that campus.

“I think this is a shining example of the governor’s desire to grow government and your desire to grow your system, and it’s not focused on the reality of how you invest in this stuff,” Born told Rothman.

Rothman said the intent behind the positions is to expand the number of foster care students who could be served.

GOP lawmakers critique admissions process

Republican lawmakers have criticized enrollment and admissions at the state’s flagship university in recent years, citing constituents who say their high-achieving children have been rejected from attending UW-Madison. They have also raised concerns that the university is denying admission to in-state students in favor of out-of-state or international students.

Unlike some of the smaller Wisconsin campuses, UW-Madison has maintained high enrollment numbers likely due to its ability to attract out-of-state and international students.

If the university significantly increased its enrollment of in-state students from an already declining pool of applicants, enrollment at other UW system schools could be negatively affected, UW-Madison Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Derek Kindle told WPR.

During the April 1 hearing, Sen. Rob Stafsholt, R-New Richmond, said he adamantly believes in retaining Wisconsin-based students in the university system. He asked Rothman why one of his young constituents — who has a 4.3 GPA, 32 ACT score and a father who is a military veteran — was rejected from UW-Madison.

“How are we not serving our own kids, as they graduate, by admitting them to our universities before we spend taxpayer dollars and increase taxpayer dollars to attract people from other parts of the world?” Stafsholt asked.

Rothman said he didn’t have the specifics of that student’s case, but pointed to a bill signed into law last year that allows graduating high school students who rank in the top 10% of their high school’s graduating class to gain admission to any UW system school and guarantees admission to UW-Madison for those in the top 5% of their class. The bill takes effect for college admissions starting next fall.

In fall 2024, UW-Madison admitted around 59.3% of in-state applicants, down from an average of 66.8% over the previous nine years. The out-of-state U.S. student admission rate was 46.5%, and the international student admission rate was 33.3%, compared to a previous nine-year average of 52.7% and 38.6% respectively.

The questioning was similar to a national talking point about high-achieving students being rejected from universities, which some Republicans have attributed to diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Right-wing activists like Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, have questioned whether the government should be funding higher education.

On the same day as the hearing, Kirk took to social media to share an example of a high-achieving student similar to the one Stafsholt spoke of.

“Why are we giving hundreds of billions of dollars to universities so stupid they won’t offer this kid an admission because of his skin color (and let’s be honest, that’s why he was rejected everywhere)?” Kirk wrote on X. “Defund the college scam.”

Slashes to federal funding loom over UW-Madison

Last month, the federal Department of Education notified UW-Madison that it was one of 60 universities across the country under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights. The letter warned that the university could lose federal funding if it failed to protect its Jewish students.

The move was part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses, which has involved detaining, deporting and terminating the visas of students with ties to the national pro-Palestinian protests last spring.

UW-Madison is also one of 45 universities being investigated for alleged racial discrimination related to its diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The Trump administration has made sweeping threats to pull federal funding from colleges that continue to consider race and diversity in their policies and programs.

But how much funding is at stake here?

According to the Associated Press, out of 50 public universities under OCR investigation, UW-Madison is among the top five that received the most federal revenue in 2022-23. The university collected more than $827 million in federal funds that year, which was just over 20% of its total revenue.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Republicans take skeptical view of UW system’s ‘make-or-break’ funding request is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Do unauthorized immigrant workers pay taxes?

It’s a question that is widely misunderstood, but yes, unauthorized immigrants do pay taxes. 

While many immigrants are still paid “under the table” for their work, the majority pay income and payroll taxes on their wages, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. While an exact number is difficult to determine, a 2013 estimate from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy suggested at least half of all unauthorized workers in the United States pay income taxes.

An estimated 70,000 unauthorized immigrants live in Wisconsin, about 47,000 of whom are employed, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. About two-thirds of those had lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more. But that information, while the most recent available, is now over five years old. The Department of Homeland Security estimated that there were 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country as of 2022.

In 2018, unauthorized immigrants in Wisconsin paid an estimated $157 million in federal taxes and $101 million in state and local taxes, totaling nearly $258 million, according to the American Immigration Council. That estimate dropped slightly to a total of $240 million in federal, state and local taxes as of 2022.

Unauthorized immigrant workers nationwide paid an estimated $97 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022, according to a July 2024 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

But how do they pay taxes without being identified by authorities? 

Unauthorized workers who lack a Social Security number can instead apply for an individual taxpayer identification number through the Internal Revenue Service — a system created in 1996 — to file their income taxes. As of December 2022, there were an estimated 5.8 million active ITINs in the United States, according to the Administration of the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number Program. 

Taxpayer ID numbers allow unauthorized workers to file tax returns. All that is required to obtain an ITIN is an application that does not require proof of work authorization or proof that you reside in the United States legally. 

ITIN holders’ tax information has historically been legally protected and could not be shared with the Department of Homeland Security or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Unauthorized immigrant workers had been able to get one without threat of the information being shared with authorities who may find and deport them.

But on April 7, the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security struck a deal on behalf of the Trump administration to share taxpayer data on unauthorized individuals under final removal orders. The agreement faces legal challenges.

Some unauthorized immigrants provide employers with fake Social Security numbers, someone else’s number or a previously valid number. When they’re hired, most employers do not and are not required to verify the identification numbers with any government entity, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. 

But when tax return season comes around, the IRS will not accept filings that include a fake, stolen or invalid Social Security number. If unauthorized workers want to file their taxes and create a paper trail, then they will often obtain an ITIN.

The Social Security Administration may alert an employer when an employee’s name and Social Security number on a W-2 form do not match, but it cannot enforce any penalties. The IRS rarely ever investigates employers with a high number of W-2 forms that don’t match. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, this is due to limited resources and employers’ ability to simply claim they asked an employee for the correct number, which is all that is required of them by law.

The financial penalty for each W-2 discrepancy is so small that the federal government often will not investigate it. Legally, a mismatched name and number cannot be considered proof that a worker is in the country illegally.

Why would unauthorized workers decide to pay and file taxes? 

According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, many unauthorized workers choose to pay taxes in the hopes that it will eventually help them gain citizenship. Should a pathway to citizenship ever be established through a comprehensive immigration bill, a history of paying taxes can be viewed as a way to show “good faith.” 

While many unauthorized immigrants pay taxes, they do not qualify for many benefits like Social Security retirement, Medicare coverage and the federal earned income tax credit — despite contributing billions of dollars in federal payroll taxes that help fund these programs. 

If they purchase goods and services in a community, unauthorized immigrants pay sales taxes just like others do. When buying a home, they will pay state and local property taxes as well.

Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.

How do unauthorized immigrant workers pay taxes? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

After two high-profile cases in which candidates were unable to remove their names from the ballot, Wisconsin lawmakers are weighing a change to one of the nation’s strictest withdrawal laws.

Under current Wisconsin law, once candidates qualify for the ballot, they can only be removed if they die. 

The restriction received renewed attention in August 2024, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running as an independent, unsuccessfully sought to withdraw from the Wisconsin presidential ballot — a request that ultimately reached the state Supreme Court. 

More recently, in January, Madison Ald. Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford announced she was dropping out of her reelection race and endorsing her opponent, citing two major life events. Despite her public withdrawal, she remained on the ballot and was reelected in April.

On Tuesday, the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections held a public hearing on the proposal written by Rep. David Steffen, a Republican, to allow candidates for certain statewide, congressional and legislative offices and independent candidates for president and vice president to withdraw from the ballot any time before the Wisconsin Elections Commission certifies candidates’ names. 

Steffen said he’s working on an amendment to address concerns raised by election clerks about how the proposal could disrupt tight ballot production timelines.

Calling the current law outdated, Steffen told lawmakers that candidates deserve a straightforward way to remove themselves from consideration before Election Day.

Clerks raise timeline concerns; Steffen promises amendment

While the bill would not apply to local or off-cycle races like Martinez-Rutherford’s, election clerks say even the limited version could still cause issues. They warned that allowing candidates to withdraw up until the day of certification doesn’t give them enough time to finalize ballots, which are often already in production before that point.

“I have no problem if a candidate wants to remove their name,” Columbia County Clerk Sue Moll, a Republican, said. “I just want to make sure that the timeline is such that we can meet our deadlines.”

Most states provide nominees who wish to drop out of a race some sort of off-ramp. Many states allow nominees to drop off the ballot between 60 and 85 days before an election. Some states require polling places to have notices clarifying candidates’ withdrawal if they drop out after ballots are already printed. 

Wisconsin law used to allow nominees to drop off the ballot if they declined to run, but it changed in 1977 to the current policy — allowing withdrawal only in the event of death.

Under the proposal presented on Tuesday, nominees could drop off the ballot anytime before the election commission certifies candidate names. 

Processing a candidate’s withdrawal on that last day would put clerks on a “really tight” timeline, Moll said.

Even with a head start to prepare ballots, county clerks are scrambling at the last minute to get their ballots programmed, printed and sent to municipal clerks in time for them to send out by the state’s legal deadline, which is 47 days before a federal election, Moll said. 

It would have taken about an extra half-day of work to reprogram everything if Kennedy dropped off the ballot last-minute, she said. It could take more time in counties that rely on vendors to prepare their ballots and program voting equipment, she added.

When a candidate changes his or her mind and drops out, Moll said, “Well, OK, that’s one candidate. What happens if there’s five candidates?”

Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson, a Democrat, told Votebeat that clerks would risk going past the deadline for sending out ballots if candidates waited until the last minute to drop out.

If the deadline to withdraw was about a week before the commission certifies candidates’ names, Tollefson said, “we should be OK.”

Steffen, the author of the proposal, said at the Tuesday public hearing that an amendment in the works would do exactly that: Require nominees to withdraw at least seven business days before the Wisconsin Elections Commission meeting to certify nominees. The amendment would require clerks to be notified of a nominee’s withdrawal at least five days before the meeting.

At the hearing, Tollefson said she agrees with the amendment. She told Votebeat that the timelines would still be tight under the amendment, particularly in bigger counties like Milwaukee County and Dane County, but that clerks should be able to get their ballots done in time. 

February and April elections don’t have long enough window

Giving nominees a path to withdraw their candidacy for the February and April elections — like the one Martinez-Rutherford won after trying to exit — would be virtually impossible because those elections are run in such a short time span, clerks told Votebeat.

Clerks only have about a week between the February and April elections to prepare their ballots, get them printed and send them out to municipal clerks, Moll said.

If the amended measure becomes law and plays out well, Steffen said he may introduce a separate proposal that addresses local races. But he also acknowledged the tight timelines that clerks face in February and April elections.

Just after the hearing, at the Eastmorland Community Center in Madison, Martinez-Rutherford, the candidate who won a city council seat in April despite informally dropping out of her race, said that she would remain on the council but that it would be “reasonable” to create a process for candidates to formally drop out.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Dying to get off the ballot? Wisconsin bill offers another way out is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Republican-ordered audits released Friday found that Wisconsin state agencies and the Universities of Wisconsin system have failed to track the millions of dollars they spent on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, making it difficult to fully assess the initiatives.

The highly anticipated reports come amid a push by President Donald Trump to end federal government support for DEI programs. There have been similar efforts in Wisconsin by Republicans who control the Legislature. The reports’ findings are likely to further increase pressure from Republicans to do away with anything related to DEI.

DEI practices at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in particular have come under close scrutiny.

The system’s flagship campus fired its chief diversity officer, LaVar Charleston, in January for what university officials said were poor financial decisions he had made, including approving substantial raises and authorizing what they deemed to be excessive spending on travel.

The school is one of 50 universities across the country that Trump said are under investigation for alleged racial discrimination related to DEI programs. UW-Madison also is one of 60 schools that federal education officials are investigating because of accusations that they failed to protect Jewish students during campus protests last year over the war in Gaza. UW-Madison officials said Friday that they are cooperating with both probes and that they condemn antisemitism in all of its forms.

Audits estimate that millions of dollars went toward DEI activities

The audits found that neither UW nor the 15 state agencies that were reviewed specifically tracked how much money they spent on DEI efforts during the 2023-2024 fiscal year, which ended June 30.

Auditors noted that neither the UW system’s Board of Regents nor its administration required schools to define DEI, which resulted in them launching individualized initiatives. Auditors were able to estimate that the system spent about $40 million on offices with duties connected to DEI. The system spent about $12.5 million on salaries for positions with job duties related to DEI and another $8 million working on DEI-related activities. A dozen state agencies spent about $2.2 million on salaries for jobs related to DEI.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration didn’t consistently require agencies to ensure DEI plans were developed and implemented correctly, the audit found. Also, agencies didn’t consistently document when they corrected noncompliance, the report said.

The administration cautioned about drawing conclusions about the actual costs related to DEI as outlined in the audit.

Many of the costs were related to implementing programs required by law, were human resources best practices or were tied to worker retention and recruitment efforts, said Kathy Blumenfeld, who heads the state’s Department of Administration.

GOP pushes to eliminate DEI programs

Legislative Republicans have been pushing for years to end DEI programs and last year ordered the review by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has pledged to end diversity efforts in state government, saying that such initiatives are “cancerous” and that he wants a society that is “truly colorblind.”

State Sen. Eric Wimberger and state Rep. Robert Wittke, Republican co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Audit Committee, said in a statement Friday that the audits show taxpayers spent millions on DEI with very little to show for it.

Vos said in a statement Friday that Assembly Republicans would keep pushing to eliminate DEI as they deliberate on the 2025-27 state budget.

“Student achievement should be based on merit,” Vos said.

DEI positions shrink at UW

Under a deal reached with Republicans in 2023, the UW system froze diversity hires, re-labeled about 40 diversity positions as “student success” positions and dropped an affirmative action hiring program at UW-Madison. In exchange, the Legislature paid for staff raises and construction projects.

Auditors found that when the deal took effect, the system had at least 123 full-time positions that provided DEI services, had job titles that included the terms “diversity, equity and inclusion” or were senior leadership positions focused on DEI. The number of positions had dropped to 110 by May 2024.

There are now 64 positions, UW system President Jay Rothman wrote in response to the auditors. Rothman said the auditors’ work was challenging because there is no universal definition of DEI, each school developed its own initiatives and the offices that perform DEI work also might have duties unrelated to DEI projects, blurring spending lines and funding sources.

“In that context, it is important to emphasize both the UW’s philosophical shift aimed more broadly at student success as well as the variance in which universities structure their offices and positions that may pertain to — though not exclusively focus on — ‘DEI’ activities when one is interpreting the data offered in the report,” Rothman wrote in his letter.

Governor required agencies to create DEI plans

Evers signed an executive order in 2019 requiring each state agency to create and monitor equity and inclusion plans to address employment barriers, assess workplaces to ensure they’re equitable and promote inclusion and expand professional development to encourage a more inclusive culture.

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.

Wisconsin audits find lack of tracking of DEI spending at UW system and state agencies is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

When a journalism nonprofit asked the Wisconsin Department of Justice in 2020 for the names and work histories of all law enforcement officers in the state, the agency initially appeared ready to grant the request.

But the department received pushback from law enforcement groups, and the records were not released.

This new information came to light in documents recently obtained by The Badger Project in its lawsuit against the state DOJ. The suit is seeking the names and work histories of most law enforcement officers in Wisconsin. The Badger Project’s co-plaintiff in the suit is the Invisible Institute, the journalism nonprofit that made the 2020 request.

Other news organizations, including the Washington Post, had seen similar requests rejected by the Wisconsin DOJ in preceding years.

In 2024, after the state DOJ denied another request for police names and work histories, this time from both the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project, the organizations sued for access.

In March, as part of the regular evidence exchange in the case, called discovery, the state DOJ released hundreds of documents to the two journalism nonprofits.

Among the documents was a letter sent by Assistant Attorney General Paul Ferguson, who heads the state DOJ’s Office of Open Government, to every police chief in the state. The letter indicated that the state DOJ intended to fulfill the request and release a list of all law enforcement officers in the state, but asked the individual agencies to identify any undercover officers who should not be included in that list.

The Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association responded with a letter to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul the next day and urged the department to reverse itself, according to the documents obtained by The Badger Project.

Kenneth Pilegge, the association’s vice president, wrote that he had “significant concerns” in the letter.

“We have had contacts with members within our membership that have very serious concerns with this release and adamantly oppose this release without a court review,” he continued.

Neither the state DOJ nor the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association gave a comment for this story when offered the opportunity to do so.

Kaul assumed the position of attorney general, the head of the Wisconsin Department of Justice, in 2019. The department previously rejected the request for a full list of law enforcement officers’ names and work histories several times before he became AG, according to the released documents.

Dozens of states — including Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa — have released a full list of their law enforcement officers to a nationwide reporting project, which includes the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project.

The Wisconsin DOJ has, in response to repeated requests, released a list of “flagged officers,” those who lost their jobs due to termination, resignation in lieu of termination, or resignation prior to completion of an internal investigation.

This list, however, does not include officers who were fired or forced out of law enforcement jobs in a different state before taking a position in Wisconsin.

In previous denials, Ferguson has cited concerns that a complete list could “endanger” undercover officers and pose a general risk to officers and their families in a “volatile environment.”

The state DOJ says it isn’t able to identify undercover officers and redact their names.

Wandering officers

In Wisconsin, police and jailers who were fired or forced out of a previous job in law enforcement only to get hired at another one, called wandering officers, increased by 50% from 2021 to 2024. 

The total number of law enforcement officers in Wisconsin is sitting near record lows, according to investigations by The Badger Project. So the pressure to hire previously fired or forced-out officers can be high, experts say. Chiefs and sheriffs need to fill positions, and officers fired or forced out from previous jobs already have their certification, which costs law enforcement agencies and new recruits time and money to obtain. Wandering officers are more likely to again commit misconduct on the job, studies have suggested.

A full list of names of law enforcement officers, including those separated from jobs outside of Wisconsin who now hold positions in the state, would alleviate a considerable information gap, the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project argue in their lawsuit.

The records requested would not include home addresses or family information.

The lawsuit

The Badger Project’s lawsuit is being funded by The National Freedom of Information Coalition, through grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Legal Defense Fund. 

The Wisconsin Transparency Project, a law firm dedicated to enforcement of the state’s open records laws, along with the University of Illinois First Amendment Clinic, filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs.

The parties are submitting written arguments, called briefs, to Dane County Circuit Court, and then the judge will likely rule on the case, said Tom Kamenick, lead attorney for the Wisconsin Transparency Project.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Department of Justice withheld officer roster after police group pushback is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Throughout his life, Robert Miranda has served many roles.

Some know him as a motorcyclist. Having been vice president of the Latin American Motorcycle Association’s Milwaukee chapter, Miranda has crossed the country several times on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Others know him as a leader and innovator in the community. Aside from working as executive director of Esperanza Unida, a nonprofit labor organization that served Milwaukee’s South Side for decades, Miranda has also been recognized by the United Migrant Opportunity Services, or UMOS, with a Community Service Award and as Hispanic Man of the Year.

Many more see him as a leader – Miranda served as the first Latino student body president at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, helping establish programs such as U-PASS, in which students can access free transportation on Milwaukee city buses.

But even with a lifetime of accolades and achievements, Miranda prides himself most on fighting for his community, having dedicated himself to causes such as Milwaukee’s decades-old lead contamination problem.

His passion for these issues, Miranda said, stems from a belief that change can happen and that it is worth fighting for.

“We’re all in this together, and we all share the same ground,” Miranda said. “All we can do is to improve things so that we can improve our quality of life.”

‘The importance of community’

Miranda credits his instinct for activism to his upbringing. Growing up in Chicago and attending a Catholic school, Miranda said, cemented many of his views.

“Social issues and social justice were ingrained in me,” he said. “This helped me build an understanding of the importance of community.”

Manny Perez, who formerly served as secretary of the state Department of Workforce Development, has worked with Miranda numerous times over the years.

He described Miranda as dedicated, honorable and forward-thinking.

“Robert, as an individual, has been a true leader,” Perez said. “His primary interest and priority has always been the improvement of conditions for the community at large.”

Serving in the Marines taught him many of his ideals, Miranda said. What he did there “was about protecting the community.”

The Marines provided a cause and a fighting energy, Miranda said. Now he seeks to “fight to improve what is going on in the community.”

Since then, his advocacy has largely featured issues that impact the people and community around him, extending to advocacy for incarcerated people, education and the environment.

“For me, if things in the community improve, my quality of life improves too,” Miranda said. “Safer streets, better schools, clean water – all of this is a part of the quality of life that I can see and that I can enjoy.”

A focus on lead

For nearly a decade, Miranda served as a Marine at Camp Lejeune, a military base in North Carolina. Camp Lejeune, later designated a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency, was found to have dangerous water contamination, exposing an estimated 1 million Marines and their families to chemicals causing cancer and other health conditions.

“From 1980 to 1987, I was on that base drinking that water,” Miranda said. “A lot of people were getting cancer. A lot of people were going home.”

Drinking the contaminated water caused him health problems that live on to this day, he said. But knowing what happened at Camp Lejeune also brought him an awareness of issues with pollution in other parts of his life.

After hearing about lead poisoning issues in cities like Washington, D.C., Miranda started researching and looking into the problem closely.

“It really piqued my interest because of what I was going through,” Miranda said. “I started looking into it and I started seeing a lot of correlations between my experiences.”

Over a decade after Miranda started researching the lead issue, he remains a staunch advocate for clean water and clean-living environments.

Miranda’s work has put him at the front lines, leading efforts with the Freshwater for Life Action Coalition and the Get the Lead Out Coalition.

He has been an outspoken critic of Milwaukee’s abundant lead hazards, having called for lead-free drinking water and living environments years before citywide efforts to address the lead problem.

“He anticipated conditions before his time,” Perez said. “He sees many things before other people.”

Fighting for a clean environment means more to Miranda than himself or his own past.

“It’s about community,” Miranda said. “This is about our babies, our children – the future of this city.”

Future generations

Among the most important aspects of a community are its future generations, Miranda said. Ending lead poisoning is such a focus for him because of how much it could help children and young people.

Miranda cites research studies about lead’s negative effects, especially on the harm that it can bring as a neurotoxin. Eliminating lead, he said, could help improve children’s education and eventually lower violence levels.

In doing this work, Miranda also hopes to lift up others in the community and encourage them to use their own voices.

His advice to the next generation?

“Watch out for yourself, but also watch out for your community.”

Miranda acknowledges that this isn’t always an easy task.

“If you want to make real change, get ready to be challenged,” he said. “You have to stand strong on your own merits and realize that it’s not about you, but it’s about lives in our community and improving things for families, neighborhoods and schools. These are the things that make our city stronger.”

Milwaukee’s Robert Miranda on a life of activism, community and doing what’s right is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

When someone is charged with a crime, law enforcement testimony can play a crucial role in court, even determining whether the defendant lands in prison. 

That’s why prosecutors nationwide must provide the defense with information that could call into question the credibility of officers or anyone else who might testify — whether that’s a history of criminal activity, dishonesty or some other integrity violation. 

But how do prosecutors determine what to disclose about whom? 

That’s where it gets complicated, and it’s the subject of an ongoing investigation by Wisconsin Watch, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and TMJ4 News called Duty to Disclose.  

Many district attorneys maintain lists of officers accused of acting in ways that erode their credibility. These are often called Brady or Giglio lists, named for two U.S. Supreme Court rulings related to disclosure. 

In investigating Milwaukee County’s Brady list of nearly 200 current or former officer names, reporters found inaccuracies and inconsistencies — raising questions about transparency in criminal proceedings. 

How do prosecutors across the rest of the state and country disclose such information and what best practices do experts recommend?

Here’s what to know.  

What are the standards for Brady lists in Wisconsin? 

No clear state or federal standards exist for when officers should be listed for disclosure.

It’s up to district attorney’s offices, which are responsible for prosecuting crimes, to maintain such records.

The district attorney should know when an officer is referred for potential criminal charges. But when officers face non-criminal internal violations, prosecutors rely on law enforcement to share that information for consideration. That’s the case in Milwaukee County, according to District Attorney Kent Lovern. If such sharing doesn’t happen, his office may be left unaware.   

The accuracy of a Brady list hinges on clear communication between law enforcement departments and prosecutors, said Rachel Moran, an associate law professor at University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis who has researched Brady systems nationwide. 

“That is where a lot of the sloppiness happens is that prosecutors don’t set up a good system with the police for even learning about the information,” Moran said. 

In Duty to Disclose, reporters asked 23 law enforcement agencies in Milwaukee County for policies governing how to handle Brady material. 

Only seven provided a written policy. The Milwaukee Police Department and eight other agencies said they lacked a written policy, while the remaining seven did not respond.  

What do Brady lists look like in Wisconsin? 

A 2024 Wisconsin Watch investigation found some of Wisconsin’s counties keeping spotty Brady records. Records requests to 72 counties turned up more than 360 names of officers on Brady lists. The tally was incomplete since 17 counties either denied a records request or said they didn’t keep track.

Another 23 district attorneys said they had no names on file, although some said they would reach out to local agencies to update their list.

Milwaukee County disclosed incomplete information at the time. But after TMJ4 News made its own request and threatened to sue, the county released a full list of 192 officers listed for a wide range of conduct — from a recruit who cheated on a test to officers sentenced to federal prison for civil rights violations. Some officers were listed multiple times. 

Of more than 200 entries on the Milwaukee County list released in September, nearly half related to an integrity or misconduct issue, such as officers lying on or off duty. About 14% related to domestic or intimate partner violence, and nearly 10% related to sex crimes, including sexual assault or possessing child pornography. Another 14% involved alcohol-related offenses.

But the list omits some officers who have cost taxpayers millions in misconduct lawsuits and whose testimony judges have found not credible. That includes two detectives who, according to a civil jury, falsely reported a man’s confession to a crime. 

What can go wrong if Brady disclosure doesn’t happen?

The consequences for failing to disclose Brady material can be dire, even leading people to be incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit.

In one extreme case in 1990, an Arizona woman was convicted of kidnapping and murdering her 4-year-old son based largely on the testimony of a Phoenix police detective who had a history of lying under oath — details prosecutors did not disclose. As a result, Debra Milke sat on death row for 22 years before a judge vacated her conviction in 2014. 

Official misconduct has contributed to more than half of wrongful convictions dating back to 1989, according to a 2020 study from the National Registry of Exonerations.

What are other benefits of consistent Brady list disclosure? 

The lack of consistent disclosure has prompted some defense attorneys to maintain their own internal Brady systems based on information they learn, said Alissa Heydari, director of the Vanderbilt Project on Prosecution Policy and a former prosecutor. 

That extra scrutiny makes it even more important for prosecutors to be aware of witness credibility issues.

“From a strategic point, you want to know the weaknesses in your own case and in your own witnesses,” Heydari said.

Consistent, transparent tracking of Brady information could also improve trust in police, Moran said. 

“I don’t think this is an attack on police,” she said. “If anything, I think it could help the credibility of law enforcement to be more transparent about the officers with histories of misconduct.”

Some police unions have sought to influence how Brady lists are created or maintained — including in Los Angeles, Brooklyn and Philadelphia, according to Moran’s research.  

Little federal enforcement and a lack of political incentive to challenge police power often prevent state or local tightening of Brady standards.

“Police misconduct disproportionately impacts communities that are often not heard and not represented in media investigations and not represented as well in politics and in places of power,” Moran said.

Following publication of the first Duty to Disclose installments, the Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police criticized Milwaukee County’s Brady list release, saying officers could face “significant career and reputational damage.”

“We appeal to the legislature to establish a standardized, transparent process that ensures the protection of officers’ due process rights, while maintaining the public’s trust in the integrity of our law enforcement agencies,” the police group said in a March 4 statement. 

A Milwaukee officer who appears on the county’s Brady list has called for inconsistencies on the list to be exposed. 

What are best practices for maintaining Brady lists? 

Brady list policies elsewhere range widely, with some jurisdictions more meticulous than others. Such policies should consider the rights of police and citizens, Heydari said.

Prosecutors are increasingly recognizing the importance of crafting such policies, but “my guess is that it’s a pretty small minority of offices that are doing it,” Heydari added.  

John Jay University’s Institute for Innovation in Prosecution in 2021 highlighted 11 jurisdictions nationwide —from San Francisco to Philadelphia — that clearly spell out their policies. 

The institute offers a variety of recommendations, including collecting as much information as possible from police departments about misconduct, providing staff with training, designating a group of people responsible for deciding when to list officers and crafting clear criteria for additions. 

“You don’t want to be frivolously adding police officers who, for instance, have unsubstantiated allegations against them,” Heydari said.

Moran cautions against making that criteria too narrow. 

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office uses strict criteria, listing officers only when they have a pending criminal charge, a past conviction or an internal investigation “that brings into question the officer’s integrity.”

That has left off, for instance, some officers who a judge found to lack credibility.

That’s in contrast to Cook County State’s Attorney Office in Chicago, which tracks adverse credibility findings — as do prosecutors in New York. 

Last year, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis expanded the type of conduct

that may qualify as Brady material, announced specialized training for attorneys, created a new tracking system for judicial orders related to witness credibility and hired staff to exclusively focus on Brady compliance. 

Are there any statewide Brady disclosure systems? 

Arizona and Colorado have developed statewide disclosure systems, although government watchdogs have called them imperfect.

Colorado became the first state to mandate standards for tracking dishonesty in law enforcement in 2019. But a Denver Post investigation later found inconsistencies in the tracking system. 

A bipartisan bill in 2021 expanded disclosure requirements, making Brady list policies and mechanisms transparent to the public. The legislation requires minimum disclosure standards for counties, with options to disclose more than is required.  

Colorado maintains a searchable Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) database that includes decertifications and disciplinary files including untruthfulness. The 2021 law required dishonesty flags be made public. However, the POST website emphasizes that the database itself is not a Brady list.

Still, more recent watchdog reporting found lingering gaps in the data and inconsistencies in enforcement.

Arizona lacks state mandates for tracking and disclosing Brady lists. The Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council does, however, publish a statewide database of listed officers — an effort that followed a 2020 investigation by ABC15 that found some prosecutors failed to keep accurate Brady lists. The council also publishes best practices for such disclosure. 

Still, ABC15’s follow-up reporting has found continuing transparency gaps in the state. 

Are Wisconsin leaders interested in standards?

Milwaukee County Supervisor Justin Bielinski said a statewide Brady standard and database could help the county manage liability in hiring. As Milwaukee County police departments aggressively recruit officers from other jurisdictions, those with a history of questionable policing may slip under the radar, he said. The problem of “wandering officers” is well documented.  

“A state law change that would centralize this kind of record keeping or at least standardize the process for how the locals go about doing it could be helpful,” Bielinski said, adding that the county board lacks power to craft such standards for the sheriff’s department.

But Bielinski, who also serves as the communications director for state Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, doubts legislation to create Brady list standards would advance in a Legislature controlled by Republicans who more often back police groups and “tough on crime” platforms. 

Larson has a different view, saying that legislation for consistency standards across law enforcement agencies and a statewide database housed at the Wisconsin Department of Justice could garner bipartisan support.

“Even Republicans would want to have consistency with their law enforcement so that they’re held to the highest standards,” Larson said. 

Asked if he supports statewide Brady standards, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said district attorneys should retain their discretion, which depends on a range of factors and the circumstances of the cases.

“It’s not as simple as whether somebody is on a list or not,” the Democrat told the Journal Sentinel. “There’s more analysis that needs to go into it.”

Still, Kaul said any Brady lists should be accessible and include “as much consistency as possible.”  

Ashley Luthern of the Journal Sentinel and Ben Jordan of TMJ4 News contributed reporting. 

This story is part of Duty to Disclose, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch. The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided financial support for this project.

How Wisconsin could better track police officer dishonesty is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Following a decades-long explosion of Wisconsin prosecutors charging people for violating court-ordered rules, defense attorneys and civil rights advocates are raising alarm and calling for new limits on the practice. 

Wisconsin is one of seven states that allow prosecutors to file additional charges if people violate a wide range of pretrial release conditions while a case is pending in court. These rules can include avoiding certain places, abstaining from alcohol, taking drug tests or obeying a curfew. 

Neighboring Minnesota is among the majority of states that issue criminal charges only for a narrower set of violations, resulting in exponentially fewer charges. But in Wisconsin, the number of charges filed by prosecutors has grown dramatically over the past two decades and has accelerated further in recent years — even as crime rates fell. 

Prosecutors filed more than four times as many of these charges in 2024 as they did in 2000, making these violations by far the most common criminal charge in Wisconsin’s courts. The charges appeared in one of every four felony cases opened last year, and one in every seven misdemeanor cases, according to court system reports. 

Some prosecutors say defendants are to blame for the spike, while other attorneys say prosecutors are using the charge to pad the case numbers. In funding requests to state lawmakers, prosecutors have long cited growing caseloads — driven in part by violations of release conditions — to justify needing more resources. 

Defense attorneys and civil rights advocates say prosecutors are also exploiting Wisconsin’s laws to amp up pressure on people to plead guilty. Under state law, a single violation of release conditions can lead to multiple new charges being filed if the person has multiple cases pending. 

Wisconsin’s public defender’s office has struggled for decades to recruit enough staff and private attorneys to take all of its cases. The office argues the growing number of charges related to court-order release conditions is now further exacerbating that challenge. 

Deputy State Public Defender Katie York said her office has seen individual cases with dozens of counts — sometimes 70 or more — creating complexity that discourages private attorneys from accepting indigent clients’ cases, which could lighten the load for public defenders.  

Michael Rempel, who studies the effectiveness of criminal justice strategies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, was stunned to learn from the Cap Times that violating release conditions was the most common charge in Wisconsin. Most states allow these charges only in more limited circumstances. 

“I’m shocked,” Rempel said. “It sounds like it would be worth evaluating this practice, and my hypothesis would be that it might have some unintended negative consequences.” 

Criminal justice research supports the practice of imposing “intermediate sanctions” on people who violate release conditions, but those sanctions need not be severe, Rempel said. In fact, “overly onerous supervision” can be counterproductive — exposing people to more charges and making them more likely to be charged with a crime again in the future, he said. 

In Dane County, prosecutors filed more than twice as many of the charges in 2024 as in 2018. Ismael Ozanne, the county’s district attorney, has defended his office’s increasing use of the charges as an important tool to help keep the community safe. Last year, the county’s prosecutors filed more felony-level charges over release conditions than prosecutors in any other Wisconsin county. That includes Milwaukee County, where the population is about 60% larger.  

“The real question is, why are people violating their conditions of bail?” Ozanne said. “If someone is violating their bail — basically disregarding the order of the court — how would the community want us to address that?” 

Still, Ozanne said he’s open to considering changes. He said Dane County is already evaluating other law enforcement practices through a Community Justice Council, which includes a committee examining pretrial release. 

“This topic does come up every so often, and it’s something that we should actually look at,” Ozanne said. 

“Are there conditions or things that we can do in the community that may help an individual not violate their bail conditions?” Ozanne added. “But I don’t think we’re in a position to say that they can have no bail conditions.” 

‘Racking up felony counts’ 

In Wisconsin courtrooms, the charge for violating court-ordered release conditions is called “bail jumping.” Though the term may call to mind images of criminals skipping town to evade justice, state law uses a far broader meaning. 

In most other states, bail jumping applies only to people missing their court dates. In some states, the law is even narrower, limiting the charge to people who intentionally skip court dates or don’t return to court within a set amount of time. 

On the books since 1969, Wisconsin’s law says prosecutors may charge people with felony-level bail jumping for violating release conditions that stemmed from another felony-level charge. They may file misdemeanor-level bail jumping charges for violations related to a misdemeanor case. 

From 2020 to 2024, Wisconsin prosecutors filed nearly 250,000 bail jumping charges, according to state court system figures. During the same period, Minnesota’s court system reported prosecutors filing 336 charges for failure to appear and 636 charges for willfully disobeying a court mandate, the only potential charges for violating bail conditions in that state. 

York, the Wisconsin public defender, said some of her office’s clients have dozens of pending bail jumping charges. Those charges don’t necessarily send people back to jail or in front of a judge, though. 

“You’re not so dangerous that your bail needs to be revoked, but yet you keep on racking up felony counts for either non-criminal behavior or low-level (criminal) behavior,” York said.  

In 1998 and 2008, Wisconsin courts twice confirmed that prosecutors may file multiple bail jumping charges for violating the conditions of a single bond — if the defendant violated multiple conditions or had multiple pending cases. Since those rulings, bail jumping charges have proliferated in the state. 

In the last three years, Wisconsin prosecutors have filed an average of nearly 50,000 charges a year for misdemeanor or felony bail jumping. That’s about twice the rate of another commonly charged crime in the state: disorderly conduct. 

Three years ago, the nonprofit Wisconsin Justice Initiative found that in most of the counties it studied, more than a third of felony cases included at least one bail jumping charge. 

‘Weaponizing our statutes’ 

Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director at the ACLU of Wisconsin, said some court-ordered release conditions are worth enforcing but only in limited situations, like when the conditions aim to protect a victim. 

“There is a clear, good public policy reason why that could be a condition of bail,” Merkwae said. “I just wish that … as prosecutors wield the enormous power that they have in making charging decisions under our existing statutes, that those narrowly tailored decisions could be made instead of just weaponizing our statutes into forcing folks to plead to underlying charges they otherwise wouldn’t.” 

Defense attorneys say bail jumping charges give prosecutors more leverage to pressure a defendant to plead guilty since the new charges can come with more jail or prison time than the original charges. Under state law, each felony bail jumping conviction may result in up to six years in prison. 

“We’ve seen cases where a person goes to trial on the underlying case and gets a not guilty (verdict), but they still are saddled with a felony because of the felony bail jumping,” York said. “That feels inherently unfair, especially when you’re talking about a felony. Now you can’t possess a firearm. Now you have all of the other restrictions that come along with being a felon.” 

Bail jumping charges can be easier to prove than underlying charges, depending on the evidence or witnesses needed in the original case. Presented with all their charges, some defendants plead guilty to an underlying charge in exchange for prosecutors dismissing some or all of the bail jumping charges, Ozanne said. In Dane County, more than eight in every 10 bail jumping charges are dismissed. 

While about 96% of Dane County criminal cases are resolved by plea deals, Ozanne disputes that bail jumping charges are driving those pleas. 

“I think there is, frankly, a high frequency of people accepting responsibility and looking to get on with their lives and hopefully, at some level, looking to repair harm,” he said. 

Wisconsin State Public Defender Jennifer Bias disagrees with that view, calling the growth of bail jumping charges “great overreach” by prosecutors. 

“They do dismiss an inordinate number of them, but I feel like that’s because they’re charging an inordinate number,” Bias said. “How much work would we take out of the system if we could find a different way to deal with that alleged behavior?” 

‘I have not trumped out more bail jumping’ 

Ozanne disputes that prosecutors are filing more bail jumping charges in an effort to inflate their case counts when requesting funding, a concern raised by the state Legislature’s nonpartisan auditing agency. 

“I’ve been indicating that we are understaffed since I took office in 2010. I have not trumped out more bail jumping as an indication … that we need more prosecutors,” Ozanne said. “We don’t have the time to generate more cases just to show that we have a need for bodies.” 

Ozanne said a more likely reason for the spike in bail jumping charges is the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered the county’s courthouse for more than a year and delayed many trials. At the height of the backlog, the average time to resolve a felony case grew to 11 months, nearly twice the average before the pandemic. 

Craig Johnson, board president of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative and longtime Wisconsin defense attorney, said Ozanne’s explanation is plausible, though it’s hard to know without examining individual cases.  

“It’s somewhat common sense that if a person is out on bail for two years, and it takes that long to get their case resolved, there’s a higher possibility that they will violate a condition of release here or there than if their case is resolved in a shorter period of time,” Johnson said.  

Still, he said, the reason could be that prosecutors discovered “a very potent tool.” 

“It’s sometimes too good for them to pass up,” Johnson said. “For a prosecutor, it’s a way to make sure that they’re going to bring that case to a close and not have to get contested at a jury trial.” 

Bias doesn’t buy Ozanne’s pandemic explanation. She questioned why the number of bail jumping charges would remain at elevated levels in 2023 and 2024 after the court cleared its backlog of cases. 

“If that’s true, we would absolutely see the trends going back down,” Bias said. 

‘Maybe this isn’t working’ 

Vernell Cauley and Tyrees Scott have each been charged with multiple bail jumping charges in Dane County. They now work in jobs supporting other formerly incarcerated people and view the surge in charges over release conditions as exploitative. 

Cauley is a peer support specialist with EXPO Wisconsin, an advocacy group made up of formerly incarcerated people. Cauley said many people sign release agreements without realizing how many rules they must follow. Cauley said the additional charges were enough in some of his cases to convince him to plead guilty. 

“The stack of charges creates the sense of more fear, more thoughts of not being able to get out of the situation,” Cauley said. “It’s a way to keep people oppressed.” 

Scott, a peer support specialist with Madison nonprofit Just Dane, said Dane County prosecutors are “notorious” for filing bail jumping cases to pressure defendants. 

“When they get to adding up all that time, you get a little nervous and scared so then you’ll take whatever they give you,” Scott said. 

For a 2020 report on the rise in bail jumping charges, the Cap Times spoke to a Madison man who, as a teen, racked up around nine bail jumping charges for missing court-ordered appointments or getting caught with drugs. He said he didn’t have a car to get from Stoughton to his appointments, and he wasn’t offered drug treatment until he was later transferred to drug court. 

Sometimes the new charges would send him back to jail. Nearly everyone he met in jail had been charged with bail jumping too, he said. 

It’s a familiar scenario to York, the deputy state public defender. She said the reason many people violate conditions of their release is because they’re poor, dealing with addiction or don’t have adequate transportation. 

“A lot of the bail jumping (charges) stem not from this intentional thwarting of the rules, but from the realities of the place in the world that our clients live in,” York said. “We’re filling up jails and prisons and putting in more roadblocks for our clients to get into a successful place.” 

Bail jumping has twice drawn attention from state lawmakers in recent years but led to no changes in state law either time. 

In 2019, a bipartisan group of legislators proposed eliminating felony-level bail jumping and reducing the maximum penalty for a misdemeanor bail jumping conviction. The bill would also have limited the charge to intentionally missing a court date, or violating an order to avoid a certain place or person. 

Four years later, Republican lawmakers called for setting a minimum bail amount of $5,000 for people previously convicted of bail jumping. That legislation followed a high-profile attack in Waukesha. A man who had been previously charged with bail jumping plowed his SUV into the city’s Christmas parade, killing six. 

Neither the bipartisan bill nor the Republican legislation gained enough support to pass the Legislature. In the coming months, the Legislature will be back in Madison debating the state’s next two-year budget, including how much funding to allocate for prosecutors and public defenders. 

York said she’s holding out hope that state lawmakers could one day narrow the scope of bail jumping to reduce how often it’s filed or reduce the severity of charges. 

“It’s probably costing taxpayers a lot of money to do all of these additional prosecutions,” York said. “So I’m hopeful that people will realize maybe this isn’t working and we need to rethink it.” 

The Cap Times produced this report in collaboration with Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom.

Crackdown on Wisconsin court order violations stuns lawyers, analysts is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

When John Gross, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, learned about the Wisconsin law that’s driven a surge in criminal charges over the past two decades, he was bewildered.

State law allows Wisconsin prosecutors to file felony- or misdemeanor-level charges against people for violating a wide range of court-ordered release conditions while cases are ongoing. In most other states, prosecutors may file similar charges only in much narrower circumstances.

Years before moving to Wisconsin to lead a public defender training program at the state’s flagship university, Gross worked as a public defender in New York City from 1999 to 2006. He said charges like the ones being filed regularly in Wisconsin were completely foreign to him.

“I usually had about 100-plus cases at any one time, and I never, ever had a bail jumping charge filed,” Gross said, referring to the statutory name of the charges. “Prosecutors would not use that as a law enforcement tool.”

In the past five years alone, Wisconsin prosecutors have filed bail jumping charges about 250,000 times, according to state court system figures. Over the past decade, bail jumping has become by far the most commonly charged crime in the state.   

“I was very surprised that this charge existed in the form that it exists, and it was being wielded the way it was by prosecutors,” Gross said.

New York law restricts bail jumping charges to situations where people fail to appear in court within 30 days after their assigned court dates. Although New York eliminated cash bail for many cases in 2019, people released before trial are often still subject to court-ordered conditions. Violating those conditions doesn’t lead to new criminal charges, however, unless the person violates a court order to avoid another person. That offense is categorized as criminal contempt of court.

“Most criminal law and procedure across the country is pretty standardized. … You’ll find the same crimes, but they might have a slightly different name or number attached to them,” Gross said. “So I do take notice when I hit on something where I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s not how other people do it.’”

Seven states criminalize violations of release conditions other than failure to appear, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan organization made up of state legislators. Joining Wisconsin in that group are Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois and Maine.

It’s unclear how often similar charges are filed by Wisconsin’s southern neighbor. Illinois’ courts system doesn’t publish caseload figures like Wisconsin courts or Minnesota courts that track how often prosecutors are filing certain charges.

Rachele Conant, a public defender in Kane County, Illinois, has practiced law in her state for nearly 30 years. In Illinois, she said, a person can be charged with a misdemeanor for violating conditions of release even though the state eliminated cash bail in 2023. Often, Conant said, multiple violations will result in a single charge.

That’s a different practice than Wisconsin public defenders describe happening here. In Wisconsin, prosecutors may file multiple charges stemming from a single violation if people have multiple pending cases where release conditions apply.

Conant said she sees bail jumping charges regularly but hasn’t seen statistics on how often those charges are filed in Illinois. Sometimes the charges can make clients more likely to plead guilty if they mean having to wait in jail until trial, she said.

The Cap Times produced this report in collaboration with Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom.

Wisconsin is an outlier in expansive, aggressive bail jumping charges is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who spread election conspiracies and led an investigation into President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss in the swing state agreed Monday to surrender his law license to settle multiple misconduct violations.

The state Office of Lawyer Regulation filed a 10-count complaint in November against Michael Gableman, accusing him of misconduct during the probe. The state Supreme Court ultimately could revoke Gableman’s law license, although the court rarely administers such a harsh punishment against wayward attorneys.

The OLR and Gableman filed a stipulation with the Supreme Court on Monday in which they agreed an appropriate sanction would be suspending Gableman’s license for three years. A referee overseeing the case and the Supreme Court must approve the agreement before it can take effect.

Gableman acknowledged in the filing that the complaint provides “an adequate factual basis” and that he couldn’t successfully defend himself against the allegations.

Complaint linked to fruitless election probe

The complaint stems from Gableman’s investigation into allegations of fraud related to the 2020 election that Trump narrowly lost in Wisconsin. Under pressure from Trump, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hired Gableman to lead the probe.

The investigation failed to uncover any widespread fraud, but drew bipartisan derision and cost taxpayers more than $2.3 million. Throughout the seven-month inquiry, Gableman was sued over his response to open records requests and subpoenas and countersued. He was ridiculed for scant expense records, criticized for sending confusing emails and making rudimentary errors in his filings and called out for meeting with conspiracy theorists.

Vos fired Gableman in 2022, calling him an “embarrassment” and saying he deserved to lose his law license. Gableman retaliated in 2024 by helping Trump backers trying to recall Vos from office, but they failed twice to gather enough valid signatures to force a vote.

Vos spokesperson Luke Wolff didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Gableman’s agreement with the OLR.

Allegations include disrupting court, insulting attorneys, records violations

The OLR complaint accuses Gableman of making false statements, disrupting a court hearing, questioning a judge’s integrity, making derogatory remarks about opposing counsel, violating open records law and revealing information about representing Vos during the investigation while Gableman was promoting a failed effort to recall Vos from office.

According to the OLR complaint, Gableman tried to force the mayors of Madison and Green Bay to submit to depositions even though he had agreed the sessions wouldn’t be needed. He discussed private conversations he had with Vos about the investigation in videos supporting the recall effort in violation of attorney ethics and falsely accused election officials of trying to cover up how they used election grants from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech and Civic Life group.

He also practiced law while working on the investigation despite his claim to the contrary and destroyed public records that liberal group American Oversight had requested, the complaint says.

During a hearing before Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington on whether the records were inadvertently destroyed, Gableman accused Remington from the witness stand of railroading him into jail and acting as an advocate for American Oversight. While the court was in recess, Gableman was captured on a microphone making sarcastic comments about Remington and American Oversight attorney Christa Westerberg’s ability to do her job without Remington’s help.

Remington found Gableman in contempt of court for not complying with open records laws. The judge forwarded the contempt order to the OLR. Attorneys from the liberal law firm Law Forward also requested sanctions against Gableman in 2023.

Law Forward’s president, Jeff Mandell, said in a statement reacting to the stipulation that the firm was “glad to see consequences for those who plan and promote overturning the will of the people.”

Gableman served on Supreme Court for a single term

Gableman was a member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 2008 to 2018 and joined with the conservative majority in several major rulings, including one that upheld the state law that effectively ended collective bargaining for public workers.

The court is now controlled 4-3 by liberal justices, including one elected to fill the seat Gableman vacated.

Liberals extend control of court after most expensive court race in US history

Liberal Susan Crawford defeated conservative Brad Schimel earlier this month for an open seat on the court, ensuring liberals will maintain their majority until at least 2028.

Fueled largely by contributions from billionaires Elon Musk and George Soros, total spending on the race topped $100 million, making it the most expensive U.S. court race ever.

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.

Michael Gableman, former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who led 2020 election probe, agrees to surrender law license is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

As both a survivor and advocate on the issue, Natalie Hayden knows how guns can turn a domestic violence situation from dangerous to deadly.

“Having that weapon just really elevates things and makes it more lethal for both parties involved,” said Hayden, co-founder of ExPOSED Inc., a nonprofit that works to empower youths and foster healthy relationships.

They’re the type of tragedies, ones that involve guns in the hands of domestic abusers, that lawmakers hope to help prevent in the future. The plan is to reintroduce legislation this year to keep individuals convicted of domestic violence offenses from possessing firearms in Wisconsin.

State Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, who co-authored similar legislation that failed to pass last year, said the goal is to align Wisconsin law with a federal law that keeps guns out of the hands of convicted domestic offenders.

If passed this go-round, the legislation would change the state’s disorderly conduct statute to separate violent conduct from other types of disorderly conduct.

 It also would alter the statute defining domestic abuse so that court records indicate the exact nature of the relationship between those involved. Together, they would close the loophole that allows domestic violence offenders in Wisconsin from possessing guns.

Impact of firearms on domestic violence situations

Jenna Gormal, public policy director for End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, said that women are five times more likely to be killed when an abuser has access to a gun and that domestic violence assaults involving a gun are 12 times more likely to result in death.

Firearms were used in 66 of 85 domestic violence homicides in Wisconsin in 2023, Gormal said.

The highest number, 28, occurred in Milwaukee County, according to the End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin Homicide Report 2023.

Domestic-violence-related charges are often present before a domestic violence homicide occurs, Gormal said.

“That tells us that people that are convicted of domestic violence offenses are more likely to commit homicide,” she said.

Hayden said guns create a high-risk situation for everyone involved in a domestic violence situation. Sometimes, she said, victims will purchase their own firearm to protect themselves from an abuser who also has one.

Guns also create a situation that is harder for a victim to escape from, she said.

“There is a weapon involved and I don’t feel safe, but maybe I have to stick around for the safety of my kids,” Hayden said.

Having a firearm present also can result in an abuser making a fatal decision once his partner decides to leave, she said.

“People can resort to extreme violence once they feel like they’ve lost that control,” Hayden said.

Some support for change

Gov. Tony Evers said keeping firearms from domestic abusers was a priority of his administration during his State of the State address in January. The city of Milwaukee passed a resolution in late 2023 in support of a change in state law that prevents domestic abusers from possessing guns.

Gormal said that legislation preventing domestic abusers from possessing firearms is a common sense, not a partisan, issue.

Roys said it’s an issue that everyone should care about but blames the gun lobby and Republican leaders for prioritizing politics over the safety of victims.

“The public overwhelmingly wants gun safety laws much broader than we have right now,” she said. “My hope is that they will finally start to prioritize women and kids who are being victimized.”

NNS reached out to Rep. Bob Donovan, a former Milwaukee alderman who now represents Greenfield in the state Assembly, and Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, both Republicans, for comment on the legislation. Neither responded.

Corey Graff, executive director of Wisconsin Gun Owners Inc., a gun rights organization, said the type of legislation Roys and others are pushing for would only impact law-abiding gun owners.

“Someone who is interested in committing an assault and potential murder against the victim is not going to follow any firearms laws,” Graff said. “Across the board, this is a homogenous attack on liberty and doesn’t address the crime of domestic violence.”

Graff said the legislation would also create a false sense of security for victims.

“They might assume that their attacker will follow the law, but that’s a false premise,” he said.

Tips for survivors

All situations are different, Hayden said, and women ultimately must decide for themselves what is best for them and their family. But there are some strategic things they can do to help them be safer, she said.

“Let people know of your whereabouts. Bring people into the fold that you trust,” Hayden said.

Sometimes, she said, victims are not ready or even able to leave because of certain circumstances, but they can start thinking of a plan while they wait.

“You can look for a shelter, and if something happens, you can file the necessary paperwork,” she said. “It’s always good to document what happens if you get to the other side and it gets to the courts.”

Overall, she said, the system needs to improve if we are going to protect people from being victimized by domestic violence.

“We need the nets to be there to catch us when we are ready. We need to bring awareness to our young people so that they can be safe, and we need to keep guns from people who could use them to bring harm,” Hayden said.

Latest push begins to prevent domestic abusers in Wisconsin from possessing firearms is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

After two days of testimony about a traffic stop that ended in a drug arrest, a Milwaukee County judge had heard enough.

“You can stop,” Judge Paul R. Van Grunsven said last fall, interrupting the defense attorney who was still cross-examining a West Allis police officer.

The judge recounted inconsistencies in the officer’s testimony and body camera footage shown during an evidence suppression hearing.

“This witness has lost any credibility with this court,” Van Grunsven said. “I find none of his testimony to therefore be truthful.”

The officer, Michael Lazaris, left the stand. 

He had been found untruthful by a judge, yet he does not appear on a list of officers with credibility concerns, findings of dishonesty or bias, or past criminal charges.

He’s not the only one. 

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has strict criteria to place officers on the list and only does so if officers have a pending criminal charge, a past conviction or an internal investigation “that brings into question the officer’s integrity.”

Legal experts who reviewed the policy suggest it is improperly narrow, depriving defendants of crucial information for a fair trial. 

The list omits officers whose testimony has been found not credible by judges and who have cost taxpayers millions in misconduct lawsuits, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch found.

Experts said any one of those officers could be included on a “Brady/Giglio” list, so named for two landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings. Such lists are maintained to help prosecutors fulfill their legal obligations to share information favorable to the defense.

In practice, the decision about who gets on — and taken off — the list often comes down to one person: Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern.

Lovern has maintained his office is fulfilling its legal obligations while striking “the appropriate balance” with adding officers to the list.

Lovern took office in January. Prior to that, he served for 16 years as the top deputy to his predecessor, John Chisholm, and was responsible for maintaining what is formally known as the “officer status list.”

“I respect that other jurisdictions may apply different parameters to their respective Brady lists,” Lovern said. “At the same time, we know many jurisdictions do not even maintain a list.”

It’s dishonesty, he said in an interview, that gets officers on the list. He has drawn a distinction between overt deception and credibility rulings, when a judge determines an officer’s testimony does not match the evidence.  

Those rulings most often occur in suppression hearings with judges finding officers did not meet their legal burden for obtaining evidence, he said.

Veteran defense attorneys say judges can and do throw out evidence when an officer cannot articulate reasonable suspicion or probable cause, but that it is different — and rare — for a judge to plainly call an officer’s testimony not credible.

“It’s the reason the judge found them not credible: It’s testimony that didn’t line up with physical evidence or what the evidence was in the case,” said Jeremy Perri, deputy trial division director for the State Public Defender’s Office.

An officer’s placement on the Brady list does not guarantee his or her past will come up in court. It’s up to the prosecutor to disclose it, the defense attorney to raise it and a judge to find it relevant to a specific case. 

At least two dozen people on Milwaukee County’s list remain employed in law enforcement, an investigation from the Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch found.

“Brady is not designed to punish the officers,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former federal prosecutor.

“Brady is designed to ensure people get fair trials,” she said.

A wrongful homicide conviction

William Avery’s homicide conviction hinged on the word of other people.

Jailhouse informants and two Milwaukee police detectives said he had admitted to killing 39-year-old Maryetta Griffin.

Avery always maintained his innocence. In 2010, he was exonerated after DNA evidence linked Griffin’s homicide to serial killer Walter Ellis. Avery had served six years of a 40-year sentence and was one of three people charged in homicides later attributed to Ellis.

Avery filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and seven Milwaukee police detectives. This time, a jury believed Avery’s word and awarded him $1 million in damages.

Jurors considered reams of evidence, including a handwritten report from then-detective Gilbert Hernandez. Hernandez and Daniel Phillips, another detective, interviewed Avery soon after Griffin’s homicide in 1998.

Hernandez wrote that Avery admitted selling drugs to Griffin and later fighting with her after he woke up to her going through his pockets.

Hernandez asked Avery how he had killed Griffin.

“Subject states, ‘I’m responsible, I just don’t remember,’” according to the report, which Avery had refused to sign.

The next day, Hernandez filed another report that said during further questioning, Avery had denied killing Griffin. 

Avery was not charged with homicide then but was convicted of a drug offense. Years later, after the jailhouse informants came forward, Avery was charged with Griffin’s homicide. At the criminal trial, Hernandez and Phillips testified that Avery implicated himself, and Hernandez’s report was admitted into evidence. 

The federal civil jury not only found in Avery’s favor but concluded Hernandez and Phillips had falsified reports saying Avery admitted to the homicide. The jury found the other detectives named in the lawsuit had not engaged in improper conduct.

At the time of the federal verdict, Phillips was retired, but Hernandez was still working as an investigator at the Wisconsin Department of Justice. 

Lovern, the district attorney, said the state agency never referred the well-publicized jury finding to his office for potential inclusion on the Brady list.  

“Our office has determined not to add him to our database,” Lovern said in an email, responding to follow-up questions from the Journal Sentinel. 

Avery’s Chicago-based civil attorney, Ben Elson of the People’s Law Office, was stunned to learn Hernandez and Phillips were not on the list.

“They sent an innocent man to prison based on a fabricated confession,” Elson said. “If they don’t belong on a Brady list, who does?”

The state Department of Justice said Hernandez resigned as a sworn special agent for the Division of Criminal Investigation in February 2016, after the civil jury finding. He continued working in a series of non-sworn office roles at the department until his retirement in December, an agency spokesman said. 

The state would share any Brady/Giglio information about Hernandez with district attorneys or other law enforcement agencies “upon request,” Riley Vetterkind, the spokesman, said in an email.

Hernandez declined to comment recently when reached by a Journal Sentinel reporter. In the federal civil trial, he denied any wrongdoing, as did Phillips. 

Hernandez remains on a witness list for prosecutors, identified as a “DCI investigator,” in at least one pending homicide case: Maxwell Anderson, who is charged with killing and dismembering Sade Robinson.

A traffic stop ends in a search without cause

Lewis Moore went to prison, accused of a crime never proven in court.

On March 2, 2019, Moore got pulled over while driving. A Milwaukee officer, Chad Boyack, told Moore he had been “flying” and asked him to step out of the car. 

Moore, then 22, did so and raised his arms.

He was sure he had not been speeding. His license was valid. The car was not stolen or wanted. It was his girlfriend’s car, he told the other officer, Anthony Milone, as he sat in the back of the police squad.

She has her concealed-carry permit, he said, and her gun might be in the car.

Boyack did find a gun in the center console. Moore maintained he did not know it was there. He was on probation for a low-level felony and legally barred from having a gun.

Boyack and Milone arrested him. A prosecutor charged him with being a felon in possession of a firearm. As a result, Moore was revoked from probation and put behind bars — his first experience in prison.

“I don’t deserve this,” Moore said he remembered thinking at the time. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

His case got stuck in the court system during the COVID-19 pandemic. He even considered pleading guilty just to get it over with. 

But his public defender, Caitlin Hazard Firer, had reviewed the reports and officers’ body camera footage. She believed the officers had conducted an illegal search. So she filed a motion to try to get the evidence from the search thrown out.

Moore finally had his day in court in 2021. Inconsistencies piled up from the officers. 

Boyack and Milone gave different estimates of his speed that day, the highest being 60 mph. Video footage showed the officers turning on their squad’s lights and driving 32 mph to pull him over.

The officers said Moore took a while to stop, which factored into their decision to get him out of the car. Video showed Moore stopped within 30 seconds, spending much of that time navigating the busy intersection of North 27th Street and West Capitol Drive.

The officers differed on whether they smelled burnt marijuana from the car. Boyack testified that he did, though he did not mention the smell when he first spoke with Moore during the stop. Milone testified he did not smell it.

Boyack also testified he did not see marijuana until he searched the car, turning up the equivalent of a few grains of rice. Milone testified he did not see or smell it when he approached the car.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Glenn Yamahiro heard the testimony, reviewed the video footage and determined the evidence had been unlawfully seized. He also noted there was no independent evidence of speeding, like a radar gun.

“So bottom line here is I don’t find these officers credible in this case,” Yamahiro said, according to a transcript.

“I do not find the reasoning here for why he got put in the squad car legitimate,” the judge said later in the hearing, adding: “I do not find the actions of the officers here lawful.”

Moore’s attorney had been practicing law for decades. It was the first adverse credibility ruling against an officer in any of her cases.

“This is incredibly rare,” Firer said. “In my experience, judges will find another reason to suppress the evidence.”

“A judge has found them not credible, and that is Brady material,” she said.

Lovern, the district attorney, disagreed. He said the prosecutor on the case did not tell him about the judge’s finding and did not need to do so.

Lovern said the judge’s decision related to a specific set of circumstances at a suppression hearing and did not find the officers had been dishonest.

Chief Judge Carl Ashley echoed his comments, saying: “The judge didn’t say they were lying.”

Yamahiro declined to comment to the Journal Sentinel. 

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said he was unaware of the judicial ruling. The department did not investigate the circumstances of Moore’s arrest because no one made a complaint, he said. 

Norman praised the two officers, saying they had earned many meritorious awards for their service. In a follow-up email, the department said the chief agreed with the district attorney and chief judge that the judge’s credibility finding was only for testimony at a suppression hearing, “which is different than the integrity or credibility of an individual.”

Boyack and Milone did not respond to interview requests from TMJ4 News. The Milwaukee Police Department declined to make them available for an interview.

Years later, Moore still finds it difficult to capture how that traffic stop upended his life.

“You guys took time away from me and my family and my business,” he said in an interview with TMJ4 News.

Milwaukee County’s policy appears ‘improperly narrow,’ expert says

Prosecutors in other states do things differently.

The Cook County State’s Attorney Office in Chicago tracks judicial rulings on officer credibility. So do prosecutors in New York. When Brooklyn prosecutors first released a Brady list in 2019, local media reported it included 53 cases involving similar judicial findings.

These judicial rulings do not mean an officer purposefully lied or committed perjury. 

Last year, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis expanded the type of conduct that may qualify as Brady material and created a new tracking system for judicial orders related to witness credibility.

In Milwaukee County, there is no comprehensive tracking of such decisions. Asked if such a system should exist, the county’s chief judge said, “there’s always a transcript of the proceedings.”

Attorneys cannot ask for a transcript if they do not know a ruling was made in the first place. Legal experts say such rulings should be disclosed and underscored that Brady protections help prevent wrongful convictions. 

Official misconduct has played a significant role in about 54% of wrongful convictions, according to a 2020 study from the National Registry of Exonerations.

“It is a staggering number that runs the gamut of witness tampering, misconduct in interrogations, fabricating evidence, concealing exculpatory evidence and perjury at trial,” said Rachel Burg, director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project.

Most cases involving misdemeanors and lower felony offenses are rarely reviewed after conviction.

Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, has extensively studied Brady lists. 

She reviewed Milwaukee County’s policy and said it appears to have an “improperly narrow reading of what types of misconduct could count as Brady evidence.”

The district attorney’s Brady list included 191 officers, as of late February. Thousands of officers have worked in the county since the list was started 25 years ago.

“The fact that the list dates back so many years and has relatively few officers suggests that it is probably missing a lot of Brady material,” Moran said.

Levenson, the Loyola Law School professor, said when a system fails to track officers with credibility problems, patterns get missed.

“The real concern is it’s not an isolated mistake, it becomes part of the culture,” she said.

A drug charge dismissed after officer found not credible by judge

The 22-year-old man stopped by Lazaris, the West Allis police officer later scolded by a judge, faced a felony drug charge.

The man’s attorney, Justin Padway, looked at the body camera footage.

In the video, Padway saw his client being polite and cooperative with the officer who had pulled him over. Lazaris peppered the driver with questions, including if he had guns or marijuana in the car. The man said no and kept his hands visible during the encounter. Lazaris got him out of the car and frisked him anyway.

Padway believed the officer had unlawfully searched his client and extended the traffic stop. He filed a motion to suppress the seized evidence, which included cocaine.

At the suppression hearing, Lazaris contradicted himself and the body camera footage, according to a transcript. 

In court, Lazaris said he pulled the man over for window tint. He said he believed he had thwarted a drug transaction and that the driver was involved in drug trafficking. In response to Padway’s questions, he admitted he saw no evidence of drug trafficking or a drug transaction.

Padway asked him to confirm his earlier testimony in the hearing, that he saw cocaine in the car. The officer said yes.

Padway played body camera footage in court. Lazaris could be heard telling another officer there may or may not be “shake” in the car. “Shake” typically refers to leftover, loose marijuana.

Lazaris, on the witness stand, said the term could be used for either marijuana or cocaine. Soon after, the judge, Van Grunsven, interrupted the questioning and said he was ready to rule.

“This guy testifies under oath he saw ‘shake’ in the vehicle,” the judge said. “That’s what he tells the K9 officer. That’s what’s truthful. That’s what’s honest. That’s what’s credible. The fact that he tries now to say that it was cocaine shake is incredible.”

The judge cited the other inconsistencies and ruled the search was unlawful, meaning the seized evidence could not be used. Prosecutors dismissed the charge against Padway’s client, who had no prior criminal convictions and has not been charged with any other offense.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel requested an interview with Lazaris or a West Allis Police Department official. In an email response, West Allis Deputy Chief Chris Marks defended the officer and said the department does not believe the judge’s finding should be considered Brady material.

“An officer losing a motion hearing can occur during the course of an officer’s career but is not indicative of deceit,” Marks said in an email. “The officer is a highly valued member of our department. We support the officer’s actions.” 

Lovern, the district attorney, said the case illustrates why his office generally will not add officers to the Brady list for credibility determinations made in court hearings.

The judge’s finding stemmed from what he thought the term “shake” meant, Lovern said.

“In fact, the term ‘shake’ has long been used to refer to both particles of marijuana and cocaine, particularly by law enforcement investigators,” Lovern said in an email.

Lovern did not address other inconsistencies cited by the judge. The Journal Sentinel left several messages for the judge but did not hear back.

To Padway, placing such an officer on the Brady list is “essential for maintaining the integrity of the justice system.”

“It ensures that both defense attorneys and prosecutors have access to crucial information about an officer’s credibility, protecting the defendant’s right to a fair trial and upholding public trust in law enforcement,” he said.

This story is part of Duty to Disclose, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 and Wisconsin Watch. The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided financial support for this project.

Falsifying reports. Found ‘not credible.’ Why aren’t they on Milwaukee’s list of police officers with integrity issues? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election was the most expensive U.S. court race in history, drawing more than $100 million in campaign spending. 

That eye-popping figure has drawn plenty of headlines — as did the millions spent by billionaire Elon Musk to support Republican-backed Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, who lost handily to Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, backed by Democrats.

But the race also set another record in Wisconsin for a spring election not featuring a presidential primary contest: in voter turnout. 

More than 2.3 million people cast ballots in the election, according to Associated Press tracking. That amounts to nearly 51% of the voting age population, shattering the previous record for such elections of 39% in 2023.

The high turnout is part of a trend in Wisconsin politics since President Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, Marquette University’s John Johnson wrote in an analysis last week.

“Wisconsin’s electorate is just plain extremely engaged,” he wrote. “Scour American history and you’ll struggle to find an example of (a) state as hyper-engaged with, and narrowly divided by, electoral politics as Wisconsin in the present moment.” 

Last week’s election offered good news for Democrats, aside from the top-line figures in Crawford’s 55%-45% win. (The Supreme Court is officially nonpartisan, but Democrats backed Crawford, while Republicans backed Schimel.) 

When comparing the high-turnout 2024 presidential election to the latest Supreme Court race, voting shifted toward the Democratic-backed candidate in all 72 counties.

The biggest difference in the latest election, according to Johnson: “A majority of the million voters who stayed home are probably Republicans, or at least Trump supporters.” 

More broadly, it’s clear that the high stakes of the Supreme Court race drove most to cast ballots in an election that also included an officially nonpartisan contest for state superintendent of public instruction and a successful ballot measure to enshrine voter ID requirements in the Wisconsin Constitution. 

Nearly 200,000 people who cast ballots did not choose a superintendent candidate. Democratic-backed incumbent Jill Underly prevailed over Republican-backed Brittany Kinser by a 53%-47% margin — closer than the Supreme Court race. 

Additionally, about 76,000 voters did not weigh in on the voter ID amendment.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

DataWatch: Record spending. Record turnout. We crunched some numbers from the Supreme Court contest is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A reader asked: “I’m wondering how the federal freeze and mass federal firings are affecting veterans’ employment and services through VA in Wisconsin. Thank you!”

Recent changes to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have left some Wisconsin veterans uncertain about what the future means for their employment, health care and resources offered through the VA. 

On Feb. 11, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to implement the Department of Government Efficiency’s Workforce Optimization Initiative. In the order, Trump called for a DOGE team to collaborate with the highest-ranking officials of each government agency to reduce the federal workforce through hiring approvals, job cuts and reorganization plans. 

While the order stated the plans exclude military personnel, recent layoffs have proved troubling for veterans working for the federal government. 

Andrew McKinney, a veteran from Cottage Grove and cashier for the Veterans Health Administration who ran for state Assembly in 2022 as a Republican, was alerted of his layoff Feb. 24, before his supervisor learned about the decision. 

McKinney, a probationary employee, said the email came from the Office of Personnel Management, citing his “performance” as the reason he was let go. But later his supervisor was informed via email the dismissal was a result of Trump’s Feb. 11 executive order. 

McKinney’s layoff was part of a wave of VA dismissals, removing over 1,000 probationary employees from their positions. 

“Those dismissed today include non-bargaining unit probationary employees who have served less than a year in a competitive service appointment or who have served less than two years in an excepted service appointment,” according to a VA press release.

While McKinney was given his job back the week of March 23, he says the unexpected removal and uncertainty have made him rethink his current situation. 

“People have families, and they have to take care of their bills, and they have to take care of things, you know,” McKinney said. “I was kind of concerned a little bit, but I had faith that I was going to come back. But it also shows that, you know, I’m gonna have to start really saving and putting stuff aside for things that happen like this.”

The VA said the personnel reorganization would save the department over $98 million a year, funds that could be redirected toward health care, benefits and services, according to the Feb. 18 press release. 

But the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) — a union representing federal employees — said further dismissals could make the already understaffed organization worse. Specifically, removals could threaten mental health resources and health care services, leading to longer wait times and threatening benefits promised to veterans. 

For example, the PACT Act was passed to expand VA health care eligibility for veterans exposed to toxic substances, such as burn pits and Agent Orange. The union argues further cuts, such as the proposed 83,000 dismissals by the end of 2025, could harm the VA’s ability to provide those promised services. 

In the first year following the approval of the PACT Act, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin reported around 15,000 Wisconsin veterans filed PACT Act claims, with about 6,600 receiving approval in the first year.

The VA did not respond with comment on the federal layoffs’ impact on VA clinics or the PACT Act in Wisconsin.

Currently, there have been no reports or claims of longer wait times or delayed services at VA clinics in Wisconsin since the first round of layoffs, according to Veterans of Foreign Wars State Adjutant Adam Wallace and American Wisconsin Legion Adjutant Julie Muhle. But these advocacy groups are preparing for the potential consequences future changes could bring. 

“We’re kind of laying the groundwork now, getting the word out there to be vigilant about it,” Wallace said. “But we haven’t … gotten any specific complaints regarding interrupted services at the VA.”

A memo published by the VA chief of staff said its reorganization plan will be published June 25, with the reduction in workforce to be carried out by the end of the fiscal year. 

“We don’t suspect that we’ll see any sort of impact in health care, probably until it’s enacted, maybe in July or later,” Wallace said.

As of now, the biggest issue veterans face in Wisconsin is uncertainty. 

Because the cuts are coming from the White House, local advocacy organizations worry VA offices will not have the adequate time and resources to prepare for further reductions in the workforce. 

“The uncertainty is causing anxiety in the employees working there, that it’s distracting from their mission, which is a very important one, and that’s serving our veterans and their health care needs and their benefit needs,” Wallace said.

Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.

How are federal firings affecting veterans in Wisconsin? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

It is too soon to definitively say whether Madison’s April 1 election went off without any problems. But city and county election officials told Votebeat that they were confident that new absentee ballot procedures put in place after 193 ballots went uncounted in November would prevent another major error.

Tuesday was the first high-profile election in Madison since the snafu in November, when 193 ballots in unopened ballot bags from two polling stations went uncounted during the presidential contest. Staff didn’t discover the ballots until much later, a critical lapse that prompted state and city investigations and the suspension of Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl in March. A voter lawsuit is expected. 

Witzel-Behl’s replacement is City Attorney Mike Haas, formerly the Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator and a longtime election lawyer. This was the first election he has ever run as a municipal clerk.

Amid the investigation, city officials implemented new procedures to better track absentee ballots and ensure that oversights are detected before results are finalized.

New procedures add to the paperwork

The changes were apparent at Madison polling places, which had multiple new checklists and required paperwork to ensure that officials opened and processed every bag containing absentee ballots. They were also apparent at the clerk’s office, where at 9 p.m., employees had begun looking through election materials from each of the city’s 108 polling sites to make sure there weren’t any missing ballots.

At Madison West High School, where 68 of the ballots went missing in November, chief inspector Peter Quinn said just before 4 p.m. that the new procedures make a repeat error “basically impossible.” 

Quinn has been a chief inspector before, but he wasn’t the chief inspector at the school in November when the ballots went missing. 

“It’s a mistake that should not have been made,” Quinn said about the error, adding that the new procedures make it easier to catch discrepancies. 

Each polling site now receives updated lists throughout the day detailing every absentee ballot bag delivered. Each bag is identified by a seal number. Election officials check off one blank on that list when they open each bag and another blank when they process the ballots. This way, election officials know how many carrier envelopes they receive — and how many they’re supposed to count. 

Poll workers also record the number of ballots in each bag on two separate documents and, at the end of the night, complete a summary sheet confirming that the number of absentee ballots received matches the number counted or rejected.

Kevin Kennedy, former state elections chief and now a chief inspector at Madison’s Senior Center, called the new process “good documentation” — but said it can be overwhelming.

“My problem,” he said at 2 p.m., standing in front of the table where absentee ballots get processed, “is that there’s so many things to keep track of here.”

Kennedy pointed to an absentee ballot processing guide given to poll workers and said he wished the clerk’s office provided equally clear instructions for navigating the added procedures. While he believes the system is now less prone to error, he warned that paperwork redundancies can slow down the process.

Procedures still need to be refined

A half-mile away, Sam Peplinski, 19, stood outside the Nicholas Recreation Center polling place — the same site where his absentee ballot went uncounted in November.

“It was my first time voting,” he said of the experience, which shook his trust in elections. “It was just shocking.”

He said it’s unrealistic to expect perfection, but the loss of nearly 200 ballots made the issue “large enough to not be ignored.”

This time he voted at the polls on Election Day — but only because he just recently learned of the election date. “An unintended benefit,” he said.

At the end of the night, Haas, the interim city clerk, told Votebeat the new procedures might have been a little “overkill,” but said after the November snafu it’s better to have too much paperwork than too little.

​​Witzel-Behl, the city clerk on leave, put in place many of the new procedures between November and February, and more were added since then, but Haas said there wasn’t much time to get feedback on those procedures from the city’s poll workers.

“I think we just need more time to refine those, make sure that they’re workable for the inspectors,” he said.

Deputy Clerk Bonnie Chang told Votebeat that staff would spend Wednesday and Thursday looking through all the election materials that polling places return to the clerk’s office, making sure there aren’t any missing ballots there. They were also checking a new sheet that each polling site’s chief inspector fills out to make sure the number of ballots processed is equal to the number of ballots received.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

New election procedures in Madison made repeat of 2024 snafu ‘basically impossible’ is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.