A vast majority of the roughly 1,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in Wisconsin between January and October of last year had prior criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. But arrests in Wisconsin of immigrants with no criminal history were ticking upward. Roughly 17% had no prior criminal convictions or pending charges. Roughly half of those without criminal histories were arrested at DHS’ downtown Milwaukee office, often while checking in on the status of their immigration cases.
DHS’s claims about arrestees’ criminal histories do not always match court records. Among the two dozen immigrants arrested in Manitowoc last October — the largest ICE raid in Wisconsin since Trump took office — was Abraham Maldonado Almanza, a dairy worker from Mexico. DHS claimed he had a prior conviction for identity theft, but court records in Wisconsin and Iowa, where Maldonado Almanza lived before moving to Manitowoc, show nothing to corroborate the claim. DHS also claimed that the Manitowoc operation netted a Honduran national charged with sexual assault of a child, but that man, Hilario Moreno Portillo, had been in ICE custody for months at the time of the Manitowoc arrests, court records showed.
Even without enforcement surges like those in Illinois and Minnesota, the Trump administration’s immigration policy overhauls are reshaping Wisconsin. We recently documented the consequences for two immigrant workers in key sectors of the state’s economy: a Mexican engineer at an aluminum foundry in Manitowoc and a Nicaraguan herdsman who lacks legal status while working on a dairy farm near Madison. Their employers, who rely on immigrant labor to expand or maintain their operations, are also feeling the pinch, as will consumers if farmers’ and manufacturers’ hiring woes drive up prices.
You can find more of our immigration coverage here.
As we continue reporting on the White House’s immigration crackdown, we want to hear from you. What questions would you like us to answer? What are we missing? Where should we look next?
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Officials from the town of Carlton and Cloverleaf Infrastructure told Wisconsin Watch the company is no longer pursuing a data center project near the Kewaunee Power Station.
The resolution happened in late 2025.
Cloverleaf Infrastructure is still interested in building a data center in northeast Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, plans for EnergySolutions to build a new plant at the Kewaunee Power Station are slowly moving forward. The company submitted files to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week.
Leaders of data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure have decided against pursuing land to build a data center in the town of Carlton in Kewaunee County after local residents opposed the idea.
The company scrapped its plans in the northeast Wisconsin farming community in late 2025, Cloverleaf and town of Carlton officials confirmed last week.
“The town chairperson said, ‘I don’t support data centers. I don’t think this is a good fit,’” Cloverleaf’s Chief Development Officer Aaron Bilyeu said. “We shook hands and said ‘thank you.’”
Cloverleaf’s decision to back off makes Carlton one of the latest towns to fend off companies looking for the space to erect often-massive data warehouses powering artificial intelligence, social media and cloud computing.
Wisconsin Watch reported in October that some Carlton residents were nervous about selling local farmland to build a data center after town officials said interested developers reached out to them.
Those fears were stoked by news that Carlton’s shuttered nuclear power plant may see new life. The plant’s owner is seeking government approval for a new nuclear power station at the site because it believes data centers and artificial intelligence will increase the state’s energy demand.
“I’m against big business,” said town Chairman David Hardtke, who has pushed back against the idea for months. “People in the town of Carlton do not want the AI (data) center.”
Similar dilemmas have played out in other rural Wisconsin communities, as residents try to block tech giants from settling in their towns.
In recent weeks, Cloverleaf offered to buy property for a data center in Greenleaf, a village in Brown County. The move drew outrage from community members, leading Cloverleaf officials to ax the proposal last week.
The decision in Carlton was a much quieter conclusion for residents of a county where cattle outnumber people by nearly 5 to 1. Some community members told Wisconsin Watch they were nervous about what losing more farmland would mean for local families and business owners.
“Once they take land away, you know, it’ll never come back,” Chris Kohnle, president of the local Tisch Mills Farm Center, told Wisconsin Watch in September.
David Hardtke, town of Carlton chairman and third-generation farmer, poses for a portrait next to one of his many vintage tractors on Sept. 16, 2025, in Kewaunee, Wis. Hardtke confirmed that Cloverleaf Infrastructure is no longer looking to build a data center in the town. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Others were less concerned, telling Wisconsin Watch that Kewaunee County has stagnated since the nuclear plant shuttered. They shared hopes that investment from big business could create more economic activity, well-paying local jobs and a reason for young people to stay in the area.
“If you bring in an employer like that who is paying, you’re going to see development. You’re going to see new homes being built, and more businesses move in,” Kewaunee County resident Dan Giannotti said in August. “Because right now we’re just stagnant … nothing’s happening to speak of.”
Despite striking out in Carlton and Greenleaf, Bilyeu said Cloverleaf is still looking for a data center site in northeast Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is attractive to developers because of the tax incentives it offers and its cool climate. Data centers need cooling methods to prevent overheating — making Carlton’s proximity to a massive water source particularly attractive.
“We’re not the only ones looking for data center sites in the area,” Bilyeu said. “We’re just the only ones that are forthright, and we’ll actually talk to people and identify ourselves and let people know what we’re doing and what we’re interested in.”
Carlton still remains on the precipice of much potential change, as the Kewaunee Power Station project inches forward.
Last week, plant owner EnergySolutions submitted files to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that company spokespeople describe as “an important next step” in getting government approval to bring nuclear power back to the site. The permitting process is lengthy, and even if everything goes smoothly, they don’t expect construction would begin until the early 2030s.
A debate playing out in Wisconsin underscores just how challenging it is for U.S. states to set policies governing data centers, even as tech giants speed ahead with plans to build the energy-gobbling computing facilities.
Wisconsin’s state legislators are eager to pass a law that prevents the data center boom from spiking households’ energy bills. The problem is, Democrats and Republicans have starkly different visions for what that measure should look like — especially when it comes to rules around hyperscalers’ renewable energy use.
Republican state legislators this month introduced a bill that orders utility regulators to ensure that regular customers do not pay any costs of constructing the electric infrastructure needed to serve data centers. It also requires data centers to recycle the water used to cool servers and to restore the site if construction isn’t completed.
Those are key protections sought by decision-makers across the political spectrum as opposition to data centers in Wisconsin and beyond reaches a fever pitch.
But the bill will likely be doomed by a “poison pill,” as consumer advocates and manufacturing industry sources describe it, that says all renewable energy used to power data centers must be built on-site.
Republican lawmakers argue this provision is necessary to prevent new solar farms and transmission lines from sprawling across the state.
“Sometimes these data centers attempt to say that they are environmentally friendly by saying we’re going to have all renewable electricity, but that requires lots of transmission from other places, either around the state or around the region,” said state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, at a press conference. “So this bill actually says that if you are going to do renewable energy, and we would encourage them to do that, it has to be done on-site.”
This effectively means that data centers would have to rely largely on fossil fuels, given the limited size of their sites and the relative paucity of renewable energy in the state thus far.
Gov. Tony Evers and his fellow Democrats in the state Legislature are unlikely to agree to this scenario, Wisconsin consumer and clean energy advocates say.
Democrats introduced their own data center bill late last year, some of which aligns closely with the Republican measure: The Democratic bill would similarly block utilities from shifting data center costs onto residents, by creating a separate billing class for very large energy customers. It would require that data centers pay an annual fee to fund public benefits such as energy upgrades for low-income households and to support the state’s green bank.
But that proposal may also prove impossible to pass, advocates say, because of its mandate that data centers get 70% of their energy from renewables in order to qualify for state tax breaks and a requirement that workers constructing and overhauling data centers be paid a prevailing wage for the area. This labor provision is deeply polarizing in Wisconsin. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and lawmakers in his party famously repealed the state’s prevailing wage law for public construction projects in 2017, and multiple Democratic efforts to reinstate it have failed.
The result of the political division around renewables and other issues is that Wisconsin may accomplish little around data center regulation in the near term.
“If we could combine the two and make it a better bill, that would be ideal,” said Beata Wierzba, government affairs director for the nonprofit clean energy advocacy group Renew Wisconsin. “It’s hard to see where this will go ultimately. I don’t foresee the Democratic bill passing, and I also don’t know how the governor can sign the Republican bill.”
Urgent need
Wisconsin’s consumer and clean energy advocates are frustrated about the absence of promising legislation at a time when they say regulation of data centers is badly needed. The environmental advocacy group Clean Wisconsin has received thousands of signatures on a petition calling for a moratorium on data center approvals until a comprehensive state plan is in place.
At least five new major data centers are planned in the state, which is considered attractive for the industry because of its ample fresh water and open land, skilled workers, robust electric grid, and generous tax breaks. The Wisconsin Policy Forum estimated that data centers will drive the state’s peak electricity demand to 17.1 gigawatts by 2030, up from 14.6 gigawatts in 2024.
Absent special treatment for data centers, utilities will pass the costs on to customers for the new power needed to meet the rising demand.
Two Wisconsin utilities — We Energies and Alliant Energy — are proposing special tariffs that would determine the rates they charge data centers. Allowing utilities in the same state to have different policies for serving data centers could lead to these projects being located wherever utilities offer them the cheapest rates and result in a patchwork of regulations and protections, consumer advocates argue. They say legislation should be passed soon, to standardize the process and enshrine protections statewide before utilities move forward on their own.
Some of Wisconsin’s neighbors have already taken that step, said Tom Content, executive director of Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group.
He pointed to Minnesota, where a law passed in June mandates that data centers and other customers be placed in separate categories for utility billing, eliminating the risk of data center costs being passed on to residents. The Minnesota law also protects customers from paying for “stranded costs” if a data center doesn’t end up needing the infrastructure that was built to serve it.
Ohio, by contrast, provides a cautionary tale, Content said. After state regulators enshrined provisions that protected customers of the utility AEP Ohio from data center costs, developers simply looked elsewhere in the state.
“Much of the data center demand in Ohio shifted to a different utility where no such protections were in place,” Content said. “We’re in a race to the bottom. Wisconsin needs a statewide framework to help guide data center development and ensure customers who aren’t tech companies don’t pick up the tab for these massive projects.”
Clean energy quandary
Limiting clean energy construction to data center sites could be especially problematic as data center developers often demand renewable energy to meet their own sustainability goals.
For example, the Lighthouse data center — being developed by OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage near Milwaukee — will subsidize 179 megawatts of new wind generation, 1,266 megawatts of new solar generation and 505 megawatts of new battery storage capacity, according to testimony from one of the developers in the We Energies tariff proceeding.
But Lighthouse covers 672 acres. It takes about 5 to 7 acres of land to generate 1 megawatt of solar energy, meaning the whole campus would have room for only about a tenth of the solar the developers promise.
We Energies is already developing the renewable generation intended to serve that data center, a utility spokesperson said, but the numbers show how future clean energy could be stymied by the on-site requirement.
“It’s unclear why lawmakers would want to discriminate against the two cheapest ways to produce energy in our state at a time when energy bills are already on the rise,” said Chelsea Chandler, the climate, energy and air program director at Clean Wisconsin.
Renew Wisconsin’s Wierzba said the Democrats’ 70% renewable energy mandate for receiving tax breaks could likewise be problematic for tech firms.
“We want data centers to use renewable energy, and companies I’m aware of prefer that,” she said. “The way the Republican bill addresses that is negative and would deter that possibility. But the Democratic bill almost goes too far — 70%. That’s a prescribed amount, too much of a hook and not enough carrot.”
Alex Beld, Renew Wisconsin’s communications director, said the Republican bill might have a hope of passing if the poison pill about on-site renewable energy were removed.
“I don’t know if there’s a will on the Republican side to remove that piece,” he said. “One thing is obvious: No matter what side of the political aisle you’re on, there are concerns about the rapid development of these data centers. Some kind of legislation should be put forward that will pass.”
Bryan Rogers, environmental director of the Milwaukee community organization Walnut Way Conservation Corp, said elected officials shouldn’t be afraid to demand more of data centers, including more public benefit payments.
“We know what the data centers want and how fast they want it,” he said. “We can extract more concessions from data centers. They should be paying not just their full way — bringing their own energy, covering transmission, generation. We also know there are going to be social impacts, public health, environmental impacts. Someone has to be responsible for that.”
Utility representatives expressed less urgency around legislation.
William Skewes, executive director of the Wisconsin Utilities Association, said the trade group “appreciates and agrees with the desire by policymakers and customers to make sure they’re not paying for costs that they did not cause.”
But, he said, the state’s utility regulators already do “a very thorough job reviewing cases and making sure that doesn’t happen. Wisconsin utilities are aligned in the view that data centers must pay their full share of costs.”
If Wisconsin legislators do manage to pass data center legislation this session, it will head to the desk of Evers. The governor is a longtime advocate for renewables, creating the state’s first clean energy plan in 2022, and he has expressed support for attracting more data centers to Wisconsin.
“I personally believe that we need to make sure that we’re creating jobs for the future in the state of Wisconsin,” Evers said at a press conference, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “But we have to balance that with my belief that we have to keep climate change in check. I think that can happen.”
A version of this article was first published by Canary Media.
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Skilled immigrant workers like Ricardo Manriquez and dairy herdsman Alex are integral to Wisconsin’s foundries and farms but face growing uncertainty under shifting federal immigration rules.
Manriquez, on a temporary TN visa, helps design complex metal castings in Manitowoc but has a tenuous path to permanent residency as visa policies and fees change.
On a dairy near Madison, Alex, who lacks legal status, struggles to recruit and retain workers as immigration enforcement tightens and labor pipelines dry up.
Wisconsin employers in manufacturing and agriculture say the changing immigration landscape is shrinking labor pools, complicating hiring and long-term workforce planning.
Ricardo Manriquez starts his shift at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry headquarters in Manitowoc long before the sun rises. More than 100 miles away, on a dairy farm near Madison, a herdsman named Alex is heading out to the barn with his crew to milk a few hundred cows.
Both are middle-aged fathers with neat haircuts and sensible work boots. Both studied at technical schools and have years of hands-on experience in their fields. Both are immigrants from Latin America who settled in Wisconsin over the past two decades. The Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement and overhaul visa rules leave both men and their employers in difficult positions.
The recruitment pathway that brought Manriquez, an engineer from Mexico with a temporary work visa, to Wisconsin remains mostly untouched by the Trump administration’s overhaul of federal immigration policy, but his prospects of securing permanent residency in the foreseeable future have faded. Alex, an undocumented immigrant from Nicaragua, is in a more precarious position. His small team is poised to shrink, and finding new hires is more difficult than ever.
At least one in 20 Wisconsin workers is a noncitizen, and many Wisconsin employers have watched recent federal immigration policy changes sever, clog or redirect their hiring pipelines. Those employers — in manufacturing, dairy and innumerable other segments of Wisconsin’s economy — are finding their bearings in the new policy landscape, and more shake-ups or reversals may lie ahead.
Ricardo Manriquez, Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry project manager, is shown at the company’s main plant in Manitowoc, Wis., Dec. 5, 2025. (Paul Kiefer / Wisconsin Watch)
The Tijuana engineer pipeline
Manriquez’s office sits near a door to the Manitowoc plant’s labyrinthine production floor, where the motion alarms on forklifts periodically cut through the hum of heavy machinery and a Nirvana album blasting from a worker’s portable speaker.
“All my life I was involved with grease and cars and steel,” Manriquez said. His father was a mechanic, he said, and his hometown, Tijuana, is a manufacturing powerhouse. Relatively low labor costs have drawn hundreds of manufacturers to cities near Mexico’s northern border, which now serve as a hub for the North American electronics, automotive parts, aerospace and medical device industries.
With an electro-mechanical engineering degree from a local technical university in hand, Manriquez found work at Prime Wheel, an American automotive parts company with a corporate office and fabrication facilities in one of Tijuana’s factory districts. He spent nearly a decade there, working long shifts with tedious commutes while attempting to raise a family. “In Mexico, we work 48 to 60 or even 80 hours a week without extra pay,” he said. “You get paid $50 to $60 a day … If you have a family, it really doesn’t help. You need to do a side job.”
Though his supervisor promoted him from designer to project engineer, Manriquez saw few opportunities to climb higher at Prime Wheel’s Tijuana plant. Prime Wheel did not respond to a request for comment.
An employee works at his desk at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The TN visa program was Manriquez’s ticket to cross the border. A product of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the TN visa provides a three-year work authorization to Mexican and Canadian nationals with job offers for a limited number of high-skilled professions.
Compared with other types of employment-based visas, like the H-1B favored in the tech and health care industries, the TN visa offers a straighter path to the U.S. for skilled Mexican workers. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved nearly 16,000 TN visas for Mexican nationals in 2024, compared to just under 2,000 H-1B visas for Mexican nationals. Only 42 Canadians received TN visas that year.
Manriquez learned about an opening in Manitowoc through word of mouth, and Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry was already primed to use the TN visa program to recruit skilled engineers.
When Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry purchased a metal castings manufacturer in New Hampton, Iowa, in 2024, the company absorbed the plant’s team, including four TN visa holders. It has retained those workers and hired three more since the acquisition, including Manriquez, who joined the company last February. Most came from Tijuana’s metals industry.
The company is trying to build a domestic pipeline. It has a relationship with Wisconsin’s technical college system, which trains engineers for a range of manufacturing roles, including on quality control teams like Manriquez’s. “It’s really hard to say if (those) skill needs are growing or shrinking,” said Ian Cameron, dean of Northcentral Technical College’s School of Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing, noting that day-to-day responsibilities and compensation for engineers with similar titles vary between companies.
But attracting and retaining talent for plants in small Midwestern towns is a constant challenge, said Michelle Szymik, the company’s human resources director. New Hampton, population 3,500, sits in a quiet stretch of northeast Iowa, and skilled engineers with U.S. citizenship tend to favor less-isolated workplaces.
Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry’s product line compounds its recruiting challenges. The foundry produces intricately detailed castings for Dodge sports cars and SpaceX satellites, among other clients, and few students of U.S. technical colleges have mastered the skills needed to design those castings by graduation. “It takes a long time to come up to speed on that kind of stuff,” Szymik added. “So we do internships, but at the end of the day, it’s really nice when you can find somebody who’s already got the skill set.”
An employee walks through the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Mexico’s advanced manufacturing industry provides a straightforward solution. Engineers like Manriquez come with years of experience and, Szymik said, are more willing to settle in small towns to “take care of their family and build a career.” Manriquez can earn more in two hours than he did in a day in Tijuana, and he no longer spends hours of his day trapped in gridlock.
The visa comes with trade-offs. Manriquez’s wife and children remain in Mexico, and while they are eligible to join him in Manitowoc as dependents, his wife would not receive work authorization.
The TN visa is not a path to permanent residency, and Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry would eventually need to sponsor Manriquez for another employment-based visa before helping him secure a green card and a long-term career with the company.
One of the more common paths would involve securing Manriquez an H-1B visa, which would allow him to simultaneously hold a “nonimmigrant” visa and apply for a green card. But the company would first need to prove it can’t find an equally qualified U.S. citizen for the job. If it finds a qualified candidate, Manriquez would be out of a job and on his way back to Tijuana.
The company spent nearly $12,000 to transition another employee from a TN to an H-1B visa, most of which went to legal fees. The Trump administration raised that hurdle even higher last year, introducing a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications — a price tag few employers can afford, including Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry.
Wisconsin’s manufacturing sector could bear the brunt of the new H-1B fees. Of the more than 1,600 workers employed in Wisconsin who received H-1B visas or renewed their visas last year, roughly a quarter worked in manufacturing. No other sector in the state sponsored more H-1B visas in 2025.
Manriquez can still renew his TN visa, but the breakneck pace of the Trump administration’s policy changes gives him reason to wonder whether that will remain true. “Suddenly, one day to another, (things) probably can change,” he said.
Completed aluminum disks lie in a pile at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wanted: ‘a good future for our children’
On a chilly morning in early December, Alex wore only a long-sleeve thermal shirt and a vest as he checked on the herd.
“We deal with the cold and the heat. We’re out there in all of that,” Alex told Wisconsin Watch in Spanish. “And it doesn’t matter to us because what we want is to work. What we want is to build a good future for our children.”
Alex is at ease around the animals. He studied agricultural sciences at a technical high school, and he was partway through a veterinary degree at a university in Managua 15 years ago when he headed north from Nicaragua to the U.S. He feared that the country’s security apparatus would some day come for him — a vocal opponent of authoritarian President Daniel Ortega.
He eventually approached an attorney about obtaining legal status, only to learn he had missed the eligibility window, which ended a year after his arrival. Because he lacks legal status, Wisconsin Watch has agreed to use only his first name.
“After 15 years in this country that respects your rights as a person, as a worker,” he said, going back to Nicaragua feels unthinkable. His brother, who spent four years working in Wisconsin, recently returned to care for his son, reporting back that allegiance to the ruling party is now required to access government services.
Alex has worked in dairies and manufacturing since arriving in Wisconsin, settling down at his current workplace in south-central Wisconsin to join his partner, with whom he has U.S.-born children. To minimize their risk of crossing paths with immigration enforcement, Alex’s family has cut back on all but the most basic errands. “We no longer think, ‘Oh, it’s a summer weekend. Let’s go to the mall. Let’s take the kids to an amusement park,’” he said. “We’ve reduced it to the minimum: if we need to go to a clinic or a hospital for a medical appointment, to school, to buy food.”
Alongside his daily duties leading a crew of fellow immigrant workers — all from Nicaragua — Alex serves as the farm’s recruiter. He’s held the role for the past five years, giving him a front-row view of the federal immigration crackdown’s impact on hiring.
“It’s been eight months since the last person came (to ask for work),” he said. “Before, people came here constantly.”
A worker is shown cleaning the milking barn at a farm in Wisconsin on June 11, 2024. (Ben Brewer for Wisconsin Watch)
With two members of his small crew preparing to leave the U.S., Alex now relies on his extensive network of former colleagues and acquaintances across Wisconsin to drum up replacement candidates. He’s competing with manufacturers who can offer overtime, but the farm’s isolation is now a selling point.
“Right now, security is a consideration. A farm is more separate, less involved, fewer moving people and cars,” he said. “The working conditions will be a little harder, but there’s more security.”
The farm’s owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid drawing the attention of immigration enforcement officials, added that skilled dairy workers can now be more selective when searching for new jobs. “The (labor) pool is clearly getting smaller,” he said. “If you don’t have a number of things — a nice, comfortable, attractive facility, one that people want to work in, if you don’t have a good company culture, and if you can’t provide housing, you’ll have a hard time hiring and retaining people.”
Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Van Ruden expects the labor drought to inflate farm wages. “You’re going to have to pay more to keep help,” he said, “which means paying someone $25 an hour versus $15.” Not all farms will be able to afford the new labor market, he added.
Alex’s employer says he has looked into the H-2A program, which provides temporary visas for hundreds of thousands of seasonal farmworkers each year, as a backup if his current crew shrinks. At least 16% of the agricultural employers that hired through the H-2A program last year own dairy herds, up from just 6% in 2020, but most sought agricultural equipment operators in seasonal job listings submitted to the U.S. Department of Labor. But the H-2A program does not provide visas for year-round roles like milking cows — a core responsibility of Alex and his crew. With that source of labor off the table, the farm’s recruitment options are slim.
While some farmers are exploring reducing labor needs through automation and rotary milking parlors, akin to a lazy Susan for cows, those options don’t eliminate the need for workers entirely.
While automation may reduce the need for some types of labor on dairy farms, some workers may simply shift to other tasks, said Hernando Duarte, a farm labor management outreach specialist with UW-Madison.
“Maybe you can need less people in the parlor,” he said, “but who is going to feed the calves? All the calves have to be fed two or three times a day. I’ve also seen more people moving more into tractors and feed work.” Rotary milking parlors, he added, also require trained staff to operate and clean.
Many workers who will learn to operate the automated milking equipment, Duarte added, will likely come from the same labor pool that currently keeps many Wisconsin dairies afloat: immigrants. But Wisconsin’s technical colleges are also preparing dairy science students for the industry’s technological frontier. Greg Cisewski, dean of Northcentral Technical College’s School of Agricultural Sciences, Utilities and Transportation, said several graduates have gone on to manage automated milking operations.
Meanwhile, Alex is preparing for the worst. He and his partner have arranged to temporarily transfer custody of their children to a U.S. citizen if they are arrested or deported, and he has been sending money back to Nicaragua for years to build a backup nest egg.
When Alex came to the U.S., he left behind a 1-year-old son. He has kept in touch, and his now-teenage son recently shared his plans to study veterinary medicine. “The degree I couldn’t finish is the degree he’s going to study,” he said.
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In a flurry of activity at the Capitol last week, Wisconsin lawmakers held more than 30 public meetings and two Assembly floor sessions, advancing bills on issues from eliminating taxes on tips and overtime to placing regulations on data centers.
For the first time in two decades, none of the actions were live-streamed, video-recorded or archived for those who sought to follow the legislative process outside of the building in Madison.
It’s a stark change at the Capitol where, since 2007, lawmakers, lobbyists, journalists and the public could rely on WisconsinEye — the nonpartisan public affairs network that functions sort of like Wisconsin’s version of C-SPAN — to record and archive legislative committees, floor sessions, press conferences and other political events around the state.
After more than 18 years, WisconsinEye went offline in mid-December after it did not raise enough funds to operate in 2026. The organization launched a GoFundMe on Jan. 12 to raise $250,000 to get back online, equal to about three months of its operating budget. About $13,000 was raised as of Friday afternoon.
“Without this funding, WisconsinEye could lose up to four highly skilled staff members,” the online fundraiser states. “Thus putting the network at considerable risk of failure.”
This WisconsinEye screenshot shows Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, during a May 14, 2024, floor debate. (WisconsinEye)
While the gap in live video coverage continues in Wisconsin, this is not an issue for four of Wisconsin’s neighboring states where the legislatures provide recordings rather than rely on a separate entity. Legislative chambers in Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan provide video streams and recordings of floor sessions and committee meetings, Wisconsin Watch found.
The Illinois Channel, a public affairs network founded in 2003, provides programming on state government, but the network no longer has cameras in the legislative chambers after the Illinois General Assembly began providing video and audio feeds in the House and Senate.
The approach varies around the country. In 2022, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported half of the states, including Wisconsin, televised broadcasts of the legislature. Some of the entities responsible for recording the sausage-making process are connected to public broadcasting stations, and others are tied to state governments. The Connecticut Network, for example, is a partnership between a nonprofit and the state legislature, but is solely funded by the Connecticut General Assembly. WisconsinEye has historically been privately funded, except for two one-time grants from the state prior to 2023.
WisconsinEye’s creation as a separate network from state government stemmed from a 1995 legislative study committee that recommended televised coverage of the Legislature be done by an organization independent of state funding, said WisconsinEye President and CEO Jon Henkes.
“Based on the recommendation of the study committee itself and the donor reality at that time … the cornerstone was laid as an independent, nongovernment-controlled, nongovernment-funded public affairs network,” Henkes said.
Over the last 18 years, Henkes said WisconsinEye’s reputation for independent coverage of state government assuaged concerns from donors over whether the organization could receive state support. The Legislature created a $10 million endowment for the network during the 2023-25 budget process. But those funds can only be accessed if WisconsinEye raises a private amount equal to a request it makes of the Joint Finance Committee. The 2025-27 budget provided $250,000 to WisconsinEye from that $10 million fund without any match requirement.
Since WisconsinEye’s departure from the Capitol, Republican lawmakers have also started to strictly enforce rules prohibiting people from recording and filming during committee meetings, although credentialed journalists are still able to do so. The Wisconsin Senate’s chief clerk in a memo this month said the Senate’s rules on prohibiting filming supersede the state’s open meetings law.
Rep. Jerry O’Connor, R-Fond du Lac, told the Wisconsin Examiner there are concerns about whether video filmed during committees can be filmed for political aims, particularly the political ads that will be blanketing TV and online media this upcoming fall. That wasn’t the case with WisconsinEye, which prohibited use of its videos for political or campaign purposes in its user agreement.
Democrats blamed Republicans for allowing legislative activities to continue “in darkness.”
“This is a step in the wrong direction and it erodes the public’s trust in this institution,” said Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, in a press briefing last week dismissed the idea that enforcing the rules banning recording while WisconsinEye is not operating lessens transparency at the Capitol.
“I think we have had about 48,000 bills passed before WisconsinEye went into effect, and I think the public was well served by the media reporting on them,” he said. “We’ve had literally hundreds of session days, thousands of session days, so this idea that if some activist is not allowed to record people, that that’s not transparent, we’ve got plenty of transparency. That’s why we’re here today.”
Other state legislatures
While Wisconsin’s neighboring states record legislative proceedings, each state differs on what is recorded, the resources available to provide video of the legislature and whether there are any restrictions on filming.
In Michigan, the state House and Senate separately handle video streaming for their own chamber. Videos in both chambers are prohibited from use for political purposes, according to Michigan House and Senate rules.
The Michigan Senate has a TV Department that records all Senate sessions and up to three committees at the same time, a Senate staff member told Wisconsin Watch. Video recordings from 2020 onward are posted to the Senate’s streaming website, but the chamber has an archive of offline videos dating back to 2003.
The Michigan House provides “gavel-to-gavel” coverage of session and committee proceedings, including archived videos, which can be accessed on its website and YouTube channel, according to the state’s House clerk.
The Minnesota House and Senate also individually handle video recordings of their chamber’s legislative activities through nonpartisan media departments. In the Minnesota House, the Public Information Services department controls the TV production of the chamber’s floor proceedings, committees and select press conferences. The department has 12 permanent staff and brings on 14 part-time staff members when the legislature is in session, according to the department’s executive director. Minnesota’s House and Senate media departments do not have any bans on the use of footage in campaign materials, staff said.
In Iowa, specific individuals in each chamber are in charge of the livestreams of legislative activities. All floor sessions and committees are filmed while legislative subcommittees are not, the Senate clerk’s office told Wisconsin Watch. It did not respond to questions about whether the state has limitations on how videos can be used.
But while Wisconsin’s neighboring state legislatures provide the live footage of legislative proceedings, Terry Martin, the executive director of the Illinois Channel, questioned if there could be limitations placed on a state-offered service depending on who is in power, pointing to Rod Blagojevich, the former Democratic Illinois governor who was convicted of corruption-related crimes.
“Somebody like Rod Blagojevich, if we had been funded by him, by the state, would have said, if you don’t do it my way, I’m going to cut your funding,” said Martin, who ran for Congress as a Republican in Illinois in 2022.
The Illinois Channel has not accepted funding from the state of Illinois for its operations, Martin said.
The path forward
Both Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and legislative leaders said they are open to options that can resolve the gap left by WisconsinEye.
Vos said he hopes there can be a “bipartisan answer.” Democrats and Republicans have had discussions on the topic, but there is no concrete next step yet, Neubauer said.
Evers told reporters he would not support simply giving WisconsinEye the money allocated without matching funds.
“I think there has to be some skin in the game,” Evers said.
Jon Henkes (Provided photo)
Neubauer told reporters the endowment’s $10 million matching requirement may not have been realistic for WisconsinEye.
“We would, of course, like to see more fundraising,” Neubauer said. “But I don’t think we set them up for success with the provision that was in the budget.”
Henkes said WisconsinEye is simply asking state leaders for support by providing nine months of its operating budget and then, in following years, investing the approved endowment funds and directing the earnings annually to the network. WisconsinEye would still require private support. A $10 million endowment conservatively invested can generate a half-million dollars each year. WisconsinEye’s annual budget is about $900,000.
That specific scenario is not how the language in the budget that created the WisconsinEye endowment is set up to work, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Changes to the law would likely be needed to direct the state to invest those dollars, LFB staff said.
Henkes said he hopes a decision comes soon.
“I mean, frankly, if this cannot be resolved in the next several weeks, WisconsinEye will have no choice but to fold up the tent and everybody goes home,” he said.
Time is quickly approaching for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to potentially launch a significant operation in Wisconsin, warns Darryl Morin, national president of Forward Latino.
“Unless there is a significant change in priorities, there will be a large enforcement action in Wisconsin,” Morin said in an email to supporters Saturday night.
Forward Latino is a national nonprofit advocacy organization based in Milwaukee that addresses community empowerment, democracy, civil rights and other issues such as hate crimes, gun violence and immigration.
Darryl Morin, national president of Forward Latino, speaks during a news conference in April 2025 after two arrests by federal immigration agents at the Milwaukee County Courthouse complex. (Devin Blake / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
The organization is a host of the annual Emergency Gun Violence Summit in Milwaukee.
Morin said there is general consensus at various levels of government that leads him to believe a wide-scale ICE operation is coming to the state. He’s urging residents and others to prepare for that possibility.
“It is important that we do not cause panic, but encourage thoughtful planning and preparation,” he said.
Morin shared a number of resources in his email, including family-planning “to-do lists”; constitutional rights cards; and information for employers if ICE comes to their workplace. The information is available in English and Spanish on the Forward Latino website.
A surge of more than 2,000 federal officers in the Twin Cities has pitted city and state officials against the federal government, sparked daily clashes between activists and immigration officers and left Renee Good, a mother of three, dead.
President Donald Trump initially threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota in response to the protests, which would allow the deployment of active-duty military troops there. He backed off on that threat Friday.
Critics have accused Trump of abusing his power.
Protesters try to avoid tear gas dispersed by federal agents, Jan. 12, 2026, in Minneapolis. (Adam Gray / Associated Press)
Residents prepare for ICE operations in Milwaukee
Drea Rodriguez, global program officer at WomenServe, which works for gender equity, said she’s received more requests than ever from residents to coordinate “know your rights” training in Milwaukee.
“Trump has already proven he cares more about profit over people. We are an immigrant city,” Rodriguez said. “Soon we will be in his crosshairs again. No one is safe. Stay ready.”
Rodriguez said that while the protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota and elsewhere are important, people should also limit business with companies that support Trump.
Hundreds of people gather outside the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis., for a Jan. 9, 2026, vigil memorializing Renee Good, who was killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
South Side resident Juanita Lara said her intuition is to carry her birth certificate as a precaution in case she’s stopped by an ICE agent.
Erika Wilson-Hale, who also lives on the South Side, said she believes parents should be careful about sending their undocumented children to school and that residents should take caution.
“If ICE does come you better be prepared, you better be ready,” she said. “Be wary because your rights will be violated. We are in scary times.”
Elected officials discuss possibility of ICE operations
State Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, wrote in a Facebook post Saturday, Jan. 17, that “it’s not a matter of if (ICE) comes, it’s when.”
Clancy said Milwaukee doesn’t have a substantial plan to keep the community safe from ICE, but he and others do.
“The plan is that the community keeps us safe, through Voces de la Frontera’s ICE hotline and Comité Sin Fronteras ‘community verifier‘ program, through legal observers, through legislation and through mass mobilization,” he said.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said in a prior email to NNS that, although the county cannot legally impede or interfere with the actions of federal immigration agents, “we will do everything in our power to keep our communities safe, informed and prepared.”
Mayor Cavalier Johnson said during a news conference after the Good shooting that federal immigration enforcement poses a risk to public safety.
“Occupying cities and targeting immigrant communities simply does not make our communities safer,” Johnson said.
Milwaukee Ald. Alex Brower is hosting a town hall on Feb. 2 to discuss ICE activities and operations in Milwaukee. That meeting will be held at The Vivarium, 1818 N. Farwell Ave., at 6:15 p.m.
Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who is running for governor, said in a Jan. 12 statement that there had been credible reports of increased ICE activity in Wisconsin. She called on state and local officials to take immediate action to protect public safety and civil rights “by adopting strong protections and transparency standards governing federal immigration enforcement operating in Wisconsin.”
Work starts around sunrise for many of the federal officers carrying out the immigration crackdown in and around the Twin Cities, with hundreds of people in tactical gear emerging from a bland office building near the main airport.
Within minutes, hulking SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans begin leaving, forming the unmarked convoys that have quickly become feared and common sights in the streets of Minneapolis, St. Paul and their suburbs.
Protesters also arrive early, braving the cold to stand across the street from the fenced-in federal compound, which houses an immigration court and government offices. “Go home!” they shout as convoys roar past. “ICE out!”
Protesters gather in front of the Minnesota State Capitol in response to the death of Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, Jan. 14, 2026, in St. Paul, Minn. (Abbie Parr / Associated Press)
Things often turn uglier after nightfall, when the convoys return and the protesters sometimes grow angrier, shaking fences and occasionally smacking passing cars. Eventually, the federal officers march toward them, firing tear gas and flash grenades before hauling away at least a few people.
“We’re not going anywhere!” a woman shouted on a recent morning. “We’re here until you leave.”
This is the daily rhythm of Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s latest and biggest crackdown yet, with more than 2,000 officers taking part. The surge has pitted city and state officials against the federal government, sparked daily clashes between activists and immigration officers in the deeply liberal cities, and left a mother of three dead.
The crackdown is barely noticeable in some areas, particularly in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods and suburbs, where convoys and tear gas are rare. And even in neighborhoods where masked immigration officers are common, they often move with ghostlike quickness, making arrests and disappearing before protesters can gather in force.
“We don’t use the word ‘invasion’ lightly,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, told reporters this week, noting that his police force has just 600 officers. “What we are seeing is thousands — plural, thousands — of federal agents coming into our city.”
Those agents have an outsized presence in a small city.
It can take hours to drive across Los Angeles and Chicago, both targets of Trump administration crackdowns. It can take 15 minutes to cross Minneapolis.
So as worry ripples through the region, children are skipping school or learning remotely, families are avoiding religious services and many businesses, especially in immigrant neighborhoods, have closed temporarily.
Drive down Lake Street, an immigrant hub since the days when newcomers came to Minneapolis from Norway and Sweden, and the sidewalks now seem crowded only with activists standing watch, ready to blow warning whistles at the first sign of a convoy.
At La Michoacana Purepecha, where customers can order ice cream, chocolate-covered bananas and pork rinds, the door is locked and staff let in people one at a time. Nearby, at Taqueria Los Ocampo, a sign in English and Spanish says the restaurant is temporarily closed because of “current conditions.”
A dozen blocks away at the Karmel Mall, where the city’s large Somali community goes for everything from food and coffee to tax preparation, signs on the doors warn, “No ICE enter without court order.”
The shadow of George Floyd
It’s been nearly six years since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, but the scars from that killing remain raw.
Floyd was killed just blocks from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, during a Jan. 7 confrontation after she stopped to help neighbors during an enforcement operation. Federal officials say the officer fired in self-defense after Good “weaponized” her vehicle. City and state officials dismiss those explanations and point to multiple bystander videos of the confrontation.
For Twin Cities residents, the crackdown can feel overwhelming.
Protesters try to avoid tear gas dispersed by federal agents, Jan. 12, 2026, in Minneapolis (Adam Gray / Associated Press)
“Enough is enough,” said Johan Baumeister, who came to the scene of Good’s death soon after the shooting to lay flowers.
He said he didn’t want to see the violent protests that shook Minneapolis after Floyd’s death, causing billions of dollars in damage. But this city has a long history of activism and protests, and he had no doubt there would be more.
“I think they’ll see Minneapolis show our rage again,” he predicted.
He was right.
In the days since, there have been repeated confrontations between activists and immigration officers. Most amounted to little more than shouted insults and taunting, with destruction mostly limited to broken windows, graffiti and some badly damaged federal vehicles.
But angry clashes now flare regularly across the Twin Cities. Some protesters clearly want to provoke the federal officers, throwing snowballs at them or screaming obscenities through bullhorns from just a couple feet away. The serious force, though, comes from immigration officers, who have broken car windows, pepper-sprayed protesters and warned observers not to follow them through the streets. Immigrants and citizens have been yanked from cars and homes and detained, sometimes for days. And most clashes end in tear gas.
Drivers in Minneapolis or St. Paul can now stumble across intersections blocked by men in body armor and gas masks, with helicopters clattering overhead and the air filled with the shriek of protesters’ whistles.
ICE anxiety spread to western Wisconsin
Western Wisconsin residents are following the protests and clashes with concern.
In Wisconsin border communities including Hudson, many people make daily commutes to the Twin Cities for work, shopping or recreation. A Hudson resident who asked to remain anonymous over safety concerns told WPR she has been involved in organizing to support protesters in the area. She said people all across the metro area have been making sure protesters and organizers have rides, are fed and are safe.
But the psychological effects of the unrest have been widespread. She said some of the students at the elementary school where she teaches are afraid to come to class.
“It is just the saddest thing to see tiny children who are just starting school have this kind of fear and uncertainty,” she said.
That echoes the experience of others in immigrant communities.
“Everybody is terrified,” immigration attorney Marc Christopher told “Wisconsin Today.” “They see what’s been broadcast on TV. They see the indiscriminate arrest of people. … The level of fear and anxiety in our immigrant community is off the charts.”
And Berge, who is also a Democratic candidate for Congress, said people in the Hmong community worry they will be targeted for being members of a minority group, regardless of legal status.
“Even though they’re American citizens,” she said, “they have to bring their documents with them, their passports or ID with them when they leave the house — even to walk their dog or bring their kids to school.”
Unfounded rumors of ICE agents staging or planning large-scale operations in Wisconsin are spreading widely on social media. Officials in Baldwin, Wausau and Stevens Point all told WPR that social media chatter was false.
Still, officials in many communities have felt pressure to review policies and plans should federal immigration enforcements scale up.
The Hudson School District this week sent a message to parents reiterating its visitors policy and how district officials work with law enforcement.
Shovel your neighbor’s walk
In a state that prides itself on its decency, there’s something particularly Minnesotan about the protests.
Soon after Good was shot, Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat and regular Trump target, repeatedly said he was angry but also urged people to find ways to help their communities.
“It might be shoveling your neighbor’s walk,” he said. “It might mean being at a food bank. It might be pausing to talk to someone you haven’t talked to before.”
He and other leaders have pleaded with protesters to remain peaceful, warning that the White House was looking for a chance to crack down harder.
Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)
And when protests do become clashes, residents will often spill from their homes, handing out bottled water so people can flush tear gas from their eyes.
Residents stand watch at schools to warn immigrant parents if convoys approach while they’re picking up their children. They take care packages to people too afraid to go out and arrange rides for them to work and doctor’s visits.
On Thursday, in the basement of a Lutheran church in St. Paul, the group Open Market MN assembled food packs for more than a hundred families staying home. Colin Anderson, the group’s outreach director, said the group has seen a surge in requests.
Sometimes, people don’t even understand what has happened to them.
Like Christian Molina from suburban Coon Rapids, who was driving through a Minneapolis neighborhood on a recent day, taking his car to a mechanic, when immigration officers began following him. He wonders if it’s because he looks Hispanic.
They turned on their siren, but Molina kept driving, unsure who they were.
Eventually, the officers sped up and hit his rear bumper, and both cars stopped. Two emerged and asked Molina for his papers. He refused, saying he’d wait for the police. Crowds began to gather, and a clash soon broke out, ending with tear gas.
So the officers left.
They left behind an angry, worried man who suddenly owned a sedan with a mangled rear fender.
Long after the officers were gone he had one final question.
“Who’s going to pay for my car?”
This post is a combination of stories from the Associated Press and WPR.
Rick Bieber reached into the soil, pulled out a handful and took a sniff.
Around him stretched fields of green — an unusual sight for late October in Wisconsin, when harvest is ending and farmers are preparing for winter. Oat and barley grasses, sunflowers, purple top turnip and radish plants blew under a gentle breeze. In the soil in his palm, an earthworm wriggled.
Bieber is the soil adviser for Fields of Sinsinawa, a project intended to help farmers understand what’s happening below the surface and why it matters for the health of people and the planet. The fields are owned by the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, a congregation of Catholic sisters who have lived for more than 175 years in southwestern Wisconsin at Sinsinawa Mound, overlooking the Mississippi River.
Written into the sisters’ guiding principles is a commitment to share their land for ecological and educational programs to help preserve it for future generations.
As Bieber puts it, “We plant with a purpose.”
Their vision of caring for the Earth as they believe God instructs them is in step with a larger movement happening across the state — and the world — in which faith drives people’s concern for the environment.
Fields of Sinsinawa soil adviser Rick Bieber sits in his UTV Oct. 17, 2025, at Sinsinawa Mound. (Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Religion can be a powerful motivator for people to pursue environmental stewardship: In a Pew Research Center study from 2022, four in five religiously affiliated Americans completely or mostly agreed that God gave humans a duty to protect and care for the Earth.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a partner of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, is profiling five people or groups in Wisconsin whose environmental actions are driven by their faith. They’re connected by a desire to do good for the Earth, following the writings in their religious texts or the teachings of their spiritual leaders. Importantly, the people drawn into this effort come from different sides of the political spectrum and from many different faiths. That suggests it could be an approach to environmental stewardship that bridges a complicated divide, something especially important as the U.S. government seeks to aggressively roll back environmental protections.
Take the soil, for instance, that Dominican Sister Julie Schwab and the others at Sinsinawa hold so precious.
“Soil is literally the common ground,” Schwab said.
Fields of Sinsinawa
Agriculture is a calling card of the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa. They once farmed the land themselves and are now hosting an organic farming collective and two father-son teams of dairy farmers who produce milk for Organic Valley.
The idea for Fields of Sinsinawa arose from an Ohio farmer named David Brandt, an influential figure in the regenerative farming movement, who was exploring the idea of creating a farmer-led learning center at Sinsinawa Mound. After his death in 2023, a group of like-minded people made it a reality.
The principles of soil health are simple to understand but can be challenging to achieve because our economic system places emphasis on big crop yields. Those at Fields of Sinsinawa believe that soil should be filled with diverse, living roots year-round, which prevents runoff that pollutes waterways and feeds microscopic organisms that can make the soil better suited to support plant life. They want to minimize practices like tilling, which disturb the soil, and encourage grazing livestock on pastures that have time to rest and regrow.
Demonstration fields at the mound are meant to be a “living classroom” that farmers can visit to learn how such regenerative practices work, and more important, why. They host visitors from the next town over and from across the globe, including at their annualSoul of the Soil conference. The on-site dairy farmers work closely with Bieber to try practices out at minimal risk to their business.
Sister Julie Schwab, center, and Fields of Sinsinawa project manager Julia Gerlach, far right, follow a tenant farmer’s cows that graze on cover crops Oct. 17, 2025, at Sinsinawa Mound. The Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa host a farmer-led learning center, Fields of Sinsinawa, where farmers can learn about the importance of soil health. (Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
“What impresses me most is the deep, deep spirituality of these farmers. They know they’re working with something sacred,” said Sister Sheila Fitzgerald, part of Fields of Sinsinawa’s administrative support team. “It’s a gift, and it’s up to us to keep this gift for the next generation. We do that by learning about this whole sacred environment — the whole blessing of the life that’s in the soil.”
The sisters are also following teachings they see carefully laid out by the late Pope Francis in his 2015 encyclical letter, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.” Earth “cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use,” Francis wrote. “We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth.”
Bieber puts it another way.
“We were formed from the soil, and we’ll go back to the soil,” he said. “Why would you beat it up if it’s going to be your resting place?”
Wisconsin Green Muslims
The same year Francis released his letter, Muslim leaders from around the world published the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change, which calls for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and directs Muslims worldwide to tackle climate change and environmental degradation.
Huda Alkaff was already hard at work. Alkaff founded Wisconsin Green Muslims in 2005 to educate people about Islamic teachings of environmental justice and apply those teachings in real life.
The Earth is mentioned more than 450 times in the Quran, Alkaff said, instructing Muslims to maintain its balance and not upset the order of creation.
“The true practice of Islam really means living simply, treading lightly on Earth, caring for our neighbors and all creatures, standing up for justice, and collaborating with others to care for our shared home,” she said.
Huda Alkaff, founder and director of Wisconsin Green Muslims. (Courtesy of Huda Alkaff / Wisconsin Green Muslims)
Now in its 20th year, Wisconsin Green Muslims has pushed for action on a wide range of environmental issues, including clean drinking water and air, renewable energy, waste reduction and healthy food, with a focus on helping marginalized communities that are disproportionately impacted by environmental problems. The group rotates through these issues monthly, Alkaff said, bringing new people into the fold based on their interests.
Since its beginning, the group has promoted Green Ramadan during the Islamic holy month, encouraging small daily actions to care for the environment such as switching to e-billing or biking to the mosque. Green Ramadan has spread to at least 20 states, Alkaff said.
Alkaff also leads two interfaith organizations: Wisconsin Faith and Solar, which aims to help faith congregations across the state to implement solar energy, and Faithful Rainwater Harvesting for sustainable water collection.
“We see sunlight and water as the commons — everyone should have access to them,” she said. “We need to appreciate them and welcome them responsibly into our homes, congregations and lives.”
Calvin DeWitt
Calvin DeWitt is a household name at the cross section of Christianity and the environment. He lists as friends Al Gore and environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, tells of having given a speech at the ranch of the late Robert Redford, a stalwart environmental advocate, and has been a leading voice for “greening up” the Christian right.
DeWitt’s story started in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he cared for a pet turtle. For 25 years, he led the Au Sable Institute in Michigan, which offers environmental science courses to students from dozens of Christian colleges. He also taught environmental studies classes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Now 90, he lives in the Waubesa Wetlands outside Madison, which he helped establish as a nature preserve.
He’s still publishing papers, running field trips and otherwise speaking loudly about caring for the Earth because, as he puts it, “I can’t think of anything more pleasurable to do.”
DeWitt has become a master at tailoring his message to make the most impact. Some of his most storied work is with evangelical Christians, fewer of whom believe climate change is a serious problem compared with other major religions, according to the2022 Pew study. He was a founding member of the Evangelical Environmental Network, which promotes evangelicals “rediscovering and reclaiming the biblical mandate to care for creation.”
“Someone’s twiddling with the thermostat” is a phrase he might say to enter into a conversation about the world heating up with someone who’d get turned off by the term global warming. In other scenarios, “if you come up with a religious point of view, you’re actually asking for trouble,” he said.
Most often, though, DeWitt tries to boil it down to the development of community, which he said is central to overcoming differences.
Several years ago, a neighbor turned to him while leaving a town hall and said, “Cal, this is just like going to church,” DeWitt recalled. A real community is about love, he said, which extends to love for the land.
“It’s contagious,” he said.
Dekila Chungyalpa and the Loka Initiative
Dekila Chungyalpa once felt like she was living two different lives. By day, she worked as an environmental scientist in the U.S. By night, she was a practicing Tibetan Buddhist. She didn’t know how to bring the two together, and it hurt.
Chungyalpa decided to return to the Himalayas, where she was born, to work with the 17th karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. In 2007, she watched him speak to thousands of Buddhists, citing a Buddhist prayer to alleviate the suffering of all beings in his call for those watching to become vegetarians. Livestock production makes up about 14.5% of human-driven greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change.
“That was my moment of awakening. My hand was rising along with all these people,” Chungyalpa said. “People were not doing it because of science or policy, but because a faith leader told them to live up to their faith value.”
Dekila Chungyalpa of the Loka Initiative speaks at a “Remembrance of Lost Species” event Dec. 4, 2025, at Science Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Loka Initiative, housed in the university’s Center for Healthy Minds, helps faith leaders and Indigenous culture keepers collaborate with scientists on environmental solutions. (Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
The idea that religious leaders could shepherd people toward environmental stewardship sparked something in her. The spark was there when she helped found Khoryug, an association of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries working on environmental protection and resilience to climate change. It also was there when she began the Loka Initiative inside UW-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds.
Today, the Loka Initiative has two goals. One is working with faith and Indigenous leaders to bring home environmental solutions that feel authentic to them. The other is developing courses that teach contemplative practices, like meditation, somatic healing and even singing, to combat grief and anxiety over the effects of environmental degradation. One recent course, “Psychology of Deep Resilience,” was taken by more than 1,550 students in 70-plus countries, she said.
Chungyalpa sees the immense power in religiously affiliated people to take action for the good of the Earth.More than 75% of people around the world identify with a religion. And religious groups, as major owners of land and buildings, can do so much, from adopting soil health practices to adding solar panels.
“They reach parts of the population scientists never can,” she said.
North Shore Interfaith Green Team
The group of people who gathered at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun in River Hills Nov. 3 had many differences: different cities, different political persuasions and different faiths.
What unites the North Shore Interfaith Green Team is a belief that religious people have a duty to care for creation and a desire to make that happen. Reenie Kavalar, of Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun, began the meeting with a reading from the Talmud, a foundational Jewish text.
“‘See My creations, how beautiful and exemplary they are. Everything I created, I created for you. Make certain that you do not ruin and destroy My world, as if you destroy it, there will be no one to mend it after you,'” Kavalar read.
She paused and reflected, “I’m thinking – if it’s not up to us, who’s it going to be up to?”
The Green Team’s members are from Conservative and Reform Jewish synagogues, Catholic parishes, and Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches.
Although the group is new, it is ambitious: In April they hosted an electronics recycling drive, which they said saved 20,000 pounds of electronics from the landfill, and they split the money they made among congregations to pursue other environmental projects. For example, Fox Point Lutheran is working on expanding its pollinator garden, said member Anne Noyes. It also spawned conversations about other types of potential efforts, such as clothes recycling and composting.
In 2026, the group will hold two more electronics recycling drives in April and will begin a partnership with Schlitz Audubon Nature Center involving volunteer conservation days. Members hope that by working together, they can come up with new ideas and tackle projects that might be impossible alone.
Susan Toman, of Christ Church Episcopal in Whitefish Bay, said she joined the Green Team in part because she sees it as a way to overcome polarization.
In many respects, her sentiment reflects the movement connecting faith and the environment, whether it’s on Milwaukee’s busy North Shore or across the state on the rural farm fields at Sinsinawa Mound.
“This is a model for how people who could be drawing a line in the sand about our differences instead are saying, ‘Let’s talk about the things that we all agree upon,'” Toman said, “something that comes from the depths of our hearts.”
In a small church off East Oklahoma Avenue, impassioned singing, steady drum beats and the smell of incense emanate from its front doors.
Brothers Isiah and Avery Nahwahquaw co-founded RedNationBoyz, a powwow drum circle, in 2024. They host their practices at Lutheran Church of the Great Spirit, 3127 S. Howell Ave., during the Milwaukee Intertribal Circle’s crafting Wednesdays. All funding for the RedNationBoyz comes directly out of the Nahwahquaw brothers’ own pockets.
The Nahwahquaw brothers formed the group to connect Indigenous boys, ranging in age from 10 to 20, in Milwaukee to their roots.
Isiah Nahwahquaw, who is Menominee and Ojibwe and co-founded the RedNationBoys, sings and plays the big drum.
Avery Nahwahquaw, who is Menominee and Ojibwe, co-founded the RedNationBoyz in 2024.
The president of the Milwaukee Intertribal Circle, Deanna Porter, invited the Nahwahquaw brothers to join the group for Wednesday nights in their space at the church. The Milwaukee Intertribal Circle, or MIC, is a group dedicated to revitalizing the intertribal community of Milwaukee.
Deanna Porter, president of the Milwaukee Intertribal Circle, sings at the Lutheran Church of the Great Spirit.
Porter, a member of the White Earth Nation Ojibwe Anishinaabe, remembers when the United Indians of Milwaukee was a central hub for the Native American community in Milwaukee. With the newly formed Milwaukee Intertribal Council, she hopes to emulate their impact.
“We’re working to reproduce that, to be serving any Native person within the city of Milwaukee or surrounding area,” Porter said. “And it doesn’t matter your tribe, we will serve enrolled members and their descendants. We welcome anybody.”
The RedNationBoyz practice on “Grandfather,” a big drum.
The drum circle has expanded quickly from a few members to more than a dozen. The group is an intertribal drum circle, meaning anyone descended from any tribe can join. Members come from Ojibwe tribes, the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and Oneida and Ho-Chunk nations.
The RedNationBoyz have performed at several community events, including the Heart of Canal Street event at Potawatomi Casino Hotel.
Isiah Nahwahquaw sings and plays the big drum at the Lutheran Church of the Great Spirit on Dec. 10.
The name “RedNationBoyz” comes from Avery and Isiah Nahwahquaw’s original drum group from their school days. When Isiah was 14, he was given a big drum from his mentor, and the brothers decided to form a drum circle with their friends. After finishing school, though, life got busy and the group stopped performing together.
Several years later, Isiah was offered a job at Indian Community School in Franklin where he worked as a youth drum instructor. Here, Isiah and his students connected. That relationship inspired him to bring back the name “RedNationBoyz” for this group.
“It was initially a job that turned to a bond and, you know, once you develop the bond, it’s hard to break,” he said. “And when I started being an instructor for these boys, I had to use the name again, because it was technically a family name to us, and we look at them as family.”
“Grandfather,” a big drum, was gifted to Isiah Nahwahquaw from his mentor at the Lutheran Church of the Great Spirit.
“So, that drum right there means a lot. That’s a spirit right there in that drum. It brings us all together, it brings a whole community together,” Avery Nahwahquaw says.
By joining the drum circle, not only does a member get to learn about their Indigenous roots and play and sing traditional music, they also join a brotherhood.
“I would describe the RedNationBoyz like family. These young men become like our nephews,” said Avery. “Not only is it singing, but it’s me finding out if you’re doing good in school, or if you got anything else you need help with in life outside of this drum circle.”
People work on crafts or other projects while the RedNationBoyz play on the big drum and sing at the Lutheran Church of the Great Spirit.
The Milwaukee Intertribal Circle hosts a crafting event on Wednesdays when members from the Native American community can come and be immersed in their culture.
The Nahwahquaw brothers spoke of the importance of creating a space where Indigenous boys could come together to be with people of their culture.
“Our practices are one night a week where they can escape from wherever they’re from, whatever they’re going through, and they can find their culture in this urban area,” said Avery.
A drum beater lies on a bag.
RedNationBoyz members Brian Bowman and Ethan Shomin practice on the big drum.
Ask the boys why they keep showing up each Wednesday, and the answers point to the deeper pull of the drum.
Angel Espino, 11, sings and plays the big drum.
Jared Dashner sings and plays the big drum.
Jared Dashner notes that even his Native name, “Little Singing Boy,” ties him to the circle.
Ethan Shomin, 15, says the experience of playing the drum and singing is a highlight of his.
“I love singing. I love all these Wednesday nights with everybody, and getting these teachings from our mentor, Isiah. I ain’t gonna never stop coming,” Ethan Shomin said.
Their commitment underscores the role RedNationBoyz plays for Indigenous youth seeking connection and community.
Tomas Espino, Jared Dashner and Isiah Nahwahquaw practice on the big drum.
Avery Nahwahquaw sings and plays the big drum with other members of the RedNationBoyz.
“We don’t want it to end. We don’t want like five years from now, they’re like, ‘Hey, remember that one guy we used to sing with on Wednesday nights?’ No, we want this to be for life,” said Avery.
The RedNationBoyz practice on “Grandfather,” a big drum.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Youth motorsport riders of the Sliders Flat Track Racing Program have spent countless hours in recent months learning how to ride dirt and electric bikes and build motorcycles while gaining personal development.
The Milwaukee youths are preparing for Flat Out Friday, an international motorcycle race that will take place at Fiserv Forum on Feb. 21. The race features over 300 riders of all skill levels.
The Sliders Flat Track Racing Program gives underrepresented youths in Milwaukee free access to electric and dirt bikes, and eventually motorcycles, while introducing them to science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, components.
“Motorsports is not something that people of color typically participate in and sometimes we’re the only people of color there when we race,” said Venisha Simpson, founder of the Sliders Flat Track Racing Program. Parents, volunteers and new Sliders pose for a photograph on Dec. 6, 2025. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
“Motorsports is not something that people of color typically participate in and sometimes we’re the only people of color there when we race,” said Venisha Simpson, founder of the Sliders Flat Track Racing Program.
Lately, Simpson and co-founder Tiger Mabato have been coaching the riders inside the Boys & Girls Club and on a dirt road in Sheboygan County for Flat Out Friday.
“I love this sport because it’s intergenerational and you’ll find people between 4 to 84 racing on the same track,” Simpson said. “The respect level is low between the young and old in the Black community, so with this event and program we’re absorbing from each other.”
Tiger Mabato and Venisha Simpson run through safety guidelines with new students during a Sliders orientation last year. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
A young engineer on the track
One of the riders in the program is Tiger Mabato’s 11-year-old son Noah.
His interest in motorbikes started when he was 6 and he complained about the condition of a junkyard dirt bike his dad gifted him.
By 7, his dad gave him the opportunity to take the dirt bike apart and rebuild it on his own.
“Engineering and building things is fun to me, but I have to learn to do this on my own without any help,” Noah said.
After rebuilding the dirt bike, he crashed into a tree, leaving him hesitant about the sport and even joining the program.
Noah regained interest after seeing another kid from the program race on a dirt bike.
“I crash often when practicing and racing, but now I know what to do,” Noah said.
Currently, Noah is building a Suzuki RM 85cc dirt bike for his third Flat Out Friday competition.
“This will become my official bike because my last bike was causing me to lose pretty badly,” he said.
He placed ninth last year in the open youth class after falling and crashing his bike, but this year wants to come back stronger.
“It took me a while to get back up last year, but I’m more excited about trying it again,” he said.
According to Tiger Mabato and Simpson, Noah Mabato and Donald Amartey are the only Black youth racers who ride vintage Harley-Davidson bikes in Milwaukee.
“Noah and Donald are making history right now,” Tiger Mabato said.
Noah Mabato, age 11, waits to ride his electric bike during practice. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Adjusting quickly
Justice Osei, 9, is a second-year rider in the Sliders Flat Track Racing Program.
He started without knowing how to ride a regular bike but caught on quickly.
“They taught him that day in just a couple hours how to ride one,” his mom, Malaika Osei, said.
Justice wasn’t drawn into traditional sports or video gaming, but with motorsports found a connection to the people and skills he learned.
“When I’m racing and sometimes make a mistake, I try to lock in and stay focused after it,” he said.
Tiger Mabato is amazed to see kids like Justice latch onto the sport.
“These kids go through so many ups, downs and tears, it’s crazy how quickly they adapted to everything,” Mabato said. “This is a different level of excitement.”
Justice Osei, 9, helps another rider adjust a helmet during practice. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Prioritizing safety
Before getting on a motorbike, every rider and parent is made aware of how dangerous the sport can be.
“The hardest thing is seeing your kid crash and tumble at times, but we prepare them for that, and our biggest thing is safety,” Mabato said.
To ensure safety, the program provides students with motorbikes, helmets, gloves, padding and vests. Parents are responsible for purchasing jeans, long-sleeve shirts and racing boots.
“It’s dangerous, but it’s fun,” Justice said.
Justice broke three toes during a practice from not wearing the proper racing boots.
His mom saw him take a tumble that day on the dirt road.
“I took off running once I saw him crying and grabbing his foot,” Malaika Osei said.
Justice didn’t even realize at first that his toes were broken.
“I didn’t even know until a week later,” he said.
After purchasing a new pair of boots, Justice was ready to ride again.
Building other skills
Jeremey Prach, co-founder of Flat Out Friday, explains to a new rider the different pieces of the bike. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Motorsports is more than just racing and maintenance.
Flat Out Friday co-founder Jeremy Prach wants riders to know the sport is about developing skills that keep you improving.
“I think the thing that hurts the most is your pride when you fall because many think they’re going to do awesome in a race,” Prach said. “But without a skill base, it’ll be hard to do awesome.”
At the Sliders Flat Track Racing Program, Simpson and Tiger Mabato teach the riders confidence, self-regulation, quick problem solving and self-respect.
“These kids are tough and it takes a different type of mentality to race with these bikes,” Mabato said.
Simpson and Mabato also teach the youth riders how to network and maintain relationships with people like Cameron Smith, one of the few professional Black racers in the country.
Cameron Smith, one of the few professional Black racers in the country, signs Donald Amartey’s motorbike at the 2025 Flat Out Friday. (Courtesy of Jennifer Ellis)
It takes a community
To ensure the program has everything it needs, places like Cream City Moto, STACYC, Southeast Sales, Proplate and other local organizations pitch in to donate equipment, design graphics, cover fees for events and more.
The program also received grants from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and Comoto Cares.
“The race community is very supportive and I love that,” Simpson said.
Tiger Mabato encourages parents to get their children involved in things that spark their interest even if it’s scary and wants them to know that the race part of the program is optional.
“There’s no better feeling than seeing your kid go around the track,” he said.
In two recent polls, a majority of U.S. adults said they use social media to get health information.
July 2025 by KFF, a leading health policy research nonprofit: 55% said they use social media “to find health information and advice” at least occasionally. Less than one in 10 said “most” of the information is trustworthy.
September 2024 by Healthline: 52% said they learned from social media health and wellness tools, resources, trends, or products they tried in the past year. About 77% expressed at least one negative view, such as “there is a lot of conflicting information.”
An April 2024 medical journal article said that over one-third of social media users perceived high levels of health misinformation, and two-thirds reported “high perceived discernment difficulty.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is conducting a long-term study to determine how social media affects the physical/mental health of adolescents.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Craig Stingley had no legal training, no big-name lawyer or civil rights advocate by his side. Yet for 13 years, he refused to accept that the judicial system would hold no one responsible for the killing of his 16-year-old son, Corey.
The quest for justice dominated his life.
He gathered police reports, witness statements and other evidence in the Dec. 14, 2012, fatal incident inside a Milwaukee-area convenience store. The youth had tried to shoplift $12 worth of flavored malt beverages at the shop before abandoning the items and turning to leave. That’s when three men wrestled him to the ground to hold him for the police.
The medical examiner determined that he died of a brain injury from asphyxiation after a “violent struggle with multiple individuals.” The manner of death: homicide.
When prosecutors chose not to charge anyone, Stingley waged a legal campaign of his own that forced the case to be reexamined. A 2023 ProPublica investigation pieced together a detailed timeline of what happened inside the store, recounted what witnesses saw and examined the backgrounds of the three customers involved in the altercation.
Finally, this week, in an extraordinary turn of events, Stingley will see a measure of accountability. On Monday, a criminal complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court charged the surviving patrons — Robert W. Beringer and Jesse R. Cole — with felony murder. The defendants were set to appear in court on Thursday.
Beringer’s attorney, Tony Cotton, described the broad outlines of a deferred prosecution agreement that can lead to the charges being dismissed after the two men plead guilty or no contest. The men may be required by the court to make a contribution to a charity in honor of Corey Stingley and to perform community service, avoiding prison time, according to Cotton and Craig Stingley.
In Wisconsin, felony murder is a special category for incidents in which the commission of a serious crime — in this case, false imprisonment — causes the death of another person. The prosecutor’s office in Dane County, which is handling the matter, declined to comment. Cole’s attorney said his client had no comment. Previously, the three men have argued that their actions were justified, citing self-defense and their need to respond to an emergency.
Craig Stingley waged a legal campaign that forced the death of his son to be reexamined. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)
For Stingley, a key part of the accountability process already has taken place. Last year, as part of a restorative justice program and under the supervision of a retired judge, Stingley and the two men interacted face to face in separate meetings.
There, inside an office on a Milwaukee college campus, they confronted the traumatic events that led to Corey Stingley’s death and the still-roiling feelings of resentment, sorrow and pain.
Craig Stingley said he felt that, after years of downplaying their role, the men showed regret and a deeper understanding of what had happened. For instance, Stingley said, he and Cole aired out their different perspectives on what occurred and even reviewed store surveillance video together.
“I have never been able to breathe as clearly and as deeply and feel as free as I have after that meeting was over,” Stingley said.
Restorative justice programs bring together survivors and offenders — via meetings or letters or through community panels — to try to deepen understanding, promote healing and discuss how best to make amends for a wide range of harms. The approach has been used by schools and juvenile and criminal justice systems, as well as nations grappling with large-scale atrocities.
Situations where restorative justice and deferred prosecution are employed for such serious charges are rare, Cotton said. But, he said, the whole case is rare — from the prosecution declining to issue charges initially to holding it open for multiple reviews over a decade.
“Our hearts go out to the Stingley family, and we believe that the restorative justice process has allowed all sides to express their feelings openly,” Cotton said. “We are glad that a fair and just outcome has been achieved.”
A medical examiner determined that Corey Stingley died of a brain injury from asphyxiation after an altercation with three men at a convenience store in 2012. Prosecutors assigned to the case declined to press charges. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)
The legal quest
Milwaukee’s district attorney at the time of Corey Stingley’s death, John Chisholm, announced there would be no charges 13 months later, in January 2014. Cole, Beringer and a third man, Maurio Laumann, now deceased, were not culpable because they did not intend to injure or kill the teen and weren’t trained in proper restraint techniques, Chisholm determined.
Craig Stingley, who is Black, and others in the community protested the decision, claiming the three men — all white — were not good Samaritans but had acted violently to kill a Black youth with impunity. “When a person loses his life at the hands of others, it would seem that a ‘chargeable’ offense has occurred,” the Milwaukee branch of the NAACP said in a statement at the time.
Looking for a way to reopen the case, Stingley reexamined the evidence, including security video. In a painful exercise, he watched the takedown of his son, by his estimation hundreds of times, analyzing who did what, frame by frame. What he saw only reinforced his view that his son’s death was unnecessary and his right to due process denied.
Corey Stingley and his father lived only blocks from VJ’s Food Mart, in West Allis, Wisconsin. That December day, Stingley made his way to the back of the store and stuck six bottles of Smirnoff Ice into his backpack. At the front counter, the teenager provided his debit card to pay for an energy drink, but the clerk demanded the stolen items. Stingley surrendered the backpack, reached toward the cash register to recover his debit card, then turned to exit.
Cole told police he extended his hand to stop Stingley and claimed that the teen punched him in the face, though it is not evident on the video. The three men grabbed the youth. During a struggle, the men pinned Stingley to the floor.
Laumann kept Stingley in a chokehold, several witnesses told investigators. ProPublica later discovered that Laumann had been a Marine. His brother told ProPublica he likely learned how to apply chokeholds as part of his military service decades ago.
Beringer had Stingley by the hair and was pressing on the teen’s head, a witness told authorities. Cole helped to hold Stingley down. Eventually, Stingley stopped resisting. The police report states that Cole thought the teen was “playing limp” to trick them into loosening their grip.
“Get up, you punk!” Laumann told the motionless teen when an officer finally arrived, according to a police report. Stingley was foaming at the mouth and had urinated through his clothes. The officer couldn’t find a pulse. Stingley never regained consciousness, dying at a hospital two weeks later.
Craig Stingley unsuccessfully sought a meeting with Chisholm in 2015 to discuss the lack of charges. “Feel free to seek legal advice in the private sector regarding your Constitutional Rights,” an assistant to Chisholm replied to Stingley in an email. “I extend my deepest sympathy to you and your family!”
Stingley’s review of the video, however, did bring about another legal opportunity in 2017, after he notified West Allis police that there was footage showing Laumann with his arm around the teen’s throat. (Laumann had denied putting him in a headlock.) A Racine County district attorney was appointed to review the evidence again. She issued no report for three years, until pressed by the court, then concluded that no charges were warranted.
Finally, Stingley discovered an obscure Wisconsin “John Doe” statute. It allows private citizens to petition a judge to consider whether a crime had been committed if a district attorney refuses to issue a criminal complaint.
A former process engineer for an electrical transformer manufacturer, Stingley had no legal training. Still, in November 2020, he filed a 14-page petition with the then-chief judge of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Mary Triggiano. It cited legal authority and “material facts,” including excerpts from police reports, witness statements and stills from the surveillance video. Stingley quoted former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in the petition and the British statesman William Gladstone: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
That led to the appointment in July 2022 of Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne to review the case. But that process was slowed by procedural hurdles. Stingley took the delays in stride, saying he trusted that Ozanne and his staff were treating the matter seriously and acting appropriately.
In 2024, Stingley said, Ozanne’s office advised him that they had found sufficient evidence to issue charges against Cole and Beringer but could not guarantee that a jury would deliver a guilty verdict. Stingley, researching the family’s options, said he inquired about the restorative justice process. The DA’s office supported the idea, arranging for him and the two men to meet under the supervision of the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, part of the law school at Milwaukee’s Marquette University. The program is run by Triggiano, who’d retired from the court.
The concept of restorative justice can be traced back to indigenous cultures, where people sat together to talk through conflict and solve problems. It emerged in the United States in criminal justice systems in the 1970s as a way to provide alternatives to prison and restitution to victims. Elsewhere, it has notably been used to address the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, where beginning in 2002 truth-telling forums led to forgiveness and reconciliation.
Stingley, who has three remaining grown children and four grandchildren, desperately wanted “balance restored” for his family. He decided the best path forward was to meet with the men he considered responsible for his son’s death.
Craig Stingley now sees the charges as a message of accountability in his son’s case. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)
The quest for closure
Stingley brought photos of Corey to the restorative justice meeting with Berringer in April.
The goal: to respectfully share their perspectives on the tragedy and how it impacted each of them personally. What was said was not recorded or transcribed. It was not for use in any court proceeding.
The sessions began with the Stingley family sharing heartfelt stories about Corey as a son, brother, student and friend. They spoke of their great bond, Corey’s love of sports and their struggle to cope with his absence.
When discussion turned to what happened in the store, Stingley said, Berringer described having only faint memories of the fatal encounter. He recalled a brief struggle and grabbing the teen by his jacket, not his hair.
Before departing the meeting, a tearful Beringer told Stingley he was looking for peace, Stingley recalled.
Cotton, Beringer’s attorney, told ProPublica that the incident and the legal steps affected his client in profound ways. “He’s had anxiety really from this from day one,” Cotton said.
The result, he said: “Sleeplessness. Horrible anxiety. Fearful because he has to go to court.”
Does the resolution ease Beringer’s mind? “I don’t know,” Cotton said, adding that the hope is that the Stingley family finds solace in the resolution process.
Cole, in a meeting in May with Stingley and some of his family, brought a gift: a pair of angel wings on a gold chain with a small “C” charm and several clear reflective orbs. With it came a handwritten note, saying: “I hope this sun catcher brings a gentle reflection of the love & light of Corey’s memory and that you feel his presence shining on you each day.”
“I told him I appreciate the gesture,” Stingley said.
Cole, according to Stingley, told him that he felt something other than the altercation — perhaps some health ailment — led to Corey’s demise.
Stingley invited Cole to watch the surveillance video together at a second session. As that day neared, in July, Stingley considered backing out. “It was almost as if I had to drag myself up out of the car,” he said. But he said he realized that he’d been preparing for such an event for 13 years: to come to some honest reckoning with the men involved.
After watching the video, he and Cole reviewed the death certificate, showing the medical examiner’s conclusions. Stingley said Cole stressed that he did not choke Corey but came to realize that what happened in the store caused the teen to lose his life, not any preexisting condition. The acknowledgment eased Stingley’s burden.
“I felt like I was reaching a place where I was finally going to get the justice that I’ve been pursuing,” Stingley said, “and this is one of the steps I had to go through to get that completed.”
Triggiano commended each of the participants for their courage in meeting and the Stingley family for “seeking the humanity of their son as opposed to vengeance.” She said Beringer and Cole “keenly listened, reflected and really acknowledged their connection to the events that led to Corey’s death.”
“The conversations were emotional and difficult but deeply human,” she said.
After the loss of his son, Stingley wanted to see the three men imprisoned. But so many years later, justice now looks different. Now Laumann is dead. Beringer is changed by the experience. And Cole is a father eager to protect his own children.
Now, in Stingley’s eyes, prison is beside the point. Criminal charges will stand instead as a strong signal of accountability, of justice — and of a father’s unyielding love.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
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As Wisconsin’s workforce ages and universities nationwide see fewer traditional college-aged students, UWGB is trying several unorthodox efforts to attract older learners.
The university offers short-term certificates that advance workers’ job skills, ungraded courses that keep older people socially engaged and classes in local nursing homes.
Leaders hope the initiatives will keep the region’s growing retirement-age population sharp and socially engaged — and potentially in the workforce for longer — while also bolstering enrollment.
Inside University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Christie Theatre, retired judge Mark Warpinski leads a discussion about how judges decide on the sentences they impose. Roughly 50 students nod along, take notes and eagerly wave their hands in the air to debate how they’d sentence someone for a hypothetical crime.
The unusually lively audience betrays that this isn’t a typical sleepy morning lecture — most of Warpinski’s students are over the age of 50.
“We pay attention. We ask questions. We’re not sitting on our cellphones and scrolling … like I guess most college students nowadays do,” said 76-year-old student Norman Schroeder.
Classrooms full of older adults are becoming more common at UWGB.
As Wisconsin’s workforce ages and universities nationwide see fewer traditional college-aged students, UWGB is trying several unorthodox efforts to attract older learners. That includes more short-term certificates that advance workers’ job skills,ungraded courses that keep older students socially engaged and classes in local nursing homes.
University leaders hope these moves will keep the region’s growing retirement-age population sharp and socially engaged — and potentially in the workforce for longer — while also bolstering enrollment.
“We’re not just an 18-year-old campus. We’re not just a campus where you live in the dorms and have a traditional experience,” said Jessica Lambrecht, UWGB’s continuing education and workforce training executive officer. “There’s hundreds of universities you can pick from that offer that type of experience. So how are we gonna stretch and serve more?”
From left, Anita Kirschling, Theresa Reiter, Judy Rogers and Linda Chapman work on knitting projects during a class through the Lifelong Learning Institute at UWGB. They are among more than 800 members of UWGB’s Lifelong Learning Institute. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
In fall 2025, UWGB joined the Age-Friendly University Global Network, an international web of universities that focus on including all ages. The college must follow the network’s 10 principles, which include supporting those pursuing second careers; expanding online education options; and promoting collaboration between older and younger students, among other tasks. Lambrecht hopes this commitment leads more community groups to help UWGB in its pursuit of older learners.
UWGB’s focus on enrolling people outside the typical 18-to-24 age group has helped the college’s enrollment climb over the past decade, at a time when many universities are seeing the opposite trend.
University leaders hope to do even more to cater to retirees and other older adults in coming years, starting with more courses in assisted living facilities and building ways for older people to mentor younger students and workers.
Addressing Wisconsin’s aging workforce
Wisconsin’s aging population has caused ongoing trouble for its workforce.
For years, there haven’t been enough working-age people to fill the jobs left by those retiring. That trend is expected to continue into 2030.
Lambrecht said UWGB leaders are thinking about how they can “encourage and invite that pre-retirement age population to stay engaged in the workforce a little bit longer.”
They think offering more short-term certificates can help.
Perhaps more commonly offered by two-year colleges, short-term certificates show someone completed a handful of courses focused on a skill or topic. An increasing number of people in the U.S. are seeking these credentials, as they’re cheaper and less time-consuming than degrees. They’re also often marketed as a way for workers to gain knowledge that will help them advance in their career and earn more money, though studies and data have indicated a mixed payoff.
UWGB offers 20 short-term certificate options, ranging from topics such as utilizing artificial intelligence to English-to-Spanish translation.
“Your job is going to continuously change, and with the exponential growth of information, how are you going to stay relevant in the workforce?” Lambrecht said. “So that’s really where continuing professional education programs come into play. It’s giving you short-term, bite-sized programming that’s going to help you refine a skill set that you now are faced with.”
University leaders also want to create more opportunities for younger students and employees to learn from people reaching retirement age. Lambrecht said she’s thinking about how they can “marry those two audiences to be of continued value in our workforce.” For example, last summer, they debuted an “intergenerational” program aiming to connect older adults and youth through several educational workshops.
‘Learning for its own sake’
The quest for more older students isn’t just about keeping them working. It also helps keep the region’s aging population mentally sharp and socially engaged.
UWGB’s Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) is geared toward older adults who want to “enjoy learning for its own sake.” There are no tests, no grades and no prerequisites. The volunteer-led club offers between 150 and 250 courses each semester — the most popular including history, film and documentary classes, guest lectures and tours around the region.
“When I retired, I realized I’ve got to keep doing things. You can’t just sit in the chair,” said Gary Lewins, a 10-year LLI student. Last semester, he took a class that taught him how to digitize all of his old photo albums.
Anita Kirschling works on her knitting project during a Lifelong Learning Institute course at UWGB. LLI offers 150 to 250 courses each semester. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
Norman Schroeder began taking LLI classes in 2018. The retired family doctor said it was good for more than just learning — he quickly made several friends. Today he helms LLI’s Board of Directors and tries to get more people to join.
“LLI is not only just the cognitive stimulation, the brain stimulation of the classes and learning — it’s also the social engagement,” Schroeder said. “Those are important elements for good health. Particularly in older patients, there’s a high incidence of depression, and some of that comes from social isolation … I kind of promote LLI as good for your health.”
The institute has over 800 members, who pay $150 for a year of access to classes. University professors often volunteer to teach classes related to their expertise, happy to teach to a highly engaged audience, Schroeder said.
In early 2025, the Rennes Group, which operates assisted living facilities in northern Wisconsin, gave a $300,000 grant to the institute. UWGB has used the money to host classes at Rennes’ nursing homes, upgrade technology to livestream classes to residents living in them and take residents on outings, such as a tour of the Green Bay Correctional Institution.
“Just because you live in an environment that provides maybe some extra help, doesn’t mean … you shouldn’t have access to things like lifelong learning,” Rennes Group President Nicole Schingick said.
Enrolling ‘the bookends’
UWGB’s focus on older learners comes as the so-called traditional college student, aged 18 to 24 years old, makes up a smaller share of enrollment nationwide.
In September, Chancellor Michael Alexander sent a letter to faculty and staff outlining how the university must “reinvent” to topple trends like these. To do so, he wrote, UWGB leaders must recognize “every person is a potential student over their lifetime, not just at 18 with stellar high school academic credentials.”
In their quest to grow enrollment, college leaders have trained their focus on not just older learners, but younger ones, too.
“(We’re) trying to think about the bookends of the population, knowing that the 18- to 24-year-old is a shrinking demographic,” Lambrecht said. “If we’re going to thrive as a university, we have to think outside the box.”
In 2020, for example, the college launched a program for high schoolers to complete associate degrees through the university for free. High schoolers have comprised a growing share of the university’s student population over the years, from 16% in fall 2018 to more than a third of enrollment today.
Anita Kirschling, left, and Theresa Reiter work on knitting projects during a Lifelong Learning Institute class at UWGB. University officials want to do more to reach older adults in the coming years, particularly those who can’t come to campus. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
In 2024, 12% of UWGB’s students were over the age of 30, though that figure only includes students who are taking classes for credit and does not include students like those involved in the Lifelong Learning Institute.
These approaches have helped UWGB’s total enrollment grow over 3,300 students in the last decade, while nearly every other UW school has seen a net decrease over the same time frame.
It’s common to see people of all ages on the Green Bay campus. In the summer, UWGB rents out its empty dorms as “snowbird housing” to older adults. But college leaders want to do even more in coming years to reach older people — particularly those who can’t come to campus.
“The reality is, some of our members have mobility issues,” Schroeder said. “When you’re an 18- to 20-year-old college student, walking any distance is not a big deal. But if you’re on the campus at UWGB, sometimes it’s a long walk from the parking lot to get into the classrooms.”
UWGB leaders hope to offer more virtual classes for older students who are home-bound or have physical limitations. To assist those with hearing loss, they want to add “hearing loops” to classrooms, which transmit sound from a microphone directly into a hearing aid. Eventually, they want Rennes residents to have access to the full catalog of lifelong learning classes virtually, in real time, Schingick said.
“That would really be able to open the doors globally, if you will, to all of our residents and all of our communities, no matter where they are in the state,” Schingick said.
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
When teacher Amanda Glunz started a robotics team at Audubon Technology and Communication High School four years ago, there were just five members.
Now, the program has grown to 32 students and two teams, including the newly formed all-girls team Av414nche. The newest team was designed to give girls an opportunity to break into science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM.
“We went with Av414nche at first, because you know how avalanches fall down? It’s like breaking down the barriers,” Audubon junior Lily Sanders said.
The team consists of builders, programmers and a marketing team.
The teams give students an outlet to build confidence and skills in STEM, receive mentorship and improve social skills, Glunz said.
Building the robot
Eighth grader Jorja (left) and sophomore Saniya Coates-Bonds control their team’s robot. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Several steps go into turning a concept from paper into a moving and functioning robot, said Jorja, an eighth grader at Audubon and member of Av414nche.
It all starts with a sketch.
“Then we started to actively use Legos,” she said. “Eventually we switched from Legos to Onshape (a computer-aided design (CAD) software program), and then once we had the Onshape model down, we just decided to go from there.”
After building the robot, the team uses trial and error to get it to function as best as possible.
For the team’s upcoming qualifier competitions, robots need to shoot balls into a goal. Audubon students compete against other schools across the state in several robotics competitions.
Sanders is part of the team that helps to build the robot. For their most recent competition, she tested out different wheels for their robot to see which ones launched the balls best.
“Really just figuring out what will work and what will not work,” Sanders said. “It’s really just a lot of trial and error.”
The robot is named Ava, which is short for Av414nche.
Ava, a robot built by Av4l4nche, Audubon Technology and Communication High School’s all-girls robotics team, throws a ball in preparation for an upcoming qualifier competition. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Jorja, a programmer on the team, works to make the robots move.
“The robot does not know anything until we tell it,” she said. “It wouldn’t just do it by itself.”
She said programmers first worked on the code that operates the wheels to make the robot move, then they code the wheel that makes the ball shoot.
Mentorship and higher education
When they aren’t working on the team’s social media, the marketing team looks for mentors who can introduce students to the fields of technology and engineering. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
When they aren’t working on the team’s social media, the marketing team looks for mentors who can introduce students to the fields of technology and engineering.
Most mentors are students from local universities including Milwaukee School of Engineering and Marquette University. The marketing team also has its own mentor who works in graphic design.
Some students like Davin Dacio, an Audubon junior who takes a dual enrollment course at Milwaukee Area Technical College, get college-level programming experience that is used on Audubon’s co-ed robotics team, DreaMKEepers.
Davin Dacio, a junior, works on his team’s robot. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Starting at a young age
Jaida Campbell, a junior on the marketing team, said they are trying to recruit younger students to the team.
Middle and high school students at Audubon share a campus. Middle schoolers begin robotics at the school by participating in the FIRST LEGO League. League members work with coaches and teammates to build Lego-based robots for engineering competitions.
Though Jorja is only in eighth grade, this is her first year on the high school robotics team.
She started as a fifth grader in the FIRST LEGO League, and by the seventh grade, she and Glunz worked on a coding project in the Fiserv Future Techies program, where they made it to nationals.
“It really inspired me, the fifth grade LEGO League,” Jorja said. “I love Legos and I was good with technology so I was like, OK, why not join my favorite things?”
Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers called on the Republican-controlled Legislature to act on a broad array of his priorities in his final year in office, even if it means working for longer than they are scheduled to be in session.
Republicans are unlikely to follow Evers’ call to action on many of the proposals he outlined in a letter, just a year after they rejected the same or similar ideas in his state budget. But Evers expressed optimism that bipartisan agreement is near on several issues, including protecting funding for SNAP, the country’s main food aid program, and combating water pollution caused by PFAS chemicals.
“We have a year left and it’s not all about me,” Evers, who opted against seeking a third term, told reporters on Monday. “All of the things that need to be addressed, many of them can be.”
Evers has served as the swing state’s governor since 2019, helping Democrat Joe Biden narrowly win the state on the way to becoming president in 2020. President Donald Trump carried Wisconsin in 2024 and in 2016, both times by less than 1 percentage point.
Evers’ term ends in a year, but he’s focused on setting up his party to take back the legislative majority for the first time since they lost it in 2010.
In 2024 Evers signed new district maps that helped Democrats chip into Republican majorities in the Assembly and Senate. Democrats are also counting on anger toward Trump helping them in the midterm.
The Legislature is scheduled to be done with its session by mid-March, giving lawmakers more time to campaign for the fall election. The Assembly is planning to quit in mid-February. But Evers said Monday that there’s still time to advance Democratic priorities.
“I think it’s bad politics to say we’re done in February, we’re done in March, and we’ll see you at the polls,” Evers said. “That doesn’t work. I don’t think it’s a good message. We have the opportunity to do some good things.”
Evers called for bipartisanship to tackle issues that have long been Democratic priorities, such as increasing public school funding, lowering health care costs and enacting gun control laws.
While many of his proposals are likely to be summarily rejected, Evers said Democrats and Republicans were close on reaching deals to release $125 million in funding to combat PFAS pollution. He also said both sides were close to an agreement that would put additional safeguards in place to ensure Wisconsin isn’t penalized by the federal government for errors in who gets SNAP food assistance.
Evers called on lawmakers to spend $1.3 billion more on public schools in an effort to reduce property taxes, a month after homeowners across the state received higher tax bills. Republicans blame Evers because of a veto he issued that allows schools to increase spending limits for 400 years. But that is only one part of the complicated school aid formula. Evers and school officials have said funding from the state has not kept pace with expenses, forcing schools to ask voters to approve referendums for an increase in property taxes to make up the difference.
If schools aren’t given more money, Evers said “we’re in a world of hurt” because property taxes will only continue to increase.
Republican legislative leaders, in interviews with The Associated Press last month, did not express support for increasing general school aid funding.
“We have to have a bigger conversation about how we’re going to fund schools long term than just saying we’re gonna put more money to the same formula doing the same thing,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said.
Evers also urged the Legislature to make progress on his plan to close a 128-year-old prison in Green Bay as part of a larger overhaul of the correctional system. In October, the state building commission approved $15 million for planning. But once that is spent, absent further action, the work will stall, Evers said.
“We have to get this across the finish line,” he said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Anticipated spikes in demand for energy to supply Wisconsin’s data center building boom come on the heels of decades of declining power and water use, according to a new report.
A Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis shows there are more than 40 data centers operating in Wisconsin with another four planned. The sprawling facilities host computer servers, which store data and support a global surge in the use of artificial intelligence.
The data center building boom has been met by local opposition groups concerned about the facilities’ resource needs. But the Policy Forum report shows it’s all happening after years of declines in demand for electricity and water.
Using projections submitted to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission by utility companies, the Policy Forum estimates the state’s peak electrical demand is expected to increase to around 17 gigawatts by 2030, driven largely by data centers. In 2024, Wisconsin’s peak demand was rated at 14.6 gigawatts. Over the past 20 years, total electricity sales have fallen by 9% over the past 20 years.
Wisconsin Policy Forum Senior Research Associate Tyler Byrnes told WPR a big part of the decline since 2005 is due to fewer commercial customers paired with more energy efficiency measures. He said during that span, utilities have pulled aging, coal-fired power plants offline and shifted toward more renewable energy.
“Into that landscape, now we’re seeing these really big data centers come online,” said Byrnes.
Some utilities in Wisconsin are expected to seek state permission to build new power plants or expand existing ones to meet the data center demand. Byrnes said that will bring a need for more transmission lines, though local impacts will vary depending on where the data centers are located.
The Policy Forum’s analysis shows most existing facilities are in south central and southeastern Wisconsin. With other large-scale data centers planned for more rural areas like Beaver Dam and DeForest, he said utility companies may need to build out more infrastructure.
Wisconsin water demand has fallen for decades. Will data centers impact rates?
Another major concern raised during the data center debate is the facilities’ hefty water demands.
Opponents have complained that developers haven’t been transparent about how much water they’ll need to cool computer servers. In September, environmental advocates sued the city of Racine to force the release of projected water needs of a $3.3 billion data center campus located at the former Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant. The city released figures showing the project will need more than 8 million gallons of water per year.
To put that into context, the Policy Forum looked at historical water sales reported by the Racine Water Works, which will supply the Mount Pleasant data center project. Between 1997 and 2022, the utility saw water sales decline by 2.1 billion gallons annually. Byrnes said that taken as a whole, the demand for water from data centers is “a drop in the bucket” in a lot of cases.
Water flows in a tank April 8, 2025, at West Des Moines Water Works in West Des Moines, Iowa. (Angela Major / WPR)
As with electrical demand, Byrnes said water demand has decreased due to fewer industrial customers and increased efficiency efforts. Because cities like Racine still need to maintain the same level of infrastructure, which is more expensive due to inflation, the revenue from each gallon of water sold has to be spread further. That means potential rate increases.
Byrnes said data centers have been turning to closed-loop cooling systems, which use less water, but cities like Racine would still be selling more water, which would help cover fixed infrastructure costs.
“Potentially, it could maybe blunt some of the (water rate) increases,” Byrnes said.
DeForest, other local governments grapple with data center proposals
With the rise in data center developments in Wisconsin, local governments and state lawmakers are working to figure out how to regulate them.
The DeForest Village Board recently took no action on a citizen petition calling for referendum votes before any data center project could be approved.
At the same time, Republican and Democratic state lawmakers have proposed different ways to regulate data centers. One GOP bill is aimed at ensuring data centers and not other customers would pay for any required improvements to the state’s power grid. The Democratic bill is aimed at requiring data centers to get the bulk of their power from renewable sources.
A 422,000-square-foot Art Deco building overlooking Lake Monona in Madison was the home of state employees for nearly 100 years. It most recently served as the offices of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
Today large “For Sale” signs bookend the historic structure, which sits vacant just a few blocks from the Capitol. A brochure for the property describes redevelopment opportunities such as a boutique hotel or mixed-use space. It also notes its proximity to a potential future commuter rail station in another state-owned building occupied by the Department of Administration.
The sale of the building, announced in December, is merely one piece of a multiyear initiative of Gov. Tony Evers’ administration known as Vision 2030. The plan seeks to make state government smaller and save taxpayers money through “rightsizing” underused office space and supporting hybrid work to grow the number of state workers across the state, according to the Department of Administration.
Since its launch in 2021, state agencies have sold millions of dollars worth of buildings and consolidated more than 589,000 square feet of office space, nearly 10% of the state’s total building footprint, according to DOA reports. The funds from building sales are used to cover outstanding state debts and then transferred to the state’s general fund.
“I see this really as a win-win both for state workers and for taxpayers,” DOA Secretary Kathy Blumenfeld said in an interview with Wisconsin Watch. “One of the things that we’re looking at is modernization and how can we be more efficient and be good fiscal stewards for the state.”
Vision 2030 fits with a long-standing desire by Wisconsin’s leaders of both parties to reduce the physical footprint of state agencies and create a presence outside of Madison. Former Gov. Scott Walker also sought to move state divisions and to seek efficiencies for taxpayers by reducing private leases. Walker’s administration oversaw the construction of a new state office building that opened in Madison in 2018 and is home to eight state agencies today.
These ideas on building a smaller, modernized state government are likely to continue when Evers leaves office next year. Former Evers Cabinet member Joel Brennan, who led DOA when it launched Vision 2030 in 2021, is one of at least eight Democrats running for governor this year.
Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, a Republican candidate for governor running against U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, announced in December a “Shrink Madison” plan to require state employees to return to in-person work, sell state office buildings in Madison and eventually move key agencies to different regions across the state. His plan specifically mentions continuing Evers’ Vision 2030 efforts.
But he also goes further to move agencies out of liberal Dane County and into more conservative parts of the state — a potential source of political patronage. Schoemann proposes moving the Department of Veterans Affairs to La Crosse, the Department of Natural Resources to Wausau, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to Stevens Point, the Department of Financial Institutions to Green Bay, the Department of Tourism to Rhinelander and the departments of Children and Families and Workforce Development to the Kenosha/Racine area.
Those moves would take years, but Schoemann in an interview said he sees it as a way to improve the relationships between state government and its citizens.
“I think this is about people, first, affordability and accountability and changing the culture of state government, which to me, ultimately, is just entirely too focused on itself … and getting it back focused on the people,” Schoemann said.
Why Vision 2030?
The Evers administration’s plan grew out of the pandemic when conditions required remote work, deferred maintenance costs for state buildings kept rising, and there was a growing need for workers to fill state jobs — all colliding at the same time.
“All these things were swirling at one time, and we launched a study in 2021 trying to get our arms around that,” Blumenfeld said.
Hybrid work opportunities meant state agencies took up less space and could hire workers outside of Madison and Milwaukee, which Blumenfeld refers to as the “Hire Anywhere in Wisconsin” initiative. Remote work also meant the state could get rid of underused office space through consolidation or sales, she said. In Milwaukee, the state sold a former Department of Natural Resources headquarters in 2022 and purchased 2.69 acres for a new office building. But as of last year it planned to work with a private developer to create a multitenant public-private space instead.
Expected moves in Madison this year include the sale of the former human services building along Lake Monona where offers are due in March. Other expected moves in 2026 include the spring listing of two adjacent general executive offices in downtown Madison, the brutalist GEF 2 and GEF 3 buildings, at a combined total of 391,000 square feet, Blumenfeld said.
The historic Art Deco state government office building at 1 W. Wilson Street in Madison, Wis., seen Jan. 6, 2026, was the home of state employees for nearly 100 years. It most recently served as the offices of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. (Brittany Carloni / Wisconsin Watch)
Blumenfeld said DOA has seen limited opposition to building sales and agency moves to reduce office space, but the Republican-led Legislature has pushed back on remote work following the pandemic. Lawmakers have argued that in-person work ensures more accountability for state employees. Evers in October vetoed a Republican bill that would have required state employees to “perform assigned work duties in physical office space for at least 80 percent” of their work time every month.
“The important progress my administration has made on our Vision 2030 goals means that it would not be possible to return to largely in-office-only work arrangements without leasing more space,” Evers wrote in his veto message. “Or having to re-open buildings that are slated for closure and sale — both of which will cost taxpayers more money.”
Blumenfeld said she can’t predict what the next governor will do when it comes to government efficiency, but changes in the state’s workforce needs and updates to work spaces are unlikely to slow down.
“Our hope is that we’ve laid a really solid foundation for utilizing space efficiently, effectively, for hiring the best talent, for bringing in people from all over the state and bringing family-sustaining jobs to all 72 counties,” Blumenfeld said.
Wisconsin’s next governor
Wisconsin voters will choose the next governor later this year, with primary contests in August and the general election in November.
Other than Schoemann’s plan, gubernatorial campaigns that responded to questions from Wisconsin Watch shared different perspectives on how they would address state government’s size and efficiency.
Tiffany, the Northwoods congressman and Schoemann’s primary opponent, said he supported then-Gov. Walker’s move of the DNR’s forestry division to Rhinelander when he served in the Legislature, but his goal is focused on rooting out “waste, fraud and duplication” in state government.
“I’ve supported changes like that when they make sense, but my focus is making government smaller, more accountable, and more efficient, not just rearranging the furniture,” Tiffany said.
Among Democratic candidates, plans for state government include making sure state agencies are effectively helping Wisconsinites and that citizens can access resources.
“Mandela Barnes’ priority as Governor is to deliver for Wisconsin families and lower costs — which includes ensuring state agencies are serving communities effectively, are spending taxpayer dollars efficiently, and that Wisconsinites in every corner of the state can access the services they rely on,” Cole Wozniak, a spokesperson for the Barnes campaign, said in a statement.
Brennan, who helped develop Vision 2030, in a statement said state government should continue to work for and be led by Wisconsinites.
“Any conversation about the future footprint of state government should start with access, effectiveness, and responsible use of taxpayer dollars,” Brennan said.
Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said the state should invest in modernizing its technology so agencies can deliver better services to citizens across the state. Republicans in the Legislature have pursued a “fiscally irresponsible starvation of government for decades,” she said.
“There’s a huge opportunity to make state government work better and deliver better outcomes for people at lower cost to taxpayers,” Roys said. “But it does take that upfront investment and political capital, frankly, to say it’s actually worth spending a little money to save bigger in the long run.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Iowa (14.5%), Illinois (22.7%) and Michigan (14.6%) were net-exporters.
Wisconsin imported more in previous years:
2023: 14.8%
2022: 18.4%
2021: 14%
2020: 15.7%
About 10% of U.S. electricity generation is traded across state lines.
Wisconsin participates in a grid run by Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which aims to ensure power flows across 15 central U.S. states.
Electricity rates in Wisconsin, which produces most electricity from coal and natural gas, have exceeded regional averages annually for 20 years.
Wisconsin utility ratepayers owe nearly $1 billion on coal-powered plants that have been or soon will be shut down, Wisconsin Watch recently reported.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The city of Madison and its former clerk are arguing in court that they can’t be sued for failing to count 193 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, in part because a Wisconsin law calls absentee voting a privilege, not a constitutional right.
That legal argument raises questions about how much protection absentee voters have against the risk of disenfranchisement — and could reignite a recent debate over whether the law calling absentee voting a privilege is itself unconstitutional.
That law, which appears to be uncommon outside of Wisconsin, has been cited repeatedly in recent years in attempts to impose more requirements and restrictions on absentee voting, and, at times, disqualify absentee ballots on which the voters have made errors. It does not appear to have been invoked to absolve election officials for errors in handling correctly cast ballots.
Nonetheless, the law has become central to the defense presented by Madison and its former clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, in a novel lawsuit seeking monetary damages on behalf of the voters whose ballots went missing.
The suit, filed by the law firm Law Forward, names the city and the clerk’s office as defendants, along with Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities, and cites a series of errors after the 2024 election that led to the ballots not being counted in alleging that they violated voters’ constitutional rights.
In defending against that claim, attorneys for Witzel-Behl argued in a court filing that by choosing to vote absentee, the 193 disenfranchised voters “exercised a privilege rather than a constitutional right.”
Witzel-Behl’s filing argues that the 193 disenfranchised voters did, in fact, exercise their right to vote, but chose to vote absentee and therefore place the ballots into an administrative system that “can result in errors.”
“The fact that Plaintiffs’ ballots were not counted is unfortunate,” the filing states. “But it is the result of human error, not malice. And that human error was not a violation of the Plaintiffs’ constitutional right to vote.”
Matthew W. O’Neill, an attorney representing Witzel-Behl, declined to comment.
The city’s attorneys have now adopted the same argument, filings show.
Asked about the city’s legal defense, current Madison clerk Lydia McComas didn’t address the argument directly but told Votebeat that the city is committed to counting all eligible votes “regardless of how they are cast.”
Phil Keisling, a former Oregon secretary of state, said he wasn’t aware of other states with similar laws. He said he found the city’s argument wrong and offensive.
“The right to vote, if there is a state constitutional right to vote, should have nothing to do with the form that a voter chooses,” he said.
Law passed to clarify absentee voting requirements
The law that Madison cites in its legal defense was enacted in 1985, long before absentee voting became widespread. The stricter language about the regulation of absentee voting came after judges in a series of Wisconsin court cases called for more liberal interpretation of those regulations.
The law states that while voting is a constitutional right, “voting by absentee ballot is a privilege exercised wholly outside the traditional safeguards of the polling place.” A subsequent provision states that absentee ballots that do not follow required procedures “may not be counted.”
The law appears similar to a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision that drew a distinction between the right to vote and the right to receive absentee ballots. That decision has since been interpreted — and misinterpreted — in a “number of ways by a number of people wanting to trim back mail voting,” said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University.
After the Wisconsin law was enacted, the state election board clarified the Legislature’s position that failing to comply with procedures for absentee ballot applications and voting would result in ballots not being counted. The board did not suggest the law could be used to excuse municipalities that improperly discard legally cast ballots.
Absentee voting has long been available in Wisconsin but surged in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and has been extensively litigated since then.
The law calling absentee voting a privilege was central to a lawsuit that resulted in a 2022 statewide ban on ballot drop boxes; another lawsuit to prohibit voters from being able to spoil ballots and vote with a new one; and President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election outcome in Wisconsin.
A later lawsuit led to the reinstatement of drop boxes in 2024. In that case, plaintiffs argued that the law “unconstitutionally degrades the voting rights of all absentee voters by increasing the risk of disenfranchisement.” The court, then led by liberal justices, declined to overturn the statute but disagreed with an earlier interpretation that absentee voting requires heightened skepticism.
Experts say Madison’s defense misinterprets the law
Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA Law School and expert on election law, said he didn’t think the law itself was problematic, adding that states have various laws controlling absentee voting. The U.S. Constitution, he noted, doesn’t require any state to offer absentee voting.
But “once the state gives someone the opportunity to vote by mail,” he said, “then they can’t — as a matter of federal constitutional law — deprive that person of their vote because they chose a method that the state didn’t have to offer.”
The city and Witzel-Behl’s use of the law in this instance “seems to be wrong,” Hasen said.
Attorneys for Law Forward in a court filing called Witzel-Behl’s argument a “shocking proposition.”
“There is no right to vote if our votes are not counted,” Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson told Votebeat. “And this is the only case I’m aware of where a municipal government has argued otherwise.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
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