Tom Tiffany has received about $11,500 from the political action committee linked to We Energies.
Both state and federal records show the WEC Energy Group PAC shares an address with WEC Energy Group, which houses We Energies, the state’s largest utility provider.
Federal Election Commission records, which capture his campaign for Congress, show the PAC made five donations totaling $9,500 to Tiffany between 2019 and 2023.
The PAC has not donated to Tiffany since he began his campaign for governor, records show.
Tiffany is far from the largest recipient of donations tied to We Energies. The PAC contributes to both Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin, including six donations totaling $136,000 to Gov. Tony Evers’ campaign.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Wisconsin voters Tuesday elected Madison-based Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor to a seat on the state Supreme Court, a decision that expands the high court’s liberal majority to five justices and cements liberal control until at least 2030.
Taylor, a former Democratic state lawmaker and former policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, defeated conservative Waukesha-based Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar in the race to replace outgoing Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of the court’s conservative wing. Wisconsin Supreme Court justices are elected to 10-year terms.
“Tonight, the people of Wisconsin stood up for our rights and freedoms, our democracy, our elections and a strong state Supreme Court that will protect the independence of our beloved state,” Taylor told a packed room of supporters at the Madison Concourse Hotel. “Once again, Wisconsin showed the entire nation that we believe that the people should be at the center of government and the priority of our judiciary.”
The Associated Press called the election only 36 minutes after polls closed as early returns showed Taylor dominating the liberal bastions of Dane and Milwaukee counties, while leading or running close behind Lazar in rural counties. Taylor told supporters that Lazar called her to concede the race.
The state’s court races are technically nonpartisan contests, but like recent high court elections, public support for Taylor and Lazar broke along party lines with Taylor backed by Democrats and Lazar by Republicans.
Taylor’s victory further cements liberal control of the state’s judicial branch, even as a new governor enters the executive branch and Democrats and Republicans fight for control of the state Legislature later this year. Lazar had raised concerns that a five-member liberal bloc could prevent certain cases from reaching the bench because three votes are needed to take up an appeal.
Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar gives her concession speech after losing the Wisconsin Supreme Court race to Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor during her election night watch party at The Ingleside Hotel on April 7, 2026, in Pewaukee, Wis. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Since Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s 2023 election win that secured a liberal majority for the first time in years, the high court has been a factor in disagreements over the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches and has made major decisions on politically charged cases, such as the 2025 ruling that invalidated Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban.
The 5-2 liberal court is likely to continue to play a major role in such cases, including challenges to the limits on collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions under Act 10 redistricting of Wisconsin’s congressional maps. Conservative Justice Annette Ziegler already announced she won’t seek reelection next year, creating another open seat that could further entrench a liberal majority.
Liberals have now won five of the last six Supreme Court elections going back to 2018. UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden called the election results “a remarkable turning of tides” from a decade ago when conservatives controlled the court and Ziegler didn’t have an opponent in 2017.
“Republicans have had a difficult run in Wisconsin during the Trump years,” Burden said. “With the court now out of reach, there will be tremendous pressure on the party this fall to take back the governorship and hold the state Legislature. The GOP is facing serious headwinds in a midterm year that will favor the Democrats nationally.”
Despite a sleepier race, politics remained a part of the 2026 election. In addition to political party support for each of the candidates, Taylor and Lazar represented starkly different judicial philosophies and career paths to the bench.
Taylor centered her campaign on protecting rights and freedoms. In campaign stops across the state, she warned of future threats to Wisconsin’s elections and highlighted her advocacy work in the state Assembly and for Planned Parenthood to support reproductive health care and victims of domestic violence.
Lazar’s campaign frequently zeroed in on Taylor’s legislative career and painted her as an activist and a politician rather than a judge. Lazar, who said the 2025 court race went “overboard” on politics, also sought to refocus Wisconsin’s Supreme Court elections on judicial experience instead of political issues.
“I have led the type of campaign that I always said I would,” Lazar told her supporters Tuesday night in Pewaukee. “I have been honest. I’ve been transparent. I have been above board. I have led with integrity, and I want you to know that that is how we need to run races in the state of Wisconsin.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The board that runs the Universities of Wisconsin voted unanimously Tuesday to fire the system’s president, drawing the ire of Republican lawmakers who called it a “partisan hatchet job.”
Jay Rothman had refused an offer from the board of regents to quietly resign, saying it never gave a clear reason why he should. Rothman has led the system that oversees the state’s four-year universities, including the flagship Madison campus, for nearly four years.
Rothman has had to tread carefully dealing with a Republican-controlled Legislature and a board of regents where all current members were appointed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. When Rothman was hired, the board also had a majority of Evers appointees.
Asked Monday about the move to oust Rothman, Evers didn’t take a side. “It’s their call,” he said of the board.
But Republican lawmakers were furious and threatened to fire regents who have yet to be confirmed by the state Senate.
“Make no mistake about it, the firing of UW President Rothman is a blatant partisan hatchet job,” Republican Senate President Patrick Testing said in a statement.
He said Rothman was fired for “not being liberal enough.”
“His only crime was his willingness to work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to get things done,” Testin said.
The vote to fire Rothman came just five days after The Associated Press first reported that the regents asked Rothman to either resign or be fired. Rothman said in two letters to the regents that he would not leave voluntarily without knowing what he did wrong.
Regent President Amy Bogost said in a statement Monday that the board has shared results of a performance review with Rothman, with “direct conversations and clear feedback regarding leadership expectations.” She said the system needs “a clear vision” but did not elaborate on the review’s findings.
She repeated the statement Tuesday following a roughly 30-minute closed session regents meeting. No other regents spoke before the vote to fire Rothman, effective immediately.
Rothman said in an earlier statement Tuesday that regents repeatedly declined to cite a specific reason for finding no confidence in his leadership. No one ever indicated to him that an evaluation could lead to termination, he said, adding that Bogost called his review “overwhelmingly positive.”
“It is disappointing that the first I heard any sort of defense of their position was when they communicated with the media,” Rothman said. “I am left to conclude that, at best, this reflects an after-the-fact rationalization of a decision that was previously made.”
Rothman declined to comment after the vote.
The state Senate’s committee that oversees higher education scheduled a hearing for Thursday for 10 regents whose appointments by Evers have yet to be confirmed. Testin called for the Senate to reject all 10, which would mean they could no longer serve as regents.
However, the Senate is not scheduled to be in session again this year.
Rothman has served as president of the 165,000-student, multicampus system since June 2022. The former chair and CEO of the Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner law firm, Rothman had no prior experience administering higher education.
He has spent his tenure lobbying Republican legislators to increase state aid for the system in the face of federal cuts, navigating free speech issues surrounding pro-Palestinian protests, and grappling with declining enrollment that has forced eight branch campuses to close. Overall enrollment across the system has remained steady under his leadership.
Rothman brokered a deal with Republicans in 2023 that called for freezing diversity hires and creating a position at UW-Madison focused on conservative thought in exchange for the Legislature releasing money for UW employee raises and tens of millions of dollars for construction projects across the system.
The regents initially rejected the deal only to approve it in a second vote held just days later. Evers said at the time the deal left him disappointed and frustrated.
The fight over Rothman’s future comes as the flagship Madison campus is losing its chancellor. Jennifer Mnookin is leaving in May at the end of the current academic year to take the job as president of Columbia University.
Rothman makes $600,943 annually as UW president. He can be fired for no stated reason and he has no appeal rights, said Wisconsin employment law attorney Tamara Packard, who reviewed Rothman’s contract at the AP’s request.
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.
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Decades of repression and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar have driven most Rohingya from their western Myanmar homeland.
Several forms of written Rohingya have emerged in the diaspora, but none has reached widespread use among a scattered population.
A small group in Milwaukee, home to what may be the country’s latest Rohingya population, is testing whether teaching a written form of Rohingya can help preserve the language.
Advocates face a major hurdle: persuading families to prioritize learning Rohingya alongside work, school and resettlement.
Similar efforts among Hmong refugees in the Midwest suggest a written language can take hold — but only with sustained community buy-in.
A dozen fasting teenagers filed into the basement of a community center on Milwaukee’s South Side in mid-February to mark the first night of Ramadan around folding tables. The building belongs to the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin (BRCW), a bare-bones nonprofit serving hundreds of local Rohingya refugee families. Brand-new carpets muffled the sounds of worshippers in the mosque one floor up.
Nearly everyone in the nonprofit’s Clarke Square community center spoke Rohingya, but not a single printed word in the language appeared on the whiteboards in the center’s classrooms where recent arrivals study English and prepare for citizenship exams. Flyers advertising a food giveaway were in English, as were posters listing prayer times and an illuminated sign over the center’s front entrance.
Printed Rohingya words could be found only in a small stack of children’s books and loose-leaf dictionaries in an office just off the prayer hall — raw materials for an experiment in cultural preservation.
A first-of-its-kind picture dictionary translating English words to a written Rohingya language is being tested at the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, shown on Jan. 19, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Hardly anyone passing through the community center can easily read a sentence in Rohingya.
Decades of state-sanctioned repression and ethnic cleansing have driven most Rohingya from their western Myanmar homeland. Several forms of written Rohingya have emerged in the diaspora, but none has reached widespread use among the scattered diaspora. Without an agreed-upon alphabet or enough people literate in Rohingya to teach it, community leaders worry the language will wither, taking with it a core part of a culture already frayed by displacement and state-sanctioned violence.
Milwaukee is now a proving ground for Rohingya literacy. If this community center with a tiny volunteer staff can build an audience for Rohingya language education — in the city likely home to the country’s largest Rohingya population — momentum could spread, boosting the language’s chances of surviving in exile.
It’s a big if.
What does it take to preserve a language that’s rarely written down? The center’s indefatigable co-founders, a Dallas-based linguist and an international network of Rohingya scholars are trying to figure it out.
From Myanmar to Milwaukee
Mohamed Anwar is always on the move. Even while juggling a half-dozen jobs, the BRCW co-founder leaves a few gaps in his schedule to help refugee families navigate their new country.
He, too, came to Milwaukee as a refugee.
Anwar grew up on a knife’s edge. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar’s government has chipped away at the rights of the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group in a majority-Buddhist nation. In 1982, when Anwar was 7, the Myanmar government stripped the Rohingya and other disfavored groups of citizenship, leaving millions stateless.
Anwar managed to secure a high school diploma and an undergraduate degree — the latter a rare accomplishment for a Rohingya student of his generation. But with prospects dimming and the threat of state-sponsored violence mounting, Anwar set aside his graduate studies and fled, joining thousands of other Rohingya refugees risking death and enslavement to reach Malaysia.
He remained in Kuala Lumpur for over a decade, initially surviving on low-wage jobs until he eventually crossed paths with United Nations outreach workers.Recognizing his talents, the U.N. brought him on as a translator.
When the State Department approved his family for resettlement in the U.S. as refugees in 2015, Anwar landed in Milwaukee, where a few friends had already begun putting down roots.
Afternoon sunlight shines on the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin on Jan. 19, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Mohamed Anwar, co-founder, president and executive director of the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, sits for a portrait while preparing for the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Even a decade ago, the city’s Rohingya community was large enough for Aurora Health Care to require interpreters. Anwar was a natural fit for the job.
Like other specialists, health care interpreters must pass a certification course. “They had no one to test me in Rohingya,” Anwar recalled. Without an agreed-upon alphabet, a written test was also off the table. His examiners took his time with the U.N. as proof of his fluency, and he has since taken charge of recruiting and training new Rohingya interpreters for the hospital system.
Milwaukee becomes a magnet
BRCW estimates more than 4,000 Rohingya live in the Milwaukee area — an educated guess, but a difficult one to confirm. Roughly half of the more than 13,000 refugees resettled in Wisconsin since 2012 came from Myanmar, but the State Department resettlement statistics do not distinguish between Rohingya and other refugees from the country.
The city has become a magnet for Rohingya refugees who first settled elsewhere in the United States, drawn by cheaper housing, abundant jobs for immigrants with limited English, a strong support network and private Islamic schools. That pattern shows up in BRCW outreach data: 17% of phone numbers collected by 2020 had out-of-state area codes — some belonging to families whom the nonprofit helped relocate from as far away as New Hampshire.
Most Rohingya families have settled on Milwaukee’s South Side and southern suburbs, with a growing number purchasing homes within walking distance of BRCW’s community center. Anwar himself owns a few nearby properties, renting them to Rohingya newcomers finding their footing in the city.
BRCW co-founder Andrew Trumbull says audio recordings are the only viable means of reaching most new arrivals, at least for now.
The nonprofit offers English classes, but many Rohingya adults have little free time between long shifts and family responsibilities. Parents often rely on their children as interpreters, but translating technical terms into Rohingya is a stretch for children who have never formally studied the language.
A volunteer effort takes shape
Trumbull sticks out in the halls of the BRCW community center. He doesn’t speak Rohingya, doesn’t pray in the center’s mosque and has no family ties to Rohingya Milwaukee, but he’s been there from the start. A decade after helping get the nonprofit off the ground, the self-described weekend warrior spends much of his scarce free time applying for grants and managing English-language communications in the cluttered office he shares with Anwar.
Andrew Trumbull, co-founder and administrative director at the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, works on his computer in his office, Jan. 19, 2026, in Milwaukee.
The pair met through Anwar’s brother, for whom Trumbull acted as a tutor and Milwaukee tour guide as the former settled into his new city. They soon launched BRCW, with Anwar managing community affairs and Trumbull managing relationships with government agencies and nonprofit peers — both as volunteers.
Trumbull’s enthusiasm for Rohingya language preservation is partially motivated by his own feelings of cultural loss. He spent most of his childhood in Germany, but after moving to the U.S. at age 11, he refused to speak his grandparents’ language. “I wanted not to be different, so I did not speak German,” he said. While he doesn’t compare his experience to those of refugees, he’s watched similar assimilatory pressures play out among Rohingya children in Milwaukee.
“All of the Rohingya parents know that the Rohingya language is dying,” he said. “The question is what they can do about it.”
For now, a small selection of children’s books and a Rohingya-to-English dictionary offer the closest thing to a Rohingya literacy curriculum in the U.S. Trumbull hosts a digital version of the dictionary on the center’s website; the physical copies in his office are the leftovers from a pile passed out to families. Without a grant to support a more structured distribution program, Anwar and Trumbull are “field-testing” the materials by handing them out whenever they can and seeking feedback.
An episode of the Sesame Workshop International series “Playtime With Noor & Aziz,” which was introduced to refugee children after field testing in Milwaukee.
The written Rohingya materials on display at BRCW are the product of decades of work by Rohingya linguists.
An earlier form of written Rohingya died out roughly 200 years ago, said Dallas-based linguist Miranda Kuykendall; the reasons for its extinction remain unclear. Revival efforts took off in the 1980s, when a Rohingya academic in Bangladesh developed the Hanifi script by adapting the alphabet family used to write Arabic and Urdu.
By the turn of the century, a Rohingya engineer in Saudi Arabia introduced a Latin alphabet alternative — a more straightforward option for standard keyboards.
“Different pockets of the Rohingya population prefer different scripts for different reasons,” Kuykendall said. For Rohingya students familiar with Arabic through religious education, the Hanifiscript may be more approachable, and pilot programs in Bangladesh teach the script to some refugee children. The Latin-based script is familiar to the growing Rohingya diaspora in North America, the United Kingdom and Malaysia, where the primary languages rely on the Latin alphabet.
Mohamed Anwar, co-founder, president and executive director of the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, left, prepares for the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
A Ramadan prayer calendar is taped on the wall at the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Kuykendall, the Rohingya language program manager for Texas nonprofit International Literacy and Development, helped roll out the Rohingya-to-English dictionary and partnered with nonprofit publisher Books Unbound to release a picture dictionary for younger audiences. The same network of collaborators is now developing a Rohingya translation app.
Though her team included multiple Rohingya scripts in the dictionary, Kuykendall noted that children of Rohingya parents born or raised in the U.S. typically find the Latin script version of the language, also called “Rohingyalish,” far easier to pick up.
That isn’t necessarily the case for Rohingya-speaking adults — even those already literate in several other languages. “It’s difficult for me to read,” said Anwar, squinting at a page of a picture dictionary. “I never got a chance to learn.”
Kuykendall and BRCW say boosting adult literacy could be transformative for Rohingya refugee communities, with written Rohingya serving as a useful counterpart for teaching English.
But in Anwar and Trumbull’s view, children and young adults are more likely to have time for the Rohingya literacy materials now in the informal testing process in Milwaukee.
For some young people, the pitch might be practical: Learning written Rohingya could help teenagers translate technical language and complicated documents for their parents. For others, the draw could be more existential. “When they become preteens and teenagers,” Trumbull said, they might “grasp the importance of what it means to have lost their language.”
Even if the nonprofit can muster a critical mass of interested young people interested in Rohingya literacy, Trumbull noted, BRCW lacks money and bandwidth to organize formal classes.
The nonprofit seeks grants to support structured outreach, including its earlier work with “Sesame Street.” If all goes well, Anwar and Trumbull hope to offer Rohingya language lessons through BRCW’s after-school religious classes. Aside from Kuykendall’s smaller-scale work with students in Dallas, a BRCW Rohingya language class would be the first of its kind in the country.
‘I am concerned that my kids will never learn’
Those offerings would need buy-in from Rohingya parents like Umi Salmah and Mohammed Rafik, a couple raising three children in Milwaukee.
Rafik, 43, still thinks of Anwar as his teacher. Back in Myanmar, Anwar offered English lessons to young people in his home village — Rafik included.
After fleeing to Malaysia as a young man, Rafik spent early adulthood as a landscaper in Kuala Lumpur. Many of his relatives stayed behind long enough to witness a 2017 ethnic cleansing campaign that killed thousands and drove more than half of Myanmar’s remaining Rohingya into crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh, where Rohingya children are barred from attending public schools. U.S. State Department officials later described the attacks as acts of genocide.Those who remain in Myanmar are now caught in the crossfire of the country’s civil war, and the country’s military has begun conscripting Rohingya men even while denying them citizenship.
More than a dozen members of Rafik’s immediate family drowned while en route to Bangladesh in 2024, as have hundreds of other refugees fleeing Myanmar by boat.
“Everything’s lost,” he said, clasping his hands together. “Language lost. Culture lost. People lost. Village lost.”
Rafik’s formal education ended after seventh grade. Salmah, on the other hand, completed high school in Myanmar before leaving for Malaysia, where the couple married. The military has since burned her home village.
They relocated to Milwaukee after six years in Dallas, where they initially settled after securing refugee status. Both are naturalized citizens; their children were born in the U.S.
Though the couple speaks Rohingya at home, their children “can’t speak back,” Salmah said. “Now I am concerned that my kids will never learn.”
Salmah is unusually well-positioned to teach her children to read Rohingya. She completed a degree in early childhood education at Milwaukee Area Technical College, and she has a knack for languages. Aside from English and Rohingya, Salmah can also speak and read in Burmese and Malay.
But even if she had the time to teach her children to read Rohingya — she’s currently working on a degree in phlebotomy — Salmah would first need to teach herself. Flipping to a page of a children’s book in the BRCW office, Salmah sounded out a passage letter by letter. “I have to pay so much attention to read that,” she said.
Rohingya literacy education “is not going to work at home” for most Rohingya families, Rafik said. Most parents have little to no formal education of their own, so many would need to learn to read as adults before they could teach their children.
People fluent in both Rohingya and English are often already busy providing translation services, and asking those ideal candidates to volunteer their time is a tall order. Like Salmah, any teaching candidate must also learn the Rohingya script alongside students. “I (need to) start from the beginning,” Anwar said. “From the ABCs.”
Mohamed Anwar, co-founder, president and executive director of the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, center, eats a community meal during the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Precedent in Hmong experience
If BRCW’s efforts gain traction, Milwaukee’s Rohingya community would not be the first group of refugees in the Midwest to give a struggling written language a new lease on life.
The century-old church that now houses BRCW previously belonged to a Hmong Christian congregation — the last community to pull off this feat.
Thousands of Hmong refugees settled in the upper Midwest beginning in the late 1970s, when the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam made allies, including many Hmong working alongside American forces in Laos, targets for retaliation. Fifty years later, Hmong refugees still outnumber any other refugee group in Wisconsin. More than 60,000 Wisconsinites identified as Hmong in 2020 — the third-largest Hmong population in the country behind Minnesota and California.
Mohamed Anwar, co-founder, president and executive director of the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, right, eats a community meal during the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Like more recent Rohingya arrivals, Hmong refugees arrived in the U.S. without a widely used written language. Christian missionaries in Laos developed a version of Hmong in the Latin script in the 1950s, but that system “did not stick,” said Bee Vang-Moua, the director of the Hmong language program at the University of Minnesota.
The mass displacement of thousands of Hmong in the 1970s became a catalyst for Hmong literacy’s rise, Vang-Moua explained. Hmong refugees in the U.S. and in refugee camps in Thailand initially communicated by recording messages on cassette tapes, but that system was difficult to sustain. “It was very expensive,” she said, “so everyone that could learn (to write) tried to learn.”
The introduction of cellphones slowed the uptake of Hmong writing, but only briefly. “Social media has boosted the need to read and write Hmong,” Vang-Moua said, because online networks connected Hmong speakers in the U.S. with Hmong speakers in Southeast Asia or Europe — primarily on text-based platforms like Facebook. The Latin-based script used by American Hmong speakers is now replacing versions of written Hmong developed independently in China and Vietnam, she added, because of the cultural influence of the diaspora in the U.S.
The emergence of Hmong language immersion schools further boosted the written language, Vang-Moua added. Milwaukee’s Hmong American Peace Academy, the first of its kind in Wisconsin, opened in 2004 with 200 students; Appleton’s Hmong American Immersion School opened last year.
Meanwhile, some Hmong groups have begun using the script to preserve community elders’ oral traditions in written form.
Given the unpredictable trajectory of Hmong literacy, Vang-Moua noted that the project underway in Milwaukee’s Rohingya community still has time to find its footing. “I’ve often wondered how it all felt” in the early stages of Hmong language education,” she said. “Here we are, talking about the same things, just with a different community.”
Can the effort last?
A Rohingya charter school is a distant goal for Anwar and Trumbull. An after-school Rohingya class would serve as a trial run, and it could give teenagers a chance to test using written Rohingya in their everyday lives.
But BRCW must also contend with parents’ priorities. Rafik and Salmah, for instance, say Rohingya language education can’t distract from other classes, including religious education.
They aren’t alone. Mohamed Ibrahim, owner of a Rohingya restaurant and grocery store on Milwaukee’s South Side, sees a practical use for written Rohingya. Though he is Rohingya by ancestry, he grew up speaking Burmese in Yangon, Myanmar’s former capital. Rohingya-language educational materials could help him communicate more easily with his Rohingya-speaking customers, Ibrahim said, but he doesn’t have time to study it.
Mohamed Ibrahim, owner of Khan Aseya Restaurant, known as “Mom’s Kitchen,” center, serves takeout meals during the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Mohamed Ibrahim, owner of Khan Aseya Restaurant, known as “Mom’s Kitchen,” serves takeout meals during the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Mohamed Ibrahim, owner of Khan Aseya Restaurant, known as “Mom’s Kitchen,” works on his phone during the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Ibrahim has similar reservations about adding Rohingya language lessons to his children’s routines. “They live in the United States now,” he said. “We have to support our kids in English.”
Meanwhile, Milwaukee’s Rohingya face a new set of hurdles.
The Trump administration’s January 2025 decision to largely end refugee resettlement halted Salmah’s efforts to bring several family members from refugee camps in Bangladesh to Milwaukee. Last year, Anwar sent voice notes to the nonprofit’s WhatsApp group reminding refugees of their rights during run-ins with federal immigration authorities. And last year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began reopening the cases of thousands of refugees admitted under the Biden administration — a policy that could impact many in Milwaukee’s Rohingya community.
Under the circumstances, Anwar and Trumbull aren’t bullish on their project’s short-term prospects. “But when you make things, sometimes they don’t go away,” Trumbull said.
Editor’s note: This story was updated from its original version to add clarifying details.
This story is part of Public Square, an occasional photography series highlighting how Wisconsin residents connect with their communities. To suggest someone in your community for us to feature, email Joe Timmerman at jtimmerman@wisconsinwatch.org.
If that comes as news, it could be because the top race is a relatively low-key Wisconsin Supreme Court contest between Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar, backed by Republicans, and Chris Taylor, backed by Democrats. They are running for an officially nonpartisan open seat on the court after conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley chose not to run for another term.
While the state Supreme Court race will appear at the top of the ballot, there are other local municipal and judicial elections and school referendum questions for voters to decide.
As of Monday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported 317,000 people voted early in-person or by mail. In 2025, more than 693,000 people voted early ahead of the spring election.
The polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Tuesday. You can find out what’s on your ballot, the location of your polling place and more at myvote.wi.gov. Voters can register at the polls on Election Day.
Andrew Gunem casts a ballot during the spring election at Lapham Elementary School, April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin Supreme Court
The 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court election is a quieter race with fewer fireworks and significantly less overall spending than the two recent contests in 2023 and 2025, which the liberal candidate won by 10 points.
The sleepier race is likely due to there being no majority on the line in 2026. A Lazar victory would maintain 4-3 liberal control. A Taylor win would grow the liberal majority to five out of the seven seats on the court and guarantee liberal control through at least 2030.
Lazar and Taylor represent contrasting judicial philosophies on political issues that come before the court, including reproductive health care, redistricting, criminal justice and the power balance between government and business.
A person walks down the sidewalk alongside voting signs at Lapham Elementary School during the spring election, April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The candidates have taken starkly different paths to the bench. Lazar served as an assistant attorney general under former Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen after starting her career in private practice. She was elected to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2015 and 2021 and then to the Court of Appeals in 2022.
Taylor also began her career in private practice but then worked as the policy and political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. She won a special election in 2011 as a Democrat to represent a Madison-focused district in the Assembly. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Taylor to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020, and she ran unopposed in 2023 for her seat on the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals.
Taylor has maintained a significant fundraising and spending advantage over Lazar throughout the campaign. The Marquette University Law School Poll in the weeks leading up to Election Day found a large percentage of undecided voters.
In the last poll conducted before the April 7 election, 30% of likely voters said they supported Taylor, 22% favored Lazar and 46% said they were undecided.
School district referendums
Seventy-two Wisconsin school districts are asking voters in their communities to approve tax increases totaling $1 billion to borrow money for construction projects or to pay for operations, such as educational programs, technology or transportation services.
The districts are turning to voters at a challenging time for referendum approvals. Referendum approval rates have declined since 2018, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Sixty-two of the school districts are seeking operating referendums. The remaining districts are asking for capital referendums, or approval of construction projects. Two districts, Howard-Suamico and Sauk Prairie, are asking for both operating and construction referendums.
Carrie Devitt casts a ballot during the spring election at Warner Park Community Recreation Center, April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis.(Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Volunteer election workers Anne Ketz, left, and David Gebhardt, cast absentee ballots at Lapham Elementary School during the spring election April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Appeals and circuit court races
There are appeals court and circuit court races on the ballot in multiple counties across the state, but most of these are uncontested elections. Candidates elected to county circuit courts and the Court of Appeals are elected to six-year terms.
The appeals court races in the Milwaukee-based 1st District, the Waukesha-based 2nd District and Madison-based 4th District are uncontested. The unopposed candidates include incumbent Judge Joe Donald in the 1st District, conservative attorney Anthony LoCoco in the 2nd District and incumbent Judge Rachel Graham in the 4th District.
Twenty-six circuit court district seats are on ballots across the state, but only six — Dane, Marathon, Washburn, Washington, Wood, and a shared seat in Florence and Forest counties — feature contested races.
Voters in Marathon and Florence and Forest counties will select new circuit court judges after the incumbents in those seats did not seek reelection. Evers-appointed judicial incumbents are running against challengers in circuit court branch races in Dane, Washburn, Washington and Wood counties.
A person walks into Warner Park Community Recreation Center during the spring election, April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Other local elections
Voters on Tuesday can also make decisions on who represents them on school boards, as county supervisors and as city mayors and alderpersons.
What is on the ballot in these local races will differ from community to community. To find out more about specific local races on your ballot, visit myvote.wi.gov.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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Wisconsin allows child welfare agencies to take federal benefits and child support payments meant for children who are in foster care.
The practices cost foster children and their parents more than $10 million annually.
While there’s been increasing bipartisan support for restrictions and bans on these practices, Wisconsin lawmakers haven’t acted.
Who foots the bill when a child is placed in foster care? In Wisconsin, it’s sometimes parents — and even the kids themselves.
Like many U.S. states, Wisconsin allows child welfare departments to take federal benefits intended for children who have a disability or a deceased parent. The practice means some foster children are paying for care the state is legally required to provide — care others get for free.
The state also bills some parents for foster care — even when parents are trying to bring their kids home and struggling to make ends meet.
In Wisconsin alone, these practices cost foster children and their parents more than $10 million a year.
Now those approaches are facing growing criticism for prolonging family separation and depriving kids and families of much-needed resources. In response, some states have enacted bans or restrictions, but Wisconsin hasn’t — despite bipartisan support.
Advocates decry ‘orphan tax’
Wisconsin child welfare authorities take around $3 million each year in Social Security benefits intended for foster children, according to the state’s Department of Children and Families.
Five years ago, nearly every U.S. state was taking these payments, NPR and The Marshall Project reported in 2021. Their investigation focused on Alaska, where hundreds of former foster youth sued in 2014, demanding the state return their money. Many didn’t know about the payments — often several hundred dollars a month — until they were about to age out of the foster care system, reporters found. On their own, those young people often struggled to afford things like rent, car payments and college tuition.
“We get out and we don’t have anybody or anything. This is exactly what survivor benefits are for,” one former foster youth told NPR and The Marshall Project.
Last year, Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled in their favor. It ordered the state to notify foster children if they are entitled to Social Security benefits and allow eligible children to choose to have their benefits managed by someone else instead of the state. It did not require the state to repay the estimated $1.8 million in lost benefits.
Chief Justice Susan Carney recommended banning the state from taking such funds in the future.
“I urge the Legislature to consider joining those of our sister states that have restricted their child protection agencies from depriving vulnerable children of these benefits intended to help them overcome extraordinary trauma as they move to adulthood,” Carney wrote.
Nationwide – largely after the Alaska case was filed – 38 jurisdictions have introduced legislation or executive actions to preserve those benefits for foster children, according to the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego, which has been lobbying for such change for years.
Ten of those jurisdictions have barred authorities from taking any Social Security benefits intended for foster youth: Arizona, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.
“The attention has been truly overwhelming. It’s like a tsunami,” said Amy Harfeld, national policy director for the institute.
Consensus grows in Wisconsin
The agency that oversees foster care in Wisconsin now favors ending the practice too. Children who turn 18 in foster care are at a higher risk of homelessness, incarceration and health problems.
For those children, the state’s goal should be to “help launch them into success,” Department of Children and Families Secretary-designee Jeff Pertl told lawmakers at a March hearing. Holding these payments in trust is one way to do that.
“We do a lot of things for kids who are aging out of care as an agency, but I would say (this is) probably one of the areas where we could spend just a little bit of resources and generate pretty significant improvements in people’s lives,” Pertl said.
Last year, Gov. Tony Evers proposed limiting the practice. Under his plan, child welfare departments must screen all incoming foster children for eligibility for Social Security benefits, apply on behalf of eligible children and hold the money in trust. The proposal included $3 million to hire a contractor to apply for benefits and manage those accounts.
The plan would have allowed the money to be used for expenses the agency would not typically cover for a child, as is the case now, but it would have barred agencies from using it to reimburse themselves for the care they’ve already agreed to provide. Leftover funds would be transferred to the child or their guardian when they leave foster care.
The proposal was one of more than 600 items Republicans on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee removed in a single vote, a move that has become routine in Wisconsin’s divided Statehouse.
Months later, President Donald Trump’s administration called for an end to the “orphan tax.” The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent letters in December to 39 governors. The letters demanded their child welfare agencies stop taking children’s Social Security survivor benefits, which are based on contributions made by a deceased parent.
“Every earned benefit dollar belongs to these foster youth, not the government agencies or bureaucrats,” Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary of the department’s Administration for Children and Families, said in a statement.
Sen. André Jacque, seen during Gov. Tony Evers’ State of the State address at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis., on Feb. 15, 2022, introduced a bill to require child welfare authorities to save Social Security benefits for foster children in their care. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
In February, in the final weeks of the legislative session, Wisconsin state Sen. André Jacque, a Republican from New Franken, introduced Senate Bill 990, which would require child welfare authorities to save Social Security benefits for foster children in their care. Unlike Evers’ proposal, it does not require authorities to check eligibility or apply for benefits.
“Children who enter foster care are already at a disadvantaged position in life,” Jacque said at a hearing on the legislation. “Preserving their benefits can provide a modest but meaningful financial foundation as they transition into adulthood, helping them pay for education, secure housing, purchasing a first car or beginning a new career.”
Parents billed for foster care
Years before the Trump administration decried the taking of Social Security payments, President Joe Biden’s administration urged states to limit another controversial practice: charging parents for foster care.
For years, the federal government required billing parents as a way to lower its own costs. It changed its guidance in 2022, after NPR reported the practice was separating families — sometimes permanently.
Outside of the foster care system, a parent who doesn’t have custody of their child may be ordered to make monthly child support payments to the custodial parent or guardian. Parents who don’t pay can rack up thousands of dollars of debt.
When a child is placed in foster care, child welfare departments often apply to collect that money, along with any past-due payments, in the child’s name. That can leave the parent who used to receive those payments struggling to cover rent or basic expenses.
To defray its costs, the child welfare department may seek a court order requiring the custodial parent to pay child support, too. That’s despite the fact that many of those parents are already struggling financially. About two-thirds of the foster children in Wisconsin were removed from their biological homes because of neglect — a condition often tied to poverty, Pertl said.
Wisconsin foster care authorities seldom seek new child support orders, but they do regularly apply to collect payments on existing orders, said John Tuohy, executive director of the Wisconsin County Human Service Association. The group represents child welfare departments in all 72 counties.
Child welfare authorities bill the parents of 7 in 10 foster children in the state, according to the Department of Children and Families. In recent years, parents have paid an average of more than $7.6 million a year. Studies show those bills can make it harder for parents to bring their children back home.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared data from Wisconsin counties that tend to collect child support for foster children to counties that don’t. A charge as low as $100 delayed reunification by more than six months, they wrote in a 2017 paper.
Another UW-Madison study, published in 2024, found children whose parents were ordered to pay for foster care spend more than twice as long in care — an average of 21 months instead of nine — and are less likely to be reunited with their parents.
“The research suggests (allowing parents to keep that money) would help that parent to maintain a residence and have the financial capacity to have a home ready for the kids to go back to,” Tuohy said.
Meanwhile, charging parents can actually increase the cost to taxpayers. For every dollar the department spends trying to collect these payments, it recoups only 88 cents, according to Connie Chesnik, administrator of the department’s Division of Family & Economic Security, which oversees child support collection. The department estimates ceasing this practice would substantially reduce the time those children spend in foster care, saving counties approximately $18,000 per affected child.
“The evidence indicates that cost recovery child support orders for children in out-of-home care are not in the best interest of children and families, and they’re not in the best interest of government or taxpayers,” UW-Madison social work professor Lawrence Berger told lawmakers.
The Department of Children and Families wants the practice to stop, too.
“It’s very clear that this kind of change in policy and practice will yield real results in terms of reunification with families,” Pertl said.
Bipartisan support, little action
As with Social Security payments, Evers proposed allocating funds to stop child support collections for most children in foster care. The $1.87 million provision was one of the hundreds cut by the Republican-led budget committee. GOP lawmakers then introduced their own legislation at the end of the session.
“The cost of care should not be subsidized by those who can least afford it,” Sen. Jesse James, R-Thorp, said at a hearing for Senate Bill 1072, which would bar child welfare departments from collecting child support for most foster children. Rep. Karen Hurd, R-Withee, led the Assembly companion to James’ bill.
At the hearing, lawmakers from both parties voiced support but acknowledged the bills wouldn’t pass so late in the Legislative session.
Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi, wondered aloud why the bills didn’t get a hearing until after the Assembly had gavelled out for the session.
“These are good bills, and I’m just disappointed we didn’t hear them sooner, because we could have done something about them,” Keyeski said.
Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi, applauds as Gov. Tony Evers delivers the 2025 state budget address, Feb. 18, 2025, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Lawmakers could come back to the Capitol this year to take action on spending the state’s $2.4 billion surplus, but ideas floated by Evers and Republican legislative leaders don’t include proposals on foster care payments.
Both James and Jacque said they plan to reintroduce their bills in the next budget cycle, although both lawmakers must first survive reelection bids in 2026.
“I see a path to it getting done,” Jacque said of his proposal. “It’s certainly an idea that should have bipartisan appeal.”
In Wisconsin, status quo persists
The lone opposition to the measures comes from the local governments that run foster care in every Wisconsin county except Milwaukee, where the Department of Children and Families directly administers care. Tuohy, of the Wisconsin County Human Service Association, said counties will face a budget shortfall if they can’t collect funds from children or parents.
“County human service budgets are very tight,” Tuohy said. “Counties cannot afford to absorb that fiscal impact.”
He said his group is open to such policy changes, as long as lawmakers allocate funding to make up for what agencies will lose and hire experts to administer these funds.
“Our group is willing to work with both the Legislature and the governor on those types of things. We want to do what’s best for kids and families and to get better outcomes for kids who go into out-of-home care,” Tuohy said. “But … until you address the fiscal effect, it’s hard to really talk about what’s good policy or not.”
The Department of Children and Families agrees.
“I’ve been doing this a long time. You know how we get these things done? We keep folks whole,” Pertl said. “In the scheme of the state budget, this is not a particularly expensive proposal. This is a very doable thing.”
Doable or not, any such legislation will likely have to wait until lawmakers return to the State Capitol in January. Jacque and James said they plan to add funding when they reintroduce their bills, to help counties make up the difference.
When they do, Harfeld believes the pressure will be on, especially when it comes to the taking of Social Security benefits. That practice, she said, has riled people of assorted political persuasions.
“We’ve got the support from Evangelical groups who just see this as an affront to God, in addition to violating at least six different biblical prescriptions on stealing from orphans. We have gotten a lot of attention from the MAGA right, who are seeing this now as waste, fraud and abuse,” Harfeld said. Libertarians, meanwhile, see the practice as government overreach, she said.
“How many issues are you seeing that have really broken through all of the political divides and resulted in this consensus between very unusual bedfellows?” Harfeld asked. “This is one of them.”
Have you or your children been in foster care in Wisconsin? I’d like to hear how foster care costs have affected you and your family. Please email me at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org or call me at (608) 620-5610.
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The president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque was detained by federal immigration agents, drawing accusations Thursday from local officials and religious leaders that the arrest was motivated by his criticism of Israel.
Salah Sarsour, a Palestinian-born legal permanent resident of the United States, was taken into custody by nearly a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who surrounded his car on Monday in Milwaukee after he left his home, according to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.
Supporters called Thursday for his immediate release. His attorneys said he was detained on the grounds that he is a foreign policy threat, a claim they say has no merit.
Instead, they believe Sarsour, 53, was targeted for speaking out against Israel and for a conviction as a minor by Israeli military courts, which have faced scrutiny over allegations of limited due process and high conviction rates of Palestinians. Israel rejects those claims. The offenses included allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli officers, according to attorney Munjed Ahmad.
“Our government should not be doing the bidding of a foreign government,” Ahmad said of Israel. “There’s no question in my mind is that this is to stifle the discourse on the Palestinian narrative.”
Attorneys said Sarsour, born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has no criminal record in the U.S., where he has lived for more than 30 years. They said the U.S. government has known about Sarsour’s conviction in Israel since he came to the U.S. in 1993.
Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. (Courtesy of Islamic Society of Milwaukee)
An email message left Thursday for ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.
Sarsour’s attorneys have likened the case to that of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student activist who faces deportation because the federal government said he was a foreign policy threat.
Sarsour has been the board president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, the largest Islamic organization in the state, for five years. His attorneys say he holds a green card and lives just outside Milwaukee. His wife and four adult children are U.S. citizens.
At a crowded news conference, boisterous supporters chanted to free Sarsour, recounting his advocacy for those in need. Several recalled Sarsour’s stories about his childhood, including allegations of inhumane treatment while being detained by Israelis.
“He was targeted because of one thing, because he dared stand up to the Israeli army,” Othman Atta, one of Sarsour’s attorneys, told the crowd. “And he was not a U.S. citizen.”
A diverse group of religious leaders in a attendance called Sarsour a valuable community member.
“This appears to be just the latest example of how this administration seeks to silence opposition and intimidate those who speak and act differently,” said the Rev. Paul D. Erickson, bishop of the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Sarsour’s arrest also prompted outcry from elected officials, including Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who called it “an outrage.”
“He is a legal permanent resident. There is no substantive evidence he has done anything wrong,” Johnson said Thursday in a post on X. “This is another example of overreach and harm from the U.S. immigration authorities.”
Sarsour is being held at a county jail in Indiana. His attorneys have filed a petition seeking his release.
“He is ready to fight tooth and nail to make sure that he’s not drug through the mud,” Ahmad said. “He wants to stay in this country.”
Endorsements from nearly 50 current and former Wisconsin judges were listed on the campaign website of conservative Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar as of April 2.
At a debate April 2, Lazar’s opponent in the April 7 state Supreme Court election, liberal Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, said she knew of no judicial endorsements for Lazar.
Lazar said in early March: “If you look at my website, I don’t even list any of my endorsements yet; we may be posting some. I don’t think it’s necessarily important.”
Lazar’s endorsements include Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler. After this brief was initially published, Lazar’s campaign said two appellate judges have endorsed Lazar.
Taylor’s site lists endorsements from some 160 judges and former judges. They include four current justices, one former justice and 10 current appellate judges.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
We’ve written more extensively about this topic in a different article. You can read more about it here.
A possible billion-dollar data center in southwest Wisconsin’s Driftless Area would be built without any tax incentives and would produce more than $5 million annually in property tax revenue, according to a local economic development official involved in the discussions.
Ron Brisbois, executive director of the Grant County Economic Development Corp., also told Wisconsin Watch he expects to learn this month whether a developer chooses Grant County over sites in Indiana and North Dakota.
Asked if progress has been made, Brisbois said: “I’ll use the word ‘promising’ because I’m about fostering economic development, and I see this project for being a quality project. So, yes, I think it looks promising, from my perspective.”
When the proposal first gained attention in February, Brisbois said little more than the data center is expected to be worth $1 billion. He is now offering more details:
Scope: The facility would cost $1 billion to $2 billion, span about 500 acres and employ about 50 people.
Tax breaks: Local governments would not have to provide any tax incentives, such as a tax incremental district — a common development tool that delays when municipalities and school districts receive additional property tax revenue from a project.
Tax revenue: Brisbois said his “conservative estimate” is that the data center would pay $5.6 million annually in property tax revenue to local governments and school districts.
Brisbois has refused to identify the company that is scouting sites, but said the data center would be run by one of the major tech companies. “People will recognize the name,” he said.
Brisbois would not identify the part of Grant County being considered, other than to say it’s near power transmission lines.
But talks have taken place with officials in the town of Cassville, population 400, where opposition has emerged.
Cassville town residents voted 54-3 last month to authorize “village powers.” The move is aimed at giving the township more control over matters such as zoning. It was sought by residents who want more control over any data center proposal.
The “No Data Centers in the Driftless” Facebook page has 2,700 members.
One of the Facebook group’s leaders, Grant County resident Pete Moris, said he was pleased that more information is being released but wants more.
“The more transparency we can have on this project, the better,” he said.
“If we’re going to embark on the largest project ever developed in Grant County, it would sure be nice for citizens to know who we’re inviting into our county.”
The use of a tax incremental district for a $15 billion data center under construction in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee, spurred backlash.
Data center opponents pushed a referendum that will be on ballots next Tuesday. If approved, the city would have to get referendum approval to create any tax incremental district worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the data center.
Hyperscale data centers are also under construction in Mount Pleasant, south of Milwaukee, and in Beaver Dam.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Taylor’s opposition, while a Democratic state lawmaker, to the Republican-backed 2011 state law requiring identification to vote.
Her introduction of a 2017 bill, which did not become law. It would have provided driver’s licenses to unauthorized residents, but the licenses would have been labeled: “Not valid for voting purposes.”
Taylor’s opinion, in a 2024 appeals court ruling, which said absentee ballots count even if voters’ witnesses fail to give election clerks their full address. Citizenship is required to vote in Wisconsin, but Wisconsin election officials generally do not verify citizenship when a person registers.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
We’ve written more extensively about this topic in a different article. You can read more about it here.
The only Wisconsin Supreme Court debate between appellate judges Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor highlighted sharp contrasts between the candidates.
Lazar and Taylor sparred over their judicial philosophies and cast each other as extreme just five days before Election Day.
The candidates are running for a 10-year term. There is no court majority on the line, but a win by either Lazar or Taylor will still impact the court’s future.
Early voting runs through Sunday. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Find out what’s on your ballot, where to vote and more at myvote.wi.gov.
In the only debate between the Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates, Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor each painted a picture of their opponent as an extreme figure who is unfit for the state’s high court.
The hour-long debate Thursday night, hosted by WISN in Milwaukee, arrived just five days ahead of Election Day on April 7. Lazar and Taylor are running for a 10-year term to replace conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, who did not run for reelection.
While there is no court majority on the line in 2026, a win by either candidate will still affect the court’s future. A Lazar victory would maintain the court’s 4-3 liberal majority. A Taylor win would grow the liberal bloc to five justices.
The evening was peppered with attacks from Lazar that Taylor was “a radical, extreme legislator” and from Taylor that Lazar has brought an “extreme, right-wing political agenda to the bench.”
One of the more intense exchanges came during debate on abortion. Taylor criticized Lazar’s past comments about the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Lazar said she supported returning the decision to state governments. Taylor said it was “tragic” for a candidate to celebrate the case.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Court of Appeals Judges Maria Lazar participates in the Wisconsin Supreme Court debate hosted by WISN 12 News, April 2, 2026, at WISN-TV in Milwaukee. (Jovanny Hernandez / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / POOL)
“It’s not been very wise for victims of rape and incest who now live in states where abortion has been outlawed,” Taylor said. “It’s not very wise for women who have lost their lives in states because they couldn’t get help when a pregnancy went wrong.”
Lazar appeared to grow angry, shook her head and rolled her eyes.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Lazar said. “This is exactly what we’ve been doing in this campaign. It’s the same old political playbook. If you don’t have anything truthful to say about your opponent, then just lie and mislead. I have never wanted women injured, ever, ever, ever. I have always said that the health and life of the mother is the most important thing.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, right, responds to a question from WISN 12 News Political Director Matt Smith, left, during the Wisconsin Supreme Court debate hosted by WISN 12 News, April 2, 2026, at WISN-TV in Milwaukee.
The back-and-forth during the debate reflected the 2026 campaign and the opposing judicial philosophies and backgrounds of the candidates.
Lazar and Taylor are both Appeals Court judges, but represent opposing judicial philosophies and each took starkly different paths to the bench.
Lazar is a member of the conservative Federalist Society, served as an assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice under Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen and was elected to the Waukesha Circuit Court in 2015 and 2021 prior to her 2022 election to the 2nd District Court of Appeals.
Taylor was the policy and political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin for eight years prior to serving as a Democrat in the Assembly where she represented a Madison-focused district. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Taylor to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020 and she ran unopposed for the 4th District Court of Appeals in 2023.
The debate was delayed a week after Taylor announced she had a kidney stone. More than 355,000 voters had already cast early ballots before Thursday. A Marquette Law School Poll released last week found 46% of likely voters said they hadn’t decided who to support.
Here’s what else you need to know about the debate.
How the judges view recusal rules
In 2010, the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted rules that did not require a justice to recuse themself based on how much money a party in a case or an attorney spent supporting their campaign.
After the record-breaking 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky, a member of the court’s liberal majority, said she was committed to holding public hearings about establishing stricter recusal rules.
Lazar and Taylor were both asked about whether they would support stricter recusal rules for Wisconsin Supreme Court justices.
Lazar said recusal is “a difficult situation,” because judges have to consider whether they are biased and whether the parties in the case believe they are receiving a fair opportunity before the court.
“The key thing that I think is important is recusal really is tied to the integrity of the judge or the justice,” Lazar said. “And I have spent the last 12 years as a judge showing that I have that integrity and that independence.”
Taylor said the court system should consider stricter recusal rules and get public input.
“It is so critically important that as judges, we have the confidence of the public,” she said.
Limited responses on redistricting, abortion
Both Lazar and Taylor received multiple questions about how they would have ruled on certain cases or hypothetical situations that could come before the court. Both candidates mostly declined to answer, saying that, as judges, they could not comment on pending cases that could reach them at the Appeals Court or on the state Supreme Court.
Lazar and Taylor were asked whether the current congressional maps are fair. One of two three-judge panels hearing legal complaints about Wisconsin’s congressional district maps this week dismissed a case brought by Democratic voters.
While both candidates said they could not comment on the maps, Taylor said she was “committed to making sure that every eligible voter in the state of Wisconsin has the ability to pick their elected representatives.” Lazar said she believed every “eligible vote should count.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates, Court of Appeals Judges Maria Lazar, left, shakes the hand of Chris Taylor, right, at the end of the Wisconsin Supreme Court debate hosted by WISN 12 News, April 2, 2026, at WISN-TV in Milwaukee. (Jovanny Hernandez / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / POOL)
Lazar and Taylor were also asked about how they would rule on the case challenging the state’s 1849 abortion ban. In 2025, the court reached a 4-3 ruling that invalidated the law. The decision broke along ideological lines.
Lazar declined comment on the 1849 abortion case but said that she would honor the state’s “20-week compromise,” an abortion restriction Republicans passed in 2015 without Democratic support. Taylor, who voted against the 20-week ban in the Legislature, said she would have ruled with the majority in overturning the 1849 abortion ban.
Taylor also emphasized at various points what she called her “values,” including support for workers over millionaires and billionaires when asked about a pending court challenge to 2011 Act 10, the Republican law that stripped most public sector workers of union rights.
Lazar characterized Taylor’s support for those issues as “legislative” values, rather than judicial ones.
“Values do not belong with the judge on the court,” Lazar said. “Values are not what’s supposed to be there. A good judge respects the law. An activist judge respects her causes.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The president of the 25-campus Universities of Wisconsin said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday that he’s been told to either resign or be fired, but has been given no reason and won’t step aside from the 165,000-student system.
Jay Rothman, president of the university system since 2022, said in the letter addressed to the head of the Board of Regents dated March 26 that he’s been given no reason why regents want him to leave.
Rothman said he’s been told that his options are to resign or retire and that if he doesn’t then the board “was prepared to terminate my employment despite all that has been accomplished.”
The Board of Regents held a closed emergency meeting on Wednesday night to discuss personnel matters.
“The Board is responsible for the leadership of the Universities of Wisconsin and is having discussions about its future,” Amy Bogost, board president, said in a statement to AP. “We don’t comment on personnel matters.”
Rothman declined to comment when reached via email on Thursday.
“I believe my letter speaks for itself,” he said.
Rothman’s tenure has been marked by his efforts to increase state funding amid federal cuts, debates over free speech on campus amid pro-Palestinian protests and declining enrollment leading to eight branch campus closures.
“Since to date you have not provided any substantive reason or reasons for the Board’s finding of no confidence in my leadership, I am not prepared, as a matter of principle, to submit my resignation,” Rothman said in the letter addressed to Bogost.
Rothman notes in the letter that “among so many other things,” the university will need to replace the chancellor of the flagship Madison campus this year. Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin is leaving to take the job as president of Columbia University.
“I do not believe my resignation at this time is in the best interests of either the Universities of Wisconsin or the state of Wisconsin,” Rothman said.
Rothman said in the letter that he has devoted his “heart and soul to the mission of the Universities of Wisconsin” and that he was surprised when told “an unidentified majority of the Board of Regents had lost confidence” in his leadership.
“When I asked you to articulate reasons for the Board’s conclusion and apparent lack of confidence in me, you merely noted that each Regent has his or her own perspective on the matter,” Rothman wrote. “You did not provide any tangible reasons for the Board’s determination.”
Rothman, the former chair and CEO of the Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner law firm, was chosen as UW president in 2022. He had no prior experience administering higher education.
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.
Betting on an election one is voting in is illegal in Wisconsin.
Politics betting has become popular on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. Just this year, people have placed lucrative bets on the capture of the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and on the war with Iran, among other events.
On Kalshi, people have placed bets worth tens of thousands of dollars on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election on April 7 and the governor’s primary election on Aug. 11.
Ann Jacobs, Wisconsin’s Elections Commission chair, noted on X that voters’ ballots can be disqualified and thrown out if they were found to have bet on the election.
Wisconsin Statute 6.03(2) specifies that no one is allowed to vote in any election in which the person has placed “any bet or wager depending upon the result of the election.” The idea behind the law has existed since 1849.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
On a rainy Friday afternoon, I walked into the Manitowoc County Jail. I asked tentatively into the metal box at the door: “I’m here to see Randy Curtis?”
I was there to deliver a simple message. What I stumbled into was something much larger, a reality I had not previously fully understood.
Randy had missed a few shifts without calling in. His supervisor looked for him where we sometimes do when an employee disappears without a word: the inmate list at the county jail. Sure enough, there was his name.
Randy is a knockout pourer at Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, doing hard physical work for $27.53 an hour – good money, the kind that, if you’re careful and nothing goes wrong, can be the beginning of something. He had spent years rebuilding his life in Manitowoc after a troubled young adulthood in Milwaukee. He had a girlfriend. He was saving for a car. Then an old legal matter surfaced, along with a small claims debt.
It is not uncommon for our employees to find themselves in jail. Often it’s a DUI, delinquent child support or drugs. The ones who don’t have money for bail spend weeks or months awaiting resolution. Usually in these situations we let the employment relationship expire.
But Randy’s supervisor called me: “We have to keep his job for him.” Of course we would. But how would we let him know? I pictured him in that cell, cut off from the outside world, assuming he had lost his job and maybe his apartment and girlfriend too, watching his precarious new life crash down.
I went to tell him myself.
From left, Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, poses for a photo with Randy Curtis, a knockout pourer at the foundry. (Courtesy of Sachin Shivaram)
The corrections officer was polite but matter-of-fact. I could not see the inmate in person. To speak with him, I would need to create an account on a third-party video service, deposit money, schedule a window and wait.
I am a CEO. I work on computers all day. It still took me the better part of an hour to figure it all out.
The service was called CIDNET, operated by Encartele, a corporation in Nebraska. The site defaulted to a purchase of 150 megabytes at 30 cents per megabyte. That’s $45, before a “Data Security Token” fee and a 5% merchant surcharge on top. I put $10 on the account, enough for a few minutes. On Sunday evening I logged on, saw Randy on a small screen and quickly told him his job was waiting. He looked relieved.
I want to be fair. Someone has to pay for that infrastructure. The same logic applies to bank overdraft fees and payday loan rates. Even the $2.59 Snickers bar in our plant vending machine, nearly four times what my family pays at Costco, is bought by a worker without the time or transportation to shop elsewhere. Each of these charges is, on its own terms, defensible. Together they amount to something else: a compounding tax on not having enough.
Being poor, it turns out, is expensive.
Randy made it through. Another of our employees didn’t fare as well.
I’ll call him Michael. He had spent his entire life in America, brought here as a small child. He was a DACA recipient – a “Dreamer” – tantalizingly close to getting his papers in order for permanent residency, but first he had to navigate old speeding tickets, lawyer fees, court dates and filing costs. He had a newborn and two toddlers at home. He could not even afford a cellphone. Outside of work, he reached me through Facebook Messenger when he could find Wi-Fi.
The fees accumulated the way fees do: the lawyer, the filings, the court dates that cost him wages he couldn’t replace, the paid leave that drained away appointment by appointment. Everything was a small thing.
But Michael had no margin for small things.
The weight of it followed him onto the shop floor. He grew distracted, made mistakes — costly ones in a manufacturing environment — and we had to let him go. I think about that a lot.
The word I keep coming back to is margin. In business, margin is everything. The difference between a company that survives a bad few years and one that doesn’t is not always the size of the problem. It is the cushion beneath it.
Families have margins, too.
A salaried employee who gets a DUI posts bond and goes home. She takes a long lunch for a dental appointment and loses nothing. When life disrupts her, it disrupts her. When life disrupts Randy or Michael, there is no category called disruption. There is functioning, and there is collapse. A car breaks down, the flu strikes, child care closes unexpectedly — attendance points rack up, the job is suddenly in jeopardy, and the carefully assembled structure of a life starts to come apart.
What I find remarkable is not that Randy and Michael sometimes stumble. It’s that they hold everything together as long as they do, maintaining a level of daily discipline against a backdrop of distress that most of us will never be tested to match.
My 8-year-old and I have been reading about black holes. The closer you get, the more energy you need to escape – until escape becomes physically impossible. That is what I witnessed. Not a failure of will. A gravitational pull that compounds with every setback, every fee, every missed day.
There is a threshold, call it escape velocity, below which the system’s small relentless extractions become unsurvivable. My former college professor Lisa Dodson, who spent years embedded with low-income workers across the country, calls this the “house of cards” – the architecture of poverty where there is no redundancy, no reserve, no margin for the ordinary turbulence of a human life.
So what can we do? At Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, we’ve introduced daily pay so workers can access wages as they earn them rather than waiting two weeks. We offer $400 per month in child care reimbursement, structured specifically to help newer, younger employees.
Most traditional benefits – vacation time, tenure-based wage levels, pension plans – naturally favor workers already on solid footing. Our most expensive benefit, health care, is the one our youngest and lowest-paid employees use the least. We can design benefit structures with that reality in mind, and we are trying.
These are imperfect responses to a structural problem. They are what one employer can do.
On policy, cash bail reform deserves serious attention. In theory, judges already weigh risk when setting bail. In practice, a $500 bail amount means freedom for one person and months in jail for another. A system that makes that distinction irrelevant might have kept Randy’s life from nearly unraveling.
The full set of public policy answers is beyond my grasp. But what I do know is that the national conversation about affordability — housing, gas, airfares — is largely about the middle class. Randy and Michael aren’t worried about buying a house. They are fighting for the basic foothold that most of us take entirely for granted.
My parents came to this country with very little and found the American Dream to be real. I believe it can still be real. Randy believed in it enough to leave Milwaukee and start over in a city where no one knew him. Michael believed in it enough to show up every single day while his entire future hung on a bureaucratic decision somewhere.
Just this week, JPMorgan Chase announced its “American Dream Initiative” aimed at strengthening small businesses, homeownership and economic mobility – a recognition that the American Dream is not self-sustaining and requires constant effort from institutions large and small.
At our holiday party earlier this year, my wife and I spotted Randy across the room — arm around his girlfriend, at a table full of co-workers, dressed in his best, laughing.
Michael messaged me last week. He’s been out of work for two months, getting by on his wife’s income. He said he’s going to reapply at the foundry. When he does, we’ll take him back.
Neither story is finished yet. They haven’t reached escape velocity. But they are defying gravity, every single day.
Sachin Shivaram is the chief executive officer of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
Months before becoming one of the nearly 200 Madison voters in 2024 whose absentee ballots were never counted, Nathan Haimowitz did what he thought he was supposed to do.
As a journalist living in Spain and out of the habit of voting, the 26-year-old former poll worker said he wanted the 2024 presidential election to “be the thing that would spur me to vote more consistently.” To make sure everything was in order, he emailed Madison officials to confirm they had received his absentee ballot application. They told him they had, so he filled out his ballot, sent it in and assumed his vote would be counted.
“It was definitely a deterrence,” he said. “I didn’t know why my vote hadn’t been counted.”
Early signs suggest the error is already reshaping how many of the disenfranchised voters engage with elections — pushing some away from absentee voting and, in some cases, out of the electorate altogether. Interviews with affected voters also reveal a broader disconnect: Many say they are dissatisfied both with how the city handled the mistake and with the high-profile lawsuit filed in its wake to seek damages for the disenfranchised voters. The city, they say, has not been appropriately responsive, and the lawsuit does not reflect their values.
Until now, the public conversation has largely reflected the perspectives of the eight voters who joined the lawsuit as named plaintiffs. But others Votebeat spoke with described a different perspective — one that questions whether financial compensation is the right remedy at all.
Nathan Haimowitz (Courtesy of Nathan Haimowitz)
Mark Ediger, a recently retired chemistry professor at UW-Madison, for example, said he found the lawsuit “pretty bewildering,” adding that as a Madison taxpayer, it would be people like him footing the bill.
The 193 voters range from dozens of students who are only in Madison for a few years to some of their professors and other longtime city residents. Their responses to the error are just as varied.
Some, like Haimowitz, stopped voting entirely. Others, like Ediger, say the incident was a one-off mistake that hasn’t impacted their voting behavior. Notably, Ediger is the only voter among the disenfranchised group who has voted absentee in both of the two elections following the error, according to election data obtained by Votebeat.
“The incident has not diminished my trust in elections,” Ediger told Votebeat, adding that he’s satisfied the city has appropriately addressed its cause. “I don’t see how this should change my voting behavior moving forward.”
But other voters said their experience will change how they vote in future elections. “I’m definitely going to prioritize in-person voting,” Joanne Fairbotham, one of the disenfranchised voters, told Votebeat.
“There’s growing evidence that when someone tries to vote and they are prevented from doing so for one reason or another, it makes them less likely to vote in the future, and it can change their behavior,” said Kevin Morris, a senior research fellow and voting policy scholar with the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “You can lose a lot of trust very easily, and it can be very difficult to build that trust.”
All of the disenfranchised voters cast absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election. But, among the 22 who cast ballots in the February 2025 primary for state superintendent of public instruction and city council, nearly all did so in person. Two months later, two-thirds of the 132 who voted in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race did so at the polls, a share similar to how the same group voted in previous April elections.
Disenfranchised voters question city follow-up
Shortly after learning that her ballot hadn’t been counted, Fairbotham — a 35-year-old medical coder who lives in Madison — wrote to City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, saying the error was “beyond devastating as an American who prides herself in voting in every election.”
“This is how people lose faith in their government that their rights will be protected,” she said in the letter, calling on Witzel-Behl to resign.
Fairbotham said she never received a response from Witzel-Behl, who has since resigned — or anyone else employed by the city.
“Not hearing a peep,” she said, is the most frustrating part. Fairbotham’s vote in the 2024 presidential election was the first time she cast an absentee ballot since the peak of the pandemic in 2020. She has only cast in-person votes since and said the incident still makes her angry.
Madison City Attorney Mike Haas disputed the characterization that the city didn’t communicate the seriousness of the error, pointing to a city and state investigation and a public apology from the mayor.
Still, some voters said the city’s outreach fell short after such a significant error. Haimowitz, for example, didn’t hear from the city when most of the voters did — a separate oversight by city officials meant overseas voters did not receive the same notice as those living locally. Until speaking with Votebeat, Haimowitz said, he didn’t know whether the mistake that kept his ballot from being counted was his or the city’s, nor what steps officials had taken to prevent it from happening again.
Election administration experts say direct, proactive communication can be critical in rebuilding trust. After a mistake like the one in Madison, jurisdictions should reach out to affected voters, review what went wrong and clearly explain how it will be prevented in the future, said Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group and a former Colorado election administrator.
The city has completed the first two steps, Morrell said, but it did not fully follow through on the third.
After sending an initial notice telling voters they could reach out with questions, the city held no further public hearings, said Haas, a longtime election lawyer and former administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Few of the disenfranchised voters followed up, he added.
Some disenfranchised voters find lawsuit bewildering
The divide among disenfranchised voters extends to the lawsuit filed in the aftermath of the error.
In March 2025, the liberal group Law Forward filed a claim seeking $34 million from the city and Dane County over the error, later turning it into a lawsuit. In February, a circuit court judge ruled that the city could be held liable for monetary damages.
A small group of affected voters has joined the case, arguing it’s one of the only ways to hold the city accountable for failing to count their ballots.
But others see it differently. “In an era where the reliability of elections is being challenged by some groups in completely spurious ways, it seems to me that this lawsuit just adds to that noise,” Ediger said.
Lawsuits seeking monetary damages for disenfranchisement are now rare, but were more common in the late 1800s and 1900s, when Black voters were intentionally and repeatedly disenfranchised by election workers. Then, the fines forced the government to think twice, said Ediger. But there’s no similar pattern of errors or intentionality here in Madison, he added, which makes him doubt the lawsuit’s purpose.
Haimowitz said he also opposed the lawsuit, despite how much it has shaken his confidence.
“I’m not sure that the city should pay such a heavy price for this,” Haimowitz said, adding that at a time when some Republicans are peddling “Stop the Steal” narratives and casting doubt on election integrity, especially in battleground states like Wisconsin, the Law Forward letter unnerved him.
“That kind of money could be debilitating to a city elections board that is already under immense scrutiny and pressure to get it all right,” he said.
Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson pushed back on comparisons between the case and post-2020 lawsuits filed by Republicans, including one that sought to throw out over 200,000 absentee ballots in Wisconsin.
“That cavalier attitude towards votes that we saw in 2020 is simply unacceptable, and not compatible with democracy,” he said. “And so what do we do with that? Well, I can tell you what we will not do: We will not stand idly by if hundreds of people in a community lose the right to vote because their ballot simply wasn’t counted.”
He said that lawsuits often make people uneasy, but that their perspective may change when a fundamental right is taken away. He declined to directly comment on some of the disenfranchised voters’ issues with the case.
For some disenfranchised voters, financial damages are part of accountability. Precious Ayodabo, a named plaintiff, wrote in a Cap Times column that her disenfranchised absentee vote “is worth enough” to warrant compensation.
“It’s worth enough that I waited for hours in line to cast it. It’s worth enough that politicians spend millions of dollars to receive it. It’s worth enough that people have put their lives on the line and died to protect it,” she wrote.
Thompson declined to make Ayodabo and the other plaintiffs available for interviews. Of the 193 voters, eight are plaintiffs in the case, he said.
Others who support the lawsuit say it’s less about personal payment and more about forcing systemic change. Fairbotham said she’s grateful the case is pushing the city to take the error seriously, particularly after the Wisconsin Elections Commission found the city violated state law.
Thompson said the lawsuit isn’t about making sure the government knows “every single jot and tittle” of absentee voting procedure, but to ensure election officials count every vote, which he defined as “the absolute most basic obligation.”
“If we’re setting an unrealistic expectation that any mistake made by an election administrator opens you up to a lawsuit, that feels like an impossible situation to be in,” she said. “Election administrators take this so seriously and do everything they can to ensure mistakes don’t happen,” she added, “but they do.”
For Haimowitz — a voter who has helped others register to vote and served as a poll worker — the question isn’t just whether the city fixes the problem. It’s whether he can move past having his ballot go uncounted.
“It was something that made me think it’s clearly not that easy to vote,” he said.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Wisconsin’s Open Records Law gives requesters the right to request records from their government. After all, as the law states, “a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate.”
But how to get started? Under the law, “any person” can make a request for records from any Wisconsin state or local government agency or official, verbally or in writing. You don’t have to start from square one: There are many tools available to help you make requests and ensure you get the records you want with minimal fuss.
The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Counsel has long posted a records request template on its website, wisfoic.org. It cites Wisconsin law and uses language to target your request and help you avoid surprise fees.
Many national groups also post letter generators online that can be used to make requests to state and local governments.
For example, the Student Press Law Center, a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting student journalists, posts a heavily used letter generator, which is available for free and can be used to make requests.
Christa Westerberg
An organization called MuckRock not only has a letter generator, but also allows users to post responsive records they receive on its website at muckrock.com. Here you can search through records others have received from all over the country.
Other groups post records they have received through their own open records and U.S. Freedom of Information Act requests.
For example, a group called Reclaim the Records posts genealogical and historical records on its website, reclaimtherecords.org. The website governmentattic.org provides a searchable collection of oddball federal government records and reports.
Of course, this is in addition to records the government proactively publishes or posts online itself. A wealth of information is already available on Wisconsin agency and local government websites, or in local libraries.
Federal agencies are even required to follow the “Rule of 3,” or make electronically available records that have been requested three or more times. The website data.gov contains more than 400,000 datasets, from what it describes as the home of the U.S. government’s open data.
In some cases, it may be easiest just to start with a phone call to the state or local agency that has the records you want. It may be able to send you the record on the spot, or help you understand available records to target your request.
If you’re looking to better understand the law, the Wisconsin Department of Justice Office of Open Government posts numerous resources online, including its Public Records Compliance Guide, which is helpful for requesters and records custodians alike.
A well-drafted records request is useful for everyone: It can help requesters get the records they want, in less time, and at a lower cost. It can also help custodians find records more easily, freeing them up to respond to others’ requests and carry out other duties.
But the most important tip is to not be intimidated by the process: There are no magic words required to trigger your right to get records, and the law must be interpreted broadly in favor of access.
Wisconsin’s Open Records Law, by design, makes it easy to get records, to fulfill its important objective of informing the electorate. Don’t hesitate to exercise your right to use it.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg is the group’s vice president and a partner at the law firm Pines Bach LLP.
A Wisconsin court has dismissed Democrats’ efforts to get the state to redraw its congressional maps.
The three-judge circuit court panel said it did not have jurisdiction to decide whether the state’s congressional districts have been gerrymandered along partisan lines, leaving the matter to the state’s Supreme Court.
“This Panel is not endorsing the current congressional map. Rather, we, as circuit court judges, do not have the authority to read into a Wisconsin Supreme Court case an analysis that it does not contain,” the judges wrote.
Wisconsin’s current district lines trace back to the 2011 congressional maps, which attorneys for the Democrats said were gerrymandered by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed Republican-drawn 2021 maps, which then prompted the state Supreme Court to order new maps drawn that made the “least change” to the existing district lines from 2011.
This lawsuit was part of a wave of redistricting suits filed by Democratic-aligned groups across the country, but it’s unlikely to yield new maps before the midterm elections.
Republicans represent six of Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts, though statewide partisan elections are often competitive and only won by a slim margin. Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin — a Republican and a Democrat, respectively — won their most recent elections by a percentage point or less. Evers won reelection by more than 3 percentage points in 2022.
Attorneys in the redistricting case may appeal the panel judgment to the state Supreme Court. Another redistricting lawsuit, which argues that Wisconsin’s congressional maps favor incumbents, is pending before its own three-judge circuit court panel.
This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
For many families across the Midwest, discussing end-of-life planning is about as comfortable as a January blizzard on Highway 175. However, proactive planning is a final act of care that prevents legal headaches and ensures a legacy stays within the family. In Wisconsin, specific statutes — ranging from marital property laws to unique transfer-on-death rules — make it essential to use the right tools. Whether you are a young parent or assisting aging parents, these are the legal and financial cornerstones for a solid plan.
Write a will and consider a living trust
A last will and testament is the traditional bedrock of any plan. In Wisconsin, a will allows you to name an executor (the person who will manage your estate) and a guardian for minor children. Without a will, a state judge — not your family — decides who raises your kids and how your assets are split.
For many Wisconsin families, a revocable living trust is a powerful alternative or supplement.
Benefit: Unlike a will, which must go through the public, often costly probate court process, a trust allows assets to pass privately and immediately to heirs.
Midwest reality: If you own property in multiple states (like a cabin in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula or a farm in Iowa), a trust can prevent your family from having to open probate cases in every state where you own land.
Assign power of attorney: health care and finances
Control is often lost not at death, but during a period of incapacity. Wisconsin law recognizes two distinct roles:
Financial power of attorney: This grants a “trusted agent” the authority to pay your mortgage, manage your taxes and handle your bank accounts. Under Wisconsin Chapter 244, these are “durable” by default, meaning they remain valid even if you lose mental capacity.
Health care power of attorney: This allows someone to make medical decisions if you cannot. In Wisconsin, your spouse is not automatically authorized to make all medical decisions for you without this document. It requires two witnesses who are not related to you or responsible for your health care costs.
Create an advance directive (living will)
While a health care power of attorney names who makes decisions, an advance directive (often called a “declaration to physicians” in Wisconsin) tells them what those decisions should be. This document outlines your wishes regarding life-sustaining treatments, such as ventilators or feeding tubes, specifically if you are in a terminal condition or a persistent vegetative state.
For Wisconsin residents, the Department of Health Services provides standard forms that are legally recognized across all state health systems.
Name beneficiaries for accounts and insurance
One of the most common mistakes is assuming a will covers everything. In reality, beneficiary designations on life insurance policies, 401(k)s and IRAs “trump” what is written in a will. If your will says your estate goes to your children, but your 20-year-old life insurance policy still lists an ex-spouse, that money will likely go to the ex-spouse.
To keep things simple, many Wisconsin banks offer payable-on-death (POD) options for checking and savings accounts, which keeps that cash out of the probate court’s hands.
Transfer-on-death deeds
Wisconsin is one of the states that allow a transfer-on-death (TOD) deed for real estate. This is a game changer for the “family home.”
How it works: You file a TOD deed with your local register of deeds (such as the one in Juneau for Dodge County). It names who inherits your home, but it has no effect while you are alive. You can still sell the house or change your mind at any time.
The catch: Because Wisconsin is a marital property state, if you are married, your spouse generally must sign the TOD deed even if the spouse’s name isn’t on the original title.
Note: For small estates, Wisconsin offers a “transfer by affidavit” process for estates valued under $50,000. This allows heirs to collect assets without a full court proceeding, provided they follow strict notification rules for the state’s Medicaid Estate Recovery Program.
This story is published in collaboration with Multi-Media Channels. It originally appeared in Multi-Media Channels’ print “Dignity in Care” publication.
Hi, Wisconsin! Health reporter Addie Costello here.
I spent last Saturday with around 80 attendees of a senior breakfast in Merrill, and it was one of my best-spent weekends so far in 2026.
Northwoods residents packed a banquet hall to eat, talk with neighbors and list the biggest issues they face as older adults.
The Senior Empowerment Project, an organizing group focused on issues impacting older people in rural areas and small towns, organized the event and asked me to give a short presentation about my reporting on long-term care issues. The most exciting part? Once I finished talking, a microphone was passed from table to table as older adults shared the questions and issues they think about the most.
Where can they get transportation on the weekends? How can older adults afford to stay in their homes as property taxes increase? Where can they get nutritious food?
Wall decor is shown at the Northwoods Senior Breakfast at the Eagles Club in Merrill, Wis., March 28, 2026. (Addie Costello / Wisconsin Watch)
I left the event with a long list of questions I plan to answer in a new project. We’re calling it Q&Aging, a series of short stories where I interview experts to answer your questions about getting older in Wisconsin — whether about health care, housing or what comes next.
I reported this as part of our collaboration with several Multi-Media Channels, which cover swaths of northeast and central Wisconsin. Find the full Dignity in Care project here.
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