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New federal dollars could extend the life of one of Wisconsin’s remaining coal power plants.

The Trump administration plans to spend $425 million to support operations at 13 coal plants in 10 states, arguing the move will help meet rising electricity demand and preserve thousands of jobs tied to the ailing coal industry. The White House will do so by invoking the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law that gives the president broad authority to accelerate American industrial output at times of crisis.

Some of that funding could go to Madison-based utility Alliant Energy, which told Wisconsin Watch that it applied for a $19 million grant to extend the life of coal-powered units it owns at the Columbia Energy Center near Portage in central Wisconsin. The utility previously planned to retire the plant’s coal units before the end of the decade. 

President Donald Trump announced the action from the Oval Office Thursday, highlighting  that the coal plants set to benefit are all in states he won during the 2024 election.

 “Wisconsin put you over the edge,” U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., interjected, standing among the gaggle of Republican lawmakers and Cabinet officials behind the president. 

“Our action will allow these facilities to invest in upgrades that will extend their operational lives for decades into the future, reinforce the reliability of our electrical grid … and keep electricity prices low for the American people,” Trump said, adding that the move may also bolster the nation’s artificial intelligence boom.  

The administration will also distribute $200 million in Department of Energy grants to reopen a coal plant in Maryland and build the first new coal plants in the U.S. in over a decade: one in Alaska and another in West Virginia.

The Trump administration has already intervened to block the retirement of coal plants in Michigan, Indiana and elsewhere. But the White House did not pair those earlier orders with funding to support ongoing operations, so ratepayers across most of the Midwest — including in Wisconsin — will pick up the bill for those extensions.

Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board (CUB) and other Midwestern ratepayer advocacy groups have since filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit challenging federal orders blocking the closure of the Michigan and Indiana plants. The costs of extending aging coal plants’ operations “are adding to an affordability challenge customers are already experiencing in Wisconsin and nearby states,” said CUB Wisconsin Executive Director Tom Content.

Alliant has already pushed back the retirement dates for its coal-powered generators at the Columbia Energy Center and Edgewater Energy Center in Sheboygan. The company initially pledged to shut down the last coal generator at the Columbia plant by 2024; Alliant did not clarify the new expected life span of the plant. 

The Edgewater plant is slated to transition to natural gas generation by 2029.

Coal generation accounts for a declining share of Wisconsin’s and the Midwest’s overall energy mix. Natural gas surpassed coal as the state’s primary fuel for generating electricity in 2022.

Wisconsin ratepayers owe at least $1 billion to pay off debts tied to retired coal plants, including We Energies’ now-shuttered Pleasant Prairie Power Plant in Kenosha County.

Extending operations at Alliant’s remaining coal plants could reduce the amount ratepayers will still owe when those facilities eventually close. 

Wisconsin clean energy advocates reacted with alarm to the White House’s doubling down on coal generation. 

“Burning coal in Wisconsin releases a long list of toxic chemicals and heavy metals, both into the air and water,” said Clean Wisconsin spokesperson Amy Barrilleaux. “No one in Wisconsin is asking for more mercury, arsenic, lead or soot. But we will be getting all of it, especially as the Trump administration dismantles pollution safeguards at coal plants, insisting more power is needed for the ‘AI data center revolution.’”

“It’s also important to note that burning coal is one of the most expensive ways to produce energy in Wisconsin — far more expensive than wind and solar farms, which are the cheapest,” she added. “So Wisconsinites will have higher energy costs and will be paying for the health costs, the longer we burn coal in this state.”

Alliant has scaled up investments in renewable energy generation in recent years, buoyed in part by clean energy tax credits extended by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. The U.S. Department of Energy also agreed to back $3 billion in loans supporting Alliant’s wind generation and battery storage buildouts in the final days of the Biden administration.

The Trump administration has since largely reversed Biden-era tax incentives for renewable energy development. In its 2025 annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Alliant noted that the termination of clean energy tax credits could “adversely impact” the company’s finances. 

The company did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the status of Department of Energy financing for its wind and battery storage projects.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum argued Thursday that clean energy tax incentives created a false impression of the viability of renewable energy sources. Wind energy developers, he said, “weren’t trying to generate electricity. They’re just trying to generate tax credits.”

“Energy shouldn’t need subsidy,” Trump responded.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on June 5, 2026 to include information from Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin

Wisconsin power plant could benefit from Trump’s $425 million coal push is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Ahead of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, Green Bay election officials accidentally sent duplicate ballots to 150 voters, prompting an administrative complaint before the Wisconsin Elections Commission and conspiracy theories online.

In a slightly different example from this year, some voters in Maryland initially received primary ballots for the wrong party. Election officials then intentionally issued new ballots for the correct party to all voters who had requested a mail ballot, and the original ballots were voided. Nonetheless, President Donald Trump falsely suggested that nobody knew what was happening with the original ballots and that “any Republican running in Maryland doesn’t have a chance” because voters who received them, who were disproportionately Democrats, would be allowed to vote twice.

Despite the heightened attention, election officials accidentally sending duplicate ballots — or sending out an erroneous batch before intentionally sending corrected ballots to the same voters — is a rare but well-understood mistake nationwide that hardly ever results in the type of double voting Trump has warned of.

“Once any ballot is received and accepted, it locks down that voter’s record, so that a second ballot could not be accepted for that same voter,” said Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer of the National Association of Election Officials. “That’s the way it works everywhere.”

Two primary mechanisms keep these accidental duplicate ballots from getting counted: proper record keeping and deterrence, said David Levine, an election security expert and the election director in Richmond, Virginia. Generally, that record keeping is done by putting unique barcodes on absentee ballot envelopes, which prevent people from voting more than once.

“It’s usually not an issue because, one, election officials are pretty good about contingency planning and having procedures in place, so if something like this happens, they know how to either void ballots or segregate them appropriately, so that they’re not going to be counted,” Levine said.

Second, he added, most voters understand that double voting is a crime, and it’s not a practice they want to engage in. A study of 2012 election results found that, at most, one in 4,000 votes cast could be a double vote, but that clerical errors in marking turnout records — not actual double voting — may account for most if not all of that number.

Some of the attention on these mistakes comes from people who are genuinely unaware of the protections that keep double votes from being counted, Levine said. But, he said, there’s also scrutiny from people who are familiar or should be familiar with those safeguards but “choose to try and make a lot of hay out of something that’s largely much ado about nothing.”

Why do duplicate ballots get sent out?

Simply put, election season is an extraordinarily busy time for clerks and the vendors that print their ballots. Sometimes amid their multitasking, they mistakenly send two batches of absentee ballots to the same group of voters, or send an incorrect batch and have to send a second, correct one.

In the Green Bay instance, City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys said election officials were scrambling because a mid-March blizzard closed much of the city, and her staff faced a time crunch to send ballots out on time. The city sent notices to the 152 affected voters before Election Day. Ultimately, just one voter returned two ballots, and both were voided after Green Bay officials alerted the voter about it.

In Maryland, the State Board of Elections said the initial batch of ballots was erroneous because of a coding error with the board’s mail ballot vendor. Since the vendor couldn’t identify which voters received the wrong ballots, the board decided to send new ballots to everyone who had requested a mail ballot in that election and void the old ones in the state’s registration database, so they wouldn’t count even if voters returned them.

Similar errors have happened around the state and country. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Madison, Wisconsin, officials sent around 2,200 duplicate ballots because of a data processing error. In Racine, Wisconsin, this year, election officials intentionally sent voters a second batch of ballots because the first set left off a municipal race. Other incidents have happened in Pennsylvania and California.

What keeps those erroneous ballots from getting counted?

One of the best tools election officials in Wisconsin and elsewhere have at their disposal are unique barcodes printed on the absentee ballot certificates that voters receive.

Those barcodes in Wisconsin connect to the statewide voter registration database and are unique to each voter. Other states have similar systems, with unique identifiers tying an absentee ballot to each voter. If an election official scans a duplicate ballot, the system shows that the voter already returned one, and one of the ballots is rejected.

That’s a “very, very established process,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said after the Green Bay incident.

In examples like Racine, when voters receive a ballot missing a race or containing another error that can be corrected before Election Day, officials will intentionally send another, correct ballot to the voter. The first ballot becomes known as the “A” ballot, and the second one is known as the “B” ballot.

If a voter returns just one ballot, that vote will count — including only valid votes from the erroneous ballot, if that’s the one submitted. If a voter returns both ballots, officials will scrap the “A” ballot and count the “B” since the latter is the correct form.

That’s different from Maryland, where election officials voided all of the original ballots and reissued new ones.

How specific instances of duplicate ballots get resolved — whether that’s canceling out all the original ballots or planning for “A” and “B” ballots like in Racine — can depend on state laws, officials’ discretion and court rulings, Patrick said. How close the error is to election day and the jurisdiction’s budget can also influence how election officials handle duplicate ballots, she added.

Patrick also drew a distinction between officials sending out duplicate absentee ballots and the rare but occasional instances of double voting.

“More often than not, the rare instances where we see it, it’s an individual voting in two different jurisdictions or two different states,” she said. “It’s not so much that a single person is voting in the same election, in the same jurisdiction, under the same name.”

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

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

Sometimes officials send duplicate ballots. Here’s how security measures prevent double voting. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The Republican Party of Wisconsin’s annual convention this weekend in the Wisconsin Dells has a heavyweight figure looming over the conversation, and it’s not the professional wrestling executive turned Cabinet official giving the keynote address.

President Donald Trump demonstrated last week how he still has a chokehold over state-level GOP politics, helping oust five Indiana Senate incumbents who defied his call to gerrymander that state’s congressional districts to help Republicans in the November election. 

“He still has a very strong influence on the voting population,” said Jack Hoogendyk, the chair of the Republican Party of Marathon County. “I think what Republicans like about Donald Trump is that he’s not afraid to say what he believes. He doesn’t back down. He just calls all the shots and then he follows through on what he says. I think it’s a good lesson for really any politician regardless of their party.” 

Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 42% among registered voters in Wisconsin, but among Republicans it’s 84%. That’s despite Trump’s cataclysmic drag on the party going back to the 2018 midterms, when Democrats won all statewide offices and have since claimed five of seven seats on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Ahead of the upcoming state convention, where Education Secretary Linda McMahon will be the featured speaker, Wisconsin Watch talked with four county Republican chairs about how Trump remains a significant factor in their communities ahead of November. It will be up to them to turn out Trump voters in a year when the president’s name is not on the ballot in Wisconsin, they said. 

“The conflict with Iran, the issues going on overseas, the affordability, these are huge issues. People have to remember that there’s an entire Cabinet of people and departments that are working on so many other things. So just because these big issues are taking up much of the news cycle, that doesn’t mean that the rest of the work is stopped,” said Hilario Deleon, the chair of the Milwaukee County Republican Party. “The Department of Agriculture, the Department of HHS, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, all these different groups are working in conjunction with the vision that the president ran on, and ultimately, he is getting the job done.”

Chad Kinsella, an associate professor of political science at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, said the lessons from Indiana primary results can differ for states where election margins are far narrower than deep red Indiana. Trump won that state in 2024 by nearly 20 percentage points, while eking out a less than 1-point win in Wisconsin. 

But there’s no question the influence Trump has over Republican voters, Kinsella said. 

“He is the 1,200-pound elephant in the room,” he said. “President is … was, and will be for the foreseeable future what … a lot of what people will think about as they vote.”

In Wisconsin, Trump’s endorsement in January of U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany in the governor’s race cleared the field of major candidates in the Republican primary. Meanwhile, a slew of Democratic candidates continue to seek the party’s nomination ahead of the primary in August. 

Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney also has no primary opponents as he seeks a rematch against Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. 

“The good thing for us, I think, is we don’t have a contested primary right now for those two top seats. I think that’s very helpful to us,” said Stephanie Soucek, the chair of the Republican Party of Door County. “I think we’ll be able to unify a lot sooner than we typically would be and I think that benefits us. I think just focusing on Wisconsin and what those races are about for our state, I think that will help us.”  

Turning out Trump voters 

Among self-identified Republican voters in Wisconsin, 40% strongly approve of the job Trump is doing, according to the Marquette University Law School Poll. That’s down from 54% a year ago. County party chairs told Wisconsin Watch that Republicans need to motivate those die-hard fans to participate in elections in a year when Trump is not on the ballot. 

“I think we need to find a way to tap into the people who strongly support him, that vote for him,” Soucek said. “And then they need to understand just the importance of electing people that will support his agenda.”

Jerry Helmer, the chair of the Republican Party of Sauk County, agreed that it’s up to county parties to educate voters in their community about Republican candidates beyond Trump. Sauk County Republicans have worked on boosting education and party membership through holding regular Saturday coffee and conservative conversation gatherings at the county party’s office inside an old bank building in Rock Springs, Helmer said. 

“We truly feel that there are a lot more Republicans in Wisconsin than show up to vote,” Helmer said. “It was very obvious during the Trump election this last time, they did show up. Part of the problem was education. I worked the polls and I talked to many other people who worked the polls, and so many people only voted for Donald Trump and didn’t vote down ballot.” 

Wisconsin Republican leadership debate

The party also has faced a reckoning after conservative Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar lost the April election by 20 percentage points to liberal justice-elect Chris Taylor. 

The results renewed calls for Republican Party of Wisconsin chair Brian Schimming’s ouster as executive committee members told reporters they signed nondisclosure agreements that banned them from sharing closed-door party discussions about the party’s leadership. 

WisPolitics reported Friday that the state party canceled an executive committee meeting on May 12 that members sought to discuss “potential action regarding employment issues and board management.” 

Neither Schimming nor a spokesperson for the Republican Party of Wisconsin responded to multiple requests for an interview with Schimming for this story.

Wisconsin Republicans look to Donald Trump’s die-hard fans to brighten their prospects in November is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Small businesses that paid President Donald Trump’s tariffs have been largely left to fend for themselves as they navigate the administration’s refund system.

In Washington, the lawmakers calling for small businesses to be first in line to receive their share of the $166 billion paid in tariffs say that, for the most part, their hands are tied.

“I’m fighting for that to happen, but most of it’s going to end up playing out in court, but it really matters to our small businesses in particular,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.

Baldwin said she met with the owners of a local textile company that laid off staff to afford tariffs on imported fabric — and now they wonder if they’ll get their money back.

In Wisconsin, importers paid $3.5 billion in tariffs from March to December 2025, according to the small business coalition We Pay The Tariffs. More than a dozen Wisconsin companies, including Milwaukee Tool and Kohl’s, have sued the Trump administration for tariff refunds.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is currently updating its duty payment processing system to issue refunds at scale. Officials must review more than 53 million entries filed by importers that include emergency tariff payments.

The development of the CBP system’s new functions to receive, process and refund these duties was mostly complete as of last week, according to court filings.

Once the process is set, it becomes a question of who has the resources and know-how to navigate CBP’s refund system. The Trump administration is requiring business owners to file their own claims.

CBP’s updated system will require importers to file a declaration detailing their payments of tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, according to an affidavit filed in trade court earlier this month.

“It’s incumbent on smaller importers to do what they need to do to get their money,” said Chris Duncan, a former CBP attorney who currently works as a tariffs and customs lawyer.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Small Business Committee, said that puts small businesses at a disadvantage.

“Small businesses do not have teams of legal and financial experts to submit their forms. Small businesses do not have the time to navigate this convoluted system,” Markey said in a call with business owners last week. “Small businesses need their refunds, and they need them now.”

Markey and 19 other Democratic senators sent a letter to CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott on Friday demanding the agency automatically refund IEEPA tariffs through its existing system rather than the updated one.

“There is no principled reason for the Trump administration to conduct the refund process this way,” reads the letter, reviewed by NOTUS. “CBP already has the payment records it needs to issue refunds.”

Markey — along with Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeanne Shaheen — also introduced a bill that would require CBP to issue full tariff refunds with interest and prioritize returning money to small businesses.

Without buy-in from Republicans, however, Democratic senators say it will be up to the local communities to pressure the federal government.

“What is going to be most helpful is to create enough pressure in communities, particularly small communities,” Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said.

Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat who represents the Madison area, expressed concern about the “dysfunction” that could arise from companies trying to navigate the intricacies of the CBP’s refund system and answer to consumers who shouldered price increases.

“Bottom line is, we never should have done illegal tariffs to begin with. Congress should have stood up, as Democrats had asked for, for our constitutional authority around tariffs, and now we’re going to wind up creating all kinds of dysfunction for businesses and individuals,” Pocan said.

Following the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling striking down his emergency tariffs in February, Trump said he would continue his tariff agenda using alternative legal authorities and imposed a 15% global tariff, which Congress must vote to extend later this year.

Trump allies in Congress say the president’s tariffs, which are unpopular among voters, are short-term pain for the long-term gain of balancing the U.S.’s trade relationships and attracting foreign investment.

Nevertheless, when asked if tariff refunds should be passed on to consumers, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican who represents suburban and rural areas west of Milwaukee, expressed openness to the idea.

“If it’s something that they could actually draw, like a clear line or a bright line. You know, we had a lot of companies where the tariffs had a direct effect on aluminum out of Canada or textiles out of Vietnam, or — you know, it was all part of the manufacturing process,” Fitzgerald said.

“So I’m not sure how that would shake out either, if it was one element of a larger manufacturing versus, like, a straight retailer who was selling some type of consumer goods.”

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Lawmakers are worried small businesses will get left behind in Trump’s tariff refund system is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Rep. Derrick Van Orden stands out among vulnerable House Republicans: He has not softened his rhetoric on President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics, despite public outcry over the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.

The Wisconsin Republican, whose seat is one of Democrats’ targets in the 2026 midterms, supported an investigation into Alex Pretti’s killing, but said his “support for federal law enforcement” would remain “unwavering.”

Van Orden told NOTUS he is holding firm in his support for the Trump administration’s deportation efforts because of the crime committed by unauthorized immigrants.

He cited a video posted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week alongside the caption, “American citizens raped and murdered by those who have no right to be in our country.”

“That’s why I back ICE,” Van Orden said. “Watch that video, and then you would never ask me that question again.”

“If you can look at that thing and see all these people that have been brutally murdered and the families that have been destroyed because of these criminal, illegal aliens, and you’re willing to turn your back to it, that means you have an alternative purpose or an alternative objective,” Van Orden said.

Van Orden’s hard-line position in support of the president’s mass deportation agenda in one of this year’s most competitive races will test the Trump agenda in the very part of the country that helped secure the president a second term in the White House.

His district includes the farmland and exurbs of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, spanning Wisconsin’s border with Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. Van Orden won by a margin of 2.8 percentage points in 2024. Trump won the district by more than 7 percentage points. In a midterm cycle that favors Democrats, and at a time voters are losing trust in Republicans’ immigration agenda, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as a “toss up.”

“We’re not a border state. It’s not something that was on the agenda prior to Trump. And obviously, people like Derrick Van Orden have taken the most extreme possible positions on an issue that I’m not sure was top of mind for most Wisconsin voters,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative political commentator and Wisconsin resident.

Van Orden has shown his MAGA bona fides through issues like immigration and trade, where he has defended the president’s actions.

He followed the administration’s lead, expressing support for body cameras on immigration officers, a reform that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she would implement after Pretti was killed. Democrats want to standardize that policy in a DHS funding bill.

“It allows good cops to be good cops, and it holds police officers that may not be doing what they should do accountable publicly,” Van Orden said. “And that makes the force better, that makes the American population trust law enforcement more.”

He said he will await the results of a full investigation into Pretti’s death, but has laid the blame for the rise of political violence squarely with Democrats, as many in the administration and Trump’s circle have done.

“This is unfortunately true for many Democrats. They’re willing to put those American lives, throw them into the garbage can for political power, which means they have no business being in power,” Van Orden said.

There are issues where Van Orden has broken with the conservative mainstream. In January, he voted to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies to prevent coverage loss, though he is opposed to the program. He has advocated for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which he used as a child, though he voted for cuts to the program in the budget reconciliation bill.

Faced with a frustrated agricultural industry, Van Orden introduced a bill to create a path to temporary worker status for immigrant agricultural workers who self-deport and pay a fine. Wisconsin farms employ a large immigrant labor force.

“He has this interesting dichotomy of picking some of those softer issues that might appeal to independents and some others, versus his very strong pro-Trump issues where, obviously that’s going to settle well with the MAGA voters and the pro-Trump Republicans,” said independent political strategist Brandon Scholz, who formerly ran the Wisconsin Republican Party.

In contrast, other House Republicans facing heated reelection bids this year have moderated their positions on immigration enforcement, calling for a reassessment of the country’s immigration policy.

“Congress and the president need to embrace a new comprehensive national immigration policy that acknowledges Americans’ many legitimate concerns about how the government has conducted immigration policy,” Rep. Mike Lawler wrote for The New York Times.

Van Orden declined to comment on other Democratic demands for DHS reforms, which include a ban on masks and identification requirements for immigration agents, until the party funds the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Secret Service and the U.S. Coast Guard.

It is these nonimmigration agencies within DHS that Van Orden’s constituents are affected by during the partial government shutdown, which has left some without paychecks and blocked others from receiving their boating licenses to go out on the district’s many lakes, he said.

That message may work with his constituents, Scholz said. While Republican voters in Wisconsin may be concerned about immigration, the issue has not historically been top of mind for them.

“There are other issues for them that may be more critical to making a decision on what they’re going to do, i.e. economic issues,” Scholz said.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Vulnerable House Republicans have softened on immigration. Derrick Van Orden hasn’t. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Wisconsin doesn’t have more registered voters than the adult population.

The claim, recently recirculated by President Donald Trump, combines two voter lists to misrepresent the number of active, eligible voters in Wisconsin.     

Wisconsin’s adult population is around 4.8 million, according to Jan. 1 estimates from the state Demographic Services Center.

On Feb. 1, Wisconsin had around 3.6 million active, registered voters, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

The state has 4.6 million inactive voters on a separate list. Voters move to the inactive list if they die, move to a new state or are convicted of a felony, for example.

Adding those two numbers produces a total of 8.2 million, more than the state’s total population.

State law requires an inactive list for record-keeping purposes. Plus, it helps clerks prevent fraud by catching someone registering under a dead person’s name, for example.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Wisconsin Elections Commission: February 1, 2026 Voter Registration Statistics
• Wisconsin Elections Commission: FAQs
• Wisconsin Demographic Services Center: Official Final Estimates, 1/1/2025

Does Wisconsin have more registered voters than adults? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Republican lawmakers have heard farmers’ concerns about President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda. Their response? Short-term pain, long-term gain.

Farmers faced a shrunken export market and operating costs after Trump enforced steep tariffs on key trading partners and farm materials last year. In response, the Trump administration will begin disbursing a $12 billion bailout to farmers due to “unfair market disruptions” at the end of this month.

Republican lawmakers from Wisconsin, a major agricultural producer, acknowledge the 2025 to 2026 crop season challenges, which resulted in an estimated $34.6 billion in losses for the industry, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. But they’re arguing that the success of specialty crops and rosier-than-expected economic indicators are evidence farmers can withstand any turmoil the tariffs have caused.

“Our farmers understand that we have to level the playing field. And how do you do that? You do that with these tariffs,” U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden said. “In order to get to the long term, you have to get through the short term, and that’s the reason that this money’s going back to people in the agriculture industry.”

A bipartisan group of agricultural experts said the Trump administration’s policies have “significantly damaged” the American farm economy in a letter to Senate Agriculture Committee leadership this month, as first reported by The New York Times.

“It is clear that the current Administration’s actions, along with Congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag research and staffing,” they wrote.

Wisconsin agriculture experts told NOTUS the administration’s bailout is undesirable and insufficient to cover many farmers’ lost revenue this year.

“They don’t solve the long-run problem of higher input costs and low prices; they are a Band-Aid to get us through this short-term problem,” said Paul Mitchell, the director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Agriculture professor and economist Steven Deller, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar view.

“We’re hemorrhaging thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and they’re giving us pennies,” Deller said, adding that farmers want “fair markets” and a “level playing field.”

Republicans in the state, however, are standing behind the president’s agenda, pointing to the administration’s stated goal to boost the manufacturing industry through baseline tariff rates for all countries, reciprocal tariffs and tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico.

“Wisconsin, at the end of the day, is going to benefit as we bring manufacturing back to the state,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the likely GOP nominee for governor.

He blamed the North American Free Trade Agreement for sending manufacturing companies packing for cheaper operations in China. Trump replaced NAFTA during his first term in office with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a deal Tiffany applauded.

Trump administration officials have defended tariffs in cable television appearances and in congressional hearings as key to transforming the American economy, even as some agricultural industries languish. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing earlier this month, Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on whether instability in the agricultural markets is a result of Trump’s tariff policies.

“It has nothing to do with the tariffs,” Bessent said.

Still, there are some signs the administration could be responsive to the backlash. The Trump administration is planning to roll back tariffs on some steel and aluminum goods due to concerns the tariffs are hurting consumers, the Financial Times reported.

The soybean industry is one of the hardest hit by tariffs, which temporarily cost farmers the U.S.’ largest soybean trading partner, China. Although China fulfilled its initial purchase agreement last month and has agreed to purchase tens of millions more metric tons over the next few years, American soybean producers withstood an unprecedented five consecutive months without purchases by China.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Republicans are looking past the short-term pain of Trump’s tariffs is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Editor’s note: This is a static version of the interactive story found at this link.

Part 1: A struggling regional carrier

The legacy network

Air Wisconsin Airlines has not been spared by the nationwide decline of regional air service. The 60-year-old carrier laid off hundreds of employees in Appleton and Milwaukee last year after terminating a contract to provide aircraft, crews and services to American Airlines in January 2025. The airline’s planned pivot to charter service and federally subsidized connections to underserved airports didn’t pan out, prompting another round of layoffs by the spring.

But the company’s troubles didn’t entirely ground its fleet. Flight tracking data indicate that Air Wisconsin continued to provide regional air service through the end of 2025, primarily connecting its Wisconsin hubs to mid-sized Midwestern airports as it had for decades.

The sale

In January, Harbor Diversified Inc., the Appleton-based parent company of Air Wisconsin, sold the company’s operations and 13 of its jets to CSI Aviation, a New Mexico-based air charter company and longtime federal contractor owned by former New Mexico Republican Party chair Allen Weh.

Air Wisconsin sent recall notices to the company’s furloughed flight attendants after the sale to CSI Aviation, and the Association of Flight Attendants — the union representing the furloughed workers — negotiated an immediate raise for returning members. In a January press release announcing the recall notices, the union noted that only a third of the furloughed flight attendants opted to return.

Neither CSI nor Harbor Diversified responded to requests for comment.

CSI is central to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.

It has provided charter services for ICE since 2024, transporting detainees and deportees both directly and through subcontractors.

The company entered its current $1.5 billion contract with the Department of Homeland Security in November of last year.

Demand for private charters surged after 2010, when the Obama administration moved away from relying solely on the U.S. Marshals Service.

Air Wisconsin isn’t alone. Avelo Airlines began deportation flights last spring, but backed out last month following intense public backlash.

A transformed network

CSI’s acquisition of Air Wisconsin transformed the airline’s flight patterns within a matter of weeks. The airline’s website no longer lists passenger routes, but flight data collected between Jan. 9 and mid-February indicates that the airline has largely ceded its role as a Midwestern regional carrier.

Instead, the airline increasingly looks south: Destinations in Louisiana and Texas replaced the mid-sized Midwestern airports that were, until recently, the airline’s most frequent destinations.

Flight data indicates Air Wisconsin planes made at least 125 trips in January 2026, up from roughly 60 in December 2025. Thicker lines on the map indicate more frequent routes.

Part 2: Air ICE

Many of Air Wisconsin’s new destinations are within easy reach of ICE detention facilities in Texas and Louisiana, including some of the agency’s largest.

The Minnesota operation

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is among the busiest in the country, but Air Wisconsin rarely provided service to the Twin Cities in the final months of 2025.

That changed in January, just weeks after the Trump administration dispatched thousands of federal agents to Minnesota for an immigration enforcement offensive dubbed Operation Metro Surge.

Hundreds of immigrants detained in the operation have since departed the airport in shackles, loaded onto charter flights bound for ICE detention facilities farther south.

Alexandria

The modest airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, is now the epicenter of ICE’s deportation flight operations. Air Wisconsin has flown to or from Alexandria at least 30 times since the airline’s acquisition by CSI, on par with the airline’s service to Madison and outpacing service to Appleton, home to the airline’s corporate headquarters.

The GEO Group, an international private prison operator, runs an ICE detention facility on the airport’s tarmac. A dozen other ICE facilities sit within easy reach. Among them is the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, where Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan national, died in custody on Dec. 14, 2025. ICE acknowledged the incident in a press release four days later, though the agency did not specify the cause of Rodriguez’s death.

El Paso

Camp East Montana, ICE’s largest detention facility, sits just east of El Paso International Airport. Air Wisconsin flights took off from or landed in El Paso at least 32 times in January and early February, second only to Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport.

The camp drew national attention in early January after Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban national, died by asphyxiation after guards pinned him to the floor of a cell. The El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled the death a homicide.

Lunas Campos’ death came a month after Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old from Guatemala and detained at Camp East Montana, died in an El Paso hospital; ICE attributed Gaspar-Andres’ death to liver and kidney failure.

Another detainee, 36-year-old Victor Manuel Diaz of Nicaragua, died at the camp on Jan. 14 in what ICE described as a “presumed suicide” — an explanation his family questions. ICE agents detained Diaz in Minneapolis only days before his death.

Back at home

Air Wisconsin hasn’t entirely withdrawn from its home state hubs. Many of the airline’s remaining pilots, flight attendants and ground crew are still Wisconsin-based, and Milwaukee remains the airline’s primary hub.

The airline is now hiring for more than a dozen Wisconsin-based positions — including legal counsel.

About the data

Wisconsin Watch used FlightAware AeroAPI data (Sept 2025 – Feb 2026) to reconstruct patterns before and after the Jan. 9 sale to CSI Aviation.

Hubs on these maps represent the 10 airports most frequently used. While the routes align with ICE operations, the data does not confirm if specific flights carried detainees.

Air Wisconsin turns to ICE (static version) is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.