The wife of a Wisconsin kayaker who faked his own drowning so he could leave her and their children and meet a woman in Eastern Europe filed court documents Thursday seeking to end their marriage.
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President-elect Donald Trump, at the time the GOP nominee, participates in a Fox News Town Hall with Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena on Sept. 4, 2024, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — An effort to pass a sweeping measure aimed at protecting press freedoms was struck down in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday night.
The journalism shield law — which would limit the federal government’s ability to force disclosure of journalists’ sources — drew strong objections from President-elect Donald Trump, who’s had a rather rocky relationship with the press.
Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton blocked Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden’s request for unanimous consent to pass the bill, calling the legislation “a threat to U.S. national security and an insult to basic fairness in the principle of equality before the law.”
Though the U.S. House passed its version of the bill through voice vote earlier this year, Trump in November urged congressional Republicans “must kill this bill.”
Reaching unanimous consent — a process to fast-track the passage of bills in the Senate — appeared extremely unlikely given Trump’s sway in the Senate GOP conference.
Cotton, who’s the incoming Senate GOP conference chair, said the measure would “turn reporters into a protected class — free to hold, share and publish highly classified and dangerous information that no other American is allowed to possess.”
He also said the bill would turn the Senate “into the active accomplice of deep-state leakers, traitors and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who helped them out.”
Wyden introduced companion legislation to the House bill in June 2023. GOP Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, along with Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, co-sponsored the bill.
Wyden dubbed the bill “so common sense” and said past administrations on both sides of the aisle have “exploited the lack of a federal shield law to curtail the freedom of the press and in some cases, even jailed journalists who refused to break their journalistic ethics and reveal their sources.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed strong support of the bill and his desire to get it to the president’s desk.
“No democracy can survive without a free and open and thriving press,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
The legislation would establish “appropriate limits on the federally compelled disclosure of information obtained as part of engaging in journalism” and would limit federal law enforcement surveillance of journalists.
Dozens of news media organizations and press advocacy groups have pushed for the legislation’s passage, with press rights organizations voicing concerns about Trump’s incoming return to the Oval Office amid the threats he’s made against journalists.
Federal wildland firefighters earn as little as $15 per hour, with entry level positions earning just less than $27,000 per year, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group. (Photo by U.S. Forest Service)
The $20,000 salary increase for wildland firefighters in the 2021 infrastructure law could be coming to an end next week if Congress doesn’t act.
The infrastructure law included $600 million to boost salaries for the nearly 11,200 wildland firefighters for two years, giving the Interior Department or Forest Service employees a raise of either $20,000 each or 50% of their base salary.
Federal wildland firefighters earn as little as $15 per hour, with entry level positions earning just less than $27,000 per year, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group. Those rates are well below those of some state employees in similar roles.
The problem is Congress provided the higher pay rate would expire with the rest of government spending, which is set for Dec. 20.
Lawmakers are likely to once again pass a continuing resolution prior to that deadline to keep the government open at current spending levels into the new year.
But because the firefighter pay boost was part of the infrastructure law instead of a yearly spending bill, it would require additional legislation to keep being paid out beyond Dec. 20.
Firefighters, their advocates and some members of Congress are now pushing to have the pay raise made permanent, as lawmakers enter the final days of this session of Congress.
President Joe Biden asked for a disaster relief spending bill after hurricanes Helene and Milton to include $24 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Biden called for the bill — which is expected to be attached to the continuing resolution — to include “statutory language to support permanent, comprehensive pay reform for Federal wildland firefighters.”
The disaster aid bill appears the best chance of addressing the issue this year.
And appropriators are looking at fixing the issue in their annual funding bills, even as work on those bills is likely to be paused as Congress instead looks to pass a stopgap measure past Dec. 20 to keep the government funded for the next few months.
A House proposal included in Republicans’ spending bill covering the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies would direct $330 million for a pay increase to replace the expiring infrastructure law salary increase. It would be a permanent pay fix.
Setting a baseline in an annual spending bill would help keep the salaries consistent and avoid the uncertainty that comes with the expiration of the one-time infrastructure law funding, supporters say.
“Rather than continuing temporary and uncertain Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) supplemental payments, the funding in this bill will permanently address Federal wildland firefighter pay and capacity,” the funding bill’s chief sponsor, Idaho Republican Mike Simpson, and Oregon Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer wrote in an August op-ed in the Idaho Statesman.
Simpson is the chair of the subcommittee responsible for writing the bill. Chavez-DeRemer, who represents a purple district in Central Oregon, lost her reelection bid this fall but won a nomination to join President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet as secretary of Labor.
The effort comes amid an atmosphere favorable to funding cuts in Washington. Republicans, who will soon have unified control of Washington as Trump returns to the Oval Office, have blamed the inflation of the past four years on high government spending.
Trump has tasked entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy with looking at ways to reduce federal spending. The pair of wealthy Trump backers has estimated $2 trillion could be trimmed from the $6.75 trillion annual budget, though they have been vague about what exactly would be chopped.
The Musk-Ramaswamy organization, which has not been formally created but is dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is not expected to be an official government entity. A Trump spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment about whether wildland firefighter pay would be a target for funding cuts.
Finding the political will to increase spending for any purpose in such an environment could be challenging, though increasing the pay of wildland firefighters — who work to manage the increasingly severe and costly fires that particularly ravage the rural areas known as the wildland-urban interface — has support from across the political spectrum in Congress, including leading GOP members.
The House funding bill authored by Simpson that included the pay raise passed the House nearly along party lines.
In a video message to constituents this month, Simpson sounded broadly supportive of Musk and Ramaswamy’s mission, but indicated there were areas he would fight to avoid cuts. He did not explicitly mention firefighter pay.
“It will be an interesting debate,” Simpson said of the effort to identify funding cuts. “I don’t mind having outside eyes look at how Congress does their job and how the money is spent. It could be spent more efficiently and more effectively, thus saving the taxpayer money.”
He added he was “excited” to see recommendations from the pair.
“There will be some I suspect I disagree with and a lot of them I probably agree with,” he said. “So that will be a debate for Congress.”
The Senate, which generally requires a much more bipartisan approach than the House, has not passed the Simpson-authored bill that Democrats opposed because of its drastic cuts to the Interior Department and EPA.
But the Senate companion spending bill, sponsored by Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley, who chairs the corresponding spending panel in the Senate, also includes a permanent raise for wildland firefighters, as well as funding for a firefighter health and wellness program and a fund for housing.
“This bill honors the courageous work our federal wildland firefighters do by establishing a permanent fix to prevent a devastating pay cut,” Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, said in a statement after the committee passed the bill 28-1 in July.
The new charges allege longtime Wisconsin GOP attorney Jim Troupis, Kenneth Chesebro and 2020 Donald Trump campaign official Mike Roman defrauded Republicans who cast alternate electoral ballots for Trump.
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A Kenosha company accused of selling unregistered pesticides will pay more than a half-million dollars in a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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Tabitha Crowe’s first child was due in February 2025, but she had a miscarriage in August. (Courtesy of Tabitha Crowe)
Editor’s Note: This is the sixth installment of an occasional States Newsroom series called When and Where: Abortion Access in America, profiling individuals who have needed abortion care in the U.S. before and after Dobbs. The first installment can be found here, the second installment is here, the third is here, the fourth is here, and the fifth is here.
By Sofia Resnick
Tabitha Crowe said she woke up around 4 a.m. one Thursday in August covered in blood. She was visiting her parents in southern Louisiana when she started miscarrying her first pregnancy. She said her mom and dad drove her to a nearby hospital while she fought dizziness from the blood loss in their back seat.
“I didn’t even know I could bleed that much,” Crowe told States Newsroom.
Over the course of the next few days, Crowe said she passed baseball-sized blood clots and experienced extreme pain and dizziness in two different hospitals, while never being offered a common miscarriage procedure, even after she requested it.
An estimated 10 to 20% of known pregnancies in the U.S. end in miscarriage. In about 80% of miscarriages, women are able to expel the pregnancy tissue naturally over a period of one to eight weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. When intervention is necessary in the first trimester, ACOG recommends abortion medications or procedures such as vacuum aspiration or dilation and curettage (D&C). Later in pregnancy, recommended termination procedures include dilation and evacuation (D&E), which has a high safety record but is condemned by anti-abortion groups and banned in some states.
But increasingly, women say they are being denied routine miscarriage care in states like Louisiana, where doctors face imprisonment if they perform an abortion unless a woman is at risk of dying, and where common miscarriage drugs are now more difficult to access. Doctors in Louisiana and Texas have also reported a rise in patients whose pregnancies are no longer viable receiving more risky and invasive terminations, such as Cesarean sections and inductions, in lieu of abortion procedures. It’s a change in practice some doctors involved in the anti-abortion movement endorse.
And in cases like Crowe’s — where death might not be imminent but failing to intervene could increase the risk for infection or other issues — some doctors are telling patients to finish their miscarriages at home.
“I think they were waiting for me to get in bad enough health,” said Crowe, who attributes her experience to Louisiana’s abortion ban, though she said no medical staff mentioned the law or responded to her requests for a D&C.
But waiting for patients’ conditions to worsen can sometimes be fatal, according to an ongoing investigation by ProPublica, which has reported on five deaths linked to abortion bans, most recently a young mom in Texas who spent hours in the ER but was never offered a D&C that could have saved her life.
As stories emerge linking abortion bans to adverse health effects, some state health departments are working to make these stories harder to learn about.
In Georgia, officials recently dismissed all 32 members of the state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee following ProPublica’s reporting that the committee linked two women’s deaths to Georgia’s six-week abortion ban. The state said it would reset the committee through a new application process and is considering measures to ensure patient confidentiality.
In Texas, ProPublica reported that at least three women have died because of delays in care caused by the state’s abortion bans. Despite these reported deaths, Texas’ Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee said it wouldn’t examine any pregnancy-related deaths from 2022 and 2023, the first two years after the state’s near-total abortion ban took effect, according to the Washington Post.
Idaho, shortly after banning abortion, disbanded its Maternal Mortality Review Committee in 2023 after members recommended expanding Medicaid. The recently re-established committee is now backlogged and focused on publishing 2023 data in January before tackling 2022 data. The committee’s last report, based on 2021 data, showed the state’s maternal mortality rate had doubled in recent years and most of the deaths were preventable.
Crowe said her experience has moved her to speak out for better reproductive health care.
“For me to have a miscarriage for the first time, it’s already a very scary process,” said Crowe, who said she eventually got the care she needed outside of Louisiana. “You go to a hospital, you expect care, you expect some type of answers on what’s going on. And I didn’t get that.”
Crowe and her husband, Noah Holesha, live on the Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle. Crowe said her husband is in the Army and she was medically discharged from the military in 2023 and now works as a caretaker. The two married in 2022 and were expecting their first baby in February.
But on the way to LSU Health Lallie Kemp Medical Center in Independence, Louisiana, on Aug. 8, Crowe said she felt she would never get to meet this baby. Two weeks earlier, her 10-week-old fetus only measured 6 weeks. Now in the emergency room, Crowe said medical staff gave her pain medicine, cleared her blood clots, and discharged her to finish miscarrying naturally.
Two days later at her parents’ house, Crowe said she woke up with 10 out of 10 pain.
“I was in excruciating pain again, like screaming and crying pain,” she said.
She said her parents took her back to Lallie Kemp, where they transferred her to St. Tammany Parish Hospital Emergency Department in Covington, about a 45-minute drive, because it was the nearest hospital with a dedicated OB-GYN unit.
“Lallie Kemp Medical Center complies with federal patient privacy laws and therefore cannot discuss specific patients’ care,” Dr. Matloob Rehman, the hospital’s medical director, said in an email. “Lallie Kemp is a small, rural hospital without a full complement of specialists, including obstetrical surgery. If a patient is in need of such care, it is Lallie Kemp’s practice to refer or transfer the patient to a hospital that can provide such services.”
At St. Tammany, Crowe said she spent the day receiving pain medicine and transvaginal ultrasounds and having her vaginal canal cleared of clots. Medical records Crowe shared with States Newsroom indicate she was given misoprostol to evacuate her uterus, which Crowe said she was not aware of. She said the ultrasounds were still showing she had not completed the miscarriage. Crowe’s cousin had recently miscarried, so she and her family knew to ask for a D&C.
“They did ultrasounds and all that, but they didn’t help make sure that the miscarriage was completing,” Crowe said. “We kept telling them, ‘Hey, can y’all just do this D&C, so like we can be done with this pain?’ They wouldn’t answer.”
Crowe’s sister, a nurse in Texas, where abortion is also banned, suggested in a text that maybe it was because of Louisiana’s abortion ban that she wasn’t being offered a D&C.
“I had a sense it was because of the abortion laws, because by the time they did the canal sweep of blood clots, they didn’t even want to listen that I was in pain anymore. They were like, brushing it off, like, you’ll be fine,” Crowe said. “Even if them not doing it was wasn’t because of the abortion laws, I still didn’t get the treatment that I needed.”
Crowe said she was still dizzy and in pain when St. Tammany released her late on Aug. 10. Her St. Tammany hospital medical records say her miscarriage was completed at St. Tammany, which Crowe disputes. Medical records from the hospital in Florida, where she received the D&C, say the patient had an “incomplete miscarriage with evidence of retained POC [products of conception] on TVUS [transvaginal ultrasound], continued bleeding and anemia.”
The St. Tammany Health System Communications Department declined to comment on Crowe’s account, citing patient confidentiality, and said in a statement: “At St. Tammany Health System, we place our patients and their families’ wellbeing first. Patient privacy rights are established by the Federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In compliance with this act, we are not at liberty to provide information or comment.”
Crowe decided to drive the four hours back to Florida. She said her pain had ebbed, but soon after she got home, her husband rushed her to Eglin Air Force Base emergency department, where she said she received a D&C the following day.
The Eglin hospital did not respond to requests for comment.
Crowe said she was still dizzy in the weeks following, and she was confused and angry, believing — without confirmation — that she was denied health care she needed because of a new abortion law. She said she started reaching out to malpractice attorneys, reproductive rights groups, even President-elect Donald Trump.
“I sent everybody emails.” Crowe said. “I reached out to Congress. I reached out to the office of Trump. I reached out to lawyers. It wasn’t anger that I’ve lost the child — because I had a feeling I was going to lose the child — but it was the anger of they didn’t give their 100% care. I was getting in bad shape, health-wise, because of it.”
Louisiana abortion laws affect miscarriage care
Louisiana was one of the first states to ban abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. And it’s the first, followed by Texas, to reclassify two abortion and miscarriage medications — mifepristone and misoprostol — as controlled substances, even though they haven’t been shown to cause addiction or dependence. In late October, health care workers sued the state, arguing that the new law is unconstitutional and has added barriers to emergency care.
One of the legal advocacy groups representing plaintiffs in that case, Lift Louisiana, co-published a report with Physicians for Human Rights with detailed interviews from patients, doctors and clinicians of how the state’s abortion ban has changed reproductive health care in Louisiana. The report found that some OB-GYN practices are now deferring prenatal care until beyond the first trimester, when miscarriage care is more common. Some clinicians reported an increase in patient referrals from rural hospitals for routine care.
“To avoid the risk of criminal penalties under the bans, nearly every clinician relayed an account
in which they and/or their colleagues delayed abortion care until complications worsened to
the point where the patient’s life was irrefutably at risk,” the report reads.
Crowe said she was grateful she was able to get treated, not a given in Florida, which has a six-week abortion ban and where patients have also reported being denied miscarriage treatment. But she lives on a military base, under federal jurisdiction. With a soon-to-be GOP majority in Washington, D.C., anti-abortion activists are pushing Trump to restrict pregnancy termination at military hospitals.
Though she personally disagrees with abortion after the first trimester, Crowe said she now believes in abortion rights.
“Growing up, I was always pro-life, because I always wanted to have a kid and all that,” Crowe said. “I was also the type that’s like, I’m not going to judge you if you do. Now I’m like … the choice to have an abortion is important because some women … we need this procedure done to save our lives, too. My child was already lost; it lost its life. Because of the abortion laws, you’re keeping me from having my life. … I couldn’t grieve because I was in so much pain.”
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Environmental groups are asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to hear their case, challenging approval of a planned $1 billion gas-fired power plant in Superior.
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Community and environmental justice advocates say the Biden administration is failing to deliver promised transparency and public engagement around its $7 billion clean hydrogen hub initiative.
“Engagement isn’t merely leading people into a process that’s going to happen with or without them,” said Tom Torres, hydrogen program director for the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit serving one of the regions where federally funded partnerships are trying to lay the groundwork for new local hydrogen economies. “It means meaningfully involving people in the decisions about the project.”
The U.S. Department of Energy announced funding in October 2023 for seven regional clean hydrogen hubs — clusters of interconnected projects meant to kickstart production of the fuel with little or no greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, the department has held online briefings and virtual listening sessions for each hub, but advocates say they are not getting the kind of information necessary to assess who will be impacted by the projects and how.
Torres and others say they want more than just dots on a map. They want to know how hydrogen will be produced, how it will be used, and how it will get to end users. For projects that depend on carbon capture, they want to know how and where the carbon will be captured, transported and stored. And once the specifics are known, they want a chance to have meaningful input on the final projects.
Spokespeople for the Department of Energy and regional hubs said the answers to those questions are still being worked out and that more engagement is on the horizon. Advocates are increasingly frustrated and fear that community input will come too late to affect how the hubs are developed.
“It doesn’t make sense … on one hand to say there’s not enough on paper to tell the public about, but on the other hand there is enough to allocate almost $1 billion for these companies,” Torres said.
When burned as a fuel source, hydrogen does not emit carbon dioxide, but its production today almost always comes from fossil fuels. Some see a potential for hydrogen to replace natural gas in certain hard-to-electrify sectors such as industry or heavy duty transportation, but the benefits for addressing climate change hinge on whether it can be produced cleanly and at scale.
The Biden administration’s hydrogen hub program, part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, aims to ramp up production of hydrogen made with low-carbon energy, including renewables, nuclear power, and fossil fuels paired with carbon capture.
“It is literally like building the natural gas infrastructure that we have all over the place again for hydrogen,” said Shawn Bennett, energy and resilience manager for Battelle, the project manager for the Appalachian Regional Hydrogen Hub, ARCH2, which includes projects for Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. A majority of its projects will use steam methane reforming to make hydrogen from natural gas, along with carbon capture and storage. Other projects in the hub plan to make hydrogen from waste gases or from electrolysis, which uses energy to split water molecules.
In May, dozens of groups urged the Department of Energy to suspend funding discussions for the ARCH2 project until the public receives detailed information beyond general maps and short project descriptions. On July 31 the Department of Energy formally committed the first $30 million of federal funding to ARCH2, with a total of up to $925 million to be spent over the next decade or so.
Last month, the Department of Energy committed up to $1 billion for the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen, MachH2, which spans Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Iowa and plans to produce hydrogen from a mix of nuclear power, wind energy and natural gas. The department will hold a December 9 briefing on MachH2.
In response to the Energy News Network’s questions about community groups’ complaints about a lack of outreach, a Department of Energy spokesperson provided a statement saying it “has been actively engaged with these communities in support of the economic playbook” of the Biden-Harris administration.
The ARCH2 project held a community outreach session in West Virginia in November, and additional meetings will be held in Ohio and Pennsylvania early next year, Bennett said. Some community group members protested outside at the West Virginia session but then came inside for a good discussion, he added.
Torres said there was no general presentation at the West Virginia meeting, and company representatives were present for only a handful of the hub’s projects. Even then, project information was still sparse.
“It wasn’t an opportunity for people’s voices to be heard,” he said. “What is the value of these events other than checking a box for these companies?”
Advocacy groups focusing on the MachH2 project said months went by without getting updates or details. Then last month, they got less than 24 hours’ notice for a briefing with general descriptions about the MachH2 hub projects.
During that session, representatives for the Department of Energy said a decision on the hub’s funding commitment would come soon, “probably next week sometime,” said Susan Thomas, the legislative and policy director and communications manager for Just Transition Northwest Indiana. Minutes after the November 20 session ended, the Department of Energy announced the MachH2 funding commitment.
“Our jaws were on the table,” Thomas said.
Groups have been trying to get answers from the Department of Energy for more than a year, said Chris Chyung, executive director of Indiana Conservation Voters. In his view, the agency’s approach “is just flouting the law.” According to the Department of Energy’s website, engagement with communities and labor is a key principle required in hubs’ community benefits plans, which are part of hubs’ contractual obligations for funding.
Community groups learned in the November 20 briefing that the MachH2 community engagement would not address concerns related to any pipelines associated with the hub. Instead, those would be handled by a separate office within the Department of Energy.
But a pipeline for northwestern Indiana “is absolutely part and parcel of [a] dirty hydrogen project that is part of MachH2,” and the community should get a say on it, said Lauren Piette, an attorney with Earthjustice, which does not consider hydrogen made with natural gas to be climate-friendly, even with carbon capture.
The Department of Energy spokesperson did not respond to the Energy News Network’s question about how community benefits for hub projects can fully be assessed if they don’t include consideration of issues and input related to necessary pipelines.
Representatives of the MachH2 and ARCH2 hubs who spoke at an Ohio Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Consortium program last month said they couldn’t practically engage in community outreach until funding commitments had been negotiated with the Department of Energy. Until then, it wasn’t certain whether each hub would move forward.
Also, as a practical matter, “there was no budget for these things,” Bennett said. Details for each hub’s projects are still being worked out, and ARCH2 is still trying to add additional project partners.
Even then, details for projects won’t be finalized until review under the National Environmental Policy Act, according to Neil Banwart, who is the chief integration officer for the MachH2 hub and also the managing director for hydrogen at Energy Systems Network.
“It’s not a certainty that all of the projects will get built in the locations that we shared on a map,” he said.
Chyung said he felt the comments about funding were “a complete dodge on behalf of these extremely wealthy national corporations that have said since 2023 they were eager to get started on community outreach.”
Advocates frustrated by lack of transparency, engagement on regional hydrogen hub projects is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.
Wisconsin is among 38 states that have legalized some form of sports betting. Even though Wisconsin’s laws on the practice are more restrictive than other states, experts say problem gambling is going up here, too.
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The other day, in my role as an advocate for open government, I heard from a Wisconsin resident who has waited more than five months for records he requested from a local law enforcement agency. He has gently prodded the agency several times, asking, “How much more time is my request going to take?” More than three months have passed since these queries have yielded a response.
Such long, frustrating wait times are not uncommon. Wisconsin’s Open Records Law allows any person to obtain any document in the possession of state and local government officials, with limited exceptions. But, unlike in some other states, there is no set time limit. Rather, the law simply directs record custodians to act “as soon as practicable and without delay.”
What does that mean? Good question.
The state Justice Department has said that “10 working days is a reasonable time for an authority to respond” to simple records requests. But this is not binding advice. Moreover, no court has ever ruled that a particular wait time was excessive.
I tell people experiencing long wait times to practice their “Ps”: Be polite. Be persistent. And be pragmatic — offer to clarify or refine your request to make it more manageable. Sometimes, this helps move things along. Other times, it seems to make no difference.
That’s where Tom Kamenick comes in. He is the founder and president of the Wisconsin Transparency Project, the state’s only law firm devoted entirely to open government litigation. Since 2019, Kamenick has filed seven lawsuits alleging illegal delays in the processing of open records requests. He has lost only one case — in which the records were provided but had ended up in the requester’s spam folder.
His other six cases ended in settlements favorable to the requestors: Records were provided, legal costs were covered and, in at least one case, the custodian apologized. The problem is that these settlement wins do not set a legal precedent that can be cited by others, although they do add credibility to threats of legal action.
Last year, Kamenick sued the Madison Police Department on my behalf after it told me to expect a wait time of 14 months to obtain records related to police discipline. The office hired additional staff and authorized overtime to reduce its backlog. Last month, Kamenick sued the Racine County Sheriff’s Department on behalf of a local resident, Mitchell Berman, over its long delays in producing records including video footage. “Delays like this are all too common,” Kamenick noted in a statement.
Custodians often contend they lack the staff and resources to handle requests more promptly. Kamenick’s response is to say it isn’t a question of resources but priorities. One school district he sued had a $600 million budget and assigned a single staff position devoted to records requests, then allowed that position to go unfilled.
Indeed, the records law expressly states that handling records requests “is declared to be an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties of officers and employees whose responsibility it is to provide such information.” That means it should be more of a priority.
Eventually the courts should weigh in on this, in a precedent-setting case. The problem also cries out for a legislative solution. A revised law could still say “as soon as practicable and without delay,” but also set a time limit of, say, 30 days, for records to be provided, absent extraordinary circumstances. Perhaps the state could provide additional funding or guidance to help make this doable — certainly there are worse ways it could spend its $4.6 billion budget surplus.
There is an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied; the same is true for records requests. If you don’t get the records until you can hardly remember what you wanted them for, the law is not working as intended.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders, a writer in Madison and editor-at-large of The Progressive, is the group’s president.
Your Right to Know: Long waits undercut records law 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.
Tech insiders say Biden is leaving a strong foundation for high-tech industry, boosting broadband access, setting a foundation for AI regulation, and encouraging chip manufacturing. (Rebecca Noble | Getty Images)
As he’s poised to leave office in two months, President Joe Biden will leave a legacy of “proactive,” “nuanced” and “effective” tech policy strategy behind him, technologists across different sectors told States Newsroom.
Biden’s term was bookended by major issues in the tech world. When he took office in early 2021, he was faced with an economy and workforce that was struggling to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, and longstanding issues with a digital divide across the country. As he prepares to exit the White House, federal agencies are working to incorporate the principles from the 2023 AI Bill of Rights, on evolving technologies that will undoubtedly continue changing American life.
Though he was unable to get federal regulations on AI passed through Congress, Biden’s goal was to bring tech access to all Americans, while safeguarding against potential harms, the technologists said.
“I think everything that he does is foundational,” said Suriel Arellano, a longtime consultant and author on digital transformation who’s based in Los Angeles. “So it definitely sets the stage for long term innovation and regulation.”
For Arellano, Biden’s attempt to bring internet access to all families stands out as a lasting piece of the president’s legacy. Broadband internet for work, healthcare and education was a part of Biden’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, especially targeting people in rural areas.
Biden earmarked $65 billion toward the project, which was dolled out to states and federal departments to establish or improve the physical infrastructure to support internet access. As of September, more than 2.4 million previously unserved homes and businesses have been connected to the internet, and $50 billion has been given to grant programs that support these goals across the states.
Arellano said he thinks there’s still work to do with the physical broadband infrastructure before that promise is realized — “I think that should have come first,” he said.
“But I think as a legacy, I think breaching the digital divide is actually one of the strong — maybe not the strongest, but I would say it’s definitely a strong legacy that he leaves,” Arellano said.
During Biden’s presidency, practical and responsible application of artificial intelligence became a major part of the tech conversation. The 2023 AI Bill of Rights created the White House AI Council, the creation of a framework for federal agencies to follow relating to privacy protection and a list of guidelines for securing AI workers, for navigating the effects on the labor market and for ensuring equity in AI use, among others.
The guidelines put forth by the administration are subtle, and “not likely to be felt by the average consumer,” said Austin-based Alex Shahrestani, an attorney and managing partner at Promise Legal, which specializes in tech and regulatory policy.
“It was something that’s very light touch and essentially sets up the groundwork to introduce a regulatory framework for AI providers without it being something that they’re really going to push back on,” Shahrestani said.
In recent months, some federal agencies have released their guidelines called for by the AI Bill of Rights, including the Department of Labor, and The Office of Management and Budget, which outlines how the government will go about “responsible acquisition” of AI. It may not seem like these guidelines would affect the average consumer, Shahrestani said, but government contractors are likely to be larger companies that already have a significant commercial footprint.
“It sets up these companies to then follow these procedures in other contexts, so whether that’s B2B or direct-to-consumer applications, that’s like more of a trickle down sort of approach,” he said.
Sheena Franklin, D.C.-based founder of K’ept Health and previously a lobbyist, said Biden emphasized the ethical use and development of AI, and set a tone of fostering public trust and preventing harm with the AI Bill of Rights.
Franklin and Shahrestani agreed it’s possible that President-elect Donald Trump could repeal some of Biden’s executive orders on AI, but they see the Bill of Rights as a fairly light approach to regulating it.
“It was a really nuanced and effective approach,” Shahrestani said. “There’s some inertia building, right? Like a snowball rolling down the hill. We’re early days for the snowball, but it just got started and it will only grow to be a bigger one.”
Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which aimed to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing, supply chains and the innovation economy with a $53 billion investment, is a major piece of his legacy, Franklin said. The bill centered on worker and community investments, and prioritized small businesses and underrepresented communities, with a goal of economic growth in the U.S., and especially in communities that needed support.
Two years after the bill was signed, the federal government, in partnership with American companies, has provided funding for semiconductor manufacturing projects that created more than 100,000 jobs and workforce development programs. The U.S. is on track to produce 30% of the world’s semiconductor chips in 2032, up from 10% today.
“He was really trying to position the U.S. as a global leader when it came to technology, because that industry is going to continue to grow,” Franklin said.
It’s hard to quantify what the lasting impact of the CHIPS act will be, but one immediate factor is computing, Shahrestani said. The AI models being developed right now have infinite abilities, he said, but the computing power had previously held the industry back.
“Being able to provide more compute through better chips, and more sophisticated hardware is going to be a big part of what provides, and what is behind the best AI technologies,” Shahrestani said.
Many in the Big Tech community see Biden’s AI Bill of Rights, and its data privacy inclusions, as well as the Justice Department’s monopoly lawsuits against tech giants like Apple and Google, as hampering innovation.
Arellano is optimistic about the technological advances and innovation that the U.S. may see under a less regulation-focused Trump presidency, but he cautions that some regulations may be needed for privacy protections.
“My concern is always on the public side, you know, putting the dog on a leash, and making sure that our regulations are there in place to protect the people,” he said.
Franklin predicts that if Biden attempts any last-minute tech policy before he leaves office, it will probably be to pursue further antitrust cases. It would align with his goal of fostering competition between startups and small businesses and reinforce his legacy of safeguarding consumer interests, she said.
When she considered how to describe Biden’s tech legacy, Franklin said she nearly used the word “strength,” though she said he ultimately could have done a little bit more for tech regulation. But she landed on two words: “thoughtful and proactive.”
“Meaning, he’s thinking about everybody’s concerns,” Franklin said. “Not just thinking about the Big Tech and not just thinking about the consumers, right? Like there has to be a balance there.”
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A Kenosha teen who had his conviction on a sexual assault charge set aside by a Kenosha judge last week was released from jail Tuesday morning pending a possible second trial.
The post Kenosha teen released on bond after conviction thrown out appeared first on WPR.
President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he would nominate former Congressman Sean Duffy as Transportation secretary. In this photo, Duffy and his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, speak onstage during the 2023 FOX Nation Patriot Awards at The Grand Ole Opry on Nov. 16, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)
President-elect Donald Trump will nominate former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin Republican, to be the next secretary of Transportation, Trump said in a statement Monday evening.
Duffy, who earned praise from both parties during his House tenure for helping to pass legislation funding a bridge connecting Wisconsin and Minnesota, won five elections to the U.S. House but resigned his seat in 2019 to care for a daughter born with a heart condition and Down syndrome.
Duffy appeared on MTV’s “The Real World” before running for Congress. He met his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, on the show.
After leaving Congress, Duffy returned to TV, appearing as a commentator on CNN, a contributor for Fox News and later a co-host on Fox Business.
A former member of the House Financial Services Committee, he also led the financial services practice at the Republican-leaning lobbying firm BGR Group.
In the written statement from the presidential transition, Trump highlighted Duffy’s years in Congress.
“Sean will use his experience and the relationships he has built over many years in Congress to maintain and rebuild our Nation’s Infrastructure, and fulfill our Mission of ushering in The Golden Age of Travel, focusing on Safety, Efficiency, and Innovation,” Trump wrote. “Importantly, he will greatly elevate the Travel Experience for all Americans!”
Trump and Duffy appear to enjoy a warm relationship, with the former president encouraging Duffy to run for Wisconsin governor in 2022, bypassing the front-runner for the GOP nomination, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.
Congress passed, and President Joe Biden signed, a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021. That law authorizes highway and transit programs through the end of September 2026.
The law increased several sources of transportation funding, including some grant programs that are awarded at the secretary’s discretion.
If confirmed, Duffy would also oversee the Federal Aviation Administration, which is monitoring Boeing after a series of safety mishaps involving the manufacturer’s jets.
New standards for rail safety, following a disastrous derailment last year of a train carrying hazardous materials near East Palestine, Ohio, and autonomous vehicles could also be on the next secretary’s agenda.
Trump’s Transportation secretary in his first term was Elaine Chao, who was the Labor secretary under former President George W. Bush. Chao, who is married to outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, announced her resignation from the administration on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Trump’s record on transportation during his first term was marked by a series of false starts on a massive infrastructure package that never materialized. Some inside the administration sought to boost private-sector involvement in infrastructure, while others favored more direct federal spending.
What it takes to be a medical examiner in Wisconsin amid chronic staffing shortages in an ever-changing field.
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Authorities don’t yet know where exactly Ryan Borgwardt is, but they’ve narrowed it down to somewhere in eastern Europe.
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Workers remove a lead service line before it’s replaced by a brass one in Providence, R.I., in 2023. A new federal rule will require water systems across the country to replace roughly 9 million lead service lines to protect residents from potential poisoning. (Kevin G. Andrade | Rhode Island Current)
A new federal rule will require water utilities across the country to pull millions of lead drinking water pipes out of the ground and replace them, at a cost of billions of dollars.
States, cities and water utilities agree that the lead pipes need to go to ensure safe water for residents. But they say they may struggle to do so in the 10-year window required under the rule, and they fear some ratepayers will be hit with massive cost increases to pay for the work.
State officials are urging Congress to provide ongoing funding for the lead replacement effort. Local leaders say they’ll need lots of help to meet the deadline. And environmental advocates are calling on states to issue bonds or provide other financial support to water utilities.
“It took us close to 100 years to get all of these lead service lines in the ground, and the EPA is asking us to get them out in 10 years,” said Tom Dobbins, CEO of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, an advocacy group for publicly owned water systems. “The [Biden] administration grossly underestimated the cost. Obviously, if the federal government doesn’t provide the funding for this, the ratepayers will have to pay for this. That exacerbates certain communities’ affordability issues.”
The new rule, issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in October, requires cities and water utilities to replace all lead service lines — the pipes that run from water mains to private residences under lawns and sidewalks. Because the lines extend under private property, some water system operators say the rule has created confusion over whether utilities or homeowners will be responsible for the replacement costs.
The EPA estimates that more than 9 million service lines are made of lead, a neurotoxin that can cause nervous system damage, learning disabilities and other health problems, especially in children. If lead pipes corrode, as in the infamous case of Flint, Michigan, they can poison drinking water.
It took us close to 100 years to get all of these lead service lines in the ground, and the EPA is asking us to get them out in 10 years.
– Tom Dobbins, CEO of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies
While no amount of lead exposure is safe, the federal rule now requires utilities to notify the public and improve corrosion treatment if lead in their water exceeds 10 parts per billion. Some homes in Syracuse, New York, recently tested at 70 parts per billion.
“This is a significant public health advance,” said Erik Olson, who leads a drinking water protection campaign with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental nonprofit. “We’ve known for decades that lead service lines are dangerous, and, unfortunately, a lot of utilities just kept putting it on the back burner.”
Under the rule, water systems will have until 2027 to draft a plan for replacing their lead lines, after which they will have 10 years to complete the work.
Olson said President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to roll back many environmental regulations, would have a difficult time undoing the lead rule. A provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act prevents “backsliding” for federal protections, he said, and efforts to overturn the rule through Congress could prove deeply unpopular.
The federal mandate comes after some states, including Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey, already issued their own lead replacement requirements and directed funding to their hardest-hit communities.
“It’s a challenging goal, but I think we’ve shown it’s achievable,” said Eric Oswald, director of the Drinking Water and Environmental Health Division in the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. “I’m trying to make Michigan the first state to remove all lead service lines.”
The federal rule will accelerate Michigan’s timeline, as state regulations gave utilities a 20-year replacement window. But the initial state requirement has given water systems there a head start. Michigan has somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 service lines, of which it’s replaced about 50,000 so far. Oswald acknowledged that the work will be expensive.
In New Jersey, water utilities have replaced more than 25,000 service lines since a state lead law was passed in 2021 (that figure does not include a previous effort that replaced 23,000 pipes in Newark). But the state still has more than 120,000 lead service lines, which it said will cost at least $1.8 billion to replace.
“There’s nothing yet that has made me think that it’s not achievable, but right now the focus has been on getting a good inventory,” said Trish Ingelido, director of water supply and geoscience at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. “We’ll have a better sense in the next two years what the replacement rate is looking like.”
The EPA estimates that the cost of replacing lead pipes nationwide will be about $45 billion. A separate analysis by the consulting firm Safe Water Engineering, funded by the Natural Resources Defense Council, arrived at a similar figure. But the American Water Works Association, a coalition of water system operators, puts the cost at closer to $90 billion.
“This is important on the public health side, but it’s a challenge for local governments,” said Carolyn Berndt, legislative director for sustainability at the National League of Cities, which advocates for municipal governments. “We do see this raising concerns about affordability.”
While local governments worry about expenses, the EPA says that the public health costs of lead poisoning are far greater. A federal analysis estimates that the rule, on an annual basis, will prevent 1,500 cases of premature death from heart disease and protect 900,000 infants from having low birthweight. The agency says the savings from avoiding the poisoning of residents will be 13 times greater than the cost of replacing the pipes.
The EPA contends that replacement costs will be affordable. It estimates that household-level costs associated with the rule will range from 10 cents to $10 a month. The agency pointed to the success of states such as Michigan and New Jersey, which have already replaced tens of thousands of pipes, as evidence that the 10-year timeline is achievable. Federal officials argue that the market will correct for any shortages of labor and material that some states fear will slow the work.
The feds have provided $15 billion for lead service line replacement through the 2021 infrastructure law passed by Congress, plus another $11.7 billion in state-administered drinking water funds that can be used for new lines. Some communities have used those federal grants and loans, along with pandemic relief funds, to make significant progress on their lead problem.
So far, the EPA says it has distributed $9 billion of the money targeted at service line replacements, enough to change out up to 1.7 million pipes. But many water systems are still working to inventory their lead pipes, leaving them little time to compete for the federal funding that expires in 2026.
“[Federal investments] provided significant new funding for this effort, but it’s absolutely not nearly enough for the successful implementation of the rule,” said Ben Grumbles, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States, a nonprofit association of environmental agency leaders.
Grumbles noted that state agencies also are facing significant expenses from new federal rules to limit exposure to PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in drinking water (lead, a naturally occurring metal, is not among the man-made PFAS chemicals).
At the local level, leaders are scrounging for funding as best they can.
“We’re looking at federal money, we’re looking at bonds, we’re looking at different loans and grants,” said Randy Conner, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Water Management. “We’re making sure we turn over all the couch cushions to find every quarter we can possibly find to put towards this effort.”
Chicago has an estimated 400,000 lead pipes, more than any other U.S. city. Because of the sheer scale of the problem, the EPA gave Chicago an extended deadline of 20 years to replace its lines. Even so, that would require pulling out 19,000 lines a year, well more than the city’s current pace of 8,000. That work will cost about $780 million annually, according to city officials.
Conner said the city is hoping for more federal and state support to avoid placing a heavy burden on ratepayers.
Meanwhile, state and local leaders say Congress is interfering with a key source of money for lead line replacement. Two loan programs, funded by the federal government but administered by states, provide crucial financing for water infrastructure work. State agency leaders deploy the funding based on detailed assessments of community needs.
But in recent years, members of Congress have bypassed states’ funding strategies to earmark money for projects in their districts. State agencies say they’re receiving less than half of the pool of money after Congress assigns its favored projects. That has left them less able to help the neediest communities. And many of the congressionally designated projects are lagging because they haven’t gone through the rigorous preparation work required by states.
“By diverting so much funding away from the successful [loan programs], disadvantaged communities are less likely to get funding,” said Grumbles, who oversees the coalition of state agencies.
Grumbles and others argue that any earmarks from Congress should only be in addition to the baseline loan program funding.
Costs aren’t the only obstacle water systems are facing. Some are concerned that the rush to replace millions of pipes nationwide will strain the workforce and supply chain capacity.
“The limiting factor is going to be the availability of contractors and professionals and materials to do the actual work,” said Robert Boos, executive director of the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority. “That’s going to be a national issue, when you’ve got tens of thousands of communities trying to do this work.”
Pennsylvania has boosted clean water funding in its state budget, and it’s trying to tackle the workforce issue as well. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order in 2023 to create a workforce training program for infrastructure jobs, including lead pipe replacement.
Olson, the environmental advocate, pointed to Newark, New Jersey, which partnered with a labor union to train local residents. The city replaced all of its 23,000 lead service lines in just over two years.
“Creative thinking and political will are really what’s needed,” he said. “This is definitely doable.”
Another potential problem is the fact that service lines lie under private property, meaning utilities need cooperation from homeowners to conduct the work. In some cases, they’ve run into opposition from residents or struggled to reach absentee landlords.
“People just don’t trust government; they don’t think that anything is free,” said Conner, the Chicago official. “We want them to understand that we’re not coming into their house to give citations.”
Environmental advocates also note that service lines’ placement on private property has created confusion over who must pay to replace them. The federal rule does not explicitly make water utilities responsible.
“When the city goes to a household and says you have to pay a couple thousand dollars to replace your portion of the lead service line, it may work for higher-income people,” Olson said. “But the studies are showing that lower-income homeowners and landlords will not pay for it. It’s a real exacerbation of environmental injustices.”
He pointed to Michigan, which adopted a rule specifying that water systems are responsible for the costs of replacing lines. He also noted that some cities have passed ordinances allowing residents of a home to authorize pipe replacement if a landlord can’t be reached.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.
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Justice Jill Karofsky appeared immediately opposed to attorney Matthew Thome’s proposed interpretation Wisconsin's 1849 law with regard to abortion. (Screenshot via Wiseye)
Several of the Wisconsin Supreme Court liberal justices appeared opposed to the enforcement of a 174-year old law when it comes to abortion during oral arguments Monday in a high-profile case meant to clarify law in the state.
Wisconsin abortion law has been unsettled since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, sending decisions about abortion legality back to states. Health care providers in Wisconsin immediately ceased providing abortion care due to the state’s 1849 law. Attorney General Josh Kaul and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers filed a lawsuit challenging the statute in June 2022, arguing that it had been superseded by other laws passed by the state, including a ban on abortions after 20 weeks enacted in 2015, and could not be enforced as applied to abortions.
Access ceased for 15 months until a Dane County judge ruled in December 2023 that the law applies to feticide, not abortion, allowing providers to resume services. Sheboygan District Attorney Joel Urmanski, a defendant in the case, appealed the decision to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and Kaul also wanted a review of the decision from the Court. Milwaukee County DA John T. Chisholm and Dane County DA Ismael Ozanne are also defendants in the case, but both oppose enforcing the law.
The pre-Civil War Wisconsin statute states that any person “other than the mother, who intentionally destroys the life of an unborn child is guilty of a Class H felony” and that any person who “intentionally destroys the life of an unborn quick child” is guilty of a Class E felony. It specifies that “unborn child” is defined as “a human being from the time of conception until it is born alive. It includes no exceptions for rape or incest or specific medical complications. The only exception for the law is the life of a mother.
Urmanski’s attorney, Matthew Thome, defended the enforcement of the statute Monday morning, saying lawmakers never repealed it. Republican lawmakers have proposed updates to the 1849 law in the last two years, including a 14-week abortion ban, but the proposals have failed to become law.
“Policymakers have not repealed it. Indeed, they have expressly declined to do so at multiple opportunities and until they do, it can be enforced,” Thome said.
He argued that the question over whether Wisconsinites would be “better served” by a different law is not for the Court to decide.
Justice Jill Karofsky appeared immediately opposed to Thome’s proposed interpretation of the law.
“Just to be clear, a 12-year-old girl, who was sexually assaulted by her father, and as a result became pregnant under your interpretation [of the law], she would be forced to carry her pregnancy to term, correct?” Karofsky asked.
“Under the policy choice the Legislature made…, that would be correct,” Thome said.
“So in that case, a child would be forced to deliver a baby,” Karofsky said.
Karofsky pushed the point, asking about the consequences of a victim of sexual assault seeking an abortion under the law if it were enforceable.
“How about a woman who is a college freshman here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison? If she is sexually assaulted and it’s charged as a third degree sexual assault… that would be intercourse without consent. If she became pregnant, as a result of the sexual assault, it would be illegal for her to obtain an abortion?” Karofsky said.
“Correct, it would be illegal for a doctor to provide an abortion to her in the state of Wisconsin,” Thome said.
“If her assaulter is charged…, he would be facing a 10-year maximum imprisonment because that would be a Class G felony,” Karofsky said. “In that case, the penalty for aborting, after a sexual assault, would be more severe than the penalty for the sexual assault.”
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimates that since the Dobbs decision more than 64,000 pregnancies have been cause by rape in states with abortion bans.
“I fear what you are asking this Court to do is to sign the death warrants of women and children and pregnant people in this state because under your interpretation they could all be denied life-saving medical care while the medical professionals who are charged with taking care of them are forced to sit idly by,” Karofsky said. “This is the world gone mad.”
Justices also asked about the web of laws passed in the state, and appeared to disagree with Thome’s argument that the 1849 law completely negates them.
“We have statute after statute that you are somehow asking us to just absolutely ignore in your interpretation,” Justice Rebecca Dallet said. “We have a statute that talks about when an abortion can be performed and that’s after 20 weeks. We have a 24-hour waiting period. We have informed consent provisions. We have a ban on what they label to be partial birth abortion.”
Dallet asked Thome how he reconciles the 1849 statute with the later statute passed in 2015 that prohibits abortion after 20 weeks and the other laws related to abortion.
“I fit those things together… because that statute doesn’t say you can have an abortion,” Thome said.
Justice Brian Hagedorn appeared to agree that the 1849 law applies to abortion, and said later laws don’t negate it.
“It’s a matter of straight reasonable statutory interpretation,” Hagedorn said. “The law’s still there. It’s still there. The judiciary doesn’t get to edit laws. The judiciary doesn’t get to rewrite them. We didn’t delete it. We prevented its enforcement now, it’s still there.”
Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Hannah Jurss, who represented Kaul, argued that there was an “implied repeal” of the 1849 law, when lawmakers passed other statutes regulating abortion access in the state.
“The standard implied repeal rule is it’s the earlier law that falls and there’s nothing in the text of the Wisconsin statutes… that would say disregard all of that, and instead in the event of Roe being overturned go back to 940.04, and we know state Legislatures knew how to do this because… a number of states enacted trigger bans,” Jurss said. “Wisconsin did not.”
Kaul said at a press conference following the arguments that the Legislature should take up some of the other laws related to abortion access in the state, no matter the outcome of the lawsuit.
“There are now relatively narrow majorities for Republicans in the state Legislature,” Kaul said. The Assembly is now a 54-45 Republican majority, while the Senate is an 18-15 Republican majority. “It is very clear that Wisconsinites overwhelmingly support having safe access to abortion in the state. For those legislators in these districts that are very moderate, where those districts could go either way, I think we ought to ask those folks, do they support some common sense changes that will protect access to abortion care in Wisconsin.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has also agreed to hear a second lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin against Urmanski, which asks the Court to find that the state Constitution’s right to equal protection grants a right to receive an abortion and a doctor’s right to provide one.
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The Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, Oct. 15, spoke to the Economic Club of Chicago. In this photo, he speaks to attendees during a campaign rally at the Mosack Group warehouse on Sept. 25 in Mint Hill, North Carolina. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump defended his plans for steep tariffs on Tuesday, arguing economists who say that those higher costs would get passed onto consumers are incorrect and that his proposals would benefit American manufacturing.
During an argumentative hour-long interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump vehemently denied tariffs on certain imported goods would lead to further spikes in inflation and sour America’s relationship with allies, including those in Europe.
“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States, and build a factory in the United States so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff,” Trump said.
Micklethwait questioned Trump about what would happen to consumer prices during the months or even years it would take companies to build factories in the United States and hire workers.
Trump responded that he could make tariffs “so high, so horrible, so obnoxious that they’ll come right away.” Earlier during the interview, Trump mentioned placing tariffs on foreign-made products as high as 100% or 200%.
Harris-Walz 2024 spokesperson Joseph Costello wrote in a statement released following the interview that “Trump showed exactly why Americans can’t afford a second Trump presidency.”
“An angry, rambling Donald Trump couldn’t focus, had to be repeatedly reminded of the topic at hand, and whenever he did stake out a position, it was so extreme that no Americans would want it,” Costello wrote. “This was yet another reminder that a second Trump term is a risk Americans simply cannot take.”
Micklethwait noted during the interview that 40 million jobs and 27% of gross domestic product within the United States rely on trade, questioning how tariffs on those products would help the economy.
He also asked Trump if his plans for tariffs could lead the country down a similar path to the one that followed the Smoot-Hawley tariff law becoming law in June 1930. Signed by President Herbert Hoover, some historians and economists have linked the law to the beginning of the Great Depression.
Trump disagreed with Micklethwait, though he didn’t detail why his proposals to increase tariffs on goods from adversarial nations as well as U.S. allies wouldn’t begin a trade war.
The U.S. Senate’s official explainer on the Smoot-Hawley tariffs describes the law as being “among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.” And the Congressional Research Services notes in a report on U.S. tariff policy that it was the last time lawmakers set tariff rates.
Desmond Lachman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, wrote last month that Trump’s proposal to implement tariffs of at least 60% on goods imported from China as well as 10 to 20% on all other imports could have severe economic consequences.
“It is difficult to see how such a unilateral trade policy in flagrant violation of World Trade Organization rules would not lead to retaliation by our trade partners with import tariff increases of their own,” Lachman wrote. “As in the 1930s, that could lead us down the destructive path of beggar-my-neighbor trade policies that could cause major disruption to the international trade system. Such an occurrence would be particularly harmful to our export industries and would heighten the chances of both a US and worldwide economic recession.”
CRS notes in its reports that while the Constitution grants Congress the authority to establish tariffs, lawmakers have given the president some authority over it as well.
The United States’ membership in the World Trade Organization and various other trade agreements also have “tariff-related commitments,” according to CRS.
“For more than 80 years, Congress has delegated extensive tariff-setting authority to the President,” the CRS report states. “This delegation insulated Congress from domestic pressures and led to an overall decline in global tariff rates. However, it has meant that the U.S. pursuit of a low-tariff, rules-based global trading system has been the product of executive discretion. While Congress has set negotiating goals, it has relied on Presidential leadership to achieve those goals.”
Trump said during the interview that he believes the president should have more input into whether the Federal Reserve raises or lowers interest rates, though he didn’t answer a question about keeping Jerome Powell as the chairman through the end of his term.
“I think I have the right to say I think he should go up or down a little bit,” Trump said. “I don’t think I should be allowed to order it. But I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether or not interest rates should go up or down.”
Trump declined to answer a question about whether he’s spoken with Russian leader Vladimir Putin since leaving office.
“I don’t comment on that,” Trump said. “But I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”
Journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his new book “War” that Trump and Putin have spoken at least seven times and that Trump secretly sent Putin COVID-19 tests during the pandemic, which the Kremlin later confirmed, according to several news reports.
Trump said the presidential race will likely come down to Pennsylvania, Michigan and possibly Arizona.
The Economic Club of Chicago has also invited Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for a sit-down interview.
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People attend a "Fight4Her" pro-choice rally in front of the White House at Lafayette Square on March 29, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)
We knew what would happen when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
We knew women would be denied access to abortion in many states, including here in Wisconsin. We knew patients would be forced to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get care. We knew there would be people who would be forced to stay pregnant against their will. We knew doctors would be put in impossible positions, knowing they had the skill and knowledge to help their patients but fearing incarceration and the loss of their careers due to state laws.
In Wisconsin, abortion was suspended immediately after Roe was overturned due to an 1849 law that prosecutors threatened to use to ban abortion in the state. This forced 9 in 10 people to travel out of state for care, putting people’s health and lives at risk. Fortunately, 15 months later, after thousands of Wisconsin women were denied care, a Dane County judge ruled that Wisconsin’s pre-Roe statute does not ban abortion. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has resumed providing abortion care, but women’s health has suffered, confusion remains, and the threats to reproductive care and freedom continue in the Legislature, Congress and the courts.
Today, 21 states have banned abortion, and 29 million women and people across the gender spectrum who are of reproductive age are living under those bans. That number includes 44% of all women of reproductive age, and 55% of Black women.
And we knew women would die because of these bans. We didn’t know how many, or where, or who they would be. But now we have names. Two women — both Black women, both mothers — in Georgia died in 2022, in the first months without a federal constitutional right to abortion. According to Georgia’s Department of Public Health maternal mortality review committee, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller died preventable deaths, as a direct result of Georgia’s abortion ban.
Women and families have been telling their stories everywhere anyone will pay attention — on social media, on national television, in local newspapers. They are telling the world that abortion is essential health care, that women, trans and nonbinary people are suffering under these bans. They’re reminding us that access to sexual and reproductive health care is not a luxury to be awarded to the few: it is essential if we call ourselves a free country.
The stories are piling up, some of them heartbreaking, some of them enraging, some of them achingly familiar to our own experiences or those of people we love. After all, one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime, which means we all know someone who has had an abortion, whether they’ve shared that story or not.
And we know what will happen if politicians against reproductive freedom take power this election. We know because they’ve already shown us what they will do, and they continue to pursue additional restrictions on our freedom to access needed information and health care.
Our democracy and basic human rights are on the ballot in November. What we can do is vote.
We can elect leaders who will protect our right to make our own decisions about our bodies. Because there is no politician, of any party, who is more qualified, at any point in pregnancy, to make decisions about your pregnancy than you and your doctor.
And people know this. Nearly 80% of Americans believe the decision whether to have an abortion should be left to a woman and her doctor, rather than regulated by law.
Every ballot cast in every election is a nudge toward a different future. Those nudges, taken together, determine the path our country will follow. The moral arc of the universe only bends toward justice and freedom if we all pull together.
So fight for the future you want, the future we all deserve. Vote for freedom.
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President Joe Biden speaks Tuesday in Milwaukee, announcing a new rule requiring the replacement of all led pipes in the U.S. by 2037. (Screenshot | White House livestream)
All U.S. municipalities will be required to remove lead from their water lines over a 10-year period under new federal regulations the Environmental Protection Agency released Tuesday.
To officially announce the new rule, President Joe Biden traveled to Milwaukee, where he spoke about the role that his administration’s bipartisan infrastructure law played in advancing the replacement of lead pipes in Wisconsin’s largest city as well as across the country.
“For too long, local communities have known how important it was to deal with this problem,” Biden said. “It hadn’t been given the national priority it demanded, though. I’m here today to tell you that I’m finally insisting that it gets prioritized, and I’m insisting to get it done well.”
The U.S. has more than 9 million water service lines still using lead pipes, according to the EPA, including 340,000 lines in Wisconsin.
The infrastructure law includes $15 billion for lead pipe replacement. It also contains incentives to use union labor and to create apprenticeship programs to train more workers.
Underscoring that, Biden was introduced by Alonso Romo, a Laborers Union member who has been among the workers replacing lead lines in Milwaukee.
“I personally helped move 35 lead laterals, and while I have a lot more to do, I know we’re making great pace,” Romo said. “This is hard work, but it is so rewarding. Not only am I getting paid great wages and great benefits, but I know that when I am removing a lead service lateral, I’m helping a family in our community have access to clean drinking water.”
Nationally about 367,000 lead lines have been replaced — and in the process, Biden said, “providing what’s good for our health and for our environment is also good for our economy and it’s good for jobs.”
The rule released Tuesday is an update of the federal lead and copper rule for drinking water. The 10-year timeline it requires for all communities to replace their lead service lines starts in 2027.
“This is also about fairness,” Biden said. “Nationally, I’m directing nearly half of this funding to go to disadvantaged communities that have borne the brunt of lead pipe poisoning for damn too long.”
A disproportionate number of people living where lead pipes remain in use are people of color, Biden said. “We have an obligation to make things right.”
Advocates praised the measure as a boon to public health.
“As we confront the legacy of lead contamination, this rule strengthens accountability and prioritizes the safety of our most vulnerable communities,” said Sara Welling, director of the water and agriculture program at Clean Wisconsin. “Today’s announcement sets us on a course for a healthier future, empowering local governments and water utilities to address this persistent threat with greater urgency and transparency.”
This report has been updated to correct the spelling of Alonso Romo’s first name.
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