Former Dane County Judge James Troupis appears in court on Dec. 12. He faces felony forgery charges for his role in developing the 2020 false elector scheme to overturn the election results for Donald Trump. (Screenshot | WisEye)
Two former attorneys and a campaign staff member for President-elect Donald Trump made their initial appearance in Dane County Circuit Court Thursday in the felony cases against them for their roles in hatching the scheme to cast false Electoral College votes for Trump following the 2020 election.
Of the three men charged, Michael Roman, James Troupis and Kenneth Chesebro, only Troupis appeared in court in person. The other two appeared over the phone. All three were granted signature bonds with the condition that they not have any contact with the ten Wisconsin Republicans who cast Electoral College votes for Trump in 2020.
Multiple recounts, lawsuits and investigations have found that Trump lost the 2020 election in Wisconsin. Still, after that election, the three men worked to develop the plan that involved false slates of electors casting votes for Trump in Wisconsin and other states. The false slates of electors provided a pretext for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
After the hearing, Troupis called the charges “lawfare in all its despicable forms,” saying Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has “doubled down on a vicious strategy to destroy our very faith in the system of justice by using the courts for his own personal political game.”
On Wednesday, the voting rights focused firm Law Forward filed an ethics complaint against Troupis, a former Dane County Circuit Court judge, with the state Office of Lawyer Regulation. The grievance alleges that Troupis’ role in developing the fake elector scheme subverted the will of the people and violated state rules for attorney conduct.
“Our democracy depends on attorneys adhering to their ethical obligations,” Jeff Mandell, President and General Counsel of Law Forward, said in a statement. “Troupis violated those obligations by advancing falsehoods, enabling fraud, and undermining the rule of law. This grievance seeks to hold him accountable and ensure that such abuses of the legal profession are never repeated.”
The three men are next scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 28.
Update, Dec. 12, 2024: A federal judge dismissed the Republican Party of Wisconsin lawsuit on Thursday, saying there’s no controversy over the main issue in the case. Both the GOP and the defendants agree they should cast electoral votes for President-elect Donald Trump on Dec. 17, in compliance with a federal law, not the Dec. 16 date dictated under a state law.
Original story: The Republican Party of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Friday to resolve a discrepancy between state and federal law directing when appointed presidential electors must meet to cast Electoral College votes.
State law requires presidential electors to meet on Dec. 16 this year, but a federal law passed two years ago calls for them to meet on Dec. 17. The state GOP is calling on a U.S. District Court of Western Wisconsin judge to enforce the federal requirement and strike the state one.
“The presidential electors cannot comply with both requirements,” the lawsuit states.
Resolving the current conflict is key to avoiding the state’s electoral votes getting challenged or contested in Congress, the state GOP states.
The lawsuit highlights the Legislature’s failure to pass a bill that would have brought Wisconsin in line with the new federal law. That inaction, the state GOP says, “led to the current conflict between the federal and state statutes.”
The lawsuit is filed against Gov. Tony Evers, Attorney General Josh Kaul and Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe.
The GOP is asking for the federal court to declare the current state law requirement — for the electors to meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, as opposed to the federal law’s requirement to meet on the first Tuesday following the second Wednesday — unconstitutional and unenforceable. Given the tight timeline, it’s seeking a hearing “as soon as the Court’s calendar allows.”
Spokespeople for the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Evers declined to comment for this story.
Generally, federal law supersedes state law if there’s a conflict between the two, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative. Under the current, conflicting laws, electors this year definitely have to meet on Dec. 17, but it’s less clear what they should do on Dec. 16, she told Votebeat in May.
The new designated day arose as a result of the new federal law, commonly called the Electoral Count Reform Act. Congress designed the law in 2022 to prevent the post-election chaos that then-President Donald Trump and his allies created after the 2020 election, which culminated in efforts to send fake electoral votes to Congress, block certification of legitimate electoral votes and then storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The new federal law sets specific schedules for certifying election results and casting electoral votes. It cleared up ambiguities contained in the previous version of the law, which was enacted in 1887 but never updated until two years ago.
As of mid-October, 15 states had updated their laws to comply with the Electoral Count Reform Act, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. A Wisconsin proposal to bring the state in line with the new federal law passed the Senate nearly unanimously in February. But it never received a vote in the Assembly.
“It would have been beneficial if Wisconsin had also done that,” Godar said.
Scott Thompson, a staff attorney at the liberal-leaning legal group Law Forward, said the Legislature knew about this problem for over a year but chose not to resolve it with a simple fix.
“This eleventh hour lawsuit merely confirms that our state Legislature needs to stop peddling election conspiracy theories and start taking the business of election administration seriously,” he said.
Wisconsin Republicans were among those who sent documents to Congress in December 2020 falsely claiming Trump won the state. Trump won the state in 2024. The Wisconsin fake electors were subject to a civil lawsuit, and there’s an ongoing criminal case against their attorneys.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
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.
Attorney Matthew Thome defended the enforcement of Wisconsin’s 1849 statute as an abortion ban Monday morning, saying lawmakers never repealed it. (Screenshot via WisEye)
“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.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said Friday that the Department of Justice is prepared to “defend” the rights of Wisconsinites. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
In the wake of former President Donald Trump winning a second term this week, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said Friday that the Department of Justice is prepared to “defend” the rights of Wisconsinites.
Kaul didn’t specify what that would look like, however, and said it would depend on what actions Trump takes once he enters office.
Kaul joins Democratic state leaders from across the country, including in Washington State and Illinois, in announcing how they will handle the potential policy changes that could come from the new Trump administration. Kaul said that the justice department would continue to continue to work with other attorneys general to confront challenges that arise. On the state level, he said the department will advocate for necessary funding for the Office of School Safety, state crime labs and for victim service programs that are facing severe federal budget cuts across the state and country.
“We have been tested in this office… If the new administration infringes upon the freedoms of Wisconsinites or attempts to use our system of justice as a tool for vengeance, we will act,” Kaul said. “We will act to protect the best interests of the people of the state of Wisconsin, we’ll act to uphold equal justice under the law.”
Kaul said future actions will depend on the path the new administration takes. He said that he hopes Trump administration officials will try to find common ground and work across the aisle.
Kaul said it’s “notable” Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, and said he would veto a national abortion ban and wouldn’t repeal the Affordable Care Act. Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation document that was described as a blueprint for the next Republican administration.
The attorney general said there are “justified concerns” the administration will take another path, however.
“Folks are worried about what the future holds for women’s ability to make their own reproductive health care decisions, about access to affordable health care more broadly, and about whether people may be targeted by the new administration based on their identity, their speech and their viewpoints, or simply doing their jobs as an election worker or a reporter,” Kaul said. “Those kinds of actions are wrong and we are committed at the Department of Justice to standing up against them.”
Doesn’t provide ‘false hope’ on abortion
Kaul said his department continues to defend abortion access while it remains in the hands of states. After being blocked for more than a year following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, access to abortion for pregnancies up to 20 weeks was restored Sept, 18, 2023 by a court order. In a case brought by Kaul challenging the state’s 1849 law, which had been interpreted as an abortion ban, a Dane County judge ruled the law did not broadly apply to abortion.
On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case,that asks if the state’s 1849 law actually bans abortion and whether the state Constitution protects abortion.
While Trump has said he would not sign legislation banning abortion nationwide and Republicans in congress have denied any intention to enact such a ban. But reproductive rights advocates have pointed to provisions in the Project 2025 document calling for a blanket national ban.
Depending on how such a law is written, Kaul warned that there might not be a path under current law to protect abortion access.
“The passage of a federal abortion ban would have enormous consequences for abortion access in Wisconsin and in other states where there currently is access,” he said. “I don’t want to give people false hope that if there is a federal abortion ban passed that there’s likely to be a successful legal challenge. On the contrary, if Congress does pass a ban, people are looking at having their access to safe and legal abortion taken away.”
On potential for National Guard being used for deportations
Asked about Trump’s comments during the campaign that he would use the National Guard to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, Kaul said that he thinks the “idea of having a National Guard from one state going into another state is not something that… I think most governors of either party want to see.” Only governors can activate the National Guard, but one of Trump’s top policy architects, Stephen Miller, has said that sympathetic Republican governors would send troops to nearby states whose governors refuse to participate.
“We are one nation and following an election, we should try to come together, find common ground and figure out how we can make progress — not divide people state by state based on National Guards,” Kaul said.
It remains to be seen, however, “what rhetoric from the campaign translates into policy actions,” he said.
“There are a lot of different issues that were raised in the campaign, and I think we could see very different approaches taken by this Administration,” Kaul said. He also noted that there has been some pushback from Republican lawmakers on the promises, pointing to comments from Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson that mass deportations were not realistic and that deportation actions should target only those who have committed crimes.
Trump said Thursday, however, that it isn’t “a matter of price tag” and there is “no choice” when it comes to his deportation plans.
Aware of racist texts
Kaul was asked about a wave of racist texts instructing people to report to the “nearest plantation” have been sent nationwide, including to a Milwaukee woman, following the election.
Kaul said the department was aware of the messages and called them “completely unacceptable.”
“Anybody making racist statements, bigoted statements and text messages is something we cannot tolerate,” Kaul said. “I encourage anybody who has information about those texts to contact local law enforcement.
Signs to commemorate Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls are placed outside of the Wisconsin State Capitol on May 05, 2022 in Madison, Wisconsin. According to the Washington State Patrol, figures show that 126 Indigenous people are unaccounted for in the state. According to the Urban Indian Health Institute, data collected by researchers from 71 cities across 29 states shows 506 cases of missing and murdered native women and girls in the U.S. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation
The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Task Force established by the Wisconsin Department of Justice reviewed more than 40 recommendations at its Sept. 19 meeting, including one to “institute greater accountability measures for law enforcement,” urging the Legislature to pass state laws mandating stronger oversight of law enforcement investigations.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said during the meeting that he was not “comfortable” with the recommendation because it didn’t have a specific focus and it read as though it was critical of law enforcement. He suggested exploring how “agencies can more effectively collaborate and respond to cases” involving missing and murdered Indigenous people.
Pushing back, task force member Andrea Lemke-Rochon offered an example of what she said was the lack of accountability concerning a case involving her cousin, Rae Elaine Tourtillott, who was murdered on the Menominee reservation in the 1980s, leaving behind a 7-week-old baby. The family, she said, had been kept in the dark about the subsequent investigation.
“I think the issue is we’re just really trying to get at the fact that the ball gets dropped a lot,” she said. “You know, there’s a box of evidence, supposedly from my cousin’s murder. Nobody knows where it is, who tested it, who worked on it, so I feel strongly about the fact that we need to have some kind of accountability measures.”
She encouraged a meeting between law enforcement and family members of victims to discuss their experiences and out of those discussions create specific recommendations. Kaul asked if the concern was “communication” or “the details of how the investigation is conducted.”
“Both,” responded Lemke-Rochon, adding she didn’t understand why Kaul was uncomfortable with a broad recommendation asking for more accountability for law enforcement, with the details to be worked out later.
Attorney General Josh Kaul | Dept. of Justice
“Right now, it reads to me as sort of critical of law enforcement, but without providing specifics,” said Kaul, who added, “If we’re going to have a sort of criticism, I think it’s helpful to have specifics about how to address it.” He noted many victims’ families often feel frustrated that they are not getting information.
“It’s not just getting the information,” responded Lemke-Rochon. “It’s really doing the investigation and being taken seriously when something’s happening. So it’s so much bigger than that. I can appreciate what you said that this sounds critical of law enforcement and I think it is, because so often law enforcement lets us down. And, no disrespect to all of you hard working folks in DOJ, I think that’s just a reality that sometimes impacts Indigenous peoples and other people of color. And so I would like to word this in a way that it doesn’t sound like such a strong finger point, and yet it’s an issue.”
Brooke Johnson, the Justice Department’s crime victim services and MMIW/R task force coordinator, suggested an “assessment of the barriers as far as why the ball is being dropped.”
“If a case isn’t solved or doesn’t result in charges, as a family member it’s incredibly painful, and particularly when you’re talking about a missing person who hasn’t been found,” said Kaul, “and you know, I think in a perfect world there would be always great communication, and people would be kept informed on exactly what’s happening, and people would be consulted. But you know, in reality, that probably doesn’t always happen as well as we would like, for perfectly legitimate reasons, right? People have resource constraints. You know, they’ve got a lot of cases going on, and to an extent that there are barriers to that kind of communication.”
Renee Gralewicz, a Brothertown Indian Nation member, weighed in. “But I keep going back to the example of Andrea’s relative. It’s been a cold case for decades,” she said. “I mean, and then they’re told you can’t have any information because it’s an ongoing case. But how does the family even know it’s still an ongoing case when the remains have been found?”
She added, “That’s part of my concern about not having more accountability is when can the case be called a cold case? When can the law enforcement share with the family what they have, you know? Because, again, this is probably not the forum to go into it, because it is fairly complicated, but we have cold cases that are 30, 40, 50 years old, and their families are not informed of anything, because oftentimes they’re told it’s an ongoing investigation.”
Myrna Warrington, a Menominee Indian Tribe councilwoman, said her uncle, Paddlefish, a tribal police officer, helped create a multi-jurisdictional task force that met yearly with agencies all over the state and talked about issues and collaborated on goals.
“So it just seems like something that we should be doing, having multi-jurisdictional meetings to see how things are going. What can we do to improve these situations?” said Warrington.
Kaul said the group Warrington referred to still exists and is called the Native American Drug and Gang Initiative. The group won a national award in 2016 from Harvard University’s Project on American Indian Economic Development for “excellence in tribal governance.”
Seeking a tribal liaison
Kaul reported to the task force that he is seeking a tribal liaison position at the Department of Justice to work on cases involving missing and murdered Indigenous people.
“We think there’s a lot of benefit to having a liaison within each tribe and then having somebody at the DOJ who would work with those folks,” Kaul said. He noted the DOJ’s request was not on the behalf of the task force.
The DOJ budget request, totaling about $3.6 million, includes one DOJ tribal liaison/coordinator position and funding for individual liaison positions spread out among each of Wisconsin’s 11 tribes.
Christopher McKinny, the DOJ’s director of government affairs, told the task force that the “basic premise” of the DOJ’s request was to “decentralize the process as much as possible with state government and really provide resources for tribal governments.”
He said tribal representatives have told the DOJ that it is more important to have family liaisons available “as opposed to having those resources in Madison at the Department of Justice.”
Gov. Tony Evers’ 2023-25 budget request included $7.4 million for a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIW/R) office within the DOJ to provide training and services to crime victims and witnesses. That request didn’t make it through the Republican-controlled Legislature.
If it had passed, it would have made Wisconsin only the second state with such an office. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation establishing the first such office in in 2021.
Task Force request
Justine Rufus, the task force co-chair, said task force members needed to organize and gain public support for additional funding through the governor’s budget request.
“I think it is very important for us to share this publicly; get support rallied in our communities for these asks because we aren’t going to get the dollars if we’re not doing that type of work,” she said.
Eugenia Hedlund of Wisconsin Judicare Legal Aid said the Task Force had been looking at replicating the office that Minnesota created.
“The folks (legislators) who are on there (the budget committee) are good people,” said Kaul. It’s important for the task force to build relationships, he added, “and not be discouraged even though I understand that the process is frustrating.”
Rufus said the Task Force members needed to have “face-to-face” conversations with legislators.
Working collaboratively
Hedlund also suggested the task force work with other groups concerned with “intertwined” issues, such as human trafficking.
Kaul agreed that the soon-to-be-created Human Trafficking Council and the existing Human Trafficking Task Force could be good partners in the effort to address missing Indigenous people.
Health care advocate Laura Packard speaks at a Protect Our Care press conference Tuesday, Sept. 24. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Nearly 15 years after passage of the landmark federal law that expanded health care access across the country, health care remains a fixture on the ballot almost every November election.
This year is no exception. For advocates, health care is a central issue in both the national presidential campaign and in Wisconsin’s newly competitive contest for the state Legislature.
Sooner or later, virtually every American faces a struggle over how to pay for health care, Leslie Dach of Protect Our Care said during a visit to Madison Tuesday. Dach, a health advisor to President Barack Obama, founded Protect Our Care in 2017 to advocate for maintaining and strengthening federal health programs including the ACA.
“When you get sick, it takes over your life,” Dach said in an interview. “There’s no larger kitchen table issue in America. And it’s expensive, and a lot of people don’t have access to the care that they need, and so it’s a problem that affects really everybody — maybe not every day, but catches up with you at some point in your life.”
Besides being a personal issue, “it’s also a political issue now,” Dach added. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) remains under threat from Republican lawmakers. Some have also called forrepealing all or part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, including provisions making health insurance cheaper and allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs.
“The choices are very clear, and it’s both emotional and economic for people,” Dach said.
The Protect Our Care bus, which is touring 17 states as part of an advocacy campaign to preserve and strengthen the Affordable Care Act. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
He was in Wisconsin for the second stop on the organization’s bus tour — a campaign to draw attention to the health care law’s increasing popularity and how it has been improved through laws such as the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Inflation Reduction Act extended tax credits that reduce the cost of health insurance policies that people buy on the ACA’s health insurance exchange through 2025.
Those credits have cut health insurance premiums by an average of $2,400 a year, said Joe Zepecki, Wisconsin representative for Protect Our Care, at a press conference outside the Protect Our Care campaign bus.
The 2022 law also capped insulin costs for Medicare patients at $35 a month and authorized Medicare to negotiate select drug prices. Starting in January, it will cap Medicare patients’ out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000 a year.
“It is essential that everyone understands how they can benefit from these savings,” Zepecki said. “These policies are overwhelmingly popular. They touch nearly every household in America, whether you’re a senior or an individual struggling with a disability who’s having a hard time affording prescription drugs, a family purchasing your own health coverage, or a taxpayer who is sick and tired of lining the pockets of big drug companies.”
The Affordable Care Act also prevented insurers from rejecting patients or charging them higher premiums because of pre-existing health conditions — a practice that was routine until the ACA took effect.
“Insurance companies analyzed people with chronic conditions like cancer,” said Dr. Sophie Kramer, a Wisconsin physician for 35 years. “If you were born with a genetic heart condition or developed multiple sclerosis in your 30s, you were often out of luck.”
Prevention and protection
Without the ACA in place, “many people had to take the risk of no health insurance or opt for expensive, extremely high deductible plans,” Kramer said. Preventive care such as mammograms to detect breast cancer or colon cancer screenings are often treated as out-of-pocket costs until the ACA required coverage for a number of preventive health care measures, she added.
“The passage of the ACA changed this,” Kramer said. “Since 2014 … one in seven Americans and over 800,000 in Wisconsin have benefited from the ACA. This is tremendous progress.”
Despite that progress, she and others noted, Republican politicians have continued to bad-mouth the ACA and run on promises to repeal it.
“Donald Trump has talked about terminating the Affordable Care Act in this campaign,” said Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, who after first taking office in 2019 withdrew the state from a lawsuit to block the ACA and joined a friend of the court brief to support the health care law. “Let’s be clear, there’s no replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act.”
Kaul referred to Trump’s statement at the Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, about what he would do to replace the ACA after working to repeal it.
“Donald Trump recently said he has ‘concepts of a plan,’ after nearly a decade of his candidacy and as President,” Kaul said. “So there’s no plan to protect people with preexisting conditions. There’s no plan to ensure that costs remain low.”
Protections for people with preexisting conditions are at risk, he added, “and it’s clear that we’re facing further restrictions on access to safe and legal abortion.”
Laura Packard, a health care advocate taking part in the bus campaign who has supported the ACA for helping her survive and get treatment for a cancer diagnosis, said that after Trump’s statement about “concepts,” his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) “laid out what some of those concepts are.”
A Vance proposal to replace preexisting condition protections with “high-risk pools” for those patients “would allow insurance companies to pick and choose their customers again,” Packard said. As one of 135 million Americans with a preexisting condition, she added, “if insurance companies had the choice, they would choose not to cover us. And we need health insurance to stay healthy and to stay alive.”
Zepecki said the Protect Our Care bus will travel 12,000 miles and visit 17 states “with a simple message — lower costs are here and we are not going back.”
Legislative endorsements
Advocating for the ACA is just one example of the way health care policy is on the political agenda this fall.
The Committee to Protect Health Care (a separate advocacy group) announced Tuesday a $500,000 ad buy and its endorsements in this fall’s Wisconsin Legislature races.
The committee consists of doctors, other health care professionals and other advocates. It is targeting a dozen Assembly and Senate races with digital video ads, direct mail and text messages directed at about 300,000 Wisconsin voters in the 12 districts.
The group’s health policy agenda includes expanding Medicaid, known as BadgerCare in Wisconsin, under the ACA and extending Medicaid coverage for new mothers for the first 12 months after they give birth.
The committee’s priorities also include support for a state board empowered to reduce the cost of prescription drugs in Wisconsin, support for a paid family and medical leave program, and measures to ensure that decisions about reproductive care are made by patients and medical providers.
The group calls for repealing an 1849 law that caused abortion providers to cease practicing in Wisconsin for a year and a half, for fear of felony prosecution, until a judge ruled in 2023 that it did not pertain to abortion, and enacting guarantees for access to contraception.
All of those measures have been proposed in the Wisconsin Legislature in one form or another by Democratic lawmakers but rejected by the Legislature’s Republican majority, the committee noted in its announcement.
Candidates supported by the ad campaign as well as the longer list of endorsed legislative candidates were selected for their support of the organization’s agenda, according to the committee.
“For too long, our state legislators have refused to expand BadgerCare and repeal our state’s archaic, harmful abortion ban,” said Dr. Ann Helms, a Committee to Protect Health Care Wisconsin leader and a neurologist. “These candidates have an opportunity to finally take action, granting health care access to tens of thousands of Wisconsinites and ensuring all women in the state can access the reproductive health care they need.”
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