A marker for a segment of Enbridge Line 6 in northern Wisconsin. A leak in the line in Jefferson County is now under investigation by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. (Photo | Frank Zufall)

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is investigating a major leak from a pipeline managed by the Canadian oil giant Enbridge. Last weekend environmental groups sounded the alarm after learning that Enbridge’s Line 6 pipeline had spilled the equivalent of 1,650 barrels — more than  69,000 gallons — of crude oil  in the town of Oakland in Jefferson County. 

The DNR issued a statement saying that a report of a two-gallon spill was sent to the state agency on Nov. 11. Notifications were sent by Enbridge to the DNR, the National Response Center (NRC), and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). The DNR then visited the site on Nov. 11 and 12, with additional follow-up on Dec. 6, according to the agency. On Nov. 14, the spill quantity was updated to 126 gallons (or 2-3 barrels). On Dec. 13, Enbridge again revised the spill estimation to 1,650 barrels (or 69,300 gallons) of crude oil. 

“Under Wisconsin law, entities that cause environmental contamination are responsible for reporting and remediating the contamination,” the DNR states. “Enbridge is providing weekly updates to the DNR regarding the investigation and cleanup process. As investigation and cleanup is an iterative process, the DNR continues to evaluate appropriate next steps, including any potential enforcement actions such as a corrective action order.”

Using the GPS coordinates from the accident report and Google Maps, Wisconsin Examiner found that the spill occurred near a roadway running through a grassy, wooded area. The spill occurred near a waterway that flows into Lake Ripley, close to  a grouping of nature preserves and campgrounds. The accident report noted that the pipeline’s leak detection systems did not notify anyone of the leak. 

The Line 6 leak occurred during the same week that environmental and tribal groups filed new legal challenges against Enbridge’s proposed Line 5 pipeline reroute. Opponents of Line 5 are concerned  that the pipeline, which currently runs through the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s reservation, will still present environmental hazards even if it is  rerouted around tribal lands. The Bad River Band argues that the pipeline poses a risk to the health of the Bad River, which the tribe relies on for food, medicine, and important cultural practices. Environmental groups echo those concerns, and feel state and federal agencies have failed to adequately evaluate the environmental risks posed by  Enbridge Line 5. 

From left, former Gov. Tommy Thompson and Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming speak to reporters after casting their Electoral College votes for President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin’s 10 Republican presidential electors — meeting officially Tuesday for the first time since 2016 — cast their votes shortly after 12 noon for President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance.

Afterward, state GOP Chair Brian Schimming and former Gov. Tommy Thompson cheerfully asserted their party was on a roll and declared that the Democratic Party of Wisconsin was in for a period of soul-searching after having been “completely captured by the left” and taken over by “elitists.”

“I don’t know if everybody realizes this as much as I do, but there’s been a complete transformation of the political parties — in the state of Wisconsin, across this country,” Thompson told a swarm of reporters who gathered in the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee meeting room on fourth floor of the state Capitol.

“The Republican Party is the party of the working man and woman,” Thompson said. “The Republican Party is the party of the downtrodden and the individuals that need help. The Democrat Party has become a party of elitists, and their policies show that. The Republican Party has been out there asking, what are the problems? What are the questions? Inflation, taxes, regulation. They’re also talking about how you can improve schools, education, and Republicans are there, front and center with ideas and answers, and the Democrats have been vacant. They’ve been vacuous in the last four years.”

The press gaggle followed a formal procedure in which each of the 10 electors signed six copies of the papers documenting Wisconsin’s Electoral College votes for Trump and Vance in 2024. The documents will be forwarded to Washington as part of the Congressional procedure in early January certifying the election results.  

In 2020, 10 Republicans also met in the Capitol and signed forms asserting that Trump, then the incumbent president, had  won Wisconsin’s electoral votes in that year’s presidential race. In fact, President Joe Biden had defeated Trump in Wisconsin by about 20,600 votes, and the state’s official electors were Democrats led by Gov. Tony Evers.

Legal ramifications of the Republicans’ 2020 false electors scheme are still playing out. In June, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed felony forgery charges against three people accused of developing the 2020 plan to have false slates of electors vote for Trump. The defendants had their first court appearance Dec. 12.

Asked his reaction to those latest charges, Thompson said Tuesday  prosecutors and the country should move on.

“Isn’t it about time to turn the page?” Thompson said. “I mean, we can fight over the election of 2020 for the next four years. What does it get us? Isn’t about time to say, you know, we’ve had, we’ve had a lot of differences. This is time to start trying to mend ways in solving America’s problems, Wisconsin’s problems.”

“No one is above the law — not lawyers for former presidents or elected officials themselves,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Executive Director Sarah Abel in a statement responding to the GOP press conference. “We can’t move forward unless we learn from the mistakes of the past, and that includes holding accountable those who undermined our democracy and tried to overturn a free and fair election because they didn’t like the outcome.”

Schimming described the Republicans’ victories this year , in which they captured the White House, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, as evidence that the party connected with voters  outside as well as inside the GOP. And, he added, those voters remain enthusiastic supporters and volunteers who will power the party forward.

“As I travel across the state, the folks that we identified as Trump voters — not just Republicans, but a lot of people who were concerned about the direction of the country — are extremely motivated,” Schimming said.

“Donald Trump is the face of the Republican Party right now,” Thompson said. “We have control of the Congress and the presidency — we got to deliver to the American people,” he added. “It’s up to us now to show America that we’re going to be able to do it, and I’m confident we’re going to be able to do that without any doubt whatsoever.”

Abel pointed to the divided results in Wisconsin, in which Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin won reelection even as Trump was elected by a slim margin and Democrats picked up seats in the state Legislature, to reject the Republicans’ depiction of the outcome. 

“Let’s not pretend that the Republican Party has a monopoly over Wisconsin,” Abel said. “Neither party swept the state in 2024, and the GOP is grasping at straws as they see their grip on power here fading away. Wisconsin Democrats are built to last. We have a progressive identity that exists separately from the leader of our party — and Republicans can’t say the same.”

Thompson, who headed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush, also stood by his previous endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice to head the agency.

Kennedy has been widely criticized for anti-vaccine positions. On Dec. 9, dozens of Nobel laureates released a letter opposing Kennedy’s nomination because of his opposition to vaccines as well as to other public health measures.

Thompson said the suggestion that Kennedy harbored hostility toward vaccines is “misreading what he said,” adding, “I’m hoping what he said is not correct.” Kennedy’s past criticisms of vaccines included the “implied” question, “is that based upon science?” Thompson argued. “I think everything has got to be based on science.”

Thompson said he supported Kennedy because the nominee’s stated goals include improving Americans’ health, ensuring foods are healthier, “trying to make sure that all medicines are based upon science — who’s against that?” and that he favors speeding up the process of approving new drugs. “I’m in favor of all of those,” Thompson said, “and that’s why I support him.”

Asked about Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler’s campaign to head the national party, Thompson joked, “I’m going to contribute to it,” then later said Wikler “is a very good politician” whom he wished well.

Schimming called Wikler “obviously a talented guy,” but asserted that the party needed more dramatic change. “The Democratic Party has been completely captured by the left, and they can’t seem to figure out that that’s part of their problem,” he said. “And if they continue not figuring it out, that’s fine.”

A sign protesting Enbridge Line 5 in Michigan. (Laina G. Stebbins | Michigan Advance)

“The land does not belong to us, it is borrowed by us from our children’s children” said Robert Blanchard, chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. “We harvest our wild rice from the waters, we hunt from the land, fish from the lake, streams, and rivers to feed our families and gather the medicines to heal our relatives.” 

The Bad River Band cites this relationship with the land in its fight against the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline, which has operated in trespass on the Bad River Band’s reservation for years. Now, the Band and its allies are challenging the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) decision to grant permits that the Canadian oil company Enbridge will need to construct a re-route of the pipeline. The new route no longer trespasses on the reservation, it will still run through the Bad River watershed. The tribe and a coalition of state environmental groups say a spill in that area could be devastating.

Last Thursday, Midwest Environmental Advocates, 350 Wisconsin, the Sierra Club of Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed a petition for a contested case hearing with the DNR, challenging DNR permitting for Line 5. Shortly after filing the challenge, Midwest Environmental Advocates received a report of a 69,000-gallon oil spill in Jefferson County.

According to an accident report shared with Wisconsin Examiner, the spill originated from Enbridge’s Line 6 pipeline. Some 1,650 barrels of crude oil are estimated to have leaked from the pipeline, with 42 gallons to a barrel. When plugged into Google Maps, GPS data in the accident report point to a roadway running through a grassy, wooded area. The map shows that the spill occurred near a waterway that flows into Lake Ripley, not far from a group of nature preserves and campgrounds. Although the pipeline segment had a leak detection system, the accident report states that this didn’t alert anyone to the leak, which was first noticed on Nov. 11 by an Enbridge technician.

Line 6 is one of four pipeliness that run from Superior, Wisconsin, to Illinois. It carries crude oil from Superior to Lockport, Illinois.

Tony Wilkin Gibart, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, said in a statement that the Line 6 spill highlights the dangers of Line 5. “Consider that in the very same week that DNR issued permits for Line 5 based on its conclusion that the risk for a spill would be ‘low,’ DNR was investigating a significant oil leak on another Enbridge pipeline in Wisconsin,” said Gibart. “DNR’s reasoning for approving Line 5 defies common sense.”

In November, the DNR decided to issue wetland and waterway permits to Enbridge as a step towards moving the pipeline off the Bad River reservation. The DNR highlighted that the wetland permits would include over 200 conditions which Enbridge would need to honor, and which would keep the company in compliance with Wisconsin’s wetland and waterway standards. Both the DNR and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would need to approve the permits before construction of the reroute could begin. 

“Many of our people will feel the effects if we lose these resources,” said Blanchard. “In my view, the DNR failed our children when it gave Enbridge the permits to build this reroute. They failed to consider the company’s multiple disasters in Minnesota and in Michigan, which are still being cleaned up. They failed to consider our tribe, our water quality, and the natural resources of the entire Bad River watershed. As a tribal chairman and an elder, it’s my responsibility to protect the generations still to come. That’s why we are fighting this reroute in court.”

The Band is represented by EarthJustice in a lawsuit filed against the DNR which, like the petition filed last week by the environmental groups, accuses the state agency of producing an inadequate final Environmental Impact Statement on the reroute which violates the Wisconsin Environmental Protection Act. 

Blanchard highlighted his tribe’s reliance on wild rice fields growing along the Bad River and Lake Superior, as well as natural medicines, wild game, and the land itself which are crucial to the Bad River Band’s cultural practices and way of life. Every year the tribe holds an annual wild rice harvest, and Bad River Band members hunt and gather from the land all year. 

“If something was to happen during that time, or when that pipeline is in place, you know, it’s really going to affect a lot of things that we do here, and the way that we do things here on the reservation as far as our way of life,” Blanchard warned. 

Currently the Line 5 pipeline crosses the Bad River inside the boundaries of the reservation. If the reroute goes through,  Enbridge would construct 41 miles of new pipeline to cross the river outside of reservation land. The reroute would still place the natural resources the tribe relies on in danger if an oil spill or leak were to occur. 

Stefanie Tsosie, senior staff attorney at Earthjustice, also warned that constructing new pipeline damages natural formations and resources which are often irreplaceable. “Once construction starts they can’t undo the damage,” Tsosie said in a statement. “Enbridge has a terrible track record for pipeline construction and operation. And this place — this watershed and this territory — is not another place they can just plow through.” 

Opponents to the pipeline point to a history of ecological disasters due to spillage from Enbridge pipelines. In 2010, millions of gallons of crude oil contaminated the Kalamazoo River, creating a crisis which took years to address. Over the past 50 years, Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline has spilled over 1 million gallons in dozens of different incidents. 

Today, an area known as the “meander” is also creating concern for the Bad River Band. “The river is changing course, and it does that throughout the way it runs,” said Blanchard. At the meander where the pipeline crosses,  he added, “If we have high water events, flooding, harsh winter with a lot of ice build up, and all that breaks loose in the spring, then we get this high water that very well could take that pipeline out, and cause a spill.”

The tribe is monitoring the situation regularly, but this does little to ease their anxieties. The meander is “quite difficult to get to,” said Blanchard, and it’s also just one area of concern along the pipeline’s route. “A few years back, we had an exposed pipeline coming down one of the sidehills up there,” said Blanchard. “There was quite a ways where the pipeline was exposed and just kind of hanging in mid-air, which could have been disastrous if it wasn’t found and something done about it.”

If Line 5 were rerouted, it would still go through other wetlands and habitats outside the reservation. “These are some of the most treasured areas in Wisconsin,” said Brett Korte, an attorney with Clean Wisconsin. “When we think of the beauty of our state, our precious freshwater resources, the places we must protect, these areas are at the top of the list.” 

In a statement, Korte added, “This push from Canadian oil giant Enbridge is getting national attention because what it’s proposing to do here in Wisconsin is dangerous.”

This report was updated with additional information about Line 6.

The Healthcare.gov website, where people can sign up for health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Sunday, Dec. 15, is the deadline to enroll for people who want coverage to start Jan. 1. (Screenshot | Healthcare.gov website)

People who want to sign up for health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act in 2025 must do so by the end of the day Sunday, Dec. 15, if they want coverage to start on New Year’s Day.

“For accidents or injuries or when illness strikes, the last thing that anyone should have to worry about is how they’re going to pay for that, or whether they’re going to fall into some sort of medical debt,” said Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley during an online press conference Friday to draw attention to the Sunday deadline.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) imposed new consumer protection provisions for health insurance plans, among them a requirement that people cannot be denied coverage or charged higher premiums because of their personal health history.

The act also led to the creation of a federal health care marketplace Healthcare.gov, where people can purchase individual health insurance plans if they don’t have health coverage through an employer or some other group source, including Medicaid or Medicare. Healthcare.gov provides information about the plans available in a person’s geographic area.

The ACA open enrollment period for individual plans started Nov. 1. Whether people are enrolling for the first time — because they’ve lost their coverage through work, for example — or renewing their insurance after enrolling previously in 2023 or before, “you should take advantage of this time right now,” said Joe Zepecki of Protect Our Care, a national campaign to support and strengthen the ACA. Protect Our Care organized Friday’s news conference.

People who sign up for a plan at Healthcare.gov must do so by Sunday, Dec. 15, to get coverage that starts Jan. 1.  For people who enroll after Sunday, 2025 coverage won’t start until Feb. 1. The final deadline for enrolling is Jan. 15.

People can get guidance in assessing their choices of plans through the statewide health insurance navigator, Covering Wisconsin (coveringwi.org).  In addition to the website, Wisconsin residents can call 414-400-9489 in the Milwaukee area or 608-261-1455 in the Madison area to reach a navigator with the organization. Both telephone numbers are available to residents anywhere in the state.

As of Dec. 1, 88,189 Wisconsin residents have enrolled in coverage during the current open enrollment period, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). That’s slightly short of the pace at the same time last year, when 99,950 people enrolled by Dec. 2, the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance reported.

Almost 250,000 Wisconsin residents — a record number — have been covered in 2024 under plans provided through the ACA website, Zepecki said Friday.

Expanded federal tax credit subsidies tied to the income of an applicant have reduced the cost of plans purchased through the ACA dramatically. Those subsidies have reduced the cost for about 61,000 Wisconsin residents, Zepecki said, and will remain in effect through 2025, making health plans much more affordable for people.

The enhanced insurance premium tax credit subsidies were first instituted with the enactment in 2021 of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in the first year of President Joe Biden’s term, and they were extended in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Zepecki said that for a 45-year-old Wisconsinite making $60,000 a year, the enhanced subsidy would save about $1,442 a year. For a 60-year-old couple with a combined income of $82,000 a year, “the difference in having the premium tax credits and losing them is more than $18,000 a year,” he added. And for a family of four with a household income of 125,000 a year, the premium tax credits would save more than $8,200.

“This helps almost everybody who’s in the [federal health insurance] marketplace,” Zepecki said.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said making the subsidies permanent “will be at the top of my list as something that helps working families across Wisconsin and across the United States” in the 2025 Congress. She said they will be part of “a very robust debate” about the tax code as Republican lawmakers seek to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Donald Trump’s first term as president.

“I know we have some folks who are more focused, sadly, on tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations,” Baldwin said. “I’m going to be fighting for working Wisconsinites.”

Living in a net-zero home is often a luxury for those who can afford solar panels, state-of-the-art HVAC and other innovations and renovations.

But lower-income people are those who could benefit most from energy cost savings, and those who suffer most from extreme climate. Milwaukee is trying to address this disconnect by building net-zero homes for low-income buyers in partnership with Habitat for Humanity, a marquee project of the city’s 2023 Climate and Equity Plan.

In September, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $3.4 million grant that will go toward Milwaukee’s construction of 35 homes on vacant lots in disadvantaged neighborhoods and the opening of a factory to make wall panels for net-zero manufactured homes.

City leaders have found the undertaking more challenging than expected, especially on the factory front. But they hope overcoming roadblocks will help create a new local and regional market for energy-efficient, affordable prefabricated homes, while also training a new generation of architects in the sector through partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

“It remains an ambitious project,” said Milwaukee environmental sustainability director Erick Shambarger. “We’re trying to support equity, climate, new technology, manufacturing. It takes some time, but we’re excited about it and looking forward to making it a success.”

Panelized, prefabricated homes can be built relatively cheaply, but making them highly energy efficient is a different story. A handful of small companies nationwide make the wall panels used in such construction to highly energy-efficient standards, but transporting the panels is expensive and creates greenhouse gas emissions. 

The city sought a local manufacturer, but an initial request for proposals yielded no viable candidates. Now the city and UWM professors are working with the Rocky Mountain Institute to convince a qualified company to open a site in Milwaukee to make energy-efficient panelized home components at commercial scale, for both the city and private customers.

“It’s such a great fit for Milwaukee,” said Lucas Toffoli, a principal in RMI’s carbon-free buildings program. “It’s a city that has a very strong blue-collar tradition, so the idea of bringing back some manufacturing, and leveling up the home-building capacity of the city feels very congruent with the spirit of Milwaukee.”

And panelized homes could be a cornerstone of affordable, energy-efficient housing nationwide if the sector was better organized and incentivized, RMI argues — a goal that Milwaukee could help further. 

“Local action always drives a message in a way that federal action doesn’t,” Toffoli said. “It will be even more important under the incoming presidential administration and Congress. Having this project getting started at the local level in an important Midwestern city is a way to help ensure that progress continues at some level, even if it’s less of a priority at the federal level.” 

Panel problems

Habitat for Humanity builds its own panels in its Milwaukee warehouse, and is working on an energy-efficient panelized design that it hope will yield the first net-zero affordable homes in 2025. Milwaukee has yet to select a developer for the DOE-funded program, but Milwaukee Habitat was a partner in the DOE grant and CEO Brian Sonderman said the organization is hopeful it will be chosen during an RFP process.

Single-family homes are typically “stick built” from the ground up, with 2×4 or similar boards forming a skeleton and then, one by one, walls. Panelized homes involve walls transported intact to the site. 

Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity often uses a hybrid method wherein walls are “stick built” laying on their side in the Habitat warehouse, and then brought to the site where volunteers help assemble the new house.

There are various other methods of making panels that don’t involve lumber, UWM Associate Professor Alexander Timmer explained, and making these models highly energy efficient is still an emerging and decentralized field.

“It’s the chicken-or-the-egg problem in some sense,” Timmer said, since component manufacturers don’t know if there’s a market for energy-efficient panelized homes, and developers don’t build the homes because few component suppliers exist.

Wall panels can involve two sheets of plywood with insulation in between, or a steel interior surrounded by rigid insulation, among other models.

“With 2x4s, any small crew can build a home,” said Timmer. “With panelized, you need a factory, specialized tools, specialized knowledge. The hope is we are graduating architects into the market who know these technologies and techniques, and can design them to high energy efficiency standards. The city needs architects and builders who want to do these things and feel comfortable doing them.”

Toffoli touted the benefits of net-zero homes beyond the carbon emissions and utility bill savings.

“There’s less draftiness, greater comfort throughout the whole home,” said Toffoli. “In addition to making the heater run less to warm the air, there’s a big comfort benefit and acoustic benefit,” with little noise or pollutants filtering into the well-sealed home.

“In the middle of a severe Wisconsin winter storm, [if] power goes out for everyone, you have a home that can basically ride through harsh conditions passively much better,” Toffoli added. 

Toffoli said examples in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts show panelized, highly energy-efficient homes can be built at costs not much greater than standard market panelized homes. A different design, including thinner studs and more insulation, means less heat or cold is transported from the outside in. Insulation and highly efficient windows cost more than market rate, but smaller appliances can be used because of the efficiency, helping to mitigate the cost increase. 

He said mass production of net-zero panelized homes is much more efficient and cost-effective than stick-built energy-efficient homes. 

“You don’t need to, every time, find a contractor who understands the proper sequence of control layers for a very high-performance wall,” Toffoli said. “It’s been done in part in a factory where they’re plugging and chugging on a design that’s been validated and repeated.”

The DOE grant includes $1 million for Milwaukee to incentivize construction of the panel factory, $40,000 each toward 25 homes, plus funds for administration and other costs. Shambarger said $40,000 per home will cover the construction cost difference between an affordable home that merely complies with building codes, and one that is net-zero – meeting federal standards with a highly efficient envelope, an electric heat pump and solar panels.

Shambarger noted that the city funding and business will not be enough to motivate a company to build a new factory in Milwaukee.  

“Any company is going to have to have a customer base” beyond the city orders, Shambarger said. “We’ll have to make sure other housing developers like the product that companies have, that it’s cost effective. One of the things we learned the first time around is most of the developers really didn’t understand how to do net-zero energy. We want to make sure the product we select fits within Milwaukee neighborhoods, will work in our climate, has buy-in from the community.”

Local jobs would be created by the factory, which is slated to be in Century City, the neighborhood with the most vacant manufacturing space.

“Overall with the climate and equity plan, we are trying to create good-paying jobs that people want,” Shambarger said. “That often means the trades. One of the things attractive about building housing components in a factory is it offers steady year-round employment, rather than having to go on unemployment for the winter,” as many building tradespeople do.

Creating Habitat

Sonderman said that in the past, Milwaukee Habitat has put solar on some homes, but little else specifically to lower energy costs.

“Clearly if there was a really substantial market for developers who were interested and willing to do this work, the reality is Habitat wouldn’t be the first call,” he said. “It’s something new. One of the things we’re looking forward to is sharing with our Habitat network in the state and other developers and builders, so we build some confidence this can be done efficiently and cost-effectively.”

Net-zero homes are not only a way to fight climate change, but an environmental and economic justice issue in predominantly Black neighborhoods scarred by redlining and disinvestment, where the majority of residents are renters, Sonderman added.

“Even for the individuals who don’t live in that home but live in the neighborhood, it breathes hope, it says that our neighborhood is being invested in,” Sonderman said. “That matters deeply for the residents of Lindsay Heights, Harambee, Midtown and elsewhere. To take a project like this and see it come to fruition has tremendous ripple effect in a positive way.”

Several other Habitat chapters nationwide are building net-zero homes, including in Colorado, Illinois and Oregon.

Milwaukee Habitat is planning to build 34 homes in 2025 and up to 60 homes annually by 2028. Sonderman said they will make as many as possible net-zero.

“We’re not in a capacity to be the full-scale factory [Shambarger] was envisioning,” he said. “But we believe we’ll be able to supply the walls we need to build dozens and dozens of net-zero homes in the future.”

Milwaukee plans to build net-zero modular homes for lower-income residents — but it’s not easy 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.

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.

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

UPDATE: Parties agree on date Trump’s electors are supposed to cast their votes 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.

A new contract between Kalamazoo, Michigan, and utility Consumers Energy signals a change in direction for the city’s clean energy strategy as it seeks to become carbon neutral by 2040. 

Solar was seen as a pillar of the city’s plans when it declared a climate emergency in 2019 and set a goal of zeroing out carbon emissions by 2040. After spending years exploring its options, though, the Michigan city is tempering a vision for rooftop solar in favor of large, more distant solar projects built and owned by the utility. It’s not alone either, with Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Muskegon and other cities taking a similar approach.

“Folks want to see solar panels on parking lots and buildings, but there’s no way as a city we can accomplish our net-zero buildings just putting solar panels on a roof,” said Justin Gish, Kalamazoo’s sustainability planner. “Working with the utility seemed to make the most sense.” 

Initially there was skepticism, Gish said — “environmentalists tend to not trust utilities and large corporate entities” — but the math just didn’t work out for going it alone with rooftop solar.

The city’s largest power user, the wastewater treatment station, has a pumping house with a roof of only 225 square feet. Kalamazoo’s largest city-owned roof, at the public service station, is 26,000 square feet. Spending an estimated $750,000 to cover that with solar would only provide 14% of the power that building uses annually — a financial “non-starter,” he said.

So the city decided to partner with Consumers Energy, joining a solar subscription program wherein Kalamazoo will tell Consumers how much solar energy it wants, starting in 2028, and the utility will use funds from its subscription fee to construct new solar farms, like a 250 MW project Consumers is building in Muskegon. 

Under the 20-year contract, Kalamazoo will pay a set rate of 15.8 cents per kWh — 6.4 cents more than what it currently pays — for 43 million kWh of solar power per year. If electricity market rates rise, the city will save money, and Kalamazoo receives Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to help meet its energy goals. 

The subscription is expected to eliminate about 80% of Kalamazoo’s emissions from electricity, Gish said. The electricity used to power streetlights and traffic signals couldn’t be covered since it is not metered. As the city acquires more electric vehicles — it currently has two — electricity demand may increase, but city leaders hope to offset any increases by improving energy efficiency of city buildings.  

Consumers Energy spokesperson Matt Johnson said the company relies “in part” on funds from customers specifically to build solar, and considers it a better deal for cities than building it themselves, “which would be more costly for them, and they have to do their own maintenance.”  

“We can do it in a more cost-effective way, we maintain it, they’re helping us fund it and do it in the right way, and those benefits get passed on to arguably everybody,” Johnson said. 

Grand Rapids, Michigan, joined the subscription program at the same time as Kalamazoo. Corporate customers including 7-Eleven, Walmart and General Motors are part of the same Consumers Energy solar subscription program, as is the state of Michigan.

Costs and benefits

“There’s a growing movement of cities trying to figure out solar — ‘Yes we want to do this, it could save us money over time, but the cost is prohibitive,’” said John Farrell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. 

Until the Inflation Reduction Act, cities couldn’t directly access federal tax credits. The direct-pay incentives under the IRA have simplified financing, Farrell said, but cities still face other financial and logistical barriers, such as whether they have sufficient rooftop space.  

Advocates acknowledge deals with utilities may be the most practical way for budget-strapped cities to move the needle on clean energy, but they emphasize that cities should also strive to develop their own solar, and question whether utilities should charge more for clean power that is increasingly a cheaper option than fossil fuels.

“Our position is rooftop and distributed generation is best — it’s best for the customers, in this case the cities; it’s best for the grid, because you’re putting those resources directly on the grid where it’s needed most; and it’s best for the planet because it can deploy a lot faster,” said John Delurey, Midwest deputy director of the advocacy group Vote Solar. “I believe customers in general and perhaps cities in particular should exhaust all resources and opportunities for distributed generation before they start to explore utility-scale resources. It’s the lowest hanging fruit and very likely to provide the most bang for their buck.”

Utility-scale solar is more cost-effective per kilowatt, but Delurey notes that when a public building is large enough for solar, “you are putting that generation directly on load, you’re consuming onsite. Anything that is concurrent consumption or paired with a battery, you are getting the full retail value of that energy. That is a feature you can’t really beat no matter how good the contract is with some utility-scale projects that are farther away.”

Delurey also noted that Michigan law mandates all energy be from clean sources by 2040; and 50% by 2030. That means Consumers needs to be building or buying renewable power, whether or not customers pay extra for it. 

“So there are diminishing returns [to a subscription deal] at that point,” Delurey said. “You better be getting a price benefit, because the power on their grid would be clean anyways.” 

“Some folks are asking ‘Why do anything now? Just wait until Consumers cleans up the grid,’” Gish acknowledged. “But our purchase shows we have skin in the game.” 

A complement to rooftop

In 2009, Milwaukee adopted a goal of powering 25% of city operations — excluding waterworks — with solar by 2025. The city’s Climate and Equity Plan adopted in 2023 also enshrined that goal. 

For a decade, Milwaukee has been battling We Energies over the city’s plan to install rooftop solar on City Hall and other buildings through a third-party owner, Eagle Point Solar. The city sought the arrangement — common in many states — to tap federal tax incentives that a nonprofit public entity couldn’t reap. But We Energies argued that third party ownership would mean Eagle Point would be acting as a utility and infringing on We Energies’ territory. A lawsuit over Milwaukee’s plans with Eagle Point is still pending.

In 2018, We Energies launched a pilot solar program in Milwaukee known by critics as “rent a roof,” in which the utility leased rooftop space for its own solar arrays. Advocates and Milwaukee officials opposed the program, arguing that it encouraged the utility to suppress the private market or publicly-owned solar. In 2023, the state Public Service Commission denied the utility’s request to expand the program.

Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board opposed the rent-a-roof arrangement since it passed costs they viewed as unfair on to ratepayers. But Wisconsin CUB executive director Tom Content said the city’s current partnership with We Energies is different, since it is just the city, not ratepayers, footing the cost for solar that helps the city meet its goals.

Milwaukee is paying about $84,000 extra per year for We Energies to build solar farms on a city landfill near the airport and outside the city limits in the town of Caledonia. The deal includes a requirement that We Energies hire underemployed or unemployed Milwaukee residents.

The Caledonia project is nearly complete, and will provide over 11 million kWh of energy annually, “enough to make 57 municipal police stations, fire stations, and health clinics 100% renewable electricity,” said Milwaukee Environmental Collaboration Office director Erick Shambarger. 

The landfill project is slated to break ground in 2025. The two arrays will total 11 MW and provide enough power for 83 city buildings, including City Hall – where Milwaukee had hoped to do the rooftop array with Eagle Point. 

Meanwhile Milwaukee is building its own rooftop solar on the Martin Luther King Jr. library and later other public buildings, and Shambarger said they will apply for direct pay tax credits made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act — basically eliminating the need for a third-party agreement.

“Utility-scale is the complement to rooftop,” said Shambarger. “They own it and maintain it, we get the RECs. It worked out pretty well. If you think about it from a big picture standpoint, to now have the utility offer a big customer like the city an option to source their power from renewable energy — that didn’t exist five years ago. If you were a big customer in Wisconsin five years ago, you really had no option except for buying RECs from who knows where. We worked hard with them to make sure we could see our renewable energy being built.”

We Energies already owns a smaller 2.25 MW solar farm on the same landfill, under a similar arrangement. Building solar on the landfill is less efficient than other types of land, since special mounting is needed to avoid puncturing the landfill’s clay cap, and the panels can’t turn to follow the sun. But Shambarger said the sacrifice is worth it to have solar within the city limits, on land useful for little else.

“We do think it’s important to have some of this where people can see it and understand it,” he said. “We also have the workforce requirements, it’s nice to have it close to home for our local workers.”

Madison is also pursuing a mix of city-owned distributed solar and utility-scale partnerships. 

On Earth Day 2024, Madison announced it has installed 2 MW of solar on 38 city rooftops. But a utility-scale solar partnership with utility MGE is also crucial to the goal of 100% clean energy for city operations by 2030. Through MGE’s Renewable Energy Rider program, Madison helped pay for the 8 MW Hermsdorf Solar Fields on a city landfill, with 5 MW devoted to city operations and 3 MW devoted to the school district. The 53-acre project went online in 2022.

Farrell said such “all of the above” approaches are ideal.

“The lesson we’ve seen generally is the more any entity can directly own the solar project, the more financial benefit you’ll get,” he said. “Ownership comes with privileges, and with risks. 

“Energy is in addition to a lot of other challenging issues that cities have to work on. The gold standard is solar on a couple public buildings with battery storage, so these are resiliency places if the grid goes down.”

Correction: Covering Kalamazoo’s public service station roof with solar panels would provide an estimated 14% of power used by that building. An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the number.

In Michigan and Wisconsin, cities are finding rooftops alone may not achieve solar energy goals  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.

Jay O. Rothman, president of the University of Wisconsin System, speaks during the UW Board of Regents meeting hosted at Union South at the University of Wisconsin–Madison on Feb. 9, 2023. (Photo by Althea Dotzour / UW–Madison)

The Universities of Wisconsin Administration released a third-party report on its finances Monday, announcing plans for how it can better and more efficiently support the state’s public universities as the system faces declining enrollment and increased scrutiny from Republican lawmakers. 

The report’s release comes after Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said that the system’s $855 million budget request was a nonstarter — even though system President Jay Rothman agreed to Republican demands for changes to the system’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. 

“Right now, the Universities of Wisconsin are 43rd out of 50 states in the nation in terms of public support for our universities,” Rothman said on WISN’s UpFront on Sunday. “The $855 million gets us up to average, gets us up to the median. That, to me, in the context of a long period of time where the universities have not been invested in, is a reasonable ask.”

The release of the report, from the consulting firm Deloitte, on the system administration’s finances comes after similar reviews of the finances of the 12 University of Wisconsin schools outside of UW-Madison. Ten of those schools have been operating at a deficit as budget support from the state government has decreased and enrollment numbers have declined. Only the Madison, La Crosse and Stout campuses have been projected to create enough revenues to cover their expenses. 

A strategic plan implemented by the UW Board of Regents in 2022 calls for structural deficits to be resolved by 2028. A decade-long tuition freeze implemented by Republican lawmakers was ended in 2022 and earlier this year, the Regents approved the second tuition increase in two years. 

​​“The independent third-party review that has now concluded complements our strategic plan, adopted by the Board of Regents two years ago,” Rothman said in a statement. “It provides us insight on how better to provide unparalleled educational opportunities for Wisconsin students, improve Wisconsin communities, and help Wisconsin win the War for Talent.” 

The report notes that each campus is run independently and that system administration needs to do a better job clearly stating what its goals are so campus leaders can plan effectively. 

There is a need to improve systemwide accountability, while leaving space for the unique identity and culture of each campus, as the Universities of Wisconsin is the sum of its parts, ultimately rolling up to singular financial statements.

“Without a clear tactical vision and roadmap for the future of UW operations, it is difficult for university leaders to make informed decisions about investing in operations and/or strategic priorities,” the report states. “UW universities would benefit from a strategic roadmap across administrative, operations, technology, programmatic, and enrollment initiatives.”

Efforts to solve the system’s financial woes have already been underway, with a number of branch campuses across the state being shuttered and faculty and staff at several universities facing layoffs. 

The release of the individual campus financial reports in April drew concerns from faculty and students that the system would lean on austerity measures to balance the budget, harming their jobs and educational opportunities when the true cause of the struggles is the lack of financial support the system has gotten in the state budget. 

Monday’s report recommends that the system administration do more oversight of academic program creation and management, noting that the number of programs at the 12 non-Madison campuses has grown by nearly 7% while the number of bachelor’s degrees conferred has declined by more than 9%. The report states that system administration should set clear markers for what it means for a program to be successful and better determine if a program should be tweaked, invested in, combined between campuses or closed. 

“While creating and curating academic programs should fall within the purview of faculty governance at each university, UW Admin should be accountable for creating transparent policies and processes to provide the data necessary for the Board of Regents to fulfill its role in approving and monitoring programs,” the report states. 

With the release of the report, Rothman announced a number of plans to follow its recommendations, including being more active in enrollment management, creating a work group for evaluating low-enrollment programs, increased standards for financial accountability and providing “more effective, customer-focused shared services.” 

“These reviews have helped us refine steps to eliminate structural deficits at a number of our universities and embark on a path of long-term financial stability,” Rothman said. “We will continue to make necessary changes across our universities to ensure faithful stewardship of resources and to better serve students and parents, employers, and communities across Wisconsin.” 

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler speaks at a climate rally outside Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson's Madison office. On Sunday Wikler announced his bid to lead the Democratic National Committee.(Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler announced Sunday that he is running for chair of the Democratic National Committee. 

In a launch video, Wikler described the “permanent campaign” he has created in Wisconsin. After Democrats lost the White House in November and failed to gain a majority in either chamber of Congress, the national party is searching for new leadership and a new strategy. Wikler, in his video, said his record in Wisconsin, a closely divided swing state, can serve as a model. 

Under Wikler’s leadership, Wisconsin Democrats reelected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2022 by a wider margin than Evers won four years earlier. In the most recent election, Democrats reduced large Republican majorities in both houses of the state Legislature, flipping 14 formerly Republican-held state legislative seats. 

Those legislative victories came after Wikler and state Democrats helped elect a new liberal majority on the state Supreme Court, setting in motion a process that ended gerrymandered voting maps that had heavily favored Republicans.

Wikler, a prodigious fundraiser, helped the Wisconsin Democrats raise more than $53 million in the last election cycle, according to Open Secrets, more than any other state party in the country. He also opened new Democratic field offices throughout the state and has made it the party’s mission to compete in rural, urban, red and blue areas alike. 

“This past election, the nation shifted 6% towards Trump — but Wisconsin only shifted by 1.5%, the least of any battleground state,” Wikler said in announcing his campaign for national party chair.

“I have led the Democratic Party of Wisconsin for the last five years, helping to transform it into an organizing, fundraising and winning machine,” he said, adding, “I’m now running for chair of the Democratic National Committee to supercharge our work in every state.” 

Echoing former DNC Chair Howard Dean’s call for a “50-state strategy,” Wikler said, “For Democrats to move forward, we must build a big tent, organize and communicate in every place and on every platform, and find the resources, people, and focus to reach voters who currently get their news about Democrats from Republicans.”

A child was fatally struck by a car while waiting for a school bus in River Hills, Wisconsin, in a Thursday incident that was deemed unintentional.

River Hills Police Department Chief Michael Gaynor told STN in a statement that the 8-year-old child was waiting for the bus and crossed in front of the vehicle without its driver knowing. The driver of the vehicle was related to the child and in no way was the incident believed to be intentional.

The River Hills Police Department and North Shore Fire Department arrived at the scene. NSFD reportedly attempted lifesaving measures; however, the child sadly succumbed to his injuries en route to the children’s hospital.

The identity of the child and names of those involved are being withheld at the time, pending parental request and privacy request during this time.

Related: 9-year-old Boy Struck by SUV While Waiting for School Bus
Related: Georgia Student Struck and Killed by Passing Vehicle
Related: New York Child and Mother Struck by School Bus
Related: 6-Year-Old Struck, Killed by Vehicle While Walking to School Bus Stop

The post Wisconsin Child Fatally Struck by Car While Waiting for School Bus appeared first on School Transportation News.

A woman from Milwaukee, Wisconsin faces charges for allegedly punching a school bus driver, reported Fox 6.

According to the news report, police responded to a battery 911 call on Nov. 6 after 20-year-old Danielle Dobbin allegedly physically assaulted a school bus driver.

The article states that when officers arrived at the scene, they communicated with the driver who was inside the vehicle with two young children.

The bus driver, who was not identified at this writing, reportedly told authorities that a black four-door car passed her on their right side and stopped in front of the bus, then began to back up. When the bus driver honked the horn to alert the driver of the car, which allegedly was Dobbin, the woman got out of her car and began yelling at the bus driver.

The bus driver told police via the article that she was not allowed to reverse the school bus without permission from dispatch, so she did not move the bus.

According to the bus driver, Dobbin reportedly walked up to the bus yelling and opened the side bus door threatening to take the bus driver’s purse. When the bus driver moved the purse, Dobbin allegedly swung her closed fist and punched the bus driver multiple times. Because the bus driver was still strapped into the driver’s seat by the seat belt, she said she could not move away from the punches.

When Dobbin stepped away from the bus, the bus driver reportedly closed the school bus door, called dispatch and described the driver of the car and what had happened.

The bus driver reportedly directed the authorities to the driveway where she said she saw Dobbin enter her vehicle. That is how police say they identified Dobbin, who told officers that the bus was traveling closely behind her and “stopped within 2 feet” of her vehicle.

Dobbin reportedly told officials that because the bus driver refused to back up, she punched the bus driver. She also stated that this incident would not have happened if the bus driver had locked the driver’s side door in the bus.

Surveillance footage from the bus was reportedly collected by police and, according to authorities, the video depicts the incident completely.

Dobbin is now facing charges of physical abuse of an elderly person, intentionally causing bodily harm and disorderly conduct. She was scheduled to make her initial appearance in Milwaukee County court on Nov. 8. The incident remains under investigation.

Related: Florida Man Arrested After Punching Bus Aide
Related: Arizona School Bus Driver Assaulted on School Bus
Related: Arizona School Bus Driver Assaulted, Student’s Mother Charged
Related: Boston School Bus Driver Allegedly Assaulted on School Bus by Parent

The post Wisconsin Woman Accused of Punching School Bus Driver appeared first on School Transportation News.

A Milwaukee police squad in front of the Municipal Court downtown. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)

Wisconsin’s municipal courts issued more than 27,000 arrest warrants and writs of commitment against people who failed to pay local ticket fines between January 2023 and August 2024, according to a report from ACLU of Wisconsin.

The extensive use of these tools, which include jailing people for failing to pay fines or forcing them to appear at a court date in 173 of the state’s 219 municipal courts (reflecting the number of courts which responded to the ACLU’s open records requests for data)  create a tiered local justice system, the report found. People who can afford a fine simply pay it and move on while those who can’t afford the fine must deal with the shockwaves a stint in jail can send through their lives. 

In 2023, the report states, Wisconsin municipal courts collected more than $35 million in fines. 

“Carceral sanctions for failure to pay municipal forfeitures create an unequal system of punishment: one for those with financial means and one for those without,” Dr. Emma Shakeshaft, the ACLU attorney who wrote the report, said in a statement. “People who are able to pay a municipal court ticket can address the citation without ever having to step in court or think about the ticket again. People who cannot pay the citation amount in full experience increased court and law enforcement involvement and a long series of harmful consequences that create barriers to well-being, employment, and community involvement.”

The report found that during the time period the ACLU assessed, Wisconsin municipal courts had more than 50,000 active warrants and commitments for people failing to pay fines. The data also showed the punitive actions were disproportionately used against people of color. In Milwaukee, which houses the state’s largest municipal court and employs three full-time judges, 71% of warrants and 49% of commitments issued between January 2023 and August 2024 were issued against Black residents. 

Even a short time in jail can have huge consequences for a person’s life, the report states, causing people to miss work or to be unable to care for family members over something as trivial as a municipal fine. 

“Monetary sanctions harm individuals and their families,” the report states. “Not only do these fines, fees, surcharges, and forfeitures have a more severe and disproportionate impact on those without access to financial resources, but they also cause harmful short- and long-term collateral consequences.”

Among the consequences of jail time for unpaid tickets are  driver’s license suspensions, caregiving emergencies, loss of employment, loss of housing and detrimental health impacts, the report found. “Overall, this leads to less household resources, limited social mobility, and negative financial consequences.”

The report also notes that using incarceration as the “teeth” of enforcement against minor violations is more expensive in the long term because of the expense to law enforcement and local jail staff.

Municipalities have a number of other tools available to collect these debts under state law, including the ability to “intercept taxes, garnish wages and levy bank accounts via the state debt collection agency, use a private debt collection agency, issue a civil judgment, transfer unclaimed property, issue a driver’s license suspension, or issue an arrest warrant for incarceration.”

A number of recommendations for municipal courts are made in the report, including eliminating the use of commitments and warrants in these cases, appointing legal counsel to people during hearings, reviewing and removing old warrants that are still active in local systems and improving data collection.

WisCovered.com is operated by the Wisconsin Office of Insurance (OCI) to inform consumers seeking health insurance about their options, including BadgerCare and the Affordable Care Act's health insurance marketplace (Screenshot | WIsCovered.com)

People are getting health coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) at a pace that approaches recent record-breaking years for the landmark federal health care law enacted 14 years ago.

In the first two weeks of November, when the annual open enrollment period to buy health insurance through the ACA’s platform Healthcare.gov began,  nearly half a million previously uninsured people in the U.S. signed up for coverage, according to the federal government. More than 2.5 million have renewed coverage that they purchased a year ago.

“We’re incredibly busy,” said Adam VanSpankeren, navigator program manager for Covering Wisconsin, a nonprofit that helps people looking for insurance. “There’s a lot of anxiety and people have concerns about the future of the ACA, but it’s not stopping them from getting coverage.”

Covering Wisconsin is federally funded and subcontracts with 44 navigator agencies across the state  — part of a program established under the ACA to guide people in assessing their options and choosing an appropriate health plan.

“Health insurance is really complicated,” VanSpankeren said in an interview. Navigators were included in the law to provide “people on the ground to explain to people how this works and how you sign up.”

To help spread awareness of coverage under the ACA, the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI) has been distributing information to community agencies, including local libraries and county health departments.

“Ensuring that everyone has access to high quality and affordable insurance on Healthcare.gov has been a priority of our office,” said OCI communications director Susan Smith. “Last year’s open enrollment period was the highest ever in Wisconsin, with over 254,000 people getting coverage.”

The open enrollment period to purchase health insurance for 2025 through the marketplace began Nov. 1. Through Nov. 16, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), 48,564 Wisconsin residents signed up.

While that’s lower than the same period a year ago, when nearly 59,000 people had enrolled, VanSpankeren doesn’t find that difference significant this early in the enrollment period.

People who enrolled last year are automatically renewed if they don’t change plans, and their enrollment numbers aren’t listed yet, he said. The full open enrollment period ends Jan. 15, 2025. For coverage starting Jan. 1, 2025, the deadline to enroll is Dec. 15.

Expanding health coverage

Enacted in 2010 and fully implemented four years later, the ACA instituted new standards for health insurance plans, including barring insurers from denying health insurance coverage or increasing premiums for people due to pre-existing health conditions.

The law required insurers to cover young people up to age 26 under their parents’ health plans, and required coverage for preventive care such as vaccines.

It also expanded the federal Medicaid program to cover families with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty guideline. Under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2012, Medicaid expansion was made optional, with states deciding whether or not to take part. Wisconsin is one of 10 states that has not done so. 

Healthcare.gov, the health insurance marketplace, was a central element of the ACA, because uninsured Americans are mainly people who don’t get coverage from an employer or through programs such as Medicaid.

“Most people get insurance from their jobs, but there are still millions and millions of people who don’t,” VanSpankeren said. Those include self-employed people and people with multiple part-time jobs and no health coverage. They also include people whose employers don’t offer insurance or offer plans that require employees to pay more than they can afford for coverage.

Under the ACA, plans sold directly to individuals and families must cover a list of essential health benefits. The federal health care marketplace requires insurers who participate to offer plans meeting the federal standards.

Having a government marketplace that sets minimum standards protects consumers, VanSpankeren said.

“There’s a lot of bad actors with bad products” — insurance plans that don’t meet the ACA’s standards, he said. Without Healthcare.gov to vet participating plans, “you have kind of a Wild West scenario.”

Outside the marketplace, unscrupulous operators, often from out of state, misrepresent the plans they sell, sometimes even switching people’s coverage without their knowledge, said Smith of OCI. OCI and insurance regulators from other states are working with CMS to address what “is still a national challenge,” she said.

Safe in 2025; after that, uncertainty

VanSpankeren said people enrolling this year are asking Covering Wisconsin navigators about what they’ll have to pay in the new year. The recent election is also on the mind of many.

“They want to know if a change in administration means anything for their plan,” VanSpankeren said. Current provisions in the law remain in effect through 2025, so “we can reassure people everything they’re doing today for the next year is good.”

Those provisions include enhanced tax-credit subsidies based on a person’s income that lower the cost of their health insurance premiums purchased on the marketplace. Those increased subsidies were first introduced in 2021 and extended in 2022 through the end of 2025.

Beyond next year, however,  ACA advocates are worried about their future.

Republicans, who will hold majorities in both houses of Congress starting in January, and President-elect Donald Trump have been openly hostile to the health law and tried repeatedly in Trump’s first term to end it without success.

On Friday, Protect Our Care, a national campaign to support and strengthen the ACA, highlighted a series of analyses looking at the impact of ending the subsidies after 2025. Protect Our Care also cited the ambition of Congressional Republicans to block their renewal.

KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling, and news organization, reported in a study in July that 92% of people covered under the ACA were subsidy recipients.

In a study published Nov. 14, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities called for Congress to act by the spring of 2025 to give insurers time to set their rates for open enrollment a year from now.

“If Congress allows the improved tax credits to expire, nearly all marketplace enrollees, in every state, will face significantly higher premium costs,” the center stated.

The Solar for Good grant program has awarded over $220,000 in grants and solar panel donations to Wisconsin nonprofit organizations for the Fall 2024 grant round. The 14 nonprofits will install 16 projects for a total of 1,000 kilowatts of solar electricity, leading to more than $2.3 million in renewable energy investments in Wisconsin.

The following organizations have been awarded Fall 2024 Solar for Good grants to install new solar energy
systems:
CAP Services, Inc. – community service, Stevens Point
COULEECAP, Inc. Hillcrest Manor – affordable housing, Ontario
COULEECAP, Inc. REACH – community service, La Crosse
EAGLE School of Madison – education, Fitchburg
Family and Children’s Center – community service, La Crosse
Family Services of Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, Inc. – community service, Beloit
Holy Spirit Parish – house of worship, Stevens Point
Hunger Task Force – community service, West Milwaukee
Ozaukee Food Alliance – community service, Saukville
Recreation and Fitness Resources Center – recreation, Bayfield
Union Congregational United Church of Christ – house of worship, Green Bay
VIA CDC – affordable housing, Milwaukee
West Central Wisconsin Community Action Agency – affordable housing, Hudson
*One organization has asked to remain anonymous.

The grant recipients from the Fall 2024 grant round are a diverse range of organizations, representing affordable housing organizations, schools, and houses of worship. Each facility’s solar project will have a significant impact on their budgets, and will allow them to focus more funds on their missions. Holy Spirit Parish will install 90 panels atop their place of worship in Stevens Point, Family Services of Southern Wisconsin will incorporate 69.6kW of solar to their rooftop, and VIA CDC will install solar systems of 5.33 kilowatts on three housing projects in Milwaukee.

“We are thrilled and deeply grateful for this opportunity through RENEW Wisconsin’s Solar for Good initiative. This support allows us to further our mission with VIA’s Turnkey Program and new construction housing, making a lasting, positive impact on our community through sustainable energy,” said JoAnna Bautch, Executive Director at VIA CDC.

Similarly, the Solar for Good grant will allow Family Services of Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois to continue serving families in need by reducing operational costs and allocating more funding to programming.

“This funding has allowed us to equip our Next Steps Family Resilience Center with solar power that will be vital to the long-term sustainability of this programming for unhoused parents with young children while also contributing to a healthier community overall,” said Kelsey M. Hood-Christenson, President and CEO, of Family & Children’s Services of Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois.

Since 2017, Solar for Good has awarded grants to over 200 nonprofits across Wisconsin, leading to more than $29.4 million of renewable energy investments in the state. Collectively, Solar for Good grant recipients will go on to install more than 10 megawatts of solar energy.

“We are most grateful to the Couillard Solar Foundation for awarding us half the solar panels we need for installation of our solar array at Holy Spirit Parish in Stevens Point,” said Susan Zach Burns, Solar Project Lead of Holy Spirit Parish. “By reducing our reliance on fossil fuel and turning to solar for a good share of our energy needs, we are joining with you and others to address greenhouse gas emissions and to care for our common home, our beautiful Earth.”

“Our congregation has been energized literally and figuratively by our solar installation and our grant from Solar for Good. Not only will our installation reduce the carbon footprint of our church, it has inspired our members to invest in solar and other climate-friendly initiatives as well,” said Reverand Bridget Flad Daniels, Union Congregational UCC of Green Bay.

Through the assistance from Solar for Good grants, these 16 installations will accelerate Wisconsin’s transition to solar energy, facilitating the expansion of environmental stewardship and energy savings. As Solar for Good looks ahead to future grant rounds, the program will remain committed to supporting nonprofits and houses of worship across the state of Wisconsin by supporting organizations in their efforts to contribute to a positive environmental impact, enhance economic advancement in Wisconsin, and strengthen their ability to aid the communities they serve.

The post Fall 2024 Solar for Good Grant Awards appeared first on RENEW Wisconsin.

The Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)

Back in July, a lot happened while the Republican National Convention (RNC) was going on in downtown Milwaukee. Donald Trump accepted his party’s presidential nomination. Local residents protested the RNC. Out-of-state police killed an unhoused man in King Park, and the convention brought so much traffic to the gay and bisexual dating app Grindr that it crashed. Those events and more were probably followed by the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) using a new tool to scan, scrape and search online activity. 

In April, the MPD announced that it was seeking an open source intelligence tool ahead of the RNC. Basically, anything which can be openly seen and accessed online counts as open source intelligence. Using the tool, the MPD planned to augment its online monitoring capabilities. What would have taken hours just a few years ago could be reduced to minutes. By the end of May, MPD had settled on an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered software called Babel Street. The contract for Babel Street, which was not to exceed $43,673.50, was awarded on May 23.

A Request for Proposal (RFP) document, compiled by the Pewaukee-based technology brokerage company Abaxent, provides details on Babel Street. The document was obtained by Wisconsin Examiner through open records requests. Utilized by the U.S. Armed Forces, intelligence agencies and the federal government, Babel Street “empowers users to extend their search to the farthest corners of the globe, netting data beyond the traditional scope of [publicly available information] in a safe and secure environment,” the RFP document states. “It opens the door to enriched and standardized [publicly available information] data from over 220 countries.”

Not only can Babel Street search online content in over 200 languages, it also employs “sentiment scoring” in over 50 languages. A Babel Street glossary of terms webpage states that sentiment analysis involves determining “if a given text is expressing a positive, negative sentiment or no particular sentiment (neutral).” The RFP document also claims that Babel Street’s use of AI “accelerates investigations and uncovers connections.”  

An MPD spokesperson echoed that point, saying in an emailed statement to Wisconsin Examiner that the software has “increased the speed of investigations.” The spokesperson said that Babel Street is used by MPD’s Fusion Division. Social media investigations are a staple for Milwaukee’s Fusion Center, composed of both MPD’s Fusion Division and the Southeastern Threat Analysis Center (STAC). Originally created for homeland security, the Fusion Center serves a variety of roles today — whether that’s operating the city’s Shotspotter gunshot surveillance system, monitoring a camera network spanning Milwaukee County, conducting ballistic tests, accessing phones seized by officers, or processing information from cell towers. 

Within the Fusion Center, analysts assigned to the Virtual Investigations Unit monitor social media, investigating not only people but entire social ecosystems. Babel Street “pinpoints key online influencers, allowing investigators to explore networks from a powerful starting point,” the RFP document states. “Rapidly exposing and unlocking their web of relationships delivers crucial information in a matter of minutes.” All of that data then gets plugged into sophisticated visualizations such as maps, algorithmic scores, or graphs. “Visualized mapping unearths influencers who have the greatest impacts on organizations, senior leaders, and world events,” the document explains. “Advanced algorithms score and prioritize critical online entities to measure this influence, bringing to the forefront obscure identities that make up their network.” 

Babel Street can track the growth of online influence emanating from a person or group of interest to police. Investigators can also set real-time updates alerting them to new developments online, as well as “persistent” monitoring. “A persistent Document Search on an identified threat actor continuously monitors filtered topics the actor is publicly engaging in,” according to the RFP document. “By establishing a persistent collection via user-built filters/queries, users can not only increase their data access and insight, but they can also automate the rate aspects of analysis.”

Records from the City of Milwaukee Purchasing Division, obtained through open records requests.

Babel Street draws on a wealth of online information to gather intelligence for police. An aspect of the software known as “Synthesis” allows MPD “to understand the profile of key influencers based on attributes, such as person/organization, location, occupation, interests, areas of influence, and communication style, which are automatically tagged for millions of accounts using an AI model, while still giving the City the option of manual tagging.” Babel Street also allows MPD to pair keyword searches with geo-fencing, thus alerting the department to posts within a specific geographic area. MPD’s new open source intelligence tool also enables data to be extracted from the dark web — parts of the internet which are not indexed in search engines and require specialized internet browsers to locate.

The ability of law enforcement to map online connections between people worried privacy advocates leading up to the RNC. In early April, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned that using an open source intelligence tool, MPD could more effectively track and profile people who were exercising their constitutional rights. David Maass, director for investigations at the EFF, told Wisconsin Examiner that open source intelligence tools “are designed to produce ‘results’ even if there’s no evidence of a nefarious plot.” 

Many police reform activists in Milwaukee also remember the protests of 2020, when police departments heavily relied on social media to surveil protesters. All of that information, however, takes time to collect and sift, especially when a department may only have so many analysts on hand. “No longer are analysts manually checking multiple data sources to identify changes,” according to  the RFP document, “as Babel Street Insights persistently and automatically collects, ingests, and alerts users when new information is available, dramatically increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of each analyst.” 

All of that information, however, also needs to be vetted to ensure that it’s accurate. “Intelligence often requires vetting in order to determine whether it is reliable or not,” MPD’s spokesperson wrote in an email statement. “Additional investigation would be required with all intelligence.”

MPD said that it does not track Babel Street’s involvement in investigations, either during the RNC or after. There is also no standard operating procedure governing the software’s use by MPD, a spokesperson told Wisconsin Examiner. “This software is utilized to investigate crimes or to assist with mitigating threats to pre-planned large-scale events,” wrote the spokesperson in a statement. No decisions have been made yet about renewing the MPD’s one-year contract for Babel Street. 

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

No.

Milwaukee counts absentee ballots at a central location and reports the totals only when they are finished.

Those results were delayed a few hours this year because election officials in Milwaukee recounted about 30,000 absentee ballots during the night of Nov. 3 into Nov. 4 because doors on the ballot tabulators were not properly sealed. 

In a Nov. 11 social media post, user End Wokeness claimed a 3:30 a.m. “ballot dump” lost candidate Eric Hovde the Senate race in Wisconsin. The chart in the post shows no evidence of fraud, just Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s vote total increasing when Milwaukee reported its absentee ballot results.

Baldwin received 82% of votes from the city’s absentee ballots and 78% overall, the Milwaukee Election Commission reported.

Wisconsin law requires clerks to post the number of total outstanding absentee ballots by the close of polls.

Baldwin won with 49.4% of the vote to Hovde’s 48.5% statewide, according to unofficial results. 

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

Sources

• Milwaukee Election Commission: Latest unofficial election results
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Editorial: Hovde's election claims are false. He's blaming Milwaukee – without evidence.
• PBS News: ‘Human error’ forces recount of 30,000 absentee ballots in Milwaukee
• The New York Times: Election officials say Wisconsin Republican's claims 'lack any merit'
• USA Today: Nothing improper or surprising in Wisconsin 'ballot dump' | Fact check
• The New York Times: Wisconsin U.S. Senate Election Results

Did a late night ‘ballot dump’ in Milwaukee cost Eric Hovde the US Senate election? 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.

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

Yes.

Liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford has opposed the state’s voter identification law.

The 2011 law requires proof of identification to vote. Because of court challenges, it didn’t take effect until 2016.

Crawford was one of three lawyers in a 2011 lawsuit challenging the requirement, which the Supreme Court rejected.

In 2016, Crawford said the law would be “acceptable” if voters could sign an affidavit swearing to their identity rather than providing proof of identification.

In 2018, she called the law “draconian.”

A University of Wisconsin-Madison study estimated the law prevented 4,000-11,000 Milwaukee and Dane county residents from voting in the 2016 presidential election.

The University of California, Berkeley, reported in 2023 that many studies found voter ID laws have little to no impact on voter turnout nationally, while others indicate “a disproportionate negative impact” on minority groups.

Crawford, a Dane County judge, is running April 1, 2025, against conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel.

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

Sources

• Wisconsin Legislative Council: 2011 Wisconsin Act 23
• University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalsm: Wisconsin’s voter ID controversy: What you need to know
• Wisconsin Circuit Court Access: Dane County Case Number 2011CV004669 League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Network Inc et al vs. Scott Walker et al
• Justia: League of Women Voters of Wis. Educ. Network, Inc. v. Walker

Has Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford opposed Wisconsin’s voter ID 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.

Flanked by Sam Liebert, left, and Scott Thompson, center, Nick Ramos of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign addresses reporters Thursday outside a Wisconsin state office building. The three criticized Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde for not conceding after vote tallies reported that Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin finished the election with 29,000 more votes than Hovde. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Voting rights advocates joined the calls Thursday for Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde to back away from accusations he made earlier this week that something went wrong with vote-counting in the election Hovde lost to Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

“This is a direct attempt to cast doubt on our free and fair elections. And this is not only disappointing, it’s unnecessary,” said Sam Liebert, Wisconsin state director for All Voting is Local at a news conference Thursday morning. The nonpartisan, nonprofit organization advocates for policies to ensure voting access, particularly for voters of color and other marginalized groups.

“The rhetoric of questioning our democracy is more than just words, but it contributes to chaos and confusion, which undermines public trust in our elections and the officials who administer them,” Liebert said.

The news conference, held outside the state office building that houses the Wisconsin Elections Commission, was organized by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan voting rights and campaign finance reform advocacy group.

Speakers emphasized Wisconsin’s history of ticket-splitting and the near equal division of Republican and Democratic voters. For that reason, they said, victories last week by Republican Donald Trump in the presidential race and Baldwin, a Democrat, in the Senate race shouldn’t be viewed as remarkable or suspicious.

“Donald Trump won, Tammy Baldwin won, Kamala Harris lost, and Erik Hovde lost,” said Scott Thompson, an attorney with the nonprofit voting rights and democracy law firm Law Forward. “The people of Wisconsin know it, and I think Eric Hovde knows it too.”

“What you’re doing is creating divisions, and that cannot be accepted here in Wisconsin,” said Nick Ramos, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

During the campaign, Hovde “said all the right things — he talked about how he would honor the election results, talked about … there’s no time for us to continue these types of conspiracies and lies,” Ramos said. But since the election, he added, Hovde has shifted his attitude.

Hovde so far has declined to concede the U.S. Senate election, although The Associated Press called the race for Baldwin, the Democratic two-term incumbent, early Wednesday, Nov. 6. With 99% of the vote counted, Baldwin had a 29,000-vote lead over Hovde, a margin of slightly less than 1%. She declared victory after the AP call.

Hovde’s first public statement came a week after Election Day. In a video posted on social media Tuesday, he said he was waiting for the vote canvass to be completed before he would comment on the outcome.

“Once the final information is available and all options are reviewed, I will announce my decision on how I will proceed,” Hovde said.

Nevertheless, Hovde questioned the vote totals that were reported from Milwaukee’s central count facility, where the city’s absentee ballots are consolidated and tallied.

About 108,000 absentee and provisional ballots were counted in the early hours last Wednesday, with Baldwin garnering 82% of those votes, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission. In Milwaukee ballots cast in-person Tuesday, Baldwin won 75% of the vote.

Both Republican and Democratic analysts have pointed out that Democrats have disproportionately voted absentee over the last several elections and that the outcome Milwaukee reported last week was in line with those trends.

In his video, however, Hovde highlighted the late-counted ballots. He falsely called Baldwin’s lead in that tally “nearly 90%,” claiming that was “statistically improbable” in comparison with the in-person vote count.

Hovde said that because of “inconsistencies” in the data, “Many people have reached out and urged me to contest the election.”

Ramos pointed out Thursday that Wisconsin lawmakers had introduced a bill with bipartisan support that would have allowed election clerks to begin counting absentee ballots the day before Election Day — ending the late-night tally change  from absentee votes that have become a regular feature in Milwaukee.

The legislation passed the Assembly but died in the state Senate. “We have folks in the state Legislature that would rather play political games and would rather see moments like this than actually fix the problem,” Ramos said.

While Hovde spoke skeptically about the vote count in his video, in a talk radio interview after it was posted he described the election outcome as a “loss.”

Hovde is “talking out of both sides of his mouth right now,” Ramos said. “And so, on the one hand, we get to hear him say things like, you know, ‘It’s going to take me a while to get over this loss,’ and then we get to watch a video that gets broadly disseminated across X and Facebook and Instagram, where … he’s literally talking about how he does not believe what happened in Milwaukee and how the numbers shifted [in the ballot counting] aren’t accurate.”

In his video Hovde said that “asking for a recount is a serious decision that requires careful consideration.”

Counties must send their final vote canvass reports to the Wisconsin Elections Commission by Tuesday, Nov. 19. Candidates then have three days to make a recount request.

State law allows candidates to seek a recount if they lose by a margin of less than 1%, but it requires the candidate to pay the cost if the margin is more than 0.25%.

“He certainly can pursue a recount, although it looks like he’s going to have to pay for it himself,” said Thompson. “[But] Eric Hovde does not have the right to baselessly spread false claims and election lies.”

A billboard promoting Enbridge Inc. (Susan Demas | Michigan Advance)

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has decided that it will issue an individual wetland and waterway permit to the Canadian oil and gas company Enbridge, as the company seeks to relocate its Line 5 pipeline. Permits will also be issued to the company for stormwater site construction and pollution discharge elimination systems. The state agency’s decision is the latest development in the contested operation of Line 5 in Wisconsin. 

A DNR press release states that the wetland permit authorizes specific construction-related activities that may impact waterways and wetlands. The permit contains “more than 200 conditions to ensure compliance with state’s wetlands and waterways standards,” according to the DNR. The construction permits for stormwater sites also involve “specific plans for erosion control and water quality protection.”

Both the DNR and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must approve the permits before the project can proceed. Enbridge may need to also obtain other permits involving  groundwater, burning and incidental takes of species listed as threatened or endangered. Enbridge will also need to apply for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit to discharge dredge or fill material to waterways, which is required under the Clean Water Act. The DNR has issued a water quality certification “that serves as a determination that the project as proposed will meet State of Wisconsin water quality standards.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will also have to consider Wisconsin’s water quality certification as part of the permitting process. 

The announcement earned praise from the Wisconsin Building Trades Council, a union with  a membership of over 40,000. Emily Pritzkow, the union’s executive director, issued a statement saying the decision “reflects an intentional and balanced approach to addressing the state’s energy infrastructure needs while ensuring responsible environmental stewardship.” Calling the relocation of Line 5 “a win for Wisconsin workers, Wisconsin families, and the Wisconsin economy,” Pritzkow said the reroute “ensures operation with the highest safety standards by incorporating cutting-edge technology and construction practices.” Pritzkow added, “together, we can advance Wisconsin’s infrastructure needs while protecting the natural resources that make our state exceptional.”

Plans to reroute  Line 5 have been debated for years. In 2019, when the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa filed a federal lawsuit to remove the pipeline from the tribe’s reservation, a judge determined that the company had trespassed on the Bad River Band’s land, and ordered the pipeline to be removed within three years. Although the decision was a victory for the Bad River Band, the tribe argues that Line 5’s rerouted path still crosses the Bad River watershed, and thus still poses a threat to the tribe’s natural resources. 

In late August, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers received over 150,000 public comments opposing the continued operation of Line 5. Nearly a month later, the DNR released a final environmental impact statement on the reroute plan, which itself was a step necessary for Enbridge to receive the permits it needed to relocate the pipeline. 

Opponents to the decades-old crude oil pipeline were displeased by the DNR’s decision to issue permits to Enbridge. “I’m angry that the DNR has signed off on a half-baked plan that spells disaster for our homeland and our way of life,” said Bad River Band chairman Robert Blanchard in a statement. “We will continue sounding the alarm to prevent yet another Enbridge pipeline from endangering our watershed.”

Stefanie Tsosie, who is helping represent the Bad River Band as senior attorney at Earthjustice, said in a statement that the DNR “chose to serve Enbridge’s interests at the cost of the Bad River Band’s treaty rights and the state’s future clean water supply.” Tsosie added, “it’s sad that they are willing to gamble the region’s irreplaceable wetlands, the wild rice beds, and even Lake Superior to secure Enbridge’s cash flow.” 

Clean Wisconsin is considering legal challenges against the permit issuances. “Wisconsin law makes it clear that projects causing harm to our waters must meet a high bar to move forward,” said Clean Wisconsin attorney Evan Feinauer. “Given the enormous impacts that construction of this pipeline would cause, we are skeptical that the proposed project meets these legal standards.” Opponents of the pipeline also point out  that constructing the reroute would involve clearing trees, digging trenches, filling wetlands, and other activities which could disturb vulnerable ecosystems in northern Wisconsin. 

“We will evaluate what actions are needed to protect our state,” said Feinauer. 

Protesters march in Milwaukee after the 2024 presidential election. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)

“Our strategy is year-round civic organizing,” Amanda Avalos, executive director of Leaders Igniting  Transformation (LIT) told Wisconsin Examiner, following the Nov. 5 election won by President-elect Donald Trump. LIT canvassers knocked on more than 665,000 doors ahead of Election Day, and the Milwaukee-based group plans to keep up its civic engagement work in the years ahead. “This doesn’t stop us,” Avalos said of the election results. “And if anything, this is fueling.”

LIT, a grassroots nonprofit and nonpartisan group led by youth of color, focuses on building political power for young people through strategic civic engagement. From canvassing neighborhoods and knocking on doors, to advocating for policy change or even preparing young people to run for office, recent years have seen the organization make a name for itself. 

It isn’t that LIT’s staff didn’t feel the waves of fear, anger, and despair many community members experienced after Trump’s victory Tuesday. Those emotions were familiar to LIT organizers. “This is not the first time that we’ve been under a Trump administration,” said Avalos. “And we know the direct negative impact that he has on the communities that we work with. And that’s young Black and brown people in the state of Wisconsin.” 

LIT plans to counteract that impact by staying organized and motivated. From advocacy efforts to leadership development, sustained organizing is LIT’s mission, said Avalos, explaining that the group is dedicated to “growing our base year-round in between election seasons — not just during election season, but for moments like these…where we need to mobilize and act.” 

LIT is already preparing for another big election on April 1, when voters in Wisconsin cast ballots in the state Supreme Court race.

Meanwhile, Avalos says, organizers need to take time to rest, process, grieve, regroup and find community. “That’s what it’s going to take to get through more moments like this,” Avalos told Wisconsin Examiner. “That’s what it took last time, and we continue to hold onto each other and continue to move fiercely with our plan, with our advocacy, with all the ways that young people are leading all across the state.”

The day after Trump’s election victory, Black Americans across the country received racist text messages telling them to be prepared to be collected and sent to the nearest plantation for cotton picking. Women have also reported being increasingly harassed online since Trump’s reelection and a far-right social media meme has gone viral, trolling women on social media with the slogan  “your body, my choice.”

The election was particularly divisive for young people. While Harris attracted many young women voters of color, Trump attracted more young men. Some young activists also expressed dissatisfaction at both major political parties. On Nov. 6, protesters gathered in Milwaukee’s Red Arrow Park to protest the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and express their frustration over the sense that they were ignored by the Democratic Party. The protest was led by groups including Students for a Democratic Society UWM, the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the Milwaukee Anti-War Committee. Speakers encouraged protesters to find an organization to join and get involved.

Avalos agrees  that young people feel ignored. “More than ever young people are frustrated,” she said. “The lack of social-economic progress, not being heard at the local decision-making levels — local government, state government and federal government. … There’s a lot of disillusionment, disappointment, frustration, completely valid.” Avalos has heard young people express their sense of powerlessness on issues including the war in Gaza, climate change, the cost of living, housing, tuition and gun violence, as elected officials have failed to remedy those concerns. “Those issues continue to be a priority, and we’re not at the point where we see that reflected in policy and law,” she said. 

Avalos told Wisconsin Examiner that LIT will be back at the doors soon, engaging with communities and asking them what they want to to see from their elected leaders. Avalos stressed that connecting the issues that affect people’s families and communities to voting helps impress on people why it’s important to show up at the ballot box. LIT will focus on getting more citizens engaged in school board meetings, common council meeting and public hearings in the state Legislature. 

As people process the fallout from the November election, Avalos said she hopes that people will  support one another and remember what motivates them. “At the end of the day, it’s not because of anything more than we love each other,” she said of LIT’s continuing work, “and we need know that we all deserve better.”