GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN - MARCH 30: Demonstrators protest outside the KI Convention Center before the start of a town hall meeting with Elon Musk on March 30, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The town hall was held ahead of the state’s high-profile Supreme Court election between Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, who has been financially backed by Musk and endorsed by President Donald Trump, and Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Days before Wisconsinites go to the polls to decide which candidate will win an open seat on the state Supreme Court, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, gave oversized $1 million checks to two Wisconsin voters.

Appearing on stage in front of more than 1,000 people and wearing a cheesehead hat, Musk, who has spent more than $20 million supporting the candidacy of conservative-backed Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, gave out the money at a rally in Green Bay Sunday night. From the stage, Musk  said the race, which will decide the ideological balance of the Court, could “affect the entire destiny of humanity.” 

Aside from the two checks he gave out on Sunday, America PAC, the political action committee Musk has used to funnel money into the race, offered Wisconsin voters $100 each to fill out a petition against “activist judges” and provide contact information. Musk’s money has also been used to hire people from out-of-state to knock on doors on behalf of Schimel and blanket the state in ads. The group has also sent texts to voters in an effort to recruit canvassers that offer $20 for each person they get to vote. 

Democrats and Schimel’s opponent, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, have accused Musk of trying to buy a seat on the Court, pointing out that Musk’s company, Tesla, is currently fighting a lawsuit against the state of Wisconsin over its law that prevents car manufacturers from selling directly to consumers. 

Musk said the $1 million giveaway was a strategy to get attention on the race. 

“We need to get attention,” he said. “Somewhat inevitably, when I do these things, it causes the legacy media to kind of lose their minds.”

Wisconsin state law includes provisions that make it illegal to offer people money in exchange for voting. In an initial post on his social media site, X, Musk said that the winners of the money would need to prove they had voted. He later deleted that post and updated the contest so that people only had to complete the America PAC petition. 

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul sued to block the giveaway, alleging that it violated state law against election bribery. Judges at the circuit, appellate and Supreme Court levels declined to step in. 

Musk’s involvement in the race has become one of the campaign’s major issues as voters are about to head to the polls. The state Democratic party has held People v. Musk town halls across the state as liberals worry about Musk’s involvement in the election and his DOGE agency’s work to cut funds at a variety of federal agencies.

The Wisconsin Capitol on spring election day, April 7, 2020. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Election administration experts say that President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to require that people prove their U.S. citizenship to register to vote is unlikely to survive legal challenges, but even if it did, it would not apply to Wisconsin’s April 1 election. 

On Tuesday, Trump signed the order that purports to pull federal funding from the Election Assistance Commission for states that do not require that voters prove their U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections. The order also attempts to give Elon Musk’s DOGE access to states’ voter registration lists and gives the Department of Homeland Security the authority to verify the citizenship status of voters and make the prosecution of non-citizen voting a priority at the Department of Justice. The order also demands that election administrators use paper ballots or paper ballot trails.

In recent years, Trump and Republicans have become increasingly focused on alleged non-citizen voting. Since Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, Republicans in Congress have worked to pass the SAVE Act, which contains similar provisions to the Trump order. Last year in Wisconsin, voters approved a Republican-authored constitutional amendment to prevent non-citizens from voting in local, state or federal elections — despite it already being against the law for non-citizens to vote. 

Voting rights advocates have frequently cautioned that the provisions included in the Trump order and the SAVE act would potentially disenfranchise millions of married American women who have a different last name on their current ID than on proof of citizenship documents like a birth certificate. Estimates say this could prevent more than 69 million women from voting. 

“Let’s keep it real: this order is not about protecting elections; it is about making it harder for voters — particularly women voters — to participate in them,” Celina Stewart, Chief Executive Officer of the League of Women Voters of the United States, said in a statement. “This executive order is an assault on our republic and a dangerous attempt to silence American voters. The President continues to overstep his authority and brazenly disregard settled law in this country. To be very clear — the League of Women Voters is prepared to fight back and defend our democracy.”

Trump issued the order just one week before Wisconsin’s April 1 election and days after he endorsed Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel in the race for a seat on the state Supreme Court. 

“President Donald Trump’s sudden, overbroad and sweeping executive order issued yesterday, just one week before Wisconsin’s nationally important and closely watched State Supreme Court election on April 1st is likely unconstitutional and destined to be rejected by federal and state courts and the U.S. Congress in part or completely,” Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin said after the order’s release. Heck also sent out a press release telling Wisconsin voters that the order does not apply to the April 1 election.

Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, wrote on social media that there are a number of reasons why the order won’t apply to the election next week. The order only applies to federal elections and there are no federal offices on the ballot — only elections for state and local offices. And the order is not set to go into effect for 30 days, long after April 1. 

Jacobs also said that the order focuses on provisions on the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA). Also known as the “Motor voter” law, the NVRA requires most states to offer people the ability to register to vote at state motor vehicle agencies, by mail or at certain state or local offices. The law also requires states to maintain up-to-date voter registration lists. 

Wisconsin is one of six states that is exempt from the NVRA because it allows people to register to vote in-person at the polls on Election Day, so, Jacobs said, any provisions of the Trump order purporting to use the authority of the NVRA aren’t applicable to Wisconsin. Jacobs also pointed out that Wisconsin is prohibited from even using an NVRA-specific voter registration form because of a Waukesha County court ruling against its use. 

Jacobs added that Wisconsin already uses paper ballots or paper voting trails to keep a record of every ballot cast in the state. 

“It is disappointing that the federal government is attempting to make people worry about voting this close to an important election,” Jacobs wrote. “I hope this is not a ham-fisted attempt to shore up a failing bid for the [Wisconsin Supreme Court] by the candidate currently behind in the polls.”

Supreme Court candidates Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel debate at Marquette Law School Wednesday evening, March 12. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

The race for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court continues to draw  record-breaking campaign donations, with both candidates receiving contributions from billionaires and out-of-state donors. 

With less than a week left in the race that will decide the ideological balance  of the Court between Dane County Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, observers believe the total amount raised will reach $100 million by Election Day on April 1. That amount makes the race the most expensive state court election in U.S.history and far surpasses Wisconsin’s record of $56 million, which was set when Justice Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Dan Kelly in the 2023 race. 

On Monday, the Crawford campaign announced that it had raised $17 million since early February and $24 million since she entered the race last summer. 

Full campaign finance reports of the reporting period are not yet available, but late contribution reports filed on Monday show Crawford’s campaign received more than $1.2 million in just the last few days, including more than $600,000 of in-kind donations from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. 

The report also shows a number of contributions to Crawford of more than $1,000 from donors across the state and the U.S., including a $5,000 donation from the actor Kevin Bacon and $1,000 from former state Department of Revenue Secretary Peter Barca. 

Schimel’s late-filing report showed he received about $1.2 million from the Republican Party of Wisconsin. 

State law puts a $20,000 limit on individuals’ donations to a judicial campaign, however both candidates are benefiting from a workaround that allows unlimited donations to both political parties, which can in turn transfer unlimited amounts of cash to the campaigns. 

Schimel’s campaign has also received $13 million in outside support from a political action committee associated with Elon Musk. Musk has been an outspoken supporter of Schimel, and Musk’s America PAC, which he used to back President Trump during the 2024 election, has offered Wisconsin voters $100 to sign a petition opposing “activist judges” and has sent staff to knock on doors in Wisconsin.  Schimel was also endorsed by President Donald Trump over the  weekend. WisPolitics reported last week that Musk had also given $2 million to the state Republican party, the largest contribution ever recorded to the state GOP.

(Photo by Drew Angerer | Getty Images)

Wisconsin voters will weigh in on a constitutional amendment to enshrine the state’s photo ID requirement to vote in the state Constitution in the April 1 election. 

On ballots this spring, voters will be asked “shall section 1m of article III of the constitution be created to require that voters present valid photographic identification verifying their identity in order to vote in any election, subject to exceptions which may be established by law?”

If approved, the state Constitution would be changed to include the provision that “no qualified elector may cast a ballot in any election unless the elector presents valid photographic identification that verifies the elector’s identity and that is issued by this state, the federal government, a federally recognized American Indian tribe or band in this state, or a college or university in this state.” 

The provision would give the Legislature the authority to determine which types of ID qualify as acceptable. Current law includes state issued driver’s licenses and photo IDs, U.S. Passports, military IDs and unexpired university IDs (expired student IDs are allowed if proof of current enrollment such as a tuition receipt or course schedule is provided). 

In several recent elections, Wisconsin Republicans have put constitutional referenda on the ballot in an effort to make policy changes without needing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ signature. 

Wisconsin has had a state law requiring voters to have an acceptable photo ID to register to vote and cast a ballot since 2011. During debate over the law, Republican lawmakers discussed its potential to help the party win elections by suppressing the vote of minority and college-aged people who tend to vote for Democrats. 

Democrats and voting rights groups said the law amounted to a “poll tax.” A 2017 study found that the law kept 17,000 people from the polls in the 2016 election. 

Since its passage, a number of court decisions have adjusted the law, leading the state to ease restrictions and costs for obtaining a photo ID — particularly for people who can’t afford a high cost or don’t have proper documents such as a birth certificate. 

Republicans in Wisconsin and across the country have increasingly focused on photo ID requirements for voting since conspiracy theories about election administration emerged following the 2020 presidential campaign. 

The process to amend the state constitution requires that a proposal pass the Legislature in two consecutive sessions and then be approved by the state’s voters in a referendum. 

If passed, the amendment would change little for Wisconsin voters because the existing law has been on the books in its current form for nearly a decade. When the amendment was proposed, Republicans said its goal was to protect the photo ID law from being struck down by the courts. 

“I cannot say for certain how the Wisconsin Supreme Court would rule on voter ID laws, but I’m also not willing to risk the Wisconsin Supreme Court declaring voter ID laws unconstitutional,” Sen. Van Wanggaard said at a public hearing on the proposal. 

But Democrats say it’s unnecessary to amend the constitution to add something that’s already in state law and accuse Republicans of including the referendum on the ballot in this election in an effort to increase Republican turnout in the contested races for state Supreme Court and superintendent of schools. 

“It’s my feeling, and it’s a feeling of most people, that you don’t legislate via changing the constitution,” Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) said at a March 17 panel on the referendum. “I think that there is pretty wide evidence that this is hitting the ballots for political reasons. I think that the majority party is afraid of what happens if we get into the majority and if we decide that existing law needs to be amended or changed or overturned entirely.”

Snodgrass added that  “we are essentially wasting everybody’s time by adding this to the ballot. And I think we’ve had five of these now already. So it’s a pattern, and it’s politically motivated.”

BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS - NOVEMBER 19: Elon Musk speaks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as they watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. SpaceX’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, a Trump confidante, has been tapped to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency alongside former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

A political action committee associated with Elon Musk is offering Wisconsin voters $100 if they sign a petition “in opposition to activist judges” and another $100 if they refer another person who signs the petition. The petition requires people to provide a name, address, email and phone number — information that will help the group make further contact with voters. 

The group, America PAC, has reported spending more than $7 million in support of Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel’s campaign for state Supreme Court. Musk himself has contributed more than $13 million to pro-Schimel efforts. 

During the campaign, Schimel’s opponent, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, has accused Musk of trying to buy a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Musk’s company, Tesla, recently filed a lawsuit against the state seeking to change Wisconsin’s law about who can operate car dealerships within the state. 

Schimel himself has portrayed himself as a “support network” for President Donald Trump if elected to the Court. 

Derrick Honeyman, a spokesperson for the Crawford campaign, accused Musk of “buying votes.” 

“Elon Musk is trying to buy a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to secure a favorable ruling in his company’s lawsuit against the state,” Honeyman said. “Now Musk has resorted to buying votes. Brad Schimel has spent his career looking out for wealthy special interests and campaign donors, and Musk wants a justice who will rule in his favor to help his own bottom line. Wisconsinites can see right through this extreme corruption and they don’t want a slimy billionaire like Elon Musk or a corrupt politician like Brad Schimel controlling the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”

The payouts from America PAC mirror an effort the group undertook during last year’s presidential election when it circulated a petition expressing support for free speech and gun rights and gave daily awards of $1 million to voters in swing states that had signed similar petitions.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and a group of six other Democratic senators representing Great Lakes states sent a letter this week to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) pressing for more information about how staff cuts at the agency will affect programs on the lakes. 

The letter, addressed to NOAA Vice Admiral Nancy Hann, asked her to detail the number of people fired at NOAA since she became the agency’s acting administrator, the number of people fired at each Great Lakes-focused NOAA program, the services that will be terminated and her plan to preserve those services.

Baldwin was joined in sending the letter by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Tina Smith (D-MN), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Gary Peters (D-MI).

“We write to express our deep concern over the firing of probationary staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the potential impact these firings will have on the Great Lakes,” the senators wrote. “The Great Lakes are among the United States’ greatest natural treasures, strengthening our economy and attracting millions of visitors each year. The Lakes provide drinking water to over 30 million people, generate clean hydropower, and generate $3.1 trillion in gross domestic product. National and regional NOAA programs help protect these lakes and support our constituents who call the Great Lakes home.” 

Among the NOAA programs that the group is seeking information about are the National Weather Service, National Estuarine Research Reserve System, Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research and Midwestern Regional Climate Center. 

In Wisconsin, Lakes Michigan and Superior support 50,000 jobs and provide nearly $3 billion to the state’s gross domestic product, according to a 2024 NOAA report. Last month, Baldwin told the Wisconsin Examiner she’d fight to protect the Great Lakes. 

“Wisconsin communities, farmers, and businesses rely on our Great Lakes, and I’ll stand up to any efforts that will hurt them and their way of life,” she said.

900 people crowded into Eau Claire's Pablo Center March 18 for a town hall with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

About 900 alarmed and angry Wisconsin voters, searching for an answer to their political helplessness, crowded into the Pablo Center in Eau Claire Tuesday evening to attend a town hall with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz hosted by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

At the event, voters said they were scared of how cuts made by the administration of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will affect their health care, children’s education and the future of the country. 

Taking place on the same day early voting started in Wisconsin’s spring election, which will decide the ideological swing of the state Supreme Court, Democratic officials repeatedly said that the April 1 election gives Wisconsinites a chance that few Americans will have this year — to reject the aggressive cuts to government programs and agencies that Trump and Musk have already made and promised to deepen. 

Musk has now spent more than $13 million supporting the campaign of Waukesha County Judge and former Republican attorney general Brad Schimel. Democrats and the campaign of Dane County Judge Susan Crawford have repeatedly pointed out the ties between Schimel and Musk. 

Schimel has said he doesn’t have control of how people spend outside money on his campaign, but in several campaign appearances, he has directly tied himself to Trump. He told a group of canvassers associated with the right-wing Turning Point USA that he’d be a “support network” for Trump, and said to supporters in Jefferson County that Trump was “screwed over” by the state Supreme Court when it decides against overturning the results of  the 2020 election. In a radio appearance this week Schimel alleged that elections in Milwaukee are frequently rigged for liberal candidates. 

“In the rest of the country, people are protesting, which is great, but essentially, they don’t have a way to fight back at the ballot box in this moment,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler told the Eau Claire crowd. “In Wisconsin, uniquely in this country, we’re the only state with a statewide election, all the way until November of this year, we’re the only state where we can go to the polls, recruit everyone we know to go to the polls and send a message to the GOP [against] this extremism, this assault by Republicans on our democracy.” 

Exactly 223 days after he was in Eau Claire for his second campaign appearance as the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, Walz pushed attendees to support Crawford in the election, criticized Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden for not holding town halls in the district and said he was searching for how Democrats can re-assert themselves as a party that makes government work for people. 

“We’re here for a very specific reason, we know what’s at stake,” Walz, who has made similar appearances across the country in recent weeks, said. “I’m not going to whistle past the graveyard here and tell you things are fine. I’m also having the most unsatisfactory I-told-you-so tour in the history of the world … You came here because, you know the fight’s still on, and you know that you love your country, and you wanted to be here in front of your member of Congress, because the First Amendment to the Constitution gives you that right and responsibility to address your congressman.”

During his remarks, Walz called Musk a “dipshit” and an “unelected South African nepo baby” before comparing the state’s April 1 election to cleaning the house, saying “America’s first chunk of cleaning is Wisconsin’s Supreme Court.” 

In a statement, the Schimel campaign said Crawford is being “propped up” by leftists. 

“Tim Walz, the leftist Governor of Minnesota and failed Democratic Vice Presidential candidate is now propping up dangerous Susan Crawford in an attempt to dismantle our state the same way he ruined Minnesota,” the campaign said. 

Prior to the event, a group of four men wearing Make America Great Again hats and other pro-Trump apparel tried to get into the auditorium before being asked to leave by staff. Republicans said the denied entry showed Democrats’ “hypocrisy.” 

Joe Oslund, a spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said the men were asked to leave because they were clearly looking for trouble. 

“Four individuals who arrived with the clear intention of inciting a confrontation were asked to leave the event,” Oslund said. “We welcomed more than 900 people in Eau Claire last night, and I’m certain that we had folks in the audience who didn’t agree with us on everything. We’re always happy to engage folks with different points of view, but when you show up to cause a scene, we’re going to save ourselves the trouble.”

While the April 1 election will be the first test across the country of the voting public’s mood after the first months of the second Trump administration, people in attendance said they were desperate for something more to do. 

During the event’s question and answer period, one man compared the Trump administration to Nazi Germany, saying this is “our World War II to save the world from Trump” before inviting people to a weekly protest outside the federal building in Eau Claire. 

Menomonie resident Shari Johnson said that after the November election she and a group of politically minded friends started having dinners to discuss ways to counter Trump. She told the Wisconsin Examiner that she’s found her answer, saying that on Saturday she’s going to start marching through her town wearing a six-foot tall inflatable chicken costume while carrying signs that promote justice and fairness in the political system. 

Helen Durden said she skipped work to attend the event because “I feel terrified, angry and lost. What do I do to fix this? Besides a vote, there’s got to be something else. There’s got to be something more. And I’m looking for answers from our leaders to help me figure out, where do I step in to make that change?”

Joe Wendtland, a teacher who lives in Chippewa Falls, said he attended because he’s trying to find ways to be part of the solution. One part of that, he said, is voting in a spring election he usually would have sat out. 

“Quite honestly, in the past, I wouldn’t have bothered with the coming up election. Just, I wouldn’t have shown up unless it was a presidential election year,” he said. “But what I’m seeing is the Republican Party and current administration is just chipping away at all the little options that are out there. And this is me saying, ‘You know what, I’ve got a responsibility to protect what we have.’ And this is one of the few ways that I can really make a difference, is to vote in this election. So I’m gonna be there April 1.”

During a question and answer session , attendees fretted about losing Social Security and Medicaid benefits, how cuts to programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will affect kids and the dismantling of government agencies like the Department of Education. 

Walz said that he believes the Democratic Party should respond to Trump by loudly acting as an opposition party, declaring forcefully that public service is noble and working to strengthen labor rights. 

“Look, I understand what I have. I have a platform and a megaphone, and my goal of doing this now also is I was hearing that primal scream of God dang it, do something,” he said. 

“They’re destroying our country, taking our freedoms,” he added, noting that Republicans are complaining about being called fascists. “Quit exhibiting fascist tendencies and we won’t say that.”

Voting carrels set up at Madison's Hawthorne Library on Election Day 2022. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

In-person absentee voting in Wisconsin’s spring elections began Tuesday, allowing voters across the state to cast absentee ballots at their municipal clerk’s office or other designated locations. 

Each municipality sets its own hours and locations for early voting access, local details can be found at the websites of local governments, the state election commission, or myvote.gov. 

On the ballot this spring are races for the state Supreme Court, state superintendent of schools, a proposed constitutional amendment codifying the state’s law requiring a photo ID to vote and local races for city council, school board and circuit court judgeships. 

To cast an in-person absentee ballot, voters need to be registered, which can be done online at MyVote.wi.gov or at a municipal clerk’s office. Voters also need to show a photo ID to receive a ballot. Acceptable IDs include a state-issued driver’s license, military ID card, U.S. passport and university IDs (only student IDs that expire within two years of issuance are accepted. If a student ID is expired, you may use it along with proof of current enrollment such as a tuition receipt or course schedule). 

In-person absentee voting ends March 30 and the deadline to request an absentee ballot by mail is March 27 — though if a request is made that late there will likely not be enough time for a voter to receive and return the ballot through the mail. Absentee ballots can also be returned to a municipal clerk’s office, a voter’s poll location on Election Day or to absentee ballot drop boxes in municipalities that use them. 

Election Day is April 1. 

Supreme Court candidates Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel debate at Marquette Law School Wednesday evening, March 12. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Judges Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel accused one another of partisanship while clashing over issues including abortion, crime and Act 10 at the Marquette University Law School Wednesday evening. It was the only debate between the two candidates in the race for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

Throughout the campaign that will determine the ideological sway of the Court, each candidate has taken aim at the other’s history of political activity and the support both have received from billionaire allies of the Democratic and Republican parties. At the debate, both candidates continued those accusations in exchanges that Crawford said in a post-debate news conference amounted to the “fireworks that are inevitable when you put two lawyers in a room and ask them tough questions.” 

Crawford, a Dane County judge who was endorsed by the state Democratic party, has been criticized for criminal sentences she’s given that Schimel and Republicans have claimed were too lenient on sex offenders. They have also singled out money her campaign has received from figures including George Soros and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and highlighted her work as a private attorney representing Planned Parenthood and in cases challenging the state’s voter ID law and Act 10 — the controversial law that ended collective bargaining rights for most public employees. 

Schimel, a Waukesha County judge running with the support of  the state Republican party, has been attacked over the millions of dollars in outside support his campaign has received from Elon Musk as well as statements he’s made in support of President Donald Trump. He has also been criticized for his record as a Republican attorney general — particularly regarding his office’s effort to resolve a backlog of untested sexual assault kits — and statements he’s made repeatedly on the campaign trail in  support for the state’s 1849 law that has been interpreted as banning abortion access. 

At one point, in a remark that Crawford said was a “slip of the tongue,” she referred to Musk as “Elon Schimel.” 

During the debate, one of the moderators, WISN’s Gerron Jordan, asked “why should voters trust or believe either one of you” when they claim to be impartial. 

Schimel said he doesn’t control the money outside groups have pumped into the race. Crawford said she’s “never promised anything” to donors — a statement Schimel responded to by saying “that’s garbage.” 

Several times, Crawford accused Schimel of saying different things to broader audiences than to audiences made up of his political allies. She called attention to reporting by the Washington Post that Schimel said Trump was “screwed over” by the Supreme Court in its decisions regarding the 2020 election, and reporting by the Wisconsin Examiner that he had told a group of canvassers he’d be a “support network” for Trump. 

“He is not impartial, and he says different things in front of a broad audience like this, where he knows it’s going to be televised, than he’ll say when he’s talking to his political allies,” she said. “He is not trustworthy.” 

On the campaign trail, access to abortion has been one of the most prominent issues. The Court is currently considering a lawsuit that would have the state’s 1849 law declared invalid, while another lawsuit is pending in the lower courts asking if the state’s Constitution grants a right to abortion access. 

Schimel has said he personally opposes abortion, that both of his daughters are adopted and he believes the 1849 statute is a “valid law.” In the debate he repeated what he’s said during the campaign on the issue — that it should be up to the state’s voters. Wisconsin doesn’t allow voters to influence state law through a referendum process. 

“As a judge, no judge or justice should be deciding this issue for the voters of Wisconsin,” he said. “This issue belongs in their hands. Should it be decided by the voters, or should it be decided by four justices on the majority on the Court? And if four justices in the majority on the court can make that decision for the voters, that decision can flip back and forth every time the majority flips. We have to let the voters make this decision. I’ve been clear on that.” 

Crawford accused Schimel of “pre-judging” the issue of abortion. She said she wouldn’t weigh in on a potential case but that she trusts women to make their own health care decisions. 

“My 23-year-old daughter doesn’t have the same rights that I did,” she said. “And what I want for her and what I want for Judge Schimel’s daughters is the same: If they are pregnant and something goes terribly wrong in their pregnancy, I don’t want them to lie bleeding on a hospital bed while their doctors are huddled in another room trying to decide if they’re close enough to death before they can deliver health care services to them.” 

One of the most heated portions of the debate came during a section on crime. Both candidates’ campaigns have aired ads accusing the other of being too soft on crime when sentencing people in their circuit courts. While the Supreme Court hears appeals of criminal cases, it has little to do with handling crime at the street level. 

Schimel accused Crawford of lying about being a prosecutor because she worked as a prosecutor at the state level for the Department of Justice while he worked as a “front-line prosecutor” in Waukesha County. 

“I was the guy that got called at 3 a.m. to go to the crime scene, I was the guy who worked with law enforcement to build that case from the crime scene all the way to conviction, I was the shoulder that the crime victims cried on time and time again,” he said. “My opponent never did that.”

Crawford responded by saying the work she did for the DOJ is “most relevant” to prepare someone for a job on the Supreme Court. Taking appeals all the way to the Court, she said, gave her experience with “cases that involve the development of the law and the kinds of legal arguments that you have to consider when you’re making decisions that are going to involve statewide precedent that every prosecutor in the state will be bound by.” 

After the debate, conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley and former Republican Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch held a news conference stating that the two candidates live in “separate realities.” Bradley and Kleefisch accused Crawford of vying to be a part of an “activist” liberal majority. 

“We went from a court that objectively and impartially evaluated every case that was before it to a court that now, as Judge Schimel mentioned, is pursuing a political agenda,” said Bradley, who has frequently accused the Court’s liberal majority of acting politically in her published opinions. 

While the two conservatives held their news conference, the Court’s four liberal justices and Crawford watched from the perimeter, occasionally shaking their heads about the accusations against them. In a news conference of her own, with the four Justices standing behind her, Crawford said Schimel has worked during his career to take rights away from Wisconsinites. 

“I thought it was a great opportunity for me to share with voters information about my experience, my values and what kind of justice I’ll be on the state Supreme Court,” she said. “And also to point out the contrast with my opponent, who has a long career as an extreme partisan politician working to take rights away from people, I think it’s important for voters to know that.” 

Early voting in the election begins March 18. Election Day is April 1.

Madison city hall during the April 2020 spring election. (Henry Redman

The progressive voting rights-focused firm Law Forward filed a class action lawsuit against the city of Madison and Dane County Thursday over the 193 absentee ballots that city election workers lost and didn’t count during the 2024 election. 

The ballots were found in sealed courier bags after the Nov. 5 election and not counted even though the bags were discovered for the ballots to be added to the final vote tally. Law Forward staff said the lawsuit was filed because voters were denied their constitutional right to vote. 

“The goal of this lawsuit is to reinforce and strengthen the right to vote in Wisconsin law, the right to vote is absolutely fundamental in our democracy, the cornerstone of our entire system of governance,” Jeff Mandell, Law Forward’s general counsel, said at a news conference Thursday. “Law Forward exists to defend and advance democracy in Wisconsin, standing up for the right to vote, whenever and wherever it may be violated, is a key part of Law Forward’s mission. This lawsuit is not an attack on any individual municipality or election official. It is instead a necessary and important defense of the right to vote in Wisconsin.” 

Since discovering the mistake, the city has notified the public about the error and participated in an investigation into how it occurred. 

Dylan Brogan, spokesperson for Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, said the city couldn’t comment on the pending litigation, but that city officials have worked to make sure the mistake isn’t repeated.

“The City of Madison takes election integrity extremely seriously,” Brogan said. “Our Clerk’s Office has issued a public apology and reached out to affected voters directly to apologize for the failure to count their absentee ballot. They have also taken a number of steps to ensure this never happens again. Ahead of the February primary, election officials were trained on new safeguards and procedures for handling absentee ballots. Internal review of the incident is still underway, and additional steps may be taken. The City is also looking forward to any additional guidance the Wisconsin Election Commission may offer to further strengthen our elections processes.”

For now, Law Forward is representing four of the voters whose ballots went uncounted, but Mandell said the remaining 189 voters would have the ability to join the lawsuit if a judge allows the class action to move forward. The suit requests that damages totalling $175,000 be paid to each affected voter — which exceeds the $50,000 limit under state law for claims against municipalities. 

If all 193 voters participate and receive the full requested amount of damages, the city would be forced to pay more than $33.7 million for the error. 

“The truth is the right to vote is valuable, and I think that we are in an ecosystem where standing up for the right to vote matters,” Law Forward staff counsel Scott Thompson said. “Across the country, there have been efforts to subvert the right to vote, and we believe that this litigation sends a message to anyone who might seek to do something like that. In Wisconsin, there’s going to be a price to pay.”

At a meeting on Friday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission is set to hear an update on its investigation into the issue and how the ballots were lost. Among the actions it may take, the commission could decide to issue a statement to municipal clerks across the state reminding them of the best practices when handling absentee ballots.

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel addresses canvassers at an early March event. (Screenshot)

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel told a group of canvassers in Waukesha County last weekend that he needs to be elected to provide a “support network” for President Donald Trump and shared  complaints about the 2020 election that have been frequently espoused by election deniers. 

In a video of the remarks, Schimel is speaking to a group of canvassers associated with Turning Point USA — a right-wing political group that has become increasingly active in Wisconsin’s Republican party. 

On the campaign trail, Schimel, a Waukesha County judge and former Republican state attorney general, has repeatedly said he is running for the Supreme Court to bring impartiality back to the body. He’s claimed that since the Court’s liberals gained a majority after the 2023 election, it has been legislating from the bench on behalf of the Democratic party. 

But in more private events and to more conservative audiences, he’s often spoken more openly about his conservative politics. 

At the Turning Point event, he said that prior to the 2024 presidential election, the country “had walked up to edge of the abyss and we could hear the wind howling,” but that the Republican party and its supporters helped the country take “a couple steps back” by electing Donald Trump. 

Democrats and their “media allies” still have “bulldozers waiting to push into all that,” he said, by bringing lawsuits to stop Trump’s efforts to dismantle federal agencies without the approval of Congress, end birthright citizenship and fire thousands of federal workers. 

“Donald Trump doesn’t do this by himself, there has to be a support network around it,” Schimel said. “They filed over 70 lawsuits against him since he took the oath of office barely a month ago, over 70 lawsuits to try to stop almost every single thing he’s doing because they don’t want him to get a win. They’re so desperate for him to not get a win that they won’t let America have a win. That’s what they’re doing. The only way we’re going to stop that is if the courts stop it. That’s the only place to stop this lawfare.” 

When Schimel was the state attorney general, he lobbied the Republican-controlled Legislature to create the position of solicitor general under the state Department of Justice to help him file lawsuits against Democratic policies enacted by then-President Barack Obama. Republicans cut the position after Democrat Josh Kaul defeated Schimel in the 2018 election. 

During his time in office Schimel joined a lawsuit with the state of Texas to have the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional. After the suit was successful in a Texas court, he said, “I’m glad he did this before I left office, because I got one more win before moving on.” 

Kaul withdrew the state from the lawsuit after taking office in 2019, and the the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the suit by a 7-2 vote. 

But, in his Turning Point remarks, Schimel accused his opponent, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, of participating in the kind of “lawfare” that is being used against Trump now. 

“My opponent is an expert on lawfare,” he said, citing her work as a lawyer against the state’s voter ID law and support from liberal billionaire donors. 

Crawford campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said that Schimel’s comments show he’ll be a “rubber stamp” for the Republican party. 

“Brad Schimel’s latest remarks are no surprise, especially coming from someone who’s been caught on his knees begging for money and is bought and paid for by Elon Musk,” Honeyman said. “Schimel is not running to be a fair and impartial member of the Supreme Court, but rather be a rubber-stamp for Musk and a far-right agenda to ban abortion and strip away health care. Schimel has recently been caught behind closed doors saying the Supreme Court ‘screwed’ Trump over by refusing to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and these latest remarks are all part of a pattern of extreme and shady behavior from Schimel. Wisconsin deserves a Supreme Court Justice who answers to the people, not the highest bidder.”

Schimel’s campaign has received millions in support from political action committees associated with Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who has been leading Trump’s effort to slash government programs. 

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that Schimel told a group of supporters in Jefferson County that Trump had been “screwed over” by the Wisconsin Supreme Court when it ruled against his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In his remarks in Waukesha, he highlighted a number of talking points popular with many of the state’s most prominent 2020 election deniers. He blamed decisions by the Supreme Court for allowing those issues to persist. 

“There were a string of other cases that the Supreme Court refused to hear before the election that impacted the election that year unquestionably,” Schimel said. 

Schimel pointed to the issue of special voting deputies in nursing homes as a major problem. 

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, officials known as special voting deputies who normally go into nursing homes to help residents cast absentee ballots were unable to enter those facilities. 

Republicans have claimed that decision allowed people who should have been ineligible to vote because they’d been declared incompetent to cast a ballot. Conspiracy theorists have pointed to affidavits filed by family members of nursing home residents that their relatives were able to vote. Only a judge can declare someone incompetent to vote, however. 

The issue led to the Republican sheriff of Racine County to accuse members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) of committing felony election fraud and became a target in former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s widely derided review of the 2020 election. 

Schimel also blamed the election commission’s decision to exclude the Green Party’s candidates from the ballot that year for Trump’s loss. WEC voted not to allow the party on the ballot because there were errors with the candidate’s addresses on the paperwork. The party sued to have the decision overturned, but the Supreme Court ruled 4-3 against the party because it was too close to the election. 

While conservatives held the majority on the Court at the time, Schimel  blamed liberals. 

“Well, that was with three liberals and a conservative getting soft headed,” Schimel said, referring to Justice Brian Hagedorn, who frequently acted as a swing vote when conservatives controlled the Court.

Schimel added: “Those billionaires from around the country said, ‘What if we could get four liberals on the court? Then we don’t have to fool a conservative into doing something stupid.’ And then they did it in 2023. They bought that election, and they stole the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and they put us in chaos ever since.” 

Mike Browne, a spokesperson for progressive political group A Better Wisconsin Together, said Schimel is willing to say anything to curry favor with right-wing supporters and financial backers. 

“Brad Schimel has extreme positions like using an 1849 law to try to ban abortion, supporting pardons for violent January 6 insurrectionists, endorsing debunked 2020 election lies, and shilling for Elon Musk,” Browne said. “His bungling attempts to try to talk his way out of it when he gets called out don’t change the fact that time and again we see Brad Schimel on his knees for right-wing campaign cash instead of standing up for Wisconsin or our rights and freedoms.”

The Schimel campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin voters view both candidates in this spring’s state Supreme Court race slightly unfavorably, according to a poll released by the Marquette Law School Wednesday, but many voters still don’t know enough about either candidate to have an opinion. 

The poll did not assess how the candidates, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, would fare in a head-to-head matchup. 

The poll, which surveyed 864 registered voters in the state between Feb. 19-26, found that 29% of those surveyed have a favorable view of Schimel and 32% have an unfavorable view. Although Schimel is a former Republican state attorney general who has previously run two statewide campaigns, 38% of voters said they didn’t know enough about him. 

After the poll’s release, the Schimel campaign said Wisconsin’s liberals were repeating the mistakes that allowed President Donald Trump to win the state in November and characterized Crawford as “deeply flawed” and having “an extreme ideologically driven agenda.” 

Both candidates have been the subjects of negative ad campaigns by their opponents and opponents’ allies. 

“We’ve known all along that this race is going to be close,” the Crawford campaign said in a statement, which claimed that “right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk are trying to save Brad Schimel’s flailing campaign.”

Crawford had a lower favorability rating than Schimel, but far more voters still don’t know enough about her. The poll found that 19% of voters have a favorable view of her while 23% have an unfavorable view, but 58% still haven’t heard enough to form an opinion. That includes 54% of surveyed Democrats who say they don’t know enough about the liberal candidate in the race.

Dane County Judge Susan Crawford speaks at an event held by the Rotary Club of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Press Club as she campaigns for Wisconsin Supreme Court. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford accused her opponent Brad Schimel of being a “partisan politician” at an event Tuesday hosted by the Rotary Club of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Press Club. Her comments come as both candidates have tried to claim they will be the more impartial justice. 

The fight over impartiality has outlined this year’s campaign in contrast with 2023, when Justice Janet Protasiewicz won her seat, and majority control of the Court for the body’s liberals, by proclaiming her “values” that support a woman’s right to access abortion and that the state’s previous legislative maps unfairly benefited Republicans. 

“I would ask voters and the media to look at the difference between the campaigns and the candidates,” Crawford said. “I have never taken a position on any case or any issue before the Supreme Court. And anyone who wants to support me needs to know that I am not making any promises.” 

But she said Schimel, a Waukesha County judge and former Republican state attorney general, has built a career as an elected Republican and taken stances on cases that will likely come before the Court in its next term, including cases about Wisconsin’s 1849 law that has been interpreted as a blanket ban on abortion and a lawsuit against Act 10, the controversial law that limited collective bargaining rights for most public employees. 

Crawford also pointed to millions of dollars in assistance Schimel’s campaign has gotten from Elon Musk and comments, reported this week by the Washington Post, that he told a group of supporters in Jefferson County that President Donald Trump had been “screwed over” by the Wisconsin Supreme Court when it ruled against his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. 

Just days before Schimel’s comments were made public, he told reporters after a speech at a Wisconsin Counties Association conference that he didn’t know enough about the case to determine if it was decided correctly. 

“He apparently has no objection to Elon Musk’s canvassers going door to door, saying that ‘Brad Schimel is going to uphold the Trump agenda,’” she said. “You know, he has not said anything to put a stop to that. So he’s got a long history as an extreme partisan. He’s run for partisan office something like five times, and he’s running this race very much as a partisan politician.” 

Throughout her remarks, Crawford said that if she’s elected, she’d work with all six of the other justices, not just the liberals — taking digs at comments Schimel and some of the Court’s conservatives have made previously — but that she defines being a judicial liberal as someone who stands up for people’s rights and how the law can be used to protect those rights. 

“If what people mean by liberal is that I’m going to work to protect the rights of every Wisconsinite on the Supreme Court, that I view our laws and our Constitution as tools to protect the rights of Wisconsinites, then I embrace that label, because that is what I will go about,” she said.

Last week, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Schimel had said in a radio interview the Court’s liberals, all women, were “driven by their emotions,” when hearing oral arguments in a case about the 1849 abortion law. And in recent years, conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley has frequently attacked her liberal colleagues in published decisions, accusing them of being mouthpieces for the Democratic Party. 

“I think there is a little bit too much talk and too much emphasis, particularly by my opponent, on the makeup of the court and these so-called lines between who’s the majority and who’s the minority,” she said. “My opponent, unfortunately, has been lobbying attacks against the same justices on the Supreme Court. You won’t hear me doing that. I intend to work with every other member of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is a body of seven justices, and they need to talk to each other.” 

In a statement, the Schimel campaign said the panel of reporters moderating Tuesday’s event didn’t ask tough enough questions and that Crawford wouldn’t be an objective justice.

“Susan Crawford continued her campaign of hoodwinking Wisconsin voters today by spreading falsehoods and pushing the radical agenda of her Democrat handlers to a sympathetic press,” Schimel spokesperson Jacob Fischer said. “What Crawford should have been pressed on was her weak on crime penchant for releasing pedophiles and murderers back onto Wisconsin streets, her willingness to offer two congressional seats in exchange for financial support, or how she sold out her objectivity to the agendas of George Soros, Bernie Sanders, and other extreme liberals. Unlike Susan Crawford, who is clearly unfit to represent the interests of Wisconsin as an impartial justice, Judge Brad Schimel is committed to restoring fairness to the Court and saving Wisconsin from the Democrats’ radical agenda.”

During the event, Crawford pointed to occasions she would have sided against the Court’s liberals and times she issued rulings that she didn’t personally like but upheld because it was the law. 

She said that when hearing challenges to the lame duck laws passed by Republicans in the Legislature in 2019 to take powers away from the governor and attorney general before Democrats Tony Evers and Josh Kaul could take power, the actions of the Legislature “left a bad taste in my mouth,” but she upheld some of those laws. 

“That’s a case where, as a lawyer, I might have taken a different position as an advocate, but as a judge, I was applying the law to the facts of that case, and I came to a narrow decision,” she said.

Milwaukee Pastor Mariano Garcia prays before Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel's Hispanic roundtable. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Ahead of a campaign event targeting Latino voters at the Wisconsin Republican Party’s Hispanic outreach center on Milwaukee’s south side on Thursday afternoon, a few dozen protesters gathered on the street outside the venue. Carrying an eight-foot effigy of Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, the protesters chanted  about Elon Musk’s campaign expenditures to help Schimel win an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the about the vote by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a budget that includes cuts to federal programs like Medicaid. 

Inside, a group of members of the right-wing John Birch Society — most famous for conspiracy theories and anti-communist crusades in the 1960s and ’70s — made fun of the protesters and questioned the validity of their beliefs. 

“They’re paid, that’s organized as hell,” one woman said. “If you’re gonna protest, protest something that’s legit.” 

Schimel, who served as Wisconsin’s Republican state attorney general from 2015-19, has run his campaign for the Court by attacking the body’s current liberal majority — saying that the group is legislating from the bench and specifically calling out Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s successful 2023 campaign for making “open promises on the campaign trail.”

In her campaign, Protasiewicz said she personally believes in women’s right to access abortion but said her beliefs would not influence how she would rule on legal questions in abortion-related cases. 

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Friday that Schimel said in a radio interview last year, after the Court heard arguments over the validity of Wisconsin’s 1849 law that has been interpreted as a blanket ban on abortion, that the Court’s majority, all women, were “driven by their emotions” while hearing the case. 

In a press release Friday, the Schimel campaign said he would restore the Court’s “impartiality” if elected. 

On the campaign trail, Schimel often compares the Supreme Court to a baseball umpire, saying Brewers fans would be frustrated if they sat down for a game with their “$17 beer” and the home plate umpire came out wearing a St. Louis Cardinals jersey. 

“You’re not going to stick around and buy another expensive beer, because you know how this game’s going to end. Why bother?” Schimel said at the Thursday event. “Litigants should not come to court knowing they’ve lost their case before they even uttered a word based on the identity of the judge that’s going to hear it. It’s not how it should work.” 

But at Schimel’s “Hispanic roundtable” Thursday, the state Republican Party was fully engaged. Republican Party of Wisconsin Executive Director Brian Schimming and former Republican candidate for attorney general Eric Toney were in attendance, rubbing elbows with the John Birch Society members. 

“Because people in this state and people in this city and people on the South Side need somebody who’s gonna have them top of mind and protecting victims and doing the right thing, stand up for the rule of law, all the things that we all want,” Schimming said. “And you would expect that would be easier for people to do, but it really takes somebody of great courage, somebody who’s honest and somebody who’s forthright, to step up at times like this.”

One attendee, filming Schimel’s remarks, wore #LoomersArmy hat, merch that can be purchased on the website of the Laura Loomer Fan Club. Loomer is a right-wing media personality and activist whom U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has called “extremely racist.” 

Schimel was introduced at the event by Marty Calderon and Mariano Garcia, two pastors on Milwaukee’s South Side who have been involved in the creation of the Republican Party’s office in the neighborhood. 

In his opening prayer, Garcia criticized Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ people.

“Black people, there are some Black people here. I’m a preacher so I can say this: Black people have worshiped at the altar of color and race for a long time,” Garcia said. “And LGBTQ, because when Obama put out those colors, a bunch of pastors turned and we shouldn’t do that. We should stand with righteousness and for God, for his word, for holiness. Amen. And Hispanics, they worship at the altar of immigration. And that is an issue … this is about law and order. Right now, even people who are illegal are against illegal immigration because what is happening is not the same thing. There is an onslaught, an invasion, there is something that all of us can unite against. Because this is endangering all of our communities. Amen.” 

Garcia said Schimel plans to visit Garcia’s church on Sunday. After the event, Schimel told reporters his Christian faith helps him remain objective. 

“I don’t begin my day doing public service without prayer every day without fail, because there are such huge impacts you can have on people’s lives, and I’m hoping for the wisdom to know how to do that, right?” he said. “But it also affects another way, as people stand in front of me, I see in everybody that stands there a dignity that comes from God for them, in them, and therefore that helps with that being objective. And I don’t view them how they look, how they appear, how they talk, how much money they have. They’re equal under the law. So that is something that my faith drives in me and how I deal with other human beings.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel speaks with reporters after an event Feb. 26. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

At an event hosted at Marquette University earlier this month, a member of the audience told Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate for state Supreme Court, that she was “a bit afraid” of him being elected. 

The woman said she’d been sexually assaulted when she was 19 and was grateful that at the time she was able to “control whether my body and life were upended with an unwanted pregnancy.” 

Throughout the campaign, Schimel, a former Republican state attorney general, has been attacked for his position on the legality of abortion — an issue that is likely to come before the Court after the election on April 1. 

A  currently pending case before the Court will determine the validity of an 1849 law that conservatives say bans abortion in the state. The ban is now on hold after a circuit court judge said it doesn’t apply to medical abortions, but at an event last summer, Schimel said he supports the idea that the 1849 law bans abortion. 

When abortion comes up during the campaign, Schimel acknowledges his own anti-abortion views, which he says are informed in part by becoming an adoptive father to two daughters, but he says the issue should be decided by Wisconsin’s voters, not a judge.

“Because of our circumstances, we treasure life even when it’s not planned,” he told reporters Wednesday. “But judges don’t make the law. This decision belongs in the hands of the voters, and I will respect the will of the voters of Wisconsin, period. When I put on the robe my personal opinions no longer matter.” 

At some campaign events, Schimel has said the voters should decide the issue through a referendum, but Wisconsin doesn’t have a process that allows its voters to change state law through referenda. The only route is through the constitutional amendment process, which requires a proposal to be passed in two consecutive legislative sessions before going to the ballot. 

More than once — including in his budget proposal this year —Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has pushed the Legislature to a referendum process that would allow voters to weigh in on abortion. Republicans in control of the Legislature have stymied that effort. 

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election is set to break campaign finance records. In the 2023 race, the most expensive so far at the time, liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz defeated conservative Dan Kelly to clinch a 4-3 liberal majority on the Court. That race generated about $50 million in spending. Experts say this year’s election could top $70 million in campaign spending. 

Both Schimel and his opponent, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, have received support from billionaire political donors. Crawford has gotten donations from George Soros and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker while Schimel has gotten support from Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks, Illinois billionaire Liz Uihlein and millions in outside support from Elon Musk. 

“It’s going to be worse,” Schimel said about the influx of money at the Wisconsin Counties Association conference Wednesday morning. 

The winner will decide the ideological tilt of a Court that, in addition to abortion rights, is likely to hear cases on the fate of Wisconsin’s congressional maps, the role of state government in regulating polluters and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. 

But Schimel, a career Republican official, told the audience of county government officials Wednesday that politics are irrelevant. 

“One of the best things about being a judge is there aren’t politics,” he said. 

He decided to run because he disapproved of the campaign rhetoric in the 2023 race, he told the county officials.

At the Marquette event earlier this month, Schimel said there’s a difference between a judicial conservative and a political conservative and that he’s an “originalist.” 

“You interpret law when you have to, but you apply the law as it’s written,” he said. “When there are ambiguities in the law, well, now you’re going to be forced to try to interpret the meaning of the ambiguity, but you try to stay as faithful as possible to the intent of the Legislature.” 

“I’m also an originalist when it comes to the Constitution and the amendments,” he continued. “That they’re to be viewed in terms of the perspective of those that ratified the document or the amendments.” 

Schimel’s exposition of his judicial philosophy has shifted when he speaks to different audiences. 

Speaking to law students and Milwaukee voters at the Marquette event, when asked about federal judges’ role in thwarting Trump’s executive orders to end birthright citizenship, give Musk access to massive troves of personal data and stop congressionally appropriated funds from being disbursed, Schimel said it’s a judge’s role to define the limits of executive authority. 

“When there’s a dispute about whether that exercise of power is legitimate or not, well, then it may have to be the court that resolves that dispute,” he said. 

However, in a radio appearance with right wing host Vicki McKenna, he accused federal judges of “acting corruptly” for issuing temporary restraining orders against the dismantling of federal agencies.

The April election will be one of the first tests nationwide of the voting public’s mood after Trump was sworn in last month, Musk began his work, the White House attempted to freeze all federal spending and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass a budget that includes massive cuts for programs such as Medicaid. 

In recent years, Democrats and liberal candidates have performed better in off-cycle elections, midterms and special elections when the electorate is made up of more highly engaged voters. At the WCA event, Schimel acknowledged he knows he needs to do a lot to re-engage the coalition of voters that narrowly swung the state for Trump in November. 

“3.4 million people turned out for Nov. 5,” he said. “If we get 2 million for April 1, that’s going to be a huge, huge turnout. Well, that means about a million and a half will fall off and don’t come and vote again. I need to convince those voters that this is important.”

Black students at Milwaukee Area Technical College have regularly received the most funds through the state's Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant program. (Photo Courtesy of MATC)

A Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that a grant program run by the Wisconsin Higher Education Aids Board (HEAB) to provide scholarships to students of certain minority groups is unconstitutional. 

The 2nd District Court of Appeals cited a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision in its ruling that found the program discriminates based on race. 

A group of families, represented by the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), sued the HEAB in 2021 to end the minority grant program. The program, established in 1985, targets student aid at students who are Black, Hispanic, Native American and immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Laos, Vietnam or Cambodia following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Students receive between $250 and $2,500 in aid. The program goes to students in Wisconsin’s technical colleges, private universities and tribal colleges. The UW System operates a similar program for its students.

In the 2021-22 academic year, $819,000 was given out through the program. 

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA) that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions are unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. 

“SFFA completely cut the legs out from under HEAB’s originally asserted government interest of student body diversity,” the Court of Appeals wrote. “But HEAB also does not meet its burden to show that its revised post-SFFA asserted government interest of increasing retention/graduation rates of students in the preferred groups, and relatedly reducing the disparity in retention/graduation rates between students from those groups and students from nonpreferred groups, is a compelling interest.” 

In a statement, WILL deputy counsel Dan Lennington said the ruling helps the state reach “true equality.” 

“The appellate judges agreed with WILL that the state of Wisconsin can offer aid based on need, income level, or personal hardships — but not race,” Lennington said. “Their comprehensive decision marks a turning point in the fight for true equality for both our state and country.”

After the Supreme Court ruled in SFFA, Wisconsin legislative leaders said they’d take aim at race-based scholarships like the minority grant program. While a legislative change would likely have been vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers, a Wisconsin Examiner analysis found that the money in the program largely went to Black students at Milwaukee Area Technical College.

Elon Musk arrives for the inauguration of President Donald Trump in the U.S. Capitol rotunda on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)

A political action group tied to Elon Musk that has sought to influence Wisconsin’s high stakes Supreme Court election canceled a social media ad this week after it featured the wrong person. 

The ad by the group Building America’s Future attempted to attack Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate in the race. However the ad featured a photo of a different Susan Crawford. Instead of showing the judge, the ad, which attacked Crawford’s record on crime, featured former Harvard Law School Professor Susan P. Crawford.

Derrick Honeyman, a spokesperson for Crawford’s campaign, said in a statement the ad was a “fraud.” 

“Maybe an audit is needed of the staff at Musk’s shady far-right group,” Honeyman said. “Wisconsinites shouldn’t trust a single thing from these guys.”

First reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the ad ran for four days and cost $3,000. 

Building America’s Future has promised to spend more than $1.5 million on airing anti-Crawford ads in a number of television markets across the state. Another Musk-associated PAC has invested $1 million in canvassing and field operations in support of the conservative candidate, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel. 

Musk’s support of Schimel comes as Tesla has sued the state of Wisconsin over a law that prevents car manufacturers from owning dealerships in the state. 

The Supreme Court race will determine the ideological swing of the body. The race between Crawford and Schimel could break spending records for a Wisconsin judicial campaign after 2023’s race set the previous record at about $50 million. 

Both candidates have been supported by contributions from billionaires. Crawford has received help from George Soros and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker while Schimel received donations from Illinois billionaire Liz Uihlein, Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks and outside help from Musk. 

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has approved a proposal to expand a Pierce County dairy factory farm, but critics have objected. Shown is a Wisconsin dairy CAFO, photographed in 2013. (Wisconsin DNR photo)

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources approved a permit allowing a Pierce County factory farm to expand from 1,700 cows to 6,500 despite heavy local opposition. 

On Friday, the DNR granted the Ridge Breeze Dairy approval for its permit under the Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (WPDES), which regulates the manure and associated nutrient runoff created by the farm. The dairy had previously been forced to re-submit its permit request after it was discovered the owners had listed properties as locations where manure would be spread without ever contacting those property owners. 

In its approval, the DNR said it had assessed the dairy’s nutrient management plan and found that all the properties listed were able to handle the spreading of manure created by the expanded farm. 

“The department reevaluated the nutrient management plan and field restriction maps based on comments received during the 30-day comment period and public hearing,” the DNR’s final determination states. “The department also required additional documentation to demonstrate Ridge Breeze Dairy’s ability to apply manure and process wastewater to fields in their nutrient management plan not under common ownership with Ridge Breeze Dairy. As a result, some fields were removed from the plan. Needed corrections were made by Ridge Breeze Dairy and included in the updated nutrient management plan.”

Opponents of the expansion say, however, that the dairy has still not gotten agreements from every property owner listed in the permit. 

“Promises that the DNR would require Ridge Breeze to submit signed agreements with landowners have been broken,” a news release from Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin (GROWW) states. “Instead, the DNR is only requiring signed affidavits from operators who rent land from landowners. These affidavits claim that landowners agree to receive manure from Ridge Breeze Dairy. However, landowners have come forward to state that they have no such agreement with Ridge Breeze despite being listed on signed affidavits.”

With the permit approval, Ridge Breeze Dairy will now become the largest factory farm operating in the seven county region of Barron, Buffalo, Dunn, Pepin, Pierce, Polk and St. Croix counties.

Ridge Breeze is operated by the Breeze Dairy Group, which runs a number of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) across the state. The group has six factory farms totalling more than 10,000 cows around Wisconsin. The company has a history of manure spills at several of its properties. At the Pine Breeze in Waushara County, DNR records show nine manure spills in the last 11 years, totalling 150,000 gallons of spilled manure. 

Last year, Breeze Dairy Group purchased the Emerald Sky Dairy in the town of Emerald in St. Croix County shortly after the previous owners were granted permission to expand the operation from 1,600 to 3,300 cows. That operation has a history of harmful manure spills causing long-term damage to water and fish kills.

Last summer, hundreds of residents attended a hearing to testify against Ridge Breeze’s expansion. During the three-hour hearing, no one spoke  in favor of the expansion. The DNR’s determination opens a 60-day window in which the decision may be contested in court. Opponents said they would explore the possibility. 

“Massive livestock operations like these tear up roads, contaminate water and shut down small farms across the state, but this is just a bad permit for a rogue corporation,” Danny Akenson, a community organizer with GROWW said. “They operated a concrete factory without county permits, ignored DNR orders and have stated they won’t comply with local ordinances. We will be taking the next 60 days to explore contesting the DNR’s deeply flawed determination.”

Fights over the construction or expansion of factory farms have popped up across western Wisconsin. A number of communities in the area have passed ordinances that give local government the authority to require a permit that addresses a factory farm’s effect on local water, roads and environment. Judy Krohn, who worked on the committee that established a CAFO ordinance in Maiden Rock, said in a statement that the DNR’s Ridge Breeze decision shows the importance of local control. 

“Our fact-based ordinance provides rules and regulations to address citizens’ concerns, and is applicable to any factory farm using town roads and farmlands for manure hauling and disposal,” Krohn said. “At capacity, Ridge Breeze Dairy will generate more than 80 million gallons of manure every year that will have to go somewhere. It is urgent that towns in Pierce, Pepin and St, Croix Counties develop similar ordinances to protect the water, roads, health, safety and property values of their residents.”

An Eau Claire County farm. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Seven western Wisconsin Republican lawmakers did not appear at an event hosted by the Wisconsin Farmers Union in Chippewa Falls Friday as farmers from the area said they were concerned about the effect that President Donald Trump’s first month in office is having on their livelihoods. 

Madison-area U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth), state Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Eau Claire) and state Reps. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) and Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) were in attendance. 

U.S. Reps. Tom Tiffany and Derrick Van Orden, state Reps. Rob Summerfield (R-Bloomer), Treig Pronschinske (R-Mondovi) and Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and state Sens. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and Rob Stafsholt (R-New Richmond) were all invited but did not attend or send a staff member. 

“All four of us want you to know that there are people in elected office who want to fight for you,” Phelps said. “Because I think there’s a lot of fear that comes from the fact that we’re seeing a lot of noise and action from the people who aren’t and some of the people that didn’t show up to this. So I hope that you will also ask questions of them when you get a chance.” 

Multiple times during the town hall, Pocan joked that Van Orden was “on vacation.” 

Emerson, whose district was recently redrawn to include many of the rural areas east of Eau Claire, told the Wisconsin Examiner she had just been at an event held by the Chippewa County Economic Development Corporation where a Van Orden staff member did attend, so she didn’t understand why they couldn’t hear about how Trump’s policies are harming local farmers. 

“I get that a member of Congress can’t be at every meeting all the time, all throughout their district,” Emerson said. With 19 counties in the 3rd District, “it’s a big area. But I hope that they’re hearing the stories of farmers and farm-adjacent businesses, even if they weren’t here. There’s something different to sit in this room and look out at all the farmers, and when one person’s talking, seeing the tears in everybody else’s eyes, and it wasn’t just the female farmers that were crying, the big tough guys, and I think that talks about how vulnerable they are right now, how scary it is for some of these folks.”

Carolyn Kaiser, a resident of the nearby town of Wheaton, said she’s never seen her congressional representative, Van Orden, out in the community. Despite Van Orden’s position on the House agriculture committee, Kaiser said her town needs help managing nitrates in the local water supply and financial support to rebuild crumbling rural roads that make it more difficult for farmers to transport their products.

“When people don’t come, it’s unfortunate,” Kaiser said. 

Emmet Fisher, who runs a small dairy farm in Hager City, said during the town hall that he was struggling with the freeze that’s been put on federal spending, which affected grants he was set to receive through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Fisher told the Examiner his farm has participated in a USDA program to encourage better conservation practices on farms and that money has been frozen. He was also set to receive a rural energy assistance grant that would help him install solar panels on the farm — money that has also been held up.

The result, he said, is that he’s facing increased uncertainty in an already uncertain business.

“We get all our income from our farm, young family, young kids, a mortgage on the farm, and so, you know, things are kind of tight, and so we try to take advantage of anything that we can,” he said. “[The] uncertainty seems really unnecessary and unfortunate, and it’s very stressful. You know, basically, we have no idea what we should be planning for. The reality is just that in farming already, you can only plan for so much when the weather and ecology and biology matter so much, and now to have all of these other unknowns, it makes planning pretty much impossible.”

A number of crop farmers at the event said the looming threat of Trump imposing tariffs on Canadian imports is alarming because a large majority of potash — a nutrient mix used to fertilize crops — used in the United States comes from Canada. Les Danielson, a cash crop and dairy farmer in Cadott, said the tariffs are set to go into effect during planting season.

“How do you offer a price to a farmer? Is it gonna be $400 a ton, or is it gonna be $500 a ton?” he asked. “I’m not even thinking about the fall. I’m just thinking about the spring and the uncertainty. This isn’t cuts to the federal budget, this is just plain chaos and uncertainty that really benefits no one. And I know it’s kind of cool to think we’re just playing this big game of chicken. Everybody’s gonna blink. But when you’re a co-op, or when you’re a farmer trying to figure out how much you can buy, it’s not fine.”

A recent report by the University of Illinois found that a 25% tariff on Canadian imports — the amount proposed by Trump to go into effect in March — would increase fertilizer costs by $100 per ton for farmers.

Throughout the event, speakers said they were concerned that Trump’s efforts to deport workers who are in the United States without authorization  could destroy the local farm labor force, that cuts to programs such as SNAP (commonly known as food stamps) could cause kids to go hungry and prevent farmers from finding markets to sell their products, that cuts to Medicaid could take coverage away from a population of farmers that is aging and relies on government health insurance and that because of all the disruption, an already simmering mental health crisis in Wisconsin’s agricultural community — in rural parts of the state that have seen clinics and hospitals close or consolidate — could come to a boil.

“Rural families, we tend to really need BadgerCare. We need Medicaid. We need those programs, too,” Pam Goodman, a public health nurse and daughter of a farmer, said. “So if you’re talking about the loss of your farming income, that you’re not going to have cash flow, you’re already experiencing significant concerns and issues, and we need the state resources. We need those federal resources. I’ve got families that from young to old, are experiencing significant health issues. We’re not going to be able to go to the hospital. We’re not going to go to the clinic. We already traveled really long distances. We’re talking about the health of all of us, and that is, for me, from my perspective as a nurse, one of my biggest concerns, because it’s all very interrelated.”

Near the end of the event, Phelps said it’s important for farmers in the area to continue sharing how they’re being hurt by Trump’s actions, because that’s how they build political pressure.

“Who benefits from all the chaos and confusion and cuts? Nobody, roughly, but not literally, nobody,” he said. “Because I just want to point out that dividing people and making people confused and uncertain and vulnerable is Donald Trump’s strategy to consolidate his political power.”

“And the people that can withstand the types of cuts that we’re seeing are the people so wealthy that they can withstand them. So they’re in Donald Trump’s orbit, basically,” Phelps said, adding  that there are far more people who will be adversely affected by Trump’s policies than there are people who will benefit.

“And you know that we all do have differences with our neighbors, but we also have a lot of similarities with them, and being in that massive group of people that do not benefit from this kind of chaos and confusion is a pretty big similarity,” he continued. “And so hopefully these types of spaces where we’re sharing our stories and hearing from each other will help us build the kind of community that will result in the kind of political power that really does fight back against it.”

Milwaukee's Hoan Bridge looking out toward Lake Michigan. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Kayakers on Wisconsin’s Lake Superior coastline rely on data collected by buoys operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to determine if conditions are safe enough for a weekend paddle or if the swells and wind could spell danger on a lake famous for wrecking much larger watercraft. 

Surfers in Sheboygan use buoys on Lake Michigan to figure out if the city is living up to its name as the “Malibu of the Midwest” on a given day. Anglers on the shores and on the ice all over the lakes rely on the buoy data to track fish populations.

Freighters sailing from Duluth, Minnesota and Superior use NOAA data to track weather patterns and ice coverage. 

Wisconsin’s maritime economy provides nearly 50,000 jobs and nearly $3 billion to the state’s gross domestic product, according to a 2024 NOAA report, but in the first month of the administration of President Donald Trump, the agency is being threatened. 

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences, UW-Madison’s Sea Grant and UW Extension’s National Estuarine Research Reserve use funds through NOAA grant programs to study the state’s two Great Lakes. 

Faculty at universities across the state receive NOAA money to study weather forecasting, severe droughts and precipitation on the Pacific Ocean. NOAA helps the state Department of Administration manage more than 1,000 miles of coastline and funds local efforts to control erosion and prevent flooding. A previous NOAA project worked with the state’s Native American tribes to study manoomin, also known as wild rice, to help maintain the plant that is sacred to the tribes and plays an important ecological role. 

All of that research could be at risk if cuts are made at NOAA. 

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — named for an internet meme of a shiba inu (a breed of Japanese hunting dog) first made popular more than a decade ago — has set its sights on NOAA. In early February, staffers with DOGE entered NOAA’s offices seeking access to its IT system, the Guardian reported. A week later, the outlet reported that scientists at the agency would need to gain approval from a Trump appointee before communicating with foreign nationals. The agency has been asked to identify climate change-related grant projects.

To run the agency, Trump has nominated Neil Jacobs as NOAA administrator. Jacobs was cited for misconduct after he and other officials put pressure on NOAA scientists to alter forecasts about 2019’s Hurricane Dorian in a scandal that became known as “Sharpiegate.” Trump has also nominated Taylor Jordan as the assistant Secretary of Commerce overseeing NOAA. Jordan previously worked as a lobbyist for private weather forecasting agencies that would benefit from the dismantling of NOAA — which runs the National Weather Service. 

A suggested Trump administration plan for NOAA was laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint. The plan calls for NOAA to “be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” because it has “become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” 

Sara Hudson, the city of Ashland’s director of parks and recreation, says the community is dependent on Lake Superior year round and funding from NOAA helps the city manage its coastline. She says the city has about $1.2 million in grant funding that could be affected by cuts at NOAA. The city’s total 2024-25 budget is about $2.4 million. 

“With the funding that Ashland has, we really don’t have a lot of access to be able to do coastal resiliency or coastal management projects,” she says. “So we rely on grants to be able to do extra.” Among the affected projects, she says, could be  coastal resiliency projects that help maintain public access to a waterfront trail along Lake Superior, projects to help improve water quality including the Bay City Creek project and work on invasive species and promoting native species within public lands.

Even if Trump and Musk are trying to erase climate change research from NOAA’s mandate, the effect of a warming climate could have dire consequences for Ashland’s lake-based economy, according to Hudson. Hundreds of businesses on Lake Superior can’t survive if the tourism season ends in the fall. 

“For a community that relies on winter and every year sees less winter, economically it could be devastating,” Hudson says. “We need to have tourism 12 months out of the year. And if our winters go away, that really, that’s going to be a pivot to us. But our winter … that’s the only way our businesses can stay alive here.” 

The Great Lakes provide drinking water for about 40 million people across the United States and Canada. Organizations like the National Estuarine Research Reserve are funded by NOAA to help make sure that water is healthy. 

“We’re doing things like tracking algae blooms and changes in water quality that are really important for tourism and fishing and drinking water,” Deanna Erickson, the research reserve’s director, says. “On Lake Superior we’re working in rural communities on flood emergencies and emergency management and coastal erosion; 70% of the reserve’s operational funding comes through NOAA, and that’s matched with state funds. So in Superior, Wisconsin, that’s, you know, a pretty big economic impact here we have about a million dollars in funding for our operations.”

Eric Peace, vice president of the Ohio-based Lake Carriers Association, says that cuts to NOAA could have drastic effects on Great Lakes shipping because the data collected by the agency is crucial to navigating the lakes safely.

“On Lake Michigan, those buoys are critical to navigation safety, because what they do is provide real time data on wind, waves, current water temperatures, etc,” he says. “And our captains use those extensively to avoid storms and to find places to transit and leave.” 

Further north on Lake Superior, real-time reports on water conditions are crucial because of how dangerous the lake can get.

“I was stationed on a buoy tender in Alaska, and I’d take the 30-footers that you get up there over the 10-footers you get on Lake Superior, because they’re so close together here,” says Peace, who spent more than 20 years in the U.S. Coast Guard. “They’re all wind-driven, and they’re dangerous. Couple that with icing and everything else, you have a recipe for disaster.”

The DOGE mandate for NOAA scientists to stop communicating with foreign nationals could have a significant impact on Great Lakes shipping because the agency coordinates with the Coast Guard and a Canadian agency to track ice conditions on the Great Lakes. 

“That is one area that would be detrimental,” Peace says. “We wouldn’t have that ice forecasting from the Canadians. We would have to assume control of that completely for our own sake.”

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin recently introduced a bipartisan bill with a group of senators from seven other Great Lakes states to increase funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The initiative involves 12 federal agencies, including NOAA, to keep the lakes clean. In a statement, Baldwin said she’d work to fight against any efforts that would harm Wisconsin’s Great Lakes. 

“Republicans are slashing support for our veterans, cancer research, and now, they are coming after resources that keep our Great Lakes clean and open for business — all to find room in the budget to give their billionaire friends a tax break,” she said. “Wisconsin communities, farmers, and businesses rely on our Great Lakes, and I’ll stand up to any efforts that will hurt them and their way of life.”