A Dane County Circuit Court judge ordered the Wisconsin Department of Justice to release its list of about 16,000 law enforcement officers certified in the state. 

The lawsuit was brought by media outlets the Badger Project and Invisible Institute. Police officers in Wisconsin are required to be certified by the state’s Law Enforcement Standards Board. The DOJ has previously released partial versions of the list, arguing that the full database could compromise the identity of officers working undercover. 

Both outlets have frequently written about “wandering cops” who leave departments due to misconduct or abuse only to be hired by another agency. The DOJ list includes a record of cops being fired or resigning in lieu of termination. 

Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled on Tuesday that the DOJ’s argument against releasing the list went against the state’s open records law. 

“When responding to records requests, there is a strong presumption of openness and liberal access to public records,” she wrote.  “[T]he DOJ has not met its burden to show that this is an ‘exceptional case’ warranting nondisclosure.”  The judge concluded that DOJ’s denial “was not the product of a genuine, case-by-case balancing analysis, but rather a habitual denial based on [its] past inability to garner compliance from local agencies.”

Lanford noted that law enforcement officers hold a public position and therefore “necessarily relinquish certain privacy and reputational rights by virtue of the amount of trust society places in them and must be subject to public scrutiny.”

Tom Kamenick, the lead attorney in the lawsuit and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Institute, said the decision was a win for transparency in Wisconsin government and the requirement that officials must prove real risk of harm when denying an open records request. 

“Courts have ruled time and time again that speculative fears of harm do not justify withholding government records from the public,” Kamenick said in a statement. “Government officials must do more than merely claim that, hypothetically, something bad might happen if the records are released.  Rather, they must show that harm is likely to occur and is sufficiently serious to overcome the presumption of access to government records. DOJ could not do that here.”

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A lawsuit seeking to throw out Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they’re unconstitutionally anti-competitive was dismissed Tuesday by a panel of three circuit court judges. 

The lawsuit was brought last summer by bipartisan business group Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy Coalition, represented by the progressive nonprofit Law Forward. 

For more than a decade, Wisconsin has been a national symbol of the effects of extreme partisan gerrymandering and Tuesday’s dismissal comes amid a effort by both major parties to redraw maps ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. 

A national mid-decade redistricting tit-for-tat started last year when Texas Republicans drew new maps, at President Donald Trump’s request, in an attempt to limit the number of Democrats in the House of Representatives. A number of other Republican states, including Missouri and North Carolina, followed suit. In response, voters in California and Virginia voted to change state laws to allow Democrats to re-draw their maps to minimize Republican seats. 

This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced a bill that would redraw his state’s maps to give Republicans four more seats. 

While both parties have drawn political maps to favor their own candidates, only congressional Democrats have proposed a bill that would ban partisan gerrymandering. In Wisconsin, state Democrats have long pushed for the adoption of a non-partisan redistricting commission. 

Wisconsin’s current congressional maps were adopted in 2021 by the state Supreme Court after Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans in the Legislature were unable to reach a deal on their own. When forced to weigh in, the Supreme Court instituted a “least change” rule that required any maps proposed to the Court to hew as closely as possible to the maps instituted by Republicans in 2011. The map the Court chose was proposed by Evers, a Democrat, but resulted in a heavily Republican congressional delegation, since they were drawn to adhere to the “least change” standard.

The 2011 political maps and the least change decision allowed Republicans to hold six of the state’s eight congressional seats. The state Supreme Court tossed out the state’s legislative maps in 2023 — which remained heavily gerrymandered under the “least change” standard — on the grounds that the shapes of the districts, some of which were broken into noncontiguous parts, were illegal. 

Over the years, the court system has heard a number of challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they are an illegal partisan gerrymander. A separate three-judge panel dismissed another lawsuit on partisan gerrymandering grounds late last month. 

Despite that dismissal, the Law Forward lawsuit argued that its claims were new and therefore deserved to be considered by the courts. The lawsuit argued that the maps were drawn to unfairly give incumbents of both parties an advantage, pointing to the fact that only one of the state’s congressional districts, western Wisconsin’s 3rd CD, is regularly decided by a single-digit margin. 

“After the Wisconsin Legislature adopted the 2011 congressional map, congressional races over the ensuing decade were, as intended, highly uncompetitive,” the lawsuit stated. “The Court’s adoption … of the ‘least change’ congressional map necessarily perpetuated the essential features — and the primary flaws — of the 2011 congressional map, including the 2011 congressional map’s intentional and effective effort to suppress competition.”

Republicans and their allies intervened in the case, arguing that it should be dismissed because the anti-competitive argument treads the same ground as the partisan gerrymandering claims the Court has already declined to hear. 

The three-judge panel, made up of Dane County Judge David Conway, Marathon County Judge Michael Moran and Portage County Judge Patricia Baker, agreed and dismissed the case, noting that the makeup of the state’s political maps is a question best left to the political branches of government, not the judicial system.

“Plaintiffs’ anti-competitive gerrymandering claims are functionally equivalent to partisan gerrymandering claims, at least for purposes of the political question analysis,” the judges wrote. “In a two-party system, partisan fairness and competitiveness are correlated: a more competitive map is typically a fairer map, whereas less competition usually means less partisan fairness. The objective of both theories is to change ‘the partisan makeup of districts,’ whether by achieving proportional representation, electoral competitiveness, or both.” 

Doug Poland, Law Forward’s director of litigation, said in a statement Tuesday that it’s disappointing the panel dismissed the case before it had the opportunity to hear evidence. He also said the panel’s ruling will be appealed directly to the Supreme Court. 

“This is the first anti-competitive gerrymandering case ever filed in Wisconsin courts, and it deserves to be heard,” Poland said. “We believe that the circuit court was wrong in concluding that anti-competitive gerrymandering is ‘functionally equivalent’ to partisan gerrymandering. They are different claims, based on different evidence, that target different ways of manipulating representation to the detriment of voters.”

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A Dane County judge dismissed a lawsuit from 15 Wisconsin children who had challenged laws they argued made climate change worse and violated their constitutional rights. 

The lawsuit was filed in August by the groups Our Children’s Trust and Midwest Environmental Advocates against the state Public Service Commission and Legislature. 

The suit argued that state lawmakers have made a number of declarations that the state’s energy production should be decarbonized and the greenhouse gas emissions of that production should be reduced, but state laws prevent that from happening. 

The state’s law for siting power plants requires that the state Public Service Commission determine that “[t]he proposed facility will not have undue adverse impact on other environmental values such as, but not limited to, ecological balance, public health and welfare, historic sites, geological formations, the aesthetics of land and water and recreational use.” However the law also prohibits the PSC from considering air pollution, including from greenhouse gas emissions, in that determination. 

Additionally, the state set a goal in 2005 that 10% of Wisconsin’s energy come from renewable sources by 2015. That goal was met in 2013. However, now that the goal has been met, state law treats it as a ceiling on renewable energy the PSC can require.

In a decision issued last week, Judge Julie Genovese said she’s sympathetic to the children’s argument but that the lawsuit was asking her to weigh in on a fundamentally political, not legal, question. 

“While the court is sympathetic to the youths and admires their willingness to access the courts in their quest to protect the planet, I conclude that the case must be dismissed because environmental policy is a nonjusticiable political question,” she wrote. 

Attorneys for the Legislature had also argued that the children didn’t have standing to bring the case, pointing to a federal court decision in a similar case in California. 

But in other states similar cases have had more success. A group of Montana children successfully sued to protect their right to a clean environment in 2024. 

Tony Wilkin Gibart, MEA’s executive director, told Wisconsin Public Radio he believes there’s a strong case for the ruling to be appealed. 

“Youth plaintiffs are frustrated,” he said. “They’re also incredibly determined and have expressed a lot of resolve to continue this fight.”

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Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Pedro Colón announced Tuesday he’s running to replace retiring Justice Annette Ziegler on the Wisconsin Supreme Court next year. 

Colón, a former Democratic member of the state Assembly and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge, moved to Milwaukee from Puerto Rico when he was 10 years old. He was the first Latino elected to the Wisconsin Assembly and to sit on the state’s appeals court. 

He was appointed to the Milwaukee County Court by Gov. Jim Doyle in 2010 and then reelected three times. He was appointed to the District I Court of Appeals by Gov. Tony Evers in 2023. 

Colón said in a news release that his experience moving to Wisconsin and decades in the law make him qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. 

“I came to Milwaukee at ten years old, not speaking a word of English. I know what it feels like to stand before a system that was not built for you,” Colón said. “For 15 years on the bench, I have made sure every person who walks into my courtroom gets the same thing: a listening ear and a fair shot. That is exactly what I will do on the Supreme Court.”

Colón got his undergraduate degree from Marquette University and his law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife and has two daughters. 

He is the second liberal-leaning judge to enter the race to replace the conservative former Chief Justice Ziegler, who announced her plan to retire earlier this year. Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette announced her candidacy earlier this month. 

A liberal victory in 2027 would establish a 6-1 majority on the Court, leaving Justice Brian Hagedorn, who has occasionally been a swing vote and sided with the Court’s liberals, as the lone conservative on the bench.

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The Trump administration’s recently announced plans to radically restructure the U.S. Forest Service have raised concerns among advocates that forest land across Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest could suffer. 

The plan, announced late last month, will relocate the agency’s head office from Washington D.C. to Salt Lake City while closing regional offices and research stations across the country. In Wisconsin, the changes are expected to affect about 250 employees across the agency’s offices in Madison and Milwaukee and smaller stations spread across the state. 

Research stations in Prairie du Chien and Wisconsin Rapids are being evaluated for closure while the Madison office has been selected to serve as the state office covering Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin. 

These proposed changes come to an agency that has already seen staff attrition over the past year due to the Trump administration’s efforts to severely reduce the size of the federal government. Last year, Wisconsin saw a 19% attrition rate in its U.S. Department of Agriculture staffing level, which includes the forest service. 

Proponents of the reorganization say that moving the headquarters out west will bring decision-makers closer to the majority of the public lands managed by the agency. However, through a combination of logging activity in the Upper Midwest, New England and southeastern states, more timber is harvested each year in states east of the Mississippi River. 

But opponents have pointed out that Salt Lake City is the epicenter of the growing anti-public lands movement within the Republican Party. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has worked to sell off millions of acres of federally owned land while the state of Utah has sued the federal government over its ownership of millions of acres of land in the state. 

The advocacy infrastructure surrounding the anti-public lands movement has at times worked to influence environmental policy in Wisconsin. 

In the large scope of the Forest Service’s public lands portfolio, Wisconsin’s Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest is just a drop in the bucket. But the existence of the national forest in the Northwoods makes the federal government the largest landowner in Wisconsin. 

The Trump administration has explicitly worked to make it easier for extractive industries such as logging and mining to work on public lands. Green Light Metals, a Canadian company, has conducted exploratory drilling on national forest land in Taylor County. Last week, Congress voted to allow mining in the Superior National Forest on the edge of  Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Environmental advocates and union representatives of Forest Service employees say that sweeping changes to the agency could have dramatic repercussions for the rural communities where agency employees often work and could do irreparable damage to the forests themselves and the scientific research conducted at Forest Service stations. 

Howard Learner, president of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said the plan was clearly an effort to undermine the Forest Service’s ability to conduct research while supercharging the extraction of resources from the country’s public forests. 

“The Trump administration’s effort to take apart, as an effective matter, the U.S. Forest Service is deplorable,” Learner said. “The U.S. Forest Service needs to do a job making sure that its forests, the vast lands across our country that are our national forests, are protected and managed.” 

He noted that the agency is currently proposing one of its largest timber sales ever in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which ELPC is working to stop, and that it’s much harder for regulators to protect the country’s forests if they’re based in a far-away office.

Several people from the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents many forest service staff members, said the changes were coming to an already demoralized group of staff members while noting that the biggest harm would be felt by the rural areas where the national forests are located.

“Most Forest Service offices are in very rural, poor communities, so if these people are forced to move to Salt Lake, that could be two or three, good paying, middle-class jobs taken out of Rhinelander or wherever they may be sitting,” said Warner Vanderheul, president of union’s Forest Service council.

Steven Gutierrez, a business representative in the federal workers union’s  land management division, said that staff members will be divided between those who can’t take any more meddling from the White House and those who stick it out in an effort to do what they can to defend the forests. 

“There’s a lot that are standing strong in solidarity right now, and saying ‘I’m going to hold the line to protect democracy,’” Gutierrez said. “And that just by being a civil servant and being a Forest Service employee, that’s their way of standing up against this tyranny that’s happening from this administration.” 

But, he said, others will leave and the risk from those departures is the end to all sorts of research projects. 

“Now programs get shut down because there’s no one there anymore,” he said. “That research, that institutional knowledge, gets lost because now nobody’s there to do it. Nobody knows what anybody was working on.” 

Jenny Van Sickle, a spokesperson for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, said she’s concerned about the drain of expertise from Wisconsin. 

“Moving these regional models to state-based models really complicates and piecemeals out decision-making with these arbitrary borders,” she said. “All of these waterways are connected. All of these forests are connected. So a comprehensive approach to management is vital.” 

She said that an organization such as the fish and wildlife commission can help supplement the research done by the Forest Service, but not fully replace it. She noted that the commission has recently worked with the agency to study American marten habitat, wild rice and tribal climate adaptation. Vanderheul said that Forest Service research conducted in Wisconsin has helped produce recyclable glue on U.S. postage stamps and less breakable bats used by Major League Baseball teams. 

“A massive reduction in the workforce and professionals that have dedicated their lives to research and protecting these ecological systems is concerning,” Van Sickle said.

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Earth Day 2026 arrives less than a week after Wisconsin was battered by a succession of unseasonably severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes. A lack of snow in the West this winter has raised fears of an especially difficult wildfire season — raising air quality concerns across the Upper Midwest this summer. The administration of President Donald Trump has made drastic changes to the budget and structure of agencies such as the EPA and U.S. Forest Service, reducing staff at agencies that manage air and water quality and protect public lands. 

Nearly 60 years after Earth Day was founded by Wisconsin Gov. Gaylord Nelson, environmental advocates and elected officials celebrated the holiday noting the state, often labeled a “climate haven” for its easy access to fresh water and northern location, is not immune from the damaging effects of climate change. Still, they said, there are small victories happening every day across the state. 

Gov. Tony Evers spent the week on a statewide tour touting efforts to plant more trees, conserve more land and use more sustainable sources of energy. 

In 2021, Evers signed a pledge that Wisconsin would plant 75 million trees and conserve 125,000 acres of forestland by the end of 2030. In a Tuesday news release, Evers’ office announced that in 2025 the state planted nearly 12 million trees and conserved more than 7,800 acres of forestland in the state in 2025 — bringing the total to more than 54 million trees planted in five years. 

“Conservation and protecting our natural resources are core to who we are as a people and as a state — it’s in our DNA, and here in Wisconsin, our work to conserve and protect our lands, waters, and air and respond to an ever-changing climate has never been more important,” Evers said in a statement. “From flooding and severe weather events to unseasonable snow droughts and everything in between, it’s clear that climate change is an imminent threat to our state, economy, and our kids’ future. That’s why, since Day One, my administration and I have been working to conserve our natural resources and tackle the climate crisis head-on, but there’s always more we can do.” 

While Evers touts the work his administration has done to protect the state’s environment, the main tool the state has used to conserve public land for the last four decades — the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program — is set to expire this summer due to Republican opposition to land conservation and the Legislature’s inability to reach a deal to reauthorize the program before adjourning for the year. 

Howard Lerner, president of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said at an online news conference Tuesday that there are still wins happening for the climate. 

“We are getting things done in the Midwest, even while the Trump administration maintains its assault on core environmental values and rolls back years and years of federal progress,” he said. 

He noted that a variety of groups across the Midwest worked together to protect the funding in the federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. He  added, however, that more work will have to be done to protect Great Lakes shoreline communities from the effects of an increasingly fluctuating water level. 

“When all is said and done, the impacts of climate change are leading to much greater fluctuations in Great Lakes water levels, and they’re leading to more intensive storms, high winds, heavy waves that batter the shoreline,” he said. “That puts a heavy impact and burden on our shoreline communities and on the shoreline infrastructure, and that’s infrastructure that we’ve got to protect and find ways of doing that.”

But the Great Lakes are also struggling with water quality, he said, largely in the form of contamination from factory farms that can lead to toxic events such as algae blooms. He said that in the wake of the federal government stepping back from its role protecting wetlands and waterways from runoff, Midwest states need to do more. 

“We need to get policies in the states that reduce the amount of phosphorus, nitrates that flow into the water supply,” he said. “I think you’re going to see that [concentrated animal feeding operations] are going to be a bigger story going forward. Communities don’t want them, and E. coli and local water supplies and more toxic algae blooms in the Great Lakes is something that the public, I just don’t think is willing to tolerate.”

Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette announced Thursday she’s getting into the 2027 race for Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

Brunette previously served as the Clark County district attorney, after she was elected as a Democrat, serving in that office from 2012 to 2018. Her announcement comes just days after liberal-leaning Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor stormed to a 20 point victory over conservative Judge Maria Lazar in this year’s Supreme Court race. 

Brunette was elected to the circuit court in 2018 and ran unopposed for reelection in 2024. She said in a statement that she was running for the Supreme Court to protect Wisconsinites’ freedoms. 

“I’m running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court because it has never been more important to have state courts dedicated to protecting fundamental rights and freedoms and holding people, and the government, accountable when they break the law,” Brunette said. “Every person who enters a courtroom is seeking the same thing: fairness, justice, a system they can trust. That’s the kind of court I want to protect for every Wisconsinite, and for my own family. Whether it’s protecting personal healthcare rights, safeguarding voting rights, or supporting public safety, we need to protect a majority on our state Supreme Court who will fairly and impartially uphold our laws.”

Her message closely matches the argument Taylor worked to make on the campaign trail over the last year. 

Brunette is running for the seat currently held by conservative Justice Annette Ziegler, who has already announced she’s not running. A victory would mean that Justice Brian Hagedorn, who has occasionally sided with the Court’s liberals, is the only conservative left on the seven-member Court. 

Before being elected as the first woman to serve as Clark County district attorney, Brunette was the county’s corporation counsel and worked in the Hennepin County attorney’s office in Minneapolis. She got her bachelor’s degree from UW-Eau Claire and her law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. She lives with her five children and husband in Neillsville.

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U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin introduced a new bill Tuesday aimed at making it simpler and cheaper for people to watch professional sports. 

Currently, for a fan in Wisconsin to watch every Packers, Brewers and Bucks game in a year it costs more than $1,500 annually to purchase the necessary streaming services and subscriptions — a cost that Baldwin said Wednesday benefits league and streaming service executives, as well as the billionaire owners of sports teams, at the expense of fans. 

“This isn’t just a Packers or a Wisconsin issue. This has become an American issue,” Baldwin said during a Wednesday news conference. “What used to be grabbing the remote and hitting a button or two has turned into a maze of streaming subscriptions, unexpected blackouts or a sky high payment. To top it all off, there is no consistency, and it is flat out confusing for fans.” 

She said at the news conference she was introducing the bill without any co-sponsors specifically to start conversations in Congress about the issues in the bill. 

Baldwin’s For the Fans Act includes two major provisions meant to make it cheaper for people to watch their favorite teams. The first would prohibit league-owned streaming services, such as MLB.Tv or NBA League Pass, from blacking out games that are played locally or on a third-party streamer. The second would require the leagues to provide a way for local fans to watch all games for teams based in the state in which they live. 

The proposal comes after the Green Bay Packers v. Chicago Bears playoff game in January was only available on local TV in Wisconsin in the Milwaukee and Green Bay markets — meaning that in five of the state’s markets, fans were forced to subscribe to Amazon to watch the game. 

The bill would apply to professional sports teams playing baseball, basketball, football, basketball, hockey and soccer. Minor league teams and leagues with fewer than eight teams are exempted. 

Baldwin has also previously introduced the Go Pack Go Act, which aims to make sure the Wisconsin households assigned to Michigan or Minnesota television markets are able to watch Packers games.

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The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has warned that the severe storms that brought tornadoes, high winds, flooding and hail to Wisconsin Tuesday evening could inspire “storm chasers” to come to the state to scam homeowners seeking repairs. 

DATCP said in a news release Wednesday that door-to-door repair crews travel to communities hit by severe weather, offering quick fixes only to do poor quality work or take money up front and perform no work at all. 

The agency said the best way to avoid these scams is to hire local workers, ask for recommendations from trusted sources and make sure there is a written contract and documentation of all transactions. 

The Wisconsin Builders Association made a similar warning Wednesday, saying in a news release that scammers often skirt state laws regulating contractors. Those include laws that prohibit contractors from offering to pay portions of a homeowner’s insurance deductible or from negotiating with insurance companies, and a law that forbids contractors from refusing to cancel parts of contracts if insurance claims are denied. 

“Severe weather can create urgency for homeowners, but that urgency can also make them targets for bad actors,” said Wisconsin Builders Association President Andy Selner. “Taking a few extra steps to verify a contractor can prevent costly mistakes and protect the investment made in your home.”

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The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources held a public hearing Tuesday on a request from the AI data center company Vantage for an air quality permit to operate 45 diesel backup generators at the company’s proposed hyperscale data center in Port Washington.

The department has already granted a preliminary approval to the permit request. Members of the public complained at the virtual hearing that the DNR chose not to conduct a full environmental impact assessment — despite southeastern Wisconsin’s existing classification as a high air pollution region. 

Michael Greif, an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates, said that all 45 generators operating at once for one hour would emit the same amount of nitrogen oxides as more than 5 million cars driving over one mile of nearby Interstate 43 — or seven times the hourly nitrogen oxide emissions for all of Ozaukee County. Exposure to nitrogen oxides have been tied to respiratory issues such as asthma. 

“It is also one of the first hyper scale AI data centers proposed in Wisconsin,” Grief said. “So it raises new and unreserved questions about energy use, climate impacts, air pollution and public health, and for all those reasons and more, DNR is legally required to prepare an EIS for the Vantage data center.”

Residents of the area put it more simply, complaining about the air pollution they’re already dealing with every day. 

“Our lakeshore is at capacity,” Sheboygan resident Rebecca Clarke said. 

Many speakers also expressed frustration at their lack of a voice in the state’s surge in data center development and proposals. 

“This community has not been given a fair process,” Port Washington resident Carri Prom said. “We’ve been speaking about this process for months. We’ve largely been ignored, and yet, here we are.”

The air pollution permit is one of the DNR’s few chances to weigh in on a data center proposal that has drawn widespread opposition in Port Washington and across the state. The Public Service Commission, the agency that regulates utility companies in Wisconsin, has given the public little confidence it will do enough to prevent electric bills from increasing.

Local zoning boards and city councils, enticed by the promise of property tax revenue, have often signed off on data centers after agreeing to non-disclosure agreements to keep the details away from their constituents. 

“I think things are very backwards, and that we’re proceeding with all of these projects before we even have any idea of how to protect residents,” said Sarah Zarling, an environmental organizer who’s been involved in the data center fight. 

Over the past year, as the number of data centers operating, under construction or proposed has continued to increase, public opposition has grown. Multiple pieces of legislation for regulating data centers were proposed by lawmakers of both parties, yet none passed  before legislators adjourned for the year. Data centers have become a big issue in the Democratic primary for governor and a number of environmental groups have called for a moratorium on data center development until stricter regulations can be put into law. 

Brett Korte, a staff attorney at Clean Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner in a statement after Tuesday’s hearing that the disconnected government approval process only highlights Wisconsin’s lack of a coherent plan.

“One of the pressing issues related to the data center boom currently underway in Wisconsin is that there is no overarching plan to ensure they don’t harm communities in our state,” he said. “Nor is there even an effort to fully understand the harm they will cause. Local governments make zoning decisions, the PSC approves the construction of power plants and transmission lines, and the DNR implements water regulations and issues air permits.” Yet no state office is responsible for looking at all of the issues raised by data centers at once.

Korte added that a better process for planning future renewable energy sources, stronger carbon emission standards and a more concrete plan for achieving Gov. Tony Evers’ goal of powering the state with 100% clean energy by 2050 would help the state better manage data center growth. 

“No one is asking: Do the benefits of data centers outweigh their environmental harm?” he continued. “That is why Clean Wisconsin continues to call for a pause on data center construction until the state has a comprehensive plan to regulate their development.”

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A legal brief filed late last week seeks to have a Dane County judge declare that an 1897 law banning the practice of fusion voting is unconstitutional because it restricts the rights to a “free government,” equal protection and freedom of speech through a law that was passed to explicitly create a partisan electoral advantage. 

The motion was filed on Friday in a lawsuit brought last year by United Wisconsin, a nascent centrist political party hoping to offer voters an alternative to the “duopoly” of the Democratic and Republican parties. The group is represented by the voting rights focused firm Law Forward. 

Fusion voting is a practice through which multiple political parties can nominate the same candidate to the ticket. Under the system, a minor party such as United could choose to nominate its own candidate, but more often the party would endorse one of the major party candidates. Voters would be able to cast their votes for the same preferred candidate under either party line. 

At a conference on fusion voting hosted at UW-Madison last year, political scientists and proponents of the system said that in theory it can give minor parties more influence. A third party candidate under the current system is unlikely to win, but a minor party’s policy preferences are harder to ignore if the party has just enough sway to swing an election result in either direction.

The brief describes a hypothetical congressional race in which United cross-endorses the Democratic candidate, given the name Olson. After the hypothetical votes are counted, the Republican candidate has earned 48.2% of the vote on the Republican ticket while Olson has earned 45.9% of the vote on the Democratic ticket and 4.9% on the United line. When added together, this gives Olson the win with 50.8% of the total vote. 

In Wisconsin, where elections are often decided by single digit margins, this could result in meaningful considerations of the desires of the minor party voters — rather than the current system under which third party candidates, such as Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election, are seen as spoilers who can pull enough support away from the closest ideological major party candidate to help the other side win. 

“That is fusion voting in action. United Wisconsin will claim, with merit, to have helped her over the finish line,” the brief states. “No doubt Olson will be more attentive to her ‘home’ party, but if she’s a competent politician, she won’t ignore the priorities of the moderates and centrists in the United Wisconsin Party. If she does, United Wisconsin, and its key bloc of voters, might cross-nominate her opponent in the next election.”

Fusion voting is often considered alongside ideas such as ranked choice voting and multi-member congressional districts as a reform proposal that could help prevent the country from sliding into an authoritarian government. 

“Fusion offers the opportunity to create meaningful new political identities,” the legal brief states. “It allows voters of all ideological stripes to vote for their values without having to support a rival or opposing party with a mostly intolerable program.”

In the 19th century, fusion voting was used across the country. The practice was phased out in most of the country but exists currently in New York and Connecticut. The brief, which includes as many examples from history and political science as it does legal citations, states that Wisconsin’s fusion voting ban was enacted by the Republican Party in 1897 as it surged to become the state’s dominant political force in a direct effort to limit the ability of the Democratic Party and other minor parties to win. 

“History shows the ban was enacted as a form of invidious political discrimination,” the brief states.

The lawsuit argues the state has no direct interest in maintaining the power of the Democratic and Republican parties, so the law must be put under “strict scrutiny” for fundamentally restricting the speech of Wisconsinites. 

“When political parties cannot nominate their candidates of choice, they cannot effectively organize, campaign, advance priorities, or exercise political power,” the brief states. “They are relegated for perpetuity to a spoiler role, whereby any electoral effort they make is not only futile in advancing their own candidate and platform, but also seriously risks helping their least-favored major-party candidate win the race and get to govern. While the ban still allows political parties to nominate most candidates, it prohibits them from nominating the only candidates who can win; and while it allows political parties some degree of speech, it constrains their speech in the context for which political parties exist — the ballot.”

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Chris Taylor, an appeals court judge and former Democratic lawmaker, was elected to an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday, securing a 5-2 majority for the Court’s liberal wing and ensuring that control remains intact until at least 2030. 

With nearly 80% of the vote counted shortly before 10 p.m., Taylor had a massive 20 point lead over Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, marking a four-election winning streak for the liberal candidates running for Wisconsin’s highest court. It also gives an early signal on the mood of the state’s voters ahead of this year’s midterm elections, when the governor’s office, majority control of the Legislature and a few competitive congressional seats will be up for grabs. 

With ideological control of the body not at stake, the 2026 Supreme Court race was markedly lower energy this year. After the more than $100 million spent on last year’s race set national fundraising records for a judicial campaign, Taylor was able to win the race with $8 million in spending from her campaign and outside advocacy groups. 

Turnout on Tuesday fell far short of the mark set last year, when the election’s stakes, its spot on the calendar shortly after President Donald Trump’s inauguration and Elon Musk’s effort to sway the race with millions of dollars of spending supercharged turnout among the state’s liberals. 

Throughout the race, Crawford polled several points ahead of Lazar; however, a large portion of the electorate, about 50%, continued to tell pollsters they remained undecided. 

At an election night watch party at Madison’s Concourse Hotel, Taylor was surrounded by her family and introduced by Chief Justice Jill Karofsky. 

In her victory speech, Taylor said she would help “move Wisconsin forward.” 

“We live in an incredible state, and people are hungry for a government that works for them,” she said. “People are hungry for a judiciary that prioritizes them, that protects our rights, that affords all Wisconsinites equal justice under the law. That is exactly what I will do as your next state Supreme Court justice.”

Throughout the campaign, Taylor sought to define herself as a careful judge who despite her history as policy director of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and a Democratic state lawmaker would act as an independent voice on the bench. She often sought to position herself as a potential bulwark on the Court against efforts from Republicans and President Donald Trump to interfere with Wisconsin’s election system during the 2028 presidential race. 

Taylor will now join Justices Jill Karofsky and Susan Crawford to be the third former Dane County Circuit Court judge to sit on the state Supreme Court. Under its current liberal majority, the Court overturned Wisconsin’s 1849 criminal abortion ban and declared the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps unconstitutional. 

At the watch party, Ana Wilson, an early education major at Mount Mary University, told the Wisconsin Examiner she believed Taylor was going to care for Wisconsin people from the bench.

“As much as there’s chaos with the Trump administration, I want what’s best for Wisconsinites,” Wilson said. “Health care, abortion access, human rights that people deserve. I’ll take these small wins at the state level.” 

Lazar’s campaign, while endorsed by the state Republican Party, received less financial support from the state GOP and its allied donors than recent conservative candidates for the Court — Dan Kelly and Brad Schimel — had received; both lost by double digits. But Lazar’s campaign message that she was the true independent in the race while her opponent would act as a partisan on the bench was similar to the conservative message in 2025 and 2023. 

Taylor’s win also continues the success that Democratic and liberal candidates have had in off-cycle and non-presidential elections in recent years — particularly since Trump took office last year. 

After the race was called, Democrats said the win represented the first steps in the effort to win up and down the ballot in November. 

“The victory Wisconsinites delivered tonight is an indictment of Trump and Tom Tiffany, who are using the federal government to bully and intimidate people into submission,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Devin Remiker said in a statement. “Our state Supreme Court has repeatedly shown it is the last line of defense against the federal government’s unconstitutional overreach, and with tonight’s election, we have secured a pro-freedom, pro-democracy majority on the Court through 2030. This victory is only the beginning of the fight ahead to win a Democratic trifecta in November and deliver real, lasting change for the working people of Wisconsin.”

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A federal judge on Monday denied the appeal of former Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, who was seeking to overturn a jury’s guilty verdict against her. 

Dugan was convicted last year of obstructing federal immigration enforcement efforts for helping an undocumented man who was appearing in her courtroom go out a side door to evade immediate detection by federal agents. After a trial in December, she was found guilty of felony obstruction of justice and not guilty of a misdemeanor charge alleging she concealed an undocumented person from arrest. 

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman ruled against Dugan’s appeal in a 39-page order. He also again rejected a claim that she was immune from prosecution because her actions were taken while she served as a judge. 

Dugan’s legal team indicated in a statement that they plan to appeal Adelman’s ruling. That appeal will take that case to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. 

“We continue to maintain that Hannah Dugan acted lawfully and within her independent authority as a judge,” Dugan’s attorneys stated. “The inconsistent jury verdicts demonstrate that the trial proceedings were flawed, and we plan to appeal.”

A date for sentencing Dugan has not yet been set.

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Wisconsin’s non-partisan spring elections are Tuesday. The race for an open seat on the state Supreme Court between Court of Appeals Judges Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor is at the top of the ticket, but Wisconsin voters will also decide a handful of races for circuit court seats, hundreds of school board races, school referendum questions and other local contests. 

Polls open on Tuesday at 7 a.m. and remain open until 8 p.m. Voters who are still in line when polls close should remain in line and will still be able to cast their ballots. Absententee ballots that have not yet been returned need to be received by local election officials by the time polls close. It’s too late to drop a ballot in the mail, but voters can bring their absentee ballots to their designated polling place, their municipal clerk’s office or, in communities that use them, to a municipal absentee ballot drop box. Details on how and where to vote as well as same-day voter registration at the polls can be found at MyVote.WI.gov.

As of Monday, 424,651 absentee ballots had been requested and 324,396 ballots had been returned, according to Wisconsin Elections Commission data. The absentee numbers show a steep drop from last year’s spring election when the state Supreme Court race drew massive national attention with the ideological balance of the Court at stake. Last year, 750,240 absentee ballots were requested and 693,981 were returned. 

Wisconsin voters head to the polls amid a flurry of national headlines about efforts from President Donald Trump and Republicans to change the rules around voter registration and absentee ballot eligibility. 

Trump signed an executive order last week that seeks to severely limit access to voting by mail. He is also pushing  for congressional Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, a bill that would change the rules guiding how people register to vote in an effort to make it harder for non-citizens to vote. Non-citizen voting has become a major focus for Republican election skeptics, however there is no evidence non-citizen voting happens in statistically significant numbers. 

Trump’s executive order curtailing mail-in ballots is being challenged in court and the SAVE Act has not yet been signed into law. At an online news conference Monday, WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe said there have been zero changes to federal law that will affect Wisconsinites trying to cast a ballot Tuesday. 

“As it pertains to the April 7, 2026 election, there are no changes,” she said. “Any federal bills that are being proposed or other measures that might be proposed at the federal level — none of those are in place. And so when voters head to the polls on April 7, they should know that nothing has changed. The same processes that you’ve used to vote in the last number of years are still in place. There have been no changes. So the photo ID requirements remain unchanged. The process where you state your name and address and you show your ID and you’re given a ballot at the polls and you sign the poll book, all of those things are still in place.” 

On Monday, the Republican Party of Wisconsin announced it had filed a complaint with WEC against the city of Green Bay after 152 people were mistakenly sent two absentee ballots. Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffries said a “system glitch” caused the error. 

Since 2020, the Wisconsin Republican Party has regularly encouraged conspiracy theories about the state’s election systems. In a statement, party chair Brian Schimming called for WEC to investigate and make sure people aren’t able to cast two votes.

“Wisconsin law is clear: one voter, one ballot,” said Schimming, who was involved in the effort to cast false Electoral College ballots on behalf of Trump after the 2020 election. “This reckless failure by the Green Bay Clerk has created serious risks of double voting and fraud. The Elections Commission must immediately investigate and order a concrete plan to secure Tuesday’s election.”

Wolfe said at the news conference that state law prevents her from commenting on the specifics of any complaints made to WEC, but that Wisconsin’s system has a “very, very established process” for how clerks handle duplicate ballots. 

The system for logging returned ballots would never allow the same voter to return two ballots, Wolfe said. 

“If two ballots come back, one of them is rejected, because only one ballot can be checked in and actually sent to be tabulated per voter,” she said. “And all that’s going to happen as part of a public process. So the actual rejection and then sending one of the ballots tabulated, all that’s going to occur at the polling place or where ballots are tabulated in that jurisdiction, and observers and the public will be made aware of exactly what’s happening and why one ballot’s being rejected and one’s being sent on to be counted. And so we always, in this situation, encourage our clerks to be very transparent in exactly how these are handled and the many, many safeguards that are in place to ensure that only one ballot can be counted.”

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While the Wisconsin Supreme Court race draws most of the headlines — and, even this year with less national attention, most of the money — elections for six county circuit court seats across the state are contested. 

The Supreme Court weighs in on the state’s most hot button issues, but during its 2024-25 term issued only 22 decisions. The state’s circuit courts, on the other hand, are responsible for thousands of cases ranging from criminal prosecutions to civil lawsuits and family law disputes. 

More than 250 judges across the state are elected to six-year terms. The spring elections are Wisconsin voters’ only real chance at changing their local judges, yet the races often go uncontested. This year, 25 seats on the circuit court bench are up for election, and only six of those races are contested. 

Dane County

In Dane County’s first contested circuit court election since 2018, incumbent Ben Jones is up against immigration attorney Huma Ahsan. Jones was appointed to the court last year to fill the seat vacated by Susan Crawford’s election to the state Supreme Court. 

Before joining the bench, Jones spent almost a decade working as an attorney at the Department of Public Instruction. Jones told the Capital Times that he applied for his appointment because of his dedication to public service. 

“I bring … all of that experience, all of that training to me on the bench every day,” he said. “Not just experience with the practice of law, but the experience as a public servant and the mentality of serving the public, as opposed to my own ego.”

Ahsan works in private practice as an immigration attorney. Prior to starting her practice, she was a legislative attorney for the Ho-Chunk Nation and the deputy director of the Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center at the University of Wisconsin Law School. 

She told the Cap Times she’s running to help make Dane County welcoming for everyone. 

“That’s why I’m running, is to make sure that this community stays welcoming, open to all of us,” Ahsan, the daughter of immigrants, said. “Because it is a haven for all of us that have ever experienced something different.”

Jones has raised $126,000 for his campaign, which includes $52,000 of his own money. He’s also received $10,000 from Crawford, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission. He’s spent the largest portions of his campaign funds on mailings and consultant services. 

Ahsan has raised $93,000, nearly $19,000 of which came from her personally. She’s spent $26,000 of her funds on digital advertising. 

Florence and Forest counties 

Voters in Florence and Forest counties will be choosing someone to replace the retiring Judge Leon Stenz on their shared circuit court bench. Stenz has held the seat since 2008. 

The candidates in the race are Robert A. Kennedy Jr. and Alex Seifert.

Kennedy previously served one term as the Florence County District Attorney and one term on the Florence-Forest circuit court. He ran unsuccessfully against Stenz in 2014. 

Seifert is the Forest County district attorney. He was appointed to the role by Gov. Tony Evers in April 2024 before being elected to a full term in the 2024 November election. He ran as an independent in his one partisan race. 

Prior to his appointment to the DA’s office, Seifert worked in the Forest County Corporation Counsel’s office and for the Wisconsin State Public Defender. He also previously ran for and lost a race to be the Langlade County district attorney. 

Seifert hasn’t raised any money for the race while Kennedy has contributed $48,000 of his own money to the race — spending that largely on newspaper and radio ads and yard signs. 

Marathon County 

In Marathon County, Michael Hughes and Douglas Bauman are running to succeed Judge LaMont Jacobson. 

Hughes works in private practice in Wausau and serves as the president of the Marathon County Bar Association. Bauman is a Marathon County court commissioner and staff attorney at the circuit court. 

Bauman said in a Wisconsin Justice Initiative questionnaire that his election to the bench would allow him to play a fuller role in the county’s justice system. 

“Becoming a judge is the best way to continue and expand my service to the community,” he said. “It would also make my service more direct and comprehensive. In the position I hold now, I work on pieces of particular cases, but the ultimate decider is a judge. I want to become a judge in order to cut out the middleman. Becoming a judge would allow me to take the experience I’ve gained during my 28-year legal career, particularly the last 24 years at the circuit court, and apply it directly to the legal disputes that come before the court. It would also allow me to ensure that litigants have the opportunity to feel heard, and that they are treated with compassion and respect.” 

Hughes has touted endorsements he’s received from local officials on both sides of the political aisle, saying his broad experience as a private attorney has prepared him to work as a judge. 

“We must have a court system that is strong, fair, efficient, and which keeps our community safe,” he told WJI. “A key part of that system are judges. We need judges who are impartial and who will make decisions based on the law and the facts. We need judges who will treat everyone in the courtroom with respect. We need judges who are committed to serving with integrity.”

Bauman has raised $11,700, with $10,000 of that coming from his own money. He’s only spent $2,400 of those funds.

Hughes has raised $27,000 for his campaign, which includes $20,000 in his own money. 

Washburn County 

Washburn County District Attorney Aaron Marcoux is running to unseat incumbent Judge Angeline Winton-Roe. 

Marcoux was appointed DA by Evers in 2019 before being reelected in 2020 and 2024. He previously worked as an assistant district attorney in the county and for the state public defender’s office. 

Winton-Roe was appointed to her seat by Evers in 2019 before being elected to a full term in 2020. She was the county’s elected DA from 2017 until her appointment to the bench. 

Marcoux told WJI that his experience as both a prosecutor and public defender help him understand what is needed from a circuit court judge. 

“I also believe strongly that the court belongs to the people it serves, not the individual sitting on the bench,” he said. “A judge’s role is not about power or position, but about responsibility. The judge must apply the law fairly, listen carefully, and treat every person who enters the courtroom with dignity and respect.” 

Winton-Roe said on the questionnaire that she hopes her court is a place where the people of Washburn County don’t get overlooked. 

“A community court must also be a place where people feel welcome, even during some of the most difficult moments in their lives,” she said. “Many who come before the court are facing uncertainty, conflict, or hardship. Some arrive feeling overwhelmed, overlooked, or even forgotten. It is essential that the courtroom remain a place where every person, regardless of their circumstances, knows they will be treated fairly and respectfully, and that their voice is heard.” 

Marcoux has raised about $13,000 for his campaign, with nearly all of it coming from his own money. Most of his funds have been spent on digital, newspaper and billboard advertising. 

Winton-Roe has raised about $16,000, with $10,000 of that coming from her own money. Most of her money has been spent on digital advertising.

Washington County 

In Washington County, incumbent Judge Gordon Leech is being challenged by Grant Scaife. 

Leech was appointed to the court by Evers last July. He previously worked as a prosecutor in Fond du Lac County and as an attorney in the U.S. Marine Corps. Scaife is an assistant district attorney in the Washington County DA’s office. 

Scaife is running explicitly as a conservative judge. He has touted his desire to “maintain a tough on crime approach” from the bench and has been endorsed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. 

Leech told WJI that he believes his 35 years of legal experience have prepared him for the role as a judge. 

“I have been out in the community talking to people about my judicial philosophy, which is committed to keeping politics out of the courtroom, and everyone agrees that is important,” he said. “I don’t see the same commitment from others. So I believe I have something unique and critical to offer the citizens of the county: judicial independence from political parties and special interests that would like to influence the courts.”

Leech has raised about $10,000 for his campaign, contributing about $3,000 of his own money. He’s only spent about $1,100 of the funds. 

Scaife has raised $60,000, $28,000 of which are personal funds. He’s also received a $2,000 donation from conservative Court of Appeals candidate Anthony LoCoco. 

Wood County 

Incumbent Judge Emily Nolan-Plutchak is being challenged for her seat on the Wood County Circuit Court by Elizabeth Gebert, an assistant district attorney for Monroe County and Marathon County.

Nolan-Plutchak was appointed to the seat by Evers last year and was previously an attorney manager for the state public defender’s office in Wisconsin Rapids. Gebert has worked in seven county DA offices across the state since 2008, she’s also married to current Wood County Judge Timothy Gebert. 

Nolan-Plutchak told WJI her experience as a public defender has helped her to understand how much people can be assisted just by the judge slowing down the process to explain what’s going on, and the community’s need for judges to take a more proactive role in addressing problems such as addiction and mental illness. 

“Knowing the difference this approach can make in an individual’s life inspires me to serve,” she said. 

Gebert touted her experience as a prosecutor as preparing her to be a judge. 

“I know that I have the ethical grounding necessary to issue decisions that reflect the values of the people of Wood County,” she told WJI. 

Gebert has raised about $6,000 for her campaign, with about $2,400 coming from her personal funds. She’s spent the most money on newspaper ads and billboards. 

Nolan-Plutchak has raised $27,000, with almost $14,000 coming from her own money. She’s also received $563 from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Her largest campaign expense has been $8,000 on brochures.

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Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor tried to tag each other with accusations of partisanship during the sole debate in the campaign Thursday evening. 

After the initially scheduled debate last week was canceled because Taylor was hospitalized with a kidney stone — and another delay Thursday due to severe weather in the Milwaukee area — the debate, moderated by WISN’s Matt Smith and Gerron Jordan, was held at WISN’s studio in Milwaukee just five days before polls open April 7.

The candidates are vying for an open seat on the Court being vacated by conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. After a string of high stakes races for the Court because the ideological swing of the body was up for grabs, this year’s race has drawn less attention and less money. This year the race will decide if the Court’s liberal wing will gain a 5-2 majority or if the split will remain 4-3. 

Through most of the campaign, Taylor has led in the polls and raised more money, however recent polling showed large swaths of the state’s voters remained undecided. 

Taylor, a judge on the state’s District IV Court of Appeals who previously worked on the Dane County Circuit Court, as a Democrat in the state Assembly and as the policy director of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, painted herself as a “scrupulous” judge who is proud of her work in the Legislature but will bring an independent judicial record to the Supreme Court. 

“I am scrupulous in applying the law, and I have a spine of steel when it comes to making sure people’s rights and freedoms are protected,” Taylor said.

Lazar, a judge on the state’s District II Court of Appeals who worked on the Waukesha County Circuit Court and as an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice under Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, touted her longer tenure as a judge and described herself as an independent jurist who has never belonged to a political party. 

“I guess when my opponent has a few more years of judicial experience, she’ll understand that being reversed is a part of being an independent judiciary,” Lazar said. 

Yet, as has been the case throughout the campaign, the candidates each tried to cast their opponent as a partisan extremist. 

Lazar repeatedly said that Taylor was answering questions as a legislator, not a judge. 

“On the one hand, you have a judge, an experienced judge who has been on the bench for more than 12 years, protecting the rights of everyone in the state,” Lazar said. “And on the other hand, you have a radical, extreme legislator who is known as the most liberal of the 99 in that Assembly, who now as a judicial activist, wants to put her views, her values and her agenda in the court above the law.” 

But Taylor pointed to cases in which Lazar sided with right-wing interest groups, endorsements from right-wing figures and her work before joining the bench to argue that Lazar is the more partisan figure. 

“She has a very specific agenda that favors big corporations and right-wing special interests,” Taylor said. 

The first clash of the night came over the state’s political maps and election law. Through much of the campaign, Taylor and her supporters have argued that if Lazar is elected she’ll be a vote on the Supreme Court in favor of potential Republican efforts to meddle with the state’s election results. 

Taylor pointed to Lazar’s previous support from election conspiracy theory figures such as Michael Gableman and her decision in Wisconsin Voter Alliance v. Secord, in which Lazar was criticized by the Supreme Court for ignoring existing precedent to rule that a group of election deniers should be given access to the confidential voting records of people with disabilities. She said that Lazar would be a “rubber stamp” for federal efforts to interfere in the state. 

In response, Lazar defended the state’s election system more forcefully than she had previously on the campaign trail. 

“I think it’s important that we tell people in the state of Wisconsin that our elections are safe, they’re fair and that their votes count, and that’s the key, important thing that we need to address in this state,” she said. 

The sharpest disagreement of the night came during a discussion of abortion. Last year, the Court struck down the state’s 1849 criminal abortion ban, which had halted abortion services in the state following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Since the state Court’s decision, a previously instituted law banning abortion after 20 weeks has been the guiding law in the state. 

Lazar said that she thought the return of abortion policy decisions to the individual states was a good thing and that she believes the 20 week line is a good compromise for the divided Wisconsin electorate. 

“I think that it falls within the parameters of where people in the state believe it should be, and if they don’t, the answer is to go to the legislature and the governor, not the courts,” she said, accusing Taylor of supporting abortions up to birth. 

Taylor said Lazar’s support of overturning Roe v. Wade ignores the women across the country who have been harmed by losing access to abortion care. 

“So it is tragic that we have someone running for the state Supreme Court that is celebrating that there are women all over this country who are victims of rape and incest … losing access,” Taylor said. “That is what the reality of overturning Roe v. Wade, that you have called very wise. It’s not been very wise for victims of rape and incest who now live in states where abortion has been outlawed. It’s not very wise for women who have lost their lives in states because they couldn’t get help when a pregnancy went wrong.”

Lazar responded by again accusing Taylor of acting as a partisan. 

“This is exactly what we’ve been doing in this campaign,” she said. “It’s the same old political playbook. If you don’t have anything truthful to say about your opponent, then just lie and mislead.”

Early voting is open until Saturday. Polls open at 7 a.m. on Election Day, April 7. Details for poll locations and hours can be found at MyVote.WI.gov.

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About 100 Wisconsinites joined a virtual town hall hosted by Citizen Action of Wisconsin Wednesday evening to share how data center developments across the state are harming local residents through the increased use of energy. 

Over the past year, data centers have become an increasingly potent issue in the state as the number of data center facilities in Wisconsin has risen to about 50. Data center proposals are currently pending in communities including Beaver Dam and Janesville. The Democratic and Republican candidates for governor have frequently been asked about the issue and lawmakers of both parties introduced legislation to manage data center growth — yet both chambers of the Legislature adjourned for the year without the bills being signed into law. 

The Legislature’s lack of action, and the 10 month wait before the body is back in session in January 2027, was a big concern for data center opponents at the event Wednesday who are worried about how many data center projects can be planned and started before then. 

“These are happening fast. A lot of these decisions are being made in the next six to 18 months, which is especially concerning because, as mentioned earlier, the state Legislature went home on a 10 month long vacation without helping us with many of these important decisions,” Kat Klawes, Citizen Action of Wisconsin’s climate policy coordinator, said. “There are data centers and power plants being built 24/7, so there are people out at construction sites across the state, still working late at night. And there’s local projects that are being approved.

“And this is a big issue, because Wisconsin does not have a statewide plan,” Klawes said “These projects are being approved on a case-by-case basis. Local towns are coming up against billion dollar companies and teams of lawyers who are demanding things. There’s no consistent framework for cost, water use, energy demand, community impact or community say. There is none of that. Wisconsin is the wild, wild west.”

Among the biggest concerns shared by attendees were the pressure that data centers’ massive energy use will put on regular Wisconsinites’ energy bills and the effect that increased energy use will have on the climate. 

Keviea Guiden, who works on energy burden issues on Milwaukee’s north side, noted that Wisconsin is two weeks away from the end of the winter moratorium on utilities shutting off people’s power. She said that with so many Wisconsin families already struggling to pay their bills, the state needs to do something to prevent data centers from further increasing the cost of energy. 

“We will be burdened with having to pay for those facilities being built,” she said. “Families are already being forced between if they should pay for health care, day cares, diapers, if they should figure out if the dog could even eat as well.” 

Attendees complained about the large amount of water data centers use to cool their systems and the effect that could have on local water supplies — especially the Great Lakes. But the bigger climate concern is the emissions caused by increasing the amount of electricity Wisconsin’s utility companies generate. Green Bay resident Arden Kozlow connected the fight against data centers to the fight against oil pipelines such as the activism against the Line 5 pipeline across northern Wisconsin. 

“We’re just fast tracking a process that is already happening with absolutely no regulation and no care for how it’s happening, and that, frankly, this only adds to the problem that we’ve already had with oil pipelines,” Kozlow said. “So it’s all just sort of feeding into itself and creating a bigger and bigger problem.”

Attendees still suggested a number of statewide solutions for managing the effects of data centers. 

One proposal is capping the state’s utility rates at 2% of household income, which advocates said would encourage the state’s utilities to invest in lower cost renewable energy. Attendees also supported legislation proposed by Democratic lawmakers that would put a moratorium on data center construction until many of the questions about their impacts can be answered.

State Rep. Angelito Tenorio (D-West Allis) joined the town hall to tout his proposed legislation that would require Wisconsin get 100% of its energy from carbon free sources by 2050. 

“We have a moral imperative to move towards clean energy, renewable energy,” he said, noting that Wisconsin lags behind its neighbors in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota on the issue. 

With the Legislature out for the year, local government approvals will remain the only lever Wisconsin residents have to push back against data center developments.

A special committee of the Wisconsin Senate approved the release of a report detailing allegations from Republicans that Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and the Department of Justice skirted the law by using funds from out-of-state groups to hire lawyers. 

The report’s release comes as Kaul is set to face re-election in November against Eric Toney, the Republican district attorney of Fond du Lac County. 

Republicans said the report shows Kaul’s willingness to circumvent the law in a way that amounts to the DOJ being “for sale,” while Democrats accused Republicans of making baseless accusations to create political theater in an election year. 

Faced with a limited budget from the GOP-controlled Legislature and increased scrutiny on the DOJ since the enactment of the Republican lame duck laws in 2018, Kaul hired the out-of-state lawyers to assist with the enforcement of the state’s environmental regulations. 

The lawyers were given fellowships to work as special assistant attorneys general through a New York University program tied to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The attorneys were paid by the NYU program and officially classified as volunteers under the state employment system yet given the powers of an assistant attorney general. 

Kaul appeared before the committee in February to give testimony. During that hearing, he said the classification as volunteers had been discussed with and approved by the state’s ethics commission. An ethics complaint against the arrangement has been pending for more than a year. 

In the report, which the oversight committee voted 4-2 along party lines to adopt on Tuesday, the Republicans allege that the arrangement was “not authorized” by Wisconsin statutes, that the DOJ violated state law by not immediately administering the attorneys oaths of office, exposes concerns about the state’s system for adjudicating ethics complaints, opens the state up to influence from outside interests and that the DOJ did not fully cooperate with records requests filed by the committee. 

The report recommends that the DOJ immediately terminate the agreements that facilitated the hiring of the attorneys. It also recommends that the Legislature pass a resolution declaring the hirings unlawful, more strictly manage the processes through which the DOJ is funded and pass legislation that only state employees can conduct prosecutions. Additionally the report states that government attorneys should take their oaths of office before conducting any work for the state and that the state Ethics Commission should be subject to faster timelines for adjudicating complaints.

Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Gillet) said he’s concerned that allowing arrangements like the one DOJ established with the NYU program means an attorney general from any party can outsource DOJ functions to outside interest groups. 

“If attorney generals, not just Josh Kaul, but if attorney generals are permitted to do this, then the DOJ is for hire. It’s for sale,” Wimberger said. 

At a news conference following the committee meeting, Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) said that the attorneys were “focused solely … on bread and butter environmental issues, keeping out air, our water and our Wisconsin lands safe, and that’s what people want” from the DOJ. 

Habush Sinykin and the other Democrat on the committee, Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), argued that the Republicans were focused on creating political drama out of standard DOJ functions when instead they should have been working to solve problems Wisconsinites care about. 

“What we just heard in there was that definition of political theater, the opposite of what the people of Wisconsin are seeking from our legislators,” Habush Sinykin said. “Which is very much what they want us focusing on, housing affordability, Knowles-Nelson, child care, all those matters which this Legislature and under this Republican majority, we have not gotten to.” 

The Democrats pointed out that last February, Republicans introduced a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the DOJ from using legal services of anyone who is not a state employee. The bill, authored by Wimberger and Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee), who is also on the committee, did not even receive a public hearing. 

Instead, the Democrats said, the issue was ignored until the report was released after the Legislature had adjourned for the year. 

“You should have moved it through committee. We should have voted on it on the Senate floor,” Habush Sinykin said during the meeting. “And I wish I could have had that chance, rather than to let it just sit there and go nowhere, and to then call us back for this purpose and to use it as a weapon.”

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Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Chris Taylor has raised four times as much money as her opponent Maria Lazar since February, according to campaign finance reports filed this week. 

In the final reports filed before next week’s election, which cover a period from early-February to mid-March, Taylor raised $2,079,406 while Lazar raised $472,295. 

Taylor has far out-spent her opponent during that period, spending $3.8 million — largely on TV ads. Lazar spent $565,000 with all but $875 spent on digital advertising. 

The money raised still pales in comparison to the massive amounts of money involved in the previous two Wisconsin Supreme Court races when the ideological balance of the Court was at stake. Last year’s election between Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel broke national spending records for a judicial race, largely because of the arms race that was kicked off once Elon Musk — the world’s richest man, who was at the time serving a role in the administration of President Donald Trump — got involved. 

Taylor’s fundraising advantage has persisted throughout the campaign. Since she entered the race last May, she’s raised $5.6 million. Lazar, who entered the race five months later than Taylor in October, has raised about $976,000. 

While both candidates have sought during the campaign to assert that as a Supreme Court justice they won’t be beholden to partisan interests, both Taylor and Lazar’s largest contributors are the Democratic and Republican parties of Wisconsin. 

State law puts a $20,000 limit on campaign contributions from individuals to Supreme Court campaigns, yet political parties are allowed to transfer unlimited amounts to the campaigns. 

In the reporting period, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin contributed $724,000 to Taylor’s campaign while the Republican Party of Wisconsin contributed $96,000 to Lazar’s campaign.

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A three-judge panel on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Democratic voters seeking to redraw Wisconsin’s existing congressional maps. 

The lawsuit, Bothfield v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, was filed last summer arguing that the state’s congressional maps were an illegal partisan gerrymander. All but two of the state’s eight congressional districts are held by Republicans. 

The dismissal marks another failure from Democrats and their allies to redraw the state’s congressional maps, which since 2011 have favored Republican candidates. Since the maps were redrawn in 2011, they have frequently been at the center of the state’s political debate. 

In 2024, the state’s legislative maps, which had locked in GOP control of the state Legislature for nearly 15 years, were tossed out. Since then, attention has been focused on the congressional maps. 

The current congressional maps were instituted in 2022 by the state Supreme Court after the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers were unable to reach an agreement on passing new maps themselves. The Court selected congressional maps that had been proposed by Evers. However, Democrats and anti-gerrymandering advocates have complained that those maps were proposed under the Court’s “least change” mandate, which required that any proposed maps hew as closely as possible to the 2011 maps. 

The Bothfield lawsuit was filed around the same time as a separate lawsuit challenging the congressional maps on the basis that they illegally dampen the competitiveness of the state’s congressional elections. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that both lawsuits should first be considered by panels of three circuit court judges. 

The other pending lawsuit is expected to go to trial in 2027. 

While the lawsuits against the maps have worked through the legal system, open government advocates and some Democrats have continued to call for changes to Wisconsin law that would take the power of map drawing out of the hands of lawmakers and ban partisan gerrymandering. 

Earlier this month, Evers signed an executive order calling the Legislature into a special session to pass a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban gerrymandering.

After the panel’s decision, Republicans and their allies celebrated the ruling as a win for GOP chances in the state’s elections this fall. Republicans in several other states across the country have redrawn their congressional maps over the last year in an effort to protect the GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Retaliatory gerrymandering in Democratic states including California has attempted to tilt the playing field back in Democrats’ favor.

“This is a significant win for Republicans and a yet another blow to desperate Democrats who wanted to reshape the electoral landscape,” Zach Bannon, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement. “By keeping Wisconsin’s current district lines in place for 2026, Republicans are in a strong position to build on our momentum to retain and grow our House majority.”

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