Then-President Joe Biden visited Milwaukee in October 2024 to announced a new rule requiring the replacement of all lead water pipes in the U.S. by 2037. On Wednesday, Attorney General Josh Kaul announced Wisconsin is joining nine other states and D.C. to defend the rule. (Oct. 8, 2024 screenshot/White House livestream)

Wisconsin has joined with nine other states and the District of Columbia to defend the federal lead and copper water rule that took effect Dec. 30, tightening standards for lead exposure and requiring water systems across the county to replace lead pipes by 2037.

The new rule, which then-President Joe Biden announced in Milwaukee in October, has been challenged by the American Water Works Association, a trade group for water and wastewater utilities.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice announced Wednesday the state was joining the legal effort to intervene in the lawsuit in support of the rule. Other states in the coalition are California, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey and North Carolina, along with D.C.

“Reducing lead in our drinking water shouldn’t be controversial,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said. “This common-sense rule that helps protect people’s health should remain in place.”

Lead exposure has been identified as a health hazard, especially for children, and has been linked to premature birth, damage during brain development and learning disabilities, delayed physical development in children and cardiovascular and kidney problems in adults. No amount of lead in drinking water is safe, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

On Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers approved an emergency rule from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) to lower the threshold for lead poisoning to 3.5 micrograms per deciliter. The change makes more children and families eligible for intervention to diagnose and treat lead poisoning.

Evers has announced plans to seek a $6.2 million increase for local health departments, some of that to address lead poisoning, in the 2025-27 state budget that he will release in February.

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Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer, speaks Tuesday at a press conference about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. With him are, from left, Sam Liebert of All Voting is Local and Nick Ramos of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

A former U.S. Capitol Police officer who survived the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack said Tuesday the insurrection must not be forgotten four years later — and candidates running for election now should face up to what happened then.

“This attempt to whitewash, downplay, normalize what happened on Jan. 6 is ongoing and shows no signs of letting up,” said Harry Dunn during a meeting with reporters in Madison.

Criticizing Republicans who have urged Democrats and the public “to move on from Jan. 6,” Dunn said the attack met the definition of an insurrection — “a violent uprising against the government. Full stop.”

“That’s what Jan. 6 was,” he added. “The police officers just happened to be in the way. But anybody that fails to accept that, acknowledge that for what that was, deserves to be called out, condemned.”

Pro-democracy advocates arranged for Dunn to speak to the press in the state Capitol building and deliberately chose one particular meeting room on the third floor — 300 South, the same room used by Republican fake electors in December 2020 who filled out false electoral votes choosing Donald Trump as the Wisconsin winner of an election that he lost.

The fake elector scheme “was hatched in Wisconsin and launched from here to the rest of the United States,” said Scott Thompson, a staff attorney for Law Forward, at Tuesday’s press conference.

The nonprofit law firm sued Wisconsin’s fake electors and won a settlement in which they acknowledged in writing they had tried “to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential elections results.” The scheme culminated in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, Thompson said.  

“The events of Jan. 6, 2021, were not just an attack on a building or a single moment in time, but they were an attack on our collective voice as voters,” said Sam Liebert, Wisconsin director of the voting rights group All Voting is Local Action. “The insurrection was a brazen and egregious attempt to silence millions of Americans nationwide to overturn the results of a free and fair election through violence and intimidation.”

Four years later in 2024 Trump won the U.S. popular vote, including a 30,000-vote majority in Wisconsin, returning him to the White House effective Jan. 20. There one of his first acts was to pardon more than 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6 attack.

Dunn’s visit to Wisconsin focused on Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel’s comments about the Jan. 6 defendants, including during a recent radio interview. Schimel is a Waukesha County circuit court judge and former Wisconsin attorney general.

In a Jan. 2 appearance on the Vicki McKenna show, Schimel said that Jan. 6 defendants didn’t have “a fair shot” when they were tried and blamed “lawfare manipulation” for the conviction of defendants in the attack.

Schimel suggested they would have been acquitted had they not been put on trial in “overwhelmingly liberal” Washington, D.C., and that the prosecutors appointed under the Democratic administration “would never take their prosecution in a district where you had a fair shot as a defendant.”

The federal government prosecuted the rioters in Washington because the city is where the U.S. Capitol is located.

Nick Ramos, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, mentioned Schimel’s radio interview before introducing Dunn.

“Four years ago, far-right mobs swarmed the Capitol, assaulted officers and tried to overturn the will of voters,” said Ramos. “It’s pretty straightforward, and yet Schimel, our former attorney general, still thinks these people weren’t given a fair shot and their trials were political gamesmanship.”

Dunn said he’s taken an interest in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race because of Schimel’s comments.

“I’ve been fighting for accountability from day one,” Dunn said. He holds Donald Trump primarily responsible for the riot.

“That accountability won’t happen,” he said. But he added that he also wants to hold accountable “public officials who believe that Donald Trump’s pardoning of these individuals was OK” — including Schimel.

“I don’t know Brad Schimel’s positions on policy on anything else, except for that he is OK with supporting the rioters who attacked me and my coworkers, period,” Dunn said. “And that is not OK — and that’s what’s bringing me here.”

During a news conference Monday featuring his endorsement by Wisconsin Republican members of Congress, Schimel accused prosecutors of overcharging some Jan. 6 defendants until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law under which they were charged didn’t apply to them.

He also said that “anyone who engaged in violence and Jan. 6, assaulted a police officer, resisted arrest, those people should have been prosecuted … and judges should impose sentences that are just under the circumstances.”

Schimel also defended the president’s power to issue pardons: “It’s a power they have. I don’t object to them utilizing that.”

Dunn was asked Tuesday about Schimel’s comments.

“If you believe that the individuals who attacked police officers should serve their sentence, then the only response to Donald Trump’s pardons should be that they’re wrong,” Dunn replied. “He should not pardon them — and those words did not come out of [Schimel’s] mouth. So he’s attempting to play both sides.”

In an interview, Dunn said he’s kept going despite disappointment at Trump’s 2024 victory because “I believe in doing what’s right.”

That’s what led him to become a police officer, he said, and after the Capitol attack, to mount an unsuccessful campaign for Congress. He also has a political action committee, raising funds to support political candidates who are pro-democracy, he said.

Dunn acknowledged that some who opposed the president have given up in despair while others have become embittered toward Trump voters.

“I’ve seen people say, ‘You know what? This is what you all voted for. You get what you deserve,’” he said. “There are a lot of people who did not vote for this, that are going to be impacted by the things that Donald Trump and this administration are going to do, and I believe they deserve somebody that’s going to fight for them.”

There will be elections this year, in 2026 and 2028, all opportunities for change, “so I encourage people,” Dunn said. “And I think part of my work is to make sure people are educated before Election Day and not outraged after Election Day.”

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State Sen. Kelda Roys speaks with reporters Tuesday about the Trump administration's memo announcing a suspension of federal funds directed to state and local governments. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin joined 21 states and the District of Columbia Tuesday in a lawsuit to stop the Trump administration from cutting off the distribution of budgeted federal funds to states and local governments.

A federal district judge ruled Tuesday the Trump administration must wait until at least next week before it can move forward with pausing federal spending on trillions in grants and loans, though she emphasized the short-term administrative stay might not continue after a Feb. 3 hearing.

District Judge Loren L. AliKhan’s decision temporarily blocks the Office of Management and Budget from moving forward with plans to stop payments on multiple federal programs, which it announced late Monday.

The White House action “would immediately jeopardize critical federal benefits and investments that provide crucial health and childcare services, support public schools, combat hate crimes and violence against women, and provide life-saving disaster relief to states, among other critical programs,” the office of Gov. Tony Evers said in announcing the lawsuit late Tuesday.

Wisconsin expects to receive $28.2 billion in federal funds appropriated for the current 2023-25 two-year budget period, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

“This was a sweeping, reckless decision that has caused unnecessary chaos and panic in Wisconsin and across our country,” Evers said in announcing the lawsuit. “Wisconsin’s kids, families, veterans, law enforcement, seniors, and Wisconsinites in every corner of our state depend upon our federal tax dollars to support basic, everyday needs and services.”

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said the funding freeze appears to include money for law enforcement, victim services, health programs, infrastructure projects, education and additional purposes.

It “has already resulted in widespread uncertainty and confusion,” Kaul said. “This misguided and unlawful policy must be blocked before it leads to substantial harm to services and programs that are critical for Wisconsinites.”

Reaction to the Trump administration action was widespread, and state as well as federal lawmakers said they were starting to hear from constituents worried about the impact on programs and services they relied on.

“I am already hearing from my constituents who are worried about funding being cut off for cops and firefighters, child care, combatting the fentanyl crisis, food for kids, and so much more,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), vowing to fight action. “Democrats and Republicans passed laws providing this funding for our kids, families, and communities, and ripping it away is an unconstitutional power grab.”

In a brief press conference in her state Capitol office, Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) called the funding suspension an “illegal power grab that the Trump administration is attempting to pull” and warned of “the very real cost that that’s going to have for Wisconsin families and families across America.”

Roys said the action was “a stunt” by Trump. “It’s a way to try to see how far he can go, how much he can get away with, and to test the loyalty of all the GOP politicians that he thinks should bend the knee,” she said. “And that should not distract us from the fact that this is going to have very, very real negative consequences for millions of families in our state, right here and across the country.”

She added the action is also “a very destabilizing move that could have significant ramifications for people’s sense of economic security” and a potential “shock to the economy.”

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan described the administration’s action as an “unprecedented and unconstitutional stop-payment on Congressionally appropriated funding” and attacked Trump as “the Grifter-in-Chief” who was violating the Constitution by imposing the freeze.

Pocan connected the action with Trump’s proposals for renewing tax cuts enacted in 2017, accusing the president of “working to enrich himself and his billionaire buddies.”

“This reckless move will devastate every community across the country, and Republicans must join with Democrats to make sure Trump does not get away with this unconstitutional theft of American taxpayers’ own money,” Pocan said.

Earlier Tuesday, Evers sent Trump a letter urging him to reverse the plan to cut off federal assistance, warning that it “could have disastrous consequences for the people of Wisconsin and our state.”

He wrote that the freeze would withhold “tax dollars from Wisconsin that were already approved by the U.S. Congress” and thus that they “are the law.”

“I urge you to please follow the law and reconsider this decision,” Evers concluded.

 

Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The members of Wisconsin’s Republican congressional delegation formally endorsed Brad Schimel in the April Wisconsin Supreme Court election Monday in a virtual news conference that highlighted Schimel’s campaign talking points.

Schimel, a Waukesha County circuit judge and former one-term state attorney general, is running for an open seat on the court against Susan Crawford, a Dane County circuit judge.

Elections for the state Supreme Court are officially nonpartisan, but they’ve become partisan in all but name over the last couple of decades, with both major parties supporting candidates. While Schimel’s announcement Monday touted the backing of congressional Republicans, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and other key Democratic leaders have endorsed Crawford.

The race to replace retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley will determine whether the Court’s four-member liberal majority remains or falls to a new four-member conservative majority. 

At the Monday morning news conference U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Prairie du Chien) said the Wisconsin voters who helped carry Donald Trump to a second term as U.S. president in November would do the same for Schimel in April.

“They’re sick and tired of the radical left agenda,” Van Orden said. “They want to make sure that someone that is sitting on the court is interpreting the law, not writing the law.”

Among the questions from reporters on the call was one about Schimel’s past statements on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn Joe Biden’s election as president in 2020.

During a talk radio show broadcast on Jan. 2, Schimel charged that the prosecution of the Jan. 6 defendants in Washington, D.C. — where the Capitol is located and the attack took place — was the result of political “manipulation” by Democrats because the population of the city “is overwhelmingly liberal.”

“They would never take their prosecution in a district where you had a fair shot as a defendant,” Schimel told radio host Vicki McKenna.

During Monday’s news conference, a member of Schimel’s campaign staff relayed a reporter’s question that began with a reference to a former U.S. Capitol Police officer “who is coming to Wisconsin tomorrow to criticize your comments about the defendants in those cases.”

The question didn’t specify Schimel’s comments or their context, but asked what he  thought “of the Trump pardons for Jan. 6 protesters who assaulted law enforcement officers.”

“I have no idea what comments you are talking about,” Schimel replied, adding, “I’ve said that anyone who engaged in violence and Jan. 6, assaulted a police officer, resisted arrest, those people should have been prosecuted. They should be prosecuted and held accountable, and judges should impose sentences that are just under the circumstances.”

But Schimel also criticized the use of a federal law against election obstruction to lodge felony charges against some of those who had broken into the Capitol that day. He said it took the U.S. Supreme Court to “finally recognize that prosecutors in Washington, D.C., overreached.” The Court vacated those convictions.

In addition, he voiced support for a president’s right to pardon offenders. “It’s a power they have,” Schimel said. “I don’t object to them utilizing that power.”

The news conference signaled that Schimel’s campaign is focusing on, among other subjects, Wisconsin’s 2011 law requiring voters to show a picture ID when they go to the polls. 

Republican lawmakers have proposed an amendment that would  enshrine the requirement in the state constitution. That proposal goes before voters on the April ballot — alongside the Supreme Court race. Republicans argue that the state Supreme Court might otherwise overturn the law.  

Schimel also raised the circuit court decision, now under appeal, that would overturn the 2011 law known as Act 10 sharply restricting collective bargaining for public employees.

As an attorney, Crawford represented clients who sought to overturn the state’s Voter ID law as well as Act 10.

“She advocated, she fought against and tried to overturn Wisconsin’s Voter ID law,” Sen. Ron Johnson said. “It’s such a huge difference between conservative judges, people like Brad Schimel, who will apply the law faithfully — again, not what his policy preferences are, but respect not only our state constitution, but the federal constitution in the separation of powers, the checks and balances and being a judge, not a super legislator.”

Schimel noted Crawford’s work as a lawyer opposing Act 10 in a case that the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority at the time, rejected.

“This has been settled law for over a decade, but it’s coming right back,” he said. “If my opponent wins, does anyone believe a case, a law, like Act 10 has any chance of a fair, objective examination?”

Asked what his standard would be for recusing himself from ruling on a case, Schimel said that would include “any case where my family, I or my family, my immediate family, have a personal stake, win or lose, in that case.” He said he would “perhaps … need to recuse” himself on issues with which “I was directly involved in the past” or that “I took strong positions on” — but added that “it’s hard to predict what that might be in a vacuum like this.”

On Monday, however, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin accused Schimel of prejudging the issue of abortion rights. The party highlighted a New York Times report on the race that included references to his opposition to abortion rights and his work as attorney general in helping to “map out a strategy to restrict abortion rights.”

The Times article quoted Schimel telling supporters during a campaign stop this past summer that he supported Wisconsin’s 1849 law that was thought to ban abortion until a December 2023 circuit court decision declared that it did not. That ruling is now under appeal and the case is likely to go before the state Supreme Court, possibly this year.

“There is not a constitutional right to abortion in our State Constitution,” The Times quoted Schimel telling supporters in Chilton. “That will be a sham if they find that.”

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court will take up a dispute over funding a state initiative to improve reading instruction. (FangXiaNuo/Getty photo)

A legal battle over $50 million to fund a new Wisconsin reading initiative will go directly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a majority of justices on the Court has decided.

The Court on Friday accepted a petition from Gov. Tony Evers and the state Department of Public Instruction to bypass the state appeals court in a lawsuit about the funding.

The $50 million was set aside in the 2023-25 budget for the new reading program, which was authorized in a separate bill in July 2023.

The Legislature passed a follow-up measure in early 2024 described as creating “a mechanism” for the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to deploy the money. Evers signed that bill, Act 100, but with a partial veto, saying he was removing language that overly complicated how the money was spent as well as language providing per-pupil increases to private choice and independent charter schools.

The finance committee has so far declined to release the $50 million.

Republican leaders of the Legislature sued the governor, arguing that Act 100 wasn’t an appropriations law subject to the partial veto. Evers, a Democrat, countersued, charging that the finance committee was acting unlawfully in refusing to release the money.

In Dane County Circuit Court, Judge Stephen Elke issued a summary judgment Aug. 27, 2024, rejecting both lawsuits: Act 100 is an appropriations law, permitting the governor to exercise partial veto power, he ruled, while the $50 million was “properly appropriated” to the finance committee, not directly to DPI.

Attorneys for both the Evers administration and the Legislature appealed to the Wisconsin Appeals Court District 4, but Evers and DPI subsequently petitioned the Supreme Court to bypass the appeals court.  

On Friday, the high court granted the petition. The Court doesn’t typically express its reasoning when accepting a bypass petition, and the authors of Friday’s order didn’t do so, either.

Justice Rebecca Bradley and Chief Justice Annette Ziegler dissented, with Bradley arguing that the Court majority’s decision to take the case was premature. 

“The members of the majority sometimes enforce a rule against ‘premature petitions’ but sometimes they don’t, without disclosing any standards by which they will choose whether to apply it,” Bradley wrote. “Such arbitrariness by courts is antithetical to the original understanding of the judicial role.”

Justice Brian Hagedorn filed a separate dissent, stating, “Consistent with past practice, I would deny the petition for bypass as premature.”

This report has been updated to include an additional dissent filed with the decision. 

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Children, parents and child care workers take part in a 2023 demonstration urging lawmakers to include money in the state budget to support child care. Gov. Tony Evers' request was denied that year, but advocates and the governor are trying again. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Child care advocates and Gov. Tony Evers are campaigning once again for a significant infusion of state money to bolster child care, a little more than a year after their last attempt ended in deadlock.

“The cost of putting two young kids in child care costs more than the average rent or mortgage in Wisconsin and exceeds the annual cost of tuition to send two students to the University of Wisconsin-Madison,” Evers told lawmakers in his State of the State message Wednesday evening.

Evers is calling on state lawmakers to put $500 million in the 2025-27 budget “aimed at lowering child care costs, supporting this critical industry, and investing in employer-sponsored child care.”

The governor’s proposal would use state money to renew and make permanent a child care subsidy that began during the COVID-19 pandemic with federal funds. A previous attempt to extend the support ended in a deadlock in late 2023. Without it, however, providers say they will remain in a crisis that has been building over the last year.

A September 2024 report by the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty for the state Department of Children and Families found that nearly 60% of providers surveyed said they were caring for fewer children than their capacity allowed. Almost half of those said they weren’t able to take more kids because they lacked staff.

The survey found that if child care providers were able to hire enough educators to fill their empty rooms, at least 33,000 more children in Wisconsin could get child care.

Federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funds supported Wisconsin’s Child Care Counts program from 2020 through 2023, granting $20 million a month in subsidies that providers used to raise wages and keep staff without hiking the fees they charged parents.

Evers pressed the Legislature to continue the subsidy program with state funds in the 2023-25 state budget, but the Republican majority rejected their appeals. Evers renewed the proposal along with several others in a special session later in 2023, but the legislators rebuffed him a second time.

Evers subsequently cobbled together $170 million from other unspent federal funds for a scaled-down version of Child Care Counts that will soon run out.

“When Child Care Counts was reduced we saw child care tuition increase by almost 15%,” Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA), said in an interview Thursday.

For families whose incomes qualify them for the state’s Wisconsin Shares child care subsidy program, the tuition increases meant that their subsidy would only pay 50% of the market price for child care instead of 75%, Schmidt said, increasing the corresponding copayment for parents.

Without a renewal of Child Care Counts or the equivalent, “some programs may be able to stay open by raising tuition, and some families may be able to afford it,” Schmidt said. “Some programs may raise tuition and lose families, because they’re tapped out.”

During a panel discussion in the Capitol Thursday with lawmakers, providers and parents, Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus provider, said that some providers have closed after raising their rates because they’ve lost parents who can no longer afford their services.

“Until we act, we’re going to continue to shed programs,” said Hendrickson, a cofounder of WECAN, an advocacy group for providers and parents. The name stands for Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed.

Providers say that as rates go up, child care is getting out of reach for people who aren’t well-off.

“If we invest in our child care system, it will not be a system just for the wealthy any more,” said Brooke Legler, co-owner of a New Glarus child care center, WECAN’s other cofounder and a panel participant.

Child care providers play an important role in young children’s brain development and in helping them learn social skills, Legler and Hendrickson said. For that reason, at state-licensed child care centers teachers must meet certain educational requirements.

“This is not a field where you just want a warm body,” said Legler.

 Average wages for child care workers with a high school diploma are 40% less than the average wage for all Wisconsin high school graduates, according to data collected by the Wisconsin Economic Development Commission (WEDC). Early child care workers with a master’s degree have an average salary of less than $36,000 a year, less than half  the average for all master’s degree holders in the state.

To hire and keep qualified child care workers requires paying them “living wages,” Legler said. “We need to treat this field with the respect it deserves.”

Participants in the Capitol panel said that despite the failure to enact a support program in 2023, they believe the case is even stronger this year and with this budget.

“This is one of the most challenging policy problems in our state,” said panel participant Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison). “But we know what to do.”

This week, the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association launched a new division focused on policy research and engagement. Schmidt said that was made possible by the organization’s success at raising private support for the new operation.

It was also aimed at ensuring a bright line between that work and the federally funded services that WECA offers child care providers around the state, assisting with licensure, training and other operational requirements, she said.

The new policy arm is preparing research to further document the condition that the child care sector is in.

“First and foremost, I think everyone in the Legislature, the governor’s office and organizations that are working on this issue understand that there’s no backup plan for Child Care Counts,” Schmidt said.

The forthcoming reports from the new policy arm will further underscore the case, she added: “It’s more compelling this time around than it was when we were doing this a year and a half ago now.”

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The number of people employed in Wisconsin reached a new high in December. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Employment in Wisconsin once again reached a new record in December, with a federal survey of households projecting that 3,076,000 people were working during the last month of 2024 — an increase of nearly 32,000 from December 2023, the state labor department reported Thursday.

The state’s unemployment rate for December, measuring people who aren’t working but are actively seeking work, ticked up slightly to 3% from November’s 2.9%, according to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD).

The unemployment rate is based on the household survey, which asks people if they’re working, actively seeking work and other related questions.

The same survey projects that 65.9% of Wisconsinites age 16 or older are working or looking for work — the labor force participation rate.

Compared with Wisconsin, for the U.S. as a whole labor force participation is lower (62.5%) and the unemployment rate is higher (4.1%), DWD reported — both continuing what has been a long-term trend.

From a separate federal survey of employers, there were a projected 3,042,100 nonfarm jobs in the state in December, also near a record. That’s an increase of 20,300 from December 2023, although a slight dip from November 2024.

In addition to being projections, all of the numbers and rates are seasonally adjusted, to smooth out increases or decreases that result from change-of-season fluctuations such as high tourism employment in the summer or high retail employment during the last couple months of the year.

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A member of the Capitol Police uses tear gas on rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A group supporting law enforcement officers who defended the building has published ads ahead of Monday's inauguration urging members of Congress to oppose presidential pardons of the Capitol rioters. (Photo by Alex Kent/for Tennessee Lookout)

For Aquilino Gonell the inauguration Monday of Donald Trump to a second term as U.S. president will carry bitter ironies.

Before and after winning the election in  November, Trump said he would pardon those convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob that sought to overturn his 2020 reelection loss.

Gonell was a sergeant with the U.S. Capitol Police, one of hundreds of police officers on the scene who sought to protect the building, members of Congress and their staffs during the attack that delayed the vote by hours to certify Joe Biden’s election as president.

“I was assaulted multiple times,” Gonell told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview. “Not because we instigated anything, but because I was defending my colleagues and myself and the Capitol, along with the elected officials” — some of whom, he added, were trying to set aside the result of the 2020 election that Trump lost.

“Both my hands were bleeding on that day, and my left shoulder required surgery,” Gonell recalled.

He and his fellow police in the building were the targets of violence by the Trump-supporting rioters.

“These are the same people that claim that they support the police, that they respect the rule of law, that they believe in law and order,” Gonell said. “And with their actions, they showed otherwise.”

Last week, the Courage for America campaign took out newspaper ads urging members of Congress to publicly oppose the pardons. Courage for America formed in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot to spotlight the violence and call attention to members of Congress who they believe have papered over the violence with misinformation and propaganda. The group describes its mission as opposing “an extreme MAGA agenda that puts money and power over the rights and freedoms of the American people.”

In Wisconsin the group published ads in Wisconsin Rapids and Stevens Point newspapers, both in the district of U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Republican and Trump supporter. 

“We must call January 6th what it was, a domestic terrorist attack of the highest level,” said Courage for America’s spokesperson, Danny Turkel. “Americans must unite and remind our elected officials that violent criminals who assaulted the United States Capitol and threatened our democracy pose major public safety risks to our communities. Every member of Congress, including MAGA Republicans, have a duty to loudly and publicly oppose the pardoning of the January 6th rioters.”

The full-page ad tells readers to “Exercise Caution” and warns of “violent criminals” who “may soon be present in your community.” It urges people to call Van Orden “and demand he oppose the pardoning of any January 6th insurrectionists.”

Van Orden was first elected to Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District in 2022 and was reelected this fall. On Jan. 6, 2021, however, he was at the Capitol, taking part in the rally that preceded the attack.

Gonell spoke to the Wisconsin Examiner in conjunction with the newspaper ad.

He reserves his most pointed criticism for members of Congress who were in the building on the day of the riot and who, he says, feared for their lives at the time but have since downplayed or ignored the violence that took place.

“People who organized and orchestrated the attack, and the people who we protected,  they tend to tell others and the public that it was not as severe, as grave, as we say,” Gonell said.

On Jan. 6, however, “the only reason why they made it out was because we saved their asses — and yet, they have contorted themselves to tell the public and tell themselves that it was peaceful.”

He scoffed at Trump’s description  of  the riot as a “day full of love.”

“If that was a day full of love, they almost loved me to death,” Gonell said sardonically.

A native of the Dominican Republic, Gonell said he came to the U.S. legally and enlisted in the military, fighting in Iraq during the Gulf War then pursuing a law enforcement career with the Capitol police, where he served for 17 years.

Because of his injuries, he received a medical pension. The benefit is less than his income before he was hurt,  “but is enough for me to be able to sustain myself and pay my bills,” he said.

Legislation was enacted in 2022 to expand benefits for public safety officers or their survivors after suicide or disability as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder, but Gonell said law enforcement personnel involved in defending the Capitol on Jan. 6 have yet to receive any assistance from the program.

He believes his outspokenness about his experience cost him the support of department brass. He’s written a book, “American Shield,” and has a website that tells his story.

Gonell testified before the Congressional committee that investigated the Capitol attack. He believes that the stories he and others in law enforcement who defended the Capitol have told failed to resonate with the voting public because many more officers who were also injured or traumatized that day haven’t come forward.

“They saw how the few of us who spoke out were being treated and they probably said to themselves, ‘Why should I put myself out there? Look how they treat you,’” he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling this past summer that presidents have immunity for acts committed in their official capacity — a decision that delayed the federal felony case against Trump on charges of election interference in 2020 — “is a betrayal,” Gonell said. “Because of that decision, this person is about to return to power.”

He expects that Trump will go through with pardoning at least some of the Jan. 6 convicts. Reports that members of  Congress have invited Jan. 6 riot participants as inauguration guests infuriate him. “They are returning these people to the crime scene,” Gonell said.

He’s already heard about comments by the president-elect that the rioters deserve an apology. “But he will never apologize to the officers who were defending the Capitol,” Gonell said.

This report has been updated to correct the spelling of Aquilino Gonell’s last name. 

 

A courtroom and a judge's gavel. (Getty Images creative)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday denied a request for records of voters identified as ineligible due to incompetence, overturning an appeals court opinion that had opened the door to releasing the list.

The lower court ruling, issued in December 2023, contradicted an appeals court opinion from another district holding that the records sought were confidential.

The Supreme Court returned the case to the appeals court on procedural grounds, ordering the judges to follow instructions laid down previously for conflicting appeals court rulings.

The Supreme Court acted in a case brought by the Wisconsin Voter Alliance. WVA’s president, Ron Heuer, has promoted unfounded claims about fraud in the state’s electronic voting system.

WVA had sought records from Walworth County identifying recipients of a Notice of Voting Eligibility from the county. The notice is issued when a court has found a person incompetent to vote or has restored a person’s right to register or vote. The Wisconsin Elections Commission sends the names of disqualified voters to local elections officers.

WVA has aired claims that people found incompetent might remain on voting  rolls. It has made the same request for Notice of Voting Eligibility recipients in 13 Wisconsin counties.

In a November 2023 opinion, the 4th District Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that denied WVA’s request to Juneau County. That appeals court upheld a circuit court ruling finding that the records are confidential and not subject to public disclosure.

A request to Walworth County was denied by a Walworth County circuit judge, who ruled that voting eligibility forms were confidential under the state law that declares records relating to incompetency proceedings to be closed. The association lacked a legal right to the information, the judge ruled.

In the 2nd District 2-1 ruling, lead author Judge Maria Lazar, a conservative, wrote that the confidentiality requirement is “expressly outweighed by the Legislature’s mandate that voting ineligibility determinations are to be publicly communicated to the local officials or agencies” through the elections commission. She was joined by Judge Shelley Grogan, also a conservative. 

In dissent, Judge Lisa Neubauer pointed to the 4th District ruling from seven weeks earlier and wrote that the eligibility forms are exempt from disclosure and not subject to the 2nd District majority’s balancing test.  

Friday’s 5-2 Supreme Court opinion was authored by Justice Janet Protasiewicz. Asked to decide whether the 4th District ruling was binding on the 2nd District judges, the majority demurred. Instead, they ruled that the 2nd District judges had failed to follow a procedure that an earlier Supreme Court ruling laid down for appeals courts rulings that contradict previous opinions.

“When the court of appeals disagrees with a prior published court of appeals opinion, it has two and only two options,” Protasiewicz wrote. “It may certify the appeal to this court and explain why it believes the prior opinion is wrong. Or it may decide the appeal, adhering to the prior opinion, and explain why it believes the prior opinion is wrong.”

The 2nd District judges failed to follow that procedure, instead “drawing fine distinctions between arguments and assuming additional or different facts” — an effort “to skirt” the established procedure, Protasiewicz wrote.

Justice Rebecca Bradley and Chief Justice Annette Ziegler dissented, criticizing the majority for taking briefs and holding oral arguments, then issuing a ruling that didn’t address the merits of the appeal. They argued that given the procedural basis for the ruling, it should have been issued summarily.

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The Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules, photographed at a Jan. 12, 2023, meeting when the body voted to block an examining board's ban on conversion therapy. On Thursday the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by Gov. Tony Evers charging that the commitee's powers violate the state constitution. (Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

For an hour and a half Thursday, lawyers argued before the Wisconsin Supreme Court about how much power should be conferred on executive agencies and on a single committee of the Legislature when it comes to enacting regulations.

The oral arguments were part of a lawsuit Gov. Tony Evers filed attacking the Legislature’s Republican leaders’ “legislative vetoes” that have hamstrung the Democratic governor. The focus was the Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR), which holds broad power to block rules enacted by the executive branch under its regulatory authority.

The Evers lawsuit, filed in October 2023, cited two instances in which the committee thwarted rulemaking.

One was JCRAR’s vote to block a new ethics code for therapists and social workers that declared that the practice of conversion therapy to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ people was unprofessional conduct.

The other was a vote to block an update to the state commercial building code that had been years in the making.

State laws give the executive branch agencies, such as the Department of Safety and Professional Services and the Department of Natural Resources, the authority to establish administrative rules in order to carry out the laws for which they’re responsible.

A series of Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions as well as laws passed by the state Legislature have strengthened the power of the Legislature’s Joint Committee for Administrative Rules (JCRAR) to intervene when rules are enacted. JCRAR can object to a rule after it’s promulgated, either temporarily or indefinitely.

If lawmakers introduce legislation that codifies their objection to a rule, the rule stays blocked for the rest of that two-year legislative session until the bill is vetoed by the governor. In the last several years, lawmakers have avoided a veto that would restore a rule they’re blocking by introducing the legislation and sending it to committee, where it remains dormant for the remainder of the term.

The governor’s case

A recurring phrase in Thursday’s argument was “bicameralism and presentment.” Bicameralism refers to the requirement in the Wisconsin Constitution that to change the law, both houses of the Legislature must pass a bill. Presentment refers to the requirement that the bill, once passed, must go to the governor to be signed or vetoed.

The ability of state agencies to write administrative rules is “executive power” in the service of carrying out laws that have been enacted, said Charlotte Gibson, an assistant state attorney general arguing the governor’s case.

When the JCRAR acts to block a rule, “they change the law,” Gibson said. “They change those rights and duties” of the state agency that have already been granted under state law. But, she argued, “bicameralism and presentment is the very method through which the Legislature has to act when it wants to amend the law.”

In addition, Gibson argued, rulemaking is “a core executive power,” and the way lawmakers have intervened in the process violates the doctrine that legislative, executive and judicial powers are separate from each other.

“The Legislature has to act through its legislative constitutional role in making law, procedurally and substantively,” Gibson said. “It can’t have the power to override the [executive] branch’s exercise of its own constitutional role.”

Gibson said that, on constitutional grounds, the Court should overturn a 1992 decision and five state statutes that together have cemented the committee’s power.

Defending the JCRAR’s power

Representing the Legislature’s Republican leaders, Misha Tseytlin conceded one of the arguments that the governor has made.

In their brief on the governor’s behalf, Evers’ lawyers highlighted that JCRAR blocked the therapy rule twice, suspending it for a total of about three and a half years, and that the committee blocked the building code with an “indefinite” objection.

Tseytlin said that the argument against allowing JCRAR to permanently suspend a rule without further action by the Legislature “has some strength” and could be addressed by limiting a suspension’s duration. He suggested that putting a “grace period” limiting suspension to six months, after which a rule would take effect unless the Legislature was able to pass a bill blocking it, would address that objection.

But he defended the rules committee’s power otherwise. By permitting agencies to write administrative rules, the Legislature “is giving away its power to the executive agencies,” Tseytlin said “So that if it enacts a law, that says that in giving away that power to you, we are interposing one of our committees, there is nothing offensive in the separation of powers.”

Tseytlin suggested that under “the original public meaning of the Constitution,” administrative rulemaking was out of bounds entirely, although he added that returning to that original idea  is now beyond reach.

“And I’m not standing here, Your Honors, saying that this Court should throw out the entire administrative state — that is water under the bridge,” he said. “But I think it is quite unfair” to question the legitimacy of the Legislature’s efforts to push back on rules.

Rulemaking as lawmaking?

The idea that rulemaking is a delegation of the Legislature’s power to enact laws, however, was sharply contested.

Early in the arguments, Justice Rebecca Bradley described rulemaking that way, while rejecting its constitutionality.

“You think that rulemaking is an executive function, but the lawmaking power, the lawmaking authority, was given by the people to the Legislature,” Bradley told Gibson. “There’s nothing in the Constitution giving that to the executive.”

Gibson disputed that framing. “When the Legislature passes a statute, they can dream up any public policy they want and make up a law that tries to address that public policy,” she said. “But when the executive branch promulgates a rule, all they’re trying to do is effectuate the statute that the Legislature has charged them to carry out.”

For Justice Rebecca Dallet, however, the constitutional affront was allowing JCRAR to block rulemaking by an agency authorized to do so  under the law, even temporarily. “This structure is a few people who get all the power to make a decision about what happens, to what an agency does with their rulemaking,” she said.

The rules themselves

For most of Thursday’s session, which ran about 30 minutes over the official time limits that had been announced at the start, the lawyers’ arguments and the justices’ challenges stuck to the broad subject of the committee’s powers.

One exception came early, when Gibson pointed out how JCRAR stepped in and blocked the building code.

Gibson said Evers’ lawsuit doesn’t challenge the state’s lengthy legal process for enacting rules — including hearings, public comment and formal approval by a designated body. The building code, for example, went through those steps and was approved by a council of experts empowered under state law for the purpose.

“So all of that is fine,” Gibson said. “What’s not fine is when the Legislature comes in at the end, through a committee, and says, ‘No, actually, the rule’s no good. We’re vetoing it.’”

The second exception came more than an hour in, when Justice Jill Karofsky brought up the specifics of the conversion therapy rule while Tseytlin was arguing for the Legislature’s right to block a rule.

Karofsky quoted from a brief on behalf of the National Association of Social Workers. The association had initiated work on the rule banning conversion therapy, including it in a new ethics code drawn up by the state board that licenses therapists, counselors and social workers.

Although delayed for more than a year, the board reinstated the new ethics code with the conversion therapy ban in 2024 after the Legislature ended its session for the year. Gibson told justices that JCRAR could block it again, however.

The brief describes conversion therapy “as torture,” Karofsky said, “And I think with good reason.” Conversion therapy seeks to lead LGBTQ people “to abandon that identity and adopt and/or exhibit a heterosexual sexual orientation and gender identity consistent with the one assigned to them at birth.”

She recited from a list of tactics included in the brief, including exorcism and “corrective rape.”

“I was a sexual assault prosecutor for decades. I had to look up what ‘corrective rape’ was,” Karofsky said. “It is rape perpetuated by a straight man against lesbians in order to correct or cure their homosexuality. It is basically a punishment for being gay and violating traditional gender presentation.”

“So under your interpretation of the statutes,” she said, addressing Tseytlin, “less than a handful of unchecked legislators . . .  can shelve a rule that stops therapists from subjecting children to horrors like ‘corrective rape’ and exorcism. Do I have that right? Because I can’t even begin to wrap my head around that.”

Tseytlin replied first with a hypothetical alternative of a rule mandating “those horrible things,” then returned to his earlier suggestion of simply a temporary waiting period for rules.

Rebecca Bradley took a different approach to the question, however.

“What is left of the rule of law if this Court makes its decisions not on the constitution, not on the law, but on our visceral, personal emotional responses to what policies the Legislature may be attempting to enact or resist?” she said.

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The NorthLakes Community Clinic health center in Washburn is one of a group of community health centers across northern Wisconsin. A new report finds that rural residents are at least as likely to rely on Medicaid for health coverage as people in other communities. (Photo courtesy of NorthLakes Community Clinic)

Residents of rural areas and small towns are more likely to rely on Medicaid for health coverage than city dwellers, a new report issued Wednesday finds.

Authors of the report said the findings highlight the potential harm that could particularly affect rural residents if Congress imposes drastic cuts to Medicaid as is reportedly being considered.

The analysis was released by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families less than a week after a published report that U.S. House Republicans are contemplating cutting Medicaid by up to $2.3 trillion as part of their plan to renew tax cuts enacted in the first Trump administration.

“That equates to almost one-third of federal Medicaid spending,” said Joan Alker, executive director of the center and a research professor at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy, during an online press briefing Wednesday. “Rural communities are at grave risk if substantial Federal cuts are enacted.”

Medicaid provides health care coverage for about 80 million low-income Americans. Closely related, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) extends coverage for children in families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to afford private health insurance coverage. Both programs are funded jointly by states and the federal government and are managed by states under federal rules.

 “Medicaid is the backbone of many aspects of our health care system, including paying for the majority of nursing home residents, covering 40 to 50% of children and births nationwide, depending on where you live, covering people with disabilities and many other low income people,” Alker said.

Medicaid’s rural footprint

The report looks at 2023 federal census data to estimate the share of urban as well as rural and small town residents covered by Medicaid and CHIP. The data source, the American Community Survey, is useful for comparisons among states but may undercount Medicaid enrollment, Alker said, making the report’s estimates conservative.

In 40 out of 48 states, the report finds, Medicaid enrollment in rural counties was similar to or higher than in urban counties. (The report defines a rural county as one with no urban communities of 50,000 people or more. New Jersey, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia have no designated rural counties.)

Medicaid and CHIP covered more than half of all children living in rural areas and small towns in six states: New Mexico, Louisiana, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina and Arkansas.

Ten states had the largest difference between rural and urban children in the programs. Arizona headed that list, with 55.9% of rural or small town children enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP compared with 34.9% of children in metro areas.

Among all states, Texas had the largest number of children — 239,100 — enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP, followed by North Carolina, with 237,800; Georgia, with 205,200; and Kentucky, with 199,200.

Higher rural Medicaid enrollment also showed up among adults. In 15 states at least 20% of rural or small-town adults ages 18 to 65 were covered by Medicaid. Arizona again headed the list, with 35.9% of rural non-elderly adults enrolled in the program compared with 16.8% of urban adults.

“Medicaid is protecting families and people from exposure to high medical costs, and Medicaid is very good at that,” Alker said. “Cuts to Medicaid, which is already a very lean payor in our health care system, will result in transferring costs, shifting costs to families and providers cutting services and in rural communities,” Alker said.

Wisconsin patterns

Overall, Medicaid coverage is highest in urban Milwaukee County (27.4%) and rural Menominee County (29.9%). On average, Medicaid covers about 15% of Wisconsin adults under 65, rural and urban alike, and Medicaid or CHIP cover about one-third of children on average, whether they live in urban or rural communities.

In 27 rural counties across northern and central Wisconsin, however, the share of children on Medicaid is higher than the state average.

“Nearly 1.5 million Wisconsin residents live in rural areas and small towns, and Medicaid plays a critical role in ensuring access to health care for these communities,” said William Parke-Sutherland of Kids Forward. “Congress is considering enormous funding cuts to Medicaid in the year ahead, and this new report confirms how disastrous this would be for our rural communities and small towns.”

Rural patients and providers alike count on Medicaid to support the health care infrastructure and provide health care services, providing preventive care, dental care and behavioral health services, according to Ana Tochterman, CEO of NorthLakes Community Clinic, a federally supported health clinic with facilities across northern Wisconsin.

“Medicaid is an absolutely essential program that provides insurance for the majority of patients served at our rural Community Health Center,” Tochterman said. “Rural patients face unique challenges like transportation barriers and limited access to resources found in larger communities, and Medicaid is an important tool that enables rural patients to thrive.”

Rural health and resources

The report identifies several health care challenges for rural areas. Those include a greater scarcity of providers, limited internet connectivity and longer distances between people and their health care providers, exacerbated by a lack of public transportation.

Medicaid cuts could threaten already-shrinking rural health care networks, the report warns. “Health care systems are already under enormous pressure and can ill afford any loss of resources,” Alker said.

Care for mothers and newborns is especially likely to suffer, said Katy B. Kozhimannil, a health policy researcher at the University of Minnesota who has studied hospital and delivery room closures.

In 2010, more than 43% of rural hospitals and almost 30% of urban hospitals didn’t offer obstetric care, she said. By 2022, that was true of more than 52% of rural hospitals and more than 35% of urban hospitals.

“More than a decade into a maternal health crisis in the United States, fewer U.S. hospitals provide obstetrics every year, with rural hospitals experiencing the greatest losses,” Kozhimannil said.

The high cost of specialized facilities and staff to deliver babies have to be covered by revenues that vary depending on how many children are born each year and how much the hospital gets paid for each birth, she explained. Those factors put a bigger burden on smaller hospitals and on hospitals with more Medicaid patients, because Medicaid usually pays less than private health insurance.

Beside care at and before birth, she added, Medicaid can make it possible for families to get health care for children growing up with special health needs, mental health care or substance abuse treatment for teens, or long-term care for the elderly.

“These are all areas of deep need in our rural communities that are disproportionately financed through Medicaid programs,” Kozhimannil said.

‘A crucial backstop’

Hutchinson Regional Medical Center in central Kansas serves a population of about 100,000 people, but its service area extends into Western Kansas. 

“Our health system, which cares for that region, is sustained largely, or in part, by Medicaid,” Benjamin Anderson, the medical center’s CEO, said during the Georgetown press briefing.

He mentioned a baby born earlier this week at the hospital whose mother never had access to prenatal care. The infant will now spend months in the facility’s neonatal intensive care unit, incurring health care expenses likely to top $1 million.

“Much of that would have been preventable with adequate prenatal care,” Anderson said.

Maternal and child health is a major part of the facility’s mission, “but older adults, too, are also cared for by moms and they are also particularly vulnerable,” he added. “Cuts to Medicaid mean fewer providers, and just speaking very plainly, fewer providers are able to sustain receiving patients that have Medicaid. Fewer poor people will be able to access care at a health system like ours that takes all payers — and those who can’t pay — and is currently operating at break even.”

The COVID-19 pandemic put health care systems into a metaphorical intensive care unit and “we’re still recovering,” Anderson said — striving to address needs ranging from maternity care to seniors who need long-term care, perhaps at home in the face of nursing home bed shortages.

“Medicaid is a crucial backstop for that to happen, and it’s so important that we sustain it, that we prop it up,” Anderson said. “We have an opportunity to rebuild a system right now, and there are many in this country that are doing that following the pandemic. And significant cuts, as are identified in this report, would cripple those efforts to recover.”

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President Joe Biden speaks in Milwaukee Oct. 8, 2024, to highlight his administration's investment in removing lead pipes and announcing a new rule requiring their replacement across the U.S. by 2037. (Screenshot | White House livestream)

Ahead of President Joe Biden’s planned farewell address Wednesday evening, the Democratic Party is calling attention to the impact his policies have had during his four-year term.

“With an unemployment rate under 3% and infrastructure investments of over $20 billion into Wisconsin, including fixing the Blatnik Bridge, President Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris have delivered for Wisconsinites,” outgoing Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said Tuesday. “The investment and commitment the Biden Administration made into Wisconsin will benefit the state for decades to come.”

The DNC is crediting Biden with a list of accomplishments, economic and otherwise, and has customized them for the Badger State.

• Unemployment in the state was 4.7% in January, 2021, when Biden took the oath of office and has since fallen to 2.9% in November, the St. Louis Federal Reserve reports.
• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 186,800 jobs added in the last four years. The state lost 83,500 jobs in Donald Trump’s first term as president, reflecting the job crash that came starting in early 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The White House takes credit for an estimated $8 billion investment that private companies have announced for clean energy and manufacturing in Wisconsin.  The U.S. Department of Energy is projecting that the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is responsible for $4 billion in new, large-scale clean power projects in the state by 2030.
• The administration has pegged the value of federal infrastructure investments in Wisconsin at $9.2 billion, with $1 billion of that going to upgrade and repair the Blatnik Bridge connecting Superior, Wisconsin, with its twin city of Duluth, Minnesota.
• Federal investment in health care navigator services and the Inflation Reduction Act’s extension of enhanced subsidies for health insurance premiums purchased through the health care marketplace Healthcare.gov under the Affordable Care Act have contributed to a record enrollment of 306,000 people to date — an increase of more than one-third from the 2020 enrollment of 195,000.
•  According to the Department of Health and Human Services, capping insulin prices at $35 a month for Medicare recipients, a new $2,000 cap on yearly out-of-pocket Medicare prescription costs and Medicare’s new ability to negotiate the prices for certain high-priced prescription drugs will benefit more than 1 million Wisconsin seniors. For some 300,000 Wisconsin Medicare recipients, prescription drug cost savings will average $475 a year, HHS projects. All of those provisions were included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
• The American Rescue Plan, enacted in the first three months of Biden’s term has most recently enabled Wisconsin to extend Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months from two months previously, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy news and analysis organization.
•  As a result of the administration’s student debt relief efforts, the federal Department of Education has projected that 62,000 Wisconsinites have had over $2.4 billion in student debt canceled.

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Justice Rebecca Bradley poses questions during oral arguments in the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday. (Screenshot/WisEye)

When does a doctor’s recommendation to a colleague become something their mutual patient should know about?

That was the question that lawyers for an obstetrician/gynecologist and one of her patients discussed before the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday. The recommendation, which the ob/gyn doctor made to a surgeon who operated on the patient, led to the woman having her ovaries removed without her knowledge or consent.

Dr. Carol Neuman made the recommendation to a surgeon, Dr. Michael McGauley, who was to remove a section of Melissa Hubbard’s colon. Neuman was treating Hubbard for endometriosis and suggested to McGauley that he could take out her ovaries during the same procedure.

He did so, but Hubbard didn’t learn about that step — or that Neuman had recommended it — until afterward.

Hubbard sued Neuman, claiming that the doctor should have told her about the recommendation. Neuman’s lawyers told the Rock County circuit judge hearing the case that it should be dismissed because one doctor’s recommendation to another doctor didn’t violate any duty under Wisconsin law.

The judge denied the dismissal motion, and it was that decision that was at the center of Tuesday’s arguments in the Supreme Court.

David Pliner, Neuman’s lawyer, told the justices that if Neuman had issued a medical order or a prescription, or if the surgeon had been a direct employee, it might have fallen under Wisconsin’s informed consent law.

“Dr. Neuman had nothing more than, at most, a conversation with Dr. McGauley, saying, ‘Here’s what I recommend you do,’” Pliner said. It was not a prescription or an order, however, he said.

There are “no allegations that she had the authority to require him to do it, order him to do it,” Pliner said.

At one point, according to court documents that the justices referred to Tuesday,  Neuman and McGauley had contemplated doing the surgery together. In the end, the ob/gyn observed the procedure but didn’t perform any part of it.

When it was his turn to present Hubbard’s case, her lawyer, Guy Fish, argued that it should be straightforward.

“Dr. Neuman was a treating physician up to and through the surgery, where she attended,” Fish said. “And she failed to disclose to Melissa Hubbard the recommendation that Dr. McGauley perform ovarian surgery upon her. Simply put, if Melissa had learned that recommendation before the surgery, she would have declined the surgery.”

Fish dismissed the distinction Pliner made between an order or prescription and a recommendation as “an argument of semantics.”

“I think that’s a misplaced analysis,” Fish said. “If the two doctors are discussing and [agree to a] recommendation or an order that a type of surgery is to be performed, I submit respectfully, the patient needs to be informed of that recommendation or prescription or order, so they can make the best, informed, fullest and timely decision on the care they’re going to receive.”

Justice Rebecca Bradley described the underlying allegations of the case as egregious, but questioned whether informed consent law was the appropriate instrument.

“This woman’s real complaint is the allegation that her ovaries were removed and no one told her they were going to remove her ovaries,” Bradley said.

She questioned the lower courts’ framing of the matter as a matter of informed consent.  “So we’re talking about and I am trying to figure out how we got to this point. It appears that the circuit court decided to interpret the complaint as one stating a claim for informed consent,” Bradley said.

“But the complaint is not that she wasn’t advised of alternative modes of treatment and the risks and benefits of different modes of treatment,” Bradley said. “We go back to older common laws. It’s kind of a battery. If a doctor removes somebody’s body part without telling them that that is what they’re planning to do, that is a terrible invasion.”

Bradley also briefly raised the question of whether McGauley had been sued as well. Pliner said that the surgeon had been sued before Neuman was. That case was dismissed, but the reason for the dismissal was never explained or discussed in Tuesday’s Court session.

Bradley and other justices seemed wary of the implications of the appeals court decision. 

Pliner argued that if it was affirmed, that could make Neuman’s recommendation, or other casual exchanges among medical professionals, subject to the informed consent law, to the detriment of medical care.

“What happens when physicians consult with each other?” Chief Justice Annette Ziegler asked Fish. “I mean, there may be a specialist who’s going to conduct a surgery and may want to consult with your GP over, you know, what else you may have going on. Would your GP have to have a separate meeting with the patient to disclose that the GP is going to give their opinion to the other surgeon?”

Fish said the specific facts of such conversations should govern whether informed consent is required. Doctor-to-doctor dialogue about the color of suture to use or whether to hold an operation in the morning or the afternoon would not rise to that level, he suggested.

“But this specific medical mode of a surgical removal of an ovary, I think, is mandated that that be disclosed to my client,” Fish said.

“The facts you’ve alleged for your client are egregious, right?” Rebecca Bradley said to Fish later in the arguments.

“Dr. McGauley is alleged to have removed her ovaries and not told her he was going to do that. That’s the big problem,” she said. “So setting aside the facts of your case, we have to be very careful about the pronouncement of law we make.”

The appeals court decision, Bradley said, has language “imposing a duty on all physicians, under all circumstances, to inform a patient about all reasonable alternative medical modes of treatment and the benefits and risks of treatment beyond the unique facts of your case, and that’s where we have to be very careful.”

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

In February 2018 Melissa Hubbard underwent surgery to remove part of her colon. What she didn’t know until afterward was that her ovaries were removed as well.

Removing Hubbard’s ovaries had been recommended to Hubbard’s surgeon by her gynecologist to treat another painful condition that Hubbard was dealing with. But while the gynecologist had previously discussed the ovary surgery with her, Hubbard wasn’t ready to go forward with that procedure. She was unaware that the gynecologist had suggested it to the surgeon who was operating on her colon.

On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a lawsuit that Hubbard has filed against the gynecologist, Dr. Carol Neuman. The lawsuit argues that Neuman’s recommendation to the surgeon without Hubbard’s knowledge was an act of medical negligence.

The lawsuit Hubbard filed against Neuman hasn’t gone to trial yet. The Ob/Gyn doctor, through her attorneys, argues that the lawsuit should be dismissed for failing to state a claim.

The lawsuit — and the doctor’s argument to throw it out — revolve around Wisconsin’s law that requires informed consent from patients for medical treatment.

Neuman’s lawyers argue that the doctor had no legal responsibility for Hubbard’s surgery under that law and no duty to tell Hubbard about what was merely Neuman’s recommendation to the surgeon, since Neuman didn’t perform the surgery herself.

A Rock County circuit judge disagreed with the doctor’s lawyers and rejected the summary judgment motion. The 4th District Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld the circuit court’s refusal to dismiss the case. Now Neuman’s lawyers have asked the state Supreme Court to reverse those decisions.

Writing for a three-judge District 4 appeals court panel in March 2024, Judge Chris Taylor found that “the duty to inform a patient about ‘the availability of reasonable alternative medical modes of treatment and about the benefits and risks of these treatments’ applies to any physician who treats a patient, regardless of whether that physician actually performs the disclosed treatment options.”

According to the appeals court’s summary of the case, in 2018 Hubbard was in Neuman’s care for treatment of endometriosis — a condition in which the same sort of tissue that lines the inside of the uterus also grows outside the uterus. Endometriosis can cause pain as well as infertility, according to the Mayo Clinic.

In a medical note quoted in the original lawsuit, Neuman wrote that she told Hubbard she should consider having at least her left uterus tube and ovary removed, or both tubes and ovaries.

Those procedures would leave Hubbard unable to conceive a child, but Neuman wrote in her clinical note, “I believe her endometriosis is so severe she may need reproductive specialists to help her. She does not want to see them because her insurance does not cover this option.”

Hubbard did not agree to the removal of her reproductive organs, according to the lawsuit.

Neuman also referred Hubbard to a surgeon for a separate procedure: the removal of part of her colon due to a concern about cancer, according to Hubbard’s lawyer, Guy Fish of Milton.

Before the colon surgery, the doctor made a recommendation to the surgeon that he could remove Hubbard’s ovaries at the same time.

“Hubbard, prior to her surgery on February 13, 2018, at no time advised Neuman that she opted to have an ovary or ovaries be surgically removed” during the operation, however, according to Hubbard’s lawsuit.

Neuman and the surgeon, Dr. Michael McGauley, “engaged in pre-surgery discussions and planning … without including or briefing Hubbard,” the lawsuit states. At one point in their discussions, the plan was for Neuman to remove Hubbard’s tubes, ovaries and uterus, with McGauley performing the colon surgery in the same procedure.

Hubbard was not informed of those conversations, the lawsuit states. On the day that the surgery took place, McGauley performed the colon surgery and also removed Hubbard’s ovaries himself.

“Had Hubbard been apprised of Neuman’s pre-surgery recommendations to McGauley . . . Hubbard would have immediately cancelled the scheduled surgery for February 13, 2018 in order to consider all her options,” the lawsuit states.

Defending the motion to dismiss the case, Neuman’s lawyers have argued that a doctor’s recommendation to another doctor shouldn’t be subject to the state’s informed consent law.

“A recommendation is not an order or a prescription,” wrote Neuman’s legal team, from the Corneille Law Group in Madison, in a Supreme Court brief. The lawyers argued that not disclosing to Hubbard the recommendation Neuman made to the surgeon should not be treated as a violation of the state’s informed consent law.

“Treating physicians who discuss the patients’ care must be able to freely exchange their thoughts, opinions, advice and counsel without concern that they may each be liable for failing to disclose the content of those communications to the patient,” the brief for Neuman argues.

The brief asks the Supreme Court to send the case back to the Rock County circuit court with an order to dismiss the lawsuit.

But Hubbard’s lawyer argues that it’s in the interest of patients to encourage disclosure, including of communications among doctors.

“Doesn’t a treating physician more fully fulfill his/her duty by disclosing more pertinent medical information to the patient?” Fish asked in a brief to the high court. 

The lower court also rejected the assertion that holding the gynecologist responsible for providing informed consent for her recommendation to the surgeon would squelch doctors from freely consulting one another.

In making their ruling, the appeals court judges focused on whether the state law would not apply to Neuman even assuming all of the factual allegations in the lawsuit were true.

The effect of Neuman’s recommendation — the loss of Hubbard’s ovaries without her knowledge ahead of time — was instrumental enough to consider Neuman a “treating physician,” even though she didn’t perform the surgery, the lower court judges wrote.

In making the recommendation to the surgeon, they wrote, Neuman arguably had a responsibility to disclose to the patient the risks of the procedure, the probabilities of success and any alternative treatments that might be available.

In short, they ruled, Neuman failed to make the case for dismissing the case outright.

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A doctor takes a blood pressure reading for a pregnant woman. Wednesday is the deadline for signing up for individual health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. (Getty Images)

Wednesday is the final deadline this year for people who want to sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

Wisconsin has already set a new record for enrollment, according to preliminary information from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The health care marketplace, https://healthcare.gov, was established as part of the Affordable Care Act for consumers who don’t have affordable health insurance through work or through government programs such as Medicaid. Individuals and families can purchase health insurance policies at Healthcare.gov.

The most recent federal data from CMS shows sign-ups through Jan. 4. On Friday, Gov. Tony Evers announced that in Wisconsin, 306,470 residents had signed up as of that date — an all-time high for the state.

Through 2025, plans purchased through the marketplace are also supported by enhanced federal subsidies, lowering their monthly insurance premium cost depending on a family’s income.

The future of the subsidies beyond this year is uncertain. Advocates are trying to pressure Republicans in Congress to maintain them as they negotiate other tax changes in the coming months.

Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) have introduced legislation to extend the enhanced subsidies and make them permanent.

The ACA advocacy group Protect Our Care cheered the legislation when it was introduced last week. “If Republicans succeed in taking away these tax credits, health care costs will increase by an average of $2,400 for working families, and five million people will lose their health care altogether,” said Leslie Dach, the group’s chair.

For people seeking guidance in how to choose coverage, Covering Wisconsin, at https://coveringwi.org/, is a federally funded navigator to help people to assess their health insurance options, including through the federal health insurance marketplace.  

The Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI) and the Department of Health Services (DHS) also outline options through WisCovered, a joint website. OCI also has a website that consumers can visit to find which ACA-approved insurers are operating in their region of the state: https://oci.wi.gov/Pages/Consumers/FindHealthInsurer.aspx.

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Artist's rendering of the planned new UW-Madison College of Engineering building. (Continuum SmithGroup rendering/UW-Madison)

A plan to redirect $70 million in Universities of Wisconsin system funds that includes $29 million for the UW-Madison’s new engineering building moved forward Friday, three weeks after Republicans on the State Building Commission blocked the measure the week before Christmas.

The money comes from a series of projects at the UW-Eau Claire that came in under budget.

On Dec. 19, the commission, with membership consisting of four Republican lawmakers and four Democrats — Gov. Tony Evers, two lawmakers and a citizen appointed by the Evers administration — deadlocked on approving the transfer, which put it on hold.

The commission met again Friday and approved reallocating the money.

“While it’s unfortunate that these reallocations to help support UW campuses across our state were unnecessarily delayed, I’m glad they were finally approved today to ensure these critical projects can move forward,” Evers said in a statement Friday.

The $29 million directed to the planned new UW-Madison engineering building will help expand enrollment and infrastructure for the school, enabling it to increase enrollment, according to the university. The $197 million project had earlier been stalled in a pitched partisan battle that was supposed to have been resolved in early 2024.

Redirected funds will also go to projects at UW-Whitewater ($10.5 million), UW-Stout ($5.4 million) and assorted university repair and maintenance projects ($25 million).

In December, Sen. Andre Jacque (R-DePere) and Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Racine) said they had voted against the transfer because they hadn’t been consulted about it. Jacque questioned why the original estimate for the Eau Claire projects had exceeded the costs based on the final bids.

Neither responded to an inquiry Friday about their decision to change their votes.

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Rainbow LGBTQ heart on hands, Getty Images

Since 2018, Marc Herstand has been on the forefront of a campaign to ban mental health professionals in Wisconsin from counseling clients with the goal of changing their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“Conversion therapy” has been denounced by mainstream professional organizations for doctors, psychiatrists, social workers and counselors. “People likened it to child abuse and torture,” says Herstand, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers Wisconsin chapter. “LGBT kids who are not accepted have a much, much higher rate of suicidality and mental health issues.”

Twenty states — and several local communities in Wisconsin — have banned the practice. And since late April 2024, the state professional licensing board for therapists, counselors and social workers has labeled conversion therapy as unprofessional conduct.

“It has no place whatsoever in the mental health professions, frankly, in our society,” Herstand says.

The provision banning the practice is precarious, however. Twice it’s been blocked by one of the Wisconsin Legislature’s most powerful committees. And advocates for the LGBTQ community fear it could be blocked again.

“Undoing this rule would overturn the work of the state’s mental health experts and expose young people and their families to unnecessary and lasting harms,” says Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the national LGBTQ advocy group The Trevor Project.

Next week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear arguments in a lawsuit that could determine whether the conversion therapy ban survives — and whether that legislative body has been overstepping its bounds in overriding state regulations that address everything from environmental quality to public health.

The Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) has been a thorn in the side of  the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers since he took office in January 2019. The committee’s power under Wisconsin law to stymie regulations enacted by the executive branch was one of three issues that Evers identified in a lawsuit the governor filed in October 2023 charging that Republican leaders of the Wisconsin Legislature were exercising an unconstitutional “legislative veto” to thwart his administration from carrying out its duties.

The lawsuit went straight to the Supreme Court. This past July the Court ruled 6-1 in Evers’ favor on the first of those three issues, throwing out state laws that had allowed the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to block how the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources spends money budgeted for the Knowles-Nelson stewardship fund.

In October, the Court dismissed the lawsuit’s second issue, an objection to actions by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) that had held up raises for University of Wisconsin system employees to pressure the UW into eliminating its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. A deal between Vos and the UW Board of Regents ended the delay in December 2023.

The Court also said it would take up the third issue: the power that JCRAR has exercised to block regulations, sometimes repeatedly.  Over the last six years, the 10-member committee’s six Republican lawmakers have voted to block or rewrite rules drawn up by state agencies on matters including environmental regulations, vaccine requirements and public health protections.

Two rules blocked

The Evers lawsuit identifies two JCRAR actions. One was the committee’s vote in January 2023 blocking the conversion therapy ban. The second was a committee vote blocking a state building code update. Both measures were produced under the umbrella of the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS).

The building code revision was developed over three years in a series of meetings and hearings following national and international model documents under the direction of a statewide professional building code body. Brian Flannery, a veteran building inspector who was part of the code revision process, told the Wisconsin Examiner in a 2023 interview that at two hearings, there were no objections to the code change brought to the group.  

In August 2023, however, a Senate committee voted along party lines against approving the new building code following a hearing in which objections were raised by business lobbyists. JCRAR held a vote Sept. 29, 2023, approving an “indefinite objection” — blocking DSPS from reintroducing the code update unless the Legislature passes a bill authorizing it.

The JCRAR vote was 6-4 on party lines, with only Republicans supporting the motion, and was conducted by paper ballot, without a hearing and without the committee meeting in person.

Therapists’ ethics rules

The rule opposing conversion therapy for LGBTQ persons was part of an ethics revision by the Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board.

Herstand of the National Association of Social Workers said he first appealed to the examining board in 2018 to ban conversion therapy. Later that year the board began the process of revising the state professional code and added to the list of actions considered “unprofessional conduct” a provision that began, “Employing or promoting any intervention or method that has the purpose of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity…”

“When I talk to survivors of conversion therapy, I hear their struggles with loss of trust — trust for family members, trust for licensed medical professionals and the entire health care system,” Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, an LGBTQ advocacy group, tells the Wisconsin Examiner. “Conversion therapy really erodes that ability to trust, and that makes interacting with the health care system in the future more difficult.”

A study from the Trevor Project also shows “a significant increase in suicide attempts, and not only that, but also a significant increase in multiple suicide attempts,” Swetz adds.

After hearings and the board’s unanimous vote to advance the rule change, however, JCRAR voted 6-4 to put the change on a temporary hold until the end of the 2021-22 legislative session.  

At the end of November 2022, the examining board republished the new ethics code, effective Dec. 1 of that year. Six weeks later, JCRAR convened again, holding a public hearing.

Mental health professionals and LGBTQ advocates urged the committee to allow the new code to stand. Herstand was among them, describing conversion therapy as “Child abuse. Torture. Major mental health and suicidal risk. Unprofessional conduct. Fake therapy.”

Testifying in favor of throwing out the rule, Julaine Appling, executive director of the conservative Wisconsin Family Council, said the ban violated professionals’  freedom of speech and religion.

JCRAR again voted 6-4 to suspend the rule for the rest of the 2023-24 legislative session. The committee co-chair, Rep. Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee) said that “the merits of any conversion therapy or any other type of therapy” was “a question for the Legislature as it is public policy and deals with speech issues.”

Nine months later, Evers filed his lawsuit, calling both of the committee actions examples of an unconstitutional legislative veto that hampered the executive branch from doing its job.

In April, with the Legislature wrapped up for the rest of 2024, the examining board reinstated the code banning conversion therapy. 

Sending rules to limbo

Under Wisconsin law, JCRAR can object to a rule after it is promulgated, either temporarily — for the balance of a legislative session — or indefinitely. State law also holds that if lawmakers introduce legislation that codifies a rule objection, the rule stays blocked until the legislation is vetoed by the governor.

Instead, however, lawmakers have introduced such legislation and referred it to committee, where it has remained dormant for the rest of the legislative session in order to avoid a veto that would restore the blocked rule.

The Evers administration argues that by blocking regulations, JCRAR is taking over the power that the Wisconsin Constitution confers on the governor to carry out the laws.

“In other words, when JCRAR vetoes a proposed rule, it effectively amends the statute under which the executive agency proposed that rule,” a brief filed on behalf of Evers argues.

“By proposing the conversion therapy rule, the [therapy licensing board] exercised that statutory authority. By objecting to that rule, JCRAR effectively withdrew a share of the statutory authority the Legislature had granted to the Board” — in essence, the brief argues, unilaterally rewriting the state law that authorizes the licensing board to set the profession’s ethical standards.

“JCRAR does not have that power—only the full Legislature does,” the brief states.

The committee’s action — and the state laws that empower it — undercut the legal right of the profession to set its standards, Herstand tells the Wisconsin Examiner.

“It’s an issue of the ability of professions, which is delineated in the law, in statute, to set their own ethical standards, when some in the Legislature are trying to prevent that,” he says. “To me, that’s a violation of statute.”

A brief filed on behalf of the Legislature’s Republican leaders argues otherwise. A 1992 state Supreme Court ruling upheld the right of the committee and the Legislature to suspend rules as part of its oversight of the executive branch. While the Evers administration argues that the earlier decision was wrong and should be overturned, the legislators’ brief contends it should be honored as legal precedent.

In defense of JCRAR’s powers, the legislators’ brief describes regulations as the product of power “delegated” by the lawmakers — an argument that lawyers for the governor reject.

A friend of the court brief by a group of legal scholars, including Miriam Seifter and Bryna Godar of the University of Wisconsin Law School, sides with the administration. The power that Wisconsin law grants to JCRAR is unlike that found in other states and unconstitutional, the brief argues.

“Wisconsin’s anomalous statutory scheme allows a handful of legislators to determine whether administrative rules are lawful; to suspend otherwise final rules forever or rescind them once in force; and to act without deadlines or judicial review,” the brief states. “The Constitution readily permits other forms of agency oversight, but it precludes these committee overreaches into the domains of the executive branch, the judiciary, and the people.”

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Sign for the Wisconsin Elections Comission. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted Thursday to investigate how nearly 200 absentee ballots cast in Madison were overlooked and not counted on Election Night.

“This was such a serious oversight that I didn’t want to wait for a complaint,” the commission chair, Ann Jacobs, said at a special meeting the commission held Thursday.

The investigation findings will be summarized to commissioners, who will “provide further direction” at a future meeting.  

The uncounted ballots didn’t affect the outcome of any state or local elections, according to the elections commission staff.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said Thursday that the city welcomed the investigation.

“I fully support this independent review, and look forward to WEC’s findings and recommendations, which will inform any changes we make to prevent a similar situation from occurring in the future,” Rhodes-Conway said in a statement.

The Madison City Clerk’s office told the elections commission in a memo Dec. 20 about the overlooked Nov. 5 ballots in two Madison wards. A bag containing 68 unprocessed absentee ballots from two wards was found Nov. 12 in a tabulator bin, the memo stated. During reconciliation of ballots on Dec. 3, clerk employees found two sealed envelopes contained a total of 125 unprocessed absentee ballots from another ward.  

The mayor’s office announced the unprocessed ballots Dec. 26. In a public statement the same day, the clerk’s office said that in future elections, “every polling location will receive a list of absentee envelope seal numbers that will be verified as counted on Election Day.”

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The infection of a farm worker in Wisconsin with avian flu has been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Stephen Ausmus | Agricultural Research Service, USDA)

A Barron County farm worker has been confirmed to have been infected with avian influenza, the state health department reported Friday. The confirmation was made by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

With the CDC analysis in hand, “the case will now be reported as a confirmed human case” of the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) announced. It is the first reported case of the virus in a human in Wisconsin. 

The presumed infection was first reported Wednesday in a farm worker who was one of 19 people exposed to a poultry flock in Barron County where the avian flu virus was detected. The flock has been destroyed to prevent the spread of the virus. 

The individual has been treated with antiviral drugs and is recovering, according to DHS. 

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Gov. Tony Evers signs legislation in March 2024 funding a new UW-Madison engineering building. On Wednesday, the State Building Commission divided on party lines, blocking a plan to transfer unspent money for other projects, including the engineering building. (Screenshot via @GovEvers Twitter page)

The on-again, off-again plan for a new engineering building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has hit a new roadblock, with Republican lawmakers questioning how the state was constructing its building project bids and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers accusing  them of last-minute political gamesmanship.

The four Republicans on the eight-member commission voted against a proposal Wednesday that would have provided $29 million for the UW-Madison engineering building from unspent funds.

The engineering building has been a political football over the last two years since Republican lawmakers sought to use the project as leverage to force the UW system to reduce or eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

After the Republican majority excluded the engineering building funding from the 2023-25 state budget, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos pressured the University of Wisconsin Regents to accept an agreement that reframed diversity initiatives. In return, the Legislature passed and Evers signed in March legislation transferring $423 million to the state’s capital improvement fund for UW projects, including $197 million for the engineering building.

At Wednesday’s State Building Commission meeting, the Evers administration proposed taking $70 million from projects at the UW Eau Claire for which bids came in under budget. The proposal called for redirecting the unspent funds to other projects already approved by the building commission.

In addition to the $29 million for the engineering building, the redirected funds were proposed to go to projects at UW-Whitewater ($10.5 million), UW-Stout ($5.4 million) and assorted university repair and maintenance projects ($25 million).

While blocking the transfer, the commission approved $81 million in projects across the state.

In a statement issued after the commission votes, Evers called the approved projects “critical to our communities” and condemned the vote blocking the transfer, calling it “partisan obstruction” to the UW.

“I am deeply disappointed that Republican lawmakers are once again pulling the rug out from under UW in the eleventh hour and putting politics ahead of doing what’s best for our kids, our workforce and economy, and our state,” Evers said.

In statements released after they voted against the transfer, GOP lawmakers on the commission complained that, among other things, the engineering building project’s design had been expanded beyond what had been previously proposed.

“I have advocated for the Engineering Building, it is important to UW-Madison but the scope of this project has drastically changed and we were not made aware all the changes until it was time for the vote,” said state Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Racine).

Sen. Andre Jacque (R-DePere) cited a news report that the UW-Madison planned to add an additional floor to proposed engineering building and criticized the university for not consulting the Legislature or the building commission about the change. Jacque also questioned why the original estimate for the Eau Claire projects had exceeded the costs based on the final bids.

The commission’s next regularly scheduled meeting is in February, but Evers said his administration will bring the transfer proposal back to the body in January.

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