U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany speaks to voters on Jan. 27 at a listening session on the campus of UW-Eau Claire Barron County. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

RICE LAKE — On Monday, as a barrage of executive orders and policy changes from the new Donald Trump administration made headlines, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany criss-crossed his district holding listening sessions with constituents. Despite the sea change in Washington, many residents were focused on local issues outside the frenzy of attention, even as the White House took aim at programs the voters in this deep red part of the state said they rely on. 

At Tiffany’s event in Rice Lake, held on UW-Eau Claire’s Barron County campus, the discussion touched on energy, government health care, COVID-19 interventions and Division III college hockey. 

Dale Seidlitz complained to Tiffany that he and his brother-in-law were struggling with the disability compensation programs offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs and how payment amounts are calculated. 

Seidlitz said he was a helicopter pilot for the Marines and did stints flying Marine One for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. He said that he has a lingering hand injury, hearing loss and issues related to exposure to toxic chemicals at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, but the VA won’t provide the full amount of compensation he’s qualified for. 

“It’s this wonky math that they do for compensation that really needs to be overhauled,” Seidlitz said. “It’s not just about me, it’s about all veterans at the VA.” 

Tiffany directed Seidlitz to his staff, saying, “it’s always a priority with veterans.”

Shortly after  Tiffany promised to help his constituent navigate  the VA bureaucracy, the White House Office of Management and Budget released a memo announcing the freezing of all federal financial assistance, including the VA’s disability compensation program. 

The memo immediately drew legal challenges including from Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, on the grounds that the president has no authority to prevent money appropriated by Congress from being spent. 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.

During Tiffany’s listening session in Rice Lake, Jennifer Jako, director of Barron County’s Aging and Disability Resource Center, told Tiffany that she was concerned about cuts that Republicans and Trump have proposed to Medicaid in order to pay for an extension of the tax cuts signed into law by Trump during his first term. Jako added that she’s heard Congress is considering $2 trillion in cuts. 

Jako said that Medicaid funding makes up about half of her office’s budget and helps the county — where 40% of the population is older than 60 — provide important services to people of every income level. 

“I just want to make sure you are aware that if we’re talking that large of Medicaid cuts, it will probably have some pretty big effects on a lot of those kinds of long-term care services and supports,” she said. 

Tiffany said that the $2 trillion proposal is over a 10-year period, so as part of the annual Medicaid budget would only be $200 billion per year, before pivoting to saying the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, shouldn’t be available to people who are capable of working. 

“Now, if you’re able bodied and you can work, you should not be on a program that’s paid for by you, the taxpayers of the United States,” he said. “We’re all willing to give a hand up, help someone out for a little while, but that shouldn’t be a way of life, and we’re also trying to get at that, because the estimates that I’ve seen is there’s five to 10 million people in America that are able bodied, that should be working and are collecting benefits, including sometimes Medicaid benefits, that really shouldn’t be getting those. And so that’s really what we’re trying to get at, is that those who legitimately deserve the help that we make sure that they get them.” 

Tiffany also said that many of the proposed cuts to Medicaid should be focused on rooting out fraud and abuse in the program, saying that “hundreds of billions of dollars” of taxpayer funds meant to be used for Medicaid are going to “foreign actors that have figured out how to break into the American system. They’re hacking into the system.” 

Among the programs for which the White House has attempted to freeze funding is the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. 

Energy production

On Monday evening, Tiffany held a town hall event in New Richmond to discuss a proposed solar farm in the area and promote his bill which would prevent energy companies from receiving tax subsidies for building a solar installation if it is constructed on working agricultural land. During the Rice Lake event, he also emphasized efforts to increase energy production in Wisconsin and around the country. 

Tiffany, who has taken a personal interest in local land use debates in his district, complained about the Bad River Tribe’s efforts to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 natural gas pipeline, which runs through northern Wisconsin. He also said that he supports easing permitting requirements for all sorts of energy sources, including natural gas and nuclear power plants, because the country needs to produce more energy — although domestic oil and gas production is already at its highest ever levels. 

“If you think climate change is real, nuclear is one of the ways in which we can have that base load power that will fill in the gaps,” he said. “If we’re going to continue to move with the wind and solar and the intermittent sources of power, you’ve got to have something that’s base load, and nothing’s more base load than nuclear.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel (second from left) stand next to Chippewa County Sheriff Travis Hakes (second from right), who has been at the center of numerous controversies. (Screenshot)

In a television ad and recent endorsements, Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel has touted the support of Chippewa County Sheriff Travis Hakes — a controversial figure whose county board voted 19-1 last year to find it had “no confidence” in him after he was accused of sexually harassing a female job applicant and subordinate.

As the race between Shimel and his opponent, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford, heats up, the two candidates have attempted to claim the other is soft on crime. Schimel, a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge who was previously the state attorney general under Republican Gov. Scott Walker, has in recent days announced endorsements from a number of current and retired sheriffs from across the state. 

Hakes is one of the sheriffs who endorsed Schimel and appeared with the judge in a television ad behind a graphic that states Schimel is “tough on crime.” 

Last February, the Chippewa County Board voted nearly unanimously that it has “no confidence in Chippewa County Sheriff Travis Hakes’ continued leadership” and that the sheriff has “a long history of not being credible.”

An independent investigation into Hakes initiated by the board found that he had sent inappropriate messages to a female job applicant and a subordinate, including a text that shared a “racist ethnically charged meme.” 

“For any leader of a law enforcement agency to make such comments calls into question their professional judgement and ability to enforce the law and treat all persons fairly and lawfully,” a joint statement from County Administrator Randy Scholz and Board Chair Dean Gullickson said. “Moreover, for any leader of a law enforcement agency to suggest that his subordinates engage in such conduct with his implied support and tolerance leaves no doubt as to his inability to effectively manage any law enforcement employee and not expose the County to great risk.”

In the texts, Hakes told a female subordinate that she was the “breast person for the job!” in a conversation about birds and then later sent a meme depicting an Asian man crying with the caption “when the chow mein was on point but you kinda miss your cat.”

Hakes’ term as sheriff runs through 2026 and the board has no ability to remove him from office, which led to the no confidence vote. But in December 2023, the Chippewa County District Attorney put Hakes on the county’s Brady list — a document prosecutors are required to send to defense attorneys naming law enforcement officers “who have had incidents of untruthfulness, criminal convictions, candor issues, or some other type of issue placing their credibility into question.”

Hakes has “misled the public and County Board” multiple times about his work history, according to the board’s statement. 

Because of his inclusion on the Brady list, Hakes is unable to be actively involved in investigations or handle physical evidence. 

Several other sheriffs who have endorsed Schimel have also sparked controversy during their tenures. 

Polk County Sheriff Brent Waak drew attention in 2023 for refusing to enforce a rule from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that banned the use of stabilizing braces on pistols. Waak has previously shared his belief in the constitutional sheriff ideology — which states that county sheriffs have nearly unlimited authority to decide what the law is. 

Schimel was also endorsed by Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling, who drew the praise of election deniers after he called for the arrest of five members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and declined to arrest an election denier who had requested absentee ballots on behalf of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Racine Mayor Cory Mason. 

In his 2018 campaign for attorney general, Schimel ran an ad touting his law enforcement support that included the endorsement of former Taylor County Sheriff Bruce Daniels — who was investigated by the FBI for hacking into a subordinate’s Dropbox account and by the state Department of Justice for pressuring another agency to destroy a report on a traffic accident that involved his son. 

Wisconsin Democratic Party spokesperson Haley McCoy said in a statement that Schimel touting Hakes’ support shows a lack of judgement. 

“This isn’t the first time that Brad Schimel has struggled with a photo op, but standing with a man censured 19-1 by local elected officials and accused of sexual harassment, conflicts of interest, poor leadership, and violating his oath is a new low — even for an extreme politician like Schimel,” McCoy said. “Brad Schimel has a long record of failing to keep Wisconsinites safe, from giving light sentences to convicted domestic abusers to failing to test more than 6,000 sexual assault kits over two years. It’s clear as day that Wisconsin voters can’t trust Brad Schimel’s judgment or public safety record on the state Supreme Court since he can’t even get this easy call right.”

Schimel’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

(Photo: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

Immigrant rights advocates and attorneys are preparing for how Wisconsin’s law enforcement community might assist federal authorities in President Donald Trump’s proposed mass deportation efforts — warning that the new administration’s policies could lead to profiling and high levels of data sharing. 

Eight counties in Wisconsin currently have agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the agency’s 287(g) program, which state that the counties will hold undocumented immigrants in jail if ICE requests them to do so. Brown, Fond du Lac, Manitowoc, Marquette and Sheboygan counties have a memorandum of agreement with ICE under the Warrant Service Officer program and Waukesha County has an agreement with the agency under its jail enforcement program — which allows local deputies to act as immigration enforcement agents and ask questions about inmates’ citizenship status. 

Tim Muth, a senior staff attorney with the Wisconsin ACLU who has researched how local law enforcement interacts with ICE, says these agreements weren’t used very much under the administration of President Joe Biden but now under Trump, it gives federal authorities a good sense of which departments will be allies in a mass deportation effort. 

“What they do indicate is which are the counties who have already raised their hands and said, ‘we are happy to assist with deporting people from the state,’ and I anticipate that the Trump administration is going to start with that list and say ‘we know who our allies are in this in the state of Wisconsin,’” Muth says. “Let’s see if one: We can get more allies signing these agreements, and, two: For the ones who already have, let’s see what we can do to get them more active in this area.” 

Luca Fagundes, an immigration attorney based in Green Bay, says that under Biden, ICE generally only picked up undocumented immigrants in the Brown County jail if they’d committed serious infractions. Fagundes anticipates that ICE — as it did in the first Trump administration — will use the agreement with the sheriff to send people to deportation proceedings for low-level offenses such as driving without a license or other minor traffic violations.

“If history is precedent, I believe the administration will place detainers on anyone they can, regardless of how minor the offense committed by the individual,” Fagundes says, adding that he doesn’t think local law enforcement should aggressively support ICE efforts in a county that Trump won with just 53% of the vote. 

“Certainly there are concerns that law enforcement will cooperate with more aggressive ICE efforts,” he says. “I have these concerns, and I believe the community also shares these concerns. I personally hope that law enforcement in this area continue to exercise their own level of discretion on who to detain. Given the political leanings or lack thereof of Brown County, I don’t believe a mandate has been established with regards to the incoming administration’s immigration policies.” 

Aside from the eight counties with formal agreements with ICE, dozens of other county sheriffs in Wisconsin are Republicans and likely share Trump’s opinions on immigration. Muth says a big concern is these counties forging informal relationships with ICE that amount to letting the agency know whenever a foreign national is held in a county jail. 

This practice, he says, has historically been common in Walworth County, resulting in a higher per capita number of immigrants removed from the county than anywhere else in the state. 

“Basically every day they would send a list to ICE of every foreign national who had been booked into the jail,” Muth says. “So I think we’re going to see more of that kind of informal information sharing. And then I think the other thing is, even though immigration enforcement is not a state matter, it’s a federal matter, we’ll probably see more local law enforcement, the county level and local municipal level, asking people, what’s their immigration status?”

Muth says the ACLU, community organizations and churches have been working on extensive know-your-rights campaigns in recent months to inform people of what their rights are if they’re stopped by law enforcement and asked these sorts of questions. 

“And our advice is always, you know, you shouldn’t speak to law enforcement without your attorney, and ask for counsel,” he says. “Very often people, especially people from marginalized communities, don’t know that they can refuse to answer questions like, ‘what’s your immigration status?’ And I expect we’re going to see local law enforcement, especially in more conservative counties, asking those questions, even though it is unrelated to enforcing any state of Wisconsin criminal statute.”

But, he adds that many rural sheriffs will be in a bind. They can support Trump and assist ICE in aggressive deportation efforts but that could come with political backlash from an important local voter base — farmers who rely on undocumented labor. 

“I think there are some counties where the local farms are very dependent on undocumented farm workers where the sheriffs recognize that they don’t want to harm the local agricultural community,” he says. 

In the state’s more liberal communities, local officials have promised to do what they can to thwart local ICE efforts. At a news conference last week, Dane County Executive Melissa Agard and District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said the county would continue to offer the area’s immigrant community assistance through programs in the human services department and that the DA would never ask for the immigration status of a victim or witness in a criminal prosecution. 

The Dane County sheriff’s department has also said it would not assist ICE and wants to maintain its relationship with the immigrant community so they report crimes when they happen. But the county has also continued to participate in the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), which provides grants to reimburse local governments for the cost of detaining noncitizens. 

Participation in the program involves regularly sending federal authorities a list of all noncitizens who were held in the jail and convicted of at least two misdemeanors or one felony. Shortly after current Sheriff Kalvin Barrett took office in 2022, the Dane County Board assessed the county’s participation in the program and decided to continue the county’s involvement. 

Elise Schaffer, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, says the board decided to continue because the reimbursement is based on historical data, not who is currently in the jail. She says the county hasn’t even finished sending all of the 2023 data to the Department of Justice office that operates the program and passes the information along to ICE. 

Muth says that in many ways Dane County and Madison have policies that he believes are good for the local immigrant community, but that even Milwaukee County, with its tight budget, hasn’t accepted this money. 

“The Milwaukee County sheriff’s budget is certainly really tight,” he says. “They’re really suffering, but they don’t pursue that money, which I commend them for. I think in general, other than pursuing this SCAAP funding, I think Dane County and the current sheriff and the Madison police department have a good set of policies that we applaud them for. But ICE’s mass deportation plan ultimately will be necessarily data driven, right? And Dane County has been feeding them data for years.”

A PFAS advisory sign along Starkweather Creek. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in a case that could upend the Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) authority to enforce the state’s decades old spills law, which allows the agency to hold companies and property owners responsible for toxic contamination. 

The case was initially brought by a Waukesha County-based leather cleaning company and joined by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), the state’s largest business lobby. The arguments came just months before the election for an open seat on the Court that could again flip the body’s ideological makeup. In the 2023 state Supreme Court race, WMC spent more than $5 million airing ads in support of Republican-backed former Justice Dan Kelly. 

Leather Rich sued the DNR after the agency found it responsible for PFAS contamination on its property. PFAS, a family of man-made chemical compounds known as “forever chemicals” do not break down easily in the body or the environment and have been connected to serious health problems. 

For years, PFAS were used for a variety of commercial and industrial purposes, including non-stick pans, fast food wrappers and firefighting foams. In recent years, state and federal governments have been attempting to crack down on PFAS contamination but in Wisconsin, water supplies across the state have been found to be contaminated. 

The lawsuit argues that the DNR can’t use the spills law to force Leather Rich to clean up the contamination because the agency never promulgated an administrative rule declaring that PFAS chemicals count as hazardous materials under the spills law. In 2022, a Waukesha County judge agreed, finding that the agency lacked the authority to regulate the chemicals. 

Last year, a conservative-controlled Court of Appeals affirmed the circuit court decision. 

During the oral arguments Tuesday, Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Colin Roth said that if the Court upheld the lower court decision, it would “fundamentally rewrite the spills law.” 

The law was written not to include a comprehensive list of materials the Legislature considered hazardous. Instead the law defines hazardous materials and leaves the rest open-ended, which the DNR has taken for the past 40 years to mean it can decide which materials are subject to regulation. The lawsuit argues the agency would need to create administrative rules with a list of specific  materials to be regulated as  hazardous, which Roth argued would cause serious harm to the state’s environment and the executive branch’s ability to perform its function. 

“The spills law has worked so well for decades precisely because the Legislature broadly defined the hazardous substances that dischargers must report and clean up,” he said. “Respondents insist that DNR must ignore this harmful PFAs discharge, and indeed many other kinds of harmful discharges, because no administrative rule lists all hazardous substances covered by the spills.” 

Roth said upending the spills law wouldn’t make the contamination go away, it would remain in the environment until the DNR can complete the rulemaking process and it would  “seriously weaken the entire executive branch’s core power to interpret and execute the law. Virtually all statutes require interpretation before agencies can administer them. If agencies cannot administer laws like this one without rulemaking, executive branch activity would grind to a halt.” 

He added that the spills law must be left open-ended because of the nature of scientific progress. He noted that numerous times throughout the history of the law, research has found that materials regularly used by industry have been found to be harmful and then regulated under the spills law and said that the agency must be able to respond to “a new set of facts.” 

“Time and time again, this happens under the spills law, science evolves,” he said. “People understand the contaminants that were used as part of ordinary commercial activity pose a threat to human health. This is how the spills law has worked for 50 years.”

Lucas Vebber, the attorney for WMC, argued that the agency wouldn’t need to promulgate rules delineating every possible hazardous material, but instead create a rule that gives a set of “objective criteria” under which a material can be declared hazardous. 

Vebber argued that it’s unfair to regulate businesses by allowing them to use a certain material for decades, then suddenly declaring the same material hazardous and subjecting those businesses to enforcement action from the agency. He added that businesses need clarity and the rulemaking process would create that.

“So at what point do people know, or are they supposed to know, that those substances become hazardous?” Vebber asked. “The Department has said that if a tanker truck of milk spills, it is certainly a hazardous substance discharge. But today, [opposing counsel] said, If you drop a gallon of milk, it’s not a hazardous substance discharge. So somewhere in the middle there, it becomes a hazardous substance discharge.” 

Justice Rebecca Dallet asked how the government would ever function if it had to pass a rule for each possible situation. 

“Each individual case is different,” she said. “Every fact situation is different. What if they spill five gallons? What if they spill 10? What if they spill 20? What about almond milk? What about oat milk? Isn’t that exactly why we have enforcement actions? Isn’t that exactly why we have the ability to interpret that the executive has to be able to apply the law? That’s called applying the law to the facts.” 

Justice Janet Protasiewicz noted that under the current administrative rulemaking process (which is currently being challenged in a separate lawsuit in which the Court will hear arguments Thursday) the Legislature has the authority to veto rules proposed by executive agencies and the possibility of a legislative veto could add even more uncertainty to the process, making it even harder for businesses to know what the rules are. 

Roth concluded his argument by pointing to a separate state statute which requires that any proposed administrative rule with an estimated compliance cost greater than $10 million be approved by the Legislature in a separate piece of legislation. He said any spills law rules would certainly exceed that threshold and questioned if it would make sense for the Court to require the Legislature to pass a separate bill in order for the executive branch to enforce a law it passed decades ago. 

“We’re in a situation where not only must the agency promulgate a rule defining hazardous substances, but the Legislature would have to pass another bill authorizing that rule,” he said. “So what do we have? We have a spill law that can’t be implemented until another statute is passed, amending it.”

Activists marched from the Capitol to the DNR Monday to demand the agency rescind its permit for Enbridge Line 5. | Photo courtesy Ian Phillips

A group of about 50 activists occupied the lobby of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Monday to protest the agency’s approval of a permit to construct a 41-mile reroute of Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline through northern Wisconsin.

Several members of the group tried to enter further into the building and one activist was arrested and put in jail, according to a news release from the coalition of indigenous and environmental groups who planned the protest. Two others were warned they’d be arrested if they tried to enter the building again.

For years, the Bad River band of Lake Superior Chippewa have fought against the pipeline, 12 miles of which crosses the tribe’s reservation, raising concerns about the pipeline’s effect on local water and the broader effects that fossil fuels have on the environment.

After declining to renew the easement that allowed the pipeline to cut across their land, the tribe sued in federal court to have it removed. In 2022 a judge ruled that Enbridge was trespassing and would have to reroute the pipeline. 

The tribe is opposed to the proposed route for the new pipeline because it would be directly upstream of the reservation.

Late last year, the DNR granted a crucial permit approval for the relocation just days after another of Enbridge’s pipelines, Line 6, was found to have leaked more than 69,000 gallons of oil in the Jefferson County town of Oakland.

On Monday, the group of activists marched from the state Capitol to the DNR offices to deliver a letter demanding that the agency revoke its permit approval and support the decommissioning and removal of Line 5.

“Enbridge Line 5 abets mayhem all around the world: deforestation and water pollution in Alberta, where companies scrape tar out of sand; oil spills across Wisconsin and Michigan; and the global heating equivalent of detonating hundreds of atomic bombs in the atmosphere every single day,” Greg Mikkelson, an organizer with the Cross Border Organizing Working Group, said in a statement. “The proposed expansion of this pipeline would lock in dependence on this disaster-genic source of energy for decades to come. Meanwhile, Wisconsinites consume virtually none of the oil or gas carried in Line 5. Shame on the DNR for approving the expansion, even while covering up a brand-new spill from Line 6, another Enbridge pipeline in Wisconsin.”

Cows at a Dunn County dairy farm. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

A Polk County judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby, challenging an ordinance enacted by the town of Eureka regulating how factory farms, known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), operate. 

Under the ordinance, CAFOs must establish plans for how they will deal with manure disposal, air pollution, road use and other effects of a large farm’s operations, before being allowed to open or expand within the town. Similar ordinances have been passed in eight towns and three counties — including the Pierce County town of Maiden Rock, which passed its ordinance last month. 

While many of the state’s largest factory farms operate on the eastern side of the state in and around Kewaunee County, communities across western Wisconsin have been fighting the expansion of farming operations in the Driftless Region because of the effect CAFOs can have on smaller farms in the community, water quality and the environment. 

“WMC’s lawsuit against Eureka is part of a three-prong strategy by this industry with one goal — no regulation,” Lisa Doerr, a Polk County farmer who helped develop Eureka’s ordinance, said in a statement. “They use lawsuits to intimidate local officials who pass legal ordinances. At the same time, they have a lawsuit challenging any state authority. Finally, their Madison lobbyists are pushing state legislators to ban all local control.”

WMC has filed a number of lawsuits in recent years challenging state authority to protect water quality. A lawsuit filed by the group in Calumet County challenged the state Department of Natural Resources’ authority to require CAFOs to obtain permits regulating their effect on local water supplies. A circuit court judge ruled against that effort last year; the ruling is pending in the state Court of Appeals. 

Next week, the state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case from WMC challenging the DNR’s ability to use the state’s toxic spills law to force polluters to clean up PFAS contamination.

The family of Kenneth Taylor says the city of Black River Falls and its police department brushed off their concerns when he was reported missing and in the years since his death. (Graphic by Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner, Photos courtesy of City of Black River Falls, U.S. Geological Survey, Joy Taylor)

On the night of Sept. 9, 2022, 20-year-old Kenneth Taylor called his aunt, Cheyenne Taylor, asking if she could drive three hours south from Hayward to Black River Falls to pick him up — something she says happened regularly. 

Cheyenne’s boyfriend answered the phone and he said they could come down to get him in the morning from the motel where he was staying. Kenneth, a member of the St. Croix Chippewa tribe, had spent the night hanging out with his girlfriend, who told police they’d been drinking. That night, he posted on Facebook asking for help with his depression.

The couple left Hayward around 8 a.m. but, Cheyenne says, as they got on I-94 near Eau Claire, she got a “sick feeling” in her stomach because her nephew wasn’t answering his phone. 

Cheyenne spent much of the day driving the unfamiliar streets of Black River Falls looking for him. Soon, other members of the family got involved in the search. 

During the first day Kenneth was missing, multiple family members turned to the police for help. But Cheyenne and Kenneth’s stepmother, Joy Taylor, say they were told by an officer that “maybe he didn’t want to be found,” and that as an adult he had the right to choose to disappear.

As the family got more desperate, a police report notes that officers weren’t concerned. 

“Kenneth was not entered as missing due to there being little to no evidence to support that he was in immediate danger to himself at that point in time,” the report, filed by Black River Falls Police Officer Charles Smart, states. 

Eventually, the family turned to resources offered by the state’s missing and murdered indigenous people (MMIP) task force. With that help, Kenneth was finally officially reported missing and search and rescue teams were on the ground in Black River Falls by the morning of Sept. 11 — two days after his aunt last heard from him. 

Around 4:30 p.m. on the same day the search began, Kenneth was found dead, hanging from a tree by his backpack strap in a small patch of woods in Black River Falls. 

For family members and advocates for missing and murdered indigenous people, the official response in Kenneth’s case once he went missing and during the investigation into his death exemplify the ways in which a bureaucratic system dismisses the concerns of Native American families even as Wisconsin works to improve its response to these types of cases. 

“Families are in a process of grief, taking care of their loved ones, in a state of traumatic shock, they are navigating through a system that is not being supportive of their needs,” says Rene Ann Goodrich, a Bad River tribal member who serves on the Wisconsin MMIW Task Force.

In the years since Kenneth’s death, his family has tried to process the grief and trauma while continuing to search for answers about what happened — without much help from local officials. 

Several members of the family remain unconvinced that Kenneth’s death was a suicide, saying they believe there was “foul play” involved. Other family members believe the coroner wasn’t entirely thorough in her assessment of the scene where his body was found. They also have questions about the results of the autopsy, which was conducted by a lab in Minnesota. Aside from their questions about the conclusions made in Kenneth’s case, family members told the Wisconsin Examiner they feel as if they’ve been “brushed off” by city officials. 

Contemporaneous notes taken by MMIP advocates and complaints filed by family members alleging their rights as victims have been violated highlight the family’s numerous unsuccessful attempts to speak with Black River Falls officials. The state Department of Justice dismissed the family’s complaints against the city because Kenneth’s death was ruled a suicide and therefore his relatives do not qualify as crime victims. 

“Throughout the death of my son, Black River Falls Police Department has shown little regard for what happened to my son based on the investigation and unwillingness to speak with the family,” Kenneth Taylor Sr. wrote in a 2023 letter to the Wisconsin Crime Victims’ Rights Board. “[We] have tried constantly to get answers and meetings. There are many discrepancies in the information the family has received from involved agencies.” 

According to several members of the Taylor family, they were told by multiple Black River Falls law enforcement and city officials that they’d been advised by the city attorney not to speak with them. 

“No one would ever talk to us,” Joy Taylor says. “They would cancel the appointments. I even went as far as calling the mayor, and he stated that no one was going to talk to me about this case, that they have been advised not to talk to anyone. Why, on a suicide case, would you not talk to someone if it was so cut and dried? Why wouldn’t you talk to me?”

Black River Falls officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story. 

Goodrich, who still has questions about her own daughter’s death, says it’s difficult for families when their relative’s cause of death is identified as a suicide or overdose because from law enforcement’s perspective, that ends the case. Yet families still have questions about what led up to their loved one’s death. 

“Families need to feel that they are included and at that table in the investigative process, and right now they are not feeling that support,” Goodrich says. “It doesn’t help assure families that justice will be served when they’re told ‘Well, we can’t talk to you anymore, we can’t share any more information with you, you’re going to have to talk to the county attorney.’ That is closing conversations and the door to families as they are sharing their valid concerns and information. Families really don’t need that type of grief as they’re trying to navigate the system and make sense of what happened. This contributes to and creates more trauma.”

Goodrich adds that what will help state and local governments in Wisconsin better handle MMIP cases is the creation of a new statewide office to help train local law enforcement and coordinate investigations.

Kristen Welch, a member of Wisconsin’s Task Force for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women who worked with the Taylor family, says the government response to Kenneth’s case fits a pattern. 

“It’s a patterned response. So what they experienced, like the delay in filing the initial report, is very common,” Welch says, adding that some of that treatment stems from bias against Native Americans but also from a lack of training and standardized practices across law enforcement agencies. “[This] sort of really rude treatment, those are all common responses for family members that are just trying to get case information. I don’t know why they feel that that’s OK, and they could really solve a lot of their own problems if they just sat down with this family, answered questions and shared the case information with them. I think a lot of the frustration would have been put to ease, but it again, is a training and protocol issue within their departments.”

Welch says that in hearings on MMIP issues that have been held across the state and country, this was a common theme. 

“That was like the common pattern — treatment of response — and at the federal level too,” she says. “So that was from Alaska all the way to the Midwest. We held hearings, and you heard the same story from our family members, the mistreatment and just lack of compassion and respect for families who are going through an incredible trauma and carry that, and just want someone to show them a little compassion.”

In the years since Kenneth’s death, the family had used the tree where he was found as a makeshift memorial, bringing food, flowers and tobacco to the site. But this year, the whole area was clear cut, adding to the family’s distress. 

“It was like where his soul left his body pretty much,” Kenneth’s aunt, Cheyenne, says. “And then they went and cut it down. Why?”

But Cheyenne says she’s trying to keep moving forward for her own children, while trying to remember how cheerful and outgoing Kenneth was and how much he loved his kids — one of whom never got to meet him. 

“It took me this long to finally accept that he’s gone and he’s not coming back,” she says. “He was always there for me, just like I was for him. And there was nothing in this world I would never do for him. And he knew it.”

Dr. Karen Hyun will be the next secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. (Office of Gov. Tony Evers)

Gov. Tony Evers announced Monday that Dr. Karen Hyun will be appointed as the next Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Hyun currently serves as chief of staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

The DNR secretary position has been unfilled for more than a year after the resignation of former Secretary Adam Payne in October 2023. In a news release, Evers said that Hyun’s career working on environmental issues makes her “a great asset.” 

“Dr. Hyun’s extensive science background and expertise working in fish and wildlife, shoreline restoration, and coastal management and resilience will make her a great asset to the Department of Natural Resources and to our administration,” Evers said. “Having spent most of her career working in environmental policy, Dr. Hyun brings a wealth of experience navigating many of the issues the department is charged with managing every day, and I’m so excited for her to get started.”

Hyun, who lives in Madison, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Earth Systems from Stanford University before getting her doctorate from the University of Rhode Island in marine science. 

Before joining NOAA, the federal agency that forecasts weather and tracks oceanic and atmospheric conditions — including on the Great Lakes — Hyun worked at the National Audubon Society as director of water and coastal policy before becoming the vice president of coastal conservation in 2018. 

She started her career in 2009 working as a staff member of the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee. She then worked in the administration of former President Barack Obama as senior policy advisor to the secretary of Commerce and deputy assistant secretary of fish, wildlife, and parks at the Department of the Interior in 2015. 

“I’m honored to accept this appointment from Gov. Evers to lead the DNR,” Hyun said. “Wisconsin is known for its abundance of natural resources, wildlife, and outdoor recreation opportunities, and I have spent much of my life dedicated to understanding, conserving, and promoting the natural resources and spaces that we all know and love. I look forward to working alongside the dedicated DNR staff to ensure that Wisconsin’s ecosystems, wildlife, natural spaces, and resources remain accessible, safe, and available for generations of Wisconsinites to come.”

Hyun’s appointment is effective Jan. 27.

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes delivers updates about the Dec. 16, 2024 school shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Madison's east side. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Just days after he was thrust into the national spotlight following the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School that killed two people, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes was announced as the new chief of the Seattle Police Department. 

Barnes’ acceptance of the job in Seattle comes as the Madison police are still investigating the shooting on Monday and the motives behind the 15-year-old girl’s attack. Authorities have discovered that the girl was in contact with a 20-year-old California man who was planning his own attack on a government building. 

Since the shooting, Barnes has been an outspoken critic of hardening the defenses of community schools. At his first press conference after the shooting, he was asked if the school had metal detectors and responded that schools shouldn’t have such measures installed. 

“I’m not aware that the school had metal detectors, nor should schools have metal detectors,” he said. “It’s a school. It’s a safe space.”

Prior to the shooting, Barnes had been named a finalist for the Seattle job. 

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell noted in a statement that Barnes has successfully brought crime down in Madison and promised to continue to work to combat gun violence.

“Earlier this week, under tragic circumstances, the nation received its introduction to Chief Shon Barnes. We all saw firsthand what our team has known since we began this recruitment process — that Chief Barnes possesses the impressive leadership capabilities, compassionate approach, and dedication to effective police work needed to continue moving our Police Department forward,” Harrell said. “I’ve spoken with Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway to express my condolences and support as they process this week’s tragedy and to share my continued commitment to fighting for solutions to the gun violence epidemic that impacts every corner of our country through our shared work with the U.S. Conference of Mayors.”

Barnes took over as chief in Madison in early 2021 as the city responded to an increase in violent crime and the protests against police violence that occurred across the country in 2020. During his tenure, Barnes has overseen the department’s effort to equip officers with body cameras. 

He was also named a finalist for the chief jobs in Chicago and San Jose, California, despite telling Isthmus in 2021 that he was committed to Madison “for the long haul.” 

Rhodes-Conway said in a statement that Barnes’ collaborative approach was important to the establishment of Dane County’s Public Health Violence Prevention Unit and the Madison Fire Department’s CARES program, noting that the city is “safer and more resilient” because of his work. 

“I would like to congratulate Chief Shon Barnes on his new opportunity in Seattle and thank him for his service to Madison,” Rhodes-Conway said. “The Chief has been a steady, forward-thinking leader throughout his tenure and he will be greatly missed.”

She also commended his work this week responding to the school shooting.

“The tragedy this week has been all-consuming, and we still have much healing to do as a community,” she said. “I’m grateful that the Madison Police Department responded to this unthinkable crisis with the utmost professionalism and compassion. Chief Barnes was at the center of coordinating local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies during an unprecedented moment. He did so admirably.”

The Madison Police and Fire Commission is responsible for finding Barnes’ replacement. Rhodes-Conway said in the coming weeks the commission will outline a search plan and during the recruitment process an interim chief will be named.

Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski and state Treasurer John Lieber present a large check to educators to represent the $70 million disbursement from the Common School Fund to public school libraries across state. (Courtesy of Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski)

Wisconsin school libraries and media resources will receive a record $70 million in funding from the Board of Commissioners of Public Land, Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski announced Thursday. 

The agency’s contribution from the Common School Fund breaks the record for largest ever provided, which was set last year when the BCPL provided $65 million from the fund. 

“I’m proud of our record-breaking distribution. It comes at a time when schools are being asked to do more with less, and our strategic investments and collaborative efforts are making a difference to ensure that every student—no matter where they live—has access to the books, technology, and tools they need to succeed,” Godlewski said in a statement.

The BCPL manages state trust funds created as Wisconsin sold off millions of acres of land granted to the state government in the 19th century. The agency also manages timber sales for 77,000 acres of land still under state control. 

The Common School Fund is the “only dedicated funding source for many of Wisconsin’s public school libraries,” according to a news release. The amount of funds provided to school libraries through the fund has substantially increased in recent years. In 2020, libraries received $38.2 million through the fund. 

“Today’s milestone reflects the dedication of our team and the strategic investments we’ve made to ensure the fund continues to grow for future generations,” Godlewski said. “We’ve diversified hundreds of millions of dollars to include Wisconsin-based venture funds that support new and growing businesses. This is a win-win for our state: the Common School Fund bolsters Wisconsin’s economy, and the financial returns directly support our schools and libraries, reinforcing our commitment to educational excellence and opportunity.”

At an event in Brown Deer Thursday afternoon, Godlewski, state Treasurer John Leiber and educators celebrated the learning resources the money will be able to provide. 

“Without the support from the common school funds, many school libraries would not have the necessary resources to stay up-to-date and provide the digital resources necessary for our students’ continued learning. The BCPL work ensures that these schools are not left behind, and that all students in Wisconsin, no matter their background, have access to the educational opportunities they deserve,” said Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association President Jennifer Griffith.

Funds disbursed through the BCPL have been criticized in recent years because the land provided to the state by the federal government in the 1800s was taken from the state’s Native American tribes. 

In February, data collected by the non-profit media outlet Grist showed that funds disbursed through the BCPL’s Normal School Fund to the state’s public universities came from profits made from land taken largely from the Ojibwe tribe, the Wisconsin Examiner reported.

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes delivers updates about the Dec. 16, 2024 school shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Madison's east side. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

This story was updated on Monday at 9:39 p.m.

Three people are dead and another six are in the hospital after a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Madison’s east side Monday morning. The shooter, who was a student at the school, is among the dead, according to Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes.

Two of the injured victims, both students, remain in critical condition while the other four have non-life threatening injuries, Barnes said at a mid-afternoon press conference. 

Barnes identified the shooter at a Monday night press conference as Natalie Rupnow, 15, who went by the name “Samantha,” and said she appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Gov. Tony Evers issued a statement decrying the shootings and announced he would order flags to fly half-staff across the state through Sunday, Dec. 22.

“As a father, a grandfather, and as governor, it is unthinkable that a kid or an educator might wake up and go to school one morning and never come home. This should never happen, and I will never accept this as a foregone reality or stop working to change it,” Evers said.

“Today my focus is on supporting these families and kids and the Abundant Life community, and the state stands ready to support them and the efforts of local law enforcement through what will undoubtedly be difficult days ahead.”

Police responded to the shooting at the K-12 private school shortly before 11 a.m., Barnes said. While clearing the building, officers found the person they believe to be responsible already dead, along with the other two people who were killed, one a teacher and the other a student. No officers fired their weapons during the incident.

Police searched a home on Madison’s North Side late Monday afternoon and evening and said the search was in connection with the shooting.

The shooter used a handgun, Barnes said. Her family was cooperating in the investigation, but there was no immediate information about what the individual’s motives may have been.

“You ask me about why, but I don’t know why, and I felt like if we did know why, we could stop these things from happening,” Barnes said.

In a statement, President Joe Biden called the shooting “shocking and unconscionable” and urged Congress to enact “Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.” 

Biden was briefed earlier Monday about the shooting according to the White House press pool. 

At an earlier news conference, Barnes lamented the incident and its impact on the school and the community. 

“​​I’m feeling a little dismayed now, so close to Christmas, every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever,” Barnes said. “These types of trauma don’t just go away. We need to figure out how to piece together what exactly happened right now. My heart is heavy for my community. My heart is heavy for Madison. We have to come together as a community and figure out what happened here and make sure that it doesn’t happen at any other place that should be a refuge for students in our community.”

Families of students showed up at the school before noon and at mid-afternoon were still lined up in their cars down Buckeye Road on Madison’s East Side waiting to be reunited with their children. Officials said they would not release information about the victims until families had been notified. 

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway emphasized the community-wide impact of the incident.

“This is a whole of government response,” Rhodes-Conway said. “It is not just police and fire. It is not just the city of Madison, and we have folks from all around the country, we have folks from multiple agencies engaged in both the initial immediate response and the ongoing support.”

She and Dane County Executive Melissa Agard emphasized the importance and availability of mental health assistance to anyone who may have been touched by the incident.

“If anyone needs mental health support as a result of this incident and the coverage of it, I encourage them to reach out” via the 9-8-8 emergency mental health line, which takes calls and text messages, Rhodes-Conway said. “It is incredibly important that we take care of our community in this very difficult time.”

“To all of those who are grieving in our community, please know that you’re not alone,” Agard said. “Dane County stands with you. We’re here to support you in any way possible — please reach out and ask for help.”

Barnes said he has been in contact with officials at the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI. 

Although the Madison Police Department had earlier reported five deaths in the shooting, spokesperson Stephanie Fryer said that was based on information from the hospital where the victims were taken. Hospital personnel later updated the number of deaths to three people, she said. 

This story has been updated with new information from the Madison police as well as city and Dane County officials.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser | official portrait

The United States and Wisconsin flags will be flown at half-staff on Saturday to honor former state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, Gov. Tony Evers announced Friday. 

Prosser died on Dec. 1 after a fight with cancer. The former justice spent most of his career working in government, starting in the 1970s when he worked as an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice and then as a staff member for U.S. Rep. Harold Froehlich (R-Appleton). 

Prosser also served in the state Assembly, including terms as speaker and minority leader, before being appointed to the Supreme Court in 1998. He served on the court for 18 years and retired in 2016. 

“Justice Prosser devoted his career to public service, from working for a congressman and his local community to serving as a legislator and his nearly two decades as a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice,” Evers said in a statement. “His career was unique — he did a little bit of everything — and he spent much of his life seeking new and more impactful ways that he could make a difference in our state. Our thoughts and condolences are with his family, friends, staff, and former colleagues as they mourn his passing.”

Dane County's DAIS held an Oct. 1 rally for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

A report released Thursday from Dane County’s Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS) found that Dane County judges grant restraining orders against perpetrators of intimate partner violence in 34% of cases. 

The report found that even when a judge grants a restraining order, it is often not for the amount of time requested by the victim — despite state law requiring that the order be for the length of time requested by the petitioner. 

State law allows judges to impose restraining orders on domestic abusers for up to four years in most cases, and up to 10 years when it can be proven the abuser is especially dangerous. But in a handful of cases, the report found, a judge granted restraining orders for only two years to allow a “cooling off period” for the people involved despite “serious lethality concerns testified to in the hearing.”

Kianna Hanson, the legal advocacy program manager at DAIS, said at an event announcing the report’s findings Thursday morning that the “cooling off period” is a myth and that judges should follow the law. 

“The fallacy of the cooling off period, which some judges have cited as a reason for choosing to grant an injunction from less time than the petitioner has requested, which in domestic abuse injunction goes against [state law],” Hanson said. “This mythology around domestic abuse cases is harmful because it suggests that domestic abuse could be the result of anger or not being able to control one’s emotion, when in reality, domestic violence is most often a conscious choice that is rooted in gaining power and control over one’s partner.”

The report was completed by a team from DAIS and other community organizations to observe more than 800 hearings in Dane County Circuit Court from April 2023 to April 2024. At the Thursday morning event, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Jill Karofsky said the report was a step toward trying to make Wisconsin’s legal system a better place for everyone involved in it. 

“What if the legal system were different? What if the legal system were the vehicle for healing and for change?” she said. “What if people left the legal system in a better place than where they entered, and I mean all of us. I mean judges and attorneys and witnesses and court reporters and victims and defendants and plaintiffs and bailiffs and advocates. What if we left work every day feeling energized and satiated and nourished instead of stressed out, depressed and exhausted, and what if the legal system itself helped us get to a better place?” 

The report found that in the vast majority of injunction hearings, 87%, the victim seeking the restraining order was there pro se, meaning they were representing themself. Just 15% of petitioners had support in court from organizations such as DAIS, who have employees who serve as court advocates to help victims navigate the legal process (but aren’t attorneys and can’t provide legal advice). 

Representation from an attorney or support from a legal advocate vastly increased the chances of a restraining order being granted, the court found. When acting on their own, petitioners had injunctions granted in 29% of cases but when assisted by an attorney or advocate, injunctions were granted 62% of the time — meaning representation increased the chances of successfully obtaining a restraining order by 114%. 

Hanson told the Wisconsin Examiner after Thursday’s event that DAIS would be able to handle more restraining order cases under its legal advocacy program, saying that because the issuance of a restraining order can be a life-or-death decision for an abuse victim, the organization would prioritize those cases. 

Domestic abuse organizations across the state face critical funding pressures after a steep decline in federal money they receive hit this fall. Advocates have warned those funding cuts could strain resources for organizations like DAIS across the state. 

The report also notes a number of comments court observers saw judges make during hearings in these cases that were interpreted as minimizing abuse, treating people of color differently and misstating the law. 

One judge, according to the report, denied an injunction over harassment, stating that he was doing so “because unwanted touching, kissing, or harassing text messages demanding explicit photos is not sexual assault,” despite state law saying it is. 

The judges are quoted anonymously in the report but DAIS staff said at Thursday’s event that in the organization’s next version of the report, it will attribute the quotes. 

Dane County Judge Julie Genovese, in attendance at the event, said during a question and answer period that she doesn’t think naming the judges will be helpful — even though the comments were made on the record in open court. 

“I’d like to say on behalf of the judges, that it would be a very helpful thing for somebody to come and present to the judges at a judge’s meeting, rather than we’re going to just identify you on our next report, to come to the judges discuss with them what are the issues, offer the training or the resources, rather than just do it in this form,” Genovese said.

Getty images

A case of avian influenza was identified in a Barron County commercial poultry flock, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) said Thursday in a news release. 

The flock where the infection was found will be depopulated and none of those birds will be used for food, according to the release. A control area of 10 kilometers has been established around the farm, stopping the movement of any poultry within that radius.

“DATCP continues to urge all livestock owners to implement strong biosecurity measures to protect their flocks and herds from the disease,” the release states. “This includes washing hands, disinfecting equipment, restricting access to animals, and separating new additions to the flock or herd for at least 30 days. Poultry owners are asked, when possible, to keep their birds indoors.”

Avian flu, or H5N1, has circulated among wild and domesticated birds in North America since 2021, the release states. Other animals, including dairy cows, have also been infected. The virus has been transmitted to a number of humans across the country through raw milk from infected cows. 

Wisconsin has not identified any cases of the virus in the state’s dairy herds.

Former Dane County Judge James Troupis appears in court on Dec. 12. He faces felony forgery charges for his role in developing the 2020 false elector scheme to overturn the election results for Donald Trump. (Screenshot | WisEye)

Two former attorneys and a campaign staff member for President-elect Donald Trump made their initial appearance in Dane County Circuit Court Thursday in the felony cases against them for their roles in hatching the scheme to cast false Electoral College votes for Trump following the 2020 election. 

Of the three men charged, Michael Roman, James Troupis and Kenneth Chesebro, only Troupis appeared in court in person. The other two appeared over the phone. All three were granted signature bonds with the condition that they not have any contact with the ten Wisconsin Republicans who cast Electoral College votes for Trump in 2020. 

All three men face 11 counts of felony forgery. 

Multiple recounts, lawsuits and investigations have found that Trump lost the 2020 election in Wisconsin. Still, after that election, the three men worked to develop the plan that involved false slates of electors casting votes for Trump in Wisconsin and other states. The false slates of electors provided a pretext for  the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

After the hearing, Troupis called the charges “lawfare in all its despicable forms,” saying Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has “doubled down on a vicious strategy to destroy our very faith in the system of justice by using the courts for his own personal political game.”

On Wednesday, the voting rights focused firm Law Forward filed an ethics complaint against Troupis, a former Dane County Circuit Court judge, with the state Office of Lawyer Regulation. The grievance alleges that Troupis’ role in developing the fake elector scheme subverted the will of the people and violated state rules for attorney conduct. 

“Our democracy depends on attorneys adhering to their ethical obligations,” Jeff Mandell, President and General Counsel of Law Forward, said in a statement. “Troupis violated those obligations by advancing falsehoods, enabling fraud, and undermining the rule of law. This grievance seeks to hold him accountable and ensure that such abuses of the legal profession are never repeated.”

The three men are next scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 28.

Cows in a western Wisconsin dairy farm. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

A Pierce County town of about 600 residents passed an ordinance requiring factory farms to obtain permits before moving into or expanding in the community. 

The decision follows a handful of other western Wisconsin communities in passing similar ordinances to limit the proliferation of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in the region. Those other communities have faced legal challenges to their ordinances and one rescinded its regulation after a change in elected leadership. 

The town of Maiden Rock overlooks the Mississippi River’s Lake Pepin. On Monday, the town’s board unanimously passed the ordinance which will require any proposed CAFOs within the community to obtain a license to operate from the town board. When applying, CAFO operators must have a third-party engineer supply plan for how the farm will manage its waste, emissions and runoff.

Pierce County has seen increased expansion of factory farms this year, with a dairy in the town of Salem announcing plans to expand from 1,700 to 6,500 cows. 

Once an application is received, the ordinance requires the board to send a letter to all residents within a three mile radius of the proposed farm informing them of a public hearing. The board will be able to grant or deny the license and if granted, impose conditions on how the CAFO must operate. 

The ordinance also requires the CAFO to fund third-party enforcement of the permit conditions. 

In the board’s materials about the ordinance, the board highlighted the enforcement mechanisms, noting that state regulations surrounding CAFOs in the state largely rely on self-reporting to the state Department of Natural Resources — a system that has resulted in large manure spills going unreported. The materials also note that a pending lawsuit from the state’s largest business lobby is attempting to strip the DNR of its authority to regulate CAFOs. 

The ordinance was drafted by a commission appointed by the board to study CAFOs. At a public hearing on the ordinance, nearly 100 residents attended and all spoke in favor of its passage. The first 23 pages of the ordinance document outline the threats CAFOs can pose to a community’s groundwater, air quality, public health, local agricultural economy and infrastructure. 

“Our town is blessed with a stunning mix of farmland, woods and bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River’s Lake Pepin,” a fact sheet about the ordinance states. “Rush River, a Class 1 trout fishing destination, is sustained by cool spring-fed streams. Everyone relies on private wells for human and animal consumption. CAFOs with thousands of animals are proposing to spread thousands of truckloads of waste in the Town. State and county laws have almost no control over these huge facilities. Without an ordinance, their impact on roads, wells, health and the economy are unknown.”

Western Wisconsin advocacy group, Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin (GROWW) celebrated the ordinance’s passage, saying it’s a victory for communities standing up to protect themselves. 

“I think the town board heard loud and clear that the residents of the town wanted the ordinance,” Danny Akenson, a field organizer for GROWW, said in a statement. “It’s a result of the community banding together and sharing their stories and fears. We’ve heard it all. Landowners have had their land used for manure spreading without permission. Residents have had to call the Sheriff’s Department to escort them out of their own driveway due to heavy truck traffic on country roads. Families have had to live with poisoned water that causes sickness and cancer.”

“We know that one town standing up and protecting themselves isn’t enough,”  Akenson continued. “Everyone deserves to have access to clean water and safe roads. Across Wisconsin, whether you’re in Maiden Rock or Milwaukee, corporate greed gets in the way of that dream becoming reality. In 2025, we hope to see even more towns stand up and pass ordinances of their own.”

Several other communities in the region have passed similarly constructed ordinances and have faced opposition from industry groups. The town of Eureka in Polk County is currently fighting a lawsuit against its ordinance. A ruling in that case is expected in early January. 

The board’s fact sheet on the ordinance notes that at a state Senate hearing in March, a Wisconsin Farm Bureau representative testified that farm groups want the state government to preempt operations ordinances against CAFOs because state law currently allows them. 

Akenson told the Wisconsin Examiner that the ordinances are allowed under the state constitution. 

“Maiden Rock’s ordinance is backed up by both Wisconsin’s Constitution and our state statutes. We’re a state that values local control,” he said. “Corporate industry groups show up with lawsuits to try and bury small towns in legal costs and paperwork. Checks and balances threaten their profits and power to consolidate markets, and they hope to scare other communities from taking action.”

“In our view, that’s what’s happening in Eureka right now,” he added. “Despite these threats, more and more towns are taking steps to protect themselves by passing ordinances. People are tired of the intimidation tactics by industry representatives. The people on the ground in Pierce County and all across the state aren’t backing down.”

The return of the sandhill crane to Wisconsin is a conservation success, but now the state needs to manage the population and the crop damage the birds can cause. (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)

In a vote that divided Republicans together with with hunting and agricultural interests on one side against Democrats and conservationists on the other, the Wisconsin legislative council study committee on sandhill cranes approved proposing legislation that would allow for a hunt of the birds and cover costs for corn farmers to have their seeds treated with a chemical that limits crop destruction by the birds. 

The committee held its final meeting Tuesday morning, with much of the debate surrounding the committee’s decision to combine both aspects of the legislation into one bill. Standalone bills that would individually cover the agricultural issues and hunting were considered but not advanced. 

Sandhill cranes were once nearly driven entirely out of Wisconsin, but the bird has rebounded here. It’s a major conservation success story in the state and in the eastern flyway — the region of the continent covering Wisconsin through which migratory birds travel as they move north and south each year. 

With the bird’s resurgence has come increased conflicts with humans. Much of the sandhill crane’s historical range covers the wetlands and marshes of south central Wisconsin that are prime areas for growing corn. Cranes are estimated to cause about $1 million in crop damage each year. 

Sandhill cranes are also territorial, with breeding pairs returning to the same area to lay their eggs every year. 

Migratory birds are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and if a farm has a problem with cranes damaging crops, that farmer must work with the agency to attempt to drive the birds off the property, using  methods that include killing the birds. 

Federal law requires that birds killed through that process not be eaten or used in any other way and the farmer must prove they’ve exhausted all other measures first. 

The solution promoted by interest groups such as the International Crane Foundation is the use of Avipel, a chemical compound that is applied to corn seed that makes it unappetizing to the birds, who eventually learn the corn isn’t food and — even though they remain on the property — stop damaging the crops. 

Under the legislation proposed by the committee, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection would establish a program that reimburses farmers up to 50% of the cost to purchase Avipel treated seed. 

For years, hunting groups and Republicans have been trying to establish a sandhill crane hunt in the state. Some advocates for the hunt say the population has grown enough that it can manage a hunt while not damaging the population. Others say the hunt could bring down the population and reduce the amount of crop damage — a claim that bird biologists disagree with. 

Under the proposed legislation, the Department of Natural Resources would work with the Fish and Wildlife Service to get a hunt approved and then issue permits for the hunt every year. 

Conservationists and crane experts say that the federal government hasn’t updated its crane management plan in 15 years, leaving the state without much guidance for holding a hunt. 

“There’s nothing biologically that would prohibit a hunt,” Meleesa Johnson, executive director of Wisconsin’s Green Fire, said. “There’s nothing biologically that would say we need a hunt. So from my perspective, and what I’m hearing from my members is, yeah, you could do a hunt. We know how to do that. But what is that solving? Is that solving the problem we’re trying to fix?”

Republican lawmakers on the committee said that the combined bill, including both a hunt and farmer reimbursements, had the best chance of getting passed by both houses of the Legislature — which are both controlled by Republicans. 

Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Cameron) said that the interest groups affected by the bill would likely be opposed to doing a standalone bill to subsidize the use of Avipel and that combining it with the hunting bill makes it more likely to pass. 

“I think our best shot threading this needle between all our constituencies that we try to represent not only on this committee, but ourselves as legislators, is to try to marry these issues together,” Quinn said. “I don’t think it’s complicated. I think the combined bill is not that hard. So I think politically, our best opportunity for any movement, for any group, is a combined bill.” 

But Sen. Mark Spreizer (D-Beloit) said that any proposed legislation not only has to get through the Republican Legislature, but be signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and he doesn’t think it’s likely that Evers would sign a bill to hold a sandhill crane hunt — meaning the hunt wouldn’t happen and farmers would again be left with no recourse to address the crop damage problem. 

By only advancing the combined bill, Spreitzer said the committee was preemptively cutting off all avenues for it to achieve action on the crane issue. 

“There are a number of winnowing points that any bill that comes out of here, or any other bill that any of us might introduce have to go through,” he said. “If Republican leadership in the Legislature, which is in the majority in the Assembly, and the Senate, doesn’t like it, it’s not going anywhere. If the Democratic governor doesn’t like it, it’s not going anywhere. And there are multiple stages in the process where that happens. And so I think folks here could strategically decide, ‘Hey, let’s put all our eggs in one basket and only support the combined Avipel-hunting bill,’ and hope that that creates enough political pressure that it means that it gets through all of those choke points.” 

“Or it could be the exact opposite,” Spreitzer added, “that because you’ve got too much going on” Republicans could decide the Avipel program spends too much money or the governor could decide he won’t support a hunt. 

Spreitzer also said that it felt like the Democrats and conservationists on the committee had been “railroaded” by the committee’s chair, Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), to support the combined bill rather than finding consensus. 

“So nothing gets done, so I guess my advice is, don’t try to game out the politics too much. We’re going to have three votes on three different bills,” he said of the committee’s votes on the combined and standalone proposals. “If you like this bill, you should vote for it. If you like the next bill, you should vote for that, too. If you like the third one, you should vote for that, too. If there’s one you don’t like, vote against it. And the more votes that each thing gets coming out of here, the stronger chance it’s going to have.”

Electric power lines. (Scott Olson | Getty Images)

The Sierra Club of Wisconsin says that the decision to delay the retirement of a Columbia County coal power plant until 2029 to consider converting it to a natural gas plant will harm the environment and expose nearby residents to harmful emissions. 

The Columbia Energy Center was initially set to be closed this year, but two years ago the plant’s retirement was delayed until 2026. In a statement on Wednesday, the co-owners of the plant, Alliant Energy, Madison Gas and Electric and Wisconsin Public Service, said keeping the plant open another three years will allow them to “explore converting at least one of Columbia’s units to natural gas.” The companies added that the decision will allow them to maintain the reliability and affordability of energy. 

Utility companies have said that using natural gas allows them to keep providing power while moving away from more harmful fuels such as coal. 

“Natural gas plays an important role in enabling the ongoing transition toward greater use of renewable resources by providing a flexible, dispatchable resource to serve customers reliably and affordably when necessary,” the companies said in the statement. 

But environmental advocates lamented the decision, which will keep coal burning at the plant south of Portage for three more years than previously expected. On Friday, the Sierra Club criticized the use of natural gas at all. 

The environmental group said that gas plants are vulnerable to failure, especially in places that experience harsh winters. The environmental group accused the companies of making the decision to boost their own profits. 

The group also said that emissions from methane gas-burning plants are more harmful to the environment than coal plants and pose health risks to neighbors. 

“We are enraged that Alliant, MG&E, and WPS have once again kicked the can on the Columbia Energy Center’s retirement date, and further exasperated with their considerations to convert the station to deadly methane gas,” the Sierra Club’s Cassie Steiner said in a statement. “Make no mistake: methane gas is not a ‘transition fuel’; it’s a way for utilities to keep exploiting captive customers for an even greater corporate profit while polluting those same communities they are supposed to serve.” 

“Clean energy sources can reliably meet customers’ needs at a far cheaper cost and at no risk to their health,” Steiner continued. “Utilities like Alliant have continued to backpedal on their clean energy commitments and then hold their customers hostage to pay for their poor decisions. We simply cannot afford to extend our dependency on costly, polluting fossil fuels like coal and methane gas.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley has been selected to receive an award from the Milwaukee chapter of the Federalist Society for her “work on behalf of” the right-wing legal group’s “legal principles.” 

The chapter’s website shows that Bradley received the Judge Rudolph T. Randa Award at an event Thursday afternoon in Milwaukee. 

“Each year, the Milwaukee Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society presents the Judge Rudolph T. Randa Award to an individual whose work on behalf of the rule of law and the legal principles our Society exists to uphold is as unquestioned as it is longstanding,” the website states. 

Bradley is also on the chapter’s board of advisors. The Federalist Society aims to promote right-wing legal ideology and has successfully worked to get its members installed as judges on the local, state and federal levels. 

Over the last year, Bradley has been one of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s most outspoken critics of the body’s liberal majority — regularly accusing the four left-leaning judges of acting on behalf of the Democratic Party. 

“It’s clear that Justice Rebecca Bradley is receiving this award because the Federalist Society believes she uses her position on court to advance their political and policy agenda instead of working for us,” Lucy Ripp, Communications Director of A Better Wisconsin Together, said.

The 30-foot balsam fir serving as Wisconsin's 2024 capitol tree was donated by a Rhinelander family.(Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Government employees, children in snow pants warding off the frigid early-December temperatures and Smokey the Bear gathered in the pine-smelling rotunda of the Wisconsin Capitol Thursday afternoon to light this year’s state holiday tree. 

This year, the tree commemorates the 125th anniversary of Wisconsin’s state parks, which began with the opening of Interstate State Park on the St. Croix River in northwest Wisconsin in 1900. Hundreds of ornaments handmade by kids from across the state celebrate outdoor recreation in Wisconsin. 

“Wisconsin is a treasure of natural beauty and wonder,” Gov. Tony Evers said before the lighting of the 30-foot balsam fir, donated by a Rhinelander family. 

Smokey the Bear and a seventh grader who spoke about what Wisconsin’s state parks mean to her flipped the switch to light the tree’s 10,000 multi-colored lights. 

Evers says new DNR secretary has been chosen, wants to keep focus on budget

At a news conference shortly after the tree lighting, Evers said that he has selected someone to take over as secretary of the Department of Natural Resources — a position that has been vacant for more than a year after former Secretary Adam Payne resigned last October. 

Evers wouldn’t say who the nominee is, but said it would be a woman. 

The governor also said he wouldn’t weigh in on the primary election in next spring’s campaign for a new Superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction and that April’s state Supreme Court race is “a huge, huge election,” but that the Court doesn’t make the law so he wanted to focus on the branch that does so. 

He told reporters that he hasn’t spoken with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos since November’s election. The relationship between Evers and Republicans in the Legislature has often been frosty, and he said he didn’t think that would change. But Evers said that in the upcoming legislative session, in which the two chambers are more closely divided than in recent years, it would be necessary for the two parties to work together to find solutions.

“I don’t think it’ll be much different,” Evers said. “They’re going to be huffing and puffing and I’m going to be huffing and puffing so on and so forth. But I believe that the makeup of the Legislature is going to make it imperative on all of us to come to some reasonable conclusions. We’ll see what happens.” 

“We’ll propose something, they’re going to save it or throw it out,” he continued. “We get five minutes together and get something accomplished. But at the end of the day, my priorities are in the budget.”