Boxer Cassius Clay rises from the amateur ranks to win gold at the 1960 Olympics and become a contender for the heavyweight championship title.
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Wicky arrives at a stately home to clean up a burglary gone wrong.
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A Wisconsin court commissioner has resigned from his job after he asked to see an immigration arrest warrant, the latest conflict between judges and President Donald Trump’s administration over the Republican’s sweeping immigration crackdown.
Peter Navis, who worked as a Walworth County court commissioner for four years, resigned from his position last month, county clerk Michelle Jacobs said Thursday. She declined to comment further because it is a personnel matter.
The incident that cost Navis his job happened on July 15. It was first reported on Thursday by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The blowup in Navis’ courtroom comes after Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was charged in May with obstructing federal officers and attempting to hide a person to avoid arrest. Authorities said Dugan tried to help a man who is in the country illegally evade U.S. immigration agents who wanted to arrest him in her courthouse.
Dugan is seeking to have the charges against her dropped, arguing that she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and therefore is immune to prosecution. A ruling on that motion by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman is pending.
Navis was presiding in his courtroom that day in the case of Enrrique Onan Zamora Castro, of Milwaukee, who faced a misdemeanor charge of operating a vehicle without a valid driver’s license for the second time in three years.
Navis said in an interview Thursday that about 15 minutes before Castro’s case was to be called, a deputy told him that Castro was going to be arrested on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, on an immigration warrant.
A court transcript shows that Navis objected to sheriff’s deputies attempting to detain Castro without a valid federal warrant.
“In my courtroom, a person cannot be detained without lawful authority,” Navis said in the transcript.
The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Andrew Herrmann, said Navis had no right to see the warrant, according to the transcript. Herrmann did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment.
Navis said he spoke with Walworth County Judge Kristine Drettwan for guidance, and she told him he had the authority to run his courtroom as he saw fit. Drettwan did not return an email seeking comment.
Sometime after Castro was detained, ICE officers appeared with deputies to make a second arrest of someone in the courtroom. Navis said he didn’t know who that person was.
According to the transcript, Navis said, “I’ve been instructed by the judges of this county to require warrants before individuals are detained in my courtroom.”
Navis said he met with three of the court’s judges six days after the incident and they told him that because he misstated their position he could either resign or be fired. None of the judges in that meeting returned emails seeking comment Thursday.
Navis said on Thursday that he misspoke in the courtroom.
“I misstated it, I did,” Navis said. “It’s not something I had intended to misstate. It’s not like I was trying to mislead anyone. What I was trying to express was I had been given the authority to act in my courtroom. That’s what I meant to say, but it didn’t come out that way.”
Navis said he is currently looking for work.
Walworth County Sheriff Dave Gerber did not respond to an email seeking comment. ICE officials had no immediate comment.
Walworth County, home to about 100,000 people, is in south-central Wisconsin along the Illinois border. Trump won the county with about 60% of the vote in November.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Wisconsin court commissioner in Walworth County resigns after dispute over immigration warrant is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The Fox River empties into Lake Michigan in Green Bay, where city officials have proposed a resolution acknowledging that local bodies of water have a right to be protected. (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)
Two Republican legislators have proposed legislation that would prevent local governments from enacting “rights of nature” ordinances — laws that grant natural entities legal rights — claiming that such ordinances are “incompatible with America’s founding principles.”
The proposal from Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) was released after the Green Bay City Council voted 9-1 last month to direct the city’s sustainability council to begin drafting a “rights of nature” resolution.
The concept of granting natural entities legal rights is relatively new in American government, but countries around the world have enshrined legal rights for nature into their constitutions. In Wisconsin, the Menominee and Ho-Chunk Nations have written rights of nature provisions into their tribal constitutions. Two years ago, the Milwaukee County Board enacted its own rights of nature resolution that promises to protect the health of the Menominee, Milwaukee and Fox rivers and Lake Michigan.
The Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights has been working for years to track and support the passage of rights of nature laws around the world. The organization’s executive director Mari Margil says these laws are meant to help protect the environment.
“As environmental crises deepen, supporters of the bill are trying to make it harder to protect the environment,” Margil says of the Goeben and Nass proposal.
While the Republican legislation, if it manages to pass the Legislature, is unlikely to be signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, critics say the proposal is an example of kneejerk Republican opposition to pro-environment ideas and another instance of Republicans from northeast Wisconsin attempting to meddle in Green Bay city politics.
A co-sponsorship memo supporting the legislation states that these types of ordinances threaten the integrity of the legal system and property rights.
“Allowing and promoting this ideology represents a dangerous shift in legal precedent,” the memo states. “It would allow nonhuman entities to sue in court, threatening property rights, stalling development, and burdening the judicial system.”
Goeben did not respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), who helped write Milwaukee County’s resolution as a member of the county board in 2023, tells the Wisconsin Examiner the idea of granting bodies of water legal rights isn’t so different from corporations having legal “personhood.” In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its Citizens United decision that corporations have the right to free speech.
“It is wholly disingenuous to say only real tangible people have rights and then fight explicitly for those rights for corporations,” Clancy says. “It’s frankly frustrating to see Republicans take these really popular measures, these are broadly popular things, and rather than engaging with us in dialog, just trying to block these things through process. It’s a disingenuous way to go about it. Let’s talk about the things that necessitate these pieces of legislation.”
He adds that legislators have the power to do more than just write legislation. Goeben’s district is in the Green Bay suburbs but doesn’t include any of the city, but, Clancy argues that she could go to city council meetings and speak with people about these ideas instead of trying to blanket ban them without any dialog.
“It would be a much more earnest process to show up in Green Bay and go to those meetings and voice your concerns there,” he says. “We have bully pulpits, I show up at the city council, county board, school board meetings, both in my capacity as a legislator and as a parent and community member. Make your case there rather than trying to ban it.”
A number of Green Bay area officials expressed frustration at Republicans again involving themselves in Green Bay city politics. Earlier this year, Green Bay-area Republicans Rep. David Steffen (R-Howard) and Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) proposed a bill that would limit the types of flags allowed to be flown at government buildings. Many Green Bay residents saw the bill as an effort to weigh in on a local debate over the flying of LGBTQ Pride flags.
“Given the challenges our communities are facing, from our housing crisis to fully funding our public schools, I am always surprised by elected officials who don’t represent this city wasting time on policies that don’t solve real problems or fund actual solutions,” Rep. Amaad Rivera-Wagner (D-Green Bay) says.
Joey Prestley, the Green Bay city council member who has led the local rights of nature effort, says the resolution — which hasn’t been drafted yet — is meant to serve as a non-binding advisory statement that city government will consider the environmental effects of its decisions throughout the development process.
“Historically, the human actors have been the ones who have had the rights and the natural features have not been able to have people speaking for them,” he says.
Prestley says the idea for the resolution started after a group of residents objected late in the process to a new housing development. The development would be near the Niagara escarpment, a geological feature residents want to protect, but didn’t hit the thresholds that would instigate involvement from the federal Environmental Protection Agency or state Department of Natural Resources.
“My hope with a resolution would be maybe we consider these — all environmental features — but especially these ones that are important to our region, earlier in the process, and more thoroughly in the process, so we don’t have people coming up in the 11th Hour and saying, ‘wait a second, you can’t build this housing development,’” Prestley says.
He adds that if that consideration and discussion of the environmental effects came earlier, it could have been a more constructive discussion rather than turning into a heated local debate that had the potential to kill a housing project in a city that, like much of Wisconsin, is in dire need of more housing. The Green Bay city council approved the 160-unit project in April
“If it had been earlier in our process, it could have been more collaborative, and it could have been neighbors and environmental advocates working together with the developer and the city to make sure it’s a plan that benefits everybody, everybody who engages with the environment, everybody who relies on the environment, everybody who appreciates the environment,” he says.
In proposing a resolution, he adds, the objective is “not trying to compel anyone, but really trying to adapt as a philosophy for the city that we want to consider nature as the original inhabitants of the land did before we were here.”
Prestley says it’s easy to spin the rights of nature discussion as “the work of a crazy person” who wants “to get trees to sue the city,” but actually he says he’s trying to make sure the city considers the potentially damaging environmental effects of its actions after decades of managing the harmful contamination of the Fox River.
“There was not enough people speaking up for the damage that was happening to the river back then, and it created something that affected the whole community,” Prestley says. “People used to swim in the river. Nobody touches the river now. Maybe we should consider the environment. That’s not a radical idea, that is a sensible idea, considering what we’ve done in the past in this community, and thinking about how we want to move forward.”
Prestley says the proposed legislation seems “silly” and notes a number of city actions, such as wetland reconstruction, that have benefited the environment. He says that if the Legislature isn’t going to help, it should get out of the way.
“I think we’re trying to do good things in Green Bay for the environment,” he says. “And I think the state’s responsibility should be to help with the good things, or to do their own thing.”
The lawmakers proposing the bill, “they’re not helping us,” Prestley says. “They’re not helping the people, they’re just opposing things, and I don’t know why.”
Correction: This report has been updated to correct the vote count when the Green Bay City Council passed a measure to draft a proposed resolution on the rights of nature.
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Protesters show support for immigrant workers in Monroe, Wisconsin, who walked off the job at a cheese-making plant to protest changes in policy made by the operation's new owners. (Photo by Bryan Pfeifer/Wisconsin Bailout the People Movement)
Known as the “Gateway to Cheese Country” and the “Cheese Capital of the USA,” the community of Monroe is a central part of Wisconsin’s dairy history. Besides this fame, the town of 10,000 or so also shares a lot with other small towns in the Midwest. Drive around the city’s courthouse square and you’ll see the offices of local lawyers, some banks and a few bars.
One thing that sets Monroe apart is the area’s relatively recent influx of immigrants.
According to the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Green County, where Monroe is located, has experienced a 229% increase in Latinos from 2000 to 2019. That growth has not been accompanied by a surge in murders, robberies, pet-eatings or any other crimes that the current administration has leveled against migrants. Instead Monroe has seen a rise in the number of Mexican restaurants and bilingual masses at the local Catholic church, as well as hardworking community members hoping to make a better life for themselves.
Which makes the recent events at Monroe’s W&W milk processing plant especially infuriating. Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) acquired W&W earlier this month , and workers describe an ownership philosophy vastly different from the positive work environment and commitment to employees they experienced under the previous owners. Short of formally firing the workers employed there, DFA instituted the E-Verify system as part of their management plan, possibly to avoid the Trump administration’s destructive crackdowns. While this system allows employers to confirm the employment authorization of new hires, employees taking part in the walkout say that in contrast to the previous owners, DFA is requiring verification of all employees, even those who have been there 10-plus years. Not surprisingly, DFA’s decision has triggered a strike and the formation of a legal assistance fund for workers who most likely will lose their jobs after years at the plant.
It’s not an isolated instance; immigrants are being unjustly targeted in similar ways elsewhere in rural America. In Long Prairie, Minnesota, a town much like Monroe, meat processing workers, many of whom received legal status to work with the humanitarian parole program that the Biden administration created for people experiencing potential violence or harm in Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, or Haiti, had their permits revoked by Trump. Hundreds of workers also lost the legal right to work in the United States at a JBS pork production facility in Ottumwa, Iowa, as the current government ended their Temporary Protection Status (TPS). Like humanitarian parole, TPS, which began in 1990, grants people from certain countries work permits who flee disasters like hurricanes or wars.
Throughout the Midwest, milk processing and meat packing firms in rural areas constitute an agro-industrial archipelago where workers, many of whom are immigrants, play a key role in making our food system operate. But instead of being rewarded for years of hard work, immigrants face persecution. Insisting on programs like E-Verify — a voluntary system with documented shortcomings — and removing legal protections terrorize hardworking people. Immigrants and their families deserve better, including legal pathways to remain and work in the country.
In a nutshell, revoking legal protections unfairly turns workers into criminals by making them ineligible to work here. More to the point, these tactics are par for the course when it comes to the current administration’s cruel, underhanded and racist approach to enforcing our country’s outdated immigration system.
This toxic mix of cruelty and racial profiling is on display when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrest immigrants at courthouses after their asylum cases are dismissed, making them vulnerable for deportation. The racial profiling is even more blatant when migrants are stopped outside schools or at Home Depot parking lots because of how they look and where they are. Some get thrown to the ground and handcuffed just because they question the reason they are being detained.
The problem with such tactics — aside from the ethical and legal problems of encouraging government agents to trample on people’s constitutional rights — is efficiency. Immigration hardliners and Trump loyalists like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller made it a goal for ICE to fill the for-profit deportation complex with 3,000 arrests per day, having no qualms separating families, arresting children or people who have been model citizens for decades.
ICE has a sordid history of workplace enforcement actions in the past that have proven widely unpopular and non-productive.
We can go back to the Bush administration’s mass raids in places like Worthington, Minnesota, and Postville, Iowa, to show how ICE agents’ large-scale enforcement actions in rural communities tear families apart and leave communities with a long process to heal culturally and economically. What we know over a decade later is that arresting and deporting hundreds of people in such ways does not lead to U.S. citizen workers taking the positions formerly held by immigrants, but the deported people being replaced by, well, another round of immigrants.
But for Trump 2.0, plans for the agro-industrial archipelago are different. Instead of staging mass actions to arrest workers, the government is doing this work digitally. Put otherwise, a faceless bureaucracy revokes programs and permits, giving a contrived legal pretext for ICE to enter communities and arrest people.
Let’s be clear — immigrant workers at these places were trying to “do it the right way.” But this government effectively took the legal carpet from under them as they were trying to scrape a living together for themselves and their families. To threaten these people with deportation is the ultimate in punching down, terrorizing hardworking and community-building people we should be welcoming instead of demonizing.
Real immigration policy reform does not underhandedly manufacture undocumented people, or target people who contribute to the economy, but involves doing the hard work of creating fair, workable policy in Congress. Nor should immigrants be welcomed on a whim of the administration as was the case when white South Africans were given refugee status while suspending protections for thousands of others. Why this special treatment? Most people seeking refugee status are people of color — the South Africans are white.
There are various serious initiatives currently in Congress that could actually improve the lives of immigrants. The bipartisan Dignity Act provides a pathway for citizenship for DREAMers (youth who came to the U.S. without authorization and either attend college or plan to do so) and a work permit system for all other undocumented people. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act puts farm workers and their families on a pathway to legalization. California U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla’s more sweeping Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929 grants lawful permanent resident status — green cards — to people who have lived in the U.S. continuously for at least seven years and do not have a criminal record.
Immigrants come to this country for a variety of reasons, including suffering the effects of flawed trade deals, as well as experiencing war and famine. Many continue to suffer here, working jobs that are ill-paid and dangerous in places like Monroe and Long Prairie. Our current government oppresses them further with draconian and dishonest tactics, scoring cheap political points instead of engaging in actual law enforcement.
Those among us who really care about public security should think long and hard on how this government is entrapping immigrants instead of reforming and enforcing the law.
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A recent law President Donald Trump signed July 24 cuts funding for public broadcast stations, including those that provide local emergency alerts.
The law rescinded $9 billion in previously approved funding – $8 billion for foreign aid and $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private nonprofit – for fiscal 2026 and 2027.
CPB, which announced it would shut down because of the rescissions, has funneled federal dollars to radio and TV networks such as NPR and PBS.
NPR, PBS and their member stations are mostly funded by private donations, but smaller stations, especially in rural areas, relied more on CPB funding. And people in those areas rely on local stations for emergency weather and other alerts.
Wisconsin stations received $8.5 million in CPB funding in fiscal 2024.
The rescissions don’t affect the Emergency Alert System, for national emergency announcements, or the Wireless Emergency Alerts.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Does a 2025 federal law cut funding for some emergency broadcast alerts? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many businesses closed or laid off workers, a massive influx of 8.8 million unemployment claims overwhelmed Wisconsin’s aging unemployment insurance system.
That created a backlog of hundreds of thousands of claims. Many potential applicants weren’t able to connect to the department’s call center to complete the process, and some Wisconsinites waited months without receiving a single unemployment payment.
Following those backlogs, the state has made strides to update the system and move away from outdated, decades-old computer systems, said state Department of Workforce Development Secretary Amy Pechacek.
She said DWD now has a digital portal for people to file unemployment claims and send documents online. The department also uses online chatbots to respond to questions in multiple languages, as well as uses artificial intelligence tools to assist with data entry.
“With these enhancements, the department is now paying 88% of all claims filed within three days or less,” Pechacek said. “That other 12% of claims that go a little bit longer are typically just because we have to do investigations if there’s some discrepancies between what the claimant and the employer are saying.”
In a letter to the Trump administration on Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers said the administration is blocking nearly $30 million in federal funding to Wisconsin, which could prevent the state from finishing the project and potentially leave it vulnerable to cyberattacks and fraud.
“If the Trump Administration does not reverse course and provide the $29 million Wisconsin expected to receive, the state will not be able to complete its UI system modernization project,” Evers wrote to U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
That funding was part of the American Rescue Plan Act, a pandemic recovery law signed by former President Joe Biden, and was being primarily used on anti-fraud measures, according to the governor’s office. Evers’ letter says the U.S. Labor Department “suddenly terminated” the funding in late May.
The termination halted work on identity authentication tools, a digital employer portal, artificial intelligence enhancements, fraud prevention and cybersecurity tools, according to Pechacek. She said the employer portal was the DWD’s next major rollout and would have made it easier for employers to provide information to the state.
“The employer portal is really one of the largest losses from this federal action,” Pechacek said. “Our employers … have to submit quarterly wage information (and) verify claim information, and some of those components are still very antiquated.”
Evers wrote that the Department of Labor “cited no objections” to those initiatives beyond “an unsupported assertion that they ‘no longer effectuate the Department’s priorities.’”
Pechacek said the state has already spent “slightly over half” of the $29 million. She said those grants were “reimbursement-based,” meaning the state first had to spend the money and then be paid back by the federal government.
“There are seven projects that have now been paused in a variety of different states of completion, so those are sunk costs,” she said. “Without realizing the full modernization effort, we can’t roll those projects out.”
The state appealed the Labor Department’s termination and received a letter from the federal government in late July that “acknowledged the appeal while restating the Department’s earlier basis for termination,” the governor’s letter states.
“The people of Wisconsin deserve systems that function, state of the art, with high integrity and accuracy,” Pechacek said. “We are also going to pursue litigation to reclaim the funds which were rightfully awarded to us already and improperly rescinded.”
In addition to the $29 million in lost funding, the project was using $80 million from a different program under the American Rescue Plan Act, according to a report sent to the Legislature’s budget committee. The document states that the $80 million has not been impacted but is “insufficient to support the full modernization work.”
Pechacek said DWD has also asked the state Legislature to allocate additional state funds toward finishing the effort but said there hasn’t been much movement on that front.
Wisconsin isn’t the only state that’s had federal funding to upgrade unemployment systems clawed back by the Trump administration. In May, Axios reported the White House terminated $400 million of that funding across the country. A July report from state agencies said $675 million in grants awarded to unemployment programs in over 30 states and territories had been terminated.
The U.S. Department of Labor did not immediately respond to WPR’s request for comment. In May, the federal agency told Axios in a statement that the unemployment modernization funding was “squandered” on “bureaucratic and wasteful projects that focused on equitable access rather than advancing access for all Americans in need.”
In the letter, Evers also said failing to complete Wisconsin’s modernization effort would put the state’s unemployment system at risk of becoming overwhelmed again during any future economic downturn. He says that would “create acute hardship for Wisconsin families.”
“It is our obligation to prevent this scenario from coming to pass,” Evers wrote. “I urge you to reverse the decision to defund these critical government efficiency and fraud prevention initiatives.”
Pechacek said the state isn’t reverting back to old technology in the pieces of the modernization that have already been completed in “major areas.” But she said failing to fully finish the effort poses a risk to Wisconsinites because there are still aspects of the system running on an outdated coding language.
“Any time we don’t fully invest in upgrading and reach the programmatic goals that we have set to get fully off of the antiquated systems, we are at risk to be overwhelmed again,” she said. “All of that leads us to be more vulnerable, in a time of significant increase of accessing the system, to the cyber attacks, to fraudulent efforts, to being compromised.”
This story was originally published by WPR.
Federal funding cut endangers Wisconsin unemployment system update is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Jack Link’s, the world’s largest manufacturer of meat snacks, has spent years integrating itself into the country’s cultural and political arenas.
Riding a wave of protein-crazed consumers and a booming snack industry, the company’s iconic Sasquatch marketing campaign has helped its products become a staple in gas stations, grocery checkout lines and school vending machines.
The company has also spent years cultivating deep political ties, funneling millions to Donald Trump and nurturing a relationship with the president that has led to White House access.
Trump has been a strong supporter of the meat industry and welcomed Jack Link’s officials to a White House event during his first term. However, the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement is currently pushing for healthier eating standards and for states to restrict processed foods in their nutrition programs.
Now, Jack Link’s and the processed meat industry are caught between conflicting ideologies within the Trump administration and a battle over the future of food policy.
“There’s very much a conflict within this administration about the role of corporate power and public health,” said Judith McGeary, executive director of the Texas-based sustainable agriculture and farmer advocacy group Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance.
In May, the federal MAHA commission, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recommended in a new report that Americans consume fewer sugary drinks, snacks and processed foods.
While the report didn’t specifically mention processed meat snacks, it grabbed the attention of snack giants like Jack Link’s and other corporate agriculture groups, which are opposed to any additional regulations or changes to the food industry, McGeary said.
The report did note that low-income children and families consume more processed meat than their peers and that these products have been classified as carcinogens linked to serious health risks.
Kennedy, along with U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, has encouraged states to restrict what foods can be purchased with benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP.
States, from West Virginia to California, have responded by approving bans that limit purchases of sugary beverages, snacks and foods with dyes and artificial ingredients.
Jack Link’s responded by hiring a lobbying firm, a move that paid off when it faced increased regulations during Trump’s first term.
Minong, Wisconsin — a small, rural village in the state’s northwestern tip, home to taverns, gravel roads, rows of northern Wisconsin pine trees, and plenty of grazing land for beef cattle — is one of dozens of small towns across the state with roots in the cattle and lumber industries.
Minong is also home to a bigfoot-sized footprint of Jack Link’s that is hard to ignore.
Jack Link’s, owned by Link Snacks, is a $2 billion, privately owned company with dual headquarters in Minong and downtown Minneapolis, a few hours away.
The company employs roughly 4,000 people worldwide. Jack Link’s leadership has long served on local college and hospital boards and, in 2016, broke ground for the Jack Link’s Aquatic & Activity Center in Minong.
What started in the late 1980s as a family-owned jerky company has evolved into a global enterprise with offices and production plants in Canada, Australia, Mexico and Brazil.
Troy Link, son of company founder and current board member John “Jack” Link, has led the company’s global expansion since he became CEO in 2013.
Link has also developed a relationship with the Trump administration over the years by hosting private fundraising events and donating to his campaigns.
Last year, Link also donated half a million dollars to America PAC, a political action committee founded and operated by Elon Musk, according to Federal Elections Committee filings.
This donation placed Link among a highly influential group of donors and prominent technology and cryptocurrency industry moguls, such as Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
Link donated $1.3 million during Trump’s 2020 re-election bid and also welcomed the president to a private fundraiser in July 2020 at his Florida mansion.
As a whole, the Link family has donated roughly $2.3 million to candidates, committees and state parties in the last decade. The majority of this occurred during the 2020 and 2024 Trump campaigns.
In 2018, the company was invited to the White House as part of a “Made In America” exhibition, where each state showcased a single business with products made in the country.
Troy Link did not respond to repeated requests for comment regarding the relationship of Jack Link’s and the Trump administration.
This relationship with politicians has served the company in the past. In Trump’s first term, Jack Link’s lobbied for beef jerky and meat snack sticks to qualify for the nation’s Child Nutrition Programs, such as school meals.
An Obama-era rule prohibited the reimbursement of beef jerky and dried meat products for school food purchases in 2011. When the rules were revisited under Trump in 2018, Jack Link’s argued in documents submitted to the USDA that dried meat products should receive the same crediting and treatment as other meat, like hamburgers and chicken strips.
“These food products should be held to the same standard as any other meat product when determining eligibility,” a Jack Link’s attorney wrote. “Currently, this is not the case because USDA has arbitrarily disqualified dried meat products from the program.”
A bipartisan trio of Wisconsin federal officials came to the aid of Jack Link’s during this regulatory update, with Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and former Congressman and current U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy writing in support of this change soon after.
“We are concerned that (Food and Nutrition Service) has overstepped in excluding this entire product class from consideration,” the officials wrote in a February 2018 letter. “Therefore, we respectfully request USDA to reevaluate this categorical exclusion.”
Link family members donated a combined $73,000 to the authors of the letter.
The lobbying effort worked. The Food and Nutrition Service announced in December 2018 that beef jerky and dried meat products were now eligible for reimbursement as part of school snacks and meals. Jack Link’s currently markets its snacks directly to school food purchasers.
The addition of school contracts and other market growth helped fuel the company’s expansion.
In recent years, Jack Link’s has broken ground on new manufacturing facilities across the country and purchased jerky companies from Tyson Foods and British packaged goods giant Unilever.
The company also launched Lorissa’s Kitchen, a healthy meat snack brand fronted by Troy’s spouse, Lorissa, and sold at Walmart and Costco nationwide. The brand differentiates itself from Jack Link’s by selling snacks “without added preservatives, nitrites or MSG and allergen-free products,” according to company media statements.
During the 2024 Republican National Convention, Link also appeared on a Fox News business segment to argue that inflation under Biden was making it more expensive for consumers to purchase snacks.
“Buying snacks should not be a luxury item; this should be an everyday occurrence,” Link said. “We just need to put more money back into the consumer’s pocket.”
As Jack Link’s worked to build a close relationship with the Trump administration, meat consumption was booming, especially thanks to right-wing influencers.
Online personalities, such as podcast hosts Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, have advocated for all-meat diets, including raw meat and eggs.
The connection between meat consumption and conservative politics dates back decades, according to food studies researcher Adrienne Bitar.
“Higher meat consumption has always been understood as sort of more conservative,” said Bitar, author of “Diet and the Disease of Civilization.”
“Where it comes up in the alt-right is the idea that the feminizing effects of civilization are unnatural, restrictive, repressive, and to liberate yourself from the accoutrements of civilization means to follow your appetite, with the hunger for meat being one of those appetites.”
Meat snacks sales increased 40% from 2019 to 2022, according to an industry report. The desire for more protein-dense snacks has risen across the entire food sector, from protein-packed popcorn to chocolate muffins.
However, the nation’s protein consumption far outpaces that of similar nations and needs to be reassessed, according to grocery experts and leading nutritionists.
“Unless you’re a competitive athlete or competitive bodybuilder, you’re probably eating too much protein,” said Errol Schweizer, publisher of The Checkout Grocery Update, a grocery industry publication, and former vice president of grocery for the multinational supermarket Whole Foods.
Schweizer said the popularity of protein snacks has ebbed and flowed with American consumers, following the trends of certain diets and lifestyles over the past few decades. U.S. consumers are “obsessed” with protein intake, he said, and typically have diets that consist of fewer fresh fruits, vegetables, fiber and healthy fats.
Schweizer’s observations align with the nation’s blueprint for diet and nutrition.
Updated every five years, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans helps shape national standards for nutrition labeling, school meals and chronic disease prevention.
In October 2024, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, a 20-person group of nutrition experts, released its recommended updates to both the USDA and the HHS. Now those two agencies will review recommendations and public comments to set the final dietary guidelines later this year.
Since 2000, the panel has consistently urged Americans to cut back on red and processed meats in favor of lean meat, seafood and plant-based proteins.
The committee’s 2024 report recommends diets “lower in red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened foods and beverages, refined grains and saturated fats.”
The country’s leading meat industry group, The Meat Institute, whose members include Jack Link’s and other major meatpacking and meat snack companies, has argued against the committee’s recommendations.
“The Meat Institute is extremely concerned that consumers will inaccurately perceive meat and poultry products as poor dietary choices, which may lead to a variety of unintended consequences, including nutritional deficiencies in certain sub-populations,” the Virginia-based group wrote to the HHS in February.
The National Pork Board, the pork checkoff organization based in Clive, Iowa, wrote to the health department in February, stating that recommendations to reduce consumption of red meats are short-sighted and efforts to push foods such as legumes and beans over meats “does not seem to be supported by a robust body of evidence.”
“The elevation of plant-based protein sources over lean meats could inadvertently discourage the consumption of nutrient-dense lean meats, thus increasing the risk of nutritional deficiencies,” the letter stated.
In its inaugural report, the MAHA Commission wrote that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans has a “history of being unduly influenced by corporate interests,” noting how a past attempt to reduce the push for reducing intake of processed meats has been met with backlash and scientific discrediting from the meat industry.
In late June, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, flanked by Kennedy in the state capitol, announced a sweeping set of executive orders to remove processed foods and foods with additives from the state’s nutrition programs.
“For far too long, we have settled for food that has made us sicker as a nation,” said Stitt at a June press event. “In Oklahoma, we’re choosing common sense, medical freedom, and personal responsibility. President Trump and Secretary Kennedy have led the charge nationally; I’m grateful for their support as we Make Oklahoma Healthy Again.”
Other states have followed suit with Arkansas, Indiana, West Virginia and California enacting bans on processed foods from SNAP purchases, or are exploring ways to reduce ultra-processed foods in the state, often with the support of Kennedy and Rollins and other federal leaders.
However, Joelle Johnson, deputy director for the food and nutrition consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, said despite growing debates about ultra-processed foods in the nation’s food programs, there is a lack of clear guidance from the federal government to retailers and food purchasers about what would and wouldn’t qualify as being ultra-processed.
“I would be surprised if we see bans of ultra-processed foods in SNAP, beyond candy and sweetened beverages, anytime soon,” she said.
Still, major snack and processed food companies, including Jack Link’s, are bracing for any changes that could harm their sales.
Consumer Brands Association, a Virginia-based organization representing major packaged food companies, including Tyson Foods and Coca-Cola, spent $42 million in lobbying over the past decade, focusing on issues including SNAP funding and dietary guidelines, among other issues.
Since 2023, the organization has worked with lobbyist Clete Willems, the deputy assistant of international economics during Trump’s first term and a former Obama administration official, according to lobbying disclosure documents.
Conagra Brands, the publicly traded, packaged food conglomerate that owns major brands such as Slim Jims, Orville Redenbacher, Birds Eye Frozen Foods and Reddi-Wip, spent over half a million dollars in the past year lobbying federal officials and has spent $4.6 million in lobbying in the past decade. Conagra and Consumer Brands Association did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
In April, Link Snacks, the parent company of Jack Link’s, hired lobbying firm Bockorny Group, which has also represented the meatpacking company Agri-Beef Co. and pork industry publication National Hog Farmer. This was the first time the beef jerky giant has lobbied federal officials.
Lobbyists working for Jack Link’s include Pete Lawson, a former VP for Ford Motors and staff attorney for Virginia Democratic Congressman Jim Moran, and Eric Bohl, a former staffer for the congressional offices of Missouri Republicans Vicky Hartzler and Jason Smith, who worked on the 2014 Farm Bill.
This year, Link Snacks has spent $25,000 on lobbying the federal government to support “protein snacks in SNAP program” as well as issues with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, according to lobbying disclosure documents.
This story was originally published on Investigate Midwest.
Jack Link’s beef: How the snack giant is lobbying Trump and fighting the Make America Healthy Again movement is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
People arriving at one of Milwaukee's drop-off centers with all manner of debris from the August 2025 floods. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
A line of cars filled with mattresses, downed tree limbs, chairs, dressers, and rugs could be seen outside a Milwaukee Department of Public Works (DPW) drop-off center on Lincoln Avenue Monday morning. Inside, long dumpsters were being filled with the ruined remains cleared out of roadways and people’s homes after flood waters blanketed swaths of Milwaukee County on Aug. 9 and 10.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson joined DPW Commissioner Jerrell Kruschke at the dump site to provide updates about the flood response Monday. “Some of these stories that we’re hearing are truly, remarkably sad,” said Johnson, recalling that the first message he received was from his uncle, whose basement was filled with water. From the North Side to the South Side, west towards Wauwatosa and east towards Lake Michigan, the flood quickly engulfed roadways and homes.
“So my thoughts are with everybody, everybody who is dealing with issues trying to clear out a basement, folks that are enduring power outages, trying to sort out, figure out what to do with the car that has been flooded through,” said Johnson. “We’re working through the process of obtaining some disaster declarations so we can bring the appropriate aid to those citizens who have been affected by the downpour.”
Gov. Tony Evers has activated the Wisconsin National Guard to assist efforts in Milwaukee County. It’s unclear at this time what role, if any, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will have in Milwaukee, as the level of damage needs to meet a certain threshold in order for the agency to be activated. The agency has also been threatened with funding cuts and possible shutdown by the Trump administration.
Johnson stressed that the weekend storm, which dropped over 10 inches of rain in some areas, was extremely rare. Timmerman Airfield recorded over 14 inches of rainfall. “I think I said the other day that last time something like this happened was about a decade or so ago,” the mayor said. “I certainly hope that a storm like this is not visited upon this city for at least another millennium,” he continued, referring to the weekend storm being called a “thousand year flood.” Kruschke echoed the mayor’s comments about the rarity of the massive flooding over the weekend. Johnson said he’d heard on the news that it dropped essentially “a summer’s-worth of rain” in a single storm.
Yet research on climate change has long-predicted that Wisconsin would experience increased rain, more intense storms, and greater risks of flooding. In late 2020, a report from UW-Madison and state health workers warned that climate change in Wisconsin would mean more rainfall over fewer days, which would likely cause flooding. The report noted that the weather changes could have a cascade of health effects including heat stroke from increased heat (which also fuels more powerful storms), asthma and insect-borne diseases. In 2021, severe storms downed hundreds of trees in Milwaukee County. The following summer, communities across Wisconsin experienced heat waves, heavy rainfall, high winds and tornadoes over a couple of days, during which time people died from heat stroke, or after being swept away in flood waters during heavy rainfall. By 2022, global CO2 levels exceeded 400 parts per million, a red line which scientists warned would spur even worse effects.
Answering a question from Wisconsin Examiner about the climate trends, Kruschke said that heavy rainfalls have been documented for a long time, and that DPW is relying on historical data. Kruschke said that the city was not prepared for the volume of rain that fell so quickly. As for whether the city can adapt to future weather patterns, Mayor Johnson said, “I’ve been thinking about this since this storm happened.”
Johnson praised the DPW’s work with the Milwaukee Metro Sewerage District (MMSD) to create infrastructure to capture rainfall when it hits the ground. “So when you look at our construction projects in the city of Milwaukee, when you see bioswales in the street, that’s to make sure that we keep rain out of sewers. That’s to make sure that we keep rain out of people’s basements. When you see MMSD working to make improvements at the parks in order to capture more rainwater there, that’s in order to make sure that we plan for events like this. When folks are going out to install rain barrels in their neighborhood, that’s in order to make sure that we stop things like this. When you have folks out in the city, like they were during this flood event, making sure that the sewer grates are clear so that water is better able to get into the sewers and not in people’s basements, all of these things play a role, and all of these things make a difference.”
Johnson said the city will continue investing in “green infrastructure” from roadway design to the creation of outdoor classrooms that, in addition to providing experiential learning to K-12 students, also capture rain. “There’s a lot of work that’s going into this,” said Johnson. “I just imagine what this would’ve turned out if we hadn’t done that work over the past number of years. I mean, who knows how many hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions of gallons of storm water that we were able to capture that didn’t end up in the streets, that didn’t end up in people’s basements.”
The city and county are continuing to assess the full scale of the damage, including how many homes have been affected and people displaced. Monday morning, the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office stated in response to an inquiry from the Wisconsin Examiner that there had been no deaths directly linked to the flooding. However, the Milwaukee Police Department’s Harbor Patrol did find a 49-year-old Native American man, identified as Juan Carlos Sierra Campos, who drowned in Lake Michigan on Sunday morning. An investigation is ongoing.
Kruschke said the public works department will continue working normal hours (7 a.m. to 3 p.m.), and operate special trash disposal procedures for people clearing out damaged or ruined property. Fees will be waived for city drop-off centers, with the centers operating free of charge until Aug. 17. Drop-off centers will also be open Mondays, when they would normally be closed. The drop-off centers are located at 3878 W. Lincoln Ave. and 6600 N. Industrial Road.
A small number of street sweepers are out on the roadways, and some communities are deploying dump trucks and other vehicles to assist. DPW is also offering special pick-ups for storm-damaged material. Among the items that will not be accepted are explosive or flammable products, propane tanks, large gas appliances, fluorescent light bulbs, wet or oil-based paint and material or vehicles from contractors or businesses.
Libraries, including the West Allis Library, are offering WiFi and computers for people unable to use their own. Cars that were swept away or abandoned during the floods may have been towed to alternate locations so as to not overwhelm the city’s usual tow yards. The city does not have a count of the number of cars towed or abandoned. Overnight parking enforcement will be suspended Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
Residents are encouraged to avoid wading through flooded areas or standing water. The possibility of contaminated water or hidden debris makes wading unsafe. The Red Cross has also opened two shelters for people who have been displaced by the flooding. The shelters are located at the Washington Park Senior Center (4420 W Vliet St.) and at Holler Park (5151 S. 6th St.).
People gather near the bridges in the Wauwatosa village to observe the still rushing flooded river and storm damage. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Neighborhoods across Milwaukee County are continuing to recover from record-shattering flooding over the weekend. Inundated basements, entire portions of Wauwatosa seemingly underwater, people fleeing the Wisconsin State Fair which shut down early amid rising floodwater and reports of cars literally floating away down roadways all followed the torrential downpour which began Aug. 9.
The National Weather Service recorded 5.74 inches of rain Saturday, eclipsing the previous single-day record for Milwaukee of 1.64 inches of rain. Meteorologists say that Saturday was Milwaukee’s second wettest day in 154 years of record keeping. Additional rainfall brought the total up to nearly 7 inches, with some areas expected to get over 10 inches of rain. Researchers have long-warned that increased and more intense rain and flooding would be among the ways climate change would manifest in Wisconsin.
Casey Serrano, a resident of Milwaukee’s North Side left the home she shares with her boyfriend around 8 p.m. Saturday about an hour after the rain started. When she returned around 1 a.m., she saw water in the basement “coming out of our main sewer drain that was covering maybe a quarter to a third of our basement, maybe an inch deep.” During the night, the water rose to nearly 2 feet of “brown runoff from the street,” she said.
Serrano woke up to find there was no power in her home. “Our immediate street is not flooded, and did not flood last night,” she told Wisconsin Examiner. “But the streets surrounding us flooded pretty heavily.” When she went out on Silver Spring Drive to get supplies, she saw “within like a 20-block radius of our house there were cars that had clearly floated down Silver Spring.”
“Thousands in Milwaukee are facing flooding after last night’s storms,” Mayor Cavalier Johnson wrote on X. “Avoid flooded roads — moving water is dangerous. City crews and first responders are working nonstop. Neighbors are stepping up to help neighbors.” The mayor posted that the city was coordinating with Gov. Tony Evers and Milwaukee County on emergency aid and shelters. “Milwaukee is strong,” Mayor Johnson posted. “Together, we’ll get through this.”
Across Milwaukee County, emergency responders were overwhelmed as the flooding created a cascade of issues with natural gas, debris and power outages. “Very busy night for [Milwaukee Fire Department] & many other FD’s!”, Milwaukee Fire Department Chief Aaron Lipski posted on X. “Over 600 responses between 8pm-7am: numerous fires, water rescues, & many other weather-related emergencies.”
Video shared with Wisconsin Examiner by Casey Serrano, a City of Milwaukee resident who experienced severe basement flooding after the storms on August 9th and 10th, 2025.
Online videos showed cars trapped on flooded roadways and highways. People attending one of the final days of the Wisconsin State Fair were filmed wading through water to leave the fairgrounds. Around 10 p.m. on Sunday the sky began to light up with a new wave of lightning, heralding more rain. Over 18,000 people reportedly lost power during the storms.
“Flooding is still an active emergency situation across Milwaukee County, and we are expecting more rain today and into this evening,” Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said in a press statement Sunday. “I strongly urge our residents to stay cautious, stay informed, and refrain from traveling. Check in on your neighbors and loved ones, especially older adults, and seek out emergency assistance if needed. I am thankful for our first responders, law enforcement partners, social services workers, and neighbors who are lending a helping hand during a challenging time. We will get through this together, Milwaukee.”
Local officials are warning residents not to walk into floodwater, as it may be contaminated or be near downed electrical wires. In some areas, the water had strong currents capable of sweeping people away. Those cleaning up debris are encouraged to wear gloves and proper protection, and residents are encouraged to limit water usage (such as by holding off on washing dishes or doing laundry) to reduce the risk of wastewater backing up into basements.
The suburban city of Wauwatosa produced some of the most dramatic images of flooding throughout the county. According to the Wauwatosa Police Department (WPD), over 500 calls were received by their dispatch center with issues ranging from flooded out basements to blocked storm drains to traffic incidents due to standing water. WPD says there have been no reports of serious injuries, though several major roadways and intersections remain affected and impassable.
Hart Park, near the Wauwatosa Village, is closed, and police are encouraging people to avoid the area. Sunday afternoon, many people were seen walking through the village area and parts of Hart Park to observe storm damage. Large debris was strewn along the railroad tracks, and reports indicate that the Menomonee River flowing through Hart Park rose from a little over 1 foot high to over 14 feet in a matter of hours. Sunday afternoon the water level was still high, with rushing water ripping through the park continuing to damage green spaces and concrete bike paths. Wauwatosa squad cars used loudspeakers to declare the area closed due to a state of emergency.
Video posted to social media of the flooding in Wauwatosa by Bobby Pantuso, including drone footage by Pantuso (shared with permission).
Traffic control issues were also reported by the Waukesha Police Department, with the Fox River also under close observation. Waukesha Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Capt. Nicholas Wenzel said in an email statement that the department was “dealing with flooding across the county,” and that no injuries or missing persons had been reported.
For Serrano, the flood is an unprecedented experience. She anticipates costly repairs, including ripping out wood paneling in her house.
Serrano is also concerned about what the flooding means for the city. “I think that my main concern is that the city is completely unprepared to deal with this, and I think it’s really willful on their part to be honest,” she said. Serrano, who used to work for the city’s sewage department creating and analyzing data maps, thinks city budget and staffing cuts have adversely affected emergency preparedness. She blames Act 10, which has limited public employees’ collective bargaining rights since 2011, arguing that it has contributed to staffing shortages and out-dated technology for city departments most responsible for preventing floods, and dealing with their aftermath.
Act 12, which mandates that staffing and funding are maintained for the Milwaukee Police Department, also exacerbated the imbalance between police and other departments including Public Works, she said.
“At any point, the Common Council could stand up for residents of this city — especially residents of the North Side,” Serrano said, “and say we’re not going to deal with this anymore. We are going to fully fund these departments so that they have the right materials and the right resources to fully staff themselves, to fully hire.”
Lincoln Hills, a detention facility the state has ordered closed by 2021. (Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections)
Rian Nyblom, 18, was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to charges stemming from the death of a staff member at Wisconsin’s infamous juvenile prison, the Lincoln Hills School for Boys. Nyblom pleaded guilty in April to two counts of being party to a crime of battery by a prisoner, a deal which reduced felony murder charges, and dropped an additional battery charge, against the teen, the AP reported.
Prosecutors say that in June 2024, tensions arose between a then- 16-year-old Lincoln Hills resident and a female guard who the teen felt was abusing her power. The 16-year-old threw a cup of what he believed was soap on her, and proceeded to punch her repeatedly. When the teen ran out into the courtyard 49-year-old staff member Corey Proulx followed. After Proulx scuffled with the teen, he sustained a head injury after falling to the pavement. Proulx died a day later.
Nyblom allegedly told investigators that he knew of the 16-year-old’s issues with the female guard. Shortly before the fighting began Nyblom retrieved extra soup and conditioner, he told investigators, and gave it to the 16-year-old. Nyblom said he hadn’t witnessed the attack on the female guard, but did see the teen hit Proulx.
Nyblom was sentenced to five years in prison, with 405 days counted as time served. He was transferred to the Lincoln County Jail last year. The 18-year-old had been sent to Lincoln Hills after being charged with misdemeanor criminal damage to property and disorderly conduct. To those charges, AP reported, Nyblom pleaded no contest and was found guilty in May.
The teen to whom Nyblom supplied the soup and conditioner, who is now 17, faces one count of first-degree reckless homicide, and two counts of battery by a prisoner, and is charged as an adult. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, with a trial expected to begin in February. It’s possible that the teen’s lawyers will attempt to move the case back to juvenile court.
As of Aug. 1, there were 80 boys in Lincoln Hills, four girls in the Copper Lake School, and 26 youth at the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Facility, according to the Department of Corrections’ latest population report. That’s slightly up from the 78 boys held at Lincoln Hills in late April. The higher population number at the juvenile prison was noted by the Lincoln Hills’ court-ordered monitor around that same time. The monitor also highlighted enduring staffing vacancies and, in the past, had complained about staff treating students poorly, even exhibiting racist behaviors.
In August 2024, following Proulx’s death, Republican lawmakers wrote letters to DOC Sec. Jared Hoy saying that Lincoln Hills had become less safe, and blamed the consent decree for limiting the ability of staff to use force against juvenile residents.
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“The state of recruitment and retention in police agencies is in trouble.”
That’s according to a 2024 report from the International Association of Chiefs of Police. And Wisconsin’s police departments aren’t strangers to the staffing shortage.
The total number of law enforcement officers in Wisconsin has dropped for years and now sits at near record lows, The Badger Project has found. As chiefs and sheriffs across the state say they struggle to fill positions in an industry less attractive to people than it once was, small departments are especially struggling.
A bipartisan bill working through the state Legislature aims to alleviate some of the problem.
The proposal would allow small police departments to apply for state grants to help put a recruit through the police academy. The grants would extend after graduation and cover the costs associated with the recruit’s department field training. The bill requires the hire to stay with the department for one year.
“There’s such a need for this,” said Rep. Clinton Anderson, D-Beloit, who introduced the Assembly’s version of the bill in mid-July.
Anderson, who also introduced the bill in 2023, explained that getting it passed this session will be an uphill battle because the state budget did not fund it. Divided government and the rush to pass the budget before the federal government passed its own tax and spending bill were factors, Anderson said.
“I know I care about law enforcement. I know they say they do too,” Anderson said of Republicans.
If the bill were passed now, Anderson said, the GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee would need to release the funding for it. His goal, since that’s not happening, is to open up the conversation and get a public hearing. Anderson hopes Republicans will take it up later in the session.
“While I am disappointed, the advocacy does not end,” said Rep. Bob Donovan, a Republican from Greenfield who worked with Anderson to introduce the bill. “I am still pursuing this bill to show my colleagues, and the public, the need for this legislation.”
While larger departments frequently sponsor a new hire as they go through the academy and move on to field training, smaller departments often can’t afford to do that, Anderson said. Small departments pull from the few who weren’t sponsored or they may make lateral hires from other departments.
“These struggles are all too real,” wrote Sen. Jesse James, a Republican from Clark County, in an email.
James, a current police officer for the village of Cadott in Chippewa County, introduced the Senate’s version of the bill in June, weeks before Gov. Tony Evers signed the state budget.
“I think it will be a significant challenge getting the bill funded and signed into law this session,” James wrote. “I still strongly believe in the importance of this program and will continue to advocate for it as the session continues. If we can’t get it across the finish line this year, I’ll try again next year.”
Both versions of the bill were assigned to committees the same day they were introduced. Neither has progressed since.
“Even if it takes another five terms,” Anderson said, “I will keep hammering home on this. It’s really important.”
This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.
Bipartisan bill to aid recruiting at small Wisconsin police departments stalls after state budget snub is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Workers install solar panels on the roof of a low-income household in California. On Thursday, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers wrote a letter to the EPA urging the Trump administration not to cancel the Solar for All program. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Gov. Tony Evers wrote to the federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, urging the Trump administration not to cancel Wisconsin’s $62.4 million grant to install solar energy systems for low- and moderate-income households.
Evers’ letter to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin followed a New York Times report earlier this week that the agency was preparing to cancel the $7 billion federal “Solar for All” grant program. “Solar for All” was part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act passed by congressional Democrats and signed by then-president Joe Biden.
“To be clear, attempting to terminate Solar for All grants has no legitimate purpose or justification,” Evers wrote. “Beyond that, doing so will also negatively impact Wisconsinites and our state, causing increased energy bills for Wisconsinites and hurting efforts to improve air quality, boost resilience, and create good-paying jobs.”
The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. has put out a request for proposal seeking an implementer for the state’s program, called “PowerUp Wisconsin.” Bidders were to submit a notice of their intent to bid by this past Monday, Aug. 4, and final proposals are due on Friday, Aug. 29.
According to the WEDC’s work plan for the project, Wisconsin’s grant would add rooftop solar power systems to 1,038 households in single-family homes and 2,200 more households in 24 multifamily homes. The plan also calls for 10 community solar projects that could serve an additional 4,239 households.
Evers told Zeldin in the letter that since Wisconsin’s $62.4 million grant was awarded in April 2024, the WEDC has worked with local governments, solar installers, utilities and housing developers to draw up the state’s program guidelines. The program would reduce Wisconsin’s reliance on out-of-state energy and save households up to $500 a year on their energy bills, Evers wrote.
The governor wrote that lowering costs has been “a top priority” for his administration.
“While the Trump Administration claims to share this priority, terminating Wisconsin’s Solar for All grant would have the exact opposite effect, preventing Wisconsin families and households from seeing the direct savings offered through PowerUp Wisconsin,” Evers wrote.
The Evers administration and the Wisconsin Department of Justice have joined a number of lawsuits to block Trump administration executive orders and unilateral actions to cut funding approved by Congress.
Evers’ letter appeared to leave open the prospect for more litigation. “At a time when energy demand continues to increase, it is unfathomable for the Trump Administration to unnecessarily — and potentially illegally — terminate funding for a program designed to deploy affordable, renewable energy systems,” Evers wrote.
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Former state Sen. Dale Schultz, left, listens as former Dane County Sheriff Davd Mahoney speaks in a panel discussion on "fusion voting" in La Crosse Wednesday. (Screenshot/LeaderEthics Wisconsin YouTube channel)
Could letting multiple political parties endorse the same candidate bring political reform to Wisconsin, or the nation?
That’s part of the idea being promoted by a bipartisan pair of retired politicians — former state Sen. Dale Schultz, a Republican, and former Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney, a Democrat.
Mohoney and Schultz believe that “fusion voting” — a system that allows multiple parties to endorse the same political candidate — could help remedy the disaffection with politics that they see becoming ever more widespread.
Talking with his two adult sons over the weekend, “both of them told me, ‘I don’t vote. I’m not going to vote because my voice doesn’t matter,’” Mahoney said during a panel discussion in La Crosse on Wednesday. “Unfortunately I hear that all too often.”
In his conversations in the community, “a consistent message was, ‘I’m not being represented by my party,’” Mahoney said.
Schultz and Mahoney have established United Wisconsin — for now, an affinity group, but in the future, they hope, a new political party.
Wednesday’s panel discussion provided a platform for the pair to make their case for fusion voting to a few dozen people at the Black River Beach Neighborhood Center in La Crosse and a broader audience watching on YouTube. It was hosted by LeaderEthics Wisconsin, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that defines its purpose as “promoting ethical leadership among elected officials.”
Making it possible for candidates to run on more than one party line would strengthen the power of third parties and give them “a seat at the table” as candidates and officeholders shape public policy, Schultz said. “We can provide agency so that their voices are heard, that they do have the ability to negotiate.”
As a state lawmaker he sought to work across party lines “in a collaborative way that would best serve all of us,” Schultz said. Disagreements were common, “but we didn’t hate each other. And at the end of the day, we were proud when we could jointly stand up in front of our constituents or the public in general and say we have a solution which we think is worth trying.”
That sense of comity has deteriorated, Schultz said. He believes fusion voting could help restore a stronger spirit of cooperation and re-engage “those who don’t believe anyone is listening to them, those who believe that the only choice they have is … voting for the lesser of two evils, voting for a third party and throwing away their vote, or simply not voting at all.”
Chapter 8 of the Wisconsin statutes has two laws that ban candidates from running on more than one party’s ticket. Statute 8.03(1) states that a candidate’s name may not be listed on the ballot more than once. Statute 8.15(1) bars candidates from running in more than one party’s primary election at the same time.
Changing those laws is at the top of United Wisconsin’s agenda. The organization, along with Schultz and Mahoney and three other people described as potential members of United Wisconsin, are suing in Dane County circuit court to have the two statutes thrown out.
The lawsuit declares that the laws violate rights guaranteed under the Wisconsin Constitution to freedom of association and speech, equal protection under the law, and free government.
The plaintiffs are represented by Law Forward, the nonprofit law firm that focuses on voting rights, democracy and related issues, along with John Franke of Gass Turek. Franke is a former judge who was appointed to the former Government Accountability Board in 2014 by then-Gov. Scott Walker. The board was later dissolved by the Wisconsin Legislature.
“We should not have the dominating party squeeze out the input from the third parties, and we should not have the voters that are inclined to vote in independent ways to also be squeezed out by the two major parties,” said Lee Rasch, executive director of LeaderEthics Wisconsin, as he introduced the discussion. Rasch is one of the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Mahoney said United Wisconsin aims to cool down the increasingly hostile rhetoric between political parties.
“I care what’s important to us as Wisconsinites,” he said. “I care what’s important to us as Americans. We have far more in common than we have separating us.”
Mahoney said he’s alarmed by the increasingly hostile political rhetoric as well as threats and acts of political violence, such as attacks on two state lawmakers in Minnesota and their spouses, killing one of them and her husband.
“I’ve had many calls myself from current lawmakers who want my thoughts on their safety and what they do to protect themselves from a security standpoint being out in the public,” Mahoney said. “That should never happen. That should never happen in our democracy.”
Schultz and Mahoney said if the lawsuit succeeds in throwing out the two statutes United Wisconsin would become a standing political party and work to build a support base. The party would negotiate with candidates to adopt compatible policy positions in return for the party nominating one of the candidates to run on its own ticket.
Mahoney said that having to compete for a block of voters from a third party “might actually bring some common sense into the positions of both major parties and moderate them and certainly the rhetoric that they send out to their members and constituents.”
The spirit of fusion voting has a long and honorable history in Wisconsin, Schultz said, with the Republican Party at its founding in Ripon in 1854 bringing together a collection of splinter political parties united in their opposition to slavery.
The state laws that bar the practice were enacted in 1897. Historian Josh Kluever, a lecturer at Alvernia University in Reading, Pennsylvania, told the Wisconsin Examiner that the law was likely written in reaction to the 1896 presidential election, when both the Populist Party and the Democratic Party endorsed William Jennings Bryan.
Kluever is from Wisconsin and has written about the history of collaborative politics in the state involving the Socialist Party and Robert La Follette’s Progressive Republican wing and later Progressive Party.
While fusion voting was formally outlawed in Wisconsin, the two groups worked to accomplish similar objectives, he said in an interview, allying to pass legislation and refraining from running candidates against each other.
Currently, only New York and Connecticut have any form of fusion voting. Kluever said that it’s “tricky to predict” how more widespread fusion voting might change political dynamics in a state or the country.
Nevertheless, “it is a positive for the small-d democratic process to have people’s voices feel that they’re being heard,” Kluever said.
This report has been updated with additional information about United Wisconsin’s legal representation in its lawsuit.
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Melissa Ludin, state board member at Ex-incarceraed People Organizing (EXPO) (Photo by Isiah Holmes)
Two Wisconsin non-profits involved in addressing the criminal justice system, Ex-incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) and LIFT Wisconsin, were recently recipients of a grant from the Catalyst Grant program, funded by Microsoft and administered by the Urban Institute to support non-profits using data and technology to “advance racial equity and reform in the adult criminal legal system.”
EXPO and LIFT Wisconsin were among 25 grantees nationwide that received the awards.
The two organizations will share a $40,000 grant to support their joint work with Legal Tune Up, an app that uses public databases to help with such issues as reinstating driver’s licenses, removing eviction and criminal records (such as dismissed cases on the record for two years), changing child support orders, and helping with debt collection issues.
A press release from EXPO and LIFT Wisconsin said that Legal Tune Up helps “people navigate unresolved legal issues and help prevent minor infractions from snowballing into life-altering consequences.”
The Catalyst Grant program notes that it “supports the efforts of nonprofit organizations to use data and technology to advance racial equity and reform in the adult criminal legal system.”
The Catalyst Grants are meant to address “racism and racial biases” in the criminal justice system that often result in “disproportionate harm to communities of color.”
The grant funds project cost and implementation assistance, peer learning and “access to technology and related support.”
“We aim to mitigate the harms of unresolved legal issues, advance racial equity in civil legal barriers, improve the delivery of the tool, and analyze data from the tool to inform advocacy,” said a press release for EXPO and LIFT Wisconsin. “Together, the partnership between EXPO and LIFT will empower those who are vulnerable to involvement in the criminal justice system to resolve legal issues independently, analyze data to determine where outreach efforts need to focus next, ensure evidence-based recommendations for reforming civil legal processes to reduce racial disparities, and hold community forums to present findings and advocate for policy changes.”
Erica Nelson, LIFT Wisconsin’s Executive Director, added, “This partnership and grant help us elevate people and expand justice for those too often left behind by the system with no resources to navigate it. Thanks to Microsoft and the Urban Institute, we are one step closer to a future where everyone, not just those who can afford an attorney, has access to justice.”
“Our goal at EXPO is to transform lives and reshape the justice system,” said Jerome Dillard, EXPO’s executive director. “In partnership with LIFT, the Catalyst Grant allows us to do just that.”
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A Flock camera on the Lac Courte Orielles Reservation in Saywer County. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner
Across Wisconsin, a vast camera network is tirelessly photographing and identifying vehicles and license plates, storing that information on a central platform that can be searched at will by law enforcement. With just a few keystrokes, including a reason for the search, officers in local departments across the state can uncover where a vehicle has been and who it belongs to. The network, known as Flock, logs these searches, a feature Flock Safety’s CEO says “underscores accountability” and allows for increased oversight. Still, residents and advocates have raised questions about who is using Flock and why.
Analyzing Flock audit data, Wisconsin Examiner found that no less than 221 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies used Flock from Jan. 1 to May 31. Although officers logged reasons like drugs, shootings, or traffic violations, many also entered vague reasons such as “investigation” or no clear reason at all.
Wisconsin Examiner obtained the audit data through open records requests to the Wauwatosa Police Department (WPD). The data was then analyzed using computer coding programs.
The public deserves to know who is deploying these technologies, under what policies, and with what accountability.
– John McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin
While favored by many law enforcement agencies nationwide, Flock cameras have also attracted controversy. CEO and Flock co-founder Garrett Langley stressed the importance of audits in an extensive June 2025 statement. “As the Founder and CEO of Flock Safety, I take nothing more seriously than the values we built this company upon — to give cities tools to uphold public safety, while enabling accountability and transparency,” Langley wrote. “I spend time with my team thinking about these issues every single day: how to build our search interface, audit records, compliance tools, and data policies to allow individual agencies to police in the best way for their community — not as prescribed by us, a private technology company, but by the elected officials and individuals the tools actually serve. Public safety does not need to come at the expense of community values.”
The statement was released as Flock faced controversy over the platform’s alleged use for immigration and abortion-related surveillance. According to investigative reports by 404 Media, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have used local law enforcement to access the nationwide AI-enabled camera network to track immigrants, and a Texas sheriff’s office conducted a Flock search with the reason for the search recorded as “had an abortion, search for female”. Langley denounced the abortion report as “misinformation” and “unequivocally false,” citing law enforcement statements and internal checks by Flock.
Although Wisconsin Examiner’s analysis found that 11 of Wisconsin’s 13 county sheriffs which partner with ICE through the federal 287(g) program appeared in the Flock audit data, it’s unclear thus far whether any of those agencies used Flock for immigration-related reasons.
“Once this level of surveillance is normalized, it becomes incredibly hard to roll back,” Jon McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin said in a statement to Wisconsin Examiner. “Today it’s license plates — tomorrow it could be forced search and seizure or checkpoints on the road. We need to draw the line somewhere. Flock cameras track the movement of millions of cars, often without a warrant or your knowledge. That’s a profound erosion of your right to move freely and privately in your own community. Flock cameras aren’t targeted at individuals but mass surveils the movement of all residents.”
A breadcrumb trail is left behind whenever Flock is used. “Everytime a search is run on the Flock System, that search and search reason is preserved permanently in the audit trail of every agency whose camera was included in the search,” Langley wrote. “Those searches are viewable in an agency’s ‘network audit’ and available for regular oversight: to command staff, to elected officials, to communities. This is part of our commitment to transparency and accountability from the beginning of the design process.”
According to an Examiner analysis, the top Wisconsin-based law enforcement agency was the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). When the agency first established a contract with Flock, a spokesperson told Wisconsin Examiner, it was attached to MPD’s intelligence-focused fusion center known as the Southeastern Threat Analysis Center (STAC). Fusion centers were formed to bridge intelligence gaps between agencies after the 9/11 attacks, and consolidate resources across local, state, military and private sector entities. STAC partners with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and shares information between local police departments across eight counties in southeastern Wisconsin. Although the Flock contract was later modified to cover the entire police department the name “milwaukee wi pd – STAC” remained in the dashboard.
Nearly 40,000 searches originating from MPD alone appeared in network audit data from the Wauwatosa Police Department.
After MPD, the second most frequent user of Flock in Wisconsin was the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, with just over 13,000 searches between Jan. 1 and May 28. West Allis PD and the Fond Du Lac County Sheriff’s Office each conducted nearly 12,000 searches. Wauwatosa PD, was the fifth highest user of Flock with10,372 searches.
A Milwaukee PD spokesperson said it makes sense that the department, including STAC, are Wisconsin’s biggest user of Flock. “Milwaukee is the largest city in the state, and the eight county area of operations also falls under STAC.”
McCray Jones feels there needs to be more oversight. “That’s not happening now,” he said. Local elected officials and the public deserve to know how this data is being used, stored and shared — especially with their data being shared with an oppositional federal government who will weaponize this information against our community members.”
Fears about federal law enforcement rose dramatically this year after high-profile immigration-related arrests in Milwaukee, including of a man who was falsely accused of writing a letter threatening President Donald Trump and Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, who was arrested for not cooperating with immigration officers who came to her court room to arrest a man who was appearing before her.
In May, Wisconsin Examiner reported that STAC used Flock for a “classified” investigation, which MPD said was not immigration-related. Residents have called for independent oversight of police surveillance. In late July, Michigan Advance reported that the Grand Rapids PD used Flock to monitor protesters who participated in pro-Palestine, LGBTQ+ and anti-Trump protests, although the department denied using Flock to surveil protesters.
McCray Jones called the spread of Flock cameras in Wisconsin “concerning, especially with the sprawling violation of civil liberties, rights and privacy by the federal government.” He specifically cited “ICE obtaining side-door access to the Flock network through local law enforcement for immigration enforcement.”
“We have not seen a complete list of Wisconsin police agencies with access to Flock,” he added, “and that is concerning considering the long history of surveillance being disproportionately targeted at the most marginalized of communities, especially when layered on top of existing disparities in traffic stops and interactions with law enforcement suffered by Black and brown communities in the state.”
The term “wanted” was MPD’s top reason for using Flock in the data the Examiner reviewed. An MPD spokesperson explained that the term “wanted” “does not mean that a warrant has been issued for a person. ‘Wanted’ refers to people, vehicles, investigative leads related to an investigation. This also includes investigative purposes that are not criminal in nature to include missing critical persons and Amber alerts.”
“Robbery” and “Shooting” were MPD’s second and third most frequent reasons for using Flock. Other categories included “res,” which could be an abbreviation for Reckless Endangering Safety and drug dealing. “Homicide” ranked as MPD’s ninth most frequent reason. Among all 221 Wisconsin agencies using Flock, violent crimes do not appear among the top 10 reasons for searches. MPD’s spokesperson said this aspect of the Examiner’s audit data review was misleading. “I would say that the vast amount of usage would be related to violent crime,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement. “This would include homicides, shootings, armed robberies, carjackings, batteries, and sexual assaults.” Although the reason column is intended to document the purpose of a Flock search, information in that column was often not detailed enough to determine whether violence was involved.
In our time using Flock, we have found it extremely beneficial in helping solve crimes and increasing public safety in our communities.
– Capt. John Rouseau, Brown County Sheriff’s Office
The discrepancy between the reasons for using Flock cited in the audit data and law enforcement claims about using Flock to fight violent crime raise doubts, says McCray Jones. “This directly contradicts how agencies like MPD have sold this technology to the public,” he told Wisconsin Examiner. “They say it’s about violent crime — but in practice, that doesn’t appear to be the case. It also begs the question of what is the technology and data being used for? If this tool is mostly being used for minor offenses or vague investigations, then we’re creating a mass surveillance infrastructure to enforce petty infractions — usually disproportionately against Black, brown, and poor residents. Is it being used to track protesters and dissidents?”
MPD’s fifth most frequent Flock search term, with over 1,000 searches, was simply “investigation” with no other context. MPD’s spokesperson said that this “denotes that the search was related to a legitimate investigative purpose.”
“Investigation” was also the most frequent reason Flock was used by Wisconsin law enforcement agencies. Unlike entries including “stolen,” “drugs,” “warrant” or “homicide,” it’s unclear what the “investigation” entries meant. The audit data included categories for case numbers and licence plates, but these were redacted upon release to protect ongoing investigations and citizen privacy.
Wauwatosa PD led all 221 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies in using only “investigation” to denote the reason for Flock searches. More than 1,900 searches by WPD used that term. WPD’s next most frequent reason was “stolen” with 871 searches. Spokesperson Det. Lt. Joseph Roy, Ph.D, said WPD Flock use is guided by a formal written policy.
“The system is a critical investigative and public safety tool that supports a wide range of legitimate law enforcement functions, from stolen vehicle recovery to identifying suspects in violent crime investigations,” said Roy. “While officers are expected to document their searches clearly, the department continues to refine training and oversight to ensure transparency, consistency, and proper use of the system.”
MPD’s spokesperson said that “the system requires a generic input to conduct a search and will include a case number. We require monthly audits to ensure that the system is utilized for legitimate investigative purposes.”
Not every agency in Wisconsin uses Flock under a specific policy. Capt. John Rousseau, spokesperson for the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, told Wisconsin Examiner that the office does not have a Flock-specific policy. “We have policies and audits that dictate our use of law enforcement databases and tools generally, but not platform specific,” Capt. John Rousseau said in a statement.
Brown County’s Sheriff’s Office, Wisconsin’s second most frequent Flock searcher, added, “We conduct regular training on all law enforcement tools, Flock included.” Wisconsin Examiner’s audit analysis found that “1410” was Brown County’s top reason for using Flock. This was a badge number, the captain explained.
The Examiner’s analysis “is not capturing Flock usage completely,” he said. “It is aggregating the reason code, but we primarily use specific case numbers in our search. That would be the largest category of our usage, but it will not be captured in your analysis.”
Flock’s system always records a search reason, and provides a dropdown menu of search terms, as well as a case number category. “Agencies should prescribe, in their [License Plate Reader] policies, how users should populate that search field,” the company’s CEO wrote in a statement.
This level of opacity is unacceptable.
– John McCray Jones, policy analyst for the ACLU of Wisconsin
Clear reasons for using Flock were sometimes lacking in the audit analysis. West Allis PD led all of Wisconsin in using only a dot in the reason field when recording Flock use. Just over 1,200 searches were conducted using the dot. Only six other agencies used a dot to indicate the reason for Flock use, including the police departments of Waukesha, Ripon, Elm Grove, MPD, and the sheriffs of Columbia and Portage counties. MPD – STAC and Portage County’s uses of this reason code was so infrequent that they barely appeared when graphed.
The dot was also West Allis’s top overall reason for using Flock. Others included “sus,” “investigation,” “stolen” and “theft,” as well as “mvth,” “pd”, “dea,”, “s,” and others which the police department did not define when asked, nor did it explain why the dot was so often favored by its officers.
West Allis PD Deputy Chief Robert Fletcher said in a statement that the department’s officers “receive training on the proper use of law enforcement databases.”
“This training includes training that the use of law enforcement databases, whether FLOCK, department records or information received through NCIC database can only be queried and used for law enforcement purposes,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher added, “Any allegation that a department member is obtaining information for a non-law enforcement purpose would be investigated by a member of the WAPD Command Staff and corrective action would be taken by the WAPD if warranted.”
WAPD’s policy states that personnel “must have an articulable law enforcement reason to access and/or perform any query in the Flock system,” and that regular audits may be performed to ensure the system is being used correctly.
Waukesha PD, the state’s second biggest user of the dot — also the department’s top reason for using Flock — suggested that this use was improper. Capt. Dan Baumann told Wisconsin Examiner that, when it came to this vague use for Flock, “we isolated this to a specific officer and have readdressed the [Standard Operating Procedure] and have provided that officer with extra training…This is being addressed through training with the officer. The Flock administrator ran an audit specific to your request and isolated this to only one officer. This has been corrected.”
Waukesha PD’s Flock policy states that officers should “enter the primary reason” for conducting a plate search “i.e. burglary suspect, robbery suspect, vehicle pursuit,” when an incident report number is unavailable. The Columbia County Sheriffs Office, Wisconsin’s third biggest user of the dot as a reason for its Flock use, didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.
McCray Jones found the Flock audit searches using only “investigation” or “.” to be “incredibly concerning.”
“Vague entries like ‘investigation’ or a period provide no meaningful oversight and violate the spirit of transparency and democracy. This kind of documentation undermines any public trust or accountability,” he said.
But police departments using Flock stressed its versatility and usefulness in netting investigative leads. “Flock has proven instrumental in criminal investigations and does help increase public safety,” MPD’s spokesperson told Wisconsin Examiner, adding that the platform has aided investigations of car theft, homicides and kidnappings.
Capt. Rousseau of the Brown County Sheriffs Office said, “We use Flock during a host of public safety activities that can range from locating missing/endangered people to wanted persons,” as well as looking for criminal suspects. “In one example, we investigated a fatal hit and run car crash where a pedestrian was killed and the vehicle fled the area,” said Rousseau. “Analysis of Flock data identified the suspect vehicle and allowed investigators to follow up on the information. That’s a significant example, but we also use Flock daily to identify and locate persons that have outstanding warrants for their arrest, known drug trafficking suspects, and many other uses.”
Capt. Bauman of the Waukesha PD said, “Our agency’s deployment of FLOCK reflects a commitment to public safety that is deliberate and respectful of civil liberties. We believe that transparency, policy integrity, and community engagement are essential in maintaining trust while responsibly leveraging technology to protect the community.”
Regarding the Examiner’s analysis of Flock audit data, McCray Jones said, “What stands out is how many agencies are using this tool with little to no transparency around the justification for its use. That kind of vagueness makes it difficult to know whether Flock is being used in ways that respect people’s rights or whether it’s enabling a dragnet approach to surveillance. We need guardrails, third-party audits, and standardized reporting across jurisdictions. It’s not enough to trust that agencies will use Flock responsibly — we need mechanisms to ensure they are.”
The ACLU and local activist groups have pushed for Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinances, which can be passed at the local level and would require public hearings and annual reports on surveillance technology. “Given the lack of safeguards and history of abuse, we believe there should be a moratorium on expanding Flock use until real oversight structures are in place — if ever,” said McCray Jones.
With concerns around surveillance, however, Capt. Rousseau cautioned that “there may be a fundamental misunderstanding about what Flock is and isn’t.” He explained in a statement that, “Flock is not facial recognition. It does not track any personally identifiable information. It is not used for traffic enforcement. Flock cameras perform the same actions that an officer could do if we were to assign a police officer to sit at an intersection recording license plates. We don’t have the resources for that kind of a deployment, so we supplement it with technology. Cameras are used everywhere.”
Wisconsin Examiner’s analysis found that “traffic enforcement” was the top reason entered by the Fond Du Lac County Sheriff’s Office for its Flock use. Fond Du Lac didn’t respond to a request for comment. Fond Du Lac County also led the state in using Flock for school-related reasons, followed by sheriffs of Kenosha counties, Milwaukee PD, the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Office, and others. Most of those uses involved school bus violations or complaints, such as cars passing in front of a school bus. Several searches were also for school-related threats.
Rousseau said that Flock must be considered in a societal context where cameras are everywhere. “A police officer wears a body camera inside of a patrol car that’s equipped with a camera driving down a highway that’s covered in cameras conducting traffic stops on cars that also may have dash cameras. Flock is but one of a handful of law enforcement tools that we use on a daily basis to improve public safety through the proactive and efficient delivery of law enforcement services. Proper data safeguards are in place to protect against abuse.”
McCray Jones agrees there are cameras everywhere, but says no surveillance network should be underestimated. “Surveillance creep is real — and Flock is just one piece,” he told Wisconsin Examiner. “Communities need to decide if this technology has any place in public safety, and if so, under what strict and democratically accountable conditions. The public should demand hearings, insist on transparency and support local ordinances that put the community — not private corporations or law enforcement — in the driver’s seat.”
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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.
Wisconsin doesn’t require daily exercise for students.
Physical education must be given weekly to students in kindergarten through sixth grade and, for older middle school students, with “sufficient frequency and instructional time to meet the objectives outlined in the district’s curriculum plan.”
High school students must follow a curriculum “designed to build lifelong fitness habits.”
In 2024, GOP lawmakers as part of a child obesity task force introduced legislation to require 180 minutes of weekly “physical activity” for K-8 students. One lawmaker said the aim was to require movement, such as playing tennis, rather than teaching tennis.
The bill passed the Assembly but not the Senate.
On July 27, former Gov. Scott Walker called for a 60-minute daily exercise minimum.
In 2022-23, 18.4% of Wisconsin children ages 6-17 were obese, the 16th highest rate in the U.S.
Childhood obesity that lasts into adulthood can result in conditions such as diabetes, liver disease and high blood pressure.
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Does Wisconsin require daily exercise for K-12 students? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.
State revenue is projected to outpace spending during the next two years leaving a $770 million surplus as of July 1, 2027. If spending and revenue are the same over 2027-29, the state will have a deficit of -$1.4 billion in its general fund by the end of that biennium, the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau reported.
That excludes the state’s $2.1 billion rainy day fund.
Wisconsin ended 2023 with a record $7.1 billion surplus and the last budget cycle with $4.4 billion.
The current state budget spends down $3.6 billion as Gov. Tony Evers prioritized spending increases for education and childcare while Republicans pushed tax cuts.
The state’s general fund in 2027 is projected to be at the lowest level since 2018. Wisconsin faced structural deficits from 1996-2011, with a projected $3.6 billion deficit during the 2011-13 biennium. That prompted steep public employee benefit cuts under the controversial Act 10 law.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Is Wisconsin facing a structural deficit in the 2027-29 state budget? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The Waukesha County Sheriff Department, one of the agencies that participate in the 287(g) program. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The number of Wisconsin county sheriff’s offices participating in a collaborative program with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has jumped from nine to 12 this year, with other forms of cooperation with ICE growing across the state, according to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin.
The report shows more sheriff offices joining the 287(g) program over the last three years. The program carves out dedicated immigration operations within the sheriff’s offices, shares data with ICE and increases local participation in ICE detention requests.
The ACLU report, released Tuesday, is an update from its 2022 report on Wisconsin’s “Jail-to-deportation pipeline.”
“Immigrants have been an important part of the fabric of Wisconsin for many years,” said Tim Muth, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Wisconsin, in a statement released by the ACLU, along with the updated report. “They are a part of our families. They are our coworkers, friends, and neighbors, and the public should know what their local law enforcement agencies are doing.”
In 2022, there were eight law enforcement across the state participating in the 287(g). The program allows ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) to partner with state and local law enforcement agencies, who are empowered to dedicate their own resources to pursuing people living without legal immigration paperwork in the United States.
“ICE recognizes the importance of its relationships with law enforcement partners to carry out its critical mission,” states a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) webpage.
Agencies can participate in 287(g) under a few different models including a “jail enforcement” model that focuses on people without legal immigration status already in local jails on other criminal charges, a “task force” model that gives local law enforcement officers limited authority to enforce immigration law and a warrant service program which allows local law enforcement to serve administrative warrants to people without legal status within county jails.
The participants in 287(g) include the sheriff’s offices of Brown, Fond du Lac, Kewaunee, Manitowoc, Marquette, Outagamie, Sheboygan, Washington, Waukesha (which is listed twice on the DHS website’s “pending agencies” portion), Waupaca, Wood, and Winnebago counties.
A growing number of Wisconsin sheriffs continue to opt into this program, actively contributing to the jail-to-deportation pipeline.
– ACLU of Wisconsin
Six of those sheriffs (Kewaunee, Outagamie, Washington, Waupaca, Winnebago, and Wood counties) joined the program between from March to June of this year. The rest began participating in 287(g) in 2020, according to the ACLU report,
While some law enforcement agencies have joined the program, others have distanced themselves from immigration enforcement. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office does not participate in the 287(g) program, and both that office and the Dane County Sheriff limit or prohibit their participation in immigration activities. The Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) also has policies limiting its own involvement in immigration enforcement in the interest of preserving a trusting and cooperative relationship with the community, the policies state.
“The expansion of these agreements enables ICE to further embed its enforcement presence within local jurisdictions, often circumventing community-driven policies against immigration enforcement,” the report states. “These partnerships not only divert local resources from community safety initiatives but also significantly heighten the risk of racial profiling and erode trust between law enforcement and immigrant communities.”
The ACLU has also found that between 2021 and 2024, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC), along with 29 counties, received over $7 million in federal funds through the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP). The ACLU states that the funds were “in exchange” for data sharing with ICE. Wisconsin Examiner reached out to DOC, the story will be updated with any reply from the the state agency regarding data sharing.
That data is just part of a growing immigration enforcement and detention network across the state. From Oct. 2021 to June 2025, according to the report, ICE sent over 3,300 immigration detainers to Wisconsin. These are situations in which ICE requests that a local jail hold individuals for up to 48 hours beyond their scheduled release, the ACLU report states. “Although these detainers are often not accompanied by a warrant signed by a neutral judicial official and lack authority under Wisconsin law,” it explains, “most sheriffs across the state continue to honor them.”
Although over 3,300 individuals have been held between Oct. 2021 and June 2025, the biggest jump in detainer requests occurred this year. Between Jan. 1 and June 10, there were 1,065 ICE detainers in Wisconsin. By comparison there were 942 ICE detainers during all of 2024, 853 detainers during a 12-month period between October 2022 and September 2023 and 474 in the 12 months before that.
“These numbers demonstrate that even without a judge-signed warrant, ICE continues to issue these ‘requests,’ and a significant number of Wisconsin jails continue to comply,” the ACLU’s report states. “This practice is problematic as federal deportation proceedings are civil, not criminal, matters and Wisconsin law does not provide legal authority for law enforcement to act on civil immigration detainers.”
Some sheriff offices are even taking it a step further than 287(g) and SCAAP. New financial agreements have also been arranged with counties such as Brown, Sauk and Ozaukee. In Brown County, the sheriff maintains a $90,000 contract for detention and transportation services, carrying a $70.00 per detainee, per day reimbursement, and another $36.00 per hour, with mileage and funding, for transportation services. Sauk County receives a $106.00 per-diem rate for housing ICE detainees, and Ozaukee County gave ICE the ability to purchase cell space in its jail by building off an existing contract with the U.S. Marshall Service. The ACLU calls this a “concerning trend” of local sheriffs “not only passively complying with ICE requests” but also “actively entering into benefiting from direct financial arrangements to house and transport immigrants for ICE removal activities.”
The report also highlights recent legislation which would require more cooperation with ICE. Republican lawmakers have introduced bills that would compel sheriffs to work with ICE regardless of their own priorities, mandate citizenship investigations of jail detainees, mandate compliance with detainer requests, and other policies.
To counter these advancements, the ACLU is calling on community members to reach out to their local sheriffs and police chiefs to learn more about where they stand on ICE cooperation, push agencies to prioritize community trust over obedience, and engage with lawmakers on the proposed bills.
“These cozy relationships between ICE and many sheriffs are disrupting our communities and funneling immigrant community members into the federal deportation machine,” said Muth.
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Elections in Wisconsin are setting new spending records every year, but the U.S. Supreme Court appears set to allow even more money into political races across the country if it rules the way experts expect it to in a pending case.
A case brought to the court by Republican plaintiffs in December seeks to abolish limits on coordinated campaign expenditures – money political parties spend in collaboration with candidates. The court’s June decision to hear a challenge to its decades-old precedent speaks to the conservative majority’s distaste for regulating campaign finance, experts say.
“We know where this thing is going because of how the (Chief Justice John) Roberts’ court has dealt with campaign finance restrictions,” said Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at UW-La Crosse.
The Supreme Court will reconsider its 2001 decision, which ruled that limits on coordinated campaign expenditures are constitutional. The limits apply to shared expenses between party and candidate, such as advertising costs.
Undoing these limits “would open a new, significant way for political parties to spend in direct support of their candidates’ campaigns,” Chergosky said.
In Wisconsin, parties coordinating with U.S. Senate candidates can spend up to about $600,000 in a general election campaign before the limits kick in, according to the Federal Elections Commission. Nationwide, limits vary from $127,200 to $3,946,100 based on the state’s voting age population. For U.S. House nominees in states with more than one representative, which includes Wisconsin, the spending cap is about $63,000.
The Republican plaintiffs – which include the National Republican Congressional Committee, Vice President J.D. Vance and former Rep. Steve Chabot – filed their case in 2022 and went to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court upheld the spending limits.
The court will likely hear the case in the fall and release a decision in 2026 just as U.S. midterm elections kick into gear, according to a SCOTUSblog analysis. All eight of Wisconsin’s U.S. House members will face reelection, though neither senator will.
The limits the court will review only apply to federal elections for president or Congress, said Brendan Glavin, the research director for OpenSecrets, a Washington-based watchdog that tracks lobbying and campaign finance data. The limits do not apply to state-level candidates.
But “even with the limit, people can still give quite a lot of money to the party, and the party is still allowed to make independent expenditures,” Glavin said. “It’s not like anybody’s being shut down.”
Even if the Supreme Court struck down these limits, federal contribution caps would still apply. This year and next, the federal limits on how much an individual can give to a candidate committee is $3,500 per election. Individuals are also limited to a yearly donation of about $44,000 to a national party committee, according to the FEC.
But the coordinated campaign expenditure limits seal a loophole, Glavin said. The limits prevent donors from circumventing individual contribution caps by donating to a party that can essentially earmark the money for a specific candidate.
“When you take these coordinated limits away, then you’re essentially providing a bit of an end run around the contribution limits for an individual,” said Glavin. However, the Republican challenge “does fit into a broader trend of what we’ve seen over time.”
Campaign finance reform, including limits on coordinated campaign expenditures, were taken up in the 1970s and expanded in 2002, Glavin said. Since then, the reforms have been incrementally rolled back through court decisions like Citizens United v. F.E.C., the 2010 Supreme Court case that paved the way for unlimited political spending organizations called Super PACs.
Reversing the law isn’t likely to affect dark money or Super PAC spending, Glavin said. But you’d likely see more candidates and parties approaching a donor together.
“One ask, one check, that’s an easier way to get the donor,” Glavin said.
Thus, overruling precedent in this case would “tilt the balance of power back in favor of party committees,” Chergosky said. Though partisan loyalty is strong, Chergosky explained, party organizations have seen their influence weaken in light of outside groups like Super PACs.
Though none of Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate seats will be in play next year, Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District is set to be one of the most expensive House races in the 2026 cycle, Chergosky said.
The race will likely be a rematch between Republican incumbent Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Prairie du Chien and Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke of Eau Claire, both of whom are “exceptional fundraisers,” Chergosky said.
As the number of competitive seats continues to decline, an “enormous amount of money gets funneled into fewer and fewer districts,” Chergosky said. But regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, there won’t be a shortage of money spent in the 3rd District, he said.
Wisconsin law provides an interesting contrast, Chergosky said. Here, state law limits how much individuals can give directly to candidates, but it does not limit the amount individuals can give to parties, nor does it limit how much party committees can give to state-level candidates.
“The comparison to the Wisconsin law is interesting because that has really motivated donors to give to state parties in a way that we just haven’t seen at the national level,” Chergosky said.
The piles of cash that fuel state and national politics has encouraged some Wisconsin legislators to propose resolutions amending the U.S. Constitution.
A Republican-backed proposal calls for an amendment that would also allow states to regulate spending in elections. A Democratic proposal calls for an advisory referendum to appear on Wisconsin ballots; it would ask voters whether they approve of amending the Constitution in order to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United.
If two-thirds of the state legislatures in the country request it, Congress can convene to consider amending the Constitution. The joint resolutions, if successful, are necessary if Wisconsin wants Congress to convene a constitutional convention. A joint resolution must pass both chambers of the state Legislature; the governor’s signature is not required.
Lawmakers last acted on the Democrats’ proposal in May, and the most recent action on the Republican proposal was in June.
This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s cash-flooded elections could get even more expensive is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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