Interior of a modern data center. Interior of a modern data center. (Stock photo by Imaginima/Getty Images)

The efforts of some of the largest companies in the world, including Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and OpenAI, to develop data centers in communities across Wisconsin have sparked heated local debates among residents, government officials and even comedians. 

Those debates have often been over the data centers’ use of water and electricity, the net impact of local government deals with big corporations, the value of handing over large tracts of land for big warehouse-like buildings and the secrecy in which the plans are often shrouded. 

Data centers, buildings that house computer servers to store information for cloud-based software and, increasingly, to support the expansion of artificial intelligence, are becoming more and more prevalent in the Upper Midwest, according to the Minneapolis branch of the U.S. Federal Reserve. 

While Wisconsin still lags behind its neighbors, the state is now home to 47 data centers with more on the horizon. As communities across the state weigh the merits of accepting data center development, critics and proponents say the state needs more than the current, piecemeal local approach. 

In Port Washington, a Milwaukee suburb on the shore of Lake Michigan, the local government has supported a proposal from tech giants Open AI and Oracle to develop an AI-focused data center on 2,000 acres of farmland in the community. That project is moving forward despite local backlash. 

In Mount Pleasant, a village in Racine County where state and local officials have been trying to salvage a failed Foxconn development, Microsoft has spent billions of dollars for the construction of two data centers in the community. 

But in nearby Caledonia, Microsoft was forced to back off a planned development after backlash from local residents led to the denial of a requested zoning change. 

Overwhelmingly, the largest complaints about data centers are the electricity and water usage. A recent Bloomberg News report found that the construction of data centers has caused electric bills in nearby communities to surge because of the high energy needs of the centers. A recent report from Clean Wisconsin found that just the data centers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington will use enough electricity to power 4.3 million homes. 

Many data centers need to use water to cycle through their cooling systems, which are necessary because computer equipment can’t be allowed to overheat. While proponents of data centers have downplayed the amount of water required to run the cooling systems, critics point to the water use associated with the increase in electricity demand. Wisconsin’s existing power plants use a high amount of water.

These demands on water have become especially fraught as the data centers have become increasingly concentrated in southeast Wisconsin, where residents are very protective of Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes watershed. 

Melissa Scanlan, the director of UW-Milwaukee’s Center for Water Policy, says Wisconsin’s failure to address data centers comprehensively could quickly put an overly burdensome strain on the state’s utilities.

“There should be a state level review of all of the potential proposals, so that the state can assess the impact on electricity generation and water supply,” Scanlan says. “Doing it in a piecemeal way, where you’ve got local governments deciding about hosting, but then utilities that are committed to supplying the electricity and water, is going to very quickly bump up against the realities of our ability to generate electricity in a responsible way.”

Robin Palm, a certified urban planner who lives in Milwaukee, says he’s largely supportive of data centers because they provide local governments with a consistent source of property tax revenue without requiring many city services. 

“A data center is extremely low services, they’re not going to have kids that need to go to school,” he says. “They are not going to have homeowners that are going to make demands at the village board, and they’re not going to have police calls because of crime or anything like that. So it’s a really low services, high value land use.”

He says the current approach of leaving these decisions up to local officials and zoning boards has pointed the public’s skepticism in the wrong direction. The local officials, he says, are making an easy economic development calculation when the real blame for the confusion should go to the state Public Service Commission and power companies — which have failed to support the expansion of renewable energy in the state. 

Palm points to Iowa, which has far more data centers than Wisconsin and gets more than 60% of its power supply from wind. 

“[Iowa is] getting cheap electricity. They use a lot more per capita than a lot of other states, and they’re way far ahead of us in data centers, and it’s mostly renewable,” he says. “I can’t see anything to complain about that situation. So it seems to me that the obvious culprit, I think, on our side, is the PSC and We Energies. There is something in that mechanism that’s basically screwing us.” 

Warning about a ‘data center stampede’

Late last month, state Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said that a “data center stampede” has started in Wisconsin and that state officials need to develop some sort of statewide plan for how to manage it. 

“We must develop a statewide plan for data centers that prioritizes the needs of our neighbors and its impact on the environment and our communities before the profit margins of private utilities and big tech companies,” he said in a statement. “If we don’t, the data center stampede will likely continue unabated, and in its wake may very well be a Wisconsin we no longer recognize — one that has abandoned its tradition of protecting our air, water, and land for future generations.”

Richard Heinemann, an attorney for Madison-based law firm Boardman Clark, says state lawmakers have already made a policy statement affirming their desire for the construction of data centers. In the 2023-25 state budget, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, a provision was included to give a sales tax rebate on the “development, construction, renovation, expansion, replacement, repair, or operation” of data centers. 

Heinemann also points to two bills signed into law by Evers earlier this year to advance the development of nuclear energy in the state. That legislation was introduced specifically to respond to the increased energy demands of data centers.

“Wisconsin must be prepared to meet soaring energy demands that will be driven by the development of data centers and other energy-intensive economic development,” the co-sponsorship memo states. 

But Heinemann says he believes local officials and residents already have the necessary tools to weigh in on data center development. 

“We already have procedural mechanisms in place to try to address some of these issues,” says Heinemann, who recently wrote an article about local government’s authority to intervene in Public Service Commission considerations of utility expansion. “I’m not saying every issue, but some of the important ones that people have looked at or pointed to. So I don’t know what sort of new legislation one could propose that would address these issues in some more comprehensive way, or in a way that would just provide some due process.” 

Hovering over the whole debate is the secrecy with which big tech companies have operated while working to build data centers. The corporations responsible for development are often hidden behind obscure LLCs and have a record across the country of trying to get local governments to sign non-disclosure agreements (though it’s unlikely such an agreement could stand up to Wisconsin’s open records laws). A group of environmental organizations recently had to file a lawsuit to force the city of Racine to disclose how much water it was estimating it would be providing to the Microsoft site in Mount Pleasant. 

Heinemann says these debates would go more smoothly if the companies worked in the open with communities. 

“Data centers themselves have an obligation to make sure that they’re doing the outreach necessary when they work to site a facility in a locality,” he says. “It behooves them to do that work of trying to address the needs of the locality.” 

Heinemann says says the state Public Service Commission, Department of Natural Resources and local communities through their zoning authority already have the resources they need to regulate data centers

“Each project is complicated. It does require a lot of infrastructure,” Heinemann adds. “There are a lot of potential benefits to communities, but there are also impacts on the communities, those can be addressed, and there are legal procedures and agencies whose job it is to do that.”

Michael Gableman | Up Front screen shot

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Susan Crawford issued an order Thursday recusing herself from former Justice Michael Gableman’s disciplinary case with the state Office of Lawyer Regulation. 

Gableman faces a suspension of his law license for his conduct during his widely derided review of the 2020 presidential election. The Supreme Court is responsible for delivering the length of his suspension and determining any monetary penalties he’s responsible for paying. 

Crawford’s recusal comes after Gableman had filed a motion requesting that she not participate in the case because of comments she made about him on the campaign trail earlier this year. However, Crawford isn’t recusing at Gableman’s request. 

Instead, Crawford wrote, she is stepping aside from weighing in on the case because part of the allegations against Gableman are his actions during an open records lawsuit against him in the circuit court of Dane County Judge Frank Remington. Crawford, formerly a judge in that circuit, said that because of her proximity to Remington’s court, she learned facts about that case that are not considered part of the official record in the disciplinary matter. 

“I believe it is likely I was exposed to information and impressions related to Attorney Gableman’s conduct and demeanor in the circuit court that fall outside of the record before this court,” she wrote. “Because I may have been exposed to factual allegations beyond those Attorney Gableman has chosen not to contest, I may have ‘personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding.’”

Because she recused herself for another reason, Crawford dismissed Gableman’s request as moot.

Gableman had also requested the recusal of Justice Rebecca Dallet, arguing that comments she made about his judicial record when she announced her campaign for the Court in 2017 meant she couldn’t impartially assess his case. In an order, Dallet denied the request, writing that her comments about him in 2017 have nothing to do with how she assesses actions he took in 2021. 

“Although Gableman tries to characterize my comments as reflecting a view of ‘Gableman’s moral turpitude,’ and his ‘professional judgment and character,’ no objective reasonable observer would understand them as such,” she wrote. “Simply put, I expressed my disagreement with Gableman’s actions as a candidate and justice between 2008 and 2018. That disagreement is irrelevant to whether he engaged in attorney misconduct in 2021 and 2022, and whether I can impartially adjudicate claims that he did so now.”

With Crawford recusing, the Court is divided 3-3 between liberals and conservatives — though conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn has previously sided with the Court’s liberals in cases relating to the 2020 presidential election.

Michael Gableman in Dane County Circuit Court on Thursday, June 23 | Screenshot via Wisconsin Eye

Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman could be forced to pay $48,192 to cover the costs of the state Office of Lawyer Regulation’s investigation into him for his conduct during his widely derided review of the 2020 presidential election. 

That review of the election, which did not turn up any proof of wrongdoing, has resulted in 10 counts of misconduct being filed against the former judge. Late last month, he agreed to have his law license suspended for three years because of the charges. 

Last week the OLR filed a statement arguing that the case against Gableman should follow Supreme Court precedent, which would mean the costs incurred by the OLR investigator and independent referee overseeing the case should be paid by the lawyer under investigation. The referee issued a recommendation stating that there was no reason the case shouldn’t follow the existing precedent.

Both the responsibility for paying the bill and the ultimate punishment will be decided by the state Supreme Court. 

Also last week, Gableman filed a motion in his case last week seeking the recusal of liberal justices Susan Crawford and Rebecca Dallet.

Gableman’s filing notes that Crawford called him a “disgraced election conspiracy theorist” and accused him of leading a “sham” investigation of the 2020 election during her campaign earlier this year. 

His filing notes comments Dallet made in 2017 after she had announced her campaign for the Court but before Gableman had decided not to run for another term. Dallet accused Gableman of not recusing himself from cases in which he had a conflict of interest, called his 2008 campaign “one of the most unethical” in state history and said he was a “rubber stamp for his political allies.”

Gableman argues that these comments create the appearance of bias and that the justices shouldn’t weigh in on his punishment. If they were to recuse, the Court’s conservatives would hold a 3-2 majority — though Justice Brian Hagedorn sided with the Court’s liberals in the 2020 election cases it decided.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels and GOP attorney general candidate Eric Toney hold a press conference at the Milwaukee Police Association in this 2022 photo. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, a Republican, announced Tuesday he’s running for a second time to unseat Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul. 

The 41-year-old Toney has been the DA in Fond du Lac County since 2012. He ran against Kaul in 2022, losing by 35,000 votes. Kaul, a Democrat, recently announced he would be running for a third term as attorney general, ending speculation that he would run for governor after Gov. Tony Evers announced his retirement. 

In a news release, Toney said he decided to run again after having open heart surgery two years ago. 

“By the grace of God — and years of running — my heart held on,” Toney said. “That clarity led me here: if I could still make a difference for Wisconsin, I would. After seven years of broken promises and political spin in the Attorney General’s office, it’s time for change.”

In the campaign announcement, Toney said he would prioritize supporting law enforcement officers, reducing violent crime in Milwaukee and being more aggressive in prosecuting drug crimes. 

“As your Top Cop, I will stand up for every Wisconsinite, enforce the law, and bring conservative, common-sense leadership back to the DOJ,” he said. “That’s what Wisconsinites expect and deserve.”

The Wisconsin attorney general is the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the state, responsible for overseeing state law enforcement agencies, enforcing state laws as varied as water quality rules and election laws and defending state agencies in court. This year, Kaul has been especially active in joining multi-state lawsuits against Trump administration policies.

Images depicting Dodge County deputies transporting ICE detainees to Broadview, Illinois. (Photo courtesy of Unraveled)

The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office in Wisconsin has been sending deputies into Illinois to transport migrants to and from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in suburban Chicago at the center of the Trump administration’s clash with Illinois officials and activists. 

For more than two decades, the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office has had a contract with the U.S. Marshal’s Service to hold federal detainees in the county jail. As part of that contract, which budget documents show provided the county with more than $6 million last year, the sheriff’s office regularly holds migrant detainees for ICE and transports federal detainees of all sorts. 

“We house federal inmates/detainees as part of our agreement with the U.S. Marshal Service.  We also transport to and from various facilities as part of our agreement. The federal government reimburses us for transportation. ICE is a rider on the agreement,” Sheriff Dale Schmidt told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email. “It is a simple, non-political arrangement we have had for 20+ years under all previous administrations during this contract (Including President Obama and President Biden).” 

But critics say that this year the arrangement has become more political because of President Donald Trump’s increased immigration enforcement and ICE’s escalation of tactics in both its efforts to capture people without legal documentation, and its confrontations with protesters.

“For two decades or more, the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office has obtained a steady stream of revenue from ICE for transporting and jailing persons in immigration detention,” Tim Muth, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin said in an emailed statement. “That practice continues. We regret that the sheriff declines to terminate his contract with ICE, a rogue federal agency that is increasingly violating the rights of persons it seizes from our communities, racially profiling and separating families, and landing some of them in the jail which the sheriff operates.”

Advocates and attorneys for immigrants say that ICE has been frequently moving detainees between detention centers as part of a “shell game” in an effort to keep them hidden from their lawyers and family. 

“I don’t even know where to begin,” said immigration attorney Marc Christopher, describing unprecedented difficulties he’s experienced attempting to locate and represent clients under the second Trump administration. Under previous administrations, Christopher said, clients were relatively easy to locate and communicate with, and the attorney felt he had a good relationship with staff at facilities like the Dodge County Jail. 

Now in nearly 70% of cases, Christopher told the Wisconsin Examiner, clients are “being shipped off to different facilities in many different locations…I’ve had clients sent to Indiana, Louisiana, Texas, Ohio, all different locations.” 

In one case, coordinating a telephone conference with a client who’d been detained in a private out-of-state facility required a three day set-up process for a video call with poor audio quality that lasted just 20 minutes, Christopher said. 

Another change he’s seen is that detainees in Wisconsin who are taken to Dodge County are given court dates in Chicago. 

“I had it where I’ve traveled to Dodge County after checking to see if my client’s there, only to drive all the way there to find out that that morning they were moved to a different facility,” said Christopher. 

The Broadview ICE detention center in a suburb of Chicago has drawn regular protests for months. The presence of Dodge County Sheriff’s deputies at the Broadview facility were first reported by the independent media outlet Unraveled.

The federal response to those protests has frequently escalated into violence and those escalations have been used as justification for Trump’s attempt to deploy troops from the Texas National Guard to the Chicago area. 

Illinois state laws restrict ICE cooperation with local law enforcement and prevent the long term detention of migrants in Illinois. Because of that prohibition, ICE has moved detainees from Illinois to facilities in nearby Indiana and Wisconsin. 

Schmidt did not respond to questions from the Wisconsin Examiner about how frequently his deputies have driven detainees in and out of Broadview under Trump, but the department’s 2024 annual report shows sheriff’s office personnel made 302 trips at the request of ICE last year. 

Dodge County is reimbursed for its trips to Illinois. The journey from Juneau to Broadview is a five-hour round trip. State Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), whose district covers part of Dodge County, says expending county resources to help ICE doesn’t keep the community safe and amounts to participating in the administration’s “cruelty.” 

“Local law enforcement does not have to take on federal immigration enforcement duties. When they do, it risks discouraging victims and witnesses from coming forward — making all of us less safe,” Ratcliff said in a statement. “Our local resources should not be diverted from protecting our local communities. Further, there are serious concerns about inhumane conditions at ICE detention centers. There are also troubling political shell games being played in which detainees are transferred from facility to facility — sometimes across state lines — making it difficult for attorneys and families to locate them or ensure they receive due process. That is not justice; that is cruelty disguised as policy and it’s unconstitutional. Wisconsin’s strength lies in our welcoming communities and our commitment to fairness, dignity, and safety for all. I urge our local leaders to prioritize community trust, transparency, and compassion in every action they take.”

“You used to be able to call Dodge, set something up for the next day, spend two-three hours talking,” Christopher said.  “Now I have to fight and find out where they are, try to schedule a time to speak with them. And the family is sitting on pins and needles. They have no idea where their loved one is. They have no idea what’s going on. I’m spending all my time not trying to analyze their case, but simply to find out where they are and try to arrange a time to chat with them. It’s horrible.””

Under the current administration, critics say, transporting ICE detainees is direct participation in an effort to deny due process and avoid transparency. 

“I think there’s a concerning pattern of more local law enforcement being brought in to play an immigration enforcement role as part of the machinery of mass deportations,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera. Local departments are paid to transport immigrants for ICE, “as in Dodge most recently, in Brown County as well and Sauk,” she said, and also receive significant federal money for sharing information on immigrants in their custody through 287g agreements.

Neumann-Ortiz pointed to the 287g agreement sought by the Palmyra Police Department, which is still pending. The 287g program involves local law enforcement agreeing to aid ICE in arresting undocumented migrants or holding them in jail until ICE can pick them up.

“There’s real concern about it,” said Neumann-Ortiz. “They’re really trading off public safety and building trust in a diverse community to take this money. That is particularly alarming when you see what’s happening with ICE, and Customs, and Border Patrol and how they’re operating…They are operating as a militarized operation with masks, with guns, and they are profiling people and physically assaulting people violently, and really trampling over people’s due process rights.” 

“Under that threat which is terrorizing communities,” she added, “why in the world would local law enforcement want to partner with that?”

This article has been edited to correct the name of attorney Marc Christopher. 

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

The Wisconsin Department of Justice on Monday filed an appeal of a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge’s decision to require that state election officials conduct an intensive search for registered voters who aren’t citizens. 

Judge Michael Maxwell’s Oct. 6 ruling required that the Wisconsin Elections Commission cross reference its voter registration list against the state Department of Transportation’s records to determine people’s citizenship status when they applied for a driver’s license or state ID. He also ordered that WEC and local election clerks stop accepting new voter registrations without obtaining proof of citizenship — though that portion of the ruling was put on hold pending the appeal. 

Under current law, people registering to vote must affirm they are U.S. citizens but are not required to provide proof. However, lying about citizenship status while registering to vote is a crime. 

Fears of non-citizen voting have frequently been raised by Republicans in recent years who, since 2020, have expressed  skepticism of election administration. The initial Waukesha County lawsuit was brought by a pair of right-wing election conspiracy theorists. 

While claims of non-citizen voting revolve around the threat that the issue could swing an election result and occasionally cases are found and prosecuted, there is no evidence that non-citizens vote in substantial enough numbers to influence election results in Wisconsin or anywhere across the country. 

In the appeal, filed in the Madison-based District IV, the DOJ argued that the ruling “reshapes Wisconsin election law” while leaving many details vague and potentially violating other laws. 

“The circuit court’s decision and order drastically alters voter registration and elections in Wisconsin, violates state law, and threatens voting rights,” the appeal states.

Lead by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, the filing states that Maxwell’s requirement to match data with Department of Transportation records would be based on data that’s up to eight years old, which could result in the disenfranchisement of people who were legal residents when they applied for their driver’s license but have since become citizens with the right to vote. 

The appeal also argues that Maxwell’s ruling orders local election officials to change their practices even though they weren’t a party to the lawsuit and does not outline what “proof of citizenship” election officials should use to register people to vote. 

“The court issued this sweeping relief despite no evidence of injury to Respondents: they speculated about the risk of vote dilution by illegal voters, but provided no evidence that a noncitizen had voted or registered to vote in Wisconsin,” the appeal states.

Getty Images

A bipartisan group of legislators has proposed a bill to require the state Department of Natural Resources to warn county and tribal health departments when an exceedance of state groundwater standards is discovered. 

The proposed bill, which was circulated for co-sponsorship Monday by Rep. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse), Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) and Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp), would include warnings about the presence of PFAS — even though the state has been unable to finalize a PFAS limit for groundwater. 

That provision would allow private well owners to be warned about the presence of PFAS despite the yearslong political quicksand that has mired the effort to enact a contaminant limit for the class of chemicals. The lack of a PFAS standard has been a regular sticking point in negotiations over legislation to spend $125 million already set aside for PFAS clean up. 

While the state doesn’t have a PFAS groundwater standard, it does have standards for nearly 150 other chemicals such as aluminum, nitrates and lead. 

About one-third of Wisconsinites get their drinking water from private wells, which don’t come with the same warnings that are often required of municipal water systems. 

“The public should be able to know if there is any threat to the safety of the water they and their children drink every day,” the co-sponsorship memo states. “This bill would provide Wisconsinites with more knowledge so they can protect themselves and their children from pollutants and allow them to take advantage of local and county-level testing initiatives and state-level assistance opportunities like the Well Compensation Grant Program.” 

After the legislation’s announcement, environmental groups celebrated it as a potential win for clean water. 

“Wisconsinites have a right to know about pollution that may be impacting the health of their families,” said Peter Burress, government affairs manager for Wisconsin Conservation Voters. “This legislation is a common sense solution that will protect Wisconsin families. It’s unacceptable that so many Wisconsin families could be drinking water contaminated with PFAS, lead, and nitrates — chemicals tied to cancer and birth defects  — without ever being told.”

UW-Platteville (UW Platteville)

The Universities of Wisconsin branch campus in West Baraboo will close at the end of the school year, officials announced Friday. 

The UW-Platteville Baraboo Sauk County is set to close after a steep decline in enrollment. The two-year campus hit an enrollment peak in 2000 with 758 students. Enrollment on the campus hit an all time low this semester with 116 students. 

Baraboo Sauk County is the eighth branch campus to be closed or dramatically downsized since 2023. It is also the second branch campus under the management of UW-Platteville to be shut down after the campus in Richland County was shuttered in July 2023. 

“This decision was not made lightly,” UW-Platteville Chancellor Tammy Evetovich said in the announcement Friday. “Enrollment continues to decline on that campus, and we are committed to being good partners with the city and county by ensuring the campus can be used in ways that best serve the region.”

Enrollment on UW’s branch campuses has steadily declined in recent years, however campus faculty and staff, as well as residents of affected communities, have blamed UW administration officials for decades of decision making that deprioritized maintaining the two-year campuses. 

State Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) blamed the closures on Republican budget decisions.

“Campus closures and the march towards consolidation is a result of Republican politicians viewing higher education as a luxury good that only those who can afford it deserve,” she said in a statement. “In their view, UW is just another cost preventing them from giving more public money to their billionaire campaign backers. The ‘budget shortfalls’ that led to this closure were manufactured over the last 15 years by right-wing politicians who systematically divested from public higher education while strangling UW’s ability to manage its own financial affairs.”

Democrats and pro-democracy organizations held a rally Thursday to call for the creation of an independent redistricting commission. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

A group of pro-democracy organizations held a rally, attended by Democratic legislators, Thursday afternoon outside the state Capitol to push for the creation of an independent commission tasked with drawing the state’s legislative maps. 

The renewed push for permanently taking the construction of Wisconsin’s political maps out of the hands of politicians comes amid a national debate about gerrymandering and as the state’s Democrats are outlining what state government will look like if they hold power in all three branches after next year’s midterm elections. 

Across the country, Democrats — who have for years been the party calling for a nonpartisan process for drawing political maps — are weighing the merits of “unilaterally disarming” by putting the drawing of maps in the hands of independent bodies in blue states while Republicans are redrawing maps in red states such as Texas in an explicit effort to hold on to their slim congressional majority. 

Next month, voters in California will weigh in on a referendum asking if the Democrats in control of the state’s government can temporarily bypass the independent map-drawing commission and redraw maps to benefit Democrats as a counter to the Republican effort in Texas. 

State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), a candidate in the Democratic primary for governor, told the Wisconsin Examiner after the Thursday rally that Wisconsin Democrats should push for a permanent resolution to the state’s map debate because a more effective counter to increasing authoritarianism than tit-for-tat congressional gerrymanders is creating systems that allow government to be more responsive to voters’ wishes. 

“Here in Wisconsin, what the people want are permanent fair maps, and that means keeping the decision of redistricting out of politicians’ hands and within a group of nonpartisan folks,” she said. “If we’re going to have representative democracy, that’s what we need. But we also have to remember to be proactive, and that’s why the permanent fair maps matter. And if we’re going to be responsive to an eroding democracy, that’s also how we should be empowering the people …” 

After Thursday’s rally, the advocates — including members of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and Fair Maps Wisconsin Coalition — were going into the Capitol to deliver the draft of their plan to legislators. 

Under the plan, the state Department of Administration would be responsible for managing the selection of 18 independent redistricting commission members (15 acting members and three reserve members). 

The membership would be divided evenly between representatives of the two major political parties and unaffiliated. Members would not be allowed to hold other public offices and could not be a family member of a public office holder. Lobbyists and anyone who has donated more than $2,000 to a candidate for office in a year over the previous five years wouldn’t be allowed to sit on the commission. 

After the DOA selects a pool of 240 applicants, the majority and minority leaders of both legislative chambers would be allowed to strike down a certain number of candidates. 

The IRC would be required to hold public hearings while it deliberates on the maps. Approval of final maps would have to come through a two-thirds majority vote that includes votes from members representing the interests of both major parties and the independents. 

The plan includes a provision for members to rank proposed maps if such a “multi-partisan agreement” can’t be reached. 

Any proposed maps from the commission would need to still be approved by the Legislature and governor within 30 days. If maps aren’t approved, the Legislature or governor must provide a written explanation to the commission and the commission would have 15 days to respond or provide new maps. 

The Legislature and governor would have three attempts to approve maps before Aug. 15 of a redistricting year. If maps can’t be codified by then, anyone in the state would have the authority to file a lawsuit with the Wisconsin Supreme Court to adopt a commission-proposed map. 

Democrats said at the rally that they want to make sure the commission is crafted in a way that prevents meddling after the fact from politicians. Redistricting commissions in states such as Iowa and Ohio have been undermined once their proposals were subjected to the political process. 

Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) said Republican legislators like the Iowa-style commission because if they vote down the commission’s proposals three times, the map-drawing authority returns to the Legislature. 

“They figured out the flaw in that model,” he said. “That is why we need a Wisconsin model, a Wisconsin model that works for all of us.”

A bill introduced on Monday would grant Devil's Lake State Park the rights to "flourish, evolve, and be clean." (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

To celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, Democrats in the Wisconsin Assembly announced a package of bills Monday that would grant rights to Devil’s Lake State Park and reinstitute a law that effectively banned mining. 

The proposal to grant “rights of nature” to Wisconsin’s most popular state park comes just months after a group of Republicans introduced legislation that would prevent local governments in the state from enacting similar legislation. The Milwaukee County Board passed a rights of nature resolution promising to protect the Menominee, Milwaukee and Fox rivers and Lake Michigan. The Green Bay city council is also currently working on a rights of nature resolution. 

Under the bill, Devil’s Lake has the right to “flourish, evolve, and be clean.” The bill gives the state attorney general the authority to enforce the law against people who infringe on the park’s rights and allows anyone to sue or intervene in a lawsuit in the name of the park to enforce the park’s rights. Anyone who infringes on the park’s rights by damaging the environment will be liable to pay damages to restore the park to its previous state. 

In addition to the Devil’s Lake bill, the package includes a joint resolution acknowledging that “nature has inherent rights” and the state of Wisconsin “has a duty to uphold those rights as part of its enduring conservation legacy and its responsibility to future generations.” 

The resolution also states that the Legislature won’t pass laws preventing local rights of nature ordinances.

The Republican bill preempting local rights of nature efforts is “anti-free speech, it’s anti-democratic,” Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), one of the bills’ co-authors, told the Wisconsin Examiner. “Whereas our bill is, ‘Hey, let’s get this on the docket and actually have a productive conversation, actually bring in stakeholders about what it means to look at nature actually having rights.’”

Miresse said the more symbolic measures passed by local governments are important statements of values, but he wanted the bill to have “teeth.” 

“I would like to move beyond mission and vision statements. I think those are great for guiding principles and taking us in the right direction and keeping our mission and vision top of mind when we are creating and drafting policy at the local level. And I want to make sure they have a right to do that regardless of what the preemption bill would do,” Miresse said. “However, when we were looking at this in terms of crafting policy and changing statute, there would be some teeth here.”

Miresse said the bill is targeted only at Devil’s Lake, rather than all the bodies of water in Wisconsin, because it was simplest to start with a piece of nature that has defined political boundaries already under the state’s control. 

In their preemption bill, Republicans Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) argued that laws granting rights to nature posed a “dangerous shift in legal precedent” that would result in “threatening property rights, stalling development, and burdening the judicial system.”

Democrats counter that granting legal rights to a park or a body of water isn’t much different than granting First Amendment rights to a corporation — which Republicans successfully argued for in court cases such as Citizens United. 

Also announced Monday is a proposal to reinstate Wisconsin’s “prove it first” mining law, which requires that in order to obtain a permit from the Department of Natural Resources, mining companies must prove the mine can be operated for 10 years and be shuttered for 10 years without harmful effects on the local environment. The law was enacted in 1997 until Republicans repealed it in 2017. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, authored the bill to repeal the mining ban when he was in the state Senate. 

This year, a Canadian company has begun exploratory drilling projects in the state, potentially leading to the first operating mines in Wisconsin for the first time in decades. 

Miresse said he wants decisions about mining to consider local environmental health rather than just being about “dollars and cents.”

Boxes of ballots wait to be counted at Milwaukee's central count on Election Day 2024. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

A Waukesha County judge on Monday issued a temporary partial stay of his ruling in a case over how state election authorities verify the citizenship status of people registering to vote. 

The partial stay was issued after the state Department of Justice had requested that Judge Michael Maxwell hold up the entirety of his order pending an appeal. Oral arguments will be held Oct. 31 to determine if the rest of the order should be stayed. 

Maxwell ruled Friday that the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Department of Transportation have a duty to match citizenship records with the state’s voter registration system to determine that non-citizens are not registering to vote. In his order, he also required that state and local election officials stop accepting new voter registrations without checking citizenship status and that the parties in the lawsuit meet to determine a plan for checking the existing voter rolls for non-citizen voters. 

The Monday order that partially stayed the decision put a pause on the halt to accepting voter registrations. 

DOJ had argued that Maxwell’s order would require a “massive overhaul” of the state’s voter registration system and take months to implement, that the ruling doesn’t make clear what the citizen verification requirement actually entails and potentially violates state law requiring the elections commission to maintain the electronic voter registration system. 

Non-citizens are not allowed to vote. Current law requires that people seeking to register to vote attest under penalty of imprisonment that they are U.S. citizens. In Wisconsin, immigrants without legal documentation are unable to obtain a driver’s license and a state-issued photo ID is required to register to vote. 

Despite little evidence that non-citizen voters are casting ballots in large numbers, the issue has been repeatedly raised by Republicans in recent years — particularly since President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and among Republicans who are already skeptical of the election system as a whole.

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

More than two years after $125 million was set aside in the 2023-25 state budget to fund the remediation of PFAS contamination across Wisconsin, legislators are again trying to pass two bills to get that money out the door. 

At a Senate public hearing Tuesday, the bills’ Republican authors said they’re “all ears” for reaching a compromise on final language. However in the last legislative session, initial hopes that a deal could be reached went unfulfilled after Republicans, Democrats, business groups and environmental organizations dug into their positions and the bill was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers.

As was the case in the last effort, the dispute is over who and how the state will hold entities responsible for PFAS contamination. 

PFAS are a class of man-made chemical compounds commonly known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment. The chemicals, which were used for decades in goods such as non-stick pans, fast food wrappers and firefighting foams, have been connected to causing cancer, thyroid diseases and developmental problems. Communities across Wisconsin have found PFAS contamination in their water supplies. 

Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), one of the bills’ co-authors, said at the Tuesday hearing he’s trying to make sure people don’t have to choose between “their health and financial ruin” by testing for contamination and potentially being held responsible for paying for the clean up under the state’s spills law — which allows the Department of Natural Resources to force “responsible parties” to pay for the testing and remediation of chemical contamination. 

“We are transitioning from a medical and legal paradigm where a widely used substance was not considered hazardous, to a paradigm where it is considered hazardous, it’s imperative we don’t sweep up those who are not responsible and treat them as though they are,” he said. 

Wimberger and Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz) have proposed Senate Bills 127 and 128, which establish the exemptions under which people won’t be held responsible for PFAS contamination on their property and create a number of grant programs to spend the $125 million. 

The challenge is that Republicans and industry have different definitions of who counts as responsible for contamination than Democrats and environmental groups. Constructing exemptions to the spills law that are too narrow could result in people being forced to pay for remediation they didn’t cause. But writing the exemptions too broadly could result in polluters passing the cost of remediation on to taxpayers. 

Across the state, municipal wastewater treatment utilities sell or give away the byproducts of their plants to use as fertilizer on farm fields. The DNR grants permits to allow the spreading of these byproducts, known as biosolids, which for years was seen as an environmentally responsible source of fertilizer because it was recycled. However biosolids from places with PFAS contamination in the water are contaminated, which can pollute the water near the field where they’re spread. 

Wimberger wants to make sure these farmers aren’t on the hook with the DNR to pay for contamination they didn’t know was happening and the DNR gave them a permit to create. 

But environmental advocates don’t want the exemptions to be so vague that they’re available to entities such as paper mills or chemical manufacturers. 

“We’re just asking you to understand that the way that you word an exemption is going to matter,” Christine Sieger, director of the DNR’s remediation and redevelopment bureau, said in her testimony. “I implement the spill law all day, every day, and I can tell you, people are crafty when it comes to getting out of liability. They will come up with all sorts of ways for how they can get themselves off the hook. And I just, I don’t want you to help them do that. Let’s make sure that they can take care of our people and clean up the mess that they’ve made.”

After the proposed PFAS bill was vetoed by Evers last session, Wimberger complained that opponents raised concerns about the exemptions being too broadly worded without naming specifics. On Tuesday, he said people objected with “platitudes” rather than specific language that could be corrected and that he hoped opponents could be more constructive this time around. 

Erik Kanter, director of government relations for Clean Wisconsin, said Tuesday the organization couldn’t support the proposal without amendments, proposing specific line-by-line changes for the bill authors to make. 

Kanter pointed to a line in SB 128 that states “a person that spreads biosolids or wastewater residuals contaminated by PFAS in compliance with any applicable license or permit” is exempt from being held responsible for PFAS contamination under the spills law. However, he said, that line is so vaguely worded that an industrial manufacturer could purchase and spread biosolids on its property as a way to gain an exemption from being held responsible for contamination it caused by creating PFAS as a byproduct of manufacturing. 

“The Legislature created the PFAS trust fund 29 months ago,” Kanter said. “Marinette, Peshtigo, the Town of Campbell, the town of Stella and communities and individuals throughout the state have waited and waited and waited for state government to create the programs through which the PFAS trust fund can be allocated. They don’t deserve to wait another day. They don’t deserve a bill that doesn’t meet their needs or lets polluters off the hook and saddles taxpayers with the bill. We believe that compromise is possible and essential. We value the bill authors’ partnership to find compromise on this bill. Clean Wisconsin shares their goal in getting a bill to the governor’s desk for his signature this session, and we will continue working in good faith toward that end.”

Both Mursau and Wimberger expressed hope that they could write an amendment that would get enough support to be signed into law.

“It’s my intention to take the feedback here … and bring forward the amendment that can earn the support of the Legislature to be signed into law by the governor,” Mursau said. “I also want to take this opportunity to thank the groups and individuals who have come to us, not just with criticisms, but with constructive ideas. Those who are willing to engage in dialogue, not just opposition, have been instrumental in helping us shape the legislation that can actually pass and deliver results. In a divided government like ours, meaningful progress requires compromise. I’m grateful for those who recognize that and continue to work with us in good faith.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

The voting rights focused firm Law Forward and former Democratic U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold filed an amicus brief Monday in a lawsuit brought by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to strike down a law that limits the amount of money political parties can contribute to individual candidates for office. 

The lawsuit was initially brought in 2022 by two Republican candidates, including then-Sen. J.D. Vance. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Republican argument and now that decision is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court is expected to hear the case during its 2025-26 term, which began on Monday. 

In the amicus brief, Feingold and Law Forward argue that the weakening of campaign finance laws over the past few decades has deeply harmed American democracy — making elected officials more responsive to the needs of their wealthiest donors, in or out of their states and districts, rather than their constituents. 

“We don’t have to guess what will happen if additional campaign finance rules are torn up, we’ve already witnessed it in Wisconsin. Striking down these federal limits will remove guardrails that are necessary for a representative democracy to thrive,” Feingold said in a statement. “The erosion of regulations is responsible for an alarming increase in the amount of money flowing through elections, giving wealthy donors an outsized voice in the political process, reducing the public’s faith in their elected representatives, and diminishing voters’ willingness to continue participating in the political process.”

During his 18 years in the Senate, Feingold regularly focused on campaign finance issues, including the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which is commonly known as McCain-Feingold and instituted a number of rules guiding the use of “soft money” by outside groups running ads to influence elections.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC decision in 2010 weakened the law and the brief filed Monday argues the erosion of campaign finance rules has damaged the country’s politics and made its government vulnerable to corruption. 

“For a representative democracy to thrive, elected officials must be responsive to their constituents and avoid even the appearance of corruption,” the brief states. “Campaign finance regulation exists to reinforce these guardrails. Yet, for years, opponents of regulation have persistently chiseled away at the limits established to prevent excessive campaign cash from corrupting our elections.” 

The brief uses Wisconsin as an example, which since 2015 has not placed a limit on the amount political parties can give to candidates. That change has resulted in wealthy donors from Wisconsin and across the country giving maximum contributions to candidates’ campaigns while giving much larger donations to each candidate’s party — essentially using the party committee as a middleman to funnel millions of dollars into candidate accounts. 

“With each election cycle, the total contributions made, especially for statewide candidates, grows at a shocking rate, incentivizing candidates to court the wealthiest donors,” the brief states. “And, as Wisconsin elections have drawn more and more national attention, the pool of prospective donors has expanded to include increasing numbers of millionaires and billionaires residing in other states. Thus, the cycle continues. The flood of money into Wisconsin’s elections has bred accusations of corruption and threatens to drown out — if not completely silence — the voices of average voters.”

The brief argues that the decision by Wisconsin Republicans in 2015 to weaken the state’s campaign finance laws resulted in a downward spiral that opened the floodgates to money pouring into high profile races — most notably campaigns for governor and state Supreme Court. 

“Wisconsin’s experience shows exactly what happens when we eliminate these crucial guardrails,” Law Forward attorney Rachel Snyder said. “The wealthiest donors route massive contributions through political parties, effectively buying themselves significant access to and influence with both political parties and elected officials. This isn’t about partisan politics — it’s about preserving a democracy where average citizens’ voices aren’t drowned out by billionaires’ checkbooks.”

Judge Lisa Neubauer | judgeneubauer.com

Lisa Neubauer, an appeals court judge and former candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, announced Monday she plans to retire at the end of her term next year. 

Neubauer, 68, has sat on the District II Court of Appeals for 18 years after being appointed to the seat in 2007. Prior to joining the bench, she was a private practice attorney at Milwaukee-based Foley and Lardner. 

She ran unsuccessfully for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2019 and was last elected to a six-year term on the appeals court in 2020, winning 54% of the vote in the 12-county southeastern Wisconsin district that is based in Waukesha County. 

She is also the mother of Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine). 

As the judicial liberals have slowly gained control of the Supreme Court over the past five years, District II has become the most reliably conservative appellate district. Neubauer is the only liberal on the four judge panel. 

“In these trying and divided times, our courts must protect our democracy, our liberty, and our rights, by maintaining judicial independence and upholding the constitution and the rule of law. I have attempted to do that with every single decision,” Neubauer said. 

Last week, conservative District II Judge Maria Lazar announced she is  running for the Supreme Court in next year’s April election.

Dairy cows huddle at sunset on a farm in Manitowoc County. Advocates and farmers say an ICE raid that took 24 migrants into custody Sept. 25 poses a threat to the state’s dairy farms and the immigrant workers that keep the industry afloat. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)

The morning of Sept. 25, federal agents and immigration authorities swept into Manitowoc to arrest people alleged to be in the country without proper documentation. Agents first went to a Walmart parking lot where dairy workers are known to meet up before driving to the farms where they work. The action then moved on to private residences, where migrants were arrested as they left the house. 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claims the ICE raid in Manitowoc was aimed at dismantling an international sex and drug trafficking ring, but has so far provided little evidence to support that claim. Federal authorities initially said 21 migrants had been arrested in the raid, before later saying 24 had been picked up. 

On Tuesday, DHS released the names of six of the 24. Only one individual named in the release has been charged with a sex crime — Jose Hilario Moreno Portillo, who was charged in Manitowoc County court in May with the 2nd degree sexual assault of a child. However, Moreno Portillo has not yet been convicted and court records show he’s been in ICE custody since July. 

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on why Moreno Portillo was named as being arrested in the Manitowoc action when he was already in ICE custody. 

The five other named individuals have been convicted of identity theft, hit-and-run, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, possession of narcotic equipment, traffic offenses and a failure to appear charge. 

In Wisconsin, immigrants without documentation aren’t able to obtain driver’s licenses, which often causes them to wrack up several criminal traffic offenses when they’re pulled over and ticketed for driving without a license. 

With little proof that ICE actually broke up a ring of sex traffickers, immigration advocates and farm groups see the raid as a direct threat to the state’s dairy farms and the immigrant workers that keep the industry afloat. 

Farmers and immigrant advocates in Wisconsin have been watching ICE’s actions on dairy farms across the country closely. In March, ICE raided a dairy farm and petting zoo in New York. In April, a raid on a dairy farm in Vermont resulted in eight arrests. And in early June, ICE arrested 11 immigrants in a raid on a dairy farm in New Mexico. 

But so far, enforcement against undocumented people on dairy farms had been sporadic and far from the Midwest. In June, President Donald Trump announced and then retreated from guidance that ICE would not aggressively target farms and the hospitality industry. 

While last Thursday’s raid in Manitowoc didn’t take place on a dairy farm, most of the individuals arrested were dairy workers. Beyond that, they were dairy workers in the county with the highest concentration of dairy factory farms in the state. Manitowoc County and its northeast Wisconsin neighbors are the epicenter of the modern farming powerhouse that maintains Wisconsin’s status as “America’s Dairyland.” 

“It’s just sending an economic ripple effect across the dairy industry, which is Wisconsin’s rural economy,” says Luis Velasquez, statewide organizing director for immigrant advocacy group Voces de la Frontera. “And then also there’s the symbolic and political dimension to it as well. We are America’s Dairyland, and so this enforcement is not just an administrative matter, but it threatens the industry’s well being. Who are we going to be after all of this? Are we still going to be America’s Dairyland?”

Velasquez says the raid sent a “big anxiety wave” through immigrant communities across the state. 

“These views have just spiraled out of control in terms of the rumors that have been sent out across the community, rumors of ICE coming into their neighborhoods, to their homes, to their schools,” Velasquez says.  

“I have had serious conversations since the raid in Manitowoc of folks who are planning to leave after many years of being here,” he adds. “They just don’t feel like this is a humane lifestyle anymore. They’ve given many years of their lives, and many of them have children here.” 

Michael Slattery, a Manitowoc County farmer who grows grain and raises Holstein steers, points to data that shows 70% of the labor on Wisconsin’s dairy farms comes from immigrants and estimates that the dairy industry is the driver of 20% of Manitowoc County’s economy. 

Slattery says farmers can’t survive without that migrant labor because no one else is willing to do the work.

“Do you want to get up at 3 a.m. seven days a week to go out in the cold, the heat, to get kicked by cows when you’re putting the suction cups on, to be shat upon, pissed on, pushed around by 1,400 pound cows? People don’t want that,” he says. “I’ve tried to hire part time labor here, I cannot get people, they don’t want to do this sort of stuff.”

Simply expecting farm families to pick up the slack isn’t the answer, he adds.  “These dairy farms, they don’t have enough family members that can come out and replace immigrant labor, both documented and undocumented, that are leaving,” Slattery says. “They’re in a money-losing situation now.” 

Losing the dairy labor force would have ripple effects across the economy in Wisconsin and the country. 

“What do they do in that situation? If your cows cannot be milked, in two, two and a half weeks they’ll go dry,” he says. “The cows get milk fever, get ill, that’s your cheap hamburger in the stores. They’re selling the cows at a loss, that’s what they’ll do. There’s less milk in the market, that will drive up prices for cheese, milk and butter.”

Danielle Endvick, executive director of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, says if Wisconsin’s immigrant workers leave the state — either from being arrested by ICE or leaving on their own to avoid arrest — farms could close and prices could increase. 

“Immigration raids and mass deportations can shrink rural economies, are terribly destabilizing for communities and can harm schools, churches, just the fabric of our rural communities too,” Endvick says. “Our rural spaces, our farmers can’t thrive if we’re treating a key workforce like they’re disposable. I think that immigrant workers are essential to Wisconsin dairy, and that when they are threatened, farmers in our rural communities are threatened too.”

Fred Clark announced Wednesday he's running for Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District. (Screenshot)

Fred Clark, a former Democratic state legislator and executive director of Wisconsin Green Fire, announced Wednesday he’s running for Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District

The 7th District covers much of northern and central Wisconsin. It is currently held by Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, who recently announced he is running for governor. Clark served in the Legislature from 2008 to 2015. After leaving the Legislature, he worked for Green Fire, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting Wisconsin’s environment. 

In a video announcing his run, Clark complained that Congress is allowing President Donald Trump to institute tariffs that are harming the northern Wisconsin economy while cutting federal benefits and failing to keep the government funded. 

“We’re all starting to pay more for the things we need because this Congress refused to stop an insane tariff war against our best trading partners,” Clark said.  “And unbelievably, they just voted for a massive handout to billionaires that will add $3.4 trillion to our national debt while taking health care away from 270,000 Wisconsinites who need it the most, leaving the rest of us to pay more for health care that’s just getting worse.” 

On his campaign website, Clark says his priorities are rebuilding rural economies, maintaining secure borders while providing a pathway for immigrants to live and work in the country, expanding health care coverage and responsibly managing the state’s farms and forests. 

Jessi Ebben, a Republican from Stanley had filed to run for the seat before Tiffany announced his gubernatorial campaign. Republican state lawmakers from the area, including Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) could also get in the race.

In a video posted to X, Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar announced she's running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. (headshot courtesy of Wisconsin Court System)

Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar announced she’s running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Wednesday morning.

Since her election to the District II Court of Appeals in 2022, Lazar has been a reliable vote for right-wing causes on the panel — which is controlled by a 3-1 conservative majority. 

Lazar joins fellow appellate Judge Chris Taylor in the race for an open seat on the Court, which is being vacated by Justice Rebecca Bradley. Bradley has been one of the Court’s most right-wing members and announced earlier this year she would not run for re-election. 

In a video posted to X, Lazar said she was running for the seat to reduce the “politicization” of the Court. 

“We need to draw a line in the sand and stop the destruction of our courts, especially our state Supreme Court,” Lazar said. “I am an independent, impartial judge who strives to follow the law and Constitution in every decision I make from the bench. It is time to restore that level of judicial dedication to the Court.”

Lazar, a former Waukesha County judge and assistant district attorney, also noted that she’s been elected to her seats on the circuit and appeals courts while Taylor, a former Democratic state lawmaker, was first appointed to a seat on the Dane County Circuit Court by Gov. Tony Evers. 

While her campaign announcement sought to establish her nonpartisan bonafides, Lazar has a history of fighting for Republican causes. In her last campaign for her seat on the court of appeals, Lazar touted endorsements from prominent election deniers. 

Those endorsements included former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who recently agreed to have his law license suspended for three years over his widely derided review of the 2020 presidential election, Jim Troupis, who is facing criminal charges for his role in the plot to cast false Electoral College votes on behalf of President Donald Trump, and Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission who cast one of those fraudulent ballots and has regularly used his position to spread conspiracy theories about election administration. 

Lazar was also endorsed in that race by Pro-Life Wisconsin, an organization dedicated to banning all abortions in the state. That endorsement is a stark contrast with Taylor, who previously worked as policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. 

“Just like Rebecca Bradley, Maria Lazar has spent her career rolling back people’s rights, attacking reproductive health care and voting rights, and doing the bidding of powerful special interests and her billionaire friends,” Ashley Franz, Taylor’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “If elected, Maria Lazar would be the most extreme member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It’s no surprise that she’s backed by the same right-wing billionaires who tried unsuccessfully to buy a seat on our supreme court this last April, which Wisconsinites overwhelmingly rejected.”

Photo by Gregory Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner

Wisconsin farms applied about 16 million pounds more nitrogen than necessary to their fields in 2022, according to a recently released report from Clean Wisconsin and Alliance for the Great Lakes. 

The excess application of fertilizer poses serious risks to public health, raises costs for people who get their water from public utilities or private wells and increases costs for farmers, the report found. 

Throughout the report, the environmental groups included input from residents who have had their health and wallets affected by nitrate pollution. 

“I own a daycare center, and the mental toll of just staying in business because I did not cause the contamination of my well and yet am expected to solve the problem is exhausting…” Kewaunee County resident Lisa Cochart says in the report. “This could put me out of business. I work hard to provide my community with a service that assures that each child is receiving the best care and it can be shut down because of a nitrate test that I cannot control.”

The report makes a number of recommendations to better track the amount of nitrogen spread on Wisconsin’s fields and in Wisconsin’s water systems while better enforcing regulations meant to protect drinking water. But agricultural industry representatives have said the report places too much burden on farmers — even though agriculture produces up to 90% of the nitrogen in the state’s groundwater. 

“Wisconsin cannot afford to delay. The cost of inaction — both financial and human — is rising,” the report states. “A coordinated, science-based policy response is essential to reduce nitrate pollution at its source, protect public health and ecosystems, and ensure clean, safe drinking water for future generations.”

The report recommends tougher state standards for nitrates, improved enforcement of nutrient management plans on individual farms, creating a statewide registration system for manure haulers and requiring regular groundwater monitoring for factory farms. It also proposes collecting data on the cost of nitrogen contamination to public water systems, expanding the state’s existing private well compensation program and increasing the state’s nitrogen fertilizer tonnage fees.

While the report’s recommendations are aimed at a wide range of policy areas and farming is the major source of nitrogen contamination, dairy industry representatives have pushed back on its findings. Tim Trotter, CEO of the Dairy Business Association, told Wisconsin Public Radio farmers are already doing enough voluntarily to address the problem. 

“Our work with solutions-minded environmental groups and other stakeholders through a statewide clean water initiative has resulted in tailored changes to programs and policies that open up more opportunities for on-farm innovation that addresses this important issue,” Trotter said. “Reports like this one do little to bring practical, achievable solutions to water quality challenges, and can be counterproductive to progress.”

In the past, the Dairy Business Association has sued state regulators to weaken the state’s ability to regulate pollution sources such as runoff. 

The report states that the state Legislature and the courts have limited the authorities of state agencies, including the Department of Natural Resources and Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, preventing them from doing all that is necessary to manage the contamination. 

“Because Wisconsin administrative agencies have been severely limited in their ability to establish new regulations, they have relied heavily on voluntary incentives, such as cost-sharing and price supports to incentivize farmers to implement conservation measures,” the report states. “However, it is clear that these voluntary incentives alone aren’t enough to solve Wisconsin’s nitrate problems.”

The report also found that in applying more nitrogen fertilizer than necessary, Wisconsin’s farmers are spending $8-$11 million more each year than they need to — “dollars that could be saved with more precise application.” 

More than one-third of the state’s residents get their drinking water from private wells, which are especially susceptible to nitrate contamination. The report recommends expanding the well compensation program, but adds that is just a band-aid solution. 

The program also limits participation to residents making less than $60,000 per year and includes a number of requirements that further restrict who is eligible, even if their wells exceed the state’s nitrate standard of 10 milligrams per liter, according to the report.  

Instead, the report argues, the state needs to better work to keep nitrates out of the groundwater in the first place. 

“Well compensation programs, while vital for near-term relief, are ultimately a stopgap,” the report states. “They do not address the root cause of nitrate pollution. Without stronger upstream controls on nitrate pollution, more families will face the high cost and growing scarcity of access to safe drinking water.”