Ryan Strnad, who promoted recycling when he announced earlier this summer that he would seek the Democratic nomination to run for governor, ended his campaign Tuesday. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Democratic hopeful Ryan Strnad, an American Family Field beer vendor from Mukwonago, announced Tuesday he is ending his campaign for governor. 

“I want to thank every person who supported this campaign,” Strnad said in a statement. “I ran to give working class families a voice and to deliver results for communities that have long been overlooked.”

Strnad launched his campaign for the Democratic nomination in August, acknowledging  he was polarizing and a longshot for the position. He told the Examiner at the start of his campaign that his mother thought he should “run for something smaller.”

He launched his campaign saying that he would seek to improve conditions for workers by repealing Act 10 and getting rid of “right to work” — the law that lets workers who are represented by unions decline to pay union dues without giving up their right to the union’s representation. He said he supported police and allowing access to abortion in Wisconsin. 

Strnad said he is endorsing Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in the crowded race and encouraged his supporters to support him as well. He said Crowley “is the candidate who can hit the ground running, fight for families, and begin delivering those results for Wisconsin starting on day one.”

Other Democratic hopefuls include Lt. Gov. Sarah Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) and former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes.

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Democrats and pro-democracy organizations held a rally Oct. 16 to call for the creation of an independent redistricting commission. On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued an order for two judicial panels to hear arguments against Wisconsin's current U.S. House maps. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a pair of three-judge panels to hear arguments in two lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional maps. 

The challenges to the maps come as fights play out all over the country over the dividing lines of congressional districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections. After Texas legislators worked to draw Democratic seats out of existence at the behest of President Donald Trump and a number of other Republican-led states followed suit, California voters elected to temporarily undo their state’s independent redistricting commission and allow Democratic leaders to wipe out Republican-leaning seats. 

Similar efforts have followed to varying degrees of success in states including Arkansas, Indiana and Virginia. 

Wisconsin’s political maps have been at the center of its divided government for more than a decade, with the Supreme Court undoing the partisan gerrymander in the state Legislature two years ago. 

Since then, the focus has turned to Wisconsin’s congressional maps, where Republicans control six of the state’s eight districts. More than once, the Supreme Court has declined to hear cases that request the Court directly take up challenges to the congressional maps. 

A lobbying effort in the state is also ongoing to establish an independent, nonpartisan process for creating the state’s legislative and congressional maps. 

On Tuesday, the Court ruled that the challenges to the maps must follow a 2011 law, passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, which requires that challenges to the state’s congressional districts be heard by a panel of three circuit court judges. 

Republicans had argued that law shouldn’t apply in this case. In a 5-2 decision, in which the court’s four liberal justices were joined by conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, the Court ruled the law applies and the panels should be created.

In the majority decision, the Court’s liberals also appointed the panels — of which all the members were appointed by Gov. Tony Evers or endorsed liberal Justice Susan Crawford in this spring’s election. 

Hagedorn dissented on the appointment of the panels, arguing the panel members should’ve been appointed randomly. 

“Given the nature of this case and the statute’s implicit call for geographic diversity and neutrality, a randomly-selected panel and venue would be a better way to fulfill the statutory mandate,” Hagedorn wrote. “To be clear, I am not suggesting the judicial panel will fail to do its job with integrity and impartiality. But this approach is an odd choice in the face of a statute so clearly designed to deter litigants from selecting their preferred venue and judge.” 

Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented from the decision, arguing the majority chose the judges on the panel to further the goals of the Democratic party. 

In several previous lawsuits over political maps, Bradley and Ziegler have issued rulings that benefited the Republican party or further entrenched the partisan gerrymander that has allowed the Republican party to retain control of the Legislature for 15 years. 

“Hand picking circuit court judges to perform political maneuvering is unimaginable,” Ziegler wrote. “Yet, my colleagues persist and appear to do this, all in furtherance of delivering partisan, political advantage to the Democratic Party.” 

On Tuesday, Crawford and Justice Janet Protasiewicz also issued orders denying requests from Republican members of Congress and GOP voters that they recuse themselves from the redistricting cases. Since the two justices’ elections in recent years, the state’s Republicans have regularly accused the pair of making statements on the campaign trail that show pre-judgment of cases involving the state’s political maps. 

“The Congressmen’s recusal theories are overbroad, impracticable, and rife with unintended consequences,” Crawford wrote. “Individuals and organizations have the right to contribute to judicial campaigns and to express their beliefs about the effect judicial elections will have on issues of importance to them. Demanding that a justice recuse from a case because third parties who made campaign contributions have expressed their views on high-profile issues improperly implies that the judge had endorsed or adopted such views. This insinuation is inappropriate, particularly where the judge has expressly disclaimed such an endorsement, and undermines judicial impartiality. Further, it would chill protected speech and undermine this court’s central role of deciding cases of statewide importance.”

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WisconsinEye's coverage includes livestreams of committee hearings, floor sessions and press conferences. Rep. Alex Dallman speaks at a press conference in June that was livestreamed by WisconsinEye. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

WisconsinEye — the independent, nonprofit service that provides coverage of Wisconsin state government similar to C-Span — is set to halt its coverage on Dec. 15 without sufficient funding and is turning to lawmakers as well as donors for help.

The service’s coverage includes livestreams of committee hearings, floor sessions and press conferences. It also has an extensive video archive of more than 30,000 hours of state government proceedings, candidate interviews and other programming. 

“We operate on a shoestring budget, but we exceed our contractual agreement with the Legislature,” WisconsinEye President Jon Henkes said, noting that they are required to cover all floor sessions as well as a certain percentage of committee hearings. “For 18 years, we have far exceeded those expectations and requirements, so we’re doing a remarkable job.”

All of that could stop — live coverage eliminated and the video archive at risk of going offline — if the organization doesn’t raise $887,000, enough to cover its 2026 annual budget, it warns in a popup message on its website. In a November press release, the organization warned of this possibility.

“It’s clear to us that the current funding model is not working. We can continue to knock on doors. We continue to connect with potential donors,” Henkes said. “The fact is by the end of December, we will run out of money — and that is the reason why we sounded the alarm a week ago — if we cannot bridge this gap in the short term.”

Since starting in 2007, WisconsinEye has operated independently with the majority of its funding coming from charitable, nonprofit donations. Henkes said that the organization, similar to other nonprofits, has faced a tough fundraising environment since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

He said there has been “a very palpable donor skittishness” due to economic uncertainty and an increase in competitiveness as nonprofits that were more dormant during the pandemic have reemerged.

“We’re such a small nonprofit, relatively young in the world of philanthropy, we’re never first in line. We’re lucky to be third in line at times,” Henkes said.

“We are not grounded and deeply rooted in a local community meeting basic human needs,” he continued. “We’re not feeding the homeless, we’re not providing shelter, we’re not disaster relief… then we’re also faced with a recent trend, which is record-breaking political fundraising, so donors who are interested in the inputs and outcomes of government are more inclined to give to candidates, campaigns and causes, but yet they put WisconsinEye into that same general bucket of politics, and we’ve got to fight our way through that fog, because that’s not us. We don’t advocate. We’re the neutral ground.”

Henkes said WisconsinEye is continuing to make inquiries and raising $250,000 could get the organization through the first quarter of 2026.

As first reported by WisPolitics, the organization is also looking to the Legislature for assistance. 

The state has provided grant funding on a few occasions, including during the pandemic. In the 2025-27 state budget, Wisconsin lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers extended WisconsinEye’s opportunity to access $10 million in state funds to build a permanent endowment fund until June 2026. 

The state had initially set aside the money in the previous budget, which required WisconsinEye to raise the entire $10 million in order to get the state-funded match. The organization wasn’t able to access the state’s portion because it didn’t meet the full amount.

In the new budget, the organization is able to collect the state portion on a dollar-by-dollar basis that matches WisconsinEye’s own fundraising.

Currently, $250,000 is available with no match requirement. That will cover expenses through Dec. 15.

The organization can receive the other $9.75 million if it raises an equal amount from private sources. Henkes said that those match dollars would not help with current operating costs, however.

“We could raise a half million dollars and the state would match that, but those dollars, by law, then would have to go into an endowment account — could not be spent for operating current budget needs, and could only be used as the income off of that investment is generated,” Henkes said. “Really, in a sense, we are competing against ourselves.” 

However, even still, Henkes says the organization has made “well qualified, well cultivated” donation requests totaling more than $9 million. None of those requests have led to donations.

“We’re trying to raise money for the operating budget. At the same time, we’ve got this wonderful opportunity to raise $10 million to create a $20 million endowment, which would solve the funding need once and for all,” Henkes said. “The priority right now is meeting month-to-month obligations and keeping the lights on, and not losing staff and having to rebuild if we do lose staff, so the pressure is on us right now.”

The organization is turning to Wisconsin lawmakers for some help with addressing its funding gaps by eliminating the match requirement or finding a way to release some of the state funding to support its operating budget.

In a letter to lawmakers, WisconsinEye identified three alternative routes they could take:

• Provide annual funding of $1 million dollars per year to fund and maintain WisconsinEye’s live and produced content; 
• Provide $1 million per year for each of the next three years, carrying WisconsinEye through the 2027-28 budget cycle; 
•  Provide $1 million for 2026 and have the next Legislature consider the 2027-28 WisconsinEye Budget Request. 

Under the third option, the 2027-28 session would not be broadcast until funds are appropriated.

Henkes said he and the rest of WisconsinEye’s management are hopeful that lawmakers will be open to helping. He said there are many champions and supporters of WisconsinEye in the Legislature, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton). He also noted that bipartisan effort led lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers during the budget process to extend the availability of the $10 million. 

“This is not like we’re asking for new money. This money has already been earmarked for WisconsinEye. We’re simply asking for release of those funds, or part of those funds, in a way different from the endowment,” Henkes said. “The best case scenario would be if the Legislature would release a minimum of one year, so $1 million, essentially to carry us forward, and we can focus 100% over the next several months through June, to really hammer down and see if we can’t raise some endowment dollars. We think that’s a very viable option, and we’re hopeful.” 

Henkes said WisconsinEye provides accountability for the state government — providing a view of how decisions are made that affect every citizen and community. He said that is the message the fundraising team is taking to potential donors. 

“There’s this current cry out there right now — and a legitimate cry — to save our democracy, and that is a painting that is being colored by different voices,” Henkes said. “Some of those voices are saying we need election integrity. Those who are eligible to vote should have every opportunity, and we need to guard against those who don’t. We need to guard against gerrymandered legislative districts. We need to tone down the partisan rhetoric and all this negative campaign stuff.” 

WisconsinEye is able to meet those demands, he argued. 

“At the heart of all that is WisconsinEye and providing transparency and access to what really happens,” Henkes said. “What we are is a network where truth takes its rightful place. If you really want to know what happened, without partisan spin, without sensational headlines, then you come to WisconsinEye.”

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President Donald Trump meets with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani n the Oval Office on Nov. 21, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani turned around their heated criticism in remarks to the press after an Oval Office meeting Friday.

After months of attacking each other, Trump and Mamdani pledged to address the high cost of living for New Yorkers. The White House has tried to steer messaging toward affordability in recent weeks as Trump’s approval ratings on the economy have sunk. 

“Some of his ideas really are the same ideas I have,” Trump said. “You know the new word is affordability. Another word is just groceries. It’s sort of an old-fashioned word, but it’s very accurate. They’re coming down.”

Food prices have risen considerably in recent years. Groceries overall cost 3.1% more than they did a year ago, according to the government’s latest Consumer Price Index.

Mamdani campaigned on lowering the cost of living, including property tax reform, making buses free and floating the idea of city-run grocery stories.

The mayor-elect described the meeting as “a productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers.”

“We spoke about rent, we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities, we spoke about the different ways in which people are being pushed out, and I appreciated the time with the president,” Mamdani said.

The pair fielded questions on housing costs, crime, whether either of them would retract their recent barbs and whether Trump would backtrack his threats to cut federal money to New York City.

“Well, I think if we didn’t get along, whether it’s cut off or just make it a little bit difficult, or not give as much, we want to see,” Trump said.

“We had a meeting today that actually surprised me. He wants to see no crime. He wants to see housing being built. He wants to see rents coming down. All things that I agree with. Now, we may disagree how we get there,” Trump added.

In response to a question about GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Trump ally, calling Mamdani a “jihadist” as she eyes the New York gubernatorial seat, Trump said “she’s out there campaigning, and you say things sometimes in a campaign.”

“I met with a man who is a very rational person. I met with a man who wants to see, really wants to see, New York be great again,” Trump continued, adding “I’ll be cheering for him.”

Mamdani will be the city’s first Muslim mayor, as well as the youngest ever elected.

Mamdani sought meeting

Mamdani said he sought the meeting with Trump.

“My team reached out to the White House to set up this meeting because I will work with anyone to make life more affordable for the 8 and a half million people who call this city home,” Mamdani said in a press conference Thursday.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday the meeting “speaks to the fact that President Trump is willing to meet with anyone.”

“It speaks volumes that tomorrow we have a communist coming to the White House.”

Trump and congressional Republicans have repeatedly referred to the 34-year-old Mamdani as a “communist.” Mamdani, who ran on the Democratic ticket, identifies as a Democratic Socialist, an organization that claims roughly 85,000 members nationally. The ideology as a movement received a boost after the 2016 presidential run of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who represents Vermont and caucuses with Democrats.

Mamdani beat out former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo this month by a 50.4% to 41% margin, according to the New York Times election coverage. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa took just over 7% of the vote. Cuomo, who ran as an independent, resigned from office in 2021 after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment.

Trump endorsed Cuomo, seemingly reluctantly, on the eve of the election, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

“Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice,” he wrote. “You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”

Threat to pull funding

As Mamdani’s campaign gained momentum, Trump threatened to cut off billions in federal funding to New York City, Trump’s own home city.

Trump repeated the threat on election eve, writing on Truth Social that if Mamdani won, New York City would be a “total economic and social disaster” and that NYC should not expect any federal dollars “other than the very minimum as required.”

In Mamdani’s victory speech, he referred to Trump as a “despot.”

In July, Trump threatened to arrest Mamdani if the incoming mayor does not comply with the administration’s mass deportation campaign, including sending an influx of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to New York City.

 

Hemp plant at a farm in Minnesota. (Photo by Baylor Spears)

When Jacob Diener first heard that the status of hemp could be reviewed, he wasn’t too concerned. With his company, A Good Plug, the 32-year-old expected to continue producing small batch hemp products like gummies, brownies, and cheesecakes. 

“It seems around this time it happens every year that they want to re-assess the Farm Bill,” Diener told the Wisconsin Examiner. But 2025 was different and Diener, like others across the industry, was caught off guard when what amounted to a prohibition on his livelihood was discreetly attached to a deal to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. “It’s just weird and scary,” he said. 

Hemp businesses were allowed to flourish after the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized the production and distribution of hemp products with no more than 0.3% THC on a dry weight basis. But under new rules that were included in the stopgap spending bill ending the federal government shutdown last week, products must contain no more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container. 

Steve Hampton, owner of the Eau Claire-based company Steve’s Hemp, says that standard is biologically impossible to meet. “[The] hemp plant struggles to grow to meet that guideline before it’s even harvested,” Hampton told the Wisconsin Examiner. “So, we’re seeing upwards to 99% of the industry get wiped out from this.” 

THC is the primary psychoactive compound in the cannabis plant. Although hemp and the psychoactive variety commonly known as marijuana are the same plant species, they have different chemical compositions. Many cannabis varieties are cultivated with high levels of THC for markets in states where the plant has been legalized medical or recreational. 

Hemp, with far lower concentrations of THC, is mostly used for rope, paper and industrial products. It is also offered in states that do not have legal cannabis markets as an alternative — a source for  products containing delta-9 THC, THCa, THCp and other derivatives. 

The law reopening the government, however, effectively bans those products and gives the industry until next November to adapt or fizzle out. Erin Kelly, owner of the Wauwatosa-based hemp goods store Kelly’s Greens, told TMJ4 that even CBD products contain trace amounts of THC which make them effective medicine, and that the new rules would render that medicine ineffective. Wisconsin’s hemp industry is estimated to be valued at $700 million and accounts for at least 3,500 jobs, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. 

“Everybody’s frantic, you know, we’re all worried,” Hampton told the Examiner. Without an amendment to the new rules or legislative intervention, Hampton says the nation’s $28.4 billion hemp industry won’t survive, and that most of his own store’s inventory would be banned. 

More than just a cash crop

When he was a teenager in Fond du Lac, Diener was introduced to cannabis through his grandmother, who used it to manage her pain and chronic illnesses. He began using it to help with his stress and the early signs of Crohn’s disease he was experiencing

After years of working in the restaurant industry, Diener realized he wanted more out of life. “And so I started to get permission from my chef to start making candy in the kitchen behind the scenes, just learning the basics, but with the intentions that I wanted to make infused candy, gummy worms, stuff like that,” he said. “Stuff that I didn’t see on the market at the time.”

Hampton also became involved in hemp after experiencing the medicinal value of the plant. “I was a college student at the time,” he said, “and was looking for some relief with some back pain, some sore muscles from the gym. And my dad had actually bought me some CBD oil to test out for my birthday. And it was from a local farm up here in northern Wisconsin. That helped me a ton with what I needed it for.” 

Hampton realized that there were not many such products marketed to younger people like him. He grew his business online before opening a storefront during Small Business Week in 2021. Today Hampton, 29, owns and operates his business alongside his wife and five employees. People of all ages come into his store. “In-store, we have a lot of customers who come in just looking for relief,” he said. Many of the customers are seeking a remedy for anxiety, as well as “a large handful of customers that have chronic pain,” he said. 

Steve’s Hemp carries flowers, vapes, gummies, candies, topical ointments and other products. Diener, who specializes in culinary cannabis products, makes everything from Nerds-covered gummies (a popular product he calls “Stoney Bites”) to other sweets. Diener describes his customers as “such a community of oddballs and people who have unique personalities. And that’s what I’ve always hoped for, and that’s kind of what I come from and who I am a person. People authentic to themselves.” 

The cost of  prohibition

Before the federal ban on THC-derived hemp products was added to the bill to reopen the government, Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin were already working on bills to restrict or prohibit the industry in the state. Representatives Lindee Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls), Jim Piwowarczyk (R-Hubertus) and others introduced what they called “a common-sense corrective bill” to close the “loophole” that allowed what they called “dangerous, psychoactive THC-laced products to proliferate in Wisconsin.” 

The lawmakers pointed to health advisory warnings issued by federal agencies about the use of delta-9 THC, and issues with unregulated markets across the country. In Wisconsin, hemp products from CBD to delta-9, HHH, THCa, and others can either be found at dispensaries where employees are often knowledgeable about their products, or at gas stations and smoke shops where customers don’t receive information and guidance. Wisconsin lawmakers have raised an alarm about emergency room visits and poison center calls linked to delta-8 THC and similar compounds, as well as concerns that children could easily purchase the products. 

Hemp business owners say they often applaud common sense regulation. They also support fully legalizing cannabis in Wisconsin —  ending prohibition. To address concerns about health consequences and children’s access to cannabis, “what would really help that is regulation, not prohibition,” Hampton said.

Everything from clear packaging guidelines to age restrictions, lab testing and education about where the product comes from and what it does could be part of a legal regulatory structure, Hampton argued. Rather than allowing any gas station to carry hemp products, Hampton would like to see licensed facilities staffed by people who care about what they’re doing. “Our main goal with this business was to educate our customers, and know what’s in our product, and recommend what would work best for our customer,” he said. 

One 2024 study analyzing national poison data systems found that between 2021 and 2022, reports of exposure to delta-8 THC increased by 79%. The study also found that poison center calls for delta-8 were significantly lower in places where either delta-THC was banned, or where cannabis use was already legalized. “Consistent regulation of delta-THC across all states should be adopted,” the study recommended. Other poison center data shows that since 2022, exposures to delta-8 THC have plummeted, a trend which has continued into 2025. 

Prohibition also creates economic stagnation,  advocates contend. Tim Frey, of Ignite Dispensary and Cigar calls it “Wisconsin’s half a billion dollar loss.”

Frey lobbied against state Republican bills to restrict hemp, and he argues that hundreds of millions are essentially handed over to Michigan and Illinois every year when Wisconsinites make the sometimes difficult decision to travel across state lines to obtain cannabis. 

“Now that Minnesota is opening up, with the largest border, we’re probably going to be losing approximately up to $200 million,” Frey told Wisconsin Examiner. “And then if they came up with a small tax on hemp-derived stuff, that’s easily $100 million there, if not more, give or take. So it’s going to be around half a billion dollars that Wisconsin could use to give to law enforcement, get fentanyl off our streets, reduce property taxes, invest in roads” and other uses. 

Hampton fears that now customers will go to the black market or risk being pulled over after driving to a neighboring state. “I just don’t understand why they thought that prohibition would be the right answer,” he said. 

As some Wisconsin legislators are working to enact a new prohibition on hemp products, others are trying to legalize medicinal THC cannabis in the state. Earlier this year, two-thirds of registered voters polled by Marquette Law School said that cannabis should be legalized in Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have introduced what would be one of the country’s most restrictive medicinal cannabis programs. 

Frey is cautious of the medical-cannabis-only approach, however, “because it’s very hard to qualify with some ailments,” he told the Wisconsin Examiner. He added that if Wisconsin passed a restrictive medical cannabis program, then it would open the door for the state’s indigenous tribal communities, as sovereign nations, to open their own recreational programs. “So then we would be a recreational state without the control, or the revenue,” he said.  

Diener said that when conservative lawmakers talk about cannabis, they sound at least 10 years behind the times. “I think that right now there’s such extreme viewpoints on it that are outdated, and really just don’t line up with today’s market or today’s values with the plant,” he said.

Frey believes that it’s past time Wisconsin had a serious discussion about legalization. “Limit the licenses,” he declared. “Control this, tax it, get licenses out there to responsible people that are going to do things the right way —  that card people, that do truth-in labeling, that care about the quality of their products.”

In addition to strict regulation, Diener said parents can protect their children from hemp products instead of the government banning them. “You have the responsibility just the same as if you have a gun in the home to keep your things in a safe space that your children cannot access,” Diener said. “You wouldn’t have your alcohol bottle sitting just, like, within reach or in a cupboard that your kids know they can access. Even growing up as a teen, when my mom knew that I was starting to go to parties and stuff, she would start to hide her alcohol.” 

After the federal hemp laws were changed, Piwowarczyk, in a television interview, said unsympathetically of hemp business owners that “you guys took a gamble when you decided to open up your hemp business.” 

Hampton counters that lawmakers like Piwowarczyk should “open their eyes, and look around, and actually meet with the constituents of their districts” who are the consumers driving the industry. 

Uneasy months ahead

For now, hemp distributors and their allies have until next November to adjust to the new federal restrictions. Frey said Wisconsin could provide some protection for the industry by enacting its own regulations for hemp products, similar to the way states have legalized cannabis industries despite the ongoing federal prohibition. 

There are already state-level legislative responses in the works, he said. One bill, AB 503, would redefine the definition of hemp to prohibit THC-derived products. Another, AB 606, would add hemp to the responsibilities of the agency in the Department of Revenue that regulates alcohol. A bill authored by Senate Democrats, SB 644, would create a regulated framework and age limits for hemp products, though it lacks Republican co-sponsors. Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) is circulating a draft bill for co-sponsorship that also regulates hemp products. 

“That bill is probably the best, most common-sense written bill that I’ve seen,” Frey told the Wisconsin Examiner. While the Democratic bill would be promising, he said, he thinks it won’t gain Republican support. 

“It’s more crucial to protect this industry in Wisconsin than it is to craft the most perfect bill,” said Frey, adding that he thinks the hemp industry will get behind Testin’s bill “full force”. 

At the same time, however, Frey wonders whether the federal regulations will change by next November. He points out that the new law gives the industry a year to adapt instead of imposing a ban immediately. 

Frey thinks that if Wisconsin passes hemp regulations but the federal laws remain the same, then the hemp industry would risk losing its federal task deductions and also lose the ability to conduct interstate commerce. 

If there is no change to save the hemp industry, a cascade of effects will ripple out. Earlier this year, Hampton  opened a new manufacturing facility just down the street from the Steve’s Hemp storefront. In the middle of next year, he will likely have to close that as well, he said. 

Once the new law takes effect, “our hands are pretty much tied,” said Hampton. “My wife and I will have to find new jobs for each other, continue to make ends meet. And then those families that work for us — those employees that work for us — will have to do the same.” Until then, Diener said, “I am going to continue to serve the people who need us the most and work to continue growing this dream and keeping this dream alive.” 

Hampton and his employees “are obsessed and passionate about this industry,” Hampton said. “We started this industry with hopes to run a legal dispensary out of Wisconsin, and hopefully transition into that. Now that plan is crushed. And so we don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re just going to try to keep our hopes up, and try to fight as much as we can to keep [hemp] legal, and if that isn’t possible, get recreational cannabis pushed through the state of Wisconsin.”

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DPI announced this week that initial special education payments would reimburse schools for their special education costs at 35%. A hallway in La Follette High School in Madison. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Initial special education reimbursement payments to school districts this year will be about 35% of their costs — about 7 percentage points below the estimated rate approved in the state budget.

When the 2025-27 state budget was passed by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. Tony Evers in July, policymakers boasted that their investments would bring the special education reimbursement rate to a historic 42% in the first year of the budget and 45% in the second year. 

While school districts will still receive more aid for special education costs this year than in previous state budgets, it appears that the state funding set aside probably won’t be enough to reach the rate that was estimated when the budget was signed in July.

The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) announced in a bulletin on Monday that initial special education payments for November through March would reimburse schools 35% of their special education costs. While DPI uses a slightly lower rate to avoid overpayment and this is not the final reimbursement rate, Chris Bucher, DPI director of communications, said in an email that the agency has anticipated the rate falling below the estimate.

Special education reimbursement rates for public school districts can vary from the estimate because it is a sum certain allocation, meaning that payments come from a fixed pot of money.

During the budget process, public education advocates, DPI and Gov. Tony Evers called for that to change to a sum sufficient allocation, meaning that the amount of money provided by the state would be enough to meet the set reimbursement rate. Republican lawmakers rejected the request.

Bucher said having a lower reimbursement rate than what is estimated has been relatively typical with budgets, given that there is a fixed amount of state funding as well as a rising amount of unaided special education costs and a rising number of students with disabilities.

According to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo released Thursday, in 2024-25 the state had appropriated about $574 million to special education aid. When the 2023-25 state budget was passed, the appropriation was estimated to bring schools to a 33.3% rate in each year of the budget. In November 2024, DPI estimated a rate of 29.16%, and the final rate for that school year was 30.64%.

Based on cost increases in recent years, DPI projected costs would grow by 4% for its 2025-27 state budget request. It had estimated that aidable costs would be about $1.8 billion in 2025-26 and $1.9 billion in 2026-27. Those estimates were also used as Evers prepared his budget request and as the Legislature prepared the budget. 

According to the new memo, DPI now projects that aidable costs in 2024-25 increased by an estimated 9% — a rate more than twice the original projection when the 2025-27 budget was being drafted.

For the 2025-27 state budget, the DPI requested about $2 billion across the biennium to cover special education costs for school at a rate of 90% by the second year of the budget and to change the funding from “sum certain” to “sum sufficient.”

Gov. Tony Evers also requested the change from sum certain to sum sufficient, though he requested increasing it to a 60% rate by the second year. The Joint Committee on Finance denied those requests instead choosing to provide $207 million in the first year of the budget to cover an estimated 42% of costs and $297 million in the second year to cover costs at an estimated rate of 45%.

Advocates called attention to the reimbursement rate in statements this week, saying the funding system needs an overhaul.

Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union, blamed the rate on lawmakers, saying that they “turned their backs on our most vulnerable children, failing to deliver on promised special education funding and leaving our students without the supports they need to succeed in school.” 

“This shortfall will mean even more communities forced into holding school referendums in 2026 just to meet basic needs, causing uncertainty and hardship for students who deserve better from their elected leaders,” Wirtz-Olsen said in a statement. 

Wirtz-Olsen said lawmakers have been “caught lying about the scant resources they are providing.” 

“It’s time for these politicians to fix Wisconsin’s school funding formula and fulfill what the state Constitution requires,” she said. “Taxpayers have had enough of picking up the tab on our property taxes to make up for their refusal to fund schools. If they won’t take action for the students who most need help, educators and families will.” 

Beth Swedeen, executive director of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, called on the state to change the way it funds school districts. 

“It’s time to build a budget that is rooted in real costs and can provide budget certainty to schools and parents that the promises made by the legislature will translate into real dollars schools can use,” Swedeen said in a statement. “We should not be in this position cycle after cycle where students with disabilities and schools are undercut by accounting codes.”

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“Frankly, Robin Vos’ move to prevent us from circulating this petition and his refusal to bring this bill to the floor is pathetic," Assembly Minority Greta Neubauer (D-Racine). (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Assembly met for its final floor session of 2025 Wednesday, where Democratic lawmakers sought to pass a bill that would extend Medicaid coverage for new mothers for one year after the birth of a child, though Republicans blocked it. Bills to encourage school district consolidation and make changes to elections laws passed.

Republicans block Democratic efforts to get a vote on postpartum Medicaid bill 

Wisconsin is one of two states in the U.S. that have not taken the federal government’s postpartum Medicaid expansion, and Democratic lawmakers hoped to begin the process of changing that during the floor session. 

The bill, which passed the Senate in April on a 32-1 vote, would allow eligible mothers to keep their Medicaid coverage for a year postpartum. Currently in Wisconsin, mothers only get 60 days of coverage if they don’t otherwise qualify for Medicaid.

Assembly Democrats planned to employ a rarely used Assembly rule to pull the bill out of committee and bring it up for a vote. Under the rule, if 50 lawmakers sign a petition, a bill can be brought to the floor. Democratic lawmakers hoped to have the chance to convince some of the Republican cosponsors of the bill to sign on.

Before that could come to fruition, however, the Assembly clerk notified Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) of the plan, Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) told reporters. 

Republicans moved the bill from the Assembly Rules Committee, where it had sat since May, to the Assembly Organization Committee — triggering a rule that says a  withdrawal petition on the bill cannot be circulated for 21 days. 

“This is a great effort by the Speaker to prevent this important bill from getting a vote on the floor,” Neubauer said. 

Neubauer said she didn’t know why the clerk notified the Assembly Republican leaders.

“There had been some conversation with staff about the timeline for [the petition], but I’m not really sure why it happened the way it did,” Neubauer told reporters. She said that Rick Champagne, director of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, told the lawmakers that notification should have happened when they turned the petition in with the 50 signatures, not prior to the petition circulating.

All 45 Democratic lawmakers are cosponsors of the bill as are over 20 Republicans, but the bill has been hung up in the Assembly due to opposition from Vos, who has said in the past that he doesn’t support expanding “welfare.” The bill only needs a simple majority of 50 votes to pass the Assembly.

Neubauer read out the names of the Republican cosponsors during the press conference. 

“These are legislators who believe that this bill should become law, so they say, but they have been bullied by their speaker into not pushing for a vote on this bill on the floor,” Neubauer said. “Frankly, Robin Vos’ move to prevent us from circulating this petition and his refusal to bring this bill to the floor is pathetic, and when moms in Wisconsin and their babies are put at risk, their health and well-being is put at risk, because they do not have adequate health care in the year after they have given birth, it will be Robin Vos’ fault.” 

The Republican lawmakers on the bill include Reps. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston), Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek), Scott Allen (R-Waukesha), Elijah Behnke (R-Town of Chase), Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc), Bob Donovan (R-Greenfield), Cindi Duchow (R-Delafield), Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere), Rick Gundrum (R-Slinger), Nate Gustafson (R-Omro), Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah), Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay), Rob Kreibich (R-New Richmond), Scott Krug (R-Rome), Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc), Dave Maxey (R-New Berlin), Paul Melotik (R-Grafton), Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz), Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee), Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville), Kevin Petersen (R-Waupaca), David Steffen (R-Howard), Rob Tusler (R-Harrison), Chuck Wichgers (Muskego), Rob Wittke (R-Caledonia), Rob Summerfield (R-Bloomer), Calvin T. Callahan (R-Tomahawk), Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and Joy Goeben (R-Hobart). 

Democratic lawmakers also tried to introduce amendments to a bill on the floor that would have extended postpartum Medicaid coverage, but those were also blocked by Republicans.

“It shouldn’t be this hard to get Republicans to do the right thing. Wisconsin women deserve access to quality, affordable health care and that includes postpartum care,” Vining said before she was cut off by Speaker Pro Tempore Kevin Petersen who said she wasn’t on topic.

“This is a disgrace,” Vining yelled out.

School district consolidation 

Democratic and Republican lawmakers split over a package of bills that would encourage school districts to consolidate. Republican lawmakers argue the bills are necessary due to falling enrollment, which they say is the reason for school districts’ financial struggles. 

Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said at a press conference that the bills would address declining enrollment and the cycle of repeatedly going to referendum to raise money from local taxpayers that school districts are in. Schools in Wisconsin have seen a drop of about 53,000 students over a decade, from the 2013-14 to 2022-23 school years.

Of Wisconsin’s 421 school districts, about two-thirds are struggling with declining enrollment with preliminary numbers from the Department of Public Instruction showing that enrollment for public school districts in the 2025-26 school year fell by about 13,600 students. Total enrollment across Wisconsin school districts is about 759,800 this year. 

“Districts with declining enrollment receive less in state aid and to make up for that revenue loss. We’ve seen a growing cycle of constant referendums with varying degrees of success,” Nedweski said. “Wisconsin taxpayers are frustrated with our public school system… They are frustrated with districts continuously asking them to raise their own taxes, frustrated that their generous investments have not produced matching results.”

Democrats blamed Republicans for school districts having to go to referendum, noting that state aid has not kept pace with inflation in nearly two decades. They also said Wisconsinites have not been asking to close schools. Neubauer said Republicans were “proving how disconnected they are from our constituents.”

“Wisconsinites do not want to close school buildings, break up their communities, force their kids to ride on the bus for hours a day, or lose their local sports teams. Wisconsinites want us to fund our public schools,” Neubauer said. “Republicans’ push to close schools misses the mark completely, and Wisconsinites deserve better… Don’t close schools, fund them.”

According to the Department of Public Instruction, Wisconsin is spending the least, proportionally, in state revenue that it has ever spent on schools under the current funding formula. About 32.1% of state general purpose revenue goes to state general aid to schools, while that percentage used to be around 35%.

Rep. Angelina Cruz (R-Racine) noted during floor debate that many school districts lost state aid this year. Data from DPI for the 2025-26 school year shows that of 421 districts, 71% — or 301 districts — will receive less state aid this year compared to the prior year and 26% will receive more.

“For 15 years, Wisconsin has intentionally divested in our public schools while expanding privatization through voucher schemes,” Cruz said at a press conference, adding that Racine Unified School District has felt the loss of revenue acutely.

According to DPI data, about 15% of Racine’s revenue limit — or $43 million — goes to pay for voucher program participants.

“Since 2011, our community has gone to referendum three times —  in 2014, 2020 and 2025 — asking residents to raise their own property taxes to provide what the state has refused to fund,” Cruz said. “Even after those referendum paths, our district has been forced to close and consolidate schools including… the school where I grew up as a teacher. This is not about a lack of community commitment. It is about the state failing its constitutional obligation to provide free and as nearly uniform as practicable schools to children… Let me be clear, if there is money to close public schools, there is money to fund public schools.”

Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) rejected claims that the choice program is to blame.

“That’s a tiny little percentage of this,” Kitchens said. “It’s happening because of declining birth rates, of people choosing to have less kids, waiting long to have kids. I can’t imagine how anybody can look at our 421 school districts that we have right now and think that in 30 years, that’s going to be sustainable.”

Kitchens also emphasized that the bills are voluntary.

“Let’s trust our communities to work through these things and decide for what’s best for themselves,” Kitchens said. 

Republicans also rejected Democratic lawmakers’ insistence that the state needs to invest more money in its public schools. 

“[Democrats] want us to believe that if we simply spend more on K-12, people will flock to Wisconsin and increase enrollment,” Nedweski said. She compared Wisconsin to New York, which according to the New York Focus spends more per public school student than any other state. “Their outcomes are no better than ours, and they are losing students even faster than Wisconsin. As they elect more communist leaders like [New York City Mayor-elect] Zohran Mamdani, I suspect more New Yorkers will rapidly leave tax-and-spend Democratic Socialist policies. More spending is not a strategy, it’s denial.”

Nedweski said the bills are a “lifeline” for school districts that can use it and will encourage savings and “invest in increasing opportunities for students who may not otherwise have access to things like AP classes, world languages, advanced tech ed and specialized learning services.”

The six bills in the package:

• AB 644 would increase additional state aid to schools that consolidate in 2027, 2028 and 2029 to $2,000 per pupil in the first year. Under current law, school districts receive additional aid when they consolidate. For the first five years after consolidation, a consolidated school district gets $150 per pupil. In the sixth year, the aid drops to 50% of what the school district received in the fifth year and in the seventh year, the aid drops to 25% of the fifth year. It passed 53-44 with Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers) joining Democrats against the bill. 

• AB 645 would provide grants of up to $25,000 to groups of two or more school district boards for the costs of a feasibility study for school district consolidation or whole grade sharing agreements. It passed on a voice vote.
• AB 646 would launch a study of Wisconsin’s school districts, looking at current school district boundaries, potential school district consolidations, existing school district facilities, staffing levels and salary scales, the population of school-age children in each school district, and revenue limits and current overall spending. It passed 54-43 along party lines.

• AB 647 would create a four-year grant program for school districts that enter into a whole-grade sharing agreement, agreeing to educate students at one location. School districts would get up to $500 per pupil enrolled in a single grade. It passed 54-43 along party lines.

• AB 648 would help create new supplemental state aid for consolidated school districts to  address differences in school districts’ levies when they merge. The measure is meant to address concerns of higher property taxes for residents of low-levy districts when a consolidation takes place. It passed 54-43 along party lines.
•  AB 649 provides the funding for the bills, including $2.7 million for grants to schools that enter whole-grade sharing agreements, $3 million to provide state aid to offset levy limit differences and $250,000 for feasibility studies. It passed 54-43 along party lines.

Vote on online sports betting bill delayed

After being fast tracked through the public hearing process, a vote on a bipartisan bill that would legalize online sports betting in Wisconsin was postponed. 

The Wisconsin Constitution requires that gambling in the state must be managed by the state’s federally recognized Native American tribes. Following that requirement, sports betting has been allowed in Wisconsin since 2021, but bets have had to be made in person at tribal casinos. 

AB 601 would expand this to allow for online sports betting anywhere in the state by placing servers running the betting websites and apps to be housed on tribal land; this is known as a “hub and spoke” model. It was introduced in October and received hearings in the Assembly and Senate earlier this month. 

Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) said that he still would have had the votes on the bill if it had come up for a vote, but he had conversations with members of his caucus over the weekend that brought new issues to his attention. He would not provide details on what the concerns were, though he said they didn’t deal with issues of constitutionality.

“I’m not going to get into the details of the conversations that I’ve had with members,” August said. “We’re just working through some of that right now, and I’m confident that there’s no rush on this. It’s the right thing for the state, and I’m confident that we’ll get there.”

Neubauer said she planned to support the bill. 

“We know that our tribes in Wisconsin have the right to control gaming in our state, and right now, that’s not happening with online sports betting,” Neubauer said. “I do hope that we pass a bill that puts control of that industry back in their hands.”

The Assembly passed and concurred in a total of over 50 bills. Others include:  

• AB 596 and AB 597, which passed unanimously, would direct $1.9 million to be used for a state grant match program for veterans’ housing. A nonprofit group would need to be participating in the federal program, which currently provides about $82 per day per veteran housed to groups that offer wraparound supportive services to homeless veterans, to be eligible for a state matching funds of $25 per day per veteran. While no one voted against the bills, Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns that the bill would not fill the gaps that currently exist due to the closure of two Veterans Housing and Recovery Program sites earlier this year. 
• AB 602, which would instruct Evers to opt into a federal school choice program, passed 54-44 along party lines. 
• A pair of bills meant to help address students who are disruptive in class passed in 54-43 votes. AB 613 would require principals to provide written notification to parents every time a student is removed from a class and “the quality or quantity of instructional time provided to the pupils in the class is diminished.” AB 614 would add language into state law to say that teachers are allowed to maintain order in the teacher’s classroom, establish and enforce classroom rules, call 911 in an emergency, take immediate action if a pupil’s behavior is dangerous or disruptive and request assistance from school administrators during a disruptive or violent incident.
• AB 207, which would provide information about constitutional amendments to voters including their potential effects, passed on a voice vote.
• AB 312  passed on a voice vote. It would require absentee voting sites to be open for at least 20 hours during the period for voting absentee in-person.
• AB 385 passed in a 55-42 vote with Rep. Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh) joining Republicans in favor. The bill would prohibit a political committee, political party or conduit from accepting contributions that are made with a credit card online unless the contributor provides their credit card verification value (CVV) or code and the billing address associated with the card is located in the United States. Republican state lawmakers introduced the bill following efforts by Republicans and the Trump administration to target ActBlue — a Massachusetts-based platform that processes donations to Democratic campaigns.
• AB 617 passed 53-44. Rep. Paul Tittl joined Democrats voting against the bill. It would make a number of changes to elections law, including requiring that alternate absentee ballot sites must be in a building or facility constituting a fixed location and requiring absentee ballots with faulty or missing certifications be returned to voters if they are received seven days before the election. It is similar to a bill introduced last session, but it does not include a provision that would have allowed for Monday processing of absentee ballots. Rep. Scott Krug (R-Rome) said that he is speaking with the Assembly Elections Committee chair about potentially having an informational hearing on Monday processing.

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

Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature are trying once again to establish a sandhill crane hunting season in the state and once again the issue has caused a heated debate. 

At a public hearing on a bill to establish a crane hunt Wednesday morning, Democrats and conservation groups complained that the proposal was a solution in search of a problem while hunters repeatedly insisted the only way to manage the crane population is through a hunt. 

The bill is the product of a Joint Legislative Council study committee convened last year — which spent months trying to find a compromise solution that would satisfy farmers concerned about the more than $1.5 million in crop damage the birds cause each year, hunting groups dead set on establishing a hunt and bird conservationists worried a hunt could damage a population that the state spent decades working to reestablish. 

Sandhill cranes were once gone from the Wisconsin environment, but years of careful work have reestablished the birds. However, many of the wetland habitats that originally served as the bird’s nesting sites have been replaced with farmland and the birds like to eat the corn seeds out of those fields. 

The compromise proposal barely eked through the study committee — which was divided along similar lines as Wednesday’s hearing. 

In the version of the bill under consideration now, a number of proposals meant to help farmers with the crop damage problem have been stripped out, including a program that would subsidize part of the cost for pre-treating corn seeds with a chemical that makes them unappetizing to the birds. 

Dave Considine, a retired state representative whose former district includes the Baraboo-based International Crane Foundation, said at the hearing it was a “travesty” that aid for farmers has been left out of the bill. 

“I thought we had a really decent compromise [in the study committee]. Now I come here to testify and we have given farmers no help, nothing,” Considine said. “Matter of fact, most of the science in the committee meeting, spoke of the fact that if anything [a hunt] may increase damage.”

Plus, a number of anti-hunt advocates questioned how holding a hunt in the fall is meant to deter crop damage, which largely happens in the spring before the seeds have sprouted. 

A number of pro-hunt speakers at the hearing pointed to Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which hold or are preparing to start sandhill crane hunting seasons. 

The difference, conservationists argued, is that the sandhill cranes that migrate through the eastern flyway (the region of North America of which Wisconsin is a part), use Wisconsin as their annual nesting ground. 

“Cranes are long-lived, and slow to breed one or two young annually,” said Ann Lacy, director of North American eastern flyway programs at the International Crane Foundation. “They do not have the same biology as ducks or geese; therefore, they cannot be managed similarly. They have unique biological considerations, especially in Wisconsin. What happens to these birds in Wisconsin has an effect on the Eastern Population as a whole.”

Despite all those concerns, hunting advocates refused to budge, even as several experts testified explaining the scientific reasons why a hunt won’t help the crop damage problem. For example, sandhill cranes mate for life and are extremely territorial but most of the damage in the state every year comes from single birds moving in larger flocks. If one or both members of a mated pair are killed in a hunt, that only opens up the pair’s territory to be taken over by an unruly group of unmated birds. 

“[We’ve] heard several times that hunting is not a tool that will help us against agricultural damage,” Todd Schaller, a member of the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association board said in response to the expert testimony. “I’m going to say, in my pragmatic thinking, that’s false.”

In 2021, Republicans in the Legislature proposed a similar bill to start a crane hunt. When announcing that bill, conservative rock musician Ted Nugent appeared at a press conference in which he called the birds “ribeyes in the sky.” On Wednesday, Tim Andryk of Wisconsin Ducks Unlimited argued people would be less squeamish about having a crane hunt in Wisconsin if they tasted the meat. 

“They’re just amazing when it comes to eating them,” Andryk said. “They’re a delicate, dark red meat … they’re such good eating that people that are opposed to hunting them, once they’ve eaten one, I don’t think they would be opposed to hunting.”

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Senate Chambers in the Wisconsin State Capitol. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

During its last floor session of the year, the Wisconsin Senate passed bills Tuesday that would eliminate the annual $325 per pupil revenue increase for school districts, define abortion to not include treatment for ectopic pregnancies and other emergency medical conditions and block state and local dollars from being used on health care for people not legally in the country.

Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said she is “dismayed” and “disgusted” that lawmakers were not taking up bills that focused on affordability. She said she is open to working across the aisle on the issue.

“Republicans do not care about affordability, and they have no plan about affordability either,” Hesselbein said. “There are no bills on this calendar that will lower prescription drug costs, increase access to health care, lower housing costs or make child care more affordable.”

Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) noted a few of the more than 60 bills lawmakers were scheduled to take up and questioned whether they addressed pressing matters. 

“Republicans, who determine the issues and bills we focus on, today are addressing things like exempting tobacco bars from the public smoking ban, delaying the implementation of commercial building code rules,” Keyeski said. “While these may be worthy issues to discuss, I would suggest that it does not meet the threshold of emergent need when families are facing dire economic circumstances. GOP legislators are essentially forcing us to sit idly by and watch Wisconsinites suffer.”

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said at a press conference that Democratic lawmakers were just “filibustering” and rejected the claim that Republicans weren’t working to help with affordability in the state.

“We passed a budget which had the second largest tax cut in state history to get money back into people’s pockets for utility bills, for retirees on fixed incomes, for middle class tax cuts. We’re doing everything we can to try to keep things affordable, ending the 400-year veto so taxes don’t go up in the next budget process,” LeMahieu said. “We are very concerned. It seems like Democrats can make these statements, but yet they’re introducing bills that let local governments increase their levies to tax, raise property taxes, and everything else, so it seems a little disingenuous.”

Republicans advance bill to eliminate 400-year veto

The Senate voted to pass a bill that would reverse Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto that extended school revenue limit increases for 400 years. 

Lawmakers during the 2023-25 state budget gave school districts a $325 increase to schools’ revenue limits for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years. When the bill reached Evers’ desk, he exercised his partial veto power, striking two digits and a dash from the years to extend the annual increases through 2425, to lawmakers’ dismay. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in April that the partial veto was within Evers’ powers.

In response, lawmakers introduced SB 389 to eliminate the $325 per pupil school revenue limit increase beginning in the 2027-28 school year. It passed along party lines. 

“We’re very concerned with the ruling of the state Supreme Court, but what we want to do is to clarify that the original intent of the Legislature in the budget was to increase school funding for the next budget period,” Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), a coauthor of the bill, said. “He changed the bill in a way that no governor in the history of the state of Wisconsin has changed [a bill], and that’s very concerning for us because the Legislature is where the voice of a people is supposed to take place, and the governor is supposed to look at that and use his veto authority to determine where he stands on that, but he went far beyond what’s ever been done before.”

Democratic lawmakers defended the revenue limit increases, saying it is helping school districts that have struggled without inflationary increases in state funding.

“As fists clench over the 400-year veto, know this, it doesn’t even make up for inflation. What it does is, it provides a minimum increase for what people can expect,” Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said. “Unfortunately, with this vote, it is trying to go back and trying to actually make a horrible budget even worse by saying not only are we giving you zero dollars in general aid increase…, but more than that, we’re also going to bar the local school district from making up for that gap by being able to allow them to vote for an increased property tax.”

Larson said that the law could have been changed during the 2025-27 state budget process and that it is the state’s fault that property taxes are bearing the brunt of the increases.

“Everybody who voted for the budget, in essence, voted for the continuation of the $325 dollars per pupil increase to be passed on to local taxpayers to make up the difference,” Larson said. “If you had wanted to change it, there were two things that you could have done. One, you could have voted to have that ended and substituted with a different per-pupil increase. Second thing is, you could have had the state actually fund those increases using funds from the increasing general aid or using the vast surplus that we have, taking money from the agriculture manufacturing tax credit [or] anywhere else, and you could have actually funded our kids.”

Redefining abortion

The Senate also passed SB 553, which seeks to redefine abortion to exempt treatments for certain medical conditions including the removal of a dead embryo or fetus, an ectopic, anembryonic or molar pregnancy.

Bill coauthor Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) said during a press conference that he wanted to remove confusion from state statute, saying he is “pro-life” and hasn’t wanted to stop women from being able to receive the medical care that they need. 

“Women who need medical attention due to situations of stillbirths, miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies or other related issues, can and should receive the care that they need. That has always been the pro-life position,” Quinn said. “This bill before us today does not ban abortions. It does not restrict abortions, it simply clarifies our laws so that both women and medical providers can do what is necessary in those situations.”

Wisconsin has a web of abortion restrictions in place, including a 20-week ban, but confusion soared in the state after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. An 1849 law interpreted as a near-total abortion ban led health care providers afraid of felony charges to deny care to women who faced miscarriage and life-threatening pregnancy complications.

Recently, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, the state’s largest abortion provider, stopped providing abortion care in part due to federal changes.

Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said the lawmakers were trying to distance themselves from “the horrors that we are seeing in states that have banned and restricted abortion.” The Assembly coauthor, Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) said in September that she introduced it in part because Republicans are getting “killed” on the abortion issue during elections, although she said she favors a total abortion ban.

“Women being turned away from hospital emergency rooms repeatedly, being left to bleed out in Walmart parking lots. In fact, women are dying because they are denied timely abortion care that could easily have saved their lives, and their children left orphaned,” Roys said. “That’s the reality of what it looks like when you ban and restrict access to abortion in this country.”

Recent polling done by Marquette Law School found that abortion policy has declined as a “most important” issue among voters across all partisan groups in 2025 as compared to 2022, although 50% of respondents still said they were “very concerned” and 23% said they were “somewhat concerned” about the issue. 

Another recent poll found that 78% of voters support protecting health care professionals from criminal charges related to providing abortion care and 72% of voters favor allowing advanced health care providers like nurse practitioners and midwives to provide abortion care.

Roys said she was also concerned that the bill could push physicians to do emergency C-sections rather than terminate pregnancies as a way of addressing health issues. 

“Abortion is a necessary medical procedure that sometimes pregnant people need to save their lives, to preserve their health, to preserve their future fertility, and nothing in this bill is going to change that,” Roys said. “This bill will instead push physicians to force women to have unnecessary C-sections or to induce delivery rather than providing them with abortion. A C-section is much more dangerous. It is much more invasive. It’s major abdominal surgery that takes weeks or months to recover from, and it also impairs a woman’s future ability to be pregnant to have the labor and delivery that she wishes.”

The bill will now go to the Assembly for consideration. 

Restricting health care for immigrants

The Senate concurred 21-12 in AB 308, which would prohibit state, county, village, long-term care district and federal funds from being used to subsidize, reimburse or provide compensation for any health care services for a person not lawfully in the United States. Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay) joined Republicans in favor. 

Bill coauthor Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) said the bill would ensure that Wisconsin doesn’t begin spending large amounts of money on people who aren’t legally in the country. He noted that other states, including Minnesota and California, have rescinded or paused providing coverage for people not legally in the U.S. 

“[Illinois] did an audit and found that they had spent nearly $900 million on health care benefits for illegal aliens, about a 200% increase, and then in Minnesota, the Legislature, by bipartisan vote, they voted to end the eligibility for illegal immigrants due to questions about their state’s financial well-being, and then, lastly, wonderful, California. Gov. [Gavin] Newsom recently froze enrollment of illegal immigrants into the state’s medical programs, citing California’s $12 billion budget deficit,” Wanggaard said at a press conference. “We’re looking at something that is really a no-brainer.”

Wisconsin already doesn’t allow immigrants without legal authorization to apply for the state’s Medicaid program, BadgerCare.

There are two programs available to those without legal status outlined on the Department of Health Services website: Medicaid Emergency Services, which provides short-term medical coverage for people who have a medical emergency and aren’t eligible for BadgerCare Plus or Wisconsin Medicaid, and BadgerCare Plus Prenatal Plan, which provides health care coverage for pregnant mothers who are not eligible for BadgerCare Plus due to immigration status or being in prison or jail.

Democratic lawmakers accused Republicans of seeking to make a political point and neglecting to address health care costs and accessibility.

“We are not in an affordability crisis because of less than 1% of BadgerCare funds that are used to save lives,” Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee) said. “This is cruel, it is a mean-spirited bill that is attempting to score cheap political points off of a group that’s already marginalized enough.” 

Advocates have warned that the bill could have a “chilling effect,” discouraging people from seeking care when they need it.

“Why is this sort of thing even coming up for discussion? Are we that heartless? Have we really lost our vision for this country?” Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) asked. “These are all messaging to somebody’s base. Terrible people who are coming here to work in our factories, in our fields without the proper papers need to be punished… How heartless are we to make political points? Go ahead and make your god dang political points.”

The Assembly passed the bill in September, so it will now go to Evers for consideration. 

Other bills passed by the Senate Tuesday include:  

• AB 165, which would ban local governments from using tax money to create guaranteed income programs without a work or training requirement. The Assembly passed the bill along party lines in April and the Senate concurred in it 18-15 so it will now go to Evers for consideration. 
• AB 265, which would require judges to sentence people convicted of human trafficking to at least 10 years in prison, or at least 15 years for trafficking a child, was concurred in in an 18-15 party line vote. Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns about young victims of sex trafficking potentially facing mandatory minimums if they are forced to participate in trafficking, while Republicans brushed away those concerns. 
• SB 498 passed 17-16 with Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) joining Democrats against it. The bill would place specific freedom of speech requirements into state statute, including barring campuses from restricting speakers on campus, and implement new penalties, including a tuition freeze, if a campus violates any parts of the bill.
• SB 394 would make it a Class I felony to damage or graffiti structures, plaques, statues, paintings or other monuments on public property or that is maintained by the state or any county or municipality. It passed 18-15 along party lines.
• SB 11, which would require school districts to provide an opportunity for certain federally chartered youth membership organizations, including the Girl Scouts, to give students information about their organizations. It passed by a voice vote. The Assembly is scheduled to vote on the bill on Wednesday.
• SB 16, which would make the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association subject to open records and open meeting laws, passed 22-11.

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State Rep. Matt Morgan, R-Richmond, surveys a map of proposed new congressional districts in Texas, as Democratic lawmakers, who left the state to deny Republicans the opportunity to redraw the state's 38 congressional districts, began returning to the Texas Capitol in Austin on Aug. 20, 2025. REUTERS/Sergio Flores

Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

Brown ordered that the 2026 congressional election “shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021.” The case will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but time is short: Candidates only have until Dec. 8 to file for the upcoming election.

The decision is a major blow for Republicans, in Texas and nationally, who pushed through this unusual mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump. They were hoping the new map would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts — up from the 25 they currently hold — and help protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House.

The map cleared the GOP-controlled Legislature in August and was quickly signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott. Several advocacy groups sued over the new district lines, saying lawmakers intentionally diluted the voting power of Black and Hispanic Texans and drew racially gerrymandered maps. Over the course of a nine-day hearing in El Paso earlier this month, they aimed to convince the judges that it was in voters’ best interest to shelve the new map until a full trial could be held.

It was not immediately clear if the state still has a legal path to restoring the new map in time for 2026. Unlike most federal lawsuits, which are heard by a single district judge and then appealed to a circuit court, voting rights lawsuits are initially heard by two district judges and one circuit judge, and their ruling can only be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision comes 10 days into the monthlong period when candidates can sign up for the March primary. The filing deadline is Dec. 8.

This is just the opening gambit in what promises to be a yearslong legal battle over Texas’ congressional map. A lawsuit over the state’s 2021 redistricting — including its state legislative and education board seats — went to trial earlier this summer and remains pending before the same three-judge panel. The judges have indicated they may want to see how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a major voting rights case before issuing their full ruling on Texas’ maps.

But for Trump, and many of his Republican supporters in Texas, the short-term goal of having this map for the 2026 election was as important as the long game.

“I’m convinced that if Texas does not take this action, there is an extreme risk that [the] Republican majority will be lost,” Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said on the floor of the state Senate before the new map passed. “If it does, the next two years after the midterm, there will be nothing but inquisitions and impeachments and humiliation for our country.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune, a States Newsroom partner

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez speaks during a Wisconsin Technology Council forum featuring Democratic and Republican hopefuls in the 2026 governor's race Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The longest ever federal government shutdown that ended last week revolved around a top issue for Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez as she campaigns to be Wisconsin’s next governor: health and health care.

A registered nurse by training and former official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rodriguez has been deeply involved in health care policy, first in her single term as a member of the Wisconsin Assembly and then, since 2023, as the No. 2 official in the state’s executive branch.

And, she says, it motivated her to declare her intention to succeed Gov. Tony Evers after Evers decided to stand down from the 2026 election.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to run is to make sure that we have somebody in a leadership position that, No. 1, understands health care, and No. 2, really gets how unaffordable and broken it is,” Rodriguez told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview Monday.

She also sees a shift in the federal government away from established public health principles, forcing states to take the lead on setting public health standards. In the governor’s office, she said, her professional background would equip her to tackle  those issues.

As  a state representative, Rodriguez proposed a bill in the 2021-22 legislative term to accept the expansion of Medicaid — BadgerCare in Wisconsin — through the Affordable Care Act. Expansion would allow the state to enroll people with incomes between 100% and 138% of the federal poverty guidelines in Medicaid, with the federal government paying 90% of the additional cost.

When the ACA took effect, Gov. Scott Walker was in office and refused throughout his two terms as governor to accept the federal support and expand the program.

Evers defeated Walker in 2018 and promised to accept the federal expansion, but in the lame-duck session before he was sworn in, the Republican majority in the Legislature passed a bill that Walker signed, requiring the Legislature’s approval for expansion.

Since then, repeated attempts by Democrats to expand Medicaid, including the bill Rodriguez authored four years ago, have failed with Republican majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Another form of Medicaid expansion — covering mothers for a year after they give birth — has the support of bipartisan majorities in the Senate and the Assembly, but Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has opposed bringing it to the floor. 

“We are one of two states that have not done that — us and Arkansas,” Rodriguez said. “And I think Arkansas may be working on it. So we may be the only one left at the end of the day.”

Rodriguez’s political career started with her Assembly race in 2020, flipping a Republican seat in the Milwaukee suburbs. She followed that with her race for lieutenant governor in 2022 and now her  campaign for the Democratic nomination to run for governor in 2026.

Throughout her political life, she said, she has been supported by 314 Action, a political organizing group seeking to elect more scientists and people in science-related professions, including health care.

During the recent federal government shutdown, Democrats in the U.S. Senate insisted that any resolution to fund the government also extend federal subsidies for health insurance under the ACA. The expiration of those subsidies at the end of this year will cause health insurance premiums to double, on average, participants in the ACA marketplace. 

Ultimately, a handful of Democratic senators voted with the Republicans to advance a GOP-authored spending bill that ended the shutdown without addressing the looming health insurance cost spike.

But the issue won’t go away, Rodriguez said.

“We’re looking at a doubling of premiums,” she said. “A 60-year-old couple are looking $1,500 to $2,000 more a month to be able to pay for their health insurance. That is absolutely unaffordable for most Wisconsinites.”

The problem extends beyond just people who buy their insurance through the federal marketplace, she warned.

“The larger amount of people who are uninsured in the state, the higher our health care costs are going to get, because they’re going to wait, they’re going to delay care, they’re going to be sicker when they get into care, and it’s going to cost hospital systems more in terms of uncompensated care,” Rodriguez said.

“If people will go uninsured, it’s going to raise costs,” she added. “And continuing to talk about it, continuing to let people know how that works, is something that I’m uniquely equipped to do as a nurse, as somebody who’s worked within the health care system. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m running for governor.”

Rodriguez said she has seen the benefits that the ACA has brought in the last decade and a half.

Before it was in place, “people delayed care,” she said. “They came in sicker to my emergency department and it cost a whole lot more dollars to be able to treat them and they were out of work because they had to be treated within a hospital system as opposed to going to their regular doctor and being able to get the care that they needed and be able to take care of their diabetes, to take care of their hypertension. Those are the kind of things that the Affordable Care Act has allowed us to do.”

She said she’s heard from small business owners who were able to start a business because they could get health insurance thanks to the ACA.

“Do we need to fix it? Absolutely. Do we need to get it better? Absolutely,” Rodriguez said. “But to get rid of it is going to have devastating effects on health care in Wisconsin.”

Rodriguez said she also brings the perspective of health and health care to other policy topics.

“The medicine we give you, the procedures that we do — it’s such a tiny fraction of how healthy we are,” she said.

Food, housing and “a good-paying job to put a roof over our heads and to pay for the food we eat and to pay for the medications we’re prescribed” are health issues, too, Rodriguez said. That’s why housing affordability, for example, is part of her platform, she said. 

“Tom Tiffany in the governor’s seat [is] not going to put a priority on lowering costs for Wisconsinites,” she said.

She also predicted that, if elected, Tiffany would sign laws restricting abortion in Wisconsin — “and that is going to be extraordinarily dangerous for people.”

Rodriguez views her science background as a strong selling point. “I think we want somebody who’s going to use data and science to make decisions,” she said.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s secretary of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, has been “using conspiracy theories as his underlying belief system, and that hurts real people,” Rodriguez said.

She cited surging measles cases in Wisconsin and nationally and the deaths of children in some states after the federal government weakened its support for vaccination.

“That hasn’t happened in a decade, and they’re continuing to feed this anti-science rhetoric that is going to harm our kids here in Wisconsin,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve been clear, I think RFK Jr. should resign. I don’t think he’s qualified for the job that he has and he’s actually a danger to public health across the country.”

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Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel speaks with reporters after an event Feb. 26. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Former state Attorney General and conservative state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel has been appointed as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

Schimel, who was also previously a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge and the Waukesha County district attorney, will now be the highest ranking federal prosecutor in the district that covers the eastern part of the state, including Milwaukee. 

Usually, U.S. attorneys are first recommended for the office by the two U.S. senators in a state and then nominated by the president before being confirmed by the Senate. In Wisconsin, Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson operate a joint commission responsible for finding candidates. 

Schimel told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the commission was unable to reach a consensus for the job — which has been empty since February when former U.S. attorney Gregory Haanstad, a Biden appointee, left the role as part of the normal transition when a new party enters the White House. 

In a statement, Baldwin accused Trump of “blowing up Wisconsin’s bipartisan judicial nominating process” and “ignoring Wisconsinites of all stripes” by choosing Schimel, whom voters rejected twice, in his races for state attorney general and Supreme Court.

Once the commission failed to find a candidate, Schimel said he reached out to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom he knows from their time as state attorneys general. 

Interim U.S. Attorneys are allowed to hold that role for 120 days, though the Trump administration has tried in other states to extend that period. 

Schimel will now take over the office as it manages increased federal immigration enforcement happening in the state and heads into the highly political trial of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan, who federal prosecutors have alleged obstructed the work of federal agents attempting to apprehend a migrant in the county courthouse. Dugan’s trial is set for Dec. 15, Schimel told the Journal-Sentinel the prosecution team on the case will remain the same. 

Schimel ran for the state Supreme Court earlier this year in what became the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history — largely due to the involvement of Elon Musk, who was at the time a part of the Trump administration through his DOGE office. 

Schimel lost by more than 10 percentage points to Justice Susan Crawford. In his campaign, he touted his prosecutorial experience but was unable to separate himself from criticism that he was too closely tied to Trump and Musk.

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A Kwik Trip station in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, was among the locations chosen for new charging stations in the first round of Wisconsin's build-out for its charging station network under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program (NEVI), part of the bipartisan infrastructure law enacted during President Joe Biden's term in office. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

A program to expand electric vehicle charging stations in Wisconsin is getting  a $14 million jolt with plans to build 26 more stations across the state.

Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation announced the expansion plan Monday.

The announcement recharges the state’s electrical vehicle charging network project, supported by the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. NEVI, part of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law signed by  then-President Joe Biden, provides grants to states to build more charging stations.

“Transportation is evolving, and departments of transportation and states have to adapt with that evolution,” said John DesRivieres, WisDOT’s communications director. “As the market and the number of folks who are driving electric vehicles grows, EV infrastructure is needed.”

NEVI funding paused after President Donald Trump took office, and Wisconsin was one of 15 states along with the District of Columbia to sue the Trump administration in May for cutting off money for the program. A federal judge blocked the administration in June from defunding NEVI, and the Wisconsin DOT subsequently restarted its program.

The $14 million in federal funds for Wisconsin’s new round of charging stations will go to projects in communities throughout the state, from Superior in the northwest to East Troy in the southeast. They include 11 locations at Kwik Trip service stations, six locations at hotels or resorts, six locations at other service station brands and a handful of other businesses.

“My administration and I have prioritized ensuring our state’s infrastructure meets the needs of the 21st Century since Day One because expanding our clean energy and electric vehicle infrastructure helps create jobs and bolster our economy, and it’s good for our planet, too,” Evers said. “Thanks to our actions to get the Trump Administration to release this critical funding that they were illegally withholding, we are thrilled to see the NEVI program continue to support these goals and further move us toward the clean energy future Wisconsinites deserve.”

The transportation department chose projects based on their location, their potential for future development, and the business site’s hours. Extended hours were given preference to accommodate longer refueling times, according to WisDOT.

Wisconsin’s plan calls for charging stations along 15 major interstate, U.S. and state highway corridors that cross the state. A WisDOT EV charging station dashboard shows the locations for all planned chargers in the state.

With the round of grants announced Monday, Wisconsin has invested a total of $36.4 million in federal funds for 78 projects.

The first round, announced in May 2024, invested $22.4 million to build 52 stations. Of those, 11 are operational, 16 have been authorized for construction and the rest are in pre-construction phases.

A federal tax credit for electric vehicles that was included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act abruptly ended, effective Sept. 30, under the Republican tax-cut and spending mega-bill enacted in July.

“There are already 37,000 EVs on the road today, and we saw that number spike as people raced to purchase EVs before the federal tax credit expired,” said Alex Beld, communications director for Renew Wisconsin, a nonprofit that promotes policies and programs to expand solar, wind and hydropower along with building electrification, energy storage and electric vehicles.

“By expanding our network of charging stations, we hope to see that number continue to climb,” Beld said. “Through this transition away from gas-powered vehicles, we can reduce emissions and support our state’s economy.”

An analysis by SRI International published in 2023 for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. concluded that “there is a tremendous opportunity for Wisconsin to develop a globally competitive cluster centered on the manufacturing of EVs and EV-related equipment, which in turn can help revitalize Wisconsin’s automotive manufacturing industry and drive statewide economic development.”

Beld said that jobs related to clean energy grew four times faster than the rest of Wisconsin’s economy in 2024.

“If this funding had been clawed back permanently, I think we would have still seen progress,” Beld said. “It would have certainly been slower and would have likely cost the state jobs.”

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A Nov. 14 conference at UW-Madison debated the merits of bringing fusion voting back to Wisconsin (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Dozens of political scientists, election experts and members of the public gathered in a UW-Madison conference room Friday to debate whether returning to a 19th century election process could empower voters and help turn back the United States’ slide toward authoritarianism. 

The event centered around fusion voting, which is the practice of allowing more than one political party to nominate the same candidate on a ballot. Currently used in Connecticut and New York, the fusion voting system means the candidates on the left can appear on the ballot under both the Democratic Party and the smaller Working Families Party while candidates on the right appear for the Republican Party and the Conservative Party. 

In theory this can give the minor parties enough influence to push for policy changes. A minor party that can swing 4% of a vote total can move the needle. 

Throughout the 1800s, fusion voting was the norm across the country — the Republican Party itself was formed in Wisconsin as a fusion party by voters who felt that the major parties at the time, the Democrats and Whigs, weren’t doing enough to end slavery. Eventually, the two major parties worked together to get the practice banned in most of the country.

Often, minor fusion parties are further from the ideological center than the major parties, but a lawsuit is currently pending in Wisconsin from a group called United Wisconsin aiming to create a fusion party that connects moderate voters who don’t feel like they’re represented by the modern Democrats or Republicans. The effort is being helmed by former state Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz and former Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney. The group is represented in the lawsuit by the voting rights focused firm Law Forward. 

Lawsuits to reinstate fusion voting are also pending in New Jersey and Kansas. 

Lilliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, said during the conference that the two party system and primary election process have polarized the country’s politics and made our’ “sense of winning or losing” more “existential.”

Looming over the discussions, but without being explicitly mentioned very often, was the Trump administration’s anti-democratic actions — including denying the outcome of the 2020 election, supporting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and pardoning Wisconsin’s fake electors —  and the threat of authoritarianism. The debate Friday was often an exchange over how fusion voting fits into broader systemic reforms and if it can be used in tandem with proposals including proportional representation, multi-member congressional districts, ranked choice voting, gerrymandering prohibitions, filibuster reform and others. 

“It makes it possible for people who want to organize and who want to create and claim their own political power, to do so in an effective way,” Beau Tremitiere, an attorney from the non-profit Protect Democracy, said. They’re exactly right. “People are deeply dissatisfied with the system. There’s a lot of energy to do something better and fusion makes that easier.”

Fusion advocates said the system allows politics to be more dynamic. People’s political beliefs don’t always fit neatly in a party system that encourages big tents and the necessity of coalition management in those big tents means that parties aren’t encouraged to distance themselves from their most extreme members. 

“Politics is a complex, dynamic system that is always changing,” said Lee Drutman, who studies political reform at the think tank New America. “And the key is, how do you keep it from spiraling out of control? How do you keep it from a self-reinforcing tumult? And if you have a party system problem, which we do, you need a party system solution.”

But several speakers at the conference also laid out the limits and downsides of fusion voting. It’s not a major structural reform. Fusion parties are usually further from the ideological center, so if the goal is a more moderate politics, it’s not clear fusion will deliver that. Members of the Green Party expressed concern that fusion enables a patronage system of political favor trading. 

Overall though, the conference often returned to the idea that the country is in a democracy crisis and experimentation is a good thing in the effort to turn it around. 

“I’m supportive of experimentation,” Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame, said. “It seems to me, we should see more real world experiments.”

Schultz, who was in the Legislature from 1983 to 2015, said he’s trying to establish a fusion party in Wisconsin to get more “humanity” in the state’s politics. 

“Why fusion voting? Why does it matter? Because of agency, the fact that suddenly people get a chance to sit at the table, to be a part of the discussions that matter to them,” he said. “Yes, fusion voting is not the be- and end-all political reform, but it is, in my opinion, an essential part of our future if we’re going to get back to having a healthy democracy.”

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State Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) questions a witness at Thursday's hearing of the Assembly labor committee about the unemployment insurance bill produced by the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

A business lobbyist Thursday sought to salvage a new unemployment insurance bill that has sparked opposition from some Democrats and advocates for people with disabilities.

The bill came from the joint labor-management Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. The council is historically a source of consensus legislation to update Wisconsin’s laws on jobless pay, but its 2025 proposal includes provisions Democrats have strongly opposed.

The senior Democrat on the Assembly’s labor committee has disavowed the bill because it includes a financial penalty for people who receive federal disability pay if they apply for unemployment insurance when they’re laid off from a job.

The council bill also contains several other changes that Democratic lawmakers have unanimously opposed and Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed in the past.

At a public hearing Thursday on the legislation, AB 652, Scott Manley of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce emphasized that the measure had the unanimous support of both the management and labor members of the advisory council.

Manley chairs the council’s management caucus. Representatives from the council’s labor caucus did not take part in the hearing.

“There’s a reason we have a council,” Manley told the Assembly Committee on Workforce Development, Labor and Integrated Employment. “It’s a process we believe in. We think it’s a process that works. And we would ask everybody in the community to respect that process.”

WMC and other business groups have repeatedly backed Republican legislators’ bills to change the state’s unemployment laws when they bypassed the joint advisory council.  Evers has regularly vetoed such bills.

Manley said that it would be unprecedented for an advisory council bill to split the Legislature on party lines, however.

“My fear is that if the Legislature decides to turn this into a partisan issue, despite the fact that it was unanimously supported by labor and management, that Gov. Evers would consider vetoing the bill,” Manley said.

If that happens, he said, the bill’s $25 bump in the state’s maximum weekly jobless pay — the first increase in more than a decade — would likely be put off until 2027.

Victor Forberger, a lawyer who specializes in unemployment law, said even that increase, bringing the maximum benefit to $395 a week, was inadequate compared with surrounding states.

Minnesota tops out at $914 a week, Forberger testified. Iowa’s maximum is $602 and Michigan’s is $446, with an increase to $530 in 2026.

“We’re not keeping pace with the states around us,” Forberger told the committee. “We’re not even coming close to that

The disability-jobless pay conflict

The advisory council bill’s highest-profile point of contention applies to people who receive Social Security Disability Income.

Since 2013, Wisconsin law has automatically disqualified SSDI recipients from collecting jobless pay, even if they get laid off from a job and otherwise meet the requirements for unemployment compensation.

A federal judge ruled in 2024 that the SSDI jobless pay ban violated federal law. After an additional court order this summer, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development is now reviewing the cases of people denied unemployment compensation in the last 10 years due to the SSDI ban, and is issuing payments to those who qualify.

The joint advisory council unemployment bill repeals the ban on unemployment insurance for SSDI recipients. But it would also cut their jobless pay by 50% of their SSDI pay.

That provision led Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), the ranking Democrat on the labor committee, to keep her name off the list of sponsors for the advisory council bill.

“I simply cannot support taking benefits from those who are disabled,” Sinicki said when she, along with the committee’s other two Democrats, voted against the bill’s formal introduction Thursday. “They receive very little money to begin with. And now to reduce their benefits to me is unconscionable.”

Manley defended the 2013 law that excluded SSDI recipients from the unemployment insurance program.

“SSDI is intended to compensate somebody for their loss of earning capacity based on a disability,” he said. “And unemployment is supposed to compensate somebody through the loss of their earnings because they were laid off or their job was eliminated or some other reason that’s no fault of their own. So, that’s why the policy decision was made in the first place that we wouldn’t allow people to have both benefits.”

While the court ruled against a blanket exclusion from unemployment compensation for people getting SSDI, Manley argued that offsetting their jobless pay by a portion of their disability income is comparable to existing provisions that offset unemployment benefits based on other wage income.

But SSDI is not like a wage, said Forberger, whose lawsuit overturned Wisconsin’s SSDI jobless pay ban.

“SSDI is essentially getting your Social Security benefits early,” Forberger testified. While Social Security payments are based on lifetime earnings at retirement age, he said, unemployment is based on a recent job loss, and unemployment benefits are based on earnings in the last year and a half.

The average SSDI benefit in Wisconsin as of December 2023 was about $1,400 per month, he said. SSDI recipients take part-time jobs because their disability income “is not enough to support themselves,” Forberger said. “They need additional money to make ends meet.”

The federal Social Security Administration, which administers the disability program, encourages recipients to work so they might make a transition back to the workforce and no longer need benefits. “Essentially, what Wisconsin is saying to disabled folks here is . . . ‘We don’t want you working anymore,’” Forberger said.

Other provisions

Several other items in the advisory council bill previously were part of Republican bills that Evers vetoed in the past when they reached his desk.

One would require DWD to establish a website where employers could report unemployment compensation recipients who “ghosted” job interviews or didn’t show up for the first day on the job after an offer.

Another would require audits of 50% of all work searches by people collecting jobless pay. In 41% of work search audits that DWD conducted, “claimants failed to fulfill weekly work search requirements,” said Brian Dake of Wisconsin Independent Businesses. “We believe this data justifies the need for more audits.”

 A third provision stipulates specific checks that DWD should make to ensure that a person who makes an unemployment claim isn’t stealing another person’s identity or engaged in some other fraudulent activity.

The bill also would mandate electronic filing of payroll information for business owners with fewer than 25 employees.

Forberger, in his testimony, rejected all those provisions as ineffectual or unnecessary.

“Ghosting interviews is already illegal in this state,” he said, with stiffer penalties than outlined in the bill. Employers, he added, are unlikely to go to the trouble of filing a report and take the time for the hearings that would follow.

Forberger observed that the department already consults a wide range of databases in checking out claims. And he said small employers have sought his help after making mistakes and getting in trouble with the department in filing required payroll documentation.

“To mandate online-only filing is just going to make it that much harder for these employers,” Forberger said.

(According to DWD communications director Haley McCoy, in 2024 about 97% of taxable employers with fewer than 25 employees submitted their wage reports electronically. “Fewer and fewer employers file on paper every quarter with current figures showing less than 3% filing by paper,” McCoy told the Wisconsin Examiner.)

Forberger said the bill’s work search audit requirement was redundant, because DWD already conducts work search audits of every person who is approved for benefits. He said he’s heard from many people who don’t understand what constitutes a work search and how to report it.

“When they’re getting audited, they’re getting disqualified,” Forberger said. “If you really want to improve the system, DWD needs to start doing some training and helping people how to navigate the system.”

This report has been updated to clarify that work search audits are conducted for people who are approved for  unemployment benefits. 

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An aerial view shows an Amazon data center last year in Ashburn, Va. A new study found that most states offering subsidies for data centers do not disclose the recipients of those tax benefits. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

Most states offering incentives to data centers don’t disclose which companies benefit, according to a new report.

At least 36 states have crafted subsidies specifically for data center projects, according to Good Jobs First, a nonprofit watchdog group that tracks economic development incentives. But only 11 of those states — Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin — disclose which companies receive those incentives.

In a new study, the organization examined a lack of transparency in data center deals, which are proliferating across the country as technology demands increase.  

Despite data centers’ significant energy requirements, states frequently compete heavily to land the projects, which invest millions or even billions into new construction. But the study noted those projects often employ nondisclosure agreements, project code names and subsidiary names that hide the firms behind the new server farms.

“Only when governments disclose information on which companies get public money and what they do with it can there be meaningful analysis, greater public participation, and wiser use of public financial resources,” the report says.

Good Jobs First specifically examined sales and use tax exemptions that benefit data centers. The study does not account for local property tax abatements, corporate income tax credits and discounts on electricity and water rates.

Virginia, the largest data center market in the world, forgoes nearly $1 billion in state and local sales and use tax revenue each year without telling the public which companies benefit or how much they receive, the study said.

Good Jobs First underscored state calculations that show data center subsidies do not provide a return on taxpayer investments. It recommends states eliminate or curtail data center subsidies. “At the very least, states should practice full transparency,” the report said.

Good Jobs First says states must reassess their investments in data centers with federal cuts looming that will strain state finances.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

A sign acknowledging Stewardship program support at Firemen's Park in Verona. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

A Wisconsin Assembly committee deadlocked 6-6 Wednesday on a Republican-authored bill to prevent the broadly popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program from lapsing next year. 

The program, which allows the state Department of Natural Resources to purchase, conserve and maintain public land enjoys bipartisan support among Wisconsin residents. However a subset of Republican legislators have soured on the program’s intentions, arguing too much land has been pulled off local property tax rolls in northern Wisconsin. Republicans have also complained that a state Supreme Court decision removed their authority to conduct oversight of the program. 

Previously, members of the Joint Committee on Finance had the ability to anonymously hold up stewardship projects. 

Republicans in the Legislature stripped money to re-authorize the program out of the state budget earlier this year and both parties have proposed competing pieces of legislation to keep it running beyond 2026. 

On Wednesday, the Assembly Committee on Forestry, Parks and Outdoor Recreation took up the Republican bill, authored by Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc). Democrats and environmental groups have been unsupportive of the Kurtz bill since its initial release because it requires that any attempt by the DNR to acquire land at a cost of more than $1 million be approved by the full Legislature through standalone legislation. 

Critics have argued the full legislative process is the opposite of what the Court intended when it took the anonymous hold power away from JFC, that the Legislature could never move quickly enough for the speed at which real estate transactions must sometimes take place and the public nature of legislation could scare off potential sellers. 

Earlier this week, Kurtz released a proposed amendment to his bill that would lower the threshold requiring legislative approval from $1 million to $250,000. 

A Democratic proposal, which was introduced as a separate bill this summer and offered as an amendment to the Republican bill this week, would create an independent board, nominated by members of both parties, to oversee the program outside of the legislative process. 

On Wednesday, the committee voted 7-5 in favor of accepting Kurtz’s amendment to his bill. Rep. Paul Melotic (R-Grafton) voted with the committee’s four Democrats against the amendment. 

But on the vote to advance the bill out of committee, Reps. Calvin Callahan (R-Tomahawk) and Rob Swearingen (R-Rhinelander) joined the Democrats to vote no, resulting in the 6-6 tie.

When an Assembly committee votes for a bill, it reports the bill to the full Assembly floor and recommends that it be passed. According to Assembly rules, when a committee ties on a vote, the chair of the committee has the discretion to report the bill to the full Assembly “without recommendation.” 

The bill has already been reported to the full Assembly for a potential vote, according to the office of Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz), the committee’s chair.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), a co-author of the Democratic proposal, said “Wisconsin Democrats are united in their support and vision for Knowles-Nelson,” while “Republicans cannot seem to agree on a path forward.”

Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives at the non-profit land trust organization Gathering Waters, told the Wisconsin Examiner that Wednesday’s vote shows the only way to save the program is with a bill that can get support from both parties. 

“Today’s hearing was a missed opportunity for bipartisan cooperation on the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program,” Carlin said. “There is ample room for compromise across the aisle. But today’s deadlocked committee vote demonstrates that no reauthorization is going to move forward without buy-in from both parties. The hearing should motivate legislators on both sides of the aisle to come together and work out a compromise that keeps Knowles-Nelson working for Wisconsin.”

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Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) speaks Wednesday about the effort to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act insurance premium tax credits that will expire at the end of 2025. Nancy Peske, left, and Julia Harris-Robinson, center also joined the press conference. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

With the loss of enhanced subsidies for the health insurance she has bought on the federal marketplace HealthCare.gov, Nancy Peske’s health plan will cost $1,163.50 a month in 2026.

That’s more than three times what she paid this year — $372 a month, Peske said Wednesday.

But if there’s one thing she wants everyone to know, it’s this: The higher prices for health insurance aren’t just something that she and other people who buy their coverage on the federal marketplace are facing.

Long before the ACA, Peske learned about “the premium death spiral,” she said.

“The more you raise the price, the more people drop out of the pool. This means you have to raise the price, which means more people drop out of the pool. And it goes on and on and on,” Peske said.

“It’s not just my health insurance that’s going to go up. It’s everybody’s — right?” she said. “We’re all in this together.”

Peske was one of two people who have relied on HealthCare.gov, created as part of the Affordable Care Act, who spoke Wednesday at a press conference in Milwaukee with Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin).

Baldwin called the press conference  to draw attention anew to the skyrocketing cost of health insurance — and to the failure of Congress to address it in the stopgap spending bill that passed the U.S. Senate Monday, the U.S. House Wednesday evening and was signed by President Donald Trump.

“This is a health and wellness issue,” Baldwin said. “This is an affordability and cost-of-living issue, and this is a quality of life and dignity issue. And it touches every single one of us right now.”

A success amid ‘a broken system’

Health care in the U.S. is “a broken system that prioritizes profits over patients,” Baldwin said. Despite that, she said, the 2010 Affordable Care Act was an important advance for expanding health care access.

She said that was improved by enhanced federal subsidies enacted in 2021 to offset the cost of health insurance for people who must buy their own policies on the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace that was created by the ACA — making insurance more affordable and drawing record numbers of people to the marketplace to get health coverage.

The enhanced subsidies expire at the end of 2025, however, and until this week a Republican stopgap spending bill that passed the U.S. House in September stalled in the U.S. Senate as Democrats pushed unsuccessfully to extend the subsidies.  

“That is what is at the center of the government shutdown and debate in Washington, D.C.,” Baldwin said. “We know the impact of taking away these tax breaks. For 275,000 Wisconsinites, their health care [insurance] costs will double, triple or even more. For 30,000 Wisconsinites, they predict the price will be too high, and that those Wisconsinites will go without insurance altogether.”

A handful of Democratic Senators changed their votes Monday to advance the spending bill in return for a promise of a future vote on the subsidies, with the House taking up the revised bill Wednesday. Baldwin didn’t join them.

“I said the entire time that a handshake deal with my Republican colleagues to reopen the government and no real action to lower health care costs was simply not good enough,” said Baldwin of her vote against the bill.

She also forced an amendment to extend the tax credits for a year — a compromise, she said, because she wants them extended permanently, but one she offered “to avoid catastrophe for families across Wisconsin and give folks breathing room while we negotiate longer-term solutions.”

The amendment failed on a party-line vote.

“Every single Republican voted no on my amendment,” Baldwin said. “They chose to send a clear, unmistakable message that they are OK with jacking up health care costs on 22 million Americans.”

Early retirement, then sticker shock

HealthCare.gov user Erica Topps also joined Baldwin’s news conference. Topps took early retirement in April and bought a health insurance policy through the federal marketplace for herself and her college-age daughter that started in June.

At the marketplace open enrollment for 2026 that started Nov. 1, that plan’s premium increased by $1,200 a month and the deductible went from $6,700 per person to $10,600 per person, Topps told reporters She found another plan via the marketplace and is enrolling, but she’s concerned about the future beyond that.

“Part of my plan is to go back to work” so she can get health insurance, Topps told the Wisconsin Examiner, because it will be 10 years before she can qualify for Medicare.

Before taking early retirement, “I did my due diligence,” she said. “I feel like the rug was pulled out from under me.”

Peske is a freelance writer, editor and consultant. She is also a cancer survivor, whose diagnosis two years ago was covered thanks to her HealthCare.gov policy. Going without health insurance is unthinkable, but at the age of 63, she must wait another two years before she can go on Medicare, she said.

Peske told the Wisconsin Examiner that she will scrape together the money to afford her new premium. “I’ll not put a dime into my underfunded retirement account,” she said. She expects to “tighten the belt” on household expenses, “and I will probably cut into my savings.”

Freelancers and small businesses account for 40% of the U.S. economy, Peske told reporters.

“Do you want everyone to go out of business?” she asked. “Should I just do what so many people do and get a much lower paying job at a company? Because I’m desperate for health care. I don’t think that’s the solution. I think you want to keep people like me in business, generating money, adding to the economy, and being able to live, to not die of cancer.”

Seeking inroads with GOP lawmakers

Baldwin said she has been talking with Republicans about finding common ground in increased transparency in the health care system, from insurance companies, pharmacy benefit managers and providers.

In addition, she told the Wisconsin Examiner after the press conference, she continues to have conversations with GOP Senate colleagues who have expressed interest in continuing the subsidies to avert the sharp hike in premiums.

None of them were willing to break ranks and vote for her amendment this week, however.

“Those discussions were happening informally, in quiet, not in the public spotlight,” Baldwin said. “But they were afraid to vote on something that they, probably, some of them want, because Donald Trump said you can’t talk about this before the government reopens.”

Baldwin said that the next step will be for the Democrats to settle on the bill that Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune has promised they could bring to the upper chamber for a vote.

As much as she favors a permanent extension of the enhanced credits, if the Democrats go that route, “we know it will go down, and it will be on a pretty much a partisan vote,” Baldwin said.

“I want results, so that probably dictates towards supporting something that conceivably does respond to some of the concerns Republicans have raised,” she said. “I’d like to pick the path most reasonably likely to succeed on behalf of the people who sent me to Washington to fight for them.”

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The U.S. Capitol on the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, just hours before a federal government shutdown. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is over and all we got was the near-cancellation of food assistance just in time for Thanksgiving and a looming explosion in health care costs.

None of the problems that led to the shutdown have been resolved. Instead, a handful of Democrats abandoned their fight to force Congress to address the health care crisis in exchange for rolling back some of the damage the Trump administration did during the shutdown itself. Federal workers are getting their jobs back — for now — and flight cancellations will end just in time for the holiday travel season. Otherwise, we’re pretty much back where we started. 

Democrats are fuming and Republicans are gloating over the end of this game of chicken, in which the party that showed it doesn’t care at all about the pain and suffering of its own constituents is the apparent winner. Stay tuned to see how long the glow of victory lasts as members of Congress go home to face the voters. 

During the fruitless shutdown battle, a couple of politicians from Wisconsin who are not facing election anytime soon showed real leadership. Their focus on serving the needs of real people, not political posturing, was a breath of fresh air, and a model of the kind of public service we badly need.

Gov. Tony Evers deserves a lot of credit for acting quickly to pay out food assistance funds to nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites last Friday as soon as a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to release the money, which it had been withholding for a week. Evers acted in the nick of time. The Trump administration appealed the decision and, on the strength of an emergency ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, demanded that Wisconsin and other states that had paid out the benefits overnight claw them back. Evers issued a terse response: “No.” 

Thanks to his leadership, hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites, including 270,000 kids, were spared from going hungry because of the Trump administration’s capricious cruelty. With the shutdown over, the battle over food assistance has ended and the USDA has said full nutrition benefits will begin flowing to states again within 24 hours of the shutdown’s end. But as Evers said when he seized the moment and released the funds, “It never should’ve come to this.” The feds had the money to prevent kids from going hungry all along. Trump made a deliberate decision to cut off aid, and then to demand that states pay only partial benefits, on the theory that doing so would punish Democrats for refusing to reopen the government on Trump’s terms. 

Evers deserves a lot of credit for his decisive action to protect Wisconsinites from harm.

Another Wisconsin politician who has been working overtime to stave off disaster for residents is U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. 

Baldwin has spent her entire career working to expand health care access, including writing the provision of the Affordable Care Act that allows children to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they reach the age of 26. She has a reputation for doggedly working across the aisle and, during the shutdown, she never gave up trying to get Senate Republicans to agree to extend ACA tax credits. 

This week, when eight Senate Democrats joined the Republicans on a resolution to reopen the government that didn’t include any language about the coming spike in health care costs, Baldwin forced a Senate vote on an amendment to extend the ACA credits for one more year. Many Senate Republicans had told her they knew the expiration of those credits would drive health care costs through the roof in their states.  

In her floor speech introducing her amendment, Baldwin said: 

“My Republican colleagues are refusing to act to stop health care premiums from doubling for over 20 million Americans. I just can’t stand by without a fight.”

Even as people across the country express shock and dismay, “Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have simply refused to address the biggest increase in American premiums they’ll likely ever experience,” Baldwin said.  

“I’m getting calls daily from Wisconsinites begging me to stay in this fight,” she added. She told her Senate colleagues about a couple from Door County who told her their premiums are going up by over $550 per month because of the failure to extend the ACA tax credits. “Everything is already too expensive. So where are they supposed to find 6,500 extra dollars in their budget?” she asked. 

Another couple from Butternut, Wisconsin, told her their premiums are going from $400 per month to more than $5,000 per month — “that’s $55,000 more a year,” she said. “As they wrote to me, ‘health care tax breaks are not just numbers on paper. They are a lifeline that allows us to sleep at night knowing that we won’t lose everything if one of us gets sick.’” 

Baldwin was back in the state Wednesday where, as Erik Gunn reports, she is holding a series of town hall meetings with people affected by rising health care costs. She is holding out hope that some of her Republican colleagues will come around on the issue. She refused to answer questions about whether she thinks Sen. Chuck Schumer should be ousted from his position as Minority Leader because of the end of the shutdown fight. 

Characteristically, she is keeping her head down and working to build bipartisan support — as she did, successfully, when she persuaded enough Republicans to join her to pass the Respect for Marriage Act protecting same-sex and interracial couples — instead of using it to score political points.

As we move past the shutdown power struggle and into the real fight over people’s lives, we need more of that kind of leadership. 

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SB 403 would prohibit a political committee, political party or conduit from accepting contributions that are made with a credit card online unless the contributor provides their credit card verification value (CVV) or code and the billing address associated with the card is located in the United States. Wisconsin State Capitol (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Wisconsin lawmakers considered proposals to crack down on political contributions made with credit cards online and to provide additional information on constitutional amendment proposals to voters during a Senate Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs committee meeting Wednesday. The committee also took up a constitutional amendment proposal to forbid the government from shutting down places of worship during a state of emergency. 

New requirements for credit card political donations

Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee) said his bill creating new requirements for political donations made with a credit card online will  ensure there is a “good, secure” process in place in Wisconsin. 

“Let’s acknowledge that we need to know that unlawful sources and foreign entities are not infiltrating our campaigns and elections,” Tomczyk said, and that “citizens are funding candidates here in Wisconsin.”

The bill, SB 403, would prohibit a political committee, political party or conduit from accepting contributions that are made with a credit card online unless the contributor provides their credit card verification value (CVV) or code and the billing address associated with the card is located in the United States. 

If a U.S. citizen is living outside the country and wants to make a contribution from a credit card that doesn’t have a U.S. billing address, then the person would need to provide a mailing address used for voter registration. 

“I’m trying to make elections more secure, the donation process more secure,” Tomczyk said. 

The bill comes as Republicans and the Trump administration have targeted ActBlue — a Massachusetts-based platform that processes donations to Democratic campaigns — claiming that the platform facilitates so-called “smurfing,” a form of money laundering where large sums of money are broken down into smaller, less noticeable transactions and could allow for “straw donors” and foreign contributions. Stakeholders, including ActBlue and Democrats, have said that the action by the administration is an attack on the democratic process.

Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, in his position as chair of the U.S. House Committee on House Administration, launched an investigation into ActBlue asking whether it required CVV information from contributors in 2023. 

The company said at the time that while it did not, it has many other measures in place to confirm the permissibility of contributions and prevent fraudulent transactions including a requirement for passport information if a donor provides an address outside the U.S. 

Steil has since proposed federal legislation that would require credit card verification for online donations. 

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) expressed concerns over how the bill could create barriers for individuals looking to contribute.

“Why are you trying to ban citizens from being able to donate by credit card?” Larson asked. 

“If they’re not voting in the United States, they’re allowed to donate by credit card if they’re providing all the information that the bill outlines. If they don’t have a voting address, it’s kind of odd,” Tomczyk replied. “I’m pretty sure it’d be a pretty small amount of people.”

The authors of the bill also said people could still donate by check and other methods if they didn’t have the necessary information. 

“It sounds like this is just putting up additional hurdles for people who want to donate by credit card and it just seems like, especially for smaller dollar donations, people who aren’t writing a lot of checks,” Larson said. “Most of the people that I know are giving with credit cards because they don’t use checks.”

Larson said the bill could make it harder for people to participate in democracy through political contributions. 

The authors of the bill claimed there have been examples of “smurfing” in Wisconsin, though they provided no specific examples when asked. 

“This is not something that comes up out of the blue. People have been interviewed about contributions that they gave with their credit card that they said they never gave,” Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Hortonville) said. 

“You guys sound like Gargamel as much as you’re talking about smurfing,” Larson said at one point, referring to the fictional antagonist in the Smurfs cartoon franchise. “Come up with an example. Give me some proof really if you want the governor to be able to sign it.”

“In testimony, I don’t think I have to show proof. I have to provide information and… get enough support to pass it through,” Tomczyk said. 

Providing information on constitutional amendments

Lawmakers are also proposing a way to ensure Wisconsin voters have information on the potential effects of constitutional amendments. 

SB 205 follows years of the Republican-led Legislature turning to constitutional amendment proposals as a way to make changes to law without going through Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. The most recent constitutional amendment that was approved by voters enshrined voter identification requirements in law, and other amendment proposals are circulating this session, including one to restrict the governor’s partial veto power. 

The committee heard from Tomczyk and Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond Du Lac) on their bill, which seeks to provide information about constitutional amendments to voters ahead of elections. 

“I’ve heard from countless friends and constituents, even people with college degrees and professional titles, all who tell me that every time they vote on a constitutional amendment the wording on the ballot makes no sense to them,” Tomczyk said. “The legalese, if you will, that is used on the ballot, is of course necessary and should be presented, but for regular everyday residents of Wisconsin, it might as well be in a different language. There has to be a way to explain what these amendments do so that people know what they are voting for.” 

“This is only meant to inform voters better about what they are voting for or against,” Tomczyk said. 

The bill would require a notice to go to voters that would include the date of the referendum, the text of the ballot question, the plain language summary of current law, an explanation in plain language of a proposed constitutional amendment and an explanation in plain language of the effects of a “yes” versus a “no” vote.

O’Connor said the Legislative Reference Bureau, the nonpartisan agency that drafts bills and proposals for the Legislature, would be responsible for writing the information in a black box. 

“The black box we cannot touch as legislators,” O’Connor said. He added that the legislation is “non-partisan, bipartisan and voter focused.” 

While the bill only has Republican cosponsors, it advanced through the Assembly Campaigns and Elections committee unanimously with support from two Democratic lawmakers. The bill is also supported by the League of Women Voters, the ACLU of Wisconsin, Disability Rights Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. 

Places of worship constitutional amendment

The committee also took up Senate Joint Resolution 4, a constitutional amendment proposal that would prohibit the state from ordering the closure of places of worship during a state of emergency. 

This is the Legislature’s second consideration of the proposal, which was first introduced and passed by the Legislature during the 2023-25 session. 

The proposal was introduced in reaction to actions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic when Gov. Tony Evers’ administration declared a state of emergency. 

Evers’ initial “Safer at Home” order in March 2020 explicitly designated religious entities as essential, though it said any gatherings should include fewer than 10 people in a room or confined space at a time and that people needed to adhere to social distancing requirements as much as possible. It also advised and permitted places of worship to have drive-in services. 

Before the constitutional amendment proposal, Evers vetoed a bill in 2021 that would have prohibited local health officers from taking any action to close or forbid gatherings in places of worship to control outbreaks and epidemics of COVID-19. 

Tomczyk noted an incident at Pilgrim Lutheran Church in West Bend where a law enforcement officer showed up to shut down a service after a neighbor called in to report the gathering. According to a Wisconsin Public Radio report, the incident was a misunderstanding and the police department later apologized to the church.

“In America, in Wisconsin, law enforcement stopped the church service because the government decided that a virus was more important than the constitutional rights of Americans. That is unacceptable,” Tomczyk said. “Many people in our great state seek solace in times of difficulty within their church, synagogue, or other plates of worship. It is critical that we continue to protect every individual’s ability to gather and worship at the times when they rely on their faiths the most.” 

Larson asked Tomczyk whether he was open to holding a religious organization liable if people “get sick and die” because they decide to meet against the direction of a public health emergency.

“No,” Tomczyk replied. 

“So… if there is a deadly pandemic, people are dying… and their parishioners die, you are fine with those deaths?” Larson asked. 

“I’m supportive of people’s constitutional right to gather and to worship at the times that they choose and, and if they make that decision, God bless them,” Tomczyk said. 

According to the constitutional amendment draft, voters would be asked whether the state constitution should be “amended to prohibit the state or a political subdivision of the state from ordering the closure of, or forbidding gatherings in, places of worship in response to a state of emergency, including a public health emergency?”

The proposal received a hearing in the Assembly in May, but has not yet been voted on there. 

If the bill passes the Assembly and Senate this session, it would be placed in front of voters during the November elections in 2026 alongside a slate of other high-profile races, including the one for governor.

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