Lemon and Fort were arrested after covering a January 18 protest at a church in Minneapolis. They were conducting the constitutionally protected activities of a working journalist: observing, recording and documenting a newsworthy event and attempting to obtain quotes from participants.
Their arrest on charges of allegedly obstructing a place of worship, and even worse, under federal conspiracy law, alarms all of us who believe in the First Amendment and seek to do our jobs without fear of obstruction by law enforcement or retaliation by agents of the government.
The principle of a free press animated the founding of the United States of America 250 years ago, and countless Americans have fought valiantly for it. We cannot allow colleagues to be subjected to spurious and unwarranted arrest for committing acts of journalism.
We call on federal authorities to drop all charges against Lemon and Fort and to publicly affirm their unqualified support for the work of professional journalists in this critical time.
In 2022, a student-led voting advocacy organization sued in Dane County to clarify which parts of a witness’ address must appear on an absentee ballot envelope. What was accepted differed from city to city.
The 4th District Court of Appeals, in an opinion written by Judge Chris Taylor, affirmed a lower court ruling that a witness only needs to provide an address where that person can “be communicated with.” The Legislature, which had appealed, argued a precise, multipart address is necessary to prevent election fraud.
“The legislature could have required such specificity for the absentee ballot witness address requirement when it initially adopted the witness address requirement in 1966 or in subsequent modifications of the absentee voting statutes,” wrote Taylor, a liberal candidate running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April.
Taylor’s campaign shared that decision as a prime example of the kind of justice she would be on the high court. The campaign for her opponent, conservative appeals court Judge Maria Lazar, shared that exact same decision as a prime example of why Taylor shouldn’t be on the high court.
As Wisconsinites head to the polls in just two months to elect another state Supreme Court justice, Wisconsin Watch asked the Lazar and Taylor campaigns separately to provide examples of rulings in past cases that show how they might serve as a justice and decisions from their opponents that warrant criticism.
That both campaigns shared the otherwise mundane witness address case speaks to the deep ideological divide that persists in the state judiciary. Campaigns can point to the outcomes of politically charged cases, such as those related to voting rights, gun rights or abortion, as a way to point voters to what their views are, legal experts said.
Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor. (Matt Roth)
Court of Appeals Judge Maria Lazar (Courtesy of Wisconsin Court of Appeals)
“To me, those are very subtle signals as to their constituency that the impact of this decision, one way or another, is consistent with your views,” said Janine Geske, who served on the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1993 to 1998.
A spokesperson for Taylor’s campaign said the case demonstrates how Taylor protected Democratic rights and “fairly” and “impartially” applies the law.
“This decision balanced protecting each Wisconsinite’s right to vote with establishing a fair, uniform procedure for our local clerks,” Taylor campaign spokesman Sam Roecker said. “As indicative of the strength of this decision, no party involved in the case appealed Judge Taylor’s decision.”
Lazar’s campaign said Taylor failed to consider the intent of the Legislature.
“Judge Taylor’s opinion, on the merits, indicates how far an activist judge who legislates from the bench will go to alter procedures for election integrity,” Lazar campaign spokesman Nathan Conrad said of the witness address case. “Every common sense citizen in Wisconsin knows that an address consists of a street name, number and municipality.”
Other significant cases from the judges
The other judicial rulings the candidates’ campaigns shared with Wisconsin Watch also showcase the candidates’ contrasting judicial philosophies.
In addition to the voting rights case, Taylor’s campaign highlighted rulings that favored utility consumers and reproductive health. In one decision the court determined the Public Service Commission did not follow proper rulemaking procedures when it prohibited activities companies use to incentivize lower energy use. In the other opinion Taylor wrote that a woman could continue seeking legal action against a physician she claimed did not inform her of a recommendation to another doctor to remove her ovaries during a colon surgery. The Wisconsin Supreme Court last May affirmed that decision with Justice Brian Hagedorn joining the liberal justices in the majority.
The different political focuses between the candidates is no surprise given their different professional and political paths prior to their time on the bench. Lazar, a conservative, was an assistant attorney general under Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen before her election to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2015. Taylor worked as a policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and served five terms as a Democrat in the Assembly before Gov. Tony Evers appointed her to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020.
The judicial rulings they highlighted as reflecting poorly on their opponent are nothing like those featured in the multimillion-dollar Supreme Court campaigns of recent years, when both sides sought to paint the other as lax on crime and public safety.
While there are still two months to go, it’s possible the race will stay muted because the stakes are different with no Supreme Court majority on the line, said Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Neither outcome will change liberal control of the court, though because the winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, it could extend guaranteed liberal control until at least 2030.
The quiet nature of the race is “bizarre” given the increasingly political direction Wisconsin Supreme Court elections have gone in the past, Schweber said.
“There is not invective. There is not screaming accusations,” Schweber said. “This may all change over the course of the election, but at least at the moment, we’re not seeing over-the-top ads making hysterical accusations, and it appears that at least part of the reason for that might be that neither campaign can find anything particularly embarrassing that the opposing candidate has done.”
Some criticisms from each campaign are still there and could grow stronger as Election Day nears. In a recent social media post seeking campaign contributions, Lazar’s campaign described Taylor not as a judge, but a “radical left-wing legislator.” Taylor’s campaign in a post following the release of January campaign finance reports described Lazar as “our extreme opponent.”
Lazar and Taylor will face each other in a March 25 debate hosted by WISN-TV at the Lubar Center at Marquette University’s Law School.
Which cases did the campaigns share?
Taylor’s campaign shared the following cases with Wisconsin Watch as examples of how Taylor would serve as a justice:
Midwest Renewable Energy Association v. Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (the utility case). (Read the opinion here.)
Rise Inc. v. Wisconsin Elections Commission (the absentee ballot case). (Read the opinion here.)
Melissa A. Hubbard v. Carol J. Neuman, M.D. (the ovary removal case). (Read the opinion here.)
The campaign criticized a 2024 appellate opinion written by Lazar that contradicted a ruling from another appeals court branch on whether a conservative group questioning the 2020 election results could access health information about individuals who were judged incapable of voting. Lazar and another judge on the 2nd District Court of Appeals released an opinion that said the group had a right to the information after the 4th District’s opposite ruling was published as precedent.
The opinion shows Lazar “is an extremist who uses our courts to protect special interests and push her right-wing agenda,” Roecker said.
“Lazar completely ignored recent precedent that private voter data could not be released to the public,” Roecker said. “That should alarm anyone who believes in protecting our democracy and fair elections.”
Lazar’s campaign in response to that criticism said the dual appeals court opinions were about “issues of procedure” when two districts disagree. The 2nd District revised the opinion at the request of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which then accepted the case, Conrad said. It is scheduled for oral arguments before the high court in April.
Lazar’s campaign shared the following cases as examples of how Lazar would serve as a justice:
Saybrook Tax Exemptors, LLC. v. Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, et. al.: Lazar concluded that certain agreements and documents between a financial company and the Lake Superior Chippewa tribe about plans for a casino were void. (Read the decision here.)
State v. Scherer: Lazar ruled that law enforcement’s seizure of a man’s cellphone that possessed child pornography was too broad and violated his privacy rights, despite the “egregious” potential crime. (Read the decision here.)
State v. Heinz: Lazar denied a request to modify the sentence of a woman who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after she was charged with first-degree reckless homicide. (Read the decision here.)
Hartland Sportsman Club v. City of Delafield (the gun range case). (Read the decision here.)
Pewaukee Land County, LLC. v. Soo Line Railroad: Lazar ruled that a company could not claim ownership of property in Pewaukee that belonged to the Canadian Pacific railroad, but did not block the company’s current use of the property. (Read the decision here.)
Craig, et. al. v. Village of West Bend: Lazar dismissed a case about the transfer of cemetery property that already had been decided in an earlier case. (Read the decision here.)
Lazar’s campaign shared two cases as criticism of Taylor’s judicial opinions:
Rise Inc. v. Wisconsin Elections Commission (the absentee ballot case). (Read the opinion here.)
State v. Kruckenberg Anderson: In an opinion written by Taylor, the 4th District Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that suppressed certain statements a teenager made to law enforcement prior to being charged with killing his newborn child. The Wisconsin Supreme Court denied a petition to review the case in 2024. (Read the Court of Appeals opinion here.)
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Minimum-wage workers in 19 states saw their paychecks increase this year. But Wisconsin hasn’t changed its minimum wage — just $7.25 per hour — for 17 years, shrinking the buying power of the lowest-earning workers.
Wisconsin ties its minimum wage to the federal level, which hasn’t budged for its longest stretch in history. Had Congress indexed the wage to inflation in 2009, it would have risen to $10.88 in 2025. That’s a difference of $145.20 over a 40-hour workweek.
Elsewhere, 34 states, territories and districts have set minimum wages above $7.25.
Neighboring Minnesota raised its minimum wage from $11.13 to $11.41 this year, while Michigan’s leaped from $12.48 to $13.73. Illinois kept its threshold at $15, the highest level among noncoastal states.
In 2024, about 1% of the Wisconsin workforce earned at or below the state’s minimum wage. Those people generally worked as salespeople, automotive service technicians or food preparation workers, U.S. Census data show.
Wisconsin’s tipped workers have an even lower minimum wage of $2.33 per hour, slightly higher than the $2.13 federal minimum, which has not changed since 1991.
Meanwhile, the average living wage for a single adult with no children in Wisconsin in 2025 is $20.96, according to MIT’s living wage calculator, with higher costs in metropolitan areas — including $22.18 in Madison and $21.07 in Milwaukee and Waukesha. The living wage is significantly higher for adults who raise children and lower for people living with a working partner.
New York campaign sparked ‘Fight for $15’
Campaigns to raise the minimum wage have regularly drawn national headlines. In 2012, fast-food workers and their supporters began calling for a $15-per-hour minimum wage in New York City. Their victory inspired a broader ‘Fight for $15’ movement, including in Wisconsin, as Wisconsin Watch previously reported.
This year, The Living Wage Coalition — a group of labor and progressive organizations — launched a campaign to raise Wisconsin’s minimum wage to $20 per hour, calling the status quo far below a reasonable standard of living for the lowest-wage workers.
An increase to $15 per hour would be politically popular and directly or indirectly raise the wages of 231,800 (18%) women workers, 36,200 (25.6%) Black workers and 50,200 (26.6%) Hispanic workers in Wisconsin — narrowing gender and racial wealth and income gaps that are some of the largest in the nation, according to a 2025 High Road Strategy Center report. The University of Wisconsin-Madison-based “think-and-do tank” focuses on solutions to social problems — including those related to the environment, opportunity and democratic institutions.
Still, multiple bills to raise Wisconsin’s minimum wage — largely proposed by Democrats — have stalled in the Legislature. Republican lawmakers have cited concerns about burdening small businesses.
Higher wage ‘has to come from somewhere’
Minimum-wage hikes — depending on the size — can bring a mix of positive and negative economic consequences, according to Callie Freitag, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Social Work.
“The good thing is that earnings would go up for workers. Employers would raise wages and be able to pay workers more,” Freitag said. “But the money to pay workers more has to come from somewhere.”
Economists worry that dramatic minimum-wage hikes could lead to higher consumer costs — or prompt businesses to cut worker hours or eliminate their jobs entirely, Freitag added.
The key would be an increase that benefits the lowest-paid workers without significantly affecting the broader economy. But it’s unclear what that sweet spot is.
Conditions of the labor market — the supply and demand for workers — shape wages across most of the economy. Wages typically increase when there are more openings than workers, and they decrease when there are few openings for available workers.
Setting the minimum wage close to or below an equilibrium wage — where the demand for labor matches the supply — only minimally affects wages across the market, economists suggest.
States that hiked minimum wages saw slightly higher gains across the lowest-tier wages (the bottom 10%) between 2019 and 2024, but not enough to claim a correlation, an analysis by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found. A range of factors could have shaped the wage increases, which also played out in the Midwest.
Wisconsin has seen slightly faster growth in bottom-tier wages than its neighbors — even without increasing the minimum wage. The state’s bottom-tier wages increased from $10.92 hourly in 2009 to $14.58, Wisconsin Watch found by analyzing EPI’s data.
Bigger hikes strain employers
While basic economic principles suggest that a 10% increase in the minimum wage would decrease the hiring of unskilled workers by 1 to 2%, recent studies suggest an even smaller shift, or no effect at all.
Most minimum-wage studies published between 2004 and 2024 have shown little or no job loss, Ben Zipperer, an EPI senior economist, found.
Researchers tend to focus most on cities and states that have significantly increased their minimum wage. Seattle, Washington, which has hiked its threshold annually since 2015, has among the highest in the country at $21.30 this year.
A sign is seen during a Wisconsin State Capitol press conference about raising Wisconsin’s minimum wage, June 17, 2021. (Isaac Wasserman / Wisconsin Watch)
In a 2022 study, University of Washington researchers found that Seattle’s minimum wage increase to $11 hourly in 2015 “had an insignificant effect on employment,” but a spike to $13 in 2016 “resulted in a large drop in employment.”
But the findings might not directly apply to other places, the researchers found, because industries and the makeup of the labor force might look and act differently elsewhere.
A separate University of Washington study found that a minimum-wage increase to $15 hourly affected most child care businesses, which commonly responded by raising tuition and reducing staff hours or total number of staff — potentially harming staff and lower-wage customers.
What work is worth
“Minimum wage legislation commonly has two stated objectives: the reduction of employer control of wages; and the abolition of poverty,” George Stiegler, a leader of the Chicago school of economics, wrote in 1946 — an era when Congress was debating bigger increases to the minimum wage in the policy’s early years.
But Stiegler was pessimistic about the prospect that minimum-wage hikes were the best way to eliminate poverty. He instead called for lawmakers to grant lower-income families other forms of relief, including tax cuts and credits.
That spirit was reflected in the “no tax on tips” bill, which the Wisconsin Assembly passed this month to benefit tipped workers.
Still, Laura Dresser, associate director of the High Road Strategy Center, views the minimum wage as an important floor to benefit workers at the margins and signal “work is worth this.”
“People who are working full time should be able to afford life,” she said. “At $7.25 per hour, there’s almost nothing you can afford, and it feels far below what a wage floor really should function as.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A Shorewood judge ruled Wednesday that a man who deliberately tested the boundaries of public access along Lake Michigan’s shoreline in late July trespassed on private property.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Paul Florsheim grew up just a few houses away from where a Shorewood resident who lives in a prominent lakeside home recorded him walking on the beach adjacent to his house multiple times and called police. Florsheim was eventually fined $313 for trespassing after walking past signs marking private property north of the public beach and cordially ignoring warnings from the police.
He previously told Wisconsin Watch that, despite Wisconsin law, the stretch of beach along Lake Michigan just north of Milwaukee had long been treated by locals like a public right of way.
Municipal Court Judge Margo Kirchner found Florsheim guilty and ordered him to pay a $313 trespassing fine, citing Wisconsin precedent that limits public access along privately controlled Lake Michigan shorelines.
Unlike other states bordering Lake Michigan like Michigan and Indiana, Wisconsin law does not guarantee public access to the beach up to the point where sand typically meets vegetation.
Under a 1923 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, private property owners adjacent to the shoreline are granted “exclusive” use of the beach, even though the land is publicly owned. The court held that Wisconsinites may walk along the shoreline only if they remain in the water.
Florsheim previously told Wisconsin Watch he hopes to appeal the case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where a favorable ruling could reshape public access along Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan shoreline.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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Anna Mykhailova and Sasha Druzhyna fled Ukraine after Russia invaded, leaving behind careers as physicians.
Wisconsin needs more medical professionals, including physicians. But those with foreign training face hurdles that can keep them from filling that gap.
State officials recently eased requirements for foreign-trained doctors, but Mykhailova isn’t sure what the change means for her.
Anna works as a sonographer at a Madison hospital, while Sasha is studying for a master’s degree in medical perfusion at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
The family is among 100,000 Ukrainians with Temporary Protected Status, allowing them to live and work in the United States for renewable 18-month stretches.
Sasha Druzhyna knows all about transplants.
As an anesthesiologist and perfusionist in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sasha used specialized equipment to keep patients’ blood pumping during heart transplants and keep donor organs alive until they reached their recipients.
Now, after fleeing Russia’s full-scale invasion, the 52-year-old is learning his profession all over again as a student in Milwaukee School of Engineering’s medical perfusion program.
Eighty miles away, his wife Anna Mykhailova, 42, is starting over, too. In 2024, she started a job as a cardiac sonographer at a Madison hospital, using skills she refined as a cardiologist in one of Ukraine’s top heart hospitals. She’s also studying for the medical board exams in hopes of one day practicing medicine in the United States.
But as they work to rebuild their careers, they still don’t know if they’ll be allowed to stay.
“It’s so stressful because of this immigration process. I will do these really hard exams and they (might) say, ‘Oh, you have to leave this country,’” Anna said of the family’s immigration limbo.
Wisconsin needs more medical professionals, including physicians. But as the couple’s experience shows, those who arrive in the country with foreign training face hurdles that can keep them from filling that gap.
Anna Mykhailova, right, worked as a cardiologist in Ukraine before fleeing with the couple’s daughter in 2022 when Russia invaded the country. Sasha Druzhyna worked as an anesthesiologist and perfusionist. He stayed in Ukraine to work for a year after his wife and daughter left.
Sasha Druzhyna, left, and Anna Mykhailova settled in Madison with the help of friends. The family has Temporary Protected Status, which allows them to stay in the U.S. for 18-month stretches.
Anna Mykhailova, left, works as a sonographer at a Madison hospital while her husband, Sasha Druzhyna, studies for a master’s degree in medical perfusion at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
A new life begins
Had the couple fled to Europe instead, their career paths might have been simpler. Sasha might be the teacher instead of the student. Anna might still be a doctor.
But the invasion left no time to deliberate. Anna and her colleagues moved their patients to the hospital’s basement, then brought their own families to shelter there, too. Anna and Sasha brought their daughter, Varya, who was 6 years old at the time.
They listened to the news as Russian troops occupied the suburbs around Kyiv.
“When they showed civilian kids killed by Russians … I realized that nobody will protect us and (we) just have to go,” Anna said.
A friend with military connections warned that Ukrainian forces would soon blow up Ukraine’s own bridges to stop Russian troops from taking more ground.
“They told us, if you want to leave, you have to leave right now,” Anna said. Sasha drove his wife and daughter west, past sirens and explosions, toward the border with Poland.
A week later, Anna and Varya were on a plane to Boston, where Anna had a friend from medical school. Arriving with tourist visas, she thought they’d be away for just a few weeks. Sasha, who didn’t speak English, opted to stay.
“Coming here, starting from zero, no money, no nothing, no job — he didn’t want to come and wash floors in a supermarket … It’s really difficult to immigrate when you already had something in your home country,” Anna said.
Anna Mykhailova and Sasha Druzhyna’s 10-year-old daughter, Varya, plays on her mother’s smartphone at their home in Madison, Wis., on Oct. 25, 2025. Varya was 6 years old when she fled Ukraine with her mother.
Drawings by their daughter hang on the front door of Anna Mykhailova and Sasha Druzhyna’s home on Oct. 25, 2025. It might have been easier for the couple to practice medicine if they immigrated to somewhere in Europe, but they said they don’t want to uproot their daughter again.
From left, Sasha Druzhyna, Varya and Anna Mykhailova sit on the couch together at their home on Oct. 25, 2025. They try to stay positive. Druzhyna sees his graduate degree program as an adventure, and Mykhailova is thankful for the support they’ve received from Americans.
He kept working in the hospital, caring for his usual patients and the war-wounded. They figured the fighting would end soon.
But about a year later, Sasha joined his family in Madison, where friends helped them get settled.
“We realized that this war is going to be forever,” Anna said. “I don’t believe that they will stop it.”
The three are among more than 100,000 Ukrainians who’ve been granted Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, because the federal government deems it unsafe to return. The status allows them to live and work in the United States for renewable 18-month stretches.
Almost four years later, they’re still here — and hoping to stay. The war rages on, and they’ve embraced their new home. Varya, 10, now speaks mostly English.
“She doesn’t want to speak Ukrainian anymore,” Anna said in an interview at her Madison apartment building in September. “So for her to go back to school in Ukraine … it’s possible, but it’s going to be really difficult.”
But staying isn’t easy either. Restarting their careers has come with significant personal and financial costs, and there’s no guarantee their efforts will pay off.
Covert cardiologist
Until recently, all foreign-trained physicians seeking to practice medicine in Wisconsin had to pass three licensing board exams — offered only in English — then compete against recent medical school graduates for a three-year residency at a U.S. hospital.
To Anna, the process seemed daunting. The tests cost around $1,000 each — not counting textbooks and study materials — and she was still taking classes to improve her English. She heard that hospitals preferred recent graduates, and she feared they’d be particularly reluctant to accept someone whose immigration status expires every 18 months.
Meanwhile, she and her husband struggled to find a place to live. The prestige they commanded back home was irrelevant to U.S. landlords running background checks.
“Could you imagine? I’m in my 40s. I don’t have any credit score … I just got my work permit. I couldn’t find a job,” Anna said. “Nobody wants me. They don’t know who I am (or) what is our culture; everybody’s afraid of us.”
Anna Mykhailova poses for a portrait on Oct. 27, 2025, at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wis. Mykhailova worked as a cardiologist in Kyiv, Ukraine, before fleeing to the United States and having to start over due to the Russian invasion.
She began applying for research jobs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I don’t know how many interviews I had,” Anna said. “Everybody was so nice, but (they said), ‘You are overqualified for this job.’”
Then the mom of one of her daughter’s soccer teammates mentioned that her employer, SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital, was hiring student sonographers. She encouraged Anna to apply.
The roles are designed for people currently studying medical sonography, but Anna already had the relevant training: Ukrainian doctors regularly do their own sonography. She applied for the job with help from teachers at the Madison nonprofit Literacy Network, where she’d been taking classes to improve her English and prepare for next steps in school or work.
She started the job in 2024, running ultrasounds to aid in medical procedures and to diagnose things like heart attacks, heart murmurs, strokes and birth defects. She was promoted to a full-time position soon after.
On a typical day, she might see half a dozen patients. She doesn’t tell them she’s a doctor.
“Nobody knows,” Anna said.
Some patients get rude when they hear her accent. “I had a couple patients, they told me, ‘Don’t touch me. Call somebody else. I don’t trust you,’” she said.
Once a hospital security officer heard the way a patient spoke to her and urged her to file a report. The hospital sent a letter threatening to deny care if the patient acted that way again.
“I have a really good experience working here,” Anna said. “I really like my job right now.”
Leaves change colors on Oct. 27, 2025, outside SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital where Anna Mykhailova works as a sonographer. Mykhailova already had the relevant training: She regularly did her own sonography as a physician in Ukraine.
Under the new rules, qualifying foreign-trained physicians can work under the supervision of another physician without repeating residency training if they’ve passed U.S. board exams and have a Wisconsin job offer.
Anna heard the news from a friend and asked about it at work.
“I showed this bill to people in the medical field here, and they were just like, ‘Oh, we don’t know,’” Anna said. “So I don’t know how does it work here, or where to go and who to ask.”
It’s also not clear she’d qualify. The new rules require applicants to have practiced medicine in their home country for at least one year in the last five years. She left her job nearly four years ago, and she figures it will likely be a couple years before she passes the board exams.
Lately, she’s been reading up on the licensing rules in other states and contemplating a move after her husband finishes school.
She wonders if things might have been easier if the family had immigrated to Poland, say, or Italy, instead of the United States. Back in Ukraine, her husband ran a perfusion school certified by the European Board of Cardiovascular Perfusion, and he received his own training in Europe. But she doesn’t think it’s worth emigrating again.
“It doesn’t matter where you go, everything is going to be different,” Anna said. “If I go to Europe, I have to start over. I have to study a new language, and then all of the education and activities for our daughter, and she also has to study a new language. So I just don’t want to do it a second time. I don’t have the energy to do it.”
From professor to pupil
Sasha, meanwhile, decided not to try to become a doctor again. His top priority was perfusion, the field to which he dedicated two doctoral dissertations and decades of work. In the United States, perfusionists don’t need to be doctors, but they do need specialized training.
“The perfusion specialty board, they do not recognize European diplomas,” Anna said. “They want them to go back to school here. But he’s happy to do it. He was so happy that they admitted him.”
Last fall, he started the two-year master’s degree program at MSOE.
“This wasn’t about choosing an easier path. Perfusion is a highly specialized and demanding field … This is where my experience is most relevant,” Sasha said, “and it’s work I genuinely value.”
Sasha Druzhyna takes classes on Nov. 5, 2025, at the Milwaukee School of Engineering in Milwaukee. Druzhyna worked as an anesthesiologist and perfusionist in Kyiv, Ukraine, before fleeing to the U.S. and having to start over due to the Russian invasion. He takes classes Monday through Friday and returns to his family in Madison on weekends.
Anna teases him about being so much older than the other students in the program.
“He’s like a father for all his classmates,” Anna said. “The first day, he brought actual paper, a notebook with different colored pens. His classmates brought just iPads. They were like, ‘What is that? Are you a dinosaur?’”
Paying for tuition for the first semester took most of the couple’s savings, Anna said. Their immigration status makes them ineligible for federal student loans.
She’s not sure how they’ll cover the remaining costs.
Sasha was also accepted to the perfusion school at State University of New York Upstate Medical University, which offered him a job that would have offset his tuition costs, but he didn’t want to uproot his family again.
“My daughter would need to change her school, leave her friends,” Sasha said. “You know how important it is for a girl of 10 years, your friends? It’s the most important thing in your life.”
But being in school has meant far less time with her. Since September, Sasha has spent his weekdays in Milwaukee, attending classes and shadowing other perfusionists during surgery. When he’s not in the operating room, he spends the night in a spare room he rents from a friend.
The Milwaukee School of Engineering campus is seen on Nov. 5, 2025. Sasha Druzhyna is studying for a master’s degree in medical perfusion, a profession he dedicated two dissertations and decades of work to in Ukraine.
Back in Madison, Anna is “basically a single mom” five days a week. On Fridays, Sasha drives home to see his family and work on a transplant team at UW Health, where he uses perfusion techniques to keep donated organs alive and healthy until they’re transplanted.
With luck, he’ll move back to Madison after he finishes his coursework in May. He’s hoping to do his second-year rotations at Madison hospitals.
Status: Pending
Back in Kyiv, the couple’s condo stands vacant, full of the things Anna left behind when she packed hurriedly for a few weeks away.
The high-rise penthouse, located beside the many bridges on Kyiv’s east side, boasts an impressive view of the city and the river — and Russian missile strikes. The couple can’t sell it, or go back, until the war ends.
“Nobody wants to live on the 27th floor when you don’t have electricity, elevator or water, and you can see rockets and jets in front of your eyes,” Anna said.
Meanwhile, despite the time and money the two doctors have invested in their new lives, their future in the United States is uncertain.
The family’s Temporary Protected Status expired in April, and they still haven’t received an answer on the renewal application they submitted a year ago.
“The Homeland Security office said that our work permits are still valid (while) we are waiting for their decision,” Anna said. “We’re just waiting to see.”
If their application is approved, they could be on the hook for thousands of dollars. The Department of Homeland Security announced in October that Ukrainians’ applications, including those already waiting to be processed, will be subject to a new fee of $1,000 per person.
Anna has been looking into other visa options, too. Many foreign doctors practice in the United States on H1-B visas, an employer-sponsored visa for workers with specialized skills. If Sasha can eventually get one of those visas as a perfusionist, Anna will get a work permit, too. But in September, the Trump administration announced a $100,000 fee on most new H1-B visas, raising concerns that employers — including hospitals — will cut back on those visas.
Sasha Druzhyna, right, and Anna Mykhailova head home after their daughter’s soccer game on Oct. 25, 2025, in Oregon, Wis.
Even if the family is able to renew their status, it will end in October unless the Department of Homeland Security extends Ukraine’s TPS designation. Since President Donald Trump took office last year, his administration ended TPS for immigrants from 10 countries, revoking legal status for more than 1.6 million immigrants, NPR found.
Anna worries that she and her family could become targets for deportation before they ever get a decision on their application.
“I don’t feel safe,” Anna said. “When you are waiting, you are legally in the United States, but this new administration and ICE police, they think that you are illegal here.”
Still, she said, she and Sasha try to stay positive.
“My husband says this is a good opportunity. He feels so young because he is studying as a student, and he says it’s just an adventure,” Anna said.
She looks for the bright side, too. She points to the support and kindness Americans have shown her and the fact that she’s learned she can survive “without anything.”
“I feel like a homeless person. I feel like Ukraine is not my home anymore, and the United States is not my home yet,” Anna said, “but people are trying to make it feel like home.”
This story is part of Public Square, an occasional photography series highlighting how Wisconsin residents connect with their communities. To suggest someone in your community for us to feature, email Joe Timmerman at jtimmerman@wisconsinwatch.org.
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
The Madison suburb of DeForest, where a $12 billion data center proposal has been in development for months, abruptly announced Jan. 27 that the data center “is not feasible.”
The statement by the village government indicates the proposal will be dropped.
The announcement came a day after Wisconsin Watch reported on secrecy on the part of local governments regarding seven major data centers around Wisconsin.
In DeForest, village staff worked for at least seven months with Virginia-based QTS Data Centers before the proposal was publicly announced in October. On Nov. 18, the village president said at a public board meeting that members had only known about the project for weeks.
A key issue was the village would have had to annex 1,600 acres in the neighboring town of Vienna.
QTS was expected to make a presentation Jan. 27 to a village board committee, ahead of consideration by the village board on Feb. 3 and a public hearing on Feb. 9.
Instead, the village issued a statement Tuesday, saying:
“After individual discussions with the Village Board trustees, village staff have determined that QTS’ data center proposal is not feasible in DeForest. Village staff have recommended to the village president to reject the annexation petition during the Feb. 3 Village Board meeting.”
Dan Jansen, a DeForest resident who opposes the data center, told Wisconsin Watch that the months of preparation appeared to give the proposal momentum, but that he believes it never had enough support on the seven-member village board.
DeForest Village President Jane Cahill Wolfgram looks on during a village board meeting at DeForest Village Hall in DeForest, Wis., on Jan. 20, 2026. (Kayla Wolf for Wisconsin Watch)
Village President Jane Cahill Wolfgram, who had expressed frustration with residents’ opposition to the data center, told Wisconsin Watch on Jan. 28: “We have looked at the project as much as we can right now and decided it’s not the direction we should go.”
Our original story on data center secrecy was the result of a reader tip. If you have suggestions for future stories, please let us know.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Last week we asked for your questions about immigration enforcement in Wisconsin, particularly as thousands of federal immigration agents patrol Minnesota’s Twin Cities, conducting door-to-door searches for immigrants and clashing daily with protesters and observers.
One reader reached out for information about Wisconsin’s firearms laws, citing the example of armed civilians at anti-ICE protests in Minnesota. The question preceded the Jan. 24 killing of Alex Pretti by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officer in Minneapolis — a shooting that escalated tensions in Minnesota, sparked national protests and reignited questions about unchecked federal power.
The episode also renewed a national conversation about the implications of exercising Second Amendment rights during protests and interactions with law enforcement. Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse at Minneapolis’ Veterans Affairs hospital, held a concealed carry permit for the handgun he carried that day. Video of the incident shows a CBP officer confiscating the handgun shortly before other agents shot Pretti multiple times, killing him.
Here’s the reader’s question and our answer below:
I would like to know more about open carry in Wisconsin. I know Wisconsin has more permissive open carry laws compared to Minnesota. But, I know there are some restrictions as to locations as well. Wisconsin law is, at least on the surface, fairly permissive on the matter of carrying firearms in most public spaces — a practice often referred to as “open carry.”
“As long as you’re not a prohibited possessor for a firearm and you’re an adult, you are allowed to lawfully open carry a firearm in the state of Wisconsin,” said Milwaukee defense attorney Tom Grieve, a former state prosecutor and Second Amendment commentator.
Protesters gather to protest U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement and the Trump administration, Jan. 25, 2026, in Madison, Wis. The protest came after a federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis the day before. (Angela Major / WPR)
Those prohibited from possessing a firearm under federal or state law include those with a felony conviction, anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence or anyone subject to a domestic violence protective order. Others prohibited include people found not guilty of a felony by reason of mental illness, those adjudicated incompetent by a court or those with a history of involuntary commitments for mental illness or drug dependence.
But carrying openly, particularly without a concealed carry license, can be a legal minefield. Carrying a firearm on federal property — including post offices — or on school grounds is a felony, and Wisconsin law sets a 1,000-foot radius around all school properties in which possessing a firearm is generally illegal. In urban areas, Grieve added, “you’re almost always within 1,000 feet of a school.”
The right to carry — either open or concealed — also does not extend to police stations, courthouses or correctional facilities. Private property owners may prohibit guns on their premises and direct anyone violating their rules to leave. “Signs or no signs, if you’re asked to leave, you have to leave,” said Nik Clark, president of the advocacy group Wisconsin Carry, Inc. Private property owners cannot, however, bar people from keeping a gun in their personal vehicle while on their premises.
Concealed carry license holders are allowed to carry within 1,000 feet of a school under state law, but they are not exempt from the law prohibiting firearms on school grounds. Licensees may also carry their guns in bars and taverns, but only if they do not drink alcohol.
Wisconsin residents over the age of 21 who are permitted to own a firearm can apply for a concealed carry license through the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Applicants must prove they have completed a firearms training course and background check and pay a $40 fee to obtain their first license, which remains valid for five years.
A sign on a University of Wisconsin-Madison campus building in 2018 warns that weapons are not allowed inside. (Dee J. Hall / Wisconsin Watch)
Most states either honor Wisconsin concealed carry licenses or do not require a license to carry a concealed firearm. Neighboring Illinois and Minnesota do not honor Wisconsin licenses, nor do 12 other states and the District of Columbia.
A growing number of states, including Illinois, prohibit openly carrying “long guns” — meaning rifles and shotguns — at protests. Those rules aim to prevent armed confrontations between protesters, counterprotesters and law enforcement, said University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor John Gross. “What (law enforcement) don’t want,” he said, “is a situation where you have two armed groups facing off against one another with the police in between them.”
But Wisconsin law generally allows both open and licensed concealed carry at political demonstrations. A few demonstrators carried rifles outside the Wisconsin State Capitol during a massive protest against COVID-19 restrictions in 2020, for instance.
Minnesota also allows concealed carry permit holders to bring firearms to political demonstrations.
Family members have confirmed that Pretti held a concealed carry permit for the handgun that a CBP agent confiscated moments before the shooting. Minnesota laws allow concealed carry permit holders to openly carry their firearms, although videos show Pretti had his handgun holstered and was holding a phone camera.
Wisconsin attorneys and gun rights advocates argue gun owners considering openly carrying their firearms at protests should think carefully about their decision.
“We have a right to our own self-defense, and the defense of our family and of our communities,” Voss said. “(But) I usually advise people against open carry. I find that there are very few situations in which that makes anyone feel better or really does you any good. Worst case scenario, it makes you the target.”
“When you are open carrying a firearm people generally think, ‘Oh, this is a great way to deter someone,’” Grieve said. “It might (be), or they’re just going to make sure the first thing they do is grab your firearm.”
Clark broadly cautioned against bringing firearms to protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“I would encourage anyone who wants to go ‘demonstrate’ armed to keep a safe distance from law enforcement,” he wrote in an email. “Wave your flag, say what you want to say, but don’t get in close contact with law enforcement. I would advise anyone not to try to interfere with law enforcement at all. But if you do interfere with law enforcement, doing so armed is presenting yourself as a deadly threat and that is dangerous for both law enforcement and agitators.”
A protester holds a sign Jan. 25, 2026, as hundreds gathered outside the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis., to protest the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. (Jim Malewitz / Wisconsin Watch)
Still, Grieve said, carrying a firearm in the presence of law enforcement is not intrinsically grounds for officers to react with deadly force, as some Trump administration officials suggested in the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s killing.
“If that’s the case, then game wardens in the United States would be slaughtering tens of thousands of Americans every year,” he said, “because those are law enforcement officials who, by their very nature, are dealing with armed Americans on a daily and hourly basis.”
Voss challenged the White House’s initial efforts to blame Pretti’s death on his decision to carry a firearm. In his view, none of Pretti’s actions captured on video justified the shooting. “At what point did (Pretti) do something that invited an immediate execution?” he asked.
Gross shares a similar view of the shooting. “He was a lawful gun owner legally carrying his firearm in a public space, and any arguments from the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI or other members of federal law enforcement that his possession of that weapon by itself indicates some intent to harm federal law enforcement (are) completely ridiculous.”
“If that were true, it would eviscerate the Second Amendment right to possess a firearm,” Gross added. “It would essentially be saying, ‘If federal agents believe you have a gun, and you potentially could use that firearm against them, then they have the authority to disarm you or even use deadly force against you to protect themselves.’”
If you are considering carrying a firearm in Wisconsin either openly or concealed, consult with the Wisconsin Department of Justice and, if possible, an attorney to learn more about how to legally and safely exercise your Second Amendment rights, Grieve said.
A video posted on Twitter shows Kyle Rittenhouse approaching police with his hands up after killing two people in Kenosha and wounding another on Aug. 25, 2020. Rittenhouse later stood trial for homicide, reckless endangerment and other charges. He was acquitted in 2021. (Courtesy of Brendan Gutenschwager via Twitter)
Wisconsinites may remember another incident that placed the intersection of firearms rights and protests in national headlines: In August 2020, then-17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of Illinois shot and killed two men in separate confrontations while patrolling Kenosha as part of an informal volunteer militia amid civil unrest following the shooting of Jacob Blake by a Kenosha police officer. Rittenhouse later stood trial for homicide and reckless endangerment, among other charges. A Kenosha County jury acquitted Rittenhouse in 2021.
Rittenhouse has since become a gun rights advocate, and the shooting of Pretti prompted some national pundits to compare his exercise of Second Amendment rights to Pretti’s. Rittenhouse himself weighed in on Monday via Twitter. “Carry everywhere,” he wrote. “It is your right.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The Madison suburb of DeForest, where a $12 billion data center proposal has been in development for months, abruptly announced the data center “is not feasible.”
Most people taken into custody by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not have a criminal conviction, recent reports show.
PolitiFact reported Jan. 23 that as of Jan. 7, 74% of immigrants being held in detention did not have a criminal conviction.
The libertarian Cato Institute, saying it received leaked ICE data, reported in September that over the previous year, 73% taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction; 8% had a violent or property conviction.
In late September, the number of people in immigration detention who had no criminal record outnumbered those convicted of crimes, The Guardian reported, citing ICE data.
ICE data for fiscal 2026, through Nov. 15, showed 72% of booked detainees did not have a criminal conviction.
Under 30% of people arrested in crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and across Massachusetts had a criminal conviction, The New York Times reported in December.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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The U.S. Department of Education delayed wage garnishment for people whose student loans are in default.
Nearly 125,000 Wisconsinites have student loans that are in default.
The Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt offers a toll-free, confidential helpline at (833) 589-0750 and via email at studentloanquestions@debtsmarts.org.
It’s a tumultuous time for student loan borrowers.
Following years of waiving payments and penalties after the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Department of Education announced in December it would soon begin garnishing the wages of borrowers who’ve defaulted on their loans.
Then, Jan. 16, department officials reversed course, saying they would wait to start “involuntary collections” until other changes to the student loan system take effect. They did not specify how long the delay would last.
Another major student loan change is pending court approval. The agreement, which settles a lawsuit brought by the department, would end the popular Biden-era repayment plan Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE). The plan offered borrowers more flexibility than any other.
Meanwhile, other changes to borrowing and repayment programs will reduce the options available to current and future students.
More than 720,000 Wisconsinites hold student loans, according to U.S. Department of Education data analyzed by researchers at the Education Data Initiative. Of those, 74,000 were in default as of last September, meaning they hadn’t made a payment in at least 270 days, and the number has likely grown since then. Overall, the state’s borrowers owe around $23.6 billion. What do all these changes mean for them?
“There have been so many announcements … The landscape is going to continue to be really confusing,” said Carole Trone, executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt, which runs a helpline providing free, confidential advice for people who have loans or are considering taking one out.
“Borrowers often express that they’re confused and overwhelmed,” Trone said. “What our organization is thinking of is how we can reach those borrowers and help them work through their confusion and feel confident with the path forward.”
The helpline received about 160 calls last year, and it can accommodate far more, Trone said. For privacy, staff don’t record any details about the caller or the reason for the person’s call, and they don’t ask for login information for callers’ loan accounts. To reach the helpline toll-free, call (833) 589-0750, or email studentloanquestions@debtsmarts.org. Staffing for the helpline is provided by Ascendium Education Group. Ascendium is a financial supporter of Wisconsin Watch, but is not involved in editorial decisions.
Wisconsin Watch spoke to Trone about what borrowers and prospective borrowers need to know right now. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does the helpline work and why was it created?
The helpline was originally set up back in the early days of the pandemic … When you call the toll-free helpline, you’re going to talk to a live person. These are trained professionals whose work, day in and day out, is working with student loan borrowers, helping them navigate the complicated process and helping them understand what might be confusing that’s come out in the news or in notices they’ve gotten.
The helpline is not a replacement for talking to your loan servicer (the company where you send payments) or logging in to your account at studentaid.gov and seeing what loans are recorded there. But what our helpline is designed to provide is a very accessible, no-wait-time forum where you can ask one-on-one, “Hey, I got this notice. What do you think it means?” or “I haven’t been paying. What should I start with doing?”… It’s a really good starting point for anyone.
In 2020, there was this historic payment pause for loans because of the challenges from the pandemic. In Wisconsin, we don’t have a statewide helpline for student loan borrowers. We don’t have an ombudsman, we don’t have a higher ed agency. These are where borrowers in other states can often turn to, so we wanted to be able to provide a resource.
The Department of Education has threatened to start garnishing wages. What should borrowers in default know?
This option to garnish wages was around last year. What’s new is that they (took) the next step, which is starting to send letters out to affected borrowers. Policy says you’re supposed to have 30 days notice before (garnishment) happens. The other thing they can do is withhold your tax refund if you’re in default or severely delinquent on your loan.
The other thing that could be almost as damaging is that your credit score is going to be affected. And just to give you a sense of how really devastating this impact could be, if you did a four-year program and you took out loans for each semester, that’s probably eight semesters minimum, so you’ve got eight loan lines. If you are late in paying, that means you’ve got eight nonpayment reports going to the credit agencies. What was happening even last year was that credit reporting had resumed, and people may not have been aware of it until they went to take out a car loan or a mortgage, and they couldn’t because their credit score tanked maybe 100 or more points.
What can borrowers do if they’re in default?
First, we know borrowers are feeling a lot of emotional pain over this. If you’re stressed out, if you’re embarrassed, if you’re overwhelmed, sometimes people just can’t move forward on this. I want to encourage people to call our helpline or email us. That is exactly what we are here for.
There are ways that you can get out of default that are tied to your income levels … You can start to rehabilitate your loan. You have to request a form from your loan servicer. They’ll need to know your income to be able to set an income-driven repayment amount. And if that amount is too much, you need to let the servicer know that … Based on your income, that mandatory payment can be as low as $10 a month. The point is to show that you are making on-time, monthly payments for nine months, and that will restore your loan. But you need to be serious when you’re doing that.
What advice do you have for borrowers who are currently signed up for the SAVE repayment plan, which is set to end soon?
If you’re in SAVE, you’re still in what they’re calling “administrative forbearance” because of all this litigation. But as of last August, your loan balance is growing because they resumed collecting interest. If you’re in the SAVE program and you are eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, you should know that while you’re in (administrative forbearance), you’re not making any progress toward the payment count that you need … There will be a timeline for when people have to move out of the SAVE program, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they have that timeline starting as early as summer.
If you’re trying to figure out what you can do, you can call our helpline. There is also a really helpful loan simulator tool on the studentaid.gov website. You can say “My number one priority is to be eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness,” or “I want to pay off my loan as fast as possible,” or “I want the lowest possible payment,” and it can give you pretty accurate scenarios of what you can expect your payment amount to be.
Provisions in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will eliminate some other repayment plans and add some new ones. What should prospective borrowers know?
The goal is to create fewer programs and fewer options.
The goal is to create fewer programs and fewer options. In principle, I think everyone would appreciate more simplicity. What has happened is that all these repayment plans have come out of different administrations and regulatory initiatives. Those are now getting caught up in the courts. One thing to know is that Public Service Loan Forgiveness came through Congress (rather than the regulatory process), and that’s why it’s on much firmer ground.
There will be basically one income-based repayment plan, called RAP (Repayment Assistance Plan), and there’s the standard repayment plan. It’s not like on July 1 of this year there’s a light switch and everyone is in RAP. Many of those (existing) plans will continue on the terms those borrowers agreed to. It will be new loans that will start to have only those two options.
Starting July 1, there will also be lower limits on how much students and their families can borrow. How do you anticipate that those changes are going to affect students?
We know that in areas like health care or in fields like law, people do (sometimes) borrow more than what these new limits are going to be. And so there’s been a lot of attention now to who’s going to be affected by that. If you’re borrowing more than the $200,000 limit, for instance, to be a medical doctor, what’s that going to mean? … Colleges and professional schools are concerned that people who are currently in their programs will hit the final year or two years of their programs and not be able to borrow the money to complete their programs.
There is a concern that the contingent of borrowers who don’t have the assets (and) the strong credit ratings to be able to turn to the private loan market won’t have options and therefore won’t pursue these degrees.
What should people know before taking out private student loans?
Private loans have a lot fewer protections than federal loans. They do not have forbearance, so when you take out that loan, repayment pretty much starts as soon as you’ve taken it out. They don’t have income-driven repayment options. If you take out a loan to go to a college and they’ve misrepresented the value of their degrees or what jobs their graduates are getting, there are federal protections that you don’t have with a private loan provider.
The big thing related to equity is that if you don’t have a high enough credit rating to qualify for the loan, you’ll be denied. And so, in the worst-case scenario, we’re worried that for these high-cost health care degrees, we will see a lot fewer first-generation, lower-income students going into those professions.
A lot is changing now, but what’s a piece of advice that you’ll keep giving?
I think there is justifiable concern about student loan debt, but we are seeing signs that many more students are hesitating or choosing not to pursue postsecondary education because they figure that’s the only way to avoid student loan debt. The challenge with that approach is that the economic studies say most jobs are going to require some kind of postsecondary credential. So we do want to make sure that students and potential borrowers read up and learn about what their programs are going to cost.
In Wisconsin, the average amount of student loan debt that an undergraduate takes on is about $33,000 for someone who completes their degree. So when you hear the stories of huge amounts of debt, those things happen. It’s heartbreaking to see those stories, but it’s not the norm.
Editor’s note: This story was corrected to reflect that the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt helpline received about 160 calls last year.
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsinites owe $23.6 billion in student loans, and thousands of Wisconsin borrowers are in default. But Carole Trone, executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt, doesn’t want those kinds of numbers to scare students away from college altogether.
“I think there is justifiable concern about student loan debt,” said Trone, whose group helps Wisconsinites figure out costs before, during and after college.
“But we are seeing signs that many more students are hesitating or choosing not to pursue postsecondary education because they figure that’s the only way to avoid student loan debt,” Trone said. The problem with that plan, she said, is that studies suggest most of the jobs of the future will require some sort of credential beyond a high school diploma.
She’d like students to hear a different number: $33,000. “In Wisconsin, the average amount of student loan debt that an undergraduate takes on is about $33,000 for someone who completes their degree. So when you hear the stories of huge amounts of debt, those things happen. It’s heartbreaking to see those stories, but it’s not the norm.”
Trone talked with Wisconsin Watch about what students can do at every step in their education to reduce what they borrow and increase the chance they’ll be able to pay it back.
“It has finally, truly gotten better, easier, simpler — at long last — so it is completely worth it to do it,” said Trone. “It keeps your options open.”
Forget the ‘dream’ school
“I caution people about talking about their ‘dream college,’” Trone said. Instead, she urges students to make a list of things like how much they’re willing to pay, what kinds of programs they’re considering and the typical salaries for those professions.
Then, she recommends students use the Department of Education’s College Scorecard website to compare schools.
“Not all programs cost the same, and not all programs are worth the same … You want to look for colleges that have strong graduation rates. You want to see how many students get financial aid. You want to see what the net cost of attendance is,” Trone said.
Meet with an adviser
Sometimes students end up paying more for school because the school doesn’t accept their prior credits, or because they need a class that’s seldom offered.
“If you’re trying to bring credits into that institution, talk to someone about that. Don’t just assume that those credits will transfer,” Trone said. “Try to map out what classes you need to take, and meet with your adviser and figure out when those classes are being offered.”
Limit loans
When colleges send financial aid offer letters, they list the maximum amount the student can borrow. But students have the option to borrow less or decline loans altogether, and they can make those decisions until around the time they’re enrolling in classes.
“Make sure that you have really thought about do you actually really need to borrow this money, because you’ll be paying it back with interest,” Trone said.
“The most important thing that you can do to be able to repay any loans you take out is to finish your program,” Trone said. People leave school for all sorts of reasons, including family commitments and job changes. “A lot of that can be really unavoidable … but those are the borrowers that often have the most difficulty in repaying their loans.”
Update your contact information
One simple step can help keep borrowers on track: signing into studentaid.gov to update their contact information regularly.
“After you’ve left college, that’s the time when lots of folks are moving around or changing email addresses,” Trone said. “When things start coming due or there’s changes, they need to be able to reach you.”
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
In less than 200 days, fall primary voters will head to the polls to choose the candidates they hope can win control of the governor’s office.
For those who decide to vote in the Democratic primary, there are plenty of options, with a range of political experience, gender and racial backgrounds, and left-wing to left-of-center political views. But recent campaign finance reports and candidate performances at a small business forum in Milwaukee show no clear front-runner yet.
The Democratic race is reminiscent of the party’s 2018 primary field, when 10 candidates (two dropped out before the primary) ran to unseat former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in another favorable year for Democrats during President Donald Trump’s first term. Tony Evers, the relatively moderate, soft-spoken, aw-shucks, occasionally cussing, thrice elected to statewide office, old white guy from the Sheboygan area, won the primary with 42% of the vote and eventually two terms as governor.
The major candidates in the Democratic field this time include (in alphabetical order) former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and Madison state Sen. Kelda Roys, who also ran in 2018.
Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, third from left, speaks to the audience during the year’s first Democratic gubernatorial candidate forum Jan. 21, 2026, hosted by Main Street Action at The Cooperage in Milwaukee. The candidates are, from left, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez; Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley; Hong; Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison; former WEDC director Missy Hughes; former DOA Secretary Joel Brennan and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
In the Republican primary, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany are the only major candidates at this time.
Barnes, who lost the 2022 U.S. Senate race against Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson by just over 26,000 votes, has been considered the initial front-runner due to the name recognition that comes from running in a major statewide election. But campaign fundraising reports from the second half of 2025 released in mid-January show no person out significantly in front of the pack. Crowley topped the group with almost $800,000 in fundraising, reports show.
The next Marquette University Law School poll that will gauge how voters feel about candidates in the governor’s race is expected to be released on Feb. 25. The October poll, released before Barnes and Brennan joined the race, showed 81% of Democratic primary voters hadn’t made up their minds.
The Republican campaigns are watching how far to the left the Democrats go, said Bill McCoshen, a lobbyist and Republican strategist who previously worked for former Gov. Tommy Thompson.
“They want the top tier to get sort of sucked into that discussion of progressive policies and to say things that make them more liberal than moderate,” McCoshen said.
Elements of this already appeared at a Democratic gubernatorial forum organized by Main Street Action in Milwaukee last week. At times candidates tried to one-up each other on questions about supporting a public option for BadgerCare, taxing the rich and protecting civil rights from federal overreach in the wake of immigration enforcement in Minnesota.
Asked whether they would increase taxes on the wealthiest, Hughes said her priority would be growing the economy “because my fear is if we simply increase taxes on the wealthy, the next team will get elected and come back in and take that away.” Brennan said Democrats need to build more trust in how elected leaders spend public money. Barnes pledged to “do bold things” including taxing the wealthy.
“The wealthy have gotten away without paying their fair share for far too long,” Barnes said.
Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, third from left, speaks to the audience alongside Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, from left, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, and Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, during the year’s first Democratic gubernatorial candidate forum, Jan. 21, 2026, hosted by Main Street Action at The Cooperage in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Former DOA Secretary Joel Brennan, second from left, speaks to the audience alongside former WEDC director Missy Hughes, left, and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, third from left, during the year’s first Democratic gubernatorial candidate forum Jan. 21, 2026, hosted by Main Street Action at The Cooperage in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Rodriguez, Crowley, Roys and Hong all agreed the state needs a public option for BadgerCare. Rodriguez added she supports extending Medicaid to 12 months postpartum, which has bipartisan support in the Legislature. Crowley said the state needs to figure out how to plug the holes left by the expiration of Obamacare subsidies. Hong and Roys both said a public option is not enough.
“Health care should be a right, not a privilege that we ration based on your wealth or your job,” Roys said.
In 2018, Wisconsin Democrats were “hungry for a win” after two terms of the Walker administration, and Evers’ statewide election success as superintendent of public instruction appealed to Democratic voters, said Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Without Walker to run against in 2026, there are multiple factors that could play a role in pushing one of the Democrats out in front, Chergosky said. It could be electability, like Evers in 2018, a compelling biographical story, unique political experience or signature policy issues.
Just this month, several candidates released major policy proposals. Rodriguez shared an immigration response plan requiring a judicial warrant for federal agents to enter sensitive locations. Hughes announced an economic development plan that includes building 200,000 homes by the end of her first term. Barnes released a proposal to lower the cost of groceries by providing grants for opening grocery stores in food deserts. Hong called for a moratorium on data center construction in Wisconsin and directing any sales and use tax exemptions from data centers into green energy infrastructure.
The candidates recognize there’s “a ton of folks” running, as Hughes said. Barnes, Crowley and Hughes, speaking to reporters after the Main Street Action forum, emphasized some of the factors that could make their candidacy stand out to primary voters.
For Barnes, it’s his experience as lieutenant governor during the COVID-19 pandemic and his “bold vision” for Wisconsin. Hughes pointed to her private sector experience and the fact that she hails from outside Madison and Milwaukee. Crowley highlighted his Milwaukee County executive experience working with both Republican and Democratic leaders.
By the August primary, some candidates may drop out and endorse others. Whoever wins may only have to secure a thin slice of the Democratic primary vote, setting up potential divisions within the party heading into the general election, Chergosky said.
“It’s plausible that someone could win the nomination with 25 to 30% of the vote,” Chergosky said. “And at that point, the question becomes, if that nominee truly represents the will of the party.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
At least four major data center projects in Wisconsin were developed after local community leaders signed a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) with the companies. In Beaver Dam, Meta used two shell companies to develop its project in secret.
In one community without a data center NDA, DeForest, the village president offered misleading comments to the public about how long officials knew about the proposal.
Several states, including Wisconsin, have legislative proposals to ban data center NDAs. Data center advocates say NDAs are necessary to ensure private companies continue to invest in local communities.
How did a $1 billion, 520-acre data center proposed by one of the world’s richest companies go unnoticed in tiny Beaver Dam, Wisconsin?
A key reason: In a city that lists “communication matters” atop its core values, officials took steps to keep the project hidden for more than a year.
Now Meta, the trillion-dollar company that owns Facebook and Instagram, is building a complex as big as 12 football fields in a city with a population of 16,000, enough to fill only a fifth of Lambeau Field.
It’s one of seven major data center projects pending in Wisconsin that combined are worth more than $57 billion.
In four of them, including Beaver Dam, local government officials kept the massive projects under wraps through confidential nondisclosure agreements (NDAs), a Wisconsin Watch investigation has found.
Secrecy also occurred in the three communities without NDAs.
In one, the Madison suburb of DeForest, officials worked behind the scenes for months before publicly announcing a proposed $12 billion data center, which residents are fighting.
The lack of public disclosure, while relatively common for typical development proposals in the planning stages, raises questions about how much time the public should have to digest projects that dramatically affect the economy, land use, energy, taxes, the environment and more.
“As soon as community leadership is contemplating, even entertaining it, I think they need to make the public aware,” said retired tech executive Prescott Balch, who is advising residents around Wisconsin where data centers are proposed.
“Even if it makes it harder, that’s the right way to do it. And nobody is doing it that way.”
Blowback from residents who have been kept in the dark has spurred a new legislative proposal that would ban data center NDAs statewide.
How Beaver Dam did it
Wisconsin has some 40 data centers, stretching from Kenosha to Eau Claire. But most are tiny compared with the big seven: three under construction in Beaver Dam, Mount Pleasant and Port Washington; and four proposed in DeForest, Janesville, Kenosha and Menomonie.
Besides storing and processing data, data centers are vital to advancing the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
A case study in how projects each worth $1 billion or more are kept quiet is Beaver Dam, the Dodge County burg an hour northeast of Madison, where Meta’s data center is expected to open in 2027.
Construction is ongoing at the 350-plus-acre Beaver Dam Commerce Park where a new Meta data center is being built, photographed on Jan. 20, 2026, in Beaver Dam, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The Beaver Dam Area Development Corp., a quasi-government nonprofit that functions as the city’s economic development arm, signed an NDA on Dec. 1, 2023, not with Meta, but with a shell company no one had ever heard of, Balloonist LLC.
The agreement referred only to a “project,” making no mention of a data center or Meta.
The NDA was signed “very early, almost in the introductory period of that project,” the development corporation’s leader, Trent Campbell, told Wisconsin Watch. All major development projects have “different levels of confidentiality for different purposes. And this entity believed it to be necessary at the onset of the conversations.”
The NDA meant that the Beaver Dam Area Development Corp. could not reveal its discussions with Balloonist, or even disclose “the existence of the project.”
The NDA also put the wheels in motion.
For more than a year, the city quietly took official actions to make the data center a reality, including:
July 2024: The city council voted 12-0 to approve a predevelopment agreement with another shell company, Degas LLC, that only later was identified with the data center. The agenda and the minutes of the meeting don’t mention a data center.
November 2024: The city council created a tax incremental finance (TIF) district for the data center to help fund development. The agenda and the minutes for that meeting do not mention a data center, though the agreement itself does.
Beaver Dam city and economic development officials worked with two shell companies as they developed a $1 billion, 520-acre data center. Meta announced its involvement in December 2025. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Not until February 2025 — 14 months after the NDA was signed — did the Beaver Dam Area Development Corp. announce that it and the city were working with a company — then still unidentified — on a “potential data center project.”
Campbell noted to Wisconsin Watch that Gov. Tony Evers and other officials had identified the site for a major development as far back as 2019. For months after the NDA was signed, it wasn’t known whether the data center would come to fruition, he added.
“I know the opponents currently disagree, but I think the city acted in as transparent a way as they could,” Campbell said.
Eventually, a news report in April 2025 identified Meta, which declined comment for this story, as the company likely behind the data center.
Meta confirmed its involvement eight months later, saying on Facebook: “We’re proud to call Beaver Dam home. We are honored to have joined such an incredible community in 2025.”
The first reply to that post was from a Beaver Dam resident, who wrote: “We would have been honored to have the opportunity to decline this.”
Secrecy without an NDA
NDAs also helped keep the public in the dark about data centers under consideration in the three other cities that used them.
Menomonie signed its NDA with Balloonist LLC in February 2024 — more than a year before the city in northwest Wisconsin announced a $1.6 billion data center proposal in July 2025. Two months after the NDA, the city council unanimously helped pave the way for a data center by changing a land use ordinance. The change gave, for the first time, a definition of the ordinance’s reference to “warehousing,” saying warehousing includes data centers. The city’s mayor put the proposed data center on hold in September 2025. In January 2026, the city council adopted a zoning ordinance for data centers that reversed the warehousing definition. “Based upon feedback from the community and elected officials, it is clear that additional discussion should occur regarding the appropriate level of regulation of data centers,” the city’s public works director told the council and the mayor.
Kenosha signed its NDA, with Microsoft, in May 2024, six months before news reports surfaced saying the NDA kept the proposed data center operator’s name confidential. It was later announced that Microsoft had purchased 240 acres in the neighboring town of Paris, which the city annexed in December 2024. No dollar amount for the proposal has been announced.
Janesville announced in July 2025 it was approached by developers about a data center and put out a request for proposal. The city signed its NDA two months later and is now in negotiations with Viridian Acquisitions, a Colorado developer, for an $8 billion data center.
The sun sets as construction continues at Microsoft’s data center project Nov. 13, 2025, in Mount Pleasant, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Port Washington in Ozaukee County and Mount Pleasant in Racine County responded to records requests from Wisconsin Watch saying they had not signed NDAs for their data centers.
In Port Washington, where three people were arrested during a city council meeting on the data center in December, residents are trying to recall Mayor Ted Neitzke, saying he has been secretive about the $15 billion data center from OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage Data Centers.
In Mount Pleasant, Microsoft this month announced plans to add 15 data centers, worth $13 billion, to the $7 billion complex under construction there.
NDAs are described by economic development officials as necessary and criticized by data center opponents as against the public interest.
NDAs and other steps to protect confidentiality are crucial at the early stages of a development proposal, said Tricia Braun, executive director of the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition.
“If I’m a company considering making strategic investments, regardless of industry, I don’t want my competition to know where I’m going, what I’m doing, what pace I’m doing it at,” said Braun, a former executive at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. “You want to make sure everything is buttoned up and bow tied before that type of information is put into the public realm.”
Questions have swirled around transparency even in communities where local government officials did not sign NDAs.
That includes DeForest, which lists “communicate clearly” among its core values.
The DeForest data center, proposed by Virginia-based QTS Data Centers, is controversial, in part, because the village board would have to annex 1,600 acres in the neighboring town of Vienna.
DeForest Village President Jane Cahill Wolfgram looks on during a village board meeting at DeForest Village Hall in DeForest, Wis., on Jan. 20, 2026. As negotiations between QTS and the village of DeForest continue, members of the public attended a village board meeting to speak in support and opposition to the proposed development. (Kayla Wolf for Wisconsin Watch)
At one DeForest Village Board meeting about the project, Village President Jane Cahill Wolfgram said that based on emails she had been receiving from residents, there was “just one thing I think we need to clear up.”
“And you can ask any one of these board members. They will tell you, they just learned about this project in the last couple of weeks.”
That was Nov. 18, 2025.
But Village Board trustees had been offered one-on-one meetings with the developer some 10 weeks earlier, trustee Jan Steffenhagen-Hahn said in an email to Vienna resident Shawn Haney.
“Because of the scale of this project,” that’s when residents should have been notified, said Haney, a leader of a group that opposes the data center.
Other emails obtained by the group show that DeForest staff were strategizing with QTS representatives and Alliant Energy as early as March 2025 — seven months before announcing the proposal last October.
Members of the public attend a village board meeting at DeForest Village Hall in DeForest, Wis., on Jan. 20, 2026. (Kayla Wolf for Wisconsin Watch)
In one email, the village planner discussed with QTS representatives when to seek various village approvals, including annexation, while acknowledging that doing so without disclosing “any details of the project or operations will be difficult.”
Cahill Wolfgram told Wisconsin Watch she in fact had met with QTS on Oct. 1, three weeks before the public announcement. She expressed frustration that many residents are urging trustees to stop the data center.
“They’ve been brought in from the very early moments of this discussion and they have continued to be front and center of everything we’ve done,” Cahill Wolfgram said. “As village president, I know of nothing that has been done behind the scenes.”
A public hearing on the annexation is scheduled for Feb. 9.
Lydia Reid returns to her seat after speaking in opposition to the QTS data center development during a village board meeting at DeForest Village Hall in DeForest, Wis., on Jan. 20, 2026. Reid is concerned about the process that the village is using to allow the data center development. (Kayla Wolf for Wisconsin Watch)
Sheri Stach hands out stickers in opposition to the QTS data center development prior to a village board meeting at DeForest Village Hall in DeForest, Wis., on Jan. 20, 2026. (Kayla Wolf for Wisconsin Watch)
The state Department of Administration, which reviews annexation proposals and issues advisory opinions, concluded the DeForest annexation is not in the public interest because of concerns over how the village would provide water and sewer services for the annexed area.
The Clean Economy Coalition of Wisconsin has called for state leaders to pause consideration of any data centers until a comprehensive strategy on them is adopted. In part, the coalition said comprehensive planning is needed to avoid more “stranded assets.”
Wisconsin Watch reported in December that Wisconsin utility ratepayers owe nearly $1 billion for stranded assets — coal power plants that have been or soon will be shut down. A push to provide new energy capacity for data centers poses the risk of creating more stranded assets.
Some states targeting NDAs
Microsoft on Jan. 13 announced new standards aimed at being a “good neighbor in the communities where we build, own and operate our data centers.” It mentioned transparency five times.
But University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers called Microsoft’s initial Mount Pleasant data center a “microcosm of a larger problem with secrecy and lack of transparency about water and electricity demands” of data centers throughout the country. That, they wrote, “harms the public’s ability to determine whether hosting a data center is in their best interest.”
The sun sets as construction continues at Microsoft’s data center project on Nov. 13, 2025, in Mount Pleasant, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Mount Pleasant has wanted a major development where the data center is now under construction because a massive development signed with Foxconn in 2017 largely fell through.
Local government use of NDAs and other methods to keep data center development secret is widespread across the U.S.
In Minnesota, local elected officials were aware of data center proposals for months or even years before disclosing them. In Virginia, 25 out of 31 data center projects had NDAs. In one New Mexico county, county staff negotiated for a $165 billion data center with an NDA that kept elected officials in the dark.
Several states are targeting NDAs.
At least three — Florida, Michigan and New Jersey — are considering legislation to prohibit governments from signing data center NDAs. A Georgia bill would prohibit NDAs that hide information about data center electricity or water usage. New York is considering a bill to limit NDAs for economic development proposals generally.
Now, similar legislation is pending in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin state Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, is photographed during a press conference on Nov. 14, 2023, in the Wisconsin State Capitol building in Madison, Wis. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
Last week, state Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, citing questions about transparency over the Menomonie proposal, introduced legislation to prohibit NDAs for data center proposals in Wisconsin.
“I’ve never seen such overwhelming opposition from all sides of the aisle,” he told Wisconsin Watch, describing constituents’ feelings about data centers and secrecy surrounding them.
Moses said he understands the need for confidentiality in economic development generally, but because data centers have such widespread impact, public notice is paramount.
“The earlier the better,” he said.
Braun, the data center coalition leader, said the public should be notified when a data center proposal is ready to be considered for approvals by elected officials — after municipal staff do due diligence to determine whether things such as zoning, utility capacity, water and sewer would make a proposal potentially viable.
Balch, who helped defeat a proposed data center in the Racine County village of Caledonia, where he lives, said the public should be alerted well before local elected officials consider such votes.
“You have to use your judgment,” he said. “But at some point, you need to realize this is not a normal thing and we need to look out for the residents.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A vast majority of the roughly 1,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in Wisconsin between January and October of last year had prior criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. But arrests in Wisconsin of immigrants with no criminal history were ticking upward. Roughly 17% had no prior criminal convictions or pending charges. Roughly half of those without criminal histories were arrested at DHS’ downtown Milwaukee office, often while checking in on the status of their immigration cases.
DHS’s claims about arrestees’ criminal histories do not always match court records. Among the two dozen immigrants arrested in Manitowoc last October — the largest ICE raid in Wisconsin since Trump took office — was Abraham Maldonado Almanza, a dairy worker from Mexico. DHS claimed he had a prior conviction for identity theft, but court records in Wisconsin and Iowa, where Maldonado Almanza lived before moving to Manitowoc, show nothing to corroborate the claim. DHS also claimed that the Manitowoc operation netted a Honduran national charged with sexual assault of a child, but that man, Hilario Moreno Portillo, had been in ICE custody for months at the time of the Manitowoc arrests, court records showed.
Even without enforcement surges like those in Illinois and Minnesota, the Trump administration’s immigration policy overhauls are reshaping Wisconsin. We recently documented the consequences for two immigrant workers in key sectors of the state’s economy: a Mexican engineer at an aluminum foundry in Manitowoc and a Nicaraguan herdsman who lacks legal status while working on a dairy farm near Madison. Their employers, who rely on immigrant labor to expand or maintain their operations, are also feeling the pinch, as will consumers if farmers’ and manufacturers’ hiring woes drive up prices.
You can find more of our immigration coverage here.
As we continue reporting on the White House’s immigration crackdown, we want to hear from you. What questions would you like us to answer? What are we missing? Where should we look next?
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Officials from the town of Carlton and Cloverleaf Infrastructure told Wisconsin Watch the company is no longer pursuing a data center project near the Kewaunee Power Station.
The resolution happened in late 2025.
Cloverleaf Infrastructure is still interested in building a data center in northeast Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, plans for EnergySolutions to build a new plant at the Kewaunee Power Station are slowly moving forward. The company submitted files to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week.
Leaders of data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure have decided against pursuing land to build a data center in the town of Carlton in Kewaunee County after local residents opposed the idea.
The company scrapped its plans in the northeast Wisconsin farming community in late 2025, Cloverleaf and town of Carlton officials confirmed last week.
“The town chairperson said, ‘I don’t support data centers. I don’t think this is a good fit,’” Cloverleaf’s Chief Development Officer Aaron Bilyeu said. “We shook hands and said ‘thank you.’”
Cloverleaf’s decision to back off makes Carlton one of the latest towns to fend off companies looking for the space to erect often-massive data warehouses powering artificial intelligence, social media and cloud computing.
Wisconsin Watch reported in October that some Carlton residents were nervous about selling local farmland to build a data center after town officials said interested developers reached out to them.
Those fears were stoked by news that Carlton’s shuttered nuclear power plant may see new life. The plant’s owner is seeking government approval for a new nuclear power station at the site because it believes data centers and artificial intelligence will increase the state’s energy demand.
“I’m against big business,” said town Chairman David Hardtke, who has pushed back against the idea for months. “People in the town of Carlton do not want the AI (data) center.”
Similar dilemmas have played out in other rural Wisconsin communities, as residents try to block tech giants from settling in their towns.
In recent weeks, Cloverleaf offered to buy property for a data center in Greenleaf, a village in Brown County. The move drew outrage from community members, leading Cloverleaf officials to ax the proposal last week.
The decision in Carlton was a much quieter conclusion for residents of a county where cattle outnumber people by nearly 5 to 1. Some community members told Wisconsin Watch they were nervous about what losing more farmland would mean for local families and business owners.
“Once they take land away, you know, it’ll never come back,” Chris Kohnle, president of the local Tisch Mills Farm Center, told Wisconsin Watch in September.
David Hardtke, town of Carlton chairman and third-generation farmer, poses for a portrait next to one of his many vintage tractors on Sept. 16, 2025, in Kewaunee, Wis. Hardtke confirmed that Cloverleaf Infrastructure is no longer looking to build a data center in the town. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Others were less concerned, telling Wisconsin Watch that Kewaunee County has stagnated since the nuclear plant shuttered. They shared hopes that investment from big business could create more economic activity, well-paying local jobs and a reason for young people to stay in the area.
“If you bring in an employer like that who is paying, you’re going to see development. You’re going to see new homes being built, and more businesses move in,” Kewaunee County resident Dan Giannotti said in August. “Because right now we’re just stagnant … nothing’s happening to speak of.”
Despite striking out in Carlton and Greenleaf, Bilyeu said Cloverleaf is still looking for a data center site in northeast Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is attractive to developers because of the tax incentives it offers and its cool climate. Data centers need cooling methods to prevent overheating — making Carlton’s proximity to a massive water source particularly attractive.
“We’re not the only ones looking for data center sites in the area,” Bilyeu said. “We’re just the only ones that are forthright, and we’ll actually talk to people and identify ourselves and let people know what we’re doing and what we’re interested in.”
Carlton still remains on the precipice of much potential change, as the Kewaunee Power Station project inches forward.
Last week, plant owner EnergySolutions submitted files to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that company spokespeople describe as “an important next step” in getting government approval to bring nuclear power back to the site. The permitting process is lengthy, and even if everything goes smoothly, they don’t expect construction would begin until the early 2030s.
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Skilled immigrant workers like Ricardo Manriquez and dairy herdsman Alex are integral to Wisconsin’s foundries and farms but face growing uncertainty under shifting federal immigration rules.
Manriquez, on a temporary TN visa, helps design complex metal castings in Manitowoc but has a tenuous path to permanent residency as visa policies and fees change.
On a dairy near Madison, Alex, who lacks legal status, struggles to recruit and retain workers as immigration enforcement tightens and labor pipelines dry up.
Wisconsin employers in manufacturing and agriculture say the changing immigration landscape is shrinking labor pools, complicating hiring and long-term workforce planning.
Ricardo Manriquez starts his shift at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry headquarters in Manitowoc long before the sun rises. More than 100 miles away, on a dairy farm near Madison, a herdsman named Alex is heading out to the barn with his crew to milk a few hundred cows.
Both are middle-aged fathers with neat haircuts and sensible work boots. Both studied at technical schools and have years of hands-on experience in their fields. Both are immigrants from Latin America who settled in Wisconsin over the past two decades. The Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement and overhaul visa rules leave both men and their employers in difficult positions.
The recruitment pathway that brought Manriquez, an engineer from Mexico with a temporary work visa, to Wisconsin remains mostly untouched by the Trump administration’s overhaul of federal immigration policy, but his prospects of securing permanent residency in the foreseeable future have faded. Alex, an undocumented immigrant from Nicaragua, is in a more precarious position. His small team is poised to shrink, and finding new hires is more difficult than ever.
At least one in 20 Wisconsin workers is a noncitizen, and many Wisconsin employers have watched recent federal immigration policy changes sever, clog or redirect their hiring pipelines. Those employers — in manufacturing, dairy and innumerable other segments of Wisconsin’s economy — are finding their bearings in the new policy landscape, and more shake-ups or reversals may lie ahead.
Ricardo Manriquez, Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry project manager, is shown at the company’s main plant in Manitowoc, Wis., Dec. 5, 2025. (Paul Kiefer / Wisconsin Watch)
The Tijuana engineer pipeline
Manriquez’s office sits near a door to the Manitowoc plant’s labyrinthine production floor, where the motion alarms on forklifts periodically cut through the hum of heavy machinery and a Nirvana album blasting from a worker’s portable speaker.
“All my life I was involved with grease and cars and steel,” Manriquez said. His father was a mechanic, he said, and his hometown, Tijuana, is a manufacturing powerhouse. Relatively low labor costs have drawn hundreds of manufacturers to cities near Mexico’s northern border, which now serve as a hub for the North American electronics, automotive parts, aerospace and medical device industries.
With an electro-mechanical engineering degree from a local technical university in hand, Manriquez found work at Prime Wheel, an American automotive parts company with a corporate office and fabrication facilities in one of Tijuana’s factory districts. He spent nearly a decade there, working long shifts with tedious commutes while attempting to raise a family. “In Mexico, we work 48 to 60 or even 80 hours a week without extra pay,” he said. “You get paid $50 to $60 a day … If you have a family, it really doesn’t help. You need to do a side job.”
Though his supervisor promoted him from designer to project engineer, Manriquez saw few opportunities to climb higher at Prime Wheel’s Tijuana plant. Prime Wheel did not respond to a request for comment.
An employee works at his desk at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The TN visa program was Manriquez’s ticket to cross the border. A product of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the TN visa provides a three-year work authorization to Mexican and Canadian nationals with job offers for a limited number of high-skilled professions.
Compared with other types of employment-based visas, like the H-1B favored in the tech and health care industries, the TN visa offers a straighter path to the U.S. for skilled Mexican workers. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved nearly 16,000 TN visas for Mexican nationals in 2024, compared to just under 2,000 H-1B visas for Mexican nationals. Only 42 Canadians received TN visas that year.
Manriquez learned about an opening in Manitowoc through word of mouth, and Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry was already primed to use the TN visa program to recruit skilled engineers.
When Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry purchased a metal castings manufacturer in New Hampton, Iowa, in 2024, the company absorbed the plant’s team, including four TN visa holders. It has retained those workers and hired three more since the acquisition, including Manriquez, who joined the company last February. Most came from Tijuana’s metals industry.
The company is trying to build a domestic pipeline. It has a relationship with Wisconsin’s technical college system, which trains engineers for a range of manufacturing roles, including on quality control teams like Manriquez’s. “It’s really hard to say if (those) skill needs are growing or shrinking,” said Ian Cameron, dean of Northcentral Technical College’s School of Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing, noting that day-to-day responsibilities and compensation for engineers with similar titles vary between companies.
But attracting and retaining talent for plants in small Midwestern towns is a constant challenge, said Michelle Szymik, the company’s human resources director. New Hampton, population 3,500, sits in a quiet stretch of northeast Iowa, and skilled engineers with U.S. citizenship tend to favor less-isolated workplaces.
Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry’s product line compounds its recruiting challenges. The foundry produces intricately detailed castings for Dodge sports cars and SpaceX satellites, among other clients, and few students of U.S. technical colleges have mastered the skills needed to design those castings by graduation. “It takes a long time to come up to speed on that kind of stuff,” Szymik added. “So we do internships, but at the end of the day, it’s really nice when you can find somebody who’s already got the skill set.”
An employee walks through the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Mexico’s advanced manufacturing industry provides a straightforward solution. Engineers like Manriquez come with years of experience and, Szymik said, are more willing to settle in small towns to “take care of their family and build a career.” Manriquez can earn more in two hours than he did in a day in Tijuana, and he no longer spends hours of his day trapped in gridlock.
The visa comes with trade-offs. Manriquez’s wife and children remain in Mexico, and while they are eligible to join him in Manitowoc as dependents, his wife would not receive work authorization.
The TN visa is not a path to permanent residency, and Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry would eventually need to sponsor Manriquez for another employment-based visa before helping him secure a green card and a long-term career with the company.
One of the more common paths would involve securing Manriquez an H-1B visa, which would allow him to simultaneously hold a “nonimmigrant” visa and apply for a green card. But the company would first need to prove it can’t find an equally qualified U.S. citizen for the job. If it finds a qualified candidate, Manriquez would be out of a job and on his way back to Tijuana.
The company spent nearly $12,000 to transition another employee from a TN to an H-1B visa, most of which went to legal fees. The Trump administration raised that hurdle even higher last year, introducing a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications — a price tag few employers can afford, including Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry.
Wisconsin’s manufacturing sector could bear the brunt of the new H-1B fees. Of the more than 1,600 workers employed in Wisconsin who received H-1B visas or renewed their visas last year, roughly a quarter worked in manufacturing. No other sector in the state sponsored more H-1B visas in 2025.
Manriquez can still renew his TN visa, but the breakneck pace of the Trump administration’s policy changes gives him reason to wonder whether that will remain true. “Suddenly, one day to another, (things) probably can change,” he said.
Completed aluminum disks lie in a pile at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wanted: ‘a good future for our children’
On a chilly morning in early December, Alex wore only a long-sleeve thermal shirt and a vest as he checked on the herd.
“We deal with the cold and the heat. We’re out there in all of that,” Alex told Wisconsin Watch in Spanish. “And it doesn’t matter to us because what we want is to work. What we want is to build a good future for our children.”
Alex is at ease around the animals. He studied agricultural sciences at a technical high school, and he was partway through a veterinary degree at a university in Managua 15 years ago when he headed north from Nicaragua to the U.S. He feared that the country’s security apparatus would some day come for him — a vocal opponent of authoritarian President Daniel Ortega.
He eventually approached an attorney about obtaining legal status, only to learn he had missed the eligibility window, which ended a year after his arrival. Because he lacks legal status, Wisconsin Watch has agreed to use only his first name.
“After 15 years in this country that respects your rights as a person, as a worker,” he said, going back to Nicaragua feels unthinkable. His brother, who spent four years working in Wisconsin, recently returned to care for his son, reporting back that allegiance to the ruling party is now required to access government services.
Alex has worked in dairies and manufacturing since arriving in Wisconsin, settling down at his current workplace in south-central Wisconsin to join his partner, with whom he has U.S.-born children. To minimize their risk of crossing paths with immigration enforcement, Alex’s family has cut back on all but the most basic errands. “We no longer think, ‘Oh, it’s a summer weekend. Let’s go to the mall. Let’s take the kids to an amusement park,’” he said. “We’ve reduced it to the minimum: if we need to go to a clinic or a hospital for a medical appointment, to school, to buy food.”
Alongside his daily duties leading a crew of fellow immigrant workers — all from Nicaragua — Alex serves as the farm’s recruiter. He’s held the role for the past five years, giving him a front-row view of the federal immigration crackdown’s impact on hiring.
“It’s been eight months since the last person came (to ask for work),” he said. “Before, people came here constantly.”
A worker is shown cleaning the milking barn at a farm in Wisconsin on June 11, 2024. (Ben Brewer for Wisconsin Watch)
With two members of his small crew preparing to leave the U.S., Alex now relies on his extensive network of former colleagues and acquaintances across Wisconsin to drum up replacement candidates. He’s competing with manufacturers who can offer overtime, but the farm’s isolation is now a selling point.
“Right now, security is a consideration. A farm is more separate, less involved, fewer moving people and cars,” he said. “The working conditions will be a little harder, but there’s more security.”
The farm’s owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid drawing the attention of immigration enforcement officials, added that skilled dairy workers can now be more selective when searching for new jobs. “The (labor) pool is clearly getting smaller,” he said. “If you don’t have a number of things — a nice, comfortable, attractive facility, one that people want to work in, if you don’t have a good company culture, and if you can’t provide housing, you’ll have a hard time hiring and retaining people.”
Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Van Ruden expects the labor drought to inflate farm wages. “You’re going to have to pay more to keep help,” he said, “which means paying someone $25 an hour versus $15.” Not all farms will be able to afford the new labor market, he added.
Alex’s employer says he has looked into the H-2A program, which provides temporary visas for hundreds of thousands of seasonal farmworkers each year, as a backup if his current crew shrinks. At least 16% of the agricultural employers that hired through the H-2A program last year own dairy herds, up from just 6% in 2020, but most sought agricultural equipment operators in seasonal job listings submitted to the U.S. Department of Labor. But the H-2A program does not provide visas for year-round roles like milking cows — a core responsibility of Alex and his crew. With that source of labor off the table, the farm’s recruitment options are slim.
While some farmers are exploring reducing labor needs through automation and rotary milking parlors, akin to a lazy Susan for cows, those options don’t eliminate the need for workers entirely.
While automation may reduce the need for some types of labor on dairy farms, some workers may simply shift to other tasks, said Hernando Duarte, a farm labor management outreach specialist with UW-Madison.
“Maybe you can need less people in the parlor,” he said, “but who is going to feed the calves? All the calves have to be fed two or three times a day. I’ve also seen more people moving more into tractors and feed work.” Rotary milking parlors, he added, also require trained staff to operate and clean.
Many workers who will learn to operate the automated milking equipment, Duarte added, will likely come from the same labor pool that currently keeps many Wisconsin dairies afloat: immigrants. But Wisconsin’s technical colleges are also preparing dairy science students for the industry’s technological frontier. Greg Cisewski, dean of Northcentral Technical College’s School of Agricultural Sciences, Utilities and Transportation, said several graduates have gone on to manage automated milking operations.
Meanwhile, Alex is preparing for the worst. He and his partner have arranged to temporarily transfer custody of their children to a U.S. citizen if they are arrested or deported, and he has been sending money back to Nicaragua for years to build a backup nest egg.
When Alex came to the U.S., he left behind a 1-year-old son. He has kept in touch, and his now-teenage son recently shared his plans to study veterinary medicine. “The degree I couldn’t finish is the degree he’s going to study,” he said.
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In a flurry of activity at the Capitol last week, Wisconsin lawmakers held more than 30 public meetings and two Assembly floor sessions, advancing bills on issues from eliminating taxes on tips and overtime to placing regulations on data centers.
For the first time in two decades, none of the actions were live-streamed, video-recorded or archived for those who sought to follow the legislative process outside of the building in Madison.
It’s a stark change at the Capitol where, since 2007, lawmakers, lobbyists, journalists and the public could rely on WisconsinEye — the nonpartisan public affairs network that functions sort of like Wisconsin’s version of C-SPAN — to record and archive legislative committees, floor sessions, press conferences and other political events around the state.
After more than 18 years, WisconsinEye went offline in mid-December after it did not raise enough funds to operate in 2026. The organization launched a GoFundMe on Jan. 12 to raise $250,000 to get back online, equal to about three months of its operating budget. About $13,000 was raised as of Friday afternoon.
“Without this funding, WisconsinEye could lose up to four highly skilled staff members,” the online fundraiser states. “Thus putting the network at considerable risk of failure.”
This WisconsinEye screenshot shows Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, during a May 14, 2024, floor debate. (WisconsinEye)
While the gap in live video coverage continues in Wisconsin, this is not an issue for four of Wisconsin’s neighboring states where the legislatures provide recordings rather than rely on a separate entity. Legislative chambers in Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan provide video streams and recordings of floor sessions and committee meetings, Wisconsin Watch found.
The Illinois Channel, a public affairs network founded in 2003, provides programming on state government, but the network no longer has cameras in the legislative chambers after the Illinois General Assembly began providing video and audio feeds in the House and Senate.
The approach varies around the country. In 2022, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported half of the states, including Wisconsin, televised broadcasts of the legislature. Some of the entities responsible for recording the sausage-making process are connected to public broadcasting stations, and others are tied to state governments. The Connecticut Network, for example, is a partnership between a nonprofit and the state legislature, but is solely funded by the Connecticut General Assembly. WisconsinEye has historically been privately funded, except for two one-time grants from the state prior to 2023.
WisconsinEye’s creation as a separate network from state government stemmed from a 1995 legislative study committee that recommended televised coverage of the Legislature be done by an organization independent of state funding, said WisconsinEye President and CEO Jon Henkes.
“Based on the recommendation of the study committee itself and the donor reality at that time … the cornerstone was laid as an independent, nongovernment-controlled, nongovernment-funded public affairs network,” Henkes said.
Over the last 18 years, Henkes said WisconsinEye’s reputation for independent coverage of state government assuaged concerns from donors over whether the organization could receive state support. The Legislature created a $10 million endowment for the network during the 2023-25 budget process. But those funds can only be accessed if WisconsinEye raises a private amount equal to a request it makes of the Joint Finance Committee. The 2025-27 budget provided $250,000 to WisconsinEye from that $10 million fund without any match requirement.
Since WisconsinEye’s departure from the Capitol, Republican lawmakers have also started to strictly enforce rules prohibiting people from recording and filming during committee meetings, although credentialed journalists are still able to do so. The Wisconsin Senate’s chief clerk in a memo this month said the Senate’s rules on prohibiting filming supersede the state’s open meetings law.
Rep. Jerry O’Connor, R-Fond du Lac, told the Wisconsin Examiner there are concerns about whether video filmed during committees can be filmed for political aims, particularly the political ads that will be blanketing TV and online media this upcoming fall. That wasn’t the case with WisconsinEye, which prohibited use of its videos for political or campaign purposes in its user agreement.
Democrats blamed Republicans for allowing legislative activities to continue “in darkness.”
“This is a step in the wrong direction and it erodes the public’s trust in this institution,” said Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, in a press briefing last week dismissed the idea that enforcing the rules banning recording while WisconsinEye is not operating lessens transparency at the Capitol.
“I think we have had about 48,000 bills passed before WisconsinEye went into effect, and I think the public was well served by the media reporting on them,” he said. “We’ve had literally hundreds of session days, thousands of session days, so this idea that if some activist is not allowed to record people, that that’s not transparent, we’ve got plenty of transparency. That’s why we’re here today.”
Other state legislatures
While Wisconsin’s neighboring states record legislative proceedings, each state differs on what is recorded, the resources available to provide video of the legislature and whether there are any restrictions on filming.
In Michigan, the state House and Senate separately handle video streaming for their own chamber. Videos in both chambers are prohibited from use for political purposes, according to Michigan House and Senate rules.
The Michigan Senate has a TV Department that records all Senate sessions and up to three committees at the same time, a Senate staff member told Wisconsin Watch. Video recordings from 2020 onward are posted to the Senate’s streaming website, but the chamber has an archive of offline videos dating back to 2003.
The Michigan House provides “gavel-to-gavel” coverage of session and committee proceedings, including archived videos, which can be accessed on its website and YouTube channel, according to the state’s House clerk.
The Minnesota House and Senate also individually handle video recordings of their chamber’s legislative activities through nonpartisan media departments. In the Minnesota House, the Public Information Services department controls the TV production of the chamber’s floor proceedings, committees and select press conferences. The department has 12 permanent staff and brings on 14 part-time staff members when the legislature is in session, according to the department’s executive director. Minnesota’s House and Senate media departments do not have any bans on the use of footage in campaign materials, staff said.
In Iowa, specific individuals in each chamber are in charge of the livestreams of legislative activities. All floor sessions and committees are filmed while legislative subcommittees are not, the Senate clerk’s office told Wisconsin Watch. It did not respond to questions about whether the state has limitations on how videos can be used.
But while Wisconsin’s neighboring state legislatures provide the live footage of legislative proceedings, Terry Martin, the executive director of the Illinois Channel, questioned if there could be limitations placed on a state-offered service depending on who is in power, pointing to Rod Blagojevich, the former Democratic Illinois governor who was convicted of corruption-related crimes.
“Somebody like Rod Blagojevich, if we had been funded by him, by the state, would have said, if you don’t do it my way, I’m going to cut your funding,” said Martin, who ran for Congress as a Republican in Illinois in 2022.
The Illinois Channel has not accepted funding from the state of Illinois for its operations, Martin said.
The path forward
Both Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and legislative leaders said they are open to options that can resolve the gap left by WisconsinEye.
Vos said he hopes there can be a “bipartisan answer.” Democrats and Republicans have had discussions on the topic, but there is no concrete next step yet, Neubauer said.
Evers told reporters he would not support simply giving WisconsinEye the money allocated without matching funds.
“I think there has to be some skin in the game,” Evers said.
Jon Henkes (Provided photo)
Neubauer told reporters the endowment’s $10 million matching requirement may not have been realistic for WisconsinEye.
“We would, of course, like to see more fundraising,” Neubauer said. “But I don’t think we set them up for success with the provision that was in the budget.”
Henkes said WisconsinEye is simply asking state leaders for support by providing nine months of its operating budget and then, in following years, investing the approved endowment funds and directing the earnings annually to the network. WisconsinEye would still require private support. A $10 million endowment conservatively invested can generate a half-million dollars each year. WisconsinEye’s annual budget is about $900,000.
That specific scenario is not how the language in the budget that created the WisconsinEye endowment is set up to work, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Changes to the law would likely be needed to direct the state to invest those dollars, LFB staff said.
Henkes said he hopes a decision comes soon.
“I mean, frankly, if this cannot be resolved in the next several weeks, WisconsinEye will have no choice but to fold up the tent and everybody goes home,” he said.
In two recent polls, a majority of U.S. adults said they use social media to get health information.
July 2025 by KFF, a leading health policy research nonprofit: 55% said they use social media “to find health information and advice” at least occasionally. Less than one in 10 said “most” of the information is trustworthy.
September 2024 by Healthline: 52% said they learned from social media health and wellness tools, resources, trends, or products they tried in the past year. About 77% expressed at least one negative view, such as “there is a lot of conflicting information.”
An April 2024 medical journal article said that over one-third of social media users perceived high levels of health misinformation, and two-thirds reported “high perceived discernment difficulty.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is conducting a long-term study to determine how social media affects the physical/mental health of adolescents.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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As Wisconsin’s workforce ages and universities nationwide see fewer traditional college-aged students, UWGB is trying several unorthodox efforts to attract older learners.
The university offers short-term certificates that advance workers’ job skills, ungraded courses that keep older people socially engaged and classes in local nursing homes.
Leaders hope the initiatives will keep the region’s growing retirement-age population sharp and socially engaged — and potentially in the workforce for longer — while also bolstering enrollment.
Inside University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Christie Theatre, retired judge Mark Warpinski leads a discussion about how judges decide on the sentences they impose. Roughly 50 students nod along, take notes and eagerly wave their hands in the air to debate how they’d sentence someone for a hypothetical crime.
The unusually lively audience betrays that this isn’t a typical sleepy morning lecture — most of Warpinski’s students are over the age of 50.
“We pay attention. We ask questions. We’re not sitting on our cellphones and scrolling … like I guess most college students nowadays do,” said 76-year-old student Norman Schroeder.
Classrooms full of older adults are becoming more common at UWGB.
As Wisconsin’s workforce ages and universities nationwide see fewer traditional college-aged students, UWGB is trying several unorthodox efforts to attract older learners. That includes more short-term certificates that advance workers’ job skills,ungraded courses that keep older students socially engaged and classes in local nursing homes.
University leaders hope these moves will keep the region’s growing retirement-age population sharp and socially engaged — and potentially in the workforce for longer — while also bolstering enrollment.
“We’re not just an 18-year-old campus. We’re not just a campus where you live in the dorms and have a traditional experience,” said Jessica Lambrecht, UWGB’s continuing education and workforce training executive officer. “There’s hundreds of universities you can pick from that offer that type of experience. So how are we gonna stretch and serve more?”
From left, Anita Kirschling, Theresa Reiter, Judy Rogers and Linda Chapman work on knitting projects during a class through the Lifelong Learning Institute at UWGB. They are among more than 800 members of UWGB’s Lifelong Learning Institute. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
In fall 2025, UWGB joined the Age-Friendly University Global Network, an international web of universities that focus on including all ages. The college must follow the network’s 10 principles, which include supporting those pursuing second careers; expanding online education options; and promoting collaboration between older and younger students, among other tasks. Lambrecht hopes this commitment leads more community groups to help UWGB in its pursuit of older learners.
UWGB’s focus on enrolling people outside the typical 18-to-24 age group has helped the college’s enrollment climb over the past decade, at a time when many universities are seeing the opposite trend.
University leaders hope to do even more to cater to retirees and other older adults in coming years, starting with more courses in assisted living facilities and building ways for older people to mentor younger students and workers.
Addressing Wisconsin’s aging workforce
Wisconsin’s aging population has caused ongoing trouble for its workforce.
For years, there haven’t been enough working-age people to fill the jobs left by those retiring. That trend is expected to continue into 2030.
Lambrecht said UWGB leaders are thinking about how they can “encourage and invite that pre-retirement age population to stay engaged in the workforce a little bit longer.”
They think offering more short-term certificates can help.
Perhaps more commonly offered by two-year colleges, short-term certificates show someone completed a handful of courses focused on a skill or topic. An increasing number of people in the U.S. are seeking these credentials, as they’re cheaper and less time-consuming than degrees. They’re also often marketed as a way for workers to gain knowledge that will help them advance in their career and earn more money, though studies and data have indicated a mixed payoff.
UWGB offers 20 short-term certificate options, ranging from topics such as utilizing artificial intelligence to English-to-Spanish translation.
“Your job is going to continuously change, and with the exponential growth of information, how are you going to stay relevant in the workforce?” Lambrecht said. “So that’s really where continuing professional education programs come into play. It’s giving you short-term, bite-sized programming that’s going to help you refine a skill set that you now are faced with.”
University leaders also want to create more opportunities for younger students and employees to learn from people reaching retirement age. Lambrecht said she’s thinking about how they can “marry those two audiences to be of continued value in our workforce.” For example, last summer, they debuted an “intergenerational” program aiming to connect older adults and youth through several educational workshops.
‘Learning for its own sake’
The quest for more older students isn’t just about keeping them working. It also helps keep the region’s aging population mentally sharp and socially engaged.
UWGB’s Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) is geared toward older adults who want to “enjoy learning for its own sake.” There are no tests, no grades and no prerequisites. The volunteer-led club offers between 150 and 250 courses each semester — the most popular including history, film and documentary classes, guest lectures and tours around the region.
“When I retired, I realized I’ve got to keep doing things. You can’t just sit in the chair,” said Gary Lewins, a 10-year LLI student. Last semester, he took a class that taught him how to digitize all of his old photo albums.
Anita Kirschling works on her knitting project during a Lifelong Learning Institute course at UWGB. LLI offers 150 to 250 courses each semester. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
Norman Schroeder began taking LLI classes in 2018. The retired family doctor said it was good for more than just learning — he quickly made several friends. Today he helms LLI’s Board of Directors and tries to get more people to join.
“LLI is not only just the cognitive stimulation, the brain stimulation of the classes and learning — it’s also the social engagement,” Schroeder said. “Those are important elements for good health. Particularly in older patients, there’s a high incidence of depression, and some of that comes from social isolation … I kind of promote LLI as good for your health.”
The institute has over 800 members, who pay $150 for a year of access to classes. University professors often volunteer to teach classes related to their expertise, happy to teach to a highly engaged audience, Schroeder said.
In early 2025, the Rennes Group, which operates assisted living facilities in northern Wisconsin, gave a $300,000 grant to the institute. UWGB has used the money to host classes at Rennes’ nursing homes, upgrade technology to livestream classes to residents living in them and take residents on outings, such as a tour of the Green Bay Correctional Institution.
“Just because you live in an environment that provides maybe some extra help, doesn’t mean … you shouldn’t have access to things like lifelong learning,” Rennes Group President Nicole Schingick said.
Enrolling ‘the bookends’
UWGB’s focus on older learners comes as the so-called traditional college student, aged 18 to 24 years old, makes up a smaller share of enrollment nationwide.
In September, Chancellor Michael Alexander sent a letter to faculty and staff outlining how the university must “reinvent” to topple trends like these. To do so, he wrote, UWGB leaders must recognize “every person is a potential student over their lifetime, not just at 18 with stellar high school academic credentials.”
In their quest to grow enrollment, college leaders have trained their focus on not just older learners, but younger ones, too.
“(We’re) trying to think about the bookends of the population, knowing that the 18- to 24-year-old is a shrinking demographic,” Lambrecht said. “If we’re going to thrive as a university, we have to think outside the box.”
In 2020, for example, the college launched a program for high schoolers to complete associate degrees through the university for free. High schoolers have comprised a growing share of the university’s student population over the years, from 16% in fall 2018 to more than a third of enrollment today.
Anita Kirschling, left, and Theresa Reiter work on knitting projects during a Lifelong Learning Institute class at UWGB. University officials want to do more to reach older adults in the coming years, particularly those who can’t come to campus. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
In 2024, 12% of UWGB’s students were over the age of 30, though that figure only includes students who are taking classes for credit and does not include students like those involved in the Lifelong Learning Institute.
These approaches have helped UWGB’s total enrollment grow over 3,300 students in the last decade, while nearly every other UW school has seen a net decrease over the same time frame.
It’s common to see people of all ages on the Green Bay campus. In the summer, UWGB rents out its empty dorms as “snowbird housing” to older adults. But college leaders want to do even more in coming years to reach older people — particularly those who can’t come to campus.
“The reality is, some of our members have mobility issues,” Schroeder said. “When you’re an 18- to 20-year-old college student, walking any distance is not a big deal. But if you’re on the campus at UWGB, sometimes it’s a long walk from the parking lot to get into the classrooms.”
UWGB leaders hope to offer more virtual classes for older students who are home-bound or have physical limitations. To assist those with hearing loss, they want to add “hearing loops” to classrooms, which transmit sound from a microphone directly into a hearing aid. Eventually, they want Rennes residents to have access to the full catalog of lifelong learning classes virtually, in real time, Schingick said.
“That would really be able to open the doors globally, if you will, to all of our residents and all of our communities, no matter where they are in the state,” Schingick said.
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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