The Wisconsin Elections Commission met Thursday to assess its preparations for the midterm elections in November, review reports on allegations of voter fraud and determine the outcome of two complaints against election officials. 

The commission met as concerns continue to swirl around Wisconsin and the country over the possibility that President Donald Trump and his Republican allies will work to undermine confidence in the results of the election. 

In the meeting, WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe gave the agency’s pre-election readiness report in which she outlined the ways the commission works to keep the state’s voter rolls accurate, train election officials, ensure the election’s security and answer any questions that come from local officials or voters. 

One of the most frequent complaints about the election system made by conspiracy theorists is that Wisconsin’s voter registration database includes the information of “inactive” voters who have moved, died or been convicted of a felony. The critics argue that leaving these files in the database makes it easier for fraud to occur.

The report states that WEC and local election officials have reviewed or updated nearly 500,000 voter files ahead of the election to make sure that only eligible voters cast votes in November. 

“And in total, since the last general election, our municipal clerks have updated or deactivated over a half a million records, and so I think that’s really, really important to highlight how much work goes into maintaining Wisconsin’s voter registration list all day, every day to ensure that anybody that’s lawfully registered will show up on the registration list,” Wolfe said. “They’ll show up on the polls when they go to vote on Election Day, and anybody who is not eligible, so anybody who maybe has been convicted of a felony or is otherwise not eligible, is removed from the list or their record is updated.”

Commission Chair Don Millis, a Republican, said that leaving the inactive voter files in the database actually protects against fraud. 

“Basically, you have one database with 7 million records, and there’s a very good reason why we keep records of inactive voter records, deceased voters, because if you got rid of those, you would lose one of your best tools to combat election fraud,” Millis said.

Wolfe also said that in an effort to provide as much information as possible to voters and clerks, the WEC office is set to open at 5 a.m. in the weeks ahead of the election. 

Commissioner Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said she appreciates the sacrifice from WEC staff to help people, but that the agency’s 30-person staff is not large enough to handle the demands of the public. 

“We have put in a request for our budget for many more positions because the work we’re doing has expanded dramatically,” Jacobs said. “It shouldn’t be something where people are sacrificing as much as they are. And I want to express my admiration for our staff’s devotion to this work and commitment to it. And also say that our need for additional staff is real. It’s profound. And I hope if any legislators are out there listening, that you treat our budget request for more personnel with great attention, and hopefully give us those staff positions.”

Voter fraud, felon reports 

Commission staff also presented the results of the agency’s regular reports on felons who have voted and reported election fraud. 

As is generally the case, neither report shows widespread levels of election fraud at the level Republicans have regularly alleged in recent years. 

The report shows that since the 2020 general election, nearly 22 million votes have been cast in Wisconsin. Only 445 of those votes, 0.002%, were matched to voters with felony convictions and an even smaller number of those instances were actually referred to prosecutors and charged. 

The commission’s annual report on voter fraud found that in the elections since November 2025, municipal clerks have referred 53 cases of election fraud to local prosecutors. The WEC report, agency staff said, could be an undercount because it’s dependent on clerks reporting the referrals to WEC when they happen. 

Most of the referrals, 44 of them, were made because the “election day registration” postcard delivered to a person’s address after they register at the polls was returned undeliverable. 

Milwaukee Complaint

The commission also voted on Thursday that there is no probable cause to further investigate a voter’s complaint that the city of Milwaukee violated state law by sorting absentee ballots at its central count location behind a curtain. 

The complaint alleged that city staff were conducting “observable” election activities behind the curtain at the city’s central count location during the November 2024 and April 2025 elections. The commission’s discussion of the complaint reopened long-running arguments between commission members — most notably from Republican Robert Spindell, who has long been the WEC member most friendly to election conspiracy theories. 

Spindell argued that people continuing to have doubts about Wisconsin’s elections is evidence that Wisconsin’s elections aren’t run competently or transparently enough. 

“Let’s stop having these problems that we have, where 45% of the citizens of Wisconsin feel that there’s something wrong with this thing,” Spindell said. “I’m sure Mayor [Cavalier] Johnson does not like the bad publicity that comes out regarding the lack of transparency. There’s no reason why that black curtain is up. There’s no reason why all these actions are being blocked if there’s nothing nefarious going on.” 

Jacobs pointed out that the complaint included several blatantly false statements.

“Bob, I’m concerned by your comments because I know you’ve been to Central Count. I know you have seen ballots being opened in the machines. I know you have seen the tables. I know you have seen the poll workers calling out names. I know you have seen all this,” Jacobs said. “And this complaint was by someone who swore under penalty of perjury that those things were happening behind this curtain. This man brought a lie to us, a lie, because he’s so invested in putting forward this conspiracy theory of secret things going on behind black curtains that he’s willing to lie on these documents to us. You and I both know, we’re both there, you and I both know that’s not true and he lies to this commission with the hopes of diminishing the work being done in the city of Milwaukee and I think you should be as offended as I am by that, because I’m pretty darn offended.” 

Mark Thomsen, another Democratic member of the commission, said that it’s Spindell’s repeated indulgence of conspiracy theories that has allowed distrust of the system to continue. 

“For you to turn this discussion about a complaint and a recommendation into the politics of the election, I think that hurts us more than anything,” Thomsen said. “I think that promotes mistrust, and … years and years of this is like it’s like Chinese torture, Bob. I mean, it’s enough.”

Hundreds of nurses at 10 SSM Dean Medical Group outpatient clinics in Dane County voted by 71% to form a union last week. 

The union drive of the 340 nurses at the SSM Health clinics comes just months after nurses at SSM St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison voted by 89% to start a union in June. The St. Louis-based Catholic health system has vehemently opposed the union effort from the St. Mary’s nurses, including by trying to get the National Labor Relations Board to invalidate the union election results. 

The St. Mary’s nurses have filed official charges with the NLRB over SSM administration’s refusal to begin negotiating a contract and undertaking anti-union efforts. 

Nurses at both St. Mary’s and the clinics have said they’re working to unionize to better advocate for their patients as the administration makes cuts that force the nurses to do more. The clinic nurses have also tied their effort directly to the system’s treatment of the St. Mary’s nurses.

“For too long, policies have been handed down from SSM executives in St. Louis that force nurses to do more and more with fewer and fewer resources,” said Kat Doebler, a 30-year nurse who works at the SSM Health Outpatient Surgery Center. “This intense focus of extracting corporate profits out of us has led to burnout and the loss of some of our very best nurses. It’s time for the nurses who actually take care of patients to have a seat at the table in the decisions that affect our jobs and how we provide that care. We are very disappointed that instead of respecting our freedom to form a union, SSM has been waging a campaign to violate our rights. Together with our coworkers at St. Mary’s, we’re calling on SSM to stop breaking federal law and start working with us to make sure our clinics and the hospital are the best places to work and receive care.”   

After the SSM administration fought the recognition of the union at St. Mary’s, the system said in a statement that it “respects” the decision of its clinic nurses. 

“We thank every nurse who participated in the recent National Labor Relations Board election at ten of our SSM Health Dean Medical Group outpatient centers in the Madison area,” SSM spokesperson Lisa Adams said. “While we would have preferred an outcome that allowed us to continue working directly with our nurses, we respect their decision and are committed to working constructively through the process ahead. We are grateful for the dedication of our nurses and the care they provide each day. Together, we will continue supporting our patients, serving our communities, and advancing our Mission of providing exceptional health care services to all.”

Wisconsin voters will decide if three proposed constitutional amendments should be enacted when they head to the polls this fall — marking 15 times Republican lawmakers have put potential amendments to voters during the two terms of Gov. Tony Evers. 

Voters have approved seven of the previous 12 proposed amendments. Republicans have said they continue to use the amendment process to make policy changes while avoiding Evers’ veto pen. 

“There are lots of things that I would do that Tony Evers would have vetoed. There are very few things that I would bring as a constitutional amendment to try to get around that,” Rep. Dave Murphy (R- Hortonville) told Wisconsin Watch. “I’m glad that I can take this to the people for a signing rather than to Gov. Evers because I think the people will support this, but I think he maybe would have vetoed it.”

But opponents say that these Republican end runs around the governor’s office are a misuse of the amendment process that flout good governance ideas and that the language of the amendments is  intentionally designed to confuse voters. 

“Right, wrong or indifferent, saying to the people that you want their voices in these ‘important’ decisions is — that sells pretty well, but it’s not the job of the Legislature,” Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner, who is critical of state legislators for trying  to legislate by constitutional amendment instead of using the regular lawmaking process. 

Voters, unlike state lawmakers, cannot propose amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution and get them onto the ballot, as voters have done in other states. Wisconsin’s process to amend the state constitution requires that voters decide on the proposed amendment after the language is set and the proposal is passed as a resolution in two consecutive sessions of the Legislature. 

“Putting anything in the constitution just makes it more difficult to undo,” Cronmiller said. 

On the ballot this year are proposed amendments to ban state and local governments from enacting diversity, equity and inclusion policies; limit the governor’s use of the partial veto to raise taxes and fees and prohibit the closure of places of worship during public health emergencies. 

Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley has expressed his opposition to all three proposed amendments while Republican candidate Tom Tiffany has said he supports them all. 

Anti-Equity 

The anti-equity program amendment will appear on voter’s ballots asking if “section 27 article 1 of the constitution be created to prohibit governmental entities in the state from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, public contracting, or public administration?”

Amanda Merkwae, the policy and advocacy director at the ACLU of Wisconsin, said that the question is written in such a way that most voters would say yes, of course they don’t want the government to discriminate against people. 

“I think this question has this misleading language that’s really intended to eliminate opportunity,” Merkwae said. “The text of prohibiting discrimination or preferential treatment, on its face, sounds like of course we’d want to do that, but doesn’t give voters this full picture and understanding that federal and state laws already strictly ban discrimination.” 

Merkwae pointed to several federal and state laws that already protect against discrimination, including the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and added that locking the amendment’s language into the state Constitution could severely limit the ability of future lawmakers to address policy problems. 

“What the amendment is ultimately designed to do is eliminate proactive programs geared towards equity, like minority and women-owned business recruitment, or targeted workforce development, or retention initiatives in higher education that are designed to ensure that everyone gets a fair shot,” she said. “And by embedding this broad language into the state constitution, it just locks in these rigid restrictions that lawmakers in the future and local communities can’t change, even if you know data shows that there is a deep need in the future.”

Republicans are putting the amendment to voters after years of opposing programs aimed at helping minority groups. Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers) released a report in January highlighting hundreds of thousands of dollars local and county governments have spent to attract diverse pools of employees and provide them with training on equity and inclusion. 

Cronmiller said that in the League of Women Voters’ advocacy against the amendment, the group has been pointing to the Sortwell report to show people which programs in their community are likely to be cut if the amendment passes. The League’s messaging on the amendment states that if passed “60 years of progress for women and people of color” will be lost due to the end of programs meant to address disparities in health outcomes, make accommodations for kids struggling in school, support poor families and victims of domestic violence and provide government contracts to diverse pools of businesses. 

“This amendment is not prohibiting governmental entity discrimination,” Cronmiller said, adding that the consequences of the amendment could reach further than intended. 

“This amendment is eliminating preferential treatment for all sorts of groups that have systemically been disenfranchised, and we’re just trying to even up the score,” she continued. “Women’s health issues, government contracting with minority-owned businesses. So many things could be on the chopping block because they give preferential treatment. I think even government programs like Head Start that targets young people. Well, guess what? Age is a prohibited category. So does Head Start go away? Do programs intended for geriatrics go away? I don’t know.”

Opponents of the bill have also pointed out that the state and federal constitutions already have anti-discrimination provisions. The conservative legal outfit the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, for example, has in recent years successfully sued on several occasions to end government programs meant to provide aid to specific minority groups.  

Murphy, who is not running for reelection, said he wrote the proposal because he wants the government to make decisions about hiring and spending based on merit. 

“I’m just very much of a supporter of the idea that when people put government in charge of something, they want it to be the best it can be,” Murphy said. “One of the ways to do that is not to put a bunch of things that get in the way of picking based on merit.”

Partial veto 

The proposed amendment to strip the governor of the power to partially veto pieces of the state budget asks voters if the constitution should “be amended to prohibit the governor, in exercising his or her partial veto authority, from creating or increasing or authorizing the creation or increase of any tax or fee?”

Republicans proposed the amendment after Evers used his partial veto power to change the 2023-25 biennial budget to allow schools to raise revenue limits by $325 per pupil per year for the next 400 years. 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed  Evers’ authority to make that change, but Republicans have been upset about it ever since. Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor,  has built his campaign in part around reversing what he calls a “400-year property tax increase.” 

The amendment to limit executive authority is in line with Wisconsin Republicans’ actions during the 2018 lame duck session to strip powers from Evers and then-incoming Attorney General Josh Kaul. 

Wisconsin’s unique partial veto authority has been rolled back a number of times over the state’s history through the courts and the constitutional amendment process. While the Evers 400-year veto is the most recent controversy, former Republican Gov. Scott Walker used the power to extend a one-year moratorium on school referendum requests for energy efficiency projects, transforming it into a 1,000-year moratorium.

With the possibility that the party in control of both the governor’s office and Legislature could change hands this fall, the current amendment is timed for exactly the moment in state politics when it’s unclear which party will benefit from its passage.

Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), the author of the resolution, told Wisconsin Watch the goal of the amendment is to protect the separation of powers. 

“It’s always about separation of powers,” Kapenga said. “This is a mechanism put in place specifically for this reason, so that if we feel that those other two branches breached their authority in that separation, we say we’re going to go directly to the people and let them make that decision.”

But Cronmiller said the partial veto is a valuable tool for a governor who has been stymied by the Legislature, as Evers has been by Republicans during his nearly eight years in office, and that it shows a lack of long-term thinking to assume a Republican governor will never be in the same position. 

“I think that some Republicans right now maybe don’t have the long-term lens on, because this is a moment in time right now where they’re trying to stifle a Democratic governor,” she said. “But if changed and made permanent in the constitution, this is going to impact every governor.”

She added that the Legislature acting to take a power long held by the governor is not good practice, even if people disagree over the specifics of the governor’s veto authority. 

“Does the League have a long-standing position on what the veto powers of a governor should be? No,” Cronmiller said. “But the powers of the governor, as defined, should be upheld. So that kind of good government position that we’ve always taken is what compelled us to say vote no on this.”

Places of worship 

The third proposed amendment asks voters if “section 18 of article I of the constitution, which deals with religious liberty, be amended to prohibit the state or a political subdivision of the state from ordering the closure of, or forbidding gatherings in, places of worship in response to a state of emergency, including a public health emergency?”

Republicans proposed the amendment after the measures instituted to prevent the spread of COVID-19 included the closure of churches, sparking protests from a wide range of conservative groups. 

“Many of us, you know, dedicate our entire lives toward our faith, and in a situation like COVID, there’s a lot of fear, and there’s a lot of uncomfort, and there’s a lot of strangeness, things we’re not used to,” Rep. Ron Tusler (R-Harrison) told Wisconsin Watch. “When we’re in a situation like that, people of faith need their faith at that moment more than ever, and to deprive people of it is a particularly heinous sin that our government shouldn’t commit.”

But opponents of the amendment say that the government needs to be able to respond during a public health emergency. 

“In the moment when the governor’s executive order came out, it was like all of us need to do our part to keep those most vulnerable in our communities safe and not prone to catching a disease that could kill them,” Cronmiller said. “So, what is every first directive of public health: prevent disease. You know that’s what public health does, and so I think that conflating disease prevention with the right to worship is completely wrong-minded. No one’s right to worship was compromised during that executive order period. Churches, synagogues, every religious institution figured it out, just like every business did, just like every academic environment did.”

Leonard Boltz, the 73-year-old who has flown Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany to events across the state, has long had ties with some of the state’s most prominent election deniers and said recently that if Tiffany loses in November it will be because of “cheating” by Democrats.

Boltz, the chair of the Langlade County Republican Party and a retired major in the U.S. Air Force, has been a regular contributor to Republican candidates and causes, state and federal campaign finance records show, but has provided personal air travel only for Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaign.

Earlier this month, Boltz was flying Tiffany from La Crosse to Wausau when a mechanical failure forced a crash landing into Lake Wausau. Both men swam to a shallow area where they were rescued and treated for minor injuries. Boltz was lauded as a hero.

Wisconsin state campaign finance records show that Boltz flew Tiffany around the state 12 times between January and June. The total value of these in-kind contributions was claimed on campaign finance filings as $2,354.

Beyond the instances in which the Tiffany campaign reported flying with Boltz, the two men appear to have both attended the same conservative events over the past year.

Flight tracking data shows that Boltz’s Beech K35 aircraft was flown to the same area as a Tiffany campaign event on at least three other occasions in July.

On July 11, Tiffany was in Door County picking cherries the same day that Boltz’s plane flew from the Door County airport in Sturgeon Bay to Antigo. On July 25, flight records show the plane flew from Rhinelander to Waukesha the same day that Tiffany appeared at an event in Pewaukee. Two days later, on July 27, the plane flew from Rhinelander to Milwaukee on the same day Tiffany held events across the Milwaukee area.

The plane was also in Green Bay the same day that Tiffany attended a Charlie Kirk memorial event there on Oct. 14 last year and landed in Baraboo the same weekend in May that Tiffany was crowned the Republican nominee for governor at the party’s convention in Wisconsin Dells.

The flight data and campaign finance records, along with public statements Boltz has made, suggest an ongoing relationship between Tiffany and an outspoken member of the election conspiracy wing of the state Republican Party even as Tiffany works to distance himself from his previous support of the ideas Boltz espouses and their originator, President Donald Trump.

Tiffany voted against certifying the 2020 election results and in May of this year, would not say whether Biden won. This month, Tiffany told Wisconsin Watch that Biden won the 2020 election, but that he would cooperate with Trump’s ongoing federal investigations into the election. 

The Examiner approached Tiffany for comment for this story at a campaign event in Waukesha County Wednesday evening. Tiffany ducked into his car while two of Tiffany’s staff members, including Alex Walker, the son of former Gov. Scott Walker, physically blocked a reporter as he asked a question.

As of publication, the campaign had not responded to a list of questions sent by email.

The Examiner reached Boltz by email and phone Thursday morning. He said on the phone he had “no comment” and hung up before he could be asked any questions.

Boltz’s support for election conspiracy theories

An Examiner review of videos of Boltz posted to the right-wing video platform Rumble show the extent of Boltz’s support for election conspiracy theories — including his support for GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde’s claim that, despite Trump’s 2024 victory in Wisconsin, Democrats somehow cheated Hovde out of a win over Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin on the same ballot.

At a Republican Party of Langlade County meeting in late June, video shows Boltz saying people had been asking him how Tiffany’s campaign was going. He said the November election would come down to whether or not the SAVE Act is passed to stop “cheating.” The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act introduces a slew of proposed restrictions on voting across the country in the name of stopping noncitizens from voting. Tiffany has been supportive of the measure in Congress, which Trump strongly supports.

“What I tell people is, well, if Trump can get through some of these election integrity issues before November, I think it’s a piece of cake,” Boltz said.

“I don’t think there’s any question that Tom will win if we can stop some of the cheating. Again, we’re not going to stop it all, but if we can stop some of the cheating, I think, certainly, Tom is going to win… Cheating is all they’ve got. They’ve got to cling, they’ve gotta hang onto cheating, and they gotta get cheating. It’s the only possible way.”

At that same meeting, Boltz said he’d recently spoken with Tiffany about the party’s chances of winning this fall.

Harry Wait, a prominent Racine County election conspiracy theorist, also spoke at the county party meeting in June. Wait was convicted in May of breaking state law by impersonating voters to request absentee ballots, with the intention of trying to expose flaws in the election system. He filed the requests using the names of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Racine Mayor Cory Mason without their permission.

Wait, campaign finance records show, has made several donations of $1,000 to Boltz’s Langlade County Republican Party.

Ahead of the 2020 election, Boltz helped Terry Brand, the former chair of the Langlade County GOP and former mayor of Antigo, resurrect the county party, serving as vice chair and then chair.  He became involved in the state’s election conspiracy movement shortly after the 2020 election.

Video posted to Rumble shows Boltz appeared at a rally in 2021 outside of the Wisconsin State Capitol to call for a “cyber forensic audit” of the 2020 election. He spoke there about going to Maricopa County, Arizona, the Phoenix-area county that helped swing the state for President Joe Biden and became a target of Trump’s false claims the election was stolen from him. At the time, an IT firm with no election experience was running a widely derided audit of the election. 

Boltz said he went to Arizona with former Rep. Janel Brandtjen of Menomonee Falls. Brandtjen, who used her position as chair of the Assembly elections committee to spread conspiracy theories and attempt to oust Meagan Wolfe from her position as the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, was kicked out of Republican caucus meetings and then lost her seat in the Assembly in a 2024 primary election. 

“I was very fortunate to be able to get out to Maricopa County,” Boltz said at the rally outside the Capitol. “My chairman, Terry Brand, and I decided that it was high time Wisconsin get out to Maricopa County…  I was able to join the delegation. Now, that worked out awfully well, because a lot of the delegation sort of got muzzled… Robin Vos muzzled most of the people that went out there.”

Boltz went on to say the state needed to have a cyber forensic audit because “there’s so much fraud in Wisconsin.” Brandtjen and former state Rep. Timothy Ramthun made similar calls at the time.

“There’s maybe more fraud in Wisconsin than there was in Maricopa County, and they had plenty,” Boltz said. “Our legislators, for the most part, with the exception of Janel [Brandtjen] and a couple others have failed us. Our courts have certainly failed us. Who’s gonna make this happen? You are. You are. We’re gonna have to force this issue. Folks, we’re gonna have to keep the pressure on our legislators, keep the letters, the emails, the phone calls coming, but really, it’s still going to be up to you, us.”

Boltz’s work also extended to electing Republican legislators who would buck the authority of Vos — who in his tenure as speaker was known for maintaining a tight grip on the actions of his caucus. The election denial wing of the party had become hostile to Vos after he fired former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman from his job investigating the 2020 election and refused to support the effort to impeach Wolfe. 

In an August 2024 video, Boltz stood alongside county party chairs and candidates for the Assembly, including now-Rep. Lindee Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls) and criticized Assembly Republicans for not helping oust Wolfe. He said not supporting Brandtjen in that effort was like “going against apple pie in America.”

“That’s why these people are here,” Boltz said. “They want to change things in the Assembly. They want to be independent thinkers and not just vote Robin Vos. That’s why we can’t always be unified with the Republicans in the Assembly because they’re not real Republicans. They’re RINOs.”

The advocacy of Brandtjen, Ramthun and their allies was crucial to the creation of Gableman’s fruitless review of the 2020 election. Gableman donated $1,000 to the Langlade County party last November.

In 2022, Boltz, then the vice chair of the county party, and Brand, then the chair, also played a role in a campaign finance scheme in which about $40,000 was funneled through the county party’s accounts to the campaign of Adam Steen, an election denier who attempted several times to unseat Vos. The state ethics commission recommended that criminal charges be filed against Boltz, Brand and Brandtjen but local prosecutors declined to charge them. 

In 2023, Boltz said in an interview that he flew to Springfield, Missouri to appear with Ramthun at the “Election Crime” summit held by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and election conspiracy theorist who this year ran a failed campaign for Minnesota governor. Boltz said he and Ramthun were taking the place of Gableman, who was supposed to deliver a report on Wisconsin at the summit but was unavailable at the last minute. 

On Jan. 6, 2025, Boltz appeared on the “Regular Joe” show’s “Red, Right & Wisconsin” podcast where he was introduced as the chair of the county party. Boltz talked about his work to grow the Langlade County Republican Party as well as Wisconsin’s 2024 U.S. Senate race.

Boltz said he didn’t believe Eric Hovde, the failed GOP Senate candidate, lost against Sen. Tammy Baldwin. In 2024, Hovde didn’t concede to Baldwin until nearly two weeks after the election as he questioned the vote counting process. There was no evidence of irregularities in the vote count.

“Why don’t you look to see if Hovde really did lose? I don’t believe he did,” Boltz said. He added that Peter Bernegger, a prominent purveyor of election conspiracy theories in Wisconsin, did not believe Hovde lost either. At Brandtjen’s invitation Bernegger made several appearances before the Assembly elections committee to give testimony containing numerous debunked claims about the 2020 election.

“You know we still have Democratic clerks in Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, Racine,” Boltz said on the Regular Joe podcast. “Those Democrat clerks are a problem and they have proven themselves to be a problem.”

This year, on May 13, Tiffany donated $475 to the Langlade County Republican Party. On the same day, records show, the party gave a “gift” of $3,000 to Bernegger. 

In April, Gableman, Bernegger and Wait all appeared as speakers or special guests at the Langlade County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln-Reagan-Trump dinner.

Since 2010, Boltz has given more than $35,000 to county chapters of the Republican Party, the state party and candidates including Scott Walker, Rebecca Kleefisch and Brad Schimel. He’s also donated to several state legislative candidates including Brandtjen, Brill and Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee). 

Federal campaign finance records show that Boltz has donated more than $7,000 to the national Republican Party and federal candidates for office. That includes $1,500 in donations to Tiffany’s previous congressional campaigns and a $1,000 donation this year to the campaign of Michael Alfonso, the Trump-endorsed candidate  running for Tiffany’s 7th Congressional District seat. He’s also given to the presidential campaigns of both John McCain and President Trump.

The gubernatorial campaign of Republican Tom Tiffany blocked two reporters for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel from entering an event in Milwaukee Thursday, preventing the state’s largest newspaper from covering the campaign. 

The campaign’s decision to prevent reporters Mary Spicuzza and David Clarey from covering the event comes just days after Tiffany said at a news conference that he would allow reporters, even those from “slanted” outlets such as the Journal-Sentinel, access to his campaign. Tiffany was asked about press access in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke White House press badges for reporters from CNN, MS Now and Politico. 

“As you can see, I did not deter anyone here from joining us today and I don’t plan on doing that — even you [Journal-Sentinel reporter] Laura [Schulte], I’m going to continue to allow you here,” Tiffany said at the Wisconsin Counties Association conference on Tuesday. “I believe in open, free press, that they be able to ask us questions. The principle that I live with, is I just expect all of you to be fair, and as long as you’re fair in your writing, I always welcome the press here. It’s when the press is slanted, that’s what’s frustrating.” 

At the event, Tiffany told reporters that he’ll “have to talk to his communications team” about Spicuzza’s access. 

In a post on social media after the event, Tiffany’s campaign said it had notified Spicuzza that she wouldn’t be allowed into the event because of her alleged political views, but that other staff members from the outlet would be allowed. 

“Liberal activist [Spicuzza] was notified yesterday that she would not be permitted to attend,” the Tiffany campaign wrote on X. “[The Journal-Sentinel] has a photographer at the event, and we welcome all balanced journalists across Wisconsin, including [Journal-Sentinel reporter Jessie Opoien]. That’s why WISN, CBS 58, and other outlets are in attendance.”

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editor Greg Borowski said in a statement that preventing the paper’s reporters from covering events prevents information from being shared with voters.

“When our reporters cover campaigns and attend political events, they are there on behalf of the public,” Borowski said. “Blocking them blocks the public from vital information. Our aim is to help voters understand the candidates, their backgrounds and their positions. We will continue to pursue fair and unbiased coverage, despite campaigns creating unnecessary hurdles.”

This story has been updated to include the second reporter, David Clarey, who was denied access to the event. 

The influence of voter opposition to data center development on November’s elections has begun to show in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, in one of the state’s most hotly contested races. 

Both candidates in the race, Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden and Democrat Rebecca Cooke, as well as outside spending groups, have each worked to connect the other to pro-data center policies. 

Van Orden’s campaign has pointed out that Cooke worked with the Wisconsin Technology Council and the think tank Third Way, both organizations that have supported data center projects in the past. 

Cooke’s campaign and the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC have recently run ads criticizing Van Orden for taking campaign contributions from people and organizations tied to the data center industry while voting for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which included tax breaks that data center developers have used over the past year. 

The House Majority PAC ad refers to the two-term congressman as “Data Center Derrick” marking the alliterative danger for candidates of both parties whose names begin with the letter D this year. In Wisconsin’s race for governor, Republican Tom Tiffany has run ads criticizing “Data Center David” Crowley for his previous statements of support for data center projects. 

Voters in the western Wisconsin district have been vocal in their opposition to data center projects, successfully working to kill a proposed development in Menomonie last year.

Following President Donald Trump’s executive order earlier this month to remove the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list, Wisconsin’s gubernatorial election will determine the direction of future management of the wolf population in the state. 

There are currently about 4,000 wolves across Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources estimating the state population number at about 1,162 wolves. The return of the wolf to the state is seen as a conservation success story after the animal’s extirpation in the 1950s. 

Trump attempted to delist the wolf during his first term in 2020, but a federal judge reversed that decision two years later. During the two years in which the wolf was delisted, Wisconsin held a controversial hunt of the animal in 2021 in which hunters surpassed the DNR’s quota in less than three days. A state law enacted in 2012 requires that Wisconsin hold a wolf hunt whenever the animal is not on the endangered species list. 

The question of Wisconsin’s wolf policy is one of the most heated in the state’s conservation politics. Farmers and residents in the northern part of the state, where most of the wolf population lives, are often more wary of living near the predator. But conservationists and the state’s Native American tribes have sought to protect the wolf as an important part of the ecosystem. 

During his time in Congress and the state Legislature, Republican candidate Tom Tiffany has regularly been a vocal advocate for hunting wolves. 

“His big priority is wolves. He wants to hunt wolves. I’m not kidding. He’s talked to me about it many times on the House floor,” Michigan Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens said on CNN last month. 

As a state legislator, Tiffany was a co-sponsor of a bill to mandate a wolf hunt and the first piece of legislation he ever introduced in Congress was a bill that would have removed the wolf from the endangered species list across the Midwest. 

After Trump’s executive order, Tiffany said in a statement that wolves are interacting too often with farmers and families in Wisconsin so they must be hunted. 

“Farmers are dealing with livestock depredations, families are losing pets, and wolves are showing up closer to homes,” Tiffany said. “Wisconsin has successfully managed wildlife for generations. It is time to get out-of-state judges and bureaucrats out of the way and let Wisconsin responsibly manage its wolf population.”

So far this year, Wisconsin has had 63 confirmed wolf depredations of livestock, pets and hunting dogs, according to DNR data. 

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

Democratic candidate David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive and a former Milwaukee-area state representative, has never represented a part of the state with a wolf population. After Trump’s delisting order, he told Wisconsin Public Radio he supports “commonsense efforts” to return management of the animal to the state. 

“While other parts of the country have different wolf populations and management needs, we need our agriculture, tribal, scientific, and impacted communities to come together to create a solution that works for Wisconsin,” Crowley said. “It’s time to follow the science and give impacted communities a seat at the table as we work together to be responsible stewards of Wisconsin’s gray wolf population.”

The decision over delisting will be made by the White House, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the federal court system. Whoever Wisconsin’s next governor is will influence the state’s wolf policy through his power to sign legislation and appoint people to lead the Department of Natural Resources and sit on the Natural Resources Board. 

In 2023, the DNR and Natural Resources Board approved the first update to Wisconsin’s wolf management plan since the animal returned in the 1990s. Under the previous plan, the state set a “population goal” at 350 wolves, which at the time was seen as an aspirational aim as the state worked to reestablish the population. 

In the decades since that initial plan, the population far surpassed the goal. Anti-wolf advocates began to see that number as their preferred ceiling on the state’s wolf population. Under the current plan, the DNR decided not to set a specific numerical population goal but instead divided the state into zones in which policymakers will assess the biological, social and cultural factors to determine if the local population should be decreased, maintained or allowed to grow. 

The state uses a similar method for managing a number of other animals in the state, including bears. 

Republicans and their allies among hunting and farming organizations have vehemently objected to the method, repeatedly introducing legislation that would reinstitute the 350 wolf population goal. 

“Our policy says that our members would like to see a return to the population goal of 350, and we believe that even under the science the DNR has shown, that that’s a sustainable number,” Tyler Wenzlaff, director of national affairs for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We in no shape or form are advocating for their removal from the Wisconsin landscape. We know that they’re an integral part of the biological makeup of Wisconsin’s habitat, but we’d like to see some kind of return to a management where they’re controlled a little bit better.”

Wenzlaff said he’d like to see a “gradual decline” of the wolf population toward that number, particularly if Tiffany is the governor and Republicans maintain control of the Legislature. 

If Crowley wins and Democrats win majorities in the Legislature, Wenzlaff said the Farm Bureau would work to lobby environmental policymakers on the idea that the wolf has hit its biological and social carrying capacity in the state. 

“A wolf population beyond 1,200 to 1,300 is probably not socially acceptable either. And I think if you talk to the DNR, the current number has kind of hovered around this for a couple years now, so they believe that we’re at the biological carrying capacity,” he said. “And I think that anything more than that, you’ll start to see people start to lose that support for wolves once you start seeing animals being taken away, taken off their porch, or you start to see them out in the field when your son or daughter is waiting for the bus in the morning, it starts to get a little bit more real for people. And I think the expansion of the wolf habitat in the last wolf management plan will start to bring that home a little bit as the number increases.”

At a news conference earlier this month, Crowley said that while he believes the state can properly manage a wolf hunt with input from every side of the debate, Tiffany would go much further. 

“I do believe that we want to make sure that people can enjoy gaming and different types of recreational outdoor activities here in the state of Wisconsin,” Crowley said. “But I do believe you still need guardrails and making sure that people will be able to hunt wolves the way that they need to, but also making sure that we’re protecting this particular species as much as possible as well. And so, I do think that Congressman Tom Tiffany is going much further than I would like to go when it comes down to wolf delisting.”

Melissa Smith, executive director of the pro-wolf Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance, said in a statement that she would have preferred that Crowley take a strong stance against the delisting. Still, his position is  preferable to the lengths to which Tiffany would go. 

“Tom Tiffany has made stripping wolves of federal protection the centerpiece of his time in Congress, possibly being one of the most anti-wolf legislators in office right now,” Smith said. “While Wisconsin families are worried about the skyrocketing cost of living, he’s spent his energy on an issue that touches a few dozen of the state’s 58,000 farms. We expect these attacks on wolves to only intensify if given the power of the governorship.”

“David Crowley has also said he supports state management,” she added, “but he’s committed to following the science, and talked about bringing tribes, scientists and affected communities to the table and we’ll hold him to that. It’s clear Wisconsinites value wolves and what they bring to our state, and we look forward to working with the next governor to make sure that’s reflected in how they’re managed.”

President Donald Trump knows the midterm elections are shaping up to go poorly for him and the Republican party so he’s trying to cast as much doubt about the country’s election systems as possible, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said at an event Monday morning. 

Meeting with three Madison-area election officials, Baldwin noted that Trump made 107 false claims about the results of the 2020 election in the six months from December 2025 to May of this year while taking a number of actions to restrict voting or discredit election systems ahead of the November election. 

The U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down Trump’s proposed executive order to limit the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to process absentee ballots sent through the mail. His administration has, at various times, promised to send ICE agents, National Guard troops, FBI agents and other federal law enforcement to polling places on Election Day — an action that opponents see as an effort to intimidate Democratic voters. He advocated strongly for the passage of a bill that would institute strict national voter ID requirements. 

Trump’s Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have been working since he was inaugurated last year to build a national database of registered voters. The effort by the DOJ to obtain Wisconsin’s voter rolls was halted in May by a federal judge. DHS is now working to compile a federal voter registration list for ICE to use to search for non-citizens who are registered to vote. 

“With everything so unaffordable, so expensive, the Trump administration should be focused on that,” Baldwin said. “But instead, I think, they are worried that they’re going to be held accountable for things this election, and so they’re selling conspiracy theories. The president has a history of election denialism, and so instead of focusing on lowering costs, he’s focusing on undercutting the midterm elections.”

At the meeting in the city county building in Madison, Baldwin met with Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, Sun Prairie City Clerk Elena Hilby and Waunakee Village Clerk Karla Endres. McDonell is an elected Democrat while the other two serve as non-partisan officials. 

The three election officials outlined the ways in which Wisconsin’s election systems are built to be resilient and transparent. 

In the years since the 2020 presidential election, a subset of Wisconsin’s electorate has remained skeptical of the state’s election system — repeatedly making false claims that fraud has stolen victories from their preferred candidates. 

McDonell said Monday that every step of the process is done in public, from the pre-election tests of the voting equipment to the voting itself and the counting process. Election officials, he said, try to plan for anything that could go wrong so if it does, they’re able to respond and get ballots counted. 

“We assume failure at every point along the way, and so we’re checking to make sure everything’s accurate as we go along,” he said. 

The three clerks said that in the remaining weeks before the election, they’re working on their emergency response plans in the event that Trump does send armed agents to the polls. Last week, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor, celebrated the Trump administration planning to send DOJ staff to the polls. 

Hilby said that she wants the people working the polls in Sun Prairie to know what to do if federal agents show up, balancing the need to follow the law against the risk that poll workers could be put in danger. 

“An armed federal agent is illegal to have at the polling place,” Hilby said. “I wouldn’t want my election officials confronting them, but more approach them and say, you know, ‘what are you here for? Do you have a warrant?’ Get whatever information they can, so they can contact me, so I can immediately contact my city attorney, and I would probably be on the phone to [McDonell], so we knew how to respond. I don’t want to put them in danger. I also want to protect the election.” 

McDonell said it’s “frustrating” that local election officials are being forced to plan for this contingency and that he would like more concrete advice from the state elections commission. This year, the Wisconsin Elections Commission has issued a number of guidance documents to clerks about problems with the U.S. Postal Service, but remained silent on the question of federal agents at the polls. 

“It’s good to have some statewide advice on how to handle these situations, but it is tough,” he said. “We’ve been doing a lot of planning around these scenarios, making sure we have criminal defense attorneys, federal criminal defense attorneys, on retainer in case we have to rush to [federal court] to get an order. So a lot of planning is going on behind the scenes for different scenarios.”

Voting in Wisconsin’s midterm elections has officially begun. Local clerks across the state were required to send absentee ballots to voters with valid requests already on file by Thursday, Sept. 17. 

Data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission shows that 299,849 absentee ballots have already been requested and 4,309 have already been returned. 

The first absentee ballots were sent after months of wrangling by the administration of President Donald Trump to restrict ballots sent through the mail. While the court system thwarted that effort, concerns about the timely return of absentee ballots through the mail remain. 

Absentee ballots must be returned to a voter’s local election clerk by the time polls close on Election Day, Nov. 3. To give ballots enough time, election officials have recommended they be placed in the mail at least 10 days before Election Day. WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe recently changed  that recommended deadline to 14 days before Election Day, or Oct. 20. 

Voters can also return their absentee ballots directly to their municipal clerk’s office, take it to their polling place on Election Day or, in communities that use them, drop their ballots in an official municipal absentee ballot drop box. 

Early in-person absentee voting will open Oct. 20. Hours and locations for early voting and returning mailed absentee ballots can be found on municipal clerk websites. 

The biggest race on the ballot in Wisconsin this year is the open race for governor between Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany. Wisconsin’s eight congressional seats, 99 state Assembly seats and 16 state Senate seats are also up for election. Control of the Legislature is up for grabs for the first time in more than 15 years. 

Voters will also decide statewide races for attorney general, treasurer and secretary of state and will vote on three proposed constitutional amendments. The constitutional amendments would prohibit state and local governments from instituting diversity, equity and inclusion policies, prevent government edicts closing places of worship during emergencies and limit the governor’s line-item veto authority. 

Voters can see the candidates and referendum questions on their ballots at MyVote.WI.gov.

With less than 50 days before the midterm elections, national figures and groups of both parties have increased their attention on Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rep. Bryan Steil is running against former VA hospital nurse Mitchell Berman. 

The focus on the 1st CD race comes as the national map of competitive congressional districts has expanded with Democrats increasingly challenging Republicans in areas where President Donald Trump won handily in 2024. A national Marquette Law School poll of likely voters released earlier this week found that Democrats are leading on a generic ballot by 13 points. 

Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., is spending heavily in a number of districts that Trump won by more than 5 points two years ago, The New Republic reported Thursday, signaling that Republicans are being forced to devote resources to defending previously safe seats. 

In Wisconsin, Trump’s PAC plans to spend $90,000 boosting Steil and just $21,000 boosting U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in the state’s 3rd Congressional District, the New York Times reported. The 3rd CD has previously been one of the most hotly contested seats in the country. 

On Tuesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that it was adding Berman to its “Red to Blue” program, signaling a coming influx of national financial and infrastructure support. 

“Wisconsinites in the First Congressional District are tired of Bryan Steil’s votes to make life more expensive for working people while also ensuring that he, his wealthy donors, and Donald Trump can enrich themselves,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesperson Rachel La Due said in a statement. “Mitchell Berman joining the DCCC’s ‘Red to Blue’ program shows what Wisconsinites have seen for years: Bryan Steil has failed to stand up for working families, work to lower costs, or make healthcare more accessible.”

Since Trump’s return to office, Steil has regularly been involved in high profile political efforts, including as one of the lead authors of the bill, championed by Trump, to implement strict national voter ID requirements. 

Steil was first elected in 2018 following the retirement of former House Speaker Paul Ryan. Republicans have won the district by large margins in every congressional election since 1998. 

In 2018, with the seat open for the first time in more than two decades, the DCCC supported Randy Bryce’s run against Steil. Steil still won that race by more than 12 points — in a year in which Democrats won back control of the House nationally. The 1st CD has not been represented by a Democrat since Peter Barca in 1995. 

Zach Bannon, a spokesperson for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said in a statement that Berman’s campaign is “out of touch” with voters in the district. 

“Liberal activist Mitchell Berman is completely out of touch with southeast Wisconsin, pushing a radical far-left agenda that puts politics ahead of common sense,” Bannon said. “While Berman marches in lockstep with the extreme left, Congressman Bryan Steil continues delivering real results for hardworking Wisconsin families.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled this week that it would not suspend the legal license of former Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan, who was convicted earlier this year of obstructing federal agents trying to make an immigration arrest in the county courthouse. 

In an order released Wednesday, the Court overruled the request of the state Office of Lawyer Regulation to suspend her license on the grounds that she was convicted of a “serious crime.” Wisconsin’s court rules state attorneys found guilty of a serious crime can have their licenses suspended until their disciplinary proceedings are complete. 

Dugan was convicted of one felony count of endeavoring to obstruct a pending proceeding after helping an undocumented man appearing in her court briefly evade federal agents. The case drew national attention and in July she was sentenced to pay a $5,000 fine. 

The Supreme Court suspended Dugan from her position as a circuit court judge in April 2025, shortly after she was arrested. 

In its Wednesday order, the Court found that “in its exercise of its discretion … a summary suspension of Attorney Dugan’s license to practice law is not warranted under the facts of the matter.” 

The two conservatives on the Court, Brian Hagedorn and Annette Ziegler, dissented from the order. 

Ziegler wrote that the standard practice of the Court has historically been to suspend attorneys convicted of crimes to expedite the investigation of the Office of Lawyer Regulation. She also questioned why the majority wouldn’t act to discipline Dugan for her actions. 

“These charges concerned then-Judge Dugan, in her capacity as a circuit court judge, wearing a judicial robe, at the courthouse, obstructing federal agents,” Ziegler wrote. “I am confounded by our court’s inaction.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in two cases challenging the constitutionality of the state’s congressional maps. One challenge is based on the claim that the maps unfairly benefit Republicans and the other is on the grounds that the maps are intentionally anti-competitive to protect incumbents. 

Both cases were previously dismissed by panels of three circuit court judges. In both, the Court is not deciding the merits of the arguments but determining if the circuit panels were correct to dismiss the cases. If the Court determines that the dismissals were incorrect, the cases will be sent back to the circuit court level for discovery and trials on the merits of the argument. 

Because of that process, neither case will change Wisconsin’s maps ahead of this year’s midterm elections, but could install new maps ahead of the 2028 elections. 

Wisconsin’s congressional maps were instituted by the Court in 2022 after Gov. Tony Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature were unable to reach a compromise on new maps. In that case, the Court installed a “least change” principle in which the newly proposed maps had to match as closely as possible to the maps instituted in 2011 — which were widely considered to be the most gerrymandered in the country. 

The maps selected by the Court in 2022 were drawn by Evers, but followed the least change standard. Democrats and fair maps proponents have argued the least change standard poisoned the maps while Republicans have said the argument falls flat because a Democratic governor created them. 

Wisconsin’s congressional maps have repeatedly been challenged since the initial 2011 gerrymander and since the 2022 update. 

In the first part of the day, the Court heard the arguments of the partisan gerrymandering challenge, in which attorney Abha Khanna said that the Wisconsin Constitution’s equal protection clauses give voters in the state protection against maps designed to benefit one party. 

“Was partisan vote dilution the predominant purpose? Was that in fact the effect of the map, and is there any legislative justification outside of sheer partisan dominance that would justify the configuration of these districts?” Khanna said. 

A trio of attorneys argued in favor of the existing congressional maps, saying that the lawsuit was brought so late in the decade it can’t be litigated in the courts anymore, that if the Court wants to rule that partisan gerrymandering isn’t allowed then this case isn’t the right one and that the lawsuit doesn’t give a good enough standard for assessing what counts as an extreme partisan gerrymander. 

During the first arguments, the two conservative justices on the panel expressed skepticism with the claim that the state Constitution protects against partisan gerrymandering. 

“I actually don’t care what happens in other states. I don’t care at all. I care about our Constitution and our laws and what our law says,” Justice Brian Hagedorn said. 

“I know that some states have explicit prohibitions against partisan gerrymandering, however that’s defined. I don’t know what that means,” he added. “But you’re asking for us to just invent a new right that has never been recognized, that even though our founders were well aware of it, as even your own brief recognizes, from the time of our founding, but have never addressed. And you’re appealing to just democratic self-governance, not our actual Constitution, your just sense of what democracy ought to protect.”

The Court’s liberal majority appeared to give some deference to the argument that the lawsuit didn’t properly set up how to assess the extent of a partisan gerrymandering claim, but often got into extended back and forths over the harm that partisan gerrymandering represents. 

Luke Berg, one of the attorneys arguing to protect the existing maps, said in an exchange with Justice Chris Taylor that partisan gerrymandering “doesn’t implicate the right to vote.” 

“How can you say that there is no remedy if it’s demonstrated that partisanship has led to the dilution of the disfavored group’s vote?” Taylor said. “It makes no sense to me, if our whole government is derived from the people, and the power that they give is through the vote, that’s how the people give the power to the government. And so if their right to vote is diluted because of partisanship, I just don’t understand why you’re saying we have no ability as a state court to remedy that.” 

Khanna said Republicans, including some of the attorneys arguing the case in Madison on Wednesday, have made the exact opposite arguments in other states and that they’ve argued map opponents aren’t following the proper process no matter which process is followed. 

“What we’ve seen from just the last couple of years, and frankly, from this argument, where intervenors have said, ‘Oh no, you can’t do this. Oh, you can’t reopen Johnson. Oh wait, you can’t hear this original action. Oh wait, you can’t appoint a three-judge panel. And now that you have appointed a three-judge panel, you can’t hear this appeal,’” she said. “These are just part and parcel of their strategy, which has been to draw this out, and now they say, ‘you know what? The decade’s almost over. There’s really nothing more that this court can do.’”

In the second part of the day, attorney Nicholas Stephanopoulos argued that the congressional maps are illegally anti-competitive. 

“Our position here is a straightforward one,” he said. “Wisconsin’s Constitution does not tolerate officeholders entrenching themselves in power and cutting out the people by suppressing electoral competition.”

But liberal and conservative members of the Court appeared confused by the distinction between a map that is anti-competitive and a map that is gerrymandered to benefit one party. 

“Because it seems to me that what’s underlying that is that the district lines are drawn in such a way to have it be a foregone conclusion that a particular party will win that district, and so I don’t see a whole lot of airspace between this claim and the partisan gerrymandering claim,” Justice Susan Crawford said. 

Stephanopoulos said the difference is that a map drawn to be anti-competitive isn’t concerned with which party wins. 

“It’s relevant what the odds of re-election would be for a candidate, but the anti-competitive theory is uninterested in which party actually,” he said. 

But opponents argued that designing maps to be as competitive as possible comes with trade-offs that might not be ideal. 

“There is a fundamental tension when you maximize for competitiveness or you increase for competitiveness, you are taking away other legitimate values such as representation, such as incumbency protection, such as bipartisan agreement,” Misha Tseytlin, an attorney for Wisconsin’s Republican members of Congress, said. “If you make a map more competitive, then you make it less likely that their incumbents will retain their seats. You also make it more likely that a larger number of the constituents of a particular district are going to be unhappy with the result. There is a legitimate policy dispute as to whether more competitiveness or more representation, incumbency protection is better. Nothing in the Constitution’s text, history, or discourse precedent settles that question as a matter of text.”

The Line 5 oil and natural gas pipeline across northern Wisconsin went back online Monday, three weeks after a broken valve caused 1.3 million gallons of natural gas liquids to spill into the nearby Iron County town of Saxon, the pipeline’s operator Enbridge said in a news release. 

The spill occurred Aug. 25 when a truck rolled forward and broke the valve as crews worked on the controversial reroute of Line 5’s path across the state from Canada. Enbridge immediately began working to bypass the broken valve and get the pipeline back up and running despite warnings from the state Department of Natural Resources that it was doing that construction without the proper permitting. 

The DNR issued a notice of noncompliance to Enbridge last week ordering it to halt its work. Despite that warning, Enbridge completed the work and said in its news release that “work continues at the site focused on safe access, environmental testing and remediation.” The company said it has worked closely with federal and local agencies to protect health and safety and that “we continue to work” with the DNR on the “relevant permitting and separately on environmental conditions at the incident site.” 

“Ongoing environmental monitoring at the site continues,” Enbridge stated. “Wildlife has not been impacted. Testing of surface water and from a nearby residential well continues to show no impacts. Water monitoring wells continue to show no contamination. Soil and water monitoring are in place, as are plans to test, remove and properly dispose of the soil in the trench.”

Since the spill, the company has argued it needs to get the pipeline back up and running as soon as possible because the fossil fuels it transports are too important. 

“Line 5 is critical infrastructure, securely supplying 10 refineries and propane production facilities that deliver energy to millions of people in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions,” the company news release states. 

Meanwhile, environmental activists, members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and elected officials have continued to argue that the spill is confirmation that the pipeline has always been a risk to Wisconsin’s environment and should be permanently shut down.

Kenosha County District Attorney Xavier Solis had his license to practice law suspended Monday. The Office of Lawyer Regulation then reinstated the license Tuesday.

A memo issued by the state court system’s Office of Lawyer Regulation states that Solis’ suspension was for “willfully failing to cooperate with one or more OLR investigations into alleged misconduct.” 

The memo also states that Solis violated a Wisconsin Supreme Court rule that states that lawyers can have their licenses suspended if they’re under investigation by the OLR and don’t comply with deadlines to provide information. 

Solis, a Republican, was elected DA of Kenosha County in 2024 and had previously worked as a private defense attorney. 

Stephen Kelley, a spokesperson for the state court system, told the Wisconsin Examiner the only information available to the public is the rule Solis is alleged to have violated. 

State law requires district attorneys to have a valid law license, so Solis cannot currently perform the job. It’s not clear what the suspension will mean for Solis’ future in the seat. Under state court rules, an attorney suspension can be lifted if the suspended lawyer discloses what happened and cooperates with the investigation to the “reasonable satisfaction” of the regulators within 18 months. 

Deputy District Attorney Rosamaria Delgado is now serving as interim DA in Solis’ office. 

“Administrative staff of the Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office and I will continue to oversee the day-to-day operations of the office,” Delgado said in a statement to 620 WTMJ. “We have reached out to the State for direction. I will take over management and/or reassignment of District Attorney Solis’ caseload until such time as District Attorney Solis’ license to practice law is reinstated or, until further direction is received from the Governor’s Office.  At this time, no other information is available.”

Solis, who had no experience as a prosecutor when he was elected in 2024, has been the subject of criticism since taking office and has struggled to fill vacancies after experienced prosecutors resigned. He was previously sanctioned by a judge for filing briefs written using the assistance of artificial intelligence which “hallucinated” fake citations.

This story was updated on Tuesday, Sept. 15 to reflect the reinstatement of Solis’ law license.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has told the oil and gas company Enbridge to halt construction on the Line 5 pipeline across northern Wisconsin after a massive spill of natural gas liquids in Iron County late last month. 

The spill, which occurred near the town of Saxon and at 1.3 million gallons of natural gas liquids was the largest in the company’s history, was caused when an unoccupied truck rolled over a valve while crews were doing construction work. The company is in the process of rerouting Line 5 off the Bad River tribe’s reservation — a controversial project which has triggered numerous challenges to the DNR and federal permits. 

Since the spill, environmental activists, tribal members, candidates for office and elected officials in both Wisconsin and Michigan have renewed their calls for the pipeline to be shut down. 

After the spill, Enbridge began working to bypass the damaged valve so the pipeline could again be used to transport Canadian oil and gas. On Wednesday, the DNR issued a notice of noncompliance to the company, noting that Enbridge was constructing the bypass without the proper permits from the DNR. 

In the notice, and in an accompanying letter from DNR Secretary Karen Hyun, the agency said that it had told the company on three separate occasions it could not conduct the bypass work without approval from the state, and possibly from both the county and federal governments. 

The notice states that the bypass construction involves matting placed in nearby wetlands and close to Spoon Creek, which is considered a navigable waterway regulated by state law. 

In her letter, Hyun said she was “deeply concerned and incredibly frustrated” by Enbridge’s actions, especially the potentially harmful effects caused by the “significant discharge” of pollutants known as volatile organic compounds — which can be harmful to people’s health and the local environment. 

“Enbridge has continued to add to the growing list of environmental concerns and violations, demonstrating disregard for the environment, human health, and the statutory authority of the department,” she wrote. “Regarding the Line 5 reroute construction, Enbridge has caused additional discharges to the environment since my earlier letter, which have caused continued frustration and profound unease for the department and the people of Wisconsin. Additionally, at the location of the Line 5 Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) spill on August 25, Enbridge has made the decision to start unpermitted construction of a bypass, despite the extensive efforts of the DNR to educate Enbridge on the necessary permits and approvals for this bypass construction and a commitment to review submitted materials in a timely matter. Based on this pattern of noncompliance demonstrated by Enbridge, my concern over the environmental impacts of Enbridge’s activities over the past weeks has only heightened.”

In a statement, Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said the company is working “around the clock” to clean up the spill site and return the pipeline to service. 

“Enbridge continues working towards both priorities related to the third-party line strike near Saxon, Wis. — the safe control and remediation of the incident site and completing a temporary bypass to allow the pipeline to return to service, which will help resolve energy supply disruptions,” she said. “Around the clock work on both priorities is being done in parallel. Line 5 is critical infrastructure delivering energy to millions of people in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. We continue to work with the Wisconsin DNR on relevant permitting and separately on environmental conditions at the incident site.”

Rob Lee, an attorney for Midwest Environmental Advocates who has worked on the challenges to Enbridge’s Line 5 permits, said that the company doesn’t get to decide that restoring the pipeline is more important than following state law. 

“Enbridge knew it needed authorization before it started this work. The DNR told the company that repeatedly. Enbridge went ahead anyway. That shows extraordinary disregard for Wisconsin’s environmental laws and for the state agency charged with enforcing them,” Lee said. ““Enbridge cannot simply decide that getting Line 5 back in service is more important than following Wisconsin law. They’ve been out there moving earth, crossing waterways and disturbing wetlands without permits. They need to stop treating environmental requirements as obstacles to work around and start following the law. If they don’t, DNR should revoke the permits for the reroute.”

Nearly 900 miles from the southwest corner of his district, U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden appeared at President Donald Trump’s Dallas convention Wednesday afternoon to argue that the healthcare policies he and Trump have enacted are benefiting rural Wisconsinites. 

Van Orden represents Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District and his campaign against Democrat Rebecca Cooke is set to be one of the most hotly contested races in the country as Democrats seek to win back majority control of the House. 

During his two terms, Van Orden has been a staunch Trump ally, often taking a bombastic, confrontational tone and drawing criticism from opponents for his treatment of constituents. 

But onstage on Wednesday, as Republicans held a rare midterm convention while Trump’s approval rating plummets to record lows and Democrats express confidence they’ll win competitive races across the country, Van Orden and his fellow Republicans sought to sell a softer version of their record. 

“Whether you choose to live in a city or a village like my beautiful wife Sarah Jane and I do, you deserve high quality, readily available, and actually affordable healthcare,” Van Orden said. “You know who else knows this? Our great president Donald J. Trump. He is fighting to make quality healthcare a reality for everyday Americans.”

Last year, Van Orden voted for the Trump-signed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In his speech, he said the bill, and the tax cuts it enacted, brought millions of dollars in funding for rural hospitals in Wisconsin. 

“This massive investment would not have been possible without President Trump’s Working Families Tax Cut Act,” Van Orden said. “And shamefully, shamefully, not one Democrat voted for it. So, from Washington to Wisconsin, Democrats spent months demonizing the tax cuts we delivered.” 

In fact, the bill made huge cuts to Medicaid, which for Wisconsin will result in losing $7 billion in federal healthcare funds over the next 10 years, an analysis by KFF found last year. In his speech, Van Orden also touted more than $200 million that will go to Wisconsin hospitals because of the law, but that is far less than those hospitals would have received without the Medicaid cuts. 

“I worked with President Trump and Republicans in Congress to level up our Medicaid assessments and bringing billions of dollars back to Wisconsin’s Badger Care program,” Van Orden said. “So these investments have made a real difference to real people all over rural America, including back home at Black River Falls Memorial Hospital. It’s where our awesome doctors can now spend less time worrying about the future of the hospital and more time taking care of their patients, who are their neighbors and that they love.”

An analysis conducted last year by the centrist think tank Third Way found that after the enactment of the Medicaid cuts, hospitals in Van Orden’s district are projected to lose more than $42 million in annual revenue. 

Van Orden has on several occasions gotten into arguments with constituents over the effect of the law and has falsely denied that Medicaid was cut. 

In a statement from her campaign, Cooke noted that Van Orden has never done a town hall in his district, but has time to join Trump in Texas.

“Derrick Van Orden still hasn’t done a single town hall with his constituents in West Central Wisconsin. And lies from Dallas can’t change his record: Derrick Van Orden watched rural hospitals in his district close,” Cooke said. “Then, he voted to cut $7 billion from Wisconsin’s health care so that those funds could go to tax breaks for data centers instead. Congressman Van Orden can continue to defend the Big Ugly Bill all he wants. Folks here in West Central Wisconsin see their health care costs going up and their doctors leaving town.”

Republican members of Congress who are attending the convention had to pay $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee to access a hotel room in the committee room block and tickets to the welcome reception. Paying up to $100,000 earned members additional perks, including breakfast with House leaders. Vulnerable members did not have to pay the five-figure fee, Axios reported. 

A spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin criticized Van Orden for attending a “lavish” Texas event rather than focusing on solving the problems of his constituents. 

“It should come as no surprise that D.C Derrick Van Orden decided to ditch his constituents to go bootlick an administration that is making life unbearably expensive for Wisconsinites,” the spokesperson, Haley King, said. “While Van Orden is out in another state trying to save his re-election campaign and promoting a delusional billionaire cosplaying as President, Wisconsin Democrats are meeting with voters and working to clean up the affordability crisis elected MAGA Republicans like Derrick Van Orden have created.”

A social media post from the Republican Party of Wisconsin showed that U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil and Glenn Grothman, and 7th Congressional District candidate Michael Alfonso, also traveled to Dallas for the convention. Only Van Orden, among Wisconsin Republicans, appeared on the program of speakers.

A legislative study committee on restoring floodplains across the state began its work Tuesday with an all-day meeting in which committee members heard from a number of scientists, state Department of Natural Resources staff and policy experts on the flood management landscape. 

Floodplains exist in flat areas along waterways marking where the water rises to during a flood event. Historically, waterways have been diverted, deepened or stifled to shrink these floodplains for development, navigability and agriculture — often making the effect of a flood more harmful and harming the health of the overall watershed. 

The committee is beginning its work to assess how floodplains can be restored to improve watershed health, restore wetland habitats and better control flooding as climate change has made floods more common and more severe. 

“Why are floodplains important? They promote habitat and biodiversity,” Tracy Hames of the Wisconsin Wetland Association said. “They’re really important for maintaining public health and safety.”

Among the benefits of floodplains, Hames said, are reducing erosion, improving water quality and filtering out nitrate pollution, stopping sediment from flowing downstream and protecting waterways against drought. 

To restore a floodplain, policymakers can remove dams and levees, let waterways return to their original meandering paths, reconnect waterways to nearby wetlands and promote the growth of native plants. But waterways across the country are governed by the Federal Emergency Management Program’s flood insurance program, limiting the tools available to the state.

The committee is made up of state  Sens. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) and Jodi Habush-Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay), state Reps. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point) and local government officials, non-profit staff and policy experts. 

The meeting Tuesday focused on presentations explaining what a floodplain is, what policy tools are available to restore them, the existing state and federal regulatory landscape and how proposed floodplain projects should be analysed for viability. 

Lawmakers have already been working on proposals for floodplain restoration. During the most recent legislative session, Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) began writing a bill that would allow the DNR and local governments to work together to approve and fund floodplain restoration projects. Under a preliminary draft of the Novak bill, local governments would have to approve projects before the DNR could authorize them.

In recent years, lawmakers of both parties have been supportive of wetland restoration projects. While floodplain restoration is subject to stricter regulations, there appears to be a path forward for future legislation. 

“Land use in floodplains is subject to extensive regulation under federal, state, and local laws. Broadly, these laws seek to mitigate risks to life and property and reduce costs associated with flood response,” the Wisconsin Legislative Council wrote in an introductory brief for the committee. “However, these laws may also pose burdens to floodplain restoration projects, which have garnered bipartisan interest in recent years due to their ability to improve flood storage and support other ecosystem services.”

Nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison have filed official charges with the National Labor Relations Board against the hospital’s parent company, SSM Health, for allegedly violating federal law by refusing to negotiate a contract with the recently established nurses’ union. 

The hospital’s nurses voted by a landslide earlier this summer to establish a union — a result that SSM fought to prevent the NLRB from recognizing. The efforts of management to prevent the union recognition were rebuffed by federal officials. 

In a news release on Tuesday, the nurses argued that hospital administration is wasting time engaging in anti-union activities when instead negotiations on a labor contract should be getting underway. 

The nurses have complained that the hospital administration has reduced staffing to unsafe levels, putting patient safety at risk. Staffing levels at St. Mary’s are the lowest of Madison’s seven hospitals. 

“SSM should be investing in staffing, support and retention of nurses, not wasting time and resources fighting our union, which is our voice to speak up for our patients,” St. Mary’s nurse Hannah Joers said in a statement released by the union. “Our number one goal is to win a contract which better takes patients’ level of sickness into account for staffing, and makes sure that we keep nurses by the bedside. SSM executives in St. Louis are abusing our empathy, making us do more and more with less and less. We’ve had enough, and the time has come to transform the system so that our patients’ needs come first. We will never back down and we are 1,000% determined to win a strong contract to provide the highest quality patient care.”

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) walked through the shelves of pasta, olive oil, tinned fish and frozen pizzas at Fraboni’s Italian deli in Monona on Thursday as part of her statewide tour assessing how President Donald Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran are affecting small businesses. 

In May, the owners of the third-generation family business said that tariffs and increased gas prices had caused the cost of fresh tomatoes to increase about 40%. That price hike included domestically grown tomatoes because tariffs that increased the cost of imported tomatoes pushed up  demand for domestic tomatoes, while higher gas prices made even nearby crops more expensive to ship.
Store co-owner Bennett Fraboni added that his deli had done its best to avoid passing the increased cost of products on to its customers. 

“We always hope that it’s going to be a temporary increase, and that we can swallow it ourselves and not have to pass it on,” Fraboni said.

The deli, which has operated in the Madison area since 1971, sells Italian grocery items and operates a popular sandwich counter. Fraboni said that as the economy has fluctuated over the past year, he’s seen the two sides of the business move independently. When money is tight, he said, people are less likely to go out to eat, so sandwich counter sales slow but the sales of grocery items increase as people look to cook at home more. 

Baldwin said that hearing these stories from businesses across the state is especially frustrating because U.S. economic struggles are “self-inflicted.” 

Traveling the state during the Senate recess, she has heard from small business owners about the challenges they are facing because of  tariffs, trade wars and Trump’s war of choice in Iran, she said. “In many ways, they describe a very chaotic environment — volatile — and recognize that a lot of these things that are causing challenges for our small businesses are choices that this administration has made.”

Democrats across the country are  pushing a message about “affordability” and highlighting voters’ worries about high prices. While Congress doesn’t usually have a simple policy solution for lowering the prices of household expenses, Baldwin said if Democrats take control they can immediately act to end Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war. 

“The type of policies that this president has engaged in are extremely harmful to the consumer and to our small businesses and to our farmers who are producing these products,” Baldwin said.

Days before Labor Day, and with just over two months before the November election, a coalition of labor unions announced Wednesday they were backing Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley’s campaign for governor. 

Leaders from American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin, the Service Employees International Union Wisconsin, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1473 and the Wisconsin Education Association Council announced their organizations’ endorsements of Crowley — acknowledging that even if they don’t agree with the Democratic nominee on every issue, he’s preferable to Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany — who as a member of the Legislature voted for Act 10, the controversial law that stripped collective bargaining rights from most public employees. 

“For the future of labor, this election is incredibly important,” Jon Shelton, president of AFT-Wisconsin and a professor at UW-Green Bay, said. “We know that we just came out of a primary that was contentious, but we are showing the solidarity to work with your campaign to make sure that we don’t just win this election, but we win a trifecta, and we move the state of Wisconsin in the direction that every working person, every kid in our schools, every citizen in this state deserves.” 

At a virtual news conference to announce the endorsements, Crowley touted his family’s union membership and the work he’s done in the past to support Wisconsin labor. 

“Working people, we aren’t asking for a handout,” he said. “We’re asking for a seat at the table. We’re asking for a fair deal. That’s pro- worker, that’s pro-family, and that’s the Wisconsin that I absolutely believe in.”

Leadership from some of the unions touted the support Crowley has provided to them in previous fights. Pat Raes, president of SEIU Wisconsin Healthcare and a nurse at Madison’s Meriter Hospital, noted that Crowley joined her union’s fight when Meriter’s nurses went on strike last year and when Milwaukee commercial office workers were bargaining for a new contract in 2024.

Raes also pointed to Crowley’s support for raising Wisconsin’s minimum wage, overturning Act 10 and expanding access to child care and healthcare. 

But other unions throwing support behind Crowley are making some policy concessions. WEAC had endorsed state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) in the Democratic primary for governor — partially because of her plan for winding down the state’s private school voucher program. 

Private school vouchers

As Milwaukee County executive, Crowley represents the part of the state with the largest number of voucher school students and has said he doesn’t support ending the controversial program, though he has said he wants to increase oversight and transparency. 

On Wednesday, WEAC president Peggy Wirtz-Olsen said she’s “talked” with Crowley about the “damage caused by vouchers” and added “Wisconsin educators are convinced that David Crowley will be the best choice for governor.” 

“WEAC has met with David Crowley and engaged in extensive conversations about the issues that are affecting public school educators, my colleagues and I, students and families we serve, and public education in Wisconsin,” Wirtz-Olsen, who also teaches high school English and art in Marshfield, said. “We’ve talked honestly about the inadequate and unstable funding, the growing class sizes, educator shortages, mental health, special education, and all the damage caused by the vouchers. We’ve talked about affordability and about high costs and how that’s squeezing families, students, and our educators.”

Tiffany has supported voucher schools and cuts to public education funding as a member of the state Legislature and in Congress. If elected, he and his Republican allies are likely to further expand the state’s voucher programs, which draw from the same pool of resources as public schools. Wirtz-Olsen said that WEAC was supporting a candidate who won’t send more state money to private voucher schools. 

“When lawmakers send more taxpayer dollars into unaccountable private school voucher programs instead of fully funding public schools that serve every student, the direct result is fewer resources for students who need the support, larger class sizes, and continued delayed services,” she said. “It’s no wonder that about half of first-time teachers will leave the profession. These demands are unsustainable. That’s been a failure of state priorities. Wisconsin needs a governor who understands that public schools are not a chip for high-stake deals. Public schools are an investment in our children, our workforce, our communities, and our democracy.”

Data centers and trade unions

The early weeks of the general election campaign were dominated by the two candidates wrangling over the issue of data centers, which has become a hot button in elections across the country this year. 

Tiffany, who in ads has called Crowley “data center David,” has said he opposes data centers, along with wind and solar farms, on the grounds that they’re taking too much of Wisconsin’s prime farmland. Crowley has said he wants to enact additional regulations governing data center development, including requirements that they be powered by renewable energy and built with union labor. 

Wisconsin’s building trade unions have been more supportive of data center developments than the public at large. 

But once hyperscale data centers such as those currently under construction in Beaver Dam, Mount Pleasant and Port Washington are built, the artificial intelligence technology they support could potentially disrupt the jobs of thousands of Wisconsin workers, including the teachers, professor and nurses endorsing Crowley. 

At the Wednesday event, Crowley said he wanted to make sure Wisconsin is “being aggressive when it comes down to protecting our workforce, protecting our environment, making sure that not one single dime is being pushed off to ratepayers and taxpayers here.” He added that he believes AI should increase productivity rather than replacing it and noted that Tiffany was a deciding vote when the House of Representatives voted to ban states from regulating AI for a decade as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The provision was not in the version of the bill that President Donald Trump signed into law last year. 

“Artificial intelligence will never ever be able to compete with authentic intelligence, and that’s what people bring to the table,” Crowley said. “And so it is unfortunate that my opponent, Congressman Tom Tiffany, he actually was the deciding vote to actually put up a state ban on us being able to regulate artificial intelligence. But we have to do everything that we can to make sure that we’re protecting workers moving forward and make sure that workers have a seat at the table as it relates to how we use artificial intelligence in the field, no matter the industry.”