Aminat Bakare, who has grandsons ages 8 to 19, is looking for programs that could help them.
“I have a lot of grandsons,” Bakare said. “I want to know what’s going on as far as different programs that can help them to stay on the right path.”
She was among residents on hand Wednesday for Milwaukee County’s launch of the Destined for Greater initiative, a collaborative effort to reduce violence.
Milwaukee County officials announced during the event, held at the Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum, they will use $1.5 million in state violence prevention funds to help connect residents in high-need neighborhoods with employment opportunities, housing assistance, mental health support and violence intervention services.
The initiative, overseen by the Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services, brings together existing violence intervention programs, wellness services and projects funded through the $1.5 million in state funding.
Bakare, who lives on the Northwest Side, said peer pressure is one of the biggest challenges facing her grandsons.
She said she was particularly hopeful the initiative will result in employment opportunities.
“Something that can spark their interest,” she said.
Robert Fisher, 15, attended the event with a mentor from the city’s 414LIFE, a community and hospital-based violence intervention program, to learn about the same opportunities.
Fisher said jobs and opportunities to create things are also hard to come by.
Violence prevention workers and community members say the increased state funding could expand services and strengthen partnerships to help improve public safety.
Among the most enthusiastic was Kenneth Burns, a Milwaukee Public Schools student who described the benefits of INPOWER Solutions’ Grow Rich Initiative, which teaches gardening, entrepreneurship and other job-readiness skills. INPOWER is one of several organizations participating in the initiative.
“For me, this is about peace,” Burns said. “Being in the garden gives me a place to slow down, build on something positive.”
Other partners include Milwaukee Turners, Milwaukee Bucks Foundation, Bloom Art and Integrated Therapies, and Community Justice Council.
According to a county press release, the Destined for Greater initiative will reduce community violence by building on the success of existing programs.
The release cited the Advance Peace Fellowship, created in 2024, and the Credible Messenger program, as examples.
The release said 95% of fellows reported no new gun injuries and that 76% of youths who participated in Credible Messenger recently had no referral or offense while in the program.
Crowley told NNS the goal of the initiative is to create collaboration in which organizations understand each other’s roles and can connect residents to needed services, even when they cannot provide those services themselves.
Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern told NNS he supports the effort.
“This is good news,” Lovern said. “It is important that this work is community-led.”
Both Bakare and Fisher said they, too, liked what they heard.
“I was very impressed,” Bakare said.
The county and its partners plan to provide regular updates on the implementation and progress of the initiative.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
State funding strengthens collaboration among Milwaukee violence prevention organizations is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
President Donald Trump's administration had another setback in its attempt to get unredacted voter registration data from Wisconsin. The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals denied its request to rush its case demanding sensitive data like driver license and partial social security numbers.
The post Trump administration request for speedy resolution of voter roll lawsuit rejected by 7th Circuit appeared first on WPR.
Lake Superior had not seen an established population of the invasive bloody red shrimp until now. A new study by researchers at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and University of Wisconsin-Superior show there's a self-sustaining population in the Duluth-Superior harbor.
The post In Lake Superior, researchers find invasive bloody red shrimp are here to stay appeared first on WPR.
This week, ICE officials detained Wisconsin Dells resident Diana Socha Torres and her son and sent them to Texas.
The post Wisconsin woman and son detained in ICE facility as Supreme Court overturns migrant protections appeared first on WPR.
Federal officials say dairy farms will gain broader access to the H-2A visa program, though questions remain about which jobs will qualify and how the changes will work.
The post Wisconsin dairy farms could gain new hiring option under visa changes appeared first on WPR.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former National Security Advisor John Bolton departs U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland after a plea deal hearing on June 26, 2026 in Greenbelt, Maryland. (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)
John Bolton, a national security adviser to President Donald Trump in his first term, pleaded guilty Friday to a federal charge of mishandling classified information, the Department of Justice said in a news release Friday.
The plea resolves an 18-count indictment against Bolton, who lives in Bethesda, Maryland. He has agreed to pay a $2.25 million penalty, the DOJ said. He could face up to five years in prison, according to the release.
During his stint as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, Bolton recorded “highly sensitive classified information” from his official duties in a personal diary. He shared the diary entries with two family members who were not cleared to have access to the information, which included top secret material, according to the indictment.
“John Bolton held a position of extraordinary public trust as the country’s top National Security Advisor, and he betrayed that trust, jeopardizing our nation’s security,” Hayden O’Byrne, the acting deputy assistant U.S. attorney general for the National Security Division, said in the statement. “Today’s resolution ought to send a message to other public officials whom the public has entrusted with classified, national defense information.”
Bolton’s attorney, Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement Friday that Bolton’s plea took responsibility for a mistake, which was “what real leaders do,” and contrasted that approach with Trump’s conduct while the Department of Justice secured similar federal charges against the then-former president in 2023.
“By contrast, President Trump thumbed his nose at the classified information laws, took actual classified documents to his Florida mansion, interfered with the investigation of that conduct, and has never accepted any accountability for his conduct,” Lowell wrote. “Ambassador Bolton, whose offense was only keeping a diary which contained classified information, kept a record to preserve history, but Donald Trump kept secrets to serve himself.”
Since leaving the White House, Bolton has been a consistent critic of Trump’s foreign policy.
That has continued even after he was indicted last year. Bolton, who also held roles in President George W. Bush’s administration and is associated with the neo-conservative wing of the Republican Party, has repeatedly slammed on social media Trump’s deal with Iran as recently as this week.
The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., amid fog on Dec. 10, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Republicans have one more opportunity to use the complex process they relied on to enact their “big, beautiful” law and provide tens of billions in additional funding for immigration enforcement — a chance that becomes less likely the more divisions over a voter identification bill splinter the party.
Debate over a third reconciliation bill has been simmering in the background for months, though GOP lawmakers have yet to reach consensus about whether they should draft another massive package, like they approved last year, or a more narrow one that could help the party boost defense spending.
That budget reconciliation process gives Republican leaders a way to get around Senate rules that would otherwise force bipartisanship, giving them a loophole out of negotiating major legislation with Democrats.
But it comes with several hurdles in order to get that special treatment, including that each provision in the bill have an impact on federal revenue or spending that is not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian.
Those in-the-weeds restrictions aren’t especially important to President Donald Trump, who wants Republicans in Congress to prioritize a voter identification bill, which cannot move through reconciliation, over everything else.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., tried to find middle ground in late June, proposing lawmakers use reconciliation to create a grant program for states that implement voter identification requirements.
Johnson acknowledged the challenges to using reconciliation amid narrow majorities in each chamber, but said he thinks Republicans can accomplish their goals if they “stick together.”
He, however, didn’t have details to share.
“Stay tuned. We’re working through that,” Johnson said. “Doing a reconciliation bill is a very complicated process of consensus building, where we have a collection of ideas that, I think, every Republican, certainly, agrees with in principle.”
A few hours later, sitting in the Oval Office, the president batted down the idea of any compromise on the elections bill, creating more public disagreement between the top Republicans in the country.
“Not really. No,” Trump said when asked whether he’d “be open to a compromise measure” moving through the reconciliation process.
Lobbying for the full bill, which would require people show proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID when casting a ballot, isn’t only coming from the president.
Far-right Republicans in both chambers are using hardball tactics to cajole their leaders to get the legislation to Trump’s desk, even if it means delaying work on their colleagues’ priorities.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee is one of several Republicans posting on social media and holding press conferences. He recently called for Americans to “encourage your senators to resume debate on the Senate floor—with a plan to keep debating it until it passes.”
“Tell your senators: Pass the SAVE America Act,” Lee wrote in another post. “Accept no excuses or half measures.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has become somewhat frustrated with constant pressure from some of his members, who are diverting time and resources to a bill that cannot pass.
“At the end of the day, I have to deal with reality,” Thune said. “And sometimes the alternative universe that is X doesn’t reflect the facts on the ground.”
Thune said it’s been “very clear” for some time there isn’t enough support among Republicans to change the Senate rule that requires at least 60 lawmakers vote to limit debate on most bills. That legislative filibuster forces bipartisanship and gives the minority party, which could be Republicans as soon as next year, a seat at the table.
“There are not the votes to nuke the filibuster and there aren’t going to be 10 Democrat votes to all of a sudden support the SAVE America Act,” Thune said. “Those are just hard realities and I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.”
West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that despite months of effort, the voter identification bill doesn’t have the votes to become law.
“If you can’t get to 60, you can’t pass it. I mean, that’s pretty simple,” she said. “Now, he says talk it to death and people will change their minds. I don’t think that’s a strategy that’s going to be in success. We tried that earlier this year to keep talking, we didn’t get to the end.”
Capito said voters want to see Republicans focus on issues that can improve people’s lives, like the broadly bipartisan housing affordability bill both chambers approved this month. Trump was set to sign that bill during a ceremony on Capitol Hill but canceled at the last minute to try to push through the election bill.
“So, yeah, they want to see us do something,” she said. “They don’t want to see us sitting up there yakking all the time.”
Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, wants to use the time to avoid another government shutdown when the next fiscal year begins Oct. 1 — no easy feat following three shutdowns over the last year.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., hopes to reach final agreement on the farm bill in the months ahead after years of delays and stopgap measures for those agriculture and food safety net programs.
He brushed aside demands from some other GOP lawmakers to use the budget reconciliation process to pass another party-line package.
“We had trouble with the one that we just did and that was very, very narrow. I mean, that was strictly Homeland Security,” Boozman said. “When you start doing a bigger package, like they’re talking about and you start involving various committees, it becomes a lot more issues involved that you have to work out. And so it just gets very complex.”
Boozman added that working through the several steps of that process takes weeks, which lawmakers may not have.
Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said the party needs to focus on legislation that would lower “the cost of everything,” in part, by eliminating taxes on gasoline and health care.
“That’s something that would be a huge benefit to every working person out there immediately,” he said. “Let them take all health care costs off of their federal taxes, so they paid no taxes on it.”
Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said he thinks lawmakers should use the budget reconciliation process to significantly bolster defense funding. But he said “duh” when asked by States Newsroom whether the limited number of days in session would make that difficult.
Lawmakers are set to be out of session for nearly all of August and September.
“I think if we want to get more money for defense, we have to do it through reconciliation, which means we need to start immediately,” he said.
Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno has a lengthy list of issues he wants to see Republicans address before November, including a bill he’s set to release later this summer with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren that would shore up the Social Security trust fund.
“It’s not really a third-rail issue, because what we’re saying is that everybody should pay the same amount of money for Social Security,” he said. “When you have something that literally 90% of Americans support, I think we should be able to get something on that across the finish line.”
The two lawmakers wrote in an op-ed published in The New York Times the bill would raise the cap that ensures people don’t pay into Social Security on earnings more than $184,500.
“Since the vast majority of Americans make less than that, most people are paying Social Security taxes on 100 percent of their earnings while the highest earners are paying on only part of theirs,” they wrote.
“Why should a middle-class nurse pay a larger share of her paycheck — than a wealthy corporate lawyer?” they added. “This is doubly unfair in an economy in which top earners’ wages, over time, have pulled far ahead of those of the average worker.”
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said he’d like lawmakers to ensure E15 gasoline, a blend that includes 15% ethanol and is usually unavailable in summer, can be sold year-round, though he hadn’t thought about any other issues the party should press for ahead of November.
“I guess I can’t answer your question,” he said. “I just haven’t thought about it.”
Communities across Wisconsin continue to grapple with how renewable energy projects get sited and permitted. At our 2026 RENEW Wisconsin Summit RENEW Wisconsin hosted a panel that brought together expert voices on state and local siting and permitting authority. The conversation is worth a revisit, as the industry continues to navigate this important topic.
Eric Callisto, a former Chair of the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) and private-sector renewable energy attorney, made a clear case for why state-level oversight of large projects matters: projects that serve the regional grid are matters of statewide concern, and an independent expert agency is better positioned to evaluate energy projects than individual town boards. He was candid that without that independent oversight, the “NIMBY element” would prevent many worthy projects from being built.
Orrie Walsvik, an associate attorney at Michael Best, walked through what he called the “inverted pyramid” of clean energy regulation, from baseline zoning to the case-by-case requirements of § 66.0401 to the PSC’s comprehensive authority over 100+ Megawatt projects. His core point: local governments have been delegated administrative authority to help Wisconsin implement its renewable energy policy, not the legislative authority to decide whether that policy is welcome in their jurisdiction.
Isaac Uitenbroek, a zoning administrator with direct experience drafting and implementing solar regulations, provided an honest window into what local government staff navigate: constituent pressure, tight timelines, and the balancing act of building ordinances that meet legal requirements while giving elected officials a process they can use to address community concerns. He advised developers and applicants to communicate early, communicate often, and leave no information vacuum. His perspective reflected real experience with what happens when communities feel blindsided.
David Jakubiak, Senior Vice President of Aileron and expert on renewable energy communications, reinforced that community engagement is not a compliance checkbox but a prerequisite for project success. He pushed back on drone footage, cookie-cutter community meetings, and out-of-state project representatives and witnesses. David made the practical case for finding local champions and showing people what renewable energy actually looks like from the road, not from the sky.
The common thread of the panel discussion and audience question was a recognition that Wisconsin is navigating a genuine policy contest, one requiring developers, lawyers, and local governments to work together to find a workable path that recognizes community concerns and appreciates the local benefits of renewable energy development.
The post RENEW Wisconsin Summit Panel: A Timely Conversation on Siting appeared first on RENEW Wisconsin.
The Ostara Initiative eventually wants to build a mother-baby house where pregnant women from jails, community corrections or the state prison could maintain custody of their infants.
The post Incarcerated women in Wisconsin are separated from their babies. Doulas want that to change. appeared first on WPR.
A developer is hoping to build a large-scale wind farm project in Marathon County, but locals are concerned about potential effects on health, homes and property values.
The post Marathon County residents sound off against proposed wind farm project appeared first on WPR.
The army of small, white food delivery robots crisscrossing the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus for the past seven years have vanished. They're destined for city streets around the world as the company behind them transitions from mobile campus snack packs to grocery delivery drones.
The post UW-Madison’s food delivery robots are no more appeared first on WPR.
A sweeping bipartisan housing bill passed through Congress earlier this week, with provisions aimed at making it easier to build new houses and rezone communities.
The post Sweeping federal housing bill won’t be a magic bullet for Wisconsin affordability, experts say appeared first on WPR.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice announced a $275,000 settlement Thursday with energy firm Enbridge for alleged violations of the state’s spills law over a 2019 spill in Jefferson County.
The post Wisconsin DOJ announces $275K settlement with Enbridge over 2019 spill appeared first on WPR.
Wisconsin's wolf population fell slightly this year, according to estimates from the Department of Natural Resources. The department has been monitoring the number of wolves in the state since the 1970s by surveying snow-covered roads for tracks and other signs.
The post Wisconsin’s wolf population declines slightly for second consecutive year appeared first on WPR.
Biofuel and corn advocates argue expanding the use of higher-ethanol gasoline could increase demand for corn and serve as a lifeline for farmers. Critics say it would lead to environmental and health costs.
The post Congress debates selling gas with 15 percent ethanol year-round permanently. Would it help Wisconsin farmers? appeared first on WPR.
Ahead of their retirements, Larry Meiller and Norman Gilliland talked with one another about their time at WPR.
The post Reel-to-Reel: Larry Meiller and Norman Gilliland appeared first on WPR.
A series of thunderstorms ripped through Green Bay Wednesday, causing flash flooding and bringing golf ball-sized hail.
The post Green Bay recovering from flash flooding after a series of storms ripped through appeared first on WPR.
This week’s new release, “Fusions," from Russian-born pianist Nikolay Medvedev, features some wildly exciting and ear-catching music: Sophisticated and fun jazz in many permutations, challenging classical structures that require almost athletic virtuosity and some gorgeous, deeply emotional lyrical passages.
The post WPR Music new album of the week: ‘Fusions’ appeared first on WPR.
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