Before Wyoming elections, the state’s League of Women Voters tries to get voter registration information into the hands of residents at events and gatherings. But under state law, League volunteers can’t sign up voters themselves — only local election officials can do that.

“It’s been tough,” said Linda Barton, president of the League of Women Voters of Wyoming. She added that her group does its best to offer registration information. “We provide a lot of printed literature that we hand out all over the state.”

Congress may take Wyoming’s approach nationwide.

The SAVE America Act would effectively ban voter registration drives, a mainstay of college campuses and neighborhood events. 

The U.S. Senate began debating a version of President Donald Trump’s signature elections measure last month, after the House passed it in February. The legislation would require voters to show photo identification to cast a ballot. It would also require individuals to present documents proving their citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to government officials in person to register to vote. 

Trump and Republican members of Congress have cast the proposal as necessary to secure elections and crack down on noncitizen voters ahead of the midterms. Democrats and other critics warn it risks disenfranchising wide swaths of Americans. Studies have shown noncitizen voting is extremely rare.

In many states, civic groups have long provided applications to would-be voters that they can quickly fill out. During the 2024 election cycle, voter registration drives accounted for 3.7% of registrations, according to survey data from the federal Election Assistance Commission. While a small percentage, the figure still represents 2.1 million Americans.

Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia placed no restrictions on voter registration drives as of November 2024, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a Colorado-based think tank. An additional 24 states impose some limits, while Wyoming and New Hampshire prohibit them.

Bill would end registration drives nationwide

Every form of voter registration drive would effectively end under the SAVE America Act as currently drafted in the Senate, said Brian Miller, executive director of NonprofitVOTE, which aids nonprofit organizations in helping individuals vote and participate in the democratic process. Community-based groups, universities, food pantries and others who help register voters would all be affected.

“That’s the high school civics teacher who works with his graduating class … gone, they can’t do that anymore,” Miller said.

NonprofitVOTE, working with 120 organizations across nine states, engaged 60,000 voters during the 2022 midterm cycle, according to a report by the group. It found that individuals reached by nonprofits were 10 percentage points more likely to cast a ballot than comparable registered voters.

The effect was more pronounced among younger voters. Those ages 18 to 24 who were engaged by nonprofit groups were 12 percentage points more likely to cast a ballot than comparable registered voters.

Hispanic Federation, a nationwide Hispanic and Latino advocacy group, says it has registered 160,000 voters since 2016. Frederick Vélez III Burgos, the federation’s senior director for communications and community outreach, said the organization works to register voters because of language and cultural barriers, work schedules and other factors that make the process challenging.

“There’s just a group of people and communities that is just very difficult to get registered through normal means,” Burgos said.

Top Trump priority

Trump has made clear the SAVE America Act is his top legislative priority and he has urged Congress to pass the measure before moving to other business. While Republicans control both chambers of Congress, support for the proposal falls short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in the Senate.

“The SAVE Act would gut tried-and-true methods of voter registration, including registration by mail and registering online,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said earlier this year.

Still, Senate Republican leaders in March kicked off an extended, wide-ranging debate over the bill. It remains unclear when the debate will end. Congress is scheduled to be in recess until mid-April.

GOP proponents have dismissed concerns that the legislation would make registering to vote and casting a ballot difficult. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said on the Senate floor that the bill offers multiple ways to prove citizenship and “gives states the flexibility to create other pathways to show proof of citizenship.”

Grassley noted that his mother was one of the first women to cast a ballot after ratification of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote.

“The SAVE America Act doesn’t infringe on these hard-fought voting rights. It would preserve the integrity of every vote cast in a federal election,” Grassley said.

Hard-to-reach voters

Third-party voter registration drives date back to voter education and registration efforts by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, according to Joshua Douglas, a University of Kentucky law professor who specializes in voting rights and election law. The association eventually morphed into the League of Women Voters, which helped spearhead registration efforts following the 19th Amendment.

Voter registration drives typically aid voters who may not otherwise have opportunities to register, Douglas wrote in an email to States Newsroom. They may not have a driver’s license or may not be thinking about registering.

“There is a long history of civic organizations engaged in voter registration drives and this legislation would make that work harder,” Douglas wrote.

Tom Lopach, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Voter Participation Center, an organization that works to register voters from underrepresented populations, said he fears some members of Congress haven’t fully read the bill or digested how it would affect voting. 

Since VPC was founded in 2003, it has helped register 7 million voters, Lopach said.

“And that’s just us,” he said. “When you think about the League of Women Voters, when you think about in-person voter registration drives happening in a grocery store parking lot, or knocking doors in a neighborhood, you would have tens of millions of Americans not registered and then not voting.”

States trending toward more restrictions

Even if the SAVE America Act doesn’t become law, some states have taken steps to make voter registration drives more difficult. 

The Center for Public Integrity and NPR found in 2024 that at least six states had passed legislation cracking down on voter registration drives following the 2020 election. Some of the bills imposed massive fines for violations or barred noncitizens from participating.

As recently as March, the North Carolina State Board of Elections announced it would require groups conducting voter registration drives to print their own registration forms. The board cited significant costs, after it provided nearly 1.3 million applications to organizations and government agencies in 2024 at a cost of more than $269,000.

“Nothing about this temporary tightening of our practice surrounding voter registration drives changes the fact that any North Carolina citizen who wants a voter registration application will always be able to get one simply by contacting their county board of elections or the State Board,” Sam Hayes, the board’s executive director, told NC Newsline.

Courts have blocked some state-level restrictions. A federal court prohibited Kansas from enforcing a 2021 law that barred out-of-state organizations from distributing advance mail ballot applications to voters and prohibited applications that contained personalized voter information. Kansas has appealed the decision.

The Missouri Supreme Court last week ruled against a state law that prohibited groups like the League of Women Voters from using paid workers in voter registration drives. The state’s high court also struck down requirements that individuals who solicit more than 10 registration applications must register with the state and be Missouri voters. The law had also prohibited encouraging someone to obtain an absentee ballot.

Kay Park, president of the League of Women Voters of Missouri, called the restrictions “ridiculous” and said that while they were in effect the organization did nothing with absentee ballots — such as suggesting an absentee ballot could be an option for someone with a disability, for instance.

The League of Women Voters of Missouri holds voter registration drives in high schools, Park said. While Missouri residents must be 18 to vote, they can register once they’re 17 ½ years old. The SAVE America Act would effectively end those drives.

If the legislation becomes law, Park said the Missouri league would likely focus more of its efforts on helping individuals obtain identification documents and birth certifications — something it’s already trying to do.

“It just puts another cog in the wheel,” Park said.

Wyoming model

In Wyoming, Barton and her fellow League of Women Voters members are already grappling with a state-level proof-of-citizenship voter registration law passed last year, regardless of whether Congress passes the SAVE America Act.

Residents who want to register to vote must visit a county clerk’s office and bring a valid passport or birth certificate. Wyoming also accepts REAL ID-compliant driver’s licenses and tribal IDs, as long as they do not indicate the individual is a noncitizen, and a few other documents, such as a naturalization certificate. Individuals may register by mail but must include copies of their documents along with a notarized application.

The new state requirements were championed by Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a Republican who is running for the state’s U.S. House seat.

“As the chief election official of Wyoming that has experience with these common sense election integrity measures, I can tell you that the SAVE America Act will be easy for states to implement,” Gray wrote in a March 17 letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican.

Gray didn’t respond to questions from States Newsroom.

Barton said without the option to hold voter registration drives, going to events and speaking to clubs and organizations like Rotary are imperative.

“I just think that the only other choice is to be out there, communicating as much as possible,” she said.

When an Alabama clinic’s only OB-GYN left the state to provide abortion care in Colorado, the head of operations thought the facility would have to close.

But Robin Marty, executive director at WAWC Healthcare in Tuscaloosa, hired a doctor in August who she called a “unicorn” — someone who’s from Alabama and, after training outside of the state, returned home to practice medicine.

Marty said Alabama’s near-total abortion ban could cause physicians to practice elsewhere after they finish their residencies.

“Doctors don’t want to worry about surveillance, potential arrests and other legal issues,” she said.

A study published in March found that applications to medical residency programs in states with abortion restrictions have declined compared to states where abortion remained mostly legal. The findings are an “early signal” that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision nearly four years ago overturning federal abortion rights protections may exacerbate health care shortages, said lead author Dr. Anisha Ganguly.

A majority of doctors end up practicing medicine in states where they trained. Obstetrician and gynecology training programs typically take four years to complete, so the full scope of how abortion restrictions affect where physicians work after they complete their residencies remains to be seen.

Still, experts said the findings could spell trouble for the future of the reproductive health care workforce in states with abortion restrictions, some of which are already plagued with maternity care deserts.

Doctors say bans limit training, standards of care

OB-GYNs affiliated with Physicians for Reproductive Health who either trained or work in states with abortion bans told States Newsroom that restrictions after the Supreme Court decision hamstrung their ability to offer reproductive care and affected the education of medical residents.

Dr. Neha Ali grew up in Texas and trained there, too. But by the end of her OB-GYN residency’s second year, the state enacted SB 8, a six-week abortion ban that allowed residents in the state to sue providers or anyone who helped someone terminate a pregnancy. After the Dobbs decision in June 2022, a near-total abortion ban took effect in Texas.

“I knew I wanted to be an abortion provider before I started OB-GYN residency, and I chose to be in Texas for my residency training because I wanted to experience what that’s like in a state with barriers. But ultimately, the barriers became too large,” Ali said.

After she finished residency in 2024, Ali moved to Colorado, a state with strong abortion-rights protections, where she practices complex family planning.

Ali said she talks to medical students about her experience training in Texas, where she was not able to perform any dilation and evacuations — a second-trimester abortion procedure — during residency.

“I do think it’s very valuable to see what it’s like to be in a restrictive state and understand what that is like to be a provider there, but that doesn’t sell people on a residency for four years,” she said.

OB-GYN Dr. Louis Monnig trained in Kentucky before the state banned abortion.

“Making it difficult or putting up barriers to that training just limits the abilities of any doctor who provides reproductive care to have opportunities to get exposure and experience, and just get better at what they’re doing,” he said.

Monnig completed his residency in June 2023 and moved back to his home state of Louisiana because of his connections to the region and its health care disparities. “It felt like it was worth it to come back,” he said.

In October 2024, a Louisiana law classifying mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled dangerous substances took effect.

“It made me lose faith that lawmakers were doing any of these things to actually protect patients or patient safety,” he said.

The medications are used not only for abortions, but miscarriages and other conditions, too. The law has sowed confusion among health care providers and led some to practice emergency drills to access the drugs during obstetric emergencies, Louisiana Illuminator reported. Monnig said the law has “changed some of the day-to-day operational workflow for patient care,” especially for situations where misoprostol is used, such as labor induction and postpartum hemorrhaging.

Patients have faced issues when trying to get prescriptions filled: Pharmacists have called Monnig’s office to make sure a patient wasn’t having an abortion after he prescribed misoprostol for conditions such as cervical stenosis — when it’s difficult to insert a medical instrument in the cervical canal.

Drop in applications to ban states’ residency programs

Out of more than 22 million applications to 4,315 residency programs across the U.S., 67% were submitted to programs in states without abortion restrictions between 2018 and 2023, the new research showed. Thirty-three percent went to programs in states with restrictions.

Fewer women than men applied to train in states with abortion restrictions before the Supreme Court’s landmark abortion ruling, according to the study, and that disparity widened after more than a dozen states enacted abortion bans. The number of men applying to residency programs in states with abortion restrictions — mostly in the South and the Midwest — also decreased significantly.

“When there’s a decreased level of interest in these states, it suggests to us that there’s an evolving health care workforce shortage in these states,” said Ganguly, an internal medicine physician and an assistant professor at University of North Carolina’s Division of General Medicine and Epidemiology.

Many states with abortion bans — Idaho, Iowa and Georgia, for example — are also facing labor and delivery unit closures, particularly in rural areas where hospitals struggle with provider recruitment. Health officials in these states listed improvements to maternal health as a priority in their applications to the federal Rural Health Care Transformation Program, but solutions will take years to implement.

Shortages affect more than one specialty. Ganguly said OB-GYNs have historically offered the bulk of abortion-related care in the U.S., but it’s increasingly important in emergency medicine, family medicine and internal medicine. Primary care providers and emergency medicine doctors often diagnose pregnancy complications such as miscarriages, and internists help women who have chronic disease manage and plan for pregnancy.

Dr. Hector Chapa, an OB-GYN who teaches obstetrics and gynecology at Texas A&M University and is a member of the American Association of Pro–Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, took issue with the study’s approach.

“It’s essential to understand that this study is not specific to OB‑GYN residency programs, and by grouping OB‑GYN with family medicine, internal medicine and emergency medicine, the study assumes that all specialties are affected equally, despite their very different levels of involvement in abortion. This broad grouping risks introducing bias into the results,” he said in a statement.

Ganguly said her team did examine applications to OB-GYN residency programs in isolation to affirm findings of a decline among applicants in abortion-restricted states. Looking at other specialties, too, was meant to provide clarity about how bans affect the health care workforce more broadly.

OB-GYN education and the maternal health care workforce

The latest study adds to a body of research examining how the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion in 2022 affected training after medical school, particularly for those specializing in reproductive health care.

In the 2023-2024 application cycle, the number of applicants to training programs in states with abortion bans decreased by 4.2% compared to the previous cycle, while there was less than a 1% decrease in applications to residency programs in states where abortion is legal, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges.

In some states, abortion bans have definitively led to an exodus of OB-GYNs and maternal fetal medicine specialists. Idaho lost 35% of its doctors who provide obstetrics between August 2022 and December 2024, according to a study published in July.

Having reproductive health providers flee states with abortion bans is “devastating,” according to Pamela Merritt, the executive director of Medical Students for Choice.

“It’s a public health disaster that we’re going to see the consequences of decades to come,” she said.

Merritt’s organization has chapters at several medical schools in states with abortion bans. She said students are not getting adequate training, and some are even discouraged from discussing abortion.

In February, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center canceled a Medical Students for Choice chapter’s talk with an OB-GYN who wrote a book about providing abortion care later in pregnancy. School officials told The Texas Tribune hosting the event on campus was not in the university’s best interests.

“Everybody who graduates from medical school in Texas should know that there’s this thing called third-trimester abortion, that when the life of the mother is at risk, you legally can provide this care,” Merritt said.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation last year clarifying that doctors can offer pregnant women abortions during medical emergencies. The Texas Medical Board released guidelines for the abortion law this year, nearly half a decade after the state banned most abortions and at least four Texans died after being denied prompt abortion care, ProPublica reported.

Program helps residents in restrictive states get abortion care training

“Every single physician, nurse and health care provider needs to be educated about abortion care,” said Dr. Jody Steinauer, an OB-GYN and the director of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California in San Francisco. “This is a huge crisis in OB-GYN specifically: All OB-GYNs must have the competence and the skill to safely empty the uterus. Even if the individual is personally uncomfortable providing abortion care, they have to be able to empty the uterus to save someone’s life in an emergency.”

Steinauer leads the Ryan Residency Training Program, which works with OB-GYN residencies across the country to ensure comprehensive abortion and family planning rotations. Nearly a dozen states lack Ryan programs, and most of them have near-total abortion bans.

She said residencies in states with abortion bans are struggling to make sure their students have the skills to provide abortion: “We’re at risk of having a whole generation of OB-GYN graduates who are not skilled to provide the care they need to provide.”

To remedy this issue, the Ryan Program has helped to establish 20 partnerships with schools in abortion-restrictive states to train OB-GYN medical residents in states with reproductive rights protections.

Steinauer said the rotations are between two to four weeks and complicated to plan, but they help doctors learn procedural skills, how to manage medication abortions and counseling.

The rotations also help OB-GYNs navigate pain management during obstetric procedures, communicate effectively with abortion patients and familiarize themselves with ultrasounds, she said. These skills are important for providing the full spectrum of reproductive health care, from inserting IUDs to treating miscarriages, the doctor said.

“It’s such a refreshing experience for them to be working in a state without a ban, and they get to see abortion as normal health care,” she said.

Stateline reporter Elisha Brown can be reached at ebrown@stateline.org.

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The president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque was detained by federal immigration agents, drawing accusations Thursday from local officials and religious leaders that the arrest was motivated by his criticism of Israel.

Salah Sarsour, a Palestinian-born legal permanent resident of the United States, was taken into custody by nearly a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who surrounded his car on Monday in Milwaukee after he left his home, according to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.

Supporters called Thursday for his immediate release. His attorneys said he was detained on the grounds that he is a foreign policy threat, a claim they say has no merit.

Instead, they believe Sarsour, 53, was targeted for speaking out against Israel and for a conviction as a minor by Israeli military courts, which have faced scrutiny over allegations of limited due process and high conviction rates of Palestinians. Israel rejects those claims. The offenses included allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli officers, according to attorney Munjed Ahmad.

“Our government should not be doing the bidding of a foreign government,” Ahmad said of Israel. “There’s no question in my mind is that this is to stifle the discourse on the Palestinian narrative.”

Attorneys said Sarsour, born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has no criminal record in the U.S., where he has lived for more than 30 years. They said the U.S. government has known about Sarsour’s conviction in Israel since he came to the U.S. in 1993.

An email message left Thursday for ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.

Sarsour’s attorneys have likened the case to that of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student activist who faces deportation because the federal government said he was a foreign policy threat.

Sarsour has been the board president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, the largest Islamic organization in the state, for five years. His attorneys say he holds a green card and lives just outside Milwaukee. His wife and four adult children are U.S. citizens.

At a crowded news conference, boisterous supporters chanted to free Sarsour, recounting his advocacy for those in need. Several recalled Sarsour’s stories about his childhood, including allegations of inhumane treatment while being detained by Israelis.

“He was targeted because of one thing, because he dared stand up to the Israeli army,” Othman Atta, one of Sarsour’s attorneys, told the crowd. “And he was not a U.S. citizen.”

A diverse group of religious leaders in a attendance called Sarsour a valuable community member.

“This appears to be just the latest example of how this administration seeks to silence opposition and intimidate those who speak and act differently,” said the Rev. Paul D. Erickson, bishop of the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Sarsour’s arrest also prompted outcry from elected officials, including Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who called it “an outrage.”

“He is a legal permanent resident. There is no substantive evidence he has done anything wrong,” Johnson said Thursday in a post on X. “This is another example of overreach and harm from the U.S. immigration authorities.”

Sarsour is being held at a county jail in Indiana. His attorneys have filed a petition seeking his release.

“He is ready to fight tooth and nail to make sure that he’s not drug through the mud,” Ahmad said. “He wants to stay in this country.”

Elected leaders and clergy seek release of Wisconsin mosque president detained by immigration agents 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.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers vetoed Republican bills that would eliminate income taxes on tips and overtime, require counties to cooperate with federal immigration agents and  overturn his 400-year veto that provided school revenue limit increases.

No tax on tips and overtime

In July 2025, President Donald Trump signed a tax and spending bill that included provisions allowing tipped workers making less than $150,000 to deduct up to $25,000 in tips annually from their federal taxable income and allowing certain employees who work overtime and make less than $150,000 to claim a tax deduction. Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin introduced proposals to align state income tax policy with those measures. 

SB 36 would have given tipped employees a state income tax exemption for cash tips, with a sunset date in 2028.

Evers supported eliminating taxes on tips in his 2025-27 state budget proposal, but GOP lawmakers rejected the provision and instead advanced their bill. Evers’ proposal would have been a permanent change, unlike the Republican proposal. 

“We should not be at the whims of a Republican-controlled Congress that has no problem gutting basic necessities and services like food and access to healthcare just to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires,” Evers wrote in his veto message. 

Wisconsin Republicans have sent Evers a number of proposals influenced by the Trump administration and Republican-led Congress to varying success. He signed a SNAP bill with funding for DHS that also included a policy to prohibit SNAP participants from being able to use their benefits to buy candy and soda, while vetoing a bill to opt the state into a federal school choice tax credit program. 

Evers wrote that his “expectation” when providing tax relief is to pass proposals that are “real, responsible, and targeted to the middle class.” Evers has signed a number of tax cuts given to him by Republican lawmakers throughout his time in office. As a result of cuts, a 2024 Wisconsin Policy Forum report found that the state and local tax burden on residents had hit a record low in 2024. In 2025, another report found that the tax burdens remained low as incomes rose.

Evers said that the state must also “stay well within our means by still ensuring our tax policy changes are sustainable and will not force us to cut services or raise taxes down the road. Therefore, I am vetoing this bill in its entirety because I object to adopting a temporary income tax provision instead of working to provide comprehensive and lasting relief to Wisconsin taxpayers.” 

Evers had a similar message in vetoing AB 461, which would have provided an income tax deduction for overtime. Under the bill, single filers would have been able to claim up to $12,500 per year under the subtraction, while joint filers would have been able to claim up to $25,000. Unlike the “no tax on tips” bill, the change would have been permanent.

“I object to this bill changing the tax code in a way that will treat Wisconsin workers who earn  similar wages differently just because of their classification as salaried or hourly workers. A salaried worker who earns $35,000 (and is not eligible to earn overtime compensation) should not pay a different amount in taxes from an hourly worker who earns $35,000 through working overtime,” Evers wrote in his veto message. “We should focus on creating a fairer tax code that provides real, responsible tax relief that supports rather than divides working Wisconsinites.”

Vetoes ICE compliance bill

Evers vetoed AB 24, which would have required  local law enforcement in Wisconsin to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The bill would have required sheriffs to check the citizenship status of people being held in jail on felony charges and notify federal immigration enforcement officials if citizenship cannot be verified. 

Counties failing to comply would be at risk of losing 15% of their shared revenue payments from the state, which help cover the cost of fire, law enforcement and other services.

Republican lawmakers, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin), introduced the bill at the start of Trump’s second term, saying that the state needed to support his immigration agenda. 

Since the introduction of the bill, the Trump administration has stepped up detaining and deporting  immigrants. The federal government sent agents to neighboring Minnesota, where they shot and killed two U.S. citizens, including a Wisconsin native. This week in Wisconsin, ICE detained Salah Sarsour, a Palestinian activist and president of the Milwaukee Islamic Society. More local law enforcement in Wisconsin have also entered agreements with ICE in the last year. 

According to a Stateline report, experts have said jails are the easiest place to pick up people for deportation, and more local law enforcement cooperation leads to more arrests. 

Evers did not make any specific mention of ICE in his veto message, instead focusing on the potential penalty that local communities could face. 

“Republican lawmakers are trying to micromanage local law enforcement decisions by threatening to gut state aid by 15% for our local communities — that’s a non-starter,” Evers wrote. “We shouldn’t be threatening law enforcement with deep budget cuts; we should be working together with local law enforcement to improve public safety, reduce crime and keep dangerous drugs and violent criminals off of our street.”

400-year veto repeal rejected

Evers also vetoed another attempt by Republican lawmakers to repeal his 400-year veto, which extended school districts’ ability to bring in an additional $325 per pupil annually through funding from the state or through property taxes. Lawmakers rejected calls to provide an increase to schools’ general aid in the most recent state budget, meaning most schools have raised property taxes to make use of the revenue authority. 

Republican lawmakers have argued that eliminating the veto is the best way to help address rising property taxes and pushed forward SB 389 to do so. 

Evers wrote in his veto message that lawmakers “all know that my 400-year veto didn’t raise Wisconsinites’ property taxes — it’s just a heckuva lot easier for them to blame me than it is to tell the truth.” He said he objected to repealing the veto, which was upheld by the state Supreme Court, without providing additional resources to school districts. 

“My 400-year veto is here to stay, lawmakers,” he wrote. “Just fund our public schools and get over it.”. 

Evers also vetoed AB 460, which would have allowed siblings of students in the state’s school voucher program to participate regardless of their income level. Advocates of the legislation said it would help keep families together in school, but Evers said the bill would expand the cost of the voucher system and further burden struggling public schools.

Currently to qualify for a school voucher program, a student’s family must be below a certain income. A student who has attended a prior year remains qualified even if the family income increases above the limit, but then a sibling who hasn’t attended might no longer qualify to apply for the voucher program. 

The legislation went to Evers as the enrollment caps on the state’s voucher programs will sunset next school year. Evers said in his veto message that he objects to increased spending on the state’s voucher program. 

“Funding for private parental choice programs remains convoluted and inconsistent across programs,” Evers said. “The cost burden of private parental choice program expansion falls either on local property taxpayers, who already are struggling due to a lack of investment in public schools by the Legislature, or on the state general fund, which draws resources away from students in public schools.” 

Vetoes closing holdover appointments loophole

Evers also vetoed AB 248. The GOP bill would have closed the loophole in state law that allows for appointees to stay in their positions past the expiration of their term. The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the practice in 2021, when Department of Natural Resources Board member Fred Prehn, appointed during Gov. Scott Walker’s second term, stayed after his term was up, blocking an Evers appointee from taking the seat.  The Court upheld the loophole again in 2025, when Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe stayed after the expiration of her term.

In his veto message Evers called the bill “just the latest in a decade-plus-long effort by Republican lawmakers to abuse the power available to them, undermine basic tenets of our democracy and erode foundational cornerstones of state government that will have impacts on our state for generations.” He noted that while he was in office lawmakers delayed confirming his nominees for key positions and fired others from their positions “for no apparent reason other than being appointed by a Democratic governor.”

“This bill is a representation of the years of Republican efforts to erode our democratic institutions… This bill represents the worst of partisan politics and what can happen when a Legislature chooses to put politics before people,” Evers wrote. “It’s shortsighted, and it is politics at its worst and most dangerous. I will not enable the Legislature to continue this ridiculous exercise.”

Evers signs handful of school bills

Evers also signed two bills introduced by lawmakers to address concerns about investigations into grooming allegations against teachers. The concerns were prompted after a CapTimes news report that found over 200 investigations into teacher licenses due to allegations of sexual misconduct or grooming from 2018 to 2023. 

SB 785, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 185, requires the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to maintain an online licensing portal that is searchable by the public at no cost. The portal will need to include information on license holders under investigation and the name of individuals who have had their licenses revoked.

AB 1004, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 186, prohibits public and private schools from entering agreements that would suppress information on the immoral conduct of an employee, would affect the report of immoral conduct by an employer or employees or require an education employer to expunge information about allegations of findings or immoral conduct. 

Evers also signed AB 530, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 189, which prohibits the operation of drones over schools in Wisconsin unless there is authorization by the school’s governing body or by a sheriff or a chief of a local public protection service agency.

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Gov. Tony Evers announced Friday that he had signed two executive orders to begin offering commutations, a reduction of a criminal sentence by the governor’s authority to grant clemency.

Even though Evers has granted a record number of pardons, a form of forgiveness that reinstates some rights, during his tenure — over 2,000 — he has not granted any commutations. The last Wisconsin governor to offer a commutation was Republican Tommy Thompson,  who issued seven commutations in addition to 202 pardons. Thompson was governor from 1987 to 2001, 

“It’s time for Wisconsin to join red and blue states across our country and finally move our justice system into the 21st Century by reforming our criminal justice and corrections systems to improve public safety, reduce the likelihood that individuals will reoffend when they enter our communities, and save taxpayer dollars in the long run,” Evers said in a statement. “Issuing official grants of forgiveness through pardons has been one of the most rewarding parts of my job as governor, and I’m looking forward to restoring the commutations process in Wisconsin for the first time since Tommy Thompson was governor.”. 

Members of WISDOM, a non-profit faith-based organization that works to end mass incarceration, say Evers told them in 2023 that he would begin issuing commutations. Subsequently, the organization and other criminal justice advocates have been pressing Evers’ administration to offer commutations and to create a structure to process applications.

Prior to Evers’ announcement, there was no process in place for those in the criminal justice system, either in prison or community supervision (parole, probation or extended supervision), to apply for a commutation. There was only a process to apply for a pardon, but to be eligible for a pardon the applicant had to complete an entire sentence,  including incarceration and community supervision, and avoid any criminal charges for  five years. 

Evers ran for office in 2018 on a commitment to reduce the prison population in Wisconsin, but after a dip during COVID, the number of people in prison population has remained steady at over 23,000. Advocates have said commutations would enable Evers to address the high prison population by offering it to worthy residents, especially those who committed crimes as youth, have been incarcerated for  a considerable number of years, and are good candidates to return to society.

In his announcement, Evers called on lawmakers to take more steps to reduce the prison population.

“Wisconsin cannot wait for criminal justice reforms,” Evers said. “As our prison population continues to skyrocket, increasing costs to taxpayers on overtime and other resource needs, the Legislature must start working toward making long-term justice and corrections reforms a priority, including efforts to help stabilize our state’s prison population that our institutions already are struggling to accommodate. For years, I’ve asked the Legislature to work with me to invest in behavioral and mental health services, treatment and diversion, and reentry programming—these are evidence-based and data-driven policies we know will help keep our communities safer while continuing to ensure dangerous individuals remain in our institutions. My administration will continue doing what we can as long as I am governor, but we cannot do it alone—the Legislature must get serious about this issue.” 

The governor noted in his order, Executive Order 287, that commutation “promotes rehabilitation by providing a system that rewards the positive efforts of incarcerated individuals who demonstrate personal growth and a commitment to change with the possibility of a second chance to contribute to society, become productive members of their communities, make amends, and improve their lives and those of the people around them.”

Additionally, the order noted, “the granting of commutations can also encourage incarcerated individuals to be accountable, take responsibility, make amends, and seek forgiveness for their actions that have harmed other individuals and the community.” 

Advocates have said the possibility of a commutation is an incentive for those incarcerated to be model residents, to strive to improve themselves with job skills, and address behavioral issues to be better prepared for life outside of prison.   

Evers said there will be categories of individuals  ineligible for commutation, including those who have committed sexual assault, physical abuse of a child, sexual exploitation of a child, trafficking of a child, incest and soliciting a child for prostitution.

Executive Order 287 will create a Commutation Advisory Board comprised of 14 members, including the Governor’s chief legal counsel or a designee and others who “have experience or expertise in the fields of reentry services, victim rights, corrections, and related areas and who are otherwise able to provide a valuable perspective on reduction of criminal sentences.”

The governor’s second  executive order, 288, creates a juvenile life sentence commutation process for individuals who were “tried as adults and sentenced to life imprisonment for a crime committed in their youth.”

“A growing body of neuroscientific and psychological research has demonstrated that an individual’s brain, behavior, and personality undergo significant changes throughout their teen years and into their twenties,” said the governor. He noted in a press release the U.S. Supreme Court decision Miller v. Alabama, which found that a mandatory life sentence without parole for juveniles is unconstitutional, in part because they are not fully accountable for their actions due to brain development and maturity.

“Individuals who commit a crime in their youth therefore possess increased potential for rehabilitation, a diminished degree of culpability, and a lower chance of reoffending once they have reached maturity,” said Evers.

Since 2022, there has been legislation offering adjustments of life sentences for people who were sentenced as adults when they were under age 18, but that legislation has failed to gain traction. With SB 882, the most recent example, one  issue has been apparent confusion over the number of those eligible, with the number cited by Sen. Jesse James (R-Altoona), the legislation’s sponsor, reportedly differing from the number advocacy groups were reporting.

Advocacy groups welcome order

Beverly Walker, an official with WISDOM and also with Integrity Center who led the organization’s advocacy for commutation, and Sherry Reames, a WISDOM volunteer who also worked on commutations, said in statements that Evers’ order would address conditions created by Wisconsin’s sentencing policies, including prison overcrowding, that especially affect Black, brown, indigenous and poor communities.

“Today, Gov. Evers took action to advance justice in Wisconsin,” said Walker. “This marks a significant shift forward.”

“Gov. Evers’ decision to restore the commutations process will promote redemption and provide hope for people who have made great strides with their personal growth and development.” said Reames. “This is an important first step, but much work remains to be done.”

Reames said WISDOM would “closely monitor the implementation of the commutation process” and help ensure it is inclusive.

“If Governor Evers and future Wisconsin governors boldly move the commutations process forward in the coming months and years, this would begin to reverse the harm caused by decades of over-incarceration and provide hope and opportunities for many people,” she said.  

Marianne Olesson, co-executive director of EXPO of Wisconsin, one of the advocacy groups that has been pressing for commutations, called Evers’ orders Friday “an important and long-overdue step toward a more just, humane, and credible legal system.” 

“By signing Executive Orders 287 and 288, Governor Evers has reopened a pathway for review, redemption, and second chances for people currently serving sentences, including a process specifically recognizing the unique potential for growth and rehabilitation among youth sentenced to life in prison,” Olesson said. “The new process includes eligibility criteria, review by a Commutation Advisory Board, consideration of institutional conduct and rehabilitation, and opportunities for survivor and victim input.”

Olesson said opportunities for people in the justice system to demonstrate they’ve changed are important. 

 “A justice system that allows no meaningful path for review, even in the face of growth, accountability, and years of demonstrated change, is not a system rooted in true public safety or human dignity,” she said. “Restoring commutations acknowledges that people can evolve and that redemption must be more than just a talking point. We applaud his commitment and we are grateful.”

The Wisconsin State Public Defenders office also praised the orders.

 “For the first time in a generation, thousands of Wisconsinites written off by the state’s legal system will have a clear path to returning home,” Public Defender Jennifer Bias said in a statement.  “For the many Wisconsinites who have done the hard work of redemption and are ready to come home, this is a chance to start anew. For our state, this is an opportunity to heal the scars left by decades of over-incarceration. Governor Evers is taking a bold and necessary step forward.”

This report has been updated with additional comments received after publication from leaders of  WISDOM.

President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail ballots faced a fresh challenge on Friday, as a coalition of Democratic states filed a lawsuit seeking to block an order that experts say is an extraordinary attempt by the president to assert authority over elections.

More than 20 states — led by California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington — and the District of Columbia sued in federal court in Massachusetts. They argue the order violates the Constitution, which gives states the responsibility to run elections and allows Congress, not the president unilaterally, the power to override state regulations.

“Though the President may wish he had unlimited power to restrict voting rights, the Constitution gives states – not the White House – the authority to oversee elections,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, a Democrat, said in a statement.

The lawsuit is only the latest in a growing number of legal challenges to the order since Trump signed it on Tuesday.

The Democratic National Committee, top Democrats in Congress and other Democratic groups have sued, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, League of Women Voters, the League of United Latin American Citizens and other voting rights groups. 

Friday’s state-led challenge marked at least the fifth lawsuit over the order.

“Neither the Constitution nor any act of Congress confers upon the President the authority to mandate sweeping changes to States’ electoral systems or procedures,” the complaint reads.

The Trump administration has said the order is necessary to ensure the security of elections and crack down on noncitizen voting, which studies have found is extremely rare. Trump acknowledged the order would likely face litigation when he signed it but called it “foolproof.”

“The President will do everything in his power to defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement on Wednesday.

List required

The order requires the Department of Homeland Security, with help from the Social Security Administration, to compile a list of voting-age U.S. citizens living in each state and then provide that information to state officials at least 60 days before each federal election. 

The order does not tell states how to use the data, but it instructs the U.S. attorney general to prioritize investigations into state and local officials who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters.

The list of citizens will be drawn from naturalization and Social Security records, according to the order. It will also include data from SAVE, a powerful computer program maintained by Homeland Security that verifies citizenship by checking names against information in federal databases. 

The order also directs the postmaster general to require every outbound mail ballot be in an envelope that includes a tracking barcode. 

At least 90 days before a federal election, states must notify the U.S. Postal Service whether they intend to allow ballots to be sent through the mail. States would then have to submit to USPS a list of voters planning to vote by mail at least 60 days before the election.

“The expression ‘a solution in search of a problem’ came to mind, but this is sort of a quasi-solution in search of a hallucination,” said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, an organization that promotes the responsible use of technology in elections.

Under the order, the Justice Department and other federal agencies would be directed to withhold federal funds from states and localities that don’t comply with federal laws. It doesn’t specify what federal funds would potentially be targeted or whether states could lose election-related dollars.

“The president’s illegal executive order creates a shadow voter eligibility list within the federal government and it threatens to coerce states into disenfranchising voters missing from those lists,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said at a news conference in Las Vegas.

States say they run elections, not feds

The coalition of states argues in the lawsuit that Trump’s order would require states to upend existing election administration procedures and spend significant time and resources “mitigating the harms” of its requirements and educating voters about the new rules.

The states joining the lawsuit include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, in addition to the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.

Some Republican state officials have backed Trump’s efforts. Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray in a statement voiced “complete and total” support for the order.

“I look forward to continuing to work with the Trump Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the United States Postal Inspection Service, and our county clerks on implementation of this executive order,” Gray said.

But the states say the order would require states to act contrary to their own voter roll procedures, systems and voter registration laws, the complaint argues. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said the Constitution is clear that states run elections.

“Not the President,” Mayes said. “And Arizona will not allow the federal government to seize control of our elections.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration released its fiscal 2027 budget request Friday, asking Congress to increase spending on defense programs by 43% and decrease funding for non-defense accounts by 10%. 

The proposal kicks off what will be a monthslong process on Capitol Hill as lawmakers write the dozen annual government funding bills ahead of the Oct. 1 deadline. 

Congress rarely adheres to the president’s request entirely, and didn’t do so last year, rejecting many of the proposed cuts, including to health and education.

Last year’s process, the first of President Donald Trump’s second term, was considerably rocky, leading to a 43-day shutdown that began in October, a brief partial shutdown that ended in early February and an ongoing shutdown for the Department of Homeland Security. 

This budget request proposes Republicans again use the complex budget reconciliation process they used last year to enact the “big, beautiful” law to further bolster spending on the Pentagon and DHS. 

The Defense Department would have its budget raised to $1.5 trillion, a $445 billion increase over its current funding level. The administration proposes lawmakers put $1.1 trillion of that in the annual spending bill that would require bipartisan support to move through the Senate and place the other $350 billion in the partisan reconciliation bill. 

“America has already begun to strengthen and reinvigorate the military by committing tens of billions of dollars to new and innovative programs such as the Golden Dome for America, and making critical investments in the defense industrial base,” the document states. “By continuing to provide the resources necessary to rebuild America’s military, the Budget re-establishes deterrence, revives the warrior ethos of America’s Armed Forces, and prioritizes investments against the most acute national security threats.”

Department-by-department requests

The budget asks that lawmakers also increase spending on:  

• The Energy Department by $4.8 billion, or 10%, to $53.9 billion.
• The Justice Department by $4.7 billion, or 13%, to $40.8 billion.
• The Veterans’ Affairs Department by $11.5 billion, or 9%, to $144.9 billion in discretionary spending. 

The proposal asks Congress to decrease spending on: 

• The Agriculture Department by $4.9 billion, or 19%, to $20.8 billion.
• The Commerce Department by $1.3 billion, or 12.2%, to $9.2 billion. 
• The Education Department by $2.3 billion, or 2.9%, to $76.5 billion.
• The Environmental Protection Agency by $4.6 billion, or 52%, to $4.2 billion. 
• The Department of Health and Human Services by $15.8 billion, or 12.5%, to $111.1 billion. 
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development by $10.7 billion, or 13%, to $73.5 billion.
• The Interior Department by $2.3 billion, or 12.9%, to $15.9 billion. 
• The Labor Department by $3.5 billion, or 25.9%, to $9.9 billion.
• The Small Business Administration by $671 million, or 67%, to $329 million. 
• The State Department and other international programs by $15.5 billion, or 30%, to $35.6 billion.
• The Transportation Department by $1.6 billion, or 6.2%, to $26.6 billion.
• The Treasury Department by $1.5 billion, or 12%, to $11.5 billion. 

The budget proposes $63 billion in funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which doesn’t yet have its appropriations bill from the current year for comparison. 

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in a statement there are issues with some of its proposals for both defense and domestic spending. 

“While there are some improvements over last year’s domestic discretionary budget request, including full support for the Pell Grant program, the request has several shortcomings,” she said. “For example, the proposal includes unwarranted funding cuts in biomedical research. It would also terminate worthwhile programs like LIHEAP, which helps low-income families and seniors to pay their energy bills during the cold winter and hot summer months, and TRIO, which assists low-income, first-generation students in pursuing higher education.” 

Collins indicated she may bolster defense spending for a certain type of ship that she views as essential to the country’s military. 

“The request for just one DDG-51, the workhorse of the U.S. Navy, is insufficient to counter the ever-growing Chinese fleet, which now exceeds the size of the American Navy, as well as other global threats,” she said. 

Privatizing TSA screening

The president’s request asks lawmakers to cut funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s non-disaster grant program and to begin the process of offloading security screening at the nation’s airports. 

“The Budget begins the privatization of TSA’s airport screeners by requiring small airports to enroll in the Screening Partnership Program, under which TSA pays for private screeners at designated airports,” it states. “The airports that already use this program have demonstrated savings compared to Federal screening operations. The move would yield cost savings compared to Federal screening and begin reform of a troubled Federal agency.”

The budget asks Congress to provide an increase of $1.7 billion to the Bureau of Prisons to improve working conditions and pay, with $152 million of that going to the first year costs to “rebuild Alcatraz as a state-of-the-art secure prison facility.” The Bureau of Prisons has been evaluating whether to restore the closed California facility.

The budget proposes increases in funding for Trump’s efforts to improve the District of Columbia, including a $10 billion Presidential Capital Stewardship Program run through the National Park Service and $403 million for a new Transportation Department program to upgrade security in the Metro system and other local projects. 

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which launched the Artemis II mission this week to orbit the moon, would receive a $5.6 billion, or 23%, cut under Trump’s budget proposal to a total funding level of $18.8 billion. 

It asks Congress to decrease funding for the International Space Station by $1.1 billion and “prioritizes the rapid development and deployment of commercial space stations, while also keeping the safe de-orbit of the ISS on track for 2030.” 

Dems reject ‘bleak’ budget

Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, wrote in a statement that the budget request was “bleak and unacceptable.”

“President Trump wants to slash medical research to fund costly foreign wars,” she wrote. “It doesn’t get more backward than that, and the only responsible thing to do with a budget this morally bankrupt is to toss it in the trash.”

Murray added that she expects Congress to pursue bipartisan spending bills, just as lawmakers did during last year’s process, including investments in domestic issues. 

“This week, President Trump said that our country cannot afford to help families with child care or health care—but his own budget proves what a ridiculous farce that is,” she said. “Imagine how many families we could help if, instead of giving the Pentagon more money than they can even figure out what to do with, we cut people’s heating bills in half and made child care affordable for every family in America.”

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., wrote in a statement the request lacks detail for programs that run outside of the annual budget and appropriations process, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. 

“Going back decades, presidents have sent to Congress detailed budgets with 10 years’ worth of detailed plans – outlining their approach to tax policy and our growing debt, as well as the solvency of our biggest programs like Medicare and Social Security,” he wrote. “This budget doesn’t do any of that. It’s just an out-of-touch plea for more money for guns and bombs, and less for the things people need, like housing, health care, education, roads, scientific research, and environmental protection.”

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum, ranking member on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said the Pentagon doesn’t have an issue with how much in taxpayer money lawmakers allocate, but “a problem with efficiently spending the funding that Congress has provided them – and accounting for it.”

“The President’s request for $1.15 trillion in defense spending is outrageous and unacceptable, especially when President Trump and Congressional Republicans intend to make further cuts to critical services that Americans rely on at home,” she said. “Our nation cannot be secure without investments in our country’s critical health care, education, nutrition, and infrastructure.”

WASHINGTON — A U.S. fighter jet went down over Iran Friday and one crew member has been rescued, according to several media reports. Iranian state media reported the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was responsible.  

The attack marks the first time Iran has shot down U.S. military aircraft since the war’s start. Reuters and the New York Times have cited U.S. officials confirming the incident. Axios has cited two unnamed sources. Sources told news media the aircraft was an F-15.

Another U.S. combat plane went down into the Persian Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, and the single pilot was rescued, according to media reports citing U.S. officials. Whether the A-10 Warthog was downed by enemy fire is unclear. The crash occurred roughly around the same time that the F-15 was attacked.

The Pentagon has not responded to States Newsroom’s requests for confirmation of the reports.

A U.S. military search and rescue operation is reportedly underway, according to American officials cited in the Times report and Iranian state media. 

U.S. Central Command, which posts about the war every day on social media, had not posted information about the downed jet as of 5 p.m. Eastern.

President Donald Trump has not commented on the incidents. At 3:20 p.m. Eastern, he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, “KEEP THE OIL, ANYONE?”

The IRGC reportedly downed the jet, which Iranian media said was an F-35, over central Iran and the crew ejected from the plane, according to the Iranian Tasmin News Agency, citing IRGC officials. 

Tasmin also claimed U.S. Black Hawk helicopters and a C-130 Hercules aircraft were searching for the pilot. A Black Hawk was hit by fire during the rescue operation but was able to remain in flight and land in Iraq, according to the New York Times, citing U.S. and Israeli officials.

Trump vowed to hit Iran ‘extremely hard’

The apparent attack came two days after Trump delivered a formal primetime address telling the nation the U.S. objectives in Iran were “nearing completion” but that American forces would be hitting Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks.

The U.S. entered the joint war with Israel on Feb. 28, killing the country’s late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and numerous other senior leaders. Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has taken over as the Islamic state’s top cleric, according to Iran’s government, but he has not been seen in public.

The fighting continues to rock global energy markets after Iran’s takeover of the Strait of Hormuz, a major passageway for one-fifth of the world’s petroleum and liquid natural gas supply.

A gallon of gas in the U.S. now costs just above $4 on average, according to AAA, the highest since 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine. Brent crude oil, the international standard, was trading at $109 a barrel as of Friday morning.

The war has taken thousands of civilian lives across the Middle East and injured tens of thousands more. Thirteen U.S. troops have been killed.

Energy and other civilian infrastructure has been badly damaged in Iran and across the region. Trump posted a video on Thursday on Truth Social of U.S. strikes destroying a major bridge connecting the country’s capital Tehran to Karaj. 

Trump has repeated several times over the past week that the U.S. will bomb Iran “back to the stone ages.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor tried to tag each other with accusations of partisanship during the sole debate in the campaign Thursday evening. 

After the initially scheduled debate last week was canceled because Taylor was hospitalized with a kidney stone — and another delay Thursday due to severe weather in the Milwaukee area — the debate, moderated by WISN’s Matt Smith and Gerron Jordan, was held at WISN’s studio in Milwaukee just five days before polls open April 7.

The candidates are vying for an open seat on the Court being vacated by conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. After a string of high stakes races for the Court because the ideological swing of the body was up for grabs, this year’s race has drawn less attention and less money. This year the race will decide if the Court’s liberal wing will gain a 5-2 majority or if the split will remain 4-3. 

Through most of the campaign, Taylor has led in the polls and raised more money, however recent polling showed large swaths of the state’s voters remained undecided. 

Taylor, a judge on the state’s District IV Court of Appeals who previously worked on the Dane County Circuit Court, as a Democrat in the state Assembly and as the policy director of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, painted herself as a “scrupulous” judge who is proud of her work in the Legislature but will bring an independent judicial record to the Supreme Court. 

“I am scrupulous in applying the law, and I have a spine of steel when it comes to making sure people’s rights and freedoms are protected,” Taylor said.

Lazar, a judge on the state’s District II Court of Appeals who worked on the Waukesha County Circuit Court and as an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice under Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, touted her longer tenure as a judge and described herself as an independent jurist who has never belonged to a political party. 

“I guess when my opponent has a few more years of judicial experience, she’ll understand that being reversed is a part of being an independent judiciary,” Lazar said. 

Yet, as has been the case throughout the campaign, the candidates each tried to cast their opponent as a partisan extremist. 

Lazar repeatedly said that Taylor was answering questions as a legislator, not a judge. 

“On the one hand, you have a judge, an experienced judge who has been on the bench for more than 12 years, protecting the rights of everyone in the state,” Lazar said. “And on the other hand, you have a radical, extreme legislator who is known as the most liberal of the 99 in that Assembly, who now as a judicial activist, wants to put her views, her values and her agenda in the court above the law.” 

But Taylor pointed to cases in which Lazar sided with right-wing interest groups, endorsements from right-wing figures and her work before joining the bench to argue that Lazar is the more partisan figure. 

“She has a very specific agenda that favors big corporations and right-wing special interests,” Taylor said. 

The first clash of the night came over the state’s political maps and election law. Through much of the campaign, Taylor and her supporters have argued that if Lazar is elected she’ll be a vote on the Supreme Court in favor of potential Republican efforts to meddle with the state’s election results. 

Taylor pointed to Lazar’s previous support from election conspiracy theory figures such as Michael Gableman and her decision in Wisconsin Voter Alliance v. Secord, in which Lazar was criticized by the Supreme Court for ignoring existing precedent to rule that a group of election deniers should be given access to the confidential voting records of people with disabilities. She said that Lazar would be a “rubber stamp” for federal efforts to interfere in the state. 

In response, Lazar defended the state’s election system more forcefully than she had previously on the campaign trail. 

“I think it’s important that we tell people in the state of Wisconsin that our elections are safe, they’re fair and that their votes count, and that’s the key, important thing that we need to address in this state,” she said. 

The sharpest disagreement of the night came during a discussion of abortion. Last year, the Court struck down the state’s 1849 criminal abortion ban, which had halted abortion services in the state following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Since the state Court’s decision, a previously instituted law banning abortion after 20 weeks has been the guiding law in the state. 

Lazar said that she thought the return of abortion policy decisions to the individual states was a good thing and that she believes the 20 week line is a good compromise for the divided Wisconsin electorate. 

“I think that it falls within the parameters of where people in the state believe it should be, and if they don’t, the answer is to go to the legislature and the governor, not the courts,” she said, accusing Taylor of supporting abortions up to birth. 

Taylor said Lazar’s support of overturning Roe v. Wade ignores the women across the country who have been harmed by losing access to abortion care. 

“So it is tragic that we have someone running for the state Supreme Court that is celebrating that there are women all over this country who are victims of rape and incest … losing access,” Taylor said. “That is what the reality of overturning Roe v. Wade, that you have called very wise. It’s not been very wise for victims of rape and incest who now live in states where abortion has been outlawed. It’s not very wise for women who have lost their lives in states because they couldn’t get help when a pregnancy went wrong.”

Lazar responded by again accusing Taylor of acting as a partisan. 

“This is exactly what we’ve been doing in this campaign,” she said. “It’s the same old political playbook. If you don’t have anything truthful to say about your opponent, then just lie and mislead.”

Early voting is open until Saturday. Polls open at 7 a.m. on Election Day, April 7. Details for poll locations and hours can be found at MyVote.WI.gov.

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(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a pair of bills Friday that would have exempted overtime pay and cash tips from state income taxes.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed a pair of bills into law Friday aimed at providing more transparency into teacher’s license investigations related to sexual misconduct and prevents local school officials from entering into agreements to hide…

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District represents a rural area running from the Minnesota and Iowa borders to Eau Claire and a strip that ends between Wausau and Appleton. But a large topic of debate in the rematch…

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin governor has not yet signed the biggest piece of legislation on his desk.

(The Center Square) – The two candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court attempted to frame themselves as the middle-of-the-road fair candidate while painting the other candidate as partisan in the lone debate between judges Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor on Thursday…

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s sports wagering bill and a name, image and likeness bill that will send $15 million annually to the University of Wisconsin athletics departments while exempting athletics spending or revenue from public records requirements were both…

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Endorsements from nearly 50 current and former Wisconsin judges were listed on the campaign website of conservative Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar as of April 2.

They were not added until late March.

At a debate April 2, Lazar’s opponent in the April 7 state Supreme Court election, liberal Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, said she knew of no judicial endorsements for Lazar.

Lazar said in early March: “If you look at my website, I don’t even list any of my endorsements yet; we may be posting some. I don’t think it’s necessarily important.”

Lazar’s endorsements include Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler. After this brief was initially published, Lazar’s campaign said two appellate judges have endorsed Lazar.

Taylor’s site lists endorsements from some 160 judges and former judges. They include four current justices, one former justice and 10 current appellate judges.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• JudgeMariaLazar.com: Endorsements
• Internet Archive Wayback Machine: JudgeMariaLazar.com home page
• Internet Archive Wayback Machine: JudgeMariaLazar.com endorsements page, March 31, 2026
• YouTube: Milwaukee Bar Association Maria Lazar interview
• Internet Archive Wayback Machine: ChrisForJustice.com endorsements page

Has Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar been endorsed by any Wisconsin judges? 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.

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A possible billion-dollar data center in southwest Wisconsin’s Driftless Area would be built without any tax incentives and would produce more than $5 million annually in property tax revenue, according to a local economic development official involved in the discussions.

Ron Brisbois, executive director of the Grant County Economic Development Corp., also told Wisconsin Watch he expects to learn this month whether a developer chooses Grant County over sites in Indiana and North Dakota.

Asked if progress has been made, Brisbois said: “I’ll use the word ‘promising’ because I’m about fostering economic development, and I see this project for being a quality project. So, yes, I think it looks promising, from my perspective.”

When the proposal first gained attention in February, Brisbois said little more than the data center is expected to be worth $1 billion. He is now offering more details:

Scope: The facility would cost $1 billion to $2 billion, span about 500 acres and employ about 50 people.

Tax breaks: Local governments would not have to provide any tax incentives, such as a tax incremental district — a common development tool that delays when municipalities and school districts receive additional property tax revenue from a project.

Tax revenue: Brisbois said his “conservative estimate” is that the data center would pay $5.6 million annually in property tax revenue to local governments and school districts.

Brisbois has refused to identify the company that is scouting sites, but said the data center would be run by one of the major tech companies. “People will recognize the name,” he said.

Brisbois would not identify the part of Grant County being considered, other than to say it’s near power transmission lines.

But talks have taken place with officials in the town of Cassville, population 400, where opposition has emerged.

Cassville town residents voted 54-3 last month to authorize “village powers.” The move is aimed at giving the township more control over matters such as zoning. It was sought by residents who want more control over any data center proposal.

The “No Data Centers in the Driftless” Facebook page has 2,700 members.

One of the Facebook group’s leaders, Grant County resident Pete Moris, said he was pleased that more information is being released but wants more.

“The more transparency we can have on this project, the better,” he said.

“If we’re going to embark on the largest project ever developed in Grant County, it would sure be nice for citizens to know who we’re inviting into our county.”

The use of a tax incremental district for a $15 billion data center under construction in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee, spurred backlash. 

Data center opponents pushed a referendum that will be on ballots next Tuesday. If approved, the city would have to get referendum approval to create any tax incremental district worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the data center.

Hyperscale data centers are also under construction in Mount Pleasant, south of Milwaukee, and in Beaver Dam.

New details emerge on possible data center in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area 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.

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Steady arrests, shifting targets: Explore latest data on ICE activity across Wisconsin 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.

In the waning days of a relatively understated race for a 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, candidates Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor vowed to be independent justices, even as they made their pitches from local political party headquarters.

The post Chris Taylor and Maria Lazar make closing arguments in Wisconsin Supreme Court race appeared first on WPR.

A leader of Wisconsin's state disease laboratory says a recent reduction in federal testing won't immediately impact the state's ability to test for infectious diseases, including rabies.

The post As CDC pauses some disease testing, Wisconsin lab leader says states are ready to fill the gaps appeared first on WPR.