Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), who has long advocated for a bill to create a task force on to examine the issue of missing and murdered Black women and girls, read testimony on behalf of Tanesha Howard, the grieving mother of Joniah Walker. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

At a Tuesday hearing, Wisconsin Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), who has long advocated   creating a task force on missing and murdered Black women and girls, read testimony on behalf of Tanesha Howard, the grieving mother of Joniah Walker.

Walker went missing in 2022 at the age of 15 in Milwaukee and has not been found.

“They refused to issue an Amber Alert to allow the community to help search for her. They were telling me Joniah did not fit the requirement of anything,” Stubbs said. Howard sat next to her with her eyes closed. “What are the requirements to get help from your local police department when your Black… daughter [is] missing?”

SB 404, coauthored by Stubbs (D-Madison), Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston) and Sens. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), would establish a 17-member task force to examine the issue of missing and murdered Black women and girls and produce a report.

“To help prevent other families from experiencing what my family and countless other families endured … this bill for missing and murdered African–American women and girls … needs to be passed into state law,” Stubbs read on behalf of Howard. “Help us. Find us. Give our families closure. We matter.” 

This is the third legislative session in a row that Stubbs has introduced legislation to create the task force. She was inspired in part by the Department of Justice’s task force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, which was established in 2020 by Attorney General Josh Kaul after the Legislature failed to pass a bill to create that task force. Kaul has said that the funds don’t exist to take a similar path with this task force. 

Stubbs said during the hearing in the Senate Mental Health, Substance Abuse Prevention, Children & Families committee that the bill is “necessary to improve the mechanisms for preventing, investigating and healing for all forms of gender-based violence in our state, which impacts women and kids of all racial backgrounds, but which affect Black women and girls at the highest rate.”

Members of the task force would include four lawmakers and other stakeholders, including law enforcement representatives and representatives from advocacy or legal organizations that focus on Black women and girls.

The task force would be responsible for examining a number of issues related to the violence that Black women and girls face including systemic causes, the appropriate methods for tracking and collecting data, policing related to investigating and prosecuting crimes, measures that could reduce violence and ways to support victims and their families.

Under the bill, a final report would be due by 2027. It would need to recommend policies and practices that would be effective in reducing gender violence and increasing the safety of Black women and girls and help victims and communities to heal from violence.

Stubbs highlighted a 2022 report from the Guardian that found that in 2020 five Black women and girls were killed every day in the U.S. Wisconsin had the worst homicide rate for Black women and girls in the nation that year. Stubbs said data on the extent of the issue is incomplete, and the task force could help fill in the picture. 

“We are lacking crucial data, especially in Wisconsin,” Stubbs said. “The data already gathered is insufficient and lacks critical detail to understand the circumstances of violence.”

Johnson said the bill is a “necessary step toward understanding why African-American women and girls are so vulnerable to violence and disappearance and where our public safety systems are falling short.”

Sheena Scarborough, mother of 19-year-old Sade Robinson, who was murdered last year, also testified at the hearing. Johnson noted that both mothers are from her district.

“I think that speaks volumes to how serious the issue is and how it impacts communities, not just in the city of Milwaukee but across the state, but disproportionately it affects African-American women, especially in the city of Milwaukee,” Johnson said. 

The bill would provide one position in the Department of Justice to support the task force as well as $80,200 in 2025-26 and $99,500 in 2026-27 to fund it.

Last session, the bill passed the Assembly but never received a vote on the Senate floor. It received a public hearing but not without encountering roadblocks due to opposition from former Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville). Stroebel said he didn’t support the legislation because he didn’t support passing laws based on race or gender. 

Snyder, who described himself as “the Republican who likes to do what is right” said the bill is “the right thing to do,” and expressed frustration with the bill getting hung up last session. 

“I get really irritated when one person thinks that because they don’t like it, that they can kill it. That bugs me a lot,” Snyder said. 

Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) asked the lawmakers if there are other groups, noting Hmong and Indigenous groups, that face disproportionate amounts of violence and suggested changing the bill to include them. 

“Instead of focusing on just one specific group… I would really love to see each one of these groups kind of meld together, so there’s representation so information can be shared,” Wanggaard said. 

James, who is the only member of the Legislature actively serving in law enforcement, answered Wanggaard’s question by pulling from his own experience. 

“Back at home, I mean, we have a high Hmong population. I don’t recall ever taking any cases involving any missing Hmong individuals to be honest with you. …I’ve had more white and African-American missing type cases,” James said. He said that a “caveat” to the issue is that “the data collection hasn’t always been prevalent and adequate… especially if we have agencies where they’re not even taking cases on missing persons, that data is not going to be collected.”

“My concern is that if they’re targeting young women — just young women in general, I’m not concerned what race they are — if they’re targeting these young women, is there a connection between some of the missing… say on the Menominee reservation as opposed to Milwaukee County,” Wanggaard said. “I’m just thinking about getting the most information to as many people as we can to help the process.”

Supporters of the bill addressed questions about why it was important to have a task force specifically focused on Black women and girls. 

Madison Police Chief John Patterson was asked whether he saw any value in creating one big task force.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to be surgical at times when it comes to disparities that we’ve identified in our system and, certainly, I believe this is one,” Patterson said. “In my almost three decades, I can tell you work that started off being very focused and surgical in nature to try to address a disparate impact in our community has led to greater communication, greater collaboration across all communities.”

Barbara Sella, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, said it’s “so important to understand dynamics within communities and different communities have different dynamics.” 

“To just say, well let’s include everybody — could make the task almost impossible… It’s really important to have a laser focus,” Sella said.

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Student protesters shout during a “Hands Off Our Schools” rally in front of the U.S. Department of Education’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in April. Students from several colleges and universities gathered to protest President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the department. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats on Tuesday blasted ongoing efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the Department of Education, including plans to shift several of its responsibilities to other Cabinet-level agencies.  

Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted a forum on the issue with several Democratic colleagues. The lawmakers, joined by education leaders, advocates and leading labor union voices, said the restructuring would lead to a loss of expertise, create more bureaucracy and weaken support for students and families. 

The administration announced six agreements in November with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State as part of a larger effort from the administration to dismantle the 46-year-old Education Department. 

Trump has sought to axe the agency in his quest to send education “back to the states” and tapped Education Secretary Linda McMahon to fulfill that mission. Much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurs at the state and local levels.

Losing expertise

Sen. Elizabeth Warren slammed the transfers as “illegal” because of federal laws assigning specific responsibilities to the Education Department.

“Congress already passed the laws on this,” she said. “Every one of the programs that’s moving out of the Department of Education specifically says we have allocated the money for a program in the Department of Education, not in whatever random other place Secretary McMahon decides to put it.” 

The Massachusetts Democrat said that if the transfers go through, “we’ve got now four federal agencies that have no experience with education suddenly in charge of more than 50 different educational programs, including ones that fund literacy, education for veterans, kids in rural school districts — you name it, it’s moving somewhere else.” 

Even before the announcements of interagency agreements, the Education Department had seen several changes since Trump took office, including layoffs of hundreds of employees that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in July could temporarily proceed.

In a late Tuesday statement to States Newsroom, department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said the transfers were part of a wider effort to initiate a sorely needed overhaul of the federal education bureaucracy.

“The opposition is protecting a system that produces dismal results for our students,” she said. “The Trump Administration demands better than the status quo.”

‘Nothing but chaos’

Under one of the agreements, the Education Department said the Labor Department would take on a “greater role” in administering elementary and secondary education programs currently managed under the Education Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said “nobody wins, the least of all, students and educators,” when the Labor Department takes on massive education programs, noting the current workforce at Education has the right experience.

“Our staff have decades of experience with the complicated programs we’re talking about today,” Gittleman said. “These moves will cause nothing but chaos and harm for the people they’re intended to help.” 

In general, the agreements “swap a highly efficient system for a chaotic, underfunded one spread across multiple agencies,” Gittleman said.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, also rebuked the administration’s efforts to gut the agency.

“What is happening here is not simply the dismantlement of the Department of Education,” she said. “It is taking away — it is abandoning the federal role in education.” 

Weingarten, who leads one of the largest teachers unions in the country, added that “we should be, as a nation, expanding the federal role in public education, not supplanting states.” 

Rhode Island commissioner condemns Brown shooting

Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said the administration’s attempts to gut the agency are “already putting our nation’s education system and our students at a disadvantage.”

Communication from the Department of Education “lacks detail,” she added.

“We get these one or two sentences with edicts that often conflict with state and federal law. What do we do? The chaos has resulted in protracted legal battles across the country, raising serious constitutional questions,” she said. 

At the top of her remarks, Infante-Green also expressed her condolences for the victims, their families and the entire Brown University community after two students were killed and nine others were injured in a shooting on campus over the weekend. 

The federal courthouse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Testimony from federal agents continued into the second day of Milwaukee Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan’s federal trial, where Dugan faces charges of obstructing immigration officers and concealing a man they were trying to arrest outside her courtroom in April. Prosecutors repeatedly asked agents about Dugan’s tone when she spoke with them, which they described as upset, angry, direct and stern. A colleague of Dugan’s, Judge Kristela Cervera, who was with Dugan when she confronted agents in the hallway outside her courtroom, also testified that Dugan’s demeanor during the encounter made her uncomfortable.

On Tuesday, FBI agent Jeffrey Baker testified about his encounter with Dugan as part of the six-man arrest team that entered the Milwaukee County Courthouse in April in search of Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican-born man who was in the country without legal authorization.

During Baker’s testimony, details emerged about a woman the agents encountered in the hallway whom they believed was a public defender and who noticed them and began taking  pictures of the agents before Dugan arrived and spoke with them. Images of a Signal Chat used by the arrest team which had been named the “Frozen Water Group,” a reference to ICE, revealed that agents texted that the woman had “been around for more than one of these before.” Another message stated “she was talking sh*t about us with another attorney about how we are not very covert.” 

The prior arrests the agents were referring to had occurred at the courthouse from late March to early April, fueling concern among Milwaukee County judges about how to ensure the courthouse remained a safe and orderly place to conduct business. Testimony and text messages suggest that the prior arrests had all been made by the same team Dugan spoke with on April 18. 

Defense attorneys highlighted the agent’s choice of profile images for the “Frozen Water Group” chat. One agent had chosen an image of a skull over a pill bottle crossed by two syringes with a thin blue line flag in the background. Brian Ayers, a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent, who said that this was his account in the Signal chat, testified Tuesday that the logo belonged to the DEA opioid task force. Another showed a man licking the barrel of a handgun. Ayers testified that he followed Flores-Ruiz down the hall, and rode the elevator down with him and his lawyer without revealing that he was a federal agent. 

FBI agents Phillip Jackling, Customs and Border Protection agent Joseph Zurao, and ICE deportation officer Joseph Vasconcellos, who were all part of that Signal chat, described Dugan coming out to ask whether they were there to attend court hearings, and pointing them down the hall to Chief Judge Carl Ashley’s office. Jackling described Dugan as “very direct, and she seemed upset,” and said that leaving the rest of the arrest team in the hall “caused me to have a little bit of uncertainty about what was going to happen next.” Zurao said that Dugan told the agents to “get out” or “leave”. 

Vasconcellos said that he was unnerved by the attorney photographing them, and that because he’d been stabbed, shot, and suffered nerve damage in his neck over the course of  his career, he had concerns that their plan to use the courthouse as a “safe place” to arrest people had gone south. “I was honestly concerned that we had had our pictures taken and the staff knew who we were,” Vasconcellos testified. He’d texted in the group chat, speaking of the public defender photographing them, “this is going to be a pain in the d-ck.”

Vasconcellos described Dugan as “very stern and upset,” and said when Dugan told them to leave the hall and go to Ashley’s office, “I told her no.” Vasconcellos eventually went into the chief judge’s office, where he and other agents waited to get connected to Ashley over the phone. Ashley discussed the courthouse draft policy governing immigration enforcement in and around the building at length with the agents. When Vasconcellos left Ashley’s office, the rest of the arrest team had already followed Flores-Ruiz outside and arrested him. 

Vasconcellos testified that he was aware that judges could speak  sternly and that he was not familiar with Dugan and didn’t know if that tone was normal for her. Defense attorneys highlighted that only DEA Special Agent Ayers told FBI investigators that he heard Dugan yelling at the team, something none of the other task force agents described in their testimony. Ayers also refuted testimony from Zuaro, who claimed to have told Ayers to “get your ass out in the hallway in case he comes out,” an assertion that was not  documented in reports and interviews conducted by investigators. Nile Hendrix-Whitmore, a victim witness advocate with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, also testified that she did not hear any yelling or arguing when Dugan spoke with the agents. 

Judge testifies about discomfort with Dugan

Later in the day, Judge Cervera took the stand. Cervera recalled that she had a busy schedule on April 18, and had arrived to court early to begin working on her cases. She’d left the building to move her car and as she walked back she ran into Dugan who was presumably doing the same. Not long after she arrived back to her courtroom, Cervera testified that Dugan came in and beckoned her over. “I thought something bad had happened,” said Cervera. “It was embarrassing to be summoned in that way.”

Cervera testified that Dugan gave the impression that  “it was urgent” and that Dugan “seemed irritated.” When Cervera began to remove her robes, she testified that Dugan told her to keep them on, which she did because Dugan was a more senior judge. “I didn’t want to walk into the hallway with my robe,” Cervera testified, though she said she didn’t tell Dugan that she was uncomfortable. 

When the two approached the agents and Dugan asked whether they had a judicial warrant, Cervera said that “her irritation seemed to progress into anger.” Cervera said that Dugan was “expressing her views to the officer” and that she thought Dugan “could have been a little more diplomatic.” Nevertheless, Cervera testified that the interaction was “pretty straightforward and quick,” and that she had her own questions about the kind of warrant the agents had. Dugan told them that a judicial warrant signed by a judge, not an administrative warrant signed by an ICE officer, would be needed, Cervera testified.

Cervera escorted the agents to Ashley’s office and recalled looking back and not seeing Dugan follow them. “I felt abandoned,” she said on the stand. “I thought she left me.” As Cervera looked over the warrant herself, she noticed other agents coming into the hall leading to the chief judge’s office. When Cervera took a short cut through Dugan’s court to get back to her own room, Cervera noticed that Dugan was hearing cases. “I was irritated at that point,” she said, repeating that she felt “abandoned” by her fellow judge. 

Bits and pieces of what happened then made it to Cervera, including Flores-Ruiz being arrested outside, and attorneys pumping their fists telling her, “You go, Judge,” and saying, “Judge, you’re ‘goated’ now,” a reference to the term “Greatest Of All Time.” Cervera testified that one attorney, the same who took pictures of agents in the hall, told her, “We knew what you guys were trying to do.” The next day, she heard that the FBI would be getting involved. “I was shocked” and “mortified,” she testified. “Judges shouldn’t be helping defendants avoid arrest.”

Sometime after April 18, Cervera recalled running into Dugan in an elevator. “I didn’t want to run into her at this point,” Cervera testified. Dugan allegedly told Cervera that she was “in the dog house with Carl,” referring to the chief judge. “She seemed eager to tell me about what happened on Friday,” Cervera said. 

Defense attorneys questioned Cervera about whether she knew ICE agents were waiting outside her courtroom as well, which she denied. When she got home on April 18, she Googled Vasconcellos’ name, and warned her sister — who is also an attorney who had cases with clients at the Milwaukee courthouse coming up — that ICE was more active in the building. Defense attorneys noted that when she was called to a grand jury, Cervera did not reveal that she had warned her sister about the federal operations. 

Cervera said on the stand that she was talking to her sister about what appeared to be “sweeping arrests” happening around the country, and that she’d never heard of ICE arrests at the courthouse prior to March. Multiple members of the arrest team testified that they had only been transferred to ICE Emergency Removal Operations (ERO) duties in early 2025, after President Donald Trump took office. 

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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio speak to reporters on Dec. 16, 2025, following a closed-door briefing with all senators about U.S. military action in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators left a closed-door meeting Tuesday with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio split over the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug-running vessels near Venezuela, particularly an early September follow-up strike that killed two survivors clinging to boat wreckage.

Hegseth and Rubio delivered the all-member briefings to Senate and House lawmakers on Capitol Hill as the death toll from U.S. military strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean has surpassed 90, and as U.S. Navy ships are amassed off the coast of Venezuela.

Controversy over the possibility of war crimes during the Sept. 2 follow-on strike that killed shipwrecked survivors drew attention after The Washington Post reported details last month, calling into question Hegseth’s orders.

Hegseth told reporters Tuesday he briefed members on a “highly successful mission to counter designated terrorist organizations, cartels, bringing weapons — weapons, meaning drugs — to the American people and poisoning the American people for far too long. So we’re proud of what we’re doing.”

Dems decry edited video

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Hegseth again refused to show unedited footage, which Schumer described as “deeply troubling,” of a second strike on Sept. 2 that killed two people who survived the initial strike. 

“The administration came to this briefing empty handed,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said. 

“If they can’t be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean? Every senator is entitled to see it. There is no problem with (revealing) sources and methods” because the senators will view it in the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a secure area of the Capitol where classified information is generally shared.

Schumer added that an “appropriate version” of the video should be disclosed to the public.

Senate Republicans downplayed loud concerns from Democrats, pointing to former President Barack Obama’s numerous counterterrorism drone strikes in the Middle East.

“We’ve been using the same technique for 24 years, and nothing has changed except the hemisphere,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.

Public release called for

Hegseth told reporters the unedited video will be shown to members of the Senate and House committees on the Armed Services Wednesday, alongside Admiral Frank Bradley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, who oversaw the strikes.

Hegseth did not address why the department declined to show the unedited video to all 100 senators. 

He did say, “Of course, we’re not going to release a top-secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public.”

Several Democratic senators have called for the video to be publicly released.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said he was told during the meeting that the video won’t be released because of “classification concerns.”

“It is hard to square the widespread, routine, prompt posting of detailed videos of every strike, with a concern that posting a portion of the video of the first strike would violate a variety of classification concerns,” Coons said.

Coons added “it’s increasingly important that the national security team of the Trump administration increasingly respect and recognize the role and power of Congress.” 

He highlighted a provision in Congress’s annual defense authorization bill that compels Hegseth to release the video or lose 25% of his travel budget. The massive defense bill is expected to pass this week.

Body count from boat strikes rising

U.S. Southern Command posted a video on social media Monday night of the military’s latest strikes on three boats “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters” in the eastern Pacific. The strikes killed eight people, according to the post.

President Donald Trump has officially promoted his military actions in the Caribbean as a fight against drug trafficking and overdose deaths in the United States, particularly from illicit fentanyl. 

On Monday Trump issued an order declaring the powerful synthetic opioid as a “Weapon of Mass Destruction.”

The smuggling routes for illicit fentanyl and the chemicals used to make it follow the path from China to Mexico to the U.S., and is highlighted as such in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment.

The administration has designated several drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, including “Cartel de los Soles,” an alleged Venezuelan group that the Department of State described as spearheaded by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump has hinted at a land invasion of the South American country.

When asked by States Newsroom on Tuesday whether Hegseth addressed during the meeting what type of drugs were alleged to be in the targeted boats, Mullin and Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said cocaine.

“We’ve always heard it’s mainly cocaine. It doesn’t matter. It’s drugs,” Mullin said.

Sullivan said “it’s the same groups” smuggling the cocaine as the ones smuggling fentanyl.

Cocaine mixed with illicit fentanyl has become “an increasing public safety concern” over the last eight years, according to the National Drug Threat Assessment. 

Overall, all U.S. drug overdose deaths have decreased in recent years, according to the assessment and latest data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Bad River in Mellen, south of the Bad River Band's reservation. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, challenging the corps’ decision to grant a permit allowing the oil company Enbridge to reroute its Line 5 pipeline around the tribe’s reservation in northern Wisconsin

The lawsuit, filed in the Washington D.C. federal circuit court, is another step in the long legal history of the Enbridge pipeline and the company’s effort to move it from its current route through the tribe’s land. The tribe is asking that the permit approval be vacated. 

In October, the corps approved Enbridge’s permit to reroute the pipeline off the reservation despite significant public opposition. 

The new route moves the pipeline south but it still runs across land on three sides of the reservation and crosses the Bad River upstream of the reservation. The permit was approved as the administration of President Donald Trump has moved to more aggressively support oil and natural gas projects. Earlier in the year, the corps approved a fast-tracked permitting process for Enbridge to construct a tunnel across the Straits of Mackinac so Line 5 can cross from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to its Lower Peninsula. 

The tribe’s lawsuit alleges that the corps violated the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by not properly conducting required environmental reviews or following the proper procedures. 

“For hundreds of years, and to this day, the Band’s ancestors and members have lived, hunted, fished, trapped, gathered, and engaged in traditional activities in the wetlands and waters to be crossed by the Project,” the lawsuit states. “The Project would encircle the Reservation on three sides and damage areas the Band highly values for their ecological and cultural significance. The Corps’ failure to properly review and address the Project’s environmental impacts to wetlands and waterways harms the Band’s interest in maintaining its Reservation homeland and resources in the ceded territory.”

The lawsuit alleges that the corps violated the NEPA by not giving proper consideration to the “environmental effects of construction, maintenance, and operation of the Project,” including how it will harm the health of resources on and near the reservation. 

Under the Clean Water Act, the corps cannot approve permits until the state or tribal government responsible for water quality in the project area certifies the project won’t harm the local water. While the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources did previously approve the state permits for the Line 5 reroute, those permits are currently being challenged in a separate legal process. 

The tribe alleges in the lawsuit that the corps should not have moved forward with its permits until after the state process is complete.  

[The corps] violated the Clean Water Act by issuing the Permit without ensuring that construction and maintenance of the Project would not adversely affect Wisconsin and the Band’s water quality,” the lawsuit states. “This includes issuing a … permit while the required … state water quality certification is not yet final, pending state administrative proceedings; without addressing the inadequacies the Band identified with Wisconsin’s Water Quality Certification; or ensuring compliance with the Band’s water quality standards.” 

The lawsuit also states the permit approval does not address how the project construction will affect the tribe’s “ability to exercise treaty-protected rights to hunt, fish, trap, and gather in ceded territory,” “failed to evaluate the risks and impacts of oil spills along the pipeline route” and “failed to evaluate the risks and impacts of blasting as a construction method.” 

In a statement, tribe chairwoman Elizabeth Arbuckle said the tribe would do whatever it can to protect the health of the Bad River, Lake Superior and surrounding watersheds. 

“For more than a decade, we have had to endure the unlawful trespass of a dangerous oil pipeline on our lands and waters,” Arbuckle said. “The reroute only makes matters worse. Enbridge’s history is full of accidents and oil spills. If that happens here, our Tribe and other communities in the Northwoods will suffer unacceptable consequences. From the Bad River to Lake Superior, our waters are the lifeblood of our Reservation. They have fed and nurtured our Tribe for hundreds of years. We will do everything in our power to protect them.”

Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said in an email that while the Army Corps made an initial permit decision, it has not been signed by the corps or the company and therefore isn’t a final decision that can be challenged in court. She said the company would intervene in the lawsuit to defend the permit approval. 

“Enbridge submitted permit applications to state and federal regulators in early 2020 to build a new segment of pipeline around the Bad River Reservation,” she said. “Enbridge’s permit applications are supported by thorough and extensive environmental analysis and modeling by leading third-party experts confirming project construction impacts will be temporary and isolated, with no adverse effect to water quality or wetlands.”

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U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., talks with reporters inside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he will not allow a floor vote this week on a bipartisan amendment supported by moderate Republicans that would extend the Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits. 

Johnson was confident that blocking the amendment would not lead centrist GOP lawmakers to oppose the Republican health care bill scheduled to get a vote Wednesday. 

“There’s about a dozen members in the conference that are in these swing districts who are fighting hard to make sure they reduce costs for all of their constituents. And many of them did want to vote on this Obamacare, COVID-era subsidy the Democrats created,” Johnson said. “We looked for a way to try to allow for that pressure release valve and it just was not to be.”

The enhanced ACA tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year, sharply increasing the cost of health insurance for the roughly 22 million Americans who purchase plans through the exchange and benefit from the subsidies. 

The House Republican health care bill wouldn’t extend those tax credits, frustrating GOP lawmakers in that chamber who are most at risk of losing their reelection bids during the November midterm elections. 

Johnson said he expects that GOP bill will pass, though he didn’t address its prospects in the Senate, where bipartisanship is needed for nearly all bills to advance under that chamber’s 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation’s analysis of the bill shows it would reduce the federal deficit by $35.6 billion during the next decade. 

An average of 100,000 people per year would lose health insurance between 2027 and 2035, while  gross benchmark premiums for health insurance would drop by 11% on average through 2035, according to the joint analysis. 

‘Idiotic and shameful’

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler said in a speech on the House floor that GOP leaders’ decision to let the enhanced ACA tax credits expire was “idiotic and shameful,” especially after changes were added to address fraud and reduce costs. 

“So we have been forced to sign onto two discharge petitions,” he said. “And yet my Democratic colleagues will not join us, but for those that were at the negotiation table.”

Lawler then criticized House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, of New York, for not encouraging Democrats to sign onto the bipartisan discharge petitions, noting that would likely get the 218 signatures needed to force a floor vote. He argued that’s because Jeffries “doesn’t actually want to solve the problem, he wants the issue.”

“This place is disgraceful,” Lawler said. “Everybody wants the upper hand.  Everybody wants the political advantage. They don’t actually want to do the damn work. This problem could be solved today if everybody who says they care about extending this signs the discharge.”

GOP-only bill in 2026?

When the House returns from its two-week holiday break next year, Johnson said, leaders may try to use the complex reconciliation process they used to enact the “one big, beautiful bill” to address health care. 

“What we anticipate going into the first quarter of next year is, possibly in a reconciliation package or in regular order a stand-alone, ideas just like this,” Johnson said after being asked a question about Health Savings Accounts. “We have a long list of things that we know will reduce premiums, increase access and quality of care.” 

President Donald Trump said Monday he wants Republicans to use the reconciliation process or to eliminate the Senate’s legislative filibuster to address health care and other policy priorities. 

“Republicans should knock out the filibuster and we should approve a lot of things,” Trump said. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said repeatedly he doesn’t intend to change or scrap the filibuster.

Direct payments or tax breaks

Trump also reiterated during the Oval Office event he would like to see Congress send direct payments to Americans to help them buy health insurance or afford health care. 

“I want all money going to the people and let the people buy their own health care. It’ll be unbelievable,” Trump said. “They’ll do a great job. They’ll get much better health care at a much lower cost.”

The Senate voted last week on two health care bills, one from Republicans and one from Democrats, but neither received the support needed to move toward a final passage vote. 

Republicans’ bill would have provided direct payments to some people enrolled in either bronze or catastrophic ACA marketplace plans with up to $1,500 in payments annually for 2026 and 2027. 

Democrats’ legislation would have extended the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits for three years. 

Cost most urgent issue, poll finds

A bipartisan group of senators is trying to find solutions that bridge the political divide, though they are unlikely to achieve consensus on the details before the end of this week.

Thune said during a press conference Tuesday he believes there’s a way to address the rising costs of health care if Democrats continue negotiations with Republicans. 

“Our views on health care and the Democratic views on health care are very different. And I think that’s a difficult challenge that we have to figure out how to overcome,” Thune said. “But if they’re willing to accept changes that actually would put more power and control and resources in the hands of the American people and less of that in the pockets of the insurance companies, then I think there is a path forward.”

Thune acknowledged that Congress cannot pass anything this week but said he believes “there’s a potential pathway in January if Democrats are willing to come to the table on things that will actually drive down the costs of health care.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., didn’t entirely rule out using the Jan. 30 government funding deadline to force a partial shutdown over health care, though he implied nothing can be done on the ACA tax credits after they expire at the end of December. 

“Once it expires, the toothpaste is out of the tube,” Schumer said. 

A poll released Monday by the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America shows that cost is the “most urgent” health issue facing the country, followed by access and then obesity. 

Just 57% of those polled said they were satisfied with how much they pay for their own health care and only 16% were satisfied with the total cost of health care.

Nearly two-thirds of those in the survey said they believe it’s the federal government’s responsibility “to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage,” while 33% said it’s not. 

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy captain, speaks to veterans at a town hall in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Aug. 31, 2025. (Photo by Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department says it has upgraded its investigation into Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly over a video where he and other members of Congress told members of the military they didn’t need to follow illegal orders. 

“The Office of the Secretary of War, in conjunction with the Department of War’s Office of the General Counsel, is escalating the preliminary review of Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.), to an official Command Investigation,” a spokesperson for the department wrote in an email Monday night. 

“Retired Captain Kelly is currently under investigation for serious allegations of misconduct,” the spokesperson continued. “Further official comments will be limited to preserve the integrity of the proceedings.”

Paul J. Fishman, an attorney at the Arnold & Porter law firm who is representing Kelly, wrote in a Monday letter to the secretary of the Navy that “there is no legitimate basis for any type of proceeding against Senator Kelly, and any such effort would be unconstitutional and an extraordinary abuse of power.”

“If the Executive Branch were to move forward in any forum—criminal, disciplinary, or administrative—we will take all appropriate legal action on Senator Kelly’s behalf to halt the Administration’s unprecedented and dangerous overreach,” Fishman wrote. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had set Dec. 10 as the deadline for the secretary of the Navy to recommend what to do about Kelly’s appearance in the video, but that came and went without any public announcements.

Hegseth also remained silent on the matter after rebuking Kelly weeks ago for posting the video where he and five other Democrats warned against illegal orders.

Kelly said on Dec. 9, one day before the deadline, he hadn’t received any information from the Navy or other administration officials. 

“Forget about an update. I haven’t heard anything from the guy,” Kelly told reporters. “That’s a good question for you guys to ask the Navy.”

The secretary of the Navy’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from States Newsroom. 

The Department of Defense posted in late November that officials were looking into “serious allegations of misconduct” against Kelly for appearing in the video. 

It didn’t detail how Kelly might have violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice but stated that “a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.” 

Hegseth referred the issue to Navy Secretary John Phelan for any “review, consideration, and disposition” he deemed appropriate. Hegseth then asked for a briefing on the outcome of the review “by no later than December 10.”

Kelly said during a press conference in early December the military’s investigation and a separate one by the FBI were designed to intimidate the six lawmakers in the video from speaking out against President Donald Trump. 

The lawmakers in the video, who have backgrounds in the military or intelligence agencies, told members of those communities they “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” they said. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

The other Democrats in the video — Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander — are not subject to the military justice system. 

Trump railed against the video a couple days after it posted, saying the statements represented “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

The first deadline for people to sign up for health insurance in 2026 through the federal health care marketplace passed Monday. With the loss of enhanced federal subsidies coverage is forecast to decline after rising for several years. (FS Productions/Getty Images)

When Chiquita Brooks-LaSure stepped into her job overseeing the federal health insurance marketplace in 2021, about 12 million Americans were purchasing their health coverage there.

By the start of 2025, that number had doubled.

Brooks-LaSure served as the administrator for the federal Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Biden administration. In addition to managing the federal health insurance programs for people over 65 and people living at or below the federal poverty guidelines, CMS also manages HealthCare.gov — the health insurance marketplace created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

The purpose of the marketplace was to make it easier for people who had neither employer-provided  health insurance nor  Medicare or Medicaid to purchase a policy that would cover them.

 The ACA set standards for what the insurance plans are required to cover, and it established a system of nonprofit navigators to guide buyers as they sought to match their own health needs with the coverage that was available to them on the marketplace.

Early during President Joe Biden’s term, Congress passed and Biden signed legislation that increased tax credit subsidies making insurance plans purchased at HealthCare.gov much more affordable. Those enhanced tax credits brought in a flood of new insurance coverage.

“By the time we left, there were 24 million people who were enrolled” in marketplace health plans purchased through HealthCare.gov, Brooks-LaSure said during a video call with reporters last week. The call was organized by Opportunity Wisconsin, an economic issues messaging and organizing group aligned with the Democratic Party.

The federal move to give people on marketplace health plans larger  tax credits drove that increase in enrollment, health policy watchers agree.

Now the enhanced tax credits are due to expire at the end of this year. So far attempts in Congress to extend them, whether permanently or even temporarily, have gone nowhere.

On average, Brooks-LaSure said, premiums for 2026 have gone up by 26%. “For many people, they will choose to not buy health insurance coverage at all,” she said. “But others may choose to buy coverage that doesn’t cover all of their health care needs.”

Monday was the first of two red-letter days in the current history of the ACA and the health care marketplace. People hoping to get coverage starting Jan. 1 were required to sign up by the end of the day.

People can still sign up between now and Jan. 15, but policies won’t take effect until Feb. 1.

After four years of increases in the population with health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office has forecast about 4 million people will drop their coverage in 2026 without the higher subsidies.

“For 275,000 Wisconsinites, these tax credits have saved them on average almost $600 every month,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin in another call with reporters. “Without them, these Wisconsinites will pay double, triple, or even worse for their premiums next year. And for 30,000 Wisconsinites, the price will be just too high. And they’ll choose to go without insurance.”

That was a decision that Shana Verstegen of Madison said she and her husband briefly considered. Verstegen spoke on Baldwin’s call about the choices the couple is having to make on behalf of themselves and their two sons, ages 7 and 10.

She and her husband both work for a small community gym, Verstegen said. Their employer has too few employees to be able to purchase a group health policy, so they went to the ACA marketplace.

This year they pay $460 a month, already a squeeze, but that will increase to more than $700 a month in 2026, she said.

“It’s an amount we just simply can’t afford,” Verstegen said. Realizing that they could not risk the family’s health by going without coverage, they’ve looked at other options — including possibly giving up work that has been a long-term career in order to find a job with employer-sponsored health insurance.

In the end, Verstegen said, the couple decided to increase their work hours and cancel some events in 2026 to save money to afford their higher-priced health plan.

“These are really tough and frustrating emotional and scary choices,” Verstegen said. “We’re a middle-class, healthy, hard-working family and like so many others we’re simply struggling to keep up.”

Forecasts are murky

The most recent “snapshot” from CMS on HealthCare.gov enrollment covers Nov. 1-29 this year. In Wisconsin, it shows enrollment down by almost 4,000 people compared to Nov. 1-30, 2024.

Nationally, however, the numbers are up — 5.76 million in November this year compared with 5.36 million a year ago. There isn’t enough data to confidently forecast a trend, however.

Of the people signing up in November, “a lot of those folks were probably people who already had coverage and were either renewing it or picking a new plan, but there were also likely some new enrollees,” said Louise Norris, a health policy analyst at healthinsurance.org, an insurance information website.

Norris said there could be a large upswing in enrollment ahead of Monday’s deadline for coverage starting Jan. 1. “Then again you’ll see another sort of surge as we get to mid-January” — the Jan. 15 deadline for coverage starting Feb. 1, Norris said.

Both Norris and Brooks-LaSure said that initial enrollment numbers also don’t tell the whole story.

“The people who are enrolling right now are people who absolutely know they need to have coverage,” Brooks-LaSure said. “But the number always drops when people have to pay their premiums. And so, it’s really the number in January, once people are enrolled, that we think that will be the important number to know about coverage.”

People who are not changing plans may be automatically renewed in their current plans, which can explain some of the initial signups, said Brooks-LaSure. In addition, she said, some people signing up may be opting for less expensive — but also less generous — health insurance than they purchased in the past.

HealthCare.gov classifies health plans as Gold, Silver or Bronze. Gold plans have costlier premiums but more generous coverage with lower deductibles and less cost-sharing required of patients. Bronze plans have lower premiums with higher deductibles and more cost-sharing, and Silver plans are in between.

Brooks-LaSure said she has heard anecdotally from people stepping down from Silver to Bronze plans, for example.

“Coverage is really important, of course, but your ability to actually pay when you go to the doctor is equally, if not more, important,” she said. “It may be that we don’t see the drop in the uninsured rate. We see people shifting to less generous coverage.”

Kelley Bruns, a Sawyer County resident who spoke on Baldwin’s call, said she and her husband took that route for 2026.

Bruns said her husband, a veteran and career firefighter, had to end his career early due to work injuries and resulting disabilities.

When the premium for the policy they had in 2025 rose to more than $1,600 a month — 40% of their monthly income — they opted for a less expensive plan for 2026. That plan, however, has copayments of up to $100, a $15,000 deductible and a cap on out-of-pocket expenses of more than $21,000.

“We have to pray we don’t need surgery or any other major medical procedure,” Bruns said, “since our out-of-pocket maximum is almost half of our annual income and would be a catastrophic expense for our family.” 

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Judge Hannah Dugan leaves court in her federal trial, where she faces charges of obstructing immigration officers. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

The gallery was packed shoulder-to-shoulder Monday morning as Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan entered the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman not as a judge, but as a criminal defendant. Dugan is accused of obstructing federal agents in their efforts to arrest a Mexican-born man who was in the country without legal authorization, and who appeared in Dugan’s misdemeanor criminal court back in April. If convicted in what Adelman signaled would be no more than a week-long trial, Dugan could face six years in prison.

Attorneys on both sides of the trial painted very different pictures of Dugan during their opening statements, which can include statements which do not have to be demonstrated by evidence. 

Opening statements from prosecutors lasted nearly an hour, with the lawyers saying that Dugan “knew what she was doing was wrong.” Repeatedly, prosecutors pointed to courtroom audio transcribed by the FBI which captured Dugan saying, “I’ll get the heat,” when talking to her courtroom staff about how to respond to the fact that immigration agents were waiting in the hallway to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a man appearing before her on misdemeanor charges of battery and domestic violence. 

Prosecutors called the Milwaukee County Courthouse “a safe place where arrests are routine,” allowing federal agents to confront targets who have passed through security screening and are unarmed. An arrest team of six federal agents from the FBI, DEA, Border Patrol, and ICE wearing plain clothes and carrying concealed weapons were attempting to blend into the normal hustle and bustle in the courthouse. Prosecutors said that an FBI agent told a Milwaukee sheriff’s deputy, who was serving as a bailiff for Dugan’s courtroom, that they were there to arrest Flores-Ruiz. “Everything was proceeding in a routine way,” prosecutors told the jury, until the court clerk told Dugan that agents were in the hallway for an immigration arrest. 

Jurors watched mute video compiled from security cameras showing Dugan, accompanied by fellow Circuit Court Judge Kristela Cervera, walking down the public hall in their judge robes to find out what the agents waiting outside the courtroom wanted. Both judges can be seen pointing to the chief judge’s office, with agents then following Cervera to consult with Chief Judge Carl Ashley. 

When Dugan returned to her courtroom she called Flores-Ruiz first out of the at least 33 cases she had on the docket, setting a court date and telling Flores-Ruiz he was welcome to attend remotely over Zoom. After that, prosecutors allege that Dugan and her court staff directed Flores-Ruiz to an exit in the courtroom which led to a non-public hallway. At the end of the hallway Flores-Ruiz could either take a staircase leading down to the fifth floor, or go through a door which led back out to the public hallway where agents were waiting. 

Flores-Ruiz and his attorney exited through the door and walked  right past the federal agents. Some of the agents trailed Flores-Ruiz to the elevator, while the rest of the arrest team left Ashley’s office. Cameras outside the courthouse captured agents running down a sidewalk after Flores-Ruiz and his attorney. 

Dugan is accused by prosecutors of “dividing” the arrest team by directing them to the chief judge. They say that Dugan had “strongly held views” about immigration enforcement in courts which led her to “cross the line,” and that the now-suspended judge had “orchestrated” Flores-Ruiz’s “escape from federal law enforcement.” 

Prosecutors claimed Dugan told Cervera to keep her robes on during the interaction, and that Cervera and Flores-Ruiz’s defense attorney Mercedes De La Rosa were both uncomfortable with Dugan’s wishes to confront the agents. 

Dugan’s defense team emphasized that the door Flores-Ruiz used to exit the courtroom was just 11 feet from the courtroom’s main entrance. They also discussed the upheaval the Trump administration’s deportation operations had caused at the Milwaukee County Courthouse before the interaction with Dugan. ICE arrests had occurred in late March and early April, alarming county judges. The defense displayed emails from courthouse personnel they said demonstrated the “paranoid” atmosphere at the courthouse and which described concerns about people not showing up to court and suspicious vehicles parked outside that looked like they belonged to federal law enforcement. 

Courthouse was developing a policy on ICE

At the time of Flores-Ruiz’s arrest, Chief Judge Ashley was drafting a policy on how to respond to immigration enforcement coming inside the courts. Judges had been invited to a training presentation on the matter which Dugan was unable to attend, but she had been briefed on its main points. 

The draft policy noted that administrative warrants of the type federal agents presented to arrest Flores-Ruiz are not treated the same way as judicial warrants. Whereas a judicial warrant would give the agents full access to the building, administrative warrants limit them to the public areas of the courthouse. Court staff were also instructed to direct immigration officers to their immediate supervisors, which Dugan appeared to be doing by directing them to Ashley, her attorneys said, adding  that the chief judge needed to be notified if a warrant is executed. 

Ashley had also issued a press release after the rash of ICE arrests saying in part that “the court must remain a safe haven,” Dugan’s attorney Steven Biskupic noted, as images of courthouse emails, messages, and press releases were presented  to jurors on two screens. Dugan did not obstruct the agents, or give direction to anyone else to do so, her attorneys argued. 

Federal agents testify

Three federal agents took the stand Monday and gave lengthy testimony, starting with Erin Lucker of the FBI. Lucker was not involved with the immigration arrest, but helped gather and analyze video and evidence to charge Dugan. Using audio from courtroom microphones, Lucker created a transcript and timeline of events from the time Dugan first approached the agents until Flores-Ruiz was arrested outside. 

The audio was very poor in places, and Judge Adelman reminded the jury that the audio is evidence, not the transcript, and that if they could not understand what is said on the audio, they were not allowed to rely on the transcript instead. In a portion of the audio, Dugan can be heard talking to court staff about the exit to the hallway, with a voice saying “down the stairs,” though some of what’s being said was inaudible. Prosecutors also said that the alleged victims of the domestic violence and battery charges Flores-Ruiz faced were kept waiting in the courtroom to wonder what happened after he left. 

In response to questions from Dugan’s defense attorneys, Lucker said she had no firsthand knowledge of the courthouse itself or what business there usually looks like. She had not participated in an arrest team like the one assembled for Flores-Ruiz, she said. She also responded to the defense that she wasn’t aware that before January 2025 immigration enforcement officers did not, as a matter of policy, target people for arrest at courthouses. 

Defense attorneys also pointed out that a video Lucker helped produce shows a walkthrough of Dugan’s courtroom and the non-public hallway outside ends with the filmer walking down the stairs, not taking the entrance to the hallway which Flores-Ruiz took. Lucker said she hadn’t walked down those stairs, and was unaware that to get out of the building you’d need to pass by multiple security checkpoints. 

Testimony revealed that federal agents had been surveilling Flores-Ruiz at his home and followed him to the courthouse. Defense attorneys questioned why a traffic stop wasn’t made. The task force agents used an encrypted Signal chat which they’d named the “Frozen Water Group” to communicate about the ICE operation. 

FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Baker,  one of the plain-clothes agents on the arrest team, testified that he  had only been on the ERO team since February when the team came for Flores-Ruiz in April. Baker said Dugan “divided” the arrest team by leading members into the chief judge’s office, and that when he talked to Dugan “she seemed to be angry at that point.” When he went to Ashley’s office, Baker said he wasn’t told where he was going or why. He was informed that Flores-Ruiz had left the building either by a text or phone call from another agent.

On Tuesday, Baker will be questioned by defense attorneys.

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(The Center Square) – Settlement of $1.25 million will be paid by a Wisconsin country club receiving an improper paycheck protection program loan.

(The Center Square) – The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval in October of Enbridge permits for a reroute of Line 5 around the band’s reservation…

(The Center Square) – The K-12 education portion of Wisconsin property tax bills rose 7.8% this year, the largest rise in more than three decades, according to a new report.

MADISON, Wis. – Wisconsin lawmakers will investigate claims Attorney General Josh Kaul is pursuing an anti-oil agenda with the help of an assistant paid for by an advocacy group.

(The Center Square) – Homeowners across Wisconsin are finding much higher property tax bills in their mailboxes this month, and Republicans at the state capitol say second-term Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is to blame.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

In the national war for affordable housing, a familiar battle is raging in Richland Center, a little city in the Driftless Area that’s surrounded by wilderness and farm fields.

A move to put duplexes on a six-acre village green has pitted some residents against their city government.

“It’s the soccer field, it’s the picnic field, it’s the place where everybody goes,” said Jeri Rust, who grew up in town and now splits time between Richland Center and Arizona.

But “the city needs housing, and we have before us a proposal that would be the envy of any other community,” Richland County Board Chair David Turk said at a September city council meeting. 

Since 2017, the average home price in Richland Center has increased from about $102,000 to $180,000, a 76% change, according to Zillow, the real estate marketplace. 

Stori Field is the “crown jewel” of the neighborhood, said Greg Dettmann, a resident who grew up in the city and lives across the street. 

The field is named for teacher and coach Dave Stori, who revived the high school’s track team in the 1940s. For decades, Stori Field hosted athletic practices and P.E. classes.

“I threw up more than once on that field,” Dettmann, 74, joked about his own time exercising on the field as a kid. “You can’t get green spaces back once they’re gone.”

But Richland Center has between three and six times more parkland than what the National Recreation and Park Association recommends for the city’s population, city attorney Michael Windle estimated. And there are other venues for recreation around the city, he said.

It’s a common fight across the country as residents resist new housing to keep their neighborhoods from changing.

“When you say it’s easy to find places to build, no, it isn’t,” Mayor Todd Coppernoll said at a September city council meeting. “We don’t have adequate housing stock at any income level, in my opinion.” 

Richland Center, like many communities, is struggling to provide affordable housing, especially for older people, as its population ages and the number of small home builders declines, according to a Richland County analysis.

The community’s median income is lagging behind its median home value, and “there is not enough affordable housing,” according to a Richland Center study from 2024. 

The city has struggled to find companies to build. When one developer, Enke Properties, zeroed in on Stori Field and agreed to cover the costs for major expenses like utilities, sidewalks and street lights, the city jumped at the offer. On top of the additional housing, the 16-unit development would also generate about $100,000 in annual tax revenue to be split among the city, county and school district, Richland Center city officials estimate. 

The city greenlit the sale of Stori Field on Oct. 7. In response, but before the transfer officially went through, residents submitted a petition with nearly 700 resident signatures asking the city to prohibit any sale without the voters’ consent. Richland Center has a population of about 5,000 people.

On Nov. 13, the same day the clerk certified most of the signatures, the city rejected the petition, saying it omitted necessary language. The city officially sold the land for $1 to the developer the same day. 

“PR-wise, I think they fell on their face,” Mary Collins, a resident of Richland Center and the chair of the Richland County Democratic Party, said of city officials.

But “from a legal perspective, I’m not sure that there’s anything stopping the city in this instance,” said Derek Clinger, a senior staff attorney for the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

On Nov. 21 residents submitted a second petition, which the city acknowledged but says conflicts with the Oct. 7 ordinance it passed authorizing the sale.

In Wisconsin, Clinger said, a direct legislation attempt, in this case the residents’ petition, can’t be used to pass a city ordinance that clearly conflicts with an existing city ordinance. But the city’s actions could certainly have political consequences in future local elections, he noted.

Shelly Dobbs, another leader in the push to protect Stori Field who has also taken the issue to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said her citizen group is considering legal action. 

But the city’s focus on Stori Field has angered some who feel there are opportunities for development elsewhere. The city says it is considering more options in addition to Stori Field.

Ellen Kellar Evans owns two rental properties near Stori Field with her husband and had been working to build 19 single-family homes in the city. She said Richland Center even offered them a $1.5 million federal grant for the project. But she said the city’s unrealistic deadlines and the ire she feels about the Stori Field project have changed things.

“We don’t think we can trust them anymore to make good decisions,” she said.

The city has since pulled the grant.

Residents have repeatedly pointed to the decommissioned University of Wisconsin campus owned by the county as an alternative to Stori Field. In response, the mayor asked Turk, the county board chair, to give an update on the campus at a special meeting Sept. 24.

“The campus is a big chunk of land,” Turk said. “Is it ready to be developed? No.”

But in his emails to The Badger Project, Windle referenced a Nov. 19 presentation the city gave at a county meeting about a proposed subdivision on the campus.

“We feel like we were fooled by thinking that couldn’t be available for years,” Kellar Evans said. “I’m very confused, myself, and I think everyone else is. We just don’t understand.” 

The campus project, Windle said, would be in addition to Stori Field. 

“At this time,” Windle said, “Stori Field is the sole and exclusive property of Enke Properties, LLC.”

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Richland Center residents fight to spare park from city’s affordable housing plans 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.

It can be a scramble to find that perfect holiday gift for a loved one. Luckily, the staff at a western Wisconsin middle school have made it easy — and affordable — for students to buy gifts for their friends and family. Author and teacher Ken Szymanski tells "Wisconsin Life" about this beloved tradition at his school.

The post ‘Everything Must Go’: The holiday store in an Eau Claire middle school appeared first on WPR.

With the loss of key Affordable Care Act tax credits on the horizon, some Wisconsin small business owners and their employees are scrambling to find health care as the final open enrollment deadline approaches. 

The post As ACA cliff approaches, Wisconsin small business owners, employees struggle to find affordable health care appeared first on WPR.

A report released Tuesday from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found gross K-12 school property taxes rose an average of 7.8 percent in December, the largest increase in three decades. 

The post Does your property tax bill seem high? It is. The highest since 2018. appeared first on WPR.

A Fox Valley construction company is suing Green Bay and a contractor over concerns about the city’s bidding process for a park pavilion project.  Neenah-based Miron Construction filed the lawsuit […]

The post Miron Construction sues Green Bay over park project bidding process appeared first on WPR.

Gov. Tony Evers is warning President Donald Trump that federal efforts to block state regulation of AI could endanger kids in Wisconsin.

The post Evers urges Trump to ‘abandon’ AI executive order appeared first on WPR.