U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany who is running for governor, said he had not seen the video of the shooting at a Monday press conference, more than 48 hours after the shooting occurred and as video of the shooting has circulated on social media and in major news outlets. Tiffany at his campaign launch in September 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin politicians are responding to the shooting of Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse from Green Bay who was killed Saturday by U.S. Border Patrol agents. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the frontrunner in the Republican gubernatorial primary, said Monday he hadn’t seen widely circulated video of the shooting.
Pretti’s death prompted protests across the country including in Green Bay, his hometown. Gov. Tony Evers joined a lawsuit challenging the presence of federal immigration agents in the Twin Cities. Other Wisconsin politicians issued a variety of statements reacting to the shooting.
U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, whose district includes Green Bay, called the shooting in Minneapolis a “tragedy” in a statement Monday. Pretti was a graduate of Green Bay’s Preble High School.
“While we await a thorough investigation, I encourage my colleagues to tone down their rhetoric, which has put both law enforcement officers and the public at risk,” Wied said. “We can disagree on the issue but we must do so in a constructive and peaceful manner. Assaulting and impeding federal law enforcement is illegal and a recipe for disaster. As a country, we need to lower the temperature and allow law enforcement to do their jobs.”
Video of the moments leading up to the shooting, which shows Pretti being pinned down by a group of immigration agents before being shot in the back, does not support Trump administration claims that he tried to assault or impede the agents.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, said he had not seen the video of the shooting at a Monday press conference, more than 48 hours after the shooting occurred and as video of the shooting has circulated on social media and in major news outlets. Tiffany also called for “full investigation” of the shooting by the state and federal government.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Tiffany also said people have the right to carry legally registered concealed guns but should consider potential consequences. Pretti was a licensed gun owner, who according to a CNN analysis of bystander video had his gun removed from him before officers shot him.
“The problem is not the Second Amendment. If I saw a quote accurately this morning… it sounds like (Pretti’s) father had some discussion with him recently, saying, ‘Be careful when you go to something like this, make sure that you don’t get caught up in the chaos,” he said. “And unfortunately, he did.”
Democrats, including some who are running for governor, criticized Tiffany.
Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Devin Remiker called Tiffany’s claim not to have seen the video “a pathetic excuse from a pathetic man.”
“Tom Tiffany is, at best, a clueless coward and at worst a liar. Either way, he’s unfit to serve as governor of Wisconsin,” Remiker said.
“You haven’t watched the video yet? Let me sum it up for you,” former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said in a social media post. “Trump’s ICE needlessly killed a US citizen without justification.”
Other Democratic candidates had a variety of responses including calling for immigration agents to vacate Minnesota and calling for the elimination of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. . ICE is responsible for enforcing immigration laws in the United States’s interior, while Border Patrol is supposed to do so near the country’s border, though according to USA Today, the two agencies have become increasingly hard to tell apart under the Trump administration.
State Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) called for the abolishment of ICE after the shooting.
“ICE under Trump is incompatible with a free society. The Trump regime is making every single one of us less safe and less free. They are destroying public safety. They refuse to respect our constitution, our law, or our rights,” Roys said in a statement. “The organized, violent actions of ICE have left us with no other choice but to disarm, dismantle, and prosecute ICE.”
State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), who joined protests according to social media posts, said “Wisconsin stands with everyone resisting ICE in Minnesota” and called ICE an “enforcer of fascism that must be abolished and those responsible for the executions prosecuted.” Last week at a candidate forum with all of the Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls Hong said that “abolishing ICE is a meaningful policy.”
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said that the country needs to “stop pretending that large-scale immigration enforcement operations” in the Midwest are about public safety.
“People — regardless of immigration status or how federal authorities choose to define them — are in danger when ICE operates this way in our neighborhoods,” Crowley said. “At the same time, I echo Gov. Walz and Minnesota officials in urging people not to respond to violence with violence.”
Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who previously had proposed banning ICE from certain sites in Wisconsin, said that “a government that puts its own citizens in harm’s way has failed its most basic responsibility. And I will never look away when the government gets this wrong. We have a choice about who we are and what we stand for: safety without cruelty, accountability without fear, and dignity for every human being.”
Missy Hughes, the former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO, said that “the lawless and deadly ICE invasion of Minneapolis is unAmerican — and Donald Trump is responsible for it.”
Joel Brennan, the former Department of Administration secretary, said he “recoiled in horror” watching the video of the recent fatal shooting and mourns for Pretti. He called for the “occupation” to end in American cities.
U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden has repeatedly claimed that the protests against ICE in Minneapolis are equivalent to an “insurrection.” He said on Monday in a Facebook post that he does not “celebrate the death of any American citizen” and the “deaths are tragic, and they never should have happened.”
But Van Orden blamed Democrats for “fueling hostility toward federal law enforcement.”
“When elected leaders and their allies normalize interference with officers doing their jobs, the outcome is entirely predictable and tragic,” Van Orden said.
Van Orden went on to compare Democratic leaders who have demanded that ICE and Border Patrol agents leave Minneapolis to Civil War Confederates.
“History has seen this before. In 1861, Confederates in the South demanded that federal troops abandon Fort Sumter. They framed it as de-escalation and local control. In reality, it was a rejection of federal authority and the rule of law. What began as political rhetoric and demands to remove federal presence quickly turned into open conflict, with deadly consequences for the nation,” Van Orden said. “As with any officer-involved shooting, this incident is under investigation. I fully support that process and will be closely following its findings. My support for federal law enforcement, and the rule of law they uphold, remains unwavering.”
CNN reported Monday that Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, who has been at the center of the Trump administration immigration enforcement across the country, is leaving Minneapolis and DHS has suspended his access to his social media accounts. Trump is sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to take charge of immigration enforcement operations there.
Rebecca Cooke, who is challenging Van Orden in 2026, said in a social media post that Pretti’s killing represents “a federal agency out of control. ICE needs to vacate Minnesota and leave our neighbors alone. This is not a policy disagreement, this is a moral imperative.”
On July 4th, in the towns and counties of rural western Wisconsin, there were celebrations like on any other Independence Day: grilling bratwurst, drinking Leinenkugel’s, fireworks showering high in the summer night.
That very same day, a thousand miles away in Washington, DC, HR1— also known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) — was signed into law. Yet for people here, the passage of the bill was a mere blip in the national headlines. It was not apparent that it would become an economic earthquake, triggering a tsunami of devastating after-effects soon to crash down on our rural communities.
The massive tax cut and spending bill is the most dramatic restructuring of federal budget priorities in six decades. The president called the OBBBA his “greatest victory” and the “most popular bill ever signed.” The White House issued only a scant 237-word press release summarizing the 900-page law; the substance of the law itself was barely mentioned. When it was enacted, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they knew “little or nothing” about what was in the bill.
When asked about his support of the bill, my own representative from Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, Derrick Van Orden, dismissed any suggestion that the White House had influenced his vote. “The president of the United States didn’t give us an assignment. We’re not a bunch of little bitches around here, OK? I’m a member of Congress, I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites.”
The OBBBA permanently extends the 2017 tax cuts and locks in a historic upward transfer of wealth. The top 1% of households receive an average tax cut of $66,000. Working families earning $53,000 or less get a tax cut of just $325. Roughly $1 trillion dollars will flow to the richest households over the next decade, while Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and health coverage are drastically scaled back, pushing 15 million people off insurance.
‘I want to be part of a strategy, something that’s actually effective’
Last August, 70 of us gathered on a Saturday in Woodville, Wisconsin, population 1,400, with the understanding that something consequential was happening in our nation, yet struggling to figure out how we can respond. We filled a community center on Main Street for six hours: teachers, farmers, retirees, retail workers, students, small business owners. People brought notebooks and coffee. The windows were open. Ceiling fans spun slowly overhead.
“I’m tired of complaining, feeling like a victim, worried about what’s going to happen next,” one of our members put it plainly. “I want to be part of a strategy, something that’s actually effective.”
I organize with Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin (GROWW). Our work has always started from a simple question: How does power move in the places we live? Since the organization began, our focus has been on local issues like housing, agriculture and rural broadband. But, at that meeting in Woodville, we were trying to name what was happening: how the political chaos in our federal government was flowing down to our families, counties, schools, cities, hospitals, town boards. And, most importantly, what we could actually do about it.
That day in Woodville we made a plan. It did not involve protest or messaging. Our organizing has never been about reacting the fastest or shouting the loudest. Power is built methodically: identifying who makes decisions, who feels the consequences, and where solidarity can be established and strengthened before a harm is normalized and written off as inevitable. That is why we started with listening.
“Most Americans don’t realize how dramatically state and local governments — which most directly affect their daily lives — are about to change.”
– Eric Schnurer, public policy consultant
During the following three months we sat down face to face with nearly 100 local leaders across four counties. We met in offices, conference rooms and coffee shops. We spoke with school superintendents, sheriffs, county administrators, hospital executives, clergy, elected officials, business owners. We asked the same questions over and over: what were people experiencing in their jobs, what pressures were they under, what was keeping them up at night?
Many people we spoke with were overwhelmed by the effort required to stay focused on their jobs: the to-do lists, budgets, hiring, planning. One program director told us her job was mostly “putting out fires.” When we asked how they were reacting to federal policy changes, most people didn’t have much to say. Unless it was affecting them today, they didn’t have the luxury to worry about it.
Each conversation made clear how county governments in rural Wisconsin are lifelines, not faceless bureaucracies. They plow snow, run elections, maintain roads, administer BadgerCare and SNAP, respond to mental health crises, operate nursing homes, and answer 911 calls. And they are already stretched thin.
Funding was the issue mentioned the most. A county administrator walked us through the elaborate gymnastics required to balance a county budget under state-imposed levy limits that make raising revenue nearly impossible: wheel taxes, bond sales, consolidating services. One-time fixes layered on top of structural gaps. Again, it came back to resources. Not culture wars, not ideology. Money.
Delaying the pain
What surprised us most was what we did not hear. Despite anxiety about shrinking budgets, very few people mentioned the One Big Beautiful Bill. It had not yet made a mark on their daily work. That is not accidental. The new law is designed to delay the pain, disperse responsibility, and conceal the damage out of public view until it feels inevitable.
We decided to look into the law’s ramifications. We did our own research, and what we learned is that rural and small-town communities in western Wisconsin are in for a slow-motion fiscal disaster, and that regular people will be the ones who pay the price.
Starting in 2027, the federal government is scheduled to cut its share of SNAP administrative costs in half. In counties like Dunn, that shift could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in new local costs. A smaller administrative budget means fewer staff, which means slower processing, higher error rates, and federal penalties that reduce funding even further. The OBBBA seems designed to trigger countless downward spirals that degrade programs until they can be declared broken.
The repercussions for Medicaid follow the same pattern. At Golden Age Manor, the beloved county-run nursing home in Amery, where most of the services are Medicaid funded, even modest reimbursement cuts will translate into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars lost each year. At the same time, more uninsured residents will still need care.
Across our counties, more than 10,000 people rely on ACA Marketplace coverage for their health insurance. Since federal tax credits expired at the end of 2025, families face premium increases averaging around $1,600 a year. Some will pay far more. Many will drop coverage altogether. When they do, costs will shift to county-funded behavioral health systems and other services already operating at the limits of their resources.
One sheriff described what that will look like in practice: “When someone is in a mental health crisis, our deputies already spend hours driving them across the state because there are no beds here,” he said. “If people lose coverage, those crises do not go away. They show up as 911 calls.”
We must act before the tsunami arrives
A tsunami is set in motion by a distant earthquake that no one feels. Life happens on shore while energy gathers fiercely far out at sea. Only a seismograph sounds the alarm. Once the wave arrives, entire cities are engulfed, communities washed out to sea. Trump’s massive tax cut and spending law was that earthquake. We have decided to act before the wave arrives.
Local governments will be forced to navigate what policy expert Eric Schnurer described as “fiscal and operational crises,” but few people will be able to connect what happens to a bill passed last year. “Most Americans don’t realize how dramatically state and local governments — which most directly affect their daily lives — are about to change.”
This fight will not be won by politicians, consultants, or pollsters. It will be won by regular people who have decided to build a movement town by town, county by county, state by state.
County budget hearings were held in November. They often happen with no public comment, gaveled in and gaveled out in a matter of minutes. Last year we showed up and filled the rooms. We brought letters we had drafted, breaking down projected budget impacts county by county. We delivered testimony from the podium. Our goal was not to blame our county leaders, but to signal our alignment with them.
After one hearing, a county administrator, a self-identified fiscal conservative, met with us and said, “Every point you raised in your letter was correct. Our county government has to brace for what’s coming, and you made that clear to everyone in the room.”
The people who will be hit hardest
We know our county boards are not responsible for causing this disaster, yet they will be forced to deal with it, while we, the residents, will be the ones who feel the cuts most deeply. Our members of Congress who voted “yes” for this bill are the ones responsible for this mess.
Letters and testimony are not enough. What we need is power. For regular people like us, there is but one path to power: organizing. That means we have to talk to those who will be most affected, inviting them to see their personal stake in this fight. The single parent in River Falls, juggling two part-time jobs and relying on SNAP to keep food on the table. The kid with asthma in Boyceville, whose parents rely on ACA coverage, now at risk of losing access to care. The retired farmer outside Balsam Lake, whose wife’s long-term care at Golden Age Manor nursing home is covered through Medicaid.
Our long game is to begin the conversation about what it will take for Congress to repeal the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The path to repeal will be fraught with political roadblocks and fiercely opposed by the corporate class, which has been true for every consequential victory working people have ever won in this country. Repealing the law must become a defining issue in every political conversation in America – at dinner tables, at bus stops, and on Reddit threads – starting now and continuing until the law is gone.
While showering billionaires with tax benefits, the OBBBA also massively expands the machinery of repression. It quadrupled the budget of ICE, expanding its force by 10,000 agents
Cracks are already beginning to form. Earlier this month, Rep. Van Orden, along with 17 other Republicans in the House of Representatives, backpedaled on his support of the OBBBA by voting to extend ACA tax credits (more than 30,000 people are expected to lose health insurance in Van Orden’s district). However, the opposition stiffens. Shortly after the vote, in a disciplinary move, Americans For Prosperity announced it was pausing support for those who defected.
Cutting services, expanding the machinery of repression
As I write, immigration agents are spilling into western Wisconsin from Minneapolis, swarming small towns and rural communities across the region. They are driving unmarked vehicles with out-of-state plates. Some members of our organization have built rapid response networks in solidarity with immigrant-led groups. Meanwhile, our neighbors are being terrorized, taken from their homes, and families are being ripped apart. Some local Mexican restaurants and grocery stores have closed their doors. Just sixty miles west, in Minneapolis, two American citizens have been killed by ICE agents.
This is not a coincidence. While showering billionaires with tax benefits, the OBBBA also massively expands the machinery of repression. It quadrupled the budget of ICE, expanding its force by 10,000 agents and thereby transforming the agency into one larger than most national militaries. On one hand, the administration subjects us to the cruel spectacle of paramilitary raids, disappearances and death. On the other, the administration dismantles the social safety nets that keep people alive, then redistributes public resources to the wealthiest few. A loud disruptive culture war creates a smokescreen for a quiet methodical class war.
The fight for Congress to repeal the OBBBA will be a David versus Goliath fight. It is a fight about whether the super-rich will be able to bleed us dry and starve our local institutions. Whether our neighbors will die as wealth is extracted from above. Whether daily life for a majority of Americans will be defined by relentless top-down class war.
This fight will not be won by politicians, consultants, or pollsters. It will be won by regular people who have decided to build a movement town by town, county by county, state by state. The ramifications of the OBBBA are so wide and deep that a new political coalition will be necessary, one big enough to include anyone who isn’t a billionaire. Republicans, Democrats, independents, libertarians, socialists, and people who’ve lost faith in politics altogether. White people, brown people, Black people, young people, old people. The poor, the working class, the middle class.
An unwavering commitment to big tent politics and multiracial solidarity is how we defeat the divide-and-conquer tactics this administration relies upon. Building trust and power across differences. Not reinforcing divides through purity tests or theoretical debate. Listening for common ground and shared humanity. Seeing every person as a potential ally, not an enemy to defeat. We must organize, strategize and mobilize until regular Americans have won the freedom to make ends meet, live with dignity, and have a voice in the decisions that affect us.
(The Center Square) – Medical training using live animals would be prohibited if human-relevant or non-animal methods are available instead, a new proposal in Wisconsin says.
(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers says that he believes that absentee voters need to have their ballots counted if they follow all the rules, calling it a “basic tenet” in a brief in a class-action lawsuit against…
(The Center Square) – Providing more than $1 billion in property tax relief is possible because of common ground, says the top Republican in the Wisconsin Assembly.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers criticized an argument by Madison and its former city clerk that they shouldn’t be held liable for losing 193 absentee ballots because absentee voting is a “privilege,” writing in a court filing that accepting such an argument would “lead to absurd results.”
The argument is key to the city’s defense against a lawsuit that seeks monetary damages on behalf of the 193 Madison residents whose votes in the November 2024 election weren’t counted. It was first presented by the former clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, citing a provision of state law, and then adopted by the city.
If courts accept the argument that absentee voting is a privilege and not a right, the Democratic governor said in a friend-of-the-court brief, election officials would be free to treat absentee ballots in ways that diminish people’s right to vote. For example, he wrote, they would be under no obligation to send voters replacement ballots if ballots they left in a drop box were damaged, and clerks could effectively disqualify ballots from politically disfavored precincts by intentionally not signing their initials on the ballot envelopes.
Experts say that for a governor to intervene in such a local matter is rare and underscores how seriously Evers views the potential implications. In an earlier communication with the court, the governor said the argument from the city and Witzel-Behl “ignores longstanding state constitutional protections.”
Barry Burden, a political science professor at UW-Madison, said Democrats are likely conflicted by the case, seeking to prevent election administration failures like those in Madison while also resisting arguments that could weaken protections for absentee voting in Wisconsin.
“They’re in a weird place to be criticizing absentee balloting in Madison, one of the most Democratic cities in the state,” he said, adding that he thinks the governor “is speaking for the Democratic Party in getting involved in this case” to convey that it is an “isolated incident” and that the party does not share the position that “absentee voting should be treated any differently in terms of the protections that are given to voters than people who vote in person.’”
In his filing Friday, the governor noted that about 45% of ballots in the 2024 presidential election were absentee.
“The constitutional right to vote,” Evers wrote, “would mean little if close to half of all voters in Wisconsin were deprived of it because they chose to legally cast an absentee ballot.”
Witzel-Behl, former clerk, stands by the ‘privilege’ defense
The lawsuit against Madison officials is a novel type of case in seeking monetary damages over the loss of voting rights. Liberal law firm Law Forward filed the case against the city and the clerk’s office, along with Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities, alleging that through a series of errors that led to 193 absentee ballots getting lost in the November 2024 election, election workers disenfranchised the voters and violated their constitutional rights.
As part of their defense, attorneys for Witzel-Behl argued in a court filing that by choosing to vote absentee, the 193 voters “exercised a privilege rather than a constitutional right,” and that she therefore couldn’t be held financially liable for the lost ballots. Madison later joined that argument.
Law Forward rejected the argument in a response filed in late December, calling it a “shocking proposition.”
Attorneys for the city and the former clerk submitted their own briefs last week.
Attorneys for Witzel-Behl reiterated their argument that absentee voting is a privilege and not a constitutional right, adding that “an error in the handling or delivery of an absentee ballot is not the constitutional equivalent of barring the door to the voting booth.”
While absentee ballots should normally be counted, they argued, not counting them because of an unintentional error isn’t a constitutional violation for which they should be financially liable.
Rather than following court precedent, they said, the plaintiffs seek to create a “new, foundationless doctrine allowing monetary damages for the mishandling of an absentee ballot.”
Other defendants zero in on novel monetary claim
In a separate brief, Verbick, the deputy clerk, said he “does not, of course, dispute that Plaintiffs have a right to vote” but rather alleges that there’s no path for the plaintiffs to seek monetary damages for the city’s error.
The city, in another brief, similarly said that no court case cited by Law Forward allows plaintiffs to seek damages for ballots that are unintentionally mishandled.
Allowing such claims, outside attorneys for the city warned, would push courts into “dangerous, untested waters.”
“As other courts have cautioned,” they said, “exposing local election officials to financial liability for unintentional disenfranchisement would thrust courts into the minutia of any given election, a role for which courts are unsuited.”
In a separate statement, the city said it believes that all forms of voting, including absentee voting, should be “encouraged, promoted and protected.” But it argued against attaching a dollar amount to a mishandled vote.
Doing so, it said, “would end up regularly costing cities, towns and municipalities hundreds, thousands — or in this case millions — of dollars that could otherwise be spent improving voter access and elections processes.”
Absentee voting has changed substantially since law’s enactment
The law cited by Witzel-Behl’s attorneys labeling absentee voting a privilege — one that may require more regulation than in-person voting — dates back to 1985. It was enacted after judges in a series of Wisconsin court cases called for more liberal interpretation of absentee voting rules. While it has previously been used to invalidate absentee ballots on which voters did not follow procedure, it has so far not been used in support of a locality failing to properly count votes.
“Absentee voting has changed so radically in the 40 years since the law was written,” Burden said. “It was used by a very small number of voters, it was more difficult to use, there were more witness requirements at the time, and clerks were not really as amenable to absentee voting as they are today.”
Today, absentee voting is an expected and routine part of elections.
“So to treat it as kind of a special class with different rules or rights, maybe in the 1980s that made more sense,” Burden said. “But now it’s as important as any other kind of voting and so it seems more peculiar, I think, to treat it in some different way.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
In less than 200 days, fall primary voters will head to the polls to choose the candidates they hope can win control of the governor’s office.
For those who decide to vote in the Democratic primary, there are plenty of options, with a range of political experience, gender and racial backgrounds, and left-wing to left-of-center political views. But recent campaign finance reports and candidate performances at a small business forum in Milwaukee show no clear front-runner yet.
The Democratic race is reminiscent of the party’s 2018 primary field, when 10 candidates (two dropped out before the primary) ran to unseat former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in another favorable year for Democrats during President Donald Trump’s first term. Tony Evers, the relatively moderate, soft-spoken, aw-shucks, occasionally cussing, thrice elected to statewide office, old white guy from the Sheboygan area, won the primary with 42% of the vote and eventually two terms as governor.
The major candidates in the Democratic field this time include (in alphabetical order) former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and Madison state Sen. Kelda Roys, who also ran in 2018.
Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, third from left, speaks to the audience during the year’s first Democratic gubernatorial candidate forum Jan. 21, 2026, hosted by Main Street Action at The Cooperage in Milwaukee. The candidates are, from left, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez; Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley; Hong; Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison; former WEDC director Missy Hughes; former DOA Secretary Joel Brennan and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
In the Republican primary, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany are the only major candidates at this time.
Barnes, who lost the 2022 U.S. Senate race against Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson by just over 26,000 votes, has been considered the initial front-runner due to the name recognition that comes from running in a major statewide election. But campaign fundraising reports from the second half of 2025 released in mid-January show no person out significantly in front of the pack. Crowley topped the group with almost $800,000 in fundraising, reports show.
The next Marquette University Law School poll that will gauge how voters feel about candidates in the governor’s race is expected to be released on Feb. 25. The October poll, released before Barnes and Brennan joined the race, showed 81% of Democratic primary voters hadn’t made up their minds.
The Republican campaigns are watching how far to the left the Democrats go, said Bill McCoshen, a lobbyist and Republican strategist who previously worked for former Gov. Tommy Thompson.
“They want the top tier to get sort of sucked into that discussion of progressive policies and to say things that make them more liberal than moderate,” McCoshen said.
Elements of this already appeared at a Democratic gubernatorial forum organized by Main Street Action in Milwaukee last week. At times candidates tried to one-up each other on questions about supporting a public option for BadgerCare, taxing the rich and protecting civil rights from federal overreach in the wake of immigration enforcement in Minnesota.
Asked whether they would increase taxes on the wealthiest, Hughes said her priority would be growing the economy “because my fear is if we simply increase taxes on the wealthy, the next team will get elected and come back in and take that away.” Brennan said Democrats need to build more trust in how elected leaders spend public money. Barnes pledged to “do bold things” including taxing the wealthy.
“The wealthy have gotten away without paying their fair share for far too long,” Barnes said.
Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, third from left, speaks to the audience alongside Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, from left, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, and Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, during the year’s first Democratic gubernatorial candidate forum, Jan. 21, 2026, hosted by Main Street Action at The Cooperage in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Former DOA Secretary Joel Brennan, second from left, speaks to the audience alongside former WEDC director Missy Hughes, left, and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, third from left, during the year’s first Democratic gubernatorial candidate forum Jan. 21, 2026, hosted by Main Street Action at The Cooperage in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Rodriguez, Crowley, Roys and Hong all agreed the state needs a public option for BadgerCare. Rodriguez added she supports extending Medicaid to 12 months postpartum, which has bipartisan support in the Legislature. Crowley said the state needs to figure out how to plug the holes left by the expiration of Obamacare subsidies. Hong and Roys both said a public option is not enough.
“Health care should be a right, not a privilege that we ration based on your wealth or your job,” Roys said.
In 2018, Wisconsin Democrats were “hungry for a win” after two terms of the Walker administration, and Evers’ statewide election success as superintendent of public instruction appealed to Democratic voters, said Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Without Walker to run against in 2026, there are multiple factors that could play a role in pushing one of the Democrats out in front, Chergosky said. It could be electability, like Evers in 2018, a compelling biographical story, unique political experience or signature policy issues.
Just this month, several candidates released major policy proposals. Rodriguez shared an immigration response plan requiring a judicial warrant for federal agents to enter sensitive locations. Hughes announced an economic development plan that includes building 200,000 homes by the end of her first term. Barnes released a proposal to lower the cost of groceries by providing grants for opening grocery stores in food deserts. Hong called for a moratorium on data center construction in Wisconsin and directing any sales and use tax exemptions from data centers into green energy infrastructure.
The candidates recognize there’s “a ton of folks” running, as Hughes said. Barnes, Crowley and Hughes, speaking to reporters after the Main Street Action forum, emphasized some of the factors that could make their candidacy stand out to primary voters.
For Barnes, it’s his experience as lieutenant governor during the COVID-19 pandemic and his “bold vision” for Wisconsin. Hughes pointed to her private sector experience and the fact that she hails from outside Madison and Milwaukee. Crowley highlighted his Milwaukee County executive experience working with both Republican and Democratic leaders.
By the August primary, some candidates may drop out and endorse others. Whoever wins may only have to secure a thin slice of the Democratic primary vote, setting up potential divisions within the party heading into the general election, Chergosky said.
“It’s plausible that someone could win the nomination with 25 to 30% of the vote,” Chergosky said. “And at that point, the question becomes, if that nominee truly represents the will of the party.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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At least four major data center projects in Wisconsin were developed after local community leaders signed a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) with the companies. In Beaver Dam, Meta used two shell companies to develop its project in secret.
In one community without a data center NDA, DeForest, the village president offered misleading comments to the public about how long officials knew about the proposal.
Several states, including Wisconsin, have legislative proposals to ban data center NDAs. Data center advocates say NDAs are necessary to ensure private companies continue to invest in local communities.
How did a $1 billion, 520-acre data center proposed by one of the world’s richest companies go unnoticed in tiny Beaver Dam, Wisconsin?
A key reason: In a city that lists “communication matters” atop its core values, officials took steps to keep the project hidden for more than a year.
Now Meta, the trillion-dollar company that owns Facebook and Instagram, is building a complex as big as 12 football fields in a city with a population of 16,000, enough to fill only a fifth of Lambeau Field.
It’s one of seven major data center projects pending in Wisconsin that combined are worth more than $57 billion.
In four of them, including Beaver Dam, local government officials kept the massive projects under wraps through confidential nondisclosure agreements (NDAs), a Wisconsin Watch investigation has found.
Secrecy also occurred in the three communities without NDAs.
In one, the Madison suburb of DeForest, officials worked behind the scenes for months before publicly announcing a proposed $12 billion data center, which residents are fighting.
The lack of public disclosure, while relatively common for typical development proposals in the planning stages, raises questions about how much time the public should have to digest projects that dramatically affect the economy, land use, energy, taxes, the environment and more.
“As soon as community leadership is contemplating, even entertaining it, I think they need to make the public aware,” said retired tech executive Prescott Balch, who is advising residents around Wisconsin where data centers are proposed.
“Even if it makes it harder, that’s the right way to do it. And nobody is doing it that way.”
Blowback from residents who have been kept in the dark has spurred a new legislative proposal that would ban data center NDAs statewide.
How Beaver Dam did it
Wisconsin has some 40 data centers, stretching from Kenosha to Eau Claire. But most are tiny compared with the big seven: three under construction in Beaver Dam, Mount Pleasant and Port Washington; and four proposed in DeForest, Janesville, Kenosha and Menomonie.
Besides storing and processing data, data centers are vital to advancing the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
A case study in how projects each worth $1 billion or more are kept quiet is Beaver Dam, the Dodge County burg an hour northeast of Madison, where Meta’s data center is expected to open in 2027.
Construction is ongoing at the 350-plus-acre Beaver Dam Commerce Park where a new Meta data center is being built, photographed on Jan. 20, 2026, in Beaver Dam, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The Beaver Dam Area Development Corp., a quasi-government nonprofit that functions as the city’s economic development arm, signed an NDA on Dec. 1, 2023, not with Meta, but with a shell company no one had ever heard of, Balloonist LLC.
The agreement referred only to a “project,” making no mention of a data center or Meta.
The NDA was signed “very early, almost in the introductory period of that project,” the development corporation’s leader, Trent Campbell, told Wisconsin Watch. All major development projects have “different levels of confidentiality for different purposes. And this entity believed it to be necessary at the onset of the conversations.”
The NDA meant that the Beaver Dam Area Development Corp. could not reveal its discussions with Balloonist, or even disclose “the existence of the project.”
The NDA also put the wheels in motion.
For more than a year, the city quietly took official actions to make the data center a reality, including:
July 2024: The city council voted 12-0 to approve a predevelopment agreement with another shell company, Degas LLC, that only later was identified with the data center. The agenda and the minutes of the meeting don’t mention a data center.
November 2024: The city council created a tax incremental finance (TIF) district for the data center to help fund development. The agenda and the minutes for that meeting do not mention a data center, though the agreement itself does.
Beaver Dam city and economic development officials worked with two shell companies as they developed a $1 billion, 520-acre data center. Meta announced its involvement in December 2025. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Not until February 2025 — 14 months after the NDA was signed — did the Beaver Dam Area Development Corp. announce that it and the city were working with a company — then still unidentified — on a “potential data center project.”
Campbell noted to Wisconsin Watch that Gov. Tony Evers and other officials had identified the site for a major development as far back as 2019. For months after the NDA was signed, it wasn’t known whether the data center would come to fruition, he added.
“I know the opponents currently disagree, but I think the city acted in as transparent a way as they could,” Campbell said.
Eventually, a news report in April 2025 identified Meta, which declined comment for this story, as the company likely behind the data center.
Meta confirmed its involvement eight months later, saying on Facebook: “We’re proud to call Beaver Dam home. We are honored to have joined such an incredible community in 2025.”
The first reply to that post was from a Beaver Dam resident, who wrote: “We would have been honored to have the opportunity to decline this.”
Secrecy without an NDA
NDAs also helped keep the public in the dark about data centers under consideration in the three other cities that used them.
Menomonie signed its NDA with Balloonist LLC in February 2024 — more than a year before the city in northwest Wisconsin announced a $1.6 billion data center proposal in July 2025. Two months after the NDA, the city council unanimously helped pave the way for a data center by changing a land use ordinance. The change gave, for the first time, a definition of the ordinance’s reference to “warehousing,” saying warehousing includes data centers. The city’s mayor put the proposed data center on hold in September 2025. In January 2026, the city council adopted a zoning ordinance for data centers that reversed the warehousing definition. “Based upon feedback from the community and elected officials, it is clear that additional discussion should occur regarding the appropriate level of regulation of data centers,” the city’s public works director told the council and the mayor.
Kenosha signed its NDA, with Microsoft, in May 2024, six months before news reports surfaced saying the NDA kept the proposed data center operator’s name confidential. It was later announced that Microsoft had purchased 240 acres in the neighboring town of Paris, which the city annexed in December 2024. No dollar amount for the proposal has been announced.
Janesville announced in July 2025 it was approached by developers about a data center and put out a request for proposal. The city signed its NDA two months later and is now in negotiations with Viridian Acquisitions, a Colorado developer, for an $8 billion data center.
The sun sets as construction continues at Microsoft’s data center project Nov. 13, 2025, in Mount Pleasant, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Port Washington in Ozaukee County and Mount Pleasant in Racine County responded to records requests from Wisconsin Watch saying they had not signed NDAs for their data centers.
In Port Washington, where three people were arrested during a city council meeting on the data center in December, residents are trying to recall Mayor Ted Neitzke, saying he has been secretive about the $15 billion data center from OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage Data Centers.
In Mount Pleasant, Microsoft this month announced plans to add 15 data centers, worth $13 billion, to the $7 billion complex under construction there.
NDAs are described by economic development officials as necessary and criticized by data center opponents as against the public interest.
NDAs and other steps to protect confidentiality are crucial at the early stages of a development proposal, said Tricia Braun, executive director of the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition.
“If I’m a company considering making strategic investments, regardless of industry, I don’t want my competition to know where I’m going, what I’m doing, what pace I’m doing it at,” said Braun, a former executive at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. “You want to make sure everything is buttoned up and bow tied before that type of information is put into the public realm.”
Questions have swirled around transparency even in communities where local government officials did not sign NDAs.
That includes DeForest, which lists “communicate clearly” among its core values.
The DeForest data center, proposed by Virginia-based QTS Data Centers, is controversial, in part, because the village board would have to annex 1,600 acres in the neighboring town of Vienna.
DeForest Village President Jane Cahill Wolfgram looks on during a village board meeting at DeForest Village Hall in DeForest, Wis., on Jan. 20, 2026. As negotiations between QTS and the village of DeForest continue, members of the public attended a village board meeting to speak in support and opposition to the proposed development. (Kayla Wolf for Wisconsin Watch)
At one DeForest Village Board meeting about the project, Village President Jane Cahill Wolfgram said that based on emails she had been receiving from residents, there was “just one thing I think we need to clear up.”
“And you can ask any one of these board members. They will tell you, they just learned about this project in the last couple of weeks.”
That was Nov. 18, 2025.
But Village Board trustees had been offered one-on-one meetings with the developer some 10 weeks earlier, trustee Jan Steffenhagen-Hahn said in an email to Vienna resident Shawn Haney.
“Because of the scale of this project,” that’s when residents should have been notified, said Haney, a leader of a group that opposes the data center.
Other emails obtained by the group show that DeForest staff were strategizing with QTS representatives and Alliant Energy as early as March 2025 — seven months before announcing the proposal last October.
Members of the public attend a village board meeting at DeForest Village Hall in DeForest, Wis., on Jan. 20, 2026. (Kayla Wolf for Wisconsin Watch)
In one email, the village planner discussed with QTS representatives when to seek various village approvals, including annexation, while acknowledging that doing so without disclosing “any details of the project or operations will be difficult.”
Cahill Wolfgram told Wisconsin Watch she in fact had met with QTS on Oct. 1, three weeks before the public announcement. She expressed frustration that many residents are urging trustees to stop the data center.
“They’ve been brought in from the very early moments of this discussion and they have continued to be front and center of everything we’ve done,” Cahill Wolfgram said. “As village president, I know of nothing that has been done behind the scenes.”
A public hearing on the annexation is scheduled for Feb. 9.
Lydia Reid returns to her seat after speaking in opposition to the QTS data center development during a village board meeting at DeForest Village Hall in DeForest, Wis., on Jan. 20, 2026. Reid is concerned about the process that the village is using to allow the data center development. (Kayla Wolf for Wisconsin Watch)
Sheri Stach hands out stickers in opposition to the QTS data center development prior to a village board meeting at DeForest Village Hall in DeForest, Wis., on Jan. 20, 2026. (Kayla Wolf for Wisconsin Watch)
The state Department of Administration, which reviews annexation proposals and issues advisory opinions, concluded the DeForest annexation is not in the public interest because of concerns over how the village would provide water and sewer services for the annexed area.
The Clean Economy Coalition of Wisconsin has called for state leaders to pause consideration of any data centers until a comprehensive strategy on them is adopted. In part, the coalition said comprehensive planning is needed to avoid more “stranded assets.”
Wisconsin Watch reported in December that Wisconsin utility ratepayers owe nearly $1 billion for stranded assets — coal power plants that have been or soon will be shut down. A push to provide new energy capacity for data centers poses the risk of creating more stranded assets.
Some states targeting NDAs
Microsoft on Jan. 13 announced new standards aimed at being a “good neighbor in the communities where we build, own and operate our data centers.” It mentioned transparency five times.
But University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers called Microsoft’s initial Mount Pleasant data center a “microcosm of a larger problem with secrecy and lack of transparency about water and electricity demands” of data centers throughout the country. That, they wrote, “harms the public’s ability to determine whether hosting a data center is in their best interest.”
The sun sets as construction continues at Microsoft’s data center project on Nov. 13, 2025, in Mount Pleasant, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Mount Pleasant has wanted a major development where the data center is now under construction because a massive development signed with Foxconn in 2017 largely fell through.
Local government use of NDAs and other methods to keep data center development secret is widespread across the U.S.
In Minnesota, local elected officials were aware of data center proposals for months or even years before disclosing them. In Virginia, 25 out of 31 data center projects had NDAs. In one New Mexico county, county staff negotiated for a $165 billion data center with an NDA that kept elected officials in the dark.
Several states are targeting NDAs.
At least three — Florida, Michigan and New Jersey — are considering legislation to prohibit governments from signing data center NDAs. A Georgia bill would prohibit NDAs that hide information about data center electricity or water usage. New York is considering a bill to limit NDAs for economic development proposals generally.
Now, similar legislation is pending in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin state Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, is photographed during a press conference on Nov. 14, 2023, in the Wisconsin State Capitol building in Madison, Wis. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
Last week, state Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, citing questions about transparency over the Menomonie proposal, introduced legislation to prohibit NDAs for data center proposals in Wisconsin.
“I’ve never seen such overwhelming opposition from all sides of the aisle,” he told Wisconsin Watch, describing constituents’ feelings about data centers and secrecy surrounding them.
Moses said he understands the need for confidentiality in economic development generally, but because data centers have such widespread impact, public notice is paramount.
“The earlier the better,” he said.
Braun, the data center coalition leader, said the public should be notified when a data center proposal is ready to be considered for approvals by elected officials — after municipal staff do due diligence to determine whether things such as zoning, utility capacity, water and sewer would make a proposal potentially viable.
Balch, who helped defeat a proposed data center in the Racine County village of Caledonia, where he lives, said the public should be alerted well before local elected officials consider such votes.
“You have to use your judgment,” he said. “But at some point, you need to realize this is not a normal thing and we need to look out for the residents.”
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CoCounsel Legal is an artificial intelligence tool that acts as a virtual assistant for legal professionals. More people in the legal field are using AI to automate repetitive tasks and save time, but hallucinations have led to fake cases and false information in legal documents. (Photo by Madyson Fitzgerald/Stateline)
Last spring, Illinois county judge Jeffrey Goffinet noticed something startling: A legal brief filed in his courtroom cited a case that did not exist.
Goffinet, an associate judge in Williamson County, looked through two legal research systems and then headed to the courthouse library — a place he hadn’t visited in years — to consult the book that purportedly listed the case. The case wasn’t in it.
The fake case, generated by artificial intelligence, came across Goffinet’s desk just a few months after the Illinois Supreme Court’s policy on the use of AI in the courts took effect. Goffinet co-chaired a task force that informed that policy, which allows the use of AI as long as it complies with existing legal and ethical standards.
“People are going to use [AI], and the courts are not going to be able to be a dam across a river that’s already flowing at flood capacity,” Goffinet said. “We have to learn how to coexist with it.”
As more false quotes, fake court cases and incorrect information appear in legal documents generated by AI, state bar associations, state court systems and national law organizations are issuing guidance on its use in the legal field. A handful of states are considering or enacting legislation to address the issue, and many courts and professional associations are focused on education for attorneys.
From divorce cases to discrimination lawsuits, AI-generated fake content can cause evidence to be dismissed and motions to be denied.
While some states urge attorneys to lean on existing guidance about accuracy and transparency, the new policies address AI concerns related to confidentiality, competency and costs. Most policies and opinions encourage attorneys to educate themselves and to use proprietary AI tools that prevent sensitive data from being entered into open source systems. Since AI tools could also increase efficiency, several policies advise attorneys to charge less if they spend less time on cases.
Some states, such as Ohio, also ban the use of artificial intelligence for certain legal tasks. In Ohio, courts are prohibited from using AI to translate legal forms, court orders and similar content that may affect the outcome of a case.
Several states have also advised legal professionals to adhere to the American Bar Association’s formal opinion of ethical AI use in law.
Artificial intelligence can help attorneys and law firms by automating administrative tasks, analyzing contracts and organizing documents. Generative AI can also be used to draft legal documents, including court briefs. Experts say the use of AI productivity tools can save legal professionals time and reduce the risk of human error in everyday tasks.
But law professionals nationwide have faced fines and license suspensions, among other consequences, for submitting legal documents citing false quotes, cases or information.
Many legal professionals are likely to not notice instances in which an AI system is “hallucinating,” or confidently making statements that are not true, said Rabihah Butler, the manager for enterprise content for Risk, Fraud and Government at the Thomson Reuters Institute. The institute is a research subsidiary of the Thomson Reuters company, which sells an AI system meant to help lawyers.
AI has such confidence, and it can appear so polished, that if you're not paying attention and doing your due diligence, the hallucination is being treated as a factual piece of information.
– Rabihah Butler, manager for enterprise content for Risk, Fraud and Government at the Thomson Reuters Institute
Courts and law organizations will need to consider education, sanctions and punitive actions to ensure law professionals are using AI appropriately, Butler said.
“AI has such confidence, and it can appear so polished, that if you’re not paying attention and doing your due diligence, the hallucination is being treated as a factual piece of information,” she said.
Since the beginning of 2025, there have been 518 documented cases in which generative AI produced hallucinated content used in U.S. courts, according to a database by Damien Charlotin, a senior research fellow at the HEC Paris business school.
“So far, if we’re looking at the institutional response, there’s not a lot because people are not very sure how to handle this kind of issue,” Charlotin said. “Everyone is aware that some lawyers are using artificial intelligence in their day-to-day work. Most people are aware that the technology is not very mature. But it’s still hard to prevent a mistake.”
State guidance
As of Jan. 23, state bar associations or similar entities have issued formal guidance on the use of AI in at least 10 states and the District of Columbia, typically in the form of an ethics opinion. Those aren’t enforceable as law, but spell out proper conduct.
In February, for example, the Professional Ethics Committee for the State Bar of Texas issued an ethics opinion that outlines issues that may arise from law professionals using AI. Texas lawyers should have a basic understanding of generative AI tools and guardrails to protect client confidentiality, it said. They should also verify any content generated by AI and refrain from charging clients for the time saved by using AI tools.
Legal professionals must be aware of their own competency with AI tools, said Brad Johnson, the executive director of the Texas Center for Legal Ethics.
“A really important takeaway from the opinion is that if a lawyer is considering using a generative AI tool in the practice of law, the lawyer has to have a reasonable and current understanding of the technology because only then can a lawyer really evaluate the risks that are associated with it,” he said.
Illinois, for instance, allows lawyers to use artificial intelligence and does not require disclosure. The policy also emphasizes that judges will ultimately be responsible for their decisions, regardless of “technological advancements.”
“The task force wanted to emphasize that as judges, what we bring to the table is our humanity,” said Goffinet, the associate judge. “And we cannot abdicate our humanity in favor of an AI-generated decision or opinion.”
Some state lawmakers have tried to address the issue through legislation. Last year, Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed a measure that requires attorneys to use “reasonable diligence” to verify the authenticity of evidence, including content generated by artificial intelligence. The law also allows parties in civil cases to raise concerns about the admissibility of evidence if they suspect it was generated or altered by artificial intelligence.
California Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg also introduced legislation last year that would require attorneys to ensure confidential information is not entered into a public generative AI system. The measure, which was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, also would require attorneys to ensure that reasonable steps are taken to verify the accuracy of generative AI material.
Attorney education
It’s also important for state bar associations and law schools to provide education on artificial intelligence, said Michael Hensley, a counsel at FBT Gibbons and an advocate for the safe use of AI in California courts. AI has the ability to reduce research time just like online legal research systems, but it requires training, he said.
“I would hope the state bar would have training for this,” Hensley said. “And I think it’s absolutely imperative that law schools have a session on AI.”
In a Bloomberg Law survey conducted last spring, 51% of the more than 750 respondents said their law firms purchased or invested in generative artificial intelligence tools. Another 21% said they planned to purchase AI tools within the next year. Attorneys reported using generative AI for general legal research, drafting communications, summarizing legal narratives, reviewing legal documents and other work.
Of the law firms that were not using generative AI, attorneys cited incorrect or unreliable output, ethical issues, security risks and data privacy as the top reasons.
While attorneys and law firms have become more comfortable with AI tools, courts have been more apprehensive, said Diane Robinson, a principal court research associate at the National Center for State Courts. Robinson is also project director at the Thomson Reuters Institute/NCSC AI Policy Consortium for Law and Courts, an association of legal practitioners and researchers developing guidance and resources for the use of AI in courts.
AI has the potential to improve case processing and can allow people needing legal advice to find information by using AI chatbots, she said. But, she added, courts are still struggling with evidence altered by AI and briefs littered with hallucinations.
“Fake evidence is nothing new,” Robinson said. “People have been altering photographs as long as there were photographs. But with AI, the ability to create videos, audio and pictures has become very easy, and courts are really struggling with it.”
Charlotin, of HEC Paris, said most courts and professional associations will continue to focus on education right now.
“You cannot prevent a mistake just by telling people, ‘Don’t make a mistake,’” Charlotin said. “That doesn’t work. It’s more about setting up processes to make people aware of it, then they can set up processes to work on dealing with it.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly speaks with reporters in the Mansfield Room of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Dec. 1, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly’s lawyers on Monday urged a federal judge to block the Defense Department from downgrading his retirement rank as a Navy captain and his pay for telling U.S. troops they aren’t required to follow illegal orders.
Paul J. Fishman wrote in a 35-page filing that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempt to punish Kelly for appearing in the video alongside other members of Congress violates several constitutional rights.
“As a decorated combat veteran and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Kelly is deeply committed to the necessity of good order and discipline in the armed forces,” Fishman wrote. “He asks this Court to reinforce, not degrade, those principles.
“His speech—simply reminding servicemembers of their fundamental obligation not to follow unlawful orders— promotes good order. And discipline does not demand silence —particularly from those no longer serving on active duty.”
Fishman firmly rejected the Department of Justice’s assertion in a brief filed last week that the federal court system has no authority over the Defense Department’s actions in this instance.
“Defendants begin from the premise that questions of ‘military discipline’ lie beyond judicial review,” Fishman wrote. “Their claim that this Court is ‘not permitted to address’ Senator Kelly’s challenge disregards reams of precedent reviewing military disciplinary actions and demands an untenable level of deference.”
Senior Judge Richard J. Leon, who was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush, had scheduled a hearing on the issue for Wednesday, but postponed that until Feb. 3 due to the snowstorm.
Hegseth pursues penalties
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced earlier this month that he had started the process to downgrade Kelly’s retirement rank and pay, writing in a social media post that his “status as a sitting United States Senator does not exempt him from accountability, and further violations could result in further action.”
The Defense Department letter of censure to Kelly alleged that his participation in the video undermined the military chain of command, counseled disobedience, created confusion about duty, brought discredit upon the Armed Forces and included conduct unbecoming of an officer.
The video at the center of the debate featured Kelly, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander, all Democrats with backgrounds in the military or intelligence community.
They said that Americans in those institutions “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.”
Kelly lawyer’s arguments
Fishman wrote in his brief that the Trump administration is asking the court to “embrace a novel rule” regarding the First Amendment: “that retired military veterans have no constitutional protection for their speech whenever the Secretary of Defense—in his sole discretion and without even identifying all of the speech at issue—concludes that it ‘risks undermining military discipline and good order.’”
The Justice Department’s brief from last week, he wrote, erroneously argued that retired military officers can legally face punishment for speaking out against Defense Department policies they oppose.
“From Alexander Hamilton denouncing President Adams’s fitness to command during the Quasi-War, to modern episodes in which retired generals publicly called for Secretary Rumsfeld’s resignation over the Iraq War, retired officers have long participated forcefully in public debate over military policy,” Fishman wrote.
“The same is true today: retired servicemembers, including Members of Congress, have openly criticized presidential decisions ranging from the Afghanistan withdrawal to vaccination requirements,” he added. “Many continue to serve with distinction as legislators, governors, and federal judges. Yet against that backdrop, Defendants assert the power to limit the First Amendment rights of more than two million retired servicemembers, all without judicial review.”
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