Technologists say the hazy definition of “artificial intelligence” leaves a wide opening for companies to over-promise or over-market the capabilities of their products – or even render “AI” more of a marketing gimmick than a real technology. (Photo illustration by tolgart/Getty Images) NOTE: The lowercase on “tolgart” in photo credit is CQ per Getty site.

In his college courses at Stanford University, Jehangir Amjad poses a curious question to his students: Was the 1969 moon landing a product of artificial intelligence?

It might sound like a work of science fiction, or time travel, he said, but understanding the history of AI answers the question for them.

“I would actually argue, yes, a lot of the algorithms that were part of what put us on the moon are precursors to a lot of what we are seeing today as well,” said Amjad, a Bay Area technology executive and a computer science lecturer at Stanford. “It’s essentially precursors to the same kind of similar sort of ‘next, next, next generation’ algorithms.”

Amjad poses the question to his students to underline how hard it is to actually define “artificial intelligence.” This has become even more difficult as the technology explodes in sophistication and public awareness.

“The beauty and the dilemma is, ‘what is AI?’ is actually very hard to define,” Amjad said.

That broad definition – and public understanding – of “artificial intelligence” can make it difficult for both consumers and the tech industry to parse out what is “real” AI and what is simply marketed as such.

Swapnil Shinde, the Los Altos, California-based CEO and cofounder of AI bookkeeping software Zeni, has seen it through his investment firm Twin Ventures. Over the last two years, Shinde has seen a huge uptick in companies seeking funding that describe themselves as “AI-powered” or “AI-driven.” The AI market is very saturated, and some “AI companies” in fact just use the technology in a very small part of their product, he said.

“It’s very easy to figure out after a few conversations if the startup is just building a wrap around ChatGPT and calling that a product,” Shinde said. “And if that’s the case, they are not going to survive for long, because it’s not really deep tech. It isn’t solving a very deep, painful problem that was driven by humans for a long period of time.”

The rush to build AI

Since early 2023, Theresa Fesinstine said she has observed a race in the corporate world to introduce AI technologies in order to stay competitive and relevant. It’s when she launched her AI education company, peoplepower.ai, in which she leads workshops, teaches organizations about how AI is built and consults them on which tools might be a good fit for their needs.

In a time where everyone wants to claim the most cutting edge tools, some basic education about AI can help both companies and their employees navigate the technology landscape, the Norwalk, Connecticut-based founder said.

In an effort to look more innovative, companies may tout basic automations or rule-based alerts as exciting new AI tools, Fesinstine said. While these tools do use some foundational technologies of AI, the companies could be overstating the tool’s abilities, she said, especially when they throw around the popular buzzword term “generative AI,” which uses complicated algorithms and deep learning techniques to learn, adapt and predict.

The pressure on companies to keep up with the latest and greatest may also lead some organizations to buy new AI software tools, even if they don’t have a strategy to implement and train their employees how to best use it.

“It’s predatory, I would say,” Fesinstine said. “For companies, especially those that are feeling unsure of what AI is going to look like, what it should be, people have a fear of being left behind.”

Some technologists argue that ambiguity around what is or isn’t AI allows for all kinds of tech products to be sold as such. Predictive analytics, for example, which uses data to forecast future outcomes, may be “borderline” AI, said Ed Watal, the Reston, Virginia-based founder of IT and AI strategy consultancy firm Intellibus.

True AI systems use algorithms to sort, analyze and review data, and make informed decisions on what to do with it, based on what humans prompt it to do. The “learning” aspects of these systems are how AI gets smarter over time through neural networks which take feedback and use history to get better at completing tasks over time.

“But the purists, the purists, will argue that AI is only machine learning and deep learning,” he said.

“AI washing”

Though there seems to be an AI-powered company promising to do pretty much any task for you, technologists warn that today’s “real” AI has its limitations. Watal said the industry has seen some “AI washing” or over-promising and over-marketing the uses of AI.

A company that promises that its AI tool can build a website from the ground up could be an example, he said. While you could get ChatGPT or another AI algorithm to generate the code, it can’t create a fully functioning website, he said.

“You wouldn’t be able to do things which require, let’s say, something as simple as sending an email, because sending an email requires a [simple mail transfer protocol] server,” Watal said. “Yeah, you could ask this AI tool to also write the code for a mail server, but you’d still have to host it and run it somewhere. So it’s not as simple as, oh, you click a button and you have an entire app.”

Amjad, who is also the head of AI Platform at generative AI company Ikigai, said companies sometimes over-promise and over-market the ability of AI to perform original, creative tasks.

While artificial intelligence tools are great at pattern recognition, data sorting and generating ideas based on existing content, humans remain the source of original, creative tasks and output, he said.

“People would argue that in the public imagination, AI is creating a lot of things, but really it’s regurgitating. It’s not creating, right?” Amjad said. “And we should doubt wherever we start seeing claims of originality coming from AI because originality is a very human trait.”

It’s definitely not the first time that a new technology has captured the public’s attention and led to a marketing frenzy, Watal said. About a decade ago, the concept of “Web3,” or a decentralized internet that relies on blockchain technology, quickly grew in popularity, he said.

Blockchain technology operates as sort of a public ledger, where transactions and records are kept in an accessible forum. It’s the basis of many cryptocurrencies, and while it has become more mainstream in recent years, it hasn’t taken over the internet as was predicted about a decade ago.

“The cloud” is another example of a technology marketing makeover, Watal said. The concept of remote servers storing information separately from your hardware goes back decades, but after Apple’s introduction of the Elastic Compute Cloud in 2006, every technology company competed to get their claim to the cloud.

Only time will tell if we are overusing or underusing the term artificial intelligence, Amjad said.

“I think it’s very clear that both the hype and the promise, and the promise of applications is actually pretty real,” Amjad said. “But that doesn’t mean that we may not be, in certain quarters, overdoing it.”

Amjad suspects the interest in AI will only continue to rise, but he feels Ikigai’s technology is one that will prove itself amid the hype cycle.

“Yes, it’s come and captured the public imagination. And I’m absolutely thrilled about that part, but it’s something that builds upon a very long tradition of these things,” Amjad said. “And I wish that would help temper some of the expectations … the hype cycle has actually existed in AI, at least a couple of times, in the last, maybe, 50 years itself.”

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Gov. Tony Evers, pictured speaking with reporters in 2023, declared an energy emergency Thursday. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order Thursday, declaring an emergency in Wisconsin that is meant to allow for quick and efficient delivery of residential heating fuel, including heating oil and propane, throughout the state. 

Winter Storm Blair brought extreme icy, snowy and cold conditions to states in parts of the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic over the last week, leading to multiple deaths as well as power outages, flight cancellations and road closures. Parts of southeast Wisconsin were under a winter weather advisory earlier this week. 

Evers said in a statement that Winter Storm Blair has “impacted residents and industries alike” across the country. 

“This has increased demand for heating fuel and caused strain on delivering essential products across our state, including fuel for home heating, which is critical for the health and safety of folks during the Wisconsin winter,” Evers said. “Getting residential heating fuel like propane and heating oil moving now to those who need it will help Wisconsinites remain safe as we continue to face cool and freezing temperatures in the coming months.”

The executive order states that demand for residential heating has been heightened due to winter weather and that residential heating fuel distribution terminals have reported limited supplies of product on hand, on allocation or loading off of the pipelines. According to the Public Service Commission’s Office of Energy Innovation, this has resulted in long wait times and drivers traveling longer distances to obtain fuel. The situation is making it difficult for transporters to meet demand while complying with state and federal hours-of-service requirements.

The emergency declaration will allow for a 30-day waiver of certain state and federal hours-of-service restrictions to allow suppliers to get caught up from weather-related delays.

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Migrants wait throughout the night on May 10, 2023, in a dust storm at Gate 42, on land between the Rio Grande and the border wall, hoping they will be processed by immigration authorities before the expiration of Title 42. (Photo by Corrie Boudreaux for Source NM)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans gained more than enough Democratic support Thursday to advance a bill that would greatly expand immigration detention, following a presidential election in which border security was a main theme for President-elect Donald Trump.

In an 84-9 procedural vote, 32 Senate Democrats and one independent backed the bill, S. 5, sponsored by Alabama’s Katie Britt. With the 60-vote threshold met, the legislation now can advance for debate and a final vote.

The only Democrats who voted against the procedural motion were Sens. Tina Smith of Minnesota, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Andy Kim and Cory Booker of New Jersey, Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, also opposed it.

Hours before the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that he planned to vote to allow the bill to proceed because Democrats want a debate on the measure and an amendment process.

“This is not a vote on the bill itself,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday. “It’s a motion to proceed, a vote that says we should have a debate and should have amendments.”

Petty crimes targeted

The bill, named after 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, would expand mandatory detention requirements for immigrants — including some with legal status — charged with petty crimes like shoplifting.

María Teresa Kumar, the president and CEO of the civic engagement group Voto Latino, said in a statement that the bill “is a chilling first step toward widespread family separation while dismantling critical protections for due process.”

“The legislation’s broad detention requirements would impact even those legally permitted to enter the United States to seek asylum, subjecting them to immediate incarceration based on accusations of minor offenses such as theft, burglary, or shoplifting,” she said. “Such measures not only undermine due process but also disproportionately target migrants who are already fleeing violence and instability in search of safety.”

The legislation would also give broad legal standing for state attorneys general to challenge federal immigration law and bond decisions of immigration judges.

It would include not only immigrants in the country without documentation, but also those with a discretionary legal status such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

Georgia murder

Riley was out on a run when her roommates became concerned after she did not return home. Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela, was charged and convicted of her murder last month. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ibarra allegedly entered the country illegally in 2022.

Ibarra was previously arrested on a shoplifting charge and released, so the bill Republicans have pushed for would require the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to detain an immigrant charged or arrested with local theft, burglary or shoplifting.

“Her killer, who came to this country illegally, should have never been in the United States, and once he had been arrested for multiple crimes before committing the most heinous, unimaginable crime, he should have been detained by ICE immediately,” Britt said on the Senate floor.

Trump often spoke of Riley’s murder on the campaign trail and blamed the Biden administration’s immigration policies for her death.

GOP trifecta

The House passed its version of the bill, H.R. 29, on Tuesday, with 48 Democrats joining Republicans. The measure also passed the House on a bipartisan basis last Congress, with 37 Democrats voting with the GOP. It stalled in the Senate, where Democrats maintained a slim majority.

With a Republican-controlled trifecta in Washington after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, and only seven Senate Democrats needed to break the 60-vote threshold, the bill has a decent chance of becoming law once it gets to a final vote, drawing concern from immigration advocates.

“With just days before Trump’s inauguration and what we know will be an onslaught of more attacks against immigrants, there is no excuse for complicity in the hateful demonization of immigrant communities and violent expansion of the detention and deportation apparatus,” Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, the deputy director of federal advocacy of the largest youth immigrant advocacy group United WeDream Action, said in a statement.

Democratic backers

Democrats, still reeling from the losses of the November election, have shifted toward the right on immigration.

The bill gained votes from senators from swing states that Trump carried, like Arizona freshman Ruben Gallego and Michigan freshman Elissa Slotkin.

“Michiganders have spoken loudly and clearly that they want action to secure our southern border,” Slotkin said in a statement.

She said that while the bill “isn’t perfect,” she’s hopeful for an amendment process.

Gallego and Slotkin both voted for the bill last Congress when they were members of the House.

Both Georgia Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff — who is up for reelection next year — and Raphael Warnock voted for the procedural motion. 

“I’m voting to begin floor debate on the Laken Riley Act because I believe the people of Georgia want their lawmakers in Washington to address the issues in this legislation,” Warnock said in a statement before Thursday’s vote.

Michigan’s Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, who is also up for reelection next year, also voted for the procedural motion. 

The late President Jimmy Carter’s casket is pictured leaving the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 9, 2025, before it was transported to Washington National Cathedral. (Photo by U.S. Army Spc. David A. Carvajal/Department of Defense)

WASHINGTON — On a wintry Thursday morning, mourners and dignitaries gathered at Washington National Cathedral to honor the life of former President Jimmy Carter.

Speakers at Carter’s state funeral, including President Joe Biden and the sons of Carter’s political contemporaries delivering eulogies written by their fathers, described the Georgia native and U.S. Navy veteran as a man committed to civil and human rights who led a courageous life of faith and service.

In his eulogy, Biden said Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, established “a model post-presidency,” depicting the Georgian as a man of “character” who held a “deep Christian faith in God.” 

“Jimmy Carter’s friendship taught me, and through his life, taught me, that strength of character is more than title or the power we hold — it’s the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect — that everyone, and I mean everyone, deserves an even shot,” he said.

Carter died at 100 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, on Dec. 29. Thursday’s funeral marked his final memorial in Washington after his body arrived in the nation’s capital Jan. 7.

The former Peach State governor lived the longest of any U.S. president. Despite serving just one White House term from 1977 to 1981, his presidency featured key diplomatic deals and energy policy initiatives, among other achievements.

After leaving the White House, he established the Carter Center in Atlanta. He authored books and spent a great deal of time volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that works to build affordable homes.

The many state funeral attendees also included the four living former U.S. presidents: Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

A life of service

Biden said his fellow Democratic president’s life was “the story of a man who never let the tides of politics divert him from his mission to serve and shape the world.”

Steven Ford delivered a eulogy written by his late father, former President Gerald Ford.

“Honesty and truth telling were synonymous with the name Jimmy Carter,”  Gerald Ford wrote. “Those traits were instilled in him by his loving parents, Lillian and Earl Carter, and the strength of his honesty was reinforced by his upbringing in the rural South poised on the brink of social transformation.”

Carter won the presidency against Gerald Ford, the Republican incumbent, in 1976. The two were dear friends, Steven Ford said. 

Andrew Young, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter administration, offered the homily.

“I don’t mean this with any disrespect, but it’s still hard for me to understand how you could get to be president from Plains, Georgia,” Young jokingly remarked as he paid tribute to Carter.

“I’ve known President Carter for more than half of my life, and I never ceased to be surprised, I never ceased to be enlightened, I never ceased to be inspired by the little deeds of love and mercy that he shared with us every day of his life,” said Young, who also served as mayor of Atlanta and represented Georgia in Congress.

“It was President James Earl Carter that, for me, symbolized the greatness of the United States of America.”

Ted Mondale, son of Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, read the eulogy written by his late father.

Though he and Carter only had four years in the Oval Office, Carter “achieved so much in that time —  it stood as a marker for Americans dedicated to justice and decency,” Walter Mondale wrote.

Three of Carter’s grandsons — Josh, James and Jason — honored their late grandfather during the service.

Josh Carter said his late grandfather spent the entire time he knew him helping people in need.

“He built houses for people who needed homes, he eliminated diseases in forgotten places, he waged peace anywhere in the world, wherever he saw a chance,” Josh Carter said.

“He loved people, and whenever he told these stories in Sunday school, he always said he did it for one simple reason: He worshiped the Prince of Peace, and he commanded it.”

Country stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who are among Habitat for Humanity’s most recognizable volunteers, sang John Lennon’s “Imagine.” 

Back to Plains

Carter, who was a peanut farmer, and his late wife, Rosalynn Carter, hailed from the small southwest Georgia town of Plains, where they returned after living in the White House.

Rosalynn Carter died in November 2023 at the age of 96. She and Jimmy Carter were married for 77 years.

The state funeral followed Carter’s body lying in state at the U.S. Capitol throughout this week. Mourners paid their respects to the former president in a public viewing that began Tuesday night and ended Thursday morning. Biden declared Jan. 9 a national day of mourning to honor the former president.

Carter’s body will make its way to Georgia on Thursday, where he will have a private funeral service and interment in Plains.

Rainbow LGBTQ heart on hands, Getty Images

Since 2018, Marc Herstand has been on the forefront of a campaign to ban mental health professionals in Wisconsin from counseling clients with the goal of changing their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“Conversion therapy” has been denounced by mainstream professional organizations for doctors, psychiatrists, social workers and counselors. “People likened it to child abuse and torture,” says Herstand, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers Wisconsin chapter. “LGBT kids who are not accepted have a much, much higher rate of suicidality and mental health issues.”

Twenty states — and several local communities in Wisconsin — have banned the practice. And since late April 2024, the state professional licensing board for therapists, counselors and social workers has labeled conversion therapy as unprofessional conduct.

“It has no place whatsoever in the mental health professions, frankly, in our society,” Herstand says.

The provision banning the practice is precarious, however. Twice it’s been blocked by one of the Wisconsin Legislature’s most powerful committees. And advocates for the LGBTQ community fear it could be blocked again.

“Undoing this rule would overturn the work of the state’s mental health experts and expose young people and their families to unnecessary and lasting harms,” says Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the national LGBTQ advocy group The Trevor Project.

Next week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear arguments in a lawsuit that could determine whether the conversion therapy ban survives — and whether that legislative body has been overstepping its bounds in overriding state regulations that address everything from environmental quality to public health.

The Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) has been a thorn in the side of  the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers since he took office in January 2019. The committee’s power under Wisconsin law to stymie regulations enacted by the executive branch was one of three issues that Evers identified in a lawsuit the governor filed in October 2023 charging that Republican leaders of the Wisconsin Legislature were exercising an unconstitutional “legislative veto” to thwart his administration from carrying out its duties.

The lawsuit went straight to the Supreme Court. This past July the Court ruled 6-1 in Evers’ favor on the first of those three issues, throwing out state laws that had allowed the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to block how the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources spends money budgeted for the Knowles-Nelson stewardship fund.

In October, the Court dismissed the lawsuit’s second issue, an objection to actions by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) that had held up raises for University of Wisconsin system employees to pressure the UW into eliminating its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. A deal between Vos and the UW Board of Regents ended the delay in December 2023.

The Court also said it would take up the third issue: the power that JCRAR has exercised to block regulations, sometimes repeatedly.  Over the last six years, the 10-member committee’s six Republican lawmakers have voted to block or rewrite rules drawn up by state agencies on matters including environmental regulations, vaccine requirements and public health protections.

Two rules blocked

The Evers lawsuit identifies two JCRAR actions. One was the committee’s vote in January 2023 blocking the conversion therapy ban. The second was a committee vote blocking a state building code update. Both measures were produced under the umbrella of the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS).

The building code revision was developed over three years in a series of meetings and hearings following national and international model documents under the direction of a statewide professional building code body. Brian Flannery, a veteran building inspector who was part of the code revision process, told the Wisconsin Examiner in a 2023 interview that at two hearings, there were no objections to the code change brought to the group.  

In August 2023, however, a Senate committee voted along party lines against approving the new building code following a hearing in which objections were raised by business lobbyists. JCRAR held a vote Sept. 29, 2023, approving an “indefinite objection” — blocking DSPS from reintroducing the code update unless the Legislature passes a bill authorizing it.

The JCRAR vote was 6-4 on party lines, with only Republicans supporting the motion, and was conducted by paper ballot, without a hearing and without the committee meeting in person.

Therapists’ ethics rules

The rule opposing conversion therapy for LGBTQ persons was part of an ethics revision by the Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board.

Herstand of the National Association of Social Workers said he first appealed to the examining board in 2018 to ban conversion therapy. Later that year the board began the process of revising the state professional code and added to the list of actions considered “unprofessional conduct” a provision that began, “Employing or promoting any intervention or method that has the purpose of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity…”

“When I talk to survivors of conversion therapy, I hear their struggles with loss of trust — trust for family members, trust for licensed medical professionals and the entire health care system,” Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, an LGBTQ advocacy group, tells the Wisconsin Examiner. “Conversion therapy really erodes that ability to trust, and that makes interacting with the health care system in the future more difficult.”

A study from the Trevor Project also shows “a significant increase in suicide attempts, and not only that, but also a significant increase in multiple suicide attempts,” Swetz adds.

After hearings and the board’s unanimous vote to advance the rule change, however, JCRAR voted 6-4 to put the change on a temporary hold until the end of the 2021-22 legislative session.  

At the end of November 2022, the examining board republished the new ethics code, effective Dec. 1 of that year. Six weeks later, JCRAR convened again, holding a public hearing.

Mental health professionals and LGBTQ advocates urged the committee to allow the new code to stand. Herstand was among them, describing conversion therapy as “Child abuse. Torture. Major mental health and suicidal risk. Unprofessional conduct. Fake therapy.”

Testifying in favor of throwing out the rule, Julaine Appling, executive director of the conservative Wisconsin Family Council, said the ban violated professionals’  freedom of speech and religion.

JCRAR again voted 6-4 to suspend the rule for the rest of the 2023-24 legislative session. The committee co-chair, Rep. Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee) said that “the merits of any conversion therapy or any other type of therapy” was “a question for the Legislature as it is public policy and deals with speech issues.”

Nine months later, Evers filed his lawsuit, calling both of the committee actions examples of an unconstitutional legislative veto that hampered the executive branch from doing its job.

In April, with the Legislature wrapped up for the rest of 2024, the examining board reinstated the code banning conversion therapy. 

Sending rules to limbo

Under Wisconsin law, JCRAR can object to a rule after it is promulgated, either temporarily — for the balance of a legislative session — or indefinitely. State law also holds that if lawmakers introduce legislation that codifies a rule objection, the rule stays blocked until the legislation is vetoed by the governor.

Instead, however, lawmakers have introduced such legislation and referred it to committee, where it has remained dormant for the rest of the legislative session in order to avoid a veto that would restore the blocked rule.

The Evers administration argues that by blocking regulations, JCRAR is taking over the power that the Wisconsin Constitution confers on the governor to carry out the laws.

“In other words, when JCRAR vetoes a proposed rule, it effectively amends the statute under which the executive agency proposed that rule,” a brief filed on behalf of Evers argues.

“By proposing the conversion therapy rule, the [therapy licensing board] exercised that statutory authority. By objecting to that rule, JCRAR effectively withdrew a share of the statutory authority the Legislature had granted to the Board” — in essence, the brief argues, unilaterally rewriting the state law that authorizes the licensing board to set the profession’s ethical standards.

“JCRAR does not have that power—only the full Legislature does,” the brief states.

The committee’s action — and the state laws that empower it — undercut the legal right of the profession to set its standards, Herstand tells the Wisconsin Examiner.

“It’s an issue of the ability of professions, which is delineated in the law, in statute, to set their own ethical standards, when some in the Legislature are trying to prevent that,” he says. “To me, that’s a violation of statute.”

A brief filed on behalf of the Legislature’s Republican leaders argues otherwise. A 1992 state Supreme Court ruling upheld the right of the committee and the Legislature to suspend rules as part of its oversight of the executive branch. While the Evers administration argues that the earlier decision was wrong and should be overturned, the legislators’ brief contends it should be honored as legal precedent.

In defense of JCRAR’s powers, the legislators’ brief describes regulations as the product of power “delegated” by the lawmakers — an argument that lawyers for the governor reject.

A friend of the court brief by a group of legal scholars, including Miriam Seifter and Bryna Godar of the University of Wisconsin Law School, sides with the administration. The power that Wisconsin law grants to JCRAR is unlike that found in other states and unconstitutional, the brief argues.

“Wisconsin’s anomalous statutory scheme allows a handful of legislators to determine whether administrative rules are lawful; to suspend otherwise final rules forever or rescind them once in force; and to act without deadlines or judicial review,” the brief states. “The Constitution readily permits other forms of agency oversight, but it precludes these committee overreaches into the domains of the executive branch, the judiciary, and the people.”

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Senate lawmakers debated the voter ID constitutional amendment on the floor Wednesday. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

Republican lawmakers continued their swift work Wednesday to enshrine voter photo identification laws in the Wisconsin Constitution with the Senate passing the proposal on the floor and the Assembly holding a public hearing on it. 

Wisconsin is one of nine states in the country with a strict photo ID requirement for voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Republican lawmakers cited worries  that future legal challenges could weaken the law as they sought to enshrine it in the state constitution.

The measure, if it passes the Assembly, will go before voters in April on the same ballot as a high-profile state Supreme Court race that will determine whether liberals maintain a majority on the court. The amendment would need a simple majority of voters to pass.

Senate passes proposal 

The Senate passed the measure 17 to 15 with Republicans voting for it and Democrats against. Sen. Rob Stafsholt (R-New Richmond) was absent and didn’t cast a vote. 

Democrats criticized the timing of the legislation during the floor debate, saying there are more urgent issues that lawmakers could be addressing, it is redundant given current state law and that voter ID laws create unnecessary obstacles for voters. Republicans defended the proposal as needed to ensure that the law isn’t changed anytime soon and argued that voter ID is needed to keep elections secure. 

“There’s no emergency. [The requirements are] already in the law,” Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said. She argued that lawmakers could have decided to address any other number of issues, including gun violence after a recent school shooting in her district, state funding for public schools and local services and health care costs.

“The reason that we are rushing is because there is another important election and the right-wing candidate wants to make sure that this proposal is on the ballot,” Roys said. She suggested that Republicans favor voter ID to suppress the vote and “make it more likely for conservatives to win.”  Brad Schimel, the former Wisconsin attorney general who is running for a seat on the state’s highest Court, previously suggested that the state’s voter ID requirement may have helped President-elect Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson win Wisconsin in 2016, Roys noted. 

Republicans have moved quickly on the proposal. A public hearing, noticed on Monday evening following lawmakers’ inauguration, was held on Tuesday morning.  

Lawmakers are working to pass the measure so it can appear on the April ballot. There aren’t any statewide elections in the fall, so the next chance for it to come up would be in the spring of 2026.

Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), who coauthored the proposal, said the measure was coming forward first because it was the only one that had been introduced and was ready for action.  

“We can do more than one piece of legislation at a time,” Wanggaard said. 

In explaining the measure, Wanggaard said he is “unwilling” to allow the Wisconsin Supreme Court to potentially overturn voter ID requirements. During the hearing Tuesday, he pointed out that since the state Supreme Court shifted from a conservative to a liberal majority in 2023, there have been challenges to the state’s 1849 law that banned abortion for a time following the overturning of Roe v. Wade and to Act 10. 

Wanggaard also rejected claims that voter ID stops people from voting. 

“This doesn’t deter people from voting,” Wanggaard said. “This actually helps to continue to support the importance of your votes.”

Republican lawmakers also argued that identification is needed to access many things in society including checking out library books and getting on an airplane. 

Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) questioned why of all the election-related proposals, this was the first one that they were discussing. 

“If you want to lead off on elections, which, frankly, I’m surprised you’re doing because there’s no Senate Elections Committee this session, but if you want to lead off on elections, how about Monday processing?” Spreitzer asked. A bill failed last session that sought to allow election clerks to begin processing absentee ballots on the Monday before Election Day as a way of speeding up the process. 

The proposal now needs to pass the Assembly, which held a press conference and public hearing on the issue ahead of the Senate floor session.

Assembly begins consideration 

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said during a press conference that the Assembly intends to vote on the measure next week on Tuesday. He said the proposal is a way to allow voters to have the final say on voter ID requirements. 

“It’s become an accepted practice as something that prevents fraud and it certainly should never be overturned by anyone but the will of the people,” Vos said. The Wisconsin Elections Commission has found that voter fraud is a rare crime and most recently reported 30 instances of fraud in 2023-24 elections out of more than 4  million votes cast. 

Republican lawmakers have been using constitutional amendments in recent years to circumvent Gov. Tony Evers while addressing their legislative priorities. In 2024, Wisconsin voters saw five constitutional amendment questions on their ballots. Three passed and two were rejected. 

In reaction to the trend, Evers announced earlier this week that in his budget proposal he will include a requirement for the Legislature to allow Wisconsin voters to bring forth constitutional amendment proposals without the input of lawmakers. Vos rejected Evers’ proposal Wednesday, saying he doesn’t believe in that process. He said the current process is more rigorous, open and transparent since it requires committee hearings and the involvement of legislators. 

“D-O-A. Dead on arrival. It’s never going to happen,” Vos said.

Evers criticized Vos’ comments, insisting that Wisconsinites should have the ability to lead ballot initiatives. 

“Republican lawmakers in the next week are set to add yet another constitutional amendment to the ballot while telling Wisconsinites they can’t have that same power,” Evers said in a statement. “If Republicans are going to continue to legislate by constitutional amendment, then they should be willing to give Wisconsinites that same opportunity. Pretty simple stuff.” 

The latest constitutional amendment proposal would add language in the state constitution requiring that qualified electors present a photo ID issued by the state, by the federal government, by a federally recognized American Indian tribe or band, or by a college or university in Wisconsin when voting. 

The amendment would require acceptable forms of ID to be specified in law, authorize lawmakers to pass laws establishing exceptions to the photo ID requirement and require that a person unable to present valid ID before voting on Election Day must be given the opportunity to cast a provisional ballot and present a valid photo ID at a later time and place. 

During the public hearing in the Assembly Campaigns and Elections Committee, Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston) said he coauthored the amendment to “ensure that the people of Wisconsin have full confidence in the security and integrity of Wisconsin’s elections.”

Snyder said the upcoming Supreme Court election is not the main reason he and his colleagues  proposed the measure, noting it passed the Legislature the first time in November 2023 and was introduced even earlier. 

However, control of the Court as a whole and recent challenges to Wisconsin laws — including to abortion laws and Act 10 — influenced the decision to move the measure forward. 

“When we have another Legislature making laws,” Snyder said, referring to the state Supreme Court, “We need to put this into our Constitution to secure it.” 

Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) said it was “offensive” to her that the proposal is one of the first to be considered. 

“I knocked a bunch of doors this summer… Not one person said to me, ‘I really want to make sure that we enshrine voter ID into the constitution,’” Snodgrass said.

The barriers that people could face in obtaining an ID came up again during the hearing. 

League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Executive Director Debra Cronmiller urged lawmakers to avoid measures that place undue burden on the voter or erect barriers to voter participation, and explained that while getting a state ID may not require paying  a fee at the DMV, the process of getting one isn’t necessarily free or easy for all voters.

“Accessing the DMV to secure state ID is not equally available to all eligible voters,” Cronmiller said. “Some voters face barriers such as a lack of public transportation, long distances, shortened hours, and ADA barriers that the DMV is aware of but has failed to correct in all the years since the law was passed.”

Cronmiller said that casting provisional ballots can be another obstacle as the information about them is not always readily available or updated online and some voters need to be walked through the process. A provisional ballot is one issued to a voter who is unable to provide the poll workers with documentation as required by Wisconsin or federal law. A provisional ballot can be marked at the time, but is set aside and not counted until the voter either returns to the polling place during polling hours to show a photo ID or present a valid voter ID at their clerk’s office before 4 pm on the Friday after the election.

Cronmiller said there are other solutions to election issues, including automatic voter registration and full funding of elections, that lawmakers could be looking at. 

Rep. Scot Krug (R-Nekoosa) questioned how the League of Women Voters could oppose voter ID when polling suggests that many support it. Krug and other Republicans repeatedly pointed to recent Pew Research Center polling that found that 81% of voters nationally support requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID. 

“The League of Women Voters, as one of the biggest advocacy groups of women in the state of Wisconsin, is going to take an official position you’re anti-photo ID?” Krug asked. 

“It has been a part of our official positions for decades. Voting rights are voting rights,” Cronmiller said. “Anything that stands in the way of an eligible voter to execute their right is opposed by the League of Women Voters.” 

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One thing we pride ourselves on at Wisconsin Watch is responding to tips from the public about the real problems affecting people’s lives.

That’s how Hallie Claflin’s story about rural homelessness began.

On Oct. 6, Eric Zieroth emailed us with this message: “Local homeless family unable to even use public showers that are maintained by the city government in a community that there’s no help for them in.”

Hallie and photographer Joe Timmerman made the four-hour trek from Madison to Shell Lake to learn more about Eric’s story. As the editor, one thing I emphasized was that telling the story of Eric and his daughter spending last winter in their car as they struggled with health issues, low-wage work and unaffordable housing was only the beginning of a broader story about rural homelessness.

Less than a week after Hallie was the first to report on Wisconsin’s homeless population rising above 5,000 for the first time since 2017 (despite a decline in Milwaukee), national news outlets first reported on an 18% increase in homelessness nationwide. The affordability crisis is hitting home for many in Wisconsin, and though we’ve made strides to improve housing in Milwaukee, rural areas are suffering. Many of these areas are represented by the Republicans who control the Legislature and are in position to steer resources to their communities.

Throughout the upcoming legislative budget session, Hallie will be covering how issues like rural homelessness are addressed, if at all. We’ll continue to put a human face on the problems facing society and hold politicians accountable for finding solutions.

You can help by sending us tips using this form. Or if you have a question about how state government works (or doesn’t work!), you can send it to us here.

Thanks to the dozens of people who have reached out to us in recent months. We can’t necessarily report on every tip, but we do review each one. We’re working on our system to follow up with people who submit tips we’re not well positioned to investigate — to explain why. To prioritize our resources, we focus on stories most likely to resonate with readers and improve lives. 

We appreciate hearing from people who trust us with their story or ideas, even when they don’t immediately result in coverage. 

After looking into rural homelessness, we saw that it checked multiple boxes for a Wisconsin Watch story.

How a tip helped us understand rural homelessness in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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For the first time in nearly two decades, the Wisconsin Senate doesn’t have a dedicated election committee — at least, not in name — even though Democrats and Republicans have multiple legislative priorities for election administration in the coming legislative session.

That doesn’t mean election-related proposals will languish in some legislative limbo. It does mean, however, that they’re likely not all going to a single committee for hearings and formal votes, which typically take place before the full chamber hears and votes on a measure.

“Given the broad range of topics included under the general ‘elections’ category, bills will be referred to committee on a case-by-case basis,” said Cameil Bowler, a spokesperson for Republican Senate President Mary Felzkowski, who’s in charge of referring bills to committees.

Rep. Scott Krug, formerly the chair and currently the vice chair of the Assembly Elections Committee, said the Senate’s opting out of a designated election committee was “not my favorite idea.” 

He said that he’d prefer election legislation going to just one committee, but added that he’ll deal with the Senate dynamic the best that he can.

In every legislative session since 2009, there has been a Senate committee formally dedicated to elections, though some of them also incorporated urban affairs, ethics, utilities, and rural issues. Last session, election bills went to a Senate committee that oversaw elections along with two other policy areas: shared revenue and consumer protection. 

This time, it’s not so clear which Senate committee election bills will go to. Could it be the Government Operations, Labor, and Economic Development committee? Transportation and Local Government? Or Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs? 

Republican Senate leaders either wouldn’t say or didn’t appear to know Monday which committees might generally handle election legislation. 

The first election-related legislation, which would enshrine the state’s photo ID requirement for voters in the constitution, got referred to the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety committee, whose chair wrote the proposal. That constitutional amendment proposal was the first legislation to get a public hearing  in the two-year session. After approval in the Senate, it would head to the Assembly for a public hearing and then likely pass in the majority-GOP chamber before heading to voters on the April 1 ballot, along with the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. 

Sen. Mark Spreitzer, a Democrat on the government operations committee who has long worked on election administration issues, said he was surprised there was no designated Senate election committee.

“Right now, it is not clear where appointments to the Wisconsin Elections Commission or critical election bills will be sent,” he said. “There is important work to be done to improve our electoral systems with reforms like Monday processing of absentee ballots to speed up election night returns. The people of Wisconsin deserve to know where that work will be done.”

He also questioned why the voter ID measure was moving through the Legislature so soon, especially “if Republicans don’t think election topics matter enough to have a committee.”

For its part, the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association appeared willing to deal with the change. Janesville Clerk Lorena Stottler, who’s a co-chair of the clerks association’s legislative committee, said the group tracks election bills in other ways besides keeping up with a single legislative committee. 

Republican senators didn’t say much about their decision to forgo a formal election committee.

Brian Radday, a spokesperson for GOP Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, didn’t explain why there wasn’t any specific election committee. Bowler, Felzkowski’s spokesperson, didn’t say to which specific committees certain election legislation would go, adding that Felzkowski doesn’t create committees. 

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin Senate won’t have a dedicated election committee is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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