Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers used his seventh State of the State speech Wednesday to urge the GOP-controlled Legislature to enact a wide range of proposals Republicans have rejected in the past, including numerous gun control measures just a month after there was a school shooting not far from the state Capitol.
Republicans were quick to dismiss his proposals, much as they have the past six years.
Here’s what to know about the speech from Evers, a Democrat who may run for a third term next year in the battleground state:
Evers, without mentioning President Donald Trump by name, said “there is a lot of angst about what may happen in the days, months and years ahead.”
“I have always been willing to work with anyone who is willing to do the right thing for the people of Wisconsin,” Evers said. “And that has not changed. But I will not compromise on our Wisconsin values of treating people with kindness, dignity, empathy, and respect.”
Evers called for bipartisan efforts to address immigration.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Republicans would next week introduce a bill that requires cooperation with federal law enforcement officials who are working to deport people who have committed a crime and are in the country illegally.
“He didn’t pay attention to what happened in this state in the election in November,” Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August said of Evers. “President Trump won Wisconsin, and one of the cornerstones of his campaign was about illegal immigration. … He’s clearly pushing back against the president.”
Wisconsin is one of 22 states suing the federal government over Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship.
Wisconsin is one of the “blue wall” states that Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020. Trump carried Wisconsin in 2024 on his way back to the White House.
Evers called for a series of gun control measures five weeks after a school shooting just 6 miles from the Capitol left a teacher and a 14-year-old student dead. The 15-year-old shooter shot and killed herself.
Evers called for universal background checks for gun purchases and restoring a 48-hour waiting period for gun purchases, a law that Republicans repealed in 2015.
He also called for banning the purchase of “ghost guns” and closing a loophole that allows for domestic abusers to own firearms.
Evers also called for incentives and new requirements to safely secure firearms and a “red flag” law that would allow judges to take guns away from people determined to be a risk to themselves or others.
Republican legislative leaders said that all of the gun control measures would be rejected.
The governor last week created a state office for violence prevention, which Republicans vowed not to fund after federal funding runs out in two years.
Evers, a former teacher and state superintendent of schools, also called for spending $300 million to provide comprehensive mental health services in schools statewide. That would be 10 times the amount the Legislature approved for school mental health services in the last budget.
Republican leaders immediately rejected the bulk of what Evers called for, saying they instead would be pushing for a tax cut of nearly $1,000 for every taxpayer in the state.
Evers’ speech “was chock full of liberal wishes, empty promises and a whole lot of things that are not going to happen in Wisconsin,” Vos said.
Declaring 2025 as “The Year of the Kid,” Evers called on Republicans to approve $500 million to lower the cost of child care. The bulk of that would go toward funding the Child Care Counts program for the next two years. Without more funding, the program — which was created during the COVID-19 pandemic — is slated to end in June.
Republicans said they would not support that additional funding.
Evers also called for creating new programs designed to set price ceilings for prescription drugs and improve oversight of drug companies, removing the state sales tax on over-the-counter medications and capping the copay on insulin at $35.
In an emotional moment, Evers welcomed the widow and parents of former state Rep. Jonathan Brostoff, who died by suicide in November. Evers, his voice cracking with emotion, talked about Brostoff’s death when introducing a new program that would allow people to temporarily and voluntarily register to prevent themselves from purchasing a firearm.
Vos said that invoking Brostoff was a “cheap political stunt” and “kind of sad.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
State of the State: Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers urges gun control measures, bipartisan approach to immigration 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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Sen. Ron Johnson via official Facebook page
Back during President Donald Trump’s first administration, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson was known as Trump’s most reliable ally in the U.S. Senate. He led investigations into Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton and alleged irregularities in the 2020 election that Trump lost. A proponent of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines and climate science, Johnson is not one of those Republicans who had to overcome principle to get in line behind Trump.
He is completely at ease with the new administration — including the pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol, battered police officers and sought to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence. The blanket pardon for the rioters, including those convicted of violent crimes, was “maybe a little more sweeping than I wanted to see,” he averred during a Politico breakfast this week. But, overall, Johnson said, the Jan. 6 defendants were victims of a “grotesque miscarriage of justice.” So Trump was right to pardon them.
If ever Johnson struggles to go along with Trump’s more out-there ideas, like slapping huge tariffs on imports that could devastate Wisconsin businesses and farms, he just figures he must not truly, deeply understand their wisdom.
“When I don’t necessarily agree with him, I always ask myself, what am I not seeing here?” he told Politico’s Zach Warmbrodt. Like any good enabler, Johnson figures Trump must have some extra-tricky reason for doing harm that actually makes what he’s doing good.
That kind of thinking will come in handy during the next four years. It could prove particularly useful to Trump as he tries to hold together supporters drawn to his promises to lift up the working class — the “forgotten men and women of America” — and tech billionaires including Elon Musk who want to liquidate the safety net, drive down wages and establish a permanent American oligarchy.
Johnson embraces white grievance and the racist, right-wing populist “replacement theory”— suggesting Democrats want more immigrants to cross the southern border and come to the U.S. to “change the makeup of the electorate” — but he is also fully, cheerfully on board with oligarchy.
Nothing suits Johnson better than the Trump administration’s plan to cut taxes for the very rich and slash entitlements to pay for it.
This was the gist of his appearance at the Politico breakfast this week, where he was introduced as someone who will have “a big role” in tax battle, having played “a very important role” in Trump’s 2017 tax cut.
Johnson basked in the glow, recalling how he held up the whole 2017 law until he managed to shoehorn in a big tax cut for “pass-through corporations” Johnson confirmed that he personally benefited from the change in the tax code that he pushed through in 2017. He cast the deciding vote for Trump’s tax code rewrite giving corporations tax cuts worth $1.4 billion — but only after he arm-twisted Trump and Congress into including special benefits for so-called “pass-through” corporations — companies like his own PACUR plastics firm — whose profits are distributed to their owners. A few months later, Johnson began the process of selling his company, reaping the benefits of the tax law change, which increased the value of pass-through companies and made him more money on the sale.
According to Politifact, “Analyses from the Joint Committee on Taxation and the National Bureau of Economic Research have found that ultra-wealthy Americans have received billions in tax savings stemming from that deduction, while those earning less have gotten less of a break.” The news organization cites one study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that found the top 1% of Americans received nearly 60% of the tax savings created by the provision, with most of that amount going to the top 0.1%.
“I made sure all the passthroughs got a tax cut, that was my contribution,” Johnson said.
“Whatever we do, we need to make it permanent,” Johnson said of the individual income and estate tax provisions of the 2017 Trump tax law. That law was heavily skewed to the rich. Households with incomes in the top 1% will receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025, compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for households in the bottom 60%, according to the Tax Policy Center.
Thanks to the law, revenue as a share of GDP has fallen from about 19.5% in the Bush years to just 16.3% in the years immediately following the Trump tax cuts, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That leaves commitments to Social Security and health care benefits for retirees in jeopardy, the Center concludes.
Nor did the tax cut yield the big benefits Trump projected. New research shows that workers who earned less than about $114,000 on average in 2016 saw “no change in earnings” from the corporate tax rate cut, while top executive salaries increased sharply, the Center reports. “Similarly, rigorous research concluded that the tax law’s 20% pass-through deduction, which was skewed in favor of wealthy business owners, has largely failed to trickle down to workers in those companies who aren’t owners.”
Yet making those tax cuts permanent is among the “top priorities” for Congress and the new administration, Johnson said. His biggest contribution to the next tax debate will be his push to rewrite the tax code and “keep it simple,” and cut spending to pay for more cuts.
“We have to return spending levels to some reasonable pre-pandemic levels,” he told the audience at the Politico breakfast. Building Trump’s border wall and keeping low taxes that benefit the very rich are the top two priorities for government, Johnson said.
Everyone would be able to see the wisdom of that program, as long you “keep it simple,” he added. The formula he laid out was “eliminate expenditures” and then you can dramatically cut rates.
He wants to “free corporations from all this complexity in the tax code,” he said, adding he favors “a corporate tax rate of zero.”
Health care and Social Security, though? Not so much.“Stop trying to socially and economically engineer through the tax system,” Johnson advised.
Let the rich keep their money. Slash the safety net. It’s simple.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
A 'now hiring' sign. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Employment in Wisconsin once again reached a new record in December, with a federal survey of households projecting that 3,076,000 people were working during the last month of 2024 — an increase of nearly 32,000 from December 2023, the state labor department reported Thursday.
The state’s unemployment rate for December, measuring people who aren’t working but are actively seeking work, ticked up slightly to 3% from November’s 2.9%, according to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD).
The unemployment rate is based on the household survey, which asks people if they’re working, actively seeking work and other related questions.
The same survey projects that 65.9% of Wisconsinites age 16 or older are working or looking for work — the labor force participation rate.
Compared with Wisconsin, for the U.S. as a whole labor force participation is lower (62.5%) and the unemployment rate is higher (4.1%), DWD reported — both continuing what has been a long-term trend.
From a separate federal survey of employers, there were a projected 3,042,100 nonfarm jobs in the state in December, also near a record. That’s an increase of 20,300 from December 2023, although a slight dip from November 2024.
In addition to being projections, all of the numbers and rates are seasonally adjusted, to smooth out increases or decreases that result from change-of-season fluctuations such as high tourism employment in the summer or high retail employment during the last couple months of the year.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
President Donald Trump holds up an executive order after signing it during an indoor inauguration parade at Capital One Arena on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship.
U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour’s ruling in a case brought by Washington and three other states is the first in what is sure to be a long legal fight over the order’s constitutionality.
Coughenour called the order “blatantly unconstitutional.”
“I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order,” the judge told the Trump administration’s attorney. “It boggles my mind.”
Coughenour’s decision came after 25 minutes of arguments between attorneys for Washington state and the Department of Justice.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Nick Brown, along with peers in Oregon, Arizona and Illinois, sued the Trump administration over the order. Shortly after filing the lawsuit, the states asked Coughenour to grant a 14-day temporary restraining order stopping the executive action from taking effect nationwide.
Eighteen other states filed a similar lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts. Those states haven’t requested a temporary restraining order.
Trump signed the executive order shortly after he was sworn into office on Monday. It would end birthright citizenship for babies born to a mother and father who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Brett Shumate, of the Department of Justice, argued the rush for an emergency pause is unwarranted because the order doesn’t go into effect until Feb. 19. He called the state’s motion “extraordinary.”
Attorneys for the state acknowledged the temporary restraining order is extraordinary, but warranted. Washington would lose federal dollars used to provide services to citizens and officials would be forced to modify those service systems.
The order is “causing immediate widespread and severe harm,” said Lane Polozola, of the Washington attorney general’s office. “Citizens are being stripped of their most foundational right, which is the right to have rights.”
Addressing reporters after the hearing, Brown said while the executive order doesn’t go into effect for nearly a month, it forces states to start preparing now for the change.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution codified birthright citizenship in 1868. It begins: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
The executive order focuses on the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” phrase.
“The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” Trump’s order reads. “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
Polozola called this interpretation “absurd,” saying children without legal immigration status are still subject to U.S. law. He added birthright citizenship is a right that is “off limits.”
Legal precedent has long backed up birthright citizenship. In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the concept when justices ruled Wong Kim Ark, a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, was a U.S. citizen.
In 2022, about 153,000 babies were born to two parents without legal immigration status across the country, including 4,000 in Washington state, according to the lawsuit filed this week.
Coughenour has been a federal judge for decades. Republican President Ronald Reagan nominated him for the bench in 1981.
Brown called Thursday’s hearing “step one.”
“But to hear the judge from the bench say that in his 40 years as a judge, he has never seen something so ‘blatantly unconstitutional’ sets the tone for the seriousness of this effort,” Brown said.
Video and audio recording were not allowed in the courtroom Thursday.
Looking forward, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would have jurisdiction over the case. Democratic presidents appointed a majority of the circuit court’s judges. Appeals could eventually land the dispute before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Shumate said the case will almost certainly end up there. But Brown said he’s taking it “one step at a time.”
“I see no reason why in a court of appeals, or even the United States Supreme Court, would reach a different decision than was reached today,” Brown told reporters.
A court hearing on a preliminary injunction to pause the executive order while litigation is ongoing is set for Feb. 6.
In court filings this week, state officials, academics and nonprofit leaders explained how the order could have detrimental effects on Washington, including losing federal reimbursements for a variety of social programs.
Tom Wong, an assistant professor at University of California, San Diego, retained by the state, wrote the order will create a “permanent underclass of people who are excluded from U.S. citizenship and are thus not able to realize their full potential.”
Congressional Republicans on Thursday introduced legislation to restrict birthright citizenship. The bill would amend federal immigration law to only allow children to be U.S. citizens if one of their parents is a citizen, a green card holder or a legal immigrant serving in the military.
This story has been updated.
TRO-STATE-OF-WASHINGTON-et-al.-v.-DONALD-TRUMP-et-alA copy of the temporary restraining order signed by U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, on Jan. 23, 2025.
The U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Wednesday passed legislation that greatly expands mandatory detention requirements of immigrants charged and arrested on petty crimes, among other crimes.
In a 263-156 vote, 46 House Democrats voted with Republicans to send the bill, S. 5, to President Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law. The passage of the measure gave Trump — who campaigned on an immigration crackdown and promised mass deportations — an early victory for a president not even a full week into his second term.
The GOP-led bill is named after 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. The man convicted in her murder was said by immigration officials to have entered the country without proper authorization and was later charged in the United States with shoplifting.
“I am proud the Laken Riley Act will be the very first landmark bill President Trump signs into law, and it is proof that President Trump and the Republican Senate Majority stand ready to come turn promises made into promises kept,” Alabama GOP Sen. Katie Britt, who led the bill, said in a statement.
Many immigration attorneys and advocates have argued the passage of the bill will help fuel Trump’s promise of mass deportations, because it would require mandatory detention of immigrants without the ability for an immigration judge to grant bond.
Additionally, there is no carve-out for immigrant children in the bill, meaning if they are accused or charged with shoplifting, the bill would require them to be detained.
And while the bill aims to target immigrants who are in the country without proper legal authorization, immigration attorneys have argued that some immigrants with legal status could be ensnared as well.
Another concerning provision pointed to by some Democrats and immigration attorneys is the broad legal standing the bill gives state attorneys general to challenge federal immigration policy and the bond decisions from immigration judges.
That same authority could also force the secretary of state to halt the issuing of visas on the international stage.
There’s also the issue of resources. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement estimated the cost of enforcing the law would be at least $26.9 billion in its first year, according to NPR. The budget for ICE for fiscal year 2024 is about $9 billion.
Twelve Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to pass the bill out of the upper chamber on Monday. The House already passed the bill earlier this month, but because amendments were added to the measure in the Senate, it went back to the House for final passage.
Those Senate Democrats included Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Mark Warner of Virginia.
A majority of those Senate Democrats are up for reelection in 2026 or hail from a battleground state that Trump won in November.
Senators also agreed to attach two amendments to the bill that expand the mandatory detention requirements even further.
One amendment by Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn requires mandatory detention for assault of a law enforcement officer. Another from Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa includes mandatory detention requirements to apply to the serious harm or death of a person.
Gov. Tony Evers delivers his seventh State of the State address while standing in front of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate President Mary Felzkowski. Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner
In his seventh State of the State address Wednesday night, Gov. Tony Evers started to outline his budget priorities — declaring 2025 the “Year of the Kid” and laying out investments and policies to support children and their families.
The address came at the start of a legislative session in which Republicans continue to hold majorities in the state Senate and Assembly, though with smaller margins than last session, and a $4.5 billion budget surplus remains unspent. Wisconsin also has about $1.9 billion in the state’s rainy day fund.
“We begin the new year with a new Legislature elected under new, fair maps,” Evers said in his address. “For the first time in a generation, this Legislature was not elected under some of the most gerrymandered maps in America. I am hopeful this will mean more collaboration, more partnership, a little less rancor and a renewed commitment to do right by the will of the people.”
Evers announced an array of proposals to support schools, including by providing free meals to students, expanding mental health resources, supporting child care for families and implementing better gun violence prevention measures.
Bipartisan collaboration will be necessary for Evers to accomplish the priorities he laid out, and the road could be difficult as Republican lawmakers were mostly critical following the address.
“What we heard tonight was Gov. Evers’ longest State of the State address and it was chock full of liberal wishes, empty promises and a whole lot of things that are not going to happen in Wisconsin,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) told reporters.
“The things the governor talked about tonight, every single thing that he talked about, was a new government program, new government spending,” Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) said. “I really am at a loss for words at how ridiculous the things he talked about were tonight.”
Before speaking about his proposals, Evers highlighted the state of taxation in Wisconsin, pointing to a recent Wisconsin Policy Forum report that found the local and state tax burden has fallen to the lowest level on record.
“Just two decades ago, Wisconsin was in the top five states for our tax burden and the taxes Wisconsinites paid as a share of their income. Today, Wisconsin is in the bottom 16 states in the country,” Evers said. “We have seen the largest drop in our tax burden of any state over the last 20 years.”
Evers said tax cuts have been a bipartisan priority. He noted that he has proposed tax cuts in each of his budget proposals targeted at middle class Wisconsinites. He has also accepted some of the proposals that Republicans have sent him. Evers’ emphasis on the state’s declining tax burden came as Republicans have said their top priority for the next state budget will be to further cut taxes.
August accused Evers of taking credit for work that Republicans did — pointing out that Evers vetoed Republicans’ major tax proposals last session.
“[Evers] actually vetoed the biggest tax cut that has ever been proposed in the state of Wisconsin. He vetoed that,” Rep. Tyler August told reporters. “Everything that he took credit for tonight economically was because of legislative Republicans’ work over the last 20 years. He’s an educator, he should know you can’t take credit for somebody else’s work.”
Evers pivoted from taxes to his vision for increasing spending and implementing new policies that would help children across the state.
“I will soon introduce our next state budget, laying out our state’s top policy priorities for the next two years. Every budget I have ever built began first by doing what is best for our kids, and this one will be no different,” Evers said.
“If we want to improve our kids’ outcomes, then we have to shorten the odds,” Evers said. “If we want our educators and schools to be able to do their very best work in the hours our kids are with them, we have to set them up for success, and we have to start by making sure our kids can bring their full and best selves to our classrooms.”
Evers said he would propose “historic investments in K-12 education” and “meaningful” investments in early childhood education, the University of Wisconsin system and the state’s technical colleges.
Evers also called for lawmakers to release $50 million that was allocated in the last budget to support new literacy efforts in classrooms. Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee have withheld the money due to disagreements over exactly how the money should be spent, and if the money isn’t released before June 30, it will lapse back into the state’s general fund.
“Our kids and their futures are too important for petty politics,” Evers said. “Republicans, release those investments so we can get to work improving reading outcomes statewide.”
In addition, Evers said that he would propose ensuring that children have access to food and clean water by reintroducing his “Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids” plan, which would provide free lunch and breakfast in schools, as well as by seeking to address the issue of lead in water.
“Making sure our kids are healthy — physically and mentally — is a crucial part of improving outcomes in our classrooms. But we have to connect the dots between school achievement and the challenges our kids are facing at home and in our communities,” Evers said. “Take lack of access to clean and safe drinking water, for example. There is no safe level of lead exposure for kids.”
Evers is proposing that the state dedicate $154.8 million for his “Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids” initiative. The initiative, he said, would use the money to provide free breakfast and lunches to students as well as for other programs including modernizing “bubblers” in schools to remove harmful contaminants.
Evers called for urgency when it comes to addressing a mental health crisis among Wisconsin children.
“The state of our kids’ mental health continues to be concerning for me, both as a governor and as a grandfather. A kid in crisis may be distracted or disengaged and may not be able to focus on their studies, if they are able to get to school at all,” Evers said.
Evers noted that the 2023-25 state budget included $30 million for school-based mental health services, but it was “just a fraction of what I asked the Legislature to approve.” His renewed call for more mental health resources comes as children in Wisconsin have reported increasing levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts over the last decade, especially among girls, kids of color and LGBTQ youth.
Evers said he’ll propose dedicating almost $300 million to supporting mental health services in schools. This would include about $168 million for comprehensive school mental health services aid, $130 million to modify the existing aid for school mental health programs to provide 20% reimbursement for the costs of pupil services professionals, $500,000 for peer-to-peer suicide prevention programs and $760,000 to increase the amount and types of mental health trainings provided to schools.
“Making sure our kids are healthy—physically and mentally—is a crucial part of improving outcomes in our classrooms. But we have to connect the dots between school achievement and the challenges our kids are facing at home and in our communities,” Evers said.
Highlighting the recent school shooting in Madison and the recent death by suicide of a former state lawmaker, Evers said gun violence prevention will be another priority this year.
“Thirty-seven days ago, a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison took the lives of Erin and Rubi — a student and an educator — who woke up and went to school that morning and will never return home. Six others were injured, and countless lives will never be the same,” Evers said.
Evers urged lawmakers to come together to work to prevent the next school shooting.
Specifically, Evers called for a law that would require background checks for any person seeking to purchase a gun, and implementing “red flag” laws in Wisconsin so “law enforcement and loved ones” have a way to remove guns from people who pose a risk to themselves or others.
“We aren’t here in Madison to quibble about the semantics of the last shooting. We are here to do everything we can to prevent the next one,” Evers said. “We do not have to choose between respecting the Second Amendment or keeping kids, schools, streets and communities safe.”
Evers said that he would also propose a $66 million investment to support services for crime victims statewide and help critical victim service providers, which would help address recent reductions in federal funding under the Victims of Crime Act.
Evers also outlined proposals that would help address deaths by suicide, and spoke about the recent loss of Former Milwaukee Rep. Jonathan Brostoff, who died by suicide in November.
“We are so deeply saddened that he is no longer with us,” Evers said before asking the room to recognize Brostoff’s wife and parents, who stood in the gallery looking over the lawmakers.
According to the Department of Health Services, Wisconsin reported 932 deaths by suicide in 2022 with almost 60% of those deaths involving a firearm.
“If you talk to someone whose loved one died by suicide, many will tell you their loss was not a foregone conclusion. That maybe — just maybe — if the person they loved had just made it through one more dark night to see with certainty that the sun again would rise, things might have ended up differently,” Evers said. “I’m asking this Legislature to give the next family and the next one, and the family after that, hope for that same opportunity.”
Evers proposed the creation of a “Self-Assigned Firearm Exclusion” (SAFE) Program, which would allow people to temporarily and voluntarily register to prevent themselves from purchasing a firearm.
Evers also called for lawmakers to reimplement a law that would require a 48-hour waiting period for buying firearms.
“The window for intervention is very short. Being able to purchase and possess a gun in minutes significantly increases the risk of firearm suicide — and firearm homicide, as well,” Evers said.
Republican lawmakers said they likely wouldn’t take up any of Evers’ proposals related to guns.
Vos said that there are already some measures in place including background checks and that some money has gone into helping schools protect against shootings. Background checks are required for purchasing a handgun or long gun from a licensed dealer, but aren’t required for private sales or at gun shows.
“Unfortunately, sometimes people do bad things and there’s only so much that we can do to prevent it,” Vos said.
Vos said that everyone feels “bad for Jonathan Brostoff’s death,” but accused Evers of using it as a “cheap political stunt to try to get a piece of legislation passed.” He said Evers’ response “demeans Jonathan’s death.”
“There are a lot of ways we can lower everyday, out-of-pocket costs to make sure Wisconsinites and working families can afford basic needs,” Evers said.
Describing child care as “too darn expensive,” he highlighted a bipartisan bill that he signed into law last year that will expand the child care tax credit once it goes into effect this year.
Evers also said he will propose investing $480 million to continue the state’s Child Care Counts program, which has provided funding assistance to eligible child care providers to support operating expenses, investments in program quality, tuition relief for families, staff compensation and professional development. The program was started in March 2020 using federal funds and Evers wants to keep it going with state funds. He also wants to dedicate another $20 million to other programs, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and he wants to use the budget to create the framework for community-based 4K.
Evers cautioned Wisconsinites about forgetting the state’s historical ties to immigrants during his address, appearing critical of President Donald Trump, who was inaugurated on Monday and immediately issued orders sending troop to the U.S.-Mexico border, calling for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and even attempting to end constitutionally protected birthright citizenship.
“A lot has happened in Washington in the last 72 hours, and I know there is a lot of angst about what may happen in the days, months and years ahead,” Evers said. “I want to talk about what that means for Wisconsin and how we move forward together.”
“Wisconsin began as a land of many people, of many origins, each important and none any better than any other,” he continued, “and that is still who we are 177 years later. The state of Wisconsin was born of immigrants, but today, there are those who would have us forget this fact.”
“Let’s agree to be honest about the fact that, in this state, some of our state’s largest — and most important — industries and companies have always welcomed the hard work of immigrants,” Evers said. “Let’s agree to be honest about the fact that the story of our state’s success today is told in the labor of over three million Wisconsinites, including tens of thousands of workers whose only transgression to date was not having the good fortune of being born in this country.”
Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul have joined a multi-state federal lawsuit that was filed in Massachusetts to challenge the order trying to deny birthright citizenship.
Republicans, meanwhile, were supportive of Trump’s work, saying that Wisconsinites voted in favor of it when the state voted for Trump in November.
“[Evers is] clearly pushing back against the president. He’s lashing out because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were not only resoundly rejected by the American people, but by the state of Wisconsin,” August said, adding that Republicans would be ready to lead on the issue of immigration in Wisconsin.
Vos said that a proposal will be coming from Republicans next week that will require cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to ensure that “if someone is here illegally and committed a crime” they are deported.
Vos said that he is “open” to the idea of repealing birthright citizenship.
“I certainly think that there’s a legal case to be made. It wasn’t enacted until sometime, I think, around the year 1900, so it’s only been part of our country for about half of our nation’s existence,” Vos said.
Apart from immigration legislation, Vos said that Republican priorities would include a tax relief proposal, which he says would provide $1,000 to Wisconsinites, and a proposal to ensure “high educational standards” if there is an increase in funding for schools.
Evers will deliver his budget address and announce his full 2025-27 budget proposal on Feb. 18.
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The program is a streamlined application process that directly sends a students’ high school transcripts to UW-Milwaukee and MATC.
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Wisconsin’s largest study on deer and chronic wasting disease shows the deadly disease substantially reduces deer survival and population growth, especially where it’s most widespread.
The post Study finds deadly disease reduces deer survival, population growth in Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.
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