A recent state Supreme Court decision could be just the beginning of a broader legal fight to expand abortion access in Wisconsin.
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Public Health Madison & Dane County officials recently launched a program to use dating apps and social media to notify people of possible exposure to sexually transmitted infections.
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The exhumation, carried out June 6, is part of the Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Biotechnology Center.
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The Festival of Sail was held in Duluth Harbor last weekend, and many of the tall ships will be visible from the Wisconsin side of Lake Superior as they make their way to their next ports of call — including some stops on the South Shore.
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President Donald Trump's massive tax and spending law indefinitely extends the 2017 tax cuts on people. It also includes targeted tax breaks that will largely expire by the end of his second term in office.
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The Arrowhead Union High School District is the latest in Wisconsin to update its harassment policy by removing the word “gender” and replacing it with “sex,” causing some parents to fear LGBTQ+ students will be targeted.
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Milwaukee has a shortage of housing, but it has vacant office space. Some developers are turning those empty offices into homes. The trend is likely to alleviate, but not solve, the housing crisis.
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Since last Thursday night, seven people have died in shootings in Milwaukee.
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As search operations continue for people lost in the flash floods along the Guadalupe River in Texas, an official with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources explains what safety measures are in the state's parks and campsites.
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Wisconsin is one of 24 states and the District of Columbia to sue the Trump administration on Monday for withholding more than $6.8 billion in education funding.
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The Raccoon River weaves past downtown Des Moines, Iowa, in June. One of the primary drinking water sources for the region, the river has high nitrate levels that have led to water restrictions for some 600,000 customers. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
For nearly a month, hundreds of thousands of Iowans have not been allowed to water their lawns — even though there’s no drought.
Local authorities previously asked the public to refrain from washing cars and filling pools. And some cities turned off splash pads in the height of summer heat.
While such measures are common during dry periods, there’s no shortage of water: Rather, the water in and around Des Moines contains too much nitrate, a natural component of soil and a byproduct of commercial fertilizer and livestock manure. Persistent rainfall has flushed nutrients out of fertilized fields into streams and rivers.
While the water bans are temporary, they’re the starkest sign yet of the state’s long-brewing struggle with high nitrate levels in streams and rivers that supply drinking water.
“It’s a big deal: the first time ever that lawn watering has been banned,” said Tami Madsen, executive director of Central Iowa Water Works, a regional water authority serving 600,000 people.
Federal law limits nitrate levels in drinking water because of its association with infant asphyxia, also known as blue baby syndrome. And a growing body of research has found links between nitrate consumption and cancer.
While Iowa’s problems are uniquely severe, nitrate levels are a rising concern in other regions, from California to the Chesapeake Bay. And climate change is expected to worsen the problem as more intense cycles of drought and severe storms increase farm runoff.
Iowa’s concentration of fertilized row crops and massive livestock confinements that produce tons of nitrogen-rich manure have caused concerns over increased nitrate levels for years. And the state’s unique underground system of farm drainage pipes quickly pumps nitrate and other nutrients into streams and rivers.
The water system serving the Des Moines metro area has invested heavily in nitrate filtration and removal equipment. The primary facility in Des Moines, one of the largest nitrate removal systems in the world, costs $16,000 per day to operate, Madsen said.
“I’m confident in our ability to continue to provide safe drinking water,” Madsen said. “It’s just going to be at what cost.”
More frequent and extreme storms because of climate change will heighten the problems nationwide, said Rebecca Logsdon Muenich, an associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering at the University of Arkansas.
Because nitrogen travels with water, nitrate levels are especially hard to control during times of severe weather.
Muenich said farm conservation practices such as establishing wetlands and landscape buffers can help keep nitrogen out of water supplies. But the growth of the livestock industry, availability of cheap crop fertilizer and lack of regulation over nitrogen application make nitrate levels hard to control.
“We’ve kind of put ourselves in a bind unless we start investing in better technologies or more conservation,” she said.
As hundreds of thousands of residents were being asked to conserve water last month, a group of 16 experts released a years-in-the-making report analyzing the quality of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers, the main sources of drinking water for the Des Moines region.
The researchers found that central Iowa rivers have some of the nation’s highest nitrate levels, routinely exceeding the federal drinking water standard. While some pollutants are naturally occurring, the researchers concluded that most of the nitrogen in the two rivers comes from farmland.
Commissioned in 2023 by Polk County, the state’s most populous county and home to Des Moines, the report underscored the connection between industrial agriculture and water quality.
Central Iowa rivers have some of the nation’s highest nitrate levels.
Larry Weber, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Iowa who worked on the report, said Iowa’s problem spreads to other areas: Iowa waterways export hundreds of millions of pounds of nitrogen per year, much of it flowing into the Mississippi River and eventually the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone.
He said water restrictions may become more common as more cities confront high nitrate levels.
“This is happening more frequently and it’s going to continue to happen more frequently,” he said.
Weber said individual farmers aren’t necessarily to blame for the crisis. They’re doing their best to survive market demands and operate within federal farm policy. But he said the broader industry and the state could do more to invest in conservation methods to prevent pollution.
He noted that Iowa lawmakers in 2023 cut $500,000 for a water quality monitoring network across the state. While the Iowa Nutrient Research Center received a short-term grant to stay open, Weber said next year it will shut down 75 sensors that measure nitrate and other pollutants in state waters.
“The agricultural system doesn’t want this unfortunately difficult information to be made available,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Iowa Farm Bureau referred questions to the state agriculture department.
In a statement to Stateline, Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig, a Republican, said many Iowa groups are working on conservation and infrastructure projects to improve water quality.
“We’re not interested in stoking animosity between rural and urban neighbors,” the statement said. “Agriculture, conservation, recreation, urban and rural development, and business growth can and must co-exist in Iowa.”
In a lengthy social media post last month, Naig said nitrate levels were primarily driven by weather and stream flows. The secretary said advances in farming practices can help farmers apply fertilizer more efficiently and touted efforts such as new wetlands and structures that reduce stream erosion. But he said the fast-growing Des Moines area also needed to examine its investments in water treatment infrastructure to meet future needs.
“The blame game is unproductive,” he wrote.
On Tuesday, Naig’s department announced a $1.9 million water quality project upstream of Des Moines. That project will install landscape buffers and bioreactors to help reduce runoff of nitrate and other nutrients. The department is contributing $244,000 of that money.
Matt McCoy, chair of the Polk County Board of Supervisors, said that local government is trying to work with landowners and farmers to prevent water pollution. The county has spent millions on projects to seed cover crops and plant vegetative buffers between fields and waterways to prevent runoff of pollutants, including nitrogen.
“I don’t think we want to disparage agriculture and farming because it’s such a big part of who we are as a state,” McCoy said.
A former Democratic state lawmaker, McCoy said the recent water restrictions and daily news reports on nitrate levels in local rivers have elevated public awareness of water quality concerns.
“There are conversations that I know are happening now that were not happening prior to the restrictions,” he said.
The water restrictions in Iowa sparked an influx of interest from locals in the Izaak Walton League of America’s Nitrate Watch program, which provides volunteers with nitrate test kits and maps the results from across the country.
Heather Wilson, the league’s Midwest Save Our Streams coordinator, said the nonprofit environmental organization received more than 300 inquiries from Iowans during a single week in June. For comparison, the organization received about 500 inquiries from across the nation during the first six months of the year.
I feel like I’m meticulously documenting the death of my home and nobody else gives a rip.
– Northeast Iowa retired science teacher Birgitta Meade
While the problems in the Des Moines area are severe, she said, volunteers are recording rising nitrate levels across the state. The project gives people who can often feel helpless an active way to contribute to the understanding of nitrate pollution.
“It’s really empowering to be able to put resources in people’s hands so that they can measure the waterways that they personally care about,” she said.
Retired science teacher Birgitta Meade has been testing nitrates around her rural northeast Iowa home for years both as classroom instruction and for Nitrate Watch.
“They’re higher than I have ever tested at any prior point,” she said. “I feel like I’m meticulously documenting the death of my home and nobody else gives a rip.”
Meade said she’s considering investing in a reverse osmosis system to remove nitrates from her home’s private well. Though her nitrate levels are below the federal drinking water standard, she pointed to the growing body of research linking cancer with consumption of nitrate — even at lower levels.
Meade acknowledged the pressures facing farmers, but she said she grows frustrated every time she drives past giant storage containers full of fertilizer and other farm chemicals.
“These are people who are choosing to poison their neighbors,” she said. “And this is just untenable.”
Climate change will only intensify nitrogen pollution, said Thomas Harter, a professor and water researcher at the University of California, Davis. Last year, he worked on research that found drought and heavy rains accelerate the speed of nitrogen absorption into groundwater.
In some parts of California’s Central Valley, nearly a third of drinking and irrigation wells exceed federal nitrogen standards.
“We are ever more productive on the grower side, and that means more fertilizer being used and more fertilizer being lost to groundwater and to streams,” Harter said.
That’s particularly challenging for drinking water systems serving small population bases.
“It gets really expensive for really small systems and it’s also a lot of maintenance,” he said.
That’s a reality currently facing Pratt, Kansas, a community of about 6,500 people, where some wells have recorded nitrate levels above the federal standard.
City Manager Regina Goff said nitrate levels are pushing the community’s pursuit of a new water treatment facility that’s expected to cost upward of $45 million. The city’s proposed 2025 budget totaled about $35.7 million.
Goff said the city is exploring financing options, including potential grants. But she said it’s frustrating for the town to spend so much to meet regulatory standards for safe drinking water, which she characterized as an “unfunded mandate.”
Currently, nearly a quarter of the city’s groundwater supply is unavailable because of high nitrate levels. But the city must notify residents of high nitrate levels even in wells that are not pumping.
“It causes a panic,” Goff said. “That’s been a hard pill for us to swallow as a city — that we have to alarm our population even though we know there’s no possibility of harm.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of the Izaak Walton League of America.
Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
The Milwaukee County Courthouse (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin Republicans are proposing a bill to stop paying judges who have been suspended in response to the arrest and suspension of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan.
Dugan was indicted in May by a federal grand jury and has pleaded not guilty to charges that she impeded the arrest by federal agents of an immigrant who was appearing in her court room. She was arrested by FBI agents in April.
Critics have condemned the arrest as an example of the Trump administration discouraging pushback to mass deportation efforts and a worrying sign for democracy. Federal and state Republicans have supported the arrest of Dugan, saying those who stand in the way of deportations should be arrested and that Dugan should resign or be removed.
The bill, cosponsored by Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee), Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) and Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers), would require that if the state Supreme Court imposes a suspension as proceedings are pending or as a disciplinary sanction due to misconduct, it must be without pay.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court chose to suspend Dugan in April, saying it was in the public interest to relieve her of her duties for now. Dugan is still being paid her nearly $175,000 annual salary.
The lawmakers noted that Dugan’s trial was postponed from July 21 and may not take place until 2026. They said taxpayers will be paying for “an extended vacation” even as reserve judges have to fill in for her and they argued the bill is needed to stop suspended judges from getting paid in the future.
According to the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, 15 judges have been suspended by the Supreme Court from 1978 to 2024.
“In these rare circumstances, these judges’ actions and alleged misconduct rose to such a level that suspension was warranted,” the lawmakers said in a memo. “Simply put, Wisconsin taxpayers must be protected from the misconduct and/or commission of a crime by rogue judges.”
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Children enrolled in the Head Start early education program operated by Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council. (Photo courtesy of Western Dairyland EOC)
A new Trump administration federal rule would bar immigrants without legal status from a range of public programs, canceling a policy that was implemented nearly three decades ago.
The change bars the children of those immigrants from the Head Start child care program. It also closes the door to immigrants lacking legal status for various programs that provide mental health and substance abuse treatment, job training and other assistance.
Head Start, which provides early education and child care for low-income families, has never been required to ascertain the immigration status of its families, said Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association.
Families enrolling in the program have to provide a variety of pieces of information to verify they are eligible, Mauer told the Wisconsin Examiner Monday, and the programs are “very compliance oriented” and collect “exactly what they have to collect.”
Mauer said a trusting relationship between Head Start programs and the families they serve is important.
“We’re serving some of the neediest families in our community,” she said. Some have had “challenging relationships” in the past with schools and other government agencies — making nurturing that trust even more critical, she added.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a notice July 10 that declared Head Start and a list of other federally funded programs would now be considered “public benefits” that exclude immigrants without legal status under a law enacted in 1996. The notice revokes a policy enacted in 1998 that had exempted the affected programs from the 1996 law.
The federal announcement said that the policy change was instituted to “ensure that taxpayer-funded program benefits intended for the American people are not diverted to subsidize illegal aliens.”
Mauer said there has been no implementation guidance from HHS since the notice.
The Wisconsin Head Start Association is among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in April by the American Civil Liberties Union opposing Trump administration actions against Head Start. The other plaintiffs include parent groups in Oregon and in Oakland, California, along with state Head Start associations in Washington, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
In a statement Friday the plaintiffs said they will amend the lawsuit if the administration follows through with the limits in the July 10 announcement.
Mauer said that the Wisconsin association is advising Head Start providers to “refrain from making any immediate changes to enrollment policy until they have an opportunity to fully evaluate their legal obligations.”
She said the notice has heightened concern about the safety of children whose families might be targeted by the new federal stance. But it will affect the entire program, she said.
Mauer said a second concern is that the policy could lead some families to take their children out of the program despite their need for it. If enrollment falls below the federally prescribed level of 97% of capacity, she’s concerned that the federal government might then take back grant money — creating “a negative feedback loop,” she said.
“I am so afraid for our families,” Mauer said. “This is fracturing the safety of all of our children. This will hurt all of the children in Head Start.”
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an unsigned order to allow President Donald Trump to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration, for now, to proceed with mass layoffs and a plan to dramatically downsize the Education Department ordered earlier this year.
The decision from the nation’s highest court marks a major victory for President Donald Trump, who has sought to overhaul the federal role in education.
The order was unsigned, while Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, indicating a 6-3 decision.
The dissent, authored by Sotomayor, was scathing.
“The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive,” she wrote. “But either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”
The Supreme Court’s order temporarily suspends lower court orders that: forced the agency to reinstate more than 1,300 employees gutted from a reduction in force, or RIF, effort; blocked the department from carrying out Trump’s executive order to dismantle the department; and barred the agency from transferring some services to other federal agencies.
In a statement Monday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon celebrated the decision, saying “today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies.”
“While today’s ruling is a significant win for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution,” she said.
“The U.S. Department of Education will now deliver on its mandate to restore excellence in American education. We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most — to students, parents, and teachers.”
A coalition of teachers, unions and school districts that sued over Trump’s order to eliminate the department and the mass layoffs said they were “incredibly disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Trump-Vance administration to proceed with its harmful efforts to dismantle the Department of Education while our case moves forward.”
“This unlawful plan will immediately and irreparably harm students, educators and communities across our nation. Children will be among those hurt the most by this decision. We will never stop fighting on behalf of all students and public schools and the protections, services, and resources they need to thrive,” they added.
The labor and advocacy coalition and a slew of Democratic attorneys general each sued in March over some of the administration’s most consequential education initiatives.
One of the lawsuits comes from a coalition of Democratic attorneys general in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin.
The other lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of Teachers, its Massachusetts chapter, AFSCME Council 93, the American Association of University Professors, the Service Employees International Union and two school districts in Massachusetts.
A Massachusetts federal judge consolidated the lawsuits and granted the states’ and groups’ preliminary injunction in May.
The administration appealed that decision, leading to a June decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit keeping in place the district court’s order.
The Trump administration then asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
New townhomes are under construction this year in Minnesota. Milwaukee joined two Minnesota counties along with dozens of cities and counties suing over Trump administration threats to tie federal funding for housing and other programs to local policy on immigration enforcement; diversity, equity and inclusion; and abortion. (Photo by Ellen Schmidt/Minnesota Reformer)
Twenty-eight cities and counties including Baltimore, Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Rochester, New York, joined a lawsuit July 10 challenging Trump administration attempts to withhold federal funds because of local policies on immigration enforcement; diversity, equity and inclusion; gender equity; and abortion access.
Funding for housing, transit, health care, civil rights and other essential programs has been threatened by new grant conditions, according to the lawsuit, which now includes 60 cities, counties and other entities.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein issued a restraining order in May against tying unrelated federal funds to ideological conditions, saying the Trump administration was forcing the local governments to “choose between accepting conditions that they believe are unconstitutional, and risking the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant funding.”
The first places to sue in early May were three counties in Washington state, two more in California, plus Boston, Columbus, Ohio, and New York City. Since then, 52 cities, counties and other entities have joined from states including Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
Two of the latest to join are Ramsey County and Hennepin County in Minnesota, where Minneapolis and St. Paul and located. Hennepin County has almost $272 million in federal funding for this year for things such as emergency shelter and road projects, all threatened by new grant conditions imposed by the Trump administration, according to the court filing.
“Communities shouldn’t have to lose critical services because of the Trump administration’s political agenda,” said Jill Habig, CEO of Public Rights Project, a nonprofit legal organization doing work in the case. “These federal funding conditions aim to strip billions of dollars from local governments working to help people thrive.”
Lawyers for the Trump administration opposed the injunction, saying the court had no authority to require the federal government to pay local governments grant money.
Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
Congresswoman Gwen Moore speaks during the protest against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore joined U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) in issuing a letter calling on the heads of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to reinstate directives protecting crime victims who are seeking T or U visas from immigration enforcement.
Moore and Jayapal called for the Trump Administration to reinstate ICE Directive 11005.3, which offered protections for immigrant crime victims, and for people currently in ICE custody who have applied for a T or U visa to be released within 60 days of the letter.
“Congress created victim-based immigration benefits to encourage noncitizen victims to seek assistance and report crimes committed against them despite their undocumented status,” Moore and Jayapal wrote.
The Biden-era directive posited that, rather than hindering law enforcement, “when victims have access to humanitarian protections, regardless of their immigration status, and can feel safe in coming forward, it strengthens the ability of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE, to detect, investigate, and prosecute crimes.”
In their letter, Moore and Jayapal highlighted the directive’s ties to the Violence Against Women Act, stressing that, “T and U visas were designed to strengthen the relationship and build trust between victims of crime and law enforcement.” Prosecutors often rely on T and U visa holders for “critical eyewitness testimony” the letter states. “These visa programs make everyone in our communities safer. Without them, undocumented victims and witnesses might be too scared to come forward to report crimes to the detriment of all.”
Under ICE Directive 1105.3, the agency was instructed to “exercise prosecutorial discretion to facilitate access to justice and victim-based immigration benefits by noncitizen crime victims.” Agents were directed to “refrain from taking civil immigration enforcement action against known beneficiaries of victim-based immigration benefits and those known to have a pending application for such benefits.” ICE officers were also directed to “look for indicia or evidence that suggests a noncitizen is a victim of a crime, such as being the beneficiary of an order of protection or being the recipient of an eligibility letter from the Office of Trafficking in Persons.”
The Trump administration’s broad crackdown on immigrants who lack permanent legal status has targeted crime victims who hold or are applying for T or U visas. In June Ramone Morales Reyes, a Milwaukee man who had lived in the United States for decades and was actively cooperating in a U-Visa investigation, was arrested and detained by ICE. After arresting Morales Reyes, DHS Sec. Noem issued a press release claiming that Morales Reyes had penned a letter threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump. The letter, however, had been written in perfect English with only a few misspellings. Morales Reyes’ family, as well as immigration advocates and attorneys, said that it was impossible for him to have written the letter as he could not speak English and was not proficient in reading or writing in Spanish. When ICE arrested Morales Reyes, local law enforcement were already investigating the possibility that someone was attempting to frame him.
In early June, Morales Reyes was released from ICE detention on bond, and a man who’d been arrested for attempting to rob him months earlier admitted to forging the letter to trigger a deportation, and prevent Morales Reyes from testifying against him. Moore and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan sought to visit Morales Reyes while he was in custody, and called on Noem to retract her statement accusing him of threatening Trump.
Rather than retracting the accusations, however, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement after Morales Reyes was released on bond calling him a “criminal illegal alien” and claiming that, while he is no longer under investigation for threats against Trump, “he is in the country illegally” and has committed previous crimes. The statement asserted that “DHS will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country.”
ICE also worked to deport Yessenia Ruano, a Milwaukee teacher’s aid. Ruano had been a victim of human trafficking, and was applying for a T-Visa. In mid-June, Ruano opted to return to El Salvador with her two daughters, who were born in the United States.
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A PFAS advisory sign along Starkweather Creek. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Now that work on the state budget is complete, environmental groups and residents of communities affected by PFAS contamination believe progress can still be made on getting money out the door to help remediate water pollution across the state.
Since the last biennial budget was passed, $125 million in funds meant to help with cleaning up contamination of water from PFAS has been sitting untouched with no legislative mechanism for getting that money out to communities.
PFAS, a family of man-made chemical compounds known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment, have been connected to cancer and other diseases. The chemicals have been used in products such as firefighting foam and household goods such as non-stick pans and fast food wrappers. Communities across the state have found PFAS contamination in their water.
During the last legislative session, early hopes of compromise crumbled after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach agreement on a provision aimed at protecting “innocent landowners” from being subject to enforcement actions for PFAS contamination under the state’s toxic spills law by the Department of Natural Resources.
Republicans, including the bill’s author, Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) argued the bill had to include language that protected people who have PFAS contamination on their property through no fault of their own. Democrats said the language in the bill defining innocent landowners was so broad that it would exempt property owners responsible for pollution from being held responsible.
Ultimately, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the bill.
Wimberger and Rep. Tim Mursau (R-Crivitz) authored legislation this year to get the $125 million earmarked for PFAS remediation out the door.
Sara Walling, Clean Wisconsin’s water and agriculture program director, says she’s “hopeful” that discussions between the Republican bill authors, Evers and affected residents have been productive.
“There is opportunity now I think that the budget is done for Wimberger and others, of course, to pay attention, put a little energy into this, and really sit down and hash out the provisions in there, and get to a point that there’s something hopefully that we can all live with, and that will get the money to impacted communities and private well owners and all the things that the money is intended to be used for,” Walling says.
While people see progress being made, there are still objections to the legislation. Wimberger and Mursau have proposed two bills, one of which exempts certain groups of people from enforcement under the spills law.
The exemptions include anyone who spread biosolids or wastewater contaminated with PFAS onto a field while in compliance with a DNR permit; owns land on which contaminated biosolids were spread under a permit; a fire department, public airport or municipality that used PFAS-contaminated firefighting foam to train for or respond to emergencies; solid waste disposal facilities that accepted PFAS and anyone that owns, leases, manages, or contracts for property on which PFAS has moved through the groundwater (unless they caused the contamination on another piece of property).
Earlier this year, Evers suggested he’d support exempting farmers and residents from being held financially responsible for cleaning up PFAS contamination if they unknowingly caused it by spreading contaminated biosolids.
But Walling says she’d like to see that language tightened further to make sure it does not create a loophole for responsible parties.
“The provisions that are laid on that out there now just provide far too big of a loophole for who would be considered an innocent landowner in the current bill language,” she said. “And we really want to see that tightened so that truly innocent landowners, the passive receivers, the farmers out there who unknowingly were accepting municipal biosolids … those are the innocent landowners that I know that the authors are trying to protect.”
The other bill creates the mechanisms and grant programs through which the $125 million would be awarded to affected communities.
Doug Oitzinger is the former mayor and a current city councilmember of Marinette and a founder of a group of community members fighting to clean up PFAS pollution in his area from the manufacture of fire suppression technologies by Tyco/Johnson Controls.
Oitzinger says he’s wary of a provision in the bill that exempts private property owners who don’t qualify as innocent landowners from enforcement under the spills law unless the level of PFAS present violates an existing state or federal standard. The federal government doesn’t regulate groundwater and for years the state Department of Natural Resources has been unable to promulgate an administrative rule that sets the allowable amount of PFAS in groundwater.
The DNR failed once because of a deadlocked vote on the state Natural Resources Board and a second time because the proposed rule had a potential economic impact greater than $10 million and therefore required approval of the full Legislature under a law known as the REINS Act.
The DNR is currently working on the economic impact analysis of another proposed groundwater standard. Oitzinger says he’s doubtful that proposal will stay clear of the REINS Act. So, he says, he’s working with Mursau to include a groundwater standard in the bill.
The most significant amendment Oitzinger is fighting for in the legislation is the creation of a temporary standard for the regulation of PFAS in Wisconsin’s groundwater.
“We’ve been working to see if legislatively, we can get something that does not undermine the spills law to get the $125 million out the door, that the governor would sign, that we would be in support of and, at the same time, establish some kind of interim groundwater standard for PFAS,” Oitzinger says.
As someone fighting for a community that’s been heavily polluted with PFAS, Oitzinger says his goal is to find a compromise that helps people get clean water, even if environmental and industry groups aren’t fully satisfied.
“It doesn’t do us any good to get into our respective camps and not find common ground,” he says. “And then the bill reaches the governor’s office and he vetoes it. That’s not helping anybody, so we’ve got to find compromise. Some of the environmental groups won’t like it, and certainly I think some of the industry lobbying groups won’t like it, but this is what we’ve got to do.”
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For over a decade, Wisconsin has heard the same message from Republicans regarding full Medicaid expansion: Accepting 90% federal reimbursement to cover more low-income people will only set Wisconsin up for failure if the federal government abandons its part of the deal.
At first glance, President Donald Trump’s recently signed big bill appears to validate that argument. The 40 states that have fully expanded are now expected to lose billions of dollars in federal aid while getting tagged with additional administrative costs to create work requirements and eligibility assessments required in the bill.
But it turns out Wisconsin is still going to be subject to the new federal mandates without the higher federal reimbursement rate that expansion states will continue to receive. In other words, at a time when the Republican-controlled federal government is supposedly pulling out the rug from expansion states, Wisconsin is still left holding the bag.
Back in 2014, then-Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans made the controversial decision not to accept full Medicaid expansion.
At the time, Walker explained his goal “is to get more people out into the workplace, more people covered when it comes to health care and fewer people dependent on the government, not because we’ve kicked them out, but we’ve empowered them to take control of their own destiny.”
But he also argued that the federal government would eventually pull back on its commitment to fund Medicaid at 90%.
“That commitment is not going to be there and taxpayers all across America will be on the hook,” Walker said. “They are not going to be on the hook in Wisconsin.”
At the time, Wisconsin was one of 25 states not accepting expansion. Now, the state is one of the 10 remaining holdouts, with most of the others in the deep red South. Even reliably red states, like Arkansas and Louisiana, have accepted full expansion.
Instead of accepting full expansion, Wisconsin chose to cover individuals through BadgerCare, the state’s Medicaid-supported health insurance program for low-income residents set up by former Gov. Tommy Thompson, a Republican.
Walker and Republicans lowered Medicaid coverage to 100% of the federal poverty line from the previous 200% and eliminated the waiting list for childless adults. Those above the poverty line without employer-sponsored insurance could purchase it through the Affordable Care Act marketplace using federal subsidies, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
But Wisconsin taxpayers are paying more to cover individuals below the poverty line: 39.3% of costs rather than 10% under full Medicaid expansion. In 2023, Medicaid accounted for 15.7% of state taxpayer spending, according to the policy forum.
Under its approach, Wisconsin doesn’t have an eligibility gap like some states, something Republicans highlight as a reason the state doesn’t need to expand.
But that has come with a loss of federal funds. Over the past decade, Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services estimates, the state has spent about $2.6 billion more to cover the costs of a partial expansion compared with the projected cost under a federal expansion.
Under an expansion, more individuals would be able to access Medicaid. But the Wisconsin Policy Forum found it would have a somewhat modest impact on coverage levels — the percentage change in Medicaid enrollees would be 7.2%, compared with nearly 30% or more in other non-expansion states.
With the recent federal bill, Walker and other Republicans still argue Wisconsin was right not to accept federal expansion. The state is going to experience the impacts to a lesser extent than fully expanded states.
But because Wisconsin receives federal waivers for its Medicaid program, the state is still subject to some provisions under the new law, including the work requirements, eligibility determinations and provider taxes.
Under the new work requirements, individuals covered by Medicaid are required to prove they are working 80 hours per month — parents with dependent children or people who are medically frail are exempted.
As a result, some 230,000 Wisconsin residents could lose coverage while the state incurs administrative costs to account for the new requirements, according to an estimate from U.S. Senate Democrats based on data from the Congressional Budget Office.
The work requirements don’t stop at individuals covered by Medicaid alone; it also extends to coverage through marketplace subsidies, affecting over 200,000 Wisconsin residents.
Work requirements used to be required for Wisconsin residents to access coverage through federal waivers, but in 2021 then-President Joe Biden removed the work requirement.
The labor force participation rate has dipped from about 68% in 2017 to a little over 65% as of May 2025 but has remained higher than the national average, which is about 62%. Some reports suggest that decline is due to the aging workforce in the state.
Work requirements have also been found to increase the uninsured rate.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum reports that one of the main reasons work requirements may lead to higher uninsured rates is that they are confusing and time-consuming. Some people may choose to get rid of coverage altogether to avoid unnecessary paperwork.
The Kaiser Family Foundation also found that implementing work requirements will be costly for states, costing anywhere from $10 million to over $270 million, depending on the size of the state. DHS estimates the state will pay $6 million annually to implement work requirements, while receiving a lower federal match rate than fully expanded states to reimburse for administrative costs.
With a lower federal match rate, Wisconsin has increased Medicaid funding through hospital taxes, which the new state budget just increased from 1.8% to the federal maximum of 6% for the 2025-27 biennium budget.
Republican lawmakers in the state were quick to approve the hospital tax increase, despite their previous opposition to Medicaid expansion as a means for drawing down additional federal funding. If they hadn’t, the state’s 1.8% tax would have been frozen under Trump’s big bill. The increase will raise some $1 billion more annually in federal matching funds that the state can use to pay hospitals for care they provide Medicaid patients.
States that expanded will not lose the 90% federal match rate, but those like Wisconsin that didn’t will now miss out on an additional incentive to expand created during the Biden administration.
The incentive would have raised the federal match rate to 95% for two years, but was eliminated by Trump’s big bill. Instead Wisconsin will remain at about 60% reimbursement, while still facing the same bureaucratic requirements as expansion states.
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Wisconsin still losing out from not expanding Medicaid — even under Trump’s big bill 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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