If you avidly read Wisconsin Watch, you’ve learned plenty about prisons in Wisconsin. As our reporting has shown, they’re overcrowded, understaffed and particularly expensive to operate. In 2020, the state spent $220 per resident to lock up people — significantly higher than neighboring states.
Wisconsin Watch has covered prison issues for more than a decade, but we’ve prioritized that coverage since reporter Mario Koran teamed up with The New York Times to expose a staffing crisis that resulted in extended lockdowns, substandard health care for prisoners and untenable working conditions for correctional officers. Our press corps colleagues joined us with months of sustained coverage, forcing lawmakers and the Department of Corrections to respond in some ways.
We’re proud of that reporting. But as we continue exposing such problems, we’re doubling down on exploring solutions. For instance, Addie Costello and Joe Timmerman last month profiled Camp Reunite, a unique program that helps Wisconsin prisoners maintain relationships with their children — recognizing that family visits have been shown to reduce recidivism.
But how might Wisconsin solve its biggest prison problems? We’re discussing that as a staff. The question is tricky because so many challenges outside of prison walls shape the problems within them, whether its barriers to housing, jobs or health care. That’s why we’re discussing coverage with beat reporters across the Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service newsrooms.
In the coming months, expect more coverage that highlights more humane and cost-effective ways to protect public safety and rehabilitate people who do break the law. What can Wisconsin learn from other states that have reduced prison populations without jeopardizing safety? We’re asking.
As with all of our stories, we’ll prioritize those with the potential for impact. Our journalism aims to help people navigate their lives, be seen and heard, hold power to account and come together in community and civic life.
Meantime, we want to hear from you. What topics or storylines do you hope to see us follow? What perspectives would you like to share? Feel free to email me at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
How we’re reporting on Wisconsin prisons 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.
Every time third-year Milwaukee Area Technical College student Devin Hayden comes to the Office of Multicultural Services, student service specialists welcome her with open arms.
“It’s literally just nothing but ‘hi Devin, how are you doing? How’s your parents?’ ” she said. “I felt like I could talk to them about anything that was going on.”
Now, students like Hayden are wondering where they’ll find support once the office closes on Sept. 18.
In August, MATC announced it is restructuring the office into a new Office of Community Impact and eliminating four student service specialist positions to comply with federal recommendations to end race-based practices.
Some are questioning whether the decision aligns with the message the college sends regarding inclusivity and diversity.
Walter Lanier remembers students walking through the doors of the Office of Multicultural Services saying, “this is different when I walk in here.”
Lanier, who ran the department until 2020 and left MATC in 2022, said many students of color consider the office their “home base.” He thinks it will be almost impossible to fill the gap left by eliminating four student support specialists.
They specialize in serving the needs of Black, Indigenous, Asian and Hispanic students but also work with students from other backgrounds.
The office also rescued leftover food from the cafeteria and gave it out to students free of charge, Hayden said. She said some students came to the office for food every day.
“I would cash in on that because sometimes I don’t have enough money for lunch,” Hayden said.
Crystal Harper, a student who’s taken classes at MATC for nine years, said the office is her “safe space.” She credits the office for supporting her growth in school, even connecting her with an internship and supporting her candidacy for MATC governor.
“When eagles fly, they don’t have to move their wings. They’re just soaring. So they told me to be like the eagles — continue to soar,” Harper said. “That’s what my plans are, to continue to soar.”
Hayden, who identifies as a Black queer woman, said she didn’t just feel like a number at the Office of Multicultural Services like she does in other spaces on campus.
Eliminating that space contradicts the college’s message of “community and inclusivity,” Hayden said.
“The message that (the college is) spreading that yes, we promote students, we promote students of different walks of life but then at the same time we’re going to eliminate this entire department is ridiculous to me,” Hayden said. “None of us are trusting that. None of us think that that decision is right.”
The four student service specialists received an email on Aug. 19 informing them that the Office of Multicultural Services will be restructured into the Office of Community Impact and their positions would be eliminated.
The office will “champion holistic support for all students,” MATC told NNS in a statement.
The decision comes amid the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke federal funding from colleges and universities that use “race-conscious practices” in programs or activities.
MATC leaders said they restructured the office to align with the administration’s guidance because the office solely serviced students who identify as a specific race or ethnic group.
“Fulfilling our mission to serve all students in our community while adjusting to this guidance from the U.S. Department of Education has been challenging,” read the statement from MATC. “We want to continue to stress our commitment and focus on supporting each and every one of our students, providing them with the resources they need to succeed.”
In August, U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland determined that the way the Trump administration attempted to threaten revoking Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs was unconstitutional.
MATC leaders said they are equally committed to supporting the employees whose positions were eliminated.
In the email, Michael Rogers, vice president of student engagement and community impact, invited support specialists to apply for two new positions within the Office of Community Impact: one that focuses on “specialized training and student events” and another for “mentorship programs,” if they wished.
In an Aug. 26 MATC District Board meeting, student service specialist Floyd C. Griffin III, who worked in multicultural services for four years, asked the board why the college eliminated his position.
“I’m living through the indignity of working day after day knowing that my service, my dedication and my livelihood have already been dismissed by leadership,” Griffin said. “After years of commitment, this is how the college treats its employees of color — rushed, silenced and discarded.”
The four service specialists are people of color.
Tony Baez, the former MATC vice president of academic affairs, implemented bilingual programs at MATC in the 1990s. He said MATC President Anthony Cruz should rethink eliminating support specialists.
“MATC is an institution that is so large that with each (support specialist), you can ease them into other kinds of positions to help those students that need the support systems,” Baez said. “He had options.”
Milwaukee tech college’s multicultural service cuts prompt pushback 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.
Wisconsin livestock markets, dealers and truckers would see massive fee increases under a rule change proposed by state agriculture regulators.
The post Wisconsin agriculture regulators propose massive fee increases for livestock industry appeared first on WPR.
An open valve led to a recent manure spill in Taylor County that flowed into a nearby waterway, killing fish over a 5-mile stretch of Trappers Creek.
The post Farm failed to report manure spill in Taylor County that killed fish in a nearby creek appeared first on WPR.
New freshman enrollment across the Universities of Wisconsin campuses is up an average of 3 percent this fall, but “significant declines” in international students has kept overall enrollment flat.
The post Loss of international students affects enrollment growth at UW campuses appeared first on WPR.
The process involves using machines to pump miniscule oxygen bubbles into the water, hopefully slowing algae growth, improving water clarity and decreasing the amount of muck on the lake bottom.
The post Wisconsin community experiments with nanobubbles to clean up lakes appeared first on WPR.
Milwaukee civil rights organizers say they are "preparing for the worst" after a decision this week by the U.S. Supreme Court focused on immigration enforcement.
The post Community advocates ‘preparing for the worst’ after Supreme Court ICE decision appeared first on WPR.
After more than a week of being unable to drink public water due to nitrite contamination, the village of Williams Bay is returning to normal. But this case is a bit of an outlier compared to the larger nitrate and nitrite concerns for drinking water around the state.
The post Williams Bay ‘Do Not Drink’ order lifted but nitrite and nitrate concerns remain around Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.
A new collection of essays by lesbian mothers reminds us that the fight for equality is, and has always been, the reluctantly public fight to savor the mundane with your loved ones.
The post Lesbian mothers from Madison share their parenting stories in new essay collection appeared first on WPR.
A western Wisconsin town is among a growing number of local governments that want local regulation of large livestock farms.
The post Western Wisconsin town is latest to propose new rules for large livestock farms appeared first on WPR.
The automobile brings new freedoms as well as perils to Blacks on the road from the 1930s to the late 1960s.
The post Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America appeared first on WPR.
Pork chops with bourbon-cherry sauce and sweet potatoes; South Carolina delicacy; South Carolina barbecue hash.
The post Cook’s Country:Pork Any Way You Like appeared first on WPR.
President Donald Trump holds up a chart while speaking during an event announcing broad global tariffs in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 2, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in early November on whether President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs are legal, according to an order the court released Tuesday.
The one-page unsigned order laid out an expedited timeline, which the administration had requested, for the consolidated legal challenges brought by a handful of business owners and a dozen Democratic state attorneys general.
A U.S. appeals court sided with the businesses and state officials late last month. In its 7-4 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling in May finding Trump’s unprecedented use of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to trigger global tariffs violated the Constitution.
The justices’ acceptance of the case is the latest in a string of legal challenges against the administration that have escalated to the high court since Trump took office in January. Recently the Supreme Court has handed the administration wins on immigration enforcement and withholding foreign aid.
Trump began imposing wide-reaching tariffs in February and significantly broadened them in the following months on goods from around the globe after declaring national emergencies — first over illegal fentanyl smuggling, and then declaring trade deficits an emergency. A trade deficit means the U.S. imports more goods from a country than that nation’s businesses purchase from U.S. suppliers.
As of July, the U.S. had collected roughly $122 billion in tariff revenue, according to a monthly tracker produced by the Peterson Institute on International Economics.
Tariffs are taxes that the U.S. government collects from domestic businesses and purchasers when they import foreign goods.
In the administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court to fast-track the case, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued the government would face “catastrophic” economic fallout if it had to repay businesses for the tariffs already collected, particularly if the court waited until next year to take the case.
Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among states that challenged Trump’s emergency tariffs.
The business plaintiffs include V.O.S. Selections, a New York-based company that imports wine and spirits from 16 countries, a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company, and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.
Minister of Justice and Public Security Héctor Villatoro, right, accompanies Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center, during a tour of the Terrorist Confinement Center on March 26, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration paid El Salvador $4.76 million to detain up to 300 immigrant men for up to a year at a notorious mega-prison and barred the funds from being used to help asylum seekers, reproductive care or diversity initiatives, according to a court document filed Tuesday.
It’s the first time the financial agreement has been made public after the White House initially said the deal amounted to $6 million.
The payments were part of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown and decision to invoke a wartime law to remove Venezuelan nationals.
The four-page agreement between the United States and El Salvador verifies that the funds came out of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law, which gives financial assistance to security forces and is subject to a human rights law known as the Leahy Law.
That human rights law bars State’s financial support of “units of foreign security forces” — which can include military and law enforcement staff in prisons — facing credible allegations of gross human rights violations.
“The purpose of this grant is to provide funds to be used by the Salvadoran law enforcement and corrections agencies for its law enforcement needs, which includes costs associated with detaining the 238 TdA members recently deported to El Salvador,” according to the agreement.
Those who drafted the law raised concerns that those payments violated human rights laws, as more than 250 Venezuelan men were removed from the U.S. to the brutal prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, despite a federal judge’s order barring such action.
Congressional Democrats have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House for a copy of the financial agreement for months, over concerns the funds were being used in violation of human rights.
On March 15, the Trump administration sent 238 men to CECOT, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to apply to Venezuelan nationals 14 and older who are suspected members of the gang Tren de Aragua.
The agreement, dated March 22, noted the men could be detained up to a year.
It also bars any of the $4.76 million to be used to help asylum seekers seek legal counsel for the U.S. asylum process, for access to abortion, funds for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that provides humanitarian assistance to Palestinians or for programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
The men were released back to Venezuela as part of a prison swap in July, but they remained at CECOT for four months. Some of those detained, including Kilmar Abrego Garica, of Maryland, whose mistaken deportation captured national attention, detailed psychological and physical torture.
The document was obtained through a lawsuit by Democracy Forward, which specifically argued the financial agreement between El Salvador and the U.S. “was created without any legal basis.”
“The correspondence between the U.S. State Department and El Salvador confirms what we have long suspected: the Trump-Vance administration did nothing to meaningfully ensure that individuals disappeared from the U.S. to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison were protected from torture, indefinite confinement, or other abuses,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. “The agreement did, however, go to lengths to ensure that the funds the U.S. provided to El Salvador not be used to provide reproductive health care or to assist asylum seekers in accessing resources and counsel.”
That case is being overseen by District of Columbia Judge James Boasberg, who also ordered the Trump administration to turn around planes carrying men removed under the wartime law. Instead, the planes landed in El Salvador.
Secretary of U.S. Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 24, 2025. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration released its strategy to Make America Healthy Again on Tuesday, which officials hope will reduce chronic diseases and align federal policy with their beliefs.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a briefing on the strategy the 128 “recommendations are things that I’ve been dreaming about my whole life.”
Kennedy said he hoped to implement several of the changes before the end of the year, including defining what constitutes an ultra-processed food, updating water quality standards for forever chemicals known as PFAS and changing infant formula standards.
The report also includes potentially controversial elements that address access to vaccines, a topic several Republican senators rebuked Kennedy over during a lengthy hearing last week.
The 20-page strategy follows the MAHA Commission’s release of its first report in May that outlined four areas of concern — nutrition, physical activity, environmental factors and “overmedicalization.”
The proposals in the new report range in scope from issues that have largely been addressed to initiatives that are likely to cause concerns among doctors and reputable medical organizations.
For example, the strategy calls on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to “develop guidance on diagnostics and treatments for food allergies,” even though doctors are already able to diagnose and treat those conditions.
The report also calls on the FDA to “improve regulatory processes for over-the-counter sunscreen, which has fallen behind other countries.”
The White House Domestic Policy Council and HHS intend to draft a separate plan addressing the childhood vaccine schedule, vaccine injuries, vaccine science, “misaligned incentives” and “scientific and medical freedom.”
Kennedy indicated during the briefing that he may seek to overhaul the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, claiming that 99% of vaccine injuries are not reported, in part, because doctors are not compensated for doing so.
“We are recasting the entire program so that vaccine injuries will be reported; they will be studied; that individuals who suffer them will not be denied, or marginalized, or vilified, or gaslighted,” Kennedy said. “They will be welcomed and we will learn everything we can about them.”
The report doesn’t include any plans to reduce pesticide use or to seek solutions to end mass shootings, though Kennedy and others at the event said those are issues the administration will look into.
“The firearms question is a complex question and it’s not an easy question,” Kennedy said. “The violence is what we’re concerned with.”
Kennedy said that guns have been around for a while and that they also exist in other countries that don’t have nearly the number of mass shootings as the United States, before talking about psychiatric drugs, video games and social media.
“We are looking at that at NIH,” Kennedy said, referring to the National Institutes of Health. “We are doing studies now. We’re initiating studies to look at the correlation and the potential connection between overmedicating our kids and this violence.”
Kennedy deferred a question about pesticides to White House Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.
Haley referenced a section in the newly released report titled “cumulative exposure” that said USDA, EPA and NIH will use new approach methodologies “to improve methods for evaluating human health and environmental risks of chemical contaminants.”
Rollins told reporters that pesticides require study before being approved and that they are needed to ensure a stable food supply.
“Is it a perfect process? Arguably there is no perfect process,” Rollins said. “But it is a strong process that our farmers stand by. And a crop protection tool, such as pesticides, is absolutely essential for America not to compromise our food supply system at this point.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday said the Trump administration can temporarily hold on to $4 billion in foreign aid funding approved by Congress, overturning a lower court’s order and continuing a struggle over who controls the nation’s purse strings.
The one-page ruling from the emergency docket, signed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., came just one day after the administration appealed the lower court’s ruling.
While the original lawsuit over withheld foreign aid began in February and stemmed from an executive order, the Trump administration sent Congress a rescissions request covering some of the spending in late August.
The proposal is part of the formal process laid out in a 1974 law that allows the president to ask lawmakers to cancel previously approved spending.
Congress typically has 45 days to approve, modify, or disagree with a rescissions request. During that time the president can legally freeze the funding and only has to spend it if lawmakers don’t approve the plan.
This particular rescission request, however, was sent to lawmakers within 45 days of the end of the fiscal year, creating a dispute that complicated the nature of the original lawsuit.
That maneuver, sometimes called a pocket rescission, is considered illegal by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and several members of Congress, though White House budget director Russ Vought believes it’s within the bounds of the law.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the Trump administration’s appeal that the federal district court’s order to spend the funding “requires the Executive Branch to rush to obligate the same $4 billion that the President has just proposed rescinding between now and September 30, and thus puts the Executive Branch at war with itself.”
“Just as the President is pressing for rescission and explaining to Congress that obligating these funds would harm U.S. foreign policy interests, his subordinates are being forced to proceed to identify and even negotiate with potential recipients,” he added.
The Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday doesn’t address whether the justices agree with the administration that it can refuse to spend the billions in foreign aid since it sent the rescissions request close to the end of the fiscal year.
Roberts wrote “that the September 3, 2025 order of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, case Nos. 1:25-cv-400 and 1:25-cv-402, is hereby partially stayed for funds that are subject to the President’s August 28, 2025 recission proposal currently pending before Congress pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court. It is further ordered that a response to the application be filed on or before Friday, September 12th, 2025, by 4 p.m. (EDT).”
A petroleum refinery in Louisiana. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that Wisconsin doesn't need to comply with stricter air quality rules to decrease smog in three southeastern Wisconsin counties. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
A federal appeals court has ruled that the state of Wisconsin and businesses operating in certain parts of southeastern Wisconsin will not be required to meet more stringent air quality standards for ozone pollution — giving state regulators and industry a reprieve from what they say were “costly and burdensome requirements.”
On Friday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state’s request to temporarily postpone a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. Late last year, the EPA reclassified areas of Milwaukee, Kenosha and Sheboygan counties as being in “serious nonattainment” of the agency’s 2015 ozone standards. In February, the state filed a lawsuit for the review of the EPA finding.
The enforcement of the EPA standard would have forced the state to revise its plan for complying with national air quality standards under the Clean Air Act, and hundreds of businesses would have had to assess if their existing permits need to be renewed or revised. The state complained that these measures would have cost the Department of Natural Resources and the state’s businesses millions of dollars when most of the ozone pollution over the areas is caused elsewhere and settles over southeast Wisconsin after drifting across Lake Michigan.
Environmental groups have said that even if Wisconsin’s industries aren’t creating most of the ozone pollution, the businesses have a duty to work to protect the health and well-being of the state’s residents. In 2018, Clean Wisconsin sued the EPA to force the agency to declare the three southeastern Wisconsin counties aren’t complying with federal air quality rules.
Ozone pollution, also known as smog, occurs most often in the summer when air pollution from vehicle exhaust and industrial processes reacts with sunlight. The pollution can be harmful to people’s respiratory systems.
“The fact that southeastern Wisconsin has been reclassified as in serious nonattainment for ozone means that residents of those counties are at higher risk of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and Wisconsin should be implementing all possible policies and strategies to reduce ozone pollution to protect public health,” Clean Wisconsin attorney Katie Nekola said in a statement to Wisconsin Public Radio.
But business groups and the state have argued the costs are too high for a problem that doesn’t start in Wisconsin. DNR analysis has found that less than 10% of the ozone pollution in the state is caused by Wisconsin industry.
The state Department of Justice said in its lawsuit that the “change triggers costly permit requirements, complex regulations, and stringent emissions offset mandates,” which could create $4 million in added costs for the state and cost an estimated 382 businesses between $1 million and $6.9 million.
Scott Manley, a lobbyist for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, said the court’s Friday order grants relief from the “crushing and job-killing ozone regulations.”
“Data from both the DNR and EPA indicate that the vast majority of ozone pollution in eastern Wisconsin is caused by emissions originating from outside our state borders,” Manley said in a statement. “It’s unfair to punish Wisconsin businesses for pollution they didn’t create, and [the] order is the first step toward righting this wrong.”
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