Parents who've lost children to severe allergic reactions are urging Wisconsin lawmakers to pass a bipartisan bill requiring first responders to carry epinephrine.
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At the Cell To Table cooking event, the audience witnessed how people use scarce resources to create dishes like fried rice and Pop-Tart pie in prison. But participants say cooking in their cells also created a community.
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President Trump is betting tariffs on imported wood and furniture will help America’s lumber and cabinet industries. But two Wisconsin producers say the tariffs are eliminating markets, depressing prices and creating chaos for their businesses.
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Milwaukee officials are again discussing the future of the city's streetcar after state lawmakers limited the options for expanding the streetcar into other neighborhoods.
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Two brothers from Green Bay got out of prison last year after serving more than two decades for a murder they didn't commit. Now, David and Robert Bintz could receive about $1 million each as compensation, if the state Legislature agrees to the payout.
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The state Department of Justice has appealed a circuit court ruling that would create a new citizenship check for millions of Wisconsin voters.
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An independent audit of the the Department of Public Instruction found about a quarter of Wisconsin’s school districts missed the deadline to file financial statements in the 2022-23 school year.
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After a Cap Times investigation found 200 educators have been investigated for sexual misconduct, Jetta Bernier, executive director of the national group, Enough Abuse, told WPR's "Wisconsin Today" there are simple ways to reduce abuses.
The post Stopping sexual abuse in schools ‘is not rocket science,’ national advocate says appeared first on WPR.
More than 805,000 students are currently enrolled across Wisconsin’s 421 public school districts, according to the state department of public instruction. Now K-12 school districts, like the Manitowoc Public School District, are examining solutions to maintain student enrollment and culture.
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Following the April state Supreme Court loss, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming launched an effort to examine what went wrong led by state Treasurer John Leiber. Schimming, Brad Schimel, Milwaukee pastor Marty Calderon and Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney pictured answer questions from the press in February 2025. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Kelly Ruh resigned from her position as treasurer of the Republican Party of Wisconsin over the weekend, saying that she can “no longer meaningfully contribute” to the party’s leadership given current circumstances.
Ruh, who worked for the party for about a decade, said there is an “absence of a strategic plan, defined objectives, measurable outcomes” alongside budgetary issues.
“As the saying goes ‘what gets measured gets done.’ Unfortunately, without metrics or accountability, it is unclear what we are working toward or what our capacity is to achieve our objective,” Ruh wrote. “Moreover, the internal dynamics of RPW, particularly the dysfunctional leadership, have made attempts at collaboration increasingly difficult, unproductive and discouraging. The lack of transparency, direction and respect for differing opinions — or even basic board oversight — has fostered a culture that is not only ineffective but also absurd.”
Ruh’s departure comes in a year when the state party has faced calls for changes after tough statewide losses, including in the race for state superintendent and the spring state Supreme Court race where the party’s endorsed candidate lost by 10 percentage points — a result that locked in a liberal majority at least through 2028.
Following the April losses, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming launched an effort to examine what went wrong led by state Treasurer John Leiber, who is the only Republican to hold a statewide office in Wisconsin.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the results of the effort included recommended goals for the party including expanding the out-of-state donor network, encouraging direct donations to candidates and the party, ensuring that third-party groups reinforce candidate and party messaging, hiring an in-house opposition researcher and supplying county parties with talking points.
“It pains me that the Republican Party of Wisconsin continues to repeat the same mistakes time and again,” Ruh wrote in her resignation letter dated Oct. 19. “Recent election results in Wisconsin are clear — if RPW does not drastically change its approach to everything (leadership, fundraising, messaging, organizing, addressing issues that Wisconsinites care about) then it will play no role in deciding our future.”
Wisconsin has another slate of crucial elections on deck for 2026 including an open race for governor and lieutenant governor, another state Supreme Court race and elections for the state Senate and Assembly where control will be up for grabs.
“My sincere hope is that those who remain in positions of authority will institute the critical changes that must be made to our party,” Ruh said.
Schimming, who was first elected to serve as the state party’s chair in 2022 and won another term in December, thanked Ruh for her service in a statement to WisPolitics without addressing the charges in her letter. He said the party wishes her “the best of luck in her future endeavors.”
Ruh’s letter was posted to social media Monday by Brett Galaszewski, who serves as fifth Congressional district vice chairman for the state party as well as the vice chair for the Republican Party of Milwaukee County and the national enterprise director for Turning Point Action. He called for the party to heed Ruh’s warnings.
“Ideologically, Kelly and I didn’t always align. I’m further to the right and we both knew it. But we had real conversations about reforming the movement,” Galaszewski said. “When even voices from the old guard start saying the quiet part out loud, it should be a wake up call for everyone.”
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A bipartisan group of legislators has proposed a bill to require the state Department of Natural Resources to warn county and tribal health departments when an exceedance of state groundwater standards is discovered.
The proposed bill, which was circulated for co-sponsorship Monday by Rep. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse), Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) and Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp), would include warnings about the presence of PFAS — even though the state has been unable to finalize a PFAS limit for groundwater.
That provision would allow private well owners to be warned about the presence of PFAS despite the yearslong political quicksand that has mired the effort to enact a contaminant limit for the class of chemicals. The lack of a PFAS standard has been a regular sticking point in negotiations over legislation to spend $125 million already set aside for PFAS clean up.
While the state doesn’t have a PFAS groundwater standard, it does have standards for nearly 150 other chemicals such as aluminum, nitrates and lead.
About one-third of Wisconsinites get their drinking water from private wells, which don’t come with the same warnings that are often required of municipal water systems.
“The public should be able to know if there is any threat to the safety of the water they and their children drink every day,” the co-sponsorship memo states. “This bill would provide Wisconsinites with more knowledge so they can protect themselves and their children from pollutants and allow them to take advantage of local and county-level testing initiatives and state-level assistance opportunities like the Well Compensation Grant Program.”
After the legislation’s announcement, environmental groups celebrated it as a potential win for clean water.
“Wisconsinites have a right to know about pollution that may be impacting the health of their families,” said Peter Burress, government affairs manager for Wisconsin Conservation Voters. “This legislation is a common sense solution that will protect Wisconsin families. It’s unacceptable that so many Wisconsin families could be drinking water contaminated with PFAS, lead, and nitrates — chemicals tied to cancer and birth defects — without ever being told.”
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U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee ranking member Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, listens during a committee hearing May 7, 2025. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — A group of Democrats on the U.S. House education panel urged the Education Department to withdraw its proposed supplemental priority on “promoting patriotic education” in a letter obtained Monday by States Newsroom.
House Committee on Education and Workforce ranking member Bobby Scott led a handful of his colleagues in writing to Education Secretary Linda McMahon opposing the proposed priority for discretionary grant funding.
The Democrats wrote that while civics education “is a vital component of a well-functioning democracy,” the proposal’s details “raise serious concerns.” The letter was sent Oct. 17 — the last day to submit a comment on the proposed priority. It has not been previously reported.
Joining Scott, of Virginia, were Reps. Frederica Wilson of Florida, Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, Mark Takano and Mark DeSaulnier of California, Lucy McBath of Georgia, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Yassamin Ansari of Arizona.
The Democrats said the agency’s proposal would insert President Donald Trump’s administration’s “preferences of a particular understanding of American history in curriculum, professional development, and educational programs.”
Civics is a branch of social studies that focuses on rights and obligations of citizenship. Though it’s long enjoyed bipartisan support, the subject has found itself engulfed in the education culture wars regarding how and what is taught as America reckons with its complicated history.
The department announced last month it would be prioritizing “patriotic education” when it comes to discretionary grants.
The department’s proposed definition of “patriotic education” calls for a presentation of America’s history that is grounded in an “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of the American founding and foundational principles” and “the concept that commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified.”
But the Democrats found this definition to be “concerning,” saying this framing “creates the potential for schools that teach accurate and complex histories of slavery, Indigenous displacement, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement to be limited in their ability to access certain discretionary grants.”
The department’s September announcement came the same day it unveiled a civics education coalition that includes a slew of prominent conservative advocacy organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA.
Left out of that initiative are some of the more traditional civics and education groups. Instead, many of the coalition’s groups have promoted Trump’s political agenda and promote a vision of U.S. identity that downplays historical wrongs associated with race and gender and projects the country as an exceptional force for good.
“Some of these groups have expressed contempt for the teaching of history that does not align with the version of history they believe students should learn, and these same groups would prefer to limit children’s access to materials that depict the realities of slavery in America or the Civil Rights Movement,” the Democrats wrote.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
A closed sign is seen on the Washington Monument on Oct. 1, 2025, in Washington, D.C., the first day of the 2025 government shutdown. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Interior Department announced Monday it will pause efforts to lay off 2,050 employees throughout the country, after a federal judge expanded a temporary restraining order late last week.
The new filing provides more information about how the Trump administration plans to reduce the size and scope of a department that oversees much of the country’s public lands.
Rachel Borra, chief human capital officer at Interior, wrote in a 35-page document the layoffs would affect employees at the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey, among others.
The National Park Service layoffs would target several areas of the country, including 63 of 224 workers at the Northeast regional office, 69 of 223 at the Southeast regional office and 57 of 198 at the Pacific West regional office.
The Northeast region holds 83 sites throughout Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.
The Southeast region “has 73 parks across 4 million acres in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.”
The Pacific West region encompasses more than “60 national park sites across California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, parts of Arizona and Montana, and the territories of Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.”
The layoffs cannot take place under the temporary restraining order that U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Susan Illston clarified and expanded Friday during an emergency hearing.
The layoffs would be further blocked if Illston, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, issues a preliminary injunction during a hearing scheduled for later this month.
Advocates and current and former Interior staff members have told States Newsroom that bare-bones staffing during the government shutdown across the department and the U.S. Forest Service already is leaving America’s treasured natural assets vulnerable to lasting damage.
The other briefs filed Monday were from the departments of Commerce and Health and Human Services, which said in earlier court documents officials planned to lay off hundreds of federal workers.
Commerce’s latest numbers say it would like to lay off 102 workers, while the Health and Human Services Department told the judge officials plan to get rid of 954 people. Both confirmed those efforts are on hold under the temporary restraining order.
The numbers were different from those included in earlier filings to the court in the lawsuit, which was brought by labor unions representing federal workers.
Those declarations in the earlier filings detailed the below layoff plans:
Federal attorneys wrote in Monday’s court documents that all other departments “have determined, to the best of their knowledge and based on their investigation to date, that they have no additional information to provide in response to the Court’s October 17, 2025, modified TRO, that was not already provided in their October 17, 2025, declarations.”
The Energy Department wrote in a filing that it didn’t need to declare any planned layoffs to the court since the Reduction in Force notices it had issued didn’t have an effective date. An earlier court filing said the department sent those notices to 179 employees.
Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., and House Energy-Water Appropriations subcommittee ranking member Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, wrote in a letter that the Energy Department’s planned layoffs were “a clear act of political retribution that will hurt communities across the country.”
“These actions, which reportedly affect 179 employees, appear to be part of a broader effort to implement the administration’s budget request without congressional approval—circumventing the appropriations process and undermining congressional intent,” Murray and Kaptur wrote. “The Department’s actions will raise energy prices for American families by disrupting the implementation of key programs that increase supply and reduce costs for hard-working Americans.”
The layoffs are one of the many ways the Trump administration is approaching the government shutdown differently than it did during the last prolonged funding lapse, which took place from December 2018 through January 2019.
White House officials have canceled funding approved by Congress for projects in regions of the country that tend to vote for Democrats. And signaled they may not provide back pay for federal workers placed on furlough, which is authorized by a 2019 law that President Donald Trump signed during his first term.
Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said during a morning press conference he hopes Senate Democrats vote to advance a stopgap spending bill soon, allowing the government to reopen.
The conclusion of the No Kings protests, he said, could help reduce pressure on Democrats to keep the government shut down.
“Now that Chuck Schumer has had his spectacle, he’s had his big protest against America, this is our plea: We’re asking, and I think everybody in this room and everybody watching, listening to our voices this morning should be hoping that he is finally now ready to go to work and end this shutdown and stop inflicting pain on the American people,” Johnson said.
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters outside the White House he believes moderate Democrats, specifically Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, are ready to end the shutdown.
Shaheen told the New Hampshire Bulletin on Friday that no official negotiations to end the shutdown are happening. She also criticized the administration’s multibillion dollar bailout for Argentina that Trump finalized last week as federal agencies remain dark during the funding lapse and as health insurance premiums are set to increase.
But Hassett repeated the argument that Republicans won’t negotiate until Senate Democrats vote to reopen the government. He told CNBC Monday morning he believes that will happen “sometime this week.”
“If they want to have policy disputes, they could do it through regular order, but just shutting down the government and making 750,000 government workers not get their paychecks, it’s just not acceptable,” the White House economic adviser said.
The Senate failed for an 11th time later in the day to advance the House-passed stopgap spending bill that would keep the government up and running through Nov. 21.
The 50-43 vote followed a familiar pattern, with Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Maine independent Sen. Angus King voting with Republicans to advance the bill. Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who has been voting to advance the bill, didn’t vote. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul voted no.
Ashley Murray and Shauneen Miranda contributed to this report.
UW-Platteville (UW Platteville)
The Universities of Wisconsin branch campus in West Baraboo will close at the end of the school year, officials announced Friday.
The UW-Platteville Baraboo Sauk County is set to close after a steep decline in enrollment. The two-year campus hit an enrollment peak in 2000 with 758 students. Enrollment on the campus hit an all time low this semester with 116 students.
Baraboo Sauk County is the eighth branch campus to be closed or dramatically downsized since 2023. It is also the second branch campus under the management of UW-Platteville to be shut down after the campus in Richland County was shuttered in July 2023.
“This decision was not made lightly,” UW-Platteville Chancellor Tammy Evetovich said in the announcement Friday. “Enrollment continues to decline on that campus, and we are committed to being good partners with the city and county by ensuring the campus can be used in ways that best serve the region.”
Enrollment on UW’s branch campuses has steadily declined in recent years, however campus faculty and staff, as well as residents of affected communities, have blamed UW administration officials for decades of decision making that deprioritized maintaining the two-year campuses.
State Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) blamed the closures on Republican budget decisions.
“Campus closures and the march towards consolidation is a result of Republican politicians viewing higher education as a luxury good that only those who can afford it deserve,” she said in a statement. “In their view, UW is just another cost preventing them from giving more public money to their billionaire campaign backers. The ‘budget shortfalls’ that led to this closure were manufactured over the last 15 years by right-wing politicians who systematically divested from public higher education while strangling UW’s ability to manage its own financial affairs.”
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Will Martin called himself a “common-sense conservative” in his launch ad, saying there is a “quiet crisis” of young people leaving the state. (Screenshot of campaign ad)
Businessman Will Martin launched his campaign for lieutenant governor Monday, joining a growing field for the second-highest executive office in Wisconsin.
Martin called himself a “common-sense conservative” in his launch ad, saying there is a “quiet crisis” of young people leaving the state. This is Martin’s second campaign for the office. He came in fifth in the 2022 primary when former U.S. Rep. Roger Roth was the Republican nominee.
“Wisconsin jobs are being lost. AI and automation are disrupting entire industries, and for far too many, homeownership has become a distant, if not impossible dream,” Martin said. “As lieutenant governor, I’ll work to cut the size and cost of state government and restore the promise of the American Dream together. Let’s ignite a new era of freedom, opportunity, and prosperity from Kenosha to Cornucopia.”
Martin worked in the administrations of former Govs. Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker. Under the Walker administration, he worked in the Wisconsin Housing & Economic Development Authority and the Department of Workforce Development.
Martin joins Former Lancaster Mayor David Varnam, who launched his campaign in September, in the race. Varnam also ran for lieutenant governor in 2022, coming seventh in the primary.
“I am concerned about my family’s future and the path Democrats are taking Wisconsin down,” Varnam said in his announcement. “We need to lower taxes to keep retirees, young people, and businesses in Wisconsin. Our schools need to focus on raising standards, test scores, and expectations for our students. As a father of two daughters, I will fight to keep men out of women’s sports and protect their locker rooms.”
Wisconsinites will cast their votes separately for governor and lieutenant governor during the partisan primary next year. The winners of the primaries will run on the same ticket in November and voters choose them as a pair.
The partisan primary is scheduled for Aug. 11, 2026.
Republican candidates for governor include U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Washington Co. Executive Josh Schoemann.
Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski, a Democrat, launched her campaign for lieutenant governor in August.
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Community Medical Services (CMS) on Milwaukee's South Side. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
When patients struggling with opioid addiction walk into the newly opened Community Medical Services (CMS) clinic on Milwaukee’s South Side, “we want them to feel that this is a space for healing and growth,” said Amanda Maria De Leon, regional community impact manager for CMS. The clinic provides therapy and medication-assisted treatment for people working to stabilize their lives after addiction.
Medication-assisted treatment involves medications like Methadone to control opioid cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Together with therapy, medication-assisted treatment allows patients to begin to stabilize and repair their lives. Although studies have associated medication-assisted treatment with reductions in overdoses and other improved recovery outcomes, its use also carries stigma. Confronting that social disapproval, while also providing a comfortable environment for patients, is part of the mission of CMS.
Walking into the clinic, patients are met with an open waiting room and ample seating. There is a small area with toys for young children in one corner, and across the room nurses sit at a desk waiting to check in patients. Hanging over the small play area is a plaque dedicated to a young girl who spoke at one of the city zoning hearings in favor of the clinic opening. De Leon explained that the girl, who was 8 years old at the time, had befriended a local unhoused man to whom she’d given food. “She knew he needed treatment,” De Leon told the Wisconsin Examiner, saying the girl told the zoning board, “I want them to open this clinic for my friend.”
Around a corner from the lobby, behind a set of protective glass windows, nurses dispense liquid methadone into small cups for patients on a daily basis. Walls and therapy rooms throughout the facility are painted calming blues and greens, and feature art or motivational messages. Small, decorative coffee tables sit between two small couches large enough for one or two people to sit facing each other.
“We create a space like this intentionally, because we don’t want a patient to feel like it’s a transaction,” De Leon told the Examiner. She said that the facility is designed to be therapeutic both to the patients and the staff, to mitigate burnout.
Dr. Dan Lemieux, one of the medical doctors at CMS, said that he’s “used to the hustle and bustle” of a clinic. His background began in family medicine, where Lemieux was used to seeing 20-25 patients each day. Over time he also began working in Suboxone treatment programs. “I think about eight years ago I kind of pulled back on family medicine a little bit and did a little more time in addiction,” Lemieux told the Wisconsin Examiner. “I found it more gratifying, enjoyed helping people a little bit more.” Lemieux began working at methadone clinics after the COVID-19 pandemic and found his way to CMS, where he has worked for about two years.
Lemieux has worked as the medical director of CMS clinics in West Allis, Madison, Fond du Lac, and now the Southside Milwaukee Clinic. Recalling the workload at West Allis, Lemieux told the the Examiner, “I think the counselors are really good at just keeping the flow going, and the front desk staff. So it never seemed overwhelming or busy, and the clients are always very appreciative.” Lemieux said he likes the highly focused sessions in recovery work, because “you can really spend your time kind of helping the client with those particular issues.”
Overdose deaths driven by the synthetic opioid fentanyl began skyrocketing in Milwaukee County around 2016, claiming hundreds of lives annually. New records for overdose deaths were set and broken every year from 2018 to 2022, when the death toll peaked at 674 lives lost. Nearly 5,800 non-fatal overdoses occurred that same year, according to the county’s overdose dashboard.
Recently, as new programs and services were established to stem the tide, overdoses began to decline. Last year there were 450 overdose deaths in Milwaukee, so far there have been fewer than half that number this year. CMS is one of the many organizations on the frontlines of the crisis, both as a treatment clinic and as a harm-reduction advocacy organization.
De Leon showcased a storage room full of boxes of hygiene kits, testing strips for both fentanyl and the tranquilizer xylazine (a more recent trend in the drug market), and Narcan (used to reverse an overdose), all of which are either used or distributed by the CMS outreach team. Sometimes staff visit homeless encampments and food pantries, other times they hold pop-up events in areas with high overdose rates. The team even organized a sober tailgate at American Family Field at a Milwaukee Brewers game and distributed over 1,200 tickets.
“We just deliver a little hope,” said De Leon. “Hopefully when you’re feeling a little better you’ll walk into a door of a treatment center. We don’t care where you walk into.” CMS also works with numerous partner organizations including the Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative (MORI), various fire departments, the West Allis overdose response team and other nodes along an evolving network.
De Leon said the network has become bigger and more collaborative. At an open house CMS held at the new clinic, dozens of people showed up, she said, including community members, firefighters and police officers from multiple departments, probation and parole representatives and treatment providers. “I was speechless,” said De Leon. “We had over 70 people show up to our open house…That would have never happened in a methadone treatment world 20 years ago.”
“We’re breaking down silos, we’re educating people,” she added. Today, people have easier access to methadone treatment programs. In Milwaukee County, both the jail and the Community Reintegration Center (formerly known as the House of Corrections) have medication-assisted treatment programs. De Leon stressed that when people are taken to correctional facilities they should tell staff whether they need medication-assisted treatment in order to access those programs.
The West Allis Fire Department became the first to carry Buprenorphine, which is given to people after reviving them from an overdose to stop sudden withdrawal symptoms. Bipartisan legislation at the state level legalized both fentanyl and xylazine testing strips.
Nevertheless, stigma associated with both addiction and medication-assisted treatment creates barriers to progress. Although CMS has clinics in the cities of West Allis and South Milwaukee, its new clinic is the first it has been able to open in the city of Milwaukee itself. The opening marked an end to years of contentious meetings with the city’s zoning board and local residents. Now, patients living near the South Side won’t need to travel far, and the new clinic could also lighten patient loads at other clinics.
Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic, who represents the district where the new CMS clinic is located, said she supports the treatment center opening. “I strongly supported this facility opening in our community,” Dimitrijevic told the Examiner. “Providing residents with nearby access to needed health care and harm reduction tools makes us all safer and healthier. I am proud to have led by example on this issue by welcoming CMS to our community and am grateful for their work serving our residents.”
Another clinic is expected to open up on Milwaukee’s North Side in early 2026. But many people are not sold on medication-assisted treatment, fentanyl testing strips and overdose-reversing medications. In 2023, when the city of Milwaukee’s zoning board approved the North Side clinic, reactions from the community were split. Leadership from the fire departments of Milwaukee and West Allis spoke in favor of CMS opening a clinic, stressing the dire need for relief and treatment access across Milwaukee County.
Others called treatment centers “predatory” and expressed concerns about the clinic’s for-profit business model.
At least one 2014 study, which analyzed self-reported services from disease testing to psychiatric care, found that for-profit providers “were significantly less likely than nonprofit and public programs to offer comprehensive services”. The study said that “interventions to increase the offering of comprehensive services are needed, particularly among for-profit programs.”
Other objections to the new clinic came from neighbors who argued that opening the clinic would hurt their property values and quality of life. A corporate representative and a real estate attorney from the Vin Baker Treatment Center, a facility named for a Milwaukee Bucks player that is located on N. 76th Street in Milwaukee, said that CMS would disrupt its business, jeopardizing a $3 million investment into the Vin Baker center. Ald. Lamont Westmoreland, who represents a North Side district, also opposed CMS, referring to city planning documents which recommended against opening social service businesses in the area. “I support treatment facilities, just not at this particular location,” Westmoreland said before the center opened.
John Koch, national director of community and public relations at CMS, explained that CMS is a for-profit entity with private equity backing. Koch said that the private equity investment, coupled with grants, has allowed the clinic to scale up to address the overdose crisis. opening new treatment centers, providing grants to extend clinic hours and embedding staff with local fire departments and homeless outreach programs for harm reduction. CMS bills Medicaid and other patient insurance to cover patient care, “and 90% of our people are on Medicaid”, Koch told the Examiner. “We work very heavily with Medicaid. And then outside of that we receive grants to open new projects.”
The private equity backing allows for “continuous investment back into the company to address the opioid epidemic as it’s needed,” said Koch. “If we were Ma and Popping it and just growing non-profit style, it’s so much slower and we would never be able to match the need.” CMS has opened seven clinics across Wisconsin, with over 70 clinics operating nationwide. “What we’ve been able to do is be innovative with our money, and meet people where they’re at,” said Koch. “So that’s our secret sauce, is using funds to just continue to provide more access to treatment. If we did not have private equity backing, we would never have been able to be this big, or be treating 30,000 people…That’s what’s allowed us to beat the opioid epidemic.”
Koch knows firsthand how treatment access can be the feather on the scale deciding life or death. In 2013, he was living on the streets of Chicago struggling with a heroin addiction. One night, not long after completing his second adult prison sentence, Koch encountered a police officer who saw that he needed help and gave him the number to a treatment center. Koch went the next day to begin recovery, which also included medication-assisted treatment. Today Koch is raising a family and works to give people the second chance he got years ago.
Despite such success stories, there is still public skepticism about medication-assisted treatment. De Leon recalled a conversation she had after making a presentation on harm reduction at a national conference. “This guy came up to me and said, ‘You know, you really changed my thinking,’” she said. He mentioned that in some cases people on probation or parole are expected to get off methadone in order to be fully released from supervision, despite the fact that he’s seen it significantly improve people’s lives.
De Leon asked why people were being forced to get off methadone and the man replied, “Well, nobody should be on these medications for the rest of their life.” She countered that if someone is finally stable after decades of addiction then, “Why not?…Would you tell me to get off of my insulin?” The man said no. “Then why would you tell somebody to get off of lifesaving medication that has him the most stable he’s ever been?” People are free to work on tapering off if they choose, but the priority should be stabilizing and saving a life, she argued.
Dr. Lemieux said that he’s also seen medication-assisted treatment make a difference. “It’s always a tough conversation to try and change minds,” Lemieux told the Examiner. “Just the data that comes out shows that people in recovery are getting jobs, they’re reuniting with family, they’re working more, crime goes down, and it’s just a win. They’re getting their lives back, and just being a part of that is very rewarding and amazing. I just hope that more people see this, realize this, and reducing deaths is just another huge point, too.”
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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.
About 5% of Americans identify as atheists, though one poll shows about 1 in 5 don’t believe in God.
Atheists believe God doesn’t exist.
According to recent polls (2023 and 2024):
Pew Research Center: Asked about their religion, 5% said they are atheists.
Asked if they believe in God or a universal spirit, 16% said no.
Pew also found that 29% of Americans (including atheists) said they are not religiously affiliated, up from 16% in 2007. The largest affiliation was Christian — 62%, down from 78%.
PRRI: 5% atheist (8% in Wisconsin).
AP-NORC: 7% atheist. 7% agnostic (believe God’s existence is unknown). 16% “nothing in particular.” Overall, 79% professed belief in God or a higher power, including 4% of atheists.
Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, who represents part of eastern Wisconsin, said Oct. 13 that over 18% of Americans are atheists. His office didn’t reply to comment requests.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Are 1 in 5 Americans atheists? 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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