In 2024, a sheriff’s deputy working for the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department was forced out for being lousy at his job. But even though the deputy, Cristian Morales, was flagged in the state’s negative separation database, he ended up being hired a few months later by the Menasha Police Department.
Earlier this year, Morales was arrested and accused of stalking an ex-girlfriend using the city’s Flock camera system. He’s now facing criminal charges.
While some folks are suited for the difficult work of being a law enforcement officer, many are not. It’s hardly a controversial statement to say that police, who can arrest people and use force when necessary, should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us.
And yet our reporting at The Badger Project has found that police chiefs and sheriffs in Wisconsin often give these “wandering officers” second or third chances, despite research saying that officers fired or forced out for misconduct are more likely than other cops to reoffend.
At our last count, more than 300 active officers in Wisconsin had been fired or forced out of previous law enforcement jobs. Many of these separations involved novices who couldn’t cut it in a tough job during their probationary period, when the bar for termination is low. But some, we’ve found, lost jobs for misconduct, including drunk driving, writing misleading reports and using sexist and racist language.
In Wisconsin, law enforcement agencies can report to the state DOJ when they fire or force out an officer, so we can track when that cop goes on to get hired by another policing agency. But we are currently unable to track these wandering officers who have been fired or forced out in other states and come to work here because we don’t have a list of all law enforcement officers here.
Peter Cameron
That’s why The Badger Project, along with our partners at the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit journalism organization, requested the full list of names and work histories from the Wisconsin Department of Justice and sued when it refused.
In April, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled in our favor and ordered the DOJ to release the records. She cited a previous state appeals court ruling that said law enforcement officers “necessarily relinquish certain privacy and reputational rights by virtue of the amount of trust society places in them and must be subject to public scrutiny.”
Prominent members of Wisconsin’s law enforcement community have criticized the judge’s ruling, saying it goes too far. An appeal could be coming.
Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, wrote an op-ed saying the release of these records could put officers at “risk of harassment, doxxing and worse.” He said officers’ birthdates are part of the records whose release we are seeking. Not so: While our initial records request asked for birthdates or birth years (to distinguish between officers with the same name), our lawsuit only asked for birth years, not months and days.
The state DOJ raised another objection, saying release of the names would jeopardize undercover officers. But what cop uses his or her real name when working undercover? We did not request photos of the officers.
I salute and thank the men and women in law enforcement who are serving their communities. I don’t envy the chiefs and sheriffs who must staff their agencies at a time when finding good job applicants for law enforcement jobs is as hard as ever.
And you know what? We at The Badger Project are not against second chances for cops who screwed up. Perhaps an officer who made a fireable mistake has learned from it. Whether that officer should continue in law enforcement is not for us to decide. Our job, as journalists, is to shine a light on those in power and get facts to the public who are being policed by these folks.
If chiefs or sheriffs want to hire an officer with problems in the past, they should say so publicly and defend their decision. They just can’t make these decisions in secret.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Peter Cameron is managing editor of The Badger Project, a nonprofit news outlet.
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Dane County ended a four-year program that distributed pipes and smoking supplies to reduce overdose deaths and disease transmission among people who use drugs.
Public health officials said the program increased visits from people seeking overdose reversal medication, fentanyl test strips and other harm reduction resources.
County officials halted the program in March after questions arose about whether distributing pipes violated Wisconsin paraphernalia law.
People who relied on the free supplies say they may now buy pipes elsewhere, use makeshift devices or inject drugs they previously smoked.
Dane County has ended an initiative to prevent overdose deaths by giving out pipes.
Four years ago, public health officials started giving people pipes and other supplies to reduce health risks associated with smoking drugs.
The program was part of the department’s broader efforts to reduce harms of drug use. For decades, syringe service programs across the country have provided harm reduction supplies to people who inject drugs. Though controversial, these programs reduce hospitalizations and overdose deaths while increasing participation in drug treatment.
But in recent years people have increasingly smoked drugs rather than injecting them. Adapting to that trend, harm reduction providers, including Public Health Madison and Dane County, began offering smoking supplies.
The pipe handouts worked. More people visited health officials to receive overdose reversal medication and other resources to prevent drug-related illnesses and injuries.
But the program was likely illegal under Wisconsin law, which allows injection supplies, not smoking materials.
Staff stopped offering smoking supplies in March. Spokesperson Morgan Finke cited a need to re-evaluate the program after the risk of COVID-19 transmission from shared pipes sharply declined and federal guidance on harm reduction shifted.
The department still offers injection supplies and other harm reduction items not intended for smoking.
“While syringes are classified as disease prevention materials under state law, smoking supplies have less clear protections,” Finke wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.
Halting the distribution of smoking supplies is already having an impact.
People who previously received pipes from the health office said they will buy similar supplies at smoke shops and gas stations, use makeshift pipes made from foil and soda cans or inject drugs they would have smoked, according to records and interviews obtained by Wisconsin Watch.
Others said they would likely stop visiting public health altogether.
Why did health officials hand out pipes?
Wisconsin opioid overdose deaths hit a record high in 2022, topping 1,450.
Officials found more evidence of smoking than injecting at fatal overdose scenes across the U.S. in 2022, a shift from years prior, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although it still carries overdose risks, evidence shows smoking instead of injecting reduces the spread of diseases like hepatitis, HIV and bacterial infections and abscesses. It may also lower overdose risks. Regular access to new pipes can reduce how often people share pipes or use broken and unsafe materials, according to a national research study that included 2024 survey data from Public Health Madison and Dane County.
Public Health Madison and Dane County offered evidence-based resources to prevent disease and overdoses, including sterile needles, fentanyl test strips and overdose reversal medication. But the office primarily served people who inject drugs, the department’s medical director, Dr. Jonathan Temte, wrote in a 2022 letter explaining why the office would start ordering smoking supplies.
“People who use drugs by means other than injection have no reason to visit,” Temte wrote.
Temte is a family medicine physician and University of Wisconsin-Madison associate dean of public health and community engagement. He advises the health department on a limited basis.
When staff asked Temte to approve adding smoking supplies to the department’s syringe service programs, they told him Wisconsin law allowed it, Temte recalled. He focused on whether medical evidence supported the initiative.
Health research overwhelmingly supports harm reduction, he said.
Adding smoking supplies addressed two major issues: Health officials needed to get life-saving resources to people who smoked drugs. And without access to safer smoking supplies, people were more likely to share pipes or use materials that cause cuts, burns and infections.
Monthly visits jumped nearly 30% once department offices began regularly offering filters, mouthpieces and two kinds of pipes.
Even with increased visits, the department distributed 3.7% fewer syringes between 2021 and 2023.
But despite the public health benefits, Wisconsin paraphernalia laws criminalizes smoking materials.
A woman visited a public health office and asked for a pipe in early April. When she found the office no longer distributed them, she asked for syringes, according to emails obtained by Wisconsin Watch. Staff asked if she would inject the drugs she usually smokes. She said yes. Without a pipe she would dissolve powdered drugs in water and inject them.
Screenshot from a “Harm Reduction Saves Lives” pamphlet included in materials Public Health Madison and Dane County produced in response to a Wisconsin Watch public records request.
Screenshot from a “Harm Reduction Saves Lives” pamphlet included in materials Public Health Madison and Dane County produced in response to a Wisconsin Watch public records request.
Screenshot from a “Harm Reduction Saves Lives” pamphlet included in materials Public Health Madison and Dane County produced in response to a Wisconsin Watch public records request.
Screenshot from a “Harm Reduction Saves Lives” pamphlet included in materials Public Health Madison and Dane County produced in response to a Wisconsin Watch public records request.
Why did the program end?
The city-county agency was likely the state’s only syringe service provider that publicized pipes online, according to a 211 list of syringe service programs.
While reporting a feature highlighting the seemingly unique initiative, Wisconsin Watch emailed Madison City Attorney Michael Haas on March 23 to ask how the department could legally distribute pipes.
The email was forwarded to public health staff, records obtained by Wisconsin Watch show. The public health agency redacted correspondence related to the email, citing attorney client privilege.
The next day, a public health supervisor instructed a staff member to remove smoking supplies from an internal tracking system. By the end of the week the department’s website no longer mentioned safer smoking supplies.
Wisconsin’s paraphernalia law bans equipment used, designed or intended for inhaling a controlled substance. Possessing paraphernalia carries a penalty up to a $500 fine and 30 days in jail.
Dane County lowered local penalties for drug paraphernalia citations in 2023. County sheriffs and local police have continued to fine and charge people for possessing smoking materials similar to those health officials distributed.
Madison police cited paraphernalia possession in around 350 arrests in 2025, department records show.
“Public health programs must follow federal, state and local law,” Finke told Wisconsin Watch. “While we continue to evaluate disease transmissions within the community and evolving guidance from federal agencies, we have currently removed smoking supplies from our offerings.”
But the medical evidence supporting the service has not changed “one iota,” Temte said. “It’s just one more (example) of the politicization of public health.”
A pipe is shown. (Addie Costello / Wisconsin Watch)
The smoking supply rollback came as harm reduction lost support from federal leaders.
The Biden administration spent millions on harm reduction efforts but prohibited spending grant dollars on pipes after reporting on the potential distribution of safer smoking kits went viral and drew criticism.
The Trump administration announced in 2025 a “clear shift away from harm reduction and practices that facilitate illicit drug use and are incompatible with Federal laws.”
Federal health leaders wrote in April that federal dollars cannot be used to buy “drug paraphernalia or supplies that promote or facilitate drug use” including pipes, injection supplies and fentanyl test strips.
The city-county’s harm reduction program focuses on reducing overdose deaths and preventing disease transmission, Finke said.
“We will continue to engage with and educate policy makers to ensure that federal and state policy evolves consistent(ly) alongside the growing evidence base supporting effective substance use prevention and harm reduction strategies.”
Opioid overdoses have dramatically declined since 2023, but overdose deaths involving stimulants have increased. People who smoke stimulants, like methamphetamine and cocaine, are at a growing risk for overdose, said Giavana Margo, Wisconsin program manager for Vital Strategies, a national nonprofit working to reduce overdose deaths.
“There’s a lot to be celebrated, and we’re still losing way too many lives to overdose,” Margo said.
A Public Health Madison and Dane County office is shown, May 22, 2026, in Madison, Wis. Staffers previously distributed pipes and other supplies to reduce health risks associated with smoking drugs, but they were told to stop doing so in March 2026. (Addie Costello / Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin’s paraphernalia laws only exempt smoking supplies associated with tobacco consumption.
But Wisconsinites can still buy pipes typically used to smoke illegal drugs, several advocates and people using drugs told Wisconsin Watch. Gas stations, local shops and online sellers advertise the glassware as tobacco products, decorations or household items.
Standing outside the department’s East Madison location in late-April a woman who identified herself as Ashley said she received pipes from the office for years. Without the free pipes, people will buy them at nearby stores for around $8 or “improvise” makeshift supplies, the 39-year-old said.
She visited public health for pipes whenever one broke, usually about twice a month. Staff asked whether she had enough fentanyl test strips and wanted to help her “stay as safe as possible,” she said. She can still go to the office to get things like condoms, bandages, injection supplies and tampons.
“It helps when you’re homeless like I am,” she said.
Most people who received harm reduction supplies from health officials in 2024 left with fentanyl test strips and overdose reversal medication, a survey of more than 250 program participants shows. Respondents reported feeling safer and no longer needing to steal smoking supplies after the visits.
Still, a quarter of respondents said they weren’t sure or would likely stop visiting the offices if smoking supplies vanished.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story included captions that misidentified the source of screenshots from a harm reduction pamphlet. The pamphlet was produced in response to a public records request submitted to Public Health Madison and Dane County.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Carmen Cancino and her daughter Ximena Lopez at a December protest against arrests of immigrants at green card appointments in Salt Lake City. The Trump administration is threatening to force legal immigrants applying for green cards to return home first and wait for processing. (Photo by Annie Knox, Utah News Dispatch)
Immigrants seeking green cards will have to return first to their home countries and wait despite years of potential backlogs, the Trump administration announced Friday.
“An alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply,” Zach Kahler, a spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a statement.
The change would apply to workers on temporary visas, as well as to people living here illegally but hoping for legal status through sponsorship by relatives such as spouses or children who are U.S. citizens.
The immigration advocacy group FWD.us said the new policy “will create chaos and impose massive costs on immigrants who have lived and worked legally in the United States for many years” in a statement to Stateline.
Business leaders said the move is disruptive to tech industries that rely on foreign workers who have temporary visas and sometimes hope for a green card and eventual citizenship.
Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera and an adjunct professor of computer science at Stanford University, in an X post called the change “a capricious attack on legal immigration” that will “hurt families, leave us with fewer doctors, teachers and scientists, and hurt American competitiveness in AI.”
“This is the worst imaginable way to disrupt important work for the country and pretend you’re fighting some loophole,” Silicon Valley venture capitalist Nick Davidov wrote on X, saying at least three large startups in his portfolio would be hurt by the policy.
The so-called green cards represent a status called lawful permanent residence, a legal immigration status that can lead to citizenship.
The administration’s intent, Kahler said in the statement, is to prevent temporary visitors from seeking permanent legal status while they’re in the United States.
“Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose,” Kahler wrote. “Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process.”
Those affected include many tech workers on temporary visas that might lead to green cards.
“This includes top scientists in our universities, founders of billion dollar companies,” Davidov wrote in his post, referring to temporary visas such as O-1 (extraordinary ability) and H-1B (highly skilled specialties) visas that can lead to citizenship with employer sponsorship. FWD.us estimates H-1B visa holders and their families in the United States number about 1.3 million.
People from India would have to wait through years of backlogs if they stopped working and went home to apply for green cards, and people from Russia would be unable to apply at all because there’s no U.S. embassy there, he noted.
The USCIS announcement did refer to “extraordinary” circumstances that might allow continued processing of green cards in the United States but did not elaborate.
According to a policy memo issued Friday, USCIS agents “must consider and weigh all the relevant evidence” and determine “if approval of the alien’s adjustment of status application is in the best interest of the United States.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Shipping cranes stand above container ships loaded with shipping containers at the Port of Los Angeles on Feb. 20, 2026, in Los Angeles, Calif. The fiscal leaders of several states are demanding transparency and consumer fairness as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to refund billions in international tariffs. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
The fiscal leaders of several states are demanding transparency and consumer fairness as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to refund billions in international tariffs following a recent Supreme Court loss.
In a February decision, the high court dealt a blow to the president’s trade agenda, ruling by a 6-3 margin that the tariffs he issued under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act were illegal.
Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began accepting applications from importers and brokers who are owed an estimated $166 billion in import tax refunds. While companies are receiving those refunds, it appears that many don’t intend to share those funds with consumers, who paid for much of the tariffs through higher prices.
“We’re the ones who paid it. We’re the ones that need to get it back, and so any system that doesn’t get it to the little guy doesn’t get it to the right place,” Minnesota State Auditor Julie Blaha said on a press call Wednesday.
She was among eight Democratic state fiscal leaders who urged the White House to publicly disclose which firms are receiving tariff refunds and to ensure consumers are not left out.
Blaha said government agencies are well equipped for that task, noting the public websites set up during the coronavirus pandemic that disclosed which companies received pandemic grants and loans. There is currently no public database of tariff refund requests or agency determinations.
“We’re not asking the federal government to do anything they don’t ask of states and local entities or nonprofits to do when they are using some of their funds,” she said. “We know how to do this kind of oversight.”
Blaha said transparency is particularly important since the White House is opposed to repaying the tariffs in the first place. The president has said his administration would “fight” the refund effort, though reports indicate more than $35 billion has already been sent to companies.
Illinois State Treasurer Mike Frerichs said American consumers are suffering from high prices as the president and his inner circle enrich themselves.
“No one trusts the federal government anymore,” he said. “They feel like the deck is stacked against them, and this example just adds further proof to their beliefs.”
State leaders estimated the tariffs cost Illinois consumers nearly $9 billion. But the current process does not ensure that those funds will be returned to consumers.
“Trump’s system is opaque by design, with no guarantee of the $9 billion owed to Illinois families and businesses returning home,” Frerichs said Wednesday. “…Millions of Americans and businesses deserve every penny back.”
The president blasted conservative Supreme Court justices who nixed his tariffs, saying their decision earlier this year was a “disgrace to our nation” as well as “unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.”
He has remained committed to tariffs on foreign imports, believing that they will incentivize manufacturers to build products in the United States rather than overseas.
After the Supreme Court loss, Trump ordered a 10% global tariff, which has also been challenged in court. Last week, the U.S. Court of International Trade granted a permanent injunction to a Florida-based toy manufacturer and a New York-based spice importer that sued the Trump administration over those tariffs.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A Pride flag flies at the Wisconsin Capitol in 2023. After a demand was rejected to repeal a ban on conversion therapy in the Wisconsin professional standards for therapists and social workers, the law firm that made the demand is suing the state and the disciplinary board that has enacted the ban. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
The legal group that demanded Wisconsin rescind a professional standard for therapists that bars attempts to change sexual orientation or gender identity is now suing Gov. Tony Evers and the counselors’ professional board to kill the standard.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in Milwaukee on behalf of two licensed therapists, charging that the standard is unconstitutional because it prescribes “what views [the therapists] may express.”
In April 2024 the examining board for licensed counselors and therapists added to its definitions of unprofessional conduct “sexual orientation change efforts,” commonly referred to as conversion therapy.
Conversion therapy has included electric shock, physical violence and “personal degradation and humiliation,” according to a 2015 statement opposing the practice from the American Academy of Nursing.
The Wisconsin board standard barring conversion therapy includes “any intervention or method that has the purpose of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including attempting to change behaviors or expressions of self or to reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.”
The board’s guidance document calls such practices “harmful, ineffective, non-evidence based, and not in line with current standards of professional practice.”
In March, the U.S. Supreme Court sent a lawsuit against a Colorado law banning conversion therapy back to lower courts. The high court said that applying the Colorado law to talk therapy required “strict scrutiny” for impinging on the First Amendment right of free speech.
Two weeks later, WILL and Wisconsin Family Action wrote to Gov. Tony Evers, demanding that the state repeal the professional standard barring conversion therapy.
The demand letter asserted that the court “struck down the law,” a claim WILL has repeated in publicizing its lawsuit.
Eversrejected the demand and stated in his letter to WILL that the organizations were “misreading” the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Colorado case. Rather than striking down the Colorado law, the high court sent a lawsuit back to lower courts, directing them to apply “strict scrutiny” on First Amendment grounds to how the law is applied to talk therapy.
The lawsuit WILL filed against Wisconsin’s standard names as defendants Evers; Dan Hereth, secretary of the state Department of Safety and Professional Services, which administers the licensing boards for a wide range of professional disciplines; and all the members of the Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board.
WILL argues that the therapists it represents practice only talk therapy, conducting their counseling practice as “an exercise of their faith,” and that clients have voluntarily sought their “faith-based counseling, including obtaining advice on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
The professional standard “prevents Plaintiffs from providing verbal advice in accordance with their sincerely-held religious beliefs in helping these patients specifically seeking to align their gender identity with their biological sex or to make changes relating to their sexual orientation or expression,” the lawsuit states.
A DSPS spokesperson said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation. A spokesperson for Evers referred to the letter Evers wrote rejecting WILL’s demand.
“I do not believe this lawsuit will succeed,” said Marc Herstand, executive director for the National Association of Social Workers Wisconsin chapter. “Wisconsin law clearly gives professions the authority to set their own Conduct Codes.”
The conversion therapy ban’s adoption in 2024 marked the third attempt by the professional board to bar the practice.Previous efforts were blocked by the Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules. In 2025, the state Supreme Court ruled that state statutes giving the committee the power to block rules indefinitelywere unconstitutional.
WILL since its founding has pursued legal actions against measures and policies respecting LGBTQ+ people, programs aimed at redressing systemic racial discrimination, and local election administration practices intended to increase voter access to the ballot box.
The organization has sued to block public health measures that were taken during the COVID-19 pandemic; argued that government efforts to encourage diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace are unconstitutional; and defended laws such as Wisconsin’s 2011 Act 10, which stripped most public employees of most union rights.
Wisconsin Family Action has opposed LGBTQ+ rights and has lobbied against the inclusion of gender identity in civil rights protections under Wisconsin law.
Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service won 12 awards on Friday as part of the Milwaukee Press Club Awards for Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism, including six first-place gold prizes for stories on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, shuttered power plants, a detained immigrant, police misconduct and a Milwaukee high school barbershop.
Freelance reporter Larry Sandler and data reporter Hongyu Liu won a gold award in the best online explanatory story or series for their three-part series “Supreme Costs,” which examined how Wisconsin became the first state to feature nine-figure spending on a high court election.
Pathways to success reporter Natalie Yahr along with Cap Times reporter Erin McGroarty won a gold award in the writing category for their story on Miguel Jerez Robles, a Cuban asylum seeker whom ICE arrested after a routine immigration hearing. Yahr and pathways to success reporter Miranda Dunlap won a bronze award in the online category for best long hard feature story for their report on high schools offering more college courses.
Photojournalist Jonathan Aguilar received silver and bronze awards for his photography in the best photo essay and best feature photo categories. His images captured an urban angler and a Dia de los Muertos celebration. Photojournalist Joe Timmerman won a silver award in the best feature photo category for his portrait of an anonymous transgender teenager.
Former reporter Mario Koran’s work on Milwaukee County’s Brady list, which lists law enforcement officers who have been dishonest, won two awards for best investigative story or series, a silver award in writing and a gold award in video. The project was a collaboration among Wisconsin Watch, TMJ4 and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Former intern Margaret Shreiner won a silver award in the online category for best investigative story or series for her report on a mother who couldn’t get a public defender after 10,000 calls to lawyers. The Press Club hands out awards in both professional and student categories. Shreiner won the award in the professional category while interning as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Eric Weigel, a corrections officer who has grown fresh produce used in a corrections facility kitchen, receives an award from Wisconsin Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy at the Mitby Theater at Madison College (Photo courtesy Wisconsin Department of Corrections)
Wisconsin Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy read the names of 10prison and community corrections workers described as seriously injured in the line of duty in 2025.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
“We work in close contact with a sometimes challenging population, and the only thing keeping it from being more dangerous is the professionalism and dedication of you and your colleagues,” Hoy said during the 2026 Secretary’s Awards ceremony last week at the Mitby Theater at Madison College, honoring standout staff.
Among those recognized were the department’s legislative director, an officer who has grown fresh produce used in a facility kitchen and the New Lisbon Correctional Institution treatment team for restricted housing — where an incarcerated person may be sent as punishment for a violation.
Hoy said that Lincoln Hills staff have created an area at Lincoln Hills/Copper Lake Schools for contemplation and reflection in Proulx’s honor, which “is beautiful and it just centers you.”
“As much as Corey’s death impacted us, his life meant so much more … Corey said, quote, ‘If I could make a difference in just one youth’s life, it will be worth it,’” Hoy said. “This award honors an employee who lives that philosophy every day.”
A treatment specialist at the minimum-security Chippewa Valley Correctional Treatment Facility received the award. The facility aims to treat substance abuse and related issues, preparing people to re-enter their communities, the DOC’s website says.
“When our clients feel loved, heard, respected and understood, it shows them that the world is not as harsh of a place as they thought,” Hoy said. “It gives them hope for their future and the ability to advocate for themselves.”
Hoy also recognized staff who were honored with a lifesaving and valor award.
“So what does this look like day to day?” Hoy said. “I’m talking about the staff at the La Crosse [probation and parole] office who leapt into action when a six-week-old premature baby stopped breathing. They delivered first aid to the infant, called 911 and kept calm. The baby recovered after a short hospital stay.”
Hoy said that at Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility, staff saw a person trying to climb a fence overlooking a 16-foot drop onto Interstate 43. The team helped the person off the fence and to safety, “stopping what would have likely been a successful suicide attempt,” Hoy said.
As they were securing the first person, they saw another person climbing the fence across the street, Hoy said, and the team escorted that person back to safety as well.
Senior probation and parole agent Amanda Herson received a safety award forher work on a situation involving a person who stalked a young woman at a technical college in Green Bay, according to an account of events announced by an awards ceremony emcee.
That person was a client of Herson’s on correctional supervision in the community. Herson conducted a lengthy investigation into the stalking, which took place over two different semesters.
Law enforcement was initially not interested in investigating, but Herson’s advocacy led to law enforcement seeing the severity of the stalking behaviors, the emcee said.
Herson’s client, who was already on supervision for stalking multiple minors and an adult, was eventually charged with a new stalking offense.
“Agent Herson dedicated significant time to ensure the victim was safe and had a voice,” the emcee said.
Eric Weigel has been a correctional officer with the DOC for over 22 years, according to a nomination read by an event emcee. He won a SALUTE (Service, Awareness, Leadership, Uniqueness, Team and Excellence) award in the category of “uniqueness.”
Weigel is currently the New Lisbon Correctional Institution horticulture officer, or “the garden guy.” As the horticulture officer for the past 10 years, he grew an average of 25,000 pounds of fresh produce per season, which was used in the institution kitchen for staff, meals for the incarcerated and reduced food costs.
Weigel maintains a partnership between the New Lisbon prison and a national wildlife refuge, which he provides with native wildflower seeds. He’s one of the “very few” people at the prison who can perform all the duties of every single traditional post in the institution and do it “flawlessly,” and incarcerated people and staff listen to him and respect what he has to say, the emcee said.
Department of Corrections leadership made stops across the state last week. May 3-9 is recognized as Correctional Employees Week.
Hoy said people who work in DOC institutions “know there’s one hot topic out there right now, and that is commutations.”
Last month, Gov. Tony Evers ordered the creation of a commutations advisory board, signaling that he is willing to consider reducing the sentences of incarcerated people in Wisconsin who meet certain criteria. Hoy said he spoke with a records supervisor who told him her office will get two to three requests for records reviews every week from incarcerated people, but they had gotten a hundred in the last week.
Hoy said the supervisor told him that if their extra work meant one or two men at the facility “might have an opportunity for a second chance and to sort of take back their life, that it would all be worth it.”
Examiner staff at the Milwaukee Press Club Awards dinner on Friday, May 8. Left to right: Frank Zufall, Andrew Kennard, Henry Redman, Isiah Holmes, Baylor Spears, Ruth Conniff and Erik Gunn
The staff of the Wisconsin Examiner won 12 Milwaukee Press Club Awards for Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism in the online category Friday evening.
Editor Ruth Conniff took first place for Best Multi-story Coverage of a Single Feature Topic or Event for her series, Midwest-Mexico Connections on Mexican farmworkers and Wisconsin dairy farmers.
The Marabou stork was first spotted in Wisconsin on Tuesday in Fond du Lac and has since been seen in the Green Bay, Appleton and Sheboygan areas. It appears the stork has been traveling north, as it made an appearance near Byron, Illinois in late April.
From left to right: U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, Acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons and Executive Director for Operations at CBP Chris Holtzer participate in the 'State of the Border' panel at the 2026 Border Security Expo on May 5, 2026, in Phoenix. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
The leader of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted that he had never even heard of some of the countries his agency has been deporting immigrants to.
“Now we are actually removing people to countries that I didn’t even know existed,” Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said during a panel discussion at the 2026 Border Security Expo in Phoenix, speaking of the third country deportation program in which the administration has sent immigrants to African nations they have no ties to.
Lyons added that the third country deportation program has been “a huge game changer” in implementing President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Lyons was one of a series of Trump administration speakers, including “border czar” Tom Homan, who spoke Tuesday, and interim U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who will be giving the event’s keynote speech on Wednesday.
During last year’s event, Homan and other speakers told the military industrial complex representatives in the crowd that the Trump administration is depending on the private sector to implement its mass deportation agenda.
That message remained largely unchanged this year, though Lyons and others also took aim at the public perception of the enforcement actions which have led to nearly two-thirds of Americans saying ICE has gone too far.
Homan claimed that those who work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE and similar agencies have been “vilified by the media” and members of Congress, taking particular offense to comments made by elected officials comparing their actions to Nazi Germany.
Homan said that ICE is just “enforcing the laws” written by members of Congress and called those remarks the “ultimate insult.”
President Donald Trump’s ‘border czar’ speaks to attendees at the 2026 Border Security Expo on May 5, 2026, in Phoenix. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
The rampant use of violence by immigration agents, including the shooting deaths of two American citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year, has been well documented on social media and in the press.
On those enforcement actions, Homan said that more are coming. He said he had been speaking with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who has agreed to hire more deportation officers.
“You ain’t seen shit yet,” Homan said to applause and cheers from the crowd. “This is going to be a good year.”
Homan also claimed that New York will be seeing more ICE agents due to a proposed law that would ban police in the Empire State from entering into 287(g) agreements with ICE. Such agreements leverage local resources to do the investigative legwork for federal immigration agents and increase deportation rates.
“We’re going to flood the zone. You’re going to see more ICE agents than you’ve seen before,” Homan said of New York if they pass such a law, claiming that it would make the state less safe and make it harder for ICE to do its job. “You forced us in this position.”
During the “State of the Border” panel in which Lyons participated, officials lauded the Trump administration for letting them “do the work” and touted the low number of illegal border crossings that have occurred under the second Trump administration.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott also spoke directly to “any illegal aliens out there.”
“We’re going to go find your entire family, your entire network. Anybody you spoke to on the phone. We’re going to take out that entire network,” Scott said, adding that one arrest at the border can lead to multiple arrests inside the United States of other individuals.
A Sherp USA all terrain vehicle on display at the 2026 Border Security Expo at the Phoenix Convention Center. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
Both Scott and Lyons also shot back at a question asked by a member of the audience who asked for them to respond to reporting by ProPublica that found more than 170 U.S. citizens have been arrested by immigration agents.
“We don’t arrest U.S. citizens, we arrest criminals. Period,” Scott said, adding that any U.S. citizen they do arrest is likely a criminal and that they are overseen by the Office of the Inspector General and FBI. Lyons made a similar statement.
A small group of protesters showed up to the event Tuesday. Among them was Democratic U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari.
A Teledyne FLIR Skyranger R70 drone on display at the 2026 Border Security Expo at the Phoenix Convention Center. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
On the show floor, vendors hawked their wares to Border Patrol agents, Homeland Security Investigations agents and local law enforcement that were seen by the Arizona Mirror walking the floor.
Two Verkada cameras on display at the 2026 Border Security Expo at the Phoenix Convention Center. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
One piece of equipment shown to the Mirror was the “Upper Hand Glove” by On Point Solutions. It is a wearable metal detector in the form of a glove meant to streamline the metal detection process.
The Mirror examined the list of companies set to be in attendance to highlight some of the key trends as well as noteworthy companies seeking the attention of the government officials.
This story was originally produced by Arizona Mirror, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
The two most common complaints I hear from people seeking public records are “Why is it taking so long?” and “Why does it cost so much?” Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to mount a successful legal challenge to delays or fees because of the way the state’s laws are worded.
Wisconsin’s Open Records Law imposes no deadline on producing records. All it says is they must be produced “as soon as practicable and without delay.” What does that actually mean? While the state Department of Justice recommends that simple requests receive a response within 10 business days, the DOJ itself doesn’t heed its own advice, often taking months — even years — to fulfill requests.
Courts haven’t given much guidance. They’ve essentially said it’s a reasonableness test that takes into account the size and complexity of the request, the resources of the government agency, and whether they are making a good faith effort to comply. But how long is too long?
Ideally, we’d have a deadline in our law, as some other states do. This may require prioritizing resources properly, which should already be happening. Fulfilling record requests, the law says, is “an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties” of public officials.” And yet I’ve seen agencies with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars who have one person doing this work.
The other common problem with the records law is it allows custodians to charge fees for complying with records requests. Here, I am especially concerned about “location” fees. The government can charge for the “actual, necessary and direct cost” of finding records, typically at the hourly rate of the lowest-paid employee capable of searching. But sometimes this is still a considerable amount, and some custodians even want to charge for employees’ benefits.
Tom Kamenick
This amounts to, essentially, the government getting paid twice for the same work. Our taxes already pay the salary or wage of the employee searching for records. The requester pays them again.
Permitting location fees also incentivizes government agencies to be sloppy in their recordkeeping. The more disorganized their records are, the longer it will take them to find records, so the more money they can collect from requesters. Those high costs also discourage requesters from following through with requests.
For example, I’ve run into police departments that still store their personnel records in paper boxes, so if somebody wants, say, disciplinary records, the department can quote an often prohibitively high price to search each box for disciplinary files. Even if records are stored electronically, they can be hard to retrieve if they are not sensibly organized.
How can we fix these twin problems? If I were in charge (and I’m not), I’d put a strict deadline in the law and eliminate location fees altogether. But realistically, we are unlikely to see either reform.
Perhaps a more practical solution would be to tie the two problems together. Change the law so that custodians can charge location costs only if the records are produced within a strict deadline — perhaps 10 business days.
That compromise would incentivize better, more organized record keeping. Government agencies would now want to keep their records — especially those people frequently request — arranged in ways easy to search and easy to find. It would also incentivize them to devote enough resources to fulfill record requests promptly.
The result? Requesters will get records faster and cheaper, and government agencies might also see a net increase in revenue, as more requesters opt to pay for prompt service rather than walk away.
Pairing these two issues is an idea worth pursuing.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Tom Kamenick, a council member, is the president and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project.
Isaac Solis knows all too well how taking a pill bought off the street can lead to tragedy.
His son Isaac Solis Jr., known as “Bubba,” died in 2019 after taking what he thought was the prescription drug Percocet.
Instead, it was a counterfeit pill laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that can kill in trace amounts.
Isaac Solis’ son Bubba died in 2019 after taking a fake Percocet laced with fentanyl. (Courtesy of Isaac Solis)
Since then, he’s been on a mission to help prevent others from losing loved ones through his “One Pill Kills” awareness campaign.
His message is being amplified in time for Fentanyl Awareness Day, observed nationally on April 29, through three billboards that feature his son. The billboards direct residents to the 1pillkills.org website and social media pages and include the message: Together We Will Save Lives.
“It’s about spreading awareness obviously that even one pill can kill you, one line can kill you,” Solis said. “If one family sees it and reaches out to their loved one and one life is saved, that’s our goal.”
Two of the billboards can be seen off of Interstate 94 in Milwaukee near West Becher and South Fourth streets, and the other is a north/south display on South 27th Street and West Morgan Avenue. The billboard near West Becher will be up for eight weeks and the one on West Morgan for four.
Solis’s campaign has utilized several billboards over the years to increase community awareness on fentanyl.
The message on the first billboard, he said, was very aggressive.
“Our grief was a bit more raw at that time,” Solis said.
Another billboard featured photos of individuals who lost their lives to fentanyl.
“Eight families put their angels up there,” he said.
Drop in overdose deaths
Fentanyl has fueled the opioid epidemic nationally and a rise in overdose deaths.
The drug had devastating impacts on Milwaukee County, which experienced multiple years of record high drug overdose deaths in the 2010s and 2020s. Those totals peaked at 674 in 2022 and 667 in 2023, according to data from the Milwaukee County Overdose Dashboard. Most of the deaths were caused by fentanyl alone or in combination with other substances.
Since then, the number of fatal overdoses has fallen. Last year 387 died, with 236 of those cases involving fentanyl.
County Executive David Crowley credits increased funding for opioid prevention and collaboration for the decrease.
“Thanks to the investment of opioid settlement dollars, increased access to free harm reduction supplies, and efforts to eliminate the stigma surrounding substance use disorder, fewer people are dying of overdose, which means more opportunities for treatment, recovery and a path forward,” Crowley said in a statement.
A OnePillKills billboard is on display next to I-94 near the intersection of South 4th and West Becher streets in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Fentanyl still a major problem
While Solis said the drop in fatal overdoses is great, it’s also concerning.
“The troublesome part is we don’t know what amount of people are addicted to fentanyl and using it daily,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to do.The closer we get to zero deaths, the better.”
He said fentanyl products continue to evolve and get more potent, and it can be in powder or liquid form, and even in vapes.
“It can be hidden in something but you can have no idea what,” Solis said. “There’s always a threat of it being in any type of drug.”
Working together
Like Crowley, Solis credits collaboration for the progress made in addressing the opioid epidemic. He partners regularly with Team HAVOC, a grassroots South Side group.
Rafael Mercado, founder of Team HAVOC, said Solis’ story and “One Pill Kills” message are having an impact.
“He does a lot to bring awareness by way of billboards, social media and pop-ups,” Mercado said. “He has lost a son to this, so he knows firsthand the pain and suffering a family goes through and the ripple effect of addiction on a family.”
Solis also partners with Samad’s House, a Milwaukee-based sober living home and behavioral health clinic dedicated to supporting women. He said he’s working with Tahira Malik, founder and chief operating officer of Samad’s House, to help organize a Walk for Lives event on July 11. Walk for Lives is a nationwide movement to raise awareness about those who died from fentanyl.
Solis said he wishes he could do even more but knows that ending the fentanyl crisis won’t happen quickly.
“The problem didn’t happen overnight,” he said. “It’s not gonna be any one group, not any one solution. Together we will save lives.”
Isaac Solis Jr., who died in 2019, had a passion for working on cars. (Courtesy of Isaac Solis)
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Four of the seven major candidates for the Democratic nomination for governor participated in a forum Tuesday evening at the Goodman Center on Madison’s East Side. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Amid a climate of uncertainty surrounding the future of federal funding for after-school programs, Wisconsin advocates, representatives from nonprofit organizations and local youth asked Democratic candidates for governor what they will do to support after-school programs.
Four of the seven major candidates for the Democratic nomination for governor participated in a forum Tuesday evening at the Goodman Center on Madison’s East Side, hosted by the Wisconsin Partnership for Kids. They included former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison).
The hosts were from a coalition of organizations that work to improve early childhood education, literacy and economic mobility for children across the state. Some of the coalition’s goals include stabilizing access to child care and supporting out-of-school time programs.
Former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, did not respond to the invitation to participate, according to the hosts. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and former Wisconsin Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan had previous commitments.
Jackie Scott with the Wisconsin Partnership for Kids told the Examiner that the organization wanted to ensure there was a forum where youth issues were at the center of the conversation.
“There’s a huge gap and we wanted to make sure that kids are front and center in the conversations for the next leader because, it’s corny, but kids are our future,” Scott said. “Unfortunately, I feel like kids’ issues often take the back burner. There’s not a whole lot of conversation that actually involves kids and gives youth a voice.”
Catie Tollofson, the vice president of mission and programs at the Goodman Community Center, echoed that sentiment.
“Anytime we’re going to elect an official, we want to make sure that those folks, if they’re representing us at a state level or any level, have youth issues as a part of what they are speaking about and thinking about and running on,” Tollofson said.
During the forum, candidates took questions from kids as well as adult advocates. One of the first questions, from a 10-year-old girl, was about candidates’ favorite activity from when they were her age. Barnes said biking; Roys said attending camps through the Madison School & Community Recreation; Hong said sledding and Rodriguez said camping.
Candidates were asked how they would help to strengthen or expand Wisconsin’s after-school programs.
The conversation came as President Donald Trump has proposed a budget eliminating dedicated federal funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC), which supports local school and community-based after school and summer learning programs.
According to a 2023 report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, federal funding for the program has decreased by about $10 million in inflation-adjusted terms since 2014. This is despite rising demand.
About 27 states in the U.S. have a dedicated funding stream for after-school and outside-of-schooltime programs. Wisconsin is not one of those and its programs rely mostly on federal, local and philanthropic dollars. Last year many programs in the state were left in limbo when the Trump administration abruptly withheld funding. It eventually released the funds.
Candidates expressed support for the programs and said they would provide state funding to keep them going.
Rodriguez said her child care plan, which would cap costs for families at 7% of their income and ensure a minimum wage for employees, would also cover after-school programs.
“You should treat it like the infrastructure that it is… My plan also indicates that child care providers should be paying at a minimum of $18 an hour, and this would include many different types of child care,” she said, including after-school programming.
Hong said she would support investing state dollars into afterschool programs. She said that access to grants or funding would need to be equitable, meaning it should be easy to find and apply for and available to those working in the programs.
“After-school time is mental health care. After-school time is healthcare. It is a way for kids and our communities to be able to take care of each other, and it should have its own dedicated funding stream from the state,” Hong said.
Roys said she breathed a sigh of relief when she got a notification this week that her 8-year-old and 4-year-old got into their after-school programs.
“I think about how much scrambling it would mean if they hadn’t gotten in,” Roys said. “Families with means can pay for all types of enrichment, things that should be basic rights for children… to do sports, to be able to socialize with friends, to have help with homework and tutoring, to do theater and art — that should be available to every single child. Instead we ration it based on where you live and based on whether or not your parents pay for it.”
Roys said that publicly funded after-school programs would help close the gap. “This has become so critical, given what the federal government has put on the chopping block,” she said. “We cannot leave Wisconsin children vulnerable to those kinds of cuts.”
An America After 3PM survey of Wisconsin families conducted by the AfterSchool Alliance found that for every child in an after-school program, there are four who cannot access a program.
Barnes said the state is in a care crisis due to the cuts to education implemented under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature. He noted that he participates in Milwaukee recreational programs.
“We already know what works. We have well functioning systems in place in the state. What we don’t have are well funded systems in this state that contribute to the growth and development of our children,” Barnes said. “That’s what we have to prioritize immediately.”
Scott noted that Wisconsin is surrounded by states that are investing in child care, including in Michigan where $75 million in state grants are going towards before-school, after-school and summer programming in the 2025-26 fiscal year.
“I was really excited that pretty much every single candidate acknowledged the fact that this is a broken system in Wisconsin, and that we don’t choose to invest in our kids,” Scott said. “We put that burden on philanthropy or we put that burden on local governments and it’s just not something that could be carried alone by philanthropy and local governments.”
The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest across Wisconsin's Northwoods make the U.S. Forest Service the largest landowner in the state of Wisconsin. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Trump administration’s recently announced plans to radically restructure the U.S. Forest Service have raised concerns among advocates that forest land across Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest could suffer.
The plan, announced late last month, will relocate the agency’s head office from Washington D.C. to Salt Lake City while closing regional offices and research stations across the country. In Wisconsin, the changes are expected to affect about 250 employees across the agency’s offices in Madison and Milwaukee and smaller stations spread across the state.
Research stations in Prairie du Chien and Wisconsin Rapids are being evaluated for closure while the Madison office has been selected to serve as the state office covering Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin.
These proposed changes come to an agency that has already seen staff attrition over the past year due to the Trump administration’s efforts to severely reduce the size of the federal government. Last year, Wisconsin saw a 19% attrition rate in its U.S. Department of Agriculture staffing level, which includes the forest service.
Proponents of the reorganization say that moving the headquarters out west will bring decision-makers closer to the majority of the public lands managed by the agency. However, through a combination of logging activity in the Upper Midwest, New England and southeastern states, more timber is harvested each year in states east of the Mississippi River.
But opponents have pointed out that Salt Lake City is the epicenter of the growing anti-public lands movement within the Republican Party. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has worked to sell off millions of acres of federally owned land while the state of Utah has sued the federal government over its ownership of millions of acres of land in the state.
The advocacy infrastructure surrounding the anti-public lands movement has at times worked to influence environmental policy in Wisconsin.
In the large scope of the Forest Service’s public lands portfolio, Wisconsin’s Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest is just a drop in the bucket. But the existence of the national forest in the Northwoods makes the federal government the largest landowner in Wisconsin.
The Trump administration has explicitly worked to make it easier for extractive industries such as logging and mining to work on public lands. Green Light Metals, a Canadian company, has conducted exploratory drilling on national forest land in Taylor County. Last week, Congress voted to allow mining in the Superior National Forest on the edge of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Environmental advocates and union representatives of Forest Service employees say that sweeping changes to the agency could have dramatic repercussions for the rural communities where agency employees often work and could do irreparable damage to the forests themselves and the scientific research conducted at Forest Service stations.
Howard Learner, president of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said the plan was clearly an effort to undermine the Forest Service’s ability to conduct research while supercharging the extraction of resources from the country’s public forests.
“The Trump administration’s effort to take apart, as an effective matter, the U.S. Forest Service is deplorable,” Learner said. “The U.S. Forest Service needs to do a job making sure that its forests, the vast lands across our country that are our national forests, are protected and managed.”
He noted that the agency is currently proposing one of its largest timber sales ever in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which ELPC is working to stop, and that it’s much harder for regulators to protect the country’s forests if they’re based in a far-away office.
Several people from the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents many forest service staff members, said the changes were coming to an already demoralized group of staff members while noting that the biggest harm would be felt by the rural areas where the national forests are located.
“Most Forest Service offices are in very rural, poor communities, so if these people are forced to move to Salt Lake, that could be two or three, good paying, middle-class jobs taken out of Rhinelander or wherever they may be sitting,” said Warner Vanderheul, president of union’s Forest Service council.
Steven Gutierrez, a business representative in the federal workers union’s land management division, said that staff members will be divided between those who can’t take any more meddling from the White House and those who stick it out in an effort to do what they can to defend the forests.
“There’s a lot that are standing strong in solidarity right now, and saying ‘I’m going to hold the line to protect democracy,’” Gutierrez said. “And that just by being a civil servant and being a Forest Service employee, that’s their way of standing up against this tyranny that’s happening from this administration.”
But, he said, others will leave and the risk from those departures is the end to all sorts of research projects.
“Now programs get shut down because there’s no one there anymore,” he said. “That research, that institutional knowledge, gets lost because now nobody’s there to do it. Nobody knows what anybody was working on.”
Jenny Van Sickle, a spokesperson for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, said she’s concerned about the drain of expertise from Wisconsin.
“Moving these regional models to state-based models really complicates and piecemeals out decision-making with these arbitrary borders,” she said. “All of these waterways are connected. All of these forests are connected. So a comprehensive approach to management is vital.”
She said that an organization such as the fish and wildlife commission can help supplement the research done by the Forest Service, but not fully replace it. She noted that the commission has recently worked with the agency to study American marten habitat, wild rice and tribal climate adaptation. Vanderheul said that Forest Service research conducted in Wisconsin has helped produce recyclable glue on U.S. postage stamps and less breakable bats used by Major League Baseball teams.
“A massive reduction in the workforce and professionals that have dedicated their lives to research and protecting these ecological systems is concerning,” Van Sickle said.
Want to experience the thrill of the migration? Anyone can be a birder, said Matt Reetz, executive director of the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance. He suggests listening for their songs or letting the birds come to you.
A camp site on Fairy Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in July 2025 (Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner)
The darkened sky in the early afternoon, the tornado sirens wailing as baseball-sized hail shattered windows and dented car roofs, sounding like a series of explosions as drivers hurried home at 4 p.m. last week — all of it felt like the eerie first scene in an apocalyptic movie.
This is not a drill, I thought, watching the clouds tumbling and boiling overhead as my car radio and my phone began shrieking in unison and a robotic voice informed me that I should take shelter immediately from a tornado that was moving at 20 miles per hour directly toward my neighborhood.
We’ve all grown accustomed to the low background hum of climate anxiety. Suddenly it’s as loud and immediate as the crack of a giant hailstone on the windshield.
The changes to the planet we’ve been warned about for decades are suddenly hitting too close to home to ignore. Over the last year in Wisconsin we’ve endured smoke-filled skies from summer forest fires, massive floods, wild temperature swings and scarier, more serious storms.
This should be a wakeup call. But instead of accelerating efforts to head off climate catastrophe, our federal government is canceling renewable energy contracts and pushing for more coal plants, more oil drilling, more toxic mining on public lands, undoing protections for clean air and water, and accelerating the destruction of our shared environment in order to extract resources and build more wealth for a handful of people in the short term.
The price of this heedlessness is so enormous it hurts just to think about it.
Two days after the hail storm and tornado warnings sent me and my neighbors scrambling for cover, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to allow sulfide mining in the Superior National Forest, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness — an inexpressibly beautiful place that is precious to my family, the scene of some of the most formative experiences of our girls’ childhood, and the most visited wilderness area in the U.S. The Forest Service spent years studying how acid mine drainage — the toxic byproduct of sulfide-ore mining — could contaminate the interconnected lakes and streams that make up the Boundary Waters. Once that contamination starts, there is no way to reverse it, which is why an overwhelming majority of Minnesotans weighed in against the mine, and the federal government blocked it. Until that protection was overturned last week.
Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith took a heroic stand on the Senate floor last Wednesday, arguing late into the night, trying to persuade her colleagues not just to hold off on destroying this pristine place, but to forgo using an obscure maneuver that, in a 50-49 vote, redefined land management and knocked down longstanding protections for every piece of national forest in the country.
My colleague J. Patrick Coolican, editor of the Minnesota Reformer, described Smith pleading to an empty chamber, “I dearly hope the members of this body will think about their legacy in protecting the great places in this country.”
No future president can reinstate the mining ban that protected the Boundary Waters now that Congress used the obscure Congressional Review Act to strike it down. And it’s bigger than that. With their vote to open up mining near the Boundary Waters, “lawmakers have called into question the validity of every management plan issued by the U.S. Forest Service over the past several decades,” Alex Brown of Stateline reports. “That could result in legal chaos for thousands of permits covering logging, grazing, mining and outdoor recreation.” As Smith warned her Republican colleagues who want to protect the public lands they cherish in their home states, their vote means it’s now open season on those lands, too.
I couldn’t bear to talk with my daughters, who have spent every summer they can remember in the Boundary Waters, about the vote last week.
But this week, Earth Week, it’s time to confront it. All is not lost. Just as they stood up to the masked federal agents who descended on Minneapolis to tear immigrant families apart, Minnesotans are organizing to fight Twin Metals, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chilean mining company Antofagasta, as it seeks state permits to open up its toxic mine. While mining proponents tout the mine as a job creator (ignoring the economic costs of destroying the nation’s most-visited wilderness), the Senate’s action mostly benefits a foreign mining company, which has a history of flouting environmental regulations and creating toxic spills in other countries, and which will likely sell the copper it extracts from Minnesota to China.
The least we Wisconsinites can do is to help our neighbors as they try to repel this deadly invasion and seizure of a priceless natural resource.
Friends of the Boundary Waters, based in Minnesota, is filing a lawsuit arguing that the congressional maneuver that opened up the mine is illegal. The group and its allies are also urging the Minnesota DNR to cancel Twin Metals’ leases for the mine, and pushing the Minnesota state legislature to ban mining in this sensitive area.
As Wisconsin Sen. Gaylor Nelson, the founder of Earth Day put it in his 1970 speech kicking off the modern environmental movement, protecting the environment is “not just an issue of survival, but an issue of how we survive.”
“Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty,” he said. “….Our goal is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all human beings and all other living creatures. An environment without ugliness, without ghettos, without poverty, without discrimination, without hunger and without war.”
We need to protect that vision of life from the forces of greed and destruction that are engulfing us. We can’t let them write the end of the story.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley announces lower fatal overdose numbers. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Elected leaders and public health officials in Milwaukee gathered at the Marcia P. Coggs Center for Health & Human Services building to announce that opioid overdose deaths in Wisconsin’s most populous county have declined for the fourth straight year in a row.
According to data provided through the county’s overdose dashboard, there has been a 17.7% decrease in fatal overdoses and a 22.7% decrease in fatal opioid overdoses since 2024. There has been a 42.6% decline since 2022 in all forms of overdose death, with a 54.6% decline in opioid-related overdose deaths specifically.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley praised the use of opioid settlement funds to expand treatment and harm reduction strategies. The funds originate from lawsuits against the producers and distributors of pain killers that triggered the opioid crisis. The nationwide epidemic of addiction and overdoses is also tied to the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl which began spreading in the mid-2010s, causing deaths on an unseen scale.
Dr. Ben Weston, chief health policy advisor of Milwaukee County. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
“As we acknowledge the progress we have made, we must also remember those we have lost,” said Crowley. “Their lives matter, and their stories remind us why this work is so critical. I am committed to continuing this work until every person in Milwaukee County has access to the care, support and second chances they deserve.”
The latest data shows that 387 people in Milwaukee County still lost their lives to an overdose last year. “These are our neighbors, these are our loved ones, these are our family members,” said Crowley, “people who we care about that live in our own communities.” At a press conference Tuesday, Crowley said he has seen family and neighbors struggle with addiction as he grew up. “And I saw firsthand the barriers that they faced when trying to access treatment, but also continue to take those steps towards healing,” said Crowley. “Healing is a lifelong journey. So to me these aren’t just numbers on a dashboard. They’re people, and even one overdose death is one too many.”
Milwaukee County will receive $111 million over the next 18 years through the opioid settlements. This represents the largest amount recovered by a local government in Wisconsin history, a county press release states.
“Three years ago, we were losing a life to opioid overdose every 16 hours,” said Chief Health Policy Advisor Dr. Ben Weston, praising the sharp decline in deaths since then.
Members of the press trying the county’s first harm reduction vending machine in March, 2023. (Photo | Isiah Homes)
Weston recalled an April weekend three years ago when there were 16 overdose deaths in Milwaukee County. The scale of the epidemic was “unimaginable” Weston said, and it forced emergency management staff, firefighters, police and community members to “say enough,” said Weston.
Over the last several years Milwaukee County adopted multiple harm reduction strategies. Narcan — the nasal spray used to revive someone from an opioid overdose — has been distributed in vast quantities to emergency responders and average citizens. There are also 27 free-to-use harm reduction vending machines around the county providing narcan, fentanyl testing strips and even gun locks.
The vending machines were launched through a Department of Health and Human Services program called Harm Reduction MKE. Another program called Pull Up & Pick Up offers residents the opportunity to order free supplies and pick them up at the Coakley Brothers building (400 S. 5th St) on the third Friday every month. Vivent Health Depot has also partnered with Milwaukee County to provide free harm reduction supplies delivered right to people’s homes.
“We’ve expanded community paramedicine programs and peer support to close the gaps in care and reach people who might never otherwise have entered into the system,” said Weston. “And we’ve partnered with the state using real-time overdose data and predictive learning and modeling to better understand who is at highest risk, and be able to intervene early.”
Treatment centers have also worked to overcome zoning restrictions and stigma to open in new parts of Milwaukee. Treatment access has also been expanded for people both entering and leaving incarceration, a particularly dangerous time when people are more likely to overdose, Weston said.
“At the Medical Examiner’s Office, we see firsthand the human toll of this crisis, and while the data shows progress, it also reminds us that this work is far from over,” said Dr. Wieslawa Tlomak, Chief Medical Examiner of Milwaukee County. ”
Tlomak said that it should concern everyone that every third or fourth death in Milwaukee County is due to drug overdose. She noted that usually overdose deaths are caused by multiple drugs. While Narcan can reverse an opioid overdose from fentanyl, there is no equivalent medication to reverse the effects of stimulants like cocaine or meth. “In other words, the landscape of overdose deaths has changed,” said Tlomak. “It is more complex, more unpredictable, and more difficult to treat.”
Dr. Wieslawa Tlomak, Chief Medical Examiner of Milwaukee County. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Tlomak said that of the 387 people who died of fatal drug overdoses last year, 263 involved opioids.
Jeremey Triblett, Prevention Integration Manager at the Department of Health and Human Services, highlighted the importance of new campaigns in Milwaukee to continue to reduce overdose deaths. One program, dubbed “Better Ways To Cope,” provides residents with strategies to deal with life problems.
On June 12, recognized as National Harm Reduction Day, the Department of Health and Human Services is inviting residents to participate in the 1,000 Doors Challenge, a neighborhood canvassing project aimed at spreading information and supplies to the people who need it.
Seagull Lake in the Boundary Waters. Superior National Forest is home to 20% of all fresh water in the entire national forest system. A congressional vote to allow mining in the area could have broad national ramifications. (Photo by Christina MacGillivray/Minnesota Reformer)
Congress’ move to allow mining in a national forest near a wilderness area may have broad ramifications across the country.
The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to overturn a mining ban in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
By using an obscure tool known as the Congressional Review Act to open the national forest for mining, lawmakers have called into question the validity of every management plan issued by the U.S. Forest Service over the past several decades. That could result in legal chaos for thousands of permits covering logging, grazing, mining and outdoor recreation.
Over the past year, Congress for the first time has used the Congressional Review Act to revoke management plans for regions managed by the Bureau of Land Management, seeking to allow more mining and drilling. Such plans had not previously been considered “rules” subject to lawmakers’ review.
Under the act, federal agencies must submit new regulations to Congress before they can take effect. Because management plans, which function as high-level guidance documents, were never considered rules, federal agencies did not submit them to Congress for review.
Using a new legal theory, Republicans in Congress have opened reviews and revoked several specific plans that limited resource extraction in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. But those actions call into question whether more than 100 other such plans are legally in effect, since they are now considered rules that were not sent to Congress as the law requires.
Public lands experts say the new interpretation could create legal jeopardy across hundreds of millions of acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management, threatening any permit issued under a management plan drafted after the passage of the Congressional Review Act in 1996.
Now, for the first time, Congress has used the review tool to overturn a management decision on Forest Service land.
“There’s a huge playing field of actions that would be forbidden if none of these management plans are lawfully in place,” Robert Anderson, who served as solicitor for the Department of the Interior during the Biden administration, told Stateline earlier this year. “This could bring things to a screeching halt.”
Longtime outdoors writer Wes Siler, who has written extensively about the Boundary Waters review battle, said in apost Thursday that the vote will “destroy the Forest Service’s ability to conduct regular business for the foreseeable future.” If the agency’s management plans suddenly become invalid, he wrote, “not only could this grind industrial operations on (Forest Service) land to a halt as all of this winds its way through federal court, but it could also set (the Forest Service) the task of re-doing 30 years of work.”
On Thursday, the Senate voted 50-49 to revoke a Biden-era plan that banned mining on land in the Superior National Forest. The resolution will now go to President Donald Trump for his signature.
A Chilean mining company has proposed to mine for copper, nickel and cobalt along Birch Lake in Minnesota. The planned mine would sit at the headwaters of the wilderness area’s watershed. The Boundary Waters is the most popular wilderness in the country, and advocates say the water is so pristine that many visitors fill their bottles straight from the surface of its lakes.
Wilderness proponents say such mines have a long track record of pollution, and leaks from the proposed site would flow downstream and irreversibly contaminate the treasured Boundary Waters.
U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, the Minnesota Republican who sponsored the review action, has said the mine would bring jobs to the region. Opponents have argued that the tourism economy centered on the Boundary Waters is a larger economic driver, and noted that the mine will be run by a foreign company that will likely export the copper to China.
U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, led the effort to uphold the mining ban on the Senate floor. Following the vote, she said that supporters of the Boundary Waters would likely mount a legal challenge, questioning the use of the Congressional Review Act to revoke a public land order from the Forest Service.
“I question the legality of what Congress did,” Smith said, according to the Minnesota Reformer.
Two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also voted against the measure. Tillus also questioned the use of the Congressional Review Act.
“It’s a precedent that I think our Republican colleagues are going to regret,” he told The Minnesota Star Tribune.
The Forest Service oversees nearly 200 million acres of land, managed for multiple uses, including timber harvests, grazing, outdoor recreation and wildlife habitat. Some legal experts fear the management plans governing those activities are now in legal jeopardy.
“That right there is chaos,” Peter Van Tuyn, a longtime environmental lawyer and managing partner at Bessenyey & Van Tuyn LLC, told Stateline earlier this year.
“Those (plans) go across the full spectrum of what land managers do: conservation and preservation, mining approvals, oil and gas drilling, resource exploitation, public access and recreation,” he added. “There’s a very real chance that a court could say that a resource management plan was never in effect and all the implementation actions under the umbrella of that plan are invalid.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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Methadone is highly effective at reducing illicit opioid use and overdoses.
The federal government sets minimum standards for clinics to prevent misuse, but Wisconsin imposes more than a dozen additional requirements on providers.
As a result, patients may wait longer to begin treatment, make daily trips to clinics and take more time to reach an effective dose.
Many other states have eased their rules, expanding access without compromising patient safety.
After years of opioid use, Bob saw three paths ahead: jail, death or methadone.
The 70-year-old Stevens Point resident chose methadone, which he has stuck with for more than half his life. He credits the treatment for his long career and ability to raise two daughters. Now retired, he sits in a recliner holding a sheet of paper with a list of old friends; he’s written “OD” next to the names of several loved ones killed by drugs.
Methadone is highly effective at reducing illicit opioid use and overdoses, experts say. It reduces drug cravings, prevents withdrawal and can provide stability without a mind-altering high.
More than 10,000 Wisconsinites used methadone treatment in 2024 to recover from opioid use disorder. But state regulations make accessing treatment more difficult for those patients, providers and researchers say.
The federal government sets minimum standards for clinics providing methadone treatment aimed at preventing misuse. Wisconsin adds more than a dozen more restrictive requirements, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.
For patients, the state’s laws can mean waiting longer to enroll in treatment, daily drives to the clinic — even on weekends and holidays — and waiting longer to reach an effective dose.
Two years after the federal government relaxed its rules, Wisconsin’s landscape remains largely unchanged. Providers and researchers want Wisconsin to catch up with newer standards adopted by other states, including Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa.
The Department of Health Services is reviewing Wisconsin’s rules, but it’s unclear what will change or when.
Long drives for methadone treatment
Bob wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and starts the 40-minute drive to his treatment clinic. Years ago, he left that early to make it to work on time. Now, he just likes to beat the crowd.
Wisconsin Watch is identifying people who use methadone by first name only to protect their private health information.
Bob tries not to pee before starting the drive. He knows clinic staff will likely send him into the bathroom with a cup as soon as he arrives. It’s been two decades since he used drugs or alcohol, but he takes the drug test all the same.
Bob holds a bottle of methadone at his home, April 14, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Bob sits in his recliner, April 14, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Next, he walks up to a clinic window, where someone hands him 13 plastic bottles of a cherry red liquid. Bob locks the medications inside a box he brought from home. A staff member watches as he swallows another dose.
He’ll do it all again in 13 days. The treatment saved his life, but it keeps him tied to this time-intensive routine — and to a clinic in another town.
“Methadone is like having a pair of golden handcuffs,” he says.
Unlike other medications, methadone cannot be picked up from a pharmacy. Only 31 locations across Wisconsin are approved to provide medication-assisted opioid treatments including methadone, according to the state health department.
At the state’s northernmost clinic in Wausau, patients traveled an average of 31 miles, one way, to their clinic in 2024.
Wisconsin allows fewer take-home doses
Methadone can be fatal if misused. To prevent people from overusing it or selling it, the federal government limited the number of take-home doses patients receive.
Early in the pandemic, the federal government allowed states to relax take-home rules to limit crowding at clinics — and many states did so. Studies later showed higher patient satisfaction and feelings of being respected without a significant increase in misuse.
In making the pandemic exceptions permanent in 2024, federal regulators wrote that the previous standards “can pose disruption to employment, education and other daily activities for patients, and several of the criteria reflect outdated biases that promote stigma and discourage people from engaging in care.”
But Wisconsin’s take-home regulations remain stricter than the federal minimums from before the pandemic.
The federal standard allows patients like Bob to take home 28 doses at a time. Wisconsin allows only 13.
Wisconsin patients must visit their clinic seven days a week until they complete a month in treatment and meet other criteria not required by the federal government. It takes a year in Wisconsin to qualify for the number of take-home doses providers in other states can offer patients after two weeks.
Bob sits in his recliner for a portrait alongside his methadone bottles, April 14, 2026. For patients, Wisconsin’s laws regarding methadone can mean waiting longer to enroll in treatment, daily drives to the clinic and starting at a dose too low to alleviate withdrawal symptoms. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Random callbacks disrupt routines
State rules also require clinics to regularly “call back” patients, like Bob, who have more than two take-home doses. The callbacks are intended to help providers make sure patients are not selling or misusing take-home doses.
Between visits, Bob’s provider often calls and tells him to arrive at the clinic within 24 hours with all 13 methadone bottles. If he doesn’t, he has to go back to daily clinic visits.
Federal rules do not require callbacks. In a 2024 report, federal regulators said providers should “consider the disruptive nature of random callbacks.”
It’s hard to make plans knowing you might have to change them any moment, Bob says. “I want to be normal again.”
Rules changes under review
Wisconsin is an outlier whose policies are overdue for an update, said Sharel Rogers, CEO of Addiction Medical Solutions and Vin Baker Recovery. She also serves as president of the Wisconsin Association of Treatment for Opioid Dependence.
Rogers was among several providers who backed a bill last month to update state rules. The measure was introduced right before the legislative session ended and was not expected to pass, but supporters hoped it would push regulators to act.
Wisconsin health officials are considering changing opioid treatment regulations, but without legislative action, the process could take years.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services aims to ensure state regulations support access to “high-quality, evidence-based care for those who need it,” wrote Elizabeth Goodsitt, a spokesperson for the agency.
The agency started the state’s “intentionally thorough” rulemaking process last year to bring state regulations “closer in alignment with current federal regulations,” Goodsitt said.
The agency is still drafting proposed changes. They would be subject to public hearings and lawmaker approval in a process that ensures input from providers, advocates and patients, Goodsitt said.
The health department declined to answer detailed questions. Staff plan to review enrollment and take-home requirements, according to a document submitted to the Legislature. It’s not clear if other discrepancies, like callbacks, lab testing or dosage levels, will be addressed.
Opioid treatment providers should be carefully regulated, but Wisconsin’s current rules create barriers for patients, Rogers said.
“I’m just amazed at these patients every day, what they will do for their own recovery,” she said.
Bob flips through a 1974 copy of The Physicians’ Desk Reference to find the drug listing for methadone, April 14, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Bob lined up his methadone bottles on a table at his home for a portrait, April 14, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Recovery under tight restrictions
Timothy overdosed three times before starting treatment.
After nine months in Marathon County jail, he relapsed unaware of his lowered tolerance and the strength of the drug supply in 2022.
Within a couple of months, he started methadone.
“Some people don’t get out of that. A lot of people don’t,” Timothy said. “I’m grateful.”
Opioid overdose deaths dropped by more than 42% in Wisconsin between 2023 and 2024, according to the state health department. Still, opioids killed 815 people in Wisconsin in 2024, compared with fewer than 300 deaths two decades earlier.
Rising overdose rates are driven in part by fentanyl, a more potent opioid. Patients with a history of fentanyl use typically need higher methadone doses, said Dr. Hillary Tamar, who oversees Wisconsin treatment providers as a medical director for Community Medical Services.
Wisconsin rules prohibit providers from giving new patients a starting dose above 30 milligrams of methadone. That limit is outdated in the fentanyl era, Tamar said. The average dose at most Wisconsin clinics in 2024 was above 100 milligrams.
Updated federal limits allow providers to start patients at 50 milligrams or higher, based on their clinical judgment. A higher starting dose can help patients avoid withdrawal and reach a stable dose sooner, Tamar said.
Federal regulations also give providers greater ability to decide whether a patient may benefit from fewer visits.
“The regulations in Wisconsin bind us to creating a one size fits all plan, and that is just not how humans work,” Tamar said.
Despite attending regular counseling and dosing in-person daily for four years, Timothy still doesn’t qualify for a single take-home dose in Wisconsin.
That’s because he started using cannabis while undergoing chemotherapy around the time he started methadone treatment. Now in remission, he is working with his counselor to stop using cannabis, but it still prevents him from receiving take-home doses in Wisconsin.
In other states, marijuana use does not bar patients from receiving take-homes, Tamar said.
Last month, Timothy received two take-home methadone bottles while visiting his daughter in Florida.
Before leaving Wisconsin, he worked with staff at his clinic to set up a week’s worth of visits with a Florida provider. He was surprised when the new clinic told him he would receive take-home doses over the weekend.
When at home in Wisconsin, Timothy doesn’t mind the daily clinic visits. But when he’s with his daughter, they remind him of his past mistakes.
For two days he mixed his medication with apple juice and celebrated his 45th birthday with his family without stopping at the clinic.
He said it was the best time of his life.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Tear gas is deployed by police Saturday at Ridglan Farms. (Photo courtesy of Lisa Castagnozzi)
Clouds of tear gas engulfed the Ridglan Farms Biomedical research facility, as police repelled hundreds of animal rights activists attempting to breach the facility to carry away thousands of beagles bred and housed inside. The activists gathered at Ridglan in the Dane County village of Blue Mounds on Saturday, a day ahead of the date they’d publicly announced for the planned rescue action.
Wayne Hsiung, a lawyer and animal rights activist from California who was one of the lead organizers of the action, was reportedly among the first people arrested. The Dane County Sheriff’s Office said on social media that he was arrested “within minutes” for conspiracy to commit burglary. As the activists attempted to enter the Ridglan facility for the second time in a little over a month, they were met with tear gas and rubber bullets. Activists said some people were severely beaten by law enforcement. One participant, Nicholas Dickman, lost multiple teeth after officers beat him after Dickman crawled through a hole activists made in the fence around the facility, according to a press release prepared by the Coalition to Save the Ridglan Dogs.
A man was injured after police deployed tear gas and rubber bullets during the second beagle rescue attempt at Ridglan Farms. (Photo courtesy of Lisa Castagnozzi)
The conflict comes after weeks of escalating tensions around the controversial facility. Ridglan keeps thousands of beagle dogs bred specifically to be used in biomedical research. Ridglan maintains its own research wing, but also sells the dogs to other facilities for use in experiments. Critics of Ridglan have long accused the facility of subjecting the dogs to cruel and inhumane conditions. Last year, a special prosecutor appointed by a Dane County judge found that violations of Wisconsin’s animal cruelty laws had occurred at Ridglan. Instead of filing charges, the special prosecutor reached a settlement deal with Ridglan that gave the company until July to shut down its breeding operation.
Animal rights advocates denounced the decision to let the beagles remain at Ridglan until July. This prompted a first attempted rescue by dozens of activists in March. More than 20 beagles were taken from the facility and some were adopted. A few of the dogs were intercepted by police and returned to Ridglan. The group forced its way into the buildings housing the dogs, breaching fences and breaking locks. Some of the activists reported that the dogs they pulled from gated enclosures were living in cramped and unsanitary conditions. Although 27 people were arrested, Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett didn’t refer charges to the district attorney’s office until last Thursday, after the activists announced their plans to return to try to get more beagles out. Barrett called the activists “outside groups” who used violence to breach the buildings and “stole dogs from the facility.”
On Saturday, at least 25 people were arrested, a coalition spokesperson said in an email statement to the Wisconsin Examiner. Two people have been charged with tresspassing, one with reckless driving, and four with felony burglary. Hsiung reportedly said in a call from jail that “only a deeply corrupt system will use tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful activists saving dogs. We are seeing the worst in humanity today. But in the courage of the rescuers, also the best.” The coalition said in a statement that Hsiung was questioned by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. The FBI refused to comment for this article.
The Dane County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on social media that a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) had been used to warn people that they’d be arrested. The statement said that hundreds of people attempted to breach the gate, while others “blocked roadways to slow the response of law enforcement and other emergency vehicles.” It also said that one of the activists reckless drove a vehicle around the property before “law enforcement stopped it and arrested the driver.”
The sheriff’s office also said that some protesters were peaceful while others ignored warnings and attempted to break into the facility, and that 40mm munitions (tear gas) and pepper balls were used. Dane County deputies were assisted by other law enforcement agencies, though the sheriff’s office did not name them in its statement.
Sheriff Barrett said that “it was clear from the beginning that this was not going to be a peaceful protest.” Barrett said the use of force was “appropriate and proportionate to the behaviors observed” and that “resorting to crime, chaos, and violence is not the solution.”
The sheriff’s post included pictures of activists dressed in white biohazard suits, carrying equipment like sledgehammers and power saws to breach the facility.
Lisa Castagnozzi, a resident of Milwaukee County who participated in the action, told the Examiner that she’d been concerned about Ridglan for at least eight years, ever since she read about the facility’s 311 animal cruelty violations cited by the state, “and yet, they just keep reporting these violations and nothing ever happens.”
Volunteers help activists injured by pepper balls and tear gas. (Photo courtesy of Lisa Castagnozzi)
“So everyone — myself included — have tried over eight or nine years now, for me eight, all of the legal channels. You know?” Castagnozzi said. “All the advocacy channels. Going to hearings. Signing petitions. Calling our Congress people. Going to Madison to talk to people at [the state Department of Agriculture and Trade], U.S.D.A., meeting with legislators, being part of Dane4Dogs…I mean literally trying to get any of the four major authorities in Wisconsin to take action. Like we know that there’s cruelty there. Why is no one taking action?”
In frustration, Castagnozzi said she and many others decided to go to Ridglan on Saturday. Originally, the second action was announced for Sunday, and Castagnozzi said that she, like many others, was surprised that the action was moved up a day to Saturday. When they arrived at Ridglan, Castagnozzi said she saw what she thought was smoke in the air as the police fired tear gas and people tried to get through the gates. Castagnozzi’s team decided to keep their distance, and then people started coming down the hill towards them with injuries.
One man, she said, “had been pepper-sprayed in the eyes, like brutally. And then from that moment on, for the rest of the day, for me…my team was scattered and there’s so many people and chaos. … people were shot with rubber bullets. People went to the hospital. Knee injuries. A professor from Sheboygan I know, she was shot in the chest and she had to go to the hospital and make sure it wasn’t a broken rib. A lot of injuries, and tons of people with serious chemical, you know, in the eyes, in the face, in the skin, in their lungs, I mean people were just passing out.”
Castagnozzi also said that she saw people who identified themselves as neighbors and supporters of Ridglan blocking roads with their vehicles and not allowing people to pass.
On Sunday, sheriff’s deputies were still in the area blocking a road to Ridglan and monitoring passing cars. A planned vigil was not held at the farm. Instead, dozens of activists gathered at the Capitol, saying they would not give up on freeing Ridglan’s beagles.
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