Controversy over Flock license plate reading cameras has rippled across Wisconsin, causing people to fill public hearings as some regions remove the cameras, and others overhaul auditing and oversight. Activists, elected officials and police departments are navigating disagreements over privacy, safety, freedom and the facts about the surveillance network.  

Communities including Dane County, Verona, Monona, Fitchburg, Appleton, Oshkosh and Sturgeon Bay are dropping contracts with the multi-billion company Flock Safety because of heightened awareness and public anxiety over surveillance. 

Officers and deputies from three different agencies and three separate counties stand accused of misusing Flock cameras, which compile images of vehicles and their license plates into a database which can be searched by police. When the Examiner reviewed five months of Flock data last year, it contained many thousands of searches conducted by 221 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies.

All three officers are accused of tracking their romantic partners, with officers Josue Ayala of Milwaukee and Cristian Morales of Menasha facing charges for which they have upcoming court appearances. Ayala is scheduled for sentencing in June and Morales has a jury trial in July. Kenosha County Deputy Frank McGrath was not charged for misconduct over his use of Flock to track another deputy he was dating and a John Doe petition seeking charges in the case has been sealed by a judge, according to court records.

“It’s powerful technology,” Heba Mohammad, an organizer with Milwaukee4Palestine — one of the local groups pushing against Flock cameras — told the Examiner.  

Milwaukee4Palestine has focused on police surveillance as cameras, automatic license plate readers like Flock, and facial recognition technology and drones came to Milwaukee. “As Palestinians, we know what that is a signal of,” said Mohammad, pointing out that similar surveillance tested on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank has been adopted by U.S. law enforcement agencies. “The road to fascism is paved with well-intentioned surveillance technology.”

Milwaukee4Palestine organized to oppose facial recognition technology and then Flock. “We know this is what is next,” said Mohammad. “We’ve seen how surveillance can be used to oppress people.”

Although MPD stands by its use of Flock, the department has also been forced to revamp its auditing procedures. Over the last couple of months, the department has limited the number of officers who have access to Flock. James Lewis, risk manager for MPD, told the Wisconsin Examiner that access was restricted to an “as needed basis,” and that requests need to go through the chain of command, creating more of a paper trail when Flock is used. 

While some units or bureaus investigating serious crimes had clearer needs for Flock, “in patrol, we wanted to make sure that the officers who had it really had the need to have this software,” said Lewis. MPD is also using audit data to flag “outlier” data that indicate questionable Flock uses, such as an officer searching the same vehicle multiple times over a short period, or not attaching case numbers to searches. MPD shares its Flock network with state partners, but not with federal agencies. 

Nevertheless, community members have expressed a lack of confidence and trust in MPD surveillance, especially after the passage of Act 12, which stripped some of the Fire and Police Commission’s oversight powers in exchange for allowing Milwaukee to adopt a sales tax. 

“We are of the position that the risks far outweigh the benefits of this technology and again, particularly with a police force like the Milwaukee Police Department that has been granted a lot of impunity through Act 12 [and has] basically no accountability,” said Mohammad. “And they are demonstrating time and time again that they don’t care what the community thinks.”

Lewis said that the department is trying to nail down exactly how Flock affects the community. “I think a lot of what we’ve seen through public comment, through the commissioners’ comments, through news media coverage for this is, ‘Hey this is this big data surveillance network and it’s got a lot of these pitfalls in it,” said Lewis. “But I think the other piece of it that we’re really trying to get our hands on is how is this making police work more efficient? Is it driving public safety outcomes? Are we getting what we want out of it and through audit, we’re trying to tell those stories as well.” 

Lewis said MPD is working on answering some of those questions, especially the question of whether there is a return on investment in terms of public safety. “If there is outlier data generated, I want to know not just compliance or not, but also what did the city get out of this? Is it a safer place because of this?” Lewis said that MPD has chosen to overhaul its auditing practices on its own in a tailor-made fashion, rather than waiting on Flock Safety to develop a fix. 

The department highlighted 24 different situations where Flock was used, including felony firearms investigations, parole violations, narcotics trafficking, homicide, material witnesses needed at criminal trials, stolen vehicles, overdose death investigations, sexual assault, shootings and armed robberies. In one of the examples involving theft, MPD specified in an email that “Flock was used to develop patterns of movement in the suspect vehicle” to determine whether it was related to other thefts. 

Balancing tracking, privacy, and public safety

The extent to which Flock can track and surveil people has been a source of tension at public meetings. In December, Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball and Chief Deputy Brain Barkow said that calling Flock a form of tracking is a misrepresentation. They argued that although Flock alerts officers that a vehicle has been sighted, they would still need to go to the area of the alert and search for the vehicle. In other words, Flock doesn’t see everything.

But the technology appears to have greater surveillance capabilities than some departments and even Flock itself have described.

The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department has also said that Flock is “not used for general surveillance, traffic enforcement, or monitoring individuals not connected to an investigation.” However, the agency’s Flock data shows that officers entered “surveillance” and “traffic offense” as reasons for searching the camera network. 

Oshkosh officials voted to continue a Flock contract only to reverse course the next day, saying that they’d been misled by Flock representatives over the camera’s ability to produce heat maps visualizing where a vehicle has been. At a meeting in April, Oshkosh Police Chief Dean Smith told local elected officials that because of that “misrepresentation” he could “I can no longer recommend Flock.”

“I think it depends on how it’s used,” Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis told the Examiner. “I think if it’s misused, you can misuse this technology in a way that would allow you to track someone.” Yet, Davis feels that Flock can be an asset when used for legitimate criminal investigations. “I think people sometimes misunderstand how the technology works.” 

Davis concedes of Flock use that in some ways, “yeah, that’s kind of tracking someone. But I have a legitimate criminal predicate for doing so.” At the same time, he condemns the use of Flock for personal reasons, like spying on ex-wives or partners. “The government doesn’t get to do that,” said Davis. “That’s unlawful overreach into someone’s life because there’s no legitimate public safety reason for getting access to that data.”

Davis was hired at Green Bay in late 2021, when the city was experiencing a rise in gun violence. After deciding not to adopt gunshot detection tech, the city pivoted to automatic license plate readers. 

“At the time Flock was one of very few, if not the only company that had stationary license plate reader technology,” said Davis. “With gun crimes, the faster you can develop a suspect and make an arrest, the better, because there’s a retaliatory cycle that happens.” The department has been able to locate homicide suspects who fled to other states, hit-and-run suspects, and stolen vehicles using Flock. 

Davis said that “license plate reader technology has been a game changer for all of us. On the other hand, you still have to take people’s privacy concerns seriously.” He stressed that “anytime you’re collecting that much data about people as they just go about their daily business, you have to be really careful with how that’s used.” 

How Flock can be layered with other surveillance technologies also worry community members. In May, officers in Wauwatosa used Flock surveillance and a drone to track a robbery suspect.

The debate reminds Davis of the words of a mentor, that being a police chief is “the great balancing act of municipal government.” He added that, “I think it would be a mistake for us to not take people’s privacy concerns seriously in this conversation.”

As cases of misuse have popped up, the Green Bay Police Department has also tightened its use of Flock. They used their own audit to look for suspicious searches, and didn’t detect any instances of misuse. “We didn’t find any of that in our audit that we did, but it doesn’t hurt to ratchet it down as much as we can,” said Davis. “Because again, I understand, like you’re talking about people’s sensitive information. We have to be responsible with how we use that, and there have to be safeguards in place.” 

The department has also restricted which outside agencies can access its Flock network. While there was an initial belief that “the bigger the network, the more valuable the tool,” Davis said that Green Bay PD has “re-thought that over the last few weeks.” Now only agencies in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, eastern Wisconsin from Green Bay to Milwaukee, and the Chicagoland area (including Racine, Kenosha, and Cook counties along with some Chicago suburbs and a small portion of Indiana around the city of Gary) can search within Green Bay’s network. 

“We figure that makes more sense to have more of a rationale for why we share data,” said Davis. “Because I don’t have control over how those other agencies manage their employees. It’s not that I don’t trust them, but if they want that information then they can call us and they can explain what they’re working on, and we’ll see if we can help them.”

Green Bay PD is also utilizing a drop down menu with pre-designated options for using Flock, rather than allowing officers to type whatever they want. When the Examiner conducted its first analysis of Flock last year, there were several departments which used vague search terms, even just putting a dot or “.” as the reason for searching Flock. When the Examiner brought it to the Waukesha Police Department’s attention, the department said an officer was re-trained and counseled. 

Captain Dan Baumann of the Waukesha PD said in an email statement that since then, the department has “strengthened its oversight of Flock Safety by increasing formal audits from twice per year to monthly.” There are also random audits in addition to the mandatory audit, as well as an AI-powered Flock audit assistance tool to flag suspicious searches. The department’s standard operating procedure has also been adjusted. No further instances of vague labeling have arisen, and no discipline has been issued in connection to use of Flock. 

Baumann said Flock has assisted investigations such as in a vehicle break-in where leads were limited, and using Flock allowed investigators to identify a suspect’s vehicle and connect it to cases in Dane County. Flock was also used to locate someone involved in a shooting, and who pointed a gun during a road rage incident, Baumann said.

Communities waking up to surveillance risks

While it may be encouraging that departments are changing procedures and upping auditing, advocates still have  questions about whether it will  be enough. Jon McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, hopes that people “don’t miss the forest for the trees” by focusing solely on Flock, when other companies sell similar technology. 

“I don’t believe that law enforcement are just acting out of good faith with a lot of these regulatory changes and auditing changes to Flock,” McCray Jones told the Examiner. “I believe that it comes from sustained pressure started at the most local level from people understanding and realizing the dangers associated with all these cameras and automated license plate readers, and specifically Flock, who is the worst company out of all of them so far.” 

It all also ties back to a growing mistrust and fear over the federal government. Under President Donald Trump, federal immigration agents have flooded Democratic-led cities across the country, resulting in multiple shootings and deaths in Minnesota earlier this year. The Trump administration has also directed federal agencies to begin investigating left-wing groups it has accused of domestic terrorism. 

Mohammad said that the ICE surges really brought surveillance to the forefront when people began to see “ICE agents scanning people’s faces in different cities, and telling them that we have a database and we can recognize your name. Or pulling people’s license plates and figuring out what their names were so that they could harass them directly by name.” She added, “I think this political moment is also a moral and ethical one.” 

McCray Jones also said the issue of police surveillance has new urgency as communities are “being targeted and their neighbors being disappeared by the federal government.” ICE and other federal agencies have access to Flock either directly, or through assistance from local and state agencies which have contracts with the company. Public officials, under pressure from voters, are “jumping on board,” McCray Jones said, “and they’re feeling courageous and empowered to take on these surveillance systems.”

Public meetings about surveillance technology in Milwaukee are energized, Mohammad said. “I don’t want to say exciting because I think that really betrays the seriousness of the moment,” she said. “But there is that buzz that often happens when that room is full, or there was a time when they had to open the overflow room.” It’s shown Mohammad that “people care about this stuff and that’s why I think that it’s really incredible that even though the FPC doesn’t really have any teeth to its accountability anymore, we as residents are using as many avenues as are open to us to make our voices heard.” 

McCray Jones suggests that people care about Flock because “at its core, it’s one of the easiest surveillance technologies for people to understand.” He believes that people understand that “anyone who drives is impacted by this technology in a way that other surveillance technologies, say like ShotSpotters or Stingray…I think people have a harder time one: knowing how these technologies work but two: viewing themselves as potential victims.” 

He added that in several cases, including in Milwaukee, officers who misused the technology were caught by people using websites like HaveIBeenFlocked, not by the department. “So we don’t know how much these systems are being abused,” he said. “And I think elected officials should use these moments of high, intense scrutiny from the community and in the media, and having anecdotal stories of officers doing this right now, to really be courageous and take the lead to fight for more accountability measures before the public forgets about this story, and forgets about the danger that they are under due to law enforcement’s ability to track where you are at all times.”

Mohammad said that she and her allies are not quitting anytime soon. “We understand our position, we understand the risks here,” she told the Examiner. “And so we’re not going to back down. We do not want our communities to be surveilled. And we believe that public safety comes from investments in other areas, not in police surveillance.”

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The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will vote this week on a 2% tuition hike that would go towards supporting university operations, including utilities and facility maintenance, employee salaries and benefits and student services. 

In a release, the Board characterized the increases as “modest,” noting that it’s less than the current inflation rate of 3.8%. The Board said the increase follows years of “significant financial restructuring across UW universities, including reductions in structural deficits, operational changes and campus-level cost containment efforts designed to strengthen long-term financial stability.”

UW Interim President Renée Wachter, who took up the position on May 8, said in a statement the system recognizes that “Wisconsin families are managing rising costs in every part of their lives, and that reality informed this proposal.” 

“This is a measured increase that helps our universities continue providing strong student support and high-quality academic experiences while keeping a UW education among the most affordable in the Midwest,” Wachter said.

The change would also include a 3.5% increase — or about $56 annually — in segregated fees, which help cover student services, activities, programs and facilities. The combined increase in tuition, segregated fees and cost of room and board would average 2.5%.

Over the years the state’s investment in the system has declined. In 1984-85, state revenue made up 41.8% of the UW System’s budget, while in recent years, state funding has made up less than 20% of the system budget. The change has meant the system has had to rely more heavily on tuition and fees. 

It’s the fourth year of increases following a 10-year tuition freeze that was adopted under former Gov. Scott Walker and ended in 2023. The tuition hike in 2025 was the maximum of 5%.

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, said in a post on X that he would institute another tuition freeze and “restore accountability” to the universities if elected. He noted the previous increases and the recent investment in the state budget.

The system received a $250 million boost for operational costs under the biennial state budget adopted in 2025, but it was well below the $855 million operational budget increase that former UW President Jay Rothman said would be needed to avoid tuition increases.

Republican lawmakers also expressed irritation at the proposed increase.

The prospect of a  2% increase came up in April during a Senate Technical Colleges and Universities committee hearing as lawmakers questioned UW Regent President Amy Bogost and Regent Timothy Nixon about the firing of Rothman. The regents told lawmakers at the time that there was “nothing written in stone.”

“I don’t know if it’s going to happen,” Bogost said then. 

In a statement, Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), who sits on the powerful committee responsible for writing the state budget every two years, claimed the regents lied.

“Unfortunately, students and their families are the ones who will be paying the price for this dishonesty,” Testin said. “At least we now know that we can no longer take the UW Board of Regents at their word. My Joint Finance Committee colleagues and I certainly will not forget this betrayal when the regents and UW officials come begging to us for more money during next year’s state budget deliberations. This is simply unacceptable.”

Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) chairs the Senate Universities and Technical Colleges committee,  did not respond to a request for comment from the Examiner. Hutton is retiring and will not be in the Legislature when lawmakers return in 2027 to write the next state budget.

It is unclear whether Republicans will hold control of the state Senate and Assembly or to the governor’s office in 2027. 

The regents are scheduled to meet on June 4 and 5 in Milwaukee.

The per-year tuitions at each campus under the proposed increase are: 

• UW-Eau Claire: $10,268
• UW-Green Bay: $9,133
• UW-La Crosse: $10,563
• UW-Madison: $12,416
• UW-Milwaukee: $11,153
• UW-Oshkosh: $9,180
• UW-Parkside: $8,851
• UW-Platteville: $9,007
• UW-River Falls: $9,448
• UW-Stevens Point: $9,692
• UW-Stout: $10,289
• UW-Superior: $9,477
• UW-Whitewater: $8,984

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The world’s largest meat and dairy companies, many of which operate in Wisconsin, have made hundreds of claims that their practices are sustainable and promises of future climate protection initiatives. But a report released last month in the journal PLOS Climate found that hardly any of those claims are legitimate. 

The report, authored by researchers at the University of Miami, assessed publicly made environmental claims and promises of the 33 largest meat and dairy companies in the world. The corporations assessed in the report includes companies with Wisconsin operations such as Saputo Cheese, Tyson Foods, JBS, Hormel Foods, Dairy Farmers of America and Nestle. 

Since 2021, the corporations made 1,233 environmental claims but, according to the report, 98% of those claims can be called “greenwashing” because they were made without supporting evidence. Only three of the claims were backed with actual peer reviewed studies. 

“This study is consistent with what we have experienced: big claims, big promises, but little in the way of quantifiable improvement in environmental quality,” said George Kraft, the former Director of the Center for Watershed Science and Education at UW-Extension and UW-Stevens Point who now sits on the science council of Wisconsin’s Greenfire. 

The report’s authors argue that it’s important to assess the claims of these companies because corporate meat and dairy operations cause a huge proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

“Meat and dairy companies, which produce disproportionate amounts of pollution relative to other kinds of foods, have prioritized climate change in their sustainability initiatives,” the report states. “They make many promises and provide very little supporting evidence. Like the fossil fuel industry, which has used greenwashing over the last several decades to delay meaningful climate action, the meat and dairy industry may be misleading consumers and investors regarding whether and to what extent they are addressing environmental impacts, including climate change, with even less time to spare.” 

In Wisconsin, economic forces have for decades pushed the state’s dairy industry to get bigger. Hundreds of factory dairy farms are now permitted to operate in the state, putting more cows on more concentrated plots of land while the state’s corporate dairy interests fight at the local and state level to prevent government regulation. 

Tara Greiman, the Wisconsin Farmers Union’s director of conservation and stewardship, told the Wisconsin Examiner that corporate agriculture has been the dominant force in the industry for the last 50 years and the effect of that control on the environment is clear. 

“They can say as much as they want, ‘look at all of our promises, look at what good stewards we are,’ but the fact of the matter is that our groundwater quality is depleting in the sectors that they control, our ecological habitat diversity depleting, we are losing farmers at the same time,” she said. “There’s other economic factors, but speaking in terms of just the climate measurements, they’re not doing a good job.” 

Earlier this month, the environmental organization Clean Wisconsin released a report outlining the steps Wisconsin’s agricultural industry will need to take to help the state achieve its climate emissions goals. The research found that reducing nitrogen fertilizer use, reducing the amount of acreage used for corn-based ethanol production, practices such as no-till and cover crops, better livestock management and the planting of perennials instead of commodity crops would help put Wisconsin on the right track. 

Chelsea Chandler, Clean Wisconsin’s climate, energy and air program director, told the Examiner the fact that corporate agribusiness feels the need to make sustainability claims is a first step. She said that sometimes companies are intentionally “overstating the benefits” of a practice, lack enough data or are extrapolating too much across different parts of the world. Still, the discussion can lead to helpful action and the adoption of scientifically backed solutions. 

Clean Wisconsin’s climate solutions roadmap can help, Chandler said,  “because it’s based on the latest science, it’s tailored specifically to Wisconsin, and it’s checking some of those claims that are overstated when it comes to the climate impacts.” 

Chandler hopes that providing good information will affect investment and support, “whether that’s coming from private companies who are trying to improve their sustainability in their operations, or if that’s coming from governments through different kinds of incentive mechanisms and channeling those into the things that are really having an impact” 

Both Chandler and Greiman said that deliberate choices built the food system we have today and it will take deliberate choices to build something more sustainable. 

“We need a new food system. Growing corn, even if you’re doing no-till, even if you’re cover-cropping after it, if you’re only growing corn and soybeans, it’s not a regenerative system. Full stop,” Greiman said. “We have to have new markets, otherwise we’re just rearranging deck chairs, and the research is saying this.” 

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In the 2024 election, Republican messaging that marginalized transgender Americans and attacked Democrats got widespread attention.

Opinion is divided among political analysts about whether anti-trans messaging contributed to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s narrow loss — about 29,000 votes in Wisconsin and about a 1.5% margin nationwide — or was irrelevant. 

A 2023 Marquette University Law School poll found that a majority of respondents favored protecting trans people against workplace discrimination, but 70% also believed athletes should be required to play sports on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth. 

But whether or not the strategy helped seal Donald Trump’s victory two years ago, Republican candidates in Wisconsin have been leaning into messaging that targets transgender and nonbinary people.

Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), whose adult son is transgender, sees little reason to “rehash” the 2024 election. “I think it’s always important to make sure that we are advocating for our trans community and for kids and speaking out against hate,” she said. “I think the bigger concern is why a party feels the need to attack our trans kids and use that as an issue to rile up part of their base ultimately.”

Transgender individuals account for less than 1% of the adult Wisconsin population, about 36,000 people, and 3.3% of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17, fewer than 13,000 people — or 180 per county. The Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles Law School calculated those estimates based on survey data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collected between 2021 and 2023.

The Republican majority in the state Legislature has passed bills that would bar gender-affirming care for young people and ban kids from playing on sports teams that didn’t match the gender they were assigned at birth or their biological sex. Gov. Tony Evers has repeatedly vetoed those measures.

“We’ve seen this in the Legislature, that by somehow going after children and bullying them is something that they see as a winning issue,” Ratcliff said. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me. And that grown adults think it’s OK to bully kids is just gross.”

Meanwhile, with Trump’s inauguration to a second term, federal policy has turned against transgender people and also against a more expansive understanding of gender.

During the Wisconsin Republican convention in Wisconsin Dells on May 16, speakers attacked the transgender population, particularly youth, sounding the alarm about the possibility of trans girls playing high school sports, mocking the use of inclusive language and promoting the  policing of bathrooms. 

Republican nominee for governor Tom Tiffany opened his speech by asking the delegates, “Are you ready for a governor that’s going to protect girls’ sports?”

Sen. Ron Johnson inveighed against “Biological males competing against our little girls in sports. Biological males invading their locker rooms, their showers, their bathrooms.” He as well as former Gov. Scott Walker falsely claimed that minors identified as transgender can be subjected to surgical procedures.

And a May 19 press release by Republican press secretary Zach Bannon falsely claimed that more than 90 lawmakers were “emphasizing their support of sex-change surgeries for minors” in an open letter to two leading Wisconsin hospital systems.

The false claim was repeated three times in the press release, which attacked Democrats in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District who are running in the party’s primary to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden. 

The letter called on the healthcare providers, Children’s Wisconsin in Wauwatosa and UW Health in Madison, to resume gender-affirming care for minors, which both suspended early this year following threats to federal medical dollars from the Trump administration.

That form of care does not include surgery, however. A Children’s Wisconsin spokesperson said medical treatment prior to the suspension of care involved medication, and that Children’s still provides mental health and behavioral care. 

“UW Health does not offer gender-affirming surgery to minors,” said Sara Benzel, a spokesperson for the Madison-based system.

Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said that for the youngest children who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria — a deep-seated sense that their gender identity doesn’t match their biological sex — the first step is extensive counseling with a therapist.

Gender-affirming care “is also age-appropriate, and this is the part that I think people miss all the time,” Swetz said in a recent interview.  “There are no medical interventions until puberty for gender-affirming care.”

Interventions at puberty can involve medication but not surgery, Swetz said. Those can include hormone treatment to delay puberty and to redirect the body’s development.

“But that is all age-appropriate, and highly individualized, just like all good medical care is with the doctor,” Swetz said. “And always with full consent of parents and guardians. When we are talking about gender-affirming care for trans youth, that’s what we’re talking about. Not what the other side would like to pretend.”

Bannon did not respond to a Wisconsin Examiner email message seeking an explanation for the false statements in his press release.

A federal judge in April blocked the Trump administration from cutting off federal funds to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care. The judge’s order said the Department of Health and Human Services lacked the authority to override professional standards of care or to deny funding to healthcare providers following those standards.

Since then some health providers in other states, including Children’s Minnesota hospital, have resumed providing gender-affirming care for minors.

Both UW Health and Children’s Wisconsin said they sympathized with patients who had been undergoing that care and their families, but that they believe they would remain in legal jeopardy if they resume care involving medication.

Ratcliff said that as someone whose family has gone through the experience of addressing the needs of a transgender child, it was important to her “to make sure that all trans kids and the trans community know that there are people in the Capitol that care about our trans community, that see them, that are fighting for them, and that we can push back again and fight back against all the hateful rhetoric toward our trans community.”

She said she believes Republicans are ramping up  attacks on trans people as a deflection from the economic squeeze voters are feeling.

“We know that everyday costs are going up and they aren’t putting forward policies that actually help everyday lives of Americans or Wisconsinites,” Ratcliff said. “My child being trans is not causing these prices to go up. My child’s healthcare is not causing any difference in people’s lives except for my child’s life.”

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America’s story cannot be told honestly without recognizing the extraordinary contributions of Muslims. Long before today’s political noise, fearmongering and divisive rhetoric, Muslims were helping build this nation with their labor, intellect, sacrifice, entrepreneurship, patriotism,and unwavering belief in the American dream. From medicine to business, from the military to science, from civil rights to community service, Muslim Americans have strengthened the soul and foundation of this country for generations.

At a time when some attempt to portray Muslims as outsiders or threats, Americans must remember a simple truth: Muslims are no strangers to America. They are part of America’s heartbeat. They did not come to weaken this nation; they helped build it.

Historians estimate that a significant number of enslaved Africans brought to America were Muslims. Though stripped of their freedom, language, names and identity, they carried with them traditions of scholarship, discipline, faith and resilience. Even under unimaginable cruelty, their labor helped build the economic foundations of early America. Their sacrifice became part of the nation’s rise.

Generation after generation, Muslim immigrants and Muslim Americans continued building America brick by brick. They opened grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, factories, trucking companies, hotels and small businesses in neighborhoods many others had abandoned. They worked double shifts, sacrificed comfort and poured every dollar into educating their children and creating opportunities for future generations. Their journey reflects the very essence of the American dream: hard work, sacrifice, faith and hope.

Today, Muslims contribute enormously to America’s economy, innovation and global leadership. Thousands of Muslim physicians serve communities across the nation, including rural and underserved areas facing severe healthcare shortages. Muslim scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and researchers are helping drive technological breakthroughs, medical discoveries and economic growth. Muslim-owned businesses employ countless Americans and contribute billions to local economies every year.

One of the most powerful examples is Muhammad Ali. He was not only one of the greatest athletes in history, but also one of the bravest moral voices America has ever produced. Ali stood firmly for his beliefs even when it cost him his heavyweight title, public support and years of his career. History eventually vindicated his courage, and he became one of the most admired Americans of all time. 

Muslim Americans have also excelled in public service as members of Congress, judges, educators, police officers, military leaders and civic activists dedicated to strengthening democracy and improving their communities. Thousands have proudly worn the uniform of the United States military, fighting and sacrificing alongside fellow Americans to defend freedom and national security. Their patriotism is unquestionable and deserves respect, not suspicion.

In business and technology, immigrants continue to fuel American greatness. America has always advanced because dreamers from every corner of the world came here willing to work, innovate and take risks. Muslim entrepreneurs embody that same spirit every day , creating companies, generating jobs, investing in struggling neighborhoods and helping America remain globally competitive.

After the tragedy of September 11, many Muslims faced discrimination, hatred and painful suspicion. Mosques were vandalized. Families lived in fear. Innocent Americans were treated as if they had to constantly prove their loyalty. Yet instead of turning away from America, Muslim communities leaned even further into service, compassion and civic engagement. They organized interfaith initiatives, fed the homeless, supported charities, helped disaster victims and worked tirelessly to build bridges between communities. They answered hatred not with hatred, but with humanity.

One remarkable example is the story of Richard “Mac” McKinney, a former Marine and Army veteran who once planned to bomb a mosque before engaging with the Muslim community and discovering the truth about Islam. Instead, he became president of that very mosque. His transformation was documented in the Academy Award-nominated film Stranger at the Gate. Another powerful example is Dr. Abdul-Munim Sombat Jitmound, who publicly forgave the man who murdered his son, embracing him in court and declaring that Islam teaches forgiveness and mercy. Former anti-Muslim extremist and KKK leader Chris Buckley also abandoned hatred after forming a friendship with Kurdish refugee Dr. Heval Kelli, eventually dedicating himself to peace and understanding. These stories remind us that human connection and engagement are much stronger than fear mostly created by politicians and social media.

Here in Wisconsin, I founded We Are Many – United Against Hate, a non-profit, non-partisan movement dedicated to building unity in our classrooms and communities by empowering young people and sharing the real-life stories of former hate group members who chose compassion over division.

What began as a local effort has grown into a powerful grassroots movement. Inspired by its impact, high school students across Wisconsin have launched chapters of the movement in their own communities. One of the most extraordinary examples of healing came after the tragic attack on the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, when the founder of a former hate group and the son of the temple president who was killed became close family friends united in promoting peace. Today, both serve on the board of our movement and courageously share their remarkable story with students and communities across the country.

Since its founding in 2016, our movement has become a national voice for unity, understanding, and hope, earning recognition from Joe Biden at the White House. Through this work, I have witnessed the people of Milwaukee and communities across Wisconsin come together across faiths, races, and cultures to welcome immigrants, reject hate, and build a stronger and more compassionate future for all.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Muslim doctors, nurses, healthcare workers and volunteers stood courageously on the front lines risking their lives to save others. Mosques and Muslim charities distributed food, medical supplies and financial assistance to struggling families regardless of religion, race or background. That is the true spirit of America,  neighbors helping neighbors.

America has always been strongest when it embraces diversity rather than fearing it. The greatness of this nation does not come from one race, one religion or one culture. It comes from people of different backgrounds united by shared values: freedom, opportunity, hard work, sacrifice, compassion, and human dignity.

Muslims are woven into that American fabric. They are teachers, veterans, scientists, truck drivers, entrepreneurs, engineers, police officers, nurses, students and public servants. They are raising families, paying taxes, healing the sick, creating jobs, serving communities and strengthening America every single day.

The attempt to marginalize Muslims or portray them as less American betrays the very ideals upon which this nation was built.

Muslims are not a burden on America. Muslims are part of America’s strength. They have helped make this nation more compassionate, more innovative, more resilient and more prosperous.

Muslims are not on the sidelines of the American story.  They are part of the lifeblood that keeps America strong. God Bless the Muslims and God Bless the United States of America. 

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More than 800 nurses at a Madison hospital owned by a national nonprofit group will vote in the coming weeks on whether to join a union.

The organizing campaign at St. Mary’s Hospital is one of the largest in recent memory in Wisconsin.

In a statement earlier this month, a spokesperson said the hospital’s parent organization, SSM Health, “respects the right of its employees” to freely choose union representation. Nurses and the Service Employees International Union say the hospital’s management has responded with stiff opposition.

Union supporters are planning a rally Thursday afternoon in front of the hospital, with U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) among the featured speakers.

“There’s a national crisis facing both our healthcare system and the nursing workforce,” Pocan said in a statement issued Tuesday announcing the event. “St. Mary’s nurses are trying to address this crisis right here in our community by having a strong voice for better staffing and retention. SSM should respect their freedom to vote in a fair union election without any pressure campaign.”

The union election, supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, will be the largest such vote in recent memory in Wisconsin. A date for the election hasn’t yet been set, but it could be announced as early as this week.

It comes amid a rising interest in unions among healthcare workers — one that coincides with the growth of increasingly concentrated multistate healthcare networks, including nonprofit organizations.

“We’re seeing more union elections, we’re seeing more petitions for recognition of unions as well,” said Dr. Ahmed Ahmed, a research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School, in a panel discussion earlier this month conducted by Wisconsin Health News.

With mergers and consolidations, hospitals and health systems have grown larger and larger. Labor costs are their biggest expense, and in trying to trim those costs, they’re increasing caseloads and reducing the time patients have with their providers, Ahmed said. Healthcare workers are turning to unions in search of “one collective voice that is able to govern and be able to bargain for those things.”

Centralized decision-making

Supporters of the St. Mary’s union campaign say that concentration is one of the reasons they’re organizing. Centralized decision-making at the Missouri headquarters of the parent organization have felt to some like a corporate takeover.

“There have been a lot more directives from corporate headquarters in St. Louis,” said Josh Taylor, a nurse in the hospital’s inpatient behavioral health unit.

St. Mary’s was one of several hospitals and healthcare facilities established by nuns from Europe and sponsored by Roman Catholic congregations in the 19th century. The facilities were only loosely connected until 1986 when the corporate structure changed with the creation of SSM Health, according to the SSM Health website.

SSM Health had been sponsored by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary until 2013, when sponsorship shifted to a new corporate entity, SSM Health Ministries, while remaining part of the Roman Catholic church.

SSM Health is headquartered in St. Louis and operates in four states — Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma — where it runs 24 hospitals and more than 540 other facilities, including doctor’s offices, outpatient services, home care and hospice programs.

According to SSM’s annual financial statements, SSM Health had $12.7 billion in revenues in 2025 and ended the year with a balance of $484 million in net revenue over expenses.

In 2014 SSM Health began applying its name to all of the healthcare facilities in its network.  It also consolidated its business operations including human resources, finance, strategy and planning and marketing and communications.

With those changes, nurses who are supporting unionizing say that decision-making on day-to-day policies and practices has moved farther away.

“We watched our personalized policies for our hospital disappear,” said Lynette Willsey-Schmidt, a labor and delivery nurse who has worked at St. Mary’s for more than 11 years.

Employee councils called ineffective

Willsey-Schmidt said labor and delivery nurses along with the doctors in the department had developed a series of practices to reduce intervention during births where risks and complications were lower. Those practices were welcomed by patients, she said.

But as SSM Health took charge of policymaking, “we were told we can’t do that anymore,” Willsey-Schmidt said, because those policies didn’t exist elsewhere in the SSM Health system.

Taylor said that while employee councils are supposed to relay feedback from the floor to upper management, they haven’t been effective.

“I’ve been on the unit councils,” he said. “We have tried the normal routes to bring our concerns to the table. We are heard, but nothing is acted on.”

When employees have raised concerns, “We’re told, ‘This is how it is. This is how all the hospitals have to do it,’” Taylor said.

Morgan Espich, an inpatient medical and surgical nurse, said the hospital recently purchased and began requiring nurses to use a new brand of intravenous pumps, different from what they had been using. She and her coworkers had been happy with the previous models, Espich said, and no one explained the reason for the change. “We just had to get new ones that no one asked for,” she recalled.

In addition, the hospital staff has to keep some of the older IV pumps on hand, said Carrie Schrank, an intermediate care trauma nurse, to substitute for the new pumps when they malfunction.

Nurses contend staffing levels have left employees straining to cover all their responsibilities, while nurses have been told to improve productivity.

“Productivity should be about patients’ outcomes,” Willsey-Schmidt said.

Consultants who visited earlier this year recommended ways to reduce staffing, but Schrank said their recommendations didn’t address how acutely ill some patients are.

“The days we’re busy, we go home and wonder, did I do enough?” Espich said.

Hospital stance — respect or intimidation?

SSM Health released a statement earlier this month in response to the Wisconsin Examiner’s submission of specific questions about the union campaign as well as a request for an interview.

“At SSM Health, we work hard to cultivate a supportive and collaborative work environment where every employee is treated with respect and compassion,” said the statement, delivered by Kim Sveum, SSM Health regional director of communications.

“We value our high-quality patient-centered care and place of healing.  We strive to ensure that our team thrives so that they can do their best work in realizing our Mission to provide exceptional patient care.”

The statement concluded, “SSM Health respects the right of its employees to make a free and informed choice as to whether or not they wish to be represented by a union.”

Union organizers say that there have been extensive messages posted on employee bulletin boards disparaging unions and the SEIU and emphasizing employees’ right to decline to sign a union authorization card.

“They have been constantly intimidating staff,” Schrank said.

Employees typically attach their work badges to a retractable line coiled up in a holder called a badge reel that can be clipped to a lapel or pocket. When they made their campaign public, pro-union nurses began using a customized badge reel with an emblem, “St. Mary’s Nurses United.”

Supervisors have ordered employees to remove those badge reels. Espich and other nurses said they have been told that “this is soliciting” against hospital policy, and that nurses who don’t remove the badge reel would be sent home without pay for the day.

“With this union-busting, though, we’re all fired up even more,” Espich said.

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A federal judge on Thursday dismissed the request from the U.S. Department of Justice for Wisconsin’s unredacted voter rolls. The ruling marks a defeat in the Trump administration’s renewed effort to scrutinize the election administration of swing states that President Donald Trump lost in 2020. 

The federal government first requested Wisconsin’s unredacted voter registration list last summer,  making a similar request to most other states. The Wisconsin Elections Commission denied the DOJ request, citing state privacy laws, and pointed the department to the publicly available redacted list. 

The DOJ responded by suing WEC for the unredacted list. The federal government has filed similar lawsuits in 30 other states. 

Republicans and their allies have for years alleged that the data management practices of state election administrators are vulnerable to fraud. Voting rights groups and Democrats have countered that the Trump administration is seeking to fan the flames of election conspiracy theories and meddle in state elections by collecting massive amounts of voter data. 

U.S. Judge James Peterson found that the personal information of voters, including birthdays, Social Security numbers and driver’s license details, isn’t a record the DOJ can demand under the Civil Rights Act. 

“Defendants and their amici contend that the government’s position fails for multiple reasons, specifically: (1) a voter registration list is not a record subject to production under Title III; (2) the government has not provided an adequate statement of basis and purpose, as required by the statute; (3) the government has not explained why it needs an unredacted copy of the voter list, as opposed to the publicly available redacted version; and (4) the government’s request is barred by state and federal privacy laws,” Peterson wrote. “The court agrees that a voter registration list is not a record subject to production under Title III, so it will dismiss the complaint on that ground without considering defendants’ other arguments.”

The DOJ has lost parallel efforts to obtain this type of data in eight other federal district courts. 

After Peterson’s ruling, attorneys from Law Forward and the ACLU celebrated the decision, stating that it protects Wisconsin’s voters from potential intimidation. 

“Requiring Wisconsin to disclose this sensitive personal information despite laws prohibiting just that would have threatened the privacy of Wisconsin voters and the removal of eligible voters from voter rolls for no reason,” said Doug Poland, Law Forward’s director of litigation. “Federal law leaves it to states to administer their own elections, and Wisconsin already has reliable processes for maintaining its voter rolls.”

Poland said the purported premise behind the federal demand — to uncover evidence of noncitizens voting in elections — was a pretext.

“Given the rarity of noncitizen voting, this lawsuit, and similar efforts in other states, are thinly-masked efforts to manipulate and subvert future elections,” he said. “The court recognized this as an illegal attempt to gather and weaponize data on Americans, dressed up in the language of voting rights enforcement. We will continue to stand up to the Trump administration’s illegal schemes to interfere with elections administration and erode the rights of voters in Wisconsin.”

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At the Wisconsin Republican Party convention at Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells Saturday, elected officials, party leaders and former governors repeatedly warned that if Democrats do well in this year’s midterm elections they will turn the state into its more liberal neighbor of Minnesota. 

“Look at Minnesota, if you must, look at where taxpayers have been fleeced of millions of dollars by Democrat politicians that chose to look the other way, take a look at Illinois, with their high tax rates, and their politicians that have passed out freebies to illegal aliens, and make no mistake, those same people, they have this state in their sights, and they want Wisconsin to be their next victim,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who was crowned Saturday as the party’s nominee for governor. 

The warning comes after 15 years in which Republicans have controlled majorities in the state Legislature and hold six of the state’s eight congressional districts while Republicans hold both houses of Congress and the presidency. In his speech, Tiffany painted a Wisconsin in decline. 

“This election is about more than politics. It’s about whether Wisconsin is going to continue down this path of decline,” he said.

The national political landscape, President Donald Trump’s sinking approval rating, a faltering economy and a less gerrymandered legislative map have Democrats dreaming of trifecta control of state government. 

“The one thing I am scared about this election is the Democrats are motivated, and they truly believe we’re on the verge of a fascist day or something,” U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman said. “And because they are so motivated — you see it in the number of protests out there — we have got to match them. To be honest, we’re not matching them quite yet, but they do believe they’re on that verge of losing America, and that that is why they have so many volunteers out there, so many people who are gathering signatures. We have got to find a way to match that enthusiasm.”

State party chair Brian Schimming said Saturday that to staunch that blue wave, Republicans need to lean into “kitchen table issues.” 

“Because wherever we are in this state on the big issues, the big kitchen table issues, the voters are with us,” said Schimming, who in recent weeks has faced internal efforts to oust him. 

During a panel discussion of current and former Republican legislators, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said that the state’s residents are “feeling the economy.”

“When you look at what’s going on right now, it is affordability, it truly is,” Kurtz said. “Let’s not sugarcoat that. Everybody, at least in my district, we’re feeling the economy. So that’s where I think we, as Republicans, we have to say what we have done and what we will continue to do.”

But from the convention stage, officials such as Tiffany, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, former Gov. Scott Walker and U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden, railed against alleged election fraud, undocumented immigrants, trained protesters fighting the Trump administration and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. 

“The left never, never talks about the victims of crime from illegal immigrants,” Johnson said. “But they take those two individuals who they trained and encouraged, put themselves into harm’s way, they died, and they turned them into martyrs and use them as an excuse to defund ICE, defund CBP, refuse to fund DHS, and put all of America, or continue to keep America at risk.”

Repeatedly, speakers highlighted their focus on eliminating protections for transgender people and preventing trans people of all ages from receiving gender-affirming care. 

“Are you ready for a governor that calls moms moms not inseminated persons? Are you ready for a governor that’s going to protect girls’ sports?” Tiffany said in the opening line of his speech. 

Throughout the day, party officials sought to paint Wisconsin Democrats as “radicals” who want to turn the country socialist. 

“The Democrat candidates leave the answer simple: the government should provide,” said Schoemann, who briefly ran in the Republican primary for governor but dropped out after Trump endorsed Tiffany. “They want a government that provides your groceries, your education, your health care, your child care. Should I keep going?”

Speakers bashed the Democratic vision for a government that can solve people’s problems — labeling Wisconsin Democrats such as Attorney General Josh Kaul and state Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) as socialists. State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), who has been leading the polls in the Democratic primary for governor and actually is a Democratic Socialist, was also a frequent target. 

Speakers also often criticized Democratic proposals to raise income taxes on the state’s millionaires, billionaires and corporations to offset rising property taxes. 

In his often meandering 30-minute speech, Johnson argued that if Democrats win back a majority in the U.S. Senate this fall, they’ll use that power to end the Senate filibuster rule to “turn America into a one-party nation.” 

So, he said, to preempt that effort, Republicans should end the filibuster this summer in order to pass the SAVE Act instituting much stricter rules on voting. 

“We better end it first, so we can save this nation,” he said. “If we were to end it, we wouldn’t be doing it to turn this into a one-party Republican party nation. No, we would do it to preserve this nation, to preserve voter integrity, so that no matter who wins we have the confidence that that’s a legitimate result.”

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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.

Evers rejected 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 indefinitely were 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.

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The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents president appointed UW-Superior Chancellor Renée Wachter as the interim president of the UW system on Friday, about a month after firing the previous president. 

Wachter has served as the 10th chancellor of UW-Superior since 2011, making her the longest-serving chancellor in the system. Effective May 18 she will serve as the UW system interim president.

Board President Amy Bogost said in a statement that Wachter “knows our universities, our communities and the challenges and opportunities facing public higher education in Wisconsin.” 

“She has earned the trust and respect of colleagues across the system through steady leadership and a collaborative approach. At a time when continuity, focus, and forward momentum are essential, the Board is confident she understands what must be done to support our universities during this transition,” Bogost said.

Prior to her tenure at UW-Superior, Wachter served as the Dean of the School of Business at Truman State University in Missouri. 

The Board of Regents decision to fire Jay Rothman, who had served as president since 2022, on April 7 came as a surprise and led to criticism from Rothman, who said he wasn’t given a reason for the termination, and from Republican lawmakers. Regents said, however, that they were dissatisfied with Rothman’s leadership, especially as he moved too slowly to act on issues including artificial intelligence, and had communicated their concerns with him during his review process. 

Bogost said that the next president must “bring the courage, discipline, and forward-looking leadership needed to guide the Universities of Wisconsin through one of the most consequential periods in higher education.”

The Board also announced the 25-member Presidential Search Committee that will conduct a nationwide search for the next permanent president. The last time there was a retirement from the position the search for a UW system president lasted for nearly three years. 

The committee will be led by Regent Ashok Rai, and it is expected that a president will be selected later this year.

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All three members of the Public Service Commission criticized the lack of transparency from Meta and Alliant Energy during a meeting Thursday in which the body approved a contract for the social media giant to obtain power for its planned data center in Beaver Dam. 

Meta is in the process of spending more than $1 billion to construct a hyperscale data center campus that, when completed, would use six to eight times more power than the city of Beaver Dam’s current energy load. 

Like similar massive data center projects across the state, Meta’s Beaver Dam project has drawn opposition from local residents. For months, the project was shrouded in secrecy with Meta operating under the name Degas LLC. Opponents have complained about the lack of openness, the massive use of energy and the impact the construction and operation of the center could have on the community. 

PSC Chair Summer Strand said in her opening remarks she didn’t understand “why it needed to be this difficult” to achieve a transparent process. 

“To me, transparency is not a cliche, feel good, bare minimum, check the box concept,” Strand said. “If there’s one takeaway from our discussion and decisions today I want it to be clear that, whether you’re a large load customer coming into Wisconsin for the first time, or regulated entity familiar with our process, transparency — and by that I mean actual and real transparency — is the foundational expectation and a necessity.”

Commissioner Kristy Nieto said in her opening remarks Thursday morning that the case is one of the “most consequential” decisions the PSC has seen. 

“It bears repeating, existing Wisconsin customers should not pay a single cent to subsidize the service of data centers, not now and not decades from now,” Nieto said. “This means these very large customers must bear the full cost of the infrastructure required to serve them — generation, transmission and distribution — and that those costs must be fully and transparently assigned.” 

The three members of the commission lamented the redactions that had initially been made to the documents submitted in the case — which were later removed after objections from outside parties including members of the public, Clean Wisconsin and the Citizens Utility Board. 

The commissioners also decided that moving forward, hyperscale data centers constructed within Alliant’s territory must pay for and receive energy through a standardized tariff, rather than a one-off contract negotiated without public scrutiny. Late last month, the PSC made a similar ruling for large customers in WE Energies territory. 

Under the PSC order, Alliant will have to develop a tariff that applies for any data centers using more than 100 megawatts of energy. The Meta campus is expected to use 220 megawatts. 

“This is not going to be the last data center contract we see from this utility, and I will say Alliant needs standard guidelines and rules for its data center customers,” Nieto said. “A clear public tariff would create consistent, transparent rates and rules for future data centers, instead of handling each one through separate, confidential negotiations.”

While Alliant was ordered to develop a tariff rate for large customers, the PSC on Thursday approved the contract negotiated between Meta and Alliant with some modifications meant to insulate regular customers from bearing the costs of Meta’s energy use and any related infrastructure upgrades by Alliant. Nieto said denying the agreement while the tariff rate is developed would have allowed Meta to operate for up to a year without any guardrails, an outcome she said didn’t think would benefit anyone.

Brett Korte, a staff attorney with Clean Wisconsin, said the PSC putting a halt to the development of a case-by-case patchwork of data center energy deals in Alliant’s territory — which covers parts of more than a dozen Wisconsin counties — will protect Wisconsinites.

“Tariffs create a consistent, transparent framework that helps protect the public interest,” Korte said in a statement. “Without them, Wisconsin risks a patchwork system where costs and responsibilities are unclear and potentially shifted onto other utility customers.”

After the meeting, consumer advocacy and environmental groups were complimentary of the PSC’s actions.

“Today, the Public Service Commission highlighted the importance of transparency and oversight: accountability is a must, and it cannot be bypassed,” Britnie Remer, organizing director of climate advocacy group 350 Wisconsin. “The Commission also recognized that protecting Wisconsinites from subsidizing billion-dollar data centers needs to be front and center when it comes to these massive projects. With more data center proposals inevitable, requiring tariff filings in the future will ensure large energy customers pay for their costs, not our families and small businesses.”

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Three weeks after two right-wing groups demanded the repeal of a professional licensing board’s ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ clients of social workers and other therapists, Gov. Tony Evers sent a sharply worded reply.

In a Tuesday letter to the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and Wisconsin Family Action, Evers declared, “my administration has no intention of repealing Wisconsin’s conversion therapy ban.”

Evers asserted that the April 14 demand letter from the two groups was based on “a significant misreading” of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that threw parts of a Colorado ban on conversion therapy into question. 

Evers wrote that it was “disappointing” that the organizations support “a long-disavowed and outdated practice” that extensive research has shown to be ineffective and responsible for harms including depression, suicide, substance misuse, posttraumatic stress and anxiety.

“On the other hand, this should come as no surprise,” Evers wrote. “After all, bullying LGBTQ kids and Wisconsinites seems to be an important goal for Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and Wisconsin Family Action.”

Purported to dissuade people from same-sex attractions and from gender dysphoria — which the American Psychiatric Association has defined as  “psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity” — conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, has been widely discredited.

Conversion therapy is not limited to talk therapy. “Aversive techniques used in reparative therapies have included electric shock, physical violence, administration of emetics, and personal degradation and humiliation,” the American Academy of Nursing wrote in a 2015 statement opposing the practice.

The Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board published an updated professional code in April 2024 that declared “any intervention or method” used or promoted to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity to be “unprofessional conduct” that could subject a practitioner to professional discipline.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a March 31 ruling, sent a lawsuit challenging a Colorado law against conversion therapy back to lower federal courts. The ruling instructed the lower courts to apply “strict scrutiny” on First Amendment grounds to the Colorado law because it seeks to “regulate speech based on viewpoint.”

In their demand letter, WILL and Wisconsin Family Action called on the Evers administration to repeal the ban in the Wisconsin therapists’ code. The letter declared that it was similar to the Colorado law and claimed that “the Supreme Court held that Colorado’s substantively identical statute was unconstitutional.”

Evers wrote that the demand “relies on a significant misreading of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision” and had “erroneously” characterized its findings. 

“First, the Court intentionally — and specifically — stopped short of striking down any applications of Colorado’s law,” Evers wrote. The high court instead remanded the case to the lower court to apply a “more searching scrutiny” to the law, he added. “Repeal before that occurs would be premature.”

Evers also wrote that the ruling “expressly held that heightened scrutiny applies only to certain applications of Colorado’s law, not the entire provision. Specifically, the case concerned only Colorado’s conversion therapy prohibition as it applied to talk therapy — not to other treatment, such as physical or medication interventions.”

Quoting the Court’s ruling, Evers wrote that the Colorado plaintiff, therapist Kaley Chiles, stated that “the statute has many valid applications. Indeed, [she] did not take issue with Colorado’s effort to ban what she herself calls ‘long-abandoned, aversive’ physical interventions. Instead, Ms. Chiles objected to Colorado’s law only as it applies to her talk therapy, therapy that involves no physical interventions or medications, only the spoken word.”

Wisconsin’s professional rule also covers more than talk therapy, Evers wrote, and the therapy, counseling and social work board “will maintain the rule and continue to enforce its valid applications, in order to protect Wisconsinites from harmful and offensive practices by Board licensees.”

WILL’s initial response Thursday to a request for comment was a two-word email message from WILL Deputy Counsel Rebecca Furdek: “Lawsuit incoming.”

In a follow up statement, Furdek said that Evers was “resorting to personal, baseless attacks on WILL and its mission.” Contrary to the distinctions Evers made about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the statement reiterated WILL’s characterization that the Court found Colorado’s “substantively identical law amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”

Making no reference to other conversion therapy tactics, the statement concluded: “Government shouldn’t be deciding which viewpoints are ‘acceptable’ for Christian counselors to express when providing talk therapy to the individuals who voluntarily seek out faith-based counseling.”

In his letter, Evers wrote that because the Colorado case remains active in lower federal courts, the Department of Safety and Professional Services will attach a note to the conversion therapy rule stating that “certain instances of the unprofessional conduct” it refers to “are the subject of ongoing litigation.”

Wisconsin’s conversion therapy ban was enacted after several previous attempts were blocked by the Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules. A Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in July 2025 found that state laws the committee’s Republican majority used to review and suspend administrative rules were unconstitutional and encroached on the examining board’s legal authority.

Marc Herstand, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers Wisconsin chapter, praised Evers’ letter Thursday. The association was among the groups that urged the counseling board to add conversion therapy to practices considered unprofessional conduct. 

Wisconsin state law “clearly gives professions the authority to establish their own Conduct Code as the social work profession, along with the marriage and family therapy and professional counseling professions,  have done in classifying Conversion Therapy as unprofessional conduct,” Herstand said in an email message. 

“I applaud Governor Evers for his recognition of the severe harm that Conversion Therapy inflicts on LGBTQ children and his commitment to retain the ban on Conversion Therapy [in the professional code] to the maximum extent possible.”

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A group of former University of Wisconsin officials and one lawmaker said better communication is key to building trust among Wisconsinites and overcoming disinvestment in the university as federal and state funding declines.

“The challenges [the higher education system] faces are on multiple fronts: ideological, financial, social professional,” said Michael Bernard-Donals, president of Public Representation Organization of the Faculty Senate (PROFS) and a professor of English and Jewish Studies at UW-Madison. “Much of the public doesn’t trust higher ed anymore or at least doesn’t think it’s worth the price. Costs have increased. The economy is changing, and the job market is shifting and colleges are a useful political punching bag for populists. The compact between the federal government and the universities… has broken down, maybe irreparably, and all of this has made navigating the internal politics of the institution that much harder.”

A 2025 Gallup poll found that confidence in U.S. two- and four-year higher education institutions was up slightly to 42% from a record low of 36% in the previous two years.

During a Wednesday panel discussion featuring a Democratic state representative as well as two former UW employees, much of the conversation centered around how universities and colleges need to improve their communication with Wisconsinites and their political leaders in order to build investment. 

Rep. Angela Stroud (D-Ashland), who serves on the Assembly Colleges and Universities committee and formerly taught at Northland College, said that it has been “stunning” to her to see the politicization of universities, but it is important that they figure out how to “change the discourse on what higher ed means to the state.”

Stroud said she sees some lawmakers grappling with knowing the importance of higher education when it comes to jobs and economic development, while also making “politically useful” attacks on higher education. 

“Those two things don’t go together very well,” Stroud said. 

In recent years, the relationship between the Republican-led Legislature and the UW system has been marked by disagreements over cutting the system’s budget versus investing in it, debates over DEI and the First Amendment and most recently, the firing of the UW System President Jay Rothman.

Raymond Taffora, emeritus vice chancellor for legal affairs at UW-Madison and former chief legal counsel for Gov. Tommy Thompson, listed the issues that he views as most  affecting higher education including diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, the cuts to federal funding that institutions are facing, changes to student visas due to the Trump administration, concerns about freedom of speech and academic freedom and uncertainty over changes in leadership. 

Addressing the recent tumult over the Rothman firing, Taffora questioned “how could the Board of Regents… decide to remove the president of the university and not designate an interim president of the system?” After the firing, the regents announced that Chris Patton, UW’s vice president for university relations, would serve as acting executive-in-charge prior to the appointment of interim president. 

“It’s not the way to lead a university,” Taffora said.

Greg Summers, an employee of the Milwaukee-based marketing agency BVK and emeritus provost at UW-Stevens Point, said part of the challenge for colleges is that while colleges do well communicating internally, communication with the general public could be better.

“Lots of colleges do a really good job communicating with their stakeholders, but that communication is very narrow. It tends to be very transactional in nature,” Summers said. “Institutions like to talk about themselves. They like to talk about recruitment — getting students to enroll at those institutions, because that’s incredibly financially important. They also talk a lot about getting donors to donate to their campuses, but there’s not a lot of conversation as an industry about the public common good that higher ed brings to American life.” 

Summers said the field of higher education needs to come up with a strategy to speak to the American public with one voice. He said that is the goal of his ad agency’s campaign called “Why College Matters.” It is a free public service campaign, he said, that any college and university can use.

“The campaign that we have created we think resonates with exactly the stakeholders that we need to reach: rural Americans, people without college degrees and political conservatives,” Summer said, adding that those groups  have been among the most skeptical of higher education in the last 10 or 15 years. 

Summers said the campaign gets at the idea of communicating better with Americans about why faculty research matters to them.

“Higher ed cannot solve its problems and its trust issues with communication alone. That’s absolutely true, but higher ed has a real communication problem and has to get outside of its usual bubble and usual audience and to talk to people in different ways about the value that they bring to American life,” Summers said. 

Stroud, noting her prior research on concealed carry and her job as a Democratic lawmaker, said she understands how difficult it is to have conversations that don’t become partisan and divisive.

“I’m just a partisan hack now in many people’s minds. They’re just completely dismissive of the evidence on gun violence… It’s going to be challenging to figure out how to enter into these conversations without being seen as being reduced to just partisan hackery,” Stroud said, adding that walking that line is essential for these conversations. 

Taffora said UW faculty and staff could improve on putting their expertise to use out in the state and living out the “Wisconsin Idea.” He brought up Walter Dickey, a faculty member of the University of Wisconsin Law School who also served as the Wisconsin Department of Corrections secretary under former Gov. Tony Earl, as an example.

“There was a time when the University of Wisconsin faculty were not only noted for their expertise, but their expertise was deployed,” Taffora said. “The best way to showcase expertise is… to get busy and to lend your expertise.”

Taffora said the showcasing needs to extend to lawmakers and decision makers and it could be beneficial for the UW system to further expand its lobbying efforts. 

“If that was a private company, you’d have batteries of lobbyists that would descend on the Legislature to tell stories. Interacting with decision-makers is key” Taffora said. “The story is a good one to tell, but it has to be told with facts and it has to be told with a degree of humility, not condescension.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the name of the college that Rep. Angela Stroud taught at. 

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U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson sent a letter to the White House Wednesday recommending their nominees for U.S. Attorney in Wisconsin’s two federal court districts. 

The appointment process for the two jobs has become more politically fraught than in the past after the commission was unable to agree on a nominee for the state’s Eastern District. The administration of President Donald Trump named former Republican attorney general and failed state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel as the interim U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee last year, which allowed him to serve for a limited time. The district’s judges ruled earlier this year that Schimel could no longer serve in his interim role, but former U.S. Attorney General gave him a new title that allowed him to continue working in the office. 

“I appreciate the hard work and dedication of Brad Schimel, who continues to serve the people of Wisconsin and remains fully committed to his role as first assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Wisconsin,” Johnson said in a statement. “My bipartisan nominating commission with Sen. Baldwin submitted two well-qualified U.S. attorneys for the President’s consideration. Peter Smyczek and Chadwick Elgersma will apply the rule of law and serve the people of Wisconsin’s Eastern and Western districts well.”

Historically, the two senators from a state each appoint people to a bipartisan nominating commission which selects candidates to be recommended to the president. Presidents usually adhere to the recommendations of a state’s senators. The Wisconsin nominating commission had broken down but was restarted after Democrats objected to Schimel’s appointment. 

Baldwin and Johnson named Peter Smyczek and Chadwick Elgersma to be the state’s top federal prosecutors. Smyczek has been an assistant U.S. attorney in the Milwaukee office while Elgersma was named to the job in January after working as an assistant prosecutor in the Madison office. 

“This is proof that the hard work of this commission and finding common ground can work,” Baldwin said. “The candidates that the commission put forward appear well qualified, to have relevant experience, and committed to delivering justice impartially, and I support them moving through the next stage of the nomination process. Wisconsinites want these top law enforcement officials to work for them and uphold the constitution without fear or favor, and I will vet these candidates to ensure they meet that criteria and do right by Wisconsin families.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday handed Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel a victory, offering a unanimous decision that laid to rest a yearslong debate over whether her case to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline should be heard in state or federal court. 

In an 14-page opinion penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court held that Enbridge had missed its 30-day window to have the case removed to federal court, with the Canadian energy company making its request 887 days after receiving Nessel’s initial complaint. 

The company’s Line 5 pipeline has been a long-running concern for tribal nations and environmentalists in the region, with Nessel calling it a “ticking time bomb” for the Great Lakes.

Running from northwestern Wisconsin into Sarnia, Ontario, the 645-mile long pipeline passes through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with a four-mile segment of dual pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet. The pipeline carries up to 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids through the straits each day.

“Today’s decision honors the truth that the Straits of Mackinac are not a bargaining chip and reaffirms what Tribal Nations have always known – we have the right and the responsibility to protect the Great Lakes,” Bay Mills Indian Community President Whitney Gravelle said in a statement. “The Supreme Court saw through Enbridge’s delay tactics and upheld the rule of law. This is a victory for our waters, our treaty rights, and the next seven generations who depend on the Great Lakes for life itself.”

In an emailed statement, Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy noted that Nessel’s case has been stayed, awaiting the results of an appeal in another court case, which Enbridge filed against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources after they revoked the company’s easement to operate Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac.

The United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan in December ruled that the move was unenforceable, with the Pipeline Safety Act of 1992 preempting states from placing safety regulations on interstate pipelines. Whitmer has appealed the decision.

“Setting aside the procedural decision, the fact remains that the safety of Line 5 is regulated exclusively by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration,” Duffy said, noting that the agency has not identified any safety issues that would warrant its shutdown.

Two right-wing organizations are taking aim at the ban on conversion therapy in Wisconsin’s professional code for social workers, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

But the head of a group that fought for the ban says professional standards are the central issue — and aren’t subject to free speech claims. 

In a joint letter Wisconsin Family Action and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty are demanding that Wisconsin repeal the ban. Conversion therapy is a widely discredited practice purporting to change sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board included the ban in its updated professional code published in April 2024.

The code declares that it is “unprofessional conduct” for practitioners to use or promote “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.”

WILL has been at the center of many conflicts over trans-inclusive policies and gender identity. Wisconsin Family Action has also lobbied against including gender identity in state civil rights protections.

Their letter seeking the conversion therapy ban’s repeal cites a U.S. Supreme Court ruling March 31 in a lawsuit that challenges Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy on First Amendment grounds.

The high court ruling didn’t throw out the Colorado law directly. Instead, it instructed the federal court hearing the Colorado lawsuit to subject that law to “strict scrutiny” on First Amendment grounds because it seeks to “regulate speech based on viewpoint.”

The WILL-Wisconsin Family Action letter, first reported by Wisconsin Health News, was sent April 14 to Gov. Tony Evers, the Department of Safety and Professional Services and the chair of the social work examining board. 

The letter demands that the board stop enforcing the ban and start the process of repealing it. WILL represents a Christian counselor in a pending federal lawsuit to block a La Crosse city ordinance that bans conversion therapy.

Marc Herstand, executive director for the National Association of Social Workers’ Wisconsin chapter, said the U.S. Supreme Court ruling isn’t relevant to the Wisconsin rule.

“I don’t think it applies because we have a rule, and according to state statute, professional boards can create their own ethical standards,” Herstand told the Wisconsin Examiner. That is supported by both the general law that applies to the state’s licensing boards as well as specific provisions authorizing the social worker board, he said.

Herstand said rules against conversion therapy are to prevent harm. He compared the practice to an electrician’s bad advice that leads to a homeowner’s fatal electric shock or a health provider whose bad advice leads a patient with diabetes to lose a limb to nerve damage or the loss of circulation.

“That’s not free speech — that’s unprofessional conduct,” Herstand said. The electrician or health professional “would be held accountable by the [relevant professional] board. Conversion therapy is exactly the same thing.”

Republican lawmakers repeatedly blocked several previous attempts to update Wisconsin’s social work standards. In April 2024, after the Legislature’s session ended, the social work examining board updated its professional standards to restore the conversion therapy ban.

Then, in a landmark state Supreme Court ruling in July 2025, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky wrote that the statutes that state legislators had used to review and suspend administrative rules violated the Wisconsin Constitution. The examining board “exercised its statutory authority” when it revised its rules to ban conversion therapy, Karofsky wrote in the 4-3 decision.

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The Wisconsin Department of Corrections is making progress on creating a program allowing incarcerated mothers who meet certain requirements to keep physical custody of their babies, the agency argued in court filings in early April. 

Over a year ago, Judge Stephen Ehlke required the Department of Corrections to begin considering women in state prisons for mother-young child programming without delay. 

Lawyers for two formerly incarcerated women argued in February that there had been no meaningful progress in the 11 months since the judge ordered the department to establish the program. They argued that the court should impose sanctions, including a daily fine. 

The department said it wants to have a program that would allow incarcerated women to live with their babies within prison walls, but that it is “currently impossible” to set up such a program in the existing prison system. The DOC cited a lack of sufficient funding from the state Legislature and overcrowding in women’s prisons. 

In its court filings, the agency argued that it has complied with the order by pursuing a program that would involve housing incarcerated women in the community but with some of the same restrictions they would face in prison.

Lawyers for the women from the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin and Quarles & Brady LLP haven’t filed a reply to the DOC yet. In an interview with the Examiner on April 10, Wisconsin ACLU Legal Director Ryan Cox said the DOC hasn’t complied with the court order. 

The ACLU’s position is that the department intends to “hide behind the Legislature,” Cox said. 

He said the court can fix the problem by fining the government “until it’s clear to the Legislature that they will be spending more money in sanctions than it would cost to just pass a bill to fix the problem overall.”

Cox said that the agency has said the criteria for its potential program is too restrictive for any person in DOC custody to currently qualify. 

In its filings, DOC said it is aware of one woman who is likely to become eligible in May of this year, and that additional women could become eligible in the future. 

In 2025, 14 mothers gave birth while in the custody of the Wisconsin Women’s Correctional System, DOC communications director Beth Hardtke said in an email to the Examiner. 

The case hinges on a 1991 law that requires the department to create a mother-young child care program that allows women in the correctional system to keep physical custody of their children while they participate. A woman may enter the program if the department approves and she is either pregnant or has a child less than 1 year old. 

Nine states have prison nursery programs, and others are considering or developing a program, Stateline reported in January. 

Last year, Ehlke agreed with the plaintiffs that incarcerated women had to be considered. He rejected the Department of Corrections’ argument that the agency’s existing program for mothers on probation, parole or extended supervision was enough to satisfy the law. 

Plaintiffs Alyssa Puphal and Natasha Curtin-Weber were incarcerated women who wanted to participate, according to the initial complaint filed in June 2024. Both women have since been released from prison. 

DOC pursuing ‘creative solution’

No DOC prisons can support housing infants, and the agency’s budget doesn’t have extra money to build a new facility for the program, the DOC argued. 

The agency said it likely could have created a “more robust” mother-young child program for prisoners if it had the necessary funding, and should not be held in contempt because any shortcoming on its part was not intentional. 

The DOC said it “would have been in no one’s best interest for Corrections to have simply started housing infants in prisons that were not equipped to safely house them.” 

The department said it is actively working with Meta House, a nonprofit that helps women recover from addiction. Meta House is one of the facilities that currently houses the DOC’s mother-young child program for women on correctional supervision in the community, the DOC said, and the department is working with Meta House to enable it to house eligible incarcerated people. 

In April 3 court filings, Daniel Cromwell, an assistant administrator for adult prisons for the DOC, said that a draft policy regarding the program is expected to become final and effective within a few weeks. After the policy is final, the final contract with Meta House will go through a DOC process for approval and signature, according to the department. 

ACLU: Too many women left out  

While Cox thinks women should have to meet some requirements to participate, he thinks the agency’s criteria are too restrictive. 

In its court filings, the department said that its plan with Meta House also relies on another state law: Wisconsin statute 301.046. An incarcerated woman would have to meet the criteria for that law and the mother-child law to participate. 

The law allows prisoners who meet certain requirements to be confined where they live or in other places in the community assigned by the department, the DOC said. 

The law requires the department to keep track of these incarcerated people by electronic monitoring or keeping them in supervised places. Laws that apply to incarcerated people in other correctional institutions still apply to them. The DOC can allow them to leave confinement for activities like employment and education, but it’s unclear whether the agency will permit this.

The DOC said that women placed in the community under this statute are legally considered “prisoners,” and that in this way, the department would meet its responsibility to provide a mother-child program to prisoners. 

Cox said that “we’re still trying to understand” the specifics of the criteria for the community confinement law that the DOC laid out in its court filings, but he contends that it is overly restrictive and doesn’t obey the court order. 

If the program was in one of its women’s prisons or a new facility built for that purpose, the agency might not have included this criteria. However, the department argued that it doesn’t have the resources needed for that. 

Cox also said that the department is trying to confuse the question of who is currently a prisoner, and that the goal of the women’s lawsuit and the court’s order is to provide a program to women who are currently incarcerated.

A drafted DOC policy includes a list of requirements incarcerated women would need to meet. Women convicted of offenses such as homicide or a crime against a child, or who are not classified as minimum custody or minimum community custody, would not qualify. 

Other requirements involve each woman’s behavior while in prison and jail and whether she has actively engaged in parenting classes. Child welfare must have approved or coordinated a safe reunification between the mother and the child, and the woman must have a stable housing and child care plan in place, among other requirements. 

Juli Bliefnick of FREE, an advocacy group focused on the justice system’s impact on women, expressed concern about what criteria the DOC will require women to meet. She said that historically, the department’s discretion limits access to programs, rather than expanding access. 

“And the human cost of excluding mothers and babies from this opportunity to form those critical bonds cannot be understated,” Bliefnick said in a message to the Examiner. 

Request for sanctions

Lawyers for the women requested sanctions, including a daily fine that would accumulate over time. They asked for the money from the fine to be set aside for the mother-child program. 

The DOC argued that it isn’t in contempt of the court order, that Wisconsin law does not allow for money from such a fine to be set aside for that purpose and that the plaintiffs haven’t provided necessary evidence for the court to hold a hearing on contempt. 

DOC’s lack of funding

Wisconsin’s budget includes $198,000 per year for the mother-child program. That’s not enough to construct a new building, and the DOC budget lacks money that could be used to do so, the agency argued. 

According to the DOC, the state Legislature has not provided additional funding despite proposals in the 2025-2027 budget process.

Joint Finance Committee co-chairs Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), as well as several of the other Republican members of the committee, did not respond to requests for comment from the Examiner.

The DOC said it’s still seeking legislative support for more money but has no “imminent” way to get the money needed to construct a new building to house a mother-child program. 

According to the department’s filings, the $198,000 per year is used by its Maternal and Infant Program, the department’s program for women on supervision. In addition, the department traditionally spends another $400,000 to $500,000 per year on that program. 

The Maternal and Infant Program reportedly offers ten single-occupancy rooms available for women on supervision to live with their babies. The department said it contracts with ARC Community Services, Inc. to administer the program.

Women take part in the program for approximately six months at a time, the department said. In 2024, about 25 women were referred for the program, with 11 admitted and six successfully completing the program.

‘A critical step’ 

The advocacy group FREE said it is working with partners like the Ostara Initiative to develop community-based alternatives that meet the requirements of statute while advancing their goal of ending the immediate separation of newborns and incarcerated mothers. 

“This is a critical step toward eliminating jail and prison births in our state, and we invite community members to join us in this work,” FREE said. 

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During a nearly four-hour hearing Thursday at the Bayfield County Courthouse in the city of Washburn, Wisconsin, Bayfield County Circuit Judge John Anderson consistently pressed lawyers petitioning for and against a stay or stoppage of work to reroute the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline in northern Wisconsin on the standard he should use in determining the likelihood of success of a judicial review.

Environmental groups and the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians have applied for a stay of the Enbridge project based on their petition for review of an administrative court judge’s decision in February to approve permits to go forward with a 41-mile pipeline project. The plan is to reroute the pipeline around the Bad River reservation, after a court finding that the existing pipeline is illegally trespassing on tribal land.

Pipeline opponents argued that the judicial review would ultimately be successful, in part because the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) had inappropriately applied a state statute governing navigable waterways, and that ongoing pipeline work before the review is completed would result in irreversible harm. Even though the new route does not cross the reservation, it endangers water that the tribe depends on, Bad River representatives and environmental groups argue.

The legal counsel for the DNR and Enbridge pushed back, noting that there had been extensive work and public scrutiny of Enbridge’s permit application, and that there wasn’t a high likelihood of the judicial review succeeding.

Judge Anderson said after he received briefs from all parties by April 27, he will decide on the stay, depending on whether he is “convinced” the judicial review would “not go further.”

He framed his future decision on the negative chances of the review.

Arguments for the stay

“The Band has a significant interest,” said John Petoskey, an Earthjustice attorney representing Bad River. “It has an interdependent relationship, and it’s the only homeland it has ever had. The natural landscape is far more than a resource. It’s a way of life. That way of life requires a sustainable environment. It’s undisputed that the project will cause an impact.”

Judge Anderson questioned how to determine “irreparable” or “irreversible” damage.

Petoskey responded that destroying a wetland that has not been damaged in 100 years would mean the area will never be the same.

“When wetlands are destroyed, they don’t clean water or control floods and no longer provide services that help the tribe,” he said.

Petoskey also said the reroute will create a “belt” of restricted area around the reservation, where if tribal members go, they could be charged with a felony. However, later, Enbridge lawyer Eric Maassen, said Enbridge would recognize the rights of all tribal members who had a legal right to be on the land.

Robert Lee, representing the Sierra Club, League of Women Voters and 350 Wisconsin, expressed concern about at least 72 waterways the pipeline is supposed to cross.

He argued that under statute 30.12, only the riparian owners (landowners whose property adjoins or contains a natural waterway, and who therefore have the right to reasonable use of the water) can apply for permits for the waterways, and noted that Enbridge is not the riparian owner but a “co-applicant” with the riparian owners.

“Enbridge has the ability to acquire land,” he said, adding that all the company had obtained were easements with property owners.

“Under our view, that is unlawful if they are not the riparian owner,” he said.

Lee also noted that Enbridge had not been specific about what and where it would remove substances from navigable waters, and said under statute 30.20 the DNR had to know specifically what is to be removed to make a decision on a permit. He also noted that Enbridge said some bedrock would be destroyed but wasn’t specific where that would occur.

“If they don’t know the waters where blasting is to take place then public interest is not met,” he said.

Representing Clean Wisconsin, Evan Feinauer said, “They can’t build a pipeline and not do irreparable harm.”

Judge Anderson responded, “Can’t you say that about any project? Where is the line?

Feinauer responded, “Environmental resources will never be the same, even under the best-case scenario.”

Feinauer claimed the DNR didn’t have all the information in front of it when it issued permits, and Judge Anderson asked, “Whose fault was that?” Feinauer said Enbridge didn’t provide needed information on all the potential waterway crossings, including wetlands Enbridge had failed to include in its project proposal.

“I can’t think of a more important question than which wetlands,” said Feinauer.

Arguments against the stay

DNR counsel Gabe Johnson-Karp  said the factors Judge Anderson should consider in issuing a stay are “irrevocable harm” and “success on the merits” of winning the judicial review.  

“I have to consider the likelihood of success,” said Judge Anderson. “How do I do that if I don’t have the record yet?”  Anderson added that he does not intend to read all 113,000 pages of submitted documents.

Johnson-Karp also said the petitioners had failed to provide a “factual showing” of harm and had only addressed a “generalized harm.”

Anderson asked why the parties were even in court if four major waterway permits had not yet been issued. Johnson-Karp acknowledged a lot more work on the pipeline could be done before the four permits are issued.

Regarding the right to cross a navigable waterway and whether the application is solely the riparian owner’s responsibility, Johnson-Karp said the DNR has had a consistent practice of using a “co-applicant approach,” such as Enbridge is using, where Enbridge has an easement with owners.

Maassen also noted there were only four permits being pursued on the project, and he anticipated that they would be opposed.

Maassen said Enbridge has a “high confidence” it could lawfully work on the permit sites, and added, “Just because there are wetlands and forest doesn’t mean you don’t do infrastructure.”

If a three-month stay were issued, Maassen said, in actuality, it would be more likely to delay the project by six months as workers who had been assigned to the project would have left and more time would be needed to hire others.

Maassen also argued that Enbridge didn’t need to be the riparian owner on property it would only be working on in some cases for 24-48 hours.

And he contested the characterization that the blasting of bedrock is not in the public interest as a “woeful miscategorization.”

“If they can’t convince me there is a likelihood on the merits, does it end there?” Judge Anderson asked Maassen about the success of the judicial review and the request for a stay, and Maassen responded, “It does.”

Maassen added that if the pipeline didn’t proceed, it would increase the “threat to energy security” and place up to 700 union jobs at risk.

He also noted that there is a stay of a judgment in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for Enbridge to stop using the existing Line 5 on the reservation by June 16. If  that judgement does not remain stayed, he said, it could negatively impact 10 refineries and cut off most of the propane supply for Michigan.

“There are no alternatives to this line,” said Maassen. “Some refineries will have to shut down, resulting in hundreds of millions of losses.

Lastly, Maassen said Enbridge is also requesting that the petitioners post a $49 million bond if a stay is ordered and Enbridge incurs a loss from the delay.

Petoskey, the Bad River lawyer, said the court did not have to consider economic factors when making decisions about wetlands, and he also noted courts have rejected requests for a bond when the litigants are seeking to protect environmental resources.

Lee, arguing for the Sierra Club, said the court has a responsibility to follow the “letter of the law to have riparian ownership,” and challenged the DNR’s use of “co-applicants” as a “made-up” application of the statute.

Asked by Anderson on the standard of success to be used in issuing a stay, Lee responded, “50-50 probability of success; that is sufficient.”

“I don’t think there is a reasonable likelihood of success,” countered Johnson-Karp on the chance the judicial appeal would succeed.

Anderson asked why Enbridge shouldn’t be the riparian owner or require Enbridge to buy the land? Maassen responded, “The whole notion that being a co-applicant is inappropriate I think is a bad argument.”

Anderson asked all the lawyers to submit briefs within 10 days, with specific attention on the issues he had raised during the hearing.

This report has been updated to reflect that Anderson is a Bayfield County circuit judge.

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The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources held a public hearing Tuesday on a request from the AI data center company Vantage for an air quality permit to operate 45 diesel backup generators at the company’s proposed hyperscale data center in Port Washington.

The department has already granted a preliminary approval to the permit request. Members of the public complained at the virtual hearing that the DNR chose not to conduct a full environmental impact assessment — despite southeastern Wisconsin’s existing classification as a high air pollution region. 

Michael Greif, an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates, said that all 45 generators operating at once for one hour would emit the same amount of nitrogen oxides as more than 5 million cars driving over one mile of nearby Interstate 43 — or seven times the hourly nitrogen oxide emissions for all of Ozaukee County. Exposure to nitrogen oxides have been tied to respiratory issues such as asthma. 

“It is also one of the first hyper scale AI data centers proposed in Wisconsin,” Grief said. “So it raises new and unreserved questions about energy use, climate impacts, air pollution and public health, and for all those reasons and more, DNR is legally required to prepare an EIS for the Vantage data center.”

Residents of the area put it more simply, complaining about the air pollution they’re already dealing with every day. 

“Our lakeshore is at capacity,” Sheboygan resident Rebecca Clarke said. 

Many speakers also expressed frustration at their lack of a voice in the state’s surge in data center development and proposals. 

“This community has not been given a fair process,” Port Washington resident Carri Prom said. “We’ve been speaking about this process for months. We’ve largely been ignored, and yet, here we are.”

The air pollution permit is one of the DNR’s few chances to weigh in on a data center proposal that has drawn widespread opposition in Port Washington and across the state. The Public Service Commission, the agency that regulates utility companies in Wisconsin, has given the public little confidence it will do enough to prevent electric bills from increasing.

Local zoning boards and city councils, enticed by the promise of property tax revenue, have often signed off on data centers after agreeing to non-disclosure agreements to keep the details away from their constituents. 

“I think things are very backwards, and that we’re proceeding with all of these projects before we even have any idea of how to protect residents,” said Sarah Zarling, an environmental organizer who’s been involved in the data center fight. 

Over the past year, as the number of data centers operating, under construction or proposed has continued to increase, public opposition has grown. Multiple pieces of legislation for regulating data centers were proposed by lawmakers of both parties, yet none passed  before legislators adjourned for the year. Data centers have become a big issue in the Democratic primary for governor and a number of environmental groups have called for a moratorium on data center development until stricter regulations can be put into law. 

Brett Korte, a staff attorney at Clean Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner in a statement after Tuesday’s hearing that the disconnected government approval process only highlights Wisconsin’s lack of a coherent plan.

“One of the pressing issues related to the data center boom currently underway in Wisconsin is that there is no overarching plan to ensure they don’t harm communities in our state,” he said. “Nor is there even an effort to fully understand the harm they will cause. Local governments make zoning decisions, the PSC approves the construction of power plants and transmission lines, and the DNR implements water regulations and issues air permits.” Yet no state office is responsible for looking at all of the issues raised by data centers at once.

Korte added that a better process for planning future renewable energy sources, stronger carbon emission standards and a more concrete plan for achieving Gov. Tony Evers’ goal of powering the state with 100% clean energy by 2050 would help the state better manage data center growth. 

“No one is asking: Do the benefits of data centers outweigh their environmental harm?” he continued. “That is why Clean Wisconsin continues to call for a pause on data center construction until the state has a comprehensive plan to regulate their development.”

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A legal brief filed late last week seeks to have a Dane County judge declare that an 1897 law banning the practice of fusion voting is unconstitutional because it restricts the rights to a “free government,” equal protection and freedom of speech through a law that was passed to explicitly create a partisan electoral advantage. 

The motion was filed on Friday in a lawsuit brought last year by United Wisconsin, a nascent centrist political party hoping to offer voters an alternative to the “duopoly” of the Democratic and Republican parties. The group is represented by the voting rights focused firm Law Forward. 

Fusion voting is a practice through which multiple political parties can nominate the same candidate to the ticket. Under the system, a minor party such as United could choose to nominate its own candidate, but more often the party would endorse one of the major party candidates. Voters would be able to cast their votes for the same preferred candidate under either party line. 

At a conference on fusion voting hosted at UW-Madison last year, political scientists and proponents of the system said that in theory it can give minor parties more influence. A third party candidate under the current system is unlikely to win, but a minor party’s policy preferences are harder to ignore if the party has just enough sway to swing an election result in either direction.

The brief describes a hypothetical congressional race in which United cross-endorses the Democratic candidate, given the name Olson. After the hypothetical votes are counted, the Republican candidate has earned 48.2% of the vote on the Republican ticket while Olson has earned 45.9% of the vote on the Democratic ticket and 4.9% on the United line. When added together, this gives Olson the win with 50.8% of the total vote. 

In Wisconsin, where elections are often decided by single digit margins, this could result in meaningful considerations of the desires of the minor party voters — rather than the current system under which third party candidates, such as Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election, are seen as spoilers who can pull enough support away from the closest ideological major party candidate to help the other side win. 

“That is fusion voting in action. United Wisconsin will claim, with merit, to have helped her over the finish line,” the brief states. “No doubt Olson will be more attentive to her ‘home’ party, but if she’s a competent politician, she won’t ignore the priorities of the moderates and centrists in the United Wisconsin Party. If she does, United Wisconsin, and its key bloc of voters, might cross-nominate her opponent in the next election.”

Fusion voting is often considered alongside ideas such as ranked choice voting and multi-member congressional districts as a reform proposal that could help prevent the country from sliding into an authoritarian government. 

“Fusion offers the opportunity to create meaningful new political identities,” the legal brief states. “It allows voters of all ideological stripes to vote for their values without having to support a rival or opposing party with a mostly intolerable program.”

In the 19th century, fusion voting was used across the country. The practice was phased out in most of the country but exists currently in New York and Connecticut. The brief, which includes as many examples from history and political science as it does legal citations, states that Wisconsin’s fusion voting ban was enacted by the Republican Party in 1897 as it surged to become the state’s dominant political force in a direct effort to limit the ability of the Democratic Party and other minor parties to win. 

“History shows the ban was enacted as a form of invidious political discrimination,” the brief states.

The lawsuit argues the state has no direct interest in maintaining the power of the Democratic and Republican parties, so the law must be put under “strict scrutiny” for fundamentally restricting the speech of Wisconsinites. 

“When political parties cannot nominate their candidates of choice, they cannot effectively organize, campaign, advance priorities, or exercise political power,” the brief states. “They are relegated for perpetuity to a spoiler role, whereby any electoral effort they make is not only futile in advancing their own candidate and platform, but also seriously risks helping their least-favored major-party candidate win the race and get to govern. While the ban still allows political parties to nominate most candidates, it prohibits them from nominating the only candidates who can win; and while it allows political parties some degree of speech, it constrains their speech in the context for which political parties exist — the ballot.”

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