Absentee voting didn’t used to be popular in Addison, a rural town of 3,300 in southeast Wisconsin. A few days before the last Supreme Court election in 2023, only about 60 residents had cast absentee ballots in person.

This year, at the same point in the election cycle, that number was over 300.

The sharp increase is due partly to Republicans’ recent embrace of absentee voting, especially in the nearly two-week period before Election Day when voters can cast absentee ballots in person. Washington County, where Addison is located, is one of the state’s most Republican counties and one of many Republican-dominated areas across Wisconsin where early voting rates have surged. 

But perhaps a bigger reason is a recent Washington County initiative aimed at making early voting more accessible for voters and more feasible for municipalities. The program compensates municipalities for the costs of extending their hours during the state’s early in-person voting period. It makes up for the gaps in municipal budgets that previously limited early voting opportunities.

“It really comes down to a matter of priorities,” Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, a former municipal clerk, told Votebeat. “And there’s nothing more fundamental to county government and to government in general, in Wisconsin and America, than the opportunity for people to vote.” 

County absorbs the added costs for municipalities

The county first rolled out the initiative during the November 2024 election as part of a broader funding package approved by the county board. The package included over $150,000 for extended in-person absentee voting hours, voluntary audits and cameras for ballot drop boxes across the county. 

Public funding for such activities is more critical now after voters last year approved a Republican-written constitutional amendment banning private funding for election support, responding to a Republican outcry over private grants to fund election administration, especially in Democratic strongholds.

County Board Chair Jeff Schleif said he was eager to support the proposal because it would ensure that Republicans, who were just coming around to voting early, had the time and opportunity to do it, just as Democrats did in places like Milwaukee. 

“Our board is as conservative as it’s ever been,” he said, adding that extending early voting hours is helpful to everybody.

Moreover, Schleif said, the proposal would authorize and fund election audits that could debunk allegations from people like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell that some voting machines were being hacked to change votes.

After the November election, about $71,000 of the funds remained unspent. This year, the county signed off on using that money to continue the program into this high-stakes April election.

For this election, the county is compensating municipalities at 150% of the added cost for extending their early voting hours beyond what they were in the April 2023 election. About 90% of the municipalities in the county are participating, Washington County Clerk Ashley Reichert, a Republican, said. The county also mailed voters a schedule of their town’s early voting hours.

Reichert said the initiative aims to provide local residents with voting opportunities comparable to urban areas, including weekend and night voting options. The additional hours benefit many residents who commute to Milwaukee for work and can’t vote during typical business hours, she said.

“We have quite a few very rural communities where the clerks are very part-time, and their budgets are small, and so for them, offering additional time was just not a feasible option,” she said. “Being able to take the funding off the table as a concern really helped quite a few of our municipalities.”

More hours for voting, and more voters showing up

Addison Town Clerk Wendy Fairbanks said early voting hours have expanded significantly due to the county’s support. In 2023, Addison’s early voting was generally open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Now it’s open as early as 7 a.m. and as late as 6 p.m., including Fridays.

“I’m able to bring in election workers to help me with this so I’m not doing it all on my own,” Fairbanks said. “Otherwise, I’d get no other work done.”

The county’s help, she continued, “takes the burden off the town, so that we’re not using money from our tax levy that could go towards road repair or something in the town.”

Another Washington County municipality, the village of Richfield, now offers Saturday hours for early voting thanks to county funding. About 90 residents participated on a recent Saturday, contributing to a total of 1,674 early ballots cast as of Thursday morning  — about double the amount from this time two years ago.

Village Administrator Jim Healy said the initiative was crucial for voters who couldn’t vote during regular hours. “We really felt strongly for these types of elections that have either state or national implications that we ought to try to go the extra mile,” Healy said, expressing hope that other Wisconsin counties might follow Washington County’s example.

In all, as of Thursday morning, Washington County had over 13,400 voters cast absentee ballots in person, nearly triple the number of votes at this point in the 2023 cycle and the fourth most in the state, despite it being only the 10th largest county by voting age population. 

While increased absentee voting means additional ballots to process, local clerks aren’t concerned about significantly longer counting times.

“This is absolutely adding one more thing,” Schoemann said, “but I also know that their biggest pain point is their budgets. They’re really, really tight. So we want to try to hit their biggest pain point where we can help them and get what voters want, and that is more opportunity.”

Other clerks look at the Washington County model

Reichert, the Washington County clerk, said she has heard from a number of county and municipal clerks, along with legislators, interested in replicating this initiative across the state. Right now, though, she said Washington County appears to be the only county offering municipal clerks that compensation. 

That may change soon: At a recent event, Rep. Scott Krug, a legislative leader who formerly chaired the Assembly Elections Committee, said one of his top upcoming legislative priorities was funding early voting so every municipality offers the same availability. He wasn’t available to comment further on Thursday.

Meanwhile, in most counties, early voting hours are uneven from town to town. In neighboring Ozaukee County, municipal clerks are staggering their hours to try to make time for residents seeking to vote early in person, said County Clerk Kellie Kretlow, a Republican. Some municipal election offices are open every day for early voting, while others are only open a few days across the nearly two-week voting period.

Sheboygan County Clerk Jon Dolson, a Republican, told Votebeat he was interested in the proposal but couldn’t see how his fiscally conservative board would approve a $15,000 funding increase, much less a $150,000 package like the one passed in neighboring Washington County. The county board recently cut the number of positions in his office, he said. 

So how did such a large spending proposal for election offices get through the fiscally conservative Washington County Board of Supervisors, which represents one of the most staunchly Republican constituencies in the state?

Schoemann, the county executive, said the board prioritized this initiative after years of disciplined budgeting and surplus management.

He said it was important for officials at the county level to take the lead, rather than expecting local clerks to each ask for help.

The proposals together were billed as an “election integrity package” that would enhance election security — a concern that Republicans have repeatedly raised.

Reichert, the county clerk, said it likely helped that the support for extended early voting hours was rolled into a broader package addressing security concerns around drop boxes and audits. Extending early voting hours itself addressed a security concern, she said, since some supervisors questioned whether mailed ballots would arrive too late or get lost in the mail.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

How Wisconsin’s Washington County helped its municipalities expand early voting hours is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

Ten years ago, when Wisconsin lawmakers approved a bill to allow unlimited spending in state elections, only one Republican voted no.

“I just thought big money was an evil, a curse on our politics,” former state Sen. Robert Cowles said recently of his 2015 decision to buck his party.

As Wisconsin voters head to the polls this week to choose a new state Supreme Court justice, Cowles stands by his assessment. Voters have been hit with a barrage of attack ads from special interest groups, and record-setting sums of money have been spent to sway residents. What’s more, Cowles said, there’s been little discussion of major issues. The candidates debated only once.

“I definitely think that that piece of legislation made things worse,” Cowles said in an interview. “Our public discourse is basically who can inflame things in the most clever way with some terrible TV ad that’s probably not even true.”

More than $80 million has been funneled into the race as of March 25, according to two groups that have been tracking spending in the contest — the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy group that follows judicial races, and the news outlet WisPolitics. That surpasses the previous costliest judicial race in the country’s history, approximately $56 million spent two years ago on the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.

Money is pouring into this swing state election so fast and so many ads have been reserved that political observers now believe the current race is likely to reach $100 million by Tuesday, which is Election Day.

“People are thoroughly disgusted, I think, across the political spectrum with just the sheer amount of money being spent on a spring Supreme Court election in Wisconsin,” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, which has long advocated for campaign finance reform.

But the elected officials who could revamp the campaign finance system on both sides of the aisle or create pressure for change have been largely silent. No bills introduced this session. No press conferences from legislators. The Senate no longer even has a designated elections committee.

The current election pits former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, now a circuit court judge in conservative-leaning Waukesha County, against Susan Crawford, a judge in Dane County, the state’s liberal bastion.

Though the race technically is nonpartisan, the Democratic Party, including former President Barack Obama, has endorsed Crawford; the party has received financial support from liberal billionaire George Soros. On the other side, President Donald Trump posted a message on his social media platform on March 21 urging his supporters to vote for Schimel, and much of Schimel’s money comes from political organizations tied to Elon Musk.

The stakes are high. Whoever wins will determine the ideological bent of the seven-member court just two years after Janet Protasiewicz won a seat on the court and swung it to the liberals. With Protasiewicz on the court, the majority struck down state legislative maps, which had been drawn to favor Republicans, and reinstated the use of drop boxes to collect absentee ballots.

A Schimel victory could resurrect those and other voting issues, as well as determine whether women in the state will continue to be able to access abortion.

Two pro-Schimel groups linked to Musk — America PAC and Building America’s Future — had disclosed spending about $17 million, as of March 25. Musk himself donated $3 million this year to the Republican Party of Wisconsin. In the final stretch of the campaign, news reports revealed that Musk’s America PAC plans to give Wisconsin voters $100 to sign petitions rejecting the actions of “activist judges.”

That has raised concerns among some election watchdog groups, which have been exploring whether the offer from Musk amounts to an illegal inducement to get people to vote.

On Wednesday night, Musk went further, announcing on X a $1 million award to a Green Bay voter he identified only as “Scott A” for “supporting our petition against activist judges in Wisconsin!” Musk promised to hand out other million-dollar prizes before the election.

Musk has a personal interest in the direction of the Wisconsin courts. His electric car company, Tesla Inc., is suing the state over a law requiring manufacturers to sell automobiles through independent dealerships. Musk and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment about his involvement in the race.

Also on Schimel’s side: billionaires Diane Hendricks and Richard Uihlein and Americans for Prosperity, a dark-money group founded by billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David. Americans for Prosperity has reported spending about $3 million, primarily for digital ads, canvassing, mailers and door hangers.

A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund, a union-supported electioneering group, has ponied up over $6 million to advance Crawford. In other big outlays, Soros has given $2 million to the state Democratic Party, while Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another billionaire, gave $1.5 million. And California venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, donated $250,000.

In Wisconsin, political parties can steer unlimited amounts to candidates.

State Sen. Jeff Smith, a Democrat and a minority leader, called the spending frenzy “obscene.”

“There’s no reason why campaigns should cost as much as they do,” he said.

Asked for comment about the vast amount of money in the race, Crawford told ProPublica: “I’m grateful for the historic outpouring of grassroots support across Wisconsin from folks who don’t want Elon Musk controlling our Supreme Court.”

Schimel’s campaign called Crawford a “hypocrite,” saying she “is playing the victim while receiving more money than any judicial candidate in American history thanks to George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and JB Pritzker funneling money to her campaign.”

Quizzed Monday by a TV reporter on whether he would recuse himself if the Tesla case got to the state’s high court, Schimel did not commit, saying: “I’ll do the same thing I do in every case. I will examine whether I can truly hear that case objectively.”

A decade after Wisconsin opened the floodgates to unlimited money in campaigns in 2015, some good government activists are wondering if the state has reached a tipping point. Is there any amount, they ask, at which the state’s political leaders can be persuaded to impose controls?

“I honestly believe that folks have their eyes open around the money in a way that they have not previously,” Nick Ramos, executive director of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks campaign spending, told reporters during a briefing on spending in the race.

A loosely organized group of campaign reformers is beginning to lay the groundwork for change. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign recently called a Zoom meeting that included representatives of public interest groups inside and outside of Wisconsin, dark-money researchers and an election security expert.

They were looking for ways to champion reform during the current legislative session. In particular, they are studying and considering what models make sense and may be achievable, including greater disclosure requirements, public financing and restricting candidates from coordinating with dark-money groups on issue ads.

But Republicans say that the spending is a natural byproduct of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which equated campaign spending with free speech and opened the spigots for big-money races.

“For the most part, we don’t really, as Republicans, want to see the brakes on free speech,” said Ken Brown, past chair of the GOP Party of Racine, a city south of Milwaukee. Noting he was not speaking for the party, Brown said he does not favor spending limits. “I believe in the First Amendment. It is what it is. I believe the Citizens United decision was correct.”

Asked to comment on the current system of unlimited money, Anika Rickard, a spokesperson for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, did not answer the question but instead criticized Crawford and her funders.

Post-reform bill opened floodgates

At one point, Wisconsin was seen as providing a roadmap for reform. In 2009, the state passed the Impartial Justice Act. The legislation, enacted with bipartisan support, provided for public financing of state Supreme Court races, so candidates could run without turning to special interests for money.

The push for the measure came after increased spending by outside special interests and the candidates in two state Supreme Court races: the 2007 election that cost an estimated $5.8 million and the 2008 contest that neared $6 million, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Candidates who agreed in 2009 to public financing and spending limits received grants of up to $400,000 for the race. The money came from the Democracy Trust Fund, which was supported by a $2 income tax check-off.

“​​Reformers win a fight to clean up court races,” the headline on an editorial in The Capital Times read at the time.

But the law was in place for only one election, in April 2011. Both candidates in the court’s general election that year agreed to take public funding, and incumbent Justice David Prosser, a conservative, narrowly won reelection. Then Republicans eliminated funding for the measure that summer. Instead, the money was earmarked to implement a stringent voter ID law.

By 2015, GOP leaders had completely overhauled the state’s campaign finance law, with Democrats in the Assembly refusing to even vote on the measure in protest.

“This Republican bill opens the floodgates to unlimited spending by billionaires, by big corporations and by monied, special interests to influence our elections,” Rep. Lisa Subeck, a Democrat, said in the floor debate.

Wisconsin is no longer cited as a model. Activists point to other states, including Arizona, Oregon and Rhode Island. Arizona and Oregon established disclosure measures to trace the flow of dark money, requiring campaign spenders to reveal the original source of donations. Rhode Island required ads to name not only the sponsor but the organization’s top donors so voters can better access the message and its credibility.

Amid skepticism that Wisconsin will rein in campaign spending, there may be some reason for optimism.

A year ago, a proposed joint resolution in Wisconsin’s Legislature bemoaned Citizens United and the spending it had unleashed. The resolution noted that “this spending has the potential to drown out speech rights for all citizens, narrow debate, weaken federalism and self-governance in the states, and increase the risk of systemic corruption.”

The resolution called for a constitutional amendment clarifying that “states may regulate the spending of money to influence federal elections.”

And though it never came to a vote, 17 members of the Legislature signed on to it, a dozen of them Republicans. Eight of them are still in the Legislature, including Sen. Van Wanggaard, who voted for the 2015 bill weakening Wisconsin’s campaign finance rules.

Wanggaard did not respond to a request for comment. But an aide expressed surprise — and disbelief — seeing the lawmaker’s name on the resolution.

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How Elon Musk, George Soros and other billionaires are shaping the most expensive court race in US history is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

No.

City of Milwaukee election officials process absentee ballots at one location on Election Day, which sometimes means ballots are still being fed into tabulators late that night or early the next morning. Results are reported once processing finishes.

Conservative Brad Schimel, who faces liberal Susan Crawford in the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, suggested the late counting was malfeasance, a long-debunked claim.

Schimel on March 18 urged supporters to vote early “so we don’t have to worry that at 11:30 in Milwaukee, they’re going to find bags of ballots that they forgot to put into the machines, like they did in 2018, or in 2024.”

Schimel lost his attorney general re-election bid in 2018. Republican Eric Hovde lost to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., in the Nov. 5, 2024, election.

State law prohibits municipalities from preparing absentee ballots before Election Day. A bill that would allow an earlier start has stalled.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Wisconsin Watch: Did a late night ‘ballot dump’ in Milwaukee cost Eric Hovde the US Senate election?
• Reuters: Fact Check: Late-night Wisconsin election update for senator is not proof of fraud
• Votebeat: https://wisconsinwatch.org/2025/01/wisconsin-election-vote-ballot-absentee-clerks-milwaukee-republican-democrat/
• Associated Press: Schimel resurfaces debunked concerns about ballot counting in Milwaukee
• PolitiFact: No, an early morning influx of Milwaukee votes doesn't prove the Wisconsin Senate race was stolen
• WISN radio: Jay Weber Show – 3-18-25 Brad Schimel joins Jay and Past comments from Demo
• Milwaukee County Clerk: Milwaukee County 2024 General Election – Unofficial Results
• Wisconsin Watch: Does Wisconsin state law prohibit counting absentee ballots before Election Day?

Did Milwaukee election officials at the end of ballot counting ‘find bags of ballots that they forgot’? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A reader asked: Was Elon Musk’s endorsement of Brad Schimel a violation of lobbying laws because of Musk’s status as a federal employee?

We’ll get to that question in a second, but we also wondered about the answer to a related question: Are the cash giveaways from Musk’s America PAC ahead of the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election legal?

Musk, the centibillionaire tech CEO turned efficiency czar for President Donald Trump, has dominated the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in recent weeks. Musk and affiliated groups have poured cash into the race between liberal candidate Susan Crawford and conservative candidate Brad Schimel, which will determine ideological control of the high court and could have national ramifications.

America PAC and Building America’s Future, two groups that are funded by Musk, have spent more than $16.7 million on advertising and voter mobilization efforts meant to aid Schimel’s candidacy. Musk has also donated $3 million to the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which can transfer the money to Schimel’s campaign.

Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, is offering registered Wisconsin voters $100 if they sign a petition opposing “activist judges.”

“Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas,” the petition reads. “By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”

Participants can also get $100 for referring another petition signer.

Late on Wednesday the super PAC announced that “Scott A.” from Green Bay had been selected to win $1 million after filling out the petition. That mirrors a move America PAC deployed in last year’s presidential race. 

It’s less clear whether America PAC’s “special offer” violates Wisconsin’s election bribery statute, according to Bryna Godar, a staff attorney with the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.

Here’s what the statute says:

The $100 reward for signing the petition “definitely falls into a gray area because (America PAC) is paying people to sign the petition,” Godar said. “The question is whether the payment is being given in order to induce anyone to vote or refrain from voting.”

“These payments kind of walk an uncertain line on whether they are amounting to that or not,” Godar added. 

Godar also noted that you have to be a registered Wisconsin voter to receive the payment, “so it does seem like it is inducing people to register to vote.” That violates federal law for federal elections, she said, but “federal law doesn’t apply to this election because there aren’t any federal offices on the ballot.” 

“Under the state law, that’s not specifically one of the listed prohibitions,” Godar said. “It’s definitely in a gray area and sort of walks the line.”

Late on Thursday, Musk announced he would “give a talk in Wisconsin” in a social media post that has since been taken down. 

“Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” he wrote. “I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”

An AI chatbot on Musk’s own social media site flagged the activity in the post as potentially illegal. “Though aimed at boosting participation, this could be seen as election bribery,” the AI profile @grok replied to someone asking if the post was legal.

In a follow-up email, Godar said giving “the payment for voting instead of for signing the petition much more clearly violates Wisconsin law.”

On Friday afternoon, Musk posted again: “To clarify a previous post, entrance is limited to those who have signed the petition in opposition to activist judges.”

“I will also hand over checks for a million dollars to 2 people to be spokesmen for the petition,” he wrote.

UPDATE (March 31, 2025, 9:00 a.m.): On Friday afternoon, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit to bar Musk and America PAC from promoting the “million-dollar gifts.” The suit also sought to prohibit Musk and America PAC “from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote.” The case was randomly assigned to Crawford, who immediately recused, and then reassigned to Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voigt. Voigt declined to hear the petition prior to Sunday’s event, so Kaul went to the Court of Appeals and subsequently the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Both turned down his request to stop Musk from giving away two $1 million checks, which he did on Sunday evening.

Violating the statute is a Class I felony, which can carry a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment of up to three-and-a-half years, or both. 

A county district attorney or the Wisconsin attorney general would be responsible for filing criminal charges for violations of the statute, Godar said. It’s also possible someone could try to bring a civil claim to have a judge halt the payments. So far that hasn’t happened.

Now back to our reader question about Musk’s political activities as a federal employee.

Musk, in his role as a “special government employee” leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is bound by the Hatch Act, a law prohibiting “political activity while you’re on duty, while you’re in the workplace, and the use of your official position to influence the outcome of an election,” said Delaney Marsco, the director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center.

But special government employees like Musk are only bound by the Hatch Act while they’re on duty representing the federal government, Marsco said, so the world’s wealthiest man “is allowed to engage in political activity that might otherwise be prohibited as long as he’s not on duty when he’s doing it.”

The Hatch Act is intended to “maintain a federal workforce that is free from partisan political influence or coercion,” according to a memo from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.

Are the cash giveaways from Elon Musk’s America PAC ahead of the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election legal? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Billionaire Elon Musk says a Wisconsin voter has been awarded $1 million days before the conclusion of a fiercely contested state Supreme Court election that has broken spending records and become a referendum on Musk and the first months of President Donald Trump’s administration.

The payment to a Green Bay man, which Musk announced Wednesday night on his social media platform X, is similar to a lottery that Musk’s political action committee ran last year in Wisconsin and other battleground states before the presidential election in November.

The upcoming election on Tuesday, filling a seat held by a liberal justice who is retiring, will determine whether Wisconsin’s highest court will remain under 4-3 liberal control or flip to a conservative majority. The race has become a proxy battle over the nation’s politics, with Trump and Musk getting behind Brad Schimel, the Republican-backed candidate in the officially nonpartisan contest.

The campaign for the Democratic-supported candidate, Susan Crawford, blasted the $1 million payment from Musk as an attempt to illegally buy influence on the court in a state where Tesla, his electric car company, has a lawsuit pending that could end up before the court.

“It’s corrupt, it’s extreme, and it’s disgraceful to our state and judiciary,” Crawford spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in a statement.

No legal action against Musk’s payments to voters has been filed in Wisconsin with the Supreme Court election five days away.

Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, said the payments were a last-minute attempt to influence the election.

“Whether or not Wisconsinites will believe this is legitimate or not probably won’t be settled until after the election,” he said. “But this is not what a Wisconsin Supreme Court election ought to be decided on. Races for the high court are supposed to be on judicial temperament and impartiality, not huge amounts of money for partisan purposes.”

Musk’s political action committee, America First, announced last week that it was offering $100 to voters who signed a petition in opposition to “activist judges.” He did not say there would be $1 million prizes at that time, but in his post on Wednesday said an additional $1 million award would be made in two days.

It was not clear who determined the winner of the $1 million or how it was done.

Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the White House election last year, offering to pay $1 million a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments.

It is a felony in Wisconsin to offer, give, lend or promise to lend or give anything of value to induce a voter to cast a ballot or not vote.

The Musk petition says it is open only to registered Wisconsin voters, but those who sign it are not required to show any proof that they actually voted.

The petition says: “Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas. By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”

The petition, while designed to collect data on Wisconsin voters and energize them, also is in line with Trump’s agenda alleging that “activist” judges are illegally working against him. Trump’s administration is embroiled in several lawsuits related to his flurry of executive orders and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort to downsize the federal bureaucracy.

During last year’s presidential race, Philadelphia’s district attorney sued in an attempt to stop the payments under Pennsylvania law. But a judge said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.

America PAC and Building for America’s Future, two groups that Musk funds, have spent more than $17 million trying to help elect Schimel, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. Musk also has given the Wisconsin Republican Party $3 million this year, which it can then give to Schimel or spend on the race.

More than $81 million has been spent on the race so far, obliterating the record for a judicial race in the U.S. of $51 million set in Wisconsin just two years ago, according to Brennan Center tallies.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Elon Musk announces $1 million for Wisconsin voter in Supreme Court race. Opposition calls it ‘corrupt’ is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced late Tuesday it will release previously authorized grant funds to farmers and small rural business owners to build renewable energy projects — but only if they rewrite applications to comply with President Donald Trump’s energy priorities.

The move has left some farmers perplexed — and doubtful that they’ll ever get the grant money they were promised, given the Trump administration’s emphasis on fossil fuels and hostility toward renewable energy. 

Some of the roughly 6,000 grant applicants have already completed the solar, wind or other energy projects and are awaiting promised repayment from the government. Others say they can’t afford to take on the projects they’d been planning unless the grant money comes through.

A Floodlight analysis shows the overwhelming majority of the intended recipients of this money reside in Trump country — congressional districts represented by Republicans. 

After hearing of the USDA’s latest announcement Wednesday, Minnesota strawberry farmer Andy Petran said he suspects many previously approved projects won’t be funded. He’d been approved for a $39,625 grant to install solar panels on his farm. But like many other farmers nationally, Petran got word from the USDA earlier this year that his grant money had been put on hold.

“It’s not like any small farmer who is looking to put solar panels on their farms will be able to put a natural gas refinery or a coal refinery on the farm,” Petran said. “I don’t know what they expect me to switch to.”

Petran was counting on the benefits that solar power would bring to his farm.

After getting word in September that the USDA had approved his grant application, he expected the solar panels would not only reduce his electricity bill but allow him to sell power back to the grid. He and his wife figured the extra income would help expand their Twin Cities Berry Co. and pay down their debt more quickly.

Petran’s optimism was soon extinguished. A USDA representative told him earlier this year that the grant had been frozen.

His 15-acre farm about 40 miles north of Minneapolis operates on a razor-thin margin, Petran said, so without the grant money, he can’t afford to build the $80,000 solar project.

“Winning these grants was a contract between us and the government,” he said. “There was a level of trust there. That trust has been broken.”

In its announcement, issued Tuesday night, the USDA said grant recipients will have 30 days to review and revise their project plans to align with President Trump’s Unleashing American Energy Executive Order, which prioritizes fossil fuel production and cuts federal support for renewable energy projects.

“This process gives rural electric providers and small businesses the opportunity to refocus their projects on expanding American energy production while eliminating Biden-era DEIA and climate mandates embedded in previous proposals,” the USDA news release said. “… This updated guidance reflects a broader shift away from the Green New Deal.”

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in the release that the new directive will give rural energy providers and small businesses a chance to “realign their projects” with Trump’s priorities. 

It’s unclear what this will mean for grant recipients who’ve already spent money on renewable energy projects — or those whose planned projects have been stalled by the administration’s funding freeze.

The USDA didn’t directly answer those questions. In an email to Floodlight on Wednesday, a department spokesperson said the agency must approve any proposed changes to plans — but offered no specific guidance on what or whether changes should be made.

“Awardees that do not respond via the website will be considered as not wishing to make changes to their proposals, and disbursements and other actions will resume after 30 days,” the email said. “For awardees who respond via the website to confirm no changes, processing on their projects will resume immediately.” 

IRA funding targeted

The grant funding was put on hold after an executive order issued by President Trump on his first day in office. It froze hundreds of billions of dollars for renewable energy under President Joe Biden’s massive climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). 

The law added more than $1 billion to the USDA’s 17-year-old Rural Energy for America (REAP) program.

About 6,000 REAP grants funded with IRA money have been paused and are being reviewed for compliance with Trump’s executive order, according to a March 5 email from the USDA’s rural development office to the office of U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland. 

A lawsuit filed earlier this month challenges the legality of the freeze on IRA funding for REAP projects. 

Earthjustice lawyer Hana Vizcarra, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, called the latest USDA announcement a “disingenuous stunt.”

“President Trump and Secretary Rollins can’t change the rules of the game well into the second half,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “This is the definition of an arbitrary and capricious catch-22.” 

Under the REAP grant program, farmers pay for renewable and lower carbon energy projects, then submit proof of the completed work to the USDA for reimbursement. The grants were intended to fund solar panels, wind turbines, grain dryers, irrigation upgrades and other projects, USDA data shows.

At a press conference in Atlanta on March 12, Rollins said, “If our farmers and ranchers, especially, have already spent money under a commitment that was made, the goal is to make sure they are made whole.” 

But some contend the administration is unfairly making farmers jump through more hoops.

“This isn’t cutting red tape; it’s adding more,” said Andy Olsen, senior policy advocate with the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a Midwest-based environmental advocacy group. “The USDA claims to deliver on commitments, but these new rules could result in awarded grants being permanently frozen.”

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a longtime farmer and Maine Democrat who sits on the House agriculture committee, said she thinks it’s illegal and unconstitutional for the administration to withhold grant money allocated by Congress. Beyond that, she said, it has hurt cash-strapped farmers.

“This is about farmers making ends meet,” she told Floodlight. “It’s not some ideological issue for us.”

GOP lawmakers silent

Using USDA data, Floodlight identified the top 10 congressional districts that received the most grants. They’re all represented by Republicans who have said little publicly about the funding freezes affecting thousands of their constituents. It’s impossible to tell from the USDA data which REAP grants will get paid out. 

The congressional district that received the most REAP grants was Iowa’s 2nd District, in the northeastern part of the state. Farmers and business owners there got more than 300 grants from 2023 through 2025. The district is represented by U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who has previously voiced support for “alternative energy strategies.” 

“More than half of the energy produced in Iowa is from renewable sources, and that is something for Iowans to be very proud of,” she told the House Appropriations Committee in June 2022. 

Hinson’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the matter. 

The No. 2 spot for REAP grants: Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, represented by U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad. In that district, which spans southern Minnesota, more than 260 farmers and rural businesses were approved for REAP grants. 

Finstad’s office did not return multiple emails and calls requesting comment. His constituents have been complaining about his silence on funding freezes. They’ve staged at least two demonstrations at his offices in Minnesota. Finstad said he held a Feb. 26 telephone town hall joined by 3,000 people in his district.

In a Feb. 28 letter to a constituent, Finstad said Rollins has announced that the USDA will honor contracts already signed with farmers and that he looks forward to working with the administration “to support the needs of farm country.”

Finstad is no stranger to the REAP program. Before becoming a congressman, he was the USDA’s state director of rural development for Minnesota. In that role, he was a renewable booster.

“By reducing energy costs, renewable energy helps to create opportunities for improvement elsewhere, like creating jobs,” Finstad said in a 2021 USDA press release. That has since been deleted from the agency’s website.

Rollins, meanwhile, called herself “a massive defender of fossil fuels” at her confirmation hearing, and she has expressed skepticism about the findings of climate scientists. “We know the research of CO2 being a pollutant is just not valid,” Rollins said at the Heartland Institute’s 2018 conference on energy.

She has also said that she welcomes the efforts of Elon Musk and his cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency team at the USDA.

Losing trust in government

Jake Rabe, a solar installer in Blairstown, Iowa, said he has put up more than 100,000 solar modules in the state since getting into the business in 2015. More than 30 of his customers have completed their installation but are awaiting frozen grant funding, he said. At least 10 more have signed the paperwork but are hesitant to begin construction. Millions of dollars worth of business is frozen, he said. 

On top of that, Rabe said, the state’s net metering policies — in which solar users get credits for any excess power they send back to the grid — are set to expire in 2026.

“I kind of feel like it may be the beginning of the end for the solar industry in Iowa with what’s going on,” said Rabe, who owns Rabe Hardware.

Despite it all, he remains a Trump supporter. 

“Under the current administration, I think we’re doing things that are necessary for the betterment of the entire United States,” he said.

On March 13, Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group, filed a federal lawsuit against the USDA on behalf of five farmers and three nonprofits. They’re seeking a court order to compel the Trump administration to honor the government’s grant commitments, saying it violated the Constitution by refusing to disburse funds allocated by Congress. 

Vizcarra, the Earthjustice lawyer, said she is disturbed by the lack of concern from Congress, whose powers appear to have been usurped by the administration.

She added, “These are real people, real farmers and real organizations whose projects have impacts on communities who are left with this horrible situation with no idea of when it will end.”

One of the plaintiffs, Laura Beth Resnick, grows dahlias, zinnias and other cut flowers on a small farm about 30 miles north of Baltimore.

Florists are her customers, and demand for her flowers blooms during cold-weather holidays like Thanksgiving. Each of her three greenhouses is half the length of a football field, and heating them during those months isn’t cheap, Resnick said. The power bill for Butterbee Farm often exceeds $500 a month.

So a year ago, Resnick applied for a USDA renewable energy grant, hoping to put solar panels on her barn roof — a move that she estimated would save about $5,000 a year. In August, the USDA sent word that her farm had been awarded a grant for $36,450.

The cost of installing solar panels was $72,000, she said. So she paid a solar contractor $36,000 upfront, expecting that she’d pay the rest in January when the federal grant money came in. The solar panels were installed in December.

But the federal government’s check never arrived. A Feb. 4 email from a USDA representative said her request for reimbursement was rejected due to the Trump administration’s recent executive orders. 

Resnick said she sought help from her elected representatives but got “pretty much nowhere.” 

After hearing about the USDA’s announcement Wednesday, Resnick said that based on the response she’s previously gotten from the USDA, she’s not confident she will get her grant money.

“I’ve lost my trust in the USDA at this point,” she said. “Our project is complete, so we can’t change the scope of it.”

Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat, said he supports the legal fight against the funding freeze. 

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are scamming our farmers,” Van Hollen said in a statement to Floodlight. “By illegally withholding these reimbursements for work done under federal grants, they’re breaking a promise to farmers and small businesses in Maryland and across the country.”

Renewable projects on hold

Since 2023, when IRA funding became available, the USDA has given or loaned about $21.3 billion through programs to support renewable energy in rural areas, according to a Floodlight analysis of agency data, including the REAP program.

Those grant payments were processed until Jan. 20, when the Trump administration announced its freeze.

Trump’s decision was in line with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint crafted by the Heritage Foundation aimed at reshaping the U.S. government. That document called for repealing the IRA and rescinding “all funds not already spent by these programs.”

Environmental groups have sharply criticized the administration’s move, and several lawsuits are challenging the legality of the freeze of IRA funding.

At a recent public roundtable, Maggie Bruns, CEO of the Prairie Rivers Network, which supports Illinois communities’ transition to clean energy, listed REAP grants that have been held up in Illinois, where her multifaceted environmental nonprofit is based. A $390,000 grant for a solar array at the grocery store in Carlinville; $27,000 for solar panels at an auto body shop in Staunton; $51,000 for a solar array for a golf course in Alton. 

Since 2023, farmers and businesses in Illinois have been approved for more than 590 REAP grants, making the state the third highest in number of recipients in the United States, Floodlight’s analysis shows. In an interview with Barn Raiser, Bruns said the decision to freeze such grants has caused unneeded stress for farmers. Before the executive order, USDA’s rural development team had worked hard to bring dollars for renewable energy projects to Illinois farmers, she said. 

“That’s the thing we should be celebrating right now,” Bruns said, “and instead we have to fight to make sure that money actually does land into the pockets of the people who have gone ahead, jumped through all these hoops and are attempting to do the right thing for their businesses and their farms.” 

In January, Dan Batson’s nursery in Mississippi was approved for a $400,367 REAP grant — money that he planned to use to install four solar arrays. He intended to use that solar energy to power the pumps that irrigate more than 1 million trees, a move that would have saved the company about $25,000 a year in electricity costs. 

Seated in a wooded area about 30 miles north of Biloxi, his 42-year-old GreenForest nursery ships potted magnolias, hollies, crepe myrtles and other trees to southern states. Until a couple of months ago, Batson had been excited about what the grant money would mean for the business. 

But when he saw news about the funding being held up earlier this year, he called a local USDA representative who confirmed the funds had been frozen. Batson had already sent the solar contractor $240,000. Now, his plans are on hold.

“I just can’t do the project if I don’t get the money,” he said.

Tuesday’s announcement from the USDA makes him no more confident he’ll get the money, he said.

Batson said he’s a fiscal conservative so he understands the effort to cut costs. “But,” he said, “the way they’ve gone about it has disrupted a lot of business owners’ lives.” 

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

Barn Raiser is a nonprofit newsroom covering rural and small town America.

Farmers in Trump country were counting on clean energy grants. Then the government moved the goalposts. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Some Milwaukee organizations are starting to feel the effects of federal funding cuts, the result of Trump administration efforts to shrink the federal government and make it more efficient.

Although many attempts to roll back funding face legal challenges, and the federal and state budgets are under review, neighborhood and advocacy-focused organizations in Milwaukee are making difficult decisions around staffing, program planning and fundraising as they wait for answers.

“I think the biggest challenge for us is just the uncertainty of the situation,” said Bill Schmitt, executive director of Rooted & Rising, a social service agency based in Washington Park.

Uncertainty impacts staffing

Uncertainty around funding led the Hmong American Women’s Association to cut its staff from 11 to four people. 

Vina Xiong, education and outreach director at HAWA, said 63% of the organization’s budget relies on federal funds.

“We had to do this because a lot of the federal grants covered our staff pay, and without us really knowing if we’re going to be getting the funds, we couldn’t allow to keep anyone on our team without paying them fairly,” Xiong said.

HAWA receives funding to advocate for domestic abuse and sexual assault survivors through the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA, and other grant programs administered by the state Department of Children and Families or End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin.

Schmitt said the first funding cut to directly impact Rooted & Rising is tied to Section 4, a capacity-building and community development grant program from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Associated Press and Bloomberg CityLab reported that HUD terminated awards in February to at least two of three national organizations that distribute Section 4 grants to local community organizations, including Local Initiatives Support Corp., or LISC.

LISC Milwaukee distributed $225,000 in Section 4 grants to four local organizations with contracts ending between February and May, according to Theodore Lipscomb, executive director of LISC Milwaukee.

Lipscomb said the grants are foundational to LISC’s efforts to help other organizations become prepared to develop new work and pull in other investments, especially with affordable housing projects. 

“It can include a portion of staffing,” Lipscomb said.

“It also can be about organizational capacity, like making sure that you have good, strong financial oversight and governance and that sort of thing to make sure that you’re successful long term.”

LISC plans to appeal the Section 4 cancellations.

Rooted & Rising used its $50,000 community development grant, ending in March, to support neighborhood engagement. Losing that funding would impact the work, Schmitt said, but it is not fully reliant on one grant.

“But if it’s a sign of things to come, it certainly becomes a much bigger problem for us,” Schmitt said.

Supporting projects and programming

VIA CDC, a community development corporation serving the neighborhoods of Silver City, Burnham Park and Layton Park, also received a $50,000 Section 4 grant from LISC Milwaukee that it used to pay staff salaries.

“My fingers are crossed that there will be a resolution that comes forward that allows us to apply for this funding or some version of it,” said JoAnna Bautch, executive director of VIA CDC.

Bautch said she doesn’t think the grant changes will cause VIA to make staffing changes, but it may have to reallocate some other funding.

VIA’s Section 4 contract ended at the end of February, but Bautch said LISC offered support to the organizations for 30 days after the grants were halted.

LISC Milwaukee had planned to distribute another award of $420,000 to extend contracts to four organizations and provide contracts to five additional organizations – all of which are currently suspended, according to Lipscomb.

“Then what that really means is that there’s a project somewhere that’s going to stall because someone’s not going to be working on it,” Lipscomb said.

Thinking about funding alternatives

At HAWA, Xiong said the organization has been able to submit reimbursements to cover pay and services so far this year, but that the organization’s leadership team is thinking about ways to pursue other funding.

“I think this current situation makes us really think about where else we need to look, in terms of more stable funding or funding that can also help support advocacy work that doesn’t rely on federal state funding so much,” Xiong said.

Bautch and Schmitt both said they are working to identify alternative sources of funding.

“I see our philanthropic funders wanting to step up to the plate,” Bautch said. “I had a brief conversation with folks at Zilber Family Foundation who give us a lot of support, and they are trying to strategize on how they can support us.”

How you can help

HAWA, Rooted & Rising and VIA recommend following their social media accounts and newsletters for updates, contacting your senators and representatives, or donating to their programs to show support for their work.

“For the most part, what we’re talking about here are really essential services for our community that are being provided by agencies like ours, that are mission-driven and meeting real needs for the community, and it’s really vital that those programs continue,” Schmitt said.

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

How Milwaukee’s community organizations are responding to federal funding cuts is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and political groups he backs are pouring millions of dollars into the race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court as the electric vehicle company sues to overturn a state law that prevents it from opening dealerships — a case that eventually could make its way to the high court.

Tesla’s multiple attempts to open its own dealerships in Wisconsin keep running up against a state law that allows only third parties, not auto manufacturers, to operate them. The company filed a lawsuit in January seeking an exemption, just as two Musk-backed political action committees started supporting the Republican-backed candidate, Brad Schimel, over his opponent, Susan Crawford, who is supported by Democrats.

Musk, who is the world’s wealthiest person and is running President Donald Trump’s initiative to slash the size of the federal workforce, has given $3 million to the Wisconsin GOP while groups he supports have funneled more than $17 million into the race. The contributions are part of an extraordinary spending spree in the race, making it by far the most expensive judicial race on record in the United States. Total spending has eclipsed $80 million with days still to go before the final day of voting on April 1.

Schimel’s critics have accused Musk of trying to buy a favorable ruling for Tesla should the dealership case make it to the state Supreme Court. Here are details of the law and Musk’s lawsuit:

Why can’t Tesla set up Wisconsin dealerships?

State statutes generally prohibit vehicle manufacturers from owning or operating dealerships in Wisconsin and give that franchise to third parties. The law was intended to prevent manufacturers from undercutting independent dealerships.

Nearly 20 states have similar prohibitions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The laws took hold in the 1930s as carmakers started to rely on independent dealerships to sell and service vehicles so they could focus on production. Later, independent dealers wanted to prevent manufacturers from opening their own dealerships and driving them out of business.

Tesla sells its vehicles directly to consumers, who can have their vehicles shipped directly to them or to dealerships in 27 states. Because the company can’t set up its own dealerships in Wisconsin, buyers there must have the cars delivered to them or travel to dealerships in neighboring Minnesota or Illinois to pick them up.

Tesla officials have been working for almost a decade to secure an exemption from the law. In 2017 and 2021, Republican legislators introduced bills that would permit Tesla dealerships, but none of those made it out of the Legislature. They inserted an exemption for Tesla dealerships into the 2019-21 state budget, but Democratic Gov. Tony Evers used his partial veto powers to erase the provision.

The Wisconsin Automobile and Truck Dealers Association has been fighting to preserve the law. Bill Sepic, the association’s president and CEO, told The Associated Press that Tesla should have to follow the law like any other vehicle manufacturer. He said the statutes exist to enable third parties to act as consumer advocates “in making one of the larger purchases of their life.”

What is the company doing now?

Tesla filed a lawsuit in state court in January seeking permission to open four dealerships in Wisconsin.

The company argues that independent dealers wouldn’t meet its standards and says selling vehicles at its own dealerships is in the public interest because unaffiliated dealers’ prices are higher and less transparent.

Its lawsuit says that the state law barring manufacturers from running their own dealerships violates economic liberty rights and that the prohibition exists only to protect independent dealers from competition.

The case is pending in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, though no hearings have been scheduled.

The state Justice Department is defending the law. An agency spokesperson declined to comment.

How did Musk get involved in the state Supreme Court race?

Schimel, the conservative state Supreme Court candidate, is vying with Crawford for an open seat on the high court.

The race is the most significant election nationally since the November presidential contest, providing an early barometer for Republicans and Democrats given the intense interest and outside spending it has generated. It also will determine whether the highest court in the perennial presidential battleground state will flip from liberal to conservative control with major cases involving abortion, union rights and congressional redistricting on the horizon.

Eight days after Tesla filed the Wisconsin dealership lawsuit, Musk tweeted: “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!”

To be clear, there has been no evidence of widespread voting fraud in Wisconsin. Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the state over then-President Donald Trump in 2020 was affirmed by a recount and an independent audit. Trump, a Republican, won the state last November and offered no objections then to the voting or ballot-counting.

According to a tally from the Brennan Center for Justice, Musk-backed groups America PAC and Building America’s Future have spent more than $17 million to support Schimel with ads and flyers. The money he donated to the state Republican Party has been used to help Schimel, who has been endorsed by Trump.

Are the candidates focused on the Tesla case?

Crawford’s supporters contend the timing of the contributions show Musk is trying to ensure that Schimel wins and creates a conservative majority on the court that ultimately would rule in Tesla’s favor. Crawford said during a debate with Schimel this month that Musk “has basically taken over Brad Schimel’s campaign.”

Sepic, president of the state dealership association, said Wisconsin should elect the candidate who enforces the prohibition but declined to comment when asked if he thought Schimel or Crawford would do that.

Schimel has repeatedly said he would treat any case involving Tesla the same as any other when he considers whether to hear it or recuse himself. Schimel also has insisted that the donations from Musk and his groups do not make him beholden to them.

Crawford has said the same thing about billionaires who have donated to her campaign, including George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Soros has contributed $2 million and Pritzker $1.5 million to the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which has funneled the money to Crawford’s campaign.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Tesla is suing to open dealerships in Wisconsin. It’s become a big deal in state’s Supreme Court race is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Tell us about your career dreams.

Are you a young person, or a parent of a young person, trying to figure out what to do after high school? 

Are you an adult who’d like to change careers but you’re not sure how, or you think the obstacles are too big to overcome? Or do you love the work you do but wish it paid enough to support your family? 

Are you an employer with big plans for your company, if you could just find workers with the right skills and training?

We want to hear from you as Wisconsin Watch launches a new beat. We’re calling it pathways to success, and it explores how schools and institutions are preparing people to find quality, family-sustaining jobs in Wisconsin’s current and future economy and how they could do better. In short, we’ll focus on the jobs people want and need, and what’s getting in their way.  

I’m Natalie Yahr, Wisconsin Watch’s first pathways to success reporter, and I’ve thought about this issue for more than a decade. Before this job, I spent about six years at the Cap Times, where I reported on the important jobs Wisconsin will most struggle to fill in the future, efforts of workers to organize and the obstacles they sometimes encounter when they do. For several years before that, I was a teacher and success coach for adult students seeking to get their high school equivalency diplomas, start new careers or just learn basic skills they’d missed. 

With this new beat, we aim to answer questions like why it’s often tricky for foreign-trained professionals to restart their careers in Wisconsin, what it would take to make some of the state’s fast-growing-but-low-paying jobs more sustainable and how are state and local governments investing in programs that prepare workers for changes in the economy. These are some initial questions we have, but to make this beat work, we need to hear yours.

Your suggestions and experiences will shape what we cover and how. Call or email me at ‪608-616-0752‬ or nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org, in English or Spanish.

I won’t be the only one covering this important beat for Wisconsin Watch.  We’re looking to hire an additional pathways reporter to specifically serve people in northeast Wisconsin, while I’ll explore issues that resonate statewide. I expect we’ll collaborate plenty. 

We’ll know we’re doing this reporting well if it helps people discover new opportunities or make informed choices about their careers. As we start publishing these stories, please let us know what you think.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

What’s your dream job? Share your questions and perspectives about working in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

Yes.

The Elon Musk–founded America PAC has spent at least $11.5 million on the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, WisPolitics reported March 24.

That doesn’t count another $3 million the PAC gave to the Wisconsin Republican Party, which can funnel unlimited funds to candidates.

Both support conservative candidate Brad Schimel over liberal Susan Crawford.

The nonprofit campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets tracks cumulative independent group spending in state supreme court and appellate court races through 2024.

Its figures indicate the biggest spender nationally is the Citizens for Judicial Fairness, which spent a total of $11.4 million in the 2020 and 2022 Illinois court races.

OpenSecrets’ data cover about two-thirds of the states; not all states report independent expenditures.

The progressive A Better Wisconsin Together has spent $9.2 million on ads backing Crawford, according to ad tracker AdImpact.

Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler said March 18 he believed Musk’s spending might be a national record.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• WisPolitics: Monday AM Update — 24 March 2025
• America PAC: Website home page
• New York Times: Musk Seeks to Put $100 Million Directly Into Trump Political Operation
• Wall Street Journal: Elon Musk Gave Tens of Millions to Republican Causes Far Earlier Than Previously Known
• New York Times: Republican Operatives Function as Hidden Hand Behind Pro-Trump Efforts
• A Better Wisconsin Together: Website home page
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Here are the groups behind the heavy spending in Wisconsin's Supreme Court race
• IllinoisSunshine.org: Citizens for Judicial Fairness
• OpenSecrets: Email, March 24, 2025
• WisPolitics: Monday PM Update — 24 March 2025
• Brian Taylor Cohen: Elon Musk caught pulling bombshell stunt to meddle in key election
• WisPolitics: Tuesday AM Update — 25 March 2025
• AdImpact: Email, March 24, 2025

Has Elon Musk’s PAC in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race set the record for outside spending on state court elections? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

In Milwaukee, lead poisoning is one of the most serious health threats facing young children, according to the City of Milwaukee Health Department.

From 2018 to 2021, nearly 6.25% of children younger than 6 in Milwaukee County tested for lead were considered lead-poisoned, with percentages of children poisoned in some Milwaukee neighborhoods nearing 25%, according to data from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

Lead hazards in paint, water and soil are common throughout many of Milwaukee’s older homes and buildings, contributing to the widespread issue of lead poisoning. Here are some ways that you can identify and manage lead hazards.

Lead hazards in buildings

After lead poisoning cases were linked to an abundance of lead hazards in two Milwaukee Public Schools facilities, Sean Kane, senior director for facilities and maintenance services at Milwaukee Public Schools, said that the district “assumes that there is lead in a building that’s been constructed before 1978.”

One reason why is because lead paint, identified as a leading cause of lead poisoning by the health department, was used often in homes and buildings before it was outlawed in 1978.

“You should always assume that a building has lead paint if it’s older than 1978,” said Michael Mannan, home environmental health director at the health department.

Lead also can be found in a building’s water – Milwaukee mandated the use of lead service lines in 1872 and outlawed the practice in 1962. A citywide lead service line replacement program seeks to replace an estimated 65,000 lead service lines. (You can check to see if your building has lead pipes here.)

But lead contamination in water can extend beyond the city’s water mains and service lines. Plumbing materials like pipes and faucets inside the building can still contain lead.

Before 1986, interior plumbing materials like pipes and faucets could be made entirely of lead, and plumbing materials made before 2014 may contain higher levels of lead.

Soil is another common source of lead contamination. Paint chips and dust from the exterior of homes built before 1978 can result in high lead levels in soil, and deposits from leaded gasoline and industrial activity also can contaminate soil.

What can you do?

“Make sure that your child gets screened for lead,” Mannan said.

The health department recommends testing all children for lead poisoning at the ages of 12, 18 and 24 months and then once every year until the age of 6.

More information about lead poisoning and free testing resources is available here.

The health department Lead-Safe Registry also lists properties that have been inspected and verified to be lead-safe. However, at the time of this story, only 18 properties in the city have participated in the registry program.

Milwaukee’s land management system also lists important information about a property, such as past lead orders or permits that would indicate that lead abatement has been completed.

But this only provides information for one point in time, Mannan said. Even if a home has undergone lead abatement in the past, new renovations and construction or further deterioration may introduce lead hazards.

Property owners also are required to disclose any past lead abatement to a tenant at the time of lease. A lead disclosure is also required to be provided to tenants at any building built before 1978.

“If you’re not receiving those documents, that should be a concern,” Mannan said.

Lead-safe practices

It is also important to maintain lead-safe practices, especially if you live in a building built before 1978.

The first step, Mannan said, is to check for flaking or chipping paint, especially around high-movement areas such as windowsills, which can cause toxic lead dust to gather. Areas with deteriorated paint can be a risk and will require professional remediation and repair efforts, such as repainting or sealing an area.

If you see any serious paint hazards, there are a few interim controls you can make to an area before completing more permanent repairs. Before cleaning lead dust, make sure that children are not present.

Mannan recommends using wet cleaning methods, like wiping or mopping, to clean off lead dust, and to make sure to dispose of a mophead or paper towel after wiping an area clean. A HEPA vacuum, which has additional filtration over a typical vacuum, also can be used to clean up lead dust. Free HEPA vacuum rentals from the health department are available to property owners during cleaning or renovation projects.

Covering a paint hazard with tape can help in especially deteriorated areas, but removing the tape afterward can cause more damage to the paint.

While these practices are helpful, “these are just intermediate controls until you can really rectify the paint hazard,” Mannan said.

It also is important to use cold filtered water for drinking and cooking. Using hot water from the tap can cause lead to dissolve more quickly, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Not all filters remove lead, however. Look for a point-of-use filter, such as a pitcher or faucet-mounted filter with the NSF/ANSI 42 and 53 designations, for lead certification. More information is available here.

In some situations, Milwaukee Water Works will provide a voucher for a free water filter at properties when a lead service line replacement is scheduled.

The health department also recommends maintaining other clean practices to help lower lead risks. These recommendations include washing hands regularly, washing children’s toys and removing shoes at the door to prevent tracking in soil with lead dust.

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

Lead hazards are everywhere in Milwaukee. Here’s what you can do to mitigate them. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The election to fill a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat has become a referendum not only on the new administration, but on Elon Musk, the billionaire who has become one of President Donald Trump ‘s top financial backers and the architect of his efforts to slash the federal workforce.

The April 1 election is the first major test in American politics since Trump secured a second term in November. It will serve as a crucial barometer of enthusiasm in both parties heading into next year’s midterm elections and is happening in a critical battleground state that Trump won by less than a percentage point.

It’s also a test for Musk himself. The Tesla CEO’s nascent political operation, which spent more than $200 million to help Trump win in November, is canvassing and advertising in Wisconsin on behalf of the conservative candidate. A win would cement his status as a conservative kingmaker, while a loss could give license to Republicans distancing themselves from his efforts to stymie government functions and eliminate tens of thousands of jobs.

“This is the first major election held since Donald Trump took office,” said Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. “And I think notably Democrats are concentrating more on Elon Musk than Donald Trump.”

Musk, who is the race’s biggest donor by far, has also inserted himself into the race, holding a get-out-the-vote event on his X platform Saturday.

“It might not seem important, but it’s actually really important. And it could determine the fate of the country,” he said. “This election is going to affect everyone in the United States.”

April 1’s election will determine majority control of a court facing critical issues: abortion rights, collective bargaining and voter access. They include decisions that could have major implications for the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election, particularly if they end up hearing challenges to the state’s congressional maps, which could theoretically swing the balance of power in Washington if they are considerably redrawn.

In 2020, the court rejected Trump’s attempts to overturn his election loss in the battleground state in a 4-3 ruling. Trump had sought to have 221,000 ballots disqualified in the state’s two most Democratic counties.

Trump inflatables and America PAC petitions

The Supreme Court race is officially nonpartisan, but the campaign has been anything but. Brad Schimel, the Republican-backed candidate, has openly courted Trump’s endorsement, which he received on Friday night, as he campaigns against Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the Democrat-backed candidate.

The Waukesha County judge and former Republican attorney general attended the president’s inauguration in January and has said that he would be part of a “support system” for Trump. Earlier this month, he attended a “Mega MAGA rally” where he posed for a picture in front of a giant inflatable version of the president, which had a “Vote Brad Schimel Supreme Court” poster plastered on its chest.

He spoke on Musk’s get-out-the-vote call on Saturday. And he joined the president’s eldest son on stage at a get-out-the-vote rally, where Donald Trump Jr. said a Schimel win would protect his father’s agenda and keep up GOP momentum.

“We can’t just show up when Trump’s on the ticket,” he said at a brewery in the Milwaukee suburbs. “You have to engage because it’s not just about now, it’s about that future. This presidency could be put to a halt with this vote.”

Schimel has also resurfaced long-debunked conspiracies about voter fraud that Trump has embraced, urging his supporters to vote early to “make this too big to rig so we don’t have to worry that at 11:30 in Milwaukee, they’re going to find bags of ballots that they forgot to put into the machines.”

Still, he pledged to judge any case that comes before him on its merits — including potential cases involving Trump and Musk.

Republicans have cast the race as a chance for Trump’s loyal supporters to rally around their leader and push back against liberal judges they accuse of working to stymie his agenda.

Mailers from Musk’s America PAC feature photographs of the president. “President Donald Trump needs your vote,” they read. Others warn that “Liberal Susan Crawford will stop President Trump’s agenda.”

America PAC is also offering Wisconsin voters $100 to sign a petition in opposition to “activist judges” — and another $100 for each signer they refer.

Republicans have argued that if even 60% of the voters who cast ballots for Trump in November turn out, Schimel can win, helping to drive momentum for the party heading into next year’s midterms.

“In theory, the opposition party should be energized, but we’re feeling very good about the energy on our side of the aisle,” said Andrew Iverson, Wisconsin GOP executive director.

Andrew Romeo, senior adviser to the Musk-backed group Building America’s Future, which has spent millions on the race, issued a recent memo advising Schimel’s campaign to remind voters that he is “a strong conservative and Trump ally.”

Two groups funded by Musk have so far spent more than $14 million on the race, according to a tally by the liberal Brennan Center for Justice — with plans to spend around $20 million total.

Musk donated another $2 million to the Wisconsin Republican Party on Thursday, the same day the party gave $1.2 million to Schimel’s campaign.

Under Wisconsin law, contributions to candidates are capped, but candidates can accept unlimited cash from state parties, which in turn can accept unlimited cash from donors.

His spending has helped make the race the most expensive judicial election in the nation’s history, with more than $73 million spent so far, according to the Brennan Center, breaking the record set by another Wisconsin Supreme Court race two years ago.

Crawford has also received her own support from billionaires, including philanthropist George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

Democrats want race to be the people vs. Musk

Democrats are hoping to channel their voters’ outrage at the Trump administration by casting the race as an opportunity to stand up to Musk. After nearly a decade of running against the president, they see Musk as a potentially more divisive figure who can motivate their base voters to turn out.

“This race is the first real test point in the country on Elon Musk and his influence on our politics, and voters want an opportunity to push back on that and the influence he is trying to make on Wisconsin and the rest of country,” said Crawford campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman.

State Democrats have hosted a series of anti-Musk town halls, including one featuring former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, and featured Musk heavily in ads.

Crawford has also seized on Musk, going as far as to refer to her opponent as “Elon Schimel” during a recent debate.

“Don’t let Elon buy the Supreme Court,” read billboards funded by the state Democratic party that depict Musk as Schimel’s puppeteer.

“There’s so many people who are desperate for a way to fight back against what Trump and Musk are doing nationally,” said Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chair, and see the race as an “opportunity to punch back.”

Wikler said the party had seen an “explosive surge” in grassroots and small-donor fundraising from across the country tied to Musk’s involvement. Both in Wisconsin and nationally, Democrats are packing town halls and angrily protesting the Trump administration’s firings of thousands of workers and shutdown of agencies. They have also show disillusionment with their party’s own leaders.

“Most voters still don’t know who Crawford and Schimel are, but they have extremely strong feelings about Musk and Trump,” he said.

What’s at stake for Musk

Musk said Saturday that he became involved in the race because it “will decide how the congressional districts are drawn in Wisconsin,” echoing Schimel’s claims that Crawford would push through new congressional maps that could favor Democrats.

Schimel’s campaign has relentlessly attacked Crawford for participating in a call with Democratic donors that was advertised in an email as a “chance to put two more House seats in play for 2026,” a reference to the state’s redistricting fights that have played out for years.

Crawford has said that she didn’t know that that was how the call had been billed when she joined and that nothing of that nature had been discussed while she was on the line.

“In my opinion, that’s the most important thing, which is a big deal given that the congressional majority is so razor-thin,” Musk said. “It could cause the House to switch to Democrat if that redrawing takes place, and then we wouldn’t be able to get through the changes that the American people want.”

Musk has also been giving money to Republican members of Congress who have echoed his calls to impeach federal judges whose decisions he doesn’t like.

He has other interests at play.

Democrats and Crawford have noted that, just days before Musk’s groups started spending on the race, Musk’s electric car company Tesla sued Wisconsin over a rule banning car manufacturers from operating dealerships — forcing buyers to purchase Teslas out of state.

The case could ultimately go before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Associated Press writer Scott Bauer contributed to this report.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Wisconsin Supreme Court election becomes a referendum on Elon Musk is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

When Larry Jones arrived at the Wisconsin State Capitol on March 12, he didn’t know what he was getting into — let alone that he would be a viral internet sensation the next day. 

The 85-year-old self-described conservative had been invited by his grandson to a public hearing on a Republican-authored bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth in the state. He decided to make the short drive from his home in Milwaukee. 

“I thought, ‘OK, I’ll go up there and listen to a couple people moaning about some kind of problems and be there for a couple hours and be long gone,’” Jones told Wisconsin Watch. “I got into something that I really didn’t know a heck of a lot about.” 

The hearing was packed with speakers there to testify either for or against the bill. Most people were limited to two minutes, but the hearing lasted more than eight hours. Jones was there in support of the bill, but wasn’t intending to get up and speak. But after listening to nearly seven hours of testimony, he put his name down. 

“I have very little knowledge of gay people and things like that there, so when I came here, my eyes were opened,” he told the state Assembly’s Health, Aging and Long-Term Care Committee just after 9 p.m. “I was one of the critics that sat on the side and made the decision there was only two genders, so I got an education that was unbelievable. And I don’t know just exactly how to say this, but my perspective for people has changed. … I’d like to apologize for being here, and I learned a very lot about this group of people.”

After he spoke, several attendees applauded.

Shortly after, his grandkids told him about a video of his testimony going viral online — as of Sunday the video had nearly 1 million views on YouTube. They called him a hero.

“Thank you for the compliment, but what the heck are you talking about?” he recalled responding. 

Jones told Wisconsin Watch he doesn’t think he did anything out of the ordinary and spoke because he felt like he owed it to the people there protesting the bill. He never thought a few sentences would garner such attention. 

“After a day or two, my 15 minutes of fame were long gone, and I went back to who I am, just plain old Larry,” Jones told Wisconsin Watch. 

Others saw an act of courage.

“Listening to his testimony was incredible,” one user commented under the viral video of Jones on Instagram. “It is powerful and brave to admit that you were wrong and have learned. I wish many of our legislators had that same strength.”

The bill

Republican politicians in recent years have frequently targeted transgender rights. One of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders the day he took office disregarded biological nuance in declaring there are only two sexes, male and female, which can’t be changed, and that gender identity “does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.” A later order declared the country wouldn’t fund transition of youth from one sex to another or medical institutions that provide such health care.

Wisconsin Assembly Bill 104 would ban gender-affirming health care, including puberty-blocking drugs, hormone replacement therapy or surgery, for those under the age of 18. Under the bill, medical providers found to be providing this care could have their licenses revoked. The legislation faces a certain veto by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who has vetoed a similar bill before. 

The authors of the bill — Sen. Cory Tomczyk, R-Mosinee, and Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha — say it would “protect minors from making life-altering, irreversible decisions that cause mental and bodily harm.”

“They’re not voting on this bill as a person, they’re voting Republican party lines,” Jones told Wisconsin Watch. “That shouldn’t be that way. … Party line is a bunch of garbage.” 

It was just one of four bills raised in the Legislature in recent weeks targeting transgender youth in Wisconsin. Two others are aimed at banning transgender girls and women from participating in high school and collegiate women’s sports. Another would prohibit school employees from using a student’s preferred name and pronouns without parental consent. 

For hours, Jones listened to the stories of kids who wanted to transition and said it seemed like “their brain was tearing them apart.” He now believes the decision to receive gender-affirming care should involve a child, a qualified doctor and a parent — not lawmakers. He likened the issue to lawmakers banning doctors from providing abortions.

Just the introduction of such bills can have negative effects on LGBTQ+ kids, research shows. The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that works to end LGBTQ+ youth suicide, found in a 2024 national survey that 90% of LGBTQ+ young people said their well-being was negatively impacted due to recent politics. Research also shows that transgender youth who are called by their preferred names and pronouns are happier and healthier.

Jones said a 14-year-old transgender teen — one of the youngest speakers who advocated for their right to go on hormones — helped to change his perspective at the hearing. In their testimony, they shared that they had recently contemplated suicide.

“I started to listen to this kid, and it wasn’t some kind of whim or something like that. This kid was actually suffering,” Jones said. “And I thought to myself, nobody has to do that. You’re only a kid.”

The GOP-controlled committee voted to advance the bill. Republican lawmakers in the Assembly passed it last week. 

“Children are not allowed to get tattoos, sign contracts, get married, or smoke — so why would we allow them to physically change their gender?” Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth, said in a statement. 

Jones had a different take. 

“All of these kids, they deserve a chance to see where they belong,” he said. 

Who is Larry?

Jones grew up in a small, rural unincorporated town in northern Michigan before moving to Milwaukee when he was 19 years old. 

“When I moved to the city, it was like I was a kid in a candy store. I discovered books, and once I discovered books, I discovered the world,” he said. 

For most of his life, he worked in the maintenance department at the Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center  — a prison formerly known as the House of Corrections. There, he encountered gay men and women, but said he had never met someone who was transgender. 

“If there’s something you don’t understand or don’t know anything about, it kind of frightens you a little bit,” Jones said. 

When he was younger, he said LGBTQ+ people were “hidden.” 

“In the area where I grew up … men were men,” Jones said. “I was taught by men who had their own visions of what gay people were like. They were called ‘queers’ and ‘fairies’ and off-the-wall, ungodly names back in the day. As I grew older … the whole world changed.” 

Jones calls himself conservative, but said he’s willing to look at both sides of an issue. He mostly tunes into Fox News and local TV stations. He said he still has a lot to learn about the transgender community, and he’s made that his mission for the next six months or so. 

Prior to the hearing, he said he believed that someone who was transgender was “play acting” and simply changed their name and clothes along with a few other cosmetic things. 

“It’s through no fault of their own. I don’t think there’s a medical problem. I think these kids were born this way,” Jones said. “I looked at it through a different perspective, from a different set of eyes, and I promised myself that I would look into this with a clearer sense of understanding.”

After his testimony, a young woman handed him a note that read, “Thank you for being open to hearing all this and being open to changing your mind. That’s brave.” Jones kept it. 

His advice to others? “Don’t wear a pair of blinders and walk down the road. Keep an open mind.”

Wisconsin Watch reporter Jack Kelly contributed to this report.

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‘Just plain old Larry’: A Wisconsin man’s testimony about gender-affirming care went viral. Here’s his story. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A group funded by billionaire Elon Musk is offering Wisconsin voters $100 to sign a petition in opposition to “activist judges,” a move that comes two weeks before the state’s Supreme Court election and after the political action committee made a similar proposal last year in battleground states.

Musk’s political action committee America PAC announced the petition in a post on X on Thursday night. It promises $100 for each Wisconsin voter who signs the petition and another $100 for each signer the voter refers.

The campaign for Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, said Musk was trying to buy votes ahead of the April 1 election. The offer was made two days after early voting started in the hotly contested race between Crawford and Brad Schimel, the preferred candidate of Musk and Republicans.

The winner of the election will determine whether the court remains under liberal control or flips to a conservative majority.

Musk’s PAC used a nearly identical tactic ahead of the November presidential election, offering to pay $1 million a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments.

Philadelphia’s district attorney sued in an attempt to stop the payments under Pennsylvania law. But a judge said that prosecutors failed to show that the effort was an illegal lottery, and it was allowed to continue through Election Day.

America PAC and Building for America’s Future, two groups Musk funds, have spent more than $13 million trying to help elect Schimel, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. The winner will determine whether conservative or liberal justices control the court, with key battles looming over abortion, public sector unions, voting rules and congressional district boundaries.

Crawford campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman accused Musk of “trying to buy a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to secure a favorable ruling in his company’s lawsuit against the state.”

Just days before Musk’s groups started spending on the Supreme Court race, electric car manufacturer Tesla sued Wisconsin over its decision to not allow it to open dealerships. Musk is the CEO of Tesla and also the head of rocket ship manufacturer SpaceX. Tesla’s case could ultimately come before the Supreme Court.

“Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud,” Musk posted on X, just eight days before the lawsuit was filed in January.

Andrew Romeo, a spokesperson for America PAC, referred to the post on X announcing the petition when asked for comment on Friday. A spokesperson for Schimel’s campaign did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Crawford and her allies have made linking Schimel with Musk a key plank of their campaign. The Wisconsin Democratic Party released a new ad this week accusing Musk of trying to buy the seat for Schimel, a close ally of President Donald Trump.

Schimel earlier this week campaigned with Donald Trump Jr. at an event where the president’s son said electing Schimel was essential for protecting Trump’s agenda. America PAC has also been making that argument in flyers it’s handing out to Wisconsin voters.

Musk’s other group, Building America’s Future, said in a memo Thursday that to defeat Crawford it must “present Schimel as a pro-Trump conservative.”

The new petition says: “Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas. By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”

The petition, while designed to collect data on Wisconsin voters and energize them, is also in line with Trump’s agenda alleging that “activist” judges are illegally working against him. Trump’s administration is embroiled in several lawsuits related to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort to downsize the federal bureaucracy.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Elon Musk group offers $100 to Wisconsin voters to sign petition against ‘activist judges’ is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Election officials in Madison are already facing a state and city investigation into the series of errors that resulted in nearly 200 absentee ballots not being counted in last fall’s election. Now officials there face a claim for compensation in an unusual case that aims to emphasize the importance of properly counting all ballots and set a monetary penalty for denying people their vote. 

A liberal election law group called Law Forward served a $34 million claim this month against Madison and Dane County, seeking damages amounting to $175,000 for each Madison voter whose absentee ballot got misplaced. The filing is likely a precursor to a lawsuit, as the group is seeking out other disenfranchised voters to join its case.

“There is going to be a price to pay when you interfere with someone’s right to vote in Wisconsin,” said Scott Thompson, staff counsel for Law Forward.

Cases like this have a history that goes back to the voting rights fights of the late 1800s and 1900s, when officials intentionally sought to bar Black people from voting. But they’re highly unusual today — most voting rights cases seek only to have a challenged right restored, rather than damages — and experts say it’s unlikely that Law Forward’s claim in the Madison case will lead to any damages being paid out.

The threat of a financial cost for errors could add to the pressure on local clerk’s offices, which already deal with the challenges of new laws and court rulings, along with persistent scrutiny from election skeptics and lawmakers. (Madison’s city clerk has been placed on leave while the investigation into her office continues.) Some clerks around the state said they consider the errors in Madison serious, but questioned the move to assign liability.

Melissa Kono, the clerk in the small town of Burnside in western Wisconsin, said that instead of a payout to voters affected by an error, money would be better spent on developing a better system for clerks to manage the increasing number of absentee ballots, which have surged since the COVID-19 pandemic. The uncounted ballots in Madison were all absentee ballots.

Thompson acknowledged the potential impact of his group’s action on clerks. But he said it serves as a broader response to the steady stream of lawsuits filed by conservative groups since 2020 aimed at preventing officials from counting certain ballots because of the way they’re returned or the information they’re missing. In the context of these lawsuits, he said, it’s important to send a message that there should be a cost for disenfranchising people.

“Elections are about exercising the right to vote,” he said. “They’re not about finding ways to kick people off the voter rolls.” 

Legal filing says Madison and Dane County violated constitution

In a statement, Madison spokesperson Dylan Brogan didn’t directly address the Law Forward claim but said every ballot should be counted accurately and that the city is cooperating with ongoing investigations while conducting its own. 

Here’s what investigators have said about the case so far: In all, 193 absentee ballots that were sent to two polling places in the city for tabulation on Election Day went missing, and were not counted, even after they were found. For reasons still unknown, the election workers at those polling places never opened the courier bags containing those ballots. Those ballots then went to the city clerk’s office, but workers didn’t open one of the parcels until Nov. 12 and the other one until Dec. 3. 

The ballots in the bag opened on Nov. 12 could still have been counted — city and county officials have given conflicting accounts on why they weren’t.

The sum total of the oversights, Law Forward alleges in its claim, resulted in the unconstitutional disenfranchisement of the 193 voters. The group appears to be preparing for a class-action lawsuit and is welcoming the other disenfranchised voters to join the case. 

In the claim, the group cites two Wisconsin Supreme Court cases that it says allow it to sue for damages, even if what happened in Madison turns out to be a series of unintentional oversights. 

One of those cases was a judgment from 1866, in which the court ruled that government officers can be found liable for their actions in denying Black Wisconsin residents the right to vote, even if those actions are done without malice. The other is a 1916 finding that because a group of voters was entitled to vote, people depriving them of that right can be held liable for their disenfranchisement.

Claims like these typically move to lawsuits if they’re not resolved, and the city and county are unlikely to accept or negotiate the requested amount, likely prompting Law Forward to file suit this summer.

When voters seek monetary damages 

Why ask for money on behalf of the voters? Thompson said it’s because there’s nothing else to ask for besides money and a finding of the city’s wrongdoing. It was too late, he said, to give the voters back the right they had been deprived of: the right to vote and have their ballots counted in the November 2024 election.

Thompson said attorney-client privilege prevented him from disclosing how the group arrived at the $175,000 figure for each voter. Wisconsin law currently caps damages against government officials at $50,000. Thompson said a secondary goal of the forthcoming lawsuit is to have a court find that law unconstitutional and allow groups to seek larger damages. 

Voter lawsuits seeking monetary damages were never very common, but there were instances in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, typically tied to racial discrimination, said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil rights division. 

The most prominent cases of this kind were in Texas, where between the 1920s and 1940s Black voters who were barred from voting in Democratic primaries because of their race sometimes sued for damages in court, Levitt said.

In those cases, Black voters were designed to be left out of the voting process. In Madison, by contrast, it appears at this point that a series of mistakes — not malice or intent — led to these ballots getting lost initially.

But Thompson cautioned against coming to conclusions about why the Madison ballots didn’t ultimately get counted.

“It is too early for anyone, I think, to say with certainty exactly what happened and why it happened here,” he said. 

Lawsuits seeking damages against government officials face two significant challenges, said Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law: First, courts usually look for something more egregious than negligence, such as malicious intent. Second, he said, a number of legal doctrines usually give government officials a raised level of immunity. 

He said he couldn’t think of any cases of this kind, where voters deprived of their right to vote successfully sued election officials for damages, since the 1960s.

Clerks question monetary penalty for errors

If the city accepts the claim or a court does award damages, it could have a financial impact of millions of dollars and would send a signal across the state.

“It’s not normal for this quantity of ballots to go uncounted, and I think everybody recognizes that that’s not normal,” Levitt said. “If this case succeeded, it would substantially increase the stakes of an error like that.”

But Madison’s errors stand out as unusually serious, said Wood County Clerk Trent Miner, a Republican. He said he thinks that Law Forward’s claim proposes too high a penalty, but that it shouldn’t make clerks fear the prospect of penalties for the far less consequential errors that they encounter from time to time.

“Humans run elections, so errors will happen,” he said. “This, I think, pole vaults over a minor error.”

Kono, the Burnside clerk, pointed out that the initial error of not counting the ballots at the polling sites was at the hands of the poll workers at the Madison polling sites who never opened or processed the 193 ballots.

“If you’re relying on unpaid or low-paid, glorified volunteers, essentially, what is the liability?” she said.

Even if the court doesn’t ultimately award monetary damages, the discovery phase of the expected lawsuit — where the two sides must share evidence — could significantly increase transparency around Madison’s ballot-counting errors, Thompson said. This process would likely place additional pressure on Madison and Dane County to fully disclose information beyond what has already emerged from ongoing city and state investigations.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

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Columbia Savings & Loan Association spent 2024 celebrating its 100th anniversary as Wisconsin’s oldest and now only Black-owned bank.

As it moves forward, Columbia’s leadership wants to modernize while continuing to serve Milwaukee’s Black and underserved communities by helping more families own homes in their neighborhoods.

After Milwaukee native Sharon Adams moved back to her parents’ home in Lindsay Heights in 1997, she opened up an account at the nearby savings and loan association at 2020 W. Fond du Lac Ave. with her cousin when they learned its history.

“It’s a bit of a mystery to me that Columbia has survived without a merger throughout these years and it’s still, for me, the place to go and support and I would expect to be supported,” said Adams, who is a founder of Walnut Way Conservation Corp., a nonprofit focused on community-led development in Lindsay Heights.

The Halyards and Columbia’s history

Wilbur and Ardie Clark Halyard founded Columbia Savings & Loan Association in 1924 to help Black people secure home loans when redlining and racial covenants restricted housing options and banks discriminated against Black people.

The Halyards moved from the South to Beloit in 1920, then to Milwaukee in 1923, advocating for the rights of African Americans along the way, according to Clayborn Benson, director of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society, 2620 W. Center St., Milwaukee.

“People wanted to buy their homes, and the Halyards made it possible to be able to do that,” Benson said.

The Halyards worked hard (and without pay for many years) to establish the association, which survived through social, economic and political changes to Milwaukee and the country.

“It’s one of those things where you knew if you needed to get a loan, or you wanted to buy a house, they would work with you, whereas other more traditional institutions might overlook you,” said Steven DeVougas, chairman of the North Avenue Marketplace Business Improvement District 32.

The bank’s lasting impact on Milwaukee can especially be felt in Halyard Park, where the Halyards worked closely with real estate agent Beechie O. Brooks to finance homes in a new development after the construction of Interstate 43.

Modernizing the mission-focused bank

Ernest Jones, the chair/president and CEO of Columbia Savings & Loan Association since 2022, said the bank has stayed true to its mission but needs to modernize.

As a savings and loan association, Columbia offers savings accounts, loans, mortgages and certificates of deposit.

Jones said he understands the limitations of Columbia’s niche market and model — it has no checking or online banking, but has built relationships with customers and partner banks.

“We need money to advance our technology, and it’s going to be a significant investment,” he said.

In addition to pursuing technology updates, Columbia has added new staff and plans to add new board members.

Seeking new deposits

The Republican National Convention Host Committee, Horicon Bank and other banks and institutions have made deposits to Columbia, bringing in new funding to support the bank’s lending efforts to local homebuyers.

The Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce committed to depositing $1 million in Columbia Savings & Loan Association in 2023. Ruben Hopkins, the chamber’s chairman and CEO, said the amount is small compared to what other institutions could deposit to support the bank.

“I congratulate them on being around for 100 years, and I’d like for them to be around for 100 more,” Hopkins said. “But again, if they don’t get the resources they need, it’s just something for the history books.”

Still focused on homeownership

Columbia’s mission stays relevant because the ZIP codes around the bank, 53205 and 53206, have some of the highest rates of poverty in the state, and mortgage payments can be more affordable than rent, Jones said.

“​​A part of our mission is not only to put people in homes, but to educate our community on the value of homeownership,” Jones said. “It extends to everything else economically and financially for people’s lives.”

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Wisconsin’s only Black-owned bank moves into new century is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Yes.

About 60% of federal spending is mandatory — appropriations are automatic.

About 27% is discretionary spending, and about 13% pays federal debt interest.

On mandatory spending, more than half is for Medicare and Social Security. 

About 69 million people receive monthly Social Security retirement or disability payments. About 68 million get Medicare, which is health insurance for people 65 and older, and some people under 65 with certain conditions.

Discretionary spending requires annual approvals by Congress and the president. About half is for defense. The rest goes to programs such as transportation, education and housing.

Projected total federal spending in fiscal 2025 is $7 trillion, up about 58% from $4.45 trillion in fiscal 2019.

President Donald Trump pledged March 4 to balance the budget “in the near future.” But the federal debt is projected to grow about $2 trillion annually through 2035.

On March 12, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., said most federal government spending is mandatory.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• U.S. Treasury Department: How much has the U.S. government spent this year? (March 17, 2025)
• USA Facts: How much of the federal budget is mandatory spending?
• Axios: Behind the Curtain: Hard truths about Trump budget cuts
• Congressional Budget Office: Mandatory Spending in Fiscal Year 2023: An Infographic
• Social Security Administration: Fact Sheet
• Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services: Medicare Monthly Enrollment
• Medicare.gov: Parts of Medicare
• U.S. Treasury Department: How much has the U.S. government spent this year?
• Congressional Budget Office: Discretionary Spending in Fiscal Year 2023: An Infographic
• U.S. Treasury Department: Treasury Bulletin December 2024
• Vicki McKenna Show: Glenn Grothman interview, March 12, 2025
• Congressional Budget Office: The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2025 to 2035
• Axios: U.S. federal deficit soars to record $3.1 trillion in 2020
• New York Times: Full Transcript of President Trump’s Speech to Congress
• Reason: Trump Promised a Balanced Budget. Don't Believe It.

Is the majority of federal government spending mandatory? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

Alexandria Ehlert has pursued a college education hoping to become a park ranger or climate scientist. Now she’s wondering whether she’ll ever finish her studies at College of Menominee Nation.

The scholarship that kept her afloat at the tribal college in Wisconsin vanished in recent weeks, and with it her optimism about completing her degrees there and continuing her studies at a four-year institution.

Ehlert is one of about 20 College of Menominee Nation students who rely on scholarships funded through a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant. The Trump administration suspended the grant amid widespread cost-cutting efforts. Unless other money can be found, Ehlert and the other scholarship students are in their final weeks on campus.

“It’s leaving me without a lot of hope,” said Ehlert, a member of the Oneida nation. “Maybe I should just get a warehouse job and drop school entirely.”

Many staff and students at the country’s 37 tribal colleges and universities, which rely heavily on federal dollars, have been alarmed by the suspension of crucial grants early in Donald Trump’s second presidency.

Even before he retook office, the schools essentially lived paycheck to paycheck. A 1978 law promised them a basic funding level, but Congress hasn’t come close to fulfilling that obligation in decades. Today, the colleges get a quarter-billion dollars less per year than they should, when accounting for inflation, and receive almost nothing to build and maintain their campuses. Water pipes break frequently, roofs leak, ventilation systems fail and buildings crumble. Other than minuscule amounts of state funding in some cases and a smattering of private donations, tribal colleges that lose any federal funding have few other sources of income.

“You freeze our funding and ask us to wait six months to see how it shakes out, and we close,” said Ahniwake Rose, president of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which lobbies for tribal colleges in Washington, D.C. “That’s incredibly concerning.”

At least $7 million in USDA grants to tribal colleges and universities have been suspended, Rose said. The schools’ concerns have been magnified by a lack of communication from federal agencies, which she attributed partly to many federal workers being laid off as the Trump administration has made across-the-board cuts to the federal bureaucracy.

Staff at the College of Menominee Nation were seeking reimbursement for $50,000 spent on research and other work conducted in January, when a federal website indicated a grant from the USDA had been suspended. It was a technical issue, they were told when they first reached someone at the agency, and they needed to contact technical support. But that didn’t solve the problem. Then a few days later the department told the college to halt all grant activity, including Ehlert’s scholarship, without explaining why or for how long.

The frozen grants are administered by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, or NIFA. They stem from a 1994 law, the Equity in Educational Land-Grant Status Act, which designated the tribal colleges as land-grant institutions. Congress created the land-grant system in the 19th century to provide more funding for agricultural and vocational degrees.

The 1994 addition of tribal colleges to the list of land-grant institutions gave the schools access to more funding for specific projects, mostly focused on food and agriculture. Many grants funded food research and projects to increase the availability of food, which is particularly important in rural areas with fewer grocery stores and restaurants.

“It’s really precarious for tribal colleges,” said Twyla Baker, president of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College in North Dakota. Her college also lost access to NIFA funds that were paying for food research and a program that connects Indigenous farmers, ranchers and gardeners to each other. “We don’t have large endowments to fall back on.”

Several other college presidents said they were preparing for the worst. Red Lake Nation College in Minnesota was freezing salaries, travel and hiring, said President Dan King. So was United Tribes Technical College in North Dakota, which paused renovation of a dormitory originally built as military barracks in 1900. ProPublica reported in October that tribal colleges need more than half a billion dollars to catch up on campus maintenance.

“We’re hoping to get started soon, because we have a short construction season here,” said Leander McDonald, president of the United Tribes college.

At Blackfeet Community College in northern Montana, a NIFA grant is helping to create a program to train workers for the Blackfeet tribe’s new slaughterhouse. The college has started construction on a new building, but President Brad Hall worries that without access to promised federal funds, he might have to pause the project.

Like other tribal college leaders, Hall hasn’t been able to get clear answers from the USDA. Unlike some other schools, his college has been able to access federal funds, but he wonders for how long.

“Without the clarity and without the communication, it’s very hard to make decisions right now,” he said. “We’re in a holding pattern, combined with a situation where the questions aren’t being answered to our satisfaction.”

USDA spokespeople declined to answer questions. The agency emailed a written statement noting that “NIFA programs are currently under review,” but did not provide details on which grants have been suspended or for how long. The agency did not respond to requests for clarification.

Some tribal college leaders theorized they were targeted partly because of the formal name of the 1994 land-grant law: the Equity in Educational Land-Grant Status Act. The Trump administration has laid waste to federal spending on programs with “diversity,” “equity” or “inclusion” in the names.

While “equity” often refers to fairness in relation to race or sex, in the 1994 bill, Congress used the word to highlight that tribal colleges would finally have access to the same funds that 19th-century laws had made available to other land-grant colleges and universities. A spokesperson for the organization that represents nontribal land-grant institutions, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, said he was not aware of any USDA funds to nontribal colleges being suspended.

Tribal colleges argue their funding is protected by treaties and the federal trust responsibility, a legal obligation requiring the United States to protect Indigenous resources, rights and assets. Cutting off funding to the tribal colleges is illegal, several university presidents said.

“We were promised education and health care and basic needs,” said King at Red Lake Nation College. “The fact that we’re being lumped in with these other programs — well, we’re not like them.”

The College of Menominee Nation was only a year into its game-changing $9 million USDA grant, which was funding workforce development, training students in local trades such as forestry, and improving food access for Indigenous people. The five-year grant was a “once-in-a-lifetime award,” said college President Christopher Caldwell.

“We want our students to graduate and have healthy job opportunities,” Caldwell said. “Now it just kind of got cut off at the knees.”

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

She’s on a scholarship at a tribal college in Wisconsin. The Trump administration suspended the USDA grant that funded it. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation through the Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

On Feb. 24, 2022, Katya Babych’s life changed in a moment. Russian jets flew overhead, tanks advanced and enemy troops slaughtered civilians in the suburbs surrounding her home city of Kyiv. 

“When it happened, we just woke up, grabbed our kids, a couple suitcases and ran,” Babych said. 

Babych and her husband, Yevhenii, have a daughter, Diana, who was 5 at the time, and a son, Nazar, who was 11. The decision to flee was simple, but not easy. She wanted to keep her children safe, but leaving their homeland still pains her three years later. 

The Babych family is among millions whose lives were upended by Russia’s invasion. The Cap Times met with some of those families in Ukraine in February, as well as loved ones and friends who now live in Wisconsin. 

One father, wounded in battle, hasn’t seen his wife and sons in more than three years. A mother works to comfort her daughters through nightly air raids. An aunt in Wisconsin fears for her nephew in Kyiv. 

Their lives have taken different paths but their goal remains the same, to keep their families safe and someday see an end to the brutal war destroying their homeland.

The night of the invasion, Babych and her husband packed what belongings they could, buckled their children into the family car and began to drive toward Poland. The drive from Kyiv to the Polish border typically takes about seven hours. This time, as thousands of other Ukrainians also fled, the journey took two days. 

They first crossed into Poland and then the Czech Republic, unsure how long the war would last. 

“But in May (2022) we understood it would not be a short story, but a very long story,” Babych said of the ongoing war.

The story of the Russian invasion has lasted over 1,100 days, and the family now lives in Stoughton. Babych works as a nurse at Stoughton Hospital, and their two children attend public school.

In Poland and the Czech Republic, her kids thought the family was on a vacation. But after arriving in Wisconsin and realizing their displacement was more permanent, they began to miss home and friends.

At first, they cried every day.

“It’s really hard because we didn’t have a plan to move, to start a new life across the ocean,” Babych said. 

At a cafe outside Madison, Babych sipped a cappuccino and gingerly held her pregnant belly as she recalled fleeing her Kyiv home. She and her husband are expecting their third child in April. 

“We’re lucky, because around us are really kind, nice people and they really support us,” Babych said. 

Her family received help from the Stoughton Resettlement Agency. The local nonprofit has helped more than a dozen immigrant families from Ukraine, Afghanistan and elsewhere who fled war-torn countries and arrived in the southeast Dane County city of 13,000.

“For now, I have a job, my kids go to school. I mean, it’s kind of like normal life. Now my brother and sister-in-law and my parents are here,” Babych said. 

Babych doesn’t know how long she and her family will be allowed to stay in Stoughton now that President Donald Trump has ended humanitarian parole — the immigration channel that tens of thousands of Ukrainians have used since the beginning of the invasion to flee to the United States. 

“Every day you wake up and check like ‘OK, what about today,’” Babych said of the uncertainty. “Right now, I can’t imagine how we can go back to Ukraine.”

‘Because life stopped, our family got closer’ 

When Babych and her family fled the invasion, their apartment in Kyiv lay empty. 

Meanwhile, in the village of Troieshchyna on the outskirts of Kyiv, Babych’s friend Marta Jarrell constantly feared for the safety of her family. 

“We have four children. It was important for us to keep them safe, but we never wanted to panic,” Jarrell said, reflecting on why she and her husband chose not to evacuate Ukraine.

Jarrell and her family moved back to the Kyiv area from the United States just six months before the invasion began. She and her husband met in America; they and their four daughters have dual citizenship. She wanted to bring her family back to Ukraine to show them her homeland. Then the war started. 

Jarrell remembers the sounds of artillery shells as Russian troops surrounded the capital city. 

“It was very loud,” she said. “We could hear gunshots. It was getting really close.”

Before the war, Babych and Jarrell worked together at a private Christian school in Kyiv. Babych offered for her friend to move her family into the empty apartment closer to the city, farther from the violence that ravaged suburbs like Irpin and Bucha.

In the beginning, Jarrell’s youngest daughter — who was 3 at the time — slept through the air alarms. Jarrell used fans at night to mask the noise of the war.

“She’s 7 now, she starts waking up from explosions. It’s really taking a toll on her,” Jarrell said. 

After three years of war, your nervous system gets worn out. But Jarrell and her husband work to stay calm as an example for their daughters. They made the choice to stay, and even though daily life is hard and she is constantly afraid for her family’s safety, she doesn’t regret the choice to remain in Kyiv.

The war has been hard in so many ways, but Jarrell has tried to find unexpected benefits to stay positive.

“Because life stopped, our family got even closer,” she remembered. 

In the early days of the invasion, Jarrell set her daily routine around what would help her daughters cope with the uncertainty and fear.

“We did what the girls wanted to do. We baked a lot because stores were closed; there wasn’t much food at first,” she said. “We colored. We read. We danced. We spent a lot of quality time together, and that’s really helped.”

The three-bedroom apartment is a tight fit, and the four girls have to share rooms. 

“It’s challenging, but it’s cozy,” she said.

When asked how it feels to live in someone else’s home, Jarrell smiled softly. 

“My home is where my husband and my kids are,” she said.

‘The flowers have already died’

Before the war, Oleksandr Turchanov and his wife, Galyna Turchanova, took family vacations with their two sons by the sea in Odesa and in the Carpathian Mountains in southwestern Ukraine.

They began to build a house in the countryside outside of their hometown of Kropyvnytskyi on family land that belonged to Oleksandr’s grandparents. Galyna planted trees and flowers and strawberries. 

Now, it has been three years since the couple have seen each other. When asked what he misses most about his wife and sons, Oleksandr simply says being together.

“When there was a family, and everyone was together,” he said.

Galyna lives in Madison with their sons while her husband remains in Kropyvnytskyi. She works in the floral department of Metcalfe’s Market. Their younger son, Tymofii, is 15. He attends Memorial High School and plays volleyball.

Their 28-year-old son, Mykhailo, lived in Madison before the invasion began. He came here through a work study program with a university in Poland where he attended. In 2016, he became gravely ill with meningitis, and Galyna traveled to Madison to help him. 

“For two years we were fighting for his life here,” she said. After his recovery, she returned home.

Mykhailo has since graduated from a software engineering program at Madison Area Technical College and works as a programmer for the Madison Metropolitan School District. 

Oleksandr said he is proud of his sons for pursuing education and supporting their mother.

In Ukraine, Galyna worked as an insurance broker, but transferring professional licenses to the United States remains difficult, so she was unable to continue that work after settling in Madison. Working with plants at Metcalfe’s soothes her, though. 

“I like flowers and plants, and in Ukraine we have a big garden, so for me, it’s also like relaxation maybe,” Galyna said. 

These days Oleksandr lives in the countryside outside of Kropyvnytskyi with his elderly father, who suffers from dementia. Oleksandr said he is trying to keep his wife’s garden alive but it’s difficult on his own.

“The flowers have already died,” he said. “The ones that are alive, I somehow take care of them, chrysanthemums, I trim those. The ones that grow like weeds and do not need much care.”

Oleksandr is a serious man with clear blue eyes and a kind, but somber, demeanor. He sipped strong black coffee with sugar as he gazed out the kitchen window of an apartment he used to share with his family. In the living room, a bare wall held framed photos of his wife and sons when they were young boys. Boxed board games were stacked in the corner. 

Before the invasion in 2022, he and his family were nearly ready to install gas and water lines for the home they were building on the property. But when Russia’s invasion forced Galyna and their younger son to flee the country, the project came to a heartbreaking halt. 

“There is no longer a desire to build, just no desire,” Oleksandr said. Not without his family to share it with.

Oleksandr, a lawyer, was unable to flee with his family. The Ukrainian government banned men ages 18-60 from leaving the country in an effort to bolster its limited military reserves. On Feb. 26, 2022 — two days after the invasion began — Oleksandr drove to the conscription office to file his paperwork. On March 8, he was called to war. 

In the early days of the war, Galyna and her son lived in the countryside with her father-in-law. They would hide in the root cellar during air raids.

“It was just terrible. And my son, he was 12 at this time. He cried and he asked, ‘Can we please leave?’ Because it was so scary,” she said.

They soon left with friends to Hungary — five people in one car with only enough space for one backpack each.

After suffering a shrapnel injury to his stomach while fighting, Oleksandr was released from the military. Galyna learned her husband had been injured as she and her youngest son awaited a plane to travel from Hungary to Wisconsin. 

“We were ready for the flight to Madison, but I couldn’t leave my son and help my husband,” she said. 

Galyna feels welcome in Madison and said the Ukrainian community has become tightly knit during the war. She speaks with her husband on the phone as often as possible. 

“I try to speak every day with my husband and my parents, and every morning I call them and I’m afraid if they will answer or not because every day I read the news from Ukraine,” Galyna said.

Oleksandr speaks with his sons on the weekends. He said he doesn’t want his calls to interrupt their school and work. The family does not know when they will be together next. 

“In Ukraine, it’s still dangerous,” Galyna said. “Just the other day I was thinking, what country I can move to if, for example, (Trump) decided to deport all Ukrainians. I don’t know if I am ready for that. I just know that we can’t go back to Ukraine right now.”

‘Our new reality has become just war’

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dmytro Komar spoke to his aunt at a frequency typical of relatives who live in different countries — on birthdays and holidays, like Christmas and Easter. 

“From the beginning of the war, we started to text each other and call, I think, almost every day,” he said. “After every rocket or drone attack, she would check in.”

Komar, 33, lives in Kyiv. His aunt, Ruslana Westerlund, lives in Mazomanie, a small Wisconsin town about 23 miles west of Madison. 

Westerlund is president of the nonprofit Friends of Ukraine, Madison, a group that works to help Ukrainians feel a sense of community and welcoming in Dane County. 

The organization holds educational events, cultural workshops, gatherings with traditional Ukrainian food, informational sessions on immigration and, last month, a rally at the Capitol to mark the third anniversary of the invasion.

Beyond welcoming Ukrainians now living in the Madison area, Westerlund said the nonprofit educates Americans who may have misunderstandings about Ukraine’s culture and independence. The work helps her feel connected to her home.

“I hear so often ‘Oh, you must be Russian. Tell me about the Russian language.’ No, we speak Ukrainian and we have Ukrainian culture,” Westerlund said. “We’re not Russians or former Russians or former Soviets. We’re just Ukrainians.” 

Westerlund was born in Buzhanka, in the Cherkasy region of central Ukraine. After graduating from Cherkasy State Pedagogical University, she moved to the United States. First to Minnesota and later to Wisconsin. 

It has been many years since she has been able to visit her home. Travel in and out of Ukraine is dangerous and limited because of Russia’s invasion. Komar hasn’t seen his aunt since 2017.

Westerlund is the sister of Komar’s mother, who died when he was 9. His father died just three years ago. “So I’m his kind of second mom,” Westerlund said, fondly. 

She is proud of her nephew but concerned for his safety. As a man in his 30s, he is not allowed to leave the country and could be conscripted into the army at any moment.This scares Westerlund. She affectionately calls him by his nickname, Dima. He is an artist and knows nothing of fighting, she worries. 

“I have his art in my house,” Westerlund said. 

His paintings hang on the walls of her home as a stained glass Ukrainian flag glows from sunlight in the window nearby.

“She is my main buyer,” Komar joked back in Kyiv. His art hangs on the walls of his own living room also.

Komar’s apartment — where he lives with his girlfriend, Tetiana Vazhka, and their cat, Maya — is bright with large windows that look out over the rest of the apartment complex and a nearby park. 

At the beginning of the war, the two rented a different flat in a nearby high-rise. It was through those windows the couple watched Russia attack their city. 

“We were sleeping,” Komar said. As the assault began, he and Vazhka watched out the window, unsure of what to do. 

“We saw people starting to run with their stuff, their pets, kids and cars,” Komar remembered. 

Between bombings, the couple went to a supermarket to buy food. 

Shelves were already beginning to empty. On the way home, another big explosion scared the couple, and they decided to flee to Zgurivka, where Vazhka’s mother lived. The village is closer to Russia but farther from main cities they thought would be the target of Russian attacks.

Instead, they lived for two and a half months through regular artillery shelling before returning to Kyiv that April.

While many others fled the country, the couple remained. 

“Today, sometimes I regret it,” Komar said of their decision to stay. 

Like many others, he thought the war would be over by now.

“I thought like, ‘OK, three days, a few weeks, maybe a month, and somehow it will end, and we will see a new reality,’” Komar said. “But our new reality has become just war.”

Before the invasion, Komar thought of war like it is depicted in movies — constant action, terrifying but predictable. 

“But the reality is that is 1% of war, and the rest of time is just a silent time when you know that war is going on and you see the impact, but it’s so slow. It’s so, so slow. Like slowly dying.”

At least the first few months of the invasion, when Kyiv underwent more intense bombardment from Russia, the war felt real, he said. 

“It was a period of real feeling of danger like in a movie,” Komar said. “But now for three years, it’s danger like cancer.”

Ukrainians at home and in Madison reflect on separation and war is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation through its initiative Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines, in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

The entrance to the Ukrainian city of Irpin holds a harsh reminder of the trauma suffered just three years ago.

Next to a newly built structure crossing the icy Irpin River lies the mangled remains of the Romanovsky Bridge that Ukrainian forces intentionally destroyed to block Russian soldiers from advancing to the capital of Kyiv. 

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24, 2022. Oleksandr Markushyn remembers the moment clearly. 

The mayor of Irpin, a Milwaukee sister city, says he received a text on the messaging platform WhatsApp from the Russian military, informing him it would soon invade his town. Markushyn had two choices, according to the text: He could either surrender his city to Russia and remain mayor, or the Russian military would take Irpin by force. 

He hugged his 4-year-old son, Mark, close to him during an interview with the Cap Times as he recalled the Russian military threatening to harm his child if he did not surrender.

Markushyn refused their menacing proposal. 

“And I wrote, ‘Try to destroy (us),’” he said, proudly. 

Russian forces occupied the city for one horrifying month, during which close to 300 civilians were killed, thousands of homes were demolished and 70% of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed.

“Why was Irpin such a key city for the Russians? Because Irpin is only 5 kilometers from Kyiv,” Markushyn said.

If Russian troops had advanced to Kyiv, the country likely would have fallen into Russian control altogether. To keep that from happening, Ukrainian troops blew up the only bridge out of Irpin. 

The self-destruction might have saved the country, but it meant thousands of civilians had to evacuate through winter mud and the frigid river. Some were able to evacuate by train in the first days of the invasion, but Russia quickly bombed the railways civilians were using to flee and continued to shell the area of the river while civilians escaped on foot.

Markushyn evacuated his own son and thousands of others but stayed back to defend Irpin. In addition to serving as the city’s mayor, he also led the area’s territorial defense squadron. 

“When I was appointed as the head of our territorial defense, I had two main decisions,” he said. “The first was to build defensive lines, defensive fortifications for our city, and the second was the evacuation of the population.”

Down the road from Irpin, the neighboring town of Bucha suffered what much of the world considers war crimes. Unarmed civilians were raped and murdered in cold blood. Images of their bodies lining the streets were broadcast around the globe.

Exploding teddy bears

In Irpin, as they retreated at the end of March 2022, occupying Russian soldiers rigged land mines in the rubble of decimated homes and nearby playgrounds. They planted children’s teddy bears with grenades hidden inside, Markushyn said. 

“As soon as a child picked up the toy, it would explode,” he said.

Residents of Irpin wanted to return home as soon as the city was liberated, the mayor recalled, but the entire community first had to be carefully de-mined. Some homes could be repaired. Many required complete demolition before they could be rebuilt.

Irpin’s cultural center building still stands in ruin. Markushyn said the city hopes to rebuild it this year.

“It was, of course, very hard to see. It was burning, and you couldn’t do anything,” Markushyn said. “Because there was no electricity, no water, no firefighters, no services at all, nothing was working, and there were battles in the city.”

Lidiia Rodchenko, 72, and her husband, Viktor, had already experienced evacuation before they settled in Irpin.

They were forced to flee their hometown of Avdiivka near the Russian border in 2015, amid fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists.

They returned to Avdiivka in 2016, then fled again when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

But the war followed them to Irpin. They had to escape once more. 

“We had already gone through this in 2015. We knew what it was like,” Lidiia said.

The apartment they rented in Irpin was destroyed.

Once Irpin’s occupation had ended, they moved into a tiny home with their cat, Tomas. The group of homes had been donated by Poland as part of the country’s humanitarian aid to neighboring Ukraine. 

The home is small but it’s on the ground floor, so Lidiia is able to easily move Viktor’s wheelchair from room to room and take him on walks outside. Viktor, 70, lost both his legs to complications from advanced diabetes, leaving many of the chores to Lidiia.

“I planted 22 rose bushes here. We have a drive for life now,” Lidiia said. “We will wait for victory. We need victory. We want to live in a free Ukraine and think for ourselves.”

Inside a kindergarten bomb shelter

Down the street from the destroyed cultural center, a drive for life is overflowing among some of the city’s youngest residents. At the Ruta Kindergarten School, children ages 2-6 enjoy a newly rebuilt school after the original building was destroyed by Russian shelling three years prior. 

At recess time on a February school day, the children, donned in colorful snowsuits, hats and mittens, played in fresh snow.

Kseniia Katrych is the headmistress of the school. She proudly showed the bright classrooms — with large windows to let in natural sunlight — the kitchen where chefs prepare the students’ lunch of borscht and bread, and the school’s basement bomb shelter.

The school was rebuilt with donations from Lithuania. In front of the school, the Lithuanian flag flies next to the Ukrainian flag. 

“As a symbol of our friendship,” Katrych said.

The multi-room shelter has play areas with toys, books, tables and chairs.

“We are really proud of our shelter. It is about 800 square meters (more than 8,000 square feet), and we’ve got everything children need,” Katrych said.

The shelter has bathrooms, a kitchen area and small beds for children to nap. Some of the youngest children nap in the bunker each day so that teachers don’t have to wake them mid-sleep if the city is advised to shelter from a potential air strike.

The entire school — 300 students along with teachers and other staff — goes to the shelter each time the air raid sirens sound in the city. 

“It could be five times a day. It could be three hours,” Katrych said of the sirens. “There are some days without alerts. But we come every time, quickly.”

Many of the children are young enough that war is all they know. Most find the air raid sirens a normal part of life. 

Katrych was not in Irpin when the school was destroyed. She evacuated with her family the first day of the war. 

“I even crossed the bridge,” she said. “It was not destroyed (yet).”

She worked in a kindergarten in Poland for a year before returning to help run Ruta. 

“I love it. Kindergarten is my life,” she said. “You know children give you special energy. They are our hope.”

Markushyn feels that same sense of hope and pride with how the community has rebuilt and recovered with the help of sister cities like Milwaukee, which donated vehicles and humanitarian aid.  

“When the city was in ruins, completely destroyed, and there was only one street passable for cars, it was fear, it was horror, and it seemed to me that rebuilding the city would be almost impossible,” he said. “But there is a saying: ‘The eyes fear, but the hands do the work.’”

Milwaukee sister city in Ukraine works to rebuild from war with Russia is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.