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.
The FBI on Friday arrested a Milwaukee judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities, escalating a clash between the Trump administration and local authorities over the Republican president’s sweeping immigration crackdown.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest. The man was taken into custody outside the courthouse after agents chased him on foot.
President Donald Trump’s administration has accused state and local officials of interfering with his immigration enforcement priorities. The arrest also comes amid a growing battle between the administration and the federal judiciary over the president’s executive actions over deportations and other matters.
Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, in a statement on the arrest, accused the Trump administration of repeatedly using “dangerous rhetoric to attack and attempt to undermine our judiciary at every level.”
“I have deep respect for the rule of law, our nation’s judiciary, the importance of judges making decisions impartially without fear or favor, and the efforts of law enforcement to hold people accountable if they commit a crime,” Evers said. “I will continue to put my faith in our justice system as this situation plays out in the court of law.”
Dugan was taken into custody by the FBI on Friday morning on the courthouse grounds, according to U.S. Marshals Service spokesperson Brady McCarron. She appeared briefly in federal court in Milwaukee later Friday before being released from custody. She faces charges of “concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest” and obstructing or impeding a proceeding.
“Judge Dugan wholeheartedly regrets and protests her arrest. It was not made in the interest of public safety,” her attorney, Craig Mastantuono, said during the hearing. He declined to comment to an Associated Press reporter following her court appearance.
Court papers suggest Dugan was alerted to the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the courthouse by her clerk, who was informed by an attorney that they appeared to be in the hallway.
The FBI affidavit describes Dugan as “visibly angry” over the arrival of immigration agents in the courthouse and says that she pronounced the situation “absurd” before leaving the bench and retreating to her chambers. It says she and another judge later approached members of the arrest team inside the courthouse, displaying what witnesses described as a “confrontational, angry demeanor.”
After a back-and-forth with officers over the warrant for the man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, she demanded that the arrest team speak with the chief judge and led them away from the courtroom, the affidavit says.
After directing the arrest team to the chief judge’s office, investigators say, Dugan returned to the courtroom and was heard saying words to the effect of “wait, come with me” before ushering Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer through a jury door into a non-public area of the courthouse. The action was unusual, the affidavit says, because “only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door.”
A sign that remained posted on Dugan’s courtroom door Friday advised that if any attorney or other court official “knows or believes that a person feels unsafe coming to the courthouse to courtroom 615,” they should notify the clerk and request an appearance via Zoom.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the man was facing domestic violence charges and victims were sitting in the courtroom with state prosecutors when the judge helped him escape immigration arrest.
The judge “put the lives of our law enforcement officers at risk. She put the lives of citizens at risk. A street chase — it’s absurd that that had to happen,” Bondi said on Fox News Channel.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat who represents Wisconsin, called the arrest of a sitting judge a “gravely serious and drastic move” that “threatens to breach” the separation of power between the executive and judicial branches.
“Make no mistake, we do not have kings in this country and we are a Democracy governed by laws that everyone must abide by,” Baldwin said in an emailed statement. “By relentlessly attacking the judicial system, flouting court orders, and arresting a sitting judge, this President is putting those basic Democratic values that Wisconsinites hold dear on the line.”
The case is similar to one brought during the first Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge, who was accused of helping a man sneak out a back door of a courthouse to evade a waiting immigration enforcement agent.
That prosecution sparked outrage from many in the legal community, who slammed the case as politically motivated. Prosecutors dropped the case against Newton District Judge Shelley Joseph in 2022 under the Democratic Biden administration after she agreed to refer herself to a state agency that investigates allegations of misconduct by members of the bench.
The Justice Department had previously signaled that it was going to crack down on local officials who thwart federal immigration efforts.
The department in January ordered prosecutors to investigate for potential criminal charges any state and local officials who obstruct or impede federal functions. As potential avenues for prosecution, a memo cited a conspiracy offense as well as a law prohibiting the harboring of people in the country illegally.
Dugan was elected in 2016 to the county court Branch 31. She also has served in the court’s probate and civil divisions, according to her judicial candidate biography.
Before being elected to public office, Dugan practiced at Legal Action of Wisconsin and the Legal Aid Society. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981 with a bachelor of arts degree and earned her Juris Doctorate in 1987 from the school.
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Reporter Natalie Yahr spoke to Matt Kures, who researches state labor and demographic trends as a community development specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension.
The current labor market is good for people who have a job right now, but challenging for those looking for a job, Kures says.
Wisconsin’s working-age population is projected to keep declining into 2030, before leveling off in the subsequent decade, fueling challenges for certain industries.
Industries with particularly large shares of older workers include: real estate, transportation, warehousing, wholesale trade, manufacturing and public administration.
Wisconsin Watch is starting a new beat called pathways to success, exploring what Wisconsin residents will need in order to build and keep thriving careers in the future economy — and what’s standing in their way.
To learn more about the jobs Wisconsin will most need to fill in the coming years, we spoke to Matt Kures, who researches state labor and demographic trends as a community development specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What numbers do you think best tell the story of Wisconsin’s labor market and what’s coming?
Unemployment rates are still near historic lows, but despite that, we’re still not seeing a large number of people being hired. The hiring rate has slowed down. We’ve also seen fewer people being laid off. So more businesses are actually retaining employees that maybe they wouldn’t have otherwise. There’s still some hangover from the pandemic and ability to hire people, so they’re a little bit hesitant to let them go.
The number of job openings has ticked down as well. We’re still seeing some uncertainty from a lot of businesses in terms of what’s going to happen with inflation, interest rates, tariffs and just the broader U.S. economy.
Those numbers put together tell of a labor market that’s good for people who have a job right now, but maybe a little bit challenging for people looking for a job.
And how about when it comes to long-standing trends in Wisconsin’s labor market or demographics? Are there numbers you like to bring up that you think people don’t tend to know?
If you look at the working-age population declining from 2020 to 2030, and then kind of leveling off from 2030 to 2040, we’re just not going to have strong growth in the number of individuals who are working age in the state. That’s mostly true across the state, although there are some counties that will be projected to grow, like Dane and Eau Claire.
And then also, the combination of individuals of retirement age or nearing retirement age that are going to either leave the labor force or change the types of work they’re doing. If we look at the manufacturing sector, for instance, we have almost 131,000 individuals in that industry who are aged 55 or older, or almost 28% of that industry. So in those large employment sectors in the state, how do we think about replacing the workforce or augmenting the workforce going forward due to retirements or just shifting abilities due to the aging population?
How are the challenges or opportunities different in different parts of the state, say in urban areas versus more rural areas?
Certainly many of the non-metro areas do have an older population and will continue to have an older population going forward, so they will most likely face some of the bigger challenges in terms of some of the population shifts by age group. In some of those areas too, you have some of the bigger challenges in developing housing … to try and attract a new labor force. So those challenges are a bit twofold.
Matt Kures, community development specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension, is shown in his office building April 18, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Would you describe Wisconsin as having a labor shortage?
The labor shortage is probably not as significant as it was, say, two or three years ago. But with our structural population distribution in terms of our age groups, we’re going to face challenges going forward. We’re going to have fewer individuals of working age.
What are your thoughts on how Wisconsin could fix that?
There’s a lot of strategies out there, and not one is going to be the sole key to solving labor problems going forward. Those strategies include thinking about ways to attract new individuals to our communities, creating quality places that people want to reside in, thinking about housing availability and affordability, and creating ecosystems where people can start a business.
So those are community-based strategies that people or communities can think about. But it’s also going to require improving productivity, and that could be through AI, automation, other capital investments and equipment, and thinking about new production techniques.
Can you tell me about some of the fastest-graying industries in Wisconsin, the ones where the most workers are aging out?
So we can look at this in two different ways: by numbers or percent. Some industries, on a percentage basis, have a very high share of individuals who are aging out of the workforce, but some of those are not the largest sectors in the state of Wisconsin.
For instance, in agriculture and natural resources, 31% of employees (covered by unemployment insurance laws) are age 55 or older, but there’s only about 8,400 of them. (Federal agriculture census data shows around 65,000 Wisconsin farmers in that age group, most of whom are not covered by unemployment insurance laws.)
But if you look at real estate, transportation, warehousing, wholesale trade, manufacturing and public administration, those are some of the biggest industries that have the highest share of individuals aged 55 or older, with manufacturing certainly being the largest in terms of total numbers with an estimated 131,000 employees aged 55 or older. That’s not surprising given that it’s a very large employment sector in the state.
You can also look at, say, health care and social assistance. They’re below the state average for their share of individuals aged 55 and older, but there’s almost 99,000 of them in that age category. So that’s an industry sector that, as we age as a state, will probably face even greater labor demands.
Of those graying industries, are there any that you’re particularly worried about?
I don’t know if “worried” is the term I would use because different industries will respond in different ways. For instance, manufacturing can probably rely a bit more on things like automation, while other industries might be able to have some of their jobs done remotely. But health care and manufacturing are two very large cornerstones of our economy, and they are going to face challenges with labor availability going forward.
When you say remotely, you mean they might use workers in other states?
Yes. But in an industry like health care, for the most part, that’s probably not going to be an option.
Can you tell me about a few of the fastest-growing industries in Wisconsin?
To be honest, I haven’t looked at any of the recent numbers on a sector-by-sector basis. I can say that health care and social assistance has been one of the largest growing sectors in the state, and that’s also true nationally.
Regardless of the industry, we’re seeing growth in demand for digital skills across all industry sectors. Especially in professional and technical services, we’re seeing a higher demand for digital skills, but across all industries, a lot of job postings require some sort of knowledge in terms of digital skills, which may be anything from software development all the way down to just being able to work with social media or operate word processing.
Anything else you want to talk about?
Thinking about the aging workforce, there are a lot of opportunities for businesses to make sure they capture and transfer a lot of the knowledge that those individuals may have gained over their careers. As new employees or younger employees come into those firms, are there opportunities to match up younger and pre-retirement workers to share all that knowledge and make sure that it benefits the organization going forward?
Also, with the aging workforce, are there opportunities to help those who may want to change their occupation or career trajectory going forward? Maybe they’ve done construction labor for a long time and now they want to try something different because they just physically can’t meet the demands anymore. There are a lot of opportunities.We can take advantage of the knowledge, skills and abilities that those individuals have or may want to have going forward.
Have a question about jobs or job training in Wisconsin? Or want to tell a reporter about your struggle to find the right job or the right workers? Email reporter Natalie Yahr nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org or call or text 608-616-0752.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Ever wondered why you can’t just go to a store and buy a new car? Why must you haggle at a dealership?
You can find the reason in state law. In Wisconsin, auto manufacturers are prohibited from selling directly to consumers. Instead, they must sell their vehicles to dealerships, which then sell them to the public.
The state’s nearly 35-year-old, explicit ban on direct sales has ignited an ongoing legal dispute between the state and Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla.
But Wisconsin isn’t an outlier.
Seventeen states bar direct sales, while 18 states allow them, according to a 2020-2021 report from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Laws in the remaining states fall somewhere in the middle of this balance.
The Wisconsin law at the center of the Tesla dispute says “A factory shall not, directly or indirectly, hold an ownership interest in or operate or control a motor vehicle dealership in this state.”
Industry and legislative history
The Wisconsin State Legislature enacted the factory store rule in 1993 after the Wisconsin Automobile & Truck Dealers Association lobbied to expand protections for car dealers, said Madeline Kasper, an analyst with the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, in an email.
But restrictions on manufacturers operating auto dealerships in Wisconsin date back to the mid-20th century and were first enacted to protect dealerships from having to compete with auto manufacturers, Kasper said.
The practice of selling new vehicles through dealerships began as the auto industry expanded in the early 20th century. Manufacturers partnered with independent dealers so they could prioritize and invest in the production of cars rather than their distribution.
Before states intervened on behalf of dealerships, manufacturers could force dealers to accept cars regardless of whether the dealer wanted them and could terminate contracts with dealerships for no reason, wrote Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan who teaches legislation and regulation, in a 2016 paper.
Prohibiting manufacturers from selling directly to consumers was meant to limit manufacturers’ ability to unfairly compete by selling the same types of cars sold by the dealer, Crane said.
Tesla has attacked the current interpretation of the factory store rule, noting that Tesla can’t compete with dealerships because dealerships don’t sell Tesla products.
“That rationale is completely inapplicable to non-franchising manufacturers, like Tesla, who have no franchisees they could possibly exploit,” the company wrote in its court filings.
The suit may end up before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which made Musk’s heavy involvement in the recent election for an open seat on the court — he unsuccessfully spent about $20 million trying to get the right-leaning candidate elected — eye-raising.
The state-imposed limits on direct sales began to loosen in 2014, two years after Tesla debuted its second car, Crane explained in another paper.
Looser restrictions on sales are essential for electric vehicles to compete with the better-established auto companies, and the traditional dealership model is ill-suited to their sale and service, Crane argues.
New car dealerships’ contribution to state tax revenue isn’t insignificant, however.
The tax revenue from the sale of vehicles both new and traded-in as well as parts, accessories and repairs at new car dealerships in Wisconsin was nearly $600 million in 2024, according to the Department of Revenue. This accounted for nearly 8% of the state’s $7.6 billion in total sales tax revenue last year.
Tesla and Wisconsin
In Wisconsin, Tesla operates two galleries in Madison and Milwaukee, but neither can sell vehicles or even discuss pricing or promotions. Wisconsin residents who wish to purchase a Tesla must do so online or visit a neighboring state that doesn’t impose direct sales restrictions.
In December, Tesla requested dealer licenses in Dane and Milwaukee counties, hoping to convert its two gallery locations to dealerships.
When a state agency rejected the requests, the company filed suit on Jan. 15 in Outagamie County Circuit Court, raising questions of judge shopping.
The company said that it is a licensed motor vehicle dealer in 30 states and Washington, D.C., and that Wisconsin residents purchased between 3,000 and 4,000 of its vehicles last year.
The company prioritizes direct sales, saying that the model is better for its consumers, who, the company says, prefer its uniform prices and “middleman-free experience.”
After initially filing in Outagamie County, where no Tesla showroom exists, the court transferred the case to Milwaukee County in March, according to online records.
This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.
Anjan Roy was studying with friends at Missouri State University when he got an email that turned his world upside down. His legal status as an international student had been terminated, and he was suddenly at risk for deportation.
“I was in literal shock, like, what the hell is this?” said Roy, a graduate student in computer science from Bangladesh.
At first, he avoided going out in public, skipping classes and mostly keeping his phone turned off. A court ruling in his favor led to his status being restored this week, and he has returned to his apartment, but he is still asking his roommates to screen visitors.
More than a thousand international students have faced similar disruptions in recent weeks, with their academic careers — and their lives in the U.S. — thrown into doubt in a widespread crackdown by the Trump administration. Some have found a measure of success in court, with federal judges around the country issuing orders to restore students’ legal status at least temporarily.
In addition to the case filed in Atlanta, where Roy is among 133 plaintiffs, judges have issued temporary restraining orders in states including New Hampshire, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. Judges have denied similar requests in some other cases, saying it was not clear the loss of status would cause irreparable harm.
International students challenge grounds for their status revocation
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges. But many affected students said they have been involved only in minor infractions, or it’s unclear altogether why they were targeted.
The attorney for Roy and his fellow plaintiffs, Charles Kuck, argued the government did not have legal grounds to terminate the students’ status.
He speculated in court last week the government is trying to encourage these students to self-deport, saying “the pressure on these students is overwhelming.” He said some asked him if it was safe to leave their homes to get food, and others worried they wouldn’t receive a degree after years of work or feared their chances of a career in the U.S. were shot.
“I think the hope is they’ll just leave,” Kuck said. “The reality is these kids are invested.”
An attorney for the government, R. David Powell, argued the students did not suffer significant harm because they could transfer their academic credits or find jobs in another country.
At least 1,190 students at 183 colleges, universities and university systems have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records. The AP is working to confirm reports of hundreds more students who are caught up in the crackdown.
In a lawsuit filed Monday by four people on student visas at the University of Iowa, attorneys detail the “mental and financial suffering” they’ve experienced. One graduate student, from India, “cannot sleep and is having difficulty breathing and eating,” the lawsuit reads. He has stopped going to school, doing research or working as a teaching assistant. Another student, a Chinese undergraduate who expected to graduate this December, said his revoked status has caused his depression to worsen to the point that his doctor increased his medication dosage. The student, the lawsuit says, has not left his apartment out of fear of detention.
Tiny infractions made students targets for the crackdown
Roy, 23, began his academic career at Missouri State in August 2024 as an undergraduate computer science student. He was active in the chess club and a fraternity and has a broad circle of friends. After graduating in December, he began work on a master’s degree in January and expects to finish in May 2026.
When Roy received the university’s April 10 email on his status termination, one of his friends offered to skip class to go with him to the school’s international services office, even though they had a quiz in 45 minutes. The staff there said a database check showed his student status had been terminated, but they didn’t know why.
Roy said his only brush with the law came in 2021, when he was questioned by campus security after someone called in a dispute at a university housing building. But he said an officer determined there was no evidence of any crime and no charges were filed.
Roy also got an email from the U.S. embassy in Bangladesh telling him his visa had been revoked and that he could be detained at any time. It warned that if he was deported, he could be sent to a country other than his own. Roy thought about leaving the U.S. but decided to stay after talking to a lawyer.
Anxious about being in his own apartment, Roy went to stay with his second cousin and her husband nearby.
“They were scared someone was going to pick me up from the street and take me somewhere that they wouldn’t even know,” Roy said.
He mostly stayed inside, turned off his phone unless he needed to use it, and avoided internet browsers that track user data through cookies. His professors were understanding when he told them he wouldn’t be able to come to classes for a while, he said.
New doubts about students’ future in the US
After the judge’s order Friday, he moved back to his apartment. He learned Tuesday his status had been restored, and he plans to return to class. But he’s still nervous. He asked his two roommates, both international students, to let him know before they open the door if someone they don’t know knocks.
The judge’s restoration of his legal status is temporary. Another hearing scheduled for Thursday will determine whether he keeps that status while the litigation continues.
Roy chose the U.S. over other options in Canada and Australia because of the research opportunities and potential for professional connections, and he ultimately wanted to teach at an American university. But now those plans are up in the air.
His parents, back in Dhaka, have been watching the news and are “freaked out,” he said. His father mentioned to him that they have family in Melbourne, Australia, including a cousin who’s an assistant professor at a university there.
AP reporters Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this story.
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.
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The city and county of Eau Claire recently asked Attorney General Josh Kaul to weigh in on the legality of police officers dropping off homeless people outside their jurisdiction.
Their request for an opinion cited several examples, including the Durand Police Department, which transported a woman in handcuffs to a city homeless shelter that has been over capacity and at risk of reducing beds.
The story includes interviews with the Durand police chief and the mayor of Santa Cruz, California, which recently outlawed the dropping off of homeless people without prior communication and a plan for helping the person find a housing solution.
On Oct. 27, a Durand police officer responded to a suspicious person call. He made contact with a woman who had committed no crimes but had nowhere to stay on a cold night.
She told the officer she was from Fargo, North Dakota, and waiting for a ride, but couldn’t explain how she arrived in Durand.
When that ride didn’t show, the officer asked if she had a credit card, which local hotels require homeless individuals to put down when using a motel voucher to stay overnight. She said she didn’t and didn’t know what to do.
There are no homeless shelters in Durand or Pepin County.
The officer then suggested she go to Sojourner House, a shelter in Eau Claire about 40 minutes away. She agreed to be transported in handcuffs, in accordance with what the officer said was department policy. He called several other shelters in communities outside of Durand, all of which were full for the night. Sojourner House didn’t answer, but he offered the woman a ride there anyway. She asked if the shelter was open.
“It’s hard to say. Once I get you up there, they might not even have a bed for you to go,” the officer told her, according to body cam footage obtained by Wisconsin Watch. “Once you get up there, ask them for resources — see what else is available to you up there.”
The officer dropped her off and left without contacting the shelter staff or Eau Claire city officials.
According to Eau Claire County Corporation Counsel Sharon McIlquham and City Attorney Stephen Nick, the shelter was full, and Eau Claire city police later took the woman to a hospital. She then had a run-in with UW-Eau Claire police for indecent exposure.
“They still found themselves homeless in an unfamiliar community and committed crimes — had to get medical attention,” Nick told Wisconsin Watch, referring to multiple people who have been dropped off in Eau Claire. “So not a good outcome for them or our community.”
But what started as a conflict between local agencies is now a legal question being posed to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul: Should police departments in Wisconsin be allowed to transport someone experiencing homelessness out of their jurisdiction?
Body cam footage obtained by Wisconsin Watch shows a rural police officer trying — and failing — to connect a homeless woman with support services. Reporters Hallie Claflin and Trisha Young discuss what’s happening in the footage and what it illustrates about the specific challenges of addressing rural homelessness.
Nick said the problem has persisted for years in Eau Claire and extends far beyond the three examples cited in his January letter to the attorney general, asking his office to weigh in on the legality of these drop-offs.
“This is the first time we’ve received a communication along these lines, certainly since I’ve been attorney general,” Kaul told reporters at WQOW. “But I can say more broadly, some of the issues raised are ones that I think are true around the state.”
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said the drop-offs display a need for more rural resources.
The letter pointed to instances of homeless individuals from neighboring counties being dropped off in Eau Claire by other agencies including the Menomonie Police Department and the St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office. McIlquham and Nick called it “a practice driven by a lack of good options,” but said the drop-offs are “unlawful at worst and unprofessional at best.”
“None of the individuals we referenced actually received care, and that is the most common outcome from these sort of transports,” Nick said.
Durand Police Chief Stanley Ridgeway said if his department is barred from carrying out these kinds of transports, the city’s human services department would have to pay other agencies or organizations to transport those in need of shelter. He added that rural communities like Durand lack rideshare services, public transportation or homeless shelters.
“In the end, it will increase our cost,” Ridgeway said. “Our hands will be tied.”
A statewide problem
The situation is not unique to Eau Claire. Police chiefs in Waukesha, Green Bay and Appleton told Wisconsin Watch they have dealt with a similar problem.
“For as long as I can remember, we have struggled with people from outside the Fox Valley coming to this area to utilize this invaluable resource,” Appleton Police Chief Polly Olson said. “We know they … may be given rides by other, outside law enforcement, or they find out through word of mouth about the shelters and resources in this area.”
Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis told Wisconsin Watch these drop-offs happen occasionally, but he has asked agencies outside the county not to transport people because it strains local resources and makes it difficult for the homeless to return to their city of origin.
Drop-offs are also prevalent in Waukesha, with unhoused individuals coming from surrounding areas like Delafield, Hartland, Chenequa, Pewaukee and New Berlin. But Chief Daniel Thompson said the issue is complicated because the city is a hub for resources such as hospitals, mental health clinics, trauma centers, charitable organizations and shelters.
He said it makes sense that people experiencing homelessness in smaller, rural jurisdictions would come to Waukesha for services because their own communities often don’t have any.
But it’s a problem when other municipalities drop their homeless off in Waukesha simply because they don’t want to deal with them. This is particularly a problem at Waukesha Memorial Hospital, Thompson said.
In December, Wisconsin Watch reported that the state’s estimated homeless population has been rising since 2021, following national trends. It rose from 4,861 on a single night in 2023 to 5,037 in 2024. In rural Wisconsin, the increase was 9%, according to the annual homeless count.
Despite accounting for over 60% of the state’s homeless population in 2023, every Wisconsin county besides Milwaukee, Dane and Racine collectively contained just 23% of the state’s long-term housing with on-site supportive services, which experts say is the best way to address chronic homelessness.
‘Only because we have such poor options’
Police departments in Durand and Menomonie quickly responded to the letter sent to the attorney general, emphasizing the transports were voluntary. Police footage from both departments confirms the officers didn’t coerce the individuals, but did suggest the destination. Neither individual knew where Eau Claire was.
“They’re not looking to come here, they’re being asked if they want to come here,” Nick said. “When that’s being done by a uniformed police officer — that changes the circumstances quite a bit in terms of how voluntary that is.”
In the letter, McIlquham and Nick cited another example in which they say a woman who was a frequent source of contact for St. Croix County sheriff’s officers was dropped off at a gas station in Eau Claire without receiving any services. Eau Claire EMS, the county sheriff’s office and the city police department later responded to multiple complaints regarding the individual, who did not have ties to Eau Claire.
St. Croix County Sheriff Scott Knudson described the incident to WEAU as a “courtesy ride.” He did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s interview request.
“I feel bad for Eau Claire that the facilities that we have available to us are in their jurisdiction, so sometimes they have to deal with the aftermath,” said Ridgeway, the Durand police chief. “But it happens a lot. That’s where the services are.”
Ridgeway told Wisconsin Watch the Durand Police Department will continue this practice as long as the attorney general allows it, adding that his department is not responsible for crimes these individuals may commit in Eau Claire. Asked how those individuals get back to where they came from, Ridgeway said that’s “out of our control.”
“These facilities receive funding from the federal government, state government, grants, donations — they’re not just receiving funding from Eau Claire County residents or city of Eau Claire residents,” Ridgeway said. “This is a service for all of western Wisconsin, and we’re going to take advantage of that service whenever we can.”
He defended the decision to drop a woman off in front of a shelter that was either full or not open.
“You might not tonight have a place, but they can tell you what time they open tomorrow so you can be in line to get services,” Ridgeway said. “We’ll continue to call and try to get a bed verified as being available, but if a person wants to be dropped off there, we’ll do so.”
In a March 11 press release, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of La Crosse said it is facing a potential decision to reduce Sojourner House’s operations from year-round to just six months, citing a loss of funding and a shortage of volunteers.
On one night in January, Dale Karls of the Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council told WEAU, Sojourner House, which has a normal capacity of 53, opened overflow spaces and housed 77 people.
Nick said he doesn’t doubt the officers were trying to help these people, “but the message needs to get out that they weren’t helped.” There’s been a growing need for homeless services since the pandemic as temporary services and funding have been rolled back, he said.
In the state’s 2023-25 biennial budget, the Republican-controlled Legislature rejected Evers’ recommendations to spend $24 million on emergency shelter and housing grants, as well as homeless case management services and rental assistance for unhoused veterans.
The Legislature also nixed $250 million Evers proposed for affordable workforce housing and home rehabilitation grants.
This year, Evers recommended another $24 million for homeless prevention programs in the 2025-27 state budget. Republican lawmakers who control the powerful budget committee vowed to throw out the governor’s budget and start from scratch this spring.
“The issue here is the disinvestment by the state and needed resources regionally,” Nick said. “It’s a law enforcement issue, but only because we have such poor options.”
A California city has outlawed the practice
In 2024, the city of Santa Cruz, California, outlawed the practice of transporting homeless people into the city without authorization. Mayor Fred Keeley told Wisconsin Watch the local ordinance has pressured surrounding communities to ramp up their own resources for the homeless.
The drop-off ban was sparked by an incident last summer when Hanford police drove a homeless woman with a disability nearly 200 miles to Santa Cruz — a city similar in size to Eau Claire — and left her outside a local shelter.
“I know that for decades, other cities in our county bring people and dump them in the city of Santa Cruz,” Keeley said. “Nobody should do this to us because we would never do it to you without a prior conversation.”
Keeley said these drop-offs almost never solve someone’s housing problem and instead shift the responsibility to another city. Santa Cruz is sympathetic to smaller municipalities with limited resources that are willing to coordinate with the city to arrange a transport, Keeley said, but that person should have some community ties.
Keeley said the city’s investments in permanent supportive housing and other programs have reduced the city’s street homelessness by more than 50% in the last two years.
Now, a bill has been introduced in the California Legislature that would ban local law enforcement agencies from transporting homeless individuals to another jurisdiction without first coordinating shelter or long-term housing for them. Keeley said he’s glad the issue is being taken up at the state level.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Fire was the primary cause of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 in New York City, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Fires were caused by debris from one of the center’s Twin Towers, according to NIST, a federal agency that investigates building failures.
The towers were struck by airplanes as part of a terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001.
More than 200 people, including scientists and engineers outside of NIST, produced the 2008 NIST report on the center attacks.
The consensus among them and other investigators was fire was the primary cause of the Building 7 collapse, international engineering academics wrote in 2020.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, suggested April 21 that the 47-story building was felled by a “controlled demolition” and that the government has covered up something. He cited a film that raised the demolition conspiracy theory.
The U.S. “has never gotten close to exceeding” quotas that would trigger Canada’s dairy tariffs, the International Dairy Foods Association said in March.
The Washington, D.C.-based group blamed Canadian “protectionist measures” for the U.S. not exporting enough dairy to reach quotas.
Canada-U.S. trade is tariff-free for almost all agricultural products, the U.S. Agriculture Department said in February.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents most of northern Wisconsin, said March 13 “Canada is tariffing us 200%” on dairy.
President Donald Trump made a similar claim March 12 in support of his tariff proposals.
Wisconsin exported $1.4 billion in agricultural products to Canada in 2023, more than double the amount of any other country, according to the latest statistics.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Death: It’s an unavoidable part of life we often avoid talking about. So folks who are seriously ill may not know how to navigate their final years or months.
Many have turned to hospice care for emotional, physical and spiritual support for themselves and loved ones.
But the national landscape of hospice care is changing, including in Wisconsin. Once run primarily by mission-driven nonprofits, the industry is increasingly privatizing, with private equity playing a growing role.
Wisconsin Watch is partnering with the Multimedia Channels publications Green Bay Press Times, Northwoods Star Journal, Waushara Argus, Merrill Foto News, Marshfield Hub City Times and Wisconsin Rapids City Times to better understand how our communities access hospice and other end-of-life services.
We want to hear your questions and perspectives — whether your experiences have been positive, negative or somewhere in between. Or maybe you’re wondering how to navigate a new experience.
If you’d like to help shape our reporting, please fill out this brief form, and a reporter will follow up. Or feel free to contact Addie Costello directly at acostello@wisconsinwatch.org. We will not publish any details you share without your permission.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
(Graphic by Michael Crowe / Ag & Water Desk with images by Jeff Wheeler and Anthony Soufflé / Minnesota Star Tribune)
In northeast Iowa, a wispy stand of trees looks out of place.
It is surrounded by crop fields on the north side of a four-lane highway, an oasis of nature that is uncommon in rural Iowa, where farming every inch of land is paramount.
Its owner hopes to cut and till it for cropland.
But he can’t do it without risking his business. For now.
Jim Conlan, an out-of-state investor in Iowa farmland, knew the federal government considered those nine acres to be a wetland before he bought it as part of a larger tract. If he clears and plows that land, he will lose eligibility for the federally subsidized crop insurance and other benefits that a majority of row crop farmers depend on, under a 1985 law called “Swampbuster.”
Conlan went to court to challenge the law, arguing it violates his constitutionally protected property rights. If he wins, hundreds of thousands of acres in Iowa and other states could be drained, plowed and put into production.
Conlan said he sued after the U.S. Department of Agriculture declined to reclassify the wetland, which is often dry.
“They’re so impossible to deal with,” he said, following a recent federal court hearing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
He’s represented by the same law firm that persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 to overturn Clean Water Act protections for vast areas of wetlands because they are not continuously connected to a stream. As they did with the Sackett case, Conlan’s lawyers hope to topple another pillar of the federal government’s wetland conservation policy.
The case describes Swampbuster as unfair and coercive, arguing that it prevents farmers from draining or filling wetlands on their own properties without paying them for taking the land out of production.
“It seemed really egregious to me that farmers — an industry that’s so vital to America and to the world — couldn’t use their own property to do this and weren’t being compensated for it,” said Loren Seehase, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, one of two organizations representing Conlan’s company, CTM Holdings. “As long as they … are getting (federal) benefits, they can’t do anything with that wetland.”
But advocates of the statute say it’s reasonable — the law does not prohibit farmers from draining wetlands on their property.
“This isn’t money that’s owed to these farmers. These are optional grants and insurance programs that the government provides,” said Dani Replogle, a staff attorney at Food & Water Watch. “So there are conditions associated with receiving government money, just like there are conditions associated with receiving Medicare and food stamps.”
Elle Gadient is a beginning farmer near Hopkinton, Iowa, and is downstream from the CTM Holdings wetland. She says Swampbuster is important for the environment. (Nick Rohlman / The Gazette)
Whatever happens in court, people in this part of the world know that one farmer’s decisions about how to manage their land will affect their neighbors.
One of those people, a beginning farmer named Elle Gadient, has 160 acres downstream from Conlan’s property. Gadient’s cropland and pasture swaddle an old white farmhouse at the top of a hill.
She and her husband hope to raise young dairy cattle there in future years.
Gadient is concerned about what happens if Swampbuster goes away. “This is really a program for all farmers and affects water quality that affects all of us,” she said.
Protecting ag wetlands
Wetlands in the United States have gained appreciation over time for their environmental benefits. They filter pollution, absorb floodwaters and provide habitat for wildlife. But millions of acres have been destroyed since European settlement.
When European settlers arrived in the Midwest in the 1700s, wetlands were an impediment to agriculture. So settlers drained most of them with ditches and, later, perforated underground tubes known as “tiling.”
In the early 1900s, the government helped organize the drainage networks — primarily in the wetter northern parts of Iowa — through the creation of drainage districts.
There are now thousands of these districts, which are overseen by counties and landowners to collectively maintain the vast systems of drain tiling that lie several feet beneath the surface. There are hundreds of thousands of miles of tile in Iowa alone.
In Iowa and Illinois — the nation’s leaders for corn and soybean production — about 90% of those states’ pre-settlement wetlands were converted, primarily to increase their cropland.
Attitudes toward wetland destruction shifted about 40 years ago. Up to that point, USDA programs were not uniformly designed to protect wetlands — some were actively destructive, such as crop commodification and price supports, which encouraged practices that led to more soil erosion and polluted water.
Conservation groups like the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society lobbied for changes to agricultural policies in the 1985 farm bill, or the Food Security Act.
The farm bill is a massive, omnibus measure that funds federal policies for food and agriculture. It is renewed by lawmakers about every five years, and it includes SNAP benefits and crop insurance subsidies for farmers, among other supports. Hundreds of billions of dollars are allocated to cover programs, loans and insurance.
The 1985 bill included the Swampbuster provision, as well as Sodbuster, which was intended to prevent soil erosion.
These provisions bound wetlands protection to USDA loans, payments and assistance programs, including crop insurance and price support. They are key programs that more than 34% of farm households in the U.S. receive, helping them break even in times of drought or low commodity prices. About 95% of both corn and soybeans in Iowa — nearly 23 million acres — are insured, according to the USDA.
And it worked. A 1998 study found that about 12 million acres of U.S. wetlands had been protected under Swampbuster.
But it’s hard to track these threatened ecosystems. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), which oversees Swampbuster rules, does not maintain a searchable database and cannot accurately say how many acres there are, said Sue Snyder Thomas, a former NRCS state compliance specialist.
She said the wetlands often range in size from a half acre to 10 acres in Iowa.
The Iowa case
Conlan’s property doesn’t look like a wetland.
It’s not connected directly to a stream. Its surface is often dry and overgrown with grass. There’s a stand of trees on part of it, and the rest is pocked with stumps — the government allows landowners to harvest trees as long as the stumps and roots remain.
But you can’t judge a swamp by its surface water.
NRCS is the judge. Federal regulators evaluate the soil and vegetation for signs that it’s often waterlogged during the growing season. They also review aerial images.
In 2010, the NRCS determined that part of the property was a wetland for the purposes of the Swampbuster rule.
Twelve years later, Conlan bought 72 acres near the town of Delaware for $700,000, according to county records. A little more than half of those acres were farmed at the time.
Conlan has since removed trees from part of the land to grow more corn and soybeans, and he would like to clear the wetland. He asked the NRCS to reevaluate the wetland designation but said he was refused.
Elle Gadient looks after chickens on her farm near Hopkinton, Iowa. (Nick Rohlman / The Gazette)
Federal rules allow landowners to ask for reevaluations if nature alters the land or if there’s evidence the agency erred.
Wetland designations have been challenged repeatedly in federal court with varying degrees of success, but Conlan’s lawsuit might be the first to question whether the wetland protection program itself is lawful under the Fifth Amendment’s clause that says private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation.
The lawsuit claims that when USDA designates a piece of farmland as a wetland, it effectively takes that area out of production, barring farmers from draining, filling or cultivating it if they wish to remain eligible for USDA benefits.
While applying for USDA benefits is not mandatory, the lawsuit claims that farmers’ historic reliance on crop insurance and other federal subsidies — coupled with pressures on the nation’s agriculture industry — have made these programs essential to their livelihoods and operations.
And if Conlan violates Swampbuster, he loses the potential for those benefits for all of his Iowa farmland, which totals more than 1,000 acres. Conlan rents the land to farmers and confers the benefits to them.
“They’re basically relinquishing (that) constitutional right in order to receive federal benefits,” said Seehase, the attorney for Conlan’s company. “There are ways to conserve and preserve our environment that still keep those constitutional protections in place.”
CTM Holdings’ lawsuit has sparked action from sustainable agriculture groups in Iowa and neighboring states, which filed a motion to intervene in the case in October 2024. The coalition argues that eliminating or weakening Swampbuster would open the door to further depletion of wetlands, exposing its members to greater flood risk and other environmental hazards and imperiling their properties, crops and overall safety.
A slam dunk?
The groups challenging the Swampbuster law don’t think it will result in widespread wetlands loss.
“It’s a huge logical misstep to think that every farmer would then till their land and turn it into farmlands,” Seehase said. “Not every farmer is going to do that.”
Others are less optimistic. Corn and soybean prices are down, and costs to grow the crops are up.
“When margins are tight, farmers find every additional acre they can plant corn to plant the corn,” said Aaron Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, a group of progressive farmers that has intervened to block the lawsuit.
He added: “It would, for sure, accelerate the depletion of our wetlands.”
In 2005, a federal appeals court ruled that the Swampbuster statute is not so “coercive” as to force farmers to comply, nor does USDA act as a “gatekeeper” to farmers developing wetlands on their properties if they so choose.
The wetlands can be transformed into a non-farm use without losing farm subsidies, under the federal rules. And following the Sackett court ruling, Swampbuster is the main federal legal disincentive for farmers who want to drain wetlands that are not continuously connected to navigable waters.
‘You could build a skyscraper on it if you want to.’
Chief U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams, noting that wetlands can be transformed into a non-farm use without losing farm subsidies, under federal rules.
At a March 31 hearing on Conlan’s case in Iowa’s northern district, Chief U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams noted that potential: “You could build a skyscraper on it if you want to,” Williams said.
Williams is considering competing motions in the case to decide the lawsuit before it is set to go to trial in June.
An assistant U.S. attorney representing the USDA argued the case should be tossed out because the agency was willing to take a second look at whether Conlan’s property is a wetland, though the agency admitted botching that message. Conlan is dubious.
Even if the judge agrees it was a miscommunication, he might still decide to weigh the arguments about its constitutionality. Whatever he decides will likely be appealed.
It’s unclear what might happen if the lawsuit succeeds. The federal government could implement a new plan that pays farmers for setting aside flood-prone land that they could otherwise grow crops on.
That still might pit farmer against farmer.
“All my upstream neighbors’ land could be drained, and that water’s got to go somewhere,” said Lehman, who farms in central Iowa. “It’s going to come and make my land less usable.”
That’s disconcerting to Gadient, the young farmer who is downstream from the land at the center of the Iowa lawsuit.
She and her husband have sought to strengthen their farm community, inviting their neighbors for regular breakfasts at their home on the hill.
They hope to graze livestock on their farm but for now have chickens and barn cats that laze about.
The men in the area typically go to a local McDonald’s for coffee in the mornings. The wives go to a women-owned gas station nearby. Gadient hopes that a Swampbuster defeat won’t fray those connections and others like them.
“We love the community,” she said. “We really care about our neighbors.”
(Graphic by Michael Crowe / Ag & Water Desk with images by Jeff Wheeler and Anthony Soufflé / Minnesota Star Tribune)
It was late in the season, and most of the birds were gone. But there had to be a few stragglers out there, late migrators that hadn’t yet left for warmer waters.
Jordan Lillemon tossed his decoys into Lake Christina, a few yards from shore, and hoped that western Minnesota still had some goldeneyes, ducks with stark black-and-white bodies. He was almost certain that sunlight would bring in hooded mergansers, smaller ducks that fly fast and dive and appear suddenly from any direction, at any time, and are among the most difficult to shoot.
Kettle, his 7-year-old black Lab, paused for a moment in the water, then climbed up to her platform next to the hunting blind and waited for the sun to rise.
Nearly all of the wetlands in Minnesota’s prairie region have been destroyed, drained away and turned into row crops by thousands of miles of ditches and tile lines. Many of the few that remain – an estimated 5% of the total before settlement – were saved by duck hunters.
The love of birds, for sport and food, or simply for observation, has been the saving grace of the swamps, marshes and shallow lakes along the Mississippi River, from its upper reaches in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa on down to Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana.
Hundreds of species, including every kind of duck, goose and swan, need those wetlands, which rise and fall, flood and recede, to breed, forage and rest.
When wetlands are destroyed, the birds are usually the first to noticeably die off.
By the early 1900s, it was clear that draining the swamps, bayous and backwaters of the Mississippi River to create new and valuable farmland was causing drastic falls in duck and wildlife populations across the continent.
In 1918, a man who grew up in Davenport, Iowa, and moved out east wrote to the Omaha World Herald to ask if duck hunting along Davenport’s portion of the Mississippi River was still the best in the world.
“All swamplands have been reclaimed, drained and fields of waving corn now stand where in your days the muskrat built his home,” the paper’s outdoor writer responded. “Very little duck hunting is now enjoyed along the Mississippi River.”
Waterfowl populations continued to fall for the next 15 years, until the habitat loss and over-hunting pushed several species to the brink of extinction.
In 1934, Congress tried something new – and simple. Lawmakers required every goose and duck hunter over the age of 16 to buy a $1 stamp. All the money collected from the stamp would be used to buy and permanently protect swamps and marshes up and down the Mississippi Flyway that the birds needed to survive.
It worked. Through the first few years of the program, the United States and hunters were able to save thousands of acres of marshes. Then tens of thousands.
The ducks almost immediately returned.
The agency in charge of the duck stamp, which became the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, started working with nonprofit conservation groups like Ducks Unlimited not only to save swamps but to revive ones that had been destroyed. Ducks Unlimited would negotiate easements with landowners and then remove drainage tiles, ditches and dams to restore the natural flow of water to breeding grounds that had been lost. The Fish and Wildlife Service worked with Ducks Unlimited and other groups to buy and permanently protect restored wetlands.
Over the last 90 years, revenue from the hunting stamp, which now costs $25, has saved about 6 million acres of wetlands. Ducks Unlimited, which is funded primarily by hunters, estimates it has restored 18 million acres in North America, the vast majority in nesting grounds for birds that migrate along the Mississippi Flyway, from prairie Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
That’s a total area of swamps, marshes, bogs and shallow lakes larger than Lake Superior.
But it’s a fraction of what it was.
Jordan Lillemon waits as his black Labrador retriever, Kettle, returns with a bird Nov. 19, 2024, on Lake Christina in Ashby, Minn. (Anthony Soufflé / Star Tribune)
Lake Christina was one of the most famed and productive hunting lakes in Minnesota in the 1920s. There were regular reports then of more than 100,000 white-backed canvasback ducks dotting the lake. But by 1959, that number had fallen to about 250.
Lillemon grew up on the lake, and seeing its rebirth helped inspire him to become a habitat engineer for Ducks Unlimited.
“It’s hard for me to hunt anywhere else,” he said, as the birds have become so consistent.
The waterline in a healthy and functioning wetland needs to fluctuate, like lungs. The damage done to a wetland when it is drained is immediate and obvious, like air sucked out of a collapsed lung. The rich soil dries up and can be plowed and turned into a cornfield. But the other extreme is just as damaging. Wetlands can be flooded to death. This happens when dams, drainage ditches and tile lines force too much water into the system and don’t let it leave. Imagine taking a deep breath and never being able to exhale.
That’s what happened to Lake Christina.
As thousands of acres of what had been meandering streams and marshes were drained to build out the crop fields of west-central Minnesota, some of that water pushed into Lake Christina. The higher water levels allowed bullheads and carp to thrive. They churned up the lake bottom, and it became dark and mucky. Native aquatic plants like wild celery died off.
The birds left.
About 15 years ago, Minnesota lawmakers funded a pumping system in one of the dams near the lake with the help of Ducks Unlimited and the Fish and Wildlife Service. In 2010, the state drew down water levels, allowing the system to exhale for the first time in 50 years. Fish and algae populations immediately dropped to more natural numbers. Sunlight once again reached the lake bottom. Plants started growing.
As the lake rose with the rains and snow melt of the following spring, thousands of ducks returned.
Shortly after sunrise on his hunting trip in November, a lone bird flew in high and fast from Lillemon’s left. The duck ignored the decoys, going straight overhead. Lillemon swung and fired. The bird fell.
“Hooded merganser,” he said.
Kettle leaped from her platform, swam out, brought it to Lillemon and then looked back up at the sky. It would be a busy morning for Kettle. There were no goldeneyes, but Lillemon and his party had nearly filled its limit of mergansers by 9 a.m.
Jordan Lillemon takes a shot while duck hunting Nov. 19, 2024, on Lake Christina in Ashby, Minn. (Anthony Soufflé / Star Tribune)
Minnesota lost 140,000 acres of forested wetlands between 2006 and 2020, with many replaced by flooded or man-made ponds and lakes.
The Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett decision has also removed federal Clean Water Act protections for wetlands unless they have a continuous surface connection to navigable waters. That strips federal protection from many shallow breeding ponds, which fill up with rain and snowmelt only in the spring.
Those ponds, called prairie potholes, will now have to rely either on state protections or conservation programs like those funded by the duck stamp.
Over the last 20 years, wetlands have been losing some of their most ardent advocates. Duck hunting, as a pastime, is in decline throughout breeding grounds of the Upper Midwest.
The number of licensed waterfowl hunters in Minnesota dropped by 45% between 2000 and 2023 – a loss of about 55,000 hunters. South Dakota duck and goose hunters fell by nearly a third over roughly the same time. Wisconsin has dropped by 5,000 licensed hunters.
But across the country, sales of the federal duck stamp have remained stable at about 1.5 million stamps sold each year since 2010. Some of that is because duck hunting has been growing as a sport in the South, in places like Arkansas where licensed hunters have increased.
It’s also because there has been a newfound push among birders, those who observe but don’t hunt, to buy duck stamps to support the preservation of wild places, said Scott Glup, the recently retired project leader of the Litchfield Wetland Management District for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
“They take as much pleasure in seeing a bird as I do watching my dog work a field,” he said. “If you want bird habitat, here’s something you can do. Buy a duck stamp.”
Scott Glup holds a variety of wildflower seed from the Squashed Frog Waterfowl Production Area on Nov. 26, 2024. Glup was project leader of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Litchfield Wetland Management District before retiring after almost 40 years. (Carlos Gonzalez / Star Tribune)
Each acre is its own struggle to reclaim.
The farmland where much of the losses have been is valuable. Some of it was drained by county or state governments for what was believed to be for the public good.
In November, Glup stood by the side of one of the wetlands he helped restore a few days before his retirement. It took 15 years for the Fish and Wildlife Service to work out a deal with the landowners to put a conservation easement on the property. It’s still owned by the farmers, but it can never be drained or intensively farmed again.
The site was a 200-acre lake named Butler Lake more than 100 years ago. But in 1919, a handful of nearby farmers asked Meeker County to drain it away to give them more room to graze their cattle. The county obliged, hiring a contractor to empty the lake.
Using duck stamp dollars, the Wildlife Service bought the easements. Partner groups including Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever helped tear out some of the old drain tile. And in 2024, a smaller, 65-acre Butler Lake held open water for the first time in more than a century.
Glup watched a pair of trumpeter swans in the lake. Just a few weeks earlier he had seen sandhill cranes, sora rails and black terns all finding an old stopping ground for their migration that had been covered up for a century.
How can you justify taking land out of production?
That’s the most persistent question Glup received in his 37-year career restoring wetlands.
Watching the swans, Glup said he used to dread that question from hostile county boards and skeptical farmers. But then he started looking forward to it – after he had hunted in some of those restored fields and seen all that they had brought back.
“We’re not taking it out of production, we’re putting it back into production,” Glup said. “With these wetlands we’re producing groundwater recharge, erosion control, flood protections, ducks and pheasants. We’re producing public land that people can go out and enjoy. We’re producing pollinators.”
Scott Glup at the Squashed Frog Waterfowl Production Area he helped restore on Nov. 26, 2024. (Carlos Gonzalez / Star Tribune)
Throughout his career Glup was usually the first one in the office, arriving around sunrise. The Litchfield office is a small building off of a two-lane road that backs up a few hundred acres of restored prairie. During the season he would hunt pheasants over his lunch break in that prairie with Rica, the best pheasant dog Glup has ever had.
About four years ago, as he walked from his car, he heard the clear and cheerful song of meadowlark. It’s a sound he had once heard often, but not in years as Minnesota’s western meadowlark population fell.
“I know young folks who don’t know what a meadowlark is because they’ve never seen them, they’ve never heard them perform,” he said.
Glup ran into his office, grabbed a pair of binoculars and found the bird — a male, bright and yellow, singing in the field.
“For about two weeks, he sang,” Glup said. “And then he disappeared.”
Each year since, meadowlarks have been back. He’ll count up to 10 of them some mornings.
He’s not sure what exactly the limiting factor was. Was it space, water, a certain mix of insects brought in by the right combination of wildflowers? But somehow the field behind his office went from inhospitable to hospitable for meadowlarks, he said.
And as soon as it did, a bird that he hadn’t seen in decades returned.
It’s almost always the birds, he said, that will tell you if the land is healthy.
Guidance from the Democratic governor of Wisconsin’s administration to state employees about what to do if immigration officials or other federal agents show up at their workplace drew fire Monday from Republicans, who said it was in defiance of the law and President Donald Trump.
The memo from Gov. Tony Evers’ administration sent Friday afternoon comes as Trump’s administration has ramped up efforts to deport people living in the country illegally, setting off a string of lawsuits and resistance among Democrats.
Here are things to know about what Evers did in Wisconsin.
Memo details how to respond to ICE
Anne Hanson, deputy secretary at Evers’ Department of Administration, said in the email to state employees that the guidance was sent after receiving questions about how to respond if Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or other federal agents show up at their workplace.
The five-point memo tells state employees to remain calm and immediately notify their supervisor. After asking agents to identify themselves and to present documentation of why they are there, the guidance says state workers should contact their office’s attorney.
The memo advises state employees not to answer questions from agents, not to give them permission to enter nonpublic areas and not to give them access to paper files or computer systems without first talking with an attorney.
Every Wisconsin state employee has a responsibility to protect confidential data and information, the memo said.
“Because of this, state employees may not grant ICE or another agent access to any such data or information absent authorization from their legal counsel pursuant to a valid judicial warrant,” the guidance concludes.
Hanson, the Evers official, says that the guidance was offered similar to what other public entities have done.
The recommendations are similar to guidance that Connecticut’s Democratic governor issued in January. The guidelines also mirror what the National Immigration Law Center and other advocacy groups have said should be done when immigration officials show up at a workplace.
Similar to the Wisconsin guidance, the National Immigration Law Center advises employees to contact an attorney, not speak to federal agents and not allow them into a private part of the workplace unless they have a judicial warrant.
Republicans accuse governor of defying the law
Republicans tried to use the memo against Evers, who has yet to say whether he will seek a third term next year in the swing state.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents northern Wisconsin and is considering a run for governor in 2026, said the memo amounts to “ordering state employees to block ICE from doing their job.”
“Wisconsin deserves better,” Tiffany posted on X. He copied U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on his message.
Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming called it an order to “impede justice.”
“This blatant defiance of law and order, in direct opposition to the Trump administration’s focus on public safety, puts our communities, families, and children at risk,” Schimming said in a statement.
Dueling approaches to immigration enforcement
The memo comes as Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature and minority Democrats are taking opposite sides on how to handle immigration enforcement.
The Wisconsin Assembly last month passed a bill requiring county sheriffs to comply with federal immigration authorities. Evers has said he is likely to veto the measure.
Democrats introduced a competing proposal that would block state and local government officials from cooperating with federal deportation efforts unless there is a judicial warrant. But that bill will go nowhere in the GOP-controlled Legislature.
The Evers memo was first made public Monday in a social media post by conservative talk radio host Dan O’Donnell.
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.
Uncertainty about what’s next — and how U.S. companies will absorb new costs — has stirred anxiety among investors, business owners and consumers.
“That whipsawing back and forth, that creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty,” said Steven Deller, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who researches the state’s agricultural and manufacturing economy. “And one thing that the economy hates is uncertainty.”
What does it all mean for Wisconsin? Fast-shifting policies make that difficult to definitely say. But Wisconsin Watch spoke with experts and examined economic numbers to provide some context.
First, what are tariffs and why is Trump issuing them?
The U.S. previously forged free trade agreements with 20 countries that limited tariffs in trade. Trump’s tariffs have blown up the status quo and prompted retaliation that has harmed some domestic producers and further rattled the global economy.
The Trump administration has cited several justifications for his policies, some of them conflicting. It says tariffs will boost manufacturing by encouraging Americans to buy domestic goods, reduce U.S. trade deficits and pressure countries to cut deals on other issues — like curbing the fentanyl trade and illegal immigration.
As it stands, most Chinese imports face tariffs of 145%, while Canada and Mexico face 25% tariffs, along with 10% for most everyone else.
Trump has exempted some goods from reciprocal tariffs, including copper, pharmaceuticals, lumber and electronics such as smartphones and laptops. However, Trump administration investigations of the national security and economic effects of importing items he exempted could result in additional tariffs. The White House has placed a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports.
How is this playing in Wisconsin?
Wisconsin’s large manufacturing and agricultural sectors make its economy strong, said Missy Hughes, secretary and CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. But business leaders she works with are increasingly hesitating to make big investments.
“It’s frustrating because our businesses were doing really well, and the Wisconsin economy is strong and has been strong for the last two years,” she said.
How much does Wisconsin import?
Wisconsin imported more than $38 billion in goods last year, about half from countries facing the highest Trump tariffs: China, Canada and Mexico.
Machinery and electronic products made up about one-third of Wisconsin’s total import value last year. Pharmaceutical products, some of which Trump has since spared from tariffs, made up 12%.
Who bears the cost of tariffs?
Importers pay tariffs to Customs and Border Protection when goods enter the country. The companies may absorb those costs or pass them to consumers by hiking prices — a common scenario.
Deller calls tariffs a regressive tax because they most affect people with lower income.
“They tend to spend their money more on goods than services,” he said. “They’re more likely to shop at a Walmart or a Dollar General-type store, and a lot of the goods that are sold in those kinds of stores come from international markets.”
How might tariffs affect Wisconsin manufacturers?
“U.S tariffs might benefit domestic manufacturers if they serve as a negotiating tool to encourage other countries to lower their own tariffs or other barriers to trade,” according to a recent Wisconsin Policy Forum report. “They might also insulate Wisconsin manufacturers from international competition at home.”
But they can harm Wisconsin producers by raising prices on raw materials or components that they import, such as steel or aluminum, the report added. Additionally, Trump’s tariffs have prompted retaliation that makes U.S. exports more expensive — at the risk of prompting foreign companies to drop Wisconsin suppliers.
Wisconsin’s top exports are particularly vulnerable to retaliatory tariffs: industrial and electrical machinery, accounting for $10.9 billion or nearly 40% of state exports in 2024, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
A New York Times analysis shows that Wisconsin workers may be among those hit hardest by retaliatory tariffs because affected industries support so many jobs in the state.
“Economists don’t agree on anything except for tariffs. You put a hundred economists in the room, and you ask them are tariffs a good policy — and 99 of them are going to tell you, no,” Deller said. “This is bad policy. At least the way that Trump is doing it. Everybody loses.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
When Neenah resident Tom Frantz got a pair of identical emails last Friday, saying they were from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, he just shrugged it off at first, believing it was spam.
But then, he said, he read the email more closely and was “really bothered” by the content.
The email said Frantz — a 68-year-old retired college administrator and teacher and American citizen born in western Pennsylvania — was in the United States on humanitarian parole and his parole was being terminated.
“If you do not depart the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States,” the email stated.
“Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you,” it added. “Please depart the United States immediately.”
Frantz has never been on or applied for humanitarian parole. He’s lived in the Fox Valley since moving in 1981 for a job at what is now the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh at Fox Cities.
Because of the threatening nature of the email and the lack of information about what to do if you were a U.S. citizen who received the notification, Frantz said he decided to do some research. He discovered that an immigration attorney in Massachusetts received a similar letter from immigration officials.
“I thought, ‘Boy, if an immigration attorney is alarmed about this, then I should be, too, and I should pay attention to what is being said here,’” Frantz said.
He said he was worried about the possibility of immigration officials showing up at his home, arresting him and ultimately deporting him. As a retiree, he said he was also worried about a reference in the letter to losing benefits because he spent years paying into Social Security and Medicare.
“I was not naive enough to believe that the government never makes a mistake,” he said. “But my fear was that it could compound. And if it compounded, then what were the consequences for me?”
Neenah resident Tom Frantz stands outside of his Fox Valley home on Thursday, April 17, 2025. Frantz received a notice from the federal government on April 11 telling him to leave the country or face removal. (Joe Schulz / WPR)
Frantz spent much of that Friday debating what to do about the letter. He ultimately decided his best bet would be to reach out to one of his representatives in Congress. On Monday morning, he said he left a voicemail with U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s office and received a phone call less than an hour later.
“After I contacted Sen. Baldwin’s office, they were working (on) it right away,” Frantz said. “I felt like I had an advocate, somebody who really understood my situation and knew the inner workings of government to try to address it.”
Baldwin’s office got in contact with the Department of Homeland Security and discovered the email was incorrectly sent to Frantz.
The notice that Frantz received went out to email addresses in the Customs and Border Patrol Home App, according to Baldwin’s office. The emails typically belonged to a person applying for parole or asylum, immigration lawyers, non-governmental organizations and financial supporters of applicants.
Frantz said he did not use the app or fit the description of those categories. He still isn’t quite sure why he received the email. Baldwin’s office says it has been in contact with federal immigration officials to ensure the issue was resolved.
While he says the Department of Homeland Security didn’t apologize to him directly, he says the department did apologize through Baldwin’s office. Frantz said the department reached out with a number of questions, and he got the sense “they were trying to figure out what went wrong.”
If Baldwin’s office hadn’t worked with him, Frantz said he planned to reach out to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s office and the office of Rep. Glenn Grothman.
“Had none of them responded … I probably would start carrying around different forms of identification, birth certificate and other stuff, to prove citizenship,” Frantz said.
The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Frantz’s situation and why he received the notification.
In a statement, Baldwin criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the situation, which could have resulted in the wrongful detention or deportation of a Wisconsin resident.
“This is completely illegal — President Trump is trying to deport an American-born, law-abiding citizen and has provided absolutely no justification,” Baldwin said in a statement. “The President cannot kick Americans out of the country just because he wants — no one is above the law, including the President.”
In reflecting on the situation, Frantz said he’s lucky because he knew how to find help. He said he expects that more U.S. citizens likely received similar emails by mistake.
“If I’m getting this, and that attorney in Massachusetts also got it, there’s probably a lot of other people who got this,” he said. “We don’t know how many people are on the distribution list.”
“I think it’s important that people stay vigilant and that they take emails seriously. Don’t click on the links, but investigate them,” Frantz added. “If it looks legitimate, I would definitely treat it as legitimate, and I would seek assistance from officials.”
Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ creative use of his uniquely powerful veto can lock in a school funding increase for 400 years, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The 4-3 ruling from the liberal-controlled court affirms the partial veto power of Wisconsin governors, which is the broadest of any state and has been used by both Republicans and Democrats to reshape spending bills passed by the Legislature.
Wisconsin is the only state where governors can partially veto spending bills by striking words, numbers and punctuation to create new meaning or spending amounts. In most states, governors can only eliminate or reduce spending amounts.
The court’s four liberal justices ruled Friday that the state constitution allows the governor to strike digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature.
“We are acutely aware that a 400-year modification is both significant and attention-grabbing,” Justice Jill Karofsky wrote for the majority. “However, our constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable.”
Justice Brian Hagedorn, writing for the three-justice conservative minority, said Wisconsin was now in a “fantastical state of affairs” that allows the governor to write new law through the use of his partial veto.
“One might scoff at the silliness of it all, but this is no laughing matter,” Hagedorn wrote. “The decision today cannot be justified under any reasonable reading of the Wisconsin Constitution.”
Evers called the decision “great news for Wisconsin’s kids and public schools.”
Brian Schimming, chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, said the ruling gives Evers “unchecked authority to override the will of Wisconsin voters.”
The ruling came in a case against Evers that was supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature. It is one of two lawsuits pending before the court dealing with vetoes by the governor. Republicans this year also introduced a constitutional amendment intended to curb veto powers.
Evers’ partial veto in 2023 increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.
Evers told lawmakers at the time that his partial veto was intended to give school districts increases in funding “in perpetuity.”
The Legislature and the state’s largest business lobbying group, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, argued that the court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare it unconstitutional. They argued that the Evers veto was barred under a 1990 constitutional amendment adopted by voters that removed the ability to strike individual letters to make new words — known as the “Vanna White” veto, named for the co-host of the game show “Wheel of Fortune” who flips letters to reveal word phrases.
Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, they argued.
But Evers countered that the “Vanna White” veto ban applies only to striking individual letters to create new words, not vetoing digits to create new numbers. Evers said that he was simply using the long-standing partial veto process allowed under the law.
Wisconsin’s partial veto power was created by a 1930 constitutional amendment, but it’s been weakened by voters over the years, including in reaction to vetoes made by former Republican and Democratic governors. The Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2020, then controlled by conservatives, undid three of Evers’ partial vetoes, but a majority of justices did not issue clear guidance on what was allowed.
Reshaping state budgets through the partial veto is a long-standing act of gamesmanship in Wisconsin between the governor and Legislature, as lawmakers try to craft bills in a way that is largely immune from creative vetoes.
Republican legislative leaders have said they were waiting for the ruling in this case and another pending case affecting the governor’s veto powers before taking up spending bills this session, including the two-year state budget.
The other case centers on whether Evers properly used his partial veto power on a bill that detailed the plan for spending on new literacy programs. The Legislature contends that Evers’ partial veto was unconstitutional because the bill did not appropriate money. Evers contends the Legislature is trying to control how the executive branch spends money and limit his partial veto power.
If the court sides with Evers in that case, it could greatly expand the kinds of bills subject to partial vetoes in the future.
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.
(Graphic by Michael Crowe / Ag & Water Desk with images by Jeff Wheeler and Anthony Soufflé / Minnesota Star Tribune)
In less than 10 years, three catastrophic floods ravaged northwestern Wisconsin and changed the way people think about water.
The most severe, in July 2016, slammed Ashland with up to 10 inches of rain in less than a day — a month’s worth of rain fell in just two hours. As rivers swelled to record highs, major highways broke into pieces, and culverts washed away. It took months for roads to reopen, with more than $41 million in damage across seven counties.
The Marengo River, which winds through forests and farmland before meeting the Bad River that flows into Lake Superior, was hit hard during these historic deluges. Centuries earlier, the upper watershed would have held onto that water, but logging and agriculture left the river disconnected from its floodplain, giving the water nowhere safe to go.
Today, the Marengo River stands as an example of a new kind of solution. Following the record floods, state leaders invested in opening up floodplains and restoring wetlands to relieve flooding. As the need to adapt to disasters grows more urgent, the Marengo River serves as an example that there’s a cheaper way to do so: using wetlands.
“We can’t change the weather or the patterns … but we can better prepare ourselves,” said MaryJo Gingras, Ashland County’s conservationist.
Wetlands once provided more natural flood storage across Wisconsin and the Mississippi River Basin, soaking up water like sponges so it couldn’t rush further downstream. But about half of the country’s wetlands have been drained and filled for agriculture and development, and they continue to be destroyed, even as climate change intensifies floods.
As the federal government disposes of rules to protect wetlands, environmental advocates want to rewrite the ecosystem’s narrative to convince more people that restoration is worth it.
Wetlands aren’t just pretty places, advocates argue, but also powerhouses that can save communities money by blunting the impact of flood disasters. A 2024 Wisconsin law geared at preventing such disasters before they happen, inspired by the wetland work in the Marengo River watershed, is going to test that theory.
“Traditionally, the outreach has been, ‘We want to have wetlands out here because they’re good for ducks, frogs and pretty flowers,’” said Tracy Hames, executive director of the Wisconsin Wetlands Association. “What do people care about here? They care about their roads, their bridges, their culverts … how can wetlands help that?”
Bipartisan Wisconsin bill posed wetlands as flood solution
Northern Wisconsin isn’t the only place paying the price for floods. Between 1980 and 2025, the U.S. was struck by 45 billion-dollar flood disasters, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with a cumulative price tag of nearly $206 billion. Many parts of the vast Mississippi River Basin receive up to eight inches more rain annually than they did 50 years ago, according to a 2022 analysis from Climate Central, a nonprofit organization that analyzes climate science.
Damaging floods are now so common in the states that border the Mississippi River, including Wisconsin, that the issue can’t be ignored, said Haley Gentry, assistant director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy in New Orleans.
“Even if you don’t agree with certain (regulations) … we absolutely have to find ways to reduce damage,” Gentry said.
Former Wisconsin state Rep. Loren Oldenburg, a Republican who served a flood-prone district in southwest Wisconsin until he lost the seat last year, was interested in how wetlands could help.
Oldenburg joined forces with Republican state Sen. Romaine Quinn, who represents northern Wisconsin and knew of the work in the Marengo River watershed. The lawmakers proposed a grant program for flood-stricken communities to better understand why and where they flood and restore wetlands in areas that need the help most.
State Highway 13, a major north-south route in Wisconsin, collapsed in rural Ashland County in 2016 after a massive rainstorm caused area rivers to swell to record highs. The county used state funds to restore wetlands, hoping to prove that they’re a natural flooding solution. (Courtesy of MaryJo Gingras / Ashland County Land & Water Conservation Department)
Jennifer Western Hauser, policy liaison at the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, met with Democratic and Republican lawmakers to advocate for the bill. She emphasized problems that might get their attention — related to transportation, emergency services, insurance, or conservation — that wetland restoration could solve. She said she got a lot of head nods as she explained that the cost of continually fixing a washed-out culvert could vanish from storing and slowing floodwaters upstream.
“These are issues that hit all over,” she said. “It’s a relatable problem.”
The bill passed unanimously and was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in April 2024. Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature approved $2 million for the program in the state’s most recent budget.
Twenty-three communities applied for the first round of grant funding, which offered two types of grants — one to help assess flood risk and another grant to help build new wetlands to reduce that risk. Eleven communities were funded, touching most corners of the state, according to Wisconsin Emergency Management, which administered the grants.
Brian Vigue, freshwater policy director for Audubon Great Lakes, said the program shows Wisconsin residents have come a long way in how they think about wetlands since 2018, when the state government made it easier for developers to build in them.
There’s an assumption that wetland restoration comes only at the expense of historically lucrative land uses like agriculture or industry, making it hard to gain ground, Vigue said. But when skeptics understand the possible economic benefits, it can change things.
“When you actually find something with the return on investment and can prove that it’s providing these benefits … we were surprised at how readily people that you’d assume wouldn’t embrace a really good, proactive wetland conservation policy did,” he said.
Private landowners need to see results
About three-quarters of the remaining wetlands in the lower 48 states are on privately owned land, including areas that were targeted for restoration in the Marengo River watershed. That means before any restoration work begins, landowners must be convinced that the work will help, not hurt them.
For projects like this to work, landowner goals are a priority, said Kyle Magyera, local government outreach specialist at the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, because “they know their property better than anyone else.”
Farmers, for example, can be leery that beefing up wetlands will take land out of production and hurt their bottom line, Magyera said.
In the Marengo watershed, Gingras worked with one landowner who had farmland that wasn’t being used. They created five new wetlands across 10 acres that have already decreased sediment and phosphorus runoff from entering the river. And while there hasn’t been a flood event yet, Gingras expects the water flows to be slowed substantially.
This work goes beyond restoring wetland habitat, Magyera said, it’s about reconnecting waterways. In another project, Magyera worked on a private property where floods carved a new channel in a ravine that funneled the water faster downstream. The property now has log structures that mimic beaver dams to help slow water down and reconnect these systems.
Now that the first round of funding has been disbursed in Wisconsin’s grant program, grantees across the state are starting work on their own versions of natural flood control, like that used in Marengo.
In Emilie Park, along the flood-prone East River in Green Bay, a project funded by the program will create 11 acres of new wetlands. That habitat will help store water and serve as an eco-park where community members can stroll through the wetland on boardwalks.
In rural Dane County, about 20 miles from the state capital, a stretch of Black Earth Creek will be reconnected to its floodplain, restoring five and a half acres of wetlands and giving the creek more room to spread out and reduce flood risk. The creek jumped its banks during a near record-breaking 2018 rainstorm, washing out two bridges and causing millions of dollars in damage.
Voluntary program with economic angle could be of interest elsewhere
Nature-based solutions to flooding have been gaining popularity along the Mississippi River. Wisconsin’s program could serve as a “national model” for how to use wetlands to promote natural flood resilience, Quinn wrote in a 2023 newspaper editorial supporting the bill.
Kyle Rorah, regional director of public policy for the Great Lakes/Atlantic region of Ducks Unlimited, said he’s talking about the Wisconsin grant program to lawmakers in other states in the upper Midwest, and he sees more appetite for this model than relying on the federal government to protect wetlands.
And Vigue has found that stakeholders in industries like fishing, shipping and recreation are receptive to using wetlands as infrastructure.
But Gentry cautioned that voluntary restoration can only go so far because it “still allows status quo development and other related patterns to continue.”
Firefighters assist residents in evacuating their homes due to East River floodwaters on March 15, 2019, in Green Bay, Wis. (Adam Wesley / USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)
Still, as the federal government backs off of regulation, Gentry said she expects more emphasis on the economic value of wetlands to drive protection.
“Every level of government is looking at ways to reduce costs so it doesn’t increase taxes for their constituents,” Gingras said.
John Sabo, director of the ByWater Institute at Tulane University, said as wetlands prove their economic value in reducing flood damage costs, taxpayers will see their value.
“You have to think about (wetlands) as providing services for people,” Sabo said, “if you want to get people on the other side of the aisle behind the idea (of restoring them).”
And although the Wisconsin grant program is small-scale for now, he said if other states bordering the Mississippi River follow its lead, it could reduce flooding across the region.
“If all upstream states start to build upstream wetlands,” he said, “that has downstream impacts.”
Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit newsroom that uses journalism to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected, seeks a regional editor to launch and lead our northeast Wisconsin bureau — covering Green Bay, Appleton, the Fox Valley and surrounding region.
This position is ideal for someone who believes that local news should be built for people who most need information to navigate their lives and engage with their communities. The right candidate will be a mission-driven, collaborative leader with a track record of producing journalism that investigates problems, explores solutions and serves the public.
Insights from community listening efforts and partnerships with other Wisconsin news organizations, built upon years of collaboration, will help the editor direct the high-impact, responsive coverage that residents deserve.
Wisconsin Watch aims to strengthen the quality of community life and self-government in Wisconsin by providing people with the knowledge they need to navigate their lives, drive forward solutions and hold those with power accountable. We pursue the truth through accurate, fair, independent, rigorous, nonpartisan reporting. We share our stories freely and collaborate with other news organizations that share our independent, nonpartisan, truth-seeking values.
Why northeast Wisconsin?
In our broader efforts to strengthen the local news ecosystem, Wisconsin Watch is launching a bureau that will serve key information and accountability needs of northeast Wisconsin residents. The bureau will build upon the success of the NEW News Lab, a collaborative launched in 2021 that provides technology support, capacity building and funding to boost local journalism and newsrooms in the region. The collaboration’s five other partners include: WPR, FoxValley365, The Post-Crescent, Green Bay Press-Gazette and The Press Times. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Journalism Department is an educational partner.
Job duties
The editor will:
Work with the managing editor and director of partnerships for northeast Wisconsin to establish and grow Wisconsin Watch’s presence in the region, playing a key role in attracting and retaining talented journalists to staff the bureau.
Work with the director of partnerships for northeast Wisconsin and community ambassadors to understand community information and accountability needs, ensuring that residents’ perspectives shape the bureau’s coverage. This will include helping to identify strategies for meeting folks’ most important news and information needs and for “meeting those audiences where they are” in terms of information levels, preferred formats and distribution channels.
Recruit, lead and edit reporters, overseeing the production of stories that will appear on Wisconsin Watch platforms and be distributed to news outlets across Wisconsin and the country. This may include occasional editing of reporters outside of the region when applicable.
Collaborate with journalists at for-profit and nonprofit news organizations in Wisconsin and across the nation.
Represent Wisconsin Watch at community events, developingrelationships with readers and supporters to ensure we stay embedded and connected in the communities we serve.
Help launch a paid citizen observer team to watch and take notes at public meetings and hearings not covered by journalists.
Required qualifications: The ideal candidate will bring a public service mindset and a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisan journalism ethics, including a commitment to abide by Wisconsin Watch’s ethics policies.
More specifically, we’re looking for a newsroom leader who:
Has at least five years of experience in public affairs journalism, including demonstrated experience in newsroom leadership — such as managing direct reports, mentoring early-career journalists or managing projects.
Is familiar with various waysnewsrooms can inform the public — from narrative investigations and features to Q&As and “how-to” explainers to visual stories, interactive graphics and social videos.
Has demonstrated experience collaborating across and/or outside of an organization.
Has experience in WordPress or similar content management systems.
Bonus skills:
Has familiarity with northeast Wisconsin, its history and its politics.
Has experience setting strategic priorities and vision.
Can communicate in multiple languages, particularly Spanish.
Location: This editor will be located in northeast Wisconsin.
Salary and benefits: The salary range is $65,000-$80,000. Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, and higher compensation may be available for someone with advanced skills and/or experience. Wisconsin Watch offers competitive benefits, including generous vacation (five weeks), a retirement fund contribution, paid sick days, paid family and caregiver leave, subsidized medical and dental premiums, vision coverage, and more.
Deadline: Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. For best consideration, apply by May 6, 2025.
To apply: Please submit a PDF of your resume, work samples and answer some brief questions in this application form. If you’d like to chat about the job before applying, contact Managing Editor Jim Malewitz at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to improving our newsroom by better reflecting the people we cover. We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. We are an equal-opportunity employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, or any other status protected under applicable law.
Reading Time: 10minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
Wisconsin law generally requires trans people, including children, to publish their legal name changes in a newspaper. Some worry the requirement poses a higher risk with the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies.
Lawyers working with trans people say Wisconsin’s publication requirements further endanger the trans community by creating a de facto dataset of people that some fear could be used for firing, harassment or violence.
“We live just in constant terror of the wrong person finding out that we have an 11-year-old trans child. … All it takes is one wrong person getting that information, and what we could end up going through, becoming a target, is horrifying.”
A Wisconsin law has dissuaded at least one transgender resident from going through with a legal name change. “It can put people at risk of violence and blatant discrimination simply because of who they are,” an ACLU lawyer said.
Update, April 18, 2025: After this story was published, the family of a transgender boy who changed his legal name at 15 years old learned a judge approved their request to retroactively seal his name-change documents. Wisconsin state Sen. Melissa Ratcliff and other Democrats have also introduced the bill that would eliminate the publication requirement for transgender people, so long as they can prove they’re not avoiding debt or a criminal record.
A transgender teenager had to announce his previous name, or deadname, in the newspaper when he legally changed his name under Wisconsin law. He is trying to retroactively seal those records because of concerns related to the political climate. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
In 2022, after living as a boy and going by a new name for several years, a 15-year-old from Madison, Wisconsin, wanted to make it official. Like most teenagers, he dreamed of getting his driver’s license, and his family wanted his government identification to reflect who he really was.
But Wisconsin law has a caveat: He would have to publish his old, feminine name and new name in the local newspaper for three weeks — essentially announcing to the world that he is transgender.
In many instances, if he had committed a crime, the law would afford him privacy as a minor. But not as a transgender teenager changing his name.
His parents worry the public notice now poses a risk as President Donald Trump has attacked transgender rights, asserted that U.S. policy recognizes only two sexes and described efforts to support transgender people as “child abuse.” The publication requirements endanger the community, lawyers working with trans people say, by creating a de facto dataset of likely transgender people that vigilantes and even the government could use for firing, harassment or violence.
Transgender people are over four times more likely to be victims of violence, research shows. Most transgender people and their families agreed to be interviewed for this story only if they weren’t named, citing safety concerns.
“Publication requirements really leave folks open and vulnerable to discrimination and to harassment more than they already are,” said Arli Christian, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It can put people at risk of violence and blatant discrimination simply because of who they are.”
Wisconsin’s legal process stems from a 167-year-old law, one of many statutes across the country that Christian said were intended to keep people from escaping debts or criminal records. Changing one’s name through marriage is a separate process that does not require publication in a paper.
Although the right to change one’s legal name exists in every state, the effort and risk required to exercise it vary. Less than half of states require people to publicize their name changes in some or all cases, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that tracks voting and LGBTQ+ rights.
Wisconsin law grants confidentiality only if a person can prove it’s more likely than not that publication “could endanger” them. But the statute does not define what that means. For years, some judges interpreted that to include psychological abuse or bullying, or they accepted statistics documenting discrimination and violence against transgender people nationwide.
In 2023, however, a state appeals court set a stricter standard after a trans teenager was denied a confidential name change in Brown County, home to Green Bay. The teen said he had endured years of bullying, in which peers called him slurs and beat him up. Court records show the Brown County judge asserted that publishing the teen’s name wouldn’t expose him to further harm because his harassers already knew he was transgender.
The teen argued that a public process would create a record available to people he met in the future. While the appeals court conceded a “reasonable judge” could agree, it found the Brown County judge had not improperly exercised her discretion in denying the request. Crucially, the appeals court determined that “endanger” meant only physical harm. The case wasn’t appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Both of these trans girls living in Wisconsin requested the confidential name-change process after the 2024 presidential election. A 14-year-old likes cuddling her cat, playing video games and practicing piano. (Illustration by Shoshana Gordon / ProPublica. Source images obtained by ProPublica.)
A 12-year-old shares her artwork. (Illustration by Shoshana Gordon / ProPublica. Source images obtained by ProPublica.)
The combination of Wisconsin’s public requirement, the restrictive ruling and the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies has dissuaded at least one person from going through with a name change.
J.J Koechell, a 20-year-old LGBTQ+ advocate from suburban Milwaukee, tried to change his name in November but decided against it after a judge denied his request for confidentiality, ordering him to publish his change in the local paper and create a public court record if he wanted to proceed.
“That’s already dangerous,” Koechell said of a public process, “given our political atmosphere, with an administration that’s trying to erase trans people from existence completely, or saying that they don’t exist, or that there’s something wrong with them.”
At the end of March, Wisconsin Democrats announced plans to introduce a bill that would eliminate the publication requirement for transgender people, so long as they can prove they’re not avoiding debt or a criminal record. Republicans, who control the Legislature, will decide whether it will receive a hearing or vote.
There has been a push in some states to make it easier and safer for transgender people to update their legal documents. Michigan and Illinois laws removing publication requirements took effect earlier this year. And a California lawmaker introduced a bill that would retroactively seal all transition-related court records.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, did not respond to emails and a phone call to his office seeking comment. Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica sought comment from four other Republican leaders in the Assembly and Senate. Of the two whose offices responded, a staffer for Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, R-Walworth, said, “It doesn’t look like something we’d consider a priority,” and a staffer for Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, said he was not available for comment.
Asked about the safety concerns people raised, a White House spokesperson said, “President Trump has vowed to defend women from gender ideology extremism and restore biological truth to the federal government.”
No exceptions for minors
Wisconsin’s law requires a transgender person to publish the details of their identity to change their name whether they are an adult or a child. The notice requirement makes no distinction based on age.
This is less privacy than the legal system typically affords young people, confirmed Cary Bloodworth, who directs a family law clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Bloodworth said both child welfare and juvenile courts tend to keep records confidential for a number of reasons, including that what happens in a person’s youth will follow them for a lifetime.
“I certainly think having a higher level of privacy for kids is a good thing,” Bloodworth said, adding that she thinks the publication requirement is unnecessary for people of any age.
An 11-year-old trans girl recently went through the name-change process. She enjoys playing with her dog and swimming, and her mom describes her as a “major science geek.” (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
A mom living near the Wisconsin-Illinois border whose 11-year-old daughter recently went through the name-change process said these proceedings should automatically be private for children.
“The fact that we still have to fight to get something as simple as a confidential name change for a minor who is obviously not running away from criminal or debt charges is just so frustrating and overwhelming,” she said.
The judge deciding their case seemed reluctant to grant confidentiality at first, questioning whether her daughter was being threatened physically, she said. The judge granted the confidential change. But the family remains shaken.
“We live just in constant terror of the wrong person finding out that we have an 11-year-old trans child,” she said. “All it takes is one wrong person getting that information, and what we could end up going through, becoming a target, is horrifying.”
Right before the pandemic, a teenager told her parents she was transgender. She spent much of that first year of her transition at home, attending virtual school like the rest of her peers in the Madison school district. She came out to only a few friends and wanted to keep her gender identity private, so she kept her camera off and skipped her high school graduation.
When she decided to legally change her name, the prospect of publicizing her transition terrified her, according to her mom.
A trans teenager was terrified of the public name-change requirement. She loves playing board games, reading and spending time with friends and her partner. (Illustration by Shoshana Gordon / ProPublica. Source images: obtained by ProPublica.)
“I explained to her that it’s in tiny, tiny print, and it’s in some page of the paper that no one is going to read,” her mom said. “But it felt to her like she was just standing out there in public with a ‘TRANS’ sign on her.”
While fewer people read physical newspapers these days, much of their content gets published online and is easily searchable. The court case, too, becomes a public record that is stored online and sometimes aggregated by other websites that show up at the top of search results.
The parents of the then-15-year-old boy who changed his name before getting his driver’s license discovered that happened to their son. When anyone — say, a prospective employer — searches the young man’s name, one of the first results shows his old name and outs him as trans.
“This is what somebody would use as their first judgment of him,” his mom said. “We certainly don’t want that to be something that people would use to rule him out for a job, or whatever it is he might be doing.”
Like many other states, Wisconsin does not have laws that ban discrimination against transgender people in credit and lending practices or in public spaces like stores, restaurants, parks, doctor’s offices and hotels. However, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, issued an executive order in 2019 banning transgender discrimination in state employment, contracting and public services.
After Trump took office again and began issuing executive orders attacking trans rights, the boy’s family started to investigate how they could retroactively seal the court records related to the name change. It wouldn’t change what was in the newspaper, but it could help them remove the online records. The court records also contain sensitive information like their home address that someone could use to harass them.
A friend who was a retired attorney helped their son craft an affidavit describing his experiences. His mom read from it during an interview. “‘Because of recent political events, I fear violence —’” she said before breaking off. “Oh God, I hate even reading this. ‘I fear violence, harassment, retribution because of my status as a transgender person.’”
Her son, who is now 18, shared a statement over email.
“At this moment in time I’m probably more scared about being a trans person than I ever have been before, with the public record if you have my first and last name you can easily find my deadname and therefore find out I’m trans,” he said. “I would love to say that I feel safe and valued in our society but unfortunately I can’t, at times I feel that my personhood is being stripped away under this government.”
A trans teenager officially changed his name and now fears violence because that information is public. He enjoys doing puzzles with his family and creating metal artwork. (Photos by Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Anne Daugherty-Leiter, who has guided transgender clients and their families through the name-change process as board president of Trans Law Help Wisconsin, said where a person lives in Wisconsin, and therefore what court they must petition, affects their likelihood of getting a confidential change.
Confidentiality is important, she said, because of how the state handles changes to birth certificates. Wisconsin birth certificates that are issued through a confidential name change show only the new name. But if a person has to announce their name change publicly, birth certificates are amended to list both the person’s old and new names. Any time the person has to use that document, at the DMV or while getting a loan, it outs them, she said.
‘This is not who I am’
Koechell, a trans man and LGBTQ+ activist, was unwilling to go through with the name-change process after being denied confidentiality by a judge late last year.
Koechell lives in Waukesha County, a Republican stronghold where multiple schools have enacted policies critics have called anti-LGBTQ+.
A judge denied J.J Koechell’s confidential name change with an order that referred to the trans man as “she” and “her.” (Illustration by Shoshana Gordon / ProPublica. Source images: courtesy of J.J Koechell, obtained by ProPublica.)
In a letter to the judge, Koechell wrote that people had sent him multiple threats and posted his family members’ addresses online, all for “being an advocate and being transgender openly in my community.”
“I do not want to publish my deadname for people to use against me,” he said in an interview, using a term common among transgender people to refer to their birth names. “I don’t see a reason why people who are not particularly fond of me wouldn’t show up at a hearing like that and try and cause trouble.”
Court records show the judge denied Koechell’s confidentiality request and his request to reconsider. The judge’s order referred to Koechell, a trans man with a masculine voice and beard, as “she” and “her.”
Koechell decided the public process wasn’t worth the risk. But it’s hard, he said, to move through life with his old identification.
“When I go to a new doctor or new appointment or something, then that’s the name on my chart, and then I get called that in a waiting room full of people, and it’s super uncomfortable. I just want to disappear,” Koechell said. “Then eventually, I have to correct the doctors, and I’m like, ‘Hey, just to let you know, I don’t go by that name. This is not who I am.’”
Data from the latest U.S. Transgender Survey found that 22% of people who had to show an ID that did not match their identity experienced some form of negative consequence, including verbal harassment, discrimination or physical violence.
If the U.S. Senate passes the SAVE Act, which would require voters to prove citizenship with a passport or birth certificate, those consequences could include disenfranchisement. Transgender people who can’t change the name on their birth certificate or passport would be ineligible to vote, according to the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and chief sponsor of the bill, has said the legislation directs states to create a process for citizens with a “name discrepancy” to register. “No one will be unable to vote because of a name change,” he said.
Trace Schlax, a trans man in Wisconsin, has tried to change his gender marker and name on official documents. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
After Trump won in November, Trace Schlax, a 40-year-old IT project manager, decided to expedite changing his gender marker on his passport, figuring he could update his name later in state court.
“It matters,” Schlax said. He loves to travel but has encountered extra scrutiny from airport security with outdated documents. “I get comments from TSA when I go through to travel domestically, about my hair, about how I look. I get extra pat-downs.”
He sent his application in early December and crossed his fingers. He received it back in February, rejected. By that time, Trump had issued an executive order banning trans people from changing the gender markers on their passports.
Schlax decided to continue updating what records he could, like his birth certificate and driver’s license. He worries about having conflicting documents. Will he get accused of fraud? Will he have trouble flying?
But in the end, he decided it was still important to change his name and update his license to improve his day-to-day experience.
And he decided to go about it publicly. It felt less painful, he said, to accept the risks rather than detail his personal, traumatic experiences to a judge only to have them decide he hadn’t endured sufficient danger.
“Me changing my name and my gender marker affects absolutely no one but me,” said Schlax, who has a court date to change his name in late April. “Why does this have to be so hard? Why do I have to prove myself so hard?”
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
If you want to understand how Wisconsin Supreme Court elections became so political — with a record $100 million spent on this year’s nasty contest — it’s helpful to trace the history of former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman.
Gableman’s career began full of promise, diligence and ambition. His cousin told Wisconsin Watch’s Tom Kertscher that at a young age Gableman “was always the adult in the room.”
But over the course of his career he became entangled in partisan politics.
Gableman was willing to travel hundreds of miles to take political appointments around the state, even receiving a Burnett County judgeship for which he didn’t apply. Gov. Scott McCallum acknowledged to Wisconsin Watch part of the reason he picked Gableman was he was a Republican supporter, bypassing two local finalists recommended by McCallum’s advisory committee for judicial appointments.
When Gableman ran for Wisconsin Supreme Court, he authorized a misleading, racially charged political ad against his opponent. At the time it was shocking enough to draw a formal complaint, but the Supreme Court couldn’t agree if it violated the judicial code of conduct. Now, you couldn’t turn on the TV or scroll social media before this year’s April 1 election without a faceful of misleading ads.
Despite his staunch Republican presence on the state’s high court, writing key opinions on Act 10 and dismissing an investigation into Gov. Scott Walker, Gableman fell out of favor with the party after he attended the 2016 Republican National Convention, in possible violation of judicial rules against partisanship. After causing disturbances in hospitality suites, he had to be escorted to his hotel. Party support for him waned. He decided, at age 50, not to run for a second 10-year term.
And yet, when President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Republicans called upon Gableman, who worked in Trump’s first administration, to investigate the results. Gableman found no evidence the election results were fraudulent and was called an “embarrassment” by the same Republican leader who hired him. The investigation ultimately cost taxpayers $2.8 million, four times more than its original budget. Now he’s facing a three-year suspension of his law license for his unprofessional conduct during the investigation.
The courts are not supposed to be subject to the same political whims of the legislative and executive branches. Supreme Court justices and judges run for office during nonpartisan spring elections for a reason.
As Kertscher’s account of Gableman’s career shows, raw power politics created this situation. It will be up to the public to decide if it wants something better.
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Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman has agreed to surrender his license to practice law for three years due to several infractions during his investigation of the 2020 election, but his career — built on serving Republican party interests — began to spiral downward after his attendance at the 2016 Republican National Convention, according to new reporting from Wisconsin Watch.
Gableman’s participation as a sitting Supreme Court justice at the 2016 Republican Convention in Cleveland may have violated the state judicial code, which bans partisan political activity. He caused disturbances in two hospitality suites and was escorted out of the convention hall by Wisconsin Republicans. Less than a year later, he decided, at age 50, not to seek re-election to a second 10-year term.
Gableman was hired in 2020 by President Donald Trump’s first administration to work in the federal Office of Personnel Management. He was involved in implementing a Trump executive order to curb diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training for federal employees. When Trump lost his 2020 bid for reelection, Gableman returned to the public spotlight by supporting claims the election had been stolen.
After Trump accused Wisconsin Republican leaders of not investigating election fraud and of “working hard to cover up election corruption,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced at the state Republican Party convention that he had retained Gableman, a Trump-aligned former Supreme Court justice, to investigate the 2020 election.
Gableman was paid $117,000 for the investigation — more than twice the amount budgeted — and the investigation cost taxpayers a total of $2.8 million — four times the budgeted amount, including $432,000 for a recently settled public records lawsuit. It found no evidence to overturn the election. “He paid no attention to detail, he delegated almost all the work to somebody else and very poor follow-through,” Vos told Wisconsin Watch. “It seemed like Mike Gableman was more concerned about the money he was earning as opposed to finding the truth.”
Listen to Tom Kertscher talking about this story on WPR.
Wisconsin’s recent Supreme Court election, with its $100 million in record spending and wall-to-wall attack ads, spotlighted how politicized the state’s “nonpartisan” high court has become.
To understand how we got here, consider the rise and fall of former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who has agreed to surrender his law license for behavior unbecoming of a lawyer, let alone a formertop judge.
Last November’s 10-count complaint filed by the Office of Lawyer Regulation, an arm of the very court he served on, is not the first time Gableman, 58, has been accused of an ethical lapse. But until now he has avoided public consequences. One example of Gableman’s actions, not previously reported, shows how closely intertwined an officially nonpartisan justice became with party politics.
Wisconsin Watch has learned that while a justice, Gableman attended the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland — in possible violation of judicial rules prohibiting attendance at party conventions — and while there, he appeared intoxicated and was escorted out of the convention hall after causing disturbances, according to two Wisconsin Republicans in attendance and a third briefed on the incident shortly after it happened.
Former longtime state GOP leader Steve King recalled then-U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy telling him that Gableman “has a problem and we need to get him back to his hotel.”
Gableman had established a solid legal career, having served in district attorney offices and courtrooms across the state. He made history winning election to the Supreme Court — the first candidate in four decades to defeat an incumbent justice.
But after the GOP convention in Cleveland, his career entered a downward spiral. His Republican support waned, and he decided not to run for a second 10-year term and disappeared from public life.
Then in 2021, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hired Gableman as a special counsel to investigate Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Wisconsin.
At the time, it was not publiclydisclosed that Gableman had worked a $170,000 executive branch job in the final yearof Trump’s first administration.
According to newly obtained public records, Gableman’s compensation for the failed election probe was more than twice what was budgeted for his role.
The entire investigation cost taxpayers nearly $2.8 million, a new figure that includes a $432,000 open records lawsuit settlement reached earlier this month. The total is more than four times the $676,000 that was budgeted for the project.
Gableman’s career — from his first major courtroom job in 1999, to the pivotal 2008 Supreme Court election, to perpetuating Trump’s debunked election conspiracies — is a case study in what can happen when partisanship entangles the government branch most shielded from political volatility.
‘Always the adult in the room’
Raised in Waukesha County as the youngest of five in a middle-class family, Gableman stood out for doing right, his cousin David Gableman told Wisconsin Watch. The former justice, through his cousin, declined to be interviewed and didn’t respond to other interview requests.
While growing up, “he was always the adult in the room,” David Gableman said. “Always the serious one, very focused. … He always wanted to have an impact, he always wanted to make a difference in life.”
Ripon senior yearbook photo, 1988. (Courtesy of the Ripon Crimson)
A multiyear classpresident at New Berlin West High School, Gableman earned a bachelor’s degree in history and education from Ripon College. At Ripon, he was sports editor of the yearbook and a member of BetaSigma Pi.
In earning his law degree in 1993 from the Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, Gableman made the dean’s honor roll.
Gableman, who never married and has no children, was aided in his career rise by Republican Party connections and a willingness to move to rural areas.
After working as a county government attorney and prosecutor in Langlade, Forest and Marathon counties in northern Wisconsin, in 1999 Gableman was appointed by GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson as district attorney in far-northwestern Ashland County.
Looking back, Thompson doesn’t see it as odd that he didn’t choose a local attorney, though he acknowledged he doesn’t recall even interviewing Gableman.
“I’m sure that Michael Gableman’s name came forward as an individual, that he was a Republican and that he was a good lawyer,” Thompson told Wisconsin Watch.
Gableman later described himself as an independent when Thompson appointed him. His first recorded campaign contribution in a Wisconsin election was to a Democrat — $500 in 1998 to then-state Assembly Rep. Greg Huber, who represented Marathon County.
Ashland County was something of a GOP launching pad at the time. Gableman was preceded as district attorney by J.B. Van Hollen, who went on to become Wisconsin’s attorney general, and succeeded by Duffy, now Trump’s transportation secretary. Van Hollen and Duffy also had been tapped for the job from outside the county.
Another GOP connection sets up a Supreme Court run
Running unopposed, Gableman was elected Ashland County district attorney as a Republican in 2000. District attorneys, unlike judges, can run with a partisan affiliation.
By then, Gableman chaired the county Republican Party. In 2002, he cut short his term as district attorney to take an administrative law judge position 260 miles away inAppleton under Thompson’s successor, GOP Gov. Scott McCallum.
The low-profile, largely bureaucratic position handles disputes within government agencies. But it gave Gableman the title of judge.
Just two months later, McCallum appointed Gableman to a vacant circuit court judgeship nearly 300 miles away in Burnett County.
Scott McCallum is seen in the 2002 Wisconsin gubernatorial debate, broadcast by C-SPAN.
It played out in a partisan way.
Gableman had not applied for the Burnett County judgeship. Yet McCallum chose him over two local applicants recommended by McCallum’s advisory committee for judicial appointments.
Gableman contributed $2,500 to McCallum’s campaign in the months before the appointment and headed up some McCallum fundraising events.
Asked why he picked Gableman, McCallum told Wisconsin Watch he knew Gableman “as a supporter of mine” and considered him a good attorney and a hard worker.
“It came down to it, the other two were Democrats, I appointed Gableman,” he said.
It’s true that one of thefinalists, then-Burnett County district attorney Ken Kutz, was a Democrat. But the other, Mark Biller, then district attorney in neighboring Polk County, was a Republican. McCallum didn’t respond to requests to clarify his recollection of Kutz and Biller.
McCallum made it clear when interviewing Kutz that the selection process was decidedly partisan.
“The first question was, ‘Why the hell should I appoint a Democrat for judge in Burnett County?’” Kutz recalled to Wisconsin Watch.
Biller was in the right party, but he had lost his run for Polk County judge months earlier.
He said McCallum chose Gableman because McCallum was “looking for someone who could use that job for higher office and advance party goals.”
“He went out there and just campaigned to death,” Kutz recalled of Gableman’s run for Burnett County judge several months after being chosen by McCallum. “The guy is a politician like nobody’s business.”
Nasty ads taint 2008 race
Gableman “ran a real tight courtroom” and performed well as a Burnett County judge, said Kutz, who succeeded Gableman after Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle appointed him to the bench.
Gableman helped create the county’s Drug and Alcohol Court, one of the first in Wisconsin, its Restorative Justice Program that helps divert offenders from jail, and inmate and juvenile justice community service programs.
But in deciding to run for Supreme Court in 2008, he was virtually unknown outside of GOP circles. Republicans speaking on condition of anonymity said Gableman emerged as the candidate after better-known conservatives opted not to challenge the incumbent Justice Louis Butler.
Butler, a former Milwaukee County judge and the state’s first African American justice, had been appointed in 2004 by Doyle. Both he and Gableman were running statewide for the first time.
Gableman’s campaign, led by former state Republican Party executive director Darrin Schmitz, cast Gableman as a law-and-order candidate, drawing a contrast with Butler, who previously had worked as a public defender.In attack ads, Gableman’s supporters nicknamed Butler “loophole Louie” — suggesting Butler would use legal loopholes to help criminal defendants.
Gableman stayed on message, said David Gableman, who accompanied his cousin on many campaign trips. “It didn’t matter what the question was,” Gableman would always quickly pivot to how many sheriffs had endorsed him, his cousin said.
Screen grab from Michael Gableman’s promotional video for his Supreme Court run. (From YouTube channel @gableman1)
He also received heavy backing from business interests, especiallyWisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which wanted a reliable conservative to flip what they viewed as an activist Supreme Court.
The court had issued a series of controversial rulings, including one finding that individual manufacturers could be held liable for a child’s lead paint injuries, even without proof they were responsible.
WMC and other conservative groups spent $2.75 million backing Gableman, nearly seven times what his own campaign spent, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign estimated.
Louis Butler (Wisconsin Supreme Court file photo)
At the time, the $6 million spent on the race — a fraction of the $100 million spent in the 2025 Supreme Court contest — passed the previous campaign spending record for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. That record had been set the previous year and was itself four times higher than the previous spending record.
Gableman defeated Butler by nearly 3 points, becoming the state’s first candidate to unseat an incumbent justice since 1967.
In his victory speech, Gableman declared a triumph for “judicial conservatism.”
William Bablitch, a former Supreme Court justice, said at the time: “Right now, the impression of the people of the state is justice is for sale, and some are going to get a fairer shake than others.”
Surviving accusations of misconduct
In what would become a pattern, Gableman was accused of two ethical lapses during and soon after the 2008 campaign.
Liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now alleged Gableman had made campaign fundraising calls for McCallum from his taxpayer-funded Ashland County district attorney’s office in 2002. One Wisconsin Now produced records showing 55 calls had been made from Gableman’s office and from his government-issued cellphone to McCallum fundraisers and donors, McCallum’s campaign office and others.
One Wisconsin Now requested investigations, but several authorities, including Van Hollen, Duffy, the Government Accountability Board and the Office of Lawyer Regulation, refused.
The calls “sent the message that he was political,” said Sachin Chheda, who ran Butler’s campaign. “It also sent the message that he was willing to push the envelope.”
Gableman also faced a judicial oversight investigation for a misleading campaign ad he approved three weeks before the election.
The ad falsely implied that, as a public defender, Butler used a loophole to free imprisoned rapist Reuben Lee Mitchell, who later molested a child. In fact, Butler’s representation didn’t result in a reduced punishment and Mitchell committed the later crime only after serving his prison sentence.
“It just shows he was willing to do anything,” Scot Ross, former head of One Wisconsin Now, said of Gableman.
David Gableman noted there were harsh attack ads on both sides, recalling that another relative didn’t vote for his cousin after ads accused him of giving light sentences to sex offenders.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman acknowledges applause after taking the oath of office in a ceremony at the Capitol in Madison, Wis., on Oct. 24, 2008. Gableman was sworn in by former Justice Donald Steinmetz. (Craig Schreiner / Wisconsin State Journal)
In October 2008, just two months after Gableman was sworn in, the state Judicial Commission filed a complaint against him, alleging his ad violated the state judicial code of conduct.
The commission dropped the case in 2010 after the Supreme Court deadlocked 3-3 on what to do about the complaint. Gableman didn’t participate. The other three conservative justices saidthat while the ad was “distasteful,” its statements were “objectively true” and protected by the First Amendment.
Reliable conservative falls out of favor with his party
Gableman’s tenure on the Supreme Court was marked by controversy.
When Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused Justice David Prosser of putting his hands around her neck during an argument — an incident witnessed by four justices — Gableman’s account was the only outlier, characterizing the 5-foot-3 Walsh Bradley as looming over the 5-foot-9 Prosser, according to a sheriff’s report.
Gableman also claimed to sheriff’s investigators that Walsh Bradley had smacked him on the back of the head in the presence of their colleagues for calling Shirley Abrahamson, then the chief justice, by her first name. No other justice corroborated his story.
Ethics complaints were filed with twostate agencies over Gableman’s acceptance of two years of free legal services, likely worth tens of thousands of dollars, in the case filed against him over the Butler ad. As a justice, Gableman did not recuse himself from cases argued by Michael Best & Friedrich, the law firm that provided his free legal aid. He ruled in favor of the firm’s clients five times, more than any other justice during his tenure on the court, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. No action was taken against him from those complaints.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman speaks during a court hearing Sept. 17, 2015, at the Grant County Courthouse in Lancaster, Wis. Also pictured are Justices David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley. (Jessica Reilly / Telegraph Herald)
A strong conservative on the court, Gableman wrote the court’s 5-2 opinion upholding Act 10, the 2011 law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most Wisconsin public employee unions. He also wrote the 4-2 decision that ended what was known as the John Doe II criminal investigation into Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s coordination with outside groups during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections that Act 10 triggered.
Then Cleveland happened.
Attending the Republican National Convention was problematic for a sitting justice. The state Judicial Code of Conduct directs judges to “avoid partisan activity” and says they may not “participate” in political party conventions. But what’s labeled as a comment on the rule says judges “may attend public events, even those sponsored by political parties or candidates, so long as the attendance does not constitute the kind of partisan activity prohibited by this rule.” In recent years, Wisconsin candidates for the Supreme Court and a justice-elect have spoken at state Democratic and Republican party conventions.
One Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he witnessed Gableman being “loud and obnoxious” at the convention. Gableman appeared to be intoxicated before other attendees escorted him out of the convention hall and back to his hotel, the Republican source said.
That source and another Republican, who was not in attendance, said they were told by party colleagues that Gableman belligerently insulted Janesville U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, then speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in a hospitality suite, before Duffy became involved and whisked him away.
Spokespersons for Duffy and Ryan did not return messages seeking comment.
David Gableman said he drove to the convention with his cousin, though they didn’t attend all of the same events together. He said he wasn’t aware of any incidents.
The Republicans who declined to be identified said the incident added to concerns about whether Gableman would be the best candidate toback in 2018. In June 2017, Gableman, then only 50, announced he would not run for a second term.
In 2020, Gableman was hired by the federal Office of Personnel Management at a salary of $170,800 putting him among the highest-paid 10% of employees in the agency. Gableman wasinvolved in implementing a Trump executive order tocurb diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training for federal employees, a precursor to what would happen this year with Trump’s second administration.
2020 election probe becomes new focus
When Trump lost the 2020 election and fought the result in court with baseless claims of voter fraud, Gableman, no longer working in government, became a lieutenant in Trump’s election fraud-fighting army.
Gableman, like Trump, “has always been kind of anti-establishment,” believes “the swamp” is deep and that politicians aren’t accountable, David Gableman said. “He’s been loyal to Trump not because he’s a blind soldier, but because he has similar political beliefs.”
Defending Trump also allowed Gableman to return to the public spotlight.
Michael Gableman, formerly a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, speaks at a rally for President Donald Trump at American Serb Hall in Milwaukee on Nov. 7, 2020, after Joe Biden had won a bitterly fought contest for president over Trump. (Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via USA TODAY NETWORK)
Four days after Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, Gableman suggested at a pro-Trump rally in Milwaukee that the election had been stolen.
In June 2021, Trump accused Vos, the state’s Assembly speaker, and other Wisconsin GOP leaders of “working hard to cover up election corruption.”
The next day, Vos announced at the state Republican Party convention that he had retained Gableman to investigate the 2020 election.
The move took pressure off Vos and other Wisconsin Republicansfrom Trump’s base. They were placating Trump by choosing a Trump-aligned former Supreme Court justice to lead the investigation.
Vos miscalculated.
It wasn’t widely known at the time that Gableman had been working for Trump’s administration in 2020. Asked if he knew, when hiring Gableman, that the former justice had been working for Trump, Vos said he didn’t think so.
Gableman began his first months of election investigation work at the New Berlin Public Library because he didn’t own a computer.
It didn’t go well. Gableman acknowledged having little understanding of how elections work. He also:
Tried to jail the mayors of Madison and Green Bay for refusing to submit to depositions, which he had no authority to do.
Endorsed various false claims about lawmakers’ power to decertify Biden’s election victory, which the New York Times reported had lended “credence to the conspiracy theories.”
Deletedrecords in violation of state regulations, leading Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn to say Gableman appeared to have “gone rogue” and “run amok” by refusing to comply with the state’s open records law.
His work did please one fan, however.
In April 2022, Gableman attended a party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where Trump praised him before an audience: “Michael, you’ve been unbelievable,” The Washington Post reported.
His efforts drew derision from Wisconsin legal authorities and even the party leader who hired him.
In June 2022, a year into the election investigation, Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington asked the Office of Lawyer Regulation in a court order to discipline Gableman. Remington found Gableman in contempt of court and fined him $2,000 per day for refusing Remington’s order to produce documents. Gableman also displayed “sneering” and mocking behavior in court, Remington wrote, and “destroyed any sense of decorum and irreparably damaged the public’s perception of the judicial process.”
Vos fired Gableman two months later, in August 2022, calling him an “embarrassment.”
After the firing, Gableman’s name was removed from his law school’s list of notablealumni.
Gableman was paid $117,000, more than double the $55,000 that had been budgeted, according to a previously unreported document Wisconsin Watch obtained from the Assembly clerk.
“He paid no attention to detail, he delegated almost all the work to somebody else and very poor follow-through,” Vos told Wisconsin Watch. “It seemed like Mike Gableman was more concerned about the money he was earning as opposed to finding the truth.”
Reviews by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and The Associated Press found no evidence of uncounted, miscounted or fraudulent votes that would have had any bearing in Wisconsin in the 2020 election.
Election probe leads to lawyer regulation complaint
Gableman’s work was supposed to conclude within a few months. Ultimately, the nearly 14-month probe cost taxpayers $2.77 million, including $1.82 million for outside lawyers. Earlier this month, the state agreed to pay $431,843 in legal fees to American Oversight, a group that sued over destruction of records related to the investigation.
Less than a month after being fired, Gableman told a gathering of Outagamie County Republicans: “Our comfort is holding us back from taking the action that’s necessary. … It’s that very comfort that is keeping us from what our Founders knew to be the only way to keep an honest government, which is revolution.”
Even while under investigation for lawyer misconduct, he continued to advance his election conspiracies to sympathetic audiences.
Michael Gableman is photographed at a Senate Committee on Shared Revenue, Elections and Consumer Protection hearing about the nomination of Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe on Aug. 29, 2023, in the Capitol in Madison, Wis. Gableman previously acted as special counsel to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, to investigate the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Wisconsin. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
The Wolf River Area Patriots promoted its January meeting by touting a Gableman speech on the importance of electing conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel to the state Supreme Court.
About 50 people turned out in tiny New London, two hours northwest of Milwaukee. The meeting was open to the public. Gableman spoke in his resonant baritone for more than an hour, stoking fear and spreading unproven theories about casting votes in the names of overseas military service people or the deceased, and saying Wisconsin elections “are only as secure as the worst criminally minded fraudster wants them to be.”
Gableman said little about Schimel, who went on to lose the April 1 election, other than that he was superior to eventual winner Susan Crawford. He called Crawford “a particularly nasty piece of work.”
At more than $100 million, the Schimel-Crawford race set a national record for spending on a state supreme court contest and featured droves of misleading attack ads that have become common since Gableman’s 2008 campaign.
The state Office of Lawyer Regulation’s case against Gableman, which includes allegations raised in a 100-page complaint from the Law Forward law firm in March 2023, saidhe violated 10 counts of Supreme Court rules of professional conduct for attorneys. He is accused of making false statements about a judge, an opposing attorney and two mayors; making false statements to the Office of Lawyer Regulation; disobeying a court order; and violating the state open records law and confidentiality rules.
Gableman had gone from a top jurist sworn to uphold the constitution to a political player accused of lying in court and breaking laws.
He initially denied the charges, which could have led to the permanent loss of his law license.
But on April 7, he capitulated.
In the settlement filing: “Gableman hereby stipulates that he cannot successfully defend against the allegations of misconduct … and agrees that the allegations of the complaint provide an adequate factual basis for a determination of SCR (Supreme Court Rules) violations as alleged in each of the ten counts of the complaint.”
He agreed with this admission to losing his license to practice law for three years.
The proposed settlement must be approved by two more authorities to become official:
A lawyer serving as referee in the case.
And the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Some research for this article was provided by Audrey Nielsen of the nonprofit Sunlight Research Center, which assists newsrooms with investigative reporting.
(Graphic by Michael Crowe / Ag & Water Desk with images by Jeff Wheeler and Anthony Soufflé / Minnesota Star Tribune)
On a sunny spring day on a farm outside St. Louis, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin celebrated a new era for America’s wetlands.
Flanked by farm equipment and a large American flag, Zeldin said federal rules about wetlands, long a source of frustration for people who want to drain them to grow crops or build homes, were going to relax.
“The federal government doesn’t need to be regulating every puddle on every property everywhere in America,” he said to a group of local farmers, in a state that has already lost nearly 90% of its natural wetlands.
Zeldin said the Trump administration will once and for all solve the hotly debated question of which wetlands are federally protected — determined by the tricky term “Waters of the United States” — so farmers won’t be punished for draining them.
That solution, Zeldin said, will come from a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared only wetlands connected to a “water of the U.S.” will be protected. That ruling, Sackett v. EPA, could remove safeguards from more than half of the nation’s remaining wetlands, which slow flooding, improve water quality and serve as important wildlife habitat.
“There is nothing to debate anymore … we’re going to follow the Supreme Court,” Zeldin said. “It’s going to be simple.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin fields questions from reporters as part of a visit to a farm outside St. Louis, Mo., to discuss wetland regulation changes under the Trump administration. (Nick Zervos / KMOV First Alert 4)
But wetland protections have never been simple.
To align with Sackett, the EPA will rewrite the definition of “Waters of the U.S.,” which spells out which water bodies and wetlands are subject to federal regulation in the Clean Water Act. The term has been caught in the crosshairs of litigation and politics for decades. Environmental advocates claim more expansive federal protections are needed to preserve the country’s natural resources, while some farmers and homebuilders argue the government is overstepping its authority to control their land.
Zeldin’s proposed definition instructs the federal government to take a big step back from how many wetlands it protects, which conservationists have warned will further abuse a misunderstood ecosystem that has already experienced widespread destruction.
The battle to save what’s left will fall to the states, which don’t protect wetlands equally.
The Mississippi River, of course, doesn’t heed any state rules on its long journey from Minnesota to the Gulf, and its millions of acres of wetlands control flooding and catch pollutants all along the way. An uncertain future for those wetlands means an uncertain future for the river and the people, animals and ecosystems that rely on it.
Mississippi River wetlands are varied and vital
Wetlands are places where land and water meet, and the Mississippi River Basin, which covers 40% of the contiguous U.S., hosts some 65 million acres of them.
What they look like varies immensely. The prairie potholes of the upper Great Plains formed from retreating glaciers. Peatlands, most common in Minnesota, are characterized by a layer of dead plant material called peat. The swamps of the Gulf South are home to water-loving trees, like cypress and tupelo. And along the coast, freshwater from the river’s mouth and saltwater from the ocean mix in tidal marshes.
A snowy egret fishes on a log in Bayou Bienvenue in Louisiana in February 2025. (James Eli Shiffer / Star Tribune)
Their common denominator is their great ecological diversity and their ability to relieve flooding, purify water, mitigate drought and provide rich wildlife habitat. Experts say in an era of increased storms, droughts and floods wrought by climate change, they’re needed now more than ever.
During the river’s massive, long-lasting flood in 2019, Nahant Marsh, a protected wetland in Davenport, Iowa, held about a trillion gallons of water from the Mississippi that would otherwise have flooded downstream communities, according to Brian Ritter, executive director of the marsh’s education center.
Wetland protections get political
Despite their benefits, wetlands are in peril. Intentional destruction began in the country’s colonial days, when “drain the swamp” was a literal, not political, strategy to clear space for farmland and cities. They were also vilified, thought to harbor diseases, dangerous animals and even monsters and ghosts.
The states that border the Mississippi River have lost at least half of the wetlands they once had, and in some states, like Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, nearly all are gone. In 2019, the latest year for which data is available, only about 116 million acres of wetlands remained in the contiguous U.S., roughly half of the pre-colonial landscape.
In the last 50 years, societal views of wetlands changed as people learned more about their value. They also became a bipartisan issue. The 1972 Clean Water Act gave them federal protections; the 1985 Swampbuster provision in the Farm Bill penalized farmers who grew crops on converted wetlands; and former President George H.W. Bush declared “no net loss” of wetlands a national goal in the late 1980s.
But they are still disappearing. The Mississippi River Basin lost 132,000 acres of wetlands between 2009 and 2019, according to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That’s the equivalent of about 100,000 football fields.
And as efforts to protect wetlands picked up, so did the issue’s political charge, launching fights over the remains of a system that was once far more vast.
“When people heard about wetlands, it was always, ‘There’s a wetland in between where I am now and what I need to do. And the goddamn government won’t let me fix that,’” said Tracy Hames, executive director of the Wisconsin Wetlands Association.
Before Sackett, the Supreme Court tried to lay down the law in Rapanos v. United States in 2006, when a developer in Michigan wanted to fill in wetlands on his property to build a shopping center. A majority of the justices agreed that the government had overstepped, but they offered two interpretations of which wetlands get federal protections. One was more restrictive, saying only wetlands that touch a protected body of water could be regulated, and one was broader, saying any wetlands that play a key role in improving downstream water quality could be regulated.
In the years that followed, presidential administrations have flip-flopped between the broader and more restrictive approach to governing wetlands, continually redefining “Waters of the U.S.”
Former President Joe Biden’s administration issued a broader “Waters of the U.S.” rule. But 26 states sued to block his rule from taking effect. That means that while those legal battles play out, the country is using two “Waters of the U.S.” rules to determine which wetlands are protected — Biden’s amended rule and an older version in the states that sued.
“Waters of the U.S.” has been a “pain in the side” for farmers and ranchers, Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in Washington March 12 after Zeldin announced his intent to revise the rule.
“I need a rule that’s on one page, that’s sitting on the dash of my truck right beside my devotional book, and if I have a question about a ravine on my farm I can pick that one page up and read it and interpret it myself,” Duvall said. “It should be that simple.”
Jordan Lillemon, a manager of engineering services for Ducks Unlimited, stands with his black Labrador retriever, Kettle, as he untangles decoys for duck hunting in the early morning hours Nov. 19, 2024, on Christina Lake in Ashby, Minn. (Anthony Souffle / Star Tribune)
And homebuilders say to fix the nation’s housing shortage, which is estimated to be at least 1.5 million housing units, developers will need wetlands.
They’ve tried to avoid them because of the difficult permitting process over the years, said Tom Ward, vice president of legal advocacy for the National Association of Home Builders.
“To get these 1.5 million units, we’re going to have to go back to some of those more difficult pieces of property,” Ward said.
What’s next
Speaking with reporters in Chesterfield, Zeldin said he’d end the ambiguity and back-and-forth with one word.
“Sackett,” he said. “S-A-C-K-E-T-T.”
On March 12 the EPA issued guidance that spells out what the new rule will do: Unless a wetland directly abuts another federally protected water, it will not get federal protections.
Importantly, that guidance isn’t legally binding. Until the EPA issues its new rule, wetlands will still have Biden-era protections, meaning half of the country will be under one rule, and half will be under another. And the rule-making process contains lengthy steps that can take years — the Trump administration issued its first “Waters of the U.S.” rule in 2020 — although Zeldin has promised this one won’t take as long.
That means the actual impacts of Sackett are yet to be understood, although some have attempted to predict them. Following the ruling, the EPA under Biden estimated that up to 63% of the nation’s remaining wetland acres could lose federal protections.
Another way to examine the impact is by looking at the determinations the Army Corps makes when someone wants to drain or fill a wetland. After the Sackett decision, about 18% fewer of those determinations found the wetland was federally protected, according to Adam Gold, coasts and watersheds science manager for the advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund.
Although the tool Gold created to track the change in these determinations has limitations, in part because of a small post-Sackett sample size, he said it gives a “sneak peek” at how federal protections for wetlands are waning.
Even under a new rule that the Trump administration asserts will be more straightforward, wetlands will not have the same protections across the country because different states have different rules. Along the Mississippi River, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Mississippi have wetland protections that go beyond the arm of the Clean Water Act, an Ag & Water Desk analysis found. But Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas do not have more protective wetland laws on the books. Louisiana extends broader state protections to its coastal wetlands, but not inland ones.
In other words, it will be easier to develop wetlands for housing in Missouri, for example, than in Minnesota. That will likely cause confusion and variation across the country, said Mark Davis, founding director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy in New Orleans. “I think you’re almost guaranteed to have more confusion … we’re like everybody else. We’re reading tea leaves.”
Even the state laws are moving targets. Illinois is aiming to beef up its wetland protections, for example, while in Tennessee, lawmakers want to scale theirs back.
Still, Zeldin intends to close the case on “Waters of the U.S.,” stepping back from decades of broad federal protections for wetlands and giving farmers and developers the certainty they’ve long asked for, with Sackett as his guide.
But given the history of wetland regulation, certainty could still be an elusive target.
After all, the Biden administration defended its amended “Waters of the U.S.” rule as being consistent with the Sackett ruling, too, said Abby Husselbee, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Energy and Environmental Law program.
“To the extent that this EPA would proclaim to be the final arbiter of how Sackett applies to the definition of (Waters of the U.S.) — we see already that there are other interpretations,” Husselbee said. “I don’t necessarily know that those would go away forever.”
W28488 Refuge Road, Trempealeau, WI 54661; 608-539-2311
Located in a quiet part of the river far from highways and railroad tracks, the wetlands at Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge — marshes, mostly — attract wildlife including beavers, muskrats and birds. In fall, migrating waterfowl fill the refuge’s wetlands.
Van Loon Wildlife Area is best known for preserving a series of unique bowstring arch truss bridges built in the early 1900s, but the trails pass through a floodplain forest rich with wetlands near the confluence of the Black and Mississippi rivers. The marshes and swamps in its 4,000 acres support a diverse range of wildlife, and the trees dazzle with color in fall.
W6488 County Road GI, Stoddard, WI 54658; 608-788-7018
Located at the southern end of La Crosse, the marshes and swamps around Goose Island are accessible by boat (follow the signed 7-mile canoe trail) and on foot. It’s also a good place to catch the sun setting over the wetlands, especially from the trails in the southern third of the island.
Avery Martinez of KMOV, Estefania Pinto Ruiz of KWQC and Elise Plunk of the Louisiana Illuminator contributed to this story. It is part of the series Down the Drain from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting collaborative based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
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