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Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested on Friday for allegedly helping a man living in the United States without legal status evade federal immigration authorities. Dugan faces two federal felony counts — obstruction and concealing an individual.

Dugan’s case is similar to a 2019 case brought by federal prosecutors against Massachusetts Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph. In that case, Joseph was accused of helping an unauthorized immigrant avoid an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after a court appearance.

In both cases, federal officials alleged the state judges allowed the defendants to exit their courtrooms through alternative routes to avoid federal immigration officials waiting outside the courtrooms in publicly accessible areas.

In a criminal complaint filed last week, federal officials alleged that Dugan confronted immigration enforcement officials outside of her courtroom as they waited for a defendant who was scheduled to appear before her finished his court business. Witnesses reported that Dugan “was visibly upset and had a confrontational, angry demeanor,” according to the complaint. Dugan asked to see the warrant the immigration officials were acting upon and then referred them to see the county’s chief judge.

After returning to the courtroom, Dugan then escorted the man and his attorney through a door that leads to a “nonpublic area” of the courthouse, the complaint states.

A similar series of events unfolded in the Massachusetts case. After learning that an ICE agent was waiting to arrest a defendant, Joseph eventually had the man exit the courtroom through a nonpublic exit, federal authorities alleged in a 2019 indictment. A separate court official then helped him exit the building through a back door.

The Massachusetts case was dismissed in 2022. In exchange, Joseph referred herself to the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct, per The New York Times.

One key difference between the two cases: Joseph was indicted. Dugan was served a criminal complaint. To secure an indictment, prosecutors have to present evidence to a panel of everyday Wisconsin residents and convince them there is probable cause a crime has been committed. For criminal complaints, officials only have to get the sign-off of a federal judge, but then later have to secure an indictment from a grand jury, two former federal prosecutors told Wisconsin Watch.

Now, the federal government has 21 days to seek an indictment, according to Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former federal prosecutor. 

“It is unusual that this happened with an arrest and complaint because there really is no indication that the Judge was a flight risk or danger to the community,” she told Wisconsin Watch in an email. “They easily could have gone to the grand jury first and summoned her in IF the grand jury wanted to indict.”

Stephen Kravit, a Milwaukee area attorney and former federal prosecutor, said criminal complaints are rare in the Eastern District of Wisconsin and are usually reserved for “an exigent situation where the defendant’s whereabouts aren’t specifically known or the presence in this area is temporary.”

“None of that applies to a sitting Circuit Court Judge,” he added in an email.

Instead, Kravit said, “this was done in a hurry to make a political point.” He added, “Normally, a person charged even with felonies aged 60+ with no record and no chance of fleeing would be summoned to show up at an appointed time for booking and arraignment. Not here. And that was the point.”

🚘 Budget road trip. The Joint Finance Committee will hold a pair of hearings on Monday and Tuesday this week, stepping away from the Capitol in Madison to hear from Wisconsin residents in Hayward and Wausau about what they want included in the state’s next two-year budget.

It will be the third and fourth time so far that the committee has heard from the public on the spending plan. But as the GOP-controlled committee continues to go through the motions of crafting the budget, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, indicated last week that Republican lawmakers could punt on passing a new budget altogether.

Vos was reacting to a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that left intact a move from Gov. Tony Evers that provided for annual public school funding increases for the next 400 years. “It’s certainly a possibility if we can’t find a way for us to get to a common middle ground,” Vos said of spiking the funding plan last week on the “Jay Weber Show.” “But that’s not the goal.”

“It’s something we’re talking about, but it wouldn’t be the first go-to,” Vos added, noting that it has never happened before. The state has passed a budget every two years since 1931, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.

But even if the Legislature were to pass on sending a new spending plan to Evers, things in the state wouldn’t shut down. In Wisconsin, the state continues operating at the existing spending levels until a new budget is approved. 

📈 Student homelessness rising. Homelessness among K-12 Wisconsin students reached a new high in 2024, increasing 9% over the previous year despite total enrollment declining slightly.

That’s according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, which found that a little more than 20,000 Wisconsin students were homeless in 2023-24. If that figure seems high, it’s because it is. Homelessness among students is counted using a definition that is more expansive than the one employed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal McKinney-Vento Act defines homeless children and youth as those “who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.”

It’s the third straight year that student homelessness increased in Wisconsin, the report found, reaching a new high since the state Department of Public Instruction started keeping data in 2019.

“The number of students affected by homelessness has grown and is likely to continue to remain high in the near future as an insufficient supply of affordable housing remains a lingering problem throughout the state,” the report concludes. “Addressing the needs of this high-risk group of students could benefit not only them but also Wisconsin’s educational outcomes overall.”

Wisconsin Watch’s Hallie Claflin has been documenting the state’s rural homelessness crisis, including in her latest report about police departments transporting homeless people outside their jurisdiction. We’ll be watching the budget process closely to see if lawmakers address this issue or similarly treat it as out of sight, out of mind.

Arrest of Milwaukee judge echoes Massachusetts case — with one key difference is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump directed his Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the Democratic Party-aligned fundraising site that has fueled so many successful challenges against his own party.

The next day, amid a long-running feud with judges who have put some of his initiatives on hold because they may violate the Constitution, Trump’s FBI arrested a Milwaukee judge, alleging she had helped a migrant evade immigration authorities.

The two acts sent shockwaves through the legal and political worlds, which already have been reeling as Trump has used his office to target law firms, media outlets and individuals with whom he disagrees. The investigations are the latest version of a clear pattern in Trump’s second term: The president has harnessed the power of the federal government to punish his enemies and anyone he sees as standing in his way.

“This government has been consistent, from the moment it took office, in weaponizing the government and deploying it against critics,” said Steve Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and the coauthor of “How Democracies Die.” “This is not a surprise. Trump campaigned on it and he’s been doing it since day one.”

The complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday accused Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan of ushering the man, who is accused of being in the country illegally, out the “jury door” of her courtroom. The complaint alleges the judge became “visibly angry” when told there were immigration agents in the courthouse.

Her arrest Friday morning was announced in a post on X by Trump’s FBI director, Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who before the election had compiled an “enemies list” to target during the president’s second term. Patel later deleted the post.

Shortly after Dugan’s arrest, a few dozen protesters marched outside the courthouse, chanting, “Judge Dugan will be free, no justice, no peace.” Democrats across the country were alarmed.

“There are no kings in America,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said. He called the arrest “a dangerous escalation, an attack on the separation of powers, and we will fight this with everything we have.”

On Saturday, protesters chanted “Immigrants are here to stay” and held up signs saying, “Liberty and Justice for All” as they marched outside the FBI’s Milwaukee division. 

“The judiciary acts as a check to unchecked executive power. And functioning democracies do not lock up judges,” Democratic state Rep. Ryan Clancy told the crowd.

During an appearance on Fox News after the arrest, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a warning to judges across the country. She was addressing the case of Dugan and a retired New Mexico judge, whom the administration also is targeting for allegedly harboring someone in the country illegally. But her words carried extra weight given the administration’s feuds with federal judges who have ruled against them in lawsuits challenging the administration’s actions and executive orders.

“Some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law and they are not, and we’re sending a very strong message today,” Bondi said.

Hours later, she revoked a Biden administration policy protecting journalists from having their records seized in leak investigations.

Trump himself lambasted judges Friday as he flew to Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome, frustrated that they were stalling his deportation plans.

“These are judges who just want to show how big and important they are,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “They shouldn’t be allowed to do it. We have hundreds of thousands of people we want to get out of the country, and the courts are holding us back.”

The White House has mocked on social media an order, upheld unanimously at the U.S. Supreme Court, from a federal judge that it “facilitate” the return of a Maryland man it admitted mistakenly deporting to a notorious prison in El Salvador. It mocked another federal judge who ordered planes full of immigrants turned around before they reached El Salvador. In another case, it acknowledged deporting additional migrants despite an order against it, arguing that the judge only forbade immigration authorities — and not the military — from removing the men from the country.

Trump’s allies in Congress and online have urged that judges be impeached if they have ruled against his other initiatives to cut the federal government or unilaterally change elections, or even to ignore orders outright. With the Republican-controlled Congress silent as Trump tries to remake the federal government, the courts have emerged as the only branch of government that is actively challenging the president.

Trump also moved to kneecap one other force challenging him by targeting ActBlue. The website funnels small-dollar donations to predominantly Democratic candidates and has become a powerhouse in helping Democrats stay ahead of Republicans financially in many elections. The GOP set up a site to mimic it called WinRed, but Trump’s order only directs a probe into the Democratic site, not the one run by his own party.

Trump asked Bondi to see if ActBlue was a potential conduit for illegal overseas donations. The site said it followed the law, and it and Democrats condemned the probe as politically motivated.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, said Trump’s targeting of Democratic Party infrastructure fits a pattern of many authoritarians around the world, who use government power to cripple opposition parties so they can no longer win elections.

“We’re well past Watergate,” he said, referring to the 1972 scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation two years later. “The investigation of ActBlue makes clear that we’re not in a fully democratic country.”

“In a democracy,” Nyhan said, “opposition parties don’t have to fight uphill.”

Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report, originally published April 25. Details reported by AP from an April 26 protest were added.

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.

Critics see Trump weaponizing government in targeting Milwaukee judge and Democratic fundraising site is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Democratic legislators on April 10 introduced Assembly Bill 227, which would expand Wisconsin’s existing election bribery laws to also prohibit people from making payments to voters in exchange for signing petitions during an election period.

The bill was introduced just nine days after the April 1 election, before which Elon Musk offered the public $100 to sign a petition opposing “activist judges.” At an event just two days before the election, Musk gave two Wisconsin voters $1 million checks. 

Here’s what you need to know: 

Context

Wisconsin law already prohibits election bribery and makes it illegal to offer “anything of value,” including money, to bribe an elector to go to or refrain from going to the polls, vote or refrain from voting, or vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person.

In a deleted X post from March 27, Musk said $1 million checks would be awarded “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote” in the April 1 election between liberal Judge Susan Crawford and conservative Judge Brad Schimel. Musk followed this up with another X post a day later on March 28 to say the checks would be awarded to two individuals to be “spokesmen for the petition.” 

On March 29, Democratic Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit against Musk and the Musk-affiliated America PAC. In the complaint, Kaul requested the court grant a temporary restraining order to stop Musk from promoting the $1 million gifts, calling the giveaway “a blatant attempt to violate Wis. Stat. § 12.11.”

But judges in Columbia County Circuit Court, the Court of Appeals and the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to hear Kaul’s petition. Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voight filed a dismissal order April 1, saying Kaul’s complaint lacked two of the four required elements for a temporary restraining order — no alleged irreparable harm and no explanation of why the temporary restraining order was the only possible solution. 

Voight noted at the end of his dismissal that the court did not come to a conclusion as to whether Musk and America PAC’s actions were illegal. 

Musk gave out the $1 million checks to two Wisconsin voters who signed his America PAC petition during a Green Bay rally on March 30. 

The actions on behalf of Musk and America PAC consequently sparked debates regarding the legality and ethics of the petition. 

The bill

In an effort led by Rep. Lee Snodgrass, D-Appleton, the “Petition Payment Prohibition Act” would expand existing election bribery laws to prohibit bribing voters to sign or refrain from signing election nomination papers, recall petitions and other petitions, including in support or opposition of candidates. 

“To be clear, election bribery is already illegal in Wisconsin,” the co-authors wrote in a memo to their legislative colleagues. “However, Musk has attempted to circumvent this law by paying people to sign a petition instead — something not explicitly banned by current law.”

If passed, the bill would prohibit anyone from offering anything of value — exceeding $5 — to influence whether or not someone signs a petition relating to elections. These petitions include those opposing and supporting candidates or referendums, political or social issues, state law, and proposed or potential legislation, according to the bill. 

The prohibition would only be enforced when it relates directly to an election or referendum or if it is circulated during an election period, which the bill defines as the period between Dec. 1 and the spring election or April 15 and the general election. 

Under the bill, it would be illegal to pay someone $100 to sign a petition within an election period that is in support of a state referendum or a candidate.

Election bribery is currently a Class I felony, meaning if the bill passes, violators could face up to three-and-a-half years in prison, a fine as high as $10,000 or both. 

So, what’s next?

So far 34 Democratic lawmakers support the “Petition Payment Prohibition Act,” in addition to Snodgrass. No Republicans have signed on.

The bill has been referred to the Committee on Campaigns and Elections where the Republican who heads the committee could schedule a public hearing and vote. Republicans who control the Legislature could then schedule it for a vote in the full Assembly. An identical version must also pass the Senate. 

If this bill passes, it would be sent to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who can either sign or veto it. 

Democratic sponsors said the bill should be bipartisan.

“Candidates and issue groups should use the strength of their message to attract voters to their cause, not cash bribes or promises of financial reward,” the sponsors said in a memo to colleagues. “It is a gross perversion of our democracy and must not be allowed to continue in future elections. Failing to act is a tacit acceptance that our votes are for sale. Rejecting this premise is something members of both parties should be able to agree on.”

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

Bill seeks to block future $1 million Wisconsin election giveaways is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Adults who plan to fly within the U.S. or visit a military base or federal buildings on or after Wednesday, May 7, will need a Real ID or other Transit Security Administration-approved documentation.

Here’s what you need to know to get a Real ID in Wisconsin before enforcement begins.

What is a Real ID?

A Real ID is a state-issued driver’s license or identification card that meets security standards of the federal REAL ID Act, which Congress enacted in 2005.

Wisconsin-issued Real IDs are marked with a star in the upper right corner. You can check if your Wisconsin ID is a Real ID here.

Over 64% of Wisconsin residents now have a federally compliant driver’s license or ID card, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation Division of Motor Vehicles.

Can I still use another ID?

Starting May 7, a Real ID-compliant driver’s license or identification card, or another TSA-acceptable form of identification, will be required for domestic air travel or visiting U.S. military bases or federal buildings.

The Wisconsin DMV offers both Real IDs and non-compliant IDs.

You do not have to apply for a Real ID if you have no plans to fly or visit a federal building, or if you have another accepted form of identification, like a valid U.S. passport.

You can continue to use your current driver’s license or ID for other identification purposes until its expiration date.

How to get a Real ID

You can apply to get a Real ID online or through a local branch of the Wisconsin DMV.

Using the DMV’s interactive driver licensing guide, you can start an application online, print out a checklist of required documents and schedule an appointment.

Appointments are not required, but the DMV is seeing an increase in visitors as the Real ID enforcement deadline approaches, a department spokesperson said.

What documents do I need to bring?

When you apply, you must provide additional documentation in the form of an original document or certified copy (not a photocopy, fax or scan) from each of the following categories, according to the Department of Transportation.

Some documents can apply to multiple categories, but others may only meet the requirements of one category.

The document categories include:

• Proof of name and date of birth.
• Proof of legal presence in the U.S.
• Proof of identity.
• Proof of name change (only if your name is different from what’s on your birth certificate).
• Proof of address (two forms)
• Provide your Social Security Number.

How to get a copy of your birth certificate or name change documents?

If you were born in Wisconsin, you or an immediate family member can request a copy of your birth certificate online through the Department of Health Services..

This process also requires forms of identification. The cost of the certificate is $20, plus $3 per additional copy.

If you are a U.S. citizen born outside Wisconsin and need a birth certificate, check this guidance.

The simplest way to provide proof of a name change is to bring a valid, unexpired U.S. passport in your current name when you apply for a Real ID. If you don’t have that, you will need to provide documents to support each name change from birth to the current date.

How will the TSA enforce the deadline?

Travelers planning to fly within the U.S. without compliant identification could face delays, additional screening and possibly not be allowed into an airport security checkpoint, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

TSA accepts some other forms of identification.

Minors are not required to have a Real ID, but it is required of adults accompanying them to travel. 

Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.

Here’s how to get a Real ID in Wisconsin as new requirements start May 7 is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The 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.

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.

FBI arrests Milwaukee County judge accused of helping man evade immigration officials is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch 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.

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.

Wisconsin’s workforce is aging. How can communities and employers prepare for the future? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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.” 

Tesla argues that it qualifies for an exemption to state law because car dealers could not own and operate a dealership selling Tesla products “in a manner consistent with the public interest and that meets the reasonable standard and uniformly applied qualifications of the factory.”

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.

Wisconsin bans auto manufacturers from selling directly to the public. Here’s why. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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.

International students stripped of legal status in the US are piling up wins in court is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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?

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.

‘A practice driven by a lack of good options’: Homeless drop-offs in Eau Claire showcase need for state action is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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

No.

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.

NIST said it found no evidence of a blast.

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

Sources

• National Institute of Standards and Technology: FAQs – NIST WTC 7 Investigation
• National September 11 Memorial & Museum: 9/11 FAQs
• U.S. Commerce Department: 20 Years Later: NIST's World Trade Center Investigation and Its Legacy
• SiF 2020 – The 11th International Conference on Structures in Fire: The Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Revisited
• Benny Johnson: Ron Johnson interview (1:07:20)
• Fire Fighters for 9-11 Truth: Calling Out Bravo-7, 2020 Edition

Was a World Trade Center building destroyed on 9/11 by ‘controlled demolition’? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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

No.

U.S.-Canadian trade of agricultural products, including dairy, is generally done without tariffs.

Tariffs are taxes paid on imported goods.

Canada has set tariffs exceeding 200% for U.S. dairy products.

But the tariffs are imposed only when the amount imported exceeds quotas.

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.

Sources

• Wisconsin Watch: DataWatch: Trump’s tariffs and Wisconsin’s economy
• Government of Canada: Chapter 4 : T2025—Dairy produce; birds' eggs; natural honey; edible products of animal origin, not elsewhere specified or included
• FactCheck.org: Trump’s Misleading Claim on Canadian Dairy Tariffs
• NewsNation: Does Canada really have tariffs above 200% on US dairy products?
• CNN: Fact check: What Trump doesn’t mention about Canada’s dairy tariffs
• CBS News: Amid U.S.-Canada trade war, Trump makes some false or misleading claims to justify tariffs
• CBC: What Trump gets wrong about Canada-U.S. dairy trade
• U.S. Agriculture Department: USMCA, Canada, & Mexico – Canada: Trade & FDI
• International Dairy Foods Association: IDFA Statement on Potential U.S. Tariff on Canadian Dairy Products
• Roll Call: Remarks: Donald Trump Holds a Bilateral Meeting With Micheál Martin of Ireland – March 12, 2025
• Wisconsin Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection Department: Export Statistics
• Canada Border Services Agency: Departmental Consolidation of the Customs Tariff 2025
• Boise State University political science professor Ross Burkhart: Email

Does Canada impose 200% tariffs on US dairy products? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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.

Help us investigate end-of-life care solutions in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

This story 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.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

One Iowa landowner fights to farm a designated wetland. Others could face consequences downstream is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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.

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.

Restoration can still feel like a losing battle.

For every acre of wetland being restored in Minnesota, more are being lost. A 2024 U.S. Department of Agriculture study found that eight of the top 10 U.S. counties where tile drainage was growing fastest were in southern Minnesota. Nearly all of those drainage systems shoot water into a river that ends up in the Mississippi.

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.”

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.”

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.

This story 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.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

For sport or food, love of birds is saving grace for America’s wetlands is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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.

Wisconsin governor’s guidance on dealing with ICE agents draws GOP backlash is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

President Donald Trump’s fluctuating tariff policies have kept the world guessing.

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? 

Tariffs are a federal tax American importers pay when goods arrive from other countries. 

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. 

To what do Trump’s tariffs apply?

First Trump added “national emergency” tariffs ranging from 10% to 25% on imports from China, Canada and Mexico. After adjusting those tariffs several times, he announced on April 2 a baseline 10% tariff on goods from all countries that export to the U.S., along with higher “reciprocal” tariffs on countries with which the U.S. has trade deficits — a move that set the stock market plunging. Trump paused most reciprocal tariffs days later. 

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.

DataWatch: Trump’s tariffs and Wisconsin’s economy is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

When 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?”

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.”

This story was originally published by WPR.

‘The federal government will find you’: Immigration officials wrongfully told a Fox Valley man to leave the US is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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.

Wisconsin governor can lock in 400-year school funding increase using a veto, state Supreme Court says is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

In 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. 

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.”

Still, as the federal government backs off of regulation, Gentry said she expects more emphasis on the economic value of wetlands to drive protection. 

Some of that is already happening. A 2024 analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that wetlands save Wisconsin and the upper Midwest nearly $23 billion a year that otherwise would be spent combating flooding. 

“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.” 

This story 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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Framing wetlands as a flooding solution won bipartisan support in Wisconsin. Could it work elsewhere? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch, 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, developing relationships 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 ways newsrooms 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.

Wisconsin Watch seeks regional editor for northeast Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.