In two recent polls, a majority of U.S. adults said they use social media to get health information.
July 2025 by KFF, a leading health policy research nonprofit: 55% said they use social media “to find health information and advice” at least occasionally. Less than one in 10 said “most” of the information is trustworthy.
September 2024 by Healthline: 52% said they learned from social media health and wellness tools, resources, trends, or products they tried in the past year. About 77% expressed at least one negative view, such as “there is a lot of conflicting information.”
An April 2024 medical journal article said that over one-third of social media users perceived high levels of health misinformation, and two-thirds reported “high perceived discernment difficulty.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is conducting a long-term study to determine how social media affects the physical/mental health of adolescents.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Craig Stingley had no legal training, no big-name lawyer or civil rights advocate by his side. Yet for 13 years, he refused to accept that the judicial system would hold no one responsible for the killing of his 16-year-old son, Corey.
The quest for justice dominated his life.
He gathered police reports, witness statements and other evidence in the Dec. 14, 2012, fatal incident inside a Milwaukee-area convenience store. The youth had tried to shoplift $12 worth of flavored malt beverages at the shop before abandoning the items and turning to leave. That’s when three men wrestled him to the ground to hold him for the police.
The medical examiner determined that he died of a brain injury from asphyxiation after a “violent struggle with multiple individuals.” The manner of death: homicide.
When prosecutors chose not to charge anyone, Stingley waged a legal campaign of his own that forced the case to be reexamined. A 2023 ProPublica investigation pieced together a detailed timeline of what happened inside the store, recounted what witnesses saw and examined the backgrounds of the three customers involved in the altercation.
Finally, this week, in an extraordinary turn of events, Stingley will see a measure of accountability. On Monday, a criminal complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court charged the surviving patrons — Robert W. Beringer and Jesse R. Cole — with felony murder. The defendants are set to appear in court on Thursday.
Beringer’s attorney, Tony Cotton, described the broad outlines of a deferred prosecution agreement that can lead to the charges being dismissed after the two men plead guilty or no contest. The men may be required by the court to make a contribution to a charity in honor of Corey Stingley and to perform community service, avoiding prison time, according to Cotton and Craig Stingley.
In Wisconsin, felony murder is a special category for incidents in which the commission of a serious crime — in this case, false imprisonment — causes the death of another person. The prosecutor’s office in Dane County, which is handling the matter, declined to comment. Cole’s attorney said his client had no comment. Previously, the three men have argued that their actions were justified, citing self-defense and their need to respond to an emergency.
Craig Stingley waged a legal campaign that forced the death of his son to be reexamined. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)
For Stingley, a key part of the accountability process already has taken place. Last year, as part of a restorative justice program and under the supervision of a retired judge, Stingley and the two men interacted face to face in separate meetings.
There, inside an office on a Milwaukee college campus, they confronted the traumatic events that led to Corey Stingley’s death and the still-roiling feelings of resentment, sorrow and pain.
Craig Stingley said he felt that, after years of downplaying their role, the men showed regret and a deeper understanding of what had happened. For instance, Stingley said, he and Cole aired out their different perspectives on what occurred and even reviewed store surveillance video together.
“I have never been able to breathe as clearly and as deeply and feel as free as I have after that meeting was over,” Stingley said.
Restorative justice programs bring together survivors and offenders — via meetings or letters or through community panels — to try to deepen understanding, promote healing and discuss how best to make amends for a wide range of harms. The approach has been used by schools and juvenile and criminal justice systems, as well as nations grappling with large-scale atrocities.
Situations where restorative justice and deferred prosecution are employed for such serious charges are rare, Cotton said. But, he said, the whole case is rare — from the prosecution declining to issue charges initially to holding it open for multiple reviews over a decade.
“Our hearts go out to the Stingley family, and we believe that the restorative justice process has allowed all sides to express their feelings openly,” Cotton said. “We are glad that a fair and just outcome has been achieved.”
A medical examiner determined that Corey Stingley died of a brain injury from asphyxiation after an altercation with three men at a convenience store in 2012. Prosecutors assigned to the case declined to press charges. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)
The legal quest
Milwaukee’s district attorney at the time of Corey Stingley’s death, John Chisholm, announced there would be no charges 13 months later, in January 2014. Cole, Beringer and a third man, Maurio Laumann, now deceased, were not culpable because they did not intend to injure or kill the teen and weren’t trained in proper restraint techniques, Chisholm determined.
Craig Stingley, who is Black, and others in the community protested the decision, claiming the three men — all white — were not good Samaritans but had acted violently to kill a Black youth with impunity. “When a person loses his life at the hands of others, it would seem that a ‘chargeable’ offense has occurred,” the Milwaukee branch of the NAACP said in a statement at the time.
Looking for a way to reopen the case, Stingley reexamined the evidence, including security video. In a painful exercise, he watched the takedown of his son, by his estimation hundreds of times, analyzing who did what, frame by frame. What he saw only reinforced his view that his son’s death was unnecessary and his right to due process denied.
Corey Stingley and his father lived only blocks from VJ’s Food Mart, in West Allis, Wisconsin. That December day, Stingley made his way to the back of the store and stuck six bottles of Smirnoff Ice into his backpack. At the front counter, the teenager provided his debit card to pay for an energy drink, but the clerk demanded the stolen items. Stingley surrendered the backpack, reached toward the cash register to recover his debit card, then turned to exit.
Cole told police he extended his hand to stop Stingley and claimed that the teen punched him in the face, though it is not evident on the video. The three men grabbed the youth. During a struggle, the men pinned Stingley to the floor.
Laumann kept Stingley in a chokehold, several witnesses told investigators. ProPublica later discovered that Laumann had been a Marine. His brother told ProPublica he likely learned how to apply chokeholds as part of his military service decades ago.
Beringer had Stingley by the hair and was pressing on the teen’s head, a witness told authorities. Cole helped to hold Stingley down. Eventually, Stingley stopped resisting. The police report states that Cole thought the teen was “playing limp” to trick them into loosening their grip.
“Get up, you punk!” Laumann told the motionless teen when an officer finally arrived, according to a police report. Stingley was foaming at the mouth and had urinated through his clothes. The officer couldn’t find a pulse. Stingley never regained consciousness, dying at a hospital two weeks later.
Craig Stingley unsuccessfully sought a meeting with Chisholm in 2015 to discuss the lack of charges. “Feel free to seek legal advice in the private sector regarding your Constitutional Rights,” an assistant to Chisholm replied to Stingley in an email. “I extend my deepest sympathy to you and your family!”
Stingley’s review of the video, however, did bring about another legal opportunity in 2017, after he notified West Allis police that there was footage showing Laumann with his arm around the teen’s throat. (Laumann had denied putting him in a headlock.) A Racine County district attorney was appointed to review the evidence again. She issued no report for three years, until pressed by the court, then concluded that no charges were warranted.
Finally, Stingley discovered an obscure Wisconsin “John Doe” statute. It allows private citizens to petition a judge to consider whether a crime had been committed if a district attorney refuses to issue a criminal complaint.
A former process engineer for an electrical transformer manufacturer, Stingley had no legal training. Still, in November 2020, he filed a 14-page petition with the then-chief judge of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Mary Triggiano. It cited legal authority and “material facts,” including excerpts from police reports, witness statements and stills from the surveillance video. Stingley quoted former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in the petition and the British statesman William Gladstone: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
That led to the appointment in July 2022 of Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne to review the case. But that process was slowed by procedural hurdles. Stingley took the delays in stride, saying he trusted that Ozanne and his staff were treating the matter seriously and acting appropriately.
In 2024, Stingley said, Ozanne’s office advised him that they had found sufficient evidence to issue charges against Cole and Beringer but could not guarantee that a jury would deliver a guilty verdict. Stingley, researching the family’s options, said he inquired about the restorative justice process. The DA’s office supported the idea, arranging for him and the two men to meet under the supervision of the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, part of the law school at Milwaukee’s Marquette University. The program is run by Triggiano, who’d retired from the court.
The concept of restorative justice can be traced back to indigenous cultures, where people sat together to talk through conflict and solve problems. It emerged in the United States in criminal justice systems in the 1970s as a way to provide alternatives to prison and restitution to victims. Elsewhere, it has notably been used to address the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, where beginning in 2002 truth-telling forums led to forgiveness and reconciliation.
Stingley, who has three remaining grown children and four grandchildren, desperately wanted “balance restored” for his family. He decided the best path forward was to meet with the men he considered responsible for his son’s death.
Craig Stingley now sees the charges as a message of accountability in his son’s case. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)
The quest for closure
Stingley brought photos of Corey to the restorative justice meeting with Berringer in April.
The goal: to respectfully share their perspectives on the tragedy and how it impacted each of them personally. What was said was not recorded or transcribed. It was not for use in any court proceeding.
The sessions began with the Stingley family sharing heartfelt stories about Corey as a son, brother, student and friend. They spoke of their great bond, Corey’s love of sports and their struggle to cope with his absence.
When discussion turned to what happened in the store, Stingley said, Berringer described having only faint memories of the fatal encounter. He recalled a brief struggle and grabbing the teen by his jacket, not his hair.
Before departing the meeting, a tearful Beringer told Stingley he was looking for peace, Stingley recalled.
Cotton, Beringer’s attorney, told ProPublica that the incident and the legal steps affected his client in profound ways. “He’s had anxiety really from this from day one,” Cotton said.
The result, he said: “Sleeplessness. Horrible anxiety. Fearful because he has to go to court.”
Does the resolution ease Beringer’s mind? “I don’t know,” Cotton said, adding that the hope is that the Stingley family finds solace in the resolution process.
Cole, in a meeting in May with Stingley and some of his family, brought a gift: a pair of angel wings on a gold chain with a small “C” charm and several clear reflective orbs. With it came a handwritten note, saying: “I hope this sun catcher brings a gentle reflection of the love & light of Corey’s memory and that you feel his presence shining on you each day.”
“I told him I appreciate the gesture,” Stingley said.
Cole, according to Stingley, told him that he felt something other than the altercation — perhaps some health ailment — led to Corey’s demise.
Stingley invited Cole to watch the surveillance video together at a second session. As that day neared, in July, Stingley considered backing out. “It was almost as if I had to drag myself up out of the car,” he said. But he said he realized that he’d been preparing for such an event for 13 years: to come to some honest reckoning with the men involved.
After watching the video, he and Cole reviewed the death certificate, showing the medical examiner’s conclusions. Stingley said Cole stressed that he did not choke Corey but came to realize that what happened in the store caused the teen to lose his life, not any preexisting condition. The acknowledgment eased Stingley’s burden.
“I felt like I was reaching a place where I was finally going to get the justice that I’ve been pursuing,” Stingley said, “and this is one of the steps I had to go through to get that completed.”
Triggiano commended each of the participants for their courage in meeting and the Stingley family for “seeking the humanity of their son as opposed to vengeance.” She said Beringer and Cole “keenly listened, reflected and really acknowledged their connection to the events that led to Corey’s death.”
“The conversations were emotional and difficult but deeply human,” she said.
After the loss of his son, Stingley wanted to see the three men imprisoned. But so many years later, justice now looks different. Now Laumann is dead. Beringer is changed by the experience. And Cole is a father eager to protect his own children.
Now, in Stingley’s eyes, prison is beside the point. Criminal charges will stand instead as a strong signal of accountability, of justice — and of a father’s unyielding love.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
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As Wisconsin’s workforce ages and universities nationwide see fewer traditional college-aged students, UWGB is trying several unorthodox efforts to attract older learners.
The university offers short-term certificates that advance workers’ job skills, ungraded courses that keep older people socially engaged and classes in local nursing homes.
Leaders hope the initiatives will keep the region’s growing retirement-age population sharp and socially engaged — and potentially in the workforce for longer — while also bolstering enrollment.
Inside University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Christie Theatre, retired judge Mark Warpinski leads a discussion about how judges decide on the sentences they impose. Roughly 50 students nod along, take notes and eagerly wave their hands in the air to debate how they’d sentence someone for a hypothetical crime.
The unusually lively audience betrays that this isn’t a typical sleepy morning lecture — most of Warpinski’s students are over the age of 50.
“We pay attention. We ask questions. We’re not sitting on our cellphones and scrolling … like I guess most college students nowadays do,” said 76-year-old student Norman Schroeder.
Classrooms full of older adults are becoming more common at UWGB.
As Wisconsin’s workforce ages and universities nationwide see fewer traditional college-aged students, UWGB is trying several unorthodox efforts to attract older learners. That includes more short-term certificates that advance workers’ job skills,ungraded courses that keep older students socially engaged and classes in local nursing homes.
University leaders hope these moves will keep the region’s growing retirement-age population sharp and socially engaged — and potentially in the workforce for longer — while also bolstering enrollment.
“We’re not just an 18-year-old campus. We’re not just a campus where you live in the dorms and have a traditional experience,” said Jessica Lambrecht, UWGB’s continuing education and workforce training executive officer. “There’s hundreds of universities you can pick from that offer that type of experience. So how are we gonna stretch and serve more?”
From left, Anita Kirschling, Theresa Reiter, Judy Rogers and Linda Chapman work on knitting projects during a class through the Lifelong Learning Institute at UWGB. They are among more than 800 members of UWGB’s Lifelong Learning Institute. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
In fall 2025, UWGB joined the Age-Friendly University Global Network, an international web of universities that focus on including all ages. The college must follow the network’s 10 principles, which include supporting those pursuing second careers; expanding online education options; and promoting collaboration between older and younger students, among other tasks. Lambrecht hopes this commitment leads more community groups to help UWGB in its pursuit of older learners.
UWGB’s focus on enrolling people outside the typical 18-to-24 age group has helped the college’s enrollment climb over the past decade, at a time when many universities are seeing the opposite trend.
University leaders hope to do even more to cater to retirees and other older adults in coming years, starting with more courses in assisted living facilities and building ways for older people to mentor younger students and workers.
Addressing Wisconsin’s aging workforce
Wisconsin’s aging population has caused ongoing trouble for its workforce.
For years, there haven’t been enough working-age people to fill the jobs left by those retiring. That trend is expected to continue into 2030.
Lambrecht said UWGB leaders are thinking about how they can “encourage and invite that pre-retirement age population to stay engaged in the workforce a little bit longer.”
They think offering more short-term certificates can help.
Perhaps more commonly offered by two-year colleges, short-term certificates show someone completed a handful of courses focused on a skill or topic. An increasing number of people in the U.S. are seeking these credentials, as they’re cheaper and less time-consuming than degrees. They’re also often marketed as a way for workers to gain knowledge that will help them advance in their career and earn more money, though studies and data have indicated a mixed payoff.
UWGB offers 20 short-term certificate options, ranging from topics such as utilizing artificial intelligence to English-to-Spanish translation.
“Your job is going to continuously change, and with the exponential growth of information, how are you going to stay relevant in the workforce?” Lambrecht said. “So that’s really where continuing professional education programs come into play. It’s giving you short-term, bite-sized programming that’s going to help you refine a skill set that you now are faced with.”
University leaders also want to create more opportunities for younger students and employees to learn from people reaching retirement age. Lambrecht said she’s thinking about how they can “marry those two audiences to be of continued value in our workforce.” For example, last summer, they debuted an “intergenerational” program aiming to connect older adults and youth through several educational workshops.
‘Learning for its own sake’
The quest for more older students isn’t just about keeping them working. It also helps keep the region’s aging population mentally sharp and socially engaged.
UWGB’s Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) is geared toward older adults who want to “enjoy learning for its own sake.” There are no tests, no grades and no prerequisites. The volunteer-led club offers between 150 and 250 courses each semester — the most popular including history, film and documentary classes, guest lectures and tours around the region.
“When I retired, I realized I’ve got to keep doing things. You can’t just sit in the chair,” said Gary Lewins, a 10-year LLI student. Last semester, he took a class that taught him how to digitize all of his old photo albums.
Anita Kirschling works on her knitting project during a Lifelong Learning Institute course at UWGB. LLI offers 150 to 250 courses each semester. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
Norman Schroeder began taking LLI classes in 2018. The retired family doctor said it was good for more than just learning — he quickly made several friends. Today he helms LLI’s Board of Directors and tries to get more people to join.
“LLI is not only just the cognitive stimulation, the brain stimulation of the classes and learning — it’s also the social engagement,” Schroeder said. “Those are important elements for good health. Particularly in older patients, there’s a high incidence of depression, and some of that comes from social isolation … I kind of promote LLI as good for your health.”
The institute has over 800 members, who pay $150 for a year of access to classes. University professors often volunteer to teach classes related to their expertise, happy to teach to a highly engaged audience, Schroeder said.
In early 2025, the Rennes Group, which operates assisted living facilities in northern Wisconsin, gave a $300,000 grant to the institute. UWGB has used the money to host classes at Rennes’ nursing homes, upgrade technology to livestream classes to residents living in them and take residents on outings, such as a tour of the Green Bay Correctional Institution.
“Just because you live in an environment that provides maybe some extra help, doesn’t mean … you shouldn’t have access to things like lifelong learning,” Rennes Group President Nicole Schingick said.
Enrolling ‘the bookends’
UWGB’s focus on older learners comes as the so-called traditional college student, aged 18 to 24 years old, makes up a smaller share of enrollment nationwide.
In September, Chancellor Michael Alexander sent a letter to faculty and staff outlining how the university must “reinvent” to topple trends like these. To do so, he wrote, UWGB leaders must recognize “every person is a potential student over their lifetime, not just at 18 with stellar high school academic credentials.”
In their quest to grow enrollment, college leaders have trained their focus on not just older learners, but younger ones, too.
“(We’re) trying to think about the bookends of the population, knowing that the 18- to 24-year-old is a shrinking demographic,” Lambrecht said. “If we’re going to thrive as a university, we have to think outside the box.”
In 2020, for example, the college launched a program for high schoolers to complete associate degrees through the university for free. High schoolers have comprised a growing share of the university’s student population over the years, from 16% in fall 2018 to more than a third of enrollment today.
Anita Kirschling, left, and Theresa Reiter work on knitting projects during a Lifelong Learning Institute class at UWGB. University officials want to do more to reach older adults in the coming years, particularly those who can’t come to campus. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
In 2024, 12% of UWGB’s students were over the age of 30, though that figure only includes students who are taking classes for credit and does not include students like those involved in the Lifelong Learning Institute.
These approaches have helped UWGB’s total enrollment grow over 3,300 students in the last decade, while nearly every other UW school has seen a net decrease over the same time frame.
It’s common to see people of all ages on the Green Bay campus. In the summer, UWGB rents out its empty dorms as “snowbird housing” to older adults. But college leaders want to do even more in coming years to reach older people — particularly those who can’t come to campus.
“The reality is, some of our members have mobility issues,” Schroeder said. “When you’re an 18- to 20-year-old college student, walking any distance is not a big deal. But if you’re on the campus at UWGB, sometimes it’s a long walk from the parking lot to get into the classrooms.”
UWGB leaders hope to offer more virtual classes for older students who are home-bound or have physical limitations. To assist those with hearing loss, they want to add “hearing loops” to classrooms, which transmit sound from a microphone directly into a hearing aid. Eventually, they want Rennes residents to have access to the full catalog of lifelong learning classes virtually, in real time, Schingick said.
“That would really be able to open the doors globally, if you will, to all of our residents and all of our communities, no matter where they are in the state,” Schingick said.
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.
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When teacher Amanda Glunz started a robotics team at Audubon Technology and Communication High School four years ago, there were just five members.
Now, the program has grown to 32 students and two teams, including the newly formed all-girls team Av414nche. The newest team was designed to give girls an opportunity to break into science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM.
“We went with Av414nche at first, because you know how avalanches fall down? It’s like breaking down the barriers,” Audubon junior Lily Sanders said.
The team consists of builders, programmers and a marketing team.
The teams give students an outlet to build confidence and skills in STEM, receive mentorship and improve social skills, Glunz said.
Building the robot
Eighth grader Jorja (left) and sophomore Saniya Coates-Bonds control their team’s robot. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Several steps go into turning a concept from paper into a moving and functioning robot, said Jorja, an eighth grader at Audubon and member of Av414nche.
It all starts with a sketch.
“Then we started to actively use Legos,” she said. “Eventually we switched from Legos to Onshape (a computer-aided design (CAD) software program), and then once we had the Onshape model down, we just decided to go from there.”
After building the robot, the team uses trial and error to get it to function as best as possible.
For the team’s upcoming qualifier competitions, robots need to shoot balls into a goal. Audubon students compete against other schools across the state in several robotics competitions.
Sanders is part of the team that helps to build the robot. For their most recent competition, she tested out different wheels for their robot to see which ones launched the balls best.
“Really just figuring out what will work and what will not work,” Sanders said. “It’s really just a lot of trial and error.”
The robot is named Ava, which is short for Av414nche.
Ava, a robot built by Av4l4nche, Audubon Technology and Communication High School’s all-girls robotics team, throws a ball in preparation for an upcoming qualifier competition. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Jorja, a programmer on the team, works to make the robots move.
“The robot does not know anything until we tell it,” she said. “It wouldn’t just do it by itself.”
She said programmers first worked on the code that operates the wheels to make the robot move, then they code the wheel that makes the ball shoot.
Mentorship and higher education
When they aren’t working on the team’s social media, the marketing team looks for mentors who can introduce students to the fields of technology and engineering. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
When they aren’t working on the team’s social media, the marketing team looks for mentors who can introduce students to the fields of technology and engineering.
Most mentors are students from local universities including Milwaukee School of Engineering and Marquette University. The marketing team also has its own mentor who works in graphic design.
Some students like Davin Dacio, an Audubon junior who takes a dual enrollment course at Milwaukee Area Technical College, get college-level programming experience that is used on Audubon’s co-ed robotics team, DreaMKEepers.
Davin Dacio, a junior, works on his team’s robot. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Starting at a young age
Jaida Campbell, a junior on the marketing team, said they are trying to recruit younger students to the team.
Middle and high school students at Audubon share a campus. Middle schoolers begin robotics at the school by participating in the FIRST LEGO League. League members work with coaches and teammates to build Lego-based robots for engineering competitions.
Though Jorja is only in eighth grade, this is her first year on the high school robotics team.
She started as a fifth grader in the FIRST LEGO League, and by the seventh grade, she and Glunz worked on a coding project in the Fiserv Future Techies program, where they made it to nationals.
“It really inspired me, the fifth grade LEGO League,” Jorja said. “I love Legos and I was good with technology so I was like, OK, why not join my favorite things?”
Alex Klaus is the education solutions 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.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers called on the Republican-controlled Legislature to act on a broad array of his priorities in his final year in office, even if it means working for longer than they are scheduled to be in session.
Republicans are unlikely to follow Evers’ call to action on many of the proposals he outlined in a letter, just a year after they rejected the same or similar ideas in his state budget. But Evers expressed optimism that bipartisan agreement is near on several issues, including protecting funding for SNAP, the country’s main food aid program, and combating water pollution caused by PFAS chemicals.
“We have a year left and it’s not all about me,” Evers, who opted against seeking a third term, told reporters on Monday. “All of the things that need to be addressed, many of them can be.”
Evers has served as the swing state’s governor since 2019, helping Democrat Joe Biden narrowly win the state on the way to becoming president in 2020. President Donald Trump carried Wisconsin in 2024 and in 2016, both times by less than 1 percentage point.
Evers’ term ends in a year, but he’s focused on setting up his party to take back the legislative majority for the first time since they lost it in 2010.
In 2024 Evers signed new district maps that helped Democrats chip into Republican majorities in the Assembly and Senate. Democrats are also counting on anger toward Trump helping them in the midterm.
The Legislature is scheduled to be done with its session by mid-March, giving lawmakers more time to campaign for the fall election. The Assembly is planning to quit in mid-February. But Evers said Monday that there’s still time to advance Democratic priorities.
“I think it’s bad politics to say we’re done in February, we’re done in March, and we’ll see you at the polls,” Evers said. “That doesn’t work. I don’t think it’s a good message. We have the opportunity to do some good things.”
Evers called for bipartisanship to tackle issues that have long been Democratic priorities, such as increasing public school funding, lowering health care costs and enacting gun control laws.
While many of his proposals are likely to be summarily rejected, Evers said Democrats and Republicans were close on reaching deals to release $125 million in funding to combat PFAS pollution. He also said both sides were close to an agreement that would put additional safeguards in place to ensure Wisconsin isn’t penalized by the federal government for errors in who gets SNAP food assistance.
Evers called on lawmakers to spend $1.3 billion more on public schools in an effort to reduce property taxes, a month after homeowners across the state received higher tax bills. Republicans blame Evers because of a veto he issued that allows schools to increase spending limits for 400 years. But that is only one part of the complicated school aid formula. Evers and school officials have said funding from the state has not kept pace with expenses, forcing schools to ask voters to approve referendums for an increase in property taxes to make up the difference.
If schools aren’t given more money, Evers said “we’re in a world of hurt” because property taxes will only continue to increase.
Republican legislative leaders, in interviews with The Associated Press last month, did not express support for increasing general school aid funding.
“We have to have a bigger conversation about how we’re going to fund schools long term than just saying we’re gonna put more money to the same formula doing the same thing,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said.
Evers also urged the Legislature to make progress on his plan to close a 128-year-old prison in Green Bay as part of a larger overhaul of the correctional system. In October, the state building commission approved $15 million for planning. But once that is spent, absent further action, the work will stall, Evers said.
“We have to get this across the finish line,” he said.
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.
Anticipated spikes in demand for energy to supply Wisconsin’s data center building boom come on the heels of decades of declining power and water use, according to a new report.
A Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis shows there are more than 40 data centers operating in Wisconsin with another four planned. The sprawling facilities host computer servers, which store data and support a global surge in the use of artificial intelligence.
The data center building boom has been met by local opposition groups concerned about the facilities’ resource needs. But the Policy Forum report shows it’s all happening after years of declines in demand for electricity and water.
Using projections submitted to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission by utility companies, the Policy Forum estimates the state’s peak electrical demand is expected to increase to around 17 gigawatts by 2030, driven largely by data centers. In 2024, Wisconsin’s peak demand was rated at 14.6 gigawatts. Over the past 20 years, total electricity sales have fallen by 9% over the past 20 years.
Wisconsin Policy Forum Senior Research Associate Tyler Byrnes told WPR a big part of the decline since 2005 is due to fewer commercial customers paired with more energy efficiency measures. He said during that span, utilities have pulled aging, coal-fired power plants offline and shifted toward more renewable energy.
“Into that landscape, now we’re seeing these really big data centers come online,” said Byrnes.
Some utilities in Wisconsin are expected to seek state permission to build new power plants or expand existing ones to meet the data center demand. Byrnes said that will bring a need for more transmission lines, though local impacts will vary depending on where the data centers are located.
The Policy Forum’s analysis shows most existing facilities are in south central and southeastern Wisconsin. With other large-scale data centers planned for more rural areas like Beaver Dam and DeForest, he said utility companies may need to build out more infrastructure.
Wisconsin water demand has fallen for decades. Will data centers impact rates?
Another major concern raised during the data center debate is the facilities’ hefty water demands.
Opponents have complained that developers haven’t been transparent about how much water they’ll need to cool computer servers. In September, environmental advocates sued the city of Racine to force the release of projected water needs of a $3.3 billion data center campus located at the former Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant. The city released figures showing the project will need more than 8 million gallons of water per year.
To put that into context, the Policy Forum looked at historical water sales reported by the Racine Water Works, which will supply the Mount Pleasant data center project. Between 1997 and 2022, the utility saw water sales decline by 2.1 billion gallons annually. Byrnes said that taken as a whole, the demand for water from data centers is “a drop in the bucket” in a lot of cases.
Water flows in a tank April 8, 2025, at West Des Moines Water Works in West Des Moines, Iowa. (Angela Major / WPR)
As with electrical demand, Byrnes said water demand has decreased due to fewer industrial customers and increased efficiency efforts. Because cities like Racine still need to maintain the same level of infrastructure, which is more expensive due to inflation, the revenue from each gallon of water sold has to be spread further. That means potential rate increases.
Byrnes said data centers have been turning to closed-loop cooling systems, which use less water, but cities like Racine would still be selling more water, which would help cover fixed infrastructure costs.
“Potentially, it could maybe blunt some of the (water rate) increases,” Byrnes said.
DeForest, other local governments grapple with data center proposals
With the rise in data center developments in Wisconsin, local governments and state lawmakers are working to figure out how to regulate them.
The DeForest Village Board recently took no action on a citizen petition calling for referendum votes before any data center project could be approved.
At the same time, Republican and Democratic state lawmakers have proposed different ways to regulate data centers. One GOP bill is aimed at ensuring data centers and not other customers would pay for any required improvements to the state’s power grid. The Democratic bill is aimed at requiring data centers to get the bulk of their power from renewable sources.
A 422,000-square-foot Art Deco building overlooking Lake Monona in Madison was the home of state employees for nearly 100 years. It most recently served as the offices of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
Today large “For Sale” signs bookend the historic structure, which sits vacant just a few blocks from the Capitol. A brochure for the property describes redevelopment opportunities such as a boutique hotel or mixed-use space. It also notes its proximity to a potential future commuter rail station in another state-owned building occupied by the Department of Administration.
The sale of the building, announced in December, is merely one piece of a multiyear initiative of Gov. Tony Evers’ administration known as Vision 2030. The plan seeks to make state government smaller and save taxpayers money through “rightsizing” underused office space and supporting hybrid work to grow the number of state workers across the state, according to the Department of Administration.
Since its launch in 2021, state agencies have sold millions of dollars worth of buildings and consolidated more than 589,000 square feet of office space, nearly 10% of the state’s total building footprint, according to DOA reports. The funds from building sales are used to cover outstanding state debts and then transferred to the state’s general fund.
“I see this really as a win-win both for state workers and for taxpayers,” DOA Secretary Kathy Blumenfeld said in an interview with Wisconsin Watch. “One of the things that we’re looking at is modernization and how can we be more efficient and be good fiscal stewards for the state.”
Vision 2030 fits with a long-standing desire by Wisconsin’s leaders of both parties to reduce the physical footprint of state agencies and create a presence outside of Madison. Former Gov. Scott Walker also sought to move state divisions and to seek efficiencies for taxpayers by reducing private leases. Walker’s administration oversaw the construction of a new state office building that opened in Madison in 2018 and is home to eight state agencies today.
These ideas on building a smaller, modernized state government are likely to continue when Evers leaves office next year. Former Evers Cabinet member Joel Brennan, who led DOA when it launched Vision 2030 in 2021, is one of at least eight Democrats running for governor this year.
Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, a Republican candidate for governor running against U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, announced in December a “Shrink Madison” plan to require state employees to return to in-person work, sell state office buildings in Madison and eventually move key agencies to different regions across the state. His plan specifically mentions continuing Evers’ Vision 2030 efforts.
But he also goes further to move agencies out of liberal Dane County and into more conservative parts of the state — a potential source of political patronage. Schoemann proposes moving the Department of Veterans Affairs to La Crosse, the Department of Natural Resources to Wausau, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to Stevens Point, the Department of Financial Institutions to Green Bay, the Department of Tourism to Rhinelander and the departments of Children and Families and Workforce Development to the Kenosha/Racine area.
Those moves would take years, but Schoemann in an interview said he sees it as a way to improve the relationships between state government and its citizens.
“I think this is about people, first, affordability and accountability and changing the culture of state government, which to me, ultimately, is just entirely too focused on itself … and getting it back focused on the people,” Schoemann said.
Why Vision 2030?
The Evers administration’s plan grew out of the pandemic when conditions required remote work, deferred maintenance costs for state buildings kept rising, and there was a growing need for workers to fill state jobs — all colliding at the same time.
“All these things were swirling at one time, and we launched a study in 2021 trying to get our arms around that,” Blumenfeld said.
Hybrid work opportunities meant state agencies took up less space and could hire workers outside of Madison and Milwaukee, which Blumenfeld refers to as the “Hire Anywhere in Wisconsin” initiative. Remote work also meant the state could get rid of underused office space through consolidation or sales, she said. In Milwaukee, the state sold a former Department of Natural Resources headquarters in 2022 and purchased 2.69 acres for a new office building. But as of last year it planned to work with a private developer to create a multitenant public-private space instead.
Expected moves in Madison this year include the sale of the former human services building along Lake Monona where offers are due in March. Other expected moves in 2026 include the spring listing of two adjacent general executive offices in downtown Madison, the brutalist GEF 2 and GEF 3 buildings, at a combined total of 391,000 square feet, Blumenfeld said.
The historic Art Deco state government office building at 1 W. Wilson Street in Madison, Wis., seen Jan. 6, 2026, was the home of state employees for nearly 100 years. It most recently served as the offices of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. (Brittany Carloni / Wisconsin Watch)
Blumenfeld said DOA has seen limited opposition to building sales and agency moves to reduce office space, but the Republican-led Legislature has pushed back on remote work following the pandemic. Lawmakers have argued that in-person work ensures more accountability for state employees. Evers in October vetoed a Republican bill that would have required state employees to “perform assigned work duties in physical office space for at least 80 percent” of their work time every month.
“The important progress my administration has made on our Vision 2030 goals means that it would not be possible to return to largely in-office-only work arrangements without leasing more space,” Evers wrote in his veto message. “Or having to re-open buildings that are slated for closure and sale — both of which will cost taxpayers more money.”
Blumenfeld said she can’t predict what the next governor will do when it comes to government efficiency, but changes in the state’s workforce needs and updates to work spaces are unlikely to slow down.
“Our hope is that we’ve laid a really solid foundation for utilizing space efficiently, effectively, for hiring the best talent, for bringing in people from all over the state and bringing family-sustaining jobs to all 72 counties,” Blumenfeld said.
Wisconsin’s next governor
Wisconsin voters will choose the next governor later this year, with primary contests in August and the general election in November.
Other than Schoemann’s plan, gubernatorial campaigns that responded to questions from Wisconsin Watch shared different perspectives on how they would address state government’s size and efficiency.
Tiffany, the Northwoods congressman and Schoemann’s primary opponent, said he supported then-Gov. Walker’s move of the DNR’s forestry division to Rhinelander when he served in the Legislature, but his goal is focused on rooting out “waste, fraud and duplication” in state government.
“I’ve supported changes like that when they make sense, but my focus is making government smaller, more accountable, and more efficient, not just rearranging the furniture,” Tiffany said.
Among Democratic candidates, plans for state government include making sure state agencies are effectively helping Wisconsinites and that citizens can access resources.
“Mandela Barnes’ priority as Governor is to deliver for Wisconsin families and lower costs — which includes ensuring state agencies are serving communities effectively, are spending taxpayer dollars efficiently, and that Wisconsinites in every corner of the state can access the services they rely on,” Cole Wozniak, a spokesperson for the Barnes campaign, said in a statement.
Brennan, who helped develop Vision 2030, in a statement said state government should continue to work for and be led by Wisconsinites.
“Any conversation about the future footprint of state government should start with access, effectiveness, and responsible use of taxpayer dollars,” Brennan said.
Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said the state should invest in modernizing its technology so agencies can deliver better services to citizens across the state. Republicans in the Legislature have pursued a “fiscally irresponsible starvation of government for decades,” she said.
“There’s a huge opportunity to make state government work better and deliver better outcomes for people at lower cost to taxpayers,” Roys said. “But it does take that upfront investment and political capital, frankly, to say it’s actually worth spending a little money to save bigger in the long run.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Iowa (14.5%), Illinois (22.7%) and Michigan (14.6%) were net-exporters.
Wisconsin imported more in previous years:
2023: 14.8%
2022: 18.4%
2021: 14%
2020: 15.7%
About 10% of U.S. electricity generation is traded across state lines.
Wisconsin participates in a grid run by Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which aims to ensure power flows across 15 central U.S. states.
Electricity rates in Wisconsin, which produces most electricity from coal and natural gas, have exceeded regional averages annually for 20 years.
Wisconsin utility ratepayers owe nearly $1 billion on coal-powered plants that have been or soon will be shut down, Wisconsin Watch recently reported.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The city of Madison and its former clerk are arguing in court that they can’t be sued for failing to count 193 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, in part because a Wisconsin law calls absentee voting a privilege, not a constitutional right.
That legal argument raises questions about how much protection absentee voters have against the risk of disenfranchisement — and could reignite a recent debate over whether the law calling absentee voting a privilege is itself unconstitutional.
That law, which appears to be uncommon outside of Wisconsin, has been cited repeatedly in recent years in attempts to impose more requirements and restrictions on absentee voting, and, at times, disqualify absentee ballots on which the voters have made errors. It does not appear to have been invoked to absolve election officials for errors in handling correctly cast ballots.
Nonetheless, the law has become central to the defense presented by Madison and its former clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, in a novel lawsuit seeking monetary damages on behalf of the voters whose ballots went missing.
The suit, filed by the law firm Law Forward, names the city and the clerk’s office as defendants, along with Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities, and cites a series of errors after the 2024 election that led to the ballots not being counted in alleging that they violated voters’ constitutional rights.
In defending against that claim, attorneys for Witzel-Behl argued in a court filing that by choosing to vote absentee, the 193 disenfranchised voters “exercised a privilege rather than a constitutional right.”
Witzel-Behl’s filing argues that the 193 disenfranchised voters did, in fact, exercise their right to vote, but chose to vote absentee and therefore place the ballots into an administrative system that “can result in errors.”
“The fact that Plaintiffs’ ballots were not counted is unfortunate,” the filing states. “But it is the result of human error, not malice. And that human error was not a violation of the Plaintiffs’ constitutional right to vote.”
Matthew W. O’Neill, an attorney representing Witzel-Behl, declined to comment.
The city’s attorneys have now adopted the same argument, filings show.
Asked about the city’s legal defense, current Madison clerk Lydia McComas didn’t address the argument directly but told Votebeat that the city is committed to counting all eligible votes “regardless of how they are cast.”
Phil Keisling, a former Oregon secretary of state, said he wasn’t aware of other states with similar laws. He said he found the city’s argument wrong and offensive.
“The right to vote, if there is a state constitutional right to vote, should have nothing to do with the form that a voter chooses,” he said.
Law passed to clarify absentee voting requirements
The law that Madison cites in its legal defense was enacted in 1985, long before absentee voting became widespread. The stricter language about the regulation of absentee voting came after judges in a series of Wisconsin court cases called for more liberal interpretation of those regulations.
The law states that while voting is a constitutional right, “voting by absentee ballot is a privilege exercised wholly outside the traditional safeguards of the polling place.” A subsequent provision states that absentee ballots that do not follow required procedures “may not be counted.”
The law appears similar to a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision that drew a distinction between the right to vote and the right to receive absentee ballots. That decision has since been interpreted — and misinterpreted — in a “number of ways by a number of people wanting to trim back mail voting,” said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University.
After the Wisconsin law was enacted, the state election board clarified the Legislature’s position that failing to comply with procedures for absentee ballot applications and voting would result in ballots not being counted. The board did not suggest the law could be used to excuse municipalities that improperly discard legally cast ballots.
Absentee voting has long been available in Wisconsin but surged in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and has been extensively litigated since then.
The law calling absentee voting a privilege was central to a lawsuit that resulted in a 2022 statewide ban on ballot drop boxes; another lawsuit to prohibit voters from being able to spoil ballots and vote with a new one; and President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election outcome in Wisconsin.
A later lawsuit led to the reinstatement of drop boxes in 2024. In that case, plaintiffs argued that the law “unconstitutionally degrades the voting rights of all absentee voters by increasing the risk of disenfranchisement.” The court, then led by liberal justices, declined to overturn the statute but disagreed with an earlier interpretation that absentee voting requires heightened skepticism.
Experts say Madison’s defense misinterprets the law
Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA Law School and expert on election law, said he didn’t think the law itself was problematic, adding that states have various laws controlling absentee voting. The U.S. Constitution, he noted, doesn’t require any state to offer absentee voting.
But “once the state gives someone the opportunity to vote by mail,” he said, “then they can’t — as a matter of federal constitutional law — deprive that person of their vote because they chose a method that the state didn’t have to offer.”
The city and Witzel-Behl’s use of the law in this instance “seems to be wrong,” Hasen said.
Attorneys for Law Forward in a court filing called Witzel-Behl’s argument a “shocking proposition.”
“There is no right to vote if our votes are not counted,” Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson told Votebeat. “And this is the only case I’m aware of where a municipal government has argued otherwise.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
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A federal pause on most refugee admissions has forced Wisconsin resettlement agencies to lay off staff and shut down some programs. The slowdown follows a historically busy four-year stretch in which about 5,000 refugees arrived in the state.
Providers warn that if Wisconsin’s resettlement infrastructure withers, the state could be unprepared for a future surge of refugees.
The Trump administration is prioritizing South Africans — primarily Afrikaners, a white minority — among the limited refugee admissions it plans to allow.
Eleven South African refugees arrived in Wisconsin in September, followed by another 32 later in 2025 — the only refugees resettled in the state this year.
Zabi Sahibzada’s team of refugee resettlement caseworkers has shrunk. The Trump administration’s pause on refugee admissions in January 2025 dealt a blow to Sahibzada’s employer, Jewish Social Services of Madison, which previously counted on federal funding tied to each new refugee arrival to support its resettlement program.
A few new arrivals trickled in over the following months, entering the U.S. with special immigrant visas available to Afghan and Iraqi nationals who worked with the U.S. government or its international partners. The same visa enabled Sahibzada, a former USAID employee from Afghanistan, to reach the U.S. in 2022.
But even those admissions have now halted. The State Department in November stopped issuing any visas to Afghan nationals after authorities identified the man who shot two West Virginia National Guard members near the White House as an Afghan special immigrant visa holder.
Though the Trump administration says it will permit up to 7,500 refugees to resettle in the U.S. this fiscal year, it plans to prioritize South Africans – primarily Afrikaners, a white minority descended largely from Dutch, French and German settlers.
Eleven South African refugees arrived in Wisconsin in September, followed by another 32 in late 2025. They were the only refugees resettled in the state since last January, U.S. State Department records show.
The dramatic slowdown leaves agencies searching for ways to maintain Wisconsin’s resettlement infrastructure until the refugee pipeline widens again. For some agencies, that includes resettling South African refugees, even if some remain skeptical of the Trump administration’s motives for privileging them in admissions. Jewish Social Services lacks that option: Federal officials did not include the nonprofit in the South African refugee program.
The offices of Jewish Social Services of Madison are shown in Madison, Wis., Dec. 19, 2025. The nonprofit laid off refugee resettlement staff after the Trump administration halted most refugee admissions. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Providers warn that if Wisconsin’s resettlement infrastructure – trained caseworkers, volunteers and employer partnerships — withers, the state won’t be prepared for any future surge of refugees.
Trends in refugee resettlement
The near-total shutdown of refugee admissions followed the most active period for resettlement in decades.
More than 5,000 refugees reached Wisconsin between October 2020 and September 2024 – a span in which refugee resettlement in the U.S. reached the highest annual peak since the early 1990s.
Most recent refugee arrivals came from Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Those figures do not include special immigrant visa holders, asylees or immigrants with humanitarian parole, many of whom come from the same countries as those admitted as refugees. Roughly 370 Afghans with special immigrant visas settled in Wisconsin between October 2020 and October 2025.
Refugees reach Wisconsin through a network of international, federal and state agencies, national nonprofits and state-level partners. In the process, they pass through a series of screening interviews, background checks and medical examinations.
Six organizations currently contract with Wisconsin’s Department of Children and Families to provide resettlement services, connecting new arrivals to housing, employment and English language courses. Relying on a mix of federal and state funding, they provide some services for up to five years after an arrival. The federal government ties much of its funding to the number of refugees resettled.
Resettlement agencies cut staff
Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan planned to resettle more than 400 people in fiscal year 2025. Instead, it resettled 163 people between October 2024 and January 2025, after which it received only a half-dozen new arrivals, resettlement director Omar Mohamed said. All were Afghans with special immigrant visas who arrived in Wisconsin without ties to a resettlement agency and reached out for help.
“At least 27 people were scheduled to arrive in January when the stop work order happened,” he added. President Donald Trump’s inauguration day order to suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program rendered their plane tickets useless.
The sudden shift prompted Lutheran Social Services to cut nearly a third of its resettlement program staff, Mohamed said.
Most Wisconsin refugee resettlement agencies face similar predicaments. Jewish Social Services in Madison laid off two case workers and a housing specialist. Hanan Refugee Relief Group, a relatively new nonprofit operating out of an office above a South Side Milwaukee pizzeria, cut 10 members of an already small team. World Relief Wisconsin, which resettles refugees in the Fox Valley, also laid off staff.
Tables and computers sit in a classroom that hosts English as a second language classes and other programs, Dec. 1, 2025, at Hanan Refugee Relief Group’s office in Milwaukee. The nonprofit cut 10 members of an already small team due to the Trump administration’s pause on most refugee admissions. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Green Bay, which has resettled hundreds of refugees in northeast Wisconsin in recent years, ended its resettlement program after its national affiliate, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, severed its partnerships with the federal government in April.
But Sean Gilligan, the diocese’s refugee services director, says Catholic Charities is still providing housing referrals, English classes and other basic services to refugees who already settled in greater Green Bay.
Resettlement agencies are still receiving some federal funds to support refugees who arrived within the past five years, along with state grants for educational and health programs.
That funding may temporarily help the agencies stay afloat.
Hanan Refugee Relief Group is ramping up its focus on employment training, Executive Director Sheila Badwan said. That includes offering on-the-job English language training for refugees employed at a Milwaukee Cargill meat processing plant.
But the loss of funding from new arrivals leaves Hanan and other agencies scrambling to find donors to support their work.
Sheila Badwan, executive director of Hanan Refugee Relief Group, listens to Maryam Durani, cultural program coordinator, Dec. 1, 2025, in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
“We are hoping just to keep our doors open to serve not just the ones we welcomed (recently),” said Uma Abdi, the nonprofit’s refugee program director, “but all of those refugees and immigrants that still need support.”
The International Institute of Wisconsin, an older and well-established resettlement agency, is an outlier. It’s growing as others scale back. Revenue from contracts with medical clinics and other businesses to provide translation services has allowed it to grow as others scale back.
“We can operate without any government contracts,” President and CEO Paul Trebian said.
Trump opens doors to South Africans
With the doors closed to refugees from most of the world’s conflict zones, some Wisconsin resettlement agencies are now turning their attention to South Africans.
The Trump administration launched the South African refugee admissions program through a February executive order, filling in the details after the fact. Alleging a “shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights,” the order pointed to a 2024 South African law that allows the state to seize land without compensation in limited circumstances.
The law’s supporters call it necessary to redistribute land from the country’s white minority, who own much of South Africa’s farmland, to a Black majority still recovering from decades of racial apartheid that ended in the 1990s. Trump decried the law as “racially discriminatory” and accused the South African government of “fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”
Trump’s order specifically offered refugee status to Afrikaners, but his administration has since said the resettlement program is open to members of any racial minority in South Africa, including those of English or South Asian descent, so long as they can “articulate a past personal experience of persecution or fear of future persecution.” Unlike most refugees, South Africans may apply for refugee status only while living in South Africa.
Refugee advocacy groups and the South African government have criticized the program for legitimizing false claims of “white genocide” and bypassing some steps through which refugees from other countries must pass.
But the Wisconsin resettlement agencies participating in the program say their responsibility is to welcome refugees, not to determine who deserves refugee status.
“We’re here to serve everybody,” said Lutheran Social Services President and CEO Héctor Colón, whose nonprofit expects next year to resettle up to 75 new arrivals, mostly or all South Africans in the Milwaukee area.
Colón adds that working with South Africans keeps his organization’s resettlement infrastructure in working order during the pause in other admissions.
“We’ve been through ebbs and flows, we understand how this works,” he said, “but our organization has made a commitment that we want to keep this program up and running. There are many programs all across the country that cannot absorb the hit.”
But World Relief Wisconsin Regional Director Gail Cornelius, whose nonprofit helped resettle South Africans this year, noted that some of the South Africans who arrived in Wisconsin last year have already moved on to other states.
Revetting of refugees promised
A wave of federal rules changes following the November attack of National Guard members further complicates the work of resettlement agencies.
Among the changes: halting green card and citizenship applications for immigrants and refugees from 39 countries, including Afghanistan and Myanmar.
“People that were going in for their citizenship oath were actually pulled out of line,” Cornelius said.
The Trump administration also vowed to revet and reinterview all refugees who entered the U.S. during the Biden administration, regardless of their current legal status. Such a review could affect thousands of Wisconsin refugees, but resettlement agencies are still awaiting clarity about how the administration will follow through.
“How are they going to review all of these cases?” Badwan asked. “Do we even have the resources to do that?”
Zabi Sahibzada, resettlement director for Jewish Social Services of Madison, in his office Dec. 19, 2025. Three years after arriving in the U.S. on a special visa available to Afghan and Iraqi nationals who worked with the U.S. government or its international partners, he wonders if he’ll face revetting from the Trump administration. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Sahibzada wonders whether he, too, will face revetting. Meanwhile, the White House’s bar on immigrant visas for Afghan nationals placed his plans to reunite with his wife and children on hold. They remain in Kabul, his daughters confined to their home after the Taliban forbade girls from attending school.
“I was waiting for things to be calm,” he said, referring to the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan that previously stalled his efforts to secure visas for his family. “I talk to my kids every morning, and they’re asking me that question, like, what’s gonna happen? I have no answer to them. I’m just saying, maybe things will get better.”
Working with Afghan families who made it to Wisconsin before the door closed is bittersweet, Sahibzada added. “Even if my kids are not here, at least they are here.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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A Shorewood homeowner has drawn ire for aggressively chasing people off the Lake Michigan beach in front of his property, reigniting debate over who can use Wisconsin’s Great Lakes shoreline.
Unlike neighboring states, Wisconsin grants private owners exclusive use of publicly owned beach up to the Ordinary High Water Mark, which expands private control during low-water years.
A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor deliberately walked the disputed beach, got ticketed for trespassing and wants to lose in court and appeal to challenge Wisconsin’s unusual shoreline law.
The homeowner’s elaborate beach compound has previously triggered local and state scrutiny over permitting and alleged shoreline violations.
Reports have surfaced in recent months of a not-so-jolly buccaneer working Lake Michigan’s Caribbean-clear waters just north of Milwaukee. He has gained an almost mythical status among southeastern Wisconsin’s swimmers, boaters and internet surfers.
He is not shaking down sailors for sugar, silk or gold. He is after something arguably more precious – the sole right to use the Lake Michigan beach behind his home and yard on the 4000 block of North Lake Drive, the second property north of Atwater’s swimming beach in the village of Shorewood.
“I dont want to be the dick but I stopped swimming there because a dude would always come out in a little black zodiac (raft) and yell. Stuff like ‘this is a historical site you cant be here,” grumbled one Redditor in an early December post. “…Watched the dude chase off all approaching boats too.”
Added another: “dude who lives just north of atwater is a menace. Hes yelled at me for swimming 100+feet off shore and came out in his little zodiac. Yall know the house lol.”
The house he is talking about is indeed an eye-catcher.
Distinct among other waterfront properties in Shorewood, this residence has a cluster of huts and an expansive deck at the bottom of a private cable car built to shuttle the owners from the main house on Lake Drive to the beach some eight stories below.
To call the beachfront development a patio, deck or even cabana doesn’t do it justice. It looks more like someone bought the set from the 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” — walled cabins, thatched roofs, boat ramp, surfboards, the works — and plopped it on a sandy Wisconsin beach that’s frozen half the year.
“Someone needs to introduce them to some Jimmy Buffet,” another Redditor posted in the December conversation. “You build a tiki porch… you share drinks and make new friends. Isn’t that a requirement to get the building permit approved?”
And that raises a question: How did regulators from the village of Shorewood and the state Department of Natural Resources allow this homemade Margaritaville to be built so close to the public’s lake?
Wisconsin’s curious shoreline law
Paul Florsheim is a 66-year-old clinical psychologist and a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor who grew up on Lake Drive several houses north of Atwater Park. That was an era when he says the beach behind all the private homes perched atop the bluff was commonly treated as a public right of way, like a sidewalk. People were free to walk up and down it and enjoy it — within reason. Walking a kid and maybe a dog, yes. Tapping a keg or having a luau smack in front of someone’s house, of course not.
Signs warning against trespassing are posted on Jan. 8, 2026, at the border of Atwater Park in the village of Shorewood, Wis. Tiki compound owner Daniel Domagala seeks to preserve exclusive access to public beach along Lake Michigan’s shoreline. Unlike neighboring states, Wisconsin grants private owners exclusive use of publicly owned beach up to the Ordinary High Water Mark, which expands private control during low-water years. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
That’s why it bugged Florsheim when he moved back to Milwaukee after a tenure on the faculty at the University of Utah and saw signs posted at the edge of Atwater Park that read “Private Property Beyond this Sign – Trespassers may be subject to citation.”
Florsheim didn’t see things that way and, legally, they aren’t.
Those signs should actually read: “Public property beyond this point: No trespassing.”
And if that doesn’t make sense to you, it didn’t to Florsheim either.
Two of Wisconsin’s neighboring states on Lake Michigan – Indiana and Michigan – have laws that ensure public access to the lake’s shoreline, as long as beach walkers leave their limbo sticks at home, keep moving and stay below the “Ordinary High Water Mark” (OHWM), commonly understood as where the sand stops and terrestrial vegetation starts.
Wisconsin is different. It acknowledges public ownership of the beach up to that line, but it gives “exclusive” use of that public beach to the private property owner adjacent to it. The law is based on a 1923 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that beachcombers are free to walk the shoreline, so long as they stay in the water, even if it’s only enough to keep their feet wet.
This means, if you want to abide by the letter of the Wisconsin law while walking the beach, you have to skitter along the beach like a sandpiper, only in reverse – ever chasing the lapping waves back toward the water instead of running away from them.
And, while the Ordinary High Water Mark remains relatively fixed, the water level does not.
The level of Lake Michigan can, in fact, fluctuate by 6 feet over a period of several years. This means in low-water years, such as 2025, what was just recently a submerged public lakebed becomes vast expanses of exposed sand that becomes, in essence, private beach.
A Shorewood beach showdown
Florsheim wants that to change, so in late July he walked down the 100-some steps to the beach at Atwater Park. Then he crossed the park boundary by scrambling over a dock-like concrete structure (called a revetment) jutting into the water separating Atwater Park from the neighbors to the north.
On the other side of the revetment that morning was tiki compound owner Daniel Domagala, who was preparing to take his kids out on their kayaks on an 80-degree, flat-as-glass water morning, conditions he described in courtroom testimony last month as “perfect.” Then he saw Florsheim, whom he did not know, making his way over the revetment with a couple of dogs.
“You’re in my backyard,” Domagala said he told the stranger after he cleared the concrete structure. “Why don’t you turn around and go back to Atwater?”
“No, I’m not,” he said Florsheim replied before ambling north.
Domagala said he was baffled by what he saw as a brazen attitude toward his property rights.
“Just imagine somebody is in your house telling you: This is not your house,” he testified.
Domagala said he remained calm and courteous during the exchange. He called police, but Florsheim was gone by the time they arrived.
Signs noting security cameras and warnings against trespassing are posted on Daniel Domagala’s beach compound along Lake Michigan just north of Atwater’s public swimming beach in the village of Shorewood, Wis., on Jan. 8, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
A surveillance camera Domagala has placed at his beach compound revealed Florsheim returned to walk the dry sand above the water line in the following days. Florsheim even cordially ignored face-to-face warnings from Shorewood police who, cordially, told him to stop.
Police finally wrote him a trespassing citation that packs a $313 fine. Florsheim was happy to get what he saw as a ticket to where he really wanted to go — Shorewood Municipal Court.
On Dec. 2 Florsheim appeared at trial without a lawyer to make his argument that Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan shoreline should be open to the public up to the Ordinary High Water Mark.
At the conclusion of the folksy four-hour trial (Florsheim called his 95-year-old dad to testify that he and his shorefront neighbors always viewed the beach abutting their homes as public property), Shorewood municipal judge Margo Kirchner said she would render a decision in the coming weeks.
Florsheim said he hopes to lose so he can appeal his case all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which he hopes will see things his way.
The ramifications of Florsheim’s summer hike are potentially staggering. In low-water years, such as 2025, vast expanses of dry sandy beach can appear in places where, just a few years earlier, that lakebed was completely submerged. If Florsheim were to take his case all the way to the state Supreme Court and get a favorable ruling, the result could open untold thousands of shorefront acres on Wisconsin’s roughly 800 miles of Great Lakes shoreline to the public for beach walking, at least in low-water years.
Signs are posted on Daniel Domagala’s beach compound along Lake Michigan just north of Atwater’s public swimming beach in the village of Shorewood, Wis., Jan. 8, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Records show past shoreline violations
Meanwhile, it appears the compound owner has his own history of violations on the same stretch of beach Florsheim was ticketed on.
Shorewood Planning & Development Department records show in August 2015 Domagala, who did not respond to emailed questions from Wisconsin Watch, applied to build a fence and a covered patio on the beach adjacent to his property, in front of an aged concrete breakwater at the base of the bluff.
Domagala didn’t stop with the covered deck and the fence that separates the public beach from his property. He ultimately built a larger deck that, in high-water years, stretches almost to the water along with two enclosed cabins. Most of that work received permits, but not all of it.
In 2018 the village notified Domagala that one of those cabins was out of compliance with village regulations because Domagala, who identifies himself as the contractor in documents submitted to the village, equipped it with a bathroom that had no connection to the village sewer system.
A letter from the village instructed Domagala to “Remove all plumbing fixtures including the Separett toilet, shower stall and sinks from the boat storage house as it is in violation of State Plumbing Codes and Village of Shorewood Municipal Codes.”
Separett toilets are composting devices that are designed to aerobically decompose waste but require regular disposal.
Domagala told the village he installed the plumbing so his family and guests wouldn’t have to shuttle up and down the towering bluff just to relieve themselves.
“This issue is important to me because I cannot imagine hanging around the beach all day without a toilet or running water,” Domagala wrote to the Shorewood planning department in October 2018.
The village stood firm and ordered the removal of all plumbing fixtures – toilet included.
These photos of Daniel Domagala’s compound along Lake Michigan in Shorewood, Wis., were included in June 4, 2020, correspondence between the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Shorewood Planning & Development Department.
Two years later, on April 6, 2020, an anonymous person complained to the village that a boat ramp attached to Domagala’s compound appeared to have been built inside the Ordinary High Water Mark, where development is prohibited.
Domagala was not happy.
“I’m really bothered by the complaint,” Domagala wrote to Shorewood building inspector Justin Burris. “These people have nothing to do but be in my business. I think we have some good track record of working together and following the rules. I once lived in the country full of communists who thought they can tell you how to live…. This is deeper than a complaint for me. It’s the idea, and if it continues I will move out of the area.”
Domagala went back to the village later in summer 2020 after his wife reported a drone flying over their property during an unsettling time due to the pandemic and public demonstrations against the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“Can you confirm that it was not (a) village of shorewood drone?” he wrote to building inspector Burris, who informed him he did not believe it was.
“… This situation is becoming more and more annoying. Between People from out of town who want to use my front lawn as their own, My driveway being constantly blocked by cars on a day like yesterday,,Atwater being occupied by A crowd that does not live in shorewood where I can’t go to the playground with my own kids and perhaps meet a neighbor, the trespassers, the riots and finally the village chasing me whenever there is some communist with the idea that they want a piece of my beach, I’m trying to find reasons to stay in shorewood and Justify 25K spent on taxes every year.”
Burris, who described Domagala as cordial and cooperative in all his dealings with the village, nevertheless ordered the ramp shortened so it did not trespass on the public’s lakebed.
“I ask that you obtain a permit for the deck/boat launch structure that was constructed without a permit,” Burris wrote on June 19, 2020. “The structure will have to be modified so it does not project beyond the OHWM.”
(Courtesy of Milwaukee Riverkeeper)
Domagala did that work but he also drew attention from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources that summer for installing piles of rocks directly in front of his compound to protect it from encroaching water after Lake Michigan water levels had climbed dramatically. State regulators found that the fortification was in an area they considered clearly below the Ordinary High Water Mark, where structures are not allowed without meeting rigid permit requirements.
“This would require a DNR permit for a structure on the bed of a waterway,” the DNR’s Michelle Hase wrote to the Shorewood Planning & Development Department on June 4, 2020. She said the DNR wasn’t about to grant such a permit. “Even if this area was exempt from permitting for rip rap/revetment, this project would not meet the exemption standards and would require a permit. It is also very unlikely we would permit this amount of fill/type of structure.”
Several days later, the DNR backed off.
“We received some guidance on Lake Michigan erosion control projects and unless there is a major resource impact, the DNR is not pursuing active enforcement,” Hase wrote to Shorewood’s planning department.
After hearing that news from the village, Domagala asked Burris if he should ask the DNR whether it would require any other modifications.
“You could contact the DNR, but how I read it was that they’re not going to be following up or asking you to remove or modify anything,” Burris wrote to Domagala. “That isn’t to say that they may not in the future, but the old adage says, let sleeping dogs lie.”
The DNR did not answer Wisconsin Watch’s question about why it took no enforcement action. A spokesperson wrote: “A member of DNR’s compliance team did reach out to the property owner regarding unpermitted shoreline erosion control, but the matter did not result in elevated enforcement.”
Lake Michigan’s waters crash on the beach near Atwater Park and Daniel Domagala’s property, Jan. 8, 2026, in Shorewood, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Questions about shoreline enforcement
Since then it seems most of the barking has been coming from Domagala; he testified at the Dec. 2, 2025, beach-walking trial that he had called police to report people trespassing on the beach last summer “at least” 50 times.
Todd Ambs, a former head of the DNR’s water division, says the agency does not routinely police Wisconsin beaches for development violations. It instead relies on public complaints to point out potential problems that, in turn, prompt the DNR to investigate.
The standing-room-only trial last month has indeed riled an avid lake-advocating community eager to point out potential problems with Domagala’s property. It includes Cheryl Nenn of the conservation group Milwaukee RiverKeeper. She has spent more than two decades working to protect the region’s waterways, and when she looks at the compound that has sprouted from the Shorewood sands in the past decade she is left with one word to describe it.
“Crazy.”
She is not alleging the compound as currently configured is out of compliance but says, from her experience with waterside developments, it appears that the compound may at least partially sit in the no-build zone below the Ordinary High Water Mark, especially when she compares it to the high-water line the DNR drew for nearby Atwater Park. That line goes right up to the greenery at the base of the bluff.
“It would be a good idea to have someone from the DNR get down there and delineate the Ordinary High Water Mark,” she said of the beach in front of Domagala’s compound, adding she isn’t looking to cause trouble for the homeowner. Quite the opposite. The no-build rule below the high-water mark, she says, “protects the lake and public rights, but it also protects the landowners …because the lake can be a mean, mean bitch.”
Dan Egan is the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Death and Life of the Great Lakes” and the Brico Fund Journalist in Residence at the Center for Water Policy in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences.
This story was produced in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Investigative Journalism class taught in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Click here to read highlights from the story
The state reported five deaths from people falling through the ice on Wisconsin lakes last winter, compared with seven over the previous five years.
There were 10 Madison lake rescues the previous two winters (plus another one in the last week of December 2025) after only one in 2023.
More dangerous ice conditions are having a negative effect on businesses and tourism.
When Alec Hembree fell through the ice on Lake Wingra last winter, he remembered, “it was instantaneous.”
It was just after dark on Jan. 20. The temperature was around 2 degrees. Hembree was riding his bike across the frozen lake from his work on Madison’s east side to his home on the west side, a commute he had tried successfully for the first time the previous week. When he fell in, his feet couldn’t touch the bottom. He barely had time to be scared.
“I think there were a couple people on the lake,” Hembree said. “They wouldn’t have been able to get to me before I got out.”
The air was so cold, Hembree’s leather gloves immediately froze to the icy surface of the lake when he tried to pull himself out. After about 30 seconds in the water, he was able to pull himself and his bike out. It all happened so fast, he wasn’t sure how he did it. He thinks his training from being an Eagle Scout helped.
“Everything was in an ice shell at that point,” he said. He biked 10 minutes to a co-worker’s house, where he used a hair dryer to thaw his jacket zipper and get out of his frozen clothes before his co-worker gave him a ride home.
Locals walk on a mostly frozen Lake Mendota on March 7, 2025. (Jess Miller for Wisconsin Watch)
Hembree’s experience is becoming more common on Wisconsin’s lakes. For some, falls prove deadly. The Department of Natural Resources last winter recorded five people statewide who died falling through the ice on off-highway vehicles across the state. Between 2020 and 2024, similar accidents accounted for a total of seven deaths.
According to the Madison Fire Department, the Lake Rescue Team was dispatched four times to rescue people who fell through the ice in 2025 and six times in 2024, though only once in 2023. Through the end of 2025, the department had responded to 39 incidents of people falling through the ice since 2016. On Dec. 27 (as this story was being finalized for publication) the department rescued another individual who had fallen through the ice on Lake Mendota.
But those are only the incidents where the Lake Rescue Team was dispatched, so the stories of Hembree and others who fell through the ice and managed to escape aren’t included.
“This (past) year has probably been one of the more dangerous years on ice that I can remember,” said Lt. Jacob Holsclaw, the Wisconsin DNR’s off-highway vehicle administrator.
Treading on Wisconsin’s frozen lakes has gotten more dangerous, creating cost for taxpayers and business owners and calling into question the future of an important state pastime.
A growing trend
Trekking on Dane County’s frozen lakes is a common winter activity for southern Wisconsin residents.
Some of the equipment used by Madison Fire Department’s Lake Rescue Team in performing ice rescues. (Jess Miller for Wisconsin Watch)
“Walking on frozen lakes” was the most common activity on the lakes among respondents to a 2010 Dane County Land & Water Resources Department survey. At 28%, that was more common than swimming, kayaking, boating, or fishing from a boat or pier. Other ice-related activities such as skating and fishing were more popular than water skiing, jet skiing and sailing. The study authors estimated that close to 110,000 Dane County residents — more than a fifth of the population — walked on the county’s frozen water bodies at least once in 2010.
The heavy usage of the frozen lakes provides a revenue stream for numerous Dane County businesses and nonprofits. For example, the Clean Lakes Alliance hosts the annual Frozen Assets Festival, in which hundreds of participants take part in a fundraising 5K on frozen Lake Mendota and others enjoy scientific demonstrations, ice skating, kiting, boating and other ice-related activities.
But the future of frozen recreation in Dane County is in peril. Madison winters are getting shorter and less predictable. And falls through the ice are becoming more common.
Ron Blumer, a Madison Fire Department division chief who heads the department’s Lake Rescue Team and has been with the city since 1995, said in recent years his team has conducted “a lot more responses” to calls to rescue people who fell through the ice.
Part of the uptick can be attributed to climate change and the shrinking number of days of 100% ice cover on the Yahara lakes. Since 1855, when the Wisconsin State Climatology Office began consistently tracking Lake Mendota’s freezing and thawing dates, the lake has stayed frozen for an average of 102 days every winter. But only in four of the last 25 years has Mendota been frozen that long. During the 2023-24 winter, the lake was frozen for 44 days — a more than 20-year low. Last winter it froze for 69 days.
There’s no ‘safe’ ice
While information about how thick ice should be for walking or driving varies between sources, there is some consensus: No ice is ever completely safe.
“We really shy away from saying that there’s ever any ice that’s 100% safe,” Holsclaw said. The DNR’s website offers no hard and fast rules for what’s considered a “safe” thickness.
“You cannot judge the strength of ice by one factor like its appearance, age, thickness, temperature or whether the ice is covered with snow,” the website reads. “Ice strength is based on a combination of several factors.”
Air temperature is just one of those factors. But others include wind, sunlight, whether the ice is near a spring or other moving water, and whether the ice is frozen water (black ice) or mixed with snow (white ice).
“Black ice can withstand a lot more force (than white ice),” said Adrianna Gorsky, a freshwater and marine sciences Ph.D. candidate at UW-Madison. “Even if you have really thick white ice, it might not be as strong as if you had black ice only.”
Cracks form in the ice along the shore of Lake Monona on March 8, 2025. (Jess Miller for Wisconsin Watch)
Fluctuations in temperature during winter can also have a marked effect on ice thickness and quality. In January and February of 2025, it wasn’t uncommon for temperatures to fluctuate by tens of degrees within a single week in Dane County. On Jan. 21, the day after Hembree fell through the ice, Madison temperatures were in the single digits. A week later, on Jan. 28, the high temperature was 49 degrees. This frequent melting and thawing back and forth, Gorsky said, could result in mixed layers of black and white ice that would compromise the ice’s structural integrity.
Variations in temperature can also make lake ice expand or contract, causing pressure heaves or large cracks to form in the surface of the ice.
“And there will be a gap in there where there’s thin ice or no ice at all,” said Jon Mast, a lieutenant on MFD’s Lake Rescue team. These areas can be especially dangerous to walk near.
For as much that is known about factors affecting ice thickness and qualities, “there is a lot of unknown,” said Gorsky. That’s because winter limnology is relatively understudied compared to other areas of marine science.
“There’s a lot of things we still don’t know and a lot of theory that we’ve based off summer open water season that doesn’t really hold true for winter,” Gorsky said.
Increasingly visible effects of climate change on lake ice have precipitated “a cry for more research” in winter limnology, Gorsky added. And it can’t come soon enough. Because falls through the ice are costing local businesses, nonprofits and taxpayers money.
The cost of thin ice
In Madison, there are no fines associated with being rescued from falling through the ice. Because, Blumer said, “we want people to enjoy the lakes and to have fun.” But that fun still comes at a cost.
Businesses and organizations that rely on the ice for income are feeling the strain of weakening lake ice too.
A sign warns of thin ice in Madison, Wis., on March 18, 2025. (Jess Miller for Wisconsin Watch)
In 2024 the Clean Lakes Alliance canceled all on-ice events for its Frozen Assets Festival, including the annual 5K. According to Sarah Skwirut, the Clean Lakes Alliance’s marketing coordinator, only around 200 participants participated in the on-land “winter workout” the organization hosted in lieu of the 5K, down from 800 who ran the 5K the previous winter, which generated around $30,000 for the nonprofit.
“If the lack of ice becomes more common in the future,” Skwirut said in an email, “we will need to adapt and find new ways to engage the community and promote our work.”
Small businesses are equally if not more affected by the phenomenon. In 2022, Pat Hasburgh purchased D&S Bait and Tackle in Madison, “very aware of what I was getting myself into as far as climate change and running a business that kind of depends on ice,” Hasburgh said. He admitted the recent, mercurial winters have made it difficult to plan for the ice fishing season.
“I mean, I had a pile of augers waist high in 2022,” Hasburgh said, citing that people are less likely to need such a high-powered tool to break through the ice in warmer winters. And 2024 was even worse.
“We had four weeks of ice, as opposed to three months,” he said. “That was a rough one to try to make it through as a business.” Hasburgh is used to around a third of D&S’s business coming from ice fishing, but guessed that it was probably less than a quarter in 2024.
Beyond Madison
The increase in falls through the ice is easier to see in a populous part of the state like Dane County. But the trend is apparent across Wisconsin. And in many cases, the cost is more than just lost business or an icy bike ride.
The five deaths this past winter happened in Pewaukee, Kenosha, Fond du Lac, Superior and Westfield, an hour north of Madison, where a man died on Jan. 6 after falling through the ice on Lawrence Lake while riding a UTV.
In a Facebook post, the Marquette County Sheriff’s Office urged the public “to avoid venturing onto frozen lakes or rivers unless they have confirmed the ice is thick enough for safe activities.”
The temperature in Westfield on Jan. 6 was below freezing and had been every day the previous week.
An October 2024 study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment warned that lakes between 40 and 45 degrees north latitude — a range that includes all of Wisconsin south of Wausau — could lose all safe ice for the winter sometime this century.
A solution may lie in more research. Gorsky said predicting the future of what winter is going to look like for lakes “is a really big research topic.”
For Hembree’s part, he considers himself lucky to be alive. But he has “no concerns” about going back on the ice. He’s enjoying it while he still can.
“If I do go out commuting on the lake again I will be, certainly, more cautious,” he said.
The Madison Fire Department offers these tips for those planning to go out on the ice this winter:
No ice is ever considered safe, regardless of how long it’s been cold or how thick the ice may appear to be. A variety of factors can create a dangerous situation unexpectedly, for one reason or another.
If you do go on the ice, never go alone, and bring your cellphone with you in case something happens.
Avoid areas where there are cracks or signs of upheaval. These are areas where pressure has caused the ice to crack and move, exposing fresh water and creating areas of thin ice and instability.
Be equipped at all times with personal safety devices such as a flotation device/life jacket and ice picks, which can be used to help pull yourself back onto the ice shelf if you fall in.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
More than a decade ago, I covered the opening of a tuition-free charter school aimed at growing the Fox Cities’ advanced manufacturing workforce.
Students are still enrolling at Appleton Technical Academy, getting hands-on experience, accessing paid apprenticeships and completing courses for college credit.
So I wondered: How is the school really doing? Has it met the goals education and industry leaders set?
I pitched the idea to reporter Miranda Dunlap, and she dug in.
Her reporting shows mixed results, and it’s a strong example of the type of solutions journalism we prioritize at Wisconsin Watch.
Solutions journalism is just what it sounds like: rigorous, evidence-based reporting on responses to problems.
Every solutions journalism story reports on four elements:
The response to the problem.
Evidence on how the response is (or isn’t) working.
Insights.
And limitations.
ATECH was created to address a shortage of advanced manufacturing employees in the Fox Cities.
The response from local industry and education leaders was to create a public charter school housed inside Appleton West that would not only introduce students to these careers, but also jump-start their journey to a certification or degree in the field. The story examines how the school got started, the application process and the four areas students can choose to study.
Nuance comes in with the evidence. Data or anecdotes fit the bill. Miranda’s story includes comments from ATECH students about why they chose to enroll. Their thoughts illustrate the need for the school.
However, the industry leader who helped found the school told Miranda ATECH didn’t become the employee pipeline he hoped. His business is no longer closely tied to the school.
The limitations of ATECH vary. The cost to run the school is one challenge. It takes a lot of metal to teach students how to weld, for example. School leaders look for donations from businesses to help with supplies and equipment.
They also mentioned a stigma that the broader public has against technical education.
Insights tend to be the trickiest pillar. I try to answer this question when I look for insights: What nuggets of information would be important to know if I were trying to implement this response in my community?
For ATECH it’s the need for industry mentors. The school needs those connections not only for students to meet professionals working in the field, but also to teach ATECH educators how to use the latest technology.
Miranda also includes context about the push for more career and technical education training, as well as how these efforts are funded at the state and federal levels.
I hope you read her story to get a full, unvarnished look at how ATECH is doing.
The U.S. Postal Service adopted a rule effective Dec. 24 clarifying that some mail is not postmarked when it is first received – at a post office, for example – but rather on a later date, during processing.
The rule doesn’t change practices, but instead is “intended to improve public understanding of postmarks and their relationship to the date of mailing.”
Postmarking can affect whether local officials accept election ballots.
Fourteen states, including Illinois, accept a mailed ballot if it is received after Election Day, as long as it is postmarked on or before Election Day.
Thirty-six states, including Wisconsin, require absentee ballots, including those cast by mail, to be received by the local election office by Election Day. They aren’t affected by the rule change.
Local experts say – and national data supports – that winter brings a broad set of safety risks, including risks that disproportionately affect older adults and young children.
Dangers include hypothermia and frostbite, falls inside and outside the home and carbon monoxide poisoning.
Here are more details about those dangers and how to prevent or minimize them.
Slips and falls
Children and older adults face higher risks for falls and injuries. (Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service file photo)
In 2024, emergency medical personnel in Wisconsin responded to more than 140,000 fall-related calls, accounting for about 21% of all 911-related ambulance runs statewide, according to DHS data.
Older adults are disproportionately affected.
According to the National Institute on Aging, older adults face a higher risk of falling due to chronic medical conditions that can limit circulation, balance or mobility, including arthritis, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.
The Milwaukee Health Department urges residents to prepare for icy conditions as temperatures fall and to clear snow and ice from walkways to help prevent falls.
The National Institute on Aging recommends using ice melt products or sand on walkways, using railings on stairs and walkways, avoiding shoveling snow yourself when possible and wearing rubber-soled, low-heeled footwear.
Christine Westrich, emergency response planning director for the Milwaukee Health Department, said social isolation adds another layer of risk for older adults.
“Either their friends or relatives have passed away, and they have over time socially isolated themselves,” Westrich said.
The onset of hearing loss and dementia are risk factors for increased isolation, she added.
Hypothermia and frostbite
Two people walk down North 27th Street in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Age can affect how the body handles cold exposure.
This winter, there have already been roughly 10 fatalities where cold temperatures may have played a factor, said Michael Simley, a medicolegal death investigator manager for the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Extreme temperatures can also worsen existing medical emergencies, Simley added.
A heart attack, for example, is serious under any circumstances, he said. But, he added, it becomes even more dangerous when it happens in a hostile environment like when it is very cold.
Carbon monoxide poisoning
With colder temperatures comes increased use of furnaces and other heating systems – and with that, a higher risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Increased use of appliances and other items that burn fuels and other chemicals, such as furnaces, portable generators, stoves and chimneys, helps account for the higher risk, according to the CDC.
Carbon monoxide is odorless and invisible, and symptoms such as headache, dizziness and nausea may be overlooked or mistaken for other illnesses.
“We’ve recently had two outbreaks with families of four (members) or greater,” Westrich said. “In one case, they didn’t have working heat and brought a charcoal grill inside. … In another, it was a malfunctioning furnace.”
In both situations, she said, there were no working carbon monoxide detectors.
DHS says carbon monoxide detectors should be installed on every level of the home.
Renters should be especially vigilant, Westrich said.
“Oftentimes, what might get overlooked in the lease, it’ll say the renter is responsible for the battery replacement in those devices,” she said. “Sometimes tenants aren’t aware of that, or it’s hanging high in the ceiling – you forget it’s even there.”
Resources
The Milwaukee Health Department maintains cold weather guidance with general information and tips.
For non-emergencies that are not crimes, the Milwaukee Police Department says residents have a number of options, a spokesperson for the department said in an email.
Residents can request a welfare check by calling 414-933-4444.
People seeking shelter, warming centers or other basic needs can call 211.
Those experiencing emotional distress or mental health struggles can call or text 988, the national Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Westrich and Simley both emphasized the same core message about being mindful of the people in your community.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Almost half of all private school students in Wisconsin now receive school vouchers, signaling a rapid reshaping of the state’s educational landscape powered by state taxpayers.
When it launched in 1990, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation’s first modern private school voucher program, included just 300 students at seven secular private schools. The students came from families earning less than 175% of the federal poverty level, and state taxpayers covered $2,446 of tuition for each.
The total price tag that year: about $700,000, or $1.78 million today adjusted for inflation. It was a pittance compared to the $1.9 billion of state aid and $2.4 billion of property taxes provided to public schools in Wisconsin that year.
By 2011, enrollment in Milwaukee’s voucher program reached 23,000 students, or about three out of four private school students that year.
Former Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature helped spur the creation of three more private school choice programs similar to MPCP: one for students in Racine (RPCP), one for students elsewhere in the state (WPCP) and another for students with special needs (SNSP). This expansion was part of a national effort to boost private school education with support from Walmart founders, the Walton family, according to previous Wisconsin Watch reporting.
Flash forward to last school year: Nearly half (46%) of all private school students in Wisconsin received vouchers across the state’s four programs. Taxpayers this school year will spend more than $700 million to defray tuition costs for about 60,000 students. Almost all (about 96%) attend religiously affiliated schools.
The vast growth of the voucher system has helped Wisconsin’s private school system grow modestly as public school enrollment declines. Critics, particularly Democrats and public school teacher unions, describe the state as funding two school systems.
Supporting a second school system with public money
Taxpayers through school district budgets provide $10,877 for each K–8 voucher student and $13,371 for each voucher student in grades 9-12 who enrolls in one of the three voucher programs. Each student who participates in the Special Needs Scholarship Program receives $16,049. Those amounts will increase by 4%, 3.2% and 2.6% respectively next school year.
Except in Milwaukee, where the program is directly funded by the state budget, the funding is deducted from the state aid to each school district. This school year, $357.5 million was deducted.
For public schools, state aid roughly represents 45% of school funding. Federal aid, property taxes and other revenue cover the rest. Although the exact amount varies by district, public schools collected an average of $14,104 per student in property taxes and state general and categorical aid during the 2024-25 school year.
When the state redirected aid from public schools to pay for the Racine, statewide and special need vouchers, school districts were still allowed to raise revenue as if the private school student were attending the public school. So while the district pays $10,877 to the private school for a K-8 student, it can still collect roughly $13,362 in state general aid and property taxes, keeping the difference to pay for other students still in the public system.
In the meantime, Republican lawmakers proposed “decoupling bills,” which would have the state fully cover the Racine, statewide and special need voucher programs, similar to Milwaukee. That would prevent the money from passing through the public school districts, reducing the net revenue school districts have been able to collect for the past decade.
“The funding system is broken, and the link in current law between school choice funding and property taxes needs to be repealed,” said Carol Shires, vice president of operations, School Choice Wisconsin, an advocate group for the voucher system, in an email to Wisconsin Watch.
Private school market stabilizes with public funds
As homeschooling has gained considerable popularity over the past decade, the voucher program has saved many private schools from losing enrollment and likely closure.
“There really would not be a private school sector in Milwaukee, with a few exceptions, if it wasn’t for the voucher program,” said Alan Borsuk, senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School, “because nobody had the money to pay tuition, and there was just no way to afford schools.”
Wisconsin private schools gained 1,687 students from 2011 to 2024, a stark contrast to public schools, where enrollment declined by more than 65,000 students. Homeschooling grew even more, by nearly 13,000 students.
There are fewer private schools, but more are participating in the voucher program
A Wisconsin Watch data analysis found that about half of the private schools that joined the voucher program between 2008 and 2024 grew their student population.
A debate on effectiveness
When the voucher program was introduced in Milwaukee, lawmakers envisioned the program empowering low-income parents who couldn’t otherwise afford private schools to choose where their children are educated, bridging the education gap, and improving education quality for both the private and public school systems.
“Choice gives poor students the ability to select the best school that they possibly can,” former Gov. Tommy Thompson said in a telephone interview with the New York Times in 1990. “The plan allows for choice and competition, and I believe competition will make both the public and private schools that much stronger.”
About 35 years after the program’s introduction, people still cannot come to a consensus on whether it improves education quality.
“Taxpayers fund choice students at a lower dollar amount than they fund public school students, yet those choice students achieve better outcomes,” Shires wrote, referring to the school year 2024-25 state testing results from DPI.
The DPI data cited by the organization showed a higher average test score for voucher students compared to their peers in public schools.
However, that methodology has been criticized by reviewers affiliated with the National Education Policy Center, a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder’s School of Education. The reviewers criticized the approach of directly comparing standardized test scores of voucher students with those of public school students, arguing that such comparisons are overly simplistic and misleading.
In his review, Stephen Kotok, an associate professor at St. John’s University, wrote that simply comparing average test scores between the two groups without accounting for nonrandom selection into voucher programs overlooks other factors that may influence student performance besides school quality. He also wrote that relying solely on standardized test scores to judge educational quality or productivity is a “crude” measure.
DPI uses report card systems to provide a more comprehensive review of school performances in addition to test scores. Last year, 85% of public schools and 85% of voucher schools met, exceeded or significantly exceeded expectations. However, less than half (43%) of the voucher schools were scored due to insufficient data. DPI cited small student populations and low test participation rates among voucher students for not assessing those schools.
Several recent studies indicate that the academic benefits of voucher programs are marginal.
An analysis of 92 studies on school choice students’ academic achievements published between 1992 and 2015 found a very slight rise in standardized test scores among students who transferred from public schools to voucher schools, according to Huriya Jabbar, an associate professor at the University of Southern California.
Borsuk wrote that the voucher system does not improve the overall quality of education in a column for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He noted the education quality of voucher schools varies by school, with a mixture of excellence and disappointment.
In addition, state laws do not protect private school students from discrimination as they do in public schools. Previous reports by Wisconsin Watch have found some voucher school students have faced discrimination because of their disabilities or sexual orientation.
Not just providing choice for public school students
RPCP and WPCP generally do not accept students previously registered in private schools, but the program makes an exception for grades K4-1 and 9.
This year, one in four (1,129) newly enrolled WPCP students studied in a private school the previous year — even more than the 948 students who transferred from Wisconsin public schools. Comparatively, most newly enrolled Racine students came from public schools or had not previously attended any school.
MPCP does not have a similar requirement, and DPI stopped publishing the source of enrollment data in 2006.
Bringing religion into classrooms
Enrollment at MPCP jumped in 1998 as the program began incorporating religious schools after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-2 the program didn’t promote state-sponsored religious education.
As of the 2025-26 school year, nearly all of the voucher schools are religiously affiliated.
Parents cite the religion-based curriculum, safer environments, strict discipline and small classrooms in their decision to send their children to private schools.
Parents of voucher students may opt out of the religious curriculum under the law, yet no available data show how often that happens.
“Almost 30 years now, if there have been 25 cases of opt-outs, I’d be really surprised,” Borsuk said. “If you’re going to a religious school and don’t want to be there, then why are you going to that school? It’s basically as simple as that.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
It’s a new year in Wisconsin, and an election one, too. There are many state government and politics storylines we plan to follow at Wisconsin Watch in 2026 from major policy debates to races that could determine the future of the state.
But we value accountability here, including for ourselves. Before we dive into predictions for the year ahead, we want to look back at what our state team thought might happen in 2025.
Here’s what we predicted and what actually happened.
2025 prediction: The Wisconsin Supreme Court will expand abortion rights.
Outcome:True.
The court in a 4-3 July ruling struck down Wisconsin’s 1849 near-total abortion ban, determining that later state laws regulating the procedure enacted after the ban superseded it.
There are still restrictions on when someone can receive an abortion, including a ban on the procedure 20 weeks after fertilization and a 24-hour waiting period and ultrasound before an abortion is performed. President Donald Trump’s big bill signed in July has also threatened Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in Wisconsin that offer abortions. A federal appeals court in December paused a lower court ruling and allowed the Trump administration to continue enforcing that part of the law.
2025 prediction: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature will again strike a deal to increase funding for public education and private voucher schools, similar to the compromise they made in 2023.
Outcome:Mixed.
Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature did reach an agreement on K-12 education funding during the budget process, approving a $500 million boost for special education funding. But this wasn’t like 2023, when conservatives secured significant funding increases for private voucher schools.
General school aid was kept at the same level as previous years. The Department of Public Instruction in October said, because of that decision, 71% of school districts will receive less general aid during the current school year. Private voucher school funding increased based on past per pupil funding adjustments. As a result of revenue limits going up $325 a year for the next 400 years (no change there from Evers’ creative veto in 2023) and general aid staying flat, property taxes increased significantly.
2025 prediction: The state Supreme Court election will set another spending record.
Outcome:Nailed it!
Total spending for the 2025 state Supreme Court race between liberal candidate Susan Crawford and conservative Brad Schimel hit $144.5 million, shattering the record set in 2023. The spending in last year’s race broke records even without a $30.3 million giveaway from tech billionaire Elon Musk to conservative voters in the state.
As Larry Sandler recently reported for Wisconsin Watch, it was another year demonstrating how expensive and highly political Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court elections have become over the years.
2025 prediction: Ben Wikler will be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Outcome: Swing and a miss!
Former Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair Ken Martin was elected chair of the Democratic National Committee in February. Wikler was the runner-up in the contest.
Following the DNC chair race, Wikler announced in April he would not seek reelection as chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Devin Remiker took on the leadership role following the state party’s convention in June.
It’s not clear what’s next for Wikler. He announced in October he would not seek the Democratic nomination for governor.
Wisconsin Watch predictions for 2026
There is a lot on the line this year, especially with several key elections on ballots in the spring and fall. Here are storylines we expect to follow in 2026.
2026 prediction: The Wisconsin Supreme Court election will NOT set a new spending record.
The big factor here is that the outcome of the April race won’t determine who controls the majority of the court, which lowers the stakes compared to elections in 2023 and 2025. The contest is expected to be a race between Appeals Court judges Chris Taylor, a liberal, and Maria Lazar, a conservative.
A clearer picture of the fundraising for the 2026 race will appear after campaign finance reports are released this month. Lazar entered the race in October, so her campaign fundraising since then is not yet available.
Taylor, who announced her campaign in May, reported raising more than $584,000 as of July. Following the August announcement that conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley would not seek reelection, a spokesperson for Taylor’s campaign said it had raised more than $1 million.
2026 prediction: Data centers will continue to be a major subject of public interest in Wisconsin as public outcry causes the Public Service Commission to delay approvals of new power plant projects.
Public protests against data centers punctuated the 2025 news cycle as tech giants saw pushback in communities where they sought to build. The Marquette University Law School poll conducted in October shows a majority of Wisconsin voters across the state believe the costs of data centers outweigh their benefits.
The public opposition to data centers and rising utility bill costs will lead to closer scrutiny of power plant projects, which the Public Service Commission is set to review this year.
2026 prediction: In the governor’s race, Republicans will focus on rising property taxes. Democrats will focus on rising health care costs. But the ultimate X factor will be the public mood about what’s happening at the federal level — just as it was in 2018.
Already in December, Republicans have slammed Evers’ 2023 creative veto that increases public school funding for the next 400 years as a centuries-long property tax increase. Democrats have condemned Republicans for not voting to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which expired at the end of December.
Federal issues and public opinion about Trump will ultimately be what sways voters to one party or the other. During the 2018 governor’s race between Evers and then-Gov. Scott Walker, health care was a key issue with Walker authorizing a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act and Evers calling to expand BadgerCare. But as we’ve noted before, the public is turning against public education in favor of lower taxes, which could keep Republicans in Wisconsin from suffering major swings the party has seen in other states in 2025 off-year elections.
2026 prediction: Democrats will flip at least one chamber of the Legislature for the first time in nearly two decades (not counting that short-lived Senate flip after the 2012 recall elections).
New legislative maps being used for the first time in state Senate races and midterm elections favoring the opposite political party from the one in the White House are signs it could be a good year for Democrats to secure at least one chamber of the Legislature — if not both.
The more likely of the two is the Senate, where Republicans hold an 18-15 majority. Democrats need to flip at least two Republican seats and hold onto the Eau Claire area seat held by Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, to win the majority. The party is targeting GOP districts currently held by Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine; Sen. Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield; and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, where new maps have yet to be tested. Kamala Harris won those three districts, and Democrats running in other states in 2025 have made double-digit gains.
The Assembly, where Republicans hold a 54-45 majority, could also be in play, but Democrats need to flip five Republican-held Assembly seats. Of the 12 Assembly districts in 2024 decided within less than 5 percentage points, five were won by Republicans. Assembly Democrats would need to flip those five seats and hold onto the other seven close districts from 2024 to win the majority.
2026 prediction: Fundraising by candidates for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District will exceed 2024, especially as that seat draws national attention in the Republican fight to keep the U.S. House majority.
Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden defeated Democrat Rebecca Cooke by less than 3 percentage points in 2024. Van Orden raised nearly $7.7 million and Cooke brought in nearly $6.4 million during the 2024 cycle, outraising all other Wisconsin congressional candidates at the time, according to Open Secrets.
The 2026 race for the 3rd District is likely to be a rematch between Van Orden and Cooke, who have already raised millions for the 2026 cycle. As of late September, Van Orden reported bringing in about $3.4 million and Cooke nearly $3 million. National attention on who wins the U.S. House majority will also bring more money into the race. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put the 3rd District on a list of “offensive targets” for 2026.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Cori Salchert leaves the Christmas lights on year round.
It’s not to celebrate the holidays, but so an ambulance can easily spot her house any time of year.
“Hearing that an 11-year-old stopped breathing … can be a scary thing for an EMT, so we just lessen the difficulty for finding our home,” Cori said.
Since 2012, Cori and her husband, Mark, have adopted five children, all with a terminal prognosis — meaning the Salcherts adopt these children knowing their lives will be cut short. They get most of their needs met at the Salcherts’ Sheboygan home, which is equipped with a stairlift and handicap shower.
“Our hope is that our kids are whole and well and that we’re going to see them again, and that they’re going to be able to say, ‘Hey mom,’ or, ‘Hey dad’ — something that they never were able to say while we had them,” she said.
Cori is known as the hospice mom.
She adopts children with complex medical conditions, many from the foster care system.
Eleven-year-old Charlie loves sunlight, so his room has numerous windows and skylights Nov. 26, 2025, in Sheboygan, Wis. (Angela Major / WPR)
Children in foster care often have worse medical health than children in the general population. And there are hundreds of kids in foster care with terminal illnesses, according to research published in the National Library of Medicine.
The Salcherts’ first adopted child was Emmalynn. She lived with them for 50 days and died in 2012. She had difficulty regulating body temperature, so she spent most of her life bundled in someone’s arms, like she was the moment she died.
Samuel was adopted at 13. He died two years later from a rare genetic disorder affecting the brain’s white matter.
And Nehemiah was just 3 1/2 when he died on Dec. 2, 2021, in the Salcherts’ family room. He was lying next to Cori as she sang “Jesus Loves Me.”
“He opened his eyes — he hadn’t done that in about 48 hours — and took his last breath, and he was gone,” Cori said as she showed a photo of Nehemiah. “He woke up in heaven and he will never have to have another surgical procedure.”
Social workers and doctors close to Cori call her a unicorn. She said that idea of being exceptionally rare often makes her sad because she wished more people could give dying children a loving place to spend the rest of their lives.
To others, it might seem like a daunting endeavor to continuously lose and grieve children.
“One of our pastors had told us, ‘These kids are going to wreck your life. But they are not going to ruin it. So your heart is never going to recover the same as it was before you had them. And that’s an OK thing,’” she said.
Meeting Charlie and Kassidy
The Salcherts say they have 17 children: five adopted, eight adult biological kids and four fostered children. There is a sign on their front door that reads: “There’s like a lot of kids in here.”
Two of the Salcherts’ adopted children, Charlie and Kassidy, were home from school recently for the holidays.
Kassidy is 6. She was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. She loves balloons and gets a big smile on her face when the family walks into the room.
Charlie is 11. He has school awards taped to his wall. One reads: “Ray of Sunshine award presented to Charlie Salchert for making our classroom a better place.” He has hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, in which his brain was damaged from a lack of oxygen and blood flow.
Mark Salchert leans down next to 11-year-old Charlie on Nov. 26, 2025, in Sheboygan, Wis. (Angela Major / WPR)
Cori Salchert, right, smiles at Kassidy as she rests in her bed Nov. 26, 2025, in Sheboygan, Wis. (Angela Major / WPR)
Providing care for Charlie and Kassidy is a family effort. Their adult children pitch in. One child sleeps in Charlie’s room at night, and another helps care for Kassidy.
Charlie’s condition makes him technically deaf and blind. But Cori said there are moments when she’s not so sure.
At school, Charlie has an eye gaze machine that helps him communicate.
He’ll do things like turn up the volume and play music as loud as the machine goes. Cori said teachers have to remind him repeatedly to stop.
“He can be a very naughty 11-year-old in his own way,” she said with a laugh.
Walk a day in their shoes
That day at the Salcherts’ home, Kassidy’s biological mother messaged Cori to see how her daughter is doing. Cori gave her an update and reminded her she is always welcome at the house.
Many people ask the Salcherts about the children’s biological parents and the circumstances that led them to give up their parental rights. She usually tells them to walk one day in their shoes.
Kassidy’s biological mother didn’t want to give her daughter up. However, her second daughter was born with a congenital heart defect, and she couldn’t care for two children with such complex medical issues.
The biological mother remains in contact and often receives pictures from school and was there when Kassidy got her ears pierced.
“Kassidy’s family has just gotten bigger rather than exclusionary,” Cori said. “She has two moms who love her a lot.”
Photos of the Salchert family are displayed in their kitchen Nov. 26, 2025, in Sheboygan, Wis. (Angela Major / WPR)
Cori rejects the notion that she is a “Disney princess mom.” She simply has the ability to care for the children, as well as the special equipment, stairlifts and accessible home that some children need.
And she thinks others have the ability to do it, too.
“We live in the miracle zone,” she said. “If you don’t live in the miracle zone, well, you don’t need miracles.
Every year in Wisconsin state government, billions of taxpayer dollars are spent on programs and policies that impact every citizen, community, school and business.
While many people roll their eyes and tune out the sometimes messy, partisan, unpredictable work of state government, WisconsinEye Public Affairs Network encourages citizens to lean in. For the past 18 years, Wisconsin’s equivalent to C-SPAN has provided an inside look into the workings of state government. This inside look, which I have been involved in from the start, has included:
Free, live and unedited coverage of the Wisconsin Legislature, executive branch and state Supreme Court.
Fourteen thousand hours of searchable and shareable archived video of official state proceedings.
An additional 16,000 hours of unedited and spin-free coverage of news conferences, interviews, campaigns, elections, and related civic events that add context and perspective.
As the nation’s first independent, non-government-controlled state Capitol network, WisconsinEye does not favor the political left or right, but is rooted firmly in that all-important middle ground where diverse voices are welcome and informed dialogue contributes to positive outcomes for Wisconsin. The transparency that it delivers is essential to building the trust that keeps democracy functioning. Once citizens in a democracy come to understand how decisions are made, they can better use their voices and voting power to shape outcomes.
Jon Henkes (Provided photo)
As an independent not-for-profit resource, WisconsinEye has relied on charitable donations to support its lean annual budget of $900,000. But this funding approach is no longer sustainable in what has become a highly competitive, post-pandemic philanthropic environment. That’s why the painful decision was made to shut down the functions of WisconsinEye, beginning Dec. 15, until the funding gap is plugged.
To this end, WisconsinEye is asking the Legislature and governor to reconfigure a previously designated $10 million matching grant approved in a unanimous bipartisan act, to help WisconsinEye build a permanent $20 million endowment. We are asking for lawmakers to remove the “match” requirement and instead allocate $900,000 for the network’s 2026 budget.
Additionally, we are calling on the state to invest the rest of the endowment, with earnings flowing annually to the network to cover two-thirds of its annual budget. The remaining one-third will be raised through three proven streams: annual program sponsorships, small-gift and online donations, and an annual fundraising dinner.
Meetings with state officials are underway, but it will potentially take three months to work its way through the state process.
In the meantime, WisconsinEye needs to raise $250,000 (three months of its operating budget) to bridge the financial gap and allow state Capitol programming to resume. Without this bridge funding, WisconsinEye could lose up to four highly skilled, cross-trained staff members. The domino effect would put the network at considerable risk of failure.
An alternative plan, that of a state government takeover of the network, was introduced by several Democratic legislators. Their plan, in my view, is in opposition with the decades-long commitment of the Wisconsin Legislature to provide citizens with an independent, trusted, neutral view of state government.
WisconsinEye cannot continue to provide a valued space where citizens can see for themselves, consider events and issues in context, and draw their own conclusions — if it is operated and controlled by the very entity it exists to cover.
Please consider joining the movement to save WisconsinEye by going to wiseye.org/donate. Your donation is tax-deductible.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Jon Henkes is the president and CEO of Wisconsin Eye.
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