Wisconsin’s version of C-SPAN is back online after going dark for about seven weeks due to a lack of funding.
In a vote tallied Monday, a state Legislature committee unanimously approved funding to the nonprofit public affairs network.
WisconsinEye’s website was back up Monday morning, including its archive of old videos of hearings and legislative sessions. The nonprofit also livestreamed a press conference in the Capitol Monday and has plans to broadcast legislative activity Tuesday.
It comes after the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Legislative Organization voted 10-0 to approve $50,000 to WisconsinEye for operations costs to resume broadcasting for the Legislature for February.
Those costs will be divided equally between the Senate and Assembly. The full Legislature does not need to vote on the funding.
WisEye went offline on Dec. 15. At the time, the network said it needed “consistent annual funding” to ensure the public doesn’t “lose the only reliable and proven source of unfiltered State Capitol news and state government proceedings.” In November, the network said it needed $887,000 in donations to cover its operation budget for one year.
During WisconsinEye’s absence, Republican state lawmakers enforced rules banning members of the public who are not credentialed media from recording legislative hearings inside the State Capitol.
WisEye has created a GoFundMe with the goal of raising $250,000, or three months of its operating budget. As of Monday morning, the campaign had raised more than $56,000.
WisconsinEye CEO Jon Henkes did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday. He had previously asked the Legislature and governor to remove a matching provision for roughly $10 million in state funding for the network that was included in the most recent state budget.
While WisEye may still face long-term funding challenges, Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said it’s good news for Wisconsinites that the network is broadcasting again.
In addition to providing live coverage of legislative meetings for residents who can’t make it to Madison, Lueders said WisEye’s archive of past meetings is important for historical purposes because it provides a record of the debates and discussions that took place in state government.
“WisconsinEye has long been a tremendously important resource for Wisconsin and advances the cause of transparency in government by letting people see the process of laws being made,” he said. “It was a very sad thing that it was forced to go offline for about six weeks or so. I’m glad that they found a way to bring it back.”
The headlines are full of stories about the Trump administration’s aggressive new approach to immigration enforcement. We hear about ICE raids and mass deportations. But there’s another, less publicized policy change that’s making it difficult for immigrants to defend themselves from deportation, even when they have a strong claim for immigration relief.
The Department of Homeland Security has changed how it responds to federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from immigrants facing deportation, in a way that deprives many immigrants of their only tool for obtaining information they need to prove they deserve to remain in the country.
Immigration court affords immigrants no formal right to discovery, the process by which the parties exchange information to ensure a fair, fact-based process. As a result, immigration attorneys must rely almost exclusively on FOIA requests to obtain a noncitizen’s Alien Registration File (“A-File”) from agencies within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
A-Files typically include prior immigration applications, enforcement records and notes from interviews. But these documents frequently contain falsehoods and inaccuracies, particularly where summaries replace verbatim transcripts and trauma affects the ability of immigrants to tell their stories. Immigration attorneys need access to their clients’ A-Files so they can identify and challenge inaccuracies in the records and hold the government to its burden of proof.
My friend and fellow attorney Gabriela Parra practices immigration law in Wisconsin. Many of her clients are asylum seekers now living in Wisconsin who fled to the United States because they feared persecution in their home countries. Since April 2025, she has observed a marked change in how immigration agencies respond to the FOIA requests she files on behalf of her clients.
Elisabeth Lambert (Provided photo)
The agencies are refusing to provide documents, or heavily redacting the documents they provide, thus denying Parra the information she needs to prepare her clients’ cases. In multiple cases, asylum seekers represented by her firm have asserted that they articulated a fear of return during border interviews, while DHS claims the opposite.
FOIA requests in these cases resulted in partial A-File disclosures, with interview notes withheld entirely. In other words, DHS has withheld the most important information that would help Parra prove her clients’ version of events.
Late last year, I joined Parra in filing a federal lawsuit asking the court to enforce FOIA. Our client in this case is a foreign national who filed an asylum application before he obtained legal assistance. He is now facing removal proceedings in immigration court.
In response to Parra’s FOIA request, DHS provided some documents, but they contained serious inaccuracies. Moreover, the agency produced only eight pages of unredacted records and 14 pages that were heavily redacted. It fully withheld 31 pages of our client’s file, including records necessary to identify and challenge errors.
Days after we filed our FOIA lawsuit, DHS provided us with some additional files. But others are still missing, and our client’s removal proceedings are looming. We are in a race against time to get our client’s records so he can make the strongest asylum case.
Immigration lawyers across the country are fighting similar battles against the administration’s FOIA practices. A December 2025 whistleblower report alleges that the government is intentionally blocking FOIA requests. It says this denies immigrants the information they need to avoid “life-altering impacts” including “family separation and prolonged detention.”
Our country’s current fight over immigration enforcement is also a fight over government transparency. Here in Wisconsin, we are doing our part.
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. Elisabeth Lambert is the founder and principal of the Wisconsin Education Law and Policy Hub (wisconsinelph.org). Thanks toGabriela Parra for her help on this column.
The limited availability of Black male mentors in Milwaukee is causing youth organizations to rethink their efforts and reveals a deeper challenge within families and communities.
The lack of mentors forced Andre Lee Ellis to postpone his annual “500 Black Tuxedos” event.
500 Black Tuxedos typically consists of 250 men stepping up to mentor 250 young men ages 12 to 17 throughout the day with workshops that bring attention to violence, anger management, artificial intelligence, men’s health, incarceration and other topics.
So far, Ellis has 200 boys but only 78 male mentors registered.
“It’s always been challenging to get the men to participate, and one of the things we lack in our community is the inclusion of Black men and fathers in the lives of our children,” Ellis said.
Committing to mentorship
Rather than calling it a “shortage of male mentors,” LaNelle Ramey, executive director of Mentor Greater Milwaukee, said it’s about capacity. He said many men are already mentors in informal ways like coaching or helping at a church.
LaNelle Ramey, executive director of Mentor Greater Milwaukee, encourages men to get involved in mentoring. (Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
“We aren’t getting people to sign up for mentoring the way that we want to, but we’re seeing different ways people are trying to tap in and be supportive,” Ramey said.
According to Christopher Smitherman ll, vice president of 100 Black Men of Milwaukee Inc., the organization recruits male mentors but can only accept a limited number of boys to maintain mentor-to-youth ratios and consistent presence.
Smitherman and Ramey said that men are backing down from mentoring because of their misconception of it being a huge time commitment.
“You have to change that narrative on how long it takes to make a difference,” Smitherman said.
Ramey said Mentor Greater Milwaukee reminds individuals that spending an hour and a half with a young person for six months still impacts a mentee’s life.
Inactive fathers affecting the recruitment process
Ellis said he believes recruiting men is harder due to a lack of active fathers to serve as mentors.
“Certain systems make it hard for men to be involved in the lives of children,” Ellis said. “But when you really want to be a dad, nothing can stop you.”
According to the Wisconsin Family Council, 85% of babies born in Milwaukee are raised by single mothers.
While men’s experiences with their own fathers can shape how they show up as dads or mentors, Ellis believes that youths can benefit from adults who use their lived experiences to guide them.
“Some of the men don’t want to be the dad they never had, but they want to be better,” Ellis said. “Our children need to see us fighting for them.”
Retaining male mentors
Ellis, Ramey and Smitherman agreed that better outreach and information about mentoring can help prevent men from overthinking and feel more confident about stepping into the role.
“We have to make sure that men and fathers have the resources they need,” Ellis said.
Smitherman said other ways to retain male mentors include offering consistent formal training.
At Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Milwaukee, mentors learn how to lead with empathy, being accessible for mentees, understanding a mentee’s situation and other topics, he said.
Feeling hopeful about mentorship
As organizations across Milwaukee continue to actively recruit mentors, the advocates hope that men can give as much as they can toward the youths.
“Mentorship is about experience, knowledge and what you have that can help elevate someone,” Smitherman said. “It also doesn’t have to be a huge age gap either.”
For men interested in serving as a mentor for the 500 Black Tuxedos event, it’s rescheduled to Saturday, Feb. 21, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 100 Gems Plaza, 6737 N. Teutonia Ave. A registration fee of $125 will cover the tuxedo for the young man you’ll mentor. Click here to register and for more information.
Click here or here to learn more about mentorship opportunities for men in Milwaukee.
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Federal immigration officials could gain access to sensitive Medicaid data — but not yet. A judge has temporarily limited what information the Department of Homeland Security can access in states, like Wisconsin, that are suing to block a data-sharing agreement.
Advocates warn the data-sharing risks chilling health care access — potentially even discouraging some from enrolling in programs for which they’re eligible.
Undocumented immigrants are categorically ineligible for full Medicaid, but two narrower options exist. In Wisconsin, emergency care and prenatal coverage are available regardless of immigration status, covering about 3,200 people as of late 2025.
State Republicans unsuccessfully sought to ban any public funding for health care for people without legal immigration status, citing rising Medicaid costs. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the proposal, arguing it would create confusion and solve problems that don’t exist.
Can federal immigration officials access personal data on every Wisconsinite enrolled in Medicaid?
Not for now, but the question is winding its way through federal courts.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last summer signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to give immigration enforcement officers broad access to Medicaid data, which includes names, addresses, claim information and banking details. Trump administration officials claim the agreement is needed “to ensure that Medicaid benefits are reserved for individuals who are lawfully entitled to receive them.”
“Millions of individuals’ health information was transferred without their consent,” the lawsuit argues. “In doing so, the Trump administration silently destroyed longstanding guardrails that protected the public’s sensitive health data.”
In December, a federal judge in California ordered that, in states involved in the lawsuit, DHS can only access the names and contact information of undocumented immigrants in states involved in the lawsuit.
But patient advocates say it’s unclear how the agency could separate the records of undocumented immigrants from those of immigrants with legal status.
“The sharing of data is dangerous for all of us at the end of the day,” said Esther Reyes, movement-building director with the national advocacy group Protecting Immigrant Families.
How does immigration status affect eligibility for Medicaid and other health programs?
Federal law bars undocumented immigrants and many other recent immigrants from receiving full-benefits Medicaid coverage. Most legal permanent residents and new arrivals with legal status become eligible for full Medicaid coverage only after five years in the U.S. A list of exceptions to that rule shrank last year when President Trump signed his trademark “big beautiful bill” into law.
But the White House claims many undocumented immigrants still access Medicaid benefits, largely citing state-funded health care programs — including a now-shuttered program in Illinois — that provided coverage for undocumented adults. While those programs must operate without federal dollars to avoid running afoul of federal law, the Trump administration argues a tax “loophole”, which it moved to close last week, made them possible.
Medicaid rules make one exception for immigrants ineligible for full coverage: Under federal law, hospitals must provide emergency care for any uninsured patient. Emergency Medicaid coverage can reimburse hospitals for those costs, meaning people of any legal status can receive temporary coverage in dire circumstances — though receiving that emergency coverage is not guaranteed.
“Emergency Medicaid is exclusively available when you go to the emergency room if you don’t qualify for Medicaid because of your immigration status, and it covers services that states by law are required to cover — life or death situations,” Reyes said.
Absent that reimbursement, hospitals may distribute the costs of emergency care for people without insurance across other patients.
Some states also rely on the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is separate from Medicaid, to cover prenatal care for pregnant patients regardless of immigration status.
How do those programs work in Wisconsin, and how much do they cost?
In Wisconsin, those two options are called Medicaid Emergency Services and BadgerCare Plus Prenatal, respectively. The prenatal program is open both to immigrants ineligible for other coverage and to pregnant inmates in Wisconsin’s prisons and jails.
Immigrant patients can receive emergency services coverage until their “condition is no longer considered an emergency,” according to state guidelines. Patients enrolled in the prenatal plan remain covered through their pregnancy, though many then become eligible for two months of emergency care coverage.
Roughly 3,200 people were enrolled in the two programs combined in October 2025, according to Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services’ data. That marked the programs’ lowest monthly enrollment since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The state paused reviews of Medicaid recipients’ eligibility during the pandemic, allowing some enrollees in the emergency services and prenatal programs to remain insured beyond the standard cutoff, but enrollment plummeted after Wisconsin DHS resumed reviews in June 2023 in a process often called the “unwinding.”
Not all patients enrolled in the programs are undocumented, and Wisconsin DHS records do not break down enrollment by legal status.
Spending on the two programs dipped from about $60 million in fiscal year 2024 to about $57 million in 2025 — less than 0.4% of the state’s overall medical assistance spending that year.
Why did Wisconsin Republicans try to block state-funded health care for undocumented immigrants last year?
The Republican-controlled Legislature voted last year to bar Wisconsin agencies and local governments from funding any form of health services for undocumented immigrants.
Rep. Alex Dallman, R-Markesan, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, pointed to Illinois’ expansion of health coverage to some undocumented adults as reason for Wisconsin to preemptively block any similar expansion; the Illinois program’s costs consistently exceeded projections, prompting the state to end the program last year.
“We’re in such a deficit on Medicaid already that it’s hard to keep up as it is,” he told Wisconsin Watch. Wisconsin is on track to overspend its Medicaid budget by $213 million by the end of the current budget cycle, state DHS Secretary-designee Kirsten Johnson wrote in a letter to state lawmakers at the end of December.
Dallman noted that the bill made an exception for health care spending required under federal law. “If they go to the emergency room, they are still going to get emergency care,” he said. As he understood it, Dallman said, that language in the bill would have shielded emergency Medicaid.
Rep. Alex Dallman, R-Markesan, is seen during a hearing of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee at the Wisconsin State Capitol on Feb. 15, 2023. He co-sponsored legislation to bar Wisconsin agencies and local governments from funding any form of health services for undocumented immigrants. (Amena Saleh / Wisconsin Watch)
But opponents say it isn’t clear that Wisconsin’s emergency services program would have been left untouched. Some also argue that the proposal could also require immigration status checks to access any form of subsidized health care, spanning far beyond hospitals alone.
“If a child is at school and they’re sick… does the school nurse need to figure out how to verify their status before they provide health care?” asked William Parke-Sutherland, government affairs director of Kids Forward, which advocates for low-income and minority families.
“It would have affected health care services for people if they are in need of emergency services like EMTs,” he added. “We have a primarily county-based crisis mental health system — I think that this would have applied to those as well.”
Could sharing Medicaid data deter patients from seeking health care?
Health outreach workers warn that giving federal immigration officials access to even some Medicaid patient data could discourage people from enrolling in programs for which they are eligible — including U.S. citizens.
The database shared with immigration authorities, called the Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System, doesn’t clearly distinguish between undocumented immigrants and immigrants with legal status who are ineligible for full-coverage Medicaid for various reasons.
In December, U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria of northern California ruled that immigration authorities may access data only on undocumented immigrants — and only if it can be separated from data on citizens and eligible immigrants.
It’s still unclear whether officials can do that.
Regardless, the data-sharing agreement alone is enough to make many immigrants — and some citizens with immigrant family members — “think twice about whether they actually access programs like Medicaid,” Reyes said.
But health care navigators say skipping coverage can be far riskier than the potential for their address to land in the hands of immigration enforcement officers.
“You’re protecting the life of your child — and yours” by enrolling in the prenatal program, said Francisco Guerrero, a health coverage navigator with the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service.
For now, advocates are urging people to be cautious when deciding whether to drop their coverage. If people are already enrolled in the emergency or prenatal programs and haven’t changed their address, leaving the program won’t wipe their information from the database, Reyes said. U.S. citizens don’t have to disclose the immigration status of anyone in their household, she added, and immigrant parents enrolling U.S.-born children do not need to share their own legal status.
“We want people to make informed decisions and understand the risks,” Reyes said. “We understand, though, that it’s really critical to get the care that you need for yourself and for your children.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Lemon and Fort were arrested after covering a January 18 protest at a church in Minneapolis. They were conducting the constitutionally protected activities of a working journalist: observing, recording and documenting a newsworthy event and attempting to obtain quotes from participants.
Their arrest on charges of allegedly obstructing a place of worship, and even worse, under federal conspiracy law, alarms all of us who believe in the First Amendment and seek to do our jobs without fear of obstruction by law enforcement or retaliation by agents of the government.
The principle of a free press animated the founding of the United States of America 250 years ago, and countless Americans have fought valiantly for it. We cannot allow colleagues to be subjected to spurious and unwarranted arrest for committing acts of journalism.
We call on federal authorities to drop all charges against Lemon and Fort and to publicly affirm their unqualified support for the work of professional journalists in this critical time.
In 2022, a student-led voting advocacy organization sued in Dane County to clarify which parts of a witness’ address must appear on an absentee ballot envelope. What was accepted differed from city to city.
The 4th District Court of Appeals, in an opinion written by Judge Chris Taylor, affirmed a lower court ruling that a witness only needs to provide an address where that person can “be communicated with.” The Legislature, which had appealed, argued a precise, multipart address is necessary to prevent election fraud.
“The legislature could have required such specificity for the absentee ballot witness address requirement when it initially adopted the witness address requirement in 1966 or in subsequent modifications of the absentee voting statutes,” wrote Taylor, a liberal candidate running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April.
Taylor’s campaign shared that decision as a prime example of the kind of justice she would be on the high court. The campaign for her opponent, conservative appeals court Judge Maria Lazar, shared that exact same decision as a prime example of why Taylor shouldn’t be on the high court.
As Wisconsinites head to the polls in just two months to elect another state Supreme Court justice, Wisconsin Watch asked the Lazar and Taylor campaigns separately to provide examples of rulings in past cases that show how they might serve as a justice and decisions from their opponents that warrant criticism.
That both campaigns shared the otherwise mundane witness address case speaks to the deep ideological divide that persists in the state judiciary. Campaigns can point to the outcomes of politically charged cases, such as those related to voting rights, gun rights or abortion, as a way to point voters to what their views are, legal experts said.
Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor. (Matt Roth)
Court of Appeals Judge Maria Lazar (Courtesy of Wisconsin Court of Appeals)
“To me, those are very subtle signals as to their constituency that the impact of this decision, one way or another, is consistent with your views,” said Janine Geske, who served on the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1993 to 1998.
A spokesperson for Taylor’s campaign said the case demonstrates how Taylor protected Democratic rights and “fairly” and “impartially” applies the law.
“This decision balanced protecting each Wisconsinite’s right to vote with establishing a fair, uniform procedure for our local clerks,” Taylor campaign spokesman Sam Roecker said. “As indicative of the strength of this decision, no party involved in the case appealed Judge Taylor’s decision.”
Lazar’s campaign said Taylor failed to consider the intent of the Legislature.
“Judge Taylor’s opinion, on the merits, indicates how far an activist judge who legislates from the bench will go to alter procedures for election integrity,” Lazar campaign spokesman Nathan Conrad said of the witness address case. “Every common sense citizen in Wisconsin knows that an address consists of a street name, number and municipality.”
Other significant cases from the judges
The other judicial rulings the candidates’ campaigns shared with Wisconsin Watch also showcase the candidates’ contrasting judicial philosophies.
In addition to the voting rights case, Taylor’s campaign highlighted rulings that favored utility consumers and reproductive health. In one decision the court determined the Public Service Commission did not follow proper rulemaking procedures when it prohibited activities companies use to incentivize lower energy use. In the other opinion Taylor wrote that a woman could continue seeking legal action against a physician she claimed did not inform her of a recommendation to another doctor to remove her ovaries during a colon surgery. The Wisconsin Supreme Court last May affirmed that decision with Justice Brian Hagedorn joining the liberal justices in the majority.
The different political focuses between the candidates is no surprise given their different professional and political paths prior to their time on the bench. Lazar, a conservative, was an assistant attorney general under Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen before her election to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2015. Taylor worked as a policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and served five terms as a Democrat in the Assembly before Gov. Tony Evers appointed her to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020.
The judicial rulings they highlighted as reflecting poorly on their opponent are nothing like those featured in the multimillion-dollar Supreme Court campaigns of recent years, when both sides sought to paint the other as lax on crime and public safety.
While there are still two months to go, it’s possible the race will stay muted because the stakes are different with no Supreme Court majority on the line, said Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Neither outcome will change liberal control of the court, though because the winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, it could extend guaranteed liberal control until at least 2030.
The quiet nature of the race is “bizarre” given the increasingly political direction Wisconsin Supreme Court elections have gone in the past, Schweber said.
“There is not invective. There is not screaming accusations,” Schweber said. “This may all change over the course of the election, but at least at the moment, we’re not seeing over-the-top ads making hysterical accusations, and it appears that at least part of the reason for that might be that neither campaign can find anything particularly embarrassing that the opposing candidate has done.”
Some criticisms from each campaign are still there and could grow stronger as Election Day nears. In a recent social media post seeking campaign contributions, Lazar’s campaign described Taylor not as a judge, but a “radical left-wing legislator.” Taylor’s campaign in a post following the release of January campaign finance reports described Lazar as “our extreme opponent.”
Lazar and Taylor will face each other in a March 25 debate hosted by WISN-TV at the Lubar Center at Marquette University’s Law School.
Which cases did the campaigns share?
Taylor’s campaign shared the following cases with Wisconsin Watch as examples of how Taylor would serve as a justice:
Midwest Renewable Energy Association v. Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (the utility case). (Read the opinion here.)
Rise Inc. v. Wisconsin Elections Commission (the absentee ballot case). (Read the opinion here.)
Melissa A. Hubbard v. Carol J. Neuman, M.D. (the ovary removal case). (Read the opinion here.)
The campaign criticized a 2024 appellate opinion written by Lazar that contradicted a ruling from another appeals court branch on whether a conservative group questioning the 2020 election results could access health information about individuals who were judged incapable of voting. Lazar and another judge on the 2nd District Court of Appeals released an opinion that said the group had a right to the information after the 4th District’s opposite ruling was published as precedent.
The opinion shows Lazar “is an extremist who uses our courts to protect special interests and push her right-wing agenda,” Roecker said.
“Lazar completely ignored recent precedent that private voter data could not be released to the public,” Roecker said. “That should alarm anyone who believes in protecting our democracy and fair elections.”
Lazar’s campaign in response to that criticism said the dual appeals court opinions were about “issues of procedure” when two districts disagree. The 2nd District revised the opinion at the request of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which then accepted the case, Conrad said. It is scheduled for oral arguments before the high court in April.
Lazar’s campaign shared the following cases as examples of how Lazar would serve as a justice:
Saybrook Tax Exemptors, LLC. v. Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, et. al.: Lazar concluded that certain agreements and documents between a financial company and the Lake Superior Chippewa tribe about plans for a casino were void. (Read the decision here.)
State v. Scherer: Lazar ruled that law enforcement’s seizure of a man’s cellphone that possessed child pornography was too broad and violated his privacy rights, despite the “egregious” potential crime. (Read the decision here.)
State v. Heinz: Lazar denied a request to modify the sentence of a woman who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after she was charged with first-degree reckless homicide. (Read the decision here.)
Hartland Sportsman Club v. City of Delafield (the gun range case). (Read the decision here.)
Pewaukee Land County, LLC. v. Soo Line Railroad: Lazar ruled that a company could not claim ownership of property in Pewaukee that belonged to the Canadian Pacific railroad, but did not block the company’s current use of the property. (Read the decision here.)
Craig, et. al. v. Village of West Bend: Lazar dismissed a case about the transfer of cemetery property that already had been decided in an earlier case. (Read the decision here.)
Lazar’s campaign shared two cases as criticism of Taylor’s judicial opinions:
Rise Inc. v. Wisconsin Elections Commission (the absentee ballot case). (Read the opinion here.)
State v. Kruckenberg Anderson: In an opinion written by Taylor, the 4th District Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that suppressed certain statements a teenager made to law enforcement prior to being charged with killing his newborn child. The Wisconsin Supreme Court denied a petition to review the case in 2024. (Read the Court of Appeals opinion here.)
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Minimum-wage workers in 19 states saw their paychecks increase this year. But Wisconsin hasn’t changed its minimum wage — just $7.25 per hour — for 17 years, shrinking the buying power of the lowest-earning workers.
Wisconsin ties its minimum wage to the federal level, which hasn’t budged for its longest stretch in history. Had Congress indexed the wage to inflation in 2009, it would have risen to $10.88 in 2025. That’s a difference of $145.20 over a 40-hour workweek.
Elsewhere, 34 states, territories and districts have set minimum wages above $7.25.
Neighboring Minnesota raised its minimum wage from $11.13 to $11.41 this year, while Michigan’s leaped from $12.48 to $13.73. Illinois kept its threshold at $15, the highest level among noncoastal states.
In 2024, about 1% of the Wisconsin workforce earned at or below the state’s minimum wage. Those people generally worked as salespeople, automotive service technicians or food preparation workers, U.S. Census data show.
Wisconsin’s tipped workers have an even lower minimum wage of $2.33 per hour, slightly higher than the $2.13 federal minimum, which has not changed since 1991.
Meanwhile, the average living wage for a single adult with no children in Wisconsin in 2025 is $20.96, according to MIT’s living wage calculator, with higher costs in metropolitan areas — including $22.18 in Madison and $21.07 in Milwaukee and Waukesha. The living wage is significantly higher for adults who raise children and lower for people living with a working partner.
New York campaign sparked ‘Fight for $15’
Campaigns to raise the minimum wage have regularly drawn national headlines. In 2012, fast-food workers and their supporters began calling for a $15-per-hour minimum wage in New York City. Their victory inspired a broader ‘Fight for $15’ movement, including in Wisconsin, as Wisconsin Watch previously reported.
This year, The Living Wage Coalition — a group of labor and progressive organizations — launched a campaign to raise Wisconsin’s minimum wage to $20 per hour, calling the status quo far below a reasonable standard of living for the lowest-wage workers.
An increase to $15 per hour would be politically popular and directly or indirectly raise the wages of 231,800 (18%) women workers, 36,200 (25.6%) Black workers and 50,200 (26.6%) Hispanic workers in Wisconsin — narrowing gender and racial wealth and income gaps that are some of the largest in the nation, according to a 2025 High Road Strategy Center report. The University of Wisconsin-Madison-based “think-and-do tank” focuses on solutions to social problems — including those related to the environment, opportunity and democratic institutions.
Still, multiple bills to raise Wisconsin’s minimum wage — largely proposed by Democrats — have stalled in the Legislature. Republican lawmakers have cited concerns about burdening small businesses.
Higher wage ‘has to come from somewhere’
Minimum-wage hikes — depending on the size — can bring a mix of positive and negative economic consequences, according to Callie Freitag, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Social Work.
“The good thing is that earnings would go up for workers. Employers would raise wages and be able to pay workers more,” Freitag said. “But the money to pay workers more has to come from somewhere.”
Economists worry that dramatic minimum-wage hikes could lead to higher consumer costs — or prompt businesses to cut worker hours or eliminate their jobs entirely, Freitag added.
The key would be an increase that benefits the lowest-paid workers without significantly affecting the broader economy. But it’s unclear what that sweet spot is.
Conditions of the labor market — the supply and demand for workers — shape wages across most of the economy. Wages typically increase when there are more openings than workers, and they decrease when there are few openings for available workers.
Setting the minimum wage close to or below an equilibrium wage — where the demand for labor matches the supply — only minimally affects wages across the market, economists suggest.
States that hiked minimum wages saw slightly higher gains across the lowest-tier wages (the bottom 10%) between 2019 and 2024, but not enough to claim a correlation, an analysis by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found. A range of factors could have shaped the wage increases, which also played out in the Midwest.
Wisconsin has seen slightly faster growth in bottom-tier wages than its neighbors — even without increasing the minimum wage. The state’s bottom-tier wages increased from $10.92 hourly in 2009 to $14.58, Wisconsin Watch found by analyzing EPI’s data.
Bigger hikes strain employers
While basic economic principles suggest that a 10% increase in the minimum wage would decrease the hiring of unskilled workers by 1 to 2%, recent studies suggest an even smaller shift, or no effect at all.
Most minimum-wage studies published between 2004 and 2024 have shown little or no job loss, Ben Zipperer, an EPI senior economist, found.
Researchers tend to focus most on cities and states that have significantly increased their minimum wage. Seattle, Washington, which has hiked its threshold annually since 2015, has among the highest in the country at $21.30 this year.
A sign is seen during a Wisconsin State Capitol press conference about raising Wisconsin’s minimum wage, June 17, 2021. (Isaac Wasserman / Wisconsin Watch)
In a 2022 study, University of Washington researchers found that Seattle’s minimum wage increase to $11 hourly in 2015 “had an insignificant effect on employment,” but a spike to $13 in 2016 “resulted in a large drop in employment.”
But the findings might not directly apply to other places, the researchers found, because industries and the makeup of the labor force might look and act differently elsewhere.
A separate University of Washington study found that a minimum-wage increase to $15 hourly affected most child care businesses, which commonly responded by raising tuition and reducing staff hours or total number of staff — potentially harming staff and lower-wage customers.
What work is worth
“Minimum wage legislation commonly has two stated objectives: the reduction of employer control of wages; and the abolition of poverty,” George Stiegler, a leader of the Chicago school of economics, wrote in 1946 — an era when Congress was debating bigger increases to the minimum wage in the policy’s early years.
But Stiegler was pessimistic about the prospect that minimum-wage hikes were the best way to eliminate poverty. He instead called for lawmakers to grant lower-income families other forms of relief, including tax cuts and credits.
That spirit was reflected in the “no tax on tips” bill, which the Wisconsin Assembly passed this month to benefit tipped workers.
Still, Laura Dresser, associate director of the High Road Strategy Center, views the minimum wage as an important floor to benefit workers at the margins and signal “work is worth this.”
“People who are working full time should be able to afford life,” she said. “At $7.25 per hour, there’s almost nothing you can afford, and it feels far below what a wage floor really should function as.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A jury found a Wisconsin man guilty Thursday of forging threats against President Donald trump in an attempt to get the victim in a robbery case against him deported.
Online court records show the Milwaukee County jury found 52-year-old Demetric Scott guilty of felony identity theft and witness intimidation after deliberating for most of the day. He represented himself during the three-day trial and was immediately taken into custody after the verdicts were read, leaving no way to reach him for comment on Thursday evening.
According to court documents, Mexican immigrant Ramon Morales Reyes was riding his bike in Milwaukee in September 2023 when Scott approached him and kicked him off the bike. He stabbed Morales Reyes with a box cutter before stealing the bike and riding away.
Scott was arrested hours later. While he was in jail, Scott wrote multiple letters posing as Morales Reyes to state and federal officials threatening to kill Trump at a rally. Federal immigration authorities took Morales Reyes into custody in May after he dropped his daughter off at school.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blasted his photo on social media, along with an excerpt of a letter he purportedly wrote in English promising to shoot Trump at a rally. The White House and Trump supporters played up his arrest as a major success in the administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Investigators determined that Morales Reyes couldn’t have written the letters since he doesn’t speak English well, can’t write in the language and the handwriting in the letters didn’t match his.
Cain Oulahan, center, Ramon Morales Reyes’ immigration attorney addresses the media, May 30, 2025 in Milwaukee about the detention of his client Ramon Morales Reyes. (Andy Manis / Associated Press)
Meanwhile, Scott was making calls from jail in which he talked about letters that needed to be mailed and a plan to get U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities to pick someone up so his trial could get dismissed. He admitted to police that he wrote the letters.
Scott was charged separately with armed robbery, battery, and reckless endangerment in connection with the bike incident. The jury on Thursday acquitted him on the robbery and battery counts but found him guilty on the endangerment charge.
Court records show prosecutors charged Scott in 2022 with being a party to burglary. He was out on bail in connection with that case when the bike incident happened and wrote the letters, prompting prosecutors to charge him with three counts of bail jumping. The jury on Thursday found him guilty on one of those counts but acquitted him on the remaining two charges.
All together, he faces up to 26 years in the state prison system when he’s sentenced on Feb. 27. The burglary charge is still pending.
The Noem news release with Morales Reyes’ photo touting his arrest is still posted on the DHS website but now includes a disclaimer stating that he’s no longer under investigation for threatening Trump but remains in ICE custody pending deportation. The release says he entered the U.S. illegally nine times between 1998 and 2005 and has a criminal record that includes arrests for felony hit and run, property damage and disorderly conduct with a domestic abuse modifier.
Morales Reyes was released on $7,500 bond in June and is currently residing with his family in Milwaukee, his deportation defense attorney, Cain Oulahan, said. He has applied for a U-visa, a document that allows crime victims and their family members to remain in the U.S., but Oulahan said it could take years to obtain one.
Ramon Morales Reyes is seen in a photo provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Wisconsin online court records do not show any criminal cases involving Morales Reyes. Oulahan, his attorney, said that all the background checks he has conducted on Morales Reyes have turned up nothing.
Morales Reyes moved to the U.S. from Mexico in the 1980s. He worked as a dishwasher in Milwaukee, is married and has three children who are U.S. citizens, according to his attorneys. He said Scott’s conviction is a huge relief for Morales Reyes and his family.
“He’s been traumatized by going through all this, all these different levels that feel like victimization,” Oulahan said. “He just wants to work and be with his family again.”
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.
After they’ve tried church, therapy, self-help and meditation, and never quite found what they were looking for, people in Milwaukee come to see Angela Smith.
Smith is the owner and operator of The Zen Dragonfly. She uses African traditional methods to assist people in their physical, mental and spiritual healing.
“I’m the person nobody knows they came to see,” she said. “People get to a point where nothing is working. And then they walk in here.”
Spiritual and life coaching
Angela Smith plays a sound bowl at The Zen Dragonfly. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Smith, 63, is a hoodoo practitioner and rootworker, though most Milwaukeeans first meet her through “acceptable” titles like Reiki master, yoga instructor or life coach, she said.
Smith’s healing work spans Reiki, tarot, bone readings, spiritual baths, shamanic journeying and herbal medicine.
Only later do many discover the deeper tradition behind her work.
Her healing practice, rooted in Black Southern folk traditions and ancestral veneration, welcomes anyone in need of help.
Smith doesn’t promise miracles. And she doesn’t advertise cures.
“My job is to help people do their own healing,” she said. “I can break something open. I can clear a path. But you have to walk it.”
Still, people continue to arrive at her door, quietly and urgently, after prayer, therapy and everything in between.
“When you’ve tried all you can,” Smith said, “I’m usually where you come next.”
Tanisha Williams, a friend and healing guest of Smith’s, said Smith is talented in many ways but especially at helping people find what type of healing can help them.
“She just knows how to appropriately assess someone and guide them with appropriate divination,” Williams said.
A lifestyle
For Smith, healing is more than work, it’s how she lives her life.
Smith’s day begins with tending to her ancestors. She rings a bell, pours water, lights candles and reads Psalms. Then she welcomes healing guests.
“Never clients,” she said.
Her home and workspace reflect her practice: altars in every room, artwork celebrating Black history and spirituality, herbs and botanicals curated with care. Friends and students have encouraged her to turn it into a visual book.
She’s considering it.
She laughs when asked about the aesthetics: “I want you to walk into my house and know an African lives here.”
Angela Smith performs Reiki on Heather Asiyanbi at The Zen Dragonfly. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Matthew Nervig, a friend of Smith’s, said she guides others to be the same way so that they aren’t dependent on her.
“She encourages everyone to pursue their own education and personal practice,” he said. “As opposed to keeping people dependent on her so that she can make money, she urges people to learn on their own and be really helpful and genuine.
Serving Milwaukee
Smith said she did not intend to become Milwaukee’s spiritual triage center.
For years, she hid her hoodoo practice, posting only glimpses of altars or crystals. But in 2018, she said she heard her grandmother’s voice say: “You can’t hide no more.”
Her public announcement cost her followers, but brought the people who needed her most.
“Word of mouth built this,” she said. “I don’t advertise. People come because someone told them, ‘When nothing else works, go see Miss Angela.’”
Nervig said Smith thrives at making people feel welcome once they find her.
“She has a real desire for everyone interested in learning more to have the knowledge,” he said.
Over the years, Smith has seen the city’s quiet desperation up close.
“There’s a lot of fear in Milwaukee,” she said. “A lot of being stuck. A lot of repeating cycles. And people don’t know where to go when the usual systems don’t fix it.”
Her School of Good JuJu launched during the pandemic and filled immediately. Smith said nearly all the students had the same story. They left church. They tried therapy. They tried being “fine.” And they were still searching.
Williams, who attended the School of Good JuJu, said it felt like a “meant to be” moment.
“We all need a guide,” Williams said. “It’s like how they say, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
Smith believes the surge of seekers reflects a deeper shift.
“People are exhausted,” she said. “They’re tired of judgment. They’re tired of being told what to believe. They just want to heal.”
Her space offers something Milwaukee’s more formal institutions often can’t: privacy, acceptance, cultural understanding and spiritual agency.
“There’s magic here every day,” she said simply. “People feel that.”
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
A misleading claim that Wisconsin has more registered voters than people eligible to vote is gaining traction on social media, including in posts shared this week by President Donald Trump.
It’s just the latest in a long-running series of claims that misinterpret basic data about voter rolls to create alarm about the risk of voter fraud.
The posts circulating this week cite a video asserting that Wisconsin’s voter rolls contain more than 7 million names — far more than the state’s voting age population — and are overlaid with text reading, “This Is Not a Glitch — This Is Election Fraud Waiting To Happen.”
The video features Peter Bernegger, an entrepreneur who has been convicted of mail fraud and bank fraud. Bernegger has repeatedly promoted false theories about the 2020 election in Wisconsin legislative hearings and repeatedly filed unsuccessful lawsuits against election officials in search of proof for his claims.
But his claim conflates two datasets in Wisconsin’s voter registration system: the Wisconsin voter list and active registered voters.
Peter Bernegger is seen on Feb. 9, 2022, at the Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
As of July 2025, the state had about 8.3 million names on its list — in line with the number Bernegger cites. But of them, only 3.7 million were active registered voters. The remaining roughly 4.6 million are inactive voters. Inactive records include people who previously registered to vote but later moved out of state, died, lost eligibility because of a felony conviction, or were ruled incompetent to vote by a court. Those individuals haven’t been removed from the voter list, but because of their inactive status, they cannot vote unless they re-register, which requires proof of residency and a photo ID.
Bernegger claims in his video that the list of voters generally grows every day, going down only once every four years, when voters who haven’t cast a ballot in four years are sent postcards asking whether they want to remain registered and then removed from the active list if they don’t respond.
Part of that claim is true: Wisconsin never deletes voter records, so the total database of active and inactive registrations only grows. But the active voter roll, which includes only voters currently eligible to cast a ballot, can shrink.
By email, Bernegger disputed Votebeat’s characterization of his claims but provided no further proof for them.
The confusion stems from a common misunderstanding about Wisconsin’s voter system, Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, told Votebeat. The pollbooks used to check voters’ eligibility on Election Day contain only active voters, while the broader voter database also retains inactive records.
The inactive records also detail why a voter was deactivated. Wisconsin state law allows for several reasons for a voter’s registration status to be changed from eligible to ineligible, but there’s no state law calling for the destruction of voter registration records, not even for a voter who has died.
And Jacobs said there’s a good reason for that: Keeping these inactive records indefinitely helps prevent fraud: If somebody tries to register using the identity of a dead voter, for example, clerks can flag that application because the prior record — including the reason it was deactivated — is still on file.
“It’s actually pro-list-hygiene to have access to that information immediately,” she said.
Interstate databases also play a role in maintaining accurate voter rolls. One such organization, the Electronic Registration Information Center, has helped states including Wisconsin identify hundreds of thousands of voters each year who have moved across state lines and tens of thousands of voters who died. But the system has gaps. Some Republican-led states have left the program, leaving just 25 states and Washington, D.C., participating.
Experts say voter fraud is extremely rare, but Republicans have long argued that dirty voter rolls could enable fraud and reduce confidence.
Similar misleading claims about voter rolls have circulated in other states, including Michigan, amplified by right-wing figures such as Elon Musk.
Democrats and many election officials typically support regular voter roll maintenance but warn that aggressive cleanup efforts may risk disenfranchising lawful, active voters.
Wisconsin’s own data shows how infrequently fraud occurs. In its latest report, which covers five elections, the WEC identified just 18 potential instances of fraud. One relates to a voter seeking to vote in two states. Most involved voting after a felony conviction or double-voting by casting an absentee and in-person vote in the same election.
Correction: This story was updated to reflect the number of names on the state’s voter list was 8.3 million.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
How much should data centers pay for the massive amounts of new power infrastructure they require? Wisconsin’s largest utility, We Energies, has offered its answer to that question in what is the first major proposal before state regulators on the issue.
Under the proposal, currently open for public comment, data centers would pay most or all of the price to construct new power plants or renewables needed to serve them, and the utility says the benefits that other customers receive would outweigh any costs they shoulder for building and running this new generation.
But environmental and consumer advocates fear the utility’s plan will actually saddle customers with payments for generation, including polluting natural gas plants, that wouldn’t otherwise be needed.
States nationwide face similar dilemmas around data centers’ energy use. But who pays for the new power plants and transmission is an especially controversial question in Wisconsin and other “vertically integrated” energy markets, where utilities charge their customers for the investments they make in such infrastructure — with a profit, called “rate of return,” baked in. In states with competitive energy markets, like Illinois, by contrast, utilities buy power on the open market and don’t make a rate of return on building generation.
Although six big data center projects are underway in Wisconsin, the state has no laws governing how the computing facilities get their power.
Lawmakers in the Republican-controlled state Legislature are debating two bills this session. The Assembly passed the GOP-backed proposal on Jan. 20, which, even if it makes it through the Senate, is unlikely to get Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ signature. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a spokesperson for Evers said on Jan. 14 that “the one thing environmentalists, labor, utilities, and data center companies can all agree on right now is how bad Republican lawmakers’ data center bill is.” Until a measure is passed, individual decisions by the state Public Service Commission will determine how utilities supply energy to data centers.
The We Energies case is high stakes because two data centers proposed in the utility’s southeast Wisconsin territory promise to double its total demand. One of those facilities is a Microsoft complex that the tech giant says will be “the world’s most powerful AI datacenter.”
The utility’s proposal could also be precedent-setting as other Wisconsin utilities plan for data centers, said Bryan Rogers, environmental justice director for the Milwaukee community organization Walnut Way Conservation Corp.
“As goes We Energies,” Rogers said, “so goes the rest of the state.”
Building new power
We Energies’ proposal — first filed last spring — would let data centers choose between two options for paying for new generation infrastructure to ensure the utility has enough capacity to meet grid operator requirements that the added electricity demand doesn’t interfere with reliability.
In both cases, the utility will acquire that capacity through “bespoke resources” built specifically for the data center. The computing facilities technically would not get their energy directly from these power plants or renewables but rather from We Energies at market prices.
Under the first option, called “full benefits,” data centers would pay the full price of constructing, maintaining and operating the new generation and would cover the profit guaranteed to We Energies. The data centers would also get revenue from the sale of the electricity on the market as well as from renewable energy credits for solar and wind arrays; renewable energy credits are basically certificates that can be sold to other entities looking to meet sustainability goals.
The second option, called “capacity only,” would have data centers paying 75% of the cost of building the generation. Other customers would pick up the tab for the remaining 25% of the construction and pay for fuel and other costs. In this case, both data centers and other customers would pay for the profit guaranteed to We Energies as part of the project, though the data centers would pay a different — and possibly lower — rate than other customers.
Developers of both data centers being built in We Energies’ territory support the utility’s proposal, saying in testimony that it will help them get online faster and sufficiently protect other customers from unfair costs.
Consumer and environmental advocacy groups, however, are pushing back on the capacity-only option, arguing that it is unfair to make regular customers pay a quarter of the price for building new generation that might not have been necessary without data centers in the picture.
“Nobody asked for this,” said Rogers of Walnut Way. The Sierra Club told regulators to scrap the capacity-only option. The advocacy group Clean Wisconsin similarly opposes that option, as noted in testimony to regulators.
But We Energies says everyone will benefit from building more power sources.
“These capacity-only plants will serve all of our customers, especially on the hottest and coldest days of the year,” We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway wrote in an email. “We expect that customers will receive benefits from these plants that exceed the costs that are proposed to be allocated to them.”
We Energies has offered no proof of this promise, according to testimony filed by the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group, which represents factories and other large operations. The trade association’s energy adviser, Jeffry Pollock, told regulators that the utility’s own modeling of the capacity-only approach showed scenarios in which the costs borne by customers outweigh the benefits to them.
Clean energy is another sticking point. Clean Wisconsin and the Environmental Law and Policy Center want the utility’s plan to more explicitly encourage data centers to meet capacity requirements in part through their own on-site renewables and to participate in demand-response programs. Customers enrolled in such programs agree to dial down energy use during moments of peak demand, reducing the need for as many new power plants.
“It’s really important to make sure that this tariff contemplates as much clean energy and avoids using as much energy as possible, so we can avoid that incremental fossil fuel build-out that would otherwise potentially be needed to meet this demand,” said Clean Wisconsin staff attorney Brett Korte.
And advocates want the utility to include smaller data centers in its proposal, which in its current form would apply only to data centers requiring 500 megawatts of power or more.
We Energies’ response to stakeholder testimony was due on Jan. 28, and the utility and regulators will also consider public comments that are being submitted. After that, the regulatory commission may hold hearings, and advocates can file additional briefs. Eventually, the utility will reach an agreement with commissioners on how to charge data centers.
Risky business
Looming large over this debate is the mounting concern that the artificial intelligence boom is a bubble. If that bubble pops, it could mean far less power demand from data centers than utilities currently expect.
In November, We Energies announced plans to build almost 3 gigawatts of natural gas plants, renewables and battery storage. Conway said much of this new construction will be paid for by data centers as their bespoke resources.
But some worry that utility customers could be left paying too much for these investments if data centers don’t materialize or don’t use as much energy as predicted. Wisconsin consumers are already on the hook for almost $1 billion for “stranded assets,” mostly expensive coal plants that closed earlier than originally planned, as Wisconsin Watch recently tabulated.
“The reason we bring up the worst-case scenario is it’s not just theoretical,” said Tom Content, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin, the state’s primary consumer advocacy organization. “There’s been so many headlines about the AI bubble. Will business plans change? Will new AI chips require data centers to use a lot less energy?”
We Energies’ proposal has data centers paying promised costs even if they go out of business or otherwise prematurely curtail their demand. But developers do not have to put up collateral for this purpose if they have a positive credit rating. That means if such data center companies went bankrupt or otherwise couldn’t meet their financial obligations, utility customers may end up paying the bill.
Steven Kihm, the Citizens Utility Board’s regulatory strategist and chief economist, gave examples of companies that had stellar credit until they didn’t, in testimony to regulators. The company that made BlackBerry handheld devices saw its stock skyrocket in the mid-2000s, only to lose most of its value with the rise of smartphones, he noted. Energy company Enron, meanwhile, had a top credit rating until a month before its 2001 collapse, Kihm warned. He advised regulators that data center developers should have to put up adequate collateral regardless of their credit rating.
The Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group echoed concerns about risk if data centers struggle financially.
“The unprecedented growth in capital spending will subject (We Energies) to elevated financial and credit risks,” Pollock told regulators. “Customers will ultimately provide the financial backstop if (the utility) is unable to fully enforce the terms” of its tariff.
Jeremy Fisher, Sierra Club’s principal adviser on climate and energy, equated the risk to co-signing “a loan on a mansion next door, with just the vague assurance that the neighbors will almost certainly be able to cover their loan.”
A version of this article was first published by Canary Media.
A Shorewood judge ruled Wednesday that a man who deliberately tested the boundaries of public access along Lake Michigan’s shoreline in late July trespassed on private property.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Paul Florsheim grew up just a few houses away from where a Shorewood resident who lives in a prominent lakeside home recorded him walking on the beach adjacent to his house multiple times and called police. Florsheim was eventually fined $313 for trespassing after walking past signs marking private property north of the public beach and cordially ignoring warnings from the police.
He previously told Wisconsin Watch that, despite Wisconsin law, the stretch of beach along Lake Michigan just north of Milwaukee had long been treated by locals like a public right of way.
Municipal Court Judge Margo Kirchner found Florsheim guilty and ordered him to pay a $313 trespassing fine, citing Wisconsin precedent that limits public access along privately controlled Lake Michigan shorelines.
Unlike other states bordering Lake Michigan like Michigan and Indiana, Wisconsin law does not guarantee public access to the beach up to the point where sand typically meets vegetation.
Under a 1923 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, private property owners adjacent to the shoreline are granted “exclusive” use of the beach, even though the land is publicly owned. The court held that Wisconsinites may walk along the shoreline only if they remain in the water.
Florsheim previously told Wisconsin Watch he hopes to appeal the case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where a favorable ruling could reshape public access along Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan shoreline.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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Anna Mykhailova and Sasha Druzhyna fled Ukraine after Russia invaded, leaving behind careers as physicians.
Wisconsin needs more medical professionals, including physicians. But those with foreign training face hurdles that can keep them from filling that gap.
State officials recently eased requirements for foreign-trained doctors, but Mykhailova isn’t sure what the change means for her.
Anna works as a sonographer at a Madison hospital, while Sasha is studying for a master’s degree in medical perfusion at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
The family is among 100,000 Ukrainians with Temporary Protected Status, allowing them to live and work in the United States for renewable 18-month stretches.
Sasha Druzhyna knows all about transplants.
As an anesthesiologist and perfusionist in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sasha used specialized equipment to keep patients’ blood pumping during heart transplants and keep donor organs alive until they reached their recipients.
Now, after fleeing Russia’s full-scale invasion, the 52-year-old is learning his profession all over again as a student in Milwaukee School of Engineering’s medical perfusion program.
Eighty miles away, his wife Anna Mykhailova, 42, is starting over, too. In 2024, she started a job as a cardiac sonographer at a Madison hospital, using skills she refined as a cardiologist in one of Ukraine’s top heart hospitals. She’s also studying for the medical board exams in hopes of one day practicing medicine in the United States.
But as they work to rebuild their careers, they still don’t know if they’ll be allowed to stay.
“It’s so stressful because of this immigration process. I will do these really hard exams and they (might) say, ‘Oh, you have to leave this country,’” Anna said of the family’s immigration limbo.
Wisconsin needs more medical professionals, including physicians. But as the couple’s experience shows, those who arrive in the country with foreign training face hurdles that can keep them from filling that gap.
Anna Mykhailova, right, worked as a cardiologist in Ukraine before fleeing with the couple’s daughter in 2022 when Russia invaded the country. Sasha Druzhyna worked as an anesthesiologist and perfusionist. He stayed in Ukraine to work for a year after his wife and daughter left.
Sasha Druzhyna, left, and Anna Mykhailova settled in Madison with the help of friends. The family has Temporary Protected Status, which allows them to stay in the U.S. for 18-month stretches.
Anna Mykhailova, left, works as a sonographer at a Madison hospital while her husband, Sasha Druzhyna, studies for a master’s degree in medical perfusion at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
A new life begins
Had the couple fled to Europe instead, their career paths might have been simpler. Sasha might be the teacher instead of the student. Anna might still be a doctor.
But the invasion left no time to deliberate. Anna and her colleagues moved their patients to the hospital’s basement, then brought their own families to shelter there, too. Anna and Sasha brought their daughter, Varya, who was 6 years old at the time.
They listened to the news as Russian troops occupied the suburbs around Kyiv.
“When they showed civilian kids killed by Russians … I realized that nobody will protect us and (we) just have to go,” Anna said.
A friend with military connections warned that Ukrainian forces would soon blow up Ukraine’s own bridges to stop Russian troops from taking more ground.
“They told us, if you want to leave, you have to leave right now,” Anna said. Sasha drove his wife and daughter west, past sirens and explosions, toward the border with Poland.
A week later, Anna and Varya were on a plane to Boston, where Anna had a friend from medical school. Arriving with tourist visas, she thought they’d be away for just a few weeks. Sasha, who didn’t speak English, opted to stay.
“Coming here, starting from zero, no money, no nothing, no job — he didn’t want to come and wash floors in a supermarket … It’s really difficult to immigrate when you already had something in your home country,” Anna said.
Anna Mykhailova and Sasha Druzhyna’s 10-year-old daughter, Varya, plays on her mother’s smartphone at their home in Madison, Wis., on Oct. 25, 2025. Varya was 6 years old when she fled Ukraine with her mother.
Drawings by their daughter hang on the front door of Anna Mykhailova and Sasha Druzhyna’s home on Oct. 25, 2025. It might have been easier for the couple to practice medicine if they immigrated to somewhere in Europe, but they said they don’t want to uproot their daughter again.
From left, Sasha Druzhyna, Varya and Anna Mykhailova sit on the couch together at their home on Oct. 25, 2025. They try to stay positive. Druzhyna sees his graduate degree program as an adventure, and Mykhailova is thankful for the support they’ve received from Americans.
He kept working in the hospital, caring for his usual patients and the war-wounded. They figured the fighting would end soon.
But about a year later, Sasha joined his family in Madison, where friends helped them get settled.
“We realized that this war is going to be forever,” Anna said. “I don’t believe that they will stop it.”
The three are among more than 100,000 Ukrainians who’ve been granted Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, because the federal government deems it unsafe to return. The status allows them to live and work in the United States for renewable 18-month stretches.
Almost four years later, they’re still here — and hoping to stay. The war rages on, and they’ve embraced their new home. Varya, 10, now speaks mostly English.
“She doesn’t want to speak Ukrainian anymore,” Anna said in an interview at her Madison apartment building in September. “So for her to go back to school in Ukraine … it’s possible, but it’s going to be really difficult.”
But staying isn’t easy either. Restarting their careers has come with significant personal and financial costs, and there’s no guarantee their efforts will pay off.
Covert cardiologist
Until recently, all foreign-trained physicians seeking to practice medicine in Wisconsin had to pass three licensing board exams — offered only in English — then compete against recent medical school graduates for a three-year residency at a U.S. hospital.
To Anna, the process seemed daunting. The tests cost around $1,000 each — not counting textbooks and study materials — and she was still taking classes to improve her English. She heard that hospitals preferred recent graduates, and she feared they’d be particularly reluctant to accept someone whose immigration status expires every 18 months.
Meanwhile, she and her husband struggled to find a place to live. The prestige they commanded back home was irrelevant to U.S. landlords running background checks.
“Could you imagine? I’m in my 40s. I don’t have any credit score … I just got my work permit. I couldn’t find a job,” Anna said. “Nobody wants me. They don’t know who I am (or) what is our culture; everybody’s afraid of us.”
Anna Mykhailova poses for a portrait on Oct. 27, 2025, at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wis. Mykhailova worked as a cardiologist in Kyiv, Ukraine, before fleeing to the United States and having to start over due to the Russian invasion.
She began applying for research jobs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I don’t know how many interviews I had,” Anna said. “Everybody was so nice, but (they said), ‘You are overqualified for this job.’”
Then the mom of one of her daughter’s soccer teammates mentioned that her employer, SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital, was hiring student sonographers. She encouraged Anna to apply.
The roles are designed for people currently studying medical sonography, but Anna already had the relevant training: Ukrainian doctors regularly do their own sonography. She applied for the job with help from teachers at the Madison nonprofit Literacy Network, where she’d been taking classes to improve her English and prepare for next steps in school or work.
She started the job in 2024, running ultrasounds to aid in medical procedures and to diagnose things like heart attacks, heart murmurs, strokes and birth defects. She was promoted to a full-time position soon after.
On a typical day, she might see half a dozen patients. She doesn’t tell them she’s a doctor.
“Nobody knows,” Anna said.
Some patients get rude when they hear her accent. “I had a couple patients, they told me, ‘Don’t touch me. Call somebody else. I don’t trust you,’” she said.
Once a hospital security officer heard the way a patient spoke to her and urged her to file a report. The hospital sent a letter threatening to deny care if the patient acted that way again.
“I have a really good experience working here,” Anna said. “I really like my job right now.”
Leaves change colors on Oct. 27, 2025, outside SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital where Anna Mykhailova works as a sonographer. Mykhailova already had the relevant training: She regularly did her own sonography as a physician in Ukraine.
Under the new rules, qualifying foreign-trained physicians can work under the supervision of another physician without repeating residency training if they’ve passed U.S. board exams and have a Wisconsin job offer.
Anna heard the news from a friend and asked about it at work.
“I showed this bill to people in the medical field here, and they were just like, ‘Oh, we don’t know,’” Anna said. “So I don’t know how does it work here, or where to go and who to ask.”
It’s also not clear she’d qualify. The new rules require applicants to have practiced medicine in their home country for at least one year in the last five years. She left her job nearly four years ago, and she figures it will likely be a couple years before she passes the board exams.
Lately, she’s been reading up on the licensing rules in other states and contemplating a move after her husband finishes school.
She wonders if things might have been easier if the family had immigrated to Poland, say, or Italy, instead of the United States. Back in Ukraine, her husband ran a perfusion school certified by the European Board of Cardiovascular Perfusion, and he received his own training in Europe. But she doesn’t think it’s worth emigrating again.
“It doesn’t matter where you go, everything is going to be different,” Anna said. “If I go to Europe, I have to start over. I have to study a new language, and then all of the education and activities for our daughter, and she also has to study a new language. So I just don’t want to do it a second time. I don’t have the energy to do it.”
From professor to pupil
Sasha, meanwhile, decided not to try to become a doctor again. His top priority was perfusion, the field to which he dedicated two doctoral dissertations and decades of work. In the United States, perfusionists don’t need to be doctors, but they do need specialized training.
“The perfusion specialty board, they do not recognize European diplomas,” Anna said. “They want them to go back to school here. But he’s happy to do it. He was so happy that they admitted him.”
Last fall, he started the two-year master’s degree program at MSOE.
“This wasn’t about choosing an easier path. Perfusion is a highly specialized and demanding field … This is where my experience is most relevant,” Sasha said, “and it’s work I genuinely value.”
Sasha Druzhyna takes classes on Nov. 5, 2025, at the Milwaukee School of Engineering in Milwaukee. Druzhyna worked as an anesthesiologist and perfusionist in Kyiv, Ukraine, before fleeing to the U.S. and having to start over due to the Russian invasion. He takes classes Monday through Friday and returns to his family in Madison on weekends.
Anna teases him about being so much older than the other students in the program.
“He’s like a father for all his classmates,” Anna said. “The first day, he brought actual paper, a notebook with different colored pens. His classmates brought just iPads. They were like, ‘What is that? Are you a dinosaur?’”
Paying for tuition for the first semester took most of the couple’s savings, Anna said. Their immigration status makes them ineligible for federal student loans.
She’s not sure how they’ll cover the remaining costs.
Sasha was also accepted to the perfusion school at State University of New York Upstate Medical University, which offered him a job that would have offset his tuition costs, but he didn’t want to uproot his family again.
“My daughter would need to change her school, leave her friends,” Sasha said. “You know how important it is for a girl of 10 years, your friends? It’s the most important thing in your life.”
But being in school has meant far less time with her. Since September, Sasha has spent his weekdays in Milwaukee, attending classes and shadowing other perfusionists during surgery. When he’s not in the operating room, he spends the night in a spare room he rents from a friend.
The Milwaukee School of Engineering campus is seen on Nov. 5, 2025. Sasha Druzhyna is studying for a master’s degree in medical perfusion, a profession he dedicated two dissertations and decades of work to in Ukraine.
Back in Madison, Anna is “basically a single mom” five days a week. On Fridays, Sasha drives home to see his family and work on a transplant team at UW Health, where he uses perfusion techniques to keep donated organs alive and healthy until they’re transplanted.
With luck, he’ll move back to Madison after he finishes his coursework in May. He’s hoping to do his second-year rotations at Madison hospitals.
Status: Pending
Back in Kyiv, the couple’s condo stands vacant, full of the things Anna left behind when she packed hurriedly for a few weeks away.
The high-rise penthouse, located beside the many bridges on Kyiv’s east side, boasts an impressive view of the city and the river — and Russian missile strikes. The couple can’t sell it, or go back, until the war ends.
“Nobody wants to live on the 27th floor when you don’t have electricity, elevator or water, and you can see rockets and jets in front of your eyes,” Anna said.
Meanwhile, despite the time and money the two doctors have invested in their new lives, their future in the United States is uncertain.
The family’s Temporary Protected Status expired in April, and they still haven’t received an answer on the renewal application they submitted a year ago.
“The Homeland Security office said that our work permits are still valid (while) we are waiting for their decision,” Anna said. “We’re just waiting to see.”
If their application is approved, they could be on the hook for thousands of dollars. The Department of Homeland Security announced in October that Ukrainians’ applications, including those already waiting to be processed, will be subject to a new fee of $1,000 per person.
Anna has been looking into other visa options, too. Many foreign doctors practice in the United States on H1-B visas, an employer-sponsored visa for workers with specialized skills. If Sasha can eventually get one of those visas as a perfusionist, Anna will get a work permit, too. But in September, the Trump administration announced a $100,000 fee on most new H1-B visas, raising concerns that employers — including hospitals — will cut back on those visas.
Sasha Druzhyna, right, and Anna Mykhailova head home after their daughter’s soccer game on Oct. 25, 2025, in Oregon, Wis.
Even if the family is able to renew their status, it will end in October unless the Department of Homeland Security extends Ukraine’s TPS designation. Since President Donald Trump took office last year, his administration ended TPS for immigrants from 10 countries, revoking legal status for more than 1.6 million immigrants, NPR found.
Anna worries that she and her family could become targets for deportation before they ever get a decision on their application.
“I don’t feel safe,” Anna said. “When you are waiting, you are legally in the United States, but this new administration and ICE police, they think that you are illegal here.”
Still, she said, she and Sasha try to stay positive.
“My husband says this is a good opportunity. He feels so young because he is studying as a student, and he says it’s just an adventure,” Anna said.
She looks for the bright side, too. She points to the support and kindness Americans have shown her and the fact that she’s learned she can survive “without anything.”
“I feel like a homeless person. I feel like Ukraine is not my home anymore, and the United States is not my home yet,” Anna said, “but people are trying to make it feel like home.”
This story is part of Public Square, an occasional photography series highlighting how Wisconsin residents connect with their communities. To suggest someone in your community for us to feature, email Joe Timmerman at jtimmerman@wisconsinwatch.org.
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
President Donald Trump’s endorsement of U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin’s open race for governor led the congressman’s top Republican rival to drop out of the race less than a day later.
Tiffany now faces only nominal opposition for the Republican nomination in the battleground state after Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann announced his decision to drop out Wednesday. Schoemann congratulated Tiffany on the Trump endorsement and wished him “great success” in November.
Trump announced the endorsement in a social media post on Tuesday night, saying Tiffany “has always been at my side.”
Tiffany has been a fierce Trump loyalist since he was elected to Congress in 2020. Prior to that, he served just over seven years in the Legislature, where he was a firm backer of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
Tiffany still faces Andy Manske, a 26-year-old medical services technician, in the Republican primary. Manske vowed to remain in the race, despite raising almost no money so far compared to Tiffany’s more than $2 million.
Trump said that as governor, Tiffany would work to grow the economy, cut taxes, secure the border, ensure law and order, support the military and protect gun rights.
Tiffany said he was honored to receive the endorsement and promised that if elected, “I will make Wisconsin great again by lowering utility rates and property taxes, cutting burdensome red tape, rooting out waste and fraud, and restoring common-sense leadership to Madison.”
Democrats blasted the endorsement.
“Tiffany has proudly voted in lockstep for Washington Republicans’ expensive and unpopular agenda that has hurt families, farmers, and small businesses across Wisconsin,” Democratic Governors Association spokesperson Izzi Levy said.
Tiffany faces some historical hurdles. No sitting member of Congress has ever been elected governor of Wisconsin. And in the past 36 years, gubernatorial candidates who were from the same party as the president in a midterm election have lost every time, except for Evers in 2022.
But Democrats have also never held the office more than eight years in a row.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
The Madison suburb of DeForest, where a $12 billion data center proposal has been in development for months, abruptly announced Jan. 27 that the data center “is not feasible.”
The statement by the village government indicates the proposal will be dropped.
The announcement came a day after Wisconsin Watch reported on secrecy on the part of local governments regarding seven major data centers around Wisconsin.
In DeForest, village staff worked for at least seven months with Virginia-based QTS Data Centers before the proposal was publicly announced in October. On Nov. 18, the village president said at a public board meeting that members had only known about the project for weeks.
A key issue was the village would have had to annex 1,600 acres in the neighboring town of Vienna.
QTS was expected to make a presentation Jan. 27 to a village board committee, ahead of consideration by the village board on Feb. 3 and a public hearing on Feb. 9.
Instead, the village issued a statement Tuesday, saying:
“After individual discussions with the Village Board trustees, village staff have determined that QTS’ data center proposal is not feasible in DeForest. Village staff have recommended to the village president to reject the annexation petition during the Feb. 3 Village Board meeting.”
Dan Jansen, a DeForest resident who opposes the data center, told Wisconsin Watch that the months of preparation appeared to give the proposal momentum, but that he believes it never had enough support on the seven-member village board.
DeForest Village President Jane Cahill Wolfgram looks on during a village board meeting at DeForest Village Hall in DeForest, Wis., on Jan. 20, 2026. (Kayla Wolf for Wisconsin Watch)
Village President Jane Cahill Wolfgram, who had expressed frustration with residents’ opposition to the data center, told Wisconsin Watch on Jan. 28: “We have looked at the project as much as we can right now and decided it’s not the direction we should go.”
Our original story on data center secrecy was the result of a reader tip. If you have suggestions for future stories, please let us know.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Artificial intelligence, cloud computing and hyperscale data centers are arriving quickly, bringing enormous demand for electricity and water. The real question is not whether these investments will come, but how we manage them and who pays the costs if we get it wrong.
As a purple state, Wisconsin has long shown that good energy policy is practical, not ideological. Families want affordable bills. Businesses want reliable power. Communities want clean water and economic opportunity. That same common-sense approach must guide how we respond to rapid data center growth.
An unprecedented load and a real affordability risk
The scale of proposed data centers is unlike anything Wisconsin has seen.
Just two projects, one in Port Washington and another in Mount Pleasant, have requested nearly four gigawatts of electricity combined. That is more power than all Wisconsin households use today.
Meeting this demand will require massive investments in power plants, transmission lines, substations, pipelines and water infrastructure. But under Wisconsin’s current utility model, these costs are not paid only by the companies driving demand. They are instead spread across all of us who pay electric bills, including families, farms and small businesses that won’t benefit from data center power.
For small businesses operating on thin margins, even modest increases in electric or water rates affect hiring, pricing and long-term viability. In rural communities with fewer customers sharing infrastructure costs, the impact can be even more severe.
This concern is already becoming real. Utilities are citing data center demand to justify new methane gas plants and delaying coal plant retirements. Utilities doubling down on fossil fuels should give every one of us pause.
Why costly gas is the wrong answer
Building new methane gas plants for data centers would lock customers into decades of fuel price volatility, even though cleaner options have become cheaper and faster to deploy.
Wind, solar and battery storage can come online far more quickly than fossil fuel plants and without exposing families and businesses to unpredictable fuel costs. Battery storage costs alone have fallen nearly 90% over the past decade.
Across the country, these tools are replacing methane gas plants in states as different as Texas and California.
There is also a serious risk that we will pay higher bills for decades, even when data centers stop using those methane gas plants. In Nevada, a major utility has acknowledged that only about 15% of proposed data centers are likely to be built. When speculative projects fall through, all of us are left to pay for infrastructure we actually never needed.
This is not ideology. It is basic financial risk management, and basic fairness.
Clean energy is the lowest-cost path
Wisconsin policymakers and elected officials need to put guardrails into place to protect everyday residents from the AI bubble that’s threatening the state. The core principle? That data centers operate on 100% clean energy, not as a slogan, but because it is the lowest-cost and lowest-risk option over time.
A smart framework would require developers to:
Supply at least 30% of their power from on-site and Wisconsin-based renewable energy.
Offset additional demand through energy efficiency, demand response – at least 25% of peak capacity – and smart grid flexibility.
Participate fully in utility efficiency and renewable energy programs rather than opting out.
Each data center project should require a legally binding Community Benefit Agreement that clearly defines community protections and benefits, negotiated among developers, local governments, neighborhood-based organizations, and underserved communities.
This approach reduces peak demand, lowers infrastructure costs and protects existing customers while allowing data centers to advance.
Major companies like Microsoft, Google and Meta have already publicly committed to operating on carbon-free energy. We need to hold them to that. Wisconsin risks losing our competitive advantage if we default to gas-heavy solutions instead of offering clean, flexible grids.
Water is a non-negotiable constraint
Energy is not the only concern. Water matters just as much.
A single hyperscale data center can use millions of gallons of water per day, either directly for cooling or indirectly through power generation. In communities with limited water systems, that can crowd out agricultural use and raise residents’ water bills.
Wisconsin should require closed-loop cooling systems, full accounting of direct and indirect water use and ongoing public reporting to ensure local water supplies are protected.
A practical path forward
Wisconsin does not have to choose between economic growth and affordability. We can do both if we insist on clear guardrails.
That means requiring data centers to pay the full cost of service, powering growth with clean energy first and protecting water resources and ratepayers from unnecessary risk.
Data centers are coming. The question is whether Wisconsin families and small businesses will be partners in that growth or be left paying higher bills for decades to come.
If we choose smart clean power over costly gas, Wisconsin can lead.
For more information
Check out the Clean Economy Coalition of Wisconsin (CECW) Data Center Accountability Framework, a statewide roadmap for policymakers to manage the rapid expansion of large-scale data centers in the state.
John Imes is co-founder and executive director of the Wisconsin Environmental Initiative and village president of Shorewood Hills. He has spent decades working with businesses, policymakers and local governments to advance pragmatic clean energy and infrastructure solutions that protect ratepayers, strengthen communities and support Wisconsin’s economy.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
Last week we asked for your questions about immigration enforcement in Wisconsin, particularly as thousands of federal immigration agents patrol Minnesota’s Twin Cities, conducting door-to-door searches for immigrants and clashing daily with protesters and observers.
One reader reached out for information about Wisconsin’s firearms laws, citing the example of armed civilians at anti-ICE protests in Minnesota. The question preceded the Jan. 24 killing of Alex Pretti by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officer in Minneapolis — a shooting that escalated tensions in Minnesota, sparked national protests and reignited questions about unchecked federal power.
The episode also renewed a national conversation about the implications of exercising Second Amendment rights during protests and interactions with law enforcement. Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse at Minneapolis’ Veterans Affairs hospital, held a concealed carry permit for the handgun he carried that day. Video of the incident shows a CBP officer confiscating the handgun shortly before other agents shot Pretti multiple times, killing him.
Here’s the reader’s question and our answer below:
I would like to know more about open carry in Wisconsin. I know Wisconsin has more permissive open carry laws compared to Minnesota. But, I know there are some restrictions as to locations as well. Wisconsin law is, at least on the surface, fairly permissive on the matter of carrying firearms in most public spaces — a practice often referred to as “open carry.”
“As long as you’re not a prohibited possessor for a firearm and you’re an adult, you are allowed to lawfully open carry a firearm in the state of Wisconsin,” said Milwaukee defense attorney Tom Grieve, a former state prosecutor and Second Amendment commentator.
Protesters gather to protest U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement and the Trump administration, Jan. 25, 2026, in Madison, Wis. The protest came after a federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis the day before. (Angela Major / WPR)
Those prohibited from possessing a firearm under federal or state law include those with a felony conviction, anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence or anyone subject to a domestic violence protective order. Others prohibited include people found not guilty of a felony by reason of mental illness, those adjudicated incompetent by a court or those with a history of involuntary commitments for mental illness or drug dependence.
But carrying openly, particularly without a concealed carry license, can be a legal minefield. Carrying a firearm on federal property — including post offices — or on school grounds is a felony, and Wisconsin law sets a 1,000-foot radius around all school properties in which possessing a firearm is generally illegal. In urban areas, Grieve added, “you’re almost always within 1,000 feet of a school.”
The right to carry — either open or concealed — also does not extend to police stations, courthouses or correctional facilities. Private property owners may prohibit guns on their premises and direct anyone violating their rules to leave. “Signs or no signs, if you’re asked to leave, you have to leave,” said Nik Clark, president of the advocacy group Wisconsin Carry, Inc. Private property owners cannot, however, bar people from keeping a gun in their personal vehicle while on their premises.
Concealed carry license holders are allowed to carry within 1,000 feet of a school under state law, but they are not exempt from the law prohibiting firearms on school grounds. Licensees may also carry their guns in bars and taverns, but only if they do not drink alcohol.
Wisconsin residents over the age of 21 who are permitted to own a firearm can apply for a concealed carry license through the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Applicants must prove they have completed a firearms training course and background check and pay a $40 fee to obtain their first license, which remains valid for five years.
A sign on a University of Wisconsin-Madison campus building in 2018 warns that weapons are not allowed inside. (Dee J. Hall / Wisconsin Watch)
Most states either honor Wisconsin concealed carry licenses or do not require a license to carry a concealed firearm. Neighboring Illinois and Minnesota do not honor Wisconsin licenses, nor do 12 other states and the District of Columbia.
A growing number of states, including Illinois, prohibit openly carrying “long guns” — meaning rifles and shotguns — at protests. Those rules aim to prevent armed confrontations between protesters, counterprotesters and law enforcement, said University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor John Gross. “What (law enforcement) don’t want,” he said, “is a situation where you have two armed groups facing off against one another with the police in between them.”
But Wisconsin law generally allows both open and licensed concealed carry at political demonstrations. A few demonstrators carried rifles outside the Wisconsin State Capitol during a massive protest against COVID-19 restrictions in 2020, for instance.
Minnesota also allows concealed carry permit holders to bring firearms to political demonstrations.
Family members have confirmed that Pretti held a concealed carry permit for the handgun that a CBP agent confiscated moments before the shooting. Minnesota laws allow concealed carry permit holders to openly carry their firearms, although videos show Pretti had his handgun holstered and was holding a phone camera.
Wisconsin attorneys and gun rights advocates argue gun owners considering openly carrying their firearms at protests should think carefully about their decision.
“We have a right to our own self-defense, and the defense of our family and of our communities,” Voss said. “(But) I usually advise people against open carry. I find that there are very few situations in which that makes anyone feel better or really does you any good. Worst case scenario, it makes you the target.”
“When you are open carrying a firearm people generally think, ‘Oh, this is a great way to deter someone,’” Grieve said. “It might (be), or they’re just going to make sure the first thing they do is grab your firearm.”
Clark broadly cautioned against bringing firearms to protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“I would encourage anyone who wants to go ‘demonstrate’ armed to keep a safe distance from law enforcement,” he wrote in an email. “Wave your flag, say what you want to say, but don’t get in close contact with law enforcement. I would advise anyone not to try to interfere with law enforcement at all. But if you do interfere with law enforcement, doing so armed is presenting yourself as a deadly threat and that is dangerous for both law enforcement and agitators.”
A protester holds a sign Jan. 25, 2026, as hundreds gathered outside the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis., to protest the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. (Jim Malewitz / Wisconsin Watch)
Still, Grieve said, carrying a firearm in the presence of law enforcement is not intrinsically grounds for officers to react with deadly force, as some Trump administration officials suggested in the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s killing.
“If that’s the case, then game wardens in the United States would be slaughtering tens of thousands of Americans every year,” he said, “because those are law enforcement officials who, by their very nature, are dealing with armed Americans on a daily and hourly basis.”
Voss challenged the White House’s initial efforts to blame Pretti’s death on his decision to carry a firearm. In his view, none of Pretti’s actions captured on video justified the shooting. “At what point did (Pretti) do something that invited an immediate execution?” he asked.
Gross shares a similar view of the shooting. “He was a lawful gun owner legally carrying his firearm in a public space, and any arguments from the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI or other members of federal law enforcement that his possession of that weapon by itself indicates some intent to harm federal law enforcement (are) completely ridiculous.”
“If that were true, it would eviscerate the Second Amendment right to possess a firearm,” Gross added. “It would essentially be saying, ‘If federal agents believe you have a gun, and you potentially could use that firearm against them, then they have the authority to disarm you or even use deadly force against you to protect themselves.’”
If you are considering carrying a firearm in Wisconsin either openly or concealed, consult with the Wisconsin Department of Justice and, if possible, an attorney to learn more about how to legally and safely exercise your Second Amendment rights, Grieve said.
A video posted on Twitter shows Kyle Rittenhouse approaching police with his hands up after killing two people in Kenosha and wounding another on Aug. 25, 2020. Rittenhouse later stood trial for homicide, reckless endangerment and other charges. He was acquitted in 2021. (Courtesy of Brendan Gutenschwager via Twitter)
Wisconsinites may remember another incident that placed the intersection of firearms rights and protests in national headlines: In August 2020, then-17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of Illinois shot and killed two men in separate confrontations while patrolling Kenosha as part of an informal volunteer militia amid civil unrest following the shooting of Jacob Blake by a Kenosha police officer. Rittenhouse later stood trial for homicide and reckless endangerment, among other charges. A Kenosha County jury acquitted Rittenhouse in 2021.
Rittenhouse has since become a gun rights advocate, and the shooting of Pretti prompted some national pundits to compare his exercise of Second Amendment rights to Pretti’s. Rittenhouse himself weighed in on Monday via Twitter. “Carry everywhere,” he wrote. “It is your right.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Most people taken into custody by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not have a criminal conviction, recent reports show.
PolitiFact reported Jan. 23 that as of Jan. 7, 74% of immigrants being held in detention did not have a criminal conviction.
The libertarian Cato Institute, saying it received leaked ICE data, reported in September that over the previous year, 73% taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction; 8% had a violent or property conviction.
In late September, the number of people in immigration detention who had no criminal record outnumbered those convicted of crimes, The Guardian reported, citing ICE data.
ICE data for fiscal 2026, through Nov. 15, showed 72% of booked detainees did not have a criminal conviction.
Under 30% of people arrested in crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and across Massachusetts had a criminal conviction, The New York Times reported in December.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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The U.S. Department of Education delayed wage garnishment for people whose student loans are in default.
Nearly 125,000 Wisconsinites have student loans that are in default.
The Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt offers a toll-free, confidential helpline at (833) 589-0750 and via email at studentloanquestions@debtsmarts.org.
It’s a tumultuous time for student loan borrowers.
Following years of waiving payments and penalties after the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Department of Education announced in December it would soon begin garnishing the wages of borrowers who’ve defaulted on their loans.
Then, Jan. 16, department officials reversed course, saying they would wait to start “involuntary collections” until other changes to the student loan system take effect. They did not specify how long the delay would last.
Another major student loan change is pending court approval. The agreement, which settles a lawsuit brought by the department, would end the popular Biden-era repayment plan Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE). The plan offered borrowers more flexibility than any other.
Meanwhile, other changes to borrowing and repayment programs will reduce the options available to current and future students.
More than 720,000 Wisconsinites hold student loans, according to U.S. Department of Education data analyzed by researchers at the Education Data Initiative. Of those, 74,000 were in default as of last September, meaning they hadn’t made a payment in at least 270 days, and the number has likely grown since then. Overall, the state’s borrowers owe around $23.6 billion. What do all these changes mean for them?
“There have been so many announcements … The landscape is going to continue to be really confusing,” said Carole Trone, executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt, which runs a helpline providing free, confidential advice for people who have loans or are considering taking one out.
“Borrowers often express that they’re confused and overwhelmed,” Trone said. “What our organization is thinking of is how we can reach those borrowers and help them work through their confusion and feel confident with the path forward.”
The helpline received about 160 calls last year, and it can accommodate far more, Trone said. For privacy, staff don’t record any details about the caller or the reason for the person’s call, and they don’t ask for login information for callers’ loan accounts. To reach the helpline toll-free, call (833) 589-0750, or email studentloanquestions@debtsmarts.org. Staffing for the helpline is provided by Ascendium Education Group. Ascendium is a financial supporter of Wisconsin Watch, but is not involved in editorial decisions.
Wisconsin Watch spoke to Trone about what borrowers and prospective borrowers need to know right now. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does the helpline work and why was it created?
The helpline was originally set up back in the early days of the pandemic … When you call the toll-free helpline, you’re going to talk to a live person. These are trained professionals whose work, day in and day out, is working with student loan borrowers, helping them navigate the complicated process and helping them understand what might be confusing that’s come out in the news or in notices they’ve gotten.
The helpline is not a replacement for talking to your loan servicer (the company where you send payments) or logging in to your account at studentaid.gov and seeing what loans are recorded there. But what our helpline is designed to provide is a very accessible, no-wait-time forum where you can ask one-on-one, “Hey, I got this notice. What do you think it means?” or “I haven’t been paying. What should I start with doing?”… It’s a really good starting point for anyone.
In 2020, there was this historic payment pause for loans because of the challenges from the pandemic. In Wisconsin, we don’t have a statewide helpline for student loan borrowers. We don’t have an ombudsman, we don’t have a higher ed agency. These are where borrowers in other states can often turn to, so we wanted to be able to provide a resource.
The Department of Education has threatened to start garnishing wages. What should borrowers in default know?
This option to garnish wages was around last year. What’s new is that they (took) the next step, which is starting to send letters out to affected borrowers. Policy says you’re supposed to have 30 days notice before (garnishment) happens. The other thing they can do is withhold your tax refund if you’re in default or severely delinquent on your loan.
The other thing that could be almost as damaging is that your credit score is going to be affected. And just to give you a sense of how really devastating this impact could be, if you did a four-year program and you took out loans for each semester, that’s probably eight semesters minimum, so you’ve got eight loan lines. If you are late in paying, that means you’ve got eight nonpayment reports going to the credit agencies. What was happening even last year was that credit reporting had resumed, and people may not have been aware of it until they went to take out a car loan or a mortgage, and they couldn’t because their credit score tanked maybe 100 or more points.
What can borrowers do if they’re in default?
First, we know borrowers are feeling a lot of emotional pain over this. If you’re stressed out, if you’re embarrassed, if you’re overwhelmed, sometimes people just can’t move forward on this. I want to encourage people to call our helpline or email us. That is exactly what we are here for.
There are ways that you can get out of default that are tied to your income levels … You can start to rehabilitate your loan. You have to request a form from your loan servicer. They’ll need to know your income to be able to set an income-driven repayment amount. And if that amount is too much, you need to let the servicer know that … Based on your income, that mandatory payment can be as low as $10 a month. The point is to show that you are making on-time, monthly payments for nine months, and that will restore your loan. But you need to be serious when you’re doing that.
What advice do you have for borrowers who are currently signed up for the SAVE repayment plan, which is set to end soon?
If you’re in SAVE, you’re still in what they’re calling “administrative forbearance” because of all this litigation. But as of last August, your loan balance is growing because they resumed collecting interest. If you’re in the SAVE program and you are eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, you should know that while you’re in (administrative forbearance), you’re not making any progress toward the payment count that you need … There will be a timeline for when people have to move out of the SAVE program, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they have that timeline starting as early as summer.
If you’re trying to figure out what you can do, you can call our helpline. There is also a really helpful loan simulator tool on the studentaid.gov website. You can say “My number one priority is to be eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness,” or “I want to pay off my loan as fast as possible,” or “I want the lowest possible payment,” and it can give you pretty accurate scenarios of what you can expect your payment amount to be.
Provisions in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will eliminate some other repayment plans and add some new ones. What should prospective borrowers know?
The goal is to create fewer programs and fewer options.
The goal is to create fewer programs and fewer options. In principle, I think everyone would appreciate more simplicity. What has happened is that all these repayment plans have come out of different administrations and regulatory initiatives. Those are now getting caught up in the courts. One thing to know is that Public Service Loan Forgiveness came through Congress (rather than the regulatory process), and that’s why it’s on much firmer ground.
There will be basically one income-based repayment plan, called RAP (Repayment Assistance Plan), and there’s the standard repayment plan. It’s not like on July 1 of this year there’s a light switch and everyone is in RAP. Many of those (existing) plans will continue on the terms those borrowers agreed to. It will be new loans that will start to have only those two options.
Starting July 1, there will also be lower limits on how much students and their families can borrow. How do you anticipate that those changes are going to affect students?
We know that in areas like health care or in fields like law, people do (sometimes) borrow more than what these new limits are going to be. And so there’s been a lot of attention now to who’s going to be affected by that. If you’re borrowing more than the $200,000 limit, for instance, to be a medical doctor, what’s that going to mean? … Colleges and professional schools are concerned that people who are currently in their programs will hit the final year or two years of their programs and not be able to borrow the money to complete their programs.
There is a concern that the contingent of borrowers who don’t have the assets (and) the strong credit ratings to be able to turn to the private loan market won’t have options and therefore won’t pursue these degrees.
What should people know before taking out private student loans?
Private loans have a lot fewer protections than federal loans. They do not have forbearance, so when you take out that loan, repayment pretty much starts as soon as you’ve taken it out. They don’t have income-driven repayment options. If you take out a loan to go to a college and they’ve misrepresented the value of their degrees or what jobs their graduates are getting, there are federal protections that you don’t have with a private loan provider.
The big thing related to equity is that if you don’t have a high enough credit rating to qualify for the loan, you’ll be denied. And so, in the worst-case scenario, we’re worried that for these high-cost health care degrees, we will see a lot fewer first-generation, lower-income students going into those professions.
A lot is changing now, but what’s a piece of advice that you’ll keep giving?
I think there is justifiable concern about student loan debt, but we are seeing signs that many more students are hesitating or choosing not to pursue postsecondary education because they figure that’s the only way to avoid student loan debt. The challenge with that approach is that the economic studies say most jobs are going to require some kind of postsecondary credential. So we do want to make sure that students and potential borrowers read up and learn about what their programs are going to cost.
In Wisconsin, the average amount of student loan debt that an undergraduate takes on is about $33,000 for someone who completes their degree. So when you hear the stories of huge amounts of debt, those things happen. It’s heartbreaking to see those stories, but it’s not the norm.
Editor’s note: This story was corrected to reflect that the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt helpline received about 160 calls last year.
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsinites owe $23.6 billion in student loans, and thousands of Wisconsin borrowers are in default. But Carole Trone, executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt, doesn’t want those kinds of numbers to scare students away from college altogether.
“I think there is justifiable concern about student loan debt,” said Trone, whose group helps Wisconsinites figure out costs before, during and after college.
“But we are seeing signs that many more students are hesitating or choosing not to pursue postsecondary education because they figure that’s the only way to avoid student loan debt,” Trone said. The problem with that plan, she said, is that studies suggest most of the jobs of the future will require some sort of credential beyond a high school diploma.
She’d like students to hear a different number: $33,000. “In Wisconsin, the average amount of student loan debt that an undergraduate takes on is about $33,000 for someone who completes their degree. So when you hear the stories of huge amounts of debt, those things happen. It’s heartbreaking to see those stories, but it’s not the norm.”
Trone talked with Wisconsin Watch about what students can do at every step in their education to reduce what they borrow and increase the chance they’ll be able to pay it back.
“It has finally, truly gotten better, easier, simpler — at long last — so it is completely worth it to do it,” said Trone. “It keeps your options open.”
Forget the ‘dream’ school
“I caution people about talking about their ‘dream college,’” Trone said. Instead, she urges students to make a list of things like how much they’re willing to pay, what kinds of programs they’re considering and the typical salaries for those professions.
Then, she recommends students use the Department of Education’s College Scorecard website to compare schools.
“Not all programs cost the same, and not all programs are worth the same … You want to look for colleges that have strong graduation rates. You want to see how many students get financial aid. You want to see what the net cost of attendance is,” Trone said.
Meet with an adviser
Sometimes students end up paying more for school because the school doesn’t accept their prior credits, or because they need a class that’s seldom offered.
“If you’re trying to bring credits into that institution, talk to someone about that. Don’t just assume that those credits will transfer,” Trone said. “Try to map out what classes you need to take, and meet with your adviser and figure out when those classes are being offered.”
Limit loans
When colleges send financial aid offer letters, they list the maximum amount the student can borrow. But students have the option to borrow less or decline loans altogether, and they can make those decisions until around the time they’re enrolling in classes.
“Make sure that you have really thought about do you actually really need to borrow this money, because you’ll be paying it back with interest,” Trone said.
“The most important thing that you can do to be able to repay any loans you take out is to finish your program,” Trone said. People leave school for all sorts of reasons, including family commitments and job changes. “A lot of that can be really unavoidable … but those are the borrowers that often have the most difficulty in repaying their loans.”
Update your contact information
One simple step can help keep borrowers on track: signing into studentaid.gov to update their contact information regularly.
“After you’ve left college, that’s the time when lots of folks are moving around or changing email addresses,” Trone said. “When things start coming due or there’s changes, they need to be able to reach you.”
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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