Twenty-four states provide a constitutional right to hunt and fish, according to a November 2025 count by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Nearly all 24, including Wisconsin and Minnesota, did so with constitutional amendments approved by voters since 1996.
Illinois, Iowa and Michigan do not have the constitutional protection.
Nationally, “well-organized animal rights groups and limitations on methods, seasons and bag limits for certain game species” spurred the amendments, according to NCSL.
Wisconsin’s 2003 amendment passed with 82% of the vote.
It reads: “The people have the right to fish, hunt, trap and take game subject only to reasonable restrictions as prescribed by law.”
The measure was among a wave of Wisconsin constitutional amendments led by Republicans.
About 800,000 licenses are sold annually in Wisconsin for both deer hunting and fishing.
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Voters approved more than 60% of school district referendums last week as schools face declining enrollment, rising inflation and stagnant state funding.
Over $1 billion in referendums from 73 school districts were on the ballot Tuesday. Wisconsin voters passed 46 out of 75 school referendums, totaling over $564 million in increased property taxes.
The resulting 61% passage rate is below the 70% average from 2020 to 2025 but slightly above last year’s 56%.
Wisconsin school districts are increasingly patching holes in their budgets with referendums, which ask voters whether school districts can increase property taxes beyond the limits set by state law to generate more revenue.
Two kinds of referendums were on the ballot this year. Operational referendums ask to raise taxes to fund the cost of running schools, such as educational programs, salaries and transportation services. Only 37 of the 63 operational referendums passed.Capital referendums ask for increased taxes to fund capital construction projects, like building upgrades. Voters passed nine of the 12 capital referendums this year.
Polling shows voters are growing weary of property tax increases. A February Marquette University Law School poll warned that a record high 60% of registered voters said they would rather reduce property taxes than increase spending on public schools.
Two districts — Howard-Suamico and Sauk Prairie — asked voters to approve both capital and operational referendums. Both of Sauk Prairie’s failed while both of Howard-Suamico’s passed. The northeast Wisconsin district will use the capital referendum funds to upgrade six of its eight schools.
Of the 20 districts where voters rejected a referendum in 2025 and they tried again this year, 16 passed a new referendum.
After rejecting referendums in 2024 and 2025, voters in the Oakfield School District approved a $4 million operational referendum this year by a margin of 41 votes. Sarah Poquette, the district’s administrator, said the referendum will help to offset operational costs from inflation and also expand math and literacy support programs and staff professional development.
“I want our voters to know that we’re still going to remain fiscally responsible and know that we want to spend our funds continuing to offer the great services to our students,” Poquette said. “We know the decision wasn’t made lightly to vote yes, and we want to make sure that we’re continuing to provide high-quality education to all of our students.”
Poquette said better communications about the school district’s expenses helped change the outcome this year.
Jason Bertrand, district administrator of the Crandon School District, also cited transparency — “really opening up all of our books” to taxpayers — as the reason the district’s referendum passed by a narrow 19-vote margin after the previous year’s rejection.
Because Crandon is a rural school district with fewer than 6,000 residents, Bertrand recognized the $3.75 million price tag was a significant ask of taxpayers.
“It was a successful referendum, but I don’t want to do this again. I don’t feel it’s an appropriate thing that 90% of our public school districts have to keep going to a referendum and asking our local taxpayers to pay more and more money, especially when we see a $2.5 billion surplus,” Bertrand said, referring to the state government’s unallocated funds that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers can’t agree on how to spend.
“I think that we were taxed enough where we can provide funding for our public schools,” Bertrand said. “So that’s what my goal is in the next couple years, is to be able to work with our federal and our state as well as our tribal partners to figure out a sustainable method to be able to fund our public schools.”
Voters in the Denmark School District approved a $925,000 package they’ve passed four times since 2017.
“Being able to maintain the same amount of $925,000 a year while still balancing our budgets, even with the funding from the state that hasn’t met inflation, has really proven to our community that we are fiscally responsible,” Superintendent Luke Goral said. “We also, with that, do our very best to give staff the raises and things that we can but we don’t go above and beyond what our budget allows.”
Voters in the Appleton Area School District approved the district’s $60 million operational referendum by a sweeping 31-point margin. The district said in a statement it plans to use the new funding to add counselors and social workers, among other things.
“With voter approval of a $15 million-per-year increase in funding over the next four years, the AASD will be able to maintain current programs, services, and staffing levels while continuing to address our ongoing budget challenges,” the statement said. “We recognize that this represents an investment from our community, and we are committed to using these resources responsibly, transparently, and in ways that directly benefit students.”
In 2024, Wisconsin voters saw a record number of referendums: 241. The majority of those happened in fall election cycles — the August primary and November general — so Wisconsin voters could see many more asks from school districts later this year.
The operational referendums schools passed generally cover three to four years, Jeff Mandell, president and general counsel at Law Forward, said. It’s not “a long-term solution” as school districts will have to introduce another referendum when the current one expires if the funding stress remains.
Law Forward is representing several school districts, unions and individuals in lawsuits against the state Legislature and the Joint Finance Committee over public education funding. The Wisconsin Assembly is expected to respond to the lawsuit by Monday, April 13.
“By failing to adequately fund our public schools, the State Legislature is offloading its constitutional responsibilities onto the shoulders of local property taxpayers, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet,” Mandell wrote in a public statement.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has called lawmakers to the Capitol on Tuesday for a special session to ban partisan gerrymandering.
It remains to be seen whether Republicans, who control the Legislature, will shrug off Evers’ request as they have in past special sessions on issues like abortion rights and gun safety. It’s possible, given the way political winds of the 2026 midterm elections appear to favor Democrats, Republican lawmakers could come to the table, though not likely.
Last week liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor defeated conservative Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar by 20 points for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The race, while technically nonpartisan, saw public support split along party lines.
Evers, who is not running for reelection, has proposed a constitutional amendment, which requires two consecutive approvals by the Legislature in separate sessions and ratification by voters. The language of the amendment is just two sentences: “Districts shall not provide a disproportionate advantage or disadvantage to any political party. Partisan gerrymandering is prohibited.”
Following a bill signing last week, Evers said his office was continuing discussions with Republican and Democratic leaders about his proposal.
“We’re still working with legislative leaders and will continue doing that until that moment when they come back,” Evers said.
State lawmakers hold the power to draw legislative and congressional districts in Wisconsin, typically once a decade after the federal government conducts the U.S. Census. Democrats, who last controlled the Assembly, Senate and governor’s office during the 2009-10 legislative session, did not pass any redistricting changes ahead of the 2010 U.S. Census and lost power to enact policy after Republicans took control of the executive and legislative branches that election year.
“The Democratic trifecta was faced with a choice: secure fair maps for prosperity, or wait and hold out for a possible retaining power for another decade,” Evers said when he signed the special session executive order in March. “And we know how that story worked.”
In 2011, Republican lawmakers crafted maps that kept the GOP in power for more than a decade, even after Democrats won statewide offices in 2018. The Republican-drawn maps remained in place until the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck them down in late 2023. Cases challenging the state’s congressional maps are still making their way through the courts, but decisions are unlikely ahead of the midterm elections.
Evers signed new legislative maps into law in 2024, and Democrats flipped 14 legislative seats under the new maps in an otherwise Republican-friendly election year. Those gains set up real competition for control of the Legislature this fall.
The challenging political environment for Republicans in 2026 could create an avenue for some kind of reform if GOP lawmakers are interested, redistricting experts said in interviews with Wisconsin Watch.
Legislative Republicans will have to consider what kind of consequences might come if Democrats take some form of power during the 2026 elections, said Jonathan Cervas, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in redistricting and served as one of the consultants to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the case challenging the state’s legislative maps. Republicans in that case compromised with Evers on the best path forward rather than letting the consultants draw maps, Cervas said.
“I really liked that they decided to compromise. I thought that was maybe the best case scenario outcome, though it may not have felt like the best case scenario for any of the other parties,” Cervas said. “I’m not sure that that’s what the Democrats wanted. I’m not sure it’s what the Republicans wanted. But I think from the voter standpoint, that’s a really good outcome.”
Cervas and Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington, D.C., office, both said there are similarities between the political environment in Wisconsin today and in the Virginia legislature around 2020 that led to redistricting reform ahead of the state’s 2021 map-drawing process.
Virginia lawmakers initiated a constitutional amendment to create a bipartisan redistricting commission in 2019 when Republicans still held power in the state legislature.
Democrats won a majority in Virginia elections that year, and the state party eventually objected to the constitutional amendment. Virginia voters in 2020 approved the bipartisan redistricting commission that shifted full control of map-drawing power away from state lawmakers. In 2021 the group failed to agree on legislative or congressional maps, and the decision fell to the Virginia Supreme Court.
Now in 2026, Virginia voters will decide in a special election on April 21 whether to temporarily undo the 2020 changes and approve mid-decade Democratic-drawn congressional maps that could give the party four more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s part of the redistricting wave initiated after President Donald Trump called on Texas and other Republican states to enact mid-decade redistricting ahead of the midterms to help Republicans hold on to the U.S. House.
“You just see this unraveling of the reforms that were once seen as promising, and largely because it’s such an unbalanced playing field,” Cervas said.
What key players are saying
Longtime Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who is not seeking reelection, was critical of Evers’ proposal in mid-March, but told reporters he would be open to working with the governor on something that is nonpartisan.
“If we could negotiate and try to find something that is truly nonpartisan, you never know,” Vos said.
Vos added that drawing district lines “should be about demographics. It should be how many people, what are the municipal lines and all those kinds of things. It shouldn’t be about how people vote.”
That’s not how the process worked when Republicans drew the lines in 2011. Instead the maps were drawn in secretive conditions with computer programs that allowed the districts to be calibrated to protect the Republican majority even in a Democratic wave election. When Evers and the Legislature couldn’t agree on maps after the 2020 Census, the then-conservative state Supreme Court ruled the new maps should adhere to a “least change” principle that had no basis in law or the constitution.
A spokesperson for Vos did not respond to additional questions from Wisconsin Watch last week about where Assembly Republicans stand ahead of the special session. Nor did a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, who in March announced he is also not seeking reelection later this year.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, said at a press conference in Madison last week that he would also want to see a nonpartisan proposal from Evers.
“He should produce a nonpartisan bill,” Tiffany said. “He should produce nonpartisan ideas because what we see is that his ideas are consistently partisan.”
While Republicans hold power over the Legislature’s moves this week, Evers also faces potential objections about a partisan gerrymandering ban from some members of his own party.
Neither Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, nor Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, expressed clear support for Evers’ plan following the governor’s executive order in March.
Both noted the challenges gerrymandered maps favoring Republicans pose for Democrats participating in the legislative process, but said they supported a future redistricting process that allowed voters to be heard.
The top Democratic candidates running for governor told Wisconsin Watch they support some form of nonpartisan redistricting, even in the wake of Taylor’s double-digit victory margin in the state Supreme Court race.
“Wisconsinites have been subjected to one of the worst gerrymanders in the nation for too long,” Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said in a statement. “Letting the people’s voices be heard is the very foundation of democracy. We owe it to every Wisconsin voter, Republican or Democrat, to fix this system once and for all.”
Joel Brennan, the former Department of Administration secretary, said the gerrymandered Republican maps “deeply harmed the state.” Fair maps now have voters “choosing their own representatives, not the other way around,” Brennan said.
Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong said she supports a nonpartisan commission to create fair maps without “elected officials meddling in that process.” Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez said Wisconsin needs to keep map drawing “outside of political hands” to stop the power swing that happens when Democrats or Republicans come into power.
Madison Sen. Kelda Roys, who stood with Evers when he signed the special session executive order in March, said she supports fair maps and a constitutional amendment to ban gerrymandering.
“The party that earns the most votes should get the most seats,” she said in a statement.
Missy Hughes, the former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO, and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes pointed to mid-decade redistricting efforts led by Trump in Republican states ahead of the midterms.
Hughes said nonpartisan redistricting methods are necessary to protect Wisconsin voters.
“Wisconsinites deserve it, and as Governor I will use every lever at my disposal to ensure that our vote is protected from Donald Trump, and our maps are fairly drawn,” she said in a statement.
Barnes said fair maps are important, but he also doesn’t want Wisconsin to “fight with one arm tied behind our backs” if there continues to be future partisan redistricting pushes from the federal government.
“There should be fair, nonpartisan redistricting all across the country,” Barnes said. “If that is not the case across the country and Wisconsin finds ourselves in a position where we ultimately have to save democracy, we need to look at all available options.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Common Ground and its new branch, Tenants United, are leading efforts to hold private landlords accountable, starting with David Tomblin of Highgrove Holdings LLC.
Highgrove Holdings is an out-of-state landlord with more than 260 properties, mostly on Milwaukee’s North Side. A significant number of homes are reportedly vacant or boarded.
Common Ground and Tenants United documented dozens of violations and examples of neglect, from mildew and mold to broken windows and holes in the ceilings.
Now both groups alongside other advocates and Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke have set out to “evict” Tomblin, owner of Highgrove Holdings, from control of his properties through a novel lawsuit filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.
A complaint filed by the city of Milwaukee is asking a judge to appoint a third-party receiver to manage Highgrove’s portfolio if hundreds of alleged nuisance and code violations are not fixed within 60 days. If granted, it would effectively strip Tomblin of operational control over his Milwaukee properties.
“The point of this is to get them to comply,” Goyke said. “No one should need to be sued to be code-compliant. It shouldn’t come to this, but if this is what it takes, so be it.”
Tenants United
Last August during unprecedented storms, Ebony Martin’s ceiling fell in. Not only was she hospitalized as a result of the collapse, but she said her property management company, Highgrove Holdings Management, never fixed the leaks.
Stories like hers led Common Ground and Tenants United to get involved.
Tenants United formed several years ago during a campaign against the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee.
The group’s advocacy for Housing Authority residents led to a change in leadership and some operations.
Charlene “Peaches” Bell said she initially joined Tenants United as a resident of the Housing Authority because she saw a need for change and accountability. She’s still there because the need is still there.
“We have to help each other,” Bell said. “They say it takes a village. What kind of world will we have if we don’t do this now?”
The strategy
Tenants United members said Highgrove Holdings has accumulated hundreds of code violations and leads the city in orders for lead abatement. They also pointed out rising delinquent property taxes and ongoing legal disputes with lenders and investors.
Tomblin, who previously lived in California and now resides in Washington, has marketed Milwaukee as a profitable market for investors. He cited strong returns tied in part to Opportunity Zones, federally designated areas intended to spur redevelopment.
Common Ground leads a tour of dilapidated Highgrove Holdings homes in the Harambee neighborhood in Milwaukee. (PrincessSafiya Byers / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
Nearly 100 tenant leaders and community advocates gathered on March 26 alongside Goyke to announce a legal campaign targeting Tomblin’s company.
Tenant leader Kiante Shields, who helped launch the campaign, described the lawsuit as a turning point in holding corporate landlords accountable.
“This is about drawing a line,” Shields said. “If you neglect hundreds of homes, there are consequences, not just fines, but losing control.”
What comes next
The lawsuit now heads to circuit court, where a judge will decide whether to order repairs or appoint a receiver to take over management.
Advocates say the case could set a precedent for how Milwaukee and other cities handle large-scale landlord neglect.
“This isn’t just about one landlord,” Shields said. “It’s about changing the system.”
Madison poll workers on Election Day counted 23 absentee ballots that arrived at four polling places after 8 p.m. Tuesday, despite a state law requiring that absentee ballots be “delivered to the polling place no later than 8 p.m.” in order to be tallied.
The law provides no clear exception to that deadline and says ballots not delivered on time “may not be counted.” But court rulings have given boards of canvassers broad discretion in these cases, allowing them to count ballots as long as there’s “substantial compliance” with election laws and no evidence of “connivance, fraud, or undue influence.”
A past Wisconsin Supreme Court case held that election statutes don’t need to be fully complied with, so long as election officials preserve the will of the voter.
City election officials instructed poll workers to count and mark the affected ballots — which all arrived by the end of the night on Monday, the day before Election Day — in case the city, county or state decides to exclude them.
The Madison canvassing board on Friday unanimously voted to count the 23 ballots. Assistant City Attorney Amber McReynolds said the error was made by the city clerk’s staff, not voters, and that past precedent supports counting the ballots. The county canvass begins Monday.
It is unclear why the ballots — which had been in the city’s possession for several hours before the deadline — were so delayed in arriving at the polling places.
The late delivery marks another potentially significant error in how the city handles its ballots after it faced extensive public scrutiny and a state investigation for disenfranchising 193 voters whose ballots were misplaced in the November 2024 election.
It’s the first high-turnout election run by City Clerk Lydia McComas, hired to replace the clerk who oversaw the 2024 ballot snafu. McComas said her office had informed the Wisconsin Elections Commission of the situation.
Ballots left the city late and got to polls after deadline
Those ballots were in the hands of a ballot courier, who left a city election facility around 6:30 p.m. to deliver ballots to the polls. The courier arrived at those final four polling locations after 8 p.m., reaching the final one at about 8:30 p.m, delivering a combined 23 ballots to all of them.
“Due to a longer-than-usual delivery time, the very last few ballots arrived at four polling places shortly after polls closed,” McComas said.
When similar incidents happened in the past, the county board of canvassers didn’t count those votes in the final canvass based on legal advice, Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said. He said he’s waiting for more details before deciding how to proceed with these ballots at Monday’s county canvass meeting.
In those past incidents, the county board decided that not counting the ballots in the final county tally “was an obvious choice based on the way the statute’s written,” McDonell said. “The statute isn’t vague.”
Given the ballots’ timely arrival, McDonell said, “they should have gotten out to the polls and should have been counted on time.”
Other municipalities have counted ballots discovered late
Other election officials have at times decided to count ballots discovered after the 8 p.m. deadline, but the rules for municipalities are different depending on their procedures for counting absentee ballots.
In November 2020, Milwaukee workers discovered nearly 400 uncounted ballots during a recount. A campaign representative for President Donald Trump objected to those ballots being included, but the municipal canvassing board unanimously decided that they should count.
At the February 2022 election, Wauwatosa election officials discovered 58 unopened ballots. After consulting the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the city attorney for advice, the city clerk convened the Wauwatosa Board of Canvassers, which included the missing ballots in the totals.
But the rules that allowed Milwaukee and Wauwatosa to count those ballots may not apply to Madison. In both of those cities, absentee ballots are counted in a central location. In Madison, absentee ballots are counted at the polling locations where the registered voter would have voted in person.
In cities like Madison, election workers must deliver absentee ballots to polling places by 8 p.m. For central count municipalities, by comparison, state law only says election officials there shall count ballots received by the clerk by 8 p.m., without clarifying that they must be in a certain place by that point.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has said the 193 ballots Madison missed in 2024 could have been counted had the city made the appropriate notifications to state authorities. But those ballots were likely already at polling places on Election Day — unlike the 23 ballots here, which arrived after the deadline.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
A loosely formed coalition of about 60 federal litigators is working with immigration attorneys in Wisconsin who represent clients being detained and facing deportation.
Gabriela Parra, an immigration attorney and partner at Layde & Parra S.C. in Milwaukee, said immigration policies are constantly changing, which adds new challenges.
Many cases now involve both immigration proceedings and federal civil rights issues, she said.
“If you haven’t done this, it’s a learning curve,” Parra said.
Federal litigators and immigration attorneys are working together to help meet this demand in Wisconsin.
Surge in overall need
The need for legal representation has grown as immigration enforcement has expanded.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement held an average of 69,600 people per day in detention in December 2025 – a 78% increase compared with the year before, according to an analysis by the Vera Institute of Justice, a national nonprofit working on issues related to mass incarceration and immigration.
“There is a due process crisis right now happening in our immigration system,” said Elizabeth Kenney, associate director of Vera’s Advancing Universal Representation Initiative.
While people have the right to obtain an immigration attorney, the government does not have to provide one, said Timothy Muth, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.
Kenney said not having legal representation has major consequences.
People who have attorneys are up to 10 and a half times more likely to get successful outcomes, Kenney said.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office at 310 E. Knapp St. in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
More complex cases
Parra said policy changes have added a federal civil rights dimension to many cases – changes that include how the Board of Immigration Appeals has interpreted immigration law.
The board sets binding rules for immigration judges and has authority over appeals in immigration cases.
Parra said there have been more than 80 decisions by the board since January 2025 that have affected immigration policy.
One Board of Immigration Appeals decision, known as Yajure Hurtado, requires immigration judges to treat many as subject to mandatory detention. The decision has significantly limited people’s access to bonds.
“Now you have individuals in detention unless you can file a habeas petition in federal court,” Parra said.
A habeas petition is used to argue that a person’s detention is unlawful.
Habeas petitions vary widely depending on a person’s situation, said Elisabeth Lambert, a federal civil rights attorney working with the network.
Some involve people who have lived in the United States for years and seek release on bond while their cases proceed. Others involve people who entered through legal processes but are later detained and denied bond.
There also are other barriers that make it harder for people to defend themselves, requiring different support in federal court.
For example, Lambert said, immigrants facing deportation don’t have a right to discovery. This means that the only way to get the records is through a specific type of federal records request.
A right of discovery allows defendants to access information that could be used against them from a prosecutor ahead of trial.
Lambert said records can face various delays and other barriers and may arrive after the deportation proceeding has already happened.
Why federal court is different
Lambert said the two court systems – immigration court and federal court – operate very differently.
Each of these legal spaces has its own sets of rules, norms and procedures, she said.
“It’s just a lot to learn very quickly in a very high-stakes situation,” Lambert said.
It works the other way, too.
“I couldn’t go into immigration court,” she said. “I don’t have the knowledge or the experience.”
In one case Lambert and Parra worked on together, a judge issued a restraining order barring ICE from moving ahead with a client’s removal proceeding until a Freedom of Information Act issue was resolved, she said.
Lambert anticipates similar litigation in the future.
“We think that this is going to be a pretty common issue – of the government withholding people’s immigration records as part of this effort to stack the deportation process against people who are seeking immigration relief.”
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Gov. Tony Evers announced April 3 that he’s reviving the state’s commutation process, allowing Wisconsin prisoners to apply to have their sentences shortened for the first time in 25 years.
Immediately, the news began echoing through the state’s prisons.
Some people caught it on the 4 o’clock TV news. Some got texts from excited family members and friends.
With the news came questions. Who exactly will be eligible? How will the process work? How will people behind bars get the records they’ll need to apply, especially those who don’t have outside help?
Without access to the open internet, it’s notoriously hard to get reliable information in prison and even more so on a still-developing issue.
Incarcerated people began calling and texting the people they trust on the outside, looking for answers. Several wrote to Wisconsin Watch reporters, sharing questions and reporting misinformation they’d heard.
Here at Wisconsin Watch, we’ll be following this developing issue in the coming weeks and months.
As a starting point, we asked advocates for incarcerated people what potential candidates for commutations most need to know right now. They told us they’re still waiting for details, but they offered tips on how people can start preparing.
Here are our sources:
Diego Rodriguez, coalition coordinator for Justice Forward Wisconsin.
Beverly Walker, executive director of the Integrity Center and administrator of the commutations committee at WISDOM, a statewide network of faith-based organizations.
Harm Venhuizen, government and public affairs specialist at the Wisconsin State Public Defenders Office.
How big a deal is this news?
The last Wisconsin governor to commute sentences was Tommy Thompson, who issued seven commutations during his 14 years in office. Gov. Evers has granted more than 2,000 pardons since taking office in 2019. Pardons restore some rights but do not shorten a person’s sentence. Currently, they are available only to Wisconsinities who have completed their sentence, including any required supervision.
Walker, who leads WISDOM’s commutations committee and worked with the governor’s office for three years on reviving the commutations process, called last week’s announcement “life-changing.”
“People were excessively sentenced and they just deserve an opportunity to have freedom, if they’ve done the work, to have a chance to come home,” Walker said.
Rodriguez agrees. “This is huge news,” he said. “This is the time for people to celebrate because we can safely lessen our prison population in a way that can help promote community, promote family bonds.”
Rodriguez said the members of Justice Forward Wisconsin, who belong to various Wisconsin groups that advocate for current and formerly incarcerated people, are working to gather as much information as they can for incarcerated people and their loved ones. They’re looking for answers to the potential challenges that could keep people from applying, like if they can’t afford to send mail or make photocopies.
But overall, he said, “there’s a general level of excitement and hope.”
Venhuizen of the Wisconsin State Public Defenders said in an email that “establishing this board provides hope that people who have done all the hard work of rehabilitation won’t have to languish but can instead return to their families and communities.” The process offers a much-needed “second look” at convictions, he said, but it doesn’t address the reasons so many Wisconsinites are in prison.
“Wisconsin’s epidemic of over-incarceration is complex and deeply entrenched,” he said. “On the individual level, it’s going to be life-changing for the people who will receive commutations. At the system level, this is a step in the right direction, but it’s not a cure-all.”
How can incarcerated individuals and their loved ones learn more?
Monitor the governor’s office’s commutations page and read its frequently asked questions. Check back for announcements about who will be on the commutations board. “The governor’s office is the best source of information on this topic right now,” Venhuizen said.
Attend Justice Forward Wisconsin’s commutations webinar 9:30-11 a.m. on Saturday, April 11. Click here to register.
What steps can incarcerated individuals take now if they’re interested in applying for a commutation?
“Start preparing now if you meet the initial eligibility criteria, as we expect this board to move quickly ahead of the gubernatorial election,” Venhuizen said.
He recommends the following:
Review the application requirements listed on the governor’s commutations website and begin compiling the required documents.
Start making plans with the people you’d want to write letters of support for you.
Write a “clear and compelling story of your growth and rehabilitation.”
Draft a post-release plan that explains where you would live and work and what programs you would participate in.
For those who are incarcerated and want help with the process, Rodriguez recommends contacting ProSay, an organization advocating for people on parole in Wisconsin, by messaging hello@weareprosay.org through the GTL app.
“I would say the biggest advice is to reach out to a group that is doing this work,” Rodriguez said. “This work gets so much easier when you’re involved in a community of other people that are doing it … And then keep asking questions until you get the answers that you need.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A coalition of electrical utilities, including two major players in Wisconsin’s power supply, is seeking federal intervention to pause competitive bidding for transmission projects needed to meet the vast energy needs of the data center boom.
The coalition filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Tuesday asking the agency to exempt at least some major grid upgrades from bidding, arguing “bureaucratic red tape” can tack months onto project timelines and strain the country’s ability to “achieve dominance” in artificial intelligence.
“This complaint is about whether our country will seize, or squander, a generational chance to own the next century,” the utilities wrote.
Among the companies behind the complaint are Xcel Energy, owner of Northern States Power Company-Wisconsin, and American Transmission Company (ATC), which owns and operates transmission lines across much of Wisconsin.
National and statewide ratepayer advocacy groups reacted with alarm, casting the utilities’ request as a recipe for higher electricity bills.
“Utilities rushing to catch a ride on the AI investment gold rush need to slow down and think about the impact their proposals are having,” wrote Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board Executive Director Tom Content, as customers “wake up like Groundhog Day to rate hikes well above the cost of living.”
The complaint and the pushback it prompted mark the latest phase in a long-standing fight over the benefits of opening the transmission market to competition.
Stiff competition
FERC first introduced competitive bidding for regional transmission projects in 2011 after ratepayer advocates lobbied for change, arguing that the earlier process — allowing local monopolies to control all projects within their territories — all but guaranteed inflated costs.
The shift set off a race between developers angling for a piece of the action. When a developer wins a transmission project, it also picks up a new revenue stream: Regulators pre-approve developers’ “return on equity,” or profit on each dollar invested.
Dozens of developers have lined up to bid since the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), a nonprofit that manages the wholesale electricity market and grid for much of the Midwest, approved more than $10 billion in new transmission projects in 2022. A new round of projects approved in December 2024 added about $22 billion to the total, and the list of prospective bidders grew once again.
Construction is ongoing at the 350-plus-acre Beaver Dam Commerce Park where a Meta data center is being built, Jan. 20, 2026, in Beaver Dam, Wis. Some experts predict that data center electricity demand could reach up to 25% of the country’s total energy use within the next five years. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Some are local utilities hoping to maintain control of their territory; others are powerful national utilities venturing outside of their turf, international developers wading into the U.S. market, and startup transmission developers backed by private equity firms.
While the data center rush had already begun in the Midwest by the time MISO approved the latest set of transmission projects in 2024, the approved projects often couldn’t account for the scale and breakneck pace of the data center developments that emerged in the region soon after. With the boom now in full swing, the tenor of competition for transmission projects is changing.
Debate over bidding benefits
MISO, which is also responsible for picking a developer for each project, has favored lower-cost bids with more substantial “cost containment” measures designed to shield customers from budget overruns. Ratepayer advocates say the lower bids are proof the bidding requirements are working, pushing even major national utilities to underbid competitors.
In their complaint to FERC, the coalition of utilities — which calls itself the “Grid Acceleration Coalition” — argued the benefits of competition are “unproven.”
Projects planned by utilities themselves aren’t subject to competitive bidding; non-competitive projects around the country routinely exceed initial budgets by millions of dollars. While cheaper bids tend to win competitive projects, the utility group argued that even those projects aren’t immune to budget overruns.
But the core of the utilities’ case is about time, not money. They argue the bidding process adds months to project timelines without clear benefits.
In their view, those delays harm customers, in part by slowing the construction of transmission lines that could expand access to cheaper electricity and prevent blackouts, and pose national security risks.
“These projects — expressways for power — are as critical to meeting today’s challenges as the Eisenhower interstate highway system was to prevailing in the Cold War,” the coalition argued in its complaint. “China has devoted itself to overtaking America as the world’s AI leader and is just months behind.”
The utilities pointed to a recent example in Wisconsin: Last month, MISO reversed its decision to award three substations in Fond du Lac, Ozaukee and Sheboygan counties to private-equity-backed startup Viridon, instead handing the projects to ATC.
ATC’s initial bid was more expensive than Viridon’s, but the company successfully argued it alone could build the substations in time to serve the nearby Vantage data center campus in Port Washington.
MISO’s initial plans set a goal to complete the substations by 2033; the Port Washington data center plans to come online in early 2028. Though ATC emerged victorious, it told FERC that the 15-month delay between MISO’s initial approval of the substations and the reversal was “completely unnecessary.”
Ratepayer advocates and other observers, however, quickly pointed out that even noncompetitive projects run into delays. ATC’s Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line in southwest Wisconsin, for instance, came online in 2024 — more than a decade after MISO approved it — following prolonged legal battles with conservation groups.
“All developers can experience construction delays,” said Claire Wayner, a senior associate with the clean energy nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute. “It’s not like there’s a silver bullet.”
Opponents also underscored that two competitively bid projects in the Southwest met their in-service date goals last year.
“Competitive transmission projects have been shown to have a better track record of adhering to cost containment and completion schedules than noncompetitive projects,” said Paul Cicio, chair of the national Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition. “A moratorium would move us backward at precisely the wrong time.”
The back-and-forth over the merits of competition is nothing new, Wayner noted. “The tricky thing with transmission competition is that there are stories of projects from both sides of the aisle that support their positions.”
The push to pause competition
The utility group proposed two options to FERC: Allow MISO and a Southwestern regional grid operator to exempt projects from competitive bidding on a case-by-case basis or suspend competition entirely for the next five years — “a period pegged to when our country must begin building the infrastructure that will decide which nation wins the AI race.”
The utilities added that they don’t intend to “claw back” other projects already awarded or interrupt ongoing bidding processes.
During that five-year period, national forecasts estimate data center electricity demand could reach up to 25% of the country’s total energy use. MISO alone projects that it may need to double its current pace of generation growth to avoid shortfalls in the near future.
MISO’s territory, stretching from the Upper Midwest to Louisiana, has seen by far the most dramatic increase in data center capacity since 2020 relative to other regional grid networks.
The right of first refusal fight
After FERC introduced competitive bidding in 2011, utility groups turned to state legislatures. The result: right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) laws that give established local utilities first dibs on transmission projects in their territories, including those planned by regional grid operators like MISO.
The former site of the We Energies power plant on Nov. 13, 2025, in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. As electric utilities race to build transmission to accommodate the data center boom, consumer advocates worry about affordability and the risk of stranded assets if the boom goes bust. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin ratepayer advocates see the FERC complaint as a work-around. “It is another effort by the utilities to defeat competition,” Todd Stuart, executive director of the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group, wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch. “When they lose in state legislatures and then lose out on competitive bids,” he added, “they go back to FERC.”
In the utilities’ complaint, Xcel Energy cited Wisconsin’s lack of an ROFR law, and the resulting bidding process for projects in the state, as posing a risk of delaying upgrades needed to serve a data center across the border in Minnesota.
The company wouldn’t comment about the parallels between the options utilities suggested in the FERC complaint and ROFR laws. Instead, spokesman Kevin Coss pointed to permitting reforms in Minnesota — a 2024 law streamlining permitting for clean energy projects — as another example of the company’s efforts to “speed the buildout of critical infrastructure across our systems.” Xcel did not bid on any of the competitive projects in Wisconsin.
In a statement to Wisconsin Watch, ATC argued the options its coalition suggested to FERC “would not operate as a substitute” for an ROFR law, “even temporarily or on a case-by-case basis.”
Customers across the Upper Midwest share the costs of MISO-designed projects across multiple states, spreading costs among a larger number of ratepayers.
But billing practices vary. In some cases, utilities can only bill ratepayers for the costs of building a transmission project after it comes online. When ATC builds a transmission line, FERC allows the developer to begin billing customers while the line is still under construction.
ATC says this approach saves customers money in the long term by reducing interest on construction costs. Ratepayer advocates see it differently. “Consumers are paying for projects without receiving the benefits,” Cicio said. Transmission projects take years to complete, and short-term increases in monthly electricity bills don’t square well with concerns about affordability and the risk of stranded assets if the AI boom goes bust.
Adding to the frustration: a planned 9.2% electricity rate increase for We Energies customers in eastern Wisconsin over the next two years. That rate hike in part reflects the addition of generators, including new natural gas plants in Milwaukee and Kenosha counties, needed to meet data center demands.
Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission will soon decide how to divvy up costs of powering We Energies-served data centers — a decision that could set a statewide precedent.
This story was updated to clarify which transmission projects are subject to competitive bidding.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Doula services aren’t covered by Wisconsin Medicaid – known as BadgerCare – as of April 2026.
Doulas provide emotional support and education around childbirth. Unlike midwives (which are covered), they don’t perform medical tasks.
A Wisconsin Department of Health Services spokesperson confirmed doulas aren’t covered as a stand-alone benefit for Medicaid recipients.
State law requires the health department to get legislative approval before making changes to Medicaid. Doula coverage has been proposed by Gov. Tony Evers and Democratic lawmakers but has not come to pass.
According to the National Health Law Program, 26 states and Washington, D.C., are actively reimbursing for Medicaid coverage of doula care. Seven more are in the process of doing so.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday signed a bill bringing Wisconsin in line with a federal law seeking to prevent the kind of post-election chaos that President Donald Trump and his allies sowed after the 2020 election.
The Democrat also vetoed a Republican-authored bill that would have required the state election commission to hear administrative complaints against itself alleging violations of the federal Help America Vote Act, in line with a U.S. Justice Department demand for the state. That vetoed bill also would have required the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct audits for potential noncitizen voters.
The bill Evers signed updates Wisconsin’s deadlines for certifying presidential election results and casting electoral votes to match federal timelines set by Congress in 2022, after President Donald Trump claimed to have won the 2020 election and hundreds of individuals stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.
The mismatch led to a lawsuit in the 2024 presidential election, when the state’s Republican electors were uncertain which day to cast their Electoral College votes because state and federal law set the dates one day apart. The new law resolves that discrepancy.
The measure passed the Senate last session but stalled in the Assembly. With its passage, Wisconsin is among more than 20 states to update their laws to align with the Electoral Count Reform Act.
Vetoed bill would have imposed U.S. DOJ demand
The HAVA bill that Evers vetoed followed a U.S. Justice Department letter sent to the Wisconsin Elections Commission last year. It claimed the WEC was violating the law by declining to hear complaints filed against it.
Under HAVA, a 2002 law that overhauled voter registration and election administration, any state receiving federal election funding must also establish an administrative process for complaints about alleged violations of the law. If a violation is found, the state must provide a remedy; if not, it can dismiss the complaint.
In recent years, however, the WEC has dismissed HAVA complaints related to its own actions, citing a Wisconsin Supreme Court opinion saying it would be “nonsensical” for the agency to adjudicate a complaint against itself.
For example, the commission dismissed a complaint against the agency filed by a Democratic voter seeking to bar Trump from the ballot and has repeatedly dismissed complaints filed by election conspiracy theorist Peter Bernegger that allege various kinds of election mismanagement.
“If a person has a complaint about the legality of the conduct of the commission, that person should file suit in court,” Evers said in his veto message Wednesday.
The vetoed bill also would have required the state to undertake audits of its voter registration list to identify potential noncitizen voters.
Evers said he objected to the “additional burden that could be placed on citizens to provide documentary proof of citizenship after they have already been lawfully registered to vote.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
A homeowner in Wauwatosa can do exactly what public messaging asks: take shorter showers, time irrigation thoughtfully, fix leaks and otherwise reduce water use. Then the quarterly bill arrives, and the cost barely moves. The homeowner might jump to a dangerous conclusion: that conservation is symbolic, not economic.
It’s an understandable reaction to misaligned incentives.
Utilities need stable revenue to maintain infrastructure that does not shrink with short-term changes in household use. At the same time, households need bills that make conservation visibly and promptly worthwhile. If both are true, the issue is not whether residents are wrong to feel frustrated, but whether rate design effectively translates public goals into household-level incentives.
This tension — between conservation messaging and what bills actually show — points to a broader public accountability issue for utilities across Wisconsin.
Wauwatosa is a useful case study because the city publishes its bill components clearly enough to reveal this trade-off.
What the Wauwatosa bill structure shows
As published by Wauwatosa’s water utility, a residential bill combines multiple components across water, sewer and storm water. For common 5/8-inch and 3/4-inch meters, the city page currently lists:
A fixed quarterly water service charge: $20.00.
A fixed public fire protection charge: $15.99.
A fixed quarterly Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (regional sewer) connection charge: $16.41.
A fixed quarterly storm water charge (per equivalent residential unit): $35.63.
Taken together, that amounts to $88.03 per quarter in fixed charges before any usage-based costs, local sanitary flows or temporary surcharges are added. For many households, that fixed baseline stands out because it does not change with daily behavior.
The Wauwatosa webpage notes another key detail: Residential sewer charges are based on average water use from the previous winter quarter. That approach can make engineering sense for irrigation-heavy months, but it also means residents who cut back now may not immediately see those savings reflected in their sewer charges.
When customers see both that delay and a large fixed baseline, the takeaway is simple: “My effort doesn’t matter.”
That is the policy risk.
Why this perception matters beyond one city
This pattern extends beyond Wauwatosa to utility systems statewide.
The Wisconsin Public Service Commission describes rate setting as a balancing problem among cost recovery, financial stability, affordability and system sustainability. EPA guidance similarly explains why many utilities use fixed-plus variable charges: Fixed charges support pipes, treatment assets and financing obligations that exist regardless of short-term household demand.
So yes, a large fixed component is not automatically evidence of bad intent. Often it reflects the cost profile of infrastructure.
But even well-designed systems can produce a weak conservation signal.
EPA water finance resources note that some pricing structures are better than others at encouraging conservation. If a city publicly asks for conservation while bill design makes savings hard to notice, policy and pricing are misaligned where customers experience them: on the bill.
The accountability test
Can a typical resident estimate cost savings before taking action to reduce use?
If the answer is no, then the price signal is too opaque.
If customers must decode fixed charges, lagged sewer formulas and unclear unit rates to understand marginal savings, the bill functions more as a revenue tool than a behavior signal — preserving cash flow but weakening conservation and public trust.
Residents do not need a lecture about civic virtue. They need rate transparency and faster feedback.
What Wauwatosa could pilot
This does not require a simplistic “slash fixed fees” response. It requires clearer design and better signal delivery.
Publish a one-page “marginal savings” table for typical homes.The table should answer: “If I reduce use by 1, 3 or 5 CCF this quarter, what is the expected bill impact now and next quarter?” Include timing notes for winter-quarter sewer logic.
Add bill lines for “behavior-sensitive charges” and “system-fixed charges.” Split the bill into two subtotals so the customer can see immediately which share was behavior-driven and which paid for infrastructure.
Introduce a conservation dividend. If systemwide demand drops below peak projections and defers capacity costs, return part of those savings as a visible credit in the next cycle. Make conservation legible.
Run a transparent pilot on stronger conservation pricing bands. EPA and national guidance point to increasing-block rates as one way to strengthen conservation signals. Pilot carefully, publish distributional impacts and protect affordability with targeted credits.
Publish a trust metric: “conservation-to-bill responsiveness.” Track how often conservation leads to measurable bill changes within one cycle. If responsiveness is weak, publish a redesign plan.
The larger policy point
When homeowners conclude, “the city designed this to extract money no matter what,” leaders should not dismiss it but treat it as a warning sign in the system.
Most residents are not accusing utilities of villainy. They are describing an incentive mismatch.
If Wisconsin cities want durable conservation, they need bill designs that preserve financial integrity and reward action quickly enough for residents to feel the loop. Otherwise, we train households to stop caring, then blame them for not conserving.
Water policy fails when the math is defensible on paper but illegible at the kitchen table.
Michael V. Haley is a Wisconsin freelance writer focused on accountability commentary abouthow public systems affect household outcomes. His work translates municipal policy, utilitydesign and implementation choices into practical impacts for residents.
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.
For Brown County Circuit Court Judge Marc Hammer, it’s freedom of information, and it was the topic of discussion at a Philosopher’s Cafe event co-hosted by the Mauthe Center and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay a few weeks ago.
Hammer, who also teaches constitutional law at UWGB, led the conversation. I was one of about 25 people total and one of three working journalists in attendance (shoutout to Jesse Lin of the Green Bay Press Gazette and Andrew Kennard of the Wisconsin Examiner).
We covered a lot of ground:
Historical attempts to limit information.
Who is “the press”?
Retractions vs. corrections.
Fact-checking.
Bias in media.
Public broadcasting funding.
Defamation.
Local news.
Social media sites like Facebook and TikTok.
The hyperpolarized times we’re living in.
I jumped in when retractions came up. Throughout the rest of the conversation, Lin, Kennard and I answered questions from community members about our jobs and explained how we do our work.
One thing I appreciate about events at the Mauthe Center is how respectful and civil the discussion is. People hold different opinions. They listen to each other. They ask thoughtful follow-up questions. They attend these events, from what I saw, to learn something new.
I did, too. And it was clear to me that community members want to learn more about newsgathering and reporting.
What do you want to know about journalism?
Should I write about our rigorous fact-checking process?
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High schoolers account for nearly half the student population at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh – the largest number of dual enrollment students in the state.
As the traditional college-age population shrinks, dual enrollment courses have surged in popularity, transforming UW-Oshkosh’s identity.
Few high schoolers who take college courses at UW-Oshkosh decide to attend the university for their undergraduate studies, a trend officials are making efforts to change.
When University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh lecturer Paul Sager logs onto Zoom every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to teach his composition course, he asks his students to paste in the chat what emoji they feel like that day.
If it’s cold outside, they might send a snowflake, or if they’re feeling motivated, a rocket ship.
“They find that really fun and ice-breaking,” Sager said. “Feeling connected to your professor, I believe, is an extremely important part of being invested in a course, especially when it’s at the college level.”
That’s especially important for Sager, who has never met most of his students in the flesh, and likely never will.
At UW-Oshkosh, high schoolers make up nearly half of the student body. Many of them live hours away and never actually step foot on campus, instead taking the college courses from their high schools.
It’s an increasingly popular dynamic as dual enrollment classes — where high schoolers simultaneously earn high school and college credit — soar in popularity and the typical college-aged population shrinks. But UW-Oshkosh enrolls more high schoolers than any university in the state, an endeavor that’s transforming the college’s identity.
A person walks across campus on an overcast day at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh on March 31, 2026, in Oshkosh, Wis. Nearly half of UW-Oshkosh’s student enrollment comes from high schoolers taking college courses. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The approach has helped UW-Oshkosh combat the big enrollment declines Wisconsin universities have seen in recent years.
But as more colleges tap into the dual enrollment trend, the state’s fourth-largest UW campus is facing stiffer competition for these students. On top of that, few of them currently continue their education at UW-Oshkosh after high school. College leaders want that to change.
“As the competitive landscape that we operate in gets more competitive, and as the number of total high school students in Wisconsin continues to go down, it’s going to be more important that we get more and more of these students to choose UW-O as their four-year solution, as well,” said Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Edwin Martini.
Today, over 6,500 high schoolers get a jump start on college through the university’s Cooperative Academic Partnership Program, dubbed “CAPP.” In most cases, UW-Oshkosh authorizes qualified high school teachers — typically those with graduate degrees in their subject areas — to teach CAPP courses at their own schools.
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh professor Paul Sager works at his computer in his office in between classes on March 31, 2026, in Oshkosh, Wis. Sager is one of five UW-Oshkosh professors who teach dual enrollment courses to high school students. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Just five UW-Oshkosh professors, Sager included, teach courses to high schoolers virtually. This allows them to reach more rural schools that otherwise lack access to dual enrollment courses, often because they don’t have qualified instructors or enough resources.
“Given the opportunity to teach these courses, I jumped on it … It’s definitely a calling,” Sager said.
The university charges high schools about half the typical tuition costs for the classes. Students considered economically disadvantaged by the state get added discounts. Each school district decides how it passes the cost of books and tuition onto students.
If students choose not to attend UW-Oshkosh after graduation, their credits can transfer to 200 other colleges.
Over the past decade, the number of students doing dual enrollment through UW-Oshkosh has nearly doubled. While that mirrors nationwide growth, UW-Oshkosh has leaned fully into the trend, hoping to attract as many students as possible across Wisconsin — and, in some cases, beyond.
“The simple truth is, if Oshkosh didn’t do it, somebody else would,” Sager said. “It’s something that I believe at Oshkosh they’ve really understood as not only a moneymaker, but just an opportunity.”
To attract students, program leaders call schools to tell them about the program and advertise at teacher conferences around the state. But largely, word of mouth and its status as the state’s oldest help win school leaders’ trust. CAPP is the only Wisconsin program accredited by the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, an organization holding universities accountable to offering dual enrollment courses as rigorous as normal college courses.
“We’ve had, more than ever, people reaching out to us to get involved,” said CAPP Outreach Specialist Sarah Adelson.
Today, 45% of UW-Oshkosh students are high schoolers, a phenomenon more common at community colleges than universities. Statewide, high schoolers are just 10% of university enrollment, compared to 1 in 3 community college students.
The dual enrollment growth has been, in many ways, a saving grace for the college.
Like other Wisconsin universities, UW-Oshkosh has lost thousands of traditional college students — those enrolling after high school graduation — over the past decade. Dual enrollment has helped offset that loss. Overall enrollment is down 9%, but without the high school students, enrollment would be down closer to 36%.
“For us, in part, it is a service. It is something that we’re proud of doing and providing these opportunities to students,” Martini said. “But we do consider our dual enrollment portfolio very much part of our strategic enrollment management portfolio.”
A shifting college experience
Walking across the UW-Oshkosh campus, it’s not immediately obvious how much the student body has changed in recent years.
Classrooms are still filled with what many would consider “typical” college students. Sidewalks bustle with students walking to class. Finding parking can still be competitive.
Teagan Massey-Plamann poses for a portrait outside Menasha High School on March 31, 2026. “(Dual enrollment classes are) just getting me in the mindset that I’m going to be doing more classes like this next year,” Massey-Plamann said. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
But in recent years, as more students take classes without setting foot on campus, the university has undergone some noticeable changes: The campus-run bookstore closed. Satellite locations in Appleton and Fond du Lac shut down because of enrollment declines. During a budget crunch, leaders offered voluntary retirement to roughly 50 faculty. And three dorm buildings are slated for demolition, as they no longer need as much space to house students living on campus.
Teagan Massey-Plamann, a senior at Menasha High School, takes UW-Oshkosh’s dual enrollment courses from about 20 minutes away but has visited campus only once.
“It may not be the experience of being on campus and everything, but I still kind of get to see what the curriculums will look like, and how much studying I’ll need to do,” Massey-Plamann said.
As dual enrollment continues to expand, it raises broader questions about what will define the college experience. While the typical experience most think of is by no means dead, Sager said, it seems pretty rare nowadays.
“All of them, I think, also seek that personal connection with faculty and wanting to have an on-campus experience in one way, shape or form … I don’t know if there is a ‘definition’ for what a college experience even is anymore,” Sager said.
For some, the experience of being a professor has shifted, too — teaching high schoolers is a different task than teaching students a few years older, Sager said.
“It really is about trying to meet them at their level and understand that, and also apply a little bit of pedagogical changes, so that the assignments mean more to them, and they feel more invested in it,” Sager said.
Great colleges think alike?
When Massey-Plamann graduates from high school this spring, she’ll already have a head start on college, thanks to her UW-Oshkosh dual enrollment courses in statistics, calculus and biology.
“It’s just getting me in the mindset that I’m going to be doing more classes like this next year,” the aspiring art therapist said. “They’re not going to be just classes where I can just sit and do nothing because I get all my work done really quickly. It’s getting me prepared for that time management.”
That head start will save her both money and stress as she heads to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota to play softball.
Teagan Massey-Plamann gets ready to travel for a softball game on March 31, 2026. Massey-Plamann got a head start on her college coursework by taking dual enrollment courses through UW-Oshkosh. She plans to pursue a career in art therapy and play softball at St. Cloud State University in the fall. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Like Massey-Plamann, most UW-Oshkosh dual enrollment students don’t continue their education there after high school. Only about 10% do.
University leaders want to change that.
While Adelson said students historically “just come to us,” that’s changing as other Wisconsin colleges try to ride the dual enrollment wave. At the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, high schoolers now make up about a third of enrollment. Just 20 miles away from UW-Oshkosh, half of the 8,000 students at Moraine Park Technical College are still in high school.
In response, UW-Oshkosh leaders are stepping up recruitment efforts — they’re offering classes other universities don’t, awarding at least $1,000 scholarships to those who enroll the following fall and funding more campus visits for high schoolers.
Freshman Hugh Thao of Appleton, left, asks University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh professor Paul Sager, center, a question after a first-year college writing class on March 31, 2026, in Oshkosh, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
But UW-Oshkosh leaders acknowledge there don’t seem to be many students left to go after — the pool of college-bound students may already be tapped. CAPP Director Margaret Hostetler said their next push is for students who aren’t planning to attend college at all. They wonder if dual enrollment could change their mind.
The university is also ramping up advising services, pointing students toward courses that will actually benefit them in the future.
“We don’t want students just taking every single dual enrollment credit they can because that’s not necessarily saving them time or money,” Hostetler said. “To save time and money, you have to have a class that is going to transfer as a course that you will need in your field of study.”
They’ve ramped up marketing efforts to remind dual enrollment students that “they are Titans,” Martini said, mailing them branded T-shirts, banners and posters for teachers to hang in their high school classrooms.
“What we want is them to have a great experience, and then that builds their affinity with UW-O,” Martini said. “And then they say … ‘Now I want to go to Oshkosh. Now I want to be a Titan.’”
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Tom Tiffany has received about $11,500 from the political action committee linked to We Energies.
Both state and federal records show the WEC Energy Group PAC shares an address with WEC Energy Group, which houses We Energies, the state’s largest utility provider.
Federal Election Commission records, which capture his campaign for Congress, show the PAC made five donations totaling $9,500 to Tiffany between 2019 and 2023.
The PAC has not donated to Tiffany since he began his campaign for governor, records show.
Tiffany is far from the largest recipient of donations tied to We Energies. The PAC contributes to both Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin, including six donations totaling $136,000 to Gov. Tony Evers’ campaign.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Wisconsin voters Tuesday elected Madison-based Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor to a seat on the state Supreme Court, a decision that expands the high court’s liberal majority to five justices and cements liberal control until at least 2030.
Taylor, a former Democratic state lawmaker and former policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, defeated conservative Waukesha-based Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar in the race to replace outgoing Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of the court’s conservative wing. Wisconsin Supreme Court justices are elected to 10-year terms.
“Tonight, the people of Wisconsin stood up for our rights and freedoms, our democracy, our elections and a strong state Supreme Court that will protect the independence of our beloved state,” Taylor told a packed room of supporters at the Madison Concourse Hotel. “Once again, Wisconsin showed the entire nation that we believe that the people should be at the center of government and the priority of our judiciary.”
The Associated Press called the election only 36 minutes after polls closed as early returns showed Taylor dominating the liberal bastions of Dane and Milwaukee counties, while leading or running close behind Lazar in rural counties. Taylor told supporters that Lazar called her to concede the race.
The state’s court races are technically nonpartisan contests, but like recent high court elections, public support for Taylor and Lazar broke along party lines with Taylor backed by Democrats and Lazar by Republicans.
Taylor’s victory further cements liberal control of the state’s judicial branch, even as a new governor enters the executive branch and Democrats and Republicans fight for control of the state Legislature later this year. Lazar had raised concerns that a five-member liberal bloc could prevent certain cases from reaching the bench because three votes are needed to take up an appeal.
Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar gives her concession speech after losing the Wisconsin Supreme Court race to Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor during her election night watch party at The Ingleside Hotel on April 7, 2026, in Pewaukee, Wis. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Since Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s 2023 election win that secured a liberal majority for the first time in years, the high court has been a factor in disagreements over the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches and has made major decisions on politically charged cases, such as the 2025 ruling that invalidated Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban.
The 5-2 liberal court is likely to continue to play a major role in such cases, including challenges to the limits on collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions under Act 10 redistricting of Wisconsin’s congressional maps. Conservative Justice Annette Ziegler already announced she won’t seek reelection next year, creating another open seat that could further entrench a liberal majority.
Liberals have now won five of the last six Supreme Court elections going back to 2018. UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden called the election results “a remarkable turning of tides” from a decade ago when conservatives controlled the court and Ziegler didn’t have an opponent in 2017.
“Republicans have had a difficult run in Wisconsin during the Trump years,” Burden said. “With the court now out of reach, there will be tremendous pressure on the party this fall to take back the governorship and hold the state Legislature. The GOP is facing serious headwinds in a midterm year that will favor the Democrats nationally.”
Despite a sleepier race, politics remained a part of the 2026 election. In addition to political party support for each of the candidates, Taylor and Lazar represented starkly different judicial philosophies and career paths to the bench.
Taylor centered her campaign on protecting rights and freedoms. In campaign stops across the state, she warned of future threats to Wisconsin’s elections and highlighted her advocacy work in the state Assembly and for Planned Parenthood to support reproductive health care and victims of domestic violence.
Lazar’s campaign frequently zeroed in on Taylor’s legislative career and painted her as an activist and a politician rather than a judge. Lazar, who said the 2025 court race went “overboard” on politics, also sought to refocus Wisconsin’s Supreme Court elections on judicial experience instead of political issues.
“I have led the type of campaign that I always said I would,” Lazar told her supporters Tuesday night in Pewaukee. “I have been honest. I’ve been transparent. I have been above board. I have led with integrity, and I want you to know that that is how we need to run races in the state of Wisconsin.”
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The board that runs the Universities of Wisconsin voted unanimously Tuesday to fire the system’s president, drawing the ire of Republican lawmakers who called it a “partisan hatchet job.”
Jay Rothman had refused an offer from the board of regents to quietly resign, saying it never gave a clear reason why he should. Rothman has led the system that oversees the state’s four-year universities, including the flagship Madison campus, for nearly four years.
Rothman has had to tread carefully dealing with a Republican-controlled Legislature and a board of regents where all current members were appointed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. When Rothman was hired, the board also had a majority of Evers appointees.
Asked Monday about the move to oust Rothman, Evers didn’t take a side. “It’s their call,” he said of the board.
But Republican lawmakers were furious and threatened to fire regents who have yet to be confirmed by the state Senate.
“Make no mistake about it, the firing of UW President Rothman is a blatant partisan hatchet job,” Republican Senate President Patrick Testing said in a statement.
He said Rothman was fired for “not being liberal enough.”
“His only crime was his willingness to work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to get things done,” Testin said.
The vote to fire Rothman came just five days after The Associated Press first reported that the regents asked Rothman to either resign or be fired. Rothman said in two letters to the regents that he would not leave voluntarily without knowing what he did wrong.
Regent President Amy Bogost said in a statement Monday that the board has shared results of a performance review with Rothman, with “direct conversations and clear feedback regarding leadership expectations.” She said the system needs “a clear vision” but did not elaborate on the review’s findings.
She repeated the statement Tuesday following a roughly 30-minute closed session regents meeting. No other regents spoke before the vote to fire Rothman, effective immediately.
Rothman said in an earlier statement Tuesday that regents repeatedly declined to cite a specific reason for finding no confidence in his leadership. No one ever indicated to him that an evaluation could lead to termination, he said, adding that Bogost called his review “overwhelmingly positive.”
“It is disappointing that the first I heard any sort of defense of their position was when they communicated with the media,” Rothman said. “I am left to conclude that, at best, this reflects an after-the-fact rationalization of a decision that was previously made.”
Rothman declined to comment after the vote.
The state Senate’s committee that oversees higher education scheduled a hearing for Thursday for 10 regents whose appointments by Evers have yet to be confirmed. Testin called for the Senate to reject all 10, which would mean they could no longer serve as regents.
However, the Senate is not scheduled to be in session again this year.
Rothman has served as president of the 165,000-student, multicampus system since June 2022. The former chair and CEO of the Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner law firm, Rothman had no prior experience administering higher education.
He has spent his tenure lobbying Republican legislators to increase state aid for the system in the face of federal cuts, navigating free speech issues surrounding pro-Palestinian protests, and grappling with declining enrollment that has forced eight branch campuses to close. Overall enrollment across the system has remained steady under his leadership.
Rothman brokered a deal with Republicans in 2023 that called for freezing diversity hires and creating a position at UW-Madison focused on conservative thought in exchange for the Legislature releasing money for UW employee raises and tens of millions of dollars for construction projects across the system.
The regents initially rejected the deal only to approve it in a second vote held just days later. Evers said at the time the deal left him disappointed and frustrated.
The fight over Rothman’s future comes as the flagship Madison campus is losing its chancellor. Jennifer Mnookin is leaving in May at the end of the current academic year to take the job as president of Columbia University.
Rothman makes $600,943 annually as UW president. He can be fired for no stated reason and he has no appeal rights, said Wisconsin employment law attorney Tamara Packard, who reviewed Rothman’s contract at the AP’s request.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
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Decades of repression and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar have driven most Rohingya from their western Myanmar homeland.
Several forms of written Rohingya have emerged in the diaspora, but none has reached widespread use among a scattered population.
A small group in Milwaukee, home to what may be the country’s latest Rohingya population, is testing whether teaching a written form of Rohingya can help preserve the language.
Advocates face a major hurdle: persuading families to prioritize learning Rohingya alongside work, school and resettlement.
Similar efforts among Hmong refugees in the Midwest suggest a written language can take hold — but only with sustained community buy-in.
A dozen fasting teenagers filed into the basement of a community center on Milwaukee’s South Side in mid-February to mark the first night of Ramadan around folding tables. The building belongs to the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin (BRCW), a bare-bones nonprofit serving hundreds of local Rohingya refugee families. Brand-new carpets muffled the sounds of worshippers in the mosque one floor up.
Nearly everyone in the nonprofit’s Clarke Square community center spoke Rohingya, but not a single printed word in the language appeared on the whiteboards in the center’s classrooms where recent arrivals study English and prepare for citizenship exams. Flyers advertising a food giveaway were in English, as were posters listing prayer times and an illuminated sign over the center’s front entrance.
Printed Rohingya words could be found only in a small stack of children’s books and loose-leaf dictionaries in an office just off the prayer hall — raw materials for an experiment in cultural preservation.
A first-of-its-kind picture dictionary translating English words to a written Rohingya language is being tested at the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, shown on Jan. 19, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Hardly anyone passing through the community center can easily read a sentence in Rohingya.
Decades of state-sanctioned repression and ethnic cleansing have driven most Rohingya from their western Myanmar homeland. Several forms of written Rohingya have emerged in the diaspora, but none has reached widespread use among the scattered diaspora. Without an agreed-upon alphabet or enough people literate in Rohingya to teach it, community leaders worry the language will wither, taking with it a core part of a culture already frayed by displacement and state-sanctioned violence.
Milwaukee is now a proving ground for Rohingya literacy. If this community center with a tiny volunteer staff can build an audience for Rohingya language education — in the city likely home to the country’s largest Rohingya population — momentum could spread, boosting the language’s chances of surviving in exile.
It’s a big if.
What does it take to preserve a language that’s rarely written down? The center’s indefatigable co-founders, a Dallas-based linguist and an international network of Rohingya scholars are trying to figure it out.
From Myanmar to Milwaukee
Mohamed Anwar is always on the move. Even while juggling a half-dozen jobs, the BRCW co-founder leaves a few gaps in his schedule to help refugee families navigate their new country.
He, too, came to Milwaukee as a refugee.
Anwar grew up on a knife’s edge. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar’s government has chipped away at the rights of the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group in a majority-Buddhist nation. In 1982, when Anwar was 7, the Myanmar government stripped the Rohingya and other disfavored groups of citizenship, leaving millions stateless.
Anwar managed to secure a high school diploma and an undergraduate degree — the latter a rare accomplishment for a Rohingya student of his generation. But with prospects dimming and the threat of state-sponsored violence mounting, Anwar set aside his graduate studies and fled, joining thousands of other Rohingya refugees risking death and enslavement to reach Malaysia.
He remained in Kuala Lumpur for over a decade, initially surviving on low-wage jobs until he eventually crossed paths with United Nations outreach workers.Recognizing his talents, the U.N. brought him on as a translator.
When the State Department approved his family for resettlement in the U.S. as refugees in 2015, Anwar landed in Milwaukee, where a few friends had already begun putting down roots.
Afternoon sunlight shines on the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin on Jan. 19, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Mohamed Anwar, co-founder, president and executive director of the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, sits for a portrait while preparing for the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Even a decade ago, the city’s Rohingya community was large enough for Aurora Health Care to require interpreters. Anwar was a natural fit for the job.
Like other specialists, health care interpreters must pass a certification course. “They had no one to test me in Rohingya,” Anwar recalled. Without an agreed-upon alphabet, a written test was also off the table. His examiners took his time with the U.N. as proof of his fluency, and he has since taken charge of recruiting and training new Rohingya interpreters for the hospital system.
Milwaukee becomes a magnet
BRCW estimates more than 4,000 Rohingya live in the Milwaukee area — an educated guess, but a difficult one to confirm. Roughly half of the more than 13,000 refugees resettled in Wisconsin since 2012 came from Myanmar, but the State Department resettlement statistics do not distinguish between Rohingya and other refugees from the country.
The city has become a magnet for Rohingya refugees who first settled elsewhere in the United States, drawn by cheaper housing, abundant jobs for immigrants with limited English, a strong support network and private Islamic schools. That pattern shows up in BRCW outreach data: 17% of phone numbers collected by 2020 had out-of-state area codes — some belonging to families whom the nonprofit helped relocate from as far away as New Hampshire.
Most Rohingya families have settled on Milwaukee’s South Side and southern suburbs, with a growing number purchasing homes within walking distance of BRCW’s community center. Anwar himself owns a few nearby properties, renting them to Rohingya newcomers finding their footing in the city.
BRCW co-founder Andrew Trumbull says audio recordings are the only viable means of reaching most new arrivals, at least for now.
The nonprofit offers English classes, but many Rohingya adults have little free time between long shifts and family responsibilities. Parents often rely on their children as interpreters, but translating technical terms into Rohingya is a stretch for children who have never formally studied the language.
A volunteer effort takes shape
Trumbull sticks out in the halls of the BRCW community center. He doesn’t speak Rohingya, doesn’t pray in the center’s mosque and has no family ties to Rohingya Milwaukee, but he’s been there from the start. A decade after helping get the nonprofit off the ground, the self-described weekend warrior spends much of his scarce free time applying for grants and managing English-language communications in the cluttered office he shares with Anwar.
Andrew Trumbull, co-founder and administrative director at the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, works on his computer in his office, Jan. 19, 2026, in Milwaukee.
The pair met through Anwar’s brother, for whom Trumbull acted as a tutor and Milwaukee tour guide as the former settled into his new city. They soon launched BRCW, with Anwar managing community affairs and Trumbull managing relationships with government agencies and nonprofit peers — both as volunteers.
Trumbull’s enthusiasm for Rohingya language preservation is partially motivated by his own feelings of cultural loss. He spent most of his childhood in Germany, but after moving to the U.S. at age 11, he refused to speak his grandparents’ language. “I wanted not to be different, so I did not speak German,” he said. While he doesn’t compare his experience to those of refugees, he’s watched similar assimilatory pressures play out among Rohingya children in Milwaukee.
“All of the Rohingya parents know that the Rohingya language is dying,” he said. “The question is what they can do about it.”
For now, a small selection of children’s books and a Rohingya-to-English dictionary offer the closest thing to a Rohingya literacy curriculum in the U.S. Trumbull hosts a digital version of the dictionary on the center’s website; the physical copies in his office are the leftovers from a pile passed out to families. Without a grant to support a more structured distribution program, Anwar and Trumbull are “field-testing” the materials by handing them out whenever they can and seeking feedback.
An episode of the Sesame Workshop International series “Playtime With Noor & Aziz,” which was introduced to refugee children after field testing in Milwaukee.
The written Rohingya materials on display at BRCW are the product of decades of work by Rohingya linguists.
An earlier form of written Rohingya died out roughly 200 years ago, said Dallas-based linguist Miranda Kuykendall; the reasons for its extinction remain unclear. Revival efforts took off in the 1980s, when a Rohingya academic in Bangladesh developed the Hanifi script by adapting the alphabet family used to write Arabic and Urdu.
By the turn of the century, a Rohingya engineer in Saudi Arabia introduced a Latin alphabet alternative — a more straightforward option for standard keyboards.
“Different pockets of the Rohingya population prefer different scripts for different reasons,” Kuykendall said. For Rohingya students familiar with Arabic through religious education, the Hanifiscript may be more approachable, and pilot programs in Bangladesh teach the script to some refugee children. The Latin-based script is familiar to the growing Rohingya diaspora in North America, the United Kingdom and Malaysia, where the primary languages rely on the Latin alphabet.
Mohamed Anwar, co-founder, president and executive director of the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, left, prepares for the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
A Ramadan prayer calendar is taped on the wall at the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Kuykendall, the Rohingya language program manager for Texas nonprofit International Literacy and Development, helped roll out the Rohingya-to-English dictionary and partnered with nonprofit publisher Books Unbound to release a picture dictionary for younger audiences. The same network of collaborators is now developing a Rohingya translation app.
Though her team included multiple Rohingya scripts in the dictionary, Kuykendall noted that children of Rohingya parents born or raised in the U.S. typically find the Latin script version of the language, also called “Rohingyalish,” far easier to pick up.
That isn’t necessarily the case for Rohingya-speaking adults — even those already literate in several other languages. “It’s difficult for me to read,” said Anwar, squinting at a page of a picture dictionary. “I never got a chance to learn.”
Kuykendall and BRCW say boosting adult literacy could be transformative for Rohingya refugee communities, with written Rohingya serving as a useful counterpart for teaching English.
But in Anwar and Trumbull’s view, children and young adults are more likely to have time for the Rohingya literacy materials now in the informal testing process in Milwaukee.
For some young people, the pitch might be practical: Learning written Rohingya could help teenagers translate technical language and complicated documents for their parents. For others, the draw could be more existential. “When they become preteens and teenagers,” Trumbull said, they might “grasp the importance of what it means to have lost their language.”
Even if the nonprofit can muster a critical mass of interested young people interested in Rohingya literacy, Trumbull noted, BRCW lacks money and bandwidth to organize formal classes.
The nonprofit seeks grants to support structured outreach, including its earlier work with “Sesame Street.” If all goes well, Anwar and Trumbull hope to offer Rohingya language lessons through BRCW’s after-school religious classes. Aside from Kuykendall’s smaller-scale work with students in Dallas, a BRCW Rohingya language class would be the first of its kind in the country.
‘I am concerned that my kids will never learn’
Those offerings would need buy-in from Rohingya parents like Umi Salmah and Mohammed Rafik, a couple raising three children in Milwaukee.
Rafik, 43, still thinks of Anwar as his teacher. Back in Myanmar, Anwar offered English lessons to young people in his home village — Rafik included.
After fleeing to Malaysia as a young man, Rafik spent early adulthood as a landscaper in Kuala Lumpur. Many of his relatives stayed behind long enough to witness a 2017 ethnic cleansing campaign that killed thousands and drove more than half of Myanmar’s remaining Rohingya into crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh, where Rohingya children are barred from attending public schools. U.S. State Department officials later described the attacks as acts of genocide.Those who remain in Myanmar are now caught in the crossfire of the country’s civil war, and the country’s military has begun conscripting Rohingya men even while denying them citizenship.
More than a dozen members of Rafik’s immediate family drowned while en route to Bangladesh in 2024, as have hundreds of other refugees fleeing Myanmar by boat.
“Everything’s lost,” he said, clasping his hands together. “Language lost. Culture lost. People lost. Village lost.”
Rafik’s formal education ended after seventh grade. Salmah, on the other hand, completed high school in Myanmar before leaving for Malaysia, where the couple married. The military has since burned her home village.
They relocated to Milwaukee after six years in Dallas, where they initially settled after securing refugee status. Both are naturalized citizens; their children were born in the U.S.
Though the couple speaks Rohingya at home, their children “can’t speak back,” Salmah said. “Now I am concerned that my kids will never learn.”
Salmah is unusually well-positioned to teach her children to read Rohingya. She completed a degree in early childhood education at Milwaukee Area Technical College, and she has a knack for languages. Aside from English and Rohingya, Salmah can also speak and read in Burmese and Malay.
But even if she had the time to teach her children to read Rohingya — she’s currently working on a degree in phlebotomy — Salmah would first need to teach herself. Flipping to a page of a children’s book in the BRCW office, Salmah sounded out a passage letter by letter. “I have to pay so much attention to read that,” she said.
Rohingya literacy education “is not going to work at home” for most Rohingya families, Rafik said. Most parents have little to no formal education of their own, so many would need to learn to read as adults before they could teach their children.
People fluent in both Rohingya and English are often already busy providing translation services, and asking those ideal candidates to volunteer their time is a tall order. Like Salmah, any teaching candidate must also learn the Rohingya script alongside students. “I (need to) start from the beginning,” Anwar said. “From the ABCs.”
Mohamed Anwar, co-founder, president and executive director of the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, center, eats a community meal during the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Precedent in Hmong experience
If BRCW’s efforts gain traction, Milwaukee’s Rohingya community would not be the first group of refugees in the Midwest to give a struggling written language a new lease on life.
The century-old church that now houses BRCW previously belonged to a Hmong Christian congregation — the last community to pull off this feat.
Thousands of Hmong refugees settled in the upper Midwest beginning in the late 1970s, when the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam made allies, including many Hmong working alongside American forces in Laos, targets for retaliation. Fifty years later, Hmong refugees still outnumber any other refugee group in Wisconsin. More than 60,000 Wisconsinites identified as Hmong in 2020 — the third-largest Hmong population in the country behind Minnesota and California.
Mohamed Anwar, co-founder, president and executive director of the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, right, eats a community meal during the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Like more recent Rohingya arrivals, Hmong refugees arrived in the U.S. without a widely used written language. Christian missionaries in Laos developed a version of Hmong in the Latin script in the 1950s, but that system “did not stick,” said Bee Vang-Moua, the director of the Hmong language program at the University of Minnesota.
The mass displacement of thousands of Hmong in the 1970s became a catalyst for Hmong literacy’s rise, Vang-Moua explained. Hmong refugees in the U.S. and in refugee camps in Thailand initially communicated by recording messages on cassette tapes, but that system was difficult to sustain. “It was very expensive,” she said, “so everyone that could learn (to write) tried to learn.”
The introduction of cellphones slowed the uptake of Hmong writing, but only briefly. “Social media has boosted the need to read and write Hmong,” Vang-Moua said, because online networks connected Hmong speakers in the U.S. with Hmong speakers in Southeast Asia or Europe — primarily on text-based platforms like Facebook. The Latin-based script used by American Hmong speakers is now replacing versions of written Hmong developed independently in China and Vietnam, she added, because of the cultural influence of the diaspora in the U.S.
The emergence of Hmong language immersion schools further boosted the written language, Vang-Moua added. Milwaukee’s Hmong American Peace Academy, the first of its kind in Wisconsin, opened in 2004 with 200 students; Appleton’s Hmong American Immersion School opened last year.
Meanwhile, some Hmong groups have begun using the script to preserve community elders’ oral traditions in written form.
Given the unpredictable trajectory of Hmong literacy, Vang-Moua noted that the project underway in Milwaukee’s Rohingya community still has time to find its footing. “I’ve often wondered how it all felt” in the early stages of Hmong language education,” she said. “Here we are, talking about the same things, just with a different community.”
Can the effort last?
A Rohingya charter school is a distant goal for Anwar and Trumbull. An after-school Rohingya class would serve as a trial run, and it could give teenagers a chance to test using written Rohingya in their everyday lives.
But BRCW must also contend with parents’ priorities. Rafik and Salmah, for instance, say Rohingya language education can’t distract from other classes, including religious education.
They aren’t alone. Mohamed Ibrahim, owner of a Rohingya restaurant and grocery store on Milwaukee’s South Side, sees a practical use for written Rohingya. Though he is Rohingya by ancestry, he grew up speaking Burmese in Yangon, Myanmar’s former capital. Rohingya-language educational materials could help him communicate more easily with his Rohingya-speaking customers, Ibrahim said, but he doesn’t have time to study it.
Mohamed Ibrahim, owner of Khan Aseya Restaurant, known as “Mom’s Kitchen,” center, serves takeout meals during the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Mohamed Ibrahim, owner of Khan Aseya Restaurant, known as “Mom’s Kitchen,” serves takeout meals during the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Mohamed Ibrahim, owner of Khan Aseya Restaurant, known as “Mom’s Kitchen,” works on his phone during the first day of Ramadan on Feb. 18, 2026, in Milwaukee.
Ibrahim has similar reservations about adding Rohingya language lessons to his children’s routines. “They live in the United States now,” he said. “We have to support our kids in English.”
Meanwhile, Milwaukee’s Rohingya face a new set of hurdles.
The Trump administration’s January 2025 decision to largely end refugee resettlement halted Salmah’s efforts to bring several family members from refugee camps in Bangladesh to Milwaukee. Last year, Anwar sent voice notes to the nonprofit’s WhatsApp group reminding refugees of their rights during run-ins with federal immigration authorities. And last year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began reopening the cases of thousands of refugees admitted under the Biden administration — a policy that could impact many in Milwaukee’s Rohingya community.
Under the circumstances, Anwar and Trumbull aren’t bullish on their project’s short-term prospects. “But when you make things, sometimes they don’t go away,” Trumbull said.
Editor’s note: This story was updated from its original version to add clarifying details.
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.
If that comes as news, it could be because the top race is a relatively low-key Wisconsin Supreme Court contest between Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar, backed by Republicans, and Chris Taylor, backed by Democrats. They are running for an officially nonpartisan open seat on the court after conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley chose not to run for another term.
While the state Supreme Court race will appear at the top of the ballot, there are other local municipal and judicial elections and school referendum questions for voters to decide.
As of Monday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported 317,000 people voted early in-person or by mail. In 2025, more than 693,000 people voted early ahead of the spring election.
The polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Tuesday. You can find out what’s on your ballot, the location of your polling place and more at myvote.wi.gov. Voters can register at the polls on Election Day.
Andrew Gunem casts a ballot during the spring election at Lapham Elementary School, April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin Supreme Court
The 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court election is a quieter race with fewer fireworks and significantly less overall spending than the two recent contests in 2023 and 2025, which the liberal candidate won by 10 points.
The sleepier race is likely due to there being no majority on the line in 2026. A Lazar victory would maintain 4-3 liberal control. A Taylor win would grow the liberal majority to five out of the seven seats on the court and guarantee liberal control through at least 2030.
Lazar and Taylor represent contrasting judicial philosophies on political issues that come before the court, including reproductive health care, redistricting, criminal justice and the power balance between government and business.
A person walks down the sidewalk alongside voting signs at Lapham Elementary School during the spring election, April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The candidates have taken starkly different paths to the bench. Lazar served as an assistant attorney general under former Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen after starting her career in private practice. She was elected to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2015 and 2021 and then to the Court of Appeals in 2022.
Taylor also began her career in private practice but then worked as the policy and political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. She won a special election in 2011 as a Democrat to represent a Madison-focused district in the Assembly. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Taylor to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020, and she ran unopposed in 2023 for her seat on the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals.
Taylor has maintained a significant fundraising and spending advantage over Lazar throughout the campaign. The Marquette University Law School Poll in the weeks leading up to Election Day found a large percentage of undecided voters.
In the last poll conducted before the April 7 election, 30% of likely voters said they supported Taylor, 22% favored Lazar and 46% said they were undecided.
School district referendums
Seventy-two Wisconsin school districts are asking voters in their communities to approve tax increases totaling $1 billion to borrow money for construction projects or to pay for operations, such as educational programs, technology or transportation services.
The districts are turning to voters at a challenging time for referendum approvals. Referendum approval rates have declined since 2018, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Sixty-two of the school districts are seeking operating referendums. The remaining districts are asking for capital referendums, or approval of construction projects. Two districts, Howard-Suamico and Sauk Prairie, are asking for both operating and construction referendums.
Carrie Devitt casts a ballot during the spring election at Warner Park Community Recreation Center, April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis.(Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Volunteer election workers Anne Ketz, left, and David Gebhardt, cast absentee ballots at Lapham Elementary School during the spring election April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Appeals and circuit court races
There are appeals court and circuit court races on the ballot in multiple counties across the state, but most of these are uncontested elections. Candidates elected to county circuit courts and the Court of Appeals are elected to six-year terms.
The appeals court races in the Milwaukee-based 1st District, the Waukesha-based 2nd District and Madison-based 4th District are uncontested. The unopposed candidates include incumbent Judge Joe Donald in the 1st District, conservative attorney Anthony LoCoco in the 2nd District and incumbent Judge Rachel Graham in the 4th District.
Twenty-six circuit court district seats are on ballots across the state, but only six — Dane, Marathon, Washburn, Washington, Wood, and a shared seat in Florence and Forest counties — feature contested races.
Voters in Marathon and Florence and Forest counties will select new circuit court judges after the incumbents in those seats did not seek reelection. Evers-appointed judicial incumbents are running against challengers in circuit court branch races in Dane, Washburn, Washington and Wood counties.
A person walks into Warner Park Community Recreation Center during the spring election, April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Other local elections
Voters on Tuesday can also make decisions on who represents them on school boards, as county supervisors and as city mayors and alderpersons.
What is on the ballot in these local races will differ from community to community. To find out more about specific local races on your ballot, visit myvote.wi.gov.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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Wisconsin allows child welfare agencies to take federal benefits and child support payments meant for children who are in foster care.
The practices cost foster children and their parents more than $10 million annually.
While there’s been increasing bipartisan support for restrictions and bans on these practices, Wisconsin lawmakers haven’t acted.
Who foots the bill when a child is placed in foster care? In Wisconsin, it’s sometimes parents — and even the kids themselves.
Like many U.S. states, Wisconsin allows child welfare departments to take federal benefits intended for children who have a disability or a deceased parent. The practice means some foster children are paying for care the state is legally required to provide — care others get for free.
The state also bills some parents for foster care — even when parents are trying to bring their kids home and struggling to make ends meet.
In Wisconsin alone, these practices cost foster children and their parents more than $10 million a year.
Now those approaches are facing growing criticism for prolonging family separation and depriving kids and families of much-needed resources. In response, some states have enacted bans or restrictions, but Wisconsin hasn’t — despite bipartisan support.
Advocates decry ‘orphan tax’
Wisconsin child welfare authorities take around $3 million each year in Social Security benefits intended for foster children, according to the state’s Department of Children and Families.
Five years ago, nearly every U.S. state was taking these payments, NPR and The Marshall Project reported in 2021. Their investigation focused on Alaska, where hundreds of former foster youth sued in 2014, demanding the state return their money. Many didn’t know about the payments — often several hundred dollars a month — until they were about to age out of the foster care system, reporters found. On their own, those young people often struggled to afford things like rent, car payments and college tuition.
“We get out and we don’t have anybody or anything. This is exactly what survivor benefits are for,” one former foster youth told NPR and The Marshall Project.
Last year, Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled in their favor. It ordered the state to notify foster children if they are entitled to Social Security benefits and allow eligible children to choose to have their benefits managed by someone else instead of the state. It did not require the state to repay the estimated $1.8 million in lost benefits.
Chief Justice Susan Carney recommended banning the state from taking such funds in the future.
“I urge the Legislature to consider joining those of our sister states that have restricted their child protection agencies from depriving vulnerable children of these benefits intended to help them overcome extraordinary trauma as they move to adulthood,” Carney wrote.
Nationwide – largely after the Alaska case was filed – 38 jurisdictions have introduced legislation or executive actions to preserve those benefits for foster children, according to the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego, which has been lobbying for such change for years.
Ten of those jurisdictions have barred authorities from taking any Social Security benefits intended for foster youth: Arizona, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.
“The attention has been truly overwhelming. It’s like a tsunami,” said Amy Harfeld, national policy director for the institute.
Consensus grows in Wisconsin
The agency that oversees foster care in Wisconsin now favors ending the practice too. Children who turn 18 in foster care are at a higher risk of homelessness, incarceration and health problems.
For those children, the state’s goal should be to “help launch them into success,” Department of Children and Families Secretary-designee Jeff Pertl told lawmakers at a March hearing. Holding these payments in trust is one way to do that.
“We do a lot of things for kids who are aging out of care as an agency, but I would say (this is) probably one of the areas where we could spend just a little bit of resources and generate pretty significant improvements in people’s lives,” Pertl said.
Last year, Gov. Tony Evers proposed limiting the practice. Under his plan, child welfare departments must screen all incoming foster children for eligibility for Social Security benefits, apply on behalf of eligible children and hold the money in trust. The proposal included $3 million to hire a contractor to apply for benefits and manage those accounts.
The plan would have allowed the money to be used for expenses the agency would not typically cover for a child, as is the case now, but it would have barred agencies from using it to reimburse themselves for the care they’ve already agreed to provide. Leftover funds would be transferred to the child or their guardian when they leave foster care.
The proposal was one of more than 600 items Republicans on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee removed in a single vote, a move that has become routine in Wisconsin’s divided Statehouse.
Months later, President Donald Trump’s administration called for an end to the “orphan tax.” The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent letters in December to 39 governors. The letters demanded their child welfare agencies stop taking children’s Social Security survivor benefits, which are based on contributions made by a deceased parent.
“Every earned benefit dollar belongs to these foster youth, not the government agencies or bureaucrats,” Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary of the department’s Administration for Children and Families, said in a statement.
Sen. André Jacque, seen during Gov. Tony Evers’ State of the State address at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis., on Feb. 15, 2022, introduced a bill to require child welfare authorities to save Social Security benefits for foster children in their care. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
In February, in the final weeks of the legislative session, Wisconsin state Sen. André Jacque, a Republican from New Franken, introduced Senate Bill 990, which would require child welfare authorities to save Social Security benefits for foster children in their care. Unlike Evers’ proposal, it does not require authorities to check eligibility or apply for benefits.
“Children who enter foster care are already at a disadvantaged position in life,” Jacque said at a hearing on the legislation. “Preserving their benefits can provide a modest but meaningful financial foundation as they transition into adulthood, helping them pay for education, secure housing, purchasing a first car or beginning a new career.”
Parents billed for foster care
Years before the Trump administration decried the taking of Social Security payments, President Joe Biden’s administration urged states to limit another controversial practice: charging parents for foster care.
For years, the federal government required billing parents as a way to lower its own costs. It changed its guidance in 2022, after NPR reported the practice was separating families — sometimes permanently.
Outside of the foster care system, a parent who doesn’t have custody of their child may be ordered to make monthly child support payments to the custodial parent or guardian. Parents who don’t pay can rack up thousands of dollars of debt.
When a child is placed in foster care, child welfare departments often apply to collect that money, along with any past-due payments, in the child’s name. That can leave the parent who used to receive those payments struggling to cover rent or basic expenses.
To defray its costs, the child welfare department may seek a court order requiring the custodial parent to pay child support, too. That’s despite the fact that many of those parents are already struggling financially. About two-thirds of the foster children in Wisconsin were removed from their biological homes because of neglect — a condition often tied to poverty, Pertl said.
Wisconsin foster care authorities seldom seek new child support orders, but they do regularly apply to collect payments on existing orders, said John Tuohy, executive director of the Wisconsin County Human Service Association. The group represents child welfare departments in all 72 counties.
Child welfare authorities bill the parents of 7 in 10 foster children in the state, according to the Department of Children and Families. In recent years, parents have paid an average of more than $7.6 million a year. Studies show those bills can make it harder for parents to bring their children back home.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared data from Wisconsin counties that tend to collect child support for foster children to counties that don’t. A charge as low as $100 delayed reunification by more than six months, they wrote in a 2017 paper.
Another UW-Madison study, published in 2024, found children whose parents were ordered to pay for foster care spend more than twice as long in care — an average of 21 months instead of nine — and are less likely to be reunited with their parents.
“The research suggests (allowing parents to keep that money) would help that parent to maintain a residence and have the financial capacity to have a home ready for the kids to go back to,” Tuohy said.
Meanwhile, charging parents can actually increase the cost to taxpayers. For every dollar the department spends trying to collect these payments, it recoups only 88 cents, according to Connie Chesnik, administrator of the department’s Division of Family & Economic Security, which oversees child support collection. The department estimates ceasing this practice would substantially reduce the time those children spend in foster care, saving counties approximately $18,000 per affected child.
“The evidence indicates that cost recovery child support orders for children in out-of-home care are not in the best interest of children and families, and they’re not in the best interest of government or taxpayers,” UW-Madison social work professor Lawrence Berger told lawmakers.
The Department of Children and Families wants the practice to stop, too.
“It’s very clear that this kind of change in policy and practice will yield real results in terms of reunification with families,” Pertl said.
Bipartisan support, little action
As with Social Security payments, Evers proposed allocating funds to stop child support collections for most children in foster care. The $1.87 million provision was one of the hundreds cut by the Republican-led budget committee. GOP lawmakers then introduced their own legislation at the end of the session.
“The cost of care should not be subsidized by those who can least afford it,” Sen. Jesse James, R-Thorp, said at a hearing for Senate Bill 1072, which would bar child welfare departments from collecting child support for most foster children. Rep. Karen Hurd, R-Withee, led the Assembly companion to James’ bill.
At the hearing, lawmakers from both parties voiced support but acknowledged the bills wouldn’t pass so late in the Legislative session.
Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi, wondered aloud why the bills didn’t get a hearing until after the Assembly had gavelled out for the session.
“These are good bills, and I’m just disappointed we didn’t hear them sooner, because we could have done something about them,” Keyeski said.
Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi, applauds as Gov. Tony Evers delivers the 2025 state budget address, Feb. 18, 2025, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Lawmakers could come back to the Capitol this year to take action on spending the state’s $2.4 billion surplus, but ideas floated by Evers and Republican legislative leaders don’t include proposals on foster care payments.
Both James and Jacque said they plan to reintroduce their bills in the next budget cycle, although both lawmakers must first survive reelection bids in 2026.
“I see a path to it getting done,” Jacque said of his proposal. “It’s certainly an idea that should have bipartisan appeal.”
In Wisconsin, status quo persists
The lone opposition to the measures comes from the local governments that run foster care in every Wisconsin county except Milwaukee, where the Department of Children and Families directly administers care. Tuohy, of the Wisconsin County Human Service Association, said counties will face a budget shortfall if they can’t collect funds from children or parents.
“County human service budgets are very tight,” Tuohy said. “Counties cannot afford to absorb that fiscal impact.”
He said his group is open to such policy changes, as long as lawmakers allocate funding to make up for what agencies will lose and hire experts to administer these funds.
“Our group is willing to work with both the Legislature and the governor on those types of things. We want to do what’s best for kids and families and to get better outcomes for kids who go into out-of-home care,” Tuohy said. “But … until you address the fiscal effect, it’s hard to really talk about what’s good policy or not.”
The Department of Children and Families agrees.
“I’ve been doing this a long time. You know how we get these things done? We keep folks whole,” Pertl said. “In the scheme of the state budget, this is not a particularly expensive proposal. This is a very doable thing.”
Doable or not, any such legislation will likely have to wait until lawmakers return to the State Capitol in January. Jacque and James said they plan to add funding when they reintroduce their bills, to help counties make up the difference.
When they do, Harfeld believes the pressure will be on, especially when it comes to the taking of Social Security benefits. That practice, she said, has riled people of assorted political persuasions.
“We’ve got the support from Evangelical groups who just see this as an affront to God, in addition to violating at least six different biblical prescriptions on stealing from orphans. We have gotten a lot of attention from the MAGA right, who are seeing this now as waste, fraud and abuse,” Harfeld said. Libertarians, meanwhile, see the practice as government overreach, she said.
“How many issues are you seeing that have really broken through all of the political divides and resulted in this consensus between very unusual bedfellows?” Harfeld asked. “This is one of them.”
Have you or your children been in foster care in Wisconsin? I’d like to hear how foster care costs have affected you and your family. Please email me at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org or call me at (608) 620-5610.
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The president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque was detained by federal immigration agents, drawing accusations Thursday from local officials and religious leaders that the arrest was motivated by his criticism of Israel.
Salah Sarsour, a Palestinian-born legal permanent resident of the United States, was taken into custody by nearly a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who surrounded his car on Monday in Milwaukee after he left his home, according to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.
Supporters called Thursday for his immediate release. His attorneys said he was detained on the grounds that he is a foreign policy threat, a claim they say has no merit.
Instead, they believe Sarsour, 53, was targeted for speaking out against Israel and for a conviction as a minor by Israeli military courts, which have faced scrutiny over allegations of limited due process and high conviction rates of Palestinians. Israel rejects those claims. The offenses included allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli officers, according to attorney Munjed Ahmad.
“Our government should not be doing the bidding of a foreign government,” Ahmad said of Israel. “There’s no question in my mind is that this is to stifle the discourse on the Palestinian narrative.”
Attorneys said Sarsour, born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has no criminal record in the U.S., where he has lived for more than 30 years. They said the U.S. government has known about Sarsour’s conviction in Israel since he came to the U.S. in 1993.
Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. (Courtesy of Islamic Society of Milwaukee)
An email message left Thursday for ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.
Sarsour’s attorneys have likened the case to that of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student activist who faces deportation because the federal government said he was a foreign policy threat.
Sarsour has been the board president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, the largest Islamic organization in the state, for five years. His attorneys say he holds a green card and lives just outside Milwaukee. His wife and four adult children are U.S. citizens.
At a crowded news conference, boisterous supporters chanted to free Sarsour, recounting his advocacy for those in need. Several recalled Sarsour’s stories about his childhood, including allegations of inhumane treatment while being detained by Israelis.
“He was targeted because of one thing, because he dared stand up to the Israeli army,” Othman Atta, one of Sarsour’s attorneys, told the crowd. “And he was not a U.S. citizen.”
A diverse group of religious leaders in a attendance called Sarsour a valuable community member.
“This appears to be just the latest example of how this administration seeks to silence opposition and intimidate those who speak and act differently,” said the Rev. Paul D. Erickson, bishop of the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Sarsour’s arrest also prompted outcry from elected officials, including Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who called it “an outrage.”
“He is a legal permanent resident. There is no substantive evidence he has done anything wrong,” Johnson said Thursday in a post on X. “This is another example of overreach and harm from the U.S. immigration authorities.”
Sarsour is being held at a county jail in Indiana. His attorneys have filed a petition seeking his release.
“He is ready to fight tooth and nail to make sure that he’s not drug through the mud,” Ahmad said. “He wants to stay in this country.”
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