Climate researchers predict storms that produce golf ball-size or larger hail will become more frequent, thanks to climate change.
According to a 2024 study by Northern Illinois University, a warmer climate increases water vapor in the air, which provides energy for thunderstorms like those seen April 14, 2026, in Wisconsin that produced large hail.
Hail is created when strong updrafts of air are pushed up into the colder atmosphere, freezing water droplets and pushing them around, making the droplets bigger and bigger. Eventually, those hailstones get too heavy and fall to earth.
“Our study suggests golf ball-size hail or larger will become more common because of more atmospheric instability, which leads to stronger thunderstorm updrafts,” NIU Atmospheric Science Professor Victor Gensini said.
A 2017 study in Nature that looked at historic patterns and forecasts also found hailstone size is expected to increase due to climate change.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
April 22, 1970, was no ordinary day in the bustling city of St. Louis. On this first Earth Day, streets filled with rallies, and lecture halls were packed with attendees. Most famously, rows of students marched through the streets wearing gas masks, protesting air pollution.
Around that time, John E. Franz was brewing up something dark in the depths of Monsanto’s St. Louis lab: glyphosate, an herbicide since linked to widespread environmental harm, cancer concerns and more than 100,000 lawsuits.
While other countries have regulated or limited glyphosate production, the U.S. has largely ignored the problem. In February, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14387 to promote the production of glyphosate and security for its producers.
The U.S. is increasingly dependent on glyphosate, and its overuse is becoming a serious concern. Amid the many environmental issues competing for attention, glyphosate deserves a prominent place this Earth Day, especially in Wisconsin.
Why Wisconsin? Glyphosate levels in groundwater aren’t being consistently monitored in the state’s highest-risk areas — its CAFO counties.
From fields to faucets
Wisconsin farmers apply millions of pounds of glyphosate each year, primarily to fields growing soybeans and corn — the state’s two biggest crops. Those crops are used to feed animals at Wisconsin’s 293 concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
After animals eat glyphosate-treated crops, the chemical can reemerge in their manure. This is a problem, considering that mismanagement of CAFO waste frequently leads to groundwater contamination.
Seems like something that should be setting off red flags, right?
Monitoring falls short in Wisconsin
The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) oversees groundwater and surface water testing for agrichemicals. The agency monitors pesticides and agricultural runoff through a private well sampling program, a field-edge monitoring program and random well sampling conducted every five to 10 years.
However effective these programs may appear, a closer look at where Wisconsin’s CAFOs are located compared with where monitoring occurs reveals a stark mismatch.
The three counties with the most CAFOs — Manitowoc (25), Brown (22), Kewaunee (19) — are all located in the Northeast Lakeshore region, where none of DATCP’s 22 field-edge monitoring wells are located, according to a 2023 report, the most recent available. The state’s monitoring system misses areas at highest risk for aquifer contamination.
Unfortunately it gets worse. DATCP’s Targeted Sampling Program also does not cover the entire Northeast Lakeshore Watershed, and these sampling panels do not test for glyphosate or its byproducts, the agency’s most recent program report shows.
The solution? Advocacy
Glyphosate usage has increased 15-fold since the 1990s. It will continue to go unchecked if more research and monitoring aren’t conducted to track where this chemical ends up.
If you’re a private landowner with a well, write to DATCP and volunteer to have your well sampled.
Universities such as University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and UW-Green Bay also play a role. DATCP already partners with both on research. Contact leaders of their water-related programs.
Why glyphosate still matters
To be sure, glyphosate is not the only problematic agrichemical. But it is by far the most widely used herbicide in U.S. agriculture, and its scale alone warrants closer monitoring of its spread in aquifers.
Still not convinced? Consider the many other contaminants that can leach into groundwater from CAFO manure — including other agrichemicals, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals and bacteria. Glyphosate is just one of many reasons stronger groundwater monitoring is needed in this region.
We’re not asking for much.
Glyphosate well testing is relatively inexpensive and should not strain government resources. Progress will depend on public pressure: Concerned citizens must keep pushing until stronger monitoring is in place across all at-risk areas of this beautiful state we call home.
Allison Gilmeister is a graduate student at Yale University studying religion and ecology. She grew up in Appleton.
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.
Wisconsin Watch is testing a new approach to data storytelling: news applications. As a first step, we’re launching a tool to track activities in federal immigration courts nationwide, designed with local and state-level interests in mind.
Nearly 5 million people entered the federal immigration court system between 2020 and 2025.
Many were new arrivals handed notices to appear in court shortly after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Others spent years in the U.S. before landing in deportation proceedings. Nearly 40,000 listed addresses in Wisconsin.
The courts primarily hear deportation cases, though immigrants can also seek asylum and other forms of relief through the court system, albeit only as a defense against deportation.
Wisconsin Watch frequently relies on federal immigration court data to shape our reporting, but navigating the data is no small task. The DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review updates a vast public dataset of immigration court records monthly — the result of repeated public records requests from the nonprofit data analytics organization Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
While other tools to explore that data exist, we have learned through trial and error that extracting local- or state-level insights is easiest when we do it ourselves.
We want to make those insights accessible to you.
Our immigration court tracker provides national, state, county and court-level summary details about the millions of immigrants placed in deportation proceedings over the past five years. It tracks the nationalities of immigrants with cases before the courts, the volume of new and active cases and the share of immigrants with legal representation, among other metrics, all summarized in brief “explainers” available through the dashboard.
The underlying data is an important counterpart to our recent reporting on the past year’s worth of ICE activity in Wisconsin. Wisconsin-level data often parallels our past coverage, and it will continue to inform our approach to covering immigration.
This is a living project, and we welcome your suggestions. If you find a way to use the dashboard — as a reporter, student or otherwise — please tell us how. The records offer far more detail than this dashboard currently provides, but we can update and upgrade our offerings in response to feedback.
It won’t be our last news application. We want to make public data as accessible as we can, so we will roll out more tools for you to explore.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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Methadone is highly effective at reducing illicit opioid use and overdoses.
The federal government sets minimum standards for clinics to prevent misuse, but Wisconsin imposes more than a dozen additional requirements on providers.
As a result, patients may wait longer to begin treatment, make daily trips to clinics and take more time to reach an effective dose.
Many other states have eased their rules, expanding access without compromising patient safety.
After years of opioid use, Bob saw three paths ahead: jail, death or methadone.
The 70-year-old Stevens Point resident chose methadone, which he has stuck with for more than half his life. He credits the treatment for his long career and ability to raise two daughters. Now retired, he sits in a recliner holding a sheet of paper with a list of old friends; he’s written “OD” next to the names of several loved ones killed by drugs.
Methadone is highly effective at reducing illicit opioid use and overdoses, experts say. It reduces drug cravings, prevents withdrawal and can provide stability without a mind-altering high.
More than 10,000 Wisconsinites used methadone treatment in 2024 to recover from opioid use disorder. But state regulations make accessing treatment more difficult for those patients, providers and researchers say.
The federal government sets minimum standards for clinics providing methadone treatment aimed at preventing misuse. Wisconsin adds more than a dozen more restrictive requirements, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.
For patients, the state’s laws can mean waiting longer to enroll in treatment, daily drives to the clinic — even on weekends and holidays — and waiting longer to reach an effective dose.
Two years after the federal government relaxed its rules, Wisconsin’s landscape remains largely unchanged. Providers and researchers want Wisconsin to catch up with newer standards adopted by other states, including Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa.
The Department of Health Services is reviewing Wisconsin’s rules, but it’s unclear what will change or when.
Long drives for methadone treatment
Bob wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and starts the 40-minute drive to his treatment clinic. Years ago, he left that early to make it to work on time. Now, he just likes to beat the crowd.
Wisconsin Watch is identifying people who use methadone by first name only to protect their private health information.
Bob tries not to pee before starting the drive. He knows clinic staff will likely send him into the bathroom with a cup as soon as he arrives. It’s been two decades since he used drugs or alcohol, but he takes the drug test all the same.
Bob holds a bottle of methadone at his home, April 14, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Bob sits in his recliner, April 14, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Next, he walks up to a clinic window, where someone hands him 13 plastic bottles of a cherry red liquid. Bob locks the medications inside a box he brought from home. A staff member watches as he swallows another dose.
He’ll do it all again in 13 days. The treatment saved his life, but it keeps him tied to this time-intensive routine — and to a clinic in another town.
“Methadone is like having a pair of golden handcuffs,” he says.
Unlike other medications, methadone cannot be picked up from a pharmacy. Only 31 locations across Wisconsin are approved to provide medication-assisted opioid treatments including methadone, according to the state health department.
At the state’s northernmost clinic in Wausau, patients traveled an average of 31 miles, one way, to their clinic in 2024.
Wisconsin allows fewer take-home doses
Methadone can be fatal if misused. To prevent people from overusing it or selling it, the federal government limited the number of take-home doses patients receive.
Early in the pandemic, the federal government allowed states to relax take-home rules to limit crowding at clinics — and many states did so. Studies later showed higher patient satisfaction and feelings of being respected without a significant increase in misuse.
In making the pandemic exceptions permanent in 2024, federal regulators wrote that the previous standards “can pose disruption to employment, education and other daily activities for patients, and several of the criteria reflect outdated biases that promote stigma and discourage people from engaging in care.”
But Wisconsin’s take-home regulations remain stricter than the federal minimums from before the pandemic.
The federal standard allows patients like Bob to take home 28 doses at a time. Wisconsin allows only 13.
Wisconsin patients must visit their clinic seven days a week until they complete a month in treatment and meet other criteria not required by the federal government. It takes a year in Wisconsin to qualify for the number of take-home doses providers in other states can offer patients after two weeks.
Bob sits in his recliner for a portrait alongside his methadone bottles, April 14, 2026. For patients, Wisconsin’s laws regarding methadone can mean waiting longer to enroll in treatment, daily drives to the clinic and starting at a dose too low to alleviate withdrawal symptoms. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Random callbacks disrupt routines
State rules also require clinics to regularly “call back” patients, like Bob, who have more than two take-home doses. The callbacks are intended to help providers make sure patients are not selling or misusing take-home doses.
Between visits, Bob’s provider often calls and tells him to arrive at the clinic within 24 hours with all 13 methadone bottles. If he doesn’t, he has to go back to daily clinic visits.
Federal rules do not require callbacks. In a 2024 report, federal regulators said providers should “consider the disruptive nature of random callbacks.”
It’s hard to make plans knowing you might have to change them any moment, Bob says. “I want to be normal again.”
Rules changes under review
Wisconsin is an outlier whose policies are overdue for an update, said Sharel Rogers, CEO of Addiction Medical Solutions and Vin Baker Recovery. She also serves as president of the Wisconsin Association of Treatment for Opioid Dependence.
Rogers was among several providers who backed a bill last month to update state rules. The measure was introduced right before the legislative session ended and was not expected to pass, but supporters hoped it would push regulators to act.
Wisconsin health officials are considering changing opioid treatment regulations, but without legislative action, the process could take years.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services aims to ensure state regulations support access to “high-quality, evidence-based care for those who need it,” wrote Elizabeth Goodsitt, a spokesperson for the agency.
The agency started the state’s “intentionally thorough” rulemaking process last year to bring state regulations “closer in alignment with current federal regulations,” Goodsitt said.
The agency is still drafting proposed changes. They would be subject to public hearings and lawmaker approval in a process that ensures input from providers, advocates and patients, Goodsitt said.
The health department declined to answer detailed questions. Staff plan to review enrollment and take-home requirements, according to a document submitted to the Legislature. It’s not clear if other discrepancies, like callbacks, lab testing or dosage levels, will be addressed.
Opioid treatment providers should be carefully regulated, but Wisconsin’s current rules create barriers for patients, Rogers said.
“I’m just amazed at these patients every day, what they will do for their own recovery,” she said.
Bob flips through a 1974 copy of The Physicians’ Desk Reference to find the drug listing for methadone, April 14, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Bob lined up his methadone bottles on a table at his home for a portrait, April 14, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Recovery under tight restrictions
Timothy overdosed three times before starting treatment.
After nine months in Marathon County jail, he relapsed unaware of his lowered tolerance and the strength of the drug supply in 2022.
Within a couple of months, he started methadone.
“Some people don’t get out of that. A lot of people don’t,” Timothy said. “I’m grateful.”
Opioid overdose deaths dropped by more than 42% in Wisconsin between 2023 and 2024, according to the state health department. Still, opioids killed 815 people in Wisconsin in 2024, compared with fewer than 300 deaths two decades earlier.
Rising overdose rates are driven in part by fentanyl, a more potent opioid. Patients with a history of fentanyl use typically need higher methadone doses, said Dr. Hillary Tamar, who oversees Wisconsin treatment providers as a medical director for Community Medical Services.
Wisconsin rules prohibit providers from giving new patients a starting dose above 30 milligrams of methadone. That limit is outdated in the fentanyl era, Tamar said. The average dose at most Wisconsin clinics in 2024 was above 100 milligrams.
Updated federal limits allow providers to start patients at 50 milligrams or higher, based on their clinical judgment. A higher starting dose can help patients avoid withdrawal and reach a stable dose sooner, Tamar said.
Federal regulations also give providers greater ability to decide whether a patient may benefit from fewer visits.
“The regulations in Wisconsin bind us to creating a one size fits all plan, and that is just not how humans work,” Tamar said.
Despite attending regular counseling and dosing in-person daily for four years, Timothy still doesn’t qualify for a single take-home dose in Wisconsin.
That’s because he started using cannabis while undergoing chemotherapy around the time he started methadone treatment. Now in remission, he is working with his counselor to stop using cannabis, but it still prevents him from receiving take-home doses in Wisconsin.
In other states, marijuana use does not bar patients from receiving take-homes, Tamar said.
Last month, Timothy received two take-home methadone bottles while visiting his daughter in Florida.
Before leaving Wisconsin, he worked with staff at his clinic to set up a week’s worth of visits with a Florida provider. He was surprised when the new clinic told him he would receive take-home doses over the weekend.
When at home in Wisconsin, Timothy doesn’t mind the daily clinic visits. But when he’s with his daughter, they remind him of his past mistakes.
For two days he mixed his medication with apple juice and celebrated his 45th birthday with his family without stopping at the clinic.
He said it was the best time of his life.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
Town of Lima Clerk Pam Hookstead’s election operation is a well-oiled machine. She comes to the polls at 6 a.m., a pot of cowboy beef stew in hand to warm up for her poll workers, and takes a backseat as she lets the town’s longtime staffers settle into their rhythm.
Having run well over 100 elections, administering the Wisconsin Supreme Court race on April 7 in the 1,200-person town felt like second nature. Hookstead, now 65, has spent three decades in the role — a depth of experience many towns have lost since 2020.
Twenty miles south sits Clinton, where 59-year-old Town Clerk Shannon Roehl-Wickingson was administering her first election on her own. It will take years for her muscle memory to rival Hookstead’s. But, she may get there faster than many of her peers in Wisconsin — or across the country. Rock County has a support and training system that most new clerks can only dream of.
As the job has grown more complex, more scrutinized and more politicized, municipalities are left scrambling to replace experienced officials and train newcomers fast enough to keep up. Rock County — where five of 29 municipalities had first-time clerks running elections earlier this month — is testing a more hands-on approach to that transition, pairing new clerks with experienced ones and building a network that helps them learn the job in real time.
But hiring is only half the battle. Keeping clerks can be even harder, in part because the job is both sprawling and slow to master. Beyond running elections, a single clerk may take meeting minutes, issue licenses, sell public land and even oversee cemeteries. All responsibilities, especially elections, are governed by a shifting patchwork of legal obligations that can take years to learn but often change quickly. Rock County is hoping to fix that.
Town of Clinton Clerk Shannon Roehl-Wickingson ran her first election as clerk on April 7, 2026. (Alexander Shur / Votebeat)
“If I wouldn’t have had help, I might have thrown in the towel by now because it’s very daunting,” said Roehl-Wickingson. “For God’s sake, in today’s climate, with voting, you just don’t want to make mistakes. But there’s tremendous support. You just have to ask the questions.”
The approach is deliberate: County Clerk Lisa Tollefson ensures municipal clerks are trained beyond state requirements and works to recruit long-serving or retiring clerks as mentors. During the busiest times of the year, her husband, Town of Harmony Deputy Clerk Tim Tollefson, makes the rounds to check in with new municipal clerks to make sure everything is moving smoothly.
Together, they push clerks to stay in close contact, with them and with each other — swapping advice on absentee voting, preparing for budget season, or gathering in person with a brandy old-fashioned to celebrate a well-run election.
Part of Tollefson’s motivation for creating the county’s support network comes from experience. When the Democrat first became Harmony’s town clerk in 2010, she knew resources were available but “felt really shy about reaching out” for help. “I don’t want anyone to ever feel that way.”
Now, she goes to public tests for every new clerk, making sure they understand there’s no dumb questions and telling them that she has been in their shoes.
In Hookstead’s view, Lisa Tollefson is the coach, municipal clerks are the assistant coaches, and poll workers are the team players.
“None of us could survive without the other one,” she said. “We’re a team. We work very well together in this county.”
‘Clerk gene’ essential to long tenures
Making a longtime clerk out of a new recruit takes some luck and some science.
In some cases, it also starts off with a little bit of deceit.
Many clerks have similar origin stories in Wisconsin: They were persuaded to begin their jobs by a town board member who made the job sound easy. Just taking minutes, they’re told. Little mention of elections, budgets, licenses or managing municipal property. That was the pitch that drew both Tollefson and Hookstead into their first clerk jobs.
Once on the job, they quickly realize how much more it entails. Some hunker down. Others leave.
What separates the two, Lisa Tollefson said, is the “clerk gene.” She described it as a mix of curiosity, a lack of timidity, and a desire to help the public. And while some — herself included — stumble into the role of clerk and step up to the job, Tollefson said transparency about the job is the best way to recruit and retain staff. “Being open about all the duties,” she said, “is huge.”
Roehl-Wickingson, whose previous job included helping union workers sign up for benefits, said the desire to help others has carried over for her. In both elections and unions, those who are indifferent are “definitely in the wrong place.”
Right now, Lisa Tollefson said, every chief election official in Rock County has what it takes to be a clerk. That’s a blessing for her office, which saw a lot of clerk turnover after the highly contentious 2020 election, when a wave of retirements rocked the workforce. Just eight of 29 Rock County municipalities still have the same clerks as they did six years ago.
“There were some older clerks at that time,” she said, “and they’re like, ‘I’m not doing another. I’m done.’”
Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson, far right, and two staff members work to build camaraderie across the county as new clerks replace longtime officials who have left. (Alexander Shur / Votebeat)
To keep new clerks from burning out, Lisa Tollefson tries to reinforce that instinct to be a supportive clerk with training and support.
She has encouraged her clerks to become trainers themselves, including to train poll workers to be chief inspectors and to use the state’s electronic pollbook system — something most poll workers aren’t usually trained to do.
The need for such advanced planning became clear in 2020, when nearly every worker at one Rock County polling location was exposed to COVID-19 during a public test and could no longer serve on Election Day. Two poll workers didn’t come to the public test, though, and because they were trained to be chief inspectors, the location was still able to open and proceed normally. That year, Tollefson also trained about 50 county employees as chief inspectors as an additional cushion against emergencies.
The benefits of this preparation and community-building also show up in smaller moments. At a recent public test of voting equipment, Tollefson said she watched experienced poll workers reassure a new clerk that everything would be OK. “There’s a lot of strength in the poll workers,” she said.
It’s an example set by Tollefson herself. She is a constant presence for clerks, Hookstead said. She offers advice and checks in, reminding clerks that she’ll be up at 5 a.m. and ready to provide any support she can offer on Election Day.
“She’s just willing to make our lives so much easier,” said Hookstead. “And it is through training — her trainings are fun.”
Rock County clerks also seem to have found another reliable strategy for finding and retaining election workers: recruiting family members.
After Tollefson left her first job as the Harmony town clerk, she recruited her husband to replace her after nobody else applied. He later became the town’s deputy clerk. Hookstead’s mom, daughter and husband have all served as poll workers in Lima. In the town of Magnolia — in western Rock County — clerk-treasurer Graceann Toberman was preceded by her mother as treasurer. Together, they’ve spent more than 60 years in the role.
Roehl-Wickingson was also recruited by family. When the town of Clinton needed a new clerk, she got a call from her daughter, who works in the county clerk’s office, suggesting it would be a good part-time job in retirement. (Unlike Lisa Tollefson and Hookstead, Roehl-Wickingson said she received an accurate summary of what the job entailed.)
“You get the bug,” Lisa Tollefson said. “It happens all the time.”
Longtime clerk says county helps her understand changing rules
Hookstead has had the bug for 30 years. She has silvering blonde hair and, on Election Day, wore a green cardigan and a name tag identifying her as clerk — not that anybody is unfamiliar with her. She said she’s not quite ready to retire as a clerk.
If anything, she’s prepared to spend even more time on the job. Having just retired from her full-time position as secretary at a school in Whitewater, she’s decided to redesign the town’s website and reorganize its paperwork system.
Still, she knows she won’t do it forever. If somebody comes along to replace her — something Hookstead acknowledged wasn’t terribly likely — she said she’s ready to step aside.
Hookstead lives and does most of her work from home on a 180-acre beef farm in town.
The 1,300-person town is sparsely populated, with no bars, no restaurants and no grocery stores — just dairy and cattle farms, a Presbyterian church and a small cluster of homes near the town center. On Election Day, its town hall had pop-up voting booths next to its wood-paneled walls and a check-in booth by the front entrance, a setup that Hookstead has meticulously spaced out to provide the best flow for voters, some of whom are in wheelchairs.
For early in-person absentee voting, residents don’t go to a government office. They go to Hookstead’s house.
Town of Lima Clerk Pam Hookstead sorts through election materials at her home. (Alexander Shur / Votebeat)
Voters go to her kitchen and take a seat at what she calls her voting table. Given its placement, with several seats surrounding it and a sack of onions on top, you’d be forgiven for calling it a kitchen table. Hookstead concedes it’s both.
Voters cast their ballots there, overlooking a cattle field and a swamp frequented by geese and sandhill cranes. If two voters come to her house at the same time, they sit on opposite corners of her kitchen table while Hookstead waits for them in the living room, near a mounted buck that her husband killed with a bow.
It’s a laid-back setting, Hookstead said — one where voters can both cast a ballot and talk about the price of corn.
When she started her job, things worked differently. There wasn’t much early absentee voting, and almost every voter cast a ballot on Election Day, hand-marking the ballots and dropping them into several wooden boxes at the town hall. Hookstead would unpack the ballots at the end of the night and hand-count for several hours.
Now, electronic tabulators and shorter ballots have sped things up. Even so, the job has grown more complicated — especially as election rules have shifted in recent years. Hookstead said she’s been frustrated by rapidly changing election rules since 2020, particularly when they don’t seem to follow clear logic. She pointed to one rule blocking voters from returning their elderly parents’ ballots, with only limited exceptions.
That’s where the county support system comes in.
Tollefson, the county clerk, notifies Hookstead and other clerks of new rules and guidelines — sometimes before the Wisconsin Elections Commission does — and always makes herself available for questions.
“I have told Lisa that when she leaves, I’ll be going,” Hookstead said.
New Clinton clerk runs successful election after weeks of nerves
In the Clinton Town Hall, just off County Road X, Roehl-Wickingson this month was running her first election as town clerk. She spent the day answering questions from poll workers, working through new problems and greeting older residents curious about the new person running their elections.
“I’ve been nervous all day,” she said, as she sat in the clerk’s office on Election Day with paperwork instructing her what to do at every step. She added that each time her chief inspector comes around to ask her a question, “I think, please let it be easy.”
Roehl-Wickingson was a longtime General Motors employee, working at the Janesville plant as an assembly worker until its mass layoffs in late 2008. She then worked as a union representative at a GM plant in Kansas City, where part of her job was spent registering union workers to vote and getting out the vote. She retired in 2024, wanting to get back home to her family in Rock County.
But retiring doesn’t mean she’s “ready to sit still in the rocking chair,” Roehl-Wickingson said from her office, where she sat beneath a street sign reading “Clerk Way.” She shuffled through stacks of paper, checking lists, double-checking them, pausing only to answer a question before returning to the lists.
When her daughter told her about the clerk opening, she felt she was the right person to take it on. Roehl-Wickingson said her position as a union rep prepared her for the contentious election landscape.
“I won’t say I’m thrilled to death about it, but I knew the atmosphere,” she said. “I don’t have anything to hide.”
Even so, the lead-up to Election Day was consuming. She said she barely slept the night before, instead rereading the election manual again and again, afraid she might miss something.
“My husband was like, ‘You’re gonna get sick,’ because I’ve been nervous the last couple of weeks and running ragged, making sure I had everything,” she said.
By early afternoon on Election Day, Tim Tollefson had turned up to meet with Roehl-Wickingson. He was making his way around the county to check on new clerks, a task he took on after his wife encouraged him to help mentor the wave of new clerks.
Much of the job, he said, is procedural, not entirely different from managing inventory at his former job as a manager at the outdoor recreation retailer Gander Mountain. Tollefson said some bits came easy for him, and the rest came with time. Two years, he said, is around how long it can take to start feeling like you have a grip on the role.
Until then, it can be overwhelming.
Both Tollefsons have been essential to her success, Roehl-Wickingson said. Without the support system, she said she would have felt lost doing things like compiling the town budget.
“You definitely need guidance,” she said. “You just don’t know what you don’t know,” she said.
That guidance extends beyond any one person. Over time, Roehl-Wickingson said, the job has started to make more sense — in part because of formal training, but just as much because of the network of clerks across the county.
“If (Lisa) didn’t pull us together, I’m not sure we would have that on our own,” she said.
By Election Day, Roehl-Wickingson had done everything she could to prepare. Too nervous to set up the polling place the day before, she went in on the Saturday before Election Day, spending hours making sure every table, sign and voting booth was exactly where it needed to be.
As the day wound down, she glanced at the analog clock on the wall: just before 8 p.m.
The room had emptied. No last-minute voters came through the door.
When the clock struck the hour, her chief inspector closed the polls.
There was plenty left for Roehl-Wickingson to do. But first, she checked the numbers — ballots cast versus the number of voters checked in.
Both were 225.
“I’m so glad,” she said, thanking her chief inspector.
For all her nerves, the first outing of Roehl-Wickingson’s late-blooming career as an election official was a success.
“At times, it’s very consuming and daunting and overwhelming, but at the same token, today, I feel kind of a sense of excitement,” she said. “And it’s rewarding to know that you’ve been a part of it, and you put it together, and you’ve been that cog in the wheel.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court was scheduled to hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case brought by a conservative group that could determine whether sensitive information about people judged mentally incapable of voting is a public record.
It’s the second time justices are hearing arguments in this case, which previously had been caught up in conflicting opinions issued by two of the state’s appeals court districts. It also became an attack point used by liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor in the most recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which she won by 20 points. Her opponent, Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, wrote an opinion supportive of the conservative group’s position, which was unusual because it contradicted another appeals court ruling in a separate case on the same issue.
The key question before justices on Tuesday is whether the information in Notices of Voting Eligibility should be publicly accessible. Courts send those forms to election officials after a judge in a guardianship case determines someone is not competent to cast a ballot. State law says “the fact that an individual has been found incompetent … is accessible to any person who demonstrates to the custodian of the records a need for that information.”.
The Wisconsin Voter Alliance is a conservative group led by Ron Heuer, who worked on the state’s partisan review of the 2020 presidential election results conducted by former Justice Michael Gableman. The alliance filed lawsuits in 13 counties arguing that access to the information about voters who have been judged incompetent would show inconsistencies with the state’s voter rolls. Gableman’s investigation ended ignominiously, and he’s now facing a three-year suspension of his law license for his unprofessional conduct.
Heuer said he “never expected” the high court to take the case back on appeal.
“We are well within our bounds here to have access to that data,” he said.
Ron Heuer, president of Wisconsin Voter Alliance, is seen at a Sept. 29, 2022, Thomas More Society fundraiser in Okauchee, Wis. (Matthew DeFour / Wisconsin Watch)
In 2023, a review conducted by the Dane County clerk at the request of Wisconsin Watch found 95 individuals who previously cast ballots despite a court declaring them unable to do so, though administrative error and people moving to different municipalities explained many of those cases, rather than any kind of intentional voter fraud. Election officials and state lawmakers previously identified a need for a legally binding process to track adjudicated incompetent voters, though no bill has passed to fix the holes in the system.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission also conducted a review of adjudicated incompetent voters, which was completed in 2023, and communicated with local register in probate offices to make sure records were accurate ahead of the 2024 elections, said spokesperson Emilee Miklas.
Miklas declined to comment on the Wisconsin Voter Alliance case, but noted the commission has previously asked for legislative changes to better track those voters.
Republicans this session proposed a bill that would have required circuit courts to notify the Wisconsin Elections Commission by email about a determination of voter incompetency and then the commission would have had three business days to update that person’s voter status and notify a local clerk. The bill passed the Assembly in November, but died after it did not receive a hearing in the Senate. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a bill with similar language and other provisions during the 2023 legislative session because other elements in the bill could cause ballots with minor errors to be discarded.
Disability advocates remain concerned that the details on Notices of Voting Eligibility forms, if made public, can put already vulnerable populations at risk of exploitations or scams. The forms sought by the WVA can include a person’s name, address and date of birth.
“We already know more about them from the fact that they’ve been found incompetent than you know about the average person you pass on the street,” said Polly Shoemaker, an attorney with the Wisconsin Guardianship Support Center. “So there’s that, and then there’s the fact that it’s these folks who can be very easily taken advantage of.”
How we got here
The high court last held oral arguments in September 2024 following conflicting opinions issued in separate but similar cases in the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals and the Waukesha-based 2nd District.
Justices in January 2025 only reached an opinion on the 2nd District’s decision, which was released after the 4th District’s ruling was published as precedent. The high court did not rule last year on whether the Notices of Voting Eligibility are accessible as public records.
The 4th District in November 2023 affirmed a Juneau County decision that the sensitive information about those voters is not open for public disclosure. A judicial committee on Dec. 21, 2023, published the 4th District’s opinion as precedent.
Then, on Dec. 27, 2023, the 2nd District ruled that the WVA had a right to the records, overturning a Walworth County court’s decision and clashing with the precedent set in the 4th District case. Lazar and Appeals Court Judge Shelley Grogan made up the majority with liberal Judge Lisa Neubauer dissenting.
The 2nd District revised the appeals decision in March 2025 after the state Supreme Court’s opinion, and the WVA petitioned for justices to hear the case again.
But the 2nd District opinion, written by Lazar, became a point of attack in the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court race. In the only debate ahead of the election, Taylor used the case to support her claim that Lazar “brought an extreme right-wing agenda to the bench.”
“She has refused to follow precedent,” Taylor said. “She ruled to release personal, private voting information to a right-wing group that tried to overturn our election. Thank goodness she was reversed by the state Supreme Court.”
In addition to the Wisconsin Voter Alliance case, the high court was also hearing oral arguments on Tuesday in another case on whether a child who was injured during birth has the right to pursue legal action against a doctor.
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A 2023 report found Wisconsin needs around 200,000 new housing units to meet demand by 2030.
Forward Analytics, the nonpartisan research arm of the Wisconsin Counties Association, said in the 2023 report that Wisconsin needs between 140,000 and 227,000 new housing units.
Those differing estimates are based on population changes, migration to Wisconsin and other trends, such as whether young adults choose to live with parents. Forward Analytics concluded the total need is “200,000 or more” units.
The League of Wisconsin Municipalities, Wisconsin Realtors Association and Wisconsin Builders Association cite that 200,000 estimate as part of their joint effort to address the shortage.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2026 housing profile for Wisconsin found the state needs to make 118,000 more homes available and affordable for the lowest-income households.
The needed housing represents about 7% of the state’s 2.8 million housing units, according to Census figures.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The filmmakers worked with a University of Minnesota ecohydrologist, Dr. Emily Fairfax, as a science expert, even naming a key character for her (Dr. Sam — for Samantha Emily Fairfax), per Minnesota Public Radio. She visited the studio several times and led a research trip to Colorado to help the team learn more about beavers and their habitat.
In that MPR story, Fairfax said Pixar did a good job showing how beavers can improve ecosystems with their dams.
“When you lose that beaver, you also lose the homes for the other animals, and I think that’s a message that not everybody really understands,” she told MPR. “If you trap a beaver out, if you remove its dam, you will take away a lot more than just the beaver from that ecosystem, whether you meant to or not.”
Researchers have identified Wisconsin as being among the top 10 states for biodiversity loss, largely due to climate change and animal overexploitation. But a vocal minority serving on a beaver advisory committee that is drafting recommendations for the state’s Department of Natural Resources believes it’s time for a change: Beavers should cease to be framed as a nuisance species and instead as an ecosystem engineer that creates wetlands. That can help reduce some of the worst effects of climate change: droughts, floods and fire.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s wildlife services program lethally removes beavers in Wisconsin and other states throughout the Midwest. In Wisconsin, wildlife services staff trapped about 2,200 beavers in 2025 and removed more than 800 dams.
The majority of beaver committee members — mostly composed of state and federal employees and interest groups — support the status quo. Those who do not have criticized the committee as stacking the deck against people who would advocate for substantive changes in policy. This makes, they say, the outcome a seemingly foregone conclusion. Some committee members have said a survey released to gauge the public’s tolerance of the critters frames beavers as pests and fails to mention the effectiveness of coexistence methods.
The Pixar movie “Hoppers” depicts the benefits of beavers. (Courtesy of Disney)
As Wisconsin Watch previously reported, the state has an arduous and often expensive permitting process to install flow control devices that can lower water levels in beaver ponds or prevent the blockage of culverts. That can usher landowners toward lethal solutions, the use of which Wisconsin law liberally allows.
People may hunt or trap beavers and remove their dams on their property without obtaining a license or reporting their catch. In fact, there are risks to ignoring one’s beavers.
People who own or lease beaver-occupied land and don’t allow their neighbors to remove them are liable for damages. Additionally, if a beaver dam causes damage to a neighboring property, the injured party may enter the property where the dam lies and remove it without being charged with trespassing.
Committee members petitioned to have Fairfax address the group. She stressed beavers’ role as a “keystone” species, on whom many plants and animals depend.
“It is harder to coexist,” she said. “But in many cases, it is worth it.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
For Samantha Gamble and Ishon Arnold, this week’s rain only exacerbated issues they were already having in their home.
Despite reporting their unsafe living conditions in their Lincoln Creek home a few weeks ago, they have had rain pouring in every room for the past two nights. Their upstairs ceiling buckled, and they have buckets everywhere.
The ceiling fell inside of Samantha Gamble and Ishon Arnold’s Lincoln Creek home. (PrincessSafiya Byers / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
“The first night it got really bad,” said Arnold at a news conference Thursday. “Then the second night it got worse.”
They are not alone.
Severe thunderstorms and flooding across Milwaukee this week have left some residents with waterlogged cars, no food, damaged homes and a difficult cleanup.
Another round of severe thunderstorms is forecast for Milwaukee County on Friday night, and a flood watch for flash flooding is scheduled from 1 p.m. Friday to 7 a.m. Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
Although the full extent of the damage is still unknown, local government leaders and neighborhood groups are preparing to help with the aftermath. Other Milwaukeeans are looking ahead to see how these disasters can be avoided in the future.
Homes near the intersection of West Pierce Street and South 23rd Street where heavy rainfall caused flooding on Thursday, April 16, 2026, in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Neighbors helping neighbors
VIA Community Development Corp., which works on community, housing and economic development projects in Silver City, Clarke Square, Layton Park and Burnham Park, reported several Milwaukee neighborhood areas had experienced flooding.
“Our team is actively connecting with neighbors and business owners to check on their homes, storefronts and properties to better understand the extent of the impacts and identify where support may be needed most,” said Christian Oliva, marketing communications manager of VIA CDC.
Both VIA CDC and Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, a community and social justice organization focused in the Metcalfe Park neighborhood, encourage neighbors and business owners to report any issues — including flooding, property damage, power outages and fallen trees — to the Milwaukee Department of Public Works, their alderperson’s office and their local neighborhood organization to track damage.
Melody McCurtis, the deputy director of Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, said neighbors experienced flooding in streets and basements, cars getting stuck in high water, property damage from wind and mudslides in some areas.
“Flooded streets and detours have made it difficult for our team and neighbors to physically reach residents who need support, limiting our ability to respond as quickly and directly as we would like,” she said.
People ride scooters toward several stuck cars underneath the railroad crossing bridge on West Burleigh Street after heavy rainfall caused flooding throughout Milwaukee on Thursday, April 16, 2026, in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Residents who receive FoodShare benefits and lost food because of the storm may be eligible for replacement benefits. To submit for the reimbursement, FoodShare recipients should fill out the Request for Replacement FoodShare and/or Summer EBT Benefits form.
Requests must be submitted within 10 days of the weather event.
Help available in Amani neighborhood
Amanda Clark with the Dominican Center, which has served residents in Amani for over 30 years, said Amani residents should reach out if they need help.
“We may not have all the answers, but we’ll do our best to assist and connect residents to resources,” she said. “They don’t have to try to figure this out alone.”
How HACM residents can get help
Folks living in Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee properties can notify their property manager about any issues. If they aren’t available, then they can contact the 24/7 public safety dispatch center at 414-286-5100.
IMPACT 211 connects residents to services like housing, food, mental health support, and crisis counseling. It is supporting the Milwaukee County Office of Emergency Management by collecting reports of property damage caused by flooding such as water/sewage in basements, collapsed walls and lightning-related incidents.
“IMPACT has turned on our local disaster switch this morning as Milwaukee County is now activated for disaster relating to the flooding event,” said Vickie Boneck, the director of marketing and communications with IMPACT 211, on Thursday.
Harold Lewis, owner of Ready to Go Towing, attempts to move a stuck car out from underneath the railroad crossing bridge on West Burleigh Street after heavy rainfall caused flooding throughout Milwaukee on Thursday, April 16, 2026, in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Looking ahead
Oby Nwabuzor is the founder of Envision Growth, a public health-driven real estate development firm. She put together a legislative framework that breaks down five specific actions organized by what can happen right now at the Common Council level with no state approval needed, what can move this budget cycle at the county and state level and what needs to be built and introduced in 2027.
“The storm is weather, but who floods, how badly, and whether it happens again at the same scale is a policy problem, and we have the data to prove it,” she said in a Facebook post. “What we do not have is legislation, and that is what I put together.”
Metcalfe Park Community Bridges is mobilizing support to repair the Northstar Healing Space’s fence, which was destroyed in the storms, and gather clean-out supplies, air purifiers, dehumidifiers and volunteers to help reduce neighborhood residents’ exposure to mold.
Recovering from vehicle damage
Since Monday, Milwaukee residents have faced dangerous commutes as some were forced to leave their vehicles stranded while others may have been trapped inside their vehicles because of flooding caused by recurring heavy storms.
According to the Milwaukee Fire Department, the North Side of the city was impacted the most, and the fire department responded to approximately 50 calls for water rescues because of submerged vehicles on April 14.
If you are driving and happen to come across a street with flooding, the Milwaukee Fire Department and Tiffany Shepherd, marketing and communications officer for the city of Milwaukee, urge drivers to avoid driving through flood waters.
If a driver’s vehicle is stuck in the middle of an intersection, Shepherd said to report it by calling the Department of Public Works at 414-286-2489 so that a representative can assess the situation and possibly relocate the vehicle.
What to do if your vehicle is under water
When your vehicle has been submerged in water, the American Automobile Association recommends drivers to never start their vehicle as its main parts like the battery, transmission and engine are damaged, even though they may not look like it.
“Unless every part is thoroughly cleaned and dried, inside and out, problems caused by corrosion can crop up weeks or even months after the flooding,” AAA said.
It’s best to have your vehicle inspected and repaired right away by AAA or another auto repair shop of your choice.
Cars drive through a flooded South 43rd Street across from Jackson Park as heavy rainfall caused flooding throughout Milwaukee on Thursday, April 16, 2026. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Navigating automobile insurance
Drivers should also contact their insurance company immediately about comprehensive coverage in their auto insurance policy to determine next steps with repairs and costs.
Comprehensive coverage is a type of insurance that pays for the damage done to your vehicle like flooding, fire, theft and more.
The cost of repairing flood damage can easily exceed a car’s value, depending on the make and model, according to AAA.
Dealing with basement flooding
Department of Neighborhood Services Commissioner Jezamil Arroyo-Vega gave tips for what to do if your basement flooded:
If you’re a renter, call your property manager or landlord first. If they don’t respond, then call the Department of Neighborhood Services.
High-level waters in basements can affect electrical breakers and can be dangerous for residents. Do not enter a flooded basement with electrical appliances until those waters have lowered.
Don’t use any electrical equipment that was submerged in water, including the water heater, washing machine, dryer or any other appliances in the affected area. These can create serious hazards including a fire risk.
Once the water has lowered and it’s safe to enter your basement, document the damage by taking photos for insurance.
Don’t attempt to restore your own breaker box or water heater. Call a licensed electrician or plumber.
Check your house for structural damages. Signs of a compromised foundation include various sizes of cracks. A foundation contractor can help identify problems and create a repair plan. Search for contractors approved to work in the city of Milwaukee here.
If you experienced more catastrophic foundation damage, such as a wall collapse, call the Department of Neighborhood Services immediately. The department will send out an inspector as soon as possible. Not only is this necessary for determining the safety of your home, but the inspection could be necessary for insurance claims.
PrincessSafiya Byers, Alex Klaus, Meredith Melland, Chesnie Wardell and Jonathan Aguilar contributed to this story.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Brenda Hines still likes to refer to her son, Donovan Hines, as her “favorite son,” the same way he liked to refer to himself before he was killed on Nov. 13, 2017.
Donovan was driving near North 29th Street and West Hampton Avenue in Milwaukee when he was struck by a stray bullet and crashed through a fence and into a home in the 4700 block of North 29th Street.
In the months that followed, Brenda Hines said she sank into such a deep, dark grief that she cried daily, unable to eat or work. She even contemplated taking her own life.
“It took me a while to get out of the state of shock,” Hines said. “It was very difficult, spiritually, for me to come back.”
Now, almost a decade later, she has turned that pain into hope by building The Donovan Hines Foundation of Exuberance Co., a Milwaukee nonprofit that offers consistent, community-based support for families grieving violent loss.
Brenda Hines, president and CEO of The Donovan Hines Foundation of Exuberance Co., sits at a desk in her office.
“Exuberance means vibrant. And that’s what Donovan was. He always came out with a smile on his face,” Hines said.
After the unexpected loss of her son, Hines connected with the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Project UJIMA, a collaborative, multidisciplinary program geared to stop violent behavior patterns and reduce the number of children hurt by violence. Meeting with Project UJIMA once a month was helpful and inspired Hines to begin her own grief group that met more frequently.
“Being a person of color, we don’t seek therapy, and we have so much trauma, so much violence going on,” Hines said.
Hines hosted her grief group weekly for about a year, with the support of the late Bishop Sedgwick Daniels of Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ.
“That was the beginning of my healing process,” Hines said. “Not only listening to someone else, but being there for myself.”
A whiteboard full of encouraging words and prayer hangs on a wall in Brenda Hines’ office.
Seven months after her loss, Hines was asked to continue her work with The Salvation Army Chaplaincy Program, in partnership with the Milwaukee Police Department. She was asked to serve as a chaplain on a case that hit close to home, helping a family who had just lost their son, who was the same age as Donovan, to suicide.
“It gave me something to hope for,” Hines said. “That’s when I started coming back out and decided to start having empowerment groups and transformation stuff for grief.”
Ever since then, she’s kept going, growing her nonprofit in any way she can, whether it be through the Summer Meal Program for children, the emergency food pantry or stockboxes for older adults.
Brenda Hines, president and CEO of The Donovan Hines Foundation of Exuberance Co., and James Ferguson, senior partner and chief operating officer at Kingdom Partner Alliance, pose for a photograph with a pallet of stockboxes.
Henry Cox loads his truck with stockboxes. A stockbox contains healthy food provided by the Hunger Task Force.
“I just kept going and going. I was like, ‘OK, I’m still not doing enough,” Hines said. “The more I help others, it seems like, the more it helps me.”
Hines, along with several other Milwaukee nonprofits, hosted a survivor-led candlelight vigil to join a National Moment of Remembrance in December. The vigil centered on healing and the belief that everyone deserves the freedom to live.
Brenda Hines, founder of The Donovan Hines Foundation of Exuberance Co., leads a conversation during a candlelight vigil for those who have been victims of violence in Milwaukee.
Candles with photographs of those who were killed by violence in Milwaukee sit on a table during a candlelight vigil for the National Moment of Remembrance hosted by The Donovan Hines Foundation of Exuberance Co., and several other nonprofits, on Dec. 10, 2025.
On the hardest days, what keeps Hines going is “God first, my family and the foundation.”
Brenda Hines, president and CEO of The Donovan Hines Foundation of Exuberance Co., poses for a portrait in front of a Bible verse at Kingdom Partner Alliance.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Researchers say this means there could be a critical but often overlooked window for intervention.
It also suggests there is a group of people who can be targeted for various forms of novel intervention, the authors of the study conclude.
Those more likely to report thoughts of shooting others were individuals who are younger, male, Black, living in the Midwest and in urban areas, according to the study.
For Vaun Mayes, a community organizer who also does violence interruption for the city of Milwaukee’s Department of Community Wellness and Safety, the study’s conclusions ring true.
“There are definitely usually signs of escalation prior to the results we see,” Mayes said. “Young people most definitely give notice before violence, and Black folks specifically culturally do as well.”
Millions report thoughts about shooting someone
The study found that roughly 8.5 million people said they had seriously thought about shooting someone in the year before being asked. Over a lifetime, that number rises to more than 19 million.
Although most never acted on their thoughts, the study estimated that 1.5 million U.S. adults had brought a gun to a specific location with the intention of shooting someone.
Fewer than 1% temporarily handed their firearm over during a time of crisis.
The study found that gun owners are not the only people who are at risk of using a firearm, but those in the vicinity of gun owners as well.
In other words, access to a firearm, rather than ownership, is a key predictor.
A temporary crisis and fatal outcome
James Bigham, a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, pays a lot of attention to when and how firearms are accessed, especially during times of poor mental health or mental health crisis.
Access to a gun can turn a temporary crisis into a fatal outcome, Bigham said.
“If we could shift our culture where it’s normal … to transfer firearms during a time of crisis, we could really reduce the rates of death,” Bigham said.
Mayes said it’s because of the gap between consideration and action that violence interrupters can intervene to deescalate a situation.
The authors of the study suggest this is especially true in states with red flag laws.
Red flag laws, also known as Extreme Risk Prevention Orders, allow judges to issue court orders to temporarily restrict access to guns by individuals who could pose a threat to themselves or others.
More than 20 states have a version of a red flag law, but Wisconsin does not.
For those who are interested in places to safely store a gun, the Wisconsin Gun Shop Project’s “Live Today – Put It Away” program partners with participating gun shops – including several in Milwaukee County – to provide firearm safety information and temporary off-site storage options, often for a low fee.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
A $458 million tax incremental financing district the city of Port Washington approved in November 2025 for a massive data center will not be altered. However, future TIFs could allow voter input if a judge sides with voters instead of business and trade groups.
In an April 7 referendum, Port Washington voters approved giving residents a say in approving tax incremental financing districts of more than $10 million. That only applies to future projects, not the $458 million TIF the city already approved for the data center for OpenAI and Oracle.
What’s more, a judge reviewing a legal challenge from business and trade groups could strike down the referendum.
The bottom line: Voters might be allowed to give input on approving TIFs, but the ordinance is facing legal challenge, is not set in stone and doesn’t affect the data center already under construction.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
An attorney for the Republican Party of Wisconsin told local officials ahead of a key vote last week that Madison should not count 23 absentee ballots from last week’s Supreme Court election that arrived at polling places after they had closed — a dispute that could set up a legal challenge.
The GOP weighed in hours before the Madison Board of Canvassers voted unanimously on Friday to count the affected ballots. On Monday, the Dane County Board of Canvassers followed suit, voting 2-1 to count the ballots.
Election officials make these judgment calls all the time, and, historically, courts have allowed them. Officials are routinely called upon to address whether a witness address is complete, whether a damaged ballot can still be counted, or the like. These issues are usually resolved locally and without controversy.
But disputes like this — over how to interpret the law and whether late-arriving ballots should count — are harder to contain. Experts say leaving those decisions to individual counties risks inconsistent outcomes across Wisconsin, especially in a high-stakes election season.
Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA, said that kind of patchwork approach is a recipe for conflict.
“This is not tenable in the current political atmosphere,” Hasen said.
Dane County votes to count ballots despite GOP opposition
The kind of disagreement worrying Hasen was on full display at Monday’s meeting of the Dane County Board of Canvassers. Two canvassers said there was a clear answer about what to do with the ballots — but they arrived at different ones.
“I don’t think this is hard,” Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said.
“I don’t either,” said canvasser Mike Willett, a former Dane County supervisor and a Republican appointee on the board.
McDonell voted to count the ballots, while Willett voted against it, saying the board had previously rejected late-arriving ballots and he didn’t want to create exceptions.
Erik Paulson, the other Democrat on the board, sided with McDonell to count the ballots.
University of Wisconsin-Madison student Cassie Semenas casts a ballot during the spring election at Lowell Center residence hall on April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Republican opposition was already taking shape before the vote.Emails obtained by Votebeat show that Nicholas Boerke, an outside attorney for the Wisconsin GOP, urged city and county officials on Friday not to count the ballots.
“We recognize this situation may have resulted from an unfortunate logistical failure. However, administrative error does not create statutory authority that otherwise does not exist,” he wrote.
“Voting absentee is a privilege granted by the Legislature that comes with inherent risks and the election day deadline for the receipt, processing, tabulation, and counting is mandatory,” he continued.
The canvass, Boerke told officials, was a “ministerial process, not a vehicle for processing absentee ballots” that weren’t received by the time dictated in law, “nor a mechanism to conduct an unauthorized recount.”
Amber McReynolds, an assistant attorney for Madison, responded that counting the ballots was in line with court decisions and past Wisconsin Elections Commission recommendations.
Boerke responded, telling officials the GOP maintains “that the statutory language is clear — absentee ballots that are not timely delivered to polling locations before 8 p.m. may not be counted.”
Boerke didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the GOP would sue Madison.
Error led to 23 Madison absentee ballots arriving late
The ballots at issue arrived at the city clerk’s office on Monday, April 6. The absentee ballot courier carrying the ballots left a city facility at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 7, to deliver ballots to 17 polling places, but the courier did not make it to the last few polling places until after the 8 p.m. deadline.
Officials said these 23 ballots were correctly, legally cast and checked into the pollbooks just like any other absentee ballot — the only problem was that that happened after polls formally closed.
Madison Clerk Lydia McComas said it was a critical error to put just one person in charge of delivering ballots to so many polling places. Madison is the largest city in Wisconsin that still chooses to count absentee ballots at individual precincts rather than at a central location — a decision that requires ballots to be transported across the city on Election Day.
It remains unclear, however, why the ballots departed from the city’s facility so late in the day. Across the state, clerks design their Election Day logistics to ensure ballots are delivered by that cutoff. McComas said it was her and her staff’s understanding that the law required ballots to be delivered to polling places by 8 p.m.
There appears to be little appetite among clerks to formally extend that deadline.
“I do not plan to take advantage of whatever ruling comes here tonight,” McComas said ahead of the county vote, implying that she wouldn’t take advantage of the canvassing board’s leniency and plan for future late deliveries accordingly.
McDonell said rejecting the ballots would penalize voters for something outside their control. “And I think that’s very problematic,” he said.
Disagreement over Wisconsin election law is ripe for legal challenges
The statute at issue in this situation says ballots must be returned so that they’re delivered to polling places “no later than 8 p.m. on election day.”
“If the municipal clerk receives an absentee ballot on election day,” the law continues, “the clerk shall secure the ballot and cause the ballot to be delivered to the polling place serving the elector’s residence before 8 p.m. Any ballot not mailed or delivered as provided in this subsection may not be counted.”
At the county-level meeting on Monday, county attorney David Gault, arguing that the ballots should be counted, took the position that the law does not apply here because the ballots were received before Election Day.
“The clear intent of everything in the statutes,” he said, is not to punish the voter for mistakes made by election officials.
“That’s certainly an interpretation,” said Willett, the conservative member of the county canvassing board. “When we start making these exceptions, these exceptions just grow.”
What’s clear to Bryna Godar — a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative — is that the statute is “ambiguous about this type of situation.” She said one part of the law appears to govern voters returning ballots on time, while another addresses ballots received on Election Day — leaving situations like this unclear.
“Because there is no voter fault here from what we know so far, there would be good reason to still count those ballots,” she said, adding that rejecting them could raise constitutional concerns.
At the city meeting on Friday, McReynolds noted that courts ruled in the 1970s and 1980s that ballots should be counted as long as there’s “substantial compliance” with election laws and no evidence of “connivance, fraud, or undue influence.”
In 1985, however, the Legislature passed a law emphasizing that absentee voting is a privilege exercised outside the usual safeguards of the polling place and that ballots not meeting legal requirements “may not be counted.”
Boerke cited that law in his exchange with the city and county, as conservatives have done repeatedly in issues of absentee ballot missteps and controversies.
Still, the courts have continued to show flexibility. In a 2004 dispute, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that “the failure on the part of the election officials to perform their duties should not deprive the voters of their constitutional right to vote.”
Lawyers often say that it’s more important for a law to be certain than for it to be right, said Hasen, the UCLA professor. Uncertainty — especially when there are good-faith arguments on either side — is one of the most dangerous situations in election law.
“That just creates all kinds of issues of equal protection and due process and election fairness,” he said. “So the more that these issues can be resolved one way or the other, not in the heat of a very close election, the better it is.”
If an election hinges on ballots like these, he said, a lawsuit is all but inevitable.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Data centers have made headlines and influenced the political debate across Wisconsin this year.
That’s why earlier this year we launched Data(Centers)Watch as a regular feature in Forward, our free Wisconsin government and politics newsletter that comes out on Mondays. Every week since mid-February, reporter Tom Kertscher has provided tidbits of data center news, including the latest from city council and county board meetings where land use decisions are being made amid public outcry, national industry news and recent polling about the issue.
To get these data center updates each Monday, please subscribe. Here’s a look at the updates that appeared in Forward since March.
April 13, 2026
From ballot box to court: The reportedly first data center referendum in the U.S. could make large-scale developments more difficult in Port Washington. Approved last Tuesday by voters in the Ozaukee County city, it was pushed by opponents of the $15 billion data center under construction there. The city now must get referendum approval to create any tax incremental finance district — a business development tool — worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the data center. Attention now turns to the courts. A hearing is set for Thursday on a business-backed lawsuit seeking to block the referendum from taking effect.
Second poll: Costs outweigh benefits: Some 70% of registered Wisconsin voters believe the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits, according to a Wisconsin Conservation Voters poll taken in February and released last week. The same result was found in a February Marquette Law School poll.
Add-on data center approved: With a $1 billion data center under construction, Beaver Dam has approved a second, much smaller, $40 million data center.
Data center opponent elected: Menomonie City Council member Matthew Crowe, an opponent of a data center proposed for Menomonie, unseated incumbent Mayor Randy Knaack in Tuesday’s election. Crowe cited lack of transparency over the data center proposal as a key to his win. Menomonie is among several Wisconsin communities that signed nondisclosure agreements to hide details of the proposals.
ICYMI: We’ve been discussing our coverage of data center secrecy deals. Recent spots: WUWM radio’s “Lake Effect” show (segment starts at 11:15), Civic Media’s “Nite Lite” show (starts at 23:30) and the Ventures of the Land podcast. We reported that Wisconsin companies are part of a coalition asking a federal agency to pause competitive bidding for electrical transmission projects needed to serve data centers.
Reporter Tom Kertscher is seen at the Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service all-staff meeting held in Madison, Wis., on March 5, 2026. (Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch)
April 6, 2026
Cure for blight? The $8 billion data center proposed for Janesville is unique in that it would involve a $30 million cleanup of the contaminated General Motors plant, which shut down in 2008. The cleanup cost has led 200 potential developments of different types to walk away, the energy and environment-focused E&E News reports. Also noteworthy is this quote from the city manager about power: “One of the most glaring needs that has not yet been addressed is statewide legislation to clarify that data centers pay for 100% of their costs.”
Referendum on Tuesday’s ballot: A referendum that could make large-scale developments more difficult is on Tuesday’s election ballots in Port Washington. It was pushed by opponents of the $15 billion data center under construction there. If the referendum is approved, the city would have to get referendum approval to create any tax incremental finance district — a business development tool — worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the data center.
Limiting public comment: The city council in Beaver Dam, where one hyperscale data center is under construction and a smaller one is proposed, limited the public comment at its meeting last week to 20 minutes. That irked some data center opponents because the period is usually open-ended, though each individual is asked to speak for two minutes. Mayor Bobbi Marck told Wisconsin Watch several items were likely to involve lengthy discussion and the comment limit was meant to use the council’s time effectively. All 10 speakers criticized data centers and the council, including Jackson Brook, 18, who said the council made data center decisions too quickly and without enough public input.
Legislative intent/inaction on NDAs: Commenting on the Legislature ending its 2025-26 session without approving any data center bills, Milwaukee data center attorney Rod Carter cited legislation that would have prohibited local governments from signing nondisclosure agreements with data center developers. “The legislative intent was clear: the era of secret data center deals in Wisconsin should be over,” he wrote. “Whether that intent becomes law remains an open question.”
March 30
Town chair calls cops on petitioner: In Grant County, which is one location being considered for a $1 billion data center, Waterloo town chair Chad Brinkman called the sheriff’s office March 21 asking that resident Richard Stelpflug be removed from public property. Stelpflug was collecting signatures on a petition seeking to have the town authorize “village powers” — which the neighboring town of Cassville did March 12 to try to get more control over any data center proposal. A sheriff’s deputy informed Brinkman that Stelpflug had a First Amendment right to circulate a petition on public property — which happened to be the Waterloo Township Shop and Hall. As it turns out, the town already adopted village powers in 1965. An update on where Grant County stands among sites being considered is expected soon.
Rock County also signed NDA: A Rock County Board committee voted down a resolution prohibiting county employees from signing nondisclosure agreements. Pointing to data center NDAs, the resolution cited concerns “across Wisconsin that the signing of an NDA without the input of the public and elected officials is unethical and risks the public trust.” Wisconsin Watch reported that the town of Beloit in Rock County signed an NDA in February 2025, more than a year before announcing this month that a data center has been proposed. Last week, Rock County responded to a Wisconsin Watch public records request showing it signed an NDA with the same company, Delaware-based Cambrin LLC, in January 2025. Janesville, about 10 miles northeast of the town of Beloit, has also signed a data center NDA, with Colorado-based Viridian Acquisitions.
Alliant Energy’s record stock price: Madison-basedAlliant Energy’s record-high closing stock price reached $73.03 on March 16. The main reason, according to The Motley Fool: an influx of data centers in the Midwest, including one under construction in Beaver Dam.
AI fear fuels opposition? Some opposition to data centers might stem from uneasiness about artificial intelligence. The Marquette Law School Poll found 69% of Wisconsin registered voters surveyed said AI is being developed too quickly. The same percentage said the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits.
ICYMI: Wisconsin Watch looked at competition over who builds out the grid as data centers demand more power.
March 23
No data center legislation: The Legislature considered a number of data center bills but concluded its work in the 2025-26 session without passing any of them. That means data center legislation won’t come up again until the Legislature’s next regular session begins in January. One of the bills, to ban nondisclosure agreements between data center developers and local governments, was introduced by Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie. He told Wisconsin Watch his bill was crowded out by other priorities, but that he’s hopeful it will eventually pass. Also disappointed was GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. He said at an event that requiring data centers to pay for their own electricity, as some legislation would require, is “probably an 80% issue for the public.”
Opposition in Grant County: Cassville township residents voted 54-3 this month to authorize “village powers.” The move gives the township more control over matters such as zoning. It was sought by residents who want more control over any data center proposal. A developer has included Cassville, in the Driftless Area in southwest Wisconsin, as one possible site for a planned $1 billion data center.
ICYMI: Microsoft announced it would stop doing NDAs with local governments amid growing focus on local governments and data center secrecy. We explored data centers’ job implications, particularly for developers, construction and operations. We also fact-checked a claim that Mount Pleasant’s massive data center will use relatively little water. Go here to see our data centers coverage in one place.
March 16
‘Bulletproof’ vest in Port: Port Washington police have been called about a dozen times to Lighthouse, the Vantage-OpenAI-Oracle data center campus, since the construction groundbreaking Dec. 17. Police reports show the largest number involve complaints of either trespassing or excessive construction noise. But on Dec. 26, a security officer on the site reported being told by a motorist she “hopes the vest they wear is really bulletproof.” Police called the motorist and left a voicemail message, according to the report. The motorist did not return calls and emails from Wisconsin Watch.
‘Stranded assets’ targeted: One of the Democratic candidates for governor, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, announced a plan to prohibit residential and other utility customers from having to cover the cost of “stranded assets” — power plants that have been shut down but on which debt is still owed. Wisconsin Watch reported in December that ratepayers owe $1 billion for stranded assets and that the rush to build more plants to serve data centers runs the risk of creating more stranded assets.
‘Stranded assets’ targeted II: In a model for state data center legislation, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Water Policy proposed making data center companies financially responsible for stranded assets. The companies would be required to post a bond.
Beaver Dam limits public comment: The city council in Beaver Dam, where one data center is under construction and another is proposed, is limiting to 20 minutes total the public comment at its meeting tonight. That raised concerns among data center opponents, some of whom packed a town hall meeting on data centers last week. Typically, the council’s public comment period is open-ended, though individuals are each asked to limit their remarks to two minutes. Mayor Bobbi Marck said several items are likely to involve lengthy discussion and the comment limit is meant to use the council’s time effectively. Ald. Nancy Wild said data center opponents have spoken at the previous eight council meetings. “I think we have been very reasonable,” she said.
March 9
Quietly, a possible Beloit data center: News of a possible data center in the town of Beloit comes eight months after the town quietly signed a predevelopment agreement. Last week, the town, saying it was responding to information “being disseminated” about a possible data center, announced it had begun “very preliminary discussions,” including signing the agreement. The town board in May approved negotiating a predevelopment agreement with Delaware-based Cambrin LLC, but the meeting minutes do not mention a data center. The predevelopment agreement, signed in July, also does not mention a data center. It says that the town will pursue a tax incremental district to finance infrastructure improvements that would be needed and that Cambrin agreed to reimburse the town up to $175,000 for preliminary work. “If the project actually moves forward, we would have a frank discussion with the developer about who should be paying for any improvements that are needed,” town administrator John Malizio told Wisconsin Watch. Newsreports indicate that Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, could be the data center operator.
Data centers’ $1 billion for Wisconsin: Even before the first hyperscale data center begins operation in Wisconsin, data centers have made an economic impact in the state. No comprehensive tally has been done. But just three Wisconsin companies have received more than $1 billion of business supplying data centers, and other companies are benefiting, too, Wisconsin Watch found. That’s separate from the economic impact from constructing data centers.
Electric-onnections: The data centers under construction in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington came together because a We Energies executive met the co-founder of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, which secures power and land for data centers, The New York Times reported. “We’ve got the site for you,” the executive said at a Chicago conference in 2021, proposing Mount Pleasant and, later, Port Washington.
March 2
Who pays for the power: The state Public Service Commission held a hearing last week on who will pay for providing the electricity needed to run the $1 billion data center being constructed in Beaver Dam. The center is owned by Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram. Opponents said the rate structure proposed by Alliant Energy doesn’t protect general ratepayers from bearing some of the costs. The same concerns have been raised to the PSC about We Energies’ proposed rates for data centers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington. Comments on the Alliant case can be submitted through March 9. That deadline was extended after Alliant agreed to remove some redactions it made in its application to the PSC.
Legislation delayed, in doubt: One bill on data centers might see action, but others are likely on ice now that the state Assembly has adjourned for the 2025-26 session. The Senate could still act on an Assembly-approved bill that seeks to limit how much general ratepayers can be charged by utilities for the cost of providing electricity to data centers. It’s likely that various bills that would prohibit local governments from signing nondisclosure agreements with data center developers won’t be considered again until a new Legislature convenes in January.
Blocking a possible data center: A move is afoot to block a possible data center in Grant County in southwest Wisconsin. Doug Schauff, the town chair in Cassville, said the town will hold a meeting March 12 on adopting “village powers.” That, in turn, would enable the town to create zoning that would regulate projects such as a data center. A data center developer has told the town it is considering the Cassville area, among other locations, for a possible $1 billion facility.
Port Washington referendum: An April 7 referendum in Port Washington pushed by data center opponents can proceed as scheduled, a judge ruled last week. Pro-business groups had sued to try to stop the vote. If the referendum is approved, the city would have to get referendum approval to create any future tax incremental finance district – a business development tool – worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the $15 billion Open AI/Oracle data center now under construction in Port Washington.
From DeForest to Iowa: Virginia-based QTS Data Centers will build in Iowa a data center it had planned for the Madison suburb of DeForest, according to Alliant Energy, which will supply the electricity. Amid community opposition, the $12 billion facility proposed for DeForest was abruptly dropped in January after Wisconsin Watch reported that village officials had worked on the proposal for months before announcing it to the public.
Voters down on data centers: Regardless of how much they have heard about data centers, most registered Wisconsin voters polled by Marquette Law School said the costs outweigh the benefits. Opposition was 74% among those who have heard a lot about data centers, 73% among those who had heard nothing at all and 68% who had heard a little.
Expect delays? Some 30-50% of data centers projected to open worldwide in 2026 could be delayed, according to the Sightline Climate research firm: Access to electricity is a key reason, and more data center operators are building their own power rather than relying on the grid.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Strong winds whipped around Doug Bartek, a fifth-generation farmer, as he headed into a grain bin to shovel soybeans onto a conveyor chute. The 60-year-old was anxious at the onset of the spring planting season, rattling off the long list of issues affecting his family’s livelihood at their 2,000-acre farm near Wahoo, Nebraska.
The high cost of fuel, equipment and fertilizer — compounded by the Iran war — and also tariffs, perceived “price gouging” by suppliers, and low soybean prices driven by a global supply glut. All of it weighs on Bartek, who is chairman of the Nebraska Soybean Association.
“Our biggest struggles are our inputs, be it fertilizer, seed, chemical, parts,” Bartek said. “There has been so much drastic markup in all of these. And I just kind of feel like the farmer’s kind of painted in the corner.”
Bartek’s concerns are shared by many Midwest soybean producers. Costs, such as equipment, have crept up over time while soybean prices have stayed low. Tariffs levied by the Trump administration last year and the resulting monthslong trade war with China only made things worse, they say. Then the Iran war bottled up shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, restricting global fertilizer supplies and sending fertilizer prices sky high. A ceasefire deal announced April 7 raised hope that bottlenecks in the strait would abate, but the future of the agreement was uncertain.
“A lot of producers are pretty nervous going into this year,” said Justin Sherlock, a soybean farmer and president of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association. “It looks like we’re going to have another year of negative returns.”
Years of rising costs, low soybean prices
Soybeans, which are used for livestock feed, food and biofuels, are among the top U.S. agricultural exports. That hasn’t always been the case. Before the 1960s soybeans weren’t a major crop in the U.S, according to Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. It wasn’t until the 1990s that soybean production accelerated due to international demand — primarily from China — and soybeans and corn are now dominant in U.S. agriculture.
But U.S. soybean farmers, who typically also grow corn, have been facing financial issues for years even before the onset of the Iran war. Soybean prices have been persistently low in recent years. The global market has been awash in soybeans, driven in part by Brazil, which surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest soybean producer years ago.
“If we look at global soybean production over the past several years, it continues to set record after record, after record,” Hart said. “There’s been just large supplies globally, and that has led to depressed prices.”
Meanwhile, Midwest soybean farmers’ costs have risen. Overall farm production expenses, including seed and pesticide, have increased over time, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Operating costs for soybean production have stayed elevated since 2020 and are projected to increase again in 2026, according to the agency.
The cost of land also is a major issue for farmers, experts say. Midwest crop land values have increased. And most regional farmers rent some of their land, according to Joana Colussi, research assistant professor in the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University.
Soybeans from last year’s harvest are loaded into a truck at Doug Bartek’s farm near Wahoo, Neb., on April 6, 2026. (Charlie Riedel / Associated Press)
Bartek, who rents three-quarters of his land, said landowners are increasing rents, causing further financial strain.
“There’s a lot of what I call absentee landowners that have absolutely no idea what goes on on the farm,” he said. “All they know is their taxes went up and you get to make up the difference, some way, somehow.”
“They’re very concerned about negative margins driven by low prices and high cost,” said Paul Mitchell, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, of farmers. “There’s just a liquidity cash crunch for a lot of them and they’re just trying to figure out how to deal with everything.”
The number of farms in the U.S. has shrunk over time, and consolidation in farming is a long-term trend, though farmers’ financial pressures wrought by high input costs and low commodity prices have contributed, Hart said. Larger farms tend to be more competitive and depend on large, expensive machinery.
“The financial reserves need(ed) on a farm are much greater than they used to be,” Hart said. “We’re a bit more sensitive to the financial conditions these days because so much capital is being utilized within the farm business.”
Tariffs, trade war have lasting impacts
Market forces aren’t the only issue weighing on farmers. Sweeping tariffs levied by President Donald Trump in April 2025 exacerbated a trade war with China, the top buyer of U.S. soybeans. China responded with retaliatory tariffs and effectively boycotted U.S. soybeans, cutting off a major export market for Midwest farmers and driving the price of soybeans even lower.
“When that was announced and soybean prices basically collapsed, if you could afford to hold on to your beans and wait for better times, you were OK,” said Mike Cerny, a soybean and winter wheat corn farmer in Sharon, Wisconsin. “If you had a mortgage due or payments due or cash flow needs and you had to sell at that point, you were taking it pretty rough.”
The U.S. and China eventually reached a deal in late 2025. Beijing committed to buying 12 million metric tons of soybeans by January and at least 25 million metric tons annually for the next three years. China has since met its initial soybean purchase goal, and the Trump administration also rolled out a $12 billion temporary aid package in December to boost farmers affected by the trade war.
But the damage is already done, experts and farmers say. While China’s renewed purchases and the federal payments are helping, it’s not enough to recover farmers’ losses. Even after federal assistance, farmers still lost almost $75 per harvested acre of soybeans in the 2025 crop, according to the American Soybean Association. And the trade war further pushed China toward competing soybean exporters, such as Brazil — accelerating a trend of declining U.S. soybean exports to China.
“When China decided to stop purchasing, we couldn’t find enough other markets to replace those sales,” Hart said. “We’re still feeling the impacts today. When you look at where soybean exports are today versus where we would normally expect them to be, we’re still running anywhere from 15% to 20% behind normal.”
Joseph Glauber, former chief economist at the Department of Agriculture between 2008 and 2014, said global competitors to U.S. soybean farmers gained from the trade war.
“When China has put on tariffs against the U.S. they’ve tended to buy them from Brazil or Argentina, largely Brazil,” Glauber added. “We’re not nearly as dominant in the world as we used to be in terms of the global export market for soybeans.”
Iran war drove up fuel, fertilizer costs
After the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, a severe slowdown in shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz sent the price of oil soaring. The shipping disruption also largely stopped the export of nitrogen fertilizers manufactured in the Persian Gulf and limited access to key fertilizer ingredients. The price of urea, the most widely traded nitrogen fertilizer, skyrocketed.
Soybeans don’t require nitrogen fertilizer, but it’s vital for corn, and most soybean farmers also grow corn. About half the global supply of urea comes from the Middle East, and Qatar and Saudi Arabia are two of the top sources of U.S. fertilizer imports, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
The U.S. and Iran last week agreed to a two-week ceasefire that included reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but traffic remained slowed amid disagreements over Israeli attacks in Lebanon, and the price of urea remains elevated.
Many Midwest farmers bought their fertilizer well in advance of the spring planting season. But some farmers who didn’t buy early face elevated prices. Dave Walton, a corn, soybean and hay farmer in Iowa and vice president of the American Soybean Association, said in March that some of his neighbors didn’t have cash on hand last fall to buy fertilizer and were struggling to budget for fertilizer due to high prices.
The war also caused gasoline and diesel prices to surge, causing further headaches for farmers. Oil prices dropped following the ceasefire announcement, but the war and the closure of the strait will have lasting impacts on farmers, said Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, an investment research company. Facilities in the Middle East that are critical for exporting chemicals, oil and other commodities were damaged or destroyed during the war, and it will take time for supply chains to recover, he said.
“Facilities have been hit, like liquid natural gas plants,” Goldstein added. “You are also looking at a big supply crunch in commodity chemicals, which are the inputs for crop chemicals.”
“We burn a lot of diesel fuel,” said Chris Gould, a corn and soybean farmer in Maple Park, Illinois. “It’s hard to say if I’m gonna come out ahead or behind on this whole deal. But I suspect I’m gonna come out behind.”
Concerns about the future
Farmers’ financial problems are showing up in some measures. Farm bankruptcies, while still relatively low, continued to climb in 2025, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. In a survey of 400 farmers conducted by researchers at the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture in late March, almost half said their farm operation is financially worse off than it was a year ago.
Goldstein, the Morningstar analyst, said farmers’ high costs and low revenues contributed to the spike in bankruptcies between 2024 and 2025. If costs rise faster than crop prices going forward, he added, that “would strain farmers again and likely lead to more bankruptcies.”
After 43 years of farming, Bartek said the smell of fresh dirt still gets him excited for spring planting. But he’s also heard of farmer suicides, bankruptcies and “retirement sales” where farmers are forced to auction off their operations due to financial problems. Bartek compares farmers to gamblers who put “millions of dollars in the dirt” hoping for returns.
At times, Bartek doubts his own decision to go into farming. He’s also worried about his son, who purchased a farm a few years ago.
Bartek wonders: “Did I do the right thing helping him get into farming?”
This story is a collaboration between Lee Enterprises and The Associated Press.
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.
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.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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.”
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