The armed officers claim was made Dec. 19 by school safety advocate Ryan Petty in an interview about a mass shooting Dec. 16 at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin.
Petty’s daughter was killed in the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, school, which did.
Petty said the connection is “proven.” He didn’t cite research to Wisconsin Watch.
Whether arming school resource officers “leads to net harms or benefits … could be addressed with strong scientific research designs or observational studies,” RAND said.
A 2023 University at Albany-RAND study found school resource officers reduce some violence and increase weapon detection, “but do not prevent gun-related incidents.”
A 2021 U.S. DOJ-funded study said “data suggest no association” between armed officers and deterring mass shootings.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
But what made this year particularly special was the introduction of the Forward newsletter. Each week the Wisconsin Watch state team produces shorter stories about what we expect to be the big news and trends in the days, weeks and months ahead. It’s something our local media partners asked for and our state team reporters delivered.
As the year winds down, we gave each state team reporter the assignment of picking a favorite story written by another member of the team (Secret Santa style!). Here were their picks:
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, speaks during a Republican press conference on June 8, 2023, in the Wisconsin State Capitol building to announce a tentative agreement between legislative Republicans and Gov. Tony Evers on a shared revenue bill. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
To some, radio is a source of entertainment and information from a bygone era. They’re mistaken. Hallie Claflin’s deeply reported, authoritative story illustrates the immense and continuing influence of talk radio — especially conservative talk radio — in Wisconsin politics. The rise of former Gov. Scott Walker, the toppling of a Democratic mayor in Wausau and the deaths of certain bills in the Legislature can all be tied, at least in part, to advocacy or opposition from conservative talk radio hosts. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the state’s most powerful Republican, makes regular appearances on broadcasts and described talk radio as being “as powerful as it’s ever been.” This story is worth your time as you look ahead to 2025.
Phoebe Petrovic’s profile of militant, anti-abortion Pastor Matthew Trewhella, her first investigation as Wisconsin’s first ProPublica local reporting network fellow, was an engaging read. But I especially liked the companion piece she wrote. It’s a reader service to do this kind of story when we do a large takeout on a person or subject unfamiliar to most readers. It also might drive readers to the main story when they learn more about why we did it. It puts the readers behind the scenes a bit and has the potential to make readers feel more connected to Wisconsin Watch.
Tom Kertscher does an amazing job with all of his fact briefs, but my favorite has to be a compilation that fact-checked presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump right before their September debate. Over the past few races, presidential campaigns have been full of misinformation. Debates are a vital time to show the reality of candidates and their beliefs. Tom’s story made sure people could accurately judge the claims both candidates were making. I learned about many new and important topics across party lines like Trump’s for-profit college, Harris’ claim about tracking miscarriages and accurate deportation statistics.
The Waupun Correctional Institution — shown here on Oct. 27, 2023 — was not over capacity as of late July 2024. But the state prison system as a whole has long incarcerated more people than its prisons were designed to hold. (Angela Major / WPR)
Khushboo Rathore’s DataWatch report detailing that the state’s prison population was at nearly 130% capacity stood out as one of my favorite pieces this year. Not only did this short story shed light on severe deficiencies in Wisconsin’s prison system, it also presented the findings in a digestible format that helped readers understand overcrowding in prisons through striking data. It’s one thing to report that Wisconsin prisons are overwhelmed, and it’s another to have the numbers that show it. This piece has the power to reshape future conversations about statewide prison reform, which is what our work here at Wisconsin Watch is all about!
The Wisconsin Supreme Court holds its first hearing of the new term on Sept. 7, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol. (Andy Manis / For Wisconsin Watch)
Jack Kelly has some of the best sourcing this newsroom has ever seen. He’s such an affable people-person, and it enables him to get coffee with anyone and everyone and build legitimate relationships that result in wild scoops, like this one. It’s a testament to his brilliance as a reporter.
The value of food imported into the U.S. exceeds what is exported.
That’s a recent reversal of a long-term trend, as U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden stated Dec. 2.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean the U.S. is “beholden on other nations,” as the western Wisconsin Republican claimed.
The U.S. was an annual net exporter of agricultural products from at least the 1970s through 2018, but since then has mostly been a net importer, and the gap is widening.
In fiscal 2025, the value of agricultural imports is projected at $215.5 billion and exports $170 billion.
William Ridley, a University of Illinois agricultural and consumer economics professor, said the U.S. produces more food for itself than ever, but it’s a net importer because of demand for imported food, much of it from allies.
Some imports, including out-of-season produce, come from foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies, said Steve Suppan, of the nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Act 10, which effectively ended collective bargaining for most Wisconsin public employee unions, has saved taxpayers billions of dollars.
The 2011 law could be reviewed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court because of a recent judge’s ruling.
The law achieved savings mainly by shifting costs for pension and health benefits for public employees to the employees.
The nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum found in 2020 that state and local governments saved $5 billion from 2011 to 2017 in pension costs alone.
PolitiFact Wisconsin reported in 2014 that public employers saved over $3 billion on pensions and health insurance.
Getting rid of Act 10’s pension, health insurance and salary limits would raise annual school district costs $1.6 billion and local government costs $480 million, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty estimated in September.
However, the recent court ruling doesn’t invalidate Act 10’s higher employee contribution requirements, said attorney Jeffrey Mandell, who represents unions in the pending case.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford was among attorneys who sued seeking to overturn Act 10, a 2011 law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most Wisconsin public employee unions.
The law spurred mass protests for weeks in Madison.
At the time, Crawford said the law violated Wisconsin’s Constitution and was “aimed at crippling public employee unions.”
In 2014, the state Supreme Court upheld Act 10, calling collective bargaining “a creation of legislative grace and not constitutional obligation.”
Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, Crawford’s conservative challenger in the April 1, 2025, election, made the claim about Crawford Dec. 1, 2024. Crawford is a Dane County judge.
On Dec. 2, Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost struck down Act 10 in a lawsuit in which Crawford is not listed as an attorney.
An appeal notice was filed the same day. Appeals are likely to reach the Supreme Court, which has a 4-3 liberal majority.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Voters Nov. 5 amended the Wisconsin Constitution to limit voting to citizens. Republican supporters said it would prevent any move allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, as some U.S. jurisdictions allow.
Over 9% of voting-age U.S. citizens (21.3 million people) cannot readily access proof of citizenship, because they do not have it or could not access it easily, a University of Maryland survey released in June said.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The sale of raw or unpasteurized milk generally is illegal in Wisconsin, although “incidental sales” are legal.
An incidental sale is when a dairy farm sells raw milk directly to a consumer at the farm.
But those sales are illegal “if done as a regular business, or if they involve advertising of any kind.”
Robert Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, has indicated he would promote raw milk.
Public health authorities consider raw milk a health danger because it hasn’t been pasteurized — heated enough to kill illness-causing bacteria such as E. coli. But 13 states allow raw milk sales in stores. Advocates say it’s more nutritious, though experts say there isn’t enough evidence to prove that.
A Wisconsin Senate bill introduced in December 2023 would have created licensing for farms that want to sell raw milk. It failed to pass the Senate.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The average time the U.S. Senate takes to approve nominees to a president’s administration is more than six months.
The nonprofit Center for Presidential Transition reported that as of Nov. 11, 2024, the average number of days has more than doubled under presidents elected since the 1980s:
Joe Biden: 192
Donald Trump: 160.5
Barack Obama: 153.3
George W. Bush: 108.2
Bill Clinton: 100.3
George H.W. Bush: 64.7
Ronald Reagan: 69.4
The nominees include more than 1,000 leadership positions, including Cabinet posts such as attorney general.
One reason for the six-month average: Any senator can “hold” a nominee’s confirmation, sometimes to extract something in return.
An August research paper concluded it is doubtful that reducing the number of positions needing confirmation would speed up confirmations.
Trump has said he wants the Senate to allow “recess appointments,” which wouldn’t require Senate confirmation, for his next administration.
The issue was raised Nov. 21 by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who called for streamlining confirmations.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
As President-elect Donald Trump stocks his Cabinet with some of his most loyal followers, we’ve already checked some of their surprising and dubious claims.
That statement was made at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee by Thomas Homan, former head of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He is Trump’s pick for border czar and does not require Senate confirmation.
Such removals were highest during Bill Clinton’s second term as president, averaging 1.7 million annually from 1997 through 2000.
Trump’s highest was 600,000 in 2020.
Check out the video version of this fact brief here.
The vice president has supported the rare occurrence of taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgery for prison inmates and detained undocumented immigrants.
That supports a claim made on Wisconsin radio by former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who was Trump’s pick for attorney general. Last week Gaetz withdrew himself from consideration amid reports he had paid women for sex and also had sex with an underage teen. Trump has since announced he plans to nominate former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer instead.
Wisconsin Watch and its partners have also fact-checked claims about (but so far not by) Elon Musk, Trump’s selection to co-lead a government efficiency effort.
We found that Musk was not the founder of Tesla (it was founded by two other entrepreneurs); and that, as of 2022, he was not the richest person in history.
Liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford has opposed the state’s voter identification law.
The 2011 law requires proof of identification to vote. Because of court challenges, it didn’t take effect until 2016.
Crawford was one of three lawyers in a 2011 lawsuit challenging the requirement, which the Supreme Court rejected.
In 2016, Crawford said the law would be “acceptable” if voters could sign an affidavit swearing to their identity rather than providing proof of identification.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study estimated the law prevented 4,000-11,000 Milwaukee and Dane county residents from voting in the 2016 presidential election.
The University of California, Berkeley, reported in 2023 that many studies found voter ID laws have little to no impact on voter turnout nationally, while others indicate “a disproportionate negative impact” on minority groups.
Crawford, a Dane County judge, is running April 1, 2025, against conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Higher-income Americans have received the largest savings from the 2017 tax cut law signed by President Donald Trump, but the top 1% have not received 83% of the savings.
The 83% claim was made Nov. 10, 2024, by U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis. He alluded to the expectation that Trump will aim to get Congress to renew the cuts, most of which expire after 2025.
The law cut individual income tax rates across the board.
In 2025, the top 1% of income tax filers will receive about 25% of the total benefits, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center projected.
In 2027, the share for the wealthiest 1% rises to 83%.
However, that’s because most individual tax cuts would have expired, but corporate tax cuts, which benefit higher-income people, would remain.
If the tax cuts are extended, their 2026 value would be about $400 billion, with the top 1% receiving $100 billion.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Wisconsin has 4.27 million inactive voters and 3.66 million registered voters.
Inactive voters are not registered and are not eligible to vote unless they re-register on or before an Election Day.
Republican Eric Hovde added the numbers together in claiming Wisconsin has “almost 8 million registered voters on our voter rolls with only 3.5 million active voters.”
Hovde raised election administration questions one week after losing Nov. 5, 2024, to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. Unofficially, Baldwin won by less than 1 percentage point.
People are made inactive when they die, move and register in another state, are convicted of a felony, are adjudicated incompetent to vote, or have their name purged.
Purging occurs every two years. The Wisconsin Elections Commission is required to make registered voters inactive if they have not voted in the past four years and have not responded to a mailing about their registration status.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Less than 8% of minors in the U.S. use antidepressant prescription drugs, the latest data indicate.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., campaigning in Milwaukee for former President Donald Trump, claimed that “40% of our kids are on antidepressants.”
Two Kennedy organizations did not provide information to back his claim.
A 2022 federal estimate based on surveys done from 2013 to 2018 said 6.6% of individuals ages 3-17 used a psychotropic medication such as an antidepressant during the previous 30 days.
In 2022, 2 million adolescents ages 12-17 filled at least one antidepressant prescription, according to a 2024 University of Michigan-led study. That’s 7.9%.
Also in 2022, antidepressants were obtained for 2.7% of children 17 and under, according to a federal agency.
Antidepressants are often effective in treating depression and anxiety in children and teenagers, but rarely “there can be severe side effects,” including suicidal thinking, according to Mayo Clinic.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Milwaukee ballot tabulation machines are not connected to the internet.
“Tabulation machines are not connected to Wi-Fi and the idle speculation suggesting they are vulnerable is simply incorrect,” Mayor Cavalier Johnson posted on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024.
For years, the city has used flash drives — thumb-size data-storing devices — to transmit results.
Flash drives are cleared and reformatted before being put in sealed envelopes; the process is witnessed, and both a Democrat and a Republican are among the observers who certify the process. After all ballots are processed, voting results from the tabulation machines are exported to the flash drives. Witnesses also sign a document certifying the exports.
On Election Day afternoon, election officials restarted the absentee ballot count after an observer noticed panel doors on Milwaukee’s 13 tabulators weren’t properly closed.
City election officials said there was no indication any of the tabulators had been tampered with.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Only registered Wisconsin voters can use Wisconsin’s MyVote website to request absentee ballots by mail.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission told Wisconsin Watch that MyVote does not automatically send an absentee ballot to the requester. Requests generate an email to the requester’s municipal clerk, who determines whether the voter has provided information, including a photo ID, to receive an absentee ballot.
MyVote is the most common way Wisconsin voters request absentee ballots.
Wisconsin-based HOT Government, which alleged fraud in Wisconsin in the 2020 election, falsely claimed Nov. 2, 2024, that “anybody from around the world” can use MyVote to “illegally order absentee ballots for anyone and ship the ballots anywhere in the world.”
In 2022, the organization’s president Harry Wait was charged with four crimes for allegedly using MyVote to request absentee ballots for two Wisconsin elected officials be mailed to his Racine-area home. The case is pending.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The government revises job numbers annually as more information becomes available.
Former President Donald Trump falsely stated in Milwaukee that the Biden administration “fraudulently claimed” to have created 818,000 jobs.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Aug. 21, 2024, “in accordance with usual practice,” its estimate of the annual “benchmark revision” of jobs numbers. The revision will occur in February 2025.
The estimate said the number of jobs added in the year ending March 31, 2024, was 818,000 fewer than had been previously shown in monthly reports.
Monthly figures come from employer surveys; the annual revision comes from unemployment records.
“Economists across the ideological spectrum” said the revision was not manipulation, PolitiFact reported.
The revision of 0.5% was higher than the 0.1% average and the highest since 2009.
Under Trump, there was a 0.3% downward adjustment of 514,000 jobs for the year ending March 31, 2019.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., has backed efforts to reduce prescription drug prices:
Cosponsored 2024 legislation to cap annual out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 per individual and $4,000 per family for people with private health insurance. No action has been taken.
Sent letters in January 2024 along with other senators to drug manufacturers demanding information on “exorbitant” asthma inhaler prices.
Sponsored 2023 legislation to require drug manufacturers to provide details of and justification for certain price increases. No action has been taken.
Supported the Inflation Reduction Act, which became law in 2022. It requires Medicare to negotiate the price of certain drugs.
Baldwin’s challenger in the Nov. 5, 2024, election, Republican Eric Hovde, stated that Baldwin “always talks about, ‘I’m going to lower drug prices.’ She’s done nothing on that.”
Average U.S. prescription drug prices are 2.78 times higher than in 33 other nations, the RAND think tank reported in February.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Wisconsin’s swing-state status has driven the presidential candidates to visit the state often ahead of the Nov. 5, 2024, election — and it has driven Wisconsin Watch to fact-check many of the claims they’ve made here.
Our fact briefs, in partnership with Gigafact, centered on statements about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump over immigration, health care and the economy.
Some of those claims hit the mark; many did not.
Here’s a look at claims related to three of the top issues voters say they are focused on in this election.
(And be sure to share the video versions of our fact briefs from Wisconsin Watch’s Trisha Young.)
No, illegal immigration did not drop 90% under Trump: Southwest border encounters decreased 43% in 2017, the first year Trump was in office. But they were higher in each of the next three years than in 2016, including 80% higher in 2019.
No, Trump has not said he plans to force states to report miscarriages: The Project 2025 policy initiative, which Trump has distanced himself from, calls for the federal government to “ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place” and “ensure that statistics are separated by category,” including spontaneous miscarriage.
Republican Eric Hovde supports raising the retirement age for receiving Social Security, but only for younger Americans, despite misleading attacks on him.
Hovde is running Nov. 5, 2024, against U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.
Hovde said Oct. 21: “Nobody who’s on Social Security or heading to Social Security with any reasonable time frame should have Social Security touched.”
But because life expectancy has increased since Social Security was created, the retirement age should be raised for younger people. “You could start someplace in the 40s,” Hovde said, reiterating previous campaign comments.
Retirees can start receiving partial Social Security benefits at 62; the age for receiving full benefits varies.
Baldwin in an ad and on social media has attacked Hovde without saying his proposed eligibility change would apply only to younger workers.
Advocates say raising the retirement age would protect Social Security, which is projected to remain solvent only through 2033.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates that more than 10,000 chemicals “have been authorized or are considered generally recognized as safe for use in food, or in contact with food in the U.S.”
The chemicals include food additives, color additives and chemicals used to make additives.
An Institute of Food Technologists journal reported in 2011 that the U.S. allows 10,000 additives in human food. An estimated 66% were approved by federal agencies, such as the FDA.
“Manufacturers and a trade association made the remaining decisions without (FDA) review by concluding that the substances were generally recognized as safe,” the researchers wrote.
The lead researcher, Thomas Neltner, told Wisconsin Watch he believes the count of chemicals is now 11,000.
Using the word “ingredients,” U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Sept. 24, 2024, he heard the 10,000 statistic in testimony.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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