Official proof of three things — identity, age and citizenship or qualifying immigration status — is required to obtain a Social Security number.
For U.S.-born adults, required documents include a U.S. birth certificate or a U.S. passport, though most U.S.-born citizens are issued a Social Security number at birth.
Noncitizens can apply if they have U.S. permission to work in the U.S. or permanent resident status (U.S.-issued green card). Less common are nonworking immigrants, such as those issued a student visa, who need a Social Security number.
“Merely showing a bill or a school ID is not sufficient,” Kathleen Romig, a former senior adviser at the Social Security Administration, told Wisconsin Watch.
Elon Musk claimed March 30 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, that “basically, you can show … a medical bill and a school ID and get a Social Security number.”
Trump administration officials did not reply to emails seeking comment.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
In September, California adopted a law that prohibits local governments from requiring voters to present identification to vote.
The law states that voter ID laws “have historically been used to disenfranchise” certain voters, including those of color or low-income.
The law says California ensures election integrity by requiring a driver’s license number or Social Security number at registration and verifying the voter’s signature with the voter’s registration form.
Voter ID supporters say requiring a photo ID helps prevent voter fraud and increases public confidence in elections.
California is among 14 states that don’t use voter ID. They verify voter identity in other ways, usually signature verification, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.
Wisconsin has required photo ID since 2016. On April 1, voters approved a referendum adding that requirement to the state constitution.
Elon Musk alluded to the California law during remarks March 30 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Susan Crawford’s win in Tuesday’s record-smashing Wisconsin Supreme Court election paves the way for the court’s liberal majority to continue to flex its influence over state politics.
The Dane County Circuit Court judge’s victory guarantees that liberals will control the court until at least 2028.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is at the center of state politics. It has been since 2020, when it denied Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and has continued to make headlines — especially since flipping to liberal control in August 2023.
For the past two years, Justices Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky, Janet Protasiewicz and Ann Walsh Bradley — who collectively make up the court’s liberal majority — have flexed their authority and remade Wisconsin’s political landscape. Crawford, who will be sworn in on Aug. 1, will replace the retiring Walsh Bradley, who has served on the high court for 30 years.
Here’s what Crawford’s victory could mean for some key issues.
1. Abortion rights
The Wisconsin Supreme Court seems poised to, in some form or the other, strike down the state’s 1849 abortion law — which bans almost all abortions in the state.
The court’s current justices in November 2024 heard oral arguments in the lawsuit challenging the statute. It was filed by Attorney General Josh Kaul in the days after Roe vs. Wade was overturned. The lawsuit asks the court to determine whether the 1849 law applies to consensual abortions. It also asks whether the 1849 ban was “impliedly repealed” when the Legislature passed additional laws — while Roe was in effect — regulating abortion after fetal viability.
A Dane County judge ruled in late 2023 that the 1849 statute applied to feticide, not consensual abortions. Abortion services, which were halted in the state after Roe was overturned, have since resumed.
Crawford’s opponent, conservative Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, argued during the campaign that the liberal majority was delaying its ruling in the case “to keep the 1849 law a live issue” in the race.
While working in private practice, Crawford represented Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin in litigation related to abortion access.
Crawford’s victory on Tuesday ensures the court’s upcoming ruling is likely to remain intact — at least for now — meaning abortion will remain legal in Wisconsin.
2. Congressional redistricting
The liberal majority’s decision to throw out the state’s Republican-gerrymandered legislative maps, breaking a GOP lock on the state Legislature, has been its most influential ruling since taking power. As a result, Democrats picked up 14 seats in the Assembly and state Senate in 2024 in a good Republican year nationwide.
However, during the same time period, the high court denied a request to reconsider the state’s congressional maps without stating a reason. The maps were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, but under a “least change” directive from a previous conservative court, so they remained GOP-friendly. But in the liberal court’s legislative redistricting decision, it overturned the “least change” precedent. Crawford’s victory opens a window for Democrats and their allies to once again challenge the maps, potentially using the argument that the current lines were drawn under rules that have since been rejected.
The future of the congressional districts were a key issue in this year’s state Supreme Court race.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice-elect Susan Crawford, left, celebrates alongside Justice Rebecca Dallet after her win in the spring election on April 1, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Elon Musk, who spent some $20 million to boost Schimel’s candidacy, said at a rally in Green Bay last weekend that a potential redrawing of the maps is what made the race so important.
He called Tuesday’s election “a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives.”
Democrats have pushed a similar idea.
The Democratic leader in the U.S. House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, last week called Wisconsin’s congressional lines “broken.”
“As soon as possible we need to be able to revisit that and have fairer lines,” he said during an event with DNC Chair Ken Martin. “The only way for that to be even a significant possibility is if you have an enlightened Supreme Court.”
Crawford’s win makes the court friendlier to a potential congressional redistricting lawsuit.
3. Labor rights
A Dane County judge ruled late last year that provisions of Act 10, a Scott Walker-era law that kneecapped public sector labor unions, violated the state constitution. Under the ruling, all public sector workers would have their collective bargaining restored to what it was before the law took effect in 2011.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court in February declined to fast-track an appeal in the case, meaning it must first be decided by a conservative branch of the state Court of Appeals, likely ensuring it won’t come before the high court before the end of the current term.
That means Crawford, who challenged aspects of Act 10 while working as a private attorney, will be on the court when it comes before the justices.
She didn’t answer directly when asked during the race’s only debate if she would recuse herself from the case. But she did note that the provision currently being challenged is different from the one she brought a lawsuit over.
“If the same provision that I was involved in litigating back in those early days was challenged again, I most likely would recuse,” she said.
But with conservative-leaning Justice Brian Hagedorn having already recused from the case, Crawford could step aside and liberals would still have the votes needed to overturn the law.
4. Environmental issues
The high court is currently also considering a case about enforcement of the state’s “Spills Law.”
Enacted in 1978, the law requires people or companies discharging a hazardous substance “to restore the environment to the extent practicable and minimize the harmful effects from the discharge to the air, lands or waters of this state.”
The lawsuit was filed by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s powerful business lobby, in 2021. It argued that the DNR could not require people to test for so-called “forever chemicals” contamination — and require remediation if they’re present — because the agency hadn’t gone through the formal process of designating the chemicals, known as PFAS, as “hazardous substances.” The court’s liberal justices seemed skeptical of WMC’s position during oral arguments in January.
WMC has been a perennial spender in state Supreme Court races. It spent some $2 million targeting Crawford during this year’s race.
Any forthcoming ruling in favor of the DNR is likely safe with Crawford on the court. She was endorsed during the campaign by Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
City of Milwaukee election officials process absentee ballots at one location on Election Day, which sometimes means ballots are still being fed into tabulators late that night or early the next morning. Results are reported once processing finishes.
Conservative Brad Schimel, who faces liberal Susan Crawford in the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, suggested the late counting was malfeasance, a long-debunked claim.
Schimel on March 18 urged supporters to vote early “so we don’t have to worry that at 11:30 in Milwaukee, they’re going to find bags of ballots that they forgot to put into the machines, like they did in 2018, or in 2024.”
Schimel lost his attorney general re-election bid in 2018. Republican Eric Hovde lost to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., in the Nov. 5, 2024, election.
State law prohibits municipalities from preparing absentee ballots before Election Day. A bill that would allow an earlier start has stalled.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
A reader asked: Was Elon Musk’s endorsement of Brad Schimel a violation of lobbying laws because of Musk’s status as a federal employee?
We’ll get to that question in a second, but we also wondered about the answer to a related question: Are the cash giveaways from Musk’s America PAC ahead of the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election legal?
Musk, the centibillionaire tech CEO turned efficiency czar for President Donald Trump, has dominated the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in recent weeks. Musk and affiliated groups have poured cash into the race between liberal candidate Susan Crawford and conservative candidate Brad Schimel, which will determine ideological control of the high court and could have national ramifications.
America PAC and Building America’s Future, two groups that are funded by Musk, have spent more than $16.7 million on advertising and voter mobilization efforts meant to aid Schimel’s candidacy. Musk has also donated $3 million to the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which can transfer the money to Schimel’s campaign.
Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, is offering registered Wisconsin voters $100 if they sign a petition opposing “activist judges.”
“Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas,” the petition reads. “By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”
Participants can also get $100 for referring another petition signer.
Late on Wednesday the super PAC announced that “Scott A.” from Green Bay had been selected to win $1 million after filling out the petition. That mirrors a move America PAC deployed in last year’s presidential race.
It’s less clear whether America PAC’s “special offer” violates Wisconsin’s election bribery statute, according to Bryna Godar, a staff attorney with the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
(1m) Any person who does any of the following violates this chapter:
a. Offers, gives, lends or promises to give or lend, or endeavors to procure, anything of value, or any office or employment or any privilege or immunity to, or for, any elector, or to or for any other person, in order to induce any elector to:
i. Go to or refrain from going to the polls.
ii. Vote or refrain from voting.
iii.Vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person.
iv. Vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular referendum; or on account of any elector having done any of the above.
The $100 reward for signing the petition “definitely falls into a gray area because (America PAC) is paying people to sign the petition,” Godar said. “The question is whether the payment is being given in order to induce anyone to vote or refrain from voting.”
“These payments kind of walk an uncertain line on whether they are amounting to that or not,” Godar added.
Godar also noted that you have to be a registered Wisconsin voter to receive the payment, “so it does seem like it is inducing people to register to vote.” That violates federal law for federal elections, she said, but “federal law doesn’t apply to this election because there aren’t any federal offices on the ballot.”
“Under the state law, that’s not specifically one of the listed prohibitions,” Godar said. “It’s definitely in a gray area and sort of walks the line.”
Elon Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, that he would incentivize voting in Wisconsin with $1 million checks. The post appears to have been taken down. An X user asked the platform’s AI chatbot, Grok, whether Musk’s plan was election fraud. The bot responded that the plan likely violates Wisconsin election law.
Late on Thursday, Musk announced he would “give a talk in Wisconsin” in a social media post that has since been taken down.
“Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” he wrote. “I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”
An AI chatbot on Musk’s own social media site flagged the activity in the post as potentially illegal. “Though aimed at boosting participation, this could be seen as election bribery,” the AI profile @grok replied to someone asking if the post was legal.
In a follow-up email, Godar said giving “the payment for voting instead of for signing the petition much more clearly violates Wisconsin law.”
On Friday afternoon, Musk posted again: “To clarify a previous post, entrance is limited to those who have signed the petition in opposition to activist judges.”
“I will also hand over checks for a million dollars to 2 people to be spokesmen for the petition,” he wrote.
UPDATE (March 31, 2025, 9:00 a.m.): On Friday afternoon, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit to bar Musk and America PAC from promoting the “million-dollar gifts.” The suit also sought to prohibit Musk and America PAC “from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote.” The case was randomly assigned to Crawford, who immediately recused, and then reassigned to Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voigt. Voigt declined to hear the petition prior to Sunday’s event, so Kaul went to the Court of Appeals and subsequently the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Both turned down his request to stop Musk from giving away two $1 million checks, which he did on Sunday evening.
Violating the statute is a Class I felony, which can carry a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment of up to three-and-a-half years, or both.
A county district attorney or the Wisconsin attorney general would be responsible for filing criminal charges for violations of the statute, Godar said. It’s also possible someone could try to bring a civil claim to have a judge halt the payments. So far that hasn’t happened.
Now back to our reader question about Musk’s political activities as a federal employee.
Musk, in his role as a “special government employee” leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is bound by the Hatch Act, a law prohibiting “political activity while you’re on duty, while you’re in the workplace, and the use of your official position to influence the outcome of an election,” said Delaney Marsco, the director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center.
But special government employees like Musk are only bound by the Hatch Act while they’re on duty representing the federal government, Marsco said, so the world’s wealthiest man “is allowed to engage in political activity that might otherwise be prohibited as long as he’s not on duty when he’s doing it.”
The Hatch Act is intended to “maintain a federal workforce that is free from partisan political influence or coercion,” according to a memo from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.
Are you a young person, or a parent of a young person, trying to figure out what to do after high school?
Are you an adult who’d like to change careers but you’re not sure how, or you think the obstacles are too big to overcome? Or do you love the work you do but wish it paid enough to support your family?
Are you an employer with big plans for your company, if you could just find workers with the right skills and training?
We want to hear from you as Wisconsin Watch launches a new beat. We’re calling it pathways to success, and it explores how schools and institutions are preparing people to find quality, family-sustaining jobs in Wisconsin’s current and future economy and how they could do better. In short, we’ll focus on the jobs people want and need, and what’s getting in their way.
I’m Natalie Yahr, Wisconsin Watch’s first pathways to success reporter, and I’ve thought about this issue for more than a decade. Before this job, I spent about six years at the Cap Times, where I reported on the important jobs Wisconsin will most struggle to fill in the future, efforts of workers to organize and the obstacles they sometimes encounter when they do. For several years before that, I was a teacher and success coach for adult students seeking to get their high school equivalency diplomas, start new careers or just learn basic skills they’d missed.
With this new beat, we aim to answer questions like why it’s often tricky for foreign-trained professionals to restart their careers in Wisconsin, what it would take to make some of the state’s fast-growing-but-low-paying jobs more sustainable and how are state and local governments investing in programs that prepare workers for changes in the economy. These are some initial questions we have, but to make this beat work, we need to hear yours.
Your suggestions and experiences will shape what we cover and how. Call or email me at 608-616-0752 or nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org, in English or Spanish.
I won’t be the only one covering this important beat for Wisconsin Watch. We’re looking to hire an additional pathways reporter to specifically serve people in northeast Wisconsin, while I’ll explore issues that resonate statewide. I expect we’ll collaborate plenty.
We’ll know we’re doing this reporting well if it helps people discover new opportunities or make informed choices about their careers. As we start publishing these stories, please let us know what you think.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The Elon Musk–founded America PAC has spent at least $11.5 million on the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, WisPolitics reported March 24.
That doesn’t count another $3 million the PAC gave to the Wisconsin Republican Party, which can funnel unlimited funds to candidates.
Both support conservative candidate Brad Schimel over liberal Susan Crawford.
The nonprofit campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets tracks cumulative independent group spending in state supreme court and appellate court races through 2024.
Its figures indicate the biggest spender nationally is the Citizens for Judicial Fairness, which spent a total of $11.4 million in the 2020 and 2022 Illinois court races.
OpenSecrets’ data cover about two-thirds of the states; not all states report independent expenditures.
The progressive A Better Wisconsin Together has spent $9.2 million on ads backing Crawford, according to ad tracker AdImpact.
Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler said March 18 he believed Musk’s spending might be a national record.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
When Larry Jones arrived at the Wisconsin State Capitol on March 12, he didn’t know what he was getting into — let alone that he would be a viral internet sensation the next day.
The 85-year-old self-described conservative had been invited by his grandson to a public hearing on a Republican-authored bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth in the state. He decided to make the short drive from his home in Milwaukee.
“I thought, ‘OK, I’ll go up there and listen to a couple people moaning about some kind of problems and be there for a couple hours and be long gone,’” Jones told Wisconsin Watch. “I got into something that I really didn’t know a heck of a lot about.”
The hearing was packed with speakers there to testify either for or against the bill. Most people were limited to two minutes, but the hearing lasted more than eight hours. Jones was there in support of the bill, but wasn’t intending to get up and speak. But after listening to nearly seven hours of testimony, he put his name down.
“I have very little knowledge of gay people and things like that there, so when I came here, my eyes were opened,” he told the state Assembly’s Health, Aging and Long-Term Care Committee just after 9 p.m. “I was one of the critics that sat on the side and made the decision there was only two genders, so I got an education that was unbelievable. And I don’t know just exactly how to say this, but my perspective for people has changed. … I’d like to apologize for being here, and I learned a very lot about this group of people.”
After he spoke, several attendees applauded.
Shortly after, his grandkids told him about a video of his testimony going viral online — as of Sunday the video had nearly 1 million views on YouTube. They called him a hero.
“Thank you for the compliment, but what the heck are you talking about?” he recalled responding.
Jones told Wisconsin Watch he doesn’t think he did anything out of the ordinary and spoke because he felt like he owed it to the people there protesting the bill. He never thought a few sentences would garner such attention.
“After a day or two, my 15 minutes of fame were long gone, and I went back to who I am, just plain old Larry,” Jones told Wisconsin Watch.
Others saw an act of courage.
“Listening to his testimony was incredible,” one user commented under the viral video of Jones on Instagram. “It is powerful and brave to admit that you were wrong and have learned. I wish many of our legislators had that same strength.”
The bill
Republican politicians in recent years have frequently targeted transgender rights. One of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders the day he took office disregarded biological nuance in declaring there are only two sexes, male and female, which can’t be changed, and that gender identity “does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.” A later order declared the country wouldn’t fund transition of youth from one sex to another or medical institutions that provide such health care.
Wisconsin Assembly Bill 104 would ban gender-affirming health care, including puberty-blocking drugs, hormone replacement therapy or surgery, for those under the age of 18. Under the bill, medical providers found to be providing this care could have their licenses revoked. The legislation faces a certain veto by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who has vetoed a similar bill before.
The authors of the bill — Sen. Cory Tomczyk, R-Mosinee, and Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha — say it would “protect minors from making life-altering, irreversible decisions that cause mental and bodily harm.”
“They’re not voting on this bill as a person, they’re voting Republican party lines,” Jones told Wisconsin Watch. “That shouldn’t be that way. … Party line is a bunch of garbage.”
It was just one of four bills raised in the Legislature in recent weeks targeting transgender youth in Wisconsin. Twoothers are aimed at banning transgender girls and women from participating in high school and collegiate women’s sports. Another would prohibit school employees from using a student’s preferred name and pronouns without parental consent.
For hours, Jones listened to the stories of kids who wanted to transition and said it seemed like “their brain was tearing them apart.” He now believes the decision to receive gender-affirming care should involve a child, a qualified doctor and a parent — not lawmakers. He likened the issue to lawmakers banning doctors from providing abortions.
Just the introduction of such bills can have negative effects on LGBTQ+ kids, research shows. The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that works to end LGBTQ+ youth suicide, found in a 2024 national survey that 90% of LGBTQ+ young people said their well-being was negatively impacted due to recent politics. Research also shows that transgender youth who are called by their preferred names and pronouns are happier and healthier.
Larry Jones, shown in his Milwaukee home on March 21, says testimony from a transgender teen helped change his perspective about a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for minors in Wisconsin. “All of these kids, they deserve a chance to see where they belong,” he says. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Jones said a 14-year-old transgender teen — one of the youngest speakers who advocated for their right to go on hormones — helped to change his perspective at the hearing. In their testimony, they shared that they had recently contemplated suicide.
“I started to listen to this kid, and it wasn’t some kind of whim or something like that. This kid was actually suffering,” Jones said. “And I thought to myself, nobody has to do that. You’re only a kid.”
The GOP-controlled committee voted to advance the bill. Republican lawmakers in the Assembly passed it last week.
“Children are not allowed to get tattoos, sign contracts, get married, or smoke — so why would we allow them to physically change their gender?” Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth, said in a statement.
Jones had a different take.
“All of these kids, they deserve a chance to see where they belong,” he said.
Who is Larry?
Jones grew up in a small, rural unincorporated town in northern Michigan before moving to Milwaukee when he was 19 years old.
“When I moved to the city, it was like I was a kid in a candy store. I discovered books, and once I discovered books, I discovered the world,” he said.
For most of his life, he worked in the maintenance department at the Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center — a prison formerly known as the House of Corrections. There, he encountered gay men and women, but said he had never met someone who was transgender.
“If there’s something you don’t understand or don’t know anything about, it kind of frightens you a little bit,” Jones said.
When he was younger, he said LGBTQ+ people were “hidden.”
“In the area where I grew up … men were men,” Jones said. “I was taught by men who had their own visions of what gay people were like. They were called ‘queers’ and ‘fairies’ and off-the-wall, ungodly names back in the day. As I grew older … the whole world changed.”
A note given to Larry Jones by a young woman lies on a table in his Milwaukee home on March 21, 2025. As Jones was leaving a Wisconsin Assembly hearing on a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors, a woman in her early 20s tapped him on the shoulder and handed him this note that reads, “Thank you for being open to hearing all this and being open to changing your mind. That’s brave.” (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Jones calls himself conservative, but said he’s willing to look at both sides of an issue. He mostly tunes into Fox News and local TV stations. He said he still has a lot to learn about the transgender community, and he’s made that his mission for the next six months or so.
Prior to the hearing, he said he believed that someone who was transgender was “play acting” and simply changed their name and clothes along with a few other cosmetic things.
“It’s through no fault of their own. I don’t think there’s a medical problem. I think these kids were born this way,” Jones said. “I looked at it through a different perspective, from a different set of eyes, and I promised myself that I would look into this with a clearer sense of understanding.”
After his testimony, a young woman handed him a note that read, “Thank you for being open to hearing all this and being open to changing your mind. That’s brave.” Jones kept it.
His advice to others? “Don’t wear a pair of blinders and walk down the road. Keep an open mind.”
Wisconsin Watch reporter Jack Kelly contributed to this report.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
About 60% of federal spending is mandatory — appropriations are automatic.
About 27% is discretionary spending, and about 13% pays federal debt interest.
On mandatory spending, more than half is for Medicare and Social Security.
About 69 million people receive monthly Social Security retirement or disability payments. About 68 million get Medicare, which is health insurance for people 65 and older, and some people under 65 with certain conditions.
Discretionary spending requires annual approvals by Congress and the president. Abouthalf is for defense. The rest goes to programs such as transportation, education and housing.
Projected total federal spending in fiscal 2025 is $7 trillion, up about 58% from $4.45 trillion in fiscal 2019.
President Donald Trump pledged March 4 to balance the budget “in the near future.” But the federal debt is projected to grow about $2 trillion annually through 2035.
On March 12, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., said most federal government spending is mandatory.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court election has been awash in record-setting spending and menacing ads about each candidate being soft on crime, even though Supreme Court justices are primarily focused on interpreting the law, not sentencing those convicted of crimes.
The nasty ads date back to the 2008 Supreme Court election in which conservative Michael Gableman launched similar ads against liberal Justice Louis Butler. The state’s business lobby spent what at the time was a staggering $1.8 million, an amount that seems paltry compared with the record-setting tens of millions being spent on this year’s race.
Though both candidates have talked about impartiality and objectivity, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel has more openly tacked to the right in what appears to emulate liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s winning 2023 strategy. Dane County Judge Susan Crawford has more recently emphasized her liberal credentials and has tried to turn the election into a referendum on billionaire Elon Musk, who has spent heavily on the race and stirred controversy as the White House efficiency czar.
The TV ads are dark and ominous. The faces of people convicted of serious crimes are flashed across the screen. A grim-sounding voice-over accuses one candidate of letting “a sex predator loose on our kids.” Another spot accuses the other of “putting pedophiles back on the street.”
These messages have for weeks blanketed TV broadcasts across Wisconsin and permeated digital media spaces like YouTube. Funded by candidates or third-party groups pushing a political agenda, they have largely focused on the same subject: crime and public safety. Another wave of ads is expected over the next two weeks.
The ads are meant to define Dane County Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel for voters ahead of the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
The race has become “probably the most intense Supreme Court race the state has ever experienced,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “For the second time in a row, (the election is) going to determine the ideological direction of the Supreme Court. And, in part, the ideological direction of state government.”
High-profile cases concerning abortion rights, voting rights, legislative and congressional maps, labor rights, environmental issues, tax policy and power disputes between the state’s Democratic governor and Republican Legislature have all come before the court in recent years or are expected to arrive there in the coming months.
The candidates have mostly shied away from sharing their thoughts about those issues with voters, though it’s widely believed Crawford would side with the Democratic position and Schimel would side with Republicans.
Instead, the ads — which represent most of the candidates’ direct communication with voters — have focused on criminal prosecutions and sentencing practices.
But those two things have little to do with the work Crawford or Schimel will be doing when the winner is sworn in as a state Supreme Court justice in August, four political and legal experts told Wisconsin Watch.
A means to an end
The TV ads are a means to an end for both the campaigns and third-party groups, the experts told Wisconsin Watch.
“What the ads are about is not what the court is about,” Burden said. “When those justices get together in the state Capitol and hear cases, they’re about facts and precedent and legal theories and their understandings of the law, at least that’s the idea. But what the discourse is about — especially from the groups that are not the campaigns themselves but are these outside groups running ads somewhat independently — they can be about whatever the groups think would be effective to get their side a victory.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford declined to take a position during the only candidate debate on a pending case challenging the state’s 1849 abortion law, but she criticized a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel said during the only candidate debate that Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law was a validly passed law, but voters should decide whether to change it, not the state Supreme Court. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The campaigns have zeroed in on issues that don’t often concern the work of the justices because “some campaign consultants somewhere concluded that they work,” said Marquette University Law School professor Chad Oldfather. Focusing on crime and public safety is a common playbook for judicial candidates across the country, Oldfather said.
“The role of a state supreme court justice does not involve much day-to-day interaction with the workings of the criminal justice system,” Oldfather said, adding that tough-on-crime or soft-on-crime ads are a way for interest groups to motivate voters.
A group like Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby and a heavy financial backer of conservative judicial candidates, including Schimel, is more focused on having a court that is friendly to business interests than it is concerned about the sentences Crawford has handed out, said Douglas Keith, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Judiciary Program.
“The people who are spending money to run those ads, those are not actually the cases they care about,” he said in an interview. “This is just a visceral idea that they can use to get voters’ attention in an ad.”
But while the spending behind these ads has exploded, the approach itself is not new. In the 2008 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, conservative candidate Michael Gableman successfully ousted liberal Justice Louis Butler with the help of similar-sounding ads funded by WMC for $1.8 million — a quaint figure compared to the amounts groups have spent on the race so far this year.
An ad from Gableman’s campaign also sparked controversy. It pictured Butler side-by-side with the mugshot of a convicted rapist and made misleading assertions that Butler was responsible for getting the man out of prison. After the man was paroled in 1992, he committed another rape and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. The ad was unusually vicious for the time, but would fit among the ads in this year’s race.
Switching playbooks
At the start of the campaign, Crawford and Schimel both talked about wanting to bring “common sense” and “objectivity” to the court, but more recently they have tried to rally voters around more political issues.
Crawford initially backed away from Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s 2023 approach, in which the liberal then-candidate spoke openly about her “values” on abortion rights and gerrymandering — though in recent weeks the Dane County judge has been more forthcoming about her support for things like abortion rights. Crawford wants her work as an attorney to speak for itself, she said, pointing to her private practice work advocating for abortion rights, labor rights and voting rights.
“I think that tells a lot about my values and what I have worked for throughout my entire career,” Crawford told Wisconsin Watch in an interview earlier this month.
Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, speaks to supporters during a canvassing event March 1, 2025, at the Madtown Os Neighborhood Action Team headquarters in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The race is about the “future of the court, and it’s about the fundamental rights and freedoms of Wisconsinites,” she said. “For me, it’s about how we interpret the laws and constitution in the state of Wisconsin. I believe they should be interpreted to protect the rights of every Wisconsinite. That’s really why I’m running.”
A Schimel victory, Crawford said, could result in the restriction of Wisconsin residents’ individual rights and liberties. “I’m running to be a common sense justice who wants to use our laws and constitution to protect every Wisconsinite,” she said. “(Schimel is) an extreme politician who has an agenda that he’s bringing to the Supreme Court.”
“That’s garbage,” Schimel fired back when Crawford made a similar assertion at the candidates’ sole debate. Schimel’s campaign did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story.
Schimel seems to be embracing the Protasiewicz campaign approach, said Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at UW-La Crosse. Giving stronger partisan cues to voters, like Schimel is doing, “was massively rewarding for (Protasiewicz),” he said. Pairing those cues with election-defining issues like abortion rights and gerrymandering helped carry her to a blowout victory, Chergosky added.
Accordingly, Schimel has tried to tap into President Donald Trump’s political movement to bolster his campaign.
“The stakes could not be higher here in Wisconsin,” he told conservative commentator Charlie Kirk during an interview late last month. “Leftists took over the majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court two years ago in 2023 and they’re going through a political agenda. They are working to wipe out every conservative reform that’s been passed in Wisconsin to make us strong, prosperous, safe. All those things are on the chopping block now.”
The court’s decisions to throw out the state’s gerrymandered legislative districts and take up a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Act 10, the Scott Walker-era law that crippled public employee unions, are two examples, he said.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate and Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel, left, shakes hands with an attendee as part of his “Save Wisconsin” tour during the Republican Party of Dane County annual caucus March 15, 2025, at the Madison West Marriott in Middleton, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Schimel said Trump’s election victory in November represented “a movement to save our nation.” Backing him on April 1 is a way to continue to be part of that movement, he said.
While speaking at an event the next day, Schimel continued to push that idea.
Prior to Nov. 5, he said, “America had walked up to the edge of the abyss and we could hear the wind howling. You could look down but you can’t see the bottom.” Trump’s victory let the country take “a couple steps back from that abyss,” he added.
“The job’s not done,” Schimel said. “And this is the message we have to get out to people: The job’s not done.”
Schimel is also appealing to Trump to visit Wisconsin to bolster his campaign, the New York Times reported last week.
Billionaires bloat spending
The stakes of the election — with the assistance of billionaires and outside groups — have already propelled the race to record spending. A recent WisPolitics.com tally found almost $59 million had been spent on the race with several weeks left to go, surpassing the record $56 million spent in the 2023 race between Protasiewicz and Daniel Kelly. Prior to 2023, the record for spending in a judicial election was $15 million in a 2004 Illinois contest.
Crawford’s campaign has been the biggest spender so far, dropping almost $23 million on just TV ads. The Madison judge’s fundraising has been boosted by the state Democratic Party, which has accepted sizable donations from liberal mega-donors like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker — all billionaires.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices, second from left, Janet Protasiewicz, Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky walk to a press briefing with Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford following the WISN 12 Wisconsin Supreme Court debate with Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel on March 12, 2025, at the Lubar Center at Marquette University Law School’s Eckstein Hall in Milwaukee, Wis. The hour-long debate was the first and only debate between the candidates ahead of the April 1 election. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
While the maximum contribution individuals can make to candidate campaigns is capped in Wisconsin, there is no limit on how much one person can donate to a state political party. Those parties can then, in turn, make unlimited transfers to candidate campaigns, a loophole used to bolster candidate fundraising.
Billionaire support for Schimel has largely come through third-party groups, though Schimel’s campaign has spent some $8.8 million on ad buys. The Waukesha judge’s largest benefactor, by far, has been Elon Musk, the centibillionaire tech CEO serving as Trump’s efficiency czar.
Musk’s super PAC has spent more than $6.5 million on the race so far, the bulk of which has been on canvassing and voter outreach efforts to bolster Schimel. A second Musk-affiliated group, Building America’s Future, has spent $6 million on TV ads, according to a WisPolitics.com tally.
Chatter about the race’s spending dominated the contest’s only debate. Crawford called Musk “dangerous” and tied him to the firing of air traffic controllers and the increased price of eggs.
“(Musk) has basically taken over Brad Schimel’s campaign,” Crawford continued, arguing that Musk is trying to buy himself a justice on the high court as Tesla filed a lawsuit seeking to open dealerships in Wisconsin. Crawford at one point called Musk “Elon Schimel.” The play comes as Democrats seek to make the election an early referendum on Musk and Trump.
Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Democratic Party launched “a seven-figure grassroots effort to turn Elon Musk’s attempt to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court race into a political disaster for Brad Schimel.” It includes a digital ad campaign, town hall events and billboards. Less than two weeks before Election Day, Crawford for the first time released an ad tying Schimel to Musk.
Schimel hit back, pointing to Soros’ financial support for Crawford, arguing the billionaire financier “funded DAs and judges who have let dangerous criminals out on the street.”
Another outside group funded by billionaire Richard Uihlein, Fair Courts America, has spent over $2.5 million on TV ads targeting Crawford. Americans for Prosperity, a group with close ties to billionaire Charles Koch, has spent over $1.2 million to boost Schimel.
Such heavy spending underscores how groups see the race as a means to advance their political agendas — despite being officially nonpartisan. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, for example, recently added the race to its target list for the 2025-26 cycle.
“Our mandate (at the DLCC) is obviously building Democratic power and securing and maintaining majorities in state legislatures,” said Jeremy Jansen, the group’s vice president of political. He added that the DLCC has been focused on state supreme court races in recent years that could affect that power, with a focus on redistricting.
“Investing in this race is a way to protect or preserve some of the work that the DLCC did in the most recent cycle and in previous cycles,” Jansen said, noting how Protasiewicz’s 2023 victory led to new legislative maps and 14 additional Democratic seats in the Legislature.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate and Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel gives a speech as part of his “Save Wisconsin” tour during the Republican Party of Dane County annual caucus March 15, 2025, at the Madison West Marriott in Middleton, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Republicans are eager for conservatives to retake a majority on the high court and protect the authority of the Legislature.
“For all the people who are concerned about concentration of power in the executive branch at the federal level, I think that we would have that happen here in Wisconsin,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters last month in response to a question about the stakes of the race. “We’re already seeing that the liberal court is taking power away from the Legislature simply because they don’t agree with us. I don’t think that’s right.”
A new normal
The final days of the campaign will be critical for both candidates. A Marquette Law School Poll from earlier this month found large portions of voters are unfamiliar with both candidates.
The survey of registered voters found that 38% of respondents lacked an opinion of Schimel and 58% lacked an opinion of Crawford. That’s “a very perilous position for a candidate to be in because it means that they need to define themselves quickly before the other side does it for them,” Chergosky said.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, left, and Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel, right, wait for the start of the WISN 12 Wisconsin Supreme Court debate March 12, 2025, at the Lubar Center at Marquette University Law School’s Eckstein Hall in Milwaukee. The debate featured clashes over the tens of millions being spent on both candidates by billionaires. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The Marquette poll did not feature a head-to-head question. But a poll commissioned by WMC earlier this month found the race tied 47% to 47%. The survey was conducted by OnMessage Inc., which receives an “A” rating from polling guru Nate Silver.
The same poll found that “fighting to uphold the rule of law,” “reducing crime and keeping violent criminals off the streets” and “ensuring that abortion is available and accessible in Wisconsin” are the top issues in the race. Those issues continue to be prominent among the ads being rolled out by the candidates and outside groups.
And while crime has long been an issue in these races, Oldfather said, “(before 2008) judicial campaigns just did not use to look like this.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
On April 1, voters will cast their ballots in a nationally watched election to select Wisconsin’s next state Supreme Court justice.
The election, which pits liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford against conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, has already smashed the prior record for spending in a judicial race. In turn, TV stations across the state have been blanketed with ads from both campaigns and third-party groups. The ads reek of politics and often focus on issues that have almost nothing to do with what justices actually do.
So, what does the Wisconsin Supreme Court actually do?
What is the Wisconsin Supreme Court?
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is the highest court in Wisconsin’s judicial system.
It has seven justices, each elected to a 10-year term in an April general election. If a vacancy occurs on the court, the governor appoints a replacement. That justice serves until an election can be held, which occurs in the first April without an already-scheduled state Supreme Court election.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has the final authority on determining whether lower courts in state criminal or civil cases followed the law and also whether a Wisconsin law adhered to the state constitution.
In some rare instances, decisions from the Wisconsin Supreme Court can be appealed to the United States Supreme Court. But those appeals typically claim the state Supreme Court’s ruling in some way infringes on federal law or rights granted by the U.S. Constitution.
How do cases reach the Supreme Court?
Cases arrive at the state Supreme Court in a number of ways:
A party who lost a case in the Court of Appeals, the state’s intermediate court, can ask the court to review the decision.
Any party involved in litigation decided by a county circuit court may ask the high court to bypass the Court of Appeals and take a case. There are 71 county circuit courts in the state, each staffed by a varying number of judges. Circuit courts are sometimes referred to as “district courts” or “trial courts.”
The Court of Appeals can ask the high court to take a case.
The state Supreme Court, on its own motion, can decide to review a case appealed in the Court of Appeals directly.
A party can petition the state Supreme Court to take a case directly, known as an original action.
Who are the current justices on the court?
Today’s court is generally believed to have four liberal justices and three conservative justices. Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky and Janet Protasiewicz make up the court’s four-member liberal majority.
The court’s three conservative members are Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and Justices Rebecca Bradley and Brian Hagedorn. Of those, Hagedorn has most frequently voted with the liberal majority, giving him the reputation of a swing vote.
The April 1 election is to replace Walsh Bradley, who is retiring after serving for 30 years on the high court.
Who is running on April 1?
Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel are jostling to be the state’s next justice.
Supreme Court elections are supposed to be nonpartisan. However, justices tend to adhere to liberal and conservative judicial and political philosophies, and partisan interests have spent heavily on candidates aligned with their interests.
Crawford is considered the liberal candidate. She has served as a Dane County judge since 2018. Prior to taking the bench, she worked for the state Department of Justice and served as chief legal counsel for Democratic former Gov. Jim Doyle. She has also worked in private practice, where she represented Planned Parenthood in litigation relating to abortion access. Crawford also worked on behalf of clients challenging the state’s voter ID law and Act 10, the Scott Walker-era law that hamstrung public sector labor unions. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin and liberal donors are heavily funding her campaign.
Schimel is considered the conservative candidate. He has served as a judge in Waukesha County since 2018. Prior to becoming a judge, he served one term as Wisconsin attorney general and spent eight years serving as the Waukesha County district attorney. He won both jobs campaigning as a Republican. As attorney general he led an unsuccessful national effort to invalidate the Affordable Care Act and appealed a federal court ruling that struck down a law restricting abortion access. Wealthy state and national Republican donors are backing his candidacy.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
On Wednesday, March 26, at 4 p.m. Central time, Wisconsin Watch will host a free, live Zoom discussion about the upcoming state Supreme Court election.
The event will feature a conversation between Wisconsin Watch statehouse reporter Jack Kelly and state bureau chief Matthew DeFour.
The link to RSVP is here, and full background details are below.
On April 1, voters will decide what direction the Wisconsin Supreme Court will shift, and there are only two possible outcomes: a guaranteed liberal majority until 2028 or a 3-3 split with Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative-leaning swing vote, again wielding outsized influence.
The two candidates are Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge endorsed by the court’s four current liberal members, and former Attorney General Brad Schimel, a Republican who now serves as a Waukesha County judge.
The actions of the state Supreme Court are a major focus for our team — in the final days before Wisconsin voters decide on the future shape of the court, we wanted to create a space for questions and thoughtful discussion.
Following the success of previous events, we’ll have that discussion as a live Zoom event hosted by state bureau chief Matthew DeFour and statehouse reporter Jack Kelly, who first wrote about the race back in January and again this month and has kept subscribers to our Monday morning newsletter, Forward, up to speed with the latest developments in the contest.
We want this discussion to be shaped by your questions, concerns and thoughts about the role of the state Supreme Court and the issues that may be determined by its members in the coming months.
You can submit yours when you RSVP using the form here or by emailing events@wisconsinwatch.org. If you are interested in the event but aren’t sure if you’ll be able to attend, register anyway — it’s free, and we will send everyone who registers a link to the full video after the event is over.
Finally, while the event is free to attend, it isn’t free to produce. If you can afford to make a donation to offset our costs, you’ll join a growing group of ordinary people funding local news.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit newsroom that uses journalism to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected, seeks a pathways to success reporter to expand our coverage of issues surrounding postsecondary education and workforce training in northeast Wisconsin. The right candidate will be a curious, collaborative, deep listener who can understand bureaucracies and economic trends that affect people’s lives.
Description
Wisconsin Watch provides trustworthy reporting that investigates problems, explores solutions and serves the public. We aim to strengthen the quality of community life and self-government in Wisconsin by providing people with the knowledge they need to navigate their lives, drive forward solutions and hold those with power accountable. We pursue the truth through accurate, fair, independent, rigorous, nonpartisan reporting. We share our stories freely and collaborate with other news organizations that share our independent, nonpartisan, truth-seeking values.
Why pathways to success?
Funding cuts and other financial pressures have forced higher education institutions to rely more heavily on tuition — increasing affordability challenges for students and affecting the quality of education. Meanwhile, Wisconsin faces a shortage of skilled workers, including in manufacturing, construction, health care, agriculture and information technology. This shortage is exacerbated by an aging workforce, particularly in rural areas, and a gap between the skills employers need and those job seekers have.
Reporting on this beat will help policymakers and civic leaders understand how to expand pathways to jobs. It will also help Wisconsin residents learn the skills needed to build thriving careers. We’re taking a different approach to higher education coverage than news outlets have historically taken. Rather than prioritizing breaking news or scandals at major universities, we’re centering the experiences of learners, families and employers to better understand how the state’s broader postsecondary landscape meets their needs. That includes paying close attention to technical colleges and trades programs.
Why northeast Wisconsin?
In our broader efforts to strengthen the local news ecosystem, Wisconsin Watch is launching a bureau that will serve key information and accountability needs of northeast Wisconsin residents. The bureau will build upon the success of the NEW News Lab, a collaborative launched in 2021 that provides technology support, capacity building and funding to boost local journalism and newsrooms in the region. The collaboration’s five other partners include: WPR, FoxValley365, The Post-Crescent, Green Bay Press-Gazette and The Press Times. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Journalism Department is an educational partner.
Job duties
The reporter will:
Work with the northeast Wisconsin editor and other colleagues to frame, report and write news stories that serve northeast Wisconsin. These stories will appear on Wisconsin Watch platforms and be distributed to news outlets across Wisconsin and the country.
Listen to those struggling to find family-supporting jobs and to those unable to fill positions to find disconnects among workforce recruitment, development and training and those who are underemployed. Find evidence-based best practices to address this challenge.
Follow up on tips from community members and leaders and develop locally focused stories based on information needs identified in community listening sessions.
Develop sources in secondary and postsecondary education, industries struggling to fill jobs, workforce development, labor and the general public to identify breakdowns in systems, information gaps and success stories that could inform pathways to success.
Research the jobs that will be in high demand for years to come to inform reporting on effective programs for gaining the necessary skills to perform these jobs, from jobs in nursing and health care, where demographics show increasing demand, to developing technologies, such as those in artificial intelligence and robotics.
Work with the northeast Wisconsin editor, community ambassadors and audience team to identify key target audiences for this beat and develop strategies for “meeting those audiences where they are” in terms of information levels, preferred formats and distribution channels.
Cultivate collegial and productive relationships with collaborating news organizations to gather and analyze data, research best practices and maximize impact on stories with national scope. This includes Open Campus, a national news network aiming to improve higher education coverage, and NEW News Lab partners.
Required qualifications: The ideal candidate will bring a public service mindset and a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisan journalism ethics, including a commitment to abide by Wisconsin Watch’s ethics policies. More specifically, we’re looking for a reporter who:
Has researched, reported and written original published news stories and/or features on deadline.
Has demonstrated the ability to formulate compelling story pitches to editors.
Aches to report stories that explore solutions to challenges residents face.
Has experience with or ideas about the many ways newsrooms can inform the public — from narrative investigations and features to Q&As and “how-to” explainers or visual stories.
Has experience working with others. Wisconsin Watch is a deeply collaborative organization. Our journalists frequently team up with each other or with colleagues at other news outlets to maximize the potential impact of our reporting.
Bonus skills:
Be able to analyze and visually present data.
Familiarity with Wisconsin, its history and its politics.
Multimedia skills including photography, audio and video.
Ability to communicate multiple languages, particularly Spanish.
Location: The pathways to success reporter will be located in northeast Wisconsin.
Salary and benefits: The salary range is $45,500-$64,500. Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, and higher compensation may be available for someone with advanced skills and/or experience. Wisconsin Watch offers competitive benefits, including generous vacation (five weeks), a retirement fund contribution, paid sick days, paid family and caregiver leave, subsidized medical and dental premiums, vision coverage, and more.
Deadline: Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.
If you’d like to chat about the job before applying, contact Managing Editor Jim Malewitz at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to improving our newsroom by better reflecting the people we cover. We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. We are an equal-opportunity employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, or any other status protected under applicable law.
In just two weeks, Wisconsin residents will head to the polls for another pivotal and closely watched election.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom with a statewide focus, and one of our goals is to ensure that Wisconsin residents have access to reliable information before they head to the polls on April 1.
We also know that most of you are busy people, which is why we’ve pulled together a short list of resources from our newsroom and other reliable sources.
Here are the key statewide races:
State Supreme Court
Candidates Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge backed by the court’s current liberal members, and former Attorney General Brad Schimel, a Republican judge from Waukesha County, are vying to replace longtime liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who is retiring.
What you need to know: This election will determine whether the Wisconsin Supreme Court maintains a guaranteed liberal majority until 2028 or shifts to a 3-3 split, with conservative-leaning swing vote Justice Brian Hagedorn holding the deciding vote. Read our coverage here.
Want more? Wisconsin Watch is hosting a free, live Zoom discussion about the Supreme Court election with statehouse reporter Jack Kelly on March 26 at 4 p.m. Central time. Submit your questions when you RSVP here or by emailing events@wisconsinwatch.org — your input will shape the conversation.
State superintendent of public instruction
Incumbent Jill Underly, backed by the Democratic Party, faces education consultant Brittany Kinser, who is supported by conservative groups advocating for private school voucher programs.
What you need to know: Underly has faced criticism from Republicans for adjusting the state’s proficiency benchmarks for standardized tests. She argues the changes better reflect what students are learning. Kinser’s platform focuses on expanding school choice statewide.
Voters will also decide on a proposed constitutional amendment that would require individuals to present valid photographic identification to vote, with exceptions allowed by law.
What you need to know: Proponents argue it safeguards election integrity, while critics warn it could disenfranchise groups less likely to possess valid photo IDs, particularly marginalized communities. The outcome could have lasting implications for future elections in Wisconsin.
Helpful resources: Our partnerVotebeat has written about the ballot measure.
To find your polling location and see what local positions are on the ballot, visit MyVote Wisconsin. All you need to know is your address — the site will guide you through the rest.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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A behind-the-scenes effort to force Congress to call a convention to amend the Constitution could end up helping President Donald Trump in his push to expand presidential power — or even run for a third term.
The effort to amend the Constitution predates Trump’s second term but carries new weight as several members of the president’s inner circle have expressed support for a convention to limit federal government spending and power.
A draft lawsuit obtained by WisconsinWatch and ProPublica argues Congress must call a convention. Liberal and conservative legal scholars have criticized the arguments in it, calling them “wild,” “completely illegitimate” and “deeply flawed.”
Some states’ requests for a constitutional convention date back centuries. “It is absurd, on the face of it, that they could count something that had to do with Prohibition as a call for a constitutional convention in 2025,” former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, said.
A behind-the-scenes legal effort to force Congress to call a convention to amend the Constitution could end up helping President Donald Trump in his push to expand presidential power.
While the convention effort is focused on the national debt, legal experts say it could open the door to other changes, such as limiting who can be a U.S. citizen, allowing the president to overrule Congress’ spending decisions or even making it legal for Trump to run for a third term.
Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica have obtained a draft version of a proposed lawsuit being floated to attorneys general in several states, revealing new details about who’s involved and their efforts to advance legal arguments that liberal and conservative legal scholars alike have criticized, calling them “wild,” “completely illegitimate” and “deeply flawed.”
The endeavor predates Trump’s second term but carries new weight as several members of Trump’s inner circle and House Speaker Mike Johnson have previously expressed support for a convention to limit federal government spending and power.
Article V of the Constitution requires Congress to call a convention to propose and pass amendments if two-thirds of states, or 34, request one. This type of convention has never happened in U.S. history, and a decadeslong effort to advance a so-called balanced budget amendment, which would prohibit the government from running a deficit, has stalled at 28.
New York’s 1789 resolution. (Via The New York Public Library)
Despite that, the lawsuit being circulated claims that Congress must hold a convention now because the states reached the two-thirds threshold in 1979. To get there, these activists count various calls for a convention dating back to the late 1700s. Wisconsin’s petition, for example, was written in 1929 and was an effort to repeal Prohibition. The oldest petition they cite, from New York, predates the Bill of Rights. Some others came on the eve of the Civil War.
“It is absurd, on the face of it, that they could count something that had to do with Prohibition as a call for a constitutional convention in 2025,” said Russ Feingold, a former Democratic senator from Wisconsin who co-wrote a book critical of convention efforts like this one. “They’re just playing games to try to pretend that the founders of this country wanted you to be able to mix and match resolutions from all different times in American history.”
To avoid the threat of a convention, the legislatures in some states like Colorado and Illinois have passed resolutions withdrawing their petitions. The draft lawsuit says those actions don’t count because “once the Article V bell has been rung, it cannot be unrung.” Nearly half the states the draft counts have rescinded their petitions.
The draft lawsuit is the work of the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation, a low-profile nonprofit that has drawn support from balanced budget advocates and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. The group’s chair, David M. Walker, oversaw government accountability as U.S. comptroller general during both the Clinton and Bush administrations. The draft lawsuit is signed by Charles “Chuck” Cooper, a high-powered conservative lawyer in Washington, D.C., who represented Trump’s previous attorney general during the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The legal effort is headed by David M. Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general. (Via U.S. Government Accountability Office)
Walker and his team have shopped the lawsuit to over a dozen state attorneys general and Republican-controlled legislatures seeking to find states to serve as plaintiffs, according to emails obtained through records requests, public testimony and interviews. Alongside ALEC’s CEO, they met with members of the Utah attorney general’s office in 2023, trying to recruit the state to take the lead, and planned to meet with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, emails show. Lawmakers in Utah, Arizona, South Carolina and West Virginia have sought to get their states to join the lawsuit.
Walker declined to confirm the authenticity of the draft complaint and wouldn’t say which states have signed onto the lawsuit. But it mirrors the legal arguments Walker and his group have made, and the document’s metadata shows Cooper’s firm authored it. Neither Cooper nor his firm returned repeated requests for comment. An ALEC spokesperson said the group has merely provided a “forum” to “exchange ideas.”
Walker said an attorney general’s office has written its own version with “modifications.” He said he hopes the states will announce their intent to sue within the next two months and file shortly after.
Walker and the draft complaint say the convention is necessary to confront the national debt and would be limited to discussing fiscal responsibility.
“Some people think that the convention would get together to basically rewrite the Constitution. That’s totally false,” Walker said. “That has nothing to do with what we’re proposing. Under Article V, it’s just a separate way to get an amendment to the existing constitution.”
The draft lawsuit is signed by Charles “Chuck” Cooper, an influential conservative lawyer in Washington, D.C., shown here in 2011. (Paul Sakuma, The Associated Press)
Dozens of legal scholars and hundreds of civil society groups, organized by the government watchdog Common Cause, have warned that it would be exceedingly difficult to constrain a convention to just one idea and that calling one would expose the entire Constitution to revision. Some of them say the risk has grown under Trump.
“Nobody is observing any restraints on their power,” Georgetown law professor and convention critic David Super said. “If he continues to lose in the courts, one can imagine he will be trying to get a convention to adopt his view of presidential powers.”
Asked to respond, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly accused Wisconsin Watch of having “TDS” (Trump derangement syndrome) and being a “dark money” group. (Wisconsin Watch makes its donors public here.)
Sam Fieldman, of the campaign finance reform group Wolf-PAC, has individually worked with the foundation on the lawsuit. He said the process empowers states to check the federal government and change the Constitution if Congress fails to act.
“People who are claiming that this process will lead to tyranny are sitting here twiddling their thumbs while we are heading toward tyranny like a rocket right now,” Fieldman said.
‘Fuzzy math’ and a ‘time machine’
Throughout history, the Constitution has been amended 27 times, including to abolish slavery and provide women with the right to vote. An amendment must be approved by two-thirds of both houses of Congress. It then must be ratified by three-quarters of the states to become law.
The Constitution also offers another way: Congress can call a convention after two-thirds of state legislatures request one.
But Article V provides few other details. It does not say what constitutes a valid application or how to add them together to reach 34. Nor does it say how a convention should run. It does not enumerate specifics on delegates, such as who can serve and how states should select them, nor whether each state gets one vote or votes relative to population. And it does not specify whether a convention can be limited to specific issues.
As of now, the three-fourths ratification requirement still stands. Critics fear delegates could take the extreme step of lowering the threshold to make it easier for the amendments to pass, a scenario that proponents dismiss as “fear mongering.”
Fewer than half the states have laws or policies governing convention procedures. The majority of those would give state legislators, rather than voters, the ability to select delegates. They’d also permit each state one vote, according to a 2023 review by the Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive government watchdog.
The center obtained audio of former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania at a private ALEC workshop saying that because “most states are going to be controlled by Republicans,” rural and Republican voters will have “an outsize granted power” in a convention.
“We have the opportunity as a result of that to have a supermajority,” he said, even though “we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”
Santorum did not return emails seeking comment.
Over the years, people from across the political spectrum have attempted to call conventions for various topics, such as campaign finance reform and congressional term limits. None of the advocates have tried to use states’ old calls that didn’t specify a topic to reach the required 34.
Illinois’ 1861 resolution that the state has since withdrawn. (1861 Ill. Laws 281-82, highlights added by Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica)
But during a 2020 ALEC presentation, a balanced budget activist named David Biddulph debuted a new theory: By combining old resolutions that generally called for a convention with ones for a balanced budget amendment, the nation already surpassed the threshold.
Biddulph said he based his theory on a paper authored by Robert Natelson, a former law professor who focuses on Article V, and published by the Federalist Society in 2018. But Natelson’s paper did not claim the threshold had been reached, and in an interview, he said he disagrees with activists claiming otherwise.
During the presentation, moderated by former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Biddulph announced that his organization, which became the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation, was encouraging attorneys general to file suit against Congress.
Biddulph did not respond to repeated calls and emails seeking comment.
That same theory forms the basis of the draft lawsuit, which counts six petitions that called for a convention without stating a specific purpose alongside balanced budget ones to support their claim for a convention.
“They realize they will never get to 34 honestly now, so they are talking about a new math,” said Nancy MacLean, a historian whose book “Democracy in Chains” discusses the dangers of a convention. Some convention opponents, like Super, refer to this as the “fuzzy math” theory.
During a legislative hearing in Utah, Sharon Anderson, a conservative opponent of a convention, used a metaphor to criticize the counting method.
“A certain team, discouraged that they hadn’t scored the winning touchdown yet, devised a way to win the game,” Anderson said. “Instead of actually getting the ball into the end zone, they would basically add up all the yards they had gained until they totaled a distance needed to cross the goal line.”
A headline to a 1929 Associated Press article from the Washington, D.C., newspaper The Evening Star. (Via Chronicling America)
But Natelson, a member of ALEC’s board of scholars who is cited repeatedly in the lawsuit, said if lawmakers had wanted to limit their calls to specific topics, they could have done so.
The second key part of the foundation’s legal argument is timing, which opponents like Super refer to as the “time machine” theory. Wisconsin passed a balanced budget amendment resolution in 2017, yet the draft instead includes the state’s Prohibition-era petition because it’s counting applications on the books between 1979 and 1998 — a period when the draft argues at least 34 existed.
Unmentioned, however, is that almost nobody during that period claimed that the nation had surpassed the threshold.
This is unlike recent debates over the Equal Rights Amendment, which would prohibit discrimination based on sex. Some argue that enough states have now approved the amendment, but the U.S. archivist declined to certify it because Congress explicitly set a deadline for ratification that states did not meet.
Getting states on board
Biddulph and others began to enlist state support in 2022 with an email that announced: “The historic milestone of 34 Article V state resolutions calling for an amendment convention to propose a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) has finally been achieved, and surprisingly it happened over 40 years ago.”
The message, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy and provided to Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica, asked states to pass a resolution demanding Congress call a convention and directing the state’s legislature and attorney general to “take such actions as will require Congress’s compliance.”
Republican state lawmakers in Utah and South Carolina responded within days, introducing measures incorporating some of the proposed language.
“We have a tremendous opportunity as a state to deal with an issue that is a very serious and grave moment in our nation,” Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican who introduced the measure, said at a legislative hearing in February 2022. “It’s the power of the state to be able to deal with the excessive debt and the financial explosion and the swindling, as Thomas Jefferson said, the swindling of the future on a massive scale.”
Since the Utah hearing, Arizona and West Virginia have also introduced measures demanding Congress call a convention. West Virginia’s was the most explicit, resolving to “commence federal court action” against Congress, and advanced the furthest, passing the state House of Delegates before stalling in its Senate. So far, none of the resolutions has been adopted. West Virginia’s was reintroduced last month.
In February 2024, activists believed they were close to filing the lawsuit, emails obtained through a public records request show. The Senate presidents and House speakers in Utah and Arizona signed letters expressing their interest in joining a federal lawsuit against Congress to force a convention on fiscal issues.
In an email that was cc’d to the Arizona lawmaker who sponsored the state’s resolution, convention supporter Mike Kapic celebrated Utah’s and Arizona’s interest as a “win.”
“One more and UT says they’ll lead the filing in federal court,” Kapic wrote. “Then watch other states rush to file.”
It still hasn’t happened. The Arizona Legislature does not have standing to file a lawsuit on its own, a spokesperson for the state attorney general said, and the Democratic attorney general has not agreed to take the case.
A spokesperson for the Utah attorney general’s office declined to comment on whether the state had agreed to file the suit.
Ivory said by email that he is unaware whether Utah has any current plans to sue Congress. “New AG, New Congress, New President,” he wrote, adding that he believes “negotiations” may be taking place with Congress “with potential promising results,” but that he is not involved.
Alaska is the only state listed on the draft complaint, but the state attorney general’s office would not confirm whether it has joined.
In Congress, Texas Republican Rep. Jodey Arrington has also introduced resolutions to trigger a convention, including one he put forward last month. His office did not agree to an interview.
If Congress does call a convention, it would likely be up to delegates to keep it from creeping into other parts of the Constitution.
Historians generally agree that the 1787 constitutional convention itself was a runaway convention. Delegates met in Philadelphia to amend the Articles of Confederation, a process that required unanimity among states. Instead, they scrapped the entire document and drafted the Constitution, proposing a lower threshold for states to ratify amendments.
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
The Social Security Administration’s actuary estimated that 30,000 people died in 2023 while waiting for a decision on their application for disability benefits.
That’s according to testimony given to a U.S. Senate committee Sept. 11, 2024, by Martin O’Malley, who was then the Social Security commissioner.
O’Malley said disability applicants wait on average nearly eight months for an initial decision and almost eight more months if they are denied and request reconsideration.
Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) makes monthly payments to people who have a disability that stops or limits their ability to work. Supplemental Security Income (SSI) pays people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income or resources.
Social Security announced Feb. 28 it plans to cut 7,000 of its 57,000 workers, part of the Trump administration’s initiative to reduce the federal workforce.
The deaths claim was made March 9 in Altoona, Wisconsin, by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
For a data journalist, this removal and possible manipulation of federal data are concerning and frustrating because it limits the information we can use to make sense of our world.
What exactly is data journalism? The term might confuse some people. To me it means using numbers to investigate inequity and injustice and find patterns and anomalies in an otherwise anecdotal world.
Credible and accessible federal, state and local data make such investigations possible, allowing us to identify solutions to challenges that affect Wisconsin communities. Journalists are hardly the only people to rely on such data. Federal data sets are used by researchers, public officials and students across the world to understand our communities.
Certain changes to government websites under a new president are relatively common, as illustrated by the End of Term web archive. The archive has, since 2008, preserved information from government websites at the end of presidential terms — collecting terabytes of information. The difference this time? The Trump administration has sought to tear apart full data sets to remove information it doesn’t like, particularly data related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
A stark example is the Youth Risk Behavior Survey — a nationally representative study that “measures health-related behaviors and experiences that can lead to death and disability among youth and adults.” The survey produced volumes of data, which could help communities understand how race, mental health, gender identity and sexual orientation shape health-related behaviors. The data was temporarily taken offline until a court order required the Department of Health and Human Services to restore the website.
A note on the website now says, in part: “This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.”
Still, like with other restored websites, we don’t know whether information has been scrubbed or changed to conform with the Trump administration’s worldview. We don’t know whether other data or information will change without notice.
But these archivists can save only what is already available. They can’t tell us what is being removed or manipulated before data reaches the public. They can’t tell us what information is being kept secret. Americans have long disagreed on politics, and that’s OK. Partisan debate is healthy and necessary in a democracy. But partisanship is now sowing mistrust in the data we rely on to tell the American story.
And right now? We need concrete facts more than ever.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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Two women incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution have died following hospital stays that began Feb. 22.
Family members of both women say hospital staff linked the deaths to pneumonia. They said both women started mentioning health issues over the phone around a month ago.
Corrections officials briefly locked down part of Taycheedah due to an increase in respiratory illnesses.
Two women incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution have died following hospital stays that began Feb. 22. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has shared limited information about their deaths, frustrating family members and those locked up at the maximum- and medium-security women’s prison.
Shawnee Reed, 36, died Feb. 23, a day after arriving at an area hospital. Brittany Doescher, 33, died Thursday after spending nearly two weeks on life support, according to an online corrections database and family members.
Both women were mothers, family members said.
Two prisoners at Taycheedah told Wisconsin Watch and WPR that a third incarcerated woman was hospitalized around the same time as Reed and Doescher. The online corrections database shows the woman they identified was “out to facility” on Feb. 23. She returned to Taycheedah in the same week.
Reed and Doescher’s official causes of death are pending, said Dr. Adam Covach, Fond du Lac County’s chief medical examiner. Family members of both women say hospital staff linked the deaths to pneumonia. Reed and Doescher’s relatives asked not to be identified to avoid drawing more attention to their families.
Doescher’s relative said she learned of Doescher’s hospitalization two days after it began. She arrived to find Doescher chained to a bed with blisters around her ankles.
Shawnee Reed, 36, right, poses with her son. Photo was blurred for privacy. (Courtesy of the Reed family)
Following discussions with doctors, Doescher’s family member believes earlier treatment could have prevented the death, particularly because she was so young.
Asked about the deaths, department spokesperson Beth Hardtke wrote in an email to WPR and Wisconsin Watch: “The federal Centers for Disease Control is seeing ‘high’ numbers of respiratory illness cases in Wisconsin, and the Department of Corrections (DOC) is taking a number of steps to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses to staff and persons in our care.”
People incarcerated at Wisconsin prisons, including Taycheedah, were recently tested and treated for Influenza A, Hardtke added.
Relatives said both women started mentioning health issues over the phone around a month ago.
Questions about the illnesses are swirling within the prison. Three incarcerated women told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they learned Reed had died but heard different versions of the cause.
Corrections officials locked down part of Taycheedah — limiting prisoner movement — on Feb. 28. That was due to an increase in respiratory illnesses, according to an internal memo from Warden Michael Gierach. The department lifted the lockdown Thursday.
Wisconsin typically charges prisoners a $7.50 copay for each face-to-face medical visit, among the highest in the country. Citing the surge of respiratory visits, the department lifted copays for visits beginning Feb. 28, five days after Reed died.
“DOC health care staff recently reminded employees and those in our care of ways to protect themselves as influenza, COVID-19, pneumonia and RSV continue to circulate,” Hardtke wrote.
The prisons are providing vaccines, masks and soap for regular hand washing, Hardtke added. Anyone who tests positive for a respiratory illness is quarantined for at least seven days.
While women at Taycheedah did receive information about respiratory illness precautions, the department shared no details about the hospitalizations and deaths, said Kady Mehaffey, who is incarcerated.
“Which is kind of maddening because of the amount of people that are filling in the blanks about what happened,” Mehaffey said.
The department did not publicly announce the women’s deaths, which WPR and Wisconsin Watch learned about from women incarcerated at the facility.
Online records showed the women had died but little other information. The department has since provided basic information, including the women’s names, ages, death dates, and that they died in an “area hospital.”
States including Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska publicly announce prisoner deaths, sharing the person’s name, prison, where they died, and in some cases, details related to their cause of death.
Wisconsin is not the only state to limit the release of such details, but doing so is problematic, said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.
“There’s no greater responsibility that prisons have than keeping the people inside safe and alive and when there’s a failure to do that the public has a right to know,” Deitch said.
Hardtke wrote that her department follows best practices to protect the privacy of people who are incarcerated and their families. What’s more, it’s up to county coroners or medical examiners to investigate causes of deaths.
The Department of Corrections does confirm deaths and release names after family is notified, but the department can’t release other details, including cause of death, because of privacy laws, Hardtke said.
Deitch said prison systems often interpret privacy laws broadly and then point to such protections to justify withholding information.
While the department updates its online database to note prisoner deaths, someone seeking information about a death would first need to know the prisoner’s name. That database was used to confirm the March 4 death of a prisoner at Waupun Correctional Institution — Damien Evans, the seventh Waupun prisoner to die in custody since June 2023.
Fourteen prisoners residing at Wisconsin’s adult institutions have died this year, Hardtke wrote. The prisons saw 61 deaths in all of 2024 and 54 deaths in 2023.
Reed and Doescher both participated in a program to help with substance abuse and facilitate an early release, according to relatives and court documents. Doescher expected her release within months, her relative said.
“She was hoping to come home and start her own business,” the relative said. “She wanted to counsel other girls in situations like her.”
Both Reed and Doescher enjoyed jewelry making while at Taycheedah.
“I don’t know how (Reed) did it, but she would get like thread and threaded around like a plastic piece or something like that and she could make these really cool designs,” Mehaffey said. “She was good with the small intricate things.”
Both women have children.
“We’re going to miss her and I certainly hope the prison system can be reformed because there’s no call for this,” Doescher’s family member said. “I feel for any other parent that has to go through this.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
For months, Republican lawmakers on the powerful Joint Finance Committee have cast doubt on the reauthorization of Wisconsin’s land stewardship program following a July state Supreme Court ruling that prohibited the legislative committee from blocking projects after the funds have been budgeted.
A 2023 Wisconsin Watch investigation found that the GOP-controlled committee had increasingly used a secretive “pocket veto” power since Democratic Gov. Tony Evers was elected to block conservation projects under the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program. Lawmakers refused to take action on some projects, preventing them from moving forward.
The program has been funded at roughly $33 million annually since 2015 and is currently funded through 2026. But only $20.1 million of those funds were spent in fiscal year 2023-24, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
That $33 million allotment hardly stacks up to the amount the program used to be funded. In 2007, the program was reauthorized for another decade and allocated $86 million annually for land purchases, though that was reduced to $60 million a year in the 2011 budget, then $50 million in the 2013 budget before bottoming out at $33 million in the 2015 budget.
Since the 6-1 ruling — with two conservative justices joining the liberal majority — GOP lawmakers have seemed poised to let a popular, bipartisan program die because they don’t have final say over spending on the projects.
“It’s unfortunate that Gov. Evers’ lawsuit (which resulted in the Supreme Court ruling) removed all accountability of the stewardship program, which helped ensure local voices were heard and that taxpayer resources were spent wisely,” Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, co-chair of the JFC, said in a statement. “The entire program is now in jeopardy.”
In an interview with the Cap Times, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said the odds that Republicans would renew the program were less than 50%.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, speaks to the Wisconsin Assembly during a floor session Jan. 14, 2025, at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
But JFC vice chair Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-Wonewoc, told Wisconsin Watch that he is hopeful the program can continue and that nobody in his caucus wants the program to end.
“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure the program is sustainable for the future,” Kurtz said in an interview.
Since 1989, when the program began, the state has spent more than $23 million in stewardship funds in Kurtz’s 41st Assembly District. The program has funded nearly 330 projects in the district ranging from trail developments and campground upgrades to habitat protection and boat launch construction.
In his executive budget proposal last month, Evers proposed a 10-year renewal of the program with a $1 billion price tag. Kurtz said the budget committee isn’t going to adopt that proposal, but he’s committed to seeing the program reauthorized for “the next couple of years.” He said every lawmaker has a Knowles-Nelson project “in their backyard” that they might not even know about.
“It is a large price tag,” Kurtz said. “But we do need to make the investments. The investments are valuable for the long-term conservation of Wisconsin.”
Following a series of listening sessions held in his district, state Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, said attendees spoke in support of the program.
“I am supportive of the program and hope to see it continue, but many of my colleagues in the legislature have reservations,” Marklein, co-chair of the JFC, said in a statement.
Kurtz said it’s unfortunate the program has become a partisan fight in the Capitol and that some lawmakers are “negative” toward the program, adding that Knowles-Nelson is “more than just one project.”
Conservation advocacy groups like Gathering Waters have pushed back against the JFC’s threats to kill the program, which provides millions of dollars in grants to local governments and nonprofits.
“I think legislative leaders were certainly unhappy about losing that Supreme Court case in such an unambiguous way,” Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives for Gathering Waters, told Wisconsin Watch. “There is constantly a temptation for lawmakers to get pulled into partisan battles where politics becomes more about winning than it does about good policy.”
When asked if he would veto a state budget that eliminates funding for Knowles-Nelson, Evers said he would use his partial veto power to reject “that part of it.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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