Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition by Tony Webster CC BY 2.0 A yard sign in Mellen, Wisconsin reads: "This Time Wisconsin Deserves Fair Maps," paid for by the Fair Elections Project, FairMapsWI.com. The political sign supports redistricting legislation to reform gerrymandering.

A lawsuit filed Thursday seeks to have the Wisconsin Supreme Court declare the state’s current congressional maps unconstitutional because they pack a “substantial share” of the state’s Democratic voters into only two of eight districts. 

The lawsuit, filed against the Wisconsin Elections Commission by the Democratic law firm Elias Law Group on behalf of nine Wisconsin voters, seeks to have the case bypass the lower courts and be taken up directly by the state Supreme Court. The filing comes one month after the state elected Susan Crawford to the Court, maintaining a 4-3 liberal majority on the body until at least 2028. 

“Wisconsin’s congressional map is antithetical to virtually every principle necessary to sustain a representative democracy,” the lawsuit states. “It impermissibly disadvantages voters based on their political views and partisan affiliation, systematically disfavoring Democrats because they are Democrats. By packing the substantial share of Wisconsin’s Democrats into just two congressional districts, while cracking other Democratic communities into uncompetitive Republican districts, the map condemns the party that regularly splits or wins the statewide vote to permanent minority status in the state’s congressional delegation.” 

The lawsuit argues that the nine voters are deprived of their rights because they are Democratic voters who have been drawn into districts that prevent them from electing their chosen candidates. 

In 2021, Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans in control of the Legislature reached a stalemate in negotiations over new congressional and legislative maps, which required the Court to step in. The Court, then controlled by a 4-3 conservative majority, ruled that it would only consider proposed new maps under a “least change” standard — meaning maps had to adhere as closely as possible to the maps that Republicans instituted in 2011. Those 2011 maps were considered among the most extreme partisan gerrymanders in the country. 

In 2022, the Court ultimately chose congressional maps proposed by Evers, but the lawsuit argues that the Court rejected the “least change” approach when it declared the legislative maps unconstitutional in 2023 and should therefore do the same for the congressional maps. 

Last year the Court rejected a similar effort. 

“This Court has since determined that the novel ‘least change’ approach that directly led to this result lacked any basis in this Court’s precedents, the Wisconsin Constitution, or past Wisconsin redistricting practice,” the lawsuit states. “Yet the congressional map adopted under the “least change” approach is now in effect and will remain in effect for the remainder of the decade absent this Court’s action.”

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden receives the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden says he’s working on a proposal that would alter two current work authorization programs to make it easier for businesses including farms and hotels to hire immigrant workers. 

Van Orden, who sits on the House agriculture committee, told the news outlet NOTUS that he’s working with Trump administration officials on a proposal to alter the H-2A and H-2B visa programs. Both programs currently provide temporary work visas for people working seasonally. 

The H-2A program, which is targeted at seasonal farm labor, has frustrated Wisconsin dairy farmers because year-round workers, including in dairy, are not eligible for the program. Immigrant workers comprise an estimated 70% of the labor force on Wisconsin dairy farms. 

“Rocks are heavy. Trees are made of wood. Gravity is real. There’s 20 million illegal aliens here that have been floating agriculture, hospitality and construction for decades, and we need their labor,” Van Orden told NOTUS.

Van Orden said the proposal is in line with the Trump administration’s increased immigration enforcement efforts because it doesn’t offer a pathway to citizenship or encourage an increase in unauthorized crossings of the border while making it easier for people to come to the U.S. to work. 

“That’s why people come here illegally, because it’s so hard to come here legally,” Van Orden said. “We’re all working towards the goal of making sure that our economy can maintain its relevancy.”

The lobby of the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, where researchers say pauses to federal grants have stifled science. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Earlier this year, Dr. Avtar Roopra, a professor of neuroscience at UW-Madison, published research that shows a drug typically used to treat arthritis halts brain-damaging seizures in mice that have a condition similar to epilepsy. The treatment could be used to provide relief for a subset of people with epilepsy who don’t get relief from other current treatments.

But even as the culmination of a decade-long project was making headlines as a possible breakthrough for the 50 million people worldwide with epilepsy, Roopra’s research was put on hold because the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under President Donald Trump has stopped reviewing grant requests. 

Now, months after his funding was paused, Roopra says he is facing the choice between cutting corners in experiments to save costs or laying off research staff — which comes with its own loss of years of experience and institutional knowledge. 

“Experiments are being trimmed down,” Roopra says. “So the perfect experiment, which is what every experiment must be, we’re now trying to reanalyze and say, ‘Well, can we get by with less?’ If we do, we’re not going to have the perfect answer, and that’s always a danger.”

Roopra’s lab is currently working on an experiment comparing data from healthy mouse brains to diseased brains and, ideally, he’d have ten of each. But to save costs he now has to use three of each. The result is that the conclusions that can be made from the data are less certain, which only creates more expenses in the long term. 

“What that means is we’ll still get some data, but the confidence we have in our conclusions will be drastically reduced,” he says. “And so any experiments we then decide to do based on that will be on more shaky ground, and experiments further on that will be on even shakier ground. And so you have this propagating knock-on effect, but ultimately, the conclusions you get, they’re going to have to be interpreted cautiously, whereas, if we did the perfect experiment for which we were expecting funds, we would have robust data, robust conclusions. We could move forward, forthright into trials.”

Science is expensive, Roopra says, because results have to be replicated many times. Cutting grant funding, as the Trump administration has done, results in austerity measures at labs and universities. Those budget cuts mean experiments aren’t repeated as many times, which means data isn’t as complete and results in less work reaching the end goal — treatments that improve people’s lives. 

Roopra says that when a patient sees a doctor and is prescribed a drug, that is just the tip of an iceberg, underneath which are the thousands of hours of research and millions of dollars spent at pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials and university departments testing theories.

“So it’s actually going to cost everybody more money if we do it this way, because we have to go back,” he says. “And once this moves to clinical trials, which is our goal, if we don’t have the very best, the most solid foundation for doing so, if that trial goes ahead and it fails, it may never be done again. Because trials cost hundreds of millions of dollars, you’ve got to get it right the first time. So that’s what this new normal looks like.”

Roopra’s work is just one research focus in one department on one campus. Wisconsin institutions alone receive about $750 million annually from the NIH. The Medical College of Wisconsin has lost at least $5 million in research grants since Trump took office. 

The cuts affect “every lab, every department, and we’re very biomedical-research centric, but it’s also happening outside of biomedical research,” Dr. Betsy Quinlan, chair of UW-Madison’s neuroscience department, says. “It’s happening in physics and it’s happening in engineering. It’s happening to all research, environmental science.”

Researchers in Wisconsin have had at least $26.8 million in expected grant funding terminated, according to data compiled by Grant Watch, a project to track cuts to grant funding at the NIH and National Science Foundation (NSF). 

“I’ve heard a lot of panic in the community as if the support that the federal government has for science has ended and that science is no longer the priority,” NIH director Jay Bhattacharya said at an event at the Medical College of Wisconsin earlier this month. “One of the reasons I was delighted to be able to come here was to assure people that is not true.”

Nonetheless, among the terminated grants here in Wisconsin are projects to study science misinformation in Black communities, how to engage the public in water stewardship in urban areas such as Milwaukee, the effect of technology on children’s development, the cardiovascular side effects of hormone treatment on transgender men and ways to increase HIV prevention measures among gay men in rural areas. 

“It’s vital that we adopt reforms, real reforms in the research enterprise of this country, so that we depoliticize it, ground it in reality and build a culture of respect for dissent and free speech,” Bhattacharya said.

But discoveries can come from unexpected places, says Quinlan, who warns that the top-down approach to approving research grants that the administration appears to be moving toward will stifle scientific exploration. 

“If the agency says, ‘Here’s a very narrow range of things we will fund,’ it will squash all creativity and real discovery, because real discovery comes when you see something that is unexpected and you follow the unexpected lead,” she says. 

While the cuts to grants are having an immediate impact on research in Wisconsin, there are also concerns about morale among lab staff and a “brain drain” as researchers choose to leave the U.S.  or even abandon science entirely. 

“The biggest problem I think most researchers are facing is the uncertainty and decline in morale that these changes have wrought,” Jo Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, says. “These are extremely real and fairly devastating effects on the research community in terms of what’s already happened, almost every week there’s a wave of NIH termination. No one feels their grant is going to continue for sure. That’s a difficult way to do research.”

For decades, scientists have come from all over the world to work in the U.S. Now cuts to grants and the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies are changing that. Last week, after decisions from a number of judges, the Trump administration walked back an effort to cancel the visas of 27 students at University of Wisconsin schools. Roopra says those fears hurt research. 

“Every minute that that researcher is worried is a minute they’re not thinking about the science,” says Roopra, whose work has also focused on breast cancer. “And so what it looks like is a continuous, chronic fear, which pushes us to think about maybe looking at other options, which we’d rather not do.”

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) speaks to reporters on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building following a vote on July 25, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Prairie du Chien) has said he’s opposed to Republican efforts to make changes to the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps, even though he voted for the Republican-authored federal budget blueprint that calls for more than $200 billion in cuts to programs including SNAP. 

Despite voting for the budget blueprint, earlier this week Van Orden co-sponsored legislation that states he’s against a budget bill that would reduce Medicaid and SNAP benefits. 

Republicans in the House of Representatives have been searching for $230 billion in budget cuts for their budget reconciliation bill — which also includes a permanent extension of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. Progress on the bill has stalled as some Republicans have objected to the cuts to popular programs in the blueprint. 

Van Orden sits on the House Agriculture Committee, which oversees SNAP. The committee has been considering a proposal that would, for the first time, pass some of the cost of operating the program on to the states while also adding work requirements and implementing methods to limit future increases to benefits. 

Last week, Van Orden walked out of a Republican House Agriculture briefing and yelled an insult at staff, according to Politico. The outlet also reported he raised concerns that the SNAP changes unfairly penalized Wisconsin during a meeting of House Republicans. 

Democrats said that if Van Orden were really against the cuts, he wouldn’t have voted for the budget blueprint. 

“If Derrick Van Orden really wanted to save Medicaid and SNAP, he should have voted ‘NO’ on the Republican budget that cuts both,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Spokesperson Justin Chermol said in a statement, He signaled that Democrats will use the blueprint vote against Van Orden in the 2026 election.

The Milwaukee County Courthouse (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

A bipartisan group of 150 former federal and state judges criticized the FBI’s arrest of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan late last month in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

The letter, sent on Monday, takes issue with the way federal officials publicized Dugan’s arrest and used it in an attempt to intimidate the judiciary system across the country.

Dugan was arrested and charged with two federal crimes after she directed Eduardo Flores-Ruiz — a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant who appeared in Dugan’s courtroom on misdemeanor battery charges —  to use a side exit when a group of federal agents came to arrest him as part of an immigration enforcement action. 

Dugan herself was arrested a week after Flores-Ruiz, accused of impeding the federal agents. Trump administration l officials quickly drew attention to Dugan’s arrest outside the court. FBI Director Kash Patel posted about the arrest on X and later posted a photo of Dugan in handcuffs being walked out of the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Bondi appeared on cable news to call judges who resist the Trump administration “deranged.”

bondi-letter

The letter states that if Dugan’s case were an emergency she would have been arrested sooner, and since it wasn’t an emergency she didn’t need to be “perp walked” out of the courthouse. She could have been issued a summons to appear before a federal judge, which is common practice in other white-collar criminal cases, according to the letter. 

“The circumstances of Judge Dugan’s arrest make it clear that it was nothing but an effort to threaten and intimidate the state and federal judiciaries into submitting to the Administration, instead of interpreting the Constitution and laws of the United States,” the letter states. “This cynical effort undermines the rule of law and destroys the trust the American people have in the nation’s judges to administer justice in the courtrooms and in the halls of justice across the land.”

Retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Judge Janine Geske is among the letter’s signers.

DNR Secretary-designee Adam Payne and members of the Natural Resources Board at the Jan. 25, 2023 meeting. (Screenshot | DNR)

Gov. Tony Evers on Thursday made two appointments to the Natural Resources Board, the body that sets policy for the state Department of Natural Resources and has been the venue for a number of partisan disputes in recent years. 

Evers reappointed Bill Smith, the board’s current chair, to his seat and appointed former Vernon County conservationist Jeff Hastings. 

Smith was first appointed to the board in 2019 and worked for the DNR for more than 30 years. 

“Over the last several years, the Natural Resources Board has worked on high-profile issues that have captured the attention of the public, and I am glad for the opportunity to continue this important work and advocate for the issues that people across the state feel so passionately about — our state’s green spaces and natural environment,” Smith said in a statement. “My years of experience on the Board lend a unique perspective on the challenges we address as a body, and I am grateful to the governor for the opportunity to continue that work.” 

In addition to working for Vernon County, Hastings worked at Trout Unlimited, serving as project manager of its Driftless Area Restoration Effort to conserve cold water fish habitat in western Wisconsin. Hastings is replacing Marcy West, whose term expired Thursday. 

“I am thrilled to be able to translate my years of work in conservation to the efforts of the Natural Resources Board,” Hastings said. “It is an honor to take up this role, and I look forward to working together with my fellow members to best serve the interests of Wisconsinites and uphold the responsibility we share to preserve and protect our state’s natural resources and wildlife.”

Members of the seven-person Natural Resources Board serve staggered six-year terms to prevent all appointments being made during one governor’s term. Three members are required to be from the northern part of the state, three members must be from the southern part of the state and there is one at-large member. At least three members must have held a hunting, fishing or trapping license in seven of the 10 years before their nomination. 

While the governor appoints members to the board, the Republican controlled Senate confirms them. The board, which has say over hot button issues such as wolf management and water quality standards, has become a regular flash point in the divide between Evers and the Senate. 

Both Hastings and Smith will need to be confirmed to their seats, but state law allows them to fill the role in the meantime.

In 2021, Republicans in the Senate worked with former board chairman Frederick Prehn to keep him in his seat on the board for more than a year after his term’s expiration in an effort to keep appointees of Gov. Scott Walker in control of the board. 

In 2023, the Senate fired four of Evers’ appointees to the board and last year the Senate failed to confirm another Evers board nominee.

The USDA announced earlier this month it was ending a $3 billion program to help farmers use climate-friendly practices. (Preston Keres | USDA)

In the first months of the administration of President Donald Trump, organizations working to keep Wisconsin’s environment healthy have seen cuts to key grant programs. Now they are watching for  Trump’s retreat from environmental protection to hit communities across the state. 

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was cancelling the Climate Smart Commodities Program — a $3 billion effort to fund projects across the country to improve soil health, sequester carbon, reduce methane emissions and encourage other climate-friendly farming practices. 

Trump administration officials called the program a “Biden era slush fund,” saying that not enough of the money went directly to farmers. The USDA cancelled projects that did not meet three criteria: a minimum of 65% of funds needed to be going directly to producers, grants must have had one producer enrolled by the end of 2024 and at least one payment must have been made to a producer by the end of 2024. 

“The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative was largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement. “The concerns of farmers took a backseat during the Biden Administration. During my short time as Secretary, I have heard directly from our farmers that many of the USDA partnerships are overburdened by red tape, have ambiguous goals, and require complex reporting that push farmers onto the sidelines. We are correcting these mistakes and redirecting our efforts to set our farmers up for an unprecedented era of prosperity.”

A USDA fact sheet published last year states that 28 Wisconsin-based projects were funded by the program. One of the organizations receiving funding was the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, which has worked to protect the Fox and Wolf Rivers — which are connected to Lake Michigan — for more than three decades in the region of the state most densely occupied by industrial agriculture operations. 

On April 22, the Alliance received an official termination notice for two grants it had received through the program to share costs with farmers to institute practices such as cover cropping and no-till planting, according to a statement from the alliance. Both practices help farmers maintain soil health and prevent potentially harmful nutrients such as phosphorus from running off fields and into the local water system. 

The grant funding also supported 10 technical support jobs at county land and water departments, Pheasants Forever and the Wisconsin Farmers Union. The loss of the money has resulted in the cancellation of 37 contracts with farmers, 4,000 acres of planned no-till planting going unfunded and, this fall, 16,000 acres of farmland that may not have cover crops planted. 

In its statement, the Alliance said that government support for programs like these is an investment that helps farmers long term, even if some of the money doesn’t go directly into their hands. 

“We fully support the goal of directing more resources to farmers. In fact, we design our programs with low overhead to ensure dollars go where they matter most,” the Alliance stated. “However, the review process did not account for one important factor: technical assistance is direct farmer support.” 

Just because the money doesn’t go straight to the farmers doesn’t mean they don’t benefit, according to the Alliance.

“Farmers often pay out-of-pocket for the kind of expertise our technical staff provide — support that is essential to the success and longevity of conservation practices,” the statement continued. “Excluding this from the ‘producer-directed’ category overlooks the real-world value of those services. Without that guidance, funding becomes a one-time transaction instead of a long-term investment. Fox-Wolf’s model is built not just on providing financial support, but on ensuring that practices are implemented effectively and sustained over time. That’s what makes our work effective — and why this funding mattered.” 

Jessica Schultz, the Alliance’s executive director, told the Wisconsin Examiner that the goal of the grants was to help the region’s farmers transition to these soil-friendly practices beyond just one season, allowing the organization to help protect the watershed, which is suffering from “excess phosphorus and sediment loading,” in the long term. 

“These practices also improve soil health, but transitioning to a continuous cover system requires a new approach to farm management. This shift can result in short-term yield losses or necessitate investment in new equipment,” Schultz said. “The cost-share provided through our grants would have played a vital role in helping farmers overcome these initial barriers. However, to realize lasting water quality improvements in our rivers and lakes, these conservation practices must be adopted consistently — not just for a single season, but year after year — across the majority of farmland in the basin.”

“The technical assistance offered through our projects was intended to support farmers through this transition, providing both expertise and access to equipment from across the region,” she continued. “Our goal was to foster long-term adoption by equipping producers with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed — not just for one growing season, but for the future health of our local waterways.” 

Climate and sustainability grants worth $100K canceled

The Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance isn’t the only organization that has lost grant funding since Trump’s inauguration. Wisconsin Green Fire has already had two grants, totaling nearly $100,000, canceled, according to Meleesa Johnson, the organization’s executive director. 

The first grant, worth about $32,000, was aimed at working with the Wisconsin Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy to develop resources for local governments seeking to implement climate change mitigation strategies such as improving stormwater management and planting more trees to reduce heat island effects. The second grant was a $65,000 contract with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to establish a farm sustainability rewards program. Similar to the alliance’s grant, that program would have given farmers money in exchange for implementing practices such as no-till planting or reducing the use of nitrogen. 

Green Fire had already spent money on getting the farm sustainability program off the ground, and now, according to Johnson, it’s unclear if the organization will be reimbursed. 

“We’re not the only ones,” she said. “There’s a lot of groups out there that have been moving along, doing the work, meeting the benchmarks of contract expectations, and now, well, many of us are, most of us are not being paid for the work that we’ve all begun. So it’s hard. It’s not impossible for organizations to regroup, but it just makes it more difficult.”

Johnson said that this program was about getting money directly to farmers — even if the program’s description used the word “carbon.” 

“First and foremost, this was about getting money into the hands of farmers either already deploying good conservation practices or wanting to, [who] didn’t have the resources to do it,” she said. “This wasn’t about Green Fire. This was about farmers, and we were just developing the metric and the strategies to make sure that high performing farms with good conservation practices were being rewarded for doing really, really good work.” 

Without programs like these, Johnson said, Wisconsin will continue to “see that continual slow degradation of farm fields and water quality.”

DNR Secretary-designee Adam Payne and members of the Natural Resources Board at the Jan. 25, 2023 meeting. (Screenshot | DNR)

Gov. Tony Evers on Thursday made two appointments to the Natural Resources Board, the body that sets policy for the state Department of Natural Resources and has been the venue for a number of partisan disputes in recent years. 

Evers reappointed Bill Smith, the board’s current chair, to his seat and appointed former Vernon County conservationist Jeff Hastings. 

Smith was first appointed to the board in 2019 and worked for the DNR for more than 30 years. 

“Over the last several years, the Natural Resources Board has worked on high-profile issues that have captured the attention of the public, and I am glad for the opportunity to continue this important work and advocate for the issues that people across the state feel so passionately about — our state’s green spaces and natural environment,” Smith said in a statement. “My years of experience on the Board lend a unique perspective on the challenges we address as a body, and I am grateful to the governor for the opportunity to continue that work.” 

In addition to working for Vernon County, Hastings worked at Trout Unlimited, serving as project manager of its Driftless Area Restoration Effort to conserve cold water fish habitat in western Wisconsin. Hastings is replacing Marcy West, whose term expired Thursday. 

“I am thrilled to be able to translate my years of work in conservation to the efforts of the Natural Resources Board,” Hastings said. “It is an honor to take up this role, and I look forward to working together with my fellow members to best serve the interests of Wisconsinites and uphold the responsibility we share to preserve and protect our state’s natural resources and wildlife.”

Members of the seven-person Natural Resources Board serve staggered six-year terms to prevent all appointments being made during one governor’s term. Three members are required to be from the northern part of the state, three members must be from the southern part of the state and there is one at-large member. At least three members must have held a hunting, fishing or trapping license in seven of the 10 years before their nomination. 

While the governor appoints members to the board, the Republican controlled Senate confirms them. The board, which has say over hot button issues such as wolf management and water quality standards, has become a regular flash point in the divide between Evers and the Senate. 

Both Hastings and Smith will need to be confirmed to their seats, but state law allows them to fill the role in the meantime.

In 2021, Republicans in the Senate worked with former board chairman Frederick Prehn to keep him in his seat on the board for more than a year after his term’s expiration in an effort to keep appointees of Gov. Scott Walker in control of the board. 

In 2023, the Senate fired four of Evers’ appointees to the board and last year the Senate failed to confirm another Evers board nominee.

The USDA announced earlier this month it was ending a $3 billion program to help farmers use climate-friendly practices. (Preston Keres | USDA)

In the first months of the administration of President Donald Trump, organizations working to keep Wisconsin’s environment healthy have seen cuts to key grant programs. Now they are watching for  Trump’s retreat from environmental protection to hit communities across the state. 

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was cancelling the Climate Smart Commodities Program — a $3 billion effort to fund projects across the country to improve soil health, sequester carbon, reduce methane emissions and encourage other climate-friendly farming practices. 

Trump administration officials called the program a “Biden era slush fund,” saying that not enough of the money went directly to farmers. The USDA cancelled projects that did not meet three criteria: a minimum of 65% of funds needed to be going directly to producers, grants must have had one producer enrolled by the end of 2024 and at least one payment must have been made to a producer by the end of 2024. 

“The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative was largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement. “The concerns of farmers took a backseat during the Biden Administration. During my short time as Secretary, I have heard directly from our farmers that many of the USDA partnerships are overburdened by red tape, have ambiguous goals, and require complex reporting that push farmers onto the sidelines. We are correcting these mistakes and redirecting our efforts to set our farmers up for an unprecedented era of prosperity.”

A USDA fact sheet published last year states that 28 Wisconsin-based projects were funded by the program. One of the organizations receiving funding was the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, which has worked to protect the Fox and Wolf Rivers — which are connected to Lake Michigan — for more than three decades in the region of the state most densely occupied by industrial agriculture operations. 

On April 22, the Alliance received an official termination notice for two grants it had received through the program to share costs with farmers to institute practices such as cover cropping and no-till planting, according to a statement from the alliance. Both practices help farmers maintain soil health and prevent potentially harmful nutrients such as phosphorus from running off fields and into the local water system. 

The grant funding also supported 10 technical support jobs at county land and water departments, Pheasants Forever and the Wisconsin Farmers Union. The loss of the money has resulted in the cancellation of 37 contracts with farmers, 4,000 acres of planned no-till planting going unfunded and, this fall, 16,000 acres of farmland that may not have cover crops planted. 

In its statement, the Alliance said that government support for programs like these is an investment that helps farmers long term, even if some of the money doesn’t go directly into their hands. 

“We fully support the goal of directing more resources to farmers. In fact, we design our programs with low overhead to ensure dollars go where they matter most,” the Alliance stated. “However, the review process did not account for one important factor: technical assistance is direct farmer support.” 

Just because the money doesn’t go straight to the farmers doesn’t mean they don’t benefit, according to the Alliance.

“Farmers often pay out-of-pocket for the kind of expertise our technical staff provide — support that is essential to the success and longevity of conservation practices,” the statement continued. “Excluding this from the ‘producer-directed’ category overlooks the real-world value of those services. Without that guidance, funding becomes a one-time transaction instead of a long-term investment. Fox-Wolf’s model is built not just on providing financial support, but on ensuring that practices are implemented effectively and sustained over time. That’s what makes our work effective — and why this funding mattered.” 

Jessica Schultz, the Alliance’s executive director, told the Wisconsin Examiner that the goal of the grants was to help the region’s farmers transition to these soil-friendly practices beyond just one season, allowing the organization to help protect the watershed, which is suffering from “excess phosphorus and sediment loading,” in the long term. 

“These practices also improve soil health, but transitioning to a continuous cover system requires a new approach to farm management. This shift can result in short-term yield losses or necessitate investment in new equipment,” Schultz said. “The cost-share provided through our grants would have played a vital role in helping farmers overcome these initial barriers. However, to realize lasting water quality improvements in our rivers and lakes, these conservation practices must be adopted consistently — not just for a single season, but year after year — across the majority of farmland in the basin.”

“The technical assistance offered through our projects was intended to support farmers through this transition, providing both expertise and access to equipment from across the region,” she continued. “Our goal was to foster long-term adoption by equipping producers with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed — not just for one growing season, but for the future health of our local waterways.” 

Climate and sustainability grants worth $100K canceled

The Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance isn’t the only organization that has lost grant funding since Trump’s inauguration. Wisconsin Green Fire has already had two grants, totaling nearly $100,000, canceled, according to Meleesa Johnson, the organization’s executive director. 

The first grant, worth about $32,000, was aimed at working with the Wisconsin Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy to develop resources for local governments seeking to implement climate change mitigation strategies such as improving stormwater management and planting more trees to reduce heat island effects. The second grant was a $65,000 contract with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to establish a farm sustainability rewards program. Similar to the alliance’s grant, that program would have given farmers money in exchange for implementing practices such as no-till planting or reducing the use of nitrogen. 

Green Fire had already spent money on getting the farm sustainability program off the ground, and now, according to Johnson, it’s unclear if the organization will be reimbursed. 

“We’re not the only ones,” she said. “There’s a lot of groups out there that have been moving along, doing the work, meeting the benchmarks of contract expectations, and now, well, many of us are, most of us are not being paid for the work that we’ve all begun. So it’s hard. It’s not impossible for organizations to regroup, but it just makes it more difficult.”

Johnson said that this program was about getting money directly to farmers — even if the program’s description used the word “carbon.” 

“First and foremost, this was about getting money into the hands of farmers either already deploying good conservation practices or wanting to, [who] didn’t have the resources to do it,” she said. “This wasn’t about Green Fire. This was about farmers, and we were just developing the metric and the strategies to make sure that high performing farms with good conservation practices were being rewarded for doing really, really good work.” 

Without programs like these, Johnson said, Wisconsin will continue to “see that continual slow degradation of farm fields and water quality.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

An outside investigation found that last year’s leak of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s order accepting a case challenging the state’s 1849 abortion law was “likely deliberate,” but was unable to determine its source. 

Last June, Wisconsin Watch published a story detailing the contents of the Court’s draft order agreeing to hear Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin v. Urmanski, the lawsuit challenging the validity of the abortion law. After the leak, all seven members of the Court condemned the order’s release, and the investigation began in August. 

According to a report released Wednesday, investigators interviewed 62 people and reviewed computer records in an effort to find the leak’s source. Despite the inconclusive findings, the report includes a number of recommendations for improving the Supreme Court’s security. 

The draft order was written on June 13 and Wisconsin Watch published its report on June 26. Investigators interviewed the 28 people who had “immediate access” to the draft. They included the seven justices, judicial assistants, law clerks and Supreme Court commissioners, as well as 18 people whose key card data shows they entered the justices’ chambers during that time period, interns and other office staff. 

Investigators requested computer usage data to determine what websites office staff visited during that time frame. The report states, however, that computer usage data from June 13 to 25 is missing. 

“The lack of complete website visitation logs for the period between June 13, 2024 and June 26, 2024 significantly hampered the ability to thoroughly examine the circumstances surrounding the leak,” the report states. “The issue underscores the importance of proper data management, retention, and verification procedures especially when such information is crucial for ongoing investigations.”

No evidence was found during the investigation that would show the leak was caused by an external breach of the Court’s network, according to the report. 

But the report also states that justices and Court staff often send confidential information to the justices’ personal email accounts and leave confidential documents unattended in printer trays. Unauthorized individuals have at times been able to access restricted floors in the Court’s Madison offices, the investigators also found. 

To improve the Supreme Court’s security, the report recommends a number of policy changes. Those include establishing better protocols for the handling of paper copies of confidential documents; stopping the justices’ use of personal email accounts; improving retention of computer history data; and using digital watermarks on confidential documents to ensure “the document remains traceable throughout its lifecycle.”

Audrey Skwierawski, the director of state courts, said in a statement that the Supreme Court would use the report’s recommendations to improve its processes.

“Integrity is the lifeblood of our court system, and we take threats to that integrity very seriously,” Skwierawski said. “Our responsibility now is to respond to and learn from the challenges identified through the investigation. This report gives us an important opportunity to strengthen the systems that support our courts and the public we serve.”

She added that her office is establishing a “Judicial Operations Integrity Task Force” to review the recommendations and proposing ways to prevent similar incidents in the future.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

An outside investigation found that last year’s leak of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s order accepting a case challenging the state’s 1849 abortion law was “likely deliberate,” but was unable to determine its source. 

Last June, Wisconsin Watch published a story detailing the contents of the Court’s draft order agreeing to hear Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin v. Urmanski, the lawsuit challenging the validity of the abortion law. After the leak, all seven members of the Court condemned the order’s release, and the investigation began in August. 

According to a report released Wednesday, investigators interviewed 62 people and reviewed computer records in an effort to find the leak’s source. Despite the inconclusive findings, the report includes a number of recommendations for improving the Supreme Court’s security. 

The draft order was written on June 13 and Wisconsin Watch published its report on June 26. Investigators interviewed the 28 people who had “immediate access” to the draft. They included the seven justices, judicial assistants, law clerks and Supreme Court commissioners, as well as 18 people whose key card data shows they entered the justices’ chambers during that time period, interns and other office staff. 

Investigators requested computer usage data to determine what websites office staff visited during that time frame. The report states, however, that computer usage data from June 13 to 25 is missing. 

“The lack of complete website visitation logs for the period between June 13, 2024 and June 26, 2024 significantly hampered the ability to thoroughly examine the circumstances surrounding the leak,” the report states. “The issue underscores the importance of proper data management, retention, and verification procedures especially when such information is crucial for ongoing investigations.”

No evidence was found during the investigation that would show the leak was caused by an external breach of the Court’s network, according to the report. 

But the report also states that justices and Court staff often send confidential information to the justices’ personal email accounts and leave confidential documents unattended in printer trays. Unauthorized individuals have at times been able to access restricted floors in the Court’s Madison offices, the investigators also found. 

To improve the Supreme Court’s security, the report recommends a number of policy changes. Those include establishing better protocols for the handling of paper copies of confidential documents; stopping the justices’ use of personal email accounts; improving retention of computer history data; and using digital watermarks on confidential documents to ensure “the document remains traceable throughout its lifecycle.”

Audrey Skwierawski, the director of state courts, said in a statement that the Supreme Court would use the report’s recommendations to improve its processes.

“Integrity is the lifeblood of our court system, and we take threats to that integrity very seriously,” Skwierawski said. “Our responsibility now is to respond to and learn from the challenges identified through the investigation. This report gives us an important opportunity to strengthen the systems that support our courts and the public we serve.”

She added that her office is establishing a “Judicial Operations Integrity Task Force” to review the recommendations and proposing ways to prevent similar incidents in the future.

The Milwaukee County Courthouse (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan’s arrest last week by federal agents is going to make Wisconsin’s court system worse, according to attorneys who practice in the state. 

Earlier this month, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI appeared at the Milwaukee County Courthouse with an administrative warrant to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery, and scheduled for an appearance in Dugan’s courtroom. 

An administrative warrant is not signed by a judge and does not allow agents to enter private spaces to make an arrest like a judicial warrant would. While the agents sat in the hallway outside the courtroom, Dugan told Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to use a side door. The door exits into the same public hallway and one agent rode the same elevator down to the lobby as Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer. Agents let Flores-Ruiz leave the building and then arrested him on the street. 

Last week, FBI agents appeared at the courthouse again to arrest Dugan. She’s been charged with obstructing justice and harboring an individual, both felony counts. Soon after her arrest, and before she had made her initial appearance in front of a judge, President Donald Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were discussing the case on social media and television, accusing Dugan of being “deranged.” 

Bondi said on Fox News Friday that the charges were filed against Dugan to show the administration was willing to go after anyone, even judges, if they get in the way of their efforts to deport millions of people. Bondi said interfering with ICE agents “will not be tolerated.” 

“What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” Bondi said. “The [judges] are deranged is all I can think of. I think some of these judges think that they are beyond and above the law. They are not, and we are sending a very strong message today … if you are harboring a fugitive… we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”

From the beginning, the case displayed many missteps in an effort to show force and draw attention, says Stephen Kravit, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

“It looks like these prosecutors are completely co-opted in Trump World and aren’t really using very good judgment. You should just look at the facts and law, and there’s just no chance they’ll be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Judge Dugan was corruptly intending to avoid a government subpoena, or that she was harboring a fugitive,” he says, calling the charges “crap.”

During the initial arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Kravit questions why DEA and FBI agents are appearing at the courthouse for immigration enforcement actions and why so many agents were needed to serve an administrative warrant. 

“It’s bad for justice on any level. They had six agents there, six to make an unarmed collar of a person who was accused of battery to his roommate,” Kravit says. “And they know he’s not armed. And there’s six of them. Two of them are DEA agents. Those are two agents not enforcing drug laws, which is what they’re charged to do. There’s no drugs involved here, OK? Two of them are FBI agents, who have 100 other different things to do. We probably only have six or seven DEA agents in the state.”

Kravit adds that the whole situation might have gone differently if ICE had gotten a warrant to arrest Flores-Ruiz from a judge rather than one “written by some guy in the office” and it’s going to be difficult for prosecutors to prove Dugan had a corrupt intent by sending Florez-Ruiz out the side door when she could have just been avoiding a “ruckus” outside her door while she’s trying to move on with the court schedule. 

He also takes offense with the way Dugan was “perp walked” out of the courthouse when she could have just been asked to turn herself in; questions why federal prosecutors didn’t bring the case to a grand jury first — which would have been the standard process — and why the country’s most powerful justice officials are discussing the case on cable news. 

“The arrest warrant for the judge is a travesty, but there’s so much reasonable doubt,” he says. “Was she corruptly trying to interrupt a government proceeding? Corruptly? Was somebody paying her money? No, or was she harboring a fugitive? That’s what she’s charged with. Did she harbor a fugitive on any set of facts that you can imagine? That’s what she’s charged with. These are serious felonies. They ruin the woman’s life and all so that Pam Bondi could make a press statement.”

Dugan’s arrest, and the attention her case has brought to ICE operating at county courthouses could have a chilling effect on Wisconsin’s justice system, Jeff Mandell, executive director of Law Forward, says. 

“I do think that there’s a chilling effect to having federal officials prowling a state courthouse to make arrests and absent real danger or exigent circumstances, it feels like that’s not a good thing,” Mandell says. “We want people in our communities to be willing and able to show up in court. We want those people to know that they can do so without feeling like they’re getting entrapped or something like that, and that’s in all of our interests.” 

For immigrants, undocumented or not, appearing in court for any reason now is a fraught decision, which could lead to witnesses to crimes not showing up to testify, Mandell says. 

“If you were just going about your day and something happened to you and this person was a witness, and you needed them to help sort things out in court and things like that, then you know, you didn’t choose your witnesses,” he says.” You didn’t decide who was going to be standing there when you were in an accident or some other misfortune befell you.” 

ICE’s focus on arresting people making court appearances puts those criminal defendants — who have not yet been convicted of a crime — in the position to decide between showing up to court and potentially being picked up by ICE or skipping their court date. Last week, the Wisconsin public defender’s office sent an email to private defense attorneys across the state advising them how to deal with clients asking about ICE operations in courthouses. 

“Explain to the client the consequences of not showing to court like you would to any client,” the email states. “Remember you cannot tell a client not to come but you can explain that ICE has been coming to courthouses and that it may no longer be a safe haven.” 

Mandell says the operations in courthouses and Dugan’s arrest are emblematic of the Trump administration’s worst impulses. 

“I think it reinforces what we’re seeing through day 98 of the administration, what we’re seeing in all kinds of ways in this administration, which is an impatience, a heedlessness, a recklessness, a disregard for norms,” he says. “That many of these folks seem to believe there’s one set of rules for them and a different set of rules for someone else.” 

“So they want respect paid to federal officials, but they are going to trample on state institutions and state officials,” he continues. “They want everyone to follow the law, but they are going to play fast and loose and cut corners, whether that’s using administrative warrants, whether that is avoiding grand juries to bring federal charges.” 

Mandell adds that when Trump was charged with felonies, he was given the privilege of turning himself in to be booked. 

“They want all of the trappings of tremendous respect for their offices, but they are not going to afford even a modicum of respect to others,” Mandell continues, “which we see handcuffing and perp walking Judge Dugan out of the courthouse without even the common courtesy of a phone call to ask if she might be willing to turn herself in, which, of course, is how the President himself insisted on all of his bookings being handled.”

The Milwaukee County Courthouse (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan’s arrest last week by federal agents is going to make Wisconsin’s court system worse, according to attorneys who practice in the state. 

Earlier this month, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI appeared at the Milwaukee County Courthouse with an administrative warrant to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery, and scheduled for an appearance in Dugan’s courtroom. 

An administrative warrant is not signed by a judge and does not allow agents to enter private spaces to make an arrest like a judicial warrant would. While the agents sat in the hallway outside the courtroom, Dugan told Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to use a side door. The door exits into the same public hallway and one agent rode the same elevator down to the lobby as Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer. Agents let Flores-Ruiz leave the building and then arrested him on the street. 

Last week, FBI agents appeared at the courthouse again to arrest Dugan. She’s been charged with obstructing justice and harboring an individual, both felony counts. Soon after her arrest, and before she had made her initial appearance in front of a judge, President Donald Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were discussing the case on social media and television, accusing Dugan of being “deranged.” 

Bondi said on Fox News Friday that the charges were filed against Dugan to show the administration was willing to go after anyone, even judges, if they get in the way of their efforts to deport millions of people. Bondi said interfering with ICE agents “will not be tolerated.” 

“What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” Bondi said. “The [judges] are deranged is all I can think of. I think some of these judges think that they are beyond and above the law. They are not, and we are sending a very strong message today … if you are harboring a fugitive… we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”

From the beginning, the case displayed many missteps in an effort to show force and draw attention, says Stephen Kravit, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

“It looks like these prosecutors are completely co-opted in Trump World and aren’t really using very good judgment. You should just look at the facts and law, and there’s just no chance they’ll be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Judge Dugan was corruptly intending to avoid a government subpoena, or that she was harboring a fugitive,” he says, calling the charges “crap.”

During the initial arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Kravit questions why DEA and FBI agents are appearing at the courthouse for immigration enforcement actions and why so many agents were needed to serve an administrative warrant. 

“It’s bad for justice on any level. They had six agents there, six to make an unarmed collar of a person who was accused of battery to his roommate,” Kravit says. “And they know he’s not armed. And there’s six of them. Two of them are DEA agents. Those are two agents not enforcing drug laws, which is what they’re charged to do. There’s no drugs involved here, OK? Two of them are FBI agents, who have 100 other different things to do. We probably only have six or seven DEA agents in the state.”

Kravit adds that the whole situation might have gone differently if ICE had gotten a warrant to arrest Flores-Ruiz from a judge rather than one “written by some guy in the office” and it’s going to be difficult for prosecutors to prove Dugan had a corrupt intent by sending Florez-Ruiz out the side door when she could have just been avoiding a “ruckus” outside her door while she’s trying to move on with the court schedule. 

He also takes offense with the way Dugan was “perp walked” out of the courthouse when she could have just been asked to turn herself in; questions why federal prosecutors didn’t bring the case to a grand jury first — which would have been the standard process — and why the country’s most powerful justice officials are discussing the case on cable news. 

“The arrest warrant for the judge is a travesty, but there’s so much reasonable doubt,” he says. “Was she corruptly trying to interrupt a government proceeding? Corruptly? Was somebody paying her money? No, or was she harboring a fugitive? That’s what she’s charged with. Did she harbor a fugitive on any set of facts that you can imagine? That’s what she’s charged with. These are serious felonies. They ruin the woman’s life and all so that Pam Bondi could make a press statement.”

Dugan’s arrest, and the attention her case has brought to ICE operating at county courthouses could have a chilling effect on Wisconsin’s justice system, Jeff Mandell, executive director of Law Forward, says. 

“I do think that there’s a chilling effect to having federal officials prowling a state courthouse to make arrests and absent real danger or exigent circumstances, it feels like that’s not a good thing,” Mandell says. “We want people in our communities to be willing and able to show up in court. We want those people to know that they can do so without feeling like they’re getting entrapped or something like that, and that’s in all of our interests.” 

For immigrants, undocumented or not, appearing in court for any reason now is a fraught decision, which could lead to witnesses to crimes not showing up to testify, Mandell says. 

“If you were just going about your day and something happened to you and this person was a witness, and you needed them to help sort things out in court and things like that, then you know, you didn’t choose your witnesses,” he says.” You didn’t decide who was going to be standing there when you were in an accident or some other misfortune befell you.” 

ICE’s focus on arresting people making court appearances puts those criminal defendants — who have not yet been convicted of a crime — in the position to decide between showing up to court and potentially being picked up by ICE or skipping their court date. Last week, the Wisconsin public defender’s office sent an email to private defense attorneys across the state advising them how to deal with clients asking about ICE operations in courthouses. 

“Explain to the client the consequences of not showing to court like you would to any client,” the email states. “Remember you cannot tell a client not to come but you can explain that ICE has been coming to courthouses and that it may no longer be a safe haven.” 

Mandell says the operations in courthouses and Dugan’s arrest are emblematic of the Trump administration’s worst impulses. 

“I think it reinforces what we’re seeing through day 98 of the administration, what we’re seeing in all kinds of ways in this administration, which is an impatience, a heedlessness, a recklessness, a disregard for norms,” he says. “That many of these folks seem to believe there’s one set of rules for them and a different set of rules for someone else.” 

“So they want respect paid to federal officials, but they are going to trample on state institutions and state officials,” he continues. “They want everyone to follow the law, but they are going to play fast and loose and cut corners, whether that’s using administrative warrants, whether that is avoiding grand juries to bring federal charges.” 

Mandell adds that when Trump was charged with felonies, he was given the privilege of turning himself in to be booked. 

“They want all of the trappings of tremendous respect for their offices, but they are not going to afford even a modicum of respect to others,” Mandell continues, “which we see handcuffing and perp walking Judge Dugan out of the courthouse without even the common courtesy of a phone call to ask if she might be willing to turn herself in, which, of course, is how the President himself insisted on all of his bookings being handled.”

Protesters gather outside of the Federal Building in Milwaukee to denounce the arrest of Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

After the arrest of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan by federal agents Friday morning, the city’s political and activist communities responded forcefully, protesting against the arrest across the city. 

Dugan was charged with obstruction of justice and harboring an individual after a group of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents showed up outside of her courtroom last week to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery. 

The criminal complaint against Durgan alleges she broke the law by allowing Flores-Ruiz to use a side door in her courtroom to exit without going past the agents. The agents saw him leave and later apprehended him on foot. 

While a larger protest took place outside of the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee, local resident Jeneca Wolski stood alone outside of the county courthouse where Dugan was arrested.

“[I’m] just a local citizen who is horrified that we are finding ourselves in this position right now,” Wolski told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We’re sliding downhill so fast. I don’t want to be looked back on by history as part of it. We have to do everything we can to kick and fight and scream to save our democracy right now.” 

At a press conference, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley accused the administration of President Donald Trump of acting to intimidate “anyone who opposes these policies.” Crowley added that Dugan was arrested by a “large, performative showing” of federal agents in the county courthouse. 

 “We have an obligation to administer our courts in a safe, efficient manner that delivers due process for anyone,” Crowley said. “The Trump administration’s actions are clearly preventing us from doing so by intimidating judges and eroding public faith in our judicial system.” 

People gathered outside the federal courthouse in Milwaukee Friday afternoon to protest Dugan’s arrest. At the rally, Christine Neumann Ortiz, executive director of immigrant rights group Voces De La Frontera, told the Wisconsin Examiner the Trump administration was trying to undermine efforts to oppose its immigration policies.

“They basically want to be unleashed to do whatever they want to commit these raids in courtrooms across the country,” she said. “They don’t want any resistance from judges or from the community standing up for people’s due process rights or limiting their policies of mass deportation and racism.”

Seven of the city of Milwaukee’s legislative representatives said in a joint statement that Dugan’s arrest and ICE operating inside the courthouse will “lead to a breakdown of civil society.”

“The County Courthouse is a sanctuary for justice and peace where the accused come forward willingly in a fair and unbiased process,” said the lawmakers, Sens. Chris Larson and Tim Carpenter and Reps. Christine Sinicki, Darrin Madison, Supreme Moore Omokunde, Angelito Tenorio and Sequanna Taylor. “Arresting people out of a courtroom will lead to a breakdown of civil society. We do not support the presence of ICE in places where it will lead to intimidation against witnesses and victims of crimes, denying everyone involved the justice they deserve.”

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned how Dugan’s arrest makes the country safer. 

“The Trump Administration continues to test the limits of our Constitution — this time by arresting a sitting judge for allegedly obstructing an immigration operation at the courthouse,” Durbin said. “When immigration enforcement officials interfere with our criminal justice system, it undermines public safety, prevents victims and witnesses from coming forward, and often prevents those who committed crimes from facing justice in the United States. How does this make America any safer? How does arresting a sitting judge make America any safer? It is imperative that Judge Dugan is afforded due process and the presumption of innocence, as required by our Constitution and her fundamental rights as an American.”

State Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein (D-Middleton) and Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, criticized the arrest in a joint statement. 

“Today’s arrest of a sitting judge, at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, is a frightening escalation of the Trump Administration’s attacks on America’s judicial system,” they said. “This is part of a pattern by this Administration – defying court orders, flouting the democratic system of checks and balances, ignoring the right to due process, and threatening judicial independence – that alarms us as legislators and as residents of this great state and this great country. We will follow this case closely. We will continue to stand up to lawless and unconstitutional actions. And, we will always fight for a bedrock principle of American democracy: equal justice under the law.”

The Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, an activist group, was planning protests Friday afternoon outside the federal courthouse and Saturday outside the FBI’s Milwaukee field office. In a statement, the group said the arrest was a “heinous attack.” 

“They are seeking to send a clear message: either you play along with Trump’s agenda, or pay the consequences,” the group said. “During this period of racist and political repression, we must stand together to denounce today’s actions by the FBI. What happened to Dugan is not new. The FBI and other agencies have been emboldened in recent months, snatching people off the streets, separating families, terrorizing communities, breaking doors down of pro-Palestine activists, and contributing to the unjust deportation of immigrants who don’t have criminal records. What is new is that they have gone after a judge.”

The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan on Friday, accusing her of obstructing an immigration enforcement action last week. 

Dugan was arrested at 8:30 a.m. at the county courthouse, according to the U.S. Marshal’s Service. She was scheduled to make an initial appearance in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Dries at 10:30 on Friday. According to a criminal complaint, she’s been charged with obstructing or impeding before a department or agency of the United States and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.

Online court records show that the government did not request that Dugan be held in detention and that she was released on an O/R bond, meaning she was released from custody without having to post bail and signed an agreement that she’d appear in court when required.

The agency’s director, Kash Patel, wrote on the social media platform X that Dugan had “intentionally misdirected federal agents away” from Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery. In the now-deleted post, Patel accused Dugan of creating “increased danger to the public.” 

Flores-Ruiz appeared in Dugan’s courtroom on April 18 for a pre-trial conference on charges of misdemeanor domestic battery. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents appeared outside Dugan’s courtroom, she led Flores-Ruiz and an attorney out a side door and down a private hallway. 

ICE agents later apprehended Flores-Ruiz on foot. This is the third time since March that immigration agents have appeared at the Milwaukee County courthouse to conduct arrests — a tactic that local officials have said threatens to undermine the work of the local justice system by making immigrants fearful of coming to the courthouse to testify in court.

Dugan-Crim-complaint

In an initial statement, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said he was aware of Dugan’s arrest and that the legal process should be allowed to play out. 

“Like any individual in this country, I believe she is entitled to due process,” Crowley said. “We should let the facts come to light and the legal process play out.”

But later, he accused the FBI of politicizing the arrest to punish perceived enemies.

“It is clear that the FBI is politicizing this situation to make an example of her and others across the country who oppose their attack on the judicial system and our nation’s immigration laws,” he said. “FBI Director Kash Patel issued a public statement on X, which he hurriedly deleted, making unsubstantiated claims about Judge Dugan’s case before charges were officially filed and she could have her moment in court. Director Patel’s statement shows that Trump’s FBI is more concerned about weaponizing federal law enforcement, punishing people without due process, and intimidating anyone who opposes those policies, than they are with seeking justice.”

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said the administration of President Donald Trump is attacking democratic values.

“In the United States, we have a system of checks and balances and separations of power for damn good reasons,” she said. “The President’s administration arresting a sitting judge is a gravely serious and drastic move, and it threatens to breach those very separations of power. Make no mistake, we do not have kings in this country and we are a Democracy governed by laws that everyone must abide by. By relentlessly attacking the judicial system, flouting court orders, and arresting a sitting judge, this President is putting those basic Democratic values that Wisconsinites hold dear on the line. While details of this exact case remain minimal, this action fits into the deeply concerning pattern of this President’s lawless behavior and undermining courts and Congress’s checks on his power.”

Gov. Tony Evers said the arrest was another example of the Trump administration’s attacks on the judiciary.

“Unfortunately, we have seen in recent months the president and the Trump Administration repeatedly use dangerous rhetoric to attack and attempt to undermine our judiciary at every level, including flat-out disobeying the highest court in the land and threatening to impeach and remove judges who do not rule in their favor,” he said. “I have deep respect for the rule of law, our nation’s judiciary, the importance of judges making decisions impartially without fear or favor, and the efforts of law enforcement to hold people accountable if they commit a crime. I will continue to put my faith in our justice system as this situation plays out in the court of law.”

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) said the arrest was “shocking.” 

“This Administration’s willingness to weaponize federal law enforcement is shocking and this arrest has all the hallmarks of overreach,” Moore said. “Federal law enforcement coming into a community and arresting a judge is a serious matter and would require a high legal bar. I will be following this case closely and facts will come out, however, I am very alarmed at the increasingly lawless actions of the Trump Administration, and in particular ICE, who have been defying courts and acting with disregard for the Constitution.”

The ACLU of Wisconsin wrote on social media that ICE making arrests at courthouses interferes with the work of local justice officials.

“Judges have a duty to maintain order in their courtrooms and ensure the fair administration of justice, and federal law does not require state judges to act as agents of federal immigration enforcement,” the organization said. “Everyone is due their day in court, and when ICE starts showing up to courts looking to make arrests, it risks interfering with those rights. In recent weeks, the administration has attacked the integrity of our judicial system, refused to comply with a Supreme Court order, and arrested a judge for using her authority to protect the fair administration of justice.”

This is a developing story and will be updated

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and state Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) listen to community members at an April 24 roundtable in Richland Center. (Hery Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

RICHLAND CENTER — In a 90-minute roundtable meeting at the Richland Center community center Thursday, President Donald Trump’s name was mentioned just twice. But community leaders highlighted how his administration’s policies are already wreaking havoc on the county with the sixth highest poverty rate in the state. 

About 15 area leaders representing small business owners, farmers, schools, hospitals and community advocacy groups met Thursday with state Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. Throughout the event, the attendees discussed how the policies and plans of Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to cut or diminish Medicaid, Social Security and education funding while instituting widespread tariffs on imported goods from countries around the world and making it harder for migrant workers to obtain visas could decimate their region. 

“None of this is right. Where I’m at that age in my life where I don’t get more thoughtful, I get more pissed,” Brett White, executive director of the Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program, said. “And because this is all not necessary, this is completely unnecessary, which means that it’s intentional.” 

The group noted repeatedly that a cut to programs in one area had a ripple effect across every other community institution. 

White, and Chris Frakes, the organization’s senior director, said that the cuts to Head Start early childhood education programming that have already come and are set to deepen under Trump are their biggest worry. 

There are currently about 70 kids in Richland County enrolled in Southwest CAP’s Head Start program, according to Frakes. If those programs are lost, poor kids in Richland County will never catch up, she said. 

“Because we know if you enter kindergarten already behind, there’s virtually no chance to catch up by third grade,” Frakes said. “If you’re not on grade level reading in third grade, we know your life prospects go down dramatically, right? So Head Start fills this critical, vital need to get those kiddos onto par with their middle class peers when they hit kindergarten, so that they are ready to learn, and their families have the sort of surrounding supports, whether that’s food, whether that’s access to transportation, for medical care.” 

If Head Start gets cut, the children who are affected will eventually reach Aaron Mithum, the middle and high school principal for the Kickapoo Area School District. Mithum says the district is “waiting for the other shoe to drop” on the future of the approximately $800,000 it gets annually from the federal government as Trump seeks to shut down the U.S. Department of Education. 

If Head Start leaves poor kids behind before they turn five, by the time they reach Mithum at a middle school that’s also struggling financially, there won’t be many options. 

“We’re getting them when they get into pre K or kindergarten, and now we’re trying to go from there, and now, all of a sudden, they don’t have any of that foundational aspect,” Mithum said. “It’s a building block, trickle effect, and not in a positive way. So now it’s that much harder for us to do what [Head Start wasn’t] able to do, and it continues to go up. And it’s just really hard to think about, what does that look like? What does that look like to be a parent with a special ed kid who needs speech services or reading services, or whatever. And the answer is, sorry, not our problem.” 

While the child care and education system of a community that’s already seen the closure of its local University of Wisconsin campus faces the prospect of being unable to keep poor kids from falling behind, the area’s food system is also being hit. 

Retaliatory tariffs on the area’s wheat, corn and soybean farmers are hurting their ability to find international markets for their products while tariffs imposed by Trump have made fertilizer and machinery more expensive, said Sally Leong, Wisconsin Farmers Union member and former professor of plant pathology at UW-Madison. 

Those struggles are continuing to push up the price of food, causing local families to rely on food pantries more than used to, according to Jackie Anderson, executive director of Feeding Wisconsin. 

Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) paused funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which Anderson said has amounted to about a 30% cut to what food banks are able to buy. USDA has also ended a program that connected local farms with food pantries to supply fresh produce. 

“Food banks are really looking at the bottom line and saying, like, ‘How are we going to be able to get that amount of food here?’” Anderson said. 

The tariffs are also affecting the companies providing jobs in the area. Marty Richards, the county tourism director, said that Rockwell Automation has delayed and cancelled orders because of Trump’s tariffs. Meanwhile it’s getting harder to find local workers and Trump’s restrictive immigration policies have made it nearly impossible to hire migrant workers. Richards said the company has had a hard time getting workers from its plant in Mexico to come to the U.S. even temporarily for technical training

Teri Richards, board member of the Greater Richland Area Chamber of Commerce, said the county desperately needs more people and she doesn’t know where to find them. 

“We’re obviously not having enough babies. We’re struggling to get that immigrant population and we can’t keep stealing from each other,” she said. “So it’s time to go into Chicago or Milwaukee, to even get a few of those folks moved out here? I don’t know.” 

With fewer people moving in and federal policies discouraging investment from the business community and cutting funds from schools and child care, the community is also facing the management of an aging population. About 30% of the population is older than 60 and 14% is disabled, according to Roxanne Klubertanz, manager of Richland County’s Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC). 

That aging population means the community is only going to become more reliant on federal programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Currently, the ADRC helps people in the community apply for Medicaid to pay for the services that will help them stay in their homes for as long as possible or move to an assisted living facility — currently a cost of about $3,800 per month, she said. 

Republicans in Congress are currently weighing a budget proposal that would slash Medicaid funding. Klubertanz said without the program people won’t be able to access those services and will ultimately get sicker and require a placement in a nursing home — a cost of about $10,000 per month. 

“So if that funding, that Medicaid funding, goes away, what’s going to happen?” she said. “Maybe right away, you’re going to see some decreases, but people are going to get sicker and need more services, and then they have to pay for that nursing home placement, which is almost three times the cost. So if you’re trying to fix something today, you have to think about what it’s gonna be like in five years. You’ve gotta have that long range thinking.” 

Protesters gather outside of the Federal Building in Milwaukee to denounce the arrest of Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

After the arrest of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan by federal agents Friday morning, the city’s political and activist communities responded forcefully, protesting against the arrest across the city. 

Dugan was charged with obstruction of justice and harboring an individual after a group of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents showed up outside of her courtroom last week to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery. 

The criminal complaint against Durgan alleges she broke the law by allowing Flores-Ruiz to use a side door in her courtroom to exit without going past the agents. The agents saw him leave and later apprehended him on foot. 

While a larger protest took place outside of the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee, local resident Jeneca Wolski stood alone outside of the county courthouse where Dugan was arrested.

“[I’m] just a local citizen who is horrified that we are finding ourselves in this position right now,” Wolski told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We’re sliding downhill so fast. I don’t want to be looked back on by history as part of it. We have to do everything we can to kick and fight and scream to save our democracy right now.” 

At a press conference, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley accused the administration of President Donald Trump of acting to intimidate “anyone who opposes these policies.” Crowley added that Dugan was arrested by a “large, performative showing” of federal agents in the county courthouse. 

 “We have an obligation to administer our courts in a safe, efficient manner that delivers due process for anyone,” Crowley said. “The Trump administration’s actions are clearly preventing us from doing so by intimidating judges and eroding public faith in our judicial system.” 

People gathered outside the federal courthouse in Milwaukee Friday afternoon to protest Dugan’s arrest. At the rally, Christine Neumann Ortiz, executive director of immigrant rights group Voces De La Frontera, told the Wisconsin Examiner the Trump administration was trying to undermine efforts to oppose its immigration policies.

“They basically want to be unleashed to do whatever they want to commit these raids in courtrooms across the country,” she said. “They don’t want any resistance from judges or from the community standing up for people’s due process rights or limiting their policies of mass deportation and racism.”

Seven of the city of Milwaukee’s legislative representatives said in a joint statement that Dugan’s arrest and ICE operating inside the courthouse will “lead to a breakdown of civil society.”

“The County Courthouse is a sanctuary for justice and peace where the accused come forward willingly in a fair and unbiased process,” said the lawmakers, Sens. Chris Larson and Tim Carpenter and Reps. Christine Sinicki, Darrin Madison, Supreme Moore Omokunde, Angelito Tenorio and Sequanna Taylor. “Arresting people out of a courtroom will lead to a breakdown of civil society. We do not support the presence of ICE in places where it will lead to intimidation against witnesses and victims of crimes, denying everyone involved the justice they deserve.”

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned how Dugan’s arrest makes the country safer. 

“The Trump Administration continues to test the limits of our Constitution — this time by arresting a sitting judge for allegedly obstructing an immigration operation at the courthouse,” Durbin said. “When immigration enforcement officials interfere with our criminal justice system, it undermines public safety, prevents victims and witnesses from coming forward, and often prevents those who committed crimes from facing justice in the United States. How does this make America any safer? How does arresting a sitting judge make America any safer? It is imperative that Judge Dugan is afforded due process and the presumption of innocence, as required by our Constitution and her fundamental rights as an American.”

State Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein (D-Middleton) and Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, criticized the arrest in a joint statement. 

“Today’s arrest of a sitting judge, at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, is a frightening escalation of the Trump Administration’s attacks on America’s judicial system,” they said. “This is part of a pattern by this Administration – defying court orders, flouting the democratic system of checks and balances, ignoring the right to due process, and threatening judicial independence – that alarms us as legislators and as residents of this great state and this great country. We will follow this case closely. We will continue to stand up to lawless and unconstitutional actions. And, we will always fight for a bedrock principle of American democracy: equal justice under the law.”

The Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, an activist group, was planning protests Friday afternoon outside the federal courthouse and Saturday outside the FBI’s Milwaukee field office. In a statement, the group said the arrest was a “heinous attack.” 

“They are seeking to send a clear message: either you play along with Trump’s agenda, or pay the consequences,” the group said. “During this period of racist and political repression, we must stand together to denounce today’s actions by the FBI. What happened to Dugan is not new. The FBI and other agencies have been emboldened in recent months, snatching people off the streets, separating families, terrorizing communities, breaking doors down of pro-Palestine activists, and contributing to the unjust deportation of immigrants who don’t have criminal records. What is new is that they have gone after a judge.”

The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan on Friday, accusing her of obstructing an immigration enforcement action last week. 

Dugan was arrested at 8:30 a.m. at the county courthouse, according to the U.S. Marshal’s Service. She was scheduled to make an initial appearance in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Dries at 10:30 on Friday. According to a criminal complaint, she’s been charged with obstructing or impeding before a department or agency of the United States and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.

Online court records show that the government did not request that Dugan be held in detention and that she was released on an O/R bond, meaning she was released from custody without having to post bail and signed an agreement that she’d appear in court when required.

The agency’s director, Kash Patel, wrote on the social media platform X that Dugan had “intentionally misdirected federal agents away” from Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery. In the now-deleted post, Patel accused Dugan of creating “increased danger to the public.” 

Flores-Ruiz appeared in Dugan’s courtroom on April 18 for a pre-trial conference on charges of misdemeanor domestic battery. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents appeared outside Dugan’s courtroom, she led Flores-Ruiz and an attorney out a side door and down a private hallway. 

ICE agents later apprehended Flores-Ruiz on foot. This is the third time since March that immigration agents have appeared at the Milwaukee County courthouse to conduct arrests — a tactic that local officials have said threatens to undermine the work of the local justice system by making immigrants fearful of coming to the courthouse to testify in court.

Dugan-Crim-complaint

In an initial statement, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said he was aware of Dugan’s arrest and that the legal process should be allowed to play out. 

“Like any individual in this country, I believe she is entitled to due process,” Crowley said. “We should let the facts come to light and the legal process play out.”

But later, he accused the FBI of politicizing the arrest to punish perceived enemies.

“It is clear that the FBI is politicizing this situation to make an example of her and others across the country who oppose their attack on the judicial system and our nation’s immigration laws,” he said. “FBI Director Kash Patel issued a public statement on X, which he hurriedly deleted, making unsubstantiated claims about Judge Dugan’s case before charges were officially filed and she could have her moment in court. Director Patel’s statement shows that Trump’s FBI is more concerned about weaponizing federal law enforcement, punishing people without due process, and intimidating anyone who opposes those policies, than they are with seeking justice.”

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said the administration of President Donald Trump is attacking democratic values.

“In the United States, we have a system of checks and balances and separations of power for damn good reasons,” she said. “The President’s administration arresting a sitting judge is a gravely serious and drastic move, and it threatens to breach those very separations of power. Make no mistake, we do not have kings in this country and we are a Democracy governed by laws that everyone must abide by. By relentlessly attacking the judicial system, flouting court orders, and arresting a sitting judge, this President is putting those basic Democratic values that Wisconsinites hold dear on the line. While details of this exact case remain minimal, this action fits into the deeply concerning pattern of this President’s lawless behavior and undermining courts and Congress’s checks on his power.”

Gov. Tony Evers said the arrest was another example of the Trump administration’s attacks on the judiciary.

“Unfortunately, we have seen in recent months the president and the Trump Administration repeatedly use dangerous rhetoric to attack and attempt to undermine our judiciary at every level, including flat-out disobeying the highest court in the land and threatening to impeach and remove judges who do not rule in their favor,” he said. “I have deep respect for the rule of law, our nation’s judiciary, the importance of judges making decisions impartially without fear or favor, and the efforts of law enforcement to hold people accountable if they commit a crime. I will continue to put my faith in our justice system as this situation plays out in the court of law.”

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) said the arrest was “shocking.” 

“This Administration’s willingness to weaponize federal law enforcement is shocking and this arrest has all the hallmarks of overreach,” Moore said. “Federal law enforcement coming into a community and arresting a judge is a serious matter and would require a high legal bar. I will be following this case closely and facts will come out, however, I am very alarmed at the increasingly lawless actions of the Trump Administration, and in particular ICE, who have been defying courts and acting with disregard for the Constitution.”

The ACLU of Wisconsin wrote on social media that ICE making arrests at courthouses interferes with the work of local justice officials.

“Judges have a duty to maintain order in their courtrooms and ensure the fair administration of justice, and federal law does not require state judges to act as agents of federal immigration enforcement,” the organization said. “Everyone is due their day in court, and when ICE starts showing up to courts looking to make arrests, it risks interfering with those rights. In recent weeks, the administration has attacked the integrity of our judicial system, refused to comply with a Supreme Court order, and arrested a judge for using her authority to protect the fair administration of justice.”

This is a developing story and will be updated

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and state Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) listen to community members at an April 24 roundtable in Richland Center. (Hery Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

RICHLAND CENTER — In a 90-minute roundtable meeting at the Richland Center community center Thursday, President Donald Trump’s name was mentioned just twice. But community leaders highlighted how his administration’s policies are already wreaking havoc on the county with the sixth highest poverty rate in the state. 

About 15 area leaders representing small business owners, farmers, schools, hospitals and community advocacy groups met Thursday with state Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. Throughout the event, the attendees discussed how the policies and plans of Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to cut or diminish Medicaid, Social Security and education funding while instituting widespread tariffs on imported goods from countries around the world and making it harder for migrant workers to obtain visas could decimate their region. 

“None of this is right. Where I’m at that age in my life where I don’t get more thoughtful, I get more pissed,” Brett White, executive director of the Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program, said. “And because this is all not necessary, this is completely unnecessary, which means that it’s intentional.” 

The group noted repeatedly that a cut to programs in one area had a ripple effect across every other community institution. 

White, and Chris Frakes, the organization’s senior director, said that the cuts to Head Start early childhood education programming that have already come and are set to deepen under Trump are their biggest worry. 

There are currently about 70 kids in Richland County enrolled in Southwest CAP’s Head Start program, according to Frakes. If those programs are lost, poor kids in Richland County will never catch up, she said. 

“Because we know if you enter kindergarten already behind, there’s virtually no chance to catch up by third grade,” Frakes said. “If you’re not on grade level reading in third grade, we know your life prospects go down dramatically, right? So Head Start fills this critical, vital need to get those kiddos onto par with their middle class peers when they hit kindergarten, so that they are ready to learn, and their families have the sort of surrounding supports, whether that’s food, whether that’s access to transportation, for medical care.” 

If Head Start gets cut, the children who are affected will eventually reach Aaron Mithum, the middle and high school principal for the Kickapoo Area School District. Mithum says the district is “waiting for the other shoe to drop” on the future of the approximately $800,000 it gets annually from the federal government as Trump seeks to shut down the U.S. Department of Education. 

If Head Start leaves poor kids behind before they turn five, by the time they reach Mithum at a middle school that’s also struggling financially, there won’t be many options. 

“We’re getting them when they get into pre K or kindergarten, and now we’re trying to go from there, and now, all of a sudden, they don’t have any of that foundational aspect,” Mithum said. “It’s a building block, trickle effect, and not in a positive way. So now it’s that much harder for us to do what [Head Start wasn’t] able to do, and it continues to go up. And it’s just really hard to think about, what does that look like? What does that look like to be a parent with a special ed kid who needs speech services or reading services, or whatever. And the answer is, sorry, not our problem.” 

While the child care and education system of a community that’s already seen the closure of its local University of Wisconsin campus faces the prospect of being unable to keep poor kids from falling behind, the area’s food system is also being hit. 

Retaliatory tariffs on the area’s wheat, corn and soybean farmers are hurting their ability to find international markets for their products while tariffs imposed by Trump have made fertilizer and machinery more expensive, said Sally Leong, Wisconsin Farmers Union member and former professor of plant pathology at UW-Madison. 

Those struggles are continuing to push up the price of food, causing local families to rely on food pantries more than used to, according to Jackie Anderson, executive director of Feeding Wisconsin. 

Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) paused funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which Anderson said has amounted to about a 30% cut to what food banks are able to buy. USDA has also ended a program that connected local farms with food pantries to supply fresh produce. 

“Food banks are really looking at the bottom line and saying, like, ‘How are we going to be able to get that amount of food here?’” Anderson said. 

The tariffs are also affecting the companies providing jobs in the area. Marty Richards, the county tourism director, said that Rockwell Automation has delayed and cancelled orders because of Trump’s tariffs. Meanwhile it’s getting harder to find local workers and Trump’s restrictive immigration policies have made it nearly impossible to hire migrant workers. Richards said the company has had a hard time getting workers from its plant in Mexico to come to the U.S. even temporarily for technical training

Teri Richards, board member of the Greater Richland Area Chamber of Commerce, said the county desperately needs more people and she doesn’t know where to find them. 

“We’re obviously not having enough babies. We’re struggling to get that immigrant population and we can’t keep stealing from each other,” she said. “So it’s time to go into Chicago or Milwaukee, to even get a few of those folks moved out here? I don’t know.” 

With fewer people moving in and federal policies discouraging investment from the business community and cutting funds from schools and child care, the community is also facing the management of an aging population. About 30% of the population is older than 60 and 14% is disabled, according to Roxanne Klubertanz, manager of Richland County’s Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC). 

That aging population means the community is only going to become more reliant on federal programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Currently, the ADRC helps people in the community apply for Medicaid to pay for the services that will help them stay in their homes for as long as possible or move to an assisted living facility — currently a cost of about $3,800 per month, she said. 

Republicans in Congress are currently weighing a budget proposal that would slash Medicaid funding. Klubertanz said without the program people won’t be able to access those services and will ultimately get sicker and require a placement in a nursing home — a cost of about $10,000 per month. 

“So if that funding, that Medicaid funding, goes away, what’s going to happen?” she said. “Maybe right away, you’re going to see some decreases, but people are going to get sicker and need more services, and then they have to pay for that nursing home placement, which is almost three times the cost. So if you’re trying to fix something today, you have to think about what it’s gonna be like in five years. You’ve gotta have that long range thinking.” 

Voting booths set up at Madison, Wisconsin's Hawthorne Library on Election Day 2022. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) deadlocked Thursday on whether to object to a proposed administrative rule that would guide the conduct of election observers at polling places. 

The 5-5 vote moves the rule one step closer to going into effect because if the committee doesn’t take any action, it will be returned to the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to be implemented. 

Even though the rule was written by WEC with input from an advisory committee that included members of right-wing election conspiracy groups, election skeptics opposed the rule’s passage at a number of public hearings. 

At a hearing on Monday, 2020 election deniers — including former state Rep. Janel Brandtjen — testified in opposition to the rule because they believed it didn’t do enough to protect the rights of election observers. Lawmakers on the committee, including its co-chair, Rep. Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee), complained that the rule was written without enough input from legislators. 

Despite that opposition, Rep. Kevin Petersen (R-Waupaca) joined with the committee’s four Democrats, Sens. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove) and Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Reps. Margaret Arney (D-Wauwatosa) and Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) to vote against the motion objecting to the rule’s passage. 

In Monday’s hearing, election commissioner Don Millis said the rule gives the state the best chance to clarify how election observers should conduct themselves while protecting the rights of voters. 

“I don’t agree with everything in the rule, but I don’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good,” he said. “Without this rule, municipal clerks have wide ranging authorities to manage polling places as they see fit. There’s no reasonable argument that observers are better off without this rule.”

While Thursday’s vote is a step toward implementation, the rule is still in the committee until May 11, according to the office of the committee’s other co-chair, Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater). The committee could vote on the issue again before then.