Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that he would tell advocates who wanted the 60% rate that the state budget has to be “right-sized” and “affordable.” (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

After many delays, the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee met Thursday evening to approve its plan for K-12 education spending that included a 5% increase to special education funding for schools and its $1.3 billion tax plan that targets retirees and middle-income earners. 

Lawmakers on the powerful budget-writing committee went back and forth for nearly three hours about the plans with Republicans saying they made significant investments in education and would help Wisconsinites while Democrats argued the state should do more for schools. 

Over $220 million for special education, no additional general aid for schools

The committee approved a total of about $336 million total in new general purpose revenue for Wisconsin’s K-12 schools — only about 10% of Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed $3.1 billion in new spending.

Special education costs will receive the majority of the allocation with an additional $220 million that will be split between the general special education reimbursement and a subset of high-cost special education services. 

The special education reimbursement funding includes $77.2 million in the first year of the budget, which will bring the rate at which the state reimburses school districts to an estimated 35%, and $151 million in the second year bringing the rate to an estimated 37.5%. It’s well below the $1.13 billion or 60% reimbursement for special education that Evers had proposed and that advocates had said was essential to place school districts back on a sustainable funding path. 

Education advocates spent the last week lobbying for the additional funding — and warning lawmakers about the financial strain on districts and the resources the students could lose. Ahead of the meeting Thursday, Democrats and a coalition of Wisconsin parents of students with disabilities spoke to the urgent need for additional investment in the state’s general special education reimbursement rate. 

“Everywhere we’ve gone in the state of Wisconsin, whether it’s rural school districts, urban school districts, whether it’s school districts that have passed referendums and those that haven’t, they all say the same thing — 60% primary special education funding is absolutely necessary for our schools to succeed,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said at the press conference.  “You can see that we have had a cycle of referendum throughout Wisconsin, and that cycle has to end.”

The special education reimbursement peaked at 70% in 1973, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. After falling to a low of 24.9% in 2015-16, the state’s share of special education costs has been incrementally increasing with some fluctuations. 

The Republican proposal represents, at maximum, about a 5% increase to the current rate by the second year. According to budget papers prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the investment lawmakers made last session was meant to bring the rate to 33.3%, but because it is a sum certain rate — meaning there was only a set amount of money set aside, regardless of expanding costs  — the actual rates have been 32.4% in 2023-24 and an estimated 32.1% for 2024-25.

Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that he would tell advocates who wanted the 60% rate that the state budget has to be “right-sized” and “affordable.”

“The governor’s budget has always [had] reckless spending that the state can’t afford, and so we’re choosing to make key investments and priorities, and these investments today will be some of … the largest investments you’ll see in the budget,” Born said. 

The committee also added $54.5 million to bring the additional reimbursement rate for a small number of high-cost special education services to 50% in the first year of the budget and 90% in the second year. The high-cost special education program provides additional aid when costs exceed $30,000 for a single student in one year. According to DPI, in 2025 only 3% of students with disabilities fell in the high-cost special education category.

In 2024-25, the program only received $14.5 million from the state. Evers had proposed the state invest an additional $18.5 million. 

Republicans on the committee insisted that they were trying to compromise and making a significant investment in schools — noting that education likely will continue being the state’s top expenditure in the budget. Meanwhile, Democrats spoke extensively about the need for higher rates of investment, read messages from superintendents and students in their districts and said Republicans were not doing what people asked for. 

“High needs special education funding only reaches about 3% of Wisconsin’s special education students,” Rep. Deb Andraca said. “You’re getting a couple good talking points, but you’re not going to get the kinds of public schools that Wisconsin kids deserve.” 

During the committee meeting, Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) criticized Democrats for saying they would vote against the proposals. He said Democrats would vote against any proposal if it isn’t what they want. 

“If we all voted no, we would return to base funding, which was good enough by the way for the governor last budget because he signed it,” Bradley said. “There would be no increases, but instead we’ve introduced a motion which will increase funding.”

McGuire responded by saying he wouldn’t vote for a proposal that is “condemning the state to continuing the cycle of referendum,” which he said Republicans are doing by minimally increasing the special education reimbursement rate and not investing any additional money in general aid. 

“Wisconsinites across the state are having to choose between raising their own property taxes” and the schools, McGuire said. 

The Kenosha School District, which is in McGuire’s legislative district, recently failed to pass referendum to help reduce a budget deficit. School leaders had said a significant increase in the special education reimbursement would prevent the district from having to seek a referendum again.

“They had a $19 million budget gap, and if this state went to 60% special education funding, you know roughly where we promised we would be, that would’ve gone down to $6 million,” McGuire said, “…$13 million of those dollars are our responsibility. That’s been our failing, and we should live up to that.”

“What are we arguing about? We’re putting more money in,” Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) said.“I would think that when this gets to his desk, Evers would sign this because it is a bigger increase than any of what he proposed while he was state superintendent.”

McGuire said the investment in the high-cost special education is also good, but only applies to a small number of schools and students. 

“You know, what would benefit all school districts in the state and will benefit all students who need special education? The primary special education reimbursement rate, which you put at 37.5[%], but everyone says should be at 60[%].” McGuire said. “I don’t think this is your intention, but I don’t believe that we should be exchanging children who need our assistance for other children who need our assistance. Why can’t we just help all of the kids who need our help?”

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said that the increase for high-cost special education will have a significant impact on some schools, especially smaller ones, and students, even if it’s not many of them.

“To get 90% for them is huge for any of our rural districts. One child, which deserves an education, can break the bank for our small districts,” Kurtz said. “Is it perfect? No, it’s not perfect, but we have to stay within our means.” 

Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) echoed Kurtz’s comments saying that there will be “a lot of districts that are going to be awful happy about that.” 

“They’ve been worried about sometimes, a student moves into the district, and it’s of incredibly high, high needs,” Marklein said.

The committee also declined to include additional general aid for school districts. Republicans on the committee said  there was already a $325 per pupil increase to districts’ revenue limits built into the budget from last session due to Evers’ partial veto. The increase gives districts the option to raise property taxes, though it doesn’t require them to, and does not include state funding for the increase.

Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) told lawmakers not to forget about the increase, saying the “insulting part about that is that everyone gets it.

There are schools that don’t need that,” Quinn said. “72% of my districts spend less than [the schools of] my Democratic colleagues on this panel.” 

School Administrators Alliance Executive Director Dee Pettack, Wisconsin Association of School Boards Executive Director Dan Rossmiller, Southeast Wisconsin School Alliance Executive Director Cathy Olig and Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance Executive Director Jeff Eide said in a joint letter reacting to the proposal that lawmakers failed to hear the voices school leaders, parents and community and business leaders.

“While the $325 revenue limit authority exists, it is not funded by the state. Instead, it is entirely borne by local property taxpayers. In addition, school districts will not see the requested support in special education,” the leaders stated. “Because of the lack of state support in these two critical areas, school districts will be left with no choice but to ask their local taxpayers to step up and shoulder the costs locally, regardless of their ability to pay.” 

The leaders said the state was investing minimally and school districts will continue to struggle to fund mandated primary special education programs.

State Superintendent Jill Underly called the Republicans’ proposal “irresponsible” in a statement Friday and said it “puts politics ahead of kids and disregards educators and public schools when they need support the most.”

“Our public schools desperately need and deserve funding that is flexible, spendable and predictable,” Underly said. “This budget fails to deliver on all three. Once again, those in power had an opportunity to do right by Wisconsin’s children — and once again, they turned their backs on them.” 

The committee also approved $30 million for the state’s choice school programs, $20 million for mental health services in school, $250,000 for robotics league grants, $750,000 for a single school, the Lakeland STAR Academy (a provision that Evers vetoed last session), $100,000 for Special Olympics Wisconsin, $3 million for public library system aid, $500,000 for recovery high schools and $500,000 for Wisconsin Reading Corps. 

Over $1 billion in tax cuts 

Republican lawmakers also approved tax cuts of about $1.3 billion for the budget Thursday evening after 8 p.m., including changes to the income tax brackets and a cut for retirees in Wisconsin.

Born and Marklein said the cuts would help retirees and other Wisconsinites afford to stay in the state.

“These are average, hard-working people in our state that will benefit from our tax cut,” Marklein said. 

The income tax change will allow more people to qualify for the second tax bracket with a rate of 4.4% by raising the qualifying maximum income to $50,480 for single filers, $67,300 for joint filers and $33,650 for married-separate filers. This will reduce the state’s revenues by $323 million in 2025-26 and $320 million in 2026-27. 

People currently eligible for the second tax bracket include: single filers making between $14,680 and $29,370, joint filers making between $19,580 and $39,150 and married separate filers making between $9,790 and $19,580.

Wisconsin Republicans have been seeking another significant tax cut since the last budget cycle when Evers vetoed their proposals. After the rejection, Republicans started to narrow their tax cuts proposals to focus on retirees and a couple of other groups with the hope of getting Evers’ approval. When negotiations on this year’s budget reached an impasse, Evers had said he was willing to support Republicans’ tax goals, but he wanted agreements from them, too. 

The proposal also includes an exclusion from income taxes for retirees that would reduce the state’s revenues by $395 million in 2025-26 and $300 million in 2026-27.

“This isn’t a high-income oriented kind of thing,” Marklein said during the meeting. “It just helps a lot of average people in the state of Wisconsin, so it’s very good tax policy.” 

Democrats appeared unimpressed with the tax proposal. 

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau told lawmakers that the income tax change would lead to about a maximum impact of $253 annually for married joint filers, $190 annually for single filers and $127 for married separate filers. 

“So roughly $5 a week for a married couple,” McGuire said. 

McGuire said that Democrats just have the perspective that Wisconsin could invest more in the priorities that residents have been expressing. 

“We heard from a lot of people about what they need,” McGuire said in reference to school districts. “We also know that as they’ve been attempting to get those funds they’ve had to go to referendums across the state, and… we think that’s harming communities and making it more difficult for people. As a perspective, we believe that that’s a good place to invest in dollars.” 

Tech colleges

The committee also voted to provide additional funding for the Wisconsin technical colleges, though it is, again, significantly less than what was requested by Evers and by the system.

The proposal will provide an additional $13 million to the system. This includes $7 million in general aid for the system of 16 technical colleges, $2 million in aid meant for grants for artificial intelligence, $3 million for grants for textbooks and nearly $30,000 to support the operations of the system. 

Evers had proposed the state provide the system with $45 million in general aid

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) said the differences between Evers’ proposals and what Republicans offered were stark. 

“We hear my GOP colleagues talk about worker training all the time and this is their opportunity to make sure that our technical colleges have the resources that they need to make sure that we are training an adequate workforce,” Johnson said, noting that the state could be short by 1,000 nurses (many of whom start their education in technical colleges) by 2030. “I’ve never had an employer complain about having an educated workforce, not once, but I have heard employers say that Wisconsin lacks the skill sets and educational skills they need. It seems my Republican colleagues are more concerned with starving our institutions of higher education, rather than making sure they have the resources they need.” 

Testin said the proposal was not a cut and that Republicans were investing in technical colleges. 

“We see there’s value in our technical colleges because they are working with the business community … getting students through the door quicker with less debt,” Testin said. “Any conversations that this is a cut is just unrealistic. These are critical investments in the technical system.” 

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William Garcia, Joe Zepecki and Devin Remicker are the candidates for Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair. (Photos courtesy of candidates)

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin will meet over the weekend with the task of choosing a new party chair who will lead the party into 2026 when crucial elections are at stake. 

Those elections include a nominally nonpartisan state Supreme Court race that could nonetheless lock in a liberal majority past 2028, campaigns for competitive congressional seats, the governor’s race and state legislative races that will determine the balance of power in the state Legislature, where Democrats have a chance to flip both the Senate and Assembly for the first time in over a decade.

The state party has been led by Ben Wikler since 2019. He’s credited with helping transform the party through fundraising and with being instrumental in many wins including electing Gov. Tony Evers to a second term, gaining back ground in the state Legislature and flipping the ideological balance of the state Supreme Court, though the party has also had some close losses under him with President Donald Trump winning the state last November and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson winning a third term in office. The state party had started considering who could fill the position earlier in the year when Wikler campaigned for Democratic National Committee chair in February, though some thought he’d remain after he lost.

Wikler announced in April that he wouldn’t be running for another term as chair, saying it was time to “pass the torch.” 

Three candidates with slightly varied visions are running for the position: Devin Remiker, a party insider from Reedsburg who has worked in leadership roles in the party since 2018; Joe Zepecki, a Milwaukee-based Democratic communications professional, and William Garcia, the 3rd Congressional District chair and co-chair of the La Crosse County Democratic Party.

Party insider wants to fine-tune party 

Remiker said he initially wasn’t sure he would have the energy to be chair but that Susan Crawford’s victory in her state Supreme Court race changed that. 

“It was just a really good reminder of why we do this and why it’s important, so I sort of switched gears pretty quickly,” Remiker said, adding that some people were encouraging him to run. 

Remiker, a 32-year-old New Rivers native, most recently served as a senior advisor for the state party. He is currently on a leave of absence during his campaign. He first joined the Democratic Party of Wisconsin as a staffer in 2018 and has worked up from there. He served as a senior advisor to the Biden-Harris and then Harris-Walz presidential campaigns in 2024 and was executive director of the party for a few years starting in 2021. 

Remiker is responsible for some of the communications campaigns that the party launched during competitive elections, including the “People v. Musk” campaign, which highlighted Elon Musk’s involvement in trying to win the state Supreme Court seat for Schimel and his work to slash funds and staffing of federal agencies.

Remiker said he thinks the state party and candidates are in a “fantastic” spot, but that “there’s always room to improve” and “to figure out how we take things to the next level” and that’s what he’d work on as chair.

Despite committing to remaining neutral in a state party chair race during his DNC chair campaign, Wikler reversed course and endorsed Remiker in a column in late May. He said at a WisPolitics event that he changed his mind because he wanted people to know about the work that Remiker’s done for the party and is making calls on his behalf. Wikler said that he thinks there will be a “burgeoning blue wave” in 2026.

“My decision to endorse was I knew that I thought he’d do a phenomenal job and I also knew that I thought he’d been working behind the scenes and people would not know what a role he played in so many of our fights unless I said something,” Wikler said.

Remiker is also endorsed by U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, State Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine), State Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) and former state party chairs. 

Remiker said that other than his father being in a union, he didn’t grow up in a very political family, but he caught the politics bug “pretty quickly” in college at UW-La Crosse and during an internship with the special election campaign for now-state Rep. Steve Doyle (D-Onalaska).

“I collected nomination signatures. I knocked on doors, and I just love talking with people,” Remiker said. The loss of his dad’s job when a nuclear facility in Kewaunee was decommissioned also pushed him towards politics. 

“It was a knife in the heart [to] this sort of rural county and area,” Remiker said. “This facility provided a lot of good paying benefits, providing union jobs, and then, to add insult to injury, I find out afterwards that they essentially are offering people their jobs back… as independent contractors with no benefits, a fraction of the pay that they were receiving before… I was mad as heck.”

Remiker said it was at that point that he decided to see where a career in politics would lead and it has shaped his mission for the party: ensuring it fights for working people.

“Our biggest failure from 2024 is that people lost faith in us as the party that fights for the working class, and I really want to center that in my work,” Remiker said.

Remiker noted there is “tremendous” opportunity for Democrats with fair state legislative maps and backlash against the Trump administration that is motivating people to become involved with the party, but the challenge will be keeping people engaged through 2026. He said there is more the party can do to ensure its engaging authentically across the state in all communities and to help Democrats in rural communities feel like they don’t have to hide. 

“We just have to make sure that when there is energy, we are running towards it and bringing it with us, so that we can point it like a laser at the fights that we need to win next year,” Remiker said. “We have a lot of fights on our hands.”

Remiker said he wants 72 county strategies that are unique to each county party. He said he’d work towards that by building on the neighborhood teams that exist by creating regional teams, which would be tasked with going county by county to better understand the needs of county parties, college Democrats, community groups and others. 

“There’s no one size fits all solution to how we sort of support each county, but we really have to get into the weeds…,” Remiker said. “This county they need some help building their membership base, because they might be struggling to have enough folks to sustain their level of work. This county might need some additional help opening a year round permanent office in their county. This county might need funding to get a trailer that they can build a parade float on. I think there’s more room to provide resources. I just think that we need to make sure that we are listening, engaging and have a more consistent feedback loop with our leadership on the ground.” 

Fundraising, he said, would also play a critical role for making that work. With his previous work for the party, Remiker noted that he has already helped do that work and would continue it as chair. 

“Wisconsin’s unique success [in fundraising] comes down to relationships of trust built with donors large and small over time, and that requires being honest about losses and proud of your victories,” Remiker said. “I’ve been lucky enough having worked with Ben so closely to have been part of sort of building that trust over time — helping to write the memos, do the calls. I’ve raised millions of dollars for the party myself.” 

Democratic comms professional says he offers fresh POV 

Zepecki, a 43-year-old from Milwaukee, is pitching himself as having the fresh perspective the party needs to win more elections, saying he’ll work to revamp the organization’s communications. 

“Two things can be true at the same time… Ben and his team have done a remarkable job. We are the envy of 49 other state parties. At the same time, it is true that Democrats have a lot of work to do,” Zepecki said in an interview. “Our brand is busted. Our messaging isn’t landing. We have work to do, and you shouldn’t need more evidence of that than the occupant of the White House, than the fact that Ron Johnson is still representing Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate.” 

As he decided to run, Zepecki said he took the time to consult a broad swath of people and entered with supporters who he said “speak to the broad coalition that is our party — rural, urban, suburban, north, south, east, west, gay, straight, progressive [and] moderate.” He said it was clear there was an “appetite” for some changes to the party.

Zepecki is endorsed by several state lawmakers, including Reps. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), Clinton Anderson (D-Beloit), Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) and Sen. Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay). He also has support from former Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Linda Honold and several local party chairs including Kelly Gallaher of the Racine County party, Nancy Fisker of the Lafayette County party and Matthew Mareno of the Waukesha County party. 

Some advocates have also given their support including Angela Lang, the executive director of Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC), Shawn Phetteplace, an organizer and campaign strategist with small business advocacy organization Main Street Alliance and Kristin Lyerly, a Green Bay OB-GYN who advocates for reproductive rights and ran for Congress in 2024.

Zepecki appeared critical of Wikler for his endorsement of Remiker in a video posted to Facebook in May, saying the current chair had assured him he wouldn’t make an endorsement and that he “abandoned” that commitment. He declined to speak further on the issue in the Examiner interview. 

“I thought that was vitally important because it is the members of our party — the folks who knock the doors and plant the signs and make the phone calls — who should decide this election and know that their voice is paramount in this process,” Zepecki said in the video.

“If you don’t change the people who are at the top are, I don’t believe we’re going to see the changes and improvements we need to see,” Zepcki added. “We need new leadership and a fresh perspective. That’s what I’m offering.”

Since 2016, Zepecki has run a communications company and worked for organizations such as Protect Our Care Wisconsin. Prior to that, he also worked on federal and state campaigns including Democrat Mary Burke’s 2014 run for governor, a U.S. Senate campaign in Nebraska and a presidential primary campaign in Nevada. 

Zepecki said he wants to build better infrastructure for the party’s communications and has been saying there are “five Ms” that should guide the work: message, messenger, mood, medium and masses.

“Spoiler alert: there is no magic set of words in just the right order that unlocks your vote… You’re better off having a young person communicate with a young person, better off having someone who’s a union member communicate with a union member. We need more messengers…,” Zepecki said. “We can’t just assume that our elected officials are going to be the only ones communicating our values, and when those messengers are out there, I think they need to match the mood of the country… It is virtually impossible to get ahead, and people are pissed about that. When we do not match the mood of the electorate, people tune us out. There are more ways to reach people than ever before, and we need to be more intentional about using more of that.” 

Zepecki said this approach will help the party, which he said has troubles communicating what it’s for and against. When it comes to what Democrats are for, Zepecki said that communicating the party as one of “economic opportunity and fairness” is essential. 

“Whether they’re building trades union members and apprentices, whether it’s public sector workers, the Democratic Party is the party of working people. When we get back to communicating that every single day, I think people are going to respond favorably,” Zepecki said, adding that this “doesn’t mean that we don’t stand up for our trans brothers and sisters. It does not mean that we do not protect civil rights.”

Zepecki said with the “big, pivotal year” of 2026 upcoming, he would want to use the latter half of the year to build up the party’s power and infrastructure to be prepared to win. He said the approach would vary region to region but it comes down to communicating that people are welcome in the party and it will work for them. 

“It is required that we ask for and earn the support of people who have voted Republican in the past, and we do so without making them swear out a blood oath to be Democrats for the rest of their life. That is the way you win elections in a 50-50 state like Wisconsin,” Zepecki said. “We share many of the frustrations that people who vote for Donald Trump and Republicans have when it comes to how our economy is working. We do a better job communicating that we welcome folks into our party, don’t like the chaos, division and the overreach of what the Trump administration is doing, and we’re going to be just fine next year.” 

Zepecki said his time serving as a political appointee in the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) in the Obama administration is the role that has prepared him the most for serving as chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. He said he was tasked with leading a team of civil servants across 68 districts, and he compared it to Wisconsin’s 72 counties.

“There are different realities and challenges and context depending on where you are…You have to earn trust. You have to win trust, and you have to lead and communicate internally as well as you communicate externally,” Zepecki said. “When you do that, I think you can improve organizations. We certainly did that at SBA — incredibly, incredibly proud of the two and a half years I spent there — and that’s the type of approach that I would bring to this.”

Garcia wants to strengthen county parties 

The basis of Garcia’s campaign is strengthening the state’s county parties. He told the Examiner that he has seen first-hand the “dangerous disconnect between the state party and county parties” that exists. 

Garcia, who is originally from San Antonio, Texas, said he grew up “very, very political,” having helped Democrats since he was a teenager. He and his wife moved to La Crosse about seven years ago after she secured a job at the UW branch campus and when they arrived he said he almost immediately looked to get involved at the local level. He is also an educator currently working as an instructor at Western Technical College and having worked in K-12 education for 17 years prior.

“‘Hey, I live here now. How can I help?’” Garcia said, he asked when he walked in the La Crosse County party office. “I started working from there.” Over the last several years, Garcia said the party has grown strong and robust.

“We get a lot of work done,” Garcia said, noting that La Crosse recently elected its most progressive mayor and city council ever, and just overturned the 96th state Assembly seat, which had been represented by Republicans for about 70 years. 

“We were able to flip that through hard work,” Garcia said, adding that new fairer maps helped also. “That was because of the strong infrastructure that we built at the county,” Garcia said. “What I want to do is replicate that all across the state.”

Garcia has support from Democrats in his local area, including Rep. Tara Johnson (D-Town of Shelby) of the 96th district, Rep. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse), La Crosse Mayor Shaundel Washington-Spivey, as well as the chair of the Jackson and Richland County parties and John Stanley, who serves as the progressive caucus chair.

Garcia said some of the changes the party needs to make may appear small but are important for helping the party reach as many people as possible. 

“Logistical things like packets with turf maps that make sense…,” Garcia said. “If you actually live in the area, you know, there are problems with how it’s put together, and it slows down our door knockers. Things like we’re not doing enough talking to our rural voters, and we’re not doing enough to talk to our farmers.”

As chair, Garcia said he would want to ensure that county parties have the resources, tools, training and infrastructure so that they can spend all their time reaching out to voters. He said that he also wants to ensure that county parties have a bigger seat at the table when it comes to organizing and messaging decision making. 

“County parties are the experts in what is happening in their own communities, and we need to be listening to them in ways that we’re not right now about the best way to really reach out and talk to voters in those areas,” Garcia said. “The organizing strategy that works in Madison is not the organizing strategy that works best in Pierce County, and the messaging that works wonderfully in Milwaukee is not necessarily the strategy that’s going to work best in Menominee.” 

Garcia added that this would apply to other local organizing organizations, including the state party caucuses such as the Latino, Black and rural caucuses. 

Garcia said strengthening the county parties is essential towards winning the trifecta in 2026.

“It’s the county parties that are really the hub of activity for electing our Assembly candidates and our state Senate candidates. It is the county parties where we find our door knocking volunteers. It’s the county party where we find the infrastructure the candidates need to tap into in order to mount an effective campaign, and so the stronger we can make these county parties, the more likely we are to flip those Assembly and Senate seats that we need to flip.” 

Garcia said it is also important to get to the areas where it’s difficult to win as well.  

“Even if an Assembly seat goes 65% for Republicans and is a very difficult win for a Democrat, we still desperately need those votes for our statewide office holders.”

Garcia said that people don’t get elected by being against something so Democrats needs to be proactive, illustrating what they are doing for people, their vision for government and, specifically, honing in on a message of “protecting Wisconsin families.”

“That’s what Democrats are trying to do from child care, where we’re trying to make it actually affordable to pay for child care, trying to expand Medicaid so that pregnant women have the care that they need to take care of their babies, all the way up to protecting Medicare and Social Security,” Garcia said. “It is Democrats that are consistently passing laws — or preventing Republicans from passing laws — to help our people.” 

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A rally goer rolls out a scroll with the names of every school district that has gone to referendum since the last state budget. Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner.

Education advocates are making a push for more investment in public schools from the state as the Republican-led Joint Finance Committee plans to take up portions of the budget related to K-12 schools during its Thursday meeting.

The issue has been a top concern for Wisconsinites who came out to budget listening sessions and was one of Gov. Tony Evers’ priorities in his budget proposal. Evers proposed that the state spend an additional $3.1 billion on K-12 education. Evers and Republican leaders were negotiating on the spending for education as well as taxes and other parts of the budget until last week when negotiations reached an impasse. 

Evers has said that Republicans were unwilling to compromise on his funding priorities, including making “meaningful investments for K-12 schools, to continue Child Care Counts to help lower the cost of child care for working families and to prevent further campus closures and layoffs at our UW System.” He said he was willing to support their tax proposal, which Republicans have said included income and retiree tax cuts. 

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said on WISN 12’s UpFront that Evers “lied” about Republicans walking away from the negotiating table.

“We’re willing to do it, just not as much as he wanted… When you read that statement, it makes it sound like we were at zero,” Vos said. “We were not at zero on any of those topics. We tried to find a way to invest in child care that actually went to the parents, and to make sure that we weren’t just having to go to a business. We tried to find a way to look at education so that money would actually go back to school districts across the state. It just wasn’t enough for what he wanted.” 

Public education advocates said school districts are in dire need of a significant investment of state dollars, especially for special education. After lobbying for the last week, many are concerned that when Republicans finally announce their proposal it won’t be enough. 

State Superintendent Jill Underly told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview Wednesday afternoon that she is anticipating that Republicans will put forth more short-term solutions, but she said schools and students can’t continue functioning in that way. 

Underly compared the situation of education funding in Wisconsin to a road trip.

“The gas tank is nearly empty, and you’re trying to coast… you’re turning the air conditioning off… going at a lower speed limit, just to save a little fuel and the state budget every two years. I kind of look at them as like these exits to gas stations,” Underly said. “We keep passing up these opportunities to refuel. Schools are running on fumes, and we see the stress that is having an our system — the number of referendums, the anxiety around whether or not we’re going to have the referendum or not in our communities. Wisconsin public schools have been underfunded for decades.” 

The one thing lawmakers must do, Underly said, is increase the special education reimbursement rate to a minimum of 60%, back to the levels of the 1990s. 

“It used to be 60% but they haven’t been keeping up their promise to public schools,” Underly said. “They need to raise the special education reimbursement rate. Anything less than 60% is once again failing to meet urgent needs.”

The Wisconsin Public Education Network is encouraging advocates to show up at the committee meeting Thursday and continue pushing lawmakers and Evers to invest. Executive Director Heather DuBois Bourenane told the Examiner that she is concerned lawmakers are planning on “low balling” special education funding, even as she said she has never seen the education community so united in its insistence on one need.

“We’re familiar with the way they work in that caucus and in the Joint Finance Committee,” DuBois Bourenane said. “The pattern of the past has been to go around the state and listen to the concerns that are raised or at least get the appearance of listening, and then reject those concerns and demands and put forward a budget that fails in almost every way to prioritize the priority needs for our communities.” 

While it’s unclear what Republicans will ultimately do, budget papers prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau includes three options when it comes to special education reimbursement rate: the first is to raise the rate to 60% sum sufficient — as Evers has proposed; the second is to leave the rate at 31.5% sum certain by investing an additional $35.8 million and the third is to raise the rate to an estimated 35% by providing an additional $68.6 million in 2023-24 and $86.2 million in 2024-25. 

The paper also includes options for investing more in the high cost of special education, which provides additional aid to reimburse 90% of the cost of educating students whose special education costs exceed $30,000 in a single year. 

The School Administrators Alliance (SAA) sent an update to its members on Monday, pointing out what was in the budget papers and saying the committee “appears poised to focus spending on High-Cost Special Education Aid and the School Levy Tax Credit, rather than significantly raising the primary special education categorical aid.”

SAA Executive Director Dee Pettack said in the email that if that’s the route lawmakers take, it would “result in minimal new, spendable resources for classrooms and students.”

Public school funding was one of the top priorities mentioned by Wisconsinites at the four budget hearings held by the budget committee across the state in March. 

“I just think it’s time to say enough is enough,” DuBois Bourenane said. “We’re really urging people to do whatever they can before our lawmakers vote on this budget, to say that we are really going to accept nothing less than a budget that stops this cycle of insufficient state support for priority needs and demand better.” 

Pettack and leaders of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, Southeast Wisconsin School Alliance and the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance also issued a joint letter Tuesday urging the committee to “meet this moment with the urgency it requires,” adding that the budget provides the opportunity to allocate resources that will help students achieve.

The letter detailed the situation that a low special education reimbursement has placed districts in as they struggle to fund the mandated services and must fill in the gaps with funds from their general budgets.

“The lack of an adequate state reimbursement for mandated special education programs and services negatively affects all other academic programs, including career and technical education, reading interventionists, teachers and counselors, STEM, dual enrollment, music, art and more,” the organizations stated. “While small increases in special education reimbursement have been achieved in recent state budgets, costs for special education programming and services have grown much faster than those increases, leaving public schools in a stagnant situation.” 

“Should we fail in this task, we are not only hurting Wisconsin’s youth today but also our chances to compete in tomorrow’s economy,” the leaders wrote. 

If the proposal from Republicans isn’t adequate, Underly said Evers doesn’t have to sign the budget. Republican lawmakers have expressed confidence that they will put a budget on Evers’ desk that he will sign. 

“There’s that, and then we keep negotiating. We keep things as they are right now. We keep moving forward,” Underly said. “But our schools and our kids, they can’t continue to wait for this… These are short term fixes, I think, that they keep talking about, and we can’t continue down this path. We need to fix it so that we’re setting ourselves up for success. Everything else is just really short sighted.”

WPEN and others want Evers to use his veto power should the proposal not be sufficient. DuBois Bourenane said dozens of organizations have signed on to a letter calling on Evers to reject any budget that doesn’t meet the state’s needs and priorities.

“What we want them to do is negotiate in good faith and reject any budget that doesn’t meet the needs of our kids, and just keep going back to the drawing board until you reach a bipartisan agreement that actually does meet those needs,” DuBois Bourenane said. “Gov. Evers has the power to break this cycle. He has the power of his veto pen. He has the power of his negotiating authority, and we expect him to use it right and people have got his back.”

The budget deadline is June 30. If it is not completed by then, the state continues to operate under the 2023-25 budget. 

“Nobody wants [the process] to be drawn out any longer than it is,” DuBois Bourenane said. “Those are valid concerns. But the fact is we are in a really critical tension point right now, and if any people care even a little bit about this, now is the time that they should be speaking out.” 

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Evers talks to reporters in March 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner. )

Wisconsin Republicans considering running for governor in 2026 are criticizing Gov. Tony Evers for supporting California Gov. Gavin Newsom as he pushes back against President Donald Trump for sending armed troops into the state to respond to protests. 

As of Tuesday, President Donald Trump has authorized deployment of 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines to Los Angeles as protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids continue in the southern California city. This is the first time in six decades that a president has called National Guard troops to respond to civil unrest without a governor’s request for help. The last time, in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights protesters.

Democratic governors, including Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, asserted their support for California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a joint statement Monday, saying that Trump’s actions were an “alarming abuse of power.”

“Governors are the Commanders in Chief of their National Guard and the federal government activating them in their own borders without consulting or working with a state’s governor is ineffective and dangerous,” the governors said. “Further, threatening to send the U.S. Marines into American neighborhoods undermines the mission of our service members, erodes public trust and shows the Trump administration does not trust local law enforcement. It’s important we respect the executive authority of our country’s governors to manage their National Guards — and we stand with Gov. Newsom who has made it clear that violence is unacceptable and that local authorities should be able to do their jobs without the chaos of this federal interference and intimidation.”

The Los Angeles police have said they could handle the protests, which had been mostly peaceful, though some violence had occurred.

Newsom has said he is suing Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Department of Defense for taking over the California’s National Guard unit, saying it has “needlessly escalated chaos and violence in the Los Angeles region.” 

White House border czar Tom Homan has suggested that he would arrest Newsom, but he hadn’t “crossed the line” yet. Trump, asked about the idea of arresting Newsom, said that he would “do it.” After Trump appeared open to the idea, Homan said there is “no intention to arrest the governor right now.”  

Wisconsin Republicans are standing behind Trump’s actions in LA and connecting Newsom to Evers’ actions regarding ICE. 

In reaction to the governors’ statement, Wisconsin businessman and Navy veteran Bill Berrien, who is considering running for governor in 2026, issued a press release through his Never Out of the Fight PAC saying that Newsom and Evers are enabling the “invasion of illegal immigrants” and “violent protests.” Berrien formed the PAC in April to advance conservative causes and to help Republicans win federal, state and local elections.

“We should be condemning this violence but our governor is once again putting violent criminals above law-abiding citizens,” Berrien said. “I served as a Navy SEAL to protect our country. President Trump is right to step up and end this chaos.”

Josh Schoemann, the first GOP candidate to officially launch a 2026 campaign, responded to a social media post that said the Democratic governors were endorsing “lawlessness and chaos on American streets,” noting a memo on ICE that Evers sent to state employees with guidance on handling ICE, and declaring “Tony’s Gotta Go!!”

COVID Lockdowns
Kenosha Riots
ICE Obstruction Memo
Dem Guv Anti-Law & Order Pact

Tony’s Gotta Go!!! https://t.co/94E58PzpP7

— Josh Schoemann (@JoshSchoemann) June 9, 2025

Republicans have been critical of Evers for his handling of increased ICE activity in Wisconsin, including calling for him to be arrested when he stood by guidance that he gave to state employees to call a lawyer if ICE showed up at their office. Those calls came after Homan previously made comments that were interpreted as a threat to arrest Evers. 

Evers released a three-minute video following Homan’s vague threat, saying that it represents a “concerning trajectory in this country.” 

“We now have a federal government that will threaten or arrest an elected official — or even everyday American citizens — who have broken no laws, committed no crimes, and done nothing wrong,” Evers said in early May. “As disgusted as I am about the continued actions of the Trump Administration, I am not afraid. I have never once been discouraged from doing the right thing, and I will not start today.”

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“The focus here is going to be on basically keeping our food safe and preventing disease from spreading,” Sen. Howard Marklein said at a press conference. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Republicans and Democrats on the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee were divided Tuesday about the amount of money the state should invest in several state agencies including the Department of Workforce Development, the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection.

Republicans on the committee said they were making strategic and realistic investments in priority areas, while Democrats said Republicans’ investments wouldn’t make enough of an impact.

GOP rejects new protection for state Supreme Court 

The first divisive issue came up when the committee considered the budgets for Wisconsin’s courts. 

Democrats proposed that the state provide an additional $2 million and 8 new positions for the creation of an Office of the Marshals of the Supreme Court that would provide security for the Court. 

Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) and Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said the need for the office has increased recently due to the number of threats the judges and justices are facing. 

“Given the role that they play in our judiciary in order to be impartial, we shouldn’t want them to be in danger or to fear for their safety or to have any outward pressures on them that would influence the case,” McGuire said. “I believe it’s important for the cause of justice. I believe it’s important for the cause of safety.”

Roys noted the inflammatory language that members of the Trump administration have used when talking about judges and justices, noting that Republicans have passed legislation before to help protect judges. She also noted that former Juneau County Circuit Court Judge John Roemer was targeted and murdered at his home in 2022. 

“It is really frightening… and the Supreme Court has made this request over numerous years because they understand better than any of us do what it’s like to try to serve the public in this critically important but increasingly dangerous role,” Roys said. “I am much less interested in putting people in prison after they have murdered a judge than I am in preventing our judges from being attacked or killed, so, this seems to me a tiny amount of money to do a really important task to protect the third branch of government and particularly our Supreme Court.” 

Republicans rejected Democrats’ motion. Committee co-chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that the Wisconsin Capitol Police are tasked with protecting visitors, employees, legislators, the Court and anyone else in the building.

“They do a good job and continue to provide top-notch work here at the Capitol as part of security for everyone who works here,” Born said. 

The committee also voted 13-3 with Andraca joining Republicans to allocate an additional $10 million each year to counties for circuit court costs.

Meat inspection gets additional funding

The committee took action on portions of the budget for the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP), giving a boost to he agency’s Meat Inspection Program and Division of Animal Health. 

“The focus here is going to be on basically keeping our food safe and preventing the disease from spreading,” committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said. 

The Meat Inspection Program got an additional $2.7 million and two additional positions under the proposal approved by the committee. The program works to ensure the safety and purity of meat products sold in Wisconsin, including by inspecting the livestock and poultry slaughtering and processing facilities that are not already inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). 

The Division of Animal Health would get three additional employees that would be funded with about $500,000. 

According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, Wisconsin has 233 official meat establishments and 70 custom meat establishments that require state inspection. 

Roys said the proposal “falls far short of what is needed,” noting that agriculture is a major economic driver in Wisconsin and the industry is under pressure due to actions being taken by the Trump administration. The USDA recently terminated its National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection, which had been in place since 1971, and the administration has considered ending most of its routine food safety inspections work. 

“That kind of uncertainty is exactly why we need to step up our work at the state level,” Roys said, adding that she hopes that Republicans “consider funding at the appropriate level what our farmers…deserve.”  

Marklein noted that the committee’s work on DATCP’s part of the budget is not completed yet. 

“This is a program that’s had a shortfall year over year,” Andraca said, adding that she hopes “members of this committee are vegetarians.” 

“If there’s one place that I wouldn’t cut, it would probably be in meat inspection. If we’re looking at places to take a little off the edge, food safety is not one of them, particularly in a time where we have avian flu and other diseases breaking out,” Andraca said.

Youth apprenticeship program gets boost

The committee also voted along party lines to invest additional funds in programs administered by the Department of Workforce Development, including $6 million in youth apprenticeship grants, $570,000 in early college credit program grants, $250,000 for the agency’s commercial driver training grant program and $250,000 for the workforce training grants. 

Democrats had suggested that the committee dedicate $11 million for the youth apprenticeship program, which provides an opportunity for juniors and seniors in high school to get hands-on experience in a field alongside classroom instruction, but Republicans rejected it opting to put a little more than half of that towards the program. 

Andraca said the program is important for allowing youth to “try out new skills and new jobs” and train to fill positions in  Wisconsin  and that the $6 million investment makes it seem like the program is “pretty much getting gutted.” The program has steadily grown annually over the last several years at an estimated rate of 16%, although, according to the LFB, the number of additional students each year has declined going from a high of 1,923 additional students in 2022-23, to 1,703 more in 2023-24, and 1,430 in 2024-25. 

Andraca noted that the program currently operates on a sum certain model, meaning that there is a specific amount of money available and the size of a grant could vary depending on participation and available funds. If there is continued growth of 16% then the grant sizes could shrink. A sum sufficient model (which Democrats wanted) would mean that the agency’s spending on the program isn’t capped by a specific dollar amount.

Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) noted that the grants for students would likely grow from an average of about $900 currently to about $1,000 under the Republican proposal. 

“This motion [is] at $6 million and $100 per award over the last budget, but we’re supposed to believe it’s gutting the program,” Quinn said. 

“Welcome to the People’s Republic of Madison where stuff like that happens a lot; $6 million in new money is a lot of money to most people but obviously the other side, it’s gutting the program,” Born said, responding to Quinn. “At some point when you’re building a budget, you have to figure out a way to afford it, be reasonable in your investments, so maybe that’s why we don’t view a $6 million investment as gutting because we’re trying to live within our means.” 

Funding to support new Wisconsin History Center

The committee approved $2.3 million to support the new Wisconsin History Center in downtown Madison for 2025-26 and $540,800 and six positions annually starting in 2026-27.

Construction on the museum, which will be operated by the Wisconsin Historical Society, started in April and  its opening is set for 2027. 

The  Historical Society had requested the one-time funding of $2.3 million in 2025-26 as well as ongoing funding of $1.7 million annually — more than double the amount the committee approved — starting in 2026-27 to help with operational costs, including security, janitorial and maintenance services. It said without ongoing funding from the state it wouldn’t be able to open and maintain the museum. It also said that it was not anticipating needing to request additional funding for the museum operations in future budget cycles if the request is funded. 

The committee also approved an additional $562,000 in one-time funding across the biennium for security and facilities improvements for the Historical Society’s facilities and collections and $157,000 to cover estimated future increases in services costs. But the committee decreased funding for the Historical Society by $214,000 for estimated fuel and utilities costs.

DOR budget moves resources to Alcohol Beverages Division 

A law, 2023 Wisconsin Act 73, overhauled alcohol regulation in Wisconsin and created a new Division of Alcohol Beverages under the Department of Regulation tasked with preventing violations of the new laws. Republicans on the committee approved a motion to recategorize nine general DOR positions and over $900,000 to the Division of Alcohol Beverages to help with enforcement. It also transferred an attorney to the division and added $456,000 in funding for two more positions in the Division of Alcohol Beverages.

Democrats said that Republicans on the committee were “nickel and diming” the Department of Revenue with its proposal given that it recategorizes already existing positions rather than creating new ones. 

“I do appreciate some of the efforts involved in this motion,” McGuire said, adding that he noticed there were 10 positions that were moved around.

“That seemed odd to me,” McGuire said. “Were their feet up on their desk? They weren’t collecting taxes… or what were they doing? We want to be able to give the Department of Revenue tools they need to succeed, and frankly, the tools they need to provide resources to the state to make sure that everyone’s on an even playing field so we can fund the priorities” of the state. 

The GOP proposal passed on a party-line vote.

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Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin President and CEO Tanya Atkinson stood alongside Wisconsin Democrats to introduce the bill in May, saying it was the “next step in protecting and securing full reproductive freedom for people in Wisconsin.” (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

A majority of Wisconsinites support allowing access to abortion according to recent polling commissioned by Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin and A Better Wisconsin Together Institute. 

The online poll conducted by the D.C.-based Hart Research Associates between March 21 and March 28 got feedback from 605 registered voters in Wisconsin as a way of understanding perspectives on abortion in the state. Planned Parenthood is facing the possibility of being cut off from Medicaid funds under Donald Trump and House Republicans’ budget reconciliation package and Wisconsin  Republicans recently reaffirmed their commitment to enforcing a strict statewide abortion ban. 

The poll found that 45% of voters are “base supporters” of abortion, meaning they personally support the right to abortion and believe it should be legal, while 34% were “soft supporters” meaning they are personally against abortion but oppose government restrictions. 

Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin President and CEO Tanya Atkinson said in a statement that the poll confirms the “overwhelming” support across the state for abortion care access and for Planned Parenthood. 

“That Wisconsin Republicans in Congress, in the State Legislature and in their own political party platform continue to endorse policies and enact cuts to essential care despite broad support from their constituents is devastating,” Atkinson said. “These cuts mean Wisconsinites will lose access to birth control, wellness visits, STI tests and cancer screenings. This isn’t just about abortion — it’s about whether people can count on the care they need, when they need it.” 

About 69% of survey participants reported a “favorable” view of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin.

Lucy Ripp, communications director for A Better Wisconsin Together Institute, said in a statement that the poll shows that Planned Parenthood is “a healthcare provider that Wisconsinites overwhelmingly support and rely on for quality healthcare access.”

The poll found that 74% of voters think abortion is at risk nationally and 71% said it is at risk on a statewide level. 

Wisconsin Republicans approved a resolution at their state convention in May that calls for the enforcement of a criminal 1849 law, which effectively banned abortion in the state following the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022. A Dane County judge ruled that the law doesn’t apply to abortion, though the decision was appealed and is currently before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Democrats, meanwhile, have introduced a proposal that would repeal the 1849 law as well as an array of other laws on the books in Wisconsin that restrict abortion access, including a state-mandated requirement that patients have two appointments before an abortion, a requirement that doctors must provide a state-mandated booklet that contains medically inaccurate information, an ultrasound requirement and a law that stops physician assistants, nurse practitioners and APRNs from performing abortions.

The bill would also repeal state laws that prohibit coverage of abortion care under insurance plans for public employees, plans on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace for Wisconsin and under BadgerCare. Federal law also bans the use of federal money for abortion with exceptions in the case that a pregnancy endangers the life of a pregnant person or is the result of rape or incest. 

The poll also found that 78% of voters support protecting health care professionals from criminal charges related to providing abortion care, that 72% of voters favor allowing advanced health care providers like nurse practitioners and midwives to provide abortion care, 70% favor funding for health care clinics that provide abortion care and 68% favor Medicaid and Badgercare coverage for abortion care.

Atkinson stood alongside Wisconsin Democrats to introduce the bill in May, saying it was the “next step in protecting and securing full reproductive freedom for people in Wisconsin.” 

The bill has not progressed in the Republican-led Legislature, though the authors of the bill Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) and Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) have said they plan to continue to advocate for better abortion access in the state, even if it has to wait until next session. 

“This legislation is about making a future here in Wisconsin, where everyone has access to the health care in need, where every single person has the ability to thrive. This is legislation that Wisconsinites broadly support, that Americans broadly support,” Roys said. “[The] only people who don’t broadly support it are the Republican politicians who have gerrymandered themselves away from any voter accountability that is coming to an end. We will be getting a hearing on this bill if it’s not this session, it will be next session back — mark my words.” 

Democrats in Wisconsin and nationally have used abortion as a motivator in elections since 2022, including in key state Supreme Court elections and in competitive state legislative races. State Democrats are aiming to win a trifecta in 2026 and need to flip the Assembly and Senate to do so — a goal that could be within their reach under the legislative maps put in place last year. The last time Democrats held majorities in the state Legislature was during the 2009-2010 legislative session 

The survey also asked participants about their electoral preferences, finding that 62% of respondents  said they were more likely to vote for a candidate who supports guaranteeing legal abortion while 57% said they would vote against a candidate who wants to make abortion illegal.  

The poll also found that 70% of voters would support a referendum that guarantees the legal right to an abortion in Wisconsin if it appeared on ballots. It also found that 81% of voters support passing legislation to conduct a statewide referendum on abortion. 

Wisconsin does not have a voter-led ballot initiative process. There is a process to allow voters to decide whether to ratify a law through a referendum, but under that, it would need to be passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Tony Evers. Democrats and Republicans have at times expressed support for placing a question about abortion on the ballot — both advisory and binding — though neither has agreed on the details.

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Committee Co-Chairs Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that they were looking forward to getting to work on the budget despite negotiations stalling and were optimistic that they could still get the budget done on time. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee on Thursday took its first actions on the budget since the breakdown in negotiations between Republican lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers by approving over $700 million in bonding authority for clean water and safe drinking water projects and taking action on several other agencies.

Committee Co-Chairs Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that they were looking forward to getting to work on the budget despite negotiations stalling and were optimistic that they could still get the budget done on time. 

“We’ve had some good conversations in the last few weeks between the governor and the legislative leaders, and unfortunately, those, you know, conversations have stopped,” Born said.

Lawmakers and Evers announced Wednesday evening that their months-long negotiations had reached an impasse for the time being. 

Republicans said they would move forward writing the budget on their own, saying the state couldn’t afford what Evers wanted, and Evers said Republicans were walking away because they refused to compromise. Evers had said he was willing to support Republican tax cut proposals that even as they were similar to proposals he previously vetoed.

“The spending really that the governor needs is just more than they can afford,” Born said Thursday, “and it’s getting to the point where it’s about 3 to 1 compared to the tax cuts that we were looking at.”

He declined to share specifics about the amounts that were being discussed.

“I don’t think we’re going to relive the conversations of the last few weeks in any details, but certainly, you know, we’ve been focused on tax cuts for retirees and the middle class,” Born said. 

Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback said in an email that Republicans’ “math is not remotely accurate.”

Despite the breakdown in discussions, the GOP lawmakers said they were optimistic about the potential for Evers to sign the budget they write, noting that he has signed budget bills passed by Republicans three times in his tenure as governor.

“I’m very hopeful that we will do a responsible budget that we can afford that addresses the major priorities and a lot of the priorities that I think the governor’s office has,” Marklein said. “I’m very hopeful that the governor will sign the budget.” 

Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee were less optimistic about the prospect for the budget to receive support from across the aisle, saying that it likely wouldn’t adequately address the issues at the top of mind for Wisconsinites, including public K-12 education, public universities and child care.

“We’re going to see a budget that prioritizes more tax breaks for the wealthiest among us at the expense of all of the rest of us and a budget from finance that will get no Democratic votes and that will likely be vetoed by the governor,” Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said. 

Roys said they didn’t know about the specifics of what Evers had agreed to. 

“We can’t really speculate on that, but I can say that we absolutely support the process and the idea of collaborative, shared government,” Roys said. “We are committed to that. We have been ready from Day One to sit down with our Republic colleagues to negotiate.” 

She said for now JFC Democrats will focus on providing alternatives to Republicans’ plans.

“We’re going to do our best to advocate for what Wisconsinites have said they want to need,” Roys said. “We want a lower cost for families. We want to make sure that our kids are the first priority in the budget, and we’re going to be offering the Republicans the opportunity to vote in favor of those things.” 

There is less than a month until the June 30 deadline for the Legislature to pass and Evers to sign the state budget. If the budget isn’t passed on time, then state agencies continue to operate under the current funding levels. 

Committee approves bonding authority for clean water fund

While negotiations have hit a wall, some committee’s actions on Thursday received bipartisan support. 

The committee unanimously approved an additional $732 million in bonding authority for the Environmental Improvement Fund (EIF). The program uses a combination of federal grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s clean water and drinking water state revolving funds and matching state funds to provide subsidized loans to municipalities for drinking water, wastewater and storm water infrastructure projects. 

“This is going to be very good for a lot of our local communities when it comes to clean water,” Marklein said ahead of the meeting. He noted that many communities were on a waiting list for their projects.

The Department of Administration and the Department of Natural Resources told lawmakers in late 2024 that that year was the first time the fund had not had enough resources to meet demand.

Demand for aid from the program increased dramatically starting in 2023, with a 154% increase in the clean water fund loan demand in 2023-24 and a 325% increase in demand for the safe drinking water loan program that year. Insufficient funding for the clean water program led to constraints in 2024-25 and left needs unmet for at least 24 projects costing around $73.9 million.

Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) said she was thrilled that lawmakers were approving money for infrastructure in the state.

“The state has over $4 billion here,” Andraca said. “A lot of that is one-time money and one-time money should be used for infrastructure — making sure that our communities are in a great position moving forward should the economy turn down.”

The action is meant to cover the next four years of state contributions to the fund.

Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) said in a statement the loans will help Wisconsin communities address aging infrastructure and water contaminants.

“With these additional funds, municipalities will be able to access low-interest loans to modernize their water systems, saving local taxpayers millions of dollars and keeping their water clean for years to come at the same time,” Wimberger said. 

Peter Burress, government affairs manager for environmental nonprofit Wisconsin Conservation Voters, said including the additional revenue bonding authority in the budget is a “smart, substantive way” to make progress towards ensuring Wisconsinites have “equitable access to safe, affordable drinking water.” 

“We urge every legislator to support this same investment and send it to Gov. Evers for his signature,” Burress said. 

Actions on other agencies get mixed or party-line support

Republicans on the committee approved an additional $500,000 for the Medical College of Wisconsin’s North Side Milwaukee Health Centers Family Medicine Residency Program, which focuses on training family physicians with expertise and skills to provide individualized, evidence-based, culturally competent care to patients and families. 

The measure also included  $250,000 annually starting in 2026-27 for the Northwest Wisconsin Residency Rotation for family medicine residents. According to budget papers, starting the funding in the second year of the budget would allow time to find a hospital partner to support residents. 

Democrats voted against the measure after their proposal for higher funding was shot down by Republicans. The Democrats proposal also called for funding a  Comprehensive Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment Fellowship Program focusing on treating substance use disorders and anAdvancing Innovation in Residency Education project to improve the behavioral health expertise of family medicine residents.

“I hope that my colleagues are reading national news because we’re seeing lots and lots of research funding being cut,” Andraca said. “The Medical College has lost about $5 million in research grants recently, and in addition to other research programs being canceled, I don’t know who has tried to make an appointment with the primary care physician, but there’s really long wait times right now, and this program is literally designed to bring doctors into the state.” 

Democrats proposed transitioning the Educational Communications Board’s Emergency Weather Warning System from relying on fees for funding to being covered by state general purpose revenue. 

Andraca, in explaining the proposal, said state funding for a system like that is more important now than ever.

“We’re talking weather alerts. We’re talking about making sure that people know when there’s something heading their way. We are in a time where we need these alerts more than ever. In fact, yesterday was an unhealthy air day, and… we’re looking at drastic federal cuts,” Andraca said. 

Republicans rejected the measure and instead approved a 5% increase that will be used on general program operations, transmitter operations and emergency weather warning system operations. Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) joined Republicans in favor of the motion. 

The committee also took action on several other agencies with support splitting along party lines

Republicans approved a modification to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation’s budget, lowering it by $3.8 million, due to projections that surcharge collections appropriated to WEDC will be lower than estimated. They also rejected Democrats’ proposal to provide an additional $5 million in the opportunity attraction and promotion fund, which makes grants to  attract events that will draw national exposure and drive economic development.

WEC budget on pause after DOJ letter

The committee was scheduled to take action on the Wisconsin Elections Commission budget, but delayed that after the U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to the state agency accusing it of violating the Help America Vote Act. The letter threatened to withhold funding and criticized the absence of  an administrative complaint process or hearings to address complaints against the Commission itself. Ann Jacobs, the commission chair, has disputed the accusations and said there is no funding for the federal government to cut. 

Marklein said the state lawmakers want more information before acting on the agency’s budget.

“Out of caution, we think we’re just going to wait and see,” Marklein said. “We need to analyze this and see what implications there may be for the entire Elections Commission and what impact that may have on the budget.”

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Negotiations on the state budget between Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers broke down on Wednesday. Evers delivers his 2025 state budget address. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Republican lawmakers are planning to move forward on writing the two-year state budget without input from across the aisle after negotiations with Gov. Tony Evers broke down on Wednesday. 

Senate and Assembly leaders and Evers each released statements on Wednesday in the early evening saying that while negotiations have been in good faith, they are ending for now after meetings late on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday morning. Evers said Republicans were walking away from the talks after being unwilling to compromise, while Republicans said Evers’ requests weren’t reasonable.

“Both sides of these negotiations worked to find compromise and do what is best for the state of Wisconsin,” Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) and Joint Finance Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said in a statement. “However, we have reached a point where Governor Evers’ spending priorities have extended beyond what taxpayers can afford.” 

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) left the possibility of future negotiations open in a separate statement.

“Assembly Republicans remain open to discussions with Governor Evers in hopes of finding areas of agreement, however after meeting until late last night and again this morning, it appears the two sides remain far apart,” the lawmakers said. 

Vos and Born said JFC will continue “using our long-established practices to craft a state budget that contains meaningful tax relief and responsible spending levels with the goal of finishing on time.” 

In previous sessions this has meant that the Republican committee throws out all of Evers’ proposals, writes the budget itself, passes it with minimal Democratic support and sends the bill to Evers — who has often signed it with many (sometimes controversial) partial vetoes. 

LeMahieu and Marklein noted that the Republican-led committee has created budgets in the last three legislative sessions that Evers has signed and they are “confident” lawmakers will pass a “responsible budget” this session that Evers will sign.

Lawmakers have less than a month before the state’s June 30 budget deadline. If a new budget isn’t approved and signed into law by then, the state will continue to operate under the current budget. 

Evers said in a statement that he is disappointed Republicans are deciding to write the budget without Democratic support.

“The concept of compromise is simple — everyone gets something they want, and no one gets everything they want,” Evers said. He added that he told lawmakers that he would support their half of priorities, including their top tax cut proposals, even though they were similar to ones he previously vetoed, but he wanted agreements from them as well.

“Unfortunately, Republicans couldn’t agree to support the top priorities in my half of the deal, which included meaningful investments for K-12 schools, to continue Child Care Counts to help lower the cost of child care for working families and to prevent further campus closures and layoffs at our UW System,” Evers said.  

“We’ve spent months trying to have real, productive conversations with Republican lawmakers in hopes of finding compromise and passing a state budget that everyone could support — and that, most importantly, delivers for the people of Wisconsin. I am admittedly disappointed that Republican lawmakers aren’t willing to reach consensus and common ground and have decided to move forward without bipartisan support instead.”

Democratic leaders said that Republicans are refusing to make investments in the areas that Wisconsinites want. 

Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said in a joint statement that it’s disappointing Republicans are walking away from negotiations. 

“The people of Wisconsin have a reasonable expectation that their elected leaders will work together to produce a state budget that prioritizes what matters most: lowering costs for families and investing in public education,” the lawmakers said. “This decision creates yet more uncertainty in a difficult time. Democrats will continue to stand up for all Wisconsinites and work to move Wisconsin forward through the budget process.”

Democrats on the budget committee accused Republicans of giving in to the “extremist wing of their party” by walking away from the negotiations and not committing to “fully funding our public schools, preventing the closure of child care centers, or meeting the healthcare needs of Wisconsinites.”

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Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) looks at the root beer float made by Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) during the Assembly Public Benefit Reform Committee. Clancy made it as he was arguing the definitions in the bill were arbitrary and unclear. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Republican lawmakers are seeking to implement a pair of bills that would prevent low-income Wisconsinites from buying “junk” food and ban certain ingredients in school meals, taking inspiration from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie), the lead author on both of the bills, has said he wants to help ensure the food children and others are eating is healthy. 

AB 180 would bar participants in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — or, as it’s known in Wisconsin, FoodShare — from purchasing soda and candy with their benefits. Under the bill, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) would need to submit a waiver to the federal government for approval to make the change to the program.

Kennedy wants a similar policy implemented nationwide, and so far several states, including Arkansas and Indiana, have asked the Trump administration for a waiver that would remove soda and candy from SNAP eligibility.

Moses said at a hearing on the proposal earlier this month that by allowing people to purchase those items with FoodShare, Wisconsin is “facilitating consumption of harmful, additive-filled foods” and that “instead, we should be supporting healthy, sustainable food choices for [people’s] overall health of individuals, the health of our society as a whole.”

Moses argued the restrictions wouldn’t be a novel idea, since people already can’t use their SNAP benefits to purchase alcohol, pet food and other items. SNAP currently also can’t be used for hot foods (such as a meal at a restaurant), supplements and vitamins and nonfood items. 

He also compared it to the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) program, the assistance program that provides free healthy foods, breastfeeding support, nutrition education and referrals to other services to income-eligible pregnant and postpartum women, breastfeeding moms and children under 5.

“Most government money has strings attached to what that money can be used for,” Moses told the Assembly Public Benefits Reform Committee. “Adding this provision is no different than the special supplemental nutrition program for the WIC program… WIC basically includes a list of good items or essentials that people can buy that does not include any of this other stuff.”

Expert: SNAP, WIC have different goals

UW-Madison food insecurity expert Judith Bartfeld says, however, that the programs are fundamentally different. WIC serves as a narrowly targeted nutrition program that provides specific foods for a defined group of nutritionally at-risk people. 

The SNAP program, meanwhile, is designed to serve as a “supplement to existing income” and “to fill the gap between a USDA estimate of what is needed to meet a household’s food needs and the amount a given household is assumed to be able to spend on food out of current income,” Bartfeld wrote in an email to the Examiner.

She said periodic state and federal attempts to restrict SNAP have been unsuccessful in the past, in part because of a “reluctance to upset the balance for a program that is a backbone of the safety net.” 

According to DHS, the SNAP program helps nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites put food on their tables annually. A USDA study from 2016, the most recent year, found that “there were no major differences in the expenditure patterns of SNAP and non-SNAP households, no matter how the data were categorized,” and that similar to other families, SNAP recipients spend about 20 cents of every dollar on sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar. 

“It’s intended to provide extra resources to support buying food at the store — and its effectiveness in reducing food insecurity is well documented,” Bartfeld said. “There have long been concerns that restricting how benefits can be used would make things more complicated for retailers, more stigmatizing for participants, unlikely to translate into meaningful health improvements, and would risk reducing participation and jeopardizing the well-documented benefits of SNAP on food security.”

In addition, she said, “identifying specific foods that are healthy or unhealthy is much more complicated in practice than it sounds.” 

Bartfeld said SNAP combats food insecurity because it provides additional resources to low income people and has become “less stigmatizing and easier to use.” Restrictions, she said, could end up having a negative effect.  

“If putting restrictions on SNAP ends up making it stigmatizing for participants, more complicated for retailers or opens the door to an increasingly constrained program, there are real concerns it may become less effective as an anti-hunger program — which of course would have negative health outcomes; this is why the anti-hunger community has long opposed bans such as this, and considered food bans as a line better not crossed,” Bartfeld said.

FoodShare cuts would cost Wisconsin $314 million a year, state health department reports

Bartfeld said it’s also unclear if a ban would improve health. Despite attempts to model health effects of a SNAP soda ban, she said, there is no empirical evidence proposed bans would meaningfully change diets or improve health outcomes.

“In contrast, there is real-world evidence that incentivizing healthy food purchases can modestly impact food choices,” Bartfeld said. “And SNAP has a nutrition education program (SNAP-Ed, which goes by FoodWise in Wisconsin), that appears to increase healthy eating — even as, ironically, that funding is currently at risk.”

The GOP-bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday included “some of the largest cuts in the program’s history” the SNAP program, according to CNBC. 

The bill would expand work requirements to qualify for benefits, likely leading to reduced participation, cut federal funding and leave it up to states to fill in the gaps and it would entirely eliminate funding for the education program. According to Wisconsin DHS, the cuts would cost the state approximately $314 million every year and would put 90,000 people at risk of losing benefits. The bill now goes to the Senate.

Punishing low-income Wisconsinites?

Bartfeld said this is one of the challenges with some of the recent “health-focused” SNAP proposals across the county as the other proposed cuts and restrictions to the program are unrelated or “often run counter to health.” 

“That interest in benefit cuts is happening in tandem with increasing attention to food choices does mean that food programs are at the center of the action, and it can make it challenging to differentiate proposals that are really about health from those that are more fundamentally about regulating the low income [population] and paring back assistance,” Bartfeld said. 

Moses during his testimony described the proposal as part of a “national movement basically to really make our food supply healthier.” He said it shouldn’t be partisan and noted former First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign to improve school meals. 

“I expect to receive full support from not just the Legislature but the governor as well,” Moses said. 

Democrats on the committee didn’t appear on board with the legislation. Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) expressed concerns about the legislation focusing on low-income Wisconsinites and including unclear, arbitrary definitions.

Clancy asked Moses about low-income families using benefits to celebrate Halloween and special occasions. Moses replied that “if their kids really want candy, they can go into the neighbor’s house then they could trick or treat, and they’d probably get all the candy they want, but the benefit would be that the taxpayers wouldn’t be paying for it.”

“People that are on SNAP… they are taxpayers as well,” Clancy said, “so I don’t want to categorize folks who are experiencing, hopefully, temporary poverty from being taxpayers. They’re chipping in for, you know, health care benefits and everything else.” He added, “We’re, I think, just targeting low-income people with this.” 

Clancy demonstrated his point by pulling out a bottle of Snickers-flavored iced coffee, a seltzer water and, at one point, a cup of ice cream and a bottle of root beer. He poured the root beer into the ice cream, saying the milk in it would make it acceptable to purchase under the definitions in the bill. The definition for “soft drink” is “a beverage that contains less than 0.5 percent of alcohol and that contains natural or artificial sweeteners” and “does not include a beverage that contains milk or milk products; soy, rice, or similar milk substitutes; or more than 50 percent vegetable or fruit juice by volume.” 

“A root beer float is totally fine right? By taking this sugary thing, adding it to another sugary thing, this is now legal for somebody to use their FoodShare benefits,” Clancy said. 

Committee Chair Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) told Clancy to stop, saying that the hearing “isn’t a cooking show.” 

Banning additives in school meals

Another bill — AB 226 — would target “ultraprocessed” foods in schools by banning certain ingredients from meals, “Ultraprocessed foods” were one of the top concerns recently outlined by Kennedy and a report the Trump administration commissioned, and Kennedy has expressed interest in banning other additives as well.

Among the additives the bill identifies are brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben, azodicarbonamide and red dye No. 3, which can be found in candy, fruit juices, cookies and other products.

Moses told lawmakers on the Assembly Education Committee that additives named in the bill are either in the process of being banned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or have been subject of peer-reviewed studies that found links to adverse side effects if consumed in significant enough amounts. For example, Red No. 3 and brominated vegetable oil are both no longer approved for use in food by the FDA. 

“Our school lunches should not be filled with substances that negatively affect our students’ health, even including their mental health,” Moses told the committee.

Moses said the bill would “bypass the need for federal action while not forcing schools to risk loss of federal funds to pay for existing school lunch programs.” He also noted that other states, including California, are also working to ban the ingredients.

The bill would go into effect on July 1, 2027.

An earlier version of the bill only included free- and reduced-price meals, but it was amended after concerns from the Department of Public Instruction and the School Nutrition Association of Wisconsin. Both now support the bill. 

The Department of Public Instruction said the legislation aligns with positive trends in nutrition. 

“With an increased focus on farm-to-school programs and the use of local food, school nutrition programs are helping to improve the nutritional value of meals,” Kim Vercauteren, policy initiatives advisor for the DPI Division for Finance and Management, said in testimony. “Many schools and school nutrition vendors are already committed to providing meals that utilize unprocessed foods, which can be enjoyed without harmful, nutritionally useless additives. These programs not only encourage the use of healthy food, but educate students on healthy lifelong choices.” 

Targeted additives not common in schools

Members of the Healthy School Meals For All Coalition told the Wisconsin Examiner that they support the proposal, but also they hope it isn’t the only thing that lawmakers do to help improve school meals. The coalition of school food stakeholders has been advocating for free school meals for all Wisconsin students and for improving the quality of food served to students.

“We appreciate the fact that they’re looking out for the well-being of our students and see the work that we do,” School Nutrition Association of Wisconsin President Kaitlin Tauriainen said in an interview. “We’re hoping that some of these steps will allow us to build more of a bridge so we can understand each other’s point of view — whether that means taking steps to grant more access to food for kids or jumping right into the full meals for all free meals for all, which is something you know we certainly want.”

Tauriainen said that school nutrition professionals are focused on feeding students the healthiest food possible, although the ingredients listed in the bill already aren’t common in school meals. 

“I would say the majority of our manufacturers that we’ve talked to don’t have those additives in their food,” Tauriainen, who is the child nutrition coordinator for the Ashwaubenon School District, said. “So it’s really kind of a non-issue.”

Allison Pfaff Harris, farm to school director with REAP Food Group, a Madison-based nonprofit, said she appreciates that the bill is trying to address the school food “supply side.” She said, however, that school nutrition programs need support in moving away from other processed ingredients not mentioned in the bill. 

Operating on limited budgets, school nutrition programs “turn to those quicker ingredients, which are going to be more processed foods,” Pfaff Harris said, adding that “not all processed foods have those food additive ingredients.”

Pfaff Harris suggested pairing Moses’ bill with other improvements. She said the “big ask” for the coalition is no-cost school meals, but smaller steps would also be significant. Guaranteeing that the breakfast reimbursement for schools is 15 cents per meal could improve the supply chain and nutrition programs, she said. DPI prorates payments because it lacks funding to pay the full cost; Pfaff Harris said the current reimbursement rate is about 7 cents. 

“This is one piece of the puzzle, but it’s a small piece in the giant puzzle,” Pfaff Harris said. 

Pfaff Harris said the discussion about healthy meals is also challenging because there have been recent federal decisions cutting resources that help schools serve fresh ingredients. Wisconsin was set to receive $11 million in funding for “Local Food for Schools” programs, but it was cut by the Trump administration. 

“You’re having these bills introduced, which is a good thing, but … from my perspective, if we really wanted to make a difference in school nutrition programs and help them to be able to do more scratch cooking and semi-scratch and fresh ingredients, it’s getting that funding back,”  Pfaff Harris said.

Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) asked Moses about free school meals and other proposals, saying it could improve his bill. 

Moses said her suggestions seemed like a completely different bill altogether.

“It doesn’t matter to me if it’s reduced or people are paying for it. I want [the meals] to be safe …” Moses said. “Essentially, it’s not the intent of this bill.”

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Schoemann spoke at the Dane County Republican’s monthly “Pints and Politics” meeting on Tuesday. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann stepped up to the front of a room in the back of Kavanaugh’s Esquire Club on the east side of Madison with a grin and quickly started a chant about Gov. Tony Evers.

“Tony’s got to go. Who’s with me?” Schoemann said about the current second-term Democratic governor. He encouraged others in the room to join him. “Tony’s gotta go… Tony’s gotta go. I’d like him to hear it if you don’t mind.”

The crowd of about 30 clapped enthusiastically and slowly started to pick up the chant.

Schoemann, who wore a red UW-Madison quarter zip up, jeans and a camo hat with his campaign logo across the front, was at the restaurant for the Dane County Republican’s monthly “Pints and Politics” meeting. It’s the one of the latest stops for Schoemann, who is the first candidate of either major party to launch his campaign in the 2026 governor’s race. 

Evers’ decision on whether he will seek a third term is still up in the air. He recently told WisEye that he is “not spending very much time at all thinking about whether I’m going to run or not.” 

Getting a head start

With about 14 months before a Republican primary might be held, Schoemann is working to get a head start on other potential candidates. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is mulling a run for the office, was critical of Evers as he addressed party members at the state GOP’s annual convention. Bill Berrien, a Whitefish Bay businessman and Navy SEAL veteran, recently formed a political action committee.

Schoemann said that it’s “entirely possible” for Wisconsin to be more competitive for Republicans. He launches his campaign as the Republican Party of Wisconsin is reevaluating how to win after their preferred candidate lost in the state Supreme Court race and as Democrats have won 12 of the last 15 statewide elections.

Schoemann sought to start his “Tony” chant a couple times as he spoke to the group — at one point telling attendees that he is the son of a Lutheran Minister and “can’t handle a congregation unless they join with me.” The crowd joined the chant more quickly this time, but Schoemann cut it off quickly as he pulled his camo hat off and placed it over his heart and encouraged attendees to stand up to sing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” with him.

Schoemann has worked in Washington County as the elected county executive for the last five years and as the county administrator for six years prior. He owns a farm in the town of Trenton, located between West Bend and Grafton, with his wife and is the father of two.

Schoemann told attendees that he joined the Army National Guard, attended UW-Whitewater and then served in Iraq in 2003. Throughout the event, Schoemann returned to his faith and military service, telling the crowd that “love your neighbor” has been central to his work and will be central to his campaign. 

“It’s changed the trajectory of my life permanently,” Schoemann said, describing a memory of his time in Iraq when he gave bottles of water to a child who was drinking from a puddle.

“As he approaches the puddle, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, he’s just going to jump around in the puddle and play.’ He kneels down, and starts cupping his hands and starts drinking out of that puddle,” Schoemann said. 

“When I came back home, that moment kept coming back to me over and over and over, and I dedicated the rest of my life to the service and sacrifice of the guys and gals who didn’t come home, either in whole or in part, and of my Lord, Jesus, by loving my neighbor,” he continued, “ and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we are going to win this election. We are going to turn Wisconsin red by loving our neighborhood.”

Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan

Schoemann said he grew up a “Rush Limbaugh” and “Ronald Reagan baby” — with beliefs in smaller government, lower taxes and strong defense — and that those ideas have shaped his service in local government.

Schoemann repeatedly criticized Evers and spoke about his record.

“Under the education governor, are your schools better than they were six years ago?” Schoemann asked, with answers of ‘no’ coming from some in the room. “He’s filling potholes right now — getting his picture taken in every community can get to… Are your roads really all that much better than they were six years ago? No, no. They’re not, and if you look across the state of Wisconsin on every issue issue after issue, things aren’t better.”

Evers has been traveling across the state last week helping fill potholes as a part of an annual effort to call attention to the issue of improving the roads and his recent budget proposal of to dedicate funds for that purpose —  though Republicans have removed that from the budget. At one stop on his trip, Evers told reporters that he didn’t know much about Schoemann but thinks he’s “gonna have to be another Donald Trump.” 

“That’s the only way Republicans can kind of move forward in this day and age,” Evers said, according to WSAW-TV 7.

Schoemann said that he decided to run because he is “sick and tired of our kids, leaving the state for other opportunities in different states and not coming back” and “sick and tired of our retirees leaving this state that has become a complete tax hell.”

Schoemann also compared himself to former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson.

“Back when I was a kid in 1986, Tommy Thompson took out another Tony — [former Gov.] Tony Earl. A young, energetic Republican did very, very well in Dane County, and eventually by 1994, I believe he won Dane County,” said Schoemann, who is 43. 

Goal: Lose by less in Dane County

Thompson is the last Wisconsin governor to win a third term in office, and Schoemann wants to ensure that stays true by taking a page out of Thompson’s playbook. Schoemann said he would have three rules for his campaign: go to the Northwoods, go to Milwaukee and go to Dane County. He said that since his campaign launched he had visited Florence County to talk with a group of people, who, he said, likely “hadn’t seen a statewide elected official in decades,” had been on the radio in Milwaukee and his Tuesday evening stop in Madison was his second already. 

Schoemann said Republicans need to lose by less in Dane County, pointing out that President Donald Trump won the state of Wisconsin with nearly 23% of the vote in the deep blue county. 

“We’ve got to be pushing back towards 26, 27, 28[%], and we’re only going to do it by having conversations with our neighbors and physically being present,” Schoemann said. “I can tell you you’re going to get sick of seeing me because I will be back again and again and again. I want to hear from you what this state needs to be. I want to hear from you what direction the state needs to go.”

Schoemann then took questions from the audience.

One attendee asked about what he would do about property taxes. Local communities across the state have been strapped for funds in recent years due to restrictions in the ways that they can raise revenue with many turning to raising property taxes through referendums to help afford services.

“How many of you live in the city of Madison? How are you liking that new referendum for the school district and the city — one-two punch?” Schoemann replied. He added that property tax rates in Washington Co. are low because of decisions he’s made. He said that at times when they have “considered alternatives where we needed additional resources, we go to the people and ask.” 

The county went  to referendum in 2024 to help prevent cuts to its public safety services. While the referendum failed, a deal on shared revenue and a local sales tax for Milwaukee that  lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers made helped the county avoid the cuts. 

That deal led to a back and forth over social media between Schoemann and Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson after Schoemann took a jab at the city because of the tax. Milwaukee leaders were prominent advocates in helping secure the state funding, which has helped communities across the state, including Washington County.

Banning ‘Democracy in the Park,’ encouraging early voting

In response to a question about elections, Schoemann said that he believes in purging voter rolls, banning voting events including ‘Democracy in the Park” — a COVID-era effort held by the city of Madison where poll workers picked up absentee ballots from voters who dropped them off  — and having “significant election integrity” measures. He also talked about promoting early voting in more rural areas. 

“The clerks are part time, most of them work out of their houses. They don’t have an office at the town hall… In those places. If you want to have in-person absentee voting, you have to schedule an appointment at the home of the clerk. In Madison and in Milwaukee… the convenience level is through the roof right now,” Schoemann said. “It’s not quite seven days a week, 24 hours a day for those 13 days, but it isn’t far either, especially as compared to those towns.” 

Schoemann said his county sought to incentivize local municipal workers to add in-person absentee voting days and times by paying them 150% of the cost. He said the state needs to “completely transform how we think about elections in Wisconsin.” 

Schoemann segued to criticizing Evers for his relationship with lawmakers and the number of bills he has vetoed, saying changes in law need to come as the result of the governor working as a “coequal” branch with the Legislature. He said that the governor should work with bills before outright vetoing them.

“The fact that this governor doesn’t have the leadership capability to walk down the hallway and talk to legislative leaders is an embarrassment to our state,” Schoemann said, referring to communication difficulties between lawmakers and Evers, who are currently negotiating the next state budget.

Schoemann said that he wouldn’t want to “throw money” to help address education problems, though he thinks the system currently in place is outdated. He also said that he would seek to help change the veto power that governors have. 

This will be the first time Schoemann runs in a statewide election. He promised the room that no one would “outwork” him. 

“There might be more money. There might be worse press, there might be all kinds of things, but no one will outwork me,” Schoemann said.

In the weeks before deciding to run, Schoemann told the room that he asked his wife if she was sure she wanted him to run. 

“You know what she said to me?” Schoemann asked. “‘Well, can’t be worse than Iraq.’”

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Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) said SB 231 offers tax credits to encourage more films to be made in Wisconsin. (Screenshot via WisEye)

Wisconsin Republicans advocated on Tuesday for a bill to encourage filmmaking in Wisconsin through tax credits and a state film office. Another bill would declare that “gig workers” for app-based delivery services aren’t employees of a company.

During a Tuesday Senate Utilities and Tourism committee meeting, Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) said SB 231 offers tax credits to encourage more films to be made in Wisconsin. Bradley described  a recent movie called “Green and Gold,” about a fourth-generation dairy farmer in Wisconsin who is on the verge of losing his farm and makes a bet on the Green Bay Packers to help save it. 

Bradley said the director of the film, Anders Lindwall, chose to make it in Wisconsin, but that decision meant a financial sacrifice as the director turned down a major studio offer to purchase his film. The studio wanted him to relocate production to Alabama — a state with film tax incentives.

“He turned down the offer to keep his project authentically Wisconsin,” Bradley said. 

Wisconsin had a film incentive for a brief time in 2010 under former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, though the Republican-led Legislature discontinued that program just a few years later. Now, Wisconsin is  one of only four states in the country without a film office and one of 13 without any film tax incentives. 

The bill would create new tax credits including one for 30% of the total cost of the salaries paid to employees who reside in Wisconsin and work in Wisconsin, one for 30% of acquiring or improving property and one for 30% production costs paid by a company to produce a film, video, broadcast advertisement or television production. A person’s total credits would be capped at $1 million for a fiscal year. The bill would also create a new State Film Office housed in the Department of Tourism that would implement the tax credits.

Rep. David Armstrong (R-Rice Lake) said having the rate at 30% would put Wisconsin in the top tier of states offering film incentives.

“How many of you like me flinch when you see the Georgia peach logo in the credits after a movie or TV show?” Armstrong asked at the hearing. “Do we want Illinois or Minnesota or Georgia to poach productions that could just as easily be shot in Wisconsin?”

Bradley said the bill “aims to make Wisconsin competitive by attracting filmmakers and productions through meaningful incentives, which in turn support local businesses, job creation, and increased tourism. Simply put, it would encourage filmmakers like Mr. Lindwall to choose Wisconsin, bringing their stories and economic activity to our state.” 

The bill has broad bipartisan support with cosponsors including Sens. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee), Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska).

Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove) expressed some concerns about whether the funding for the proposal would be included in the budget since it is not in the bill. Wisconsin lawmakers are in the progress of writing the next biennial budget and while Gov. Tony Evers included a similar proposal in his budget, it was pulled out along with more than 600 other items by Republican lawmakers on the committee.

“I have a motion to bring that back in,” Bradley told Ratcliff. 

“But if we pass this bill, it does not include the funding?” Ratcliff asked. 

“This bill does not have the funding. The funding would come through the budget… We’re going to fight real hard to try to get that funded,” Bradley said. 

According to fiscal estimates, the cost to state revenues would be at max $10 million. The new office would require three new positions in the tourism agency and would cost about $199,300 in 2026 and $254,000 in 2027. 

Film stakeholders testified in favor of the bill during the hearing. 

Paulina Lule, a Milwaukee native and an actress who recently starred in the MGM+ series Emperor of Ocean Park and has been in other shows including The Good Place and Scandal, told lawmakers that the bill would help people who want to showcase Wisconsin as it is in real life.

Lule said she has a film she has been working on called Sherman Park, which is about the neighborhood in Milwaukee. 

“I have had producers who have been interested in making this film as long as I make it not in Sherman [Park],” Lule said. “I don’t want to, and so this film has sat unfilmed for 10 years.” 

Lule said she recently began shooting a short film version in the Milwaukee park and was proud to be able to include a shot of the neighborhood’s name on a sign. She said that making films in Wisconsin would be a powerful way to promote the state and encourage people to visit. 

“Show off Racine. We can show off the real Green Bay, not just the Packers. There’s more to Green Bay than just the Packers as much as I love them,” Lule said. “You’re missing out on one of the broadest… ways of promoting the state is by having stories that are authentically about Wisconsin, made in Wisconsin… with actors in it that sound like they’re from Wisconsin.”

Michelle Maher, a River Falls movie theater owner, said that having movies filmed in the state would also provide an opportunity for local theaters. She noted that the movie Sinners, a vampire movie set in the Jim Crow South directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan, was filmed on-site in Clarksville, Mississippi.

“It was a town similar to the size of the town that I live in, River Falls,” Maher said. “Unfortunately, that town doesn’t have the movie theater that I have in my town… [Coogler and Jordan] got together and said, we are going to make sure this movie shows in this town, so they brought in a crew to be able to show that movie locally to the town that it was filmed at. What if there was a movie filmed in River Falls? Not only would I have a huge premiere for a regional area, I would have an annual event built in that would generate huge tourism opportunities and other ways to invent and reinvent that same wheel.”

Classifying ‘gig workers’ as non-employees

Lawmakers also considered SB 256, which would declare delivery drivers for app-based companies, including Uber and Doordash, are not employees of the company for the purposes of compensation insurance, minimum wage laws and unemployment insurance. The bill would allow “portable benefits” for those workers.

Bradley, the coauthor of the proposal, said the legislation is needed so that companies can provide benefits to workers without changing their “independent contractor” status. Under this type of benefit system, accounts are linked to a worker rather than the employer, meaning the benefits follow workers to other employment opportunities, and companies and workers would both be able to contribute.

“The gig economy is here to stay, and with it, the flexibility that many workers value and desire,” Bradley said. “Unfortunately, current laws prevent drivers from accessing crucial benefits. These include health care, paid leave and retirement savings. That’s the problem SB 256 aims to address. This legislation creates portable benefit accounts funded through contributions from the platforms based on drivers’ earnings. These accounts can be used by drivers to pay for a range of expenses, including health care, retirement, or coverage of loss of wages due to illness or an accident.” 

Lawmakers have considered the proposal before, including last session. The bill passed the Senate but never came up for a vote in the Assembly. 

The bill specifies that if an app-based delivery company doesn’t prescribe dates, times of day or a minimum number of hours during which someone must work; terminate the contract of the driver for not accepting a specific request for transportation or delivery service request; allow drivers to work for other companies; or restrict the driver from working in any other lawful occupation or business, then a driver is not considered an employee or agent of the company. 

“Previous versions of this legislation have garnered bipartisan support, and that support is only growing,” Bradley said. “It’s time we modernize our policies to meet the realities faced by thousands of Wisconsin workers.”

Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) said he found it “embarrassing, disappointing” that the committee was considering the proposal. He said there is an “independent contractor travesty in this country.” 

“As an independent contractor, these workers know what they’re signing up for,” Rep. Alex Dallman (R-Markesan) said. “They understand that they’re on an independent contractor basis. They understand that they want to remain independent contractors.” 

Katie Franger, public affairs manager for Uber, told lawmakers that flexibility is the “fundamental reason” people choose the company’s platform for work. She said that the legislation would fit with this by allowing workers to have flexibility in benefits as well.

“Portable benefits allow each individual to choose what truly matters to them, ensuring resources are directed where they’re most needed,” Franger said. 

When Smith asked about why they couldn’t provide the benefits already, Addison DiSesa, legislative policy advisor for DoorDash, said “providing the benefits proactively jeopardizes the independence of these workers” and that the bill “empowers workers to get access to the benefits that they want while protecting their independence.” 

Maliki Krieski, a Ripon mother and Doordash worker, told lawmakers that she supports the bill because she wants to keep the flexibility that is part of the work currently. She said it allows her to take care of her child, who has diabetes.

“Our state system is outdated…,” Krieski said. “The one thing that stands between us and any form of health care incentive, retirement plan… The only thing that stands between us and that is the state law.”

Stephanie Bloomingdale, president for the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, cautioned that the bill seeks to create an exemption to current law and could be harmful to workers, who depending on the situation might qualify for certain benefits. She also pointed out that it doesn’t require companies to provide access to any benefits. 

“It exempts app-based delivery drivers from settled Wisconsin law concerning our workers compensation, minimum wage and unemployment insurance laws,” Bloomingdale said. 

Bloomingdale noted that to be considered an “independent contractor,” when it comes to worker’s compensation, workers have to meet a nine-part test, otherwise a worker is automatically considered an employee. The bill would replace this with the four-part test, which she said would be quite “minimal.” She noted that depending on the situation some workers could potentially qualify for worker’s compensation. 

A legislative council representative explained that “the default is that you’re an employee, and then there’s a nine factored test and that leads to a determination that you might be an independent contractor.” The bill, he said, would implement a “route that’s more streamlined for these app-based drivers.” 

“We oppose the bill because it does not guarantee any more or less flexibility for workers. It does not guarantee good wages and it does not guarantee benefits for workers in the gig economy. It does none of these things because the bill eliminates employee status for these workers and all the rights that come with that status,” Bloomingdale said. “The bill does not guarantee or require that these tech giants provide any benefits, portable or fixed.”

Bloomingdale said the bill would instead just “create special exemption for these powerful corporations at the expense of Wisconsin’s working men and women” and called the bill a “slippery slope.” 

“If this bill passes, we will be back here as those who do the bidding on international corporations come to this legislative body to similarly carve out a certain class of workers to evade state law and reclassify each group of workers one by one,” Bloomingdale said. “If these companies succeed in passing this bill, their low-pay, no-protection business model could expand in virtually every industry.”

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Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming called on Wisconsin Republicans to focus and move forward to elections next year, saying they "won the country last November and saved America. Next year, we can save Wisconsin." Schimming and state Treasurer John Leiber speak to reporters at the RNC in 2024. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin’s Republicans urged party members to put aside their differences over the weekend, saying that unity will be necessary if they want to win the 2026 elections for governor, Congress and the state Legislature.

The state party reflected on recent elections as they met in Rothschild, Wisconsin. Many of the state’s top Republicans delivered glowing reviews of Trump’s first few months in office and celebrated Wisconsin’s role in helping reelect him. 

“We are seeing President Trump honor the promises he made,” U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said. “That was made possible because of people like you that delivered the 10 electoral votes to President Trump of Wisconsin.”

Despite Trump carrying the state in November, the state party is reeling from recent losses.

Johnson called the April Wisconsin Supreme Court election “stinging” and a “crushing defeat.” 

Republicans’ preferred candidate Brad Schimel lost his bid for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court  by nearly 10 percentage points, solidifying a liberal majority on the Court at least until 2027. It was the third Supreme Court  election in a row that conservatives lost after  Dan Kelly was defeated by double digits in both 2020 and 2023. The Republican-endorsed candidate for the spring state Superintendent race, Brittany Kinser, also lost in April. Kinser, a school choice advocate, thanked the party for its help at the convention. 

“There’s no way you can sugarcoat that,” Johnson said. 

Johnson said the results were because of “voters who came out to try and save America by electing Donald Trump” but didn’t come out to vote in April to “ensure that [Trump] would have four years where he could implement his agenda without possibly the majority shifting in the House.” He said the party needs to work to get voters out in non-presidential elections. , especially as Trump is in his second term and is barred from running again by the U.S. Constitution.

“As much as many would want Donald Trump to be on the ballot again, he won’t be. He won’t be, and we’re going to figure out how we win, but without Donald Trump on the ballot here in Wisconsin, so that’s just a hard truth,” Johnson said.

Following the April losses, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming came under scrutiny by some party members who blamed him for the results. Some at the convention circulated a paper seeking a vote of no confidence in Schimming though the effort never came to fruition. 

Fights within county parties have also broken out since the April elections. Those divisions were on display at the convention as some from a local county party sought to keep Kelly Ruh, the party treasurer and one of the people to serve as a fake elector for Trump in 2020, from being seated as a delegate. Her supporters said it was “absurd” that members of the party would seek to block their own treasurer from voting, while others said she shouldn’t be seated because to do so would subvert the vote taken by the county party. The full convention voted to seat her anyway. 

“There’s always power struggles,” Johnson, who declined to take sides in any fights, said. “But I have to admit in the 15 years since I entered the political process, I’ve never seen as many squabbles.” 

Johnson warned that the party won’t be able to win if Republicans are  “disunified.” 

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden echoed Johnson’s calls for unity, saying that people didn’t vote because Republicans were fighting. 

“If I hear one more person, say, RINO [an acronym for Republican in Name Only], you’re gonna get the horn,” Van Orden said. “Knock it off. We are Republicans who are Americans who are patriots. We love our country. We love our families. We love our communities.” 

Wisconsin RNC Chairman Terry Dittrich said Republicans need to up their game and don’t have time to waste ahead of 2026. 

“We stop the infighting. We start working together. We welcome the youth in. We pay attention to our goal… to make sure President Trump can finish his job in four years and go on with JD Vance for another four years and another four years and another four years,” Dittrich said. “Let’s all unify.”

State Treasurer John Leiber is leading an effort to examine the recent losses — a job he was assigned by Schimming. At the convention, Leiber cautioned party members against “pointing fingers” at others. 

“That doesn’t help anyone… What I’m focused on is how we can use that experience, learn from it and figure out how to win in 2026,” Leiber said. 

Lieber said his committee is working to gather information and data to understand ways of making progress, and he asked attendees to fill out a handout to provide feedback. He noted that he is up for reelection in 2026. 

“I want to win, so I don’t have any reason to try to smooth things over or sugarcoat. If anything I want to identify what exactly we need to do, what we can do better, how we do it better, and identify the ways that we can all work together to accomplish our goal, which is of course winning,” Leiber said. 

Schimming said that the party has to be honest about the April elections and the frustration about them. But he said Republicans need to focus and move forward to win the next election. 

“Doesn’t mean we agree on everything. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t change tactics or strategies, but it means we gotta look forward… We’re gonna work together. We’re gonna listen. We’re going to lead. We’re going to lead, and we’re going to do what it takes to win. We won the country last November and saved America. Next year, we can save Wisconsin,” Schimming said. 

2026 gubernatorial, legislative and Supreme Court elections 

The calls for unity come during an off year for Wisconsin elections but also as crucial gubernatorial and state legislative races lie ahead in November 2026. A race for the state Supreme Court will also take place in April with Justice Rebecca Bradley up for reelection,  though that race, which won’t tip the ideological balance of the Court, wasn’t a  prominent focus at the convention. 

Gov. Tony Evers has yet to decide whether he will run for a third term, but Republicans are intent on putting a Republican in office, whether that means ousting Evers or defeating another Democratic candidate. So far, only one Republican, Washington Co. Executive Josh Schoemann, has launched his campaign for the office. 

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany is also considering a run for governor and spent the majority of his time on stage at the convention taking jabs at Evers.

“The question — as we have this great reset led by President Trump — is will Wisconsin be one of the winners?” Tiffany said. “Will Wisconsin be one of the winners like Texas and South Dakota, Tennessee, Florida? States like that are winning, people are moving to those states, businesses are growing, people want to be there. Are we going to be one of those states or are we going to be like the losers in Illinois and Minnesota?” 

“We all know what the problems are. The question is how are we going to fix it?” Tiffany said. “We can fix it easily by replacing Tony Evers in 2026.”

U.S. Rep. Tony Wied from Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District said Republicans  need to keep up  their momentum into the next year, and in the race for governor the “fight starts right now” and can’t wait.

“We have a governor who refuses to even say the word mother,” Wied said, referring to Evers’ proposal to update language in state laws related to infertility treatments, “who fights the Trump administration at every single turn, who would rather protect illegal aliens than hard-working Wisconsinites.  

State Rep. Mark Born (R-Spring Green) and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) were also critical of Evers during a panel discussion. Born said he introduced a “ridiculous budget again” that included “reckless spending,” and “massive policy trying to rewrite everything that’s happened in the state in the last more than a decade now.” LeMahieu said that Evers is trying to “turn us into Minnesota, turn us into Illinois — states that have out of control spending.”

“If you could think of a dumb idea for government, the governor probably had it in his budget,” Born said. 

Lawmakers said it would be essential they keep control of the Senate and Assembly to continue to stop Democrats’ agenda.

Running under new legislative maps in 2024, Republican lawmakers lost 14 state legislative seats in the last elections — leaving them with slimmer majorities in the Senate and Assembly. In 2026, Democrats are seeking to flip the Assembly, which currently has a 54-45 Republican majority, and the Senate, which currently has an 18-15 Republican majority. 

“We’re going to be up against it this next year, but we’re out there fighting, knocking on doors. We are the firewall against really horrible liberal policies coming into Wisconsin,” LeMahieu said. 

The Senate will be particularly crucial as it will be the first time the new district lines are in place for the half of the seats up for election. While addressing the convention, former Gov. Tommy Thompson said some have been telling him that they are afraid they will lose the state Senate.

“Don’t even think that way,” Thompson said. “We are winners, not losers. We’re going to campaign. We are going to unite… and we’re going to win.” 

Trump’s agenda 

Republicans were complimentary of Trump’s first few months in office, including his efforts to detain and deport noncitizens, bar transgender people from certain spaces, eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and cut investments in social programs. 

Wied said the border is “more secure than at any other point in history.” 

“Trump is doing what he said he would do. Under President Trump and Republican leadership, illegal immigrants will no longer be given a free pass in this country,” Wied said. “If you break the law, you are going to face consequences.”

“Isn’t it great that border crossings are going down and deportations are going up?” Tiffany asked. “Isn’t it great to live in America like that?

Johnson was not completely on board with everything Trump is doing, expressing concern about the cost of the so-called “big beautiful bill” Trump is working to get through Congress, which using the budget reconciliation process to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent, increase funding for immigration enforcement, expand work requirements for food assistance and cut Medicaid costs by implementing work requirements.

“The big, beautiful bill isn’t what it’s advertised to be,” Johnson said. “We’re not going to be bending the debt curve down. We would be exacerbating the problem by a total of about $4 trillion over the next 10 years.” 

Splitting from Johnson, Van Orden said that Republicans should also be united on Trump’s bill.

“We don’t need grandstanders in the Republican party — stop talking and get it done,” Van Orden said, echoing Trump.

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina delivered a keynote address to the convention, praising Trump for his immigration policies and his efforts to stop transgender women from participating on women’s sports teams. Mace is known for seeking to bar transgender people from certain spaces, including bathrooms, locker rooms, and targeting her Democratic transgender colleague in the House of Representatives and other transgender individuals. 

“I like an immigration policy kind of how I like my sweet tea — with a lot of ICE,” Mace said, playing on the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“There has never been a president stronger than Donald Trump. They impeached him. They raided his home. They indicted him. They even shot him, and the man still survived. He stood tall. We prayed for him every single time, because no weapon formed against him shall ever prosper,” Mace said. “Trump is back. He’s securing the border. He’s deporting illegals. He’s protecting women’s sports, and he’s declaring there are only two genders, and DEI under Donald J Trump is DOA.” 

Mace, who noted she’s considering running for governor of South Carolina in the future, took her comments further telling convention goers that the U.S. is in a battle. 

“It’s not necessarily a battle between the parties or left and right or ideology. It is a battle between good and between evil, and we cannot allow this evil to win,” Mace said.

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Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said during a press conference ahead of a Senate floor session Thursday that Evers’ office has had lawmakers’ plan for a tax cut since March and that they have asked Evers for a list of specific items that he would want in the budget to agree to cutting taxes. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

State budget negotiations were top of mind for lawmakers Thursday, even as the Senate took action on a variety of bills, with Senate Republicans calling for a meeting with Gov. Tony Evers and Democrats calling on Republicans to support Evers’ budget requests. 

The Wisconsin Legislature is in the process of writing the next biennial budget, and Republicans are intent on passing a tax cut this session after failing to get Evers’ approval for a proposed cut last session.

Republican leaders have said they want an agreement on the tax cut before allocating spending to other priorities, and are waiting for Evers to schedule an in-person meeting with them to work it out.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said during a press conference ahead of a Senate floor session Thursday that Evers’ office has had lawmakers’ plan for a tax cut since March and that they have asked Evers for a list of specific items that he would want in the budget to agree to cutting taxes. However, LeMahieu said they haven’t been given any details in the last several weeks.

“Speaker Vos and I provided the governor with a series of times [to meet] into next week as a last-ditch effort to preserve these good faith negotiations,” LeMahieu said. “I hope sincerely that he accepts… one of those dates next week. It’s imperative that we meet by the end of next week at the latest to stay on schedule to pass a budget by the end of the fiscal year. It’s as simple as that. Time’s ticking… and if we’re going to work to get a budget passed, we need to meet with the governor next week.”

LeMahieu said GOP tax goals include exempting income for retirees in Wisconsin to encourage them to stay in the state and increasing the second-tier tax bracket, similar to a bill the governor vetoed last session. LeMahieu said the new tax bracket won’t reach as high up the income ladder as the vetoed one.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said on Tuesday that work on the budget is “on pause” until legislators get an in-person meeting with Evers and that their preferred option is “to be able to get an agreed upon tax cut so that we know we have X dollars to invest in schools and health care and all the other things that are important.” 

LeMahieu said that the latest Legislative Fiscal Bureau report would also be pivotal in negotiations because it will help lawmakers understand “what kind of tax cut we can afford” and “what kind of other investments we can afford.”

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected in the fiscal estimate released Thursday afternoon that the state will finish the 2023-25 fiscal year, which ends June 30, with a $4.3 billion budget surplus, which is slightly higher than the estimate from January. However, the estimate also found that tax collection will likely be lower over the next two years.

“While we are not surprised by these new estimates, we remain cautious as we work to craft a budget that invests in our priorities, funds our obligations, and puts the State of Wisconsin in a strong fiscal position for the future,” Joint Finance Committee Co-chairs Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said in a statement. 

The lawmakers said that the estimates are a sign that they need to continue to approach the budget in the same way they have in the past. They also called on Evers to “take these revenue re-estimates seriously” and to “come to the table with legislative leaders and work with us to craft a reasonable budget that works for Wisconsin.” 

Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee said in a statement that the estimate is a sign of the decline the economy could face due to Trump administration tariffs. 

“Now, more than ever, Wisconsinites are struggling to put food on the table and maintain a roof over their heads. This projection shows it’s going to get even worse, especially when our communities start to feel the direct impact of the Trump regime’s trade war around the globe,” the lawmakers said. “Together, we need to ensure Wisconsinites have the resources to get through the chaos and uncertainty that lies ahead.” 

Ahead of the floor session, Democratic lawmakers called attention to Evers’ budget requests, saying that the various non-budget bills the Senate took up Thursday don’t address the issues that Wisconsinites are most concerned about. 

“It’s been 87 days since [Evers] has introduced his budget. It invests in essential priorities — K-12 funding, child care education, mental health, helping the environment and putting much needed funding in the university system. What have Republicans done in those 87 days? Well, they stripped essential items in that budget….” Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said at a press conference. “What the Legislature should do is debate the budget.”

Wisconsin Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee cut over 600 items from Evers’ proposal last week , saying they were taking the budget “back to base.” 

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) noted that lawmakers recently traveled across the state to hear from Wisconsinites about their priorities for the state budget and then failed to act on any of those priorities. She then listed several bills on Thursday’s calendar. 

“We’ve got a bill on changing the name on the name-change process for people convicted of violent crimes; a bill that gives big businesses their own private courts; a bill tweaking surcharges for electric vehicles,” Johnson said. “I’m not saying that these bills aren’t important to someone, but we sure didn’t hear about these issues when we traveled across the state at our listening sessions.” 

Johnson said that lawmakers need to ask if the bills “meet the moment” the state is facing. 

“Do they lower the cost for hard-working families? Do they help us hire nurses, teachers, child care providers? Do they clean our water and keep our streets safe [or remediate] lead contaminated classrooms?” Johnson asked. “If the answer is no, then why the hell are we here?” 

Democrats, including Hesselbein, have said they think Democratic votes will be necessary to pass a budget, but they don’t necessarily expect to be in the room for budget negotiations between legislative Republicans and Evers.

Asked if Democrats are requesting to participate in a sit-down between Evers and Republicans, Hesselbein said she is “in consistent contact with Gov. Evers and his administration, and those conversations have been both before and moving forward.” 

Pressed on whether she wants to be in the room when the governor and Republicans meet, Hesselbein said “I’ll be honest, sometimes it’s hard to get all of us in the same room because of timing and schedules and things like that.”

Some of the bills that the Senate took action on Thursday include: 

• SB 33, which would make it a crime to share nonconsensual “deep fake” nude images and was introduced in reaction to the growing use of artificial intelligence to make fake images. It passed unanimously. 
• SB 125, which would require the Public Service Commission to conduct a study for a place to locate a nuclear power plant. It passed with bipartisan support from 28 Senators. Four Democrats and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) voted against the bill. 
• SB 96, which would exempt electric vehicle charging stations at a person’s home from the electric vehicle charging tax. It passed unanimously. 
• SB 146, which would bar someone convicted of a violent crime including homicide, battery, kidnapping, stalking, human trafficking and sexual assault from changing their name, passed 18-15 in a party line vote.
• The Senate also passed AB 73 in an 18-15 vote. The bill would create a specialized commercial court meant to handle business cases. It comes after the state Supreme Court discontinued a pilot program last year.

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At the Wednesday press conference, organized by the Asian Legislative Caucus, Yang highlighted the work of several Hmong Dane County community members. (Photo courtesy of Rep. Francesca Hong)

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the resettlement of Hmong refugees in Wisconsin. During a press conference Wednesday morning, Brenda Yang, the first Hmong person to serve on the Dane County Board of Supervisors, reflected on a complicated question: What does it mean to be Hmong?

“Is it one’s genetics? Is it being born into a Hmong family? Is it about the values of the community and prioritizing collective needs over individual needs or is it about knowing how to speak the Hmong language?” Yang mused.

“As I reflect on the many ways that I am Hmong, I realize that every new generation among us has had to wrestle with what it means to be Hmong, and despite the challenges of extinction, we have endured and overcome them through reimagining and redefining what it means to be Hmong, wherever we reside.”

In 1975, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Hmong families began resettling in the U.S., including in Wisconsin, aided by church organizations. According to the Hmong American Center, the U.S. government enlisted Hmong allies to assist with its “secret war” — the covert military operations carried out in Laos during the Vietnam War against the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao. Hmong were persecuted by the Lao and Vietnamese governments as a result, forcing them to flee. The last group of Hmong refugee families came to the U.S. between June 2004 and May 2006.

At the Wednesday press conference, organized by the Legislative Asian Caucus, Yang highlighted the work of several Hmong Dane County community members including Manila Kue, who is the founder and CEO of Grand Journey, an organization that provides support services for Hmong and Southeast Asian elders, and Nkauj Nou Vang-Vue, who is the the first school principal of Hmong descent in the Madison Metropolitan School District and also leads the only Hmong-English Language Immersion Program in Wisconsin. She said the leaders are prime examples of people working to embrace their cultural identity as a way to heal and reconcile with the past traumas endured by Hmong and Southeast Asian communities.

“I am reminded that to be Hmong is to be free. I come from a long line of deep history, rich culture and immense resilience,” Yang said. “To be Hmong is to be free and to be free means to not only liberate ourselves but also to liberate others.”

Tammie Xiong, the executive director of the Hmong American Women’s Association, was born in the U.S. to Hmong refugees and she said she has “made it my duty to never forget what happened and why.” Families including hers, she said, “came as Hmong and Southeast Asian refugees uprooted from our homelands, resettled in a country whose language we did not speak, into a new context we would have to learn to live and build community in.”

The state Assembly approved two resolutions this week, including one to celebrate 50 years of strength and resilience of the Hmong, Lao, Cambodian and Vietnamese people and another to commemorate Hmong-Lao Veterans Day and honor the Hmong-Lao veterans who served with U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War. Xiong said those resolutions are an important step in remembering history.

“The 50th year allows us to look back on where we have been, what we have been able to build here in the U.S.,” Xiong said. “We have gone to school. Some of us have become entrepreneurs, adding to the U.S. economy. Many of us are teachers, mental health practitioners, carpenters, artists, community organizers, researchers, healers, scientists, caretakers. The list goes on and on and these are also positions that continue to nourish and support the community.”

“We must never forget and we will never forget,” Xiong said.

Wisconsin is now the state with the third largest Hmong population in the U.S. with over 55,000 people. Xiong noted that they are “a young community, where the median age is 26 years old, and many of us here in Wisconsin still live at or below the poverty level.”

“Our communities did not come here by choice,” Zon Moua, director of organizing for Dane County-based nonprofit Freedom Inc, said. “We came here because of war, because of displacement, and because of U.S. foreign policy and when we arrived, we were given very little to rebuild our lives, and for five decades, southeast Asian people have worked tirelessly to survive, to heal and to build futures for ourselves and our families.

Moua said the anniversary commemoration is also about looking forward and working to improve the lives of Hmong people in Wisconsin.

“What we need is our elected leaders to choose not only to stand with us today, but to act with us tomorrow,” Moua said. She called for fully funding culturally specific victim services, investing in housing and supporting leadership pathways for Southeast Asian youth, “especially those who are trans and queer.”

“It means teaching our history in schools and making sure our communities are no longer an afterthought,” she said. “We are here to build and we invite you to build with us.”

Pheng Thao, who is the co-executive director of Southeast Asian Action and Southeast Asian Freedom Network, called attention to the challenges that some Hmong and Asian Americans are now facing from the Trump administration.

A Hmong woman who was born in Thailand and has lived in the Milwaukee-area since she was eight months old, was recently swept up in the Trump administration’s deportation efforts and sent to Laos — a country she had never been to and where she doesn’t speak the language.

“Those who came here as refugees, my generation, are being detained and deported back to Laos, a country that they do not know or to Cambodia, a country that they’ve never seen or to Vietnam to a place that they do not know the language…,” Thao said. “This is double punishment, and this is something that our families are forced to reconcile with again, and our community is forced to reconcile with forced family separation again.”

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The bill passed 87-10 with only Republican lawmakers voting against. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin State Assembly, in a departure from prior floor debates this session, passed several widely bipartisan bills related to health care, including one to exempt direct primary care services from insurance laws and another to allow pharmacist to prescribe birth control.

AB 43 would allow pharmacists to prescribe certain birth control, including the pill and contraceptive patches, to patients 18 and older as a way of making it easier to access. Currently, Wisconsin patients have to make an appointment with a doctor or advanced practice nurse and answer a mandatory list of questions regarding their health before a doctor could prescribe birth control. Once a physician determines it safe, patients can take a prescription to a pharmacy to be filled. 

Under the bill, pharmacists would have to give patients a self-assessment questionnaire and do blood pressure screening. If there are any “red flags,” then a pharmacist would need to refer  patients to see a physician.

Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) said during a press conference ahead of the session that the process included in the bill is “much more rigorous” than when women get birth control online. He said it would also help women with family planning, noting that about half of pregnancies in Wisconsin are unplanned each year.

“These women are unlikely to finish school, and it will severely affect their potential earnings throughout their lives…” Kitchens said. “Birth control is 99.9% effective when it’s used according to directions and regularly. The lack of access is the biggest reason that it sometimes fails. Women will leave home for a couple of days and forget about it, or they can’t make an appointment with their doctor, and this bill is going to help with all of that.” 

This is the fourth time the Assembly has passed a similar bill. Last session, it passed a Senate committee but it never came for a floor vote. 

Kitchens said he thinks there is a “good chance the Senate will pass it this time.” 

Rep. Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek) said in a statement that the policy “will increase access to contraceptives, particularly for women who live in rural areas, where many Wisconsinites live closer to their pharmacy than they do to their doctor’s office,” and urged her Senate colleagues to take up the bill. 

“This is a good bill that will make for greater access to contraception. I have voted for this proposal four sessions in a row. I urge the Senate to follow our lead,” Rodriguez said. 

The bill passed 87-10 with only Republican lawmakers voting against. 

Primary care insurance exemption

SB 4 would exempt direct primary care, which is a health care model where patients pay a monthly or annual fee to a physician or practice for access to primary care services, from insurance laws. Advocates have said that clarifying that insurance law doesn’t apply to direct primary care doctors would encourage more providers to opt in to this model.

Bill author Rep. Cindi Duchow (R-Town of Delafield) said at a press conference that direct primary care “is not insurance.” 

“It’s a private contract you have with the doctor, then you have insurance for something catastrophic — if you need to have surgery or you have a heart attack, you have insurance to cover that — but this is just for your everyday needs, and it’s more one-on-one, and you have more personal experiences with the doctors,” Duchow said. 

Rep. Robyn Vining  (D-Wauwatosa) expressed concerns about the bill, noting that it is missing nondiscrimination language and that she would be voting against it.

“[This] is getting us nowhere helpful,” Vining said. 

The nondiscrimination language, Vining referenced, was in relation to prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.” Conservative organizations had lobbied against the bill last session due to the inclusion of that language and it never received a vote in the Senate.

Vining expressed concerns that Evers might veto the bill without the nondiscrimination language. 

Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) said she had similar concerns but would be voting for it. 

“I think it is a good bill, and it does something that is important, but I do it knowing that I wish the bill could be stronger,” Subeck said. 

The Assembly concurred in SB 4 in a voice vote. The Senate passed the bill in March, and it will now head to Evers’ desk.

Lawmakers also concurred in SB 14, a bill to require written informed consent from a patient when a hospital performs a pelvic examination for educational purposes on a patient while the patient is under general anesthesia or otherwise unconscious. The bill was advocated for by Sarah Wright, a teacher who was subjected to a nonconsensual pelvic exam while she was undergoing abdominal surgery in Madison in 2009. 

Subeck said it is a “horrifying” story that Wright has shared every legislative session. 

“[Wright] was unconscious. There was no medical need for a pelvic exam and medical students were brought in to do public exams in order to learn the procedure because it’s easy as to learn on an unconscious individual,” Subeck said. “This is tantamount to sexual assault. This is not giving consent. This is assuming consent from somebody who is unconscious.” 

Subeck noted in a statement that lawmakers have been working on the legislation for over a decade. 

“It has taken far too long, but we are finally honoring her bravery by putting an end to this disturbing and unethical practice,” Subeck said in a statement. “Patients entrust medical professionals with their care at their most vulnerable moments. That trust must never be violated. Performing a medically unnecessary and invasive exam without consent is not only a breach of ethics — it is a violation that can feel indistinguishable from sexual assault.”

Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) noted that one study found that over 80% of medical students at major training hospitals reported performing pelvic exams on anaesthetized patients, but only 17% said that the patients were informed, while nearly half reported that the patients were rarely or never explicitly told so. 

“I am really thankful for the bipartisan support,” Goeben said. 

Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said in a statement ahead of the session that the bills were a sign that lawmakers could work across partisan lines, but said they could do more. 

“It is possible to come together to pass good, bipartisan bills that will move our state forward — but we know that there is so much work left to be done,” Neubauer said. “Just last week, Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee cut proposals by [Evers] that would have lowered costs for working families and cut taxes for the majority of Wisconsinites. Removing these critical proposals from consideration and preventing future discussion is ridiculous, and on top of this, the GOP has refused to have public hearings, let alone votes, on popular and bipartisan legislation that would move our state forward.”

Ahead of the floor session, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) told reporters that work on the budget is on hold until legislative leaders meet in person with Evers. Republican lawmakers are seeking a tax cut in the budget. 

“Our preferred option [is] to be able to get an agreed upon tax cut so that we know we have X dollars to invest in schools and health care and all the other things that are important,” Vos said. “It’s pretty hard for us to move forward… I think we’re kind of on pause until we hear back from Gov. Evers.”

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Wisconsin Republicans want to require cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Photo via ICE)

Wisconsin Republicans continued their push Tuesday for a bill that would require local law enforcement to report people charged with a felony to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if they cannot verify their immigration status. Legislative leaders are also demanding that state government officials cooperate with and support President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.

State legislatures across the country have taken action to either require or prohibit local law enforcement cooperation. According to a Stateline report, experts have said jails are the easiest place to pick up people for deportation and when local law enforcement cooperates there are more arrests. Noncooperation in states, including California, is leading to a decreased number of arrests and deportations.

Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director for the ACLU of Wisconsin,  testified against the legislation before the Senate Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs Committee Tuesday. Merkwae detailed extensive actions the Trump administration has taken to target immigrants since the bill was first introduced by lawmakers and cautioned against having local law enforcement play a larger role in those efforts.

Merkwae quoted a former North Carolina sheriff who said at a 2008 conference about the role of local police in immigration enforcement, “if you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally, but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.”

“A lot has happened even since the Assembly public hearing on this bill back in February,” Merkwae said, reeling off a list including “the disappearing of legal residents to gulags without due process,” “inappropriately invoking the Alien Enemies Act to remove people,” to “escalating violent arrests” by masked Department of Homeland Security agents, detaining students and activists for exercising their First Amendment rights in ICE facilities, arbitrarily canceling student visas, “threatening to disappear U.S. citizens to El Salvador,” “and just this week — and it’s only Tuesday — eliminating temporary protective status of thousands of immigrants despite a court order, blocking the entry of refugees who spent years getting approved through a lengthy process while living in refugee camps and third countries and the administration openly exploring the suspension of habeas corpus.”

“When the federal government is violating the Constitution, we must resist pressures to integrate local governance into its abuses,” she said. 

The Assembly passed the bill in March along party lines, and Gov. Tony Evers has vowed to veto it. Lawmakers introduced the bill just three weeks into Trump’s new term.

Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) and Rep. Jim Piwowarczyk (R-Hubertus) said the bill is narrow and seeks to help ensure that Wisconsin is safe.

“This proposal will make it easier to remove dangerous criminals from our communities. It’s shocking to think that a handful in law enforcement and our government would rather protect felons than work with our federal partners to stop the flow of crime and drugs into our neighborhoods,” Bradley said. 

Since March, the number of Wisconsin counties with official agreements to cooperate with ICE has grown to 12, including Washington, Waupaca, Winnebago and Wood. Two counties — Dane and Milwaukee — have previously been identified by ICE as noncooperative. 

Milwaukee County has become a focal point of controversy over ICE cooperation. Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested and indicted on charges of obstructing federal agents and concealing a person to prevent an arrest. ICE has arrested at least four people since March at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Republicans have also accused Evers of being noncooperative after he told state employees to contact a lawyer before handing over information if ICE showed up at their office buildings.

“I am deeply concerned that some local jurisdictions, including Dane County and Milwaukee County, have severely limited their cooperation with ICE. Many, if not most, Wisconsin sheriffs are already doing everything they can to identify the legal immigrants in their jails and cooperate with ICE holds,” Piwowarczyk said. “This bill won’t affect them. It will affect those who refuse, imperiling the safety of all Wisconsin citizens.”

The bill — AB 24 — would require local law enforcement to check the citizenship status of people in custody for  felony offenses and notify ICE if their citizenship can’t be verified. It also requires sheriffs to comply with detainers and administrative warrants received from the Department of Homeland Security regarding people held in the county jail for a criminal offense. If a sheriff refuses to comply with the law, the county would face a 15% deduction in its state aid payment the following year.

Merkwae said that the bill authors were taking a narrow reading of the bill, but “with 15% of an entire county’s share revenues on the line,” this will lead to sheriffs erring on the “side of overreporting.”

Democrats on the committee had an array of concerns about the bills, especially given the actions that the Trump administration has taken since the start of his term. 

Larson asked lawmakers whether they trusted ICE. 

“You’re throwing your trust in ICE — that 10 out of 10 [times] ICE is doing the right thing, 10 out of 10 times ICE is only taking people who have committed felonies and following the guidance of the president,” Larson said. “I don’t trust this federal government because [President Trump] came out on the record and said, ‘I don’t know if people deserve due process, I don’t know if I’m supposed to uphold the Constitution.’ Those are the words of the person who’s in charge of the administration.” 

Bradley said he rejected the premise of Larson’s question. 

“We aren’t empowering ICE,” Bradley said. “We don’t have the power to empower ICE. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re telling the sheriffs to cooperate with the federal government as they’re required to because we have instances where people have publicly come out and said, we will not cooperate… In this bill, [people] have also committed and are being charged with a felony. That’s what this bill is about.”

Larson corrected lawmakers several times when they said the only people covered in the bill had committed a crime: “75 of the people shipped overseas to El Salvador prison have no criminal history, and so this seems like an effort to jump on that bandwagon.” 

“Accused,” Larson said at one point. “Accused. You keep forgetting that part — alleged.” 

Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) said he also doesn’t trust the current system, especially as ICE isn’t being transparent about its work. 

“It seems like it’s more of a campaign pitch to grab as many people as you can, but there are people that are innocent,” Carpenter said, adding that he fears that the bill if passed is “legitimizing a system that is not doing what we wanted it to do.”

Carpenter noted he has the largest Latino population among Wisconsin Senate districts. From events hosted in the district and conversations with constituents, he said, it’s “very noticeable that people are scared, and they don’t want to have someone — they’re innocent and get caught up in the system and end up in El Salvador.” 

Carpenter told the bill authors to try to convince him that the bill won’t further affect those communities.

“How do we deal with that impact on a sizable community — many of whom have done nothing wrong?” Carpenter asked. 

“I think the best thing that could happen is if people were honest about what this bill does, because by not being honest or conflating issues, what we’re doing is we’re spreading that fear,” Bradley said. “So, if you are here illegally and you are being charged with a felony, this bill, this applies to you, and you should be concerned. If not, you shouldn’t be concerned.”

Larson asked why there is a financial penalty in the bill, saying the premise of the bill appears to  be that law enforcement must cooperate “or we’re cutting your damn funding.” 

“If they’re not cooperating with ICE and are not doing what they’re supposed to do to keep their community safe, there should be a penalty and the penalty should be felt,” Bradley said. 

“Do you think the sheriff’s department will be able to keep communities safe by cutting them?” Larson asked. 

“If they follow the guidance in the bill, they won’t have to worry about that,” Bradley said.

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Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer is joining the DLCC board. Neubauer takes questions from reporters alongside Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein in Jan. 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer is joining the Board of Directors for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) — the national organization dedicated to electing Democrats to state legislatures.

The Racine Democrat, who has been in the Legislature since 2018 and has led Assembly Democrats since 2021, joins the board as Wisconsin Democrats seek majorities in both chambers for the first time in many years in 2026.

Neubauer said DLCC President Heather Williams asked her to join the board and it’s a sign of the organization’s “deep commitment” to Wisconsin and understanding that a trifecta could be possible in 2026. 

“They want to be a part of helping us flip this state blue,” Neubauer said. “DLCC of course is focused on the national strategy of supporting democratic legislatures to win majorities in legislative chambers. They have had great success in the last few years… so I’m excited to be part of that national strategy work.” 

Williams said in a statement that “all eyes should be on the states in 2025” and Neubauer is a leader to watch. 

“As state Democrats continue to overperform in special elections and counter the chaos in Washington, we are laying the foundation for Democratic success up and down the ticket,” Williams said. “Our board members represent some of the sharpest minds in politics, and I’m excited to partner with them to build our plan for victory for cycles to come.” 

In the past, the DLCC has invested in helping Wisconsin Democrats win and outlined strategies for winning targeted seats.

Neubauer said it has been helpful getting to know leaders in other states where Democrats have successfully flipped control of their legislative chambers including Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania. She said she has learned a lot from those leaders and is trying to bring those lessons back to Democrats in Wisconsin, especially when it comes to preparing to be in the majority. 

“When we do win, we want to take advantage of the opportunity and pass policy that is going to materially improve people’s lives very quickly, so that’s been really helpful to me to speak with them about how they prepared to govern, how they worked with their caucuses,” Neubauer said, adding that Democrats have 10 new Assembly members this year and hope to grow that number now that the Legislature has passed new maps that no longer overwhelmingly favor Republicans. “The level of program that we run during the campaign cycle, the amount of money we need to raise and candidates we’re supporting has grown significantly since we got the fair maps. I’m getting all sorts of advice from those leaders both about governing and about effectively campaigning, winning majorities.” 

When it comes to its targets for 2025-26, Wisconsin is one of five of the DLCC’s “battleground” states where legislative majorities are determined by the slimmest of margins. 

New legislative maps were put in place last year by the state Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the old maps were an unconstitutional gerrymander. Democrats in Wisconsin haven’t held a legislative majority in the Senate or Assembly since 2010, and under the old maps, Senate Republicans were able to win two-thirds of the seats, while Republicans held a 64-35 majority.

Under the new maps, Democrats in 2024 were able to pick up 10 Assembly seats and now hold 45 of 99 seats. They also added four Senate seats and now hold 15 seats out of 33 in that chamber.

Wisconsin’s 2026 elections will be the first time that control of the Senate will be in play as only half of the body was up in the last election and Assembly Democrats will again be working to try to win a majority.

“It is absolutely doable, but it is going to take quite a bit of work,” Neubauer said. 

Democratic lawmakers, she said, are taking a few approaches to getting things done for voters ahead of the next elections. This includes working across the aisle in the budget process to get investment into programs that Wisconsinites rely on, including child care and public schools and ensuring “Republican attacks on our rights and freedoms are not successful” by upholding the governor’s veto. 

Neubauer said her party is also “focused on that long-term vision and communicating what we will do when we have a Democratic trifecta — how we will change the state, how we will make Wisconsin a place where everyone has the ability to thrive, wants to live, raise a family, retire.” She noted that Democrats introduced a package of bills in January to address prescription drug access, ensure students have access to food in school and help improve housing, but Republicans haven’t shown interest in them. 

“We have a big and deep policy agenda that we’ve been working on for over a decade that we are ready to implement, and so we just have to get out and communicate about it,” Neubauer said. “And that of course looks like fanning out across the state, both in districts we represent and other communities, and talking about the work that we need to get done.” 

Neubauer said they are going to continue to work to lower costs, especially as “Trump engages in reckless, irresponsible trade wars and weakens the economy for no good reason.” She said state legislatures are essential in pushing back on his agenda.

The first part of Trump’s term in office could have an effect on Wisconsin Democrats’ chances as well, Neubauer said. 

“We have a number of Republican legislators who have really tried to position themselves as being moderate. They go home to their districts and they emphasize the bipartisan proposals that they’ve signed on to or tried to get passed, but what they don’t talk about is their voting record being in line with Republican leadership almost 100% of the time,” Neubauer said. 

Neubauer said that Wisconsin Republicans haven’t distanced themselves from Trump’s  agenda. 

“The first several months of the legislative session here in Wisconsin, we saw Republicans focused on culture wars rather than lowering costs for working families, making their lives easier, investing in our schools — the things that we all hear about when we run into our constituents at the grocery store,” Neubauer said. “Republicans are going to have to answer for Donald Trump and his attacks on Wisconsin families next year, and that is going to be difficult for them to do in extremely purple districts.”

Wisconsin’s gubernatorial election is also coming up in November 2026. Evers hasn’t said whether he’ll run for a third term, saying he’ll likely decide after the next budget is done. Republican Josh Schoemann, who serves as the county executive of Washington, is the first candidate to announce his campaign.

“We’re all eagerly awaiting that decision,” Neubauer said of Evers’ choice whether to make a re-election bid. “[I] always look forward to working with the governor.”

Neubauer is one of seven legislative leaders joining the DLCC board alongside California Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas, Colorado Senate President James Coleman, Illinois Speaker Pro Tempore Kam Buckner, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, Oregon Speaker of the House Julie Fahey and Virginia Speaker of the House Don Scott. 

New York Senate President Pro Tempore and Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who also serves as the DLCC chair, said in a statement that she is thrilled Neubauer is joining. 

“There has never been a more important time to ensure we have battle-tested, experienced leaders at the helm of Democratic strategy in the states as Donald Trump upends Washington and our economy,” Stewart-Cousins said, adding that Neubauer “embodies the diverse expertise needed to drive and elevate our strategy to build durable state power through the end of the decade.”

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Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) told reporters that they would be starting from “base” with the budget. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Joint Finance Committee kicked off its work on the next Wisconsin State Budget Thursday by eliminating over 600 items from Gov. Tony Evers’ sweeping budget proposal, saying they would start from “base” and his budget had too much “irresponsible” spending. Democrats criticized Republicans for blocking all of Evers’ proposals without presenting a plan of their own to address the concerns of everyday Wisconsinites.

The committee spent last month hearing from members of the public, many of whom called for investments in public education and health care, and from some agency heads, who have defended Gov. Tony Evers’ budget requests. The state has a $4 billion budget surplus it’s considering, and Evers proposed the state tap those funds and raise income taxes on the wealthiest Wisconsinites to fund his proposals. 

The list that lawmakers eliminated from the budget bill spanned about 20 pages and includes a new 9.8% income tax bracket for high-income earners, Medicaid expansion, nearly $500 million for the Child Care Counts program, marijuana legalization and taxation, $125 million to create a grant program to address PFAS, $200 million to address the replacement of lead pipes and other provisions to help address lead poisoning and many provisions related to public schools including free school meals, a “grow your own” teaching program and ensuring access to menstrual supplies in schools, funding for the Office of School Safety and a provision to cap participation in the state’s voucher programs.

Ahead of the budget meeting, committee co-chairs Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) told reporters that they would be starting from “base” with the budget, meaning removing all of the items and taking the budget back to the one in place for 2023-2025. 

Born said legislators are accustomed to “the way we have to manage the governor’s executive budgets.” Since Evers took office in 2019, Republicans have kicked off every  budget cycle by removing all of his proposals.

“Unfortunately, [Evers] sends us an executive budget that’s just piles full of stuff that doesn’t make sense and spends recklessly and raises taxes and has way too much policy,” Born said. “So, we’ll work from base and the first step of that today is to remove all that policy… and then begin the work of rebuilding the budget.”

Responding to Democrats’ criticism  that Republicans are removing items that are popular with the public, Marklein said they should draft separate bills and use the regular legislative process to advance those ideas. 

“I can point to things in the budget bill that we’re going to pull up that I like… and we’re pulling that out as well. It’s a policy,” Marklein said. “It’s got nothing to do with the budget.” 

Born noted that there are also other ways that lawmakers could address issues of concern apart from Evers’ suggestions, saying the removal of items “doesn’t mean that when we build this budget over the next couple of months, we won’t impact those areas in positive and significant ways.”

“The governor has one idea on how to fund child care or one idea on how to impact mental health,” Born said. “There are other ways that we can do that in current law and current budget operations by inserting more money in things that I can most likely see us do.”

Marklein also noted that there could be some changes to how they go about drafting the budget this year following the state Supreme Court upholding Evers’ partial veto in the last budget.

“I anticipate that you’re not going to see too many references to digits, years anymore,” Marklein said. “My guess is that our drafting attorneys are going to recommend that you spell out those years, and those dates in the budget.” Born said the decision could also affect the education budget because there are increases already “baked into the cake.” 

Evers slammed Republicans for gutting his proposal, saying that they are refusing to help Wisconsinites.

“The most frustrating part for me as governor is that Republicans consistently reject basic, commonsense proposals that can help kids, families, farmers, seniors and Wisconsinites across our state, all while Republicans offer no real or meaningful alternative of their own,” Evers said. “Republicans talk a lot about what they’re against, but not what they’re for.”

During the meeting, Democrats proposed keeping 19 items in the budget across a handful of motions that touched on certain issue areas, saying they hoped they could carve out some spots for agreement. 

One would have placed $420 million back in the budget to fund the Child Care Counts program, as well as several other child care related measures. 

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) said Republicans are “willing to pull out really, really important items” and said the child care proposals are essential, warning that money for the Child Care Counts program is expected to expire in June. 

“We are at risk of losing 87,000 [child care] slots… The fact that these things are being pulled out of the budget today and as of today, there is no mention or discussion of a replacement plan for something as important as this,” she said, is creating uncertainty among Wisconsinites and exacerbating a crisis. 

“Our children deserve quality services. Our families deserve affordable rates,” Johnson said. 

Another motion would have placed Medicaid expansion back in the budget. Wisconsin is one of only 10 states that haven’t accepted the federal expansion, which would allow coverage for those up to 138% of the federal poverty line. 

“Families are struggling to afford the care they need, and we have an opportunity — and I would argue an obligation — to do something,” Andraca said.

Andraca noted that Congressional Republicans, including Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, are considering cuts to the Medicaid program as they aim to extend the 2017 tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s first term.

“We heard how people are fearful of cuts to the programs that they rely on, and they are forced to make increasingly hard choices between groceries and prescriptions,” Andraca said. “Are you still willing to turn your backs on the people who entrusted us to vote for their best interests? Honestly, our constituents deserve better than this.”

The final proposal from Democrats would have kept items in the budget related to veterans including tax credits for veterans, funding for a veterans’ mental health program and for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum as well as an item to designate Juneteenth and Veterans Day as holidays. 

Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said he hoped they could agree on not making veterans’ lives harder.

“I recognize that it’s sort of the whole brand of the Republican party right now is to make everyone’s life a little bit more difficult,” McGuire said. “Certainly, it’s harder to travel in this country, It’s harder for people to access health insurance, it’s harder for people to afford college or go to college or manage their student loans. It’s harder for people to afford groceries and there may even be a question of what you can have full shelves soon… I know it’s your whole brand to make people’s lives harder, but I think we can all agree… [veterans] should still deserve some support.” 

Republicans rejected each motion.

McGuire doubled down on his point, saying that Republicans’ opposition to supporting even smaller parts of Evers’ proposal is a sign that they don’t want to help the average person.

“People are struggling and it is a challenging world and the one thing we should not be doing the one thing that nobody votes for their legislator to do is to make their life harder,” McGuire said. “Yet, that is all we are seeing out of the Republican party right now. That’s all we see out of the federal Republican party and frankly the Republican party here,” McGuire said, noting that Republican lawmakers recently passed legislation that would place additional restrictions on unemployment benefits.

“You’re making things less affordable and more difficult for regular [people] and that’s bad and we shouldn’t do it,” McGuire said.

Marklein said he was “glad we’re going back to base” because Evers’ budget proposal included a 20% increase in spending, an additional 1,300 positions funded by general purpose revenue and an increase in taxes. 

“When I talk to my constituents about the process, they are truly supportive of us not starting from this inflated budget that [Evers] put before us,” Marklein said, noting that Evers signed the last budget after they went through a similar process. “The idea that the door is closed on all these things is pretty ridiculous.” 

McGuire pushed back on Marklein’s comments, saying that lawmakers are pretending it is a “nice and friendly” process. 

“Part of the process that occurs here today is that not only do you remove the governor’s budget items, which make life easier for Wisconsinites, but then, you also prohibit anyone from ever discussing them ever again,” McGuire said. “And that’s really bizarre… This is a top-down totalitarian committee where we’re not permitted to discuss things past a certain point.”

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