National Institutes of Health Director Jayanta Bhattacharya speaks at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Capitol Hill on March 5, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya testified Tuesday that he will work with Congress to potentially reverse a steep cut to the agency’s funding the White House proposed earlier this year in its budget request.
Bhattacharya told highly critical Republicans and Democrats on the Senate panel that writes the NIH’s annual spending bill that he’s “happy” to work with lawmakers to find a funding level that everyone can support in the months ahead.
“This is my first time through this budget fight and so I’m still learning. But I’ll tell you, what I understand is that the budget is a collaborative effort between Congress and the administration,” Bhattacharya said. “I look forward to working with you all to advance the real health needs — not just the folks here in the room who represent Alzheimer’s patients, but also the health needs of all Americans.”
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said it was “disturbing” that the president’s budget request suggested lawmakers cut NIH funding by about $18 billion, or 40%, in the upcoming spending bill.
“It would undo years of congressional investment in NIH,” Collins said. “And it would delay or stop effective treatments and cures from being developed for diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer, type one diabetes. I could go on and on.
“We also risk falling behind China and other countries that are increasing their investment in biomedical research.”
Collins said the committee planned to work with Bhattacharya “to remedy these problems and the deficiencies” in the budget request in the months ahead as the committee writes the annual government funding bills.
Collins also rebuked Bhattacharya for seeking to reduce how much the NIH pays grantees for facilities and administrative costs, which go toward paying bills that aren’t directly associated with just one research project.
NIH efforts to cap those indirect costs at 15% are on hold as lawsuits from Democratic attorneys general, the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Association of American Universities work through the federal court system.
“This proposed cap is so poorly conceived,” Collins said. “And I have seen firsthand how harmful it is. It is leading to scientists leaving the United States for opportunities in other countries. It’s causing clinical trials to be halted and promising medical research to be abandoned. It’s also against federal law. Since 2018, we in Congress have specifically included language to prevent NIH from arbitrarily imposing such a cap.”
Collins told Bhattacharya to talk with Kelvin K. Droegemeier, who worked as President Donald Trump’s science adviser during his first term. Droegemeier is chairman of a group put together by the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities to propose changes to the indirect costs model.
‘Frankly, catastrophic’
Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, pressed Bhattacharya to defend the actions he’s taken so far and those proposed in the budget request.
“What the Trump administration is doing to NIH right now is, frankly, catastrophic,” Murray said. “Over the past few months, this administration has fired and pushed out nearly 5,000 critical employees across NIH, prevented nearly $3 billion in grant funding from being awarded and terminated nearly 2,500 grants totaling almost $5 billion for life-saving research that is ongoing that includes clinical trials for HIV and Alzheimer’s disease.”
Murray added that no one in America wants less research into treatments and cures for cancer, or Alzheimer’s disease.
West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, chairwoman of the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations subcommittee that held the hearing, expressed concern about NIH’s proposed budget cuts, saying they have raised alarms at numerous research universities.
“These institutions are the reason America has kept the edge in biomedical research and innovation,” Capito said. “As with many changes in leadership, there seems to be a heightened set of concern and confusion that diverting resources from research will result in a less healthy America.”
Capito emphasized she expects NIH to continue to focus research efforts on Alzheimer’s, a disease that affects more than 7 million Americans.
“For almost a decade, this committee has supported research towards the goals of finding treatments and a cure for Alzheimer’s disease,” Capito said. “This goal is very personal to me, as you know, since both of my parents lived with and eventually succumbed to this disease. And I could look out behind you and see in the audience that many folks here are extremely interested in that area of research.”
Delayed funding in the states
Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member on the subcommittee, also reprimanded Bhattacharya for cutting off funding for projects looking into Alzheimer’s and several other illnesses.
“NIH has delayed $65 million in funding for 14 Alzheimer’s disease research centers in nine states, including at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,” Baldwin said. “It has delayed $47 million in cancer center support grants at nine cancer centers in eight states, it has delayed $55 million for 11 rare disease clinical research network grants in eight states.
“Let that sink in: This administration is making a conscious choice not to fund research into Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and rare diseases. And NIH has terminated grants for maternal morbidity and mortality centers, a grant developing new digital imaging techniques for cervical cancer screening and a clinical trial studying a potential cure for infants born with HIV, just to name a few.”
Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt called on Bhattacharya to ensure NIH refocuses on maternal health research and ways to decrease the country’s high maternal mortality rate.
“Look, far too many women in this country are dying from pregnancy-related causes,” Britt said. “You look at Alabama, we have one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation. It disproportionately affects Black women, Native American women, those women in rural areas.”
Shawano County was included on a Department of Homeland Security list of jurisdictions "defying federal immigration law"
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security listed Shawano County along with Dane County, Madison and Milwaukee as Wisconsin jurisdictions “defying immigration law” on Thursday.
The department released the list as part of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump requiring that sanctuary jurisdictions across the country be listed.
“Sanctuary jurisdictions including cities, counties, and states that are deliberately and shamefully obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws endangering American communities,” the DHS announcement states. “Sanctuary cities protect dangerous criminal aliens from facing consequences and put law enforcement in peril.”
Dane County, Madison and Milwaukee have enacted policies that limit local law enforcement agencies’ collaboration with federal immigration authorities. Earlier this year, Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett announced that the county would no longer participate in a program that provides funding in exchange for telling federal agencies when an immigrant without legal status is in custody in the local jail. Milwaukee also refuses to share such information.
“DHS demands that these jurisdictions immediately review and revise their policies to align with Federal immigration laws and renew their obligation to protect American citizens, not dangerous illegal aliens,” DHS stated.
But Shawano County, which Trump won with 67% of its vote last year, is a Republican Party stronghold that appears out of place on the list. The DHS announcement states that “no one should act on this information without conducting their own evaluation of the information.”
In 2021, the Shawano County board voted to declare the county a “Second Amendment sanctuary county,” which declared the county sheriff would not enforce any laws which “unconstitutionally impedes our fundamental Second Amendment right to Keep and Bear Arms.”
The Shawano County administrator and sheriff did not respond to requests for comment.
UW-Madison Engineering Hall. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Federal fallout
As federal funding and systems dwindle, states are left to decide how and
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The visas of UW-Madison’s Chinese students, who make up about half of the school’s international student body, could be at risk after the administration of President Donald Trump said Wednesday night it plans to “aggressively” revoke Chinese student visas and pause the rescheduling of visa review appointments.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that international students with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in “critical fields” could have their visas revoked. Rubio didn’t define what those critical fields would be and also provided little detail when he said that the State Department would “enhance scrutiny” on new student visa applications.
The administration has also said it plans to increase the vetting of visa applicants’ social media accounts. The announcement that the administration would be revoking the visas of Chinese students came the same day the State Department announced it had paused scheduling appointments for visa applicants.
UW-Madison had 3,414 international students from China this spring semester. In recent years, the university has worked to expand its international student body, aiming to increase the international population from 4% to 8% by 2028. The acceptance of international students helps the university increase revenue as state aid has remained flat and inflation has increased costs because international students pay an average of four times the amount of tuition as in-state students.
The university said Thursday it is monitoring the situation.
“We are deeply concerned about the impact of such a policy on our Chinese student community,” the university said.
In a message to its international students, the university advised them to attend visa appointments that are already scheduled and inform university staff if an appointment is canceled. The message also told the students to schedule appointments as quickly as possible once the pause on scheduling is lifted and to enroll in classes for the fall.
These moves are the latest in the Trump administration’s efforts to attack international student visas. Earlier this spring, the administration deleted visa records for some students over minor traffic infractions and encounters with law enforcement. That effort temporarily canceled the visas of more than two dozen students and alumni at UW schools across the state.
The Trump administration rolled back that decision and reinstated the visas after a federal judge ruled in favor of a number of students who sued to stop the revocation.
The father of a Wisconsin teenage girl who killed a teacher and fellow student in a school shooting was charged with felonies Thursday in connection with the case, police said.
The shooting occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison last December.
Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, of Madison, was taken into custody around 3:45 a.m. Thursday, police said.
Rupnow was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a child and two counts of providing a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 resulting in death. All three charges are felonies, punishable by up to six years in prison each. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in court on Friday.
Rupnow’s daughter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, opened fire on Dec. 16, 2024, at Abundant Life Christian School, killing a teacher and a 14-year-old student before killing herself. Two other students were critically injured.
Jeffrey Rupnow did not immediately respond to a message The Associated Press left on his Facebook page. No one immediately returned voicemails left at possible telephone listings for him and his ex-wife, Melissa Rupnow. Online court records indicate he represented himself in the couple’s 2022 divorce and do not list an attorney for him in that case.
According to a criminal complaint, Rupnow told investigators that his daughter was traumatized by her parents’ divorce and got into shooting guns after he took her shooting on a friend’s land. He said he bought her two handguns and told her the access code to his gun safe was his Social Security number entered backward.
Investigators discovered writings in her room in which she describes humanity as “filth,” hated people, got her weapons through her father’s “stupidity” and wanted to kill herself in front of everyone. She built a cardboard model of the school and developed a schedule for her attack that ended just after noon with the notation: “ready 4 death.”
Police recovered a 9 mm Glock handgun that her father had bought her from a study hall where she opened fire and another .22-caliber pistol that her father had given to her as a Christmas present in a bag she had been carrying through the school.
Twelve days after the shooting, a Madison police detective received a message from Jeffrey Rupnow saying his biggest mistake was teaching his kid safe gun handling and urging police to warn people to change the codes on their gun safes every two to three months.
“Kids are smart and they will figure it out. Just like someone trying to hack your bank account.’ I just want to protect other families from going through what I’m going through,” he said.
Jeffrey Rupnow is the latest parent of a school shooter to face charges associated with an attack.
Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who killed four students in 2021 were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The mother was the first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.
The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon.
In 2023, the father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors related to how his son obtained a gun license.
Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school that offers prekindergarten classes through high school. About 420 students attend the institution.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Anjan Roy was studying with friends at Missouri State University when he got an email that turned his world upside down. His legal status as an international student had been terminated, and he was suddenly at risk for deportation.
“I was in literal shock, like, what the hell is this?” said Roy, a graduate student in computer science from Bangladesh.
At first, he avoided going out in public, skipping classes and mostly keeping his phone turned off. A court ruling in his favor led to his status being restored this week, and he has returned to his apartment, but he is still asking his roommates to screen visitors.
More than a thousand international students have faced similar disruptions in recent weeks, with their academic careers — and their lives in the U.S. — thrown into doubt in a widespread crackdown by the Trump administration. Some have found a measure of success in court, with federal judges around the country issuing orders to restore students’ legal status at least temporarily.
In addition to the case filed in Atlanta, where Roy is among 133 plaintiffs, judges have issued temporary restraining orders in states including New Hampshire, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. Judges have denied similar requests in some other cases, saying it was not clear the loss of status would cause irreparable harm.
International students challenge grounds for their status revocation
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges. But many affected students said they have been involved only in minor infractions, or it’s unclear altogether why they were targeted.
The attorney for Roy and his fellow plaintiffs, Charles Kuck, argued the government did not have legal grounds to terminate the students’ status.
He speculated in court last week the government is trying to encourage these students to self-deport, saying “the pressure on these students is overwhelming.” He said some asked him if it was safe to leave their homes to get food, and others worried they wouldn’t receive a degree after years of work or feared their chances of a career in the U.S. were shot.
“I think the hope is they’ll just leave,” Kuck said. “The reality is these kids are invested.”
An attorney for the government, R. David Powell, argued the students did not suffer significant harm because they could transfer their academic credits or find jobs in another country.
At least 1,190 students at 183 colleges, universities and university systems have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records. The AP is working to confirm reports of hundreds more students who are caught up in the crackdown.
In a lawsuit filed Monday by four people on student visas at the University of Iowa, attorneys detail the “mental and financial suffering” they’ve experienced. One graduate student, from India, “cannot sleep and is having difficulty breathing and eating,” the lawsuit reads. He has stopped going to school, doing research or working as a teaching assistant. Another student, a Chinese undergraduate who expected to graduate this December, said his revoked status has caused his depression to worsen to the point that his doctor increased his medication dosage. The student, the lawsuit says, has not left his apartment out of fear of detention.
Tiny infractions made students targets for the crackdown
Roy, 23, began his academic career at Missouri State in August 2024 as an undergraduate computer science student. He was active in the chess club and a fraternity and has a broad circle of friends. After graduating in December, he began work on a master’s degree in January and expects to finish in May 2026.
When Roy received the university’s April 10 email on his status termination, one of his friends offered to skip class to go with him to the school’s international services office, even though they had a quiz in 45 minutes. The staff there said a database check showed his student status had been terminated, but they didn’t know why.
Roy said his only brush with the law came in 2021, when he was questioned by campus security after someone called in a dispute at a university housing building. But he said an officer determined there was no evidence of any crime and no charges were filed.
Roy also got an email from the U.S. embassy in Bangladesh telling him his visa had been revoked and that he could be detained at any time. It warned that if he was deported, he could be sent to a country other than his own. Roy thought about leaving the U.S. but decided to stay after talking to a lawyer.
Anxious about being in his own apartment, Roy went to stay with his second cousin and her husband nearby.
“They were scared someone was going to pick me up from the street and take me somewhere that they wouldn’t even know,” Roy said.
He mostly stayed inside, turned off his phone unless he needed to use it, and avoided internet browsers that track user data through cookies. His professors were understanding when he told them he wouldn’t be able to come to classes for a while, he said.
New doubts about students’ future in the US
After the judge’s order Friday, he moved back to his apartment. He learned Tuesday his status had been restored, and he plans to return to class. But he’s still nervous. He asked his two roommates, both international students, to let him know before they open the door if someone they don’t know knocks.
The judge’s restoration of his legal status is temporary. Another hearing scheduled for Thursday will determine whether he keeps that status while the litigation continues.
Roy chose the U.S. over other options in Canada and Australia because of the research opportunities and potential for professional connections, and he ultimately wanted to teach at an American university. But now those plans are up in the air.
His parents, back in Dhaka, have been watching the news and are “freaked out,” he said. His father mentioned to him that they have family in Melbourne, Australia, including a cousin who’s an assistant professor at a university there.
AP reporters Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this story.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Madison’s city clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, resigned Monday as the city and state continued to look into how she and her staff lost track of nearly 200 ballots that never got counted in November.
Witzel-Behl, who took the post in 2006, gained wide recognition for running elections in the state’s second largest city during the pandemic and multiple presidential elections. In all, she oversaw more than 60 elections.
But her reputation took a blow in the November 2024 election, when 193 ballots from two polling stations went missing on Election Day and never got counted. Clerks and the Wisconsin Elections Commission have criticized her for failing to promptly inform state and city officials about the issue.
“On behalf of city of Madison residents, I want to extend my gratitude to Maribeth for her commitment and dedication to public service,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said.
Witzel-Behl was placed on leave in March, with Mike Haas, the city attorney and former commission administrator, acting as clerk in the interim. It’s unclear who will replace Witzel-Behl; Haas previously told Votebeat he does not want the job permanently. The city is undertaking a national search, officials said.
Madison interim City Clerk Mike Haas, left, acting in the role since Maribeth Witzel-Behl was placed on leave, and Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, right, address the press at the City-County Building in Madison, Wis., after the spring election on April 1, 2025. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
In addition to ongoing city and state investigations, the November error has also led to legal action, with a liberal election law group seeking $34 million in damages on the grounds voters were disenfranchised.
In its probe, the Wisconsin Elections Commission found that mistakes by the clerk’s office began well before Election Day, including printing poll books for the two polling sites earlier than recommended by the commission.
Had the poll books been printed later, they would have automatically indicated that certain ballots had been returned, making it clearer to poll workers on Election Day that some ballots had been received but not counted.
Clerk’s staff found the first batch of ballots — 68 in total — in a previously unopened courier bag in the clerk’s office on Nov. 12, while Dane County was in the middle of certifying the election.
There are conflicting accounts of what happened next: An unidentified Madison election worker claimed that the county was informed about the ballots that day, but Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell has denied that. Witzel-Behl, who according to records obtained by Votebeat was on vacation for much of the time following Election Day, didn’t follow up with the county, and those ballots were never counted.
A second batch of 125 ballots was discovered in the clerk’s office on Dec. 3. However, staff didn’t relay that information to the Wisconsin Elections Commission until Dec. 18, well after the state certified the election. The commission then notified Haas about the error, and he relayed the news to the mayor’s office — which is when both learned of the problem for the first time.
Facing growing scrutiny, Witzel-Behl proposed procedural changes, including requiring clerk’s staff to verify all election materials received on election night and ensuring that each polling place receives a list of the absentee ballot courier bags it handles to prevent any from being overlooked.
Those measures were implemented fully in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, for which she was on leave. The city apparently didn’t have any significant oversights in that election. City officials say they’re still refining the procedural changes.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
At an April 1 hearing, in a sign of what the most contentious issues will be in this year’s state budget, the Republican-controlled budget committee only heard from two state agencies: Corrections and the Universities of Wisconsin system.
UW system President Jay Rothman told lawmakers he agreed with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ assessment that the 2025-27 biennial state budget is a “make it or break it” budget year for the public university system.
Evers’ budget request for the Universities of Wisconsin matched the agency’s ask of $856 million in additional funding over two years, which would be one of the largest increases in the university system’s history. Evers told reporters this funding, in addition to $1.6 billion proposed for capital projects, is essential even without the Trump administration’s threats to cut university funding.
Republican lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee asked Rothman to justify “administrative bloat” across the system’s 13 universities, as well as the sizable budget ask. Rothman said while the request is large, Wisconsin currently ranks 43rd out of 50 in state spending on public universities. Evers’ budget would add 214 state-funded positions to UW campuses. Rothman said that excluding UW-Madison, the universities have lost over 1,000 positions since 2019.
The share of the UW system budget that comes from state funds has decreased by about 15 percentage points in the last two decades, from 33% to 18%.
“If we get the budget funded, we will not have to raise tuition,” Rothman told the JFC. “If we don’t get funded at an adequate level, that’s one of the levers we have. We keep our branch campuses open, that’s another lever we have that I don’t want to have to use.”
But amid declining birth rates and enrollment in public schools across the state, Republican lawmakers questioned whether the $856 million ask is reasonable considering university enrollments may soon drop significantly. Five of the 13 campuses had enrollments shrink last year.
“You cannot cut your way to success,” Rothman told the committee. “You need to invest.”
State funding for UW-Madison — the state’s flagship university — in inflation-adjusted dollars was $644 million in 1974. Since then, it has declined by $93 million in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the university’s 2023-24 budget report. Figures aren’t available system-wide.
Republican Rep. Mark Born, co-chair of the committee, asked Rothman why the request called for 13 new staff positions — one on each campus — to support students who have aged out of the foster care system. He cited a UW system report that found there were 420 students in that program across nine of the campuses. He questioned why a position would need to be created at a school like UW-Platteville, which served nine of those students last year. The report also shows that the program didn’t serve all 570 students who qualify, including 23 on that campus.
“I think this is a shining example of the governor’s desire to grow government and your desire to grow your system, and it’s not focused on the reality of how you invest in this stuff,” Born told Rothman.
Rothman said the intent behind the positions is to expand the number of foster care students who could be served.
GOP lawmakers critique admissions process
Republican lawmakers have criticized enrollment and admissions at the state’s flagship university in recent years, citing constituents who say their high-achieving children have been rejected from attending UW-Madison. They have also raised concerns that the university is denying admission to in-state students in favor of out-of-state or international students.
Unlike some of the smaller Wisconsin campuses, UW-Madison has maintained high enrollment numbers likely due to its ability to attract out-of-state and international students.
If the university significantly increased its enrollment of in-state students from an already declining pool of applicants, enrollment at other UW system schools could be negatively affected, UW-Madison Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Derek Kindle told WPR.
During the April 1 hearing, Sen. Rob Stafsholt, R-New Richmond, said he adamantly believes in retaining Wisconsin-based students in the university system. He asked Rothman why one of his young constituents — who has a 4.3 GPA, 32 ACT score and a father who is a military veteran — was rejected from UW-Madison.
“How are we not serving our own kids, as they graduate, by admitting them to our universities before we spend taxpayer dollars and increase taxpayer dollars to attract people from other parts of the world?” Stafsholt asked.
Rothman said he didn’t have the specifics of that student’s case, but pointed to a bill signed into law last year that allows graduating high school students who rank in the top 10% of their high school’s graduating class to gain admission to any UW system school and guarantees admission to UW-Madison for those in the top 5% of their class. The bill takes effect for college admissions starting next fall.
In fall 2024, UW-Madison admitted around 59.3% of in-state applicants, down from an average of 66.8% over the previous nine years. The out-of-state U.S. student admission rate was 46.5%, and the international student admission rate was 33.3%, compared to a previous nine-year average of 52.7% and 38.6% respectively.
The questioning was similar to a national talking point about high-achieving students being rejected from universities, which some Republicans have attributed to diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Right-wing activists like Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, have questioned whether the government should be funding higher education.
On the same day as the hearing, Kirk took to social media to share an example of a high-achieving student similar to the one Stafsholt spoke of.
“Why are we giving hundreds of billions of dollars to universities so stupid they won’t offer this kid an admission because of his skin color (and let’s be honest, that’s why he was rejected everywhere)?” Kirk wrote on X. “Defund the college scam.”
Slashes to federal funding loom over UW-Madison
Last month, the federal Department of Education notified UW-Madison that it was one of 60 universities across the country under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights. The letter warned that the university could lose federal funding if it failed to protect its Jewish students.
The move was part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses, which has involved detaining, deporting and terminating the visas of students with ties to the national pro-Palestinian protests last spring.
UW-Madison is also one of 45 universities being investigated for alleged racial discrimination related to its diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The Trump administration has made sweeping threats to pull federal funding from colleges that continue to consider race and diversity in their policies and programs.
But how much funding is at stake here?
According to the Associated Press, out of 50 public universities under OCR investigation, UW-Madison is among the top five that received the most federal revenue in 2022-23. The university collected more than $827 million in federal funds that year, which was just over 20% of its total revenue.
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Republican-ordered audits released Friday found that Wisconsin state agencies and the Universities of Wisconsin system have failed to track the millions of dollars they spent on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, making it difficult to fully assess the initiatives.
The highly anticipated reports come amid a push by President Donald Trump to end federal government support for DEI programs. There have been similar efforts in Wisconsin by Republicans who control the Legislature. The reports’ findings are likely to further increase pressure from Republicans to do away with anything related to DEI.
DEI practices at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in particular have come under close scrutiny.
The system’s flagship campus fired its chief diversity officer, LaVar Charleston, in January for what university officials said were poor financial decisions he had made, including approving substantial raises and authorizing what they deemed to be excessive spending on travel.
The school is one of 50 universities across the country that Trump said are under investigation for alleged racial discrimination related to DEI programs. UW-Madison also is one of 60 schools that federal education officials are investigating because of accusations that they failed to protect Jewish students during campus protests last year over the war in Gaza. UW-Madison officials said Friday that they are cooperating with both probes and that they condemn antisemitism in all of its forms.
Audits estimate that millions of dollars went toward DEI activities
The audits found that neither UW nor the 15 state agencies that were reviewed specifically tracked how much money they spent on DEI efforts during the 2023-2024 fiscal year, which ended June 30.
Auditors noted that neither the UW system’s Board of Regents nor its administration required schools to define DEI, which resulted in them launching individualized initiatives. Auditors were able to estimate that the system spent about $40 million on offices with duties connected to DEI. The system spent about $12.5 million on salaries for positions with job duties related to DEI and another $8 million working on DEI-related activities. A dozen state agencies spent about $2.2 million on salaries for jobs related to DEI.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration didn’t consistently require agencies to ensure DEI plans were developed and implemented correctly, the audit found. Also, agencies didn’t consistently document when they corrected noncompliance, the report said.
The administration cautioned about drawing conclusions about the actual costs related to DEI as outlined in the audit.
Many of the costs were related to implementing programs required by law, were human resources best practices or were tied to worker retention and recruitment efforts, said Kathy Blumenfeld, who heads the state’s Department of Administration.
GOP pushes to eliminate DEI programs
Legislative Republicans have been pushing for years to end DEI programs and last year ordered the review by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has pledged to end diversity efforts in state government, saying that such initiatives are “cancerous” and that he wants a society that is “truly colorblind.”
State Sen. Eric Wimberger and state Rep. Robert Wittke, Republican co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Audit Committee, said in a statement Friday that the audits show taxpayers spent millions on DEI with very little to show for it.
Vos said in a statement Friday that Assembly Republicans would keep pushing to eliminate DEI as they deliberate on the 2025-27 state budget.
“Student achievement should be based on merit,” Vos said.
DEI positions shrink at UW
Under a deal reached with Republicans in 2023, the UW system froze diversity hires, re-labeled about 40 diversity positions as “student success” positions and dropped an affirmative action hiring program at UW-Madison. In exchange, the Legislature paid for staff raises and construction projects.
Auditors found that when the deal took effect, the system had at least 123 full-time positions that provided DEI services, had job titles that included the terms “diversity, equity and inclusion” or were senior leadership positions focused on DEI. The number of positions had dropped to 110 by May 2024.
There are now 64 positions, UW system President Jay Rothman wrote in response to the auditors. Rothman said the auditors’ work was challenging because there is no universal definition of DEI, each school developed its own initiatives and the offices that perform DEI work also might have duties unrelated to DEI projects, blurring spending lines and funding sources.
“In that context, it is important to emphasize both the UW’s philosophical shift aimed more broadly at student success as well as the variance in which universities structure their offices and positions that may pertain to — though not exclusively focus on — ‘DEI’ activities when one is interpreting the data offered in the report,” Rothman wrote in his letter.
Governor required agencies to create DEI plans
Evers signed an executive order in 2019 requiring each state agency to create and monitor equity and inclusion plans to address employment barriers, assess workplaces to ensure they’re equitable and promote inclusion and expand professional development to encourage a more inclusive culture.
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It is too soon to definitively say whether Madison’s April 1 election went off without any problems. But city and county election officials told Votebeat that they were confident that new absentee ballot procedures put in place after 193 ballots went uncounted in November would prevent another major error.
Tuesday was the first high-profile election in Madison since the snafu in November, when 193 ballots in unopened ballot bags from two polling stations went uncounted during the presidential contest. Staff didn’t discover the ballots until much later, a critical lapse that prompted state and city investigations and the suspension of Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl in March. A voter lawsuit is expected.
Witzel-Behl’s replacement is City Attorney Mike Haas, formerly the Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator and a longtime election lawyer. This was the first election he has ever run as a municipal clerk.
Amid the investigation, city officials implemented new procedures to better track absentee ballots and ensure that oversights are detected before results are finalized.
New procedures add to the paperwork
The changes were apparent at Madison polling places, which had multiple new checklists and required paperwork to ensure that officials opened and processed every bag containing absentee ballots. They were also apparent at the clerk’s office, where at 9 p.m., employees had begun looking through election materials from each of the city’s 108 polling sites to make sure there weren’t any missing ballots.
At Madison West High School, where 68 of the ballots went missing in November, chief inspector Peter Quinn said just before 4 p.m. that the new procedures make a repeat error “basically impossible.”
Quinn has been a chief inspector before, but he wasn’t the chief inspector at the school in November when the ballots went missing.
“It’s a mistake that should not have been made,” Quinn said about the error, adding that the new procedures make it easier to catch discrepancies.
After nearly 200 absentee ballots weren’t counted in the November election, Madison implemented new procedures for poll workers for the April 1, 2025, election. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Each polling site now receives updated lists throughout the day detailing every absentee ballot bag delivered. Each bag is identified by a seal number. Election officials check off one blank on that list when they open each bag and another blank when they process the ballots. This way, election officials know how many carrier envelopes they receive — and how many they’re supposed to count.
Poll workers also record the number of ballots in each bag on two separate documents and, at the end of the night, complete a summary sheet confirming that the number of absentee ballots received matches the number counted or rejected.
Kevin Kennedy, former state elections chief and now a chief inspector at Madison’s Senior Center, called the new process “good documentation” — but said it can be overwhelming.
“My problem,” he said at 2 p.m., standing in front of the table where absentee ballots get processed, “is that there’s so many things to keep track of here.”
Kennedy pointed to an absentee ballot processing guide given to poll workers and said he wished the clerk’s office provided equally clear instructions for navigating the added procedures. While he believes the system is now less prone to error, he warned that paperwork redundancies can slow down the process.
Procedures still need to be refined
A half-mile away, Sam Peplinski, 19, stood outside the Nicholas Recreation Center polling place — the same site where his absentee ballot went uncounted in November.
“It was my first time voting,” he said of the experience, which shook his trust in elections. “It was just shocking.”
He said it’s unrealistic to expect perfection, but the loss of nearly 200 ballots made the issue “large enough to not be ignored.”
This time he voted at the polls on Election Day — but only because he just recently learned of the election date. “An unintended benefit,” he said.
At the end of the night, Haas, the interim city clerk, told Votebeat the new procedures might have been a little “overkill,” but said after the November snafu it’s better to have too much paperwork than too little.
Witzel-Behl, the city clerk on leave, put in place many of the new procedures between November and February, and more were added since then, but Haas said there wasn’t much time to get feedback on those procedures from the city’s poll workers.
“I think we just need more time to refine those, make sure that they’re workable for the inspectors,” he said.
Deputy Clerk Bonnie Chang told Votebeat that staff would spend Wednesday and Thursday looking through all the election materials that polling places return to the clerk’s office, making sure there aren’t any missing ballots there. They were also checking a new sheet that each polling site’s chief inspector fills out to make sure the number of ballots processed is equal to the number of ballots received.
At the City-County Building in Madison, Wis., Madison Deputy Clerk Bonnie Chang prepares to review results from polling places following the April 1, 2025, election. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Election officials in Madison are already facing a state and city investigation into the series of errors that resulted in nearly 200 absentee ballots not being counted in last fall’s election. Now officials there face a claim for compensation in an unusual case that aims to emphasize the importance of properly counting all ballots and set a monetary penalty for denying people their vote.
A liberal election law group called Law Forward served a $34 million claim this month against Madison and Dane County, seeking damages amounting to $175,000 for each Madison voter whose absentee ballot got misplaced. The filing is likely a precursor to a lawsuit, as the group is seeking out other disenfranchised voters to join its case.
“There is going to be a price to pay when you interfere with someone’s right to vote in Wisconsin,” said Scott Thompson, staff counsel for Law Forward.
Cases like this have a history that goes back to the voting rights fights of the late 1800s and 1900s, when officials intentionally sought to bar Black people from voting. But they’re highly unusual today — most voting rights cases seek only to have a challenged right restored, rather than damages — and experts say it’s unlikely that Law Forward’s claim in the Madison case will lead to any damages being paid out.
The threat of a financial cost for errors could add to the pressure on local clerk’s offices, which already deal with the challenges of new laws and court rulings, along with persistent scrutiny from election skeptics and lawmakers. (Madison’s city clerk has been placed on leave while the investigation into her office continues.) Some clerks around the state said they consider the errors in Madison serious, but questioned the move to assign liability.
Melissa Kono, the clerk in the small town of Burnside in western Wisconsin, said that instead of a payout to voters affected by an error, money would be better spent on developing a better system for clerks to manage the increasing number of absentee ballots, which have surged since the COVID-19 pandemic. The uncounted ballots in Madison were all absentee ballots.
Thompson acknowledged the potential impact of his group’s action on clerks. But he said it serves as a broader response to the steady stream of lawsuits filed by conservative groups since 2020 aimed at preventing officials from counting certain ballots because of the way they’re returned or the information they’re missing. In the context of these lawsuits, he said, it’s important to send a message that there should be a cost for disenfranchising people.
“Elections are about exercising the right to vote,” he said. “They’re not about finding ways to kick people off the voter rolls.”
Legal filing says Madison and Dane County violated constitution
In a statement, Madison spokesperson Dylan Brogan didn’t directly address the Law Forward claim but said every ballot should be counted accurately and that the city is cooperating with ongoing investigations while conducting its own.
Here’s what investigators have said about the case so far: In all, 193 absentee ballots that were sent to two polling places in the city for tabulation on Election Day went missing, and were not counted, even after they were found. For reasons still unknown, the election workers at those polling places never opened the courier bags containing those ballots. Those ballots then went to the city clerk’s office, but workers didn’t open one of the parcels until Nov. 12 and the other one until Dec. 3.
In the claim, the group cites two Wisconsin Supreme Court cases that it says allow it to sue for damages, even if what happened in Madison turns out to be a series of unintentional oversights.
One of those cases was a judgment from 1866, in which the court ruled that government officers can be found liable for their actions in denying Black Wisconsin residents the right to vote, even if those actions are done without malice. The other is a 1916 finding that because a group of voters was entitled to vote, people depriving them of that right can be held liable for their disenfranchisement.
Claims like these typically move to lawsuits if they’re not resolved, and the city and county are unlikely to accept or negotiate the requested amount, likely prompting Law Forward to file suit this summer.
When voters seek monetary damages
Why ask for money on behalf of the voters? Thompson said it’s because there’s nothing else to ask for besides money and a finding of the city’s wrongdoing. It was too late, he said, to give the voters back the right they had been deprived of: the right to vote and have their ballots counted in the November 2024 election.
Thompson said attorney-client privilege prevented him from disclosing how the group arrived at the $175,000 figure for each voter. Wisconsin law currently caps damages against government officials at $50,000. Thompson said a secondary goal of the forthcoming lawsuit is to have a court find that law unconstitutional and allow groups to seek larger damages.
Voter lawsuits seeking monetary damages were never very common, but there were instances in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, typically tied to racial discrimination, said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
The most prominent cases of this kind were in Texas, where between the 1920s and 1940s Black voters who were barred from voting in Democratic primaries because of their race sometimes sued for damages in court, Levitt said.
In those cases, Black voters were designed to be left out of the voting process. In Madison, by contrast, it appears at this point that a series of mistakes — not malice or intent — led to these ballots getting lost initially.
But Thompson cautioned against coming to conclusions about why the Madison ballots didn’t ultimately get counted.
“It is too early for anyone, I think, to say with certainty exactly what happened and why it happened here,” he said.
Lawsuits seeking damages against government officials face two significant challenges, said Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law: First, courts usually look for something more egregious than negligence, such as malicious intent. Second, he said, a number of legal doctrines usually give government officials a raised level of immunity.
He said he couldn’t think of any cases of this kind, where voters deprived of their right to vote successfully sued election officials for damages, since the 1960s.
Clerks question monetary penalty for errors
If the city accepts the claim or a court does award damages, it could have a financial impact of millions of dollars and would send a signal across the state.
“It’s not normal for this quantity of ballots to go uncounted, and I think everybody recognizes that that’s not normal,” Levitt said. “If this case succeeded, it would substantially increase the stakes of an error like that.”
But Madison’s errors stand out as unusually serious, said Wood County Clerk Trent Miner, a Republican. He said he thinks that Law Forward’s claim proposes too high a penalty, but that it shouldn’t make clerks fear the prospect of penalties for the far less consequential errors that they encounter from time to time.
“Humans run elections, so errors will happen,” he said. “This, I think, pole vaults over a minor error.”
Kono, the Burnside clerk, pointed out that the initial error of not counting the ballots at the polling sites was at the hands of the poll workers at the Madison polling sites who never opened or processed the 193 ballots.
“If you’re relying on unpaid or low-paid, glorified volunteers, essentially, what is the liability?” she said.
Even if the court doesn’t ultimately award monetary damages, the discovery phase of the expected lawsuit — where the two sides must share evidence — could significantly increase transparency around Madison’s ballot-counting errors, Thompson said. This process would likely place additional pressure on Madison and Dane County to fully disclose information beyond what has already emerged from ongoing city and state investigations.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
On Feb. 24, 2022, Katya Babych’s life changed in a moment. Russian jets flew overhead, tanks advanced and enemy troops slaughtered civilians in the suburbs surrounding her home city of Kyiv.
“When it happened, we just woke up, grabbed our kids, a couple suitcases and ran,” Babych said.
Babych and her husband, Yevhenii, have a daughter, Diana, who was 5 at the time, and a son, Nazar, who was 11. The decision to flee was simple, but not easy. She wanted to keep her children safe, but leaving their homeland still pains her three years later.
The Babych family, from Ukraine, pictured in their apartment in Stoughton. Clockwise from left are Katya, Nazar, Yevhenii and Diana. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
The Babych family is among millions whose lives were upended by Russia’s invasion. The Cap Times met with some of those families in Ukraine in February, as well as loved ones and friends who now live in Wisconsin.
One father, wounded in battle, hasn’t seen his wife and sons in more than three years. A mother works to comfort her daughters through nightly air raids. An aunt in Wisconsin fears for her nephew in Kyiv.
Their lives have taken different paths but their goal remains the same, to keep their families safe and someday see an end to the brutal war destroying their homeland.
The night of the invasion, Babych and her husband packed what belongings they could, buckled their children into the family car and began to drive toward Poland. The drive from Kyiv to the Polish border typically takes about seven hours. This time, as thousands of other Ukrainians also fled, the journey took two days.
They first crossed into Poland and then the Czech Republic, unsure how long the war would last.
“But in May (2022) we understood it would not be a short story, but a very long story,” Babych said of the ongoing war.
The story of the Russian invasion has lasted over 1,100 days, and the family now lives in Stoughton. Babych works as a nurse at Stoughton Hospital, and their two children attend public school.
In Poland and the Czech Republic, her kids thought the family was on a vacation. But after arriving in Wisconsin and realizing their displacement was more permanent, they began to miss home and friends.
At first, they cried every day.
“It’s really hard because we didn’t have a plan to move, to start a new life across the ocean,” Babych said.
At a cafe outside Madison, Babych sipped a cappuccino and gingerly held her pregnant belly as she recalled fleeing her Kyiv home. She and her husband are expecting their third child in April.
“We’re lucky, because around us are really kind, nice people and they really support us,” Babych said.
Her family received help from the Stoughton Resettlement Agency. The local nonprofit has helped more than a dozen immigrant families from Ukraine, Afghanistan and elsewhere who fled war-torn countries and arrived in the southeast Dane County city of 13,000.
Diana Babych practices gymnastics as her family gathers for tea and snacks in their apartment in Stoughton. The Babych family fled Ukraine nearly three years ago. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
“For now, I have a job, my kids go to school. I mean, it’s kind of like normal life. Now my brother and sister-in-law and my parents are here,” Babych said.
Babych doesn’t know how long she and her family will be allowed to stay in Stoughton now that President Donald Trump has ended humanitarian parole — the immigration channel that tens of thousands of Ukrainians have used since the beginning of the invasion to flee to the United States.
“Every day you wake up and check like ‘OK, what about today,’” Babych said of the uncertainty. “Right now, I can’t imagine how we can go back to Ukraine.”
‘Because life stopped, our family got closer’
When Babych and her family fled the invasion, their apartment in Kyiv lay empty.
Meanwhile, in the village of Troieshchyna on the outskirts of Kyiv, Babych’s friend Marta Jarrell constantly feared for the safety of her family.
“We have four children. It was important for us to keep them safe, but we never wanted to panic,” Jarrell said, reflecting on why she and her husband chose not to evacuate Ukraine.
Marta Jarrell looks out of the window of a cafe in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 20, 2025. (Erin McGroarty / The Cap Times)
Jarrell and her family moved back to the Kyiv area from the United States just six months before the invasion began. She and her husband met in America; they and their four daughters have dual citizenship. She wanted to bring her family back to Ukraine to show them her homeland. Then the war started.
Jarrell remembers the sounds of artillery shells as Russian troops surrounded the capital city.
“It was very loud,” she said. “We could hear gunshots. It was getting really close.”
Before the war, Babych and Jarrell worked together at a private Christian school in Kyiv. Babych offered for her friend to move her family into the empty apartment closer to the city, farther from the violence that ravaged suburbs like Irpin and Bucha.
In the beginning, Jarrell’s youngest daughter — who was 3 at the time — slept through the air alarms. Jarrell used fans at night to mask the noise of the war.
“She’s 7 now, she starts waking up from explosions. It’s really taking a toll on her,” Jarrell said.
After three years of war, your nervous system gets worn out. But Jarrell and her husband work to stay calm as an example for their daughters. They made the choice to stay, and even though daily life is hard and she is constantly afraid for her family’s safety, she doesn’t regret the choice to remain in Kyiv.
The war has been hard in so many ways, but Jarrell has tried to find unexpected benefits to stay positive.
“Because life stopped, our family got even closer,” she remembered.
In the early days of the invasion, Jarrell set her daily routine around what would help her daughters cope with the uncertainty and fear.
“We did what the girls wanted to do. We baked a lot because stores were closed; there wasn’t much food at first,” she said. “We colored. We read. We danced. We spent a lot of quality time together, and that’s really helped.”
The three-bedroom apartment is a tight fit, and the four girls have to share rooms.
“It’s challenging, but it’s cozy,” she said.
When asked how it feels to live in someone else’s home, Jarrell smiled softly.
“My home is where my husband and my kids are,” she said.
‘The flowers have already died’
Galyna Turchanova fled to Madison with her youngest son after her husband, Oleksandr, was conscripted into the Ukrainian army. The couple has not seen each other in three years. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Before the war, Oleksandr Turchanov and his wife, Galyna Turchanova, took family vacations with their two sons by the sea in Odesa and in the Carpathian Mountains in southwestern Ukraine.
They began to build a house in the countryside outside of their hometown of Kropyvnytskyi on family land that belonged to Oleksandr’s grandparents. Galyna planted trees and flowers and strawberries.
Now, it has been three years since the couple have seen each other. When asked what he misses most about his wife and sons, Oleksandr simply says being together.
“When there was a family, and everyone was together,” he said.
Galyna lives in Madison with their sons while her husband remains in Kropyvnytskyi. She works in the floral department of Metcalfe’s Market. Their younger son, Tymofii, is 15. He attends Memorial High School and plays volleyball.
Their 28-year-old son, Mykhailo, lived in Madison before the invasion began. He came here through a work study program with a university in Poland where he attended. In 2016, he became gravely ill with meningitis, and Galyna traveled to Madison to help him.
“For two years we were fighting for his life here,” she said. After his recovery, she returned home.
Mykhailo has since graduated from a software engineering program at Madison Area Technical College and works as a programmer for the Madison Metropolitan School District.
Oleksandr said he is proud of his sons for pursuing education and supporting their mother.
In Ukraine, Galyna worked as an insurance broker, but transferring professional licenses to the United States remains difficult, so she was unable to continue that work after settling in Madison. Working with plants at Metcalfe’s soothes her, though.
“I like flowers and plants, and in Ukraine we have a big garden, so for me, it’s also like relaxation maybe,” Galyna said.
These days Oleksandr lives in the countryside outside of Kropyvnytskyi with his elderly father, who suffers from dementia. Oleksandr said he is trying to keep his wife’s garden alive but it’s difficult on his own.
“The flowers have already died,” he said. “The ones that are alive, I somehow take care of them, chrysanthemums, I trim those. The ones that grow like weeds and do not need much care.”
Oleksandr Turchanov sits in the kitchen of his apartment in Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine, on Feb. 18, 2025. (Erin McGroarty / The Cap Times)
Galyna Turchanova stays near her youngest son, Tymofii, while he makes a FaceTime call to his father, Oleksandr Turchanov, who lives in Ukraine. Galyna and Tymofii fled the war in Ukraine and now live on the west side of Madison. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Oleksandr is a serious man with clear blue eyes and a kind, but somber, demeanor. He sipped strong black coffee with sugar as he gazed out the kitchen window of an apartment he used to share with his family. In the living room, a bare wall held framed photos of his wife and sons when they were young boys. Boxed board games were stacked in the corner.
Before the invasion in 2022, he and his family were nearly ready to install gas and water lines for the home they were building on the property. But when Russia’s invasion forced Galyna and their younger son to flee the country, the project came to a heartbreaking halt.
“There is no longer a desire to build, just no desire,” Oleksandr said. Not without his family to share it with.
Oleksandr, a lawyer, was unable to flee with his family. The Ukrainian government banned men ages 18-60 from leaving the country in an effort to bolster its limited military reserves. On Feb. 26, 2022 — two days after the invasion began — Oleksandr drove to the conscription office to file his paperwork. On March 8, he was called to war.
In the early days of the war, Galyna and her son lived in the countryside with her father-in-law. They would hide in the root cellar during air raids.
“It was just terrible. And my son, he was 12 at this time. He cried and he asked, ‘Can we please leave?’ Because it was so scary,” she said.
They soon left with friends to Hungary — five people in one car with only enough space for one backpack each.
After suffering a shrapnel injury to his stomach while fighting, Oleksandr was released from the military. Galyna learned her husband had been injured as she and her youngest son awaited a plane to travel from Hungary to Wisconsin.
“We were ready for the flight to Madison, but I couldn’t leave my son and help my husband,” she said.
Galyna feels welcome in Madison and said the Ukrainian community has become tightly knit during the war. She speaks with her husband on the phone as often as possible.
“I try to speak every day with my husband and my parents, and every morning I call them and I’m afraid if they will answer or not because every day I read the news from Ukraine,” Galyna said.
Oleksandr speaks with his sons on the weekends. He said he doesn’t want his calls to interrupt their school and work. The family does not know when they will be together next.
“In Ukraine, it’s still dangerous,” Galyna said. “Just the other day I was thinking, what country I can move to if, for example, (Trump) decided to deport all Ukrainians. I don’t know if I am ready for that. I just know that we can’t go back to Ukraine right now.”
‘Our new reality has become just war’
Ruslana Westerlund is pictured in her home office in Mazomanie, where she displays artwork made by her
nephew, Dmytro Komar, who is an artist in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dmytro Komar spoke to his aunt at a frequency typical of relatives who live in different countries — on birthdays and holidays, like Christmas and Easter.
“From the beginning of the war, we started to text each other and call, I think, almost every day,” he said. “After every rocket or drone attack, she would check in.”
Komar, 33, lives in Kyiv. His aunt, Ruslana Westerlund, lives in Mazomanie, a small Wisconsin town about 23 miles west of Madison.
Westerlund is president of the nonprofit Friends of Ukraine, Madison, a group that works to help Ukrainians feel a sense of community and welcoming in Dane County.
The organization holds educational events, cultural workshops, gatherings with traditional Ukrainian food, informational sessions on immigration and, last month, a rally at the Capitol to mark the third anniversary of the invasion.
Beyond welcoming Ukrainians now living in the Madison area, Westerlund said the nonprofit educates Americans who may have misunderstandings about Ukraine’s culture and independence. The work helps her feel connected to her home.
“I hear so often ‘Oh, you must be Russian. Tell me about the Russian language.’ No, we speak Ukrainian and we have Ukrainian culture,” Westerlund said. “We’re not Russians or former Russians or former Soviets. We’re just Ukrainians.”
Westerlund was born in Buzhanka, in the Cherkasy region of central Ukraine. After graduating from Cherkasy State Pedagogical University, she moved to the United States. First to Minnesota and later to Wisconsin.
It has been many years since she has been able to visit her home. Travel in and out of Ukraine is dangerous and limited because of Russia’s invasion. Komar hasn’t seen his aunt since 2017.
Westerlund is the sister of Komar’s mother, who died when he was 9. His father died just three years ago. “So I’m his kind of second mom,” Westerlund said, fondly.
She is proud of her nephew but concerned for his safety. As a man in his 30s, he is not allowed to leave the country and could be conscripted into the army at any moment.This scares Westerlund. She affectionately calls him by his nickname, Dima. He is an artist and knows nothing of fighting, she worries.
“I have his art in my house,” Westerlund said.
Dmytro Komar, 33, poses with one of his paintings in his Kyiv apartment on Feb. 25, 2025. (Erin McGroarty / The Cap Times)
His paintings hang on the walls of her home as a stained glass Ukrainian flag glows from sunlight in the window nearby.
“She is my main buyer,” Komar joked back in Kyiv. His art hangs on the walls of his own living room also.
Komar’s apartment — where he lives with his girlfriend, Tetiana Vazhka, and their cat, Maya — is bright with large windows that look out over the rest of the apartment complex and a nearby park.
At the beginning of the war, the two rented a different flat in a nearby high-rise. It was through those windows the couple watched Russia attack their city.
“We were sleeping,” Komar said. As the assault began, he and Vazhka watched out the window, unsure of what to do.
“We saw people starting to run with their stuff, their pets, kids and cars,” Komar remembered.
Between bombings, the couple went to a supermarket to buy food.
Shelves were already beginning to empty. On the way home, another big explosion scared the couple, and they decided to flee to Zgurivka, where Vazhka’s mother lived. The village is closer to Russia but farther from main cities they thought would be the target of Russian attacks.
Instead, they lived for two and a half months through regular artillery shelling before returning to Kyiv that April.
While many others fled the country, the couple remained.
“Today, sometimes I regret it,” Komar said of their decision to stay.
Like many others, he thought the war would be over by now.
“I thought like, ‘OK, three days, a few weeks, maybe a month, and somehow it will end, and we will see a new reality,’” Komar said. “But our new reality has become just war.”
Before the invasion, Komar thought of war like it is depicted in movies — constant action, terrifying but predictable.
“But the reality is that is 1% of war, and the rest of time is just a silent time when you know that war is going on and you see the impact, but it’s so slow. It’s so, so slow. Like slowly dying.”
At least the first few months of the invasion, when Kyiv underwent more intense bombardment from Russia, the war felt real, he said.
“It was a period of real feeling of danger like in a movie,” Komar said. “But now for three years, it’s danger like cancer.”
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