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• Jess D’Souza, a small-time pig farmer in Klevenville, is challenged to sustain her livelihood in the wake of a sudden federal funding cut.

• After years of taking no salary, she had hoped 2025 would be the first year she turned a profit, aided by Wisconsin’s participation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Local Food Purchase Assistance program, designed to support underserved farmers and bolster local food systems. But the Trump administration abruptly rescinded the program, upending Jess’ plans.

• As she contends with the government’s broken promise and weighs whether to raise or sell her newest piglets, Jess seeks to build a more resilient food system independent from political whims.

Two piglets jostled in the barnyard as Jess D’Souza stepped outside. Neither youngster seemed to be winning their morning game of tug-of-war over an empty feed bag.

Jess approached the chicken coop. She swung open the weathered door. The flood of fowl scampered up a hill to a cluster of empty food bowls.

Groans resembling bassoons and didgeridoos leaked from the hog house as groggy pigs stirred. Jess often greets them in a singsong as she completes chores.

Hi Mama! Hi babies! 

She asks if she can get them some hay. Or perhaps something to drink? The swine respond with raspy snorts and spine-rattling squeals.

Jess unfurled the hose from the water pump as pigs trudged outdoors into their muddy pen.

“Is everybody thirsty? Are you all thirsty? Is that what’s going on?”

That morning, Jess slipped a Wisconsin Farmers Union beanie over her dark brown hair and stepped into comfy gray Dovetail overalls — “Workwear for Women by Women.” The spring wind was still crisp. Bare tree branches swayed across the 80-acre farm.

She filled a plastic bucket, then heaved the water over a board fence into a trough.

Growing up, the Chicago native never imagined a career rearing dozens of Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs in Klevenville, Wisconsin — an agricultural enclave surrounded by creeping neighborhoods of the state’s capital and surrounding communities.

She can watch the precociously curious creatures from her bedroom window much of the year. Their skin is pale, dotted with splotchy ink stains. Floppy ears shade their eyes from the sun like an old-time bank teller’s visor.

Jess spends her days tending to the swine, hoisting 40-pound organic feed bags across her shoulder and under an arm. Some pigs lumber after her, seeking scratches, belly rubs and lunch. Juveniles dart through gaps in the electric netting she uses to cordon off the barnyard, woods and pastures up a nearby hill.

She knows she shouldn’t view her pigs like pet dogs, but she coos at them when she works. Right until the last minute.

Jess hadn’t anticipated politics would so dramatically affect her farm.

Last year, Jess doubled the size of her pig herd, believing the government’s agriculture department, the USDA, would honor a $5.5 million grant it awarded to Wisconsin. 

Under the Biden administration, the agency gave states money for two years to run the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, or LFPA, which helped underserved farmers invest in local food systems and grow their businesses.

In Wisconsin, the state, Indigenous tribes and several farming groups developed a host of projects that enabled producers to deliver goods like plump tomatoes and crisp emerald spinach to food pantries, schools and community organizations across all 72 counties.

The Trump administration gutted the program in March, just as farmers started placing seed orders. For her part, Jess must anticipate the size of her pork harvests 18 months in advance. She banked on program funding as guaranteed income.

This was supposed to be the year Jess, 40, broke a profit after a decade of toiling. She has never paid herself.

Jess chuckles as she admits she worries too much. She’s an optimist at heart but mulls over questions that lack ready-made answers: How will she support herself following her recent divorce? How are her son and daughter faring during their tumultuous teens? How will she keep the piglets from being squished by the adults?

Now, if she can’t find buyers for the four tons of pork she expects to produce, will she even be able to keep farming?

The world, she thinks, feels like it’s on fire. 

***

In childhood, Jess, the elder sibling, strove to meet her parents’ expectations. School was her top priority. Academic achievement would lead to a good job, material comfort and happiness. She realized only as an adult that her rejection of this progression reflected a difference in values, not a personal deficiency.

She almost taught high school mathematics after college, but didn’t like forcing lukewarm students to learn.

Jess moved in 2005 to Verona, Wisconsin, where she planted fruit trees and vegetable gardens in her suburban yards. But a yard can only produce so much. She wanted chickens and ducks and perennial produce.

Jess can’t pinpoint a precise moment when she decided to farm pigs.

She attended workshops where farmers raved about Gloucestershires. The mamas attentively care for their offspring. Jess wouldn’t have to fret that the docile creatures would eat her own kids. Pigs also are the source of her favorite meats, and the breed tastes delicious. Her housemate wanted to harvest one.

It took almost 3 ½ years to name the farm after Jess and her then-husband located and purchased the property in 2016. 

She hiked it during a showing and discovered a creek and giant pile of sand in the woods that for her children could become the best sandbox ever.

What did the place encapsulate, she mused.

She chronicled life on “Yet to be Named Community Farm” across social media: Photographs of piglets wrestling in straw piles next to lip-smacking pork entrees.

Also, lessons learned.

“I like to tell people I’m a recovering perfectionist, and farming is playing a large part in that recovery,” Jess posted to Facebook. She can’t develop the perfect plan in the face of unpredictability. Farmers must embrace risk. Maybe predators will infiltrate the hen house, the ends of a fence don’t quite align or a mama will crush her litter. 

On the farm, life and death meet.

Some days, Jess can only keep the dust out of her eyes and her wounds bandaged.

Years later, the creatures living on the land still insist she take a moment to pause.

Jess once encountered a transparent monarch chrysalis. She inspected the incubating butterfly’s wings, noticing each tiny gold dot.

The farm instills a sense of wonderment.

When the idea for a name emerged, she knew.

Wonderfarm.

***

In March, a thunderstorm crashed overhead, and Jess couldn’t sleep. Clicking through her inbox at 5 a.m., she had more than five times her usual emails to sift through.

The daily stream of news from Washington grew unbearable. Murmurings that LFPA might be cancelled had been building.

President Donald Trump’s administration wasted no time throttling the civil service since he took office in January. Billionaire Elon Musk headed a newly created Department of Government Efficiency that scoured offices and grants purportedly seeking to unearth waste and fraud.

The executive branch froze payments, dissolved contracts and shuttered programs. Supporters cheered a Republican president who promised to finally drain the swamp. Detractors saw democracy and the rule of law cracking under hammer blows.

But agriculture generally gleans support from both sides of the aisle, Jess thought. Although lawmakers disagree over who may claim to be a “real” farmer versus a mere hobbyist, surely the feds wouldn’t can the program.

Like the lightning overhead, the news shocked.

LFPA “no longer effectuates agency priorities,” government officials declared in terse letters sent to states and tribes.

Its termination left Jess and hundreds of producers and recipients in a lurch. The cut coincided with ballooning demand at food banks and pantries while congressional Republicans pushed legislation to shrink food assistance programs.

LFPA is a relic of a bygone era, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in May.

She smiled as she touted the administration’s achievements and defended agency reductions before congressional appropriations subcommittees.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., pressed the secretary, asking if the department will reinstate “critical” food assistance programs. One in five Wisconsin children and one in 10 adults — often elderly, disabled or employed but struggling — are unable to or uncertain how they will obtain enough nutritious food.

“Those were COVID-era programs,” Rollins said, shaking her head. “They were never meant to go forever and ever.”

But LFPA also strengthened local food infrastructure, which withered on the vine as a few giant companies — reaching from fields to grocery aisles — came to dominate America’s agricultural sector.

The pandemic illustrated what happens when the country’s food system grinds to a halt. Who knows when the next wave will strike?

***

Nearly 300 Wisconsin producers participated in LFPA over two years. A buyer told Jess their organization could purchase up to $12,000 of pork each month — almost as much as Jess previously earned in a year.

Wisconsin’s $8 million award was among the tiniest of drops in the USDA’s billion-dollar budget. The agency’s decision seemed illogically punitive.

Only a few months earlier, Biden’s agriculture department encouraged marginalized farmers and fishers to participate so underserved communities could obtain healthy and “culturally relevant” foods like okra, bok choy and Thai chilis.

Then the Trump administration cast diversity, equity and inclusion programs as “woke” poison.

Cutting LFPA also clashes with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again initiative and his calls to ban ultra-processed foods. Farmers and distributors wondered what goods pantries would use to stock shelves instead of fresh produce. Boxed macaroni?

The aftershocks of the canceled award spread through Wisconsin’s local food distribution networks. Trucks had been rented, staff hired and hub-and-spoke routes mapped in preparation for three more years of government-backed deliveries.

For a president who touts the art of the deal, pulling the plug on an investment that neared self-sufficiency is just bad business, said Tara Turner-Roberts, manager of the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers accused the Trump administration of abandoning farmers, and Attorney General Josh Kaul recently joined 20 others suing to block grant rescissions.

Meanwhile, participants asked the agriculture department and Congress to reinstate the program. Should that fail, they implored Wisconsin legislators to fill the gap and continue to seek local solutions.

Jess is too.

***

Jess alternately texted on her cellphone and scanned a swarm of protesters who gathered across the Wisconsin State Capitol’s lawn.

She had agreed to speak before hundreds, potentially thousands, of people and was searching for an organizer.

Madison’s “Hands off!” rally reflected national unrest that ignited during the first 75 days of Trump’s term. In early April, a coalition of advocates and civil rights groups organized more than 1,300 events across every state.

Jess pulled out a USDA-branded reusable sandwich bag, which she had loaded with boiled potatoes to snack on. She and her new girlfriend joined the masses and advanced down State Street to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

A hoarse woman wearing a T-shirt covered in peace patches and a tie-dye bandana directed the marchers. She led them in a menagerie of greatest protest hits during the 30-minute walk past shops, restaurants and mixed-use high-rises.

“Money for jobs and education, not for war and corporations!” her metallic voice crackled through a megaphone. 

Trump’s administration had maligned so many communities, creating a coherent rallying cry seemed impossible. The chant leader hurriedly checked her cellphone for the next jingle in a dizzying display of outrage.

“The people, united, will never be defeated!”

“Say it loud! Say it clear! Immigrants are welcome here!”

Jess leaned into her girlfriend, linking arms as they walked. 

They ran into a friend with violet hair. Jess grinned sheepishly, trying not to think about the speech.

“You’ll be fine,” her friend said.

The chant captain bellowed. 

“Hands off everything!”

A black police cruiser flashed its emergency lights as the walk continued under overcast skies.

An hour later, Jess stood atop a cement terrace, awed by the sea of chatter, laughter and shouts that swamped the plaza.

A friend took her photo. Jess swayed to the chant of “Defund ICE!” A protester walked past, carrying a sign bearing the silhouette of Trump locking lips with Russian President Vladmir Putin.

Someone passed Jess a microphone. The crowd shouted to the heavens that “trans lives matter!” A cowbell clanged.

She grinned.

“I don’t want to slow us down,” Jess began.

She described her dilemma as the crowd listened politely. The government broke its commitments. She struggles to pay bills between unpredictable sales. Some farm chores require four working hands. 

Jess only has two.

“LFPA kind of gave me hope that I’d be able to keep doing the thing that I love,” she said.

Bystanders booed as she recounted the night of the fateful email. Jess chuckled and rocked on her foot, glad to see friends in the audience.

“The structures around us are crumbling,” she said, shrugging. “So let’s stop leaning on them. Let’s stop feeding them. Let’s grow a resilient community.”

The crowd whooped.

 ***

It’s hard for Jess to stomach meat on harvest days.

Naming an animal and later slaughtering it necessitates learning how to grieve. Jess had years to practice.

The meat processor’s truck rumbled up the farm driveway at 7 a.m. in late April.

Jess spent the previous week sorting her herd, selecting the six largest non-breeding swine. She ushered them to either side of a fence that bisected the barnyard.

It took roughly 30 minutes for the two butchers to transform a pig into pork on Jess’ farm. The transfiguration occurred somewhere between the barnyard, the metal cutting table and the cooler where the halved carcasses dangle from hooks inside the mobile slaughter unit.

The butchers unpacked their gear in the gentle morning glow. Jess carried a plastic tray of eggs, squash shavings and mango peels to the pen.

The snack helps lure anxious pigs during the harvest. It’s also a final gift for the one they are about to give.

The butchers employed an electrical stunner that resembles a pair of barbecue tongs. A coiled cord connects the contraption to a battery that releases an electric current.

When pressed to a pig’s head, the animal seizes and passes out. The butchers cut its chest before it awakens.

An hour into the harvest, Jess guided more swine from a trailer, where a cluster slept the previous night, along with a seventh little pig that wasn’t headed to the block.

A male began to urinate atop a dead female — possibly mating behavior. Jess smacked his butt to shoo him away. She regretted it. 

He bolted across the yard, grunting and sidestepping whenever Jess approached.

“Just leave him for the next round,” one of the butchers said.

Jess remembers her first on-farm slaughter years ago when a female spooked and tore through the woods. Jess kept her as a breeder.

The agitated male disappeared behind the red barn. He sniffed the air as he peeked around the corner.

The standoff lasted another hour. One of the butchers returned with a 20-gauge shotgun. He unslung it from his shoulder, then walked behind the building.

Jess turned away. She covered her ears. A rooster crowed.

The crack split the air.

The other worker hauled the pig across the barnyard, leaving a glossy wake in the dirt.

Jess crossed the pen, shoulders deflated, and stepped over the dividing fence to feed the others.

A 6-month-old trotted over to her. Jess squatted on her haunches and extended a gloved hand. 

“Are you playing?” she asked. “Is that what is happening?”

***

The May harvest never happened.

Nearly all the females were pregnant, even though they aren’t designated breeders. Jess will postpone the slaughter day for now.

She needs to decide whether to raise her spring piglets or sell them. It all depends on how quickly she can move product, but she’s leaning toward keeping them.

The pork from April’s butchering is on ice as she works her way down a list of potential buyers. She still serves people in need by selling a portion to a Madison nonprofit that distributes Farms to Families “resilience boxes.”

Jess marks the days she collects her meat from the processor. She defrosts, say, a pack of brats and heats them up for dinner. 

She celebrates her pigs.

Jess and her farming peers are planning for a world with less federal assistance.

One idea: They would staff shifts at the still-under-construction Madison Public Market, where fresh food would remain on site 40 hours a week. No more schlepping meat from cold storage to a pop-up vendor stand.

She dreams of a wholesale market where buyers place large orders. One day maybe. No government whims or purse strings.

Like seeds that sprout after a prairie burn, some institutions will survive the flames, she thinks. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be the ones in Washington. 

Those that remain will grow anew.

This story is part of a partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report for America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

Wisconsin pig farmer holds on at Wonderfarm as Washington breaks a promise is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The roof of the Hotel Verdant in Downtown Racine received federal tax credits for installing solar panels. Labor and environmental advocates are attacking the Congressional Republicans' tax cut megabill for rolling back clean energy programs enacted in the Biden administration. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

The tax cut megabill in Congress with a historic rollback on Medicaid also includes provisions reversing U.S. clean energy policies, advocates warned Wednesday, harming not only the environment but the economy.

“This legislation will kill economic growth and jobs, raise energy prices, and cede clean energy technology manufacturing to other countries,” said Carly Ebben Eaton, Wisconsin Policy Manager for the Blue Green Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups.

Eaton took part in two online news conferences Wednesday to draw attention to the federal budget reconciliation bill and its repeal of key portions of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

The budget bill has been the top priority of the Republican majority in Congress as well as the administration of President Donald Trump. It was drawn up to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term that will expire at the end of 2025.

The package returned to the U.S. House for final action after a tied vote in the U.S. Senate that required Vice President JD Vance to pass the measure on Tuesday.

Steep cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition programs have drawn the most attention during debate on the bill, along with the Congressional Budget Office finding that the wealthiest taxpayers will benefit most from its tax cuts.

The bill also includes measures that would undo several provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), one of the signature pieces of legislation enacted during President Joe Biden’s four years in office. After its passage the act was lauded by environmental advocates for provisions to address climate change by encouraging clean energy through tax credits as well as federal investments.

The House version of the GOP bill “already dealt a serious blow to clean energy tax credits and investments,” Eaton said Wednesday, “but the Senate took it even further, doubling down on cuts that will cost jobs, stall progress and raise energy costs.”

Consumer, business renewable energy incentives

The IRA’s tax breaks were designed to encourage consumers to move to energy-efficient and clean energy appliances and vehicles and encourage utilities and other businesses to increase their use of renewable resources such as solar energy and wind power.

Eaton said Wednesday that clean energy tax credits are supporting more than $8.6 billion in private investments in Wisconsin.

Garrik Harwick, assistant business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union Local 890 in Janesville, said that over the past three years more than 300 members have worked on solar projects in Southern Wisconsin. He spoke at a news conference with Eaton and several other union leaders.

The IRA tax breaks have encouraged those developments, Harwick said, and the investments have included increased apprenticeship slots, bringing in new trainees.

“These investments don’t just deliver clean energy,” Harwick added. “They create good paying union jobs that strengthen our local communities.”

He warned that repealing the tax credit will likely reduce the use of clean energy technologies and increase energy costs by 6% for homeowners and more than 9% for business customers.

The IRA’s provisions that encouraged apprenticeships helped “open doors that many didn’t even know existed,” said Andy Buck, government affairs director for the Wisconsin and Upper Michigan district of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.

He said the union has added a number of jobs, including apprentices, installing energy-efficient glass in buildings on projects that were facilitated by the Inflation Reduction Act.

“When someone enters a registered apprenticeship program, they aren’t just learning a trade,” Buck said. “They’re building a career, gaining self-respect, and finding a path to a better life.”

Another provision of the 2022 law opened up tax credits for renewable energy to nonprofit organizations and government agencies, allowing them to receive direct payments to the federal government comparable to the value they’d receive from the tax credit if they paid taxes.

A new middle school being built in Menasha will include solar panels and energy storage, said Matt VanderPuy, a business agent for the Sheet Metal workers union in Sheboygan. The direct pay program will reimburse the district $3 million, he said, while the energy savings is projected at $190,000 per year.

“This is money that they can reinvest into the students, the teachers and the school district,” while saving on property taxes, VanderPuy said.

‘Very ugly impacts,’ says advocate

At another news conference, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes observed that more than 90% of the jobs that IRA incentives helped create are in Republican congressional districts — although no Republicans in the state delegation voted for the bill. Barnes leads Forward Wisconsin, a nonprofit established during Biden’s term in the White House to inform people about the Biden administration’s infrastructure and climate investments and to defend them.

But business uncertainty this year, which Barnes blamed on GOP positions including Trump’s tariff executive orders, has led nationally to the cancellation of projects worth $15.5 billion, he said.

“The so-called big beautiful bill is going to have some very ugly impacts in Wisconsin, ripping away tax incentives for wind and solar farms, for rooftop solar, for farm sustainability programs, for clean cars and school buses,” said Amy Barrilleaux, communications director for Clean Wisconsin, at the event with Barnes. “And giving more tax breaks to big oil and gas companies does absolutely nothing to create jobs here or any opportunities here — it’s a gift to big oil at the expense of Wisconsin families and at the expense of our environment.”

Heather Allen, policy director for Elevate, an energy efficiency nonprofit, said as many as 11,000 clean energy and manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin could be at risk.

Plans for a $2.5 billion network of electric vehicle charging stations in the state have stalled, Allen said, and Wisconsin manufacturers that would have supplied components “are going to lose that opportunity now.”

“This legislation is going to strangle our solar businesses with red tape,” Allen said. “What you have here is an attack on small businesses that are delivering clean energy solutions to help families save money on their energy bills. And that includes solar installers, but it also includes other home energy contractors, other construction jobs.”

In four recent polls, a majority of those surveyed disapproved of the Republicans’  megabill — making it “more unpopular than any piece of major legislation that’s been passed since at least 1990,” Barnes said.

At the labor news conference, Emily Pritzkow, the Wisconsin Building Trades Council executive director, said advocates are urging people to contact their members of Congress.

“The polling on this is abysmal, and as long as people continue to call and deliver that message , that is what we need to do right now,” Pritzkow said. “Now is the time to weigh in, not once it’s coming to your front door, impacting you, your community, and people you care about.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it will review whether Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's lawsuit seeking to shut down a section of an aging pipeline beneath a Great Lakes channel belongs in state court.

The post US Supreme Court to decide whether shutting down Michigan pipeline is a state or federal fight appeared first on WPR.

A Green Light Metals crew hit water when it began digging a waste pit for its exploratory drilling project last week. Activists say it proves the project is occurring too close to the groundwater while the DNR and company say it's just rain water. (Photo obtained by the Wisconsin Examiner)

A Canadian mining company began work on an exploratory drilling project in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Taylor County earlier this month, triggering local concerns that the project could harm groundwater and the nearby north fork of the Yellow River as the company and state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) insist the permitting and regulatory processes are enough to keep the environment safe. 

Green Light Metals, which runs its U.S. operations out of Medford, owns the mineral rights to the Bend deposit in Taylor County, about 19 miles north of Medford, and the Reef deposit near Wausau. The Bend deposit, which has been explored before, contains copper, gold, silver and zinc. The deposit is estimated to contain more than 4 million tons of ore. If the drilling exploration is successful, it could lead to a larger underground mine. 

The start of work on the project is the beginning of the company’s efforts to expand its operations in the U.S. after it went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange earlier this year. 

“Wisconsin is open for business,” the company’s CEO Matt Filgate said on an investing focused podcast earlier this month. 

Company officials say their aim is to protect the environment while nodding to the possibility that a mine in the region could produce materials necessary for green infrastructure — mostly tellurium, a metal necessary in the construction of solar panels. 

“There are very detailed environmental review and environmental studies that are done on virtually every aspect of the surrounding environment,” Steven Donahue, a Green Light Metals board member, told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in April. “An important component of that is the water resources, but it’s also all the ecosystems. It’s the engineering of the project, it’s how the project is going to be closed and reclaimed, and how it’s going to be able to protect the environment, not only during construction and operations, but also after it’s closed. All those facets of a project would be evaluated by the state.”

Views of the project within the rural, largely conservative county — President Donald Trump won Taylor County with 73.5% of the vote last year — vary widely. Much of the county is covered by the national forest, which Juliana Reimann, a Madison resident who grew up in the county and remains a regular visitor, says is a “magnificent, breathtaking natural environment.” 

Conservative hunters and fishers in the area are concerned about the drilling project’s potential effect on those activities in the forest or on the Yellow River. Still, some community members are hopeful the mine can bring some economic benefits to the community and others are keeping a watchful eye on the project without making a conclusion. 

“Some of the people who are in our group are adamantly opposed to any mine, period,” Cathy Mauer, a member of the Friends of the Yellow River, says. “Some of us think that so far they’re trying to be careful without being naive about it because the goal is to make money for their investors.” 

“I’ve found sometimes the people from Green Light are being, I don’t think they’re lying, I think they believe it, but I don’t think they’re being realistic about the potential problems,” she adds. “I think they’re being straightforward, they’re either optimistic or aren’t being completely realistic about the potential problems. And maybe we’re imagining the worst case scenario, which we need to. It’s the worst case scenarios that cause the problems. That’s what we have to plan for.”

Some environmental activists remain much more concerned about the possible effect of the drilling operation on the local water. 

“I really have such a love for that forest, and that drilling site is right smack dab in the middle of it,” Reimann says. “The project will impact groundwater, as I see it, heavily. And of course, groundwater is critical as drinking water.”

She adds that the health of the forest is important for the community’s ability to “thrive.” 

Wisconsin was under a mining moratorium from 1997 until 2017, which required companies that wanted to mine sulfide ores such as copper and gold to prove that other mines operated and were closed for 10 years without causing pollution. While business groups lauded the law’s repeal as opening up the state to billions of dollars in investment, drilling operations in the state have yet to result in a full mine being opened. 

With the repeal gone, the DNR’s permitting process for drilling operations requires companies to obtain a license and file a notice of intent to drill, which the state can deny, approve or approve with conditions. The company must then obtain a number of permits relating to stormwater discharge, dewatering operations, endangered species and wetland preservation. Because the site is within the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service also has its own permitting process. 

The DNR’s approval of Green Light Metals’ notice of intent included nearly two dozen conditions but despite that, environmental activists remain concerned about a number of aspects of the project. 

When the company drills into the bedrock where the minerals are, the drill must go through the layers, known as the glacial overburden, above it, which requires a steel casing to keep chemicals out of the groundwater. The company obtains cuttings from the bedrock that can be tested for the metals it is looking for. After drilling is complete, the hole is filled from the bottom up with cement, which pushes up the lubricants and water used in the drilling process and flushes out the hole. 

State regulations require that the pipe used to pump in that cement be submerged the entire time so as to prevent air pockets forming. This is often done using what’s known as a tremie pipe, but Green Light Metals is instead pouring cement through the drill rods themselves, which come in 10 foot sections and therefore require that crews stop as each piece is removed — a method that activists are concerned makes the process more likely to cause pollution but DNR metallic mining coordinator Molly Gardner says is common practice. 

The materials flushed out of the drill hole as the cement rises are then put into a lined waste pit dug by the company, encased with more cement and finally covered with the topsoil. 

Activists are concerned the company will not be thorough enough to protect the environment throughout this process.

“It’s like any industrial activity, there is room for error, and if not fixed, you could have a problem,” Dave Blouin, the political chair for the Wisconsin Sierra Club, says. 

Additionally, there has been a dispute about the type of land the company is operating on. Green Light Metals says there is some wetland in the area, but not where it is drilling, while activists say much of the area is wetland, directly connecting the groundwater with the Yellow River. A recent study by the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey found that “the North Fork Yellow River and surrounding surface waters are connected to the shallow glacial aquifer.”

“The North Fork Yellow River is a river within the Chippewa Basin. Over 3,000 stream and river miles flow within the Chippewa River basin and with 156,200 acres of freshwater lakes, 22,711 acres of flowages and more than 150 acres of freshwater springs. The river basin watershed provides significant habitat, recreation, navigation and is a significant drinking water resource for northwest Wisconsin people,” Wisconsin Trout Unlimited said in a resolution opposing the Bend project. “Mining of metallic sulfide ores and minerals has a consistent proven record of surface and ground water contamination and pollution. This potential source of pollution threatens the groundwater of Taylor County and the surface waters of the Chippewa Basin watershed.”

When the company began digging the waste pit for its first drill hole last week, the crew hit water just four feet below ground, which opponents of the project say was the groundwater and proof the area is mostly wetland. 

State regulations require that waste pits for drilling “shall not be at or below the groundwater table at the time of the drilling activity and shall be constructed such that the base will remain above the normal local groundwater elevation.”

Reimann and other opponents believe the company moving forward puts the entire watershed at risk. 

“This drilling is taking place very close to the north fork of the Yellow River,” Reimann says. “It’s taking place in vast wetlands, the hydrology is such that any kind of contamination there will affect not only the Yellow River. The Yellow River flows to the Chequamegon Waters Flowage. People up there refer to it as Miller dam, that’s a very popular camping and fishing site, as well as close to the rice beds of the Ojibwe and ultimately those waters will migrate westward to the Chippewa River, to Lake Wissota and I guess ultimately to the Black River [and] to the Mississippi. You know that water doesn’t stay in one place, so it has a huge negative impact if those waters are contaminated.” 

But Gardner says those claims aren’t accurate and is confident in the department’s regulatory and inspection processes. She says the survey conducted by the company confirmed they weren’t drilling in wetlands and the water the crews found when digging the pit is just rainwater. She says the groundwater is actually 20 feet below the surface. 

The company’s wetland study was partially done as a “desk review” using maps, state data and satellite imagery. A field study by the company was conducted later, but “soils were not investigated,” and “WDNR Wetland Soils & Indicators (WSI) are prevalent across nearly the entire site,” a company memo states. 

“We’re looking at the access, we’re looking at the drilling operation, the sumps, the security, the safety, and everything that’s going on,” Gardner says. “We’re regulating, we’re inspecting that they follow their exploration plan.” 

She says that throughout the drilling process, which includes eight holes as part of the first phase and an additional 15 holes in the second phase, the DNR will have stormwater inspectors, exploration inspectors and Gardner herself on site at regular intervals and for occasional unannounced inspections. 

“It’s not common for the DNR to be able to go on site continuously with any type of construction projects,” Gardner says. “So mining and mining-related projects are allowed to have extra inspections to really ensure that things are going according to plan, because it is an important topic and it’s an important project, so we have more resources to do additional inspections for mining in relation to other types of construction projects.” 

Donahue, the company board member, says the company has been working with local officials and community members to keep them aware of what’s happening on the site and that the project will follow all “applicable regulations.” 

“The Green Light exploration team has been working diligently with the Wisconsin DNR and the U.S. Forest Service to secure all necessary permits and approvals for the exploration program,” he says. Green Light will work diligently to properly abandon the boreholes with the proper amount of cement in accordance with applicable regulations and permits.  In addition, the drill cuttings will be properly disposed by mixing the cuttings with cement in accordance with applicable regulations and permit requirements.”

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Photo by Gregory Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner

The U.S. Senate is currently working on its version of  the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—a deeply misleading attempt to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and derail America’s clean energy future.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t just political posturing. This bill, backed by fossil fuel interests and already passed in the House, would strip away the very tools Wisconsin families, businesses, farmers and communities are using to lower energy costs, create jobs and build a more resilient future. The damage to our state would be both immediate and long-term.

In Wisconsin alone, 82 clean energy projects are currently in the pipeline. These projects represent not just thousands of jobs and billions in investment — they’re the backbone of a 21st-century economy. From wind turbine manufacturing in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley to solar installations in rural communities, Wisconsinites are hard at work powering our future.

If the “Big, Broken Bill” becomes law, it threatens to cancel or delay many of these efforts. Clean energy tax credits would vanish. The Solar for All program and clean manufacturing investments would be eliminated. Tax incentives for electric vehicles, energy-efficient buildings, and sustainable agriculture would be repealed. These aren’t just policy tools — they’re direct investments in our people, places and potential. Many Wisconsin communities have used these credits to launch local projects that reduce taxpayer dollars through direct pay for solar, geothermal and clean vehicles.

And we can’t afford to go backward. Energy demand is skyrocketing — especially with the rapid expansion of AI and data centers. Experts warn electricity bills could jump by 70% in the next five years if we don’t act. Clean, renewable energy remains the cheapest and fastest option to deploy. Gutting these investments would lead to higher prices, more power interruptions and less energy reliability — leaving Wisconsin families and businesses to bear the cost.

Without these programs, household energy costs could rise by up to $400 a year. That’s a hidden tax hike on working families — piled on top of rising costs from tariffs and supply chain disruptions already straining our economy.

Even worse, the bill guts EPA pollution standards and allows major polluters to sidestep environmental compliance. It’s a taxpayer-funded giveaway to fossil fuel interests, trading our health, air and water for short-term corporate profits.

Let’s not forget Wisconsin’s farmers, who were just beginning to benefit from billions in IRA investments for conservation, renewable energy and carbon-smart agriculture. With grant contracts abruptly canceled, many family farms are left holding the bag, having made plans in good faith only to be blindsided.

We can do better. Wisconsin has the talent, tools and environmental leadership tradition to lead the clean energy economy. Clean energy already supports more than 71,000 jobs in our state. With the right investments, we could add 34,000 more and grow our economy by $21 billion by 2050.

We’re also home to over 350 clean energy supply chain companies. With support from IRA tax credits and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), we can expand local manufacturing of batteries, solar panels, wind components, EV systems and smart grid technology — positioning Wisconsin as a national clean energy hub.

This is the kind of forward-thinking, common-sense investment we need. It creates good jobs, lowers energy bills, strengthens supply chains and revitalizes communities.

The Senate still has time to act. Let’s urge our lawmakers, regardless of party, to reject this harmful bill and stand with the workers, innovators and families building a cleaner, stronger Wisconsin. Our policies should reflect our shared values of fairness, innovation, resilience and stewardship — not special treatment for polluters.

This isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about economic survival, energy independence and the future we want to leave our children.

It’s time to move forward, not backward, with a smarter stronger, and more sustainable Wisconsin.

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Reading Time: < 1 minute

Back in May, the federal agency AmeriCorps was hit hard when the Trump administration placed 85% of its staff on administrative leave, terminated nearly $400 million in federal contracts for the National Civilian Community Corps and reneged on over $550 million of congressionally approved funding for 2025. 

Actions at the federal level don’t always have immediate local impact, but in this case, organizations across Wisconsin were in shock as funding that they had been counting on suddenly disappeared. We invited people who were affected to get in touch with Wisconsin Watch video journalist Trisha Young. Within a day, she had multiple interviews lined up. 

Just as we were getting ready to publish a video with those interviews, a federal judge ruled that funding commitments for this year had to be honored for states – including Wisconsin – that had collectively sued the federal government over the AmeriCorps cuts. 

Trisha quickly got in touch with the people she’d interviewed, many of whom were still processing the news. We decided that this roller-coaster experience was a critical part of the story — or in some ways, the main story — and we reshot the interviews. 

We learned a lot from reporting this story, and we hope that viewers will consider a few questions as they watch the video: How much did you know about AmeriCorps and the programs it funds in Wisconsin? If you think these programs are doing valuable work, then how should they be funded?

You can say share your thoughts by emailing Cecilia at cdobbs@wisconsinwatch.org or Trisha at tyoung@wisconsinwatch.org.

‘Harder to rebuild than it is to destroy’: AmeriCorps regroups in Wisconsin after judge restores funding that Trump cut is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Wisconsin Supreme Court delivered a victory for environmentalists on Tuesday in the fight over “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, issuing a ruling that advocates said will hold polluters accountable.

The liberal-controlled court ruled that state regulators can force landowners to clean up emerging pollutants such as PFAS before they are officially designated as hazardous substances.

The 5-2 ruling is a defeat for the state’s powerful group representing businesses and manufacturers, which had argued the state couldn’t enforce regulations on substances before they were officially designated as hazardous.

It is the latest development in a yearslong battle in Wisconsin and nationally involving regulators, environmentalists, politicians and businesses over how to deal with PFAS contamination.

The PFAS problem

Cities large and small across Wisconsin, from Madison to Marinette and La Crosse to Wausau, are grappling with PFAS contamination.

PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of chemicals that have been around for decades and have now spread into the nation’s air, water and soil.

They were manufactured by companies such as 3M, Chemours and others because they were incredibly useful. They helped eggs slide across nonstick frying pans, ensured that firefighting foam suffocates flames and helped clothes withstand the rain and keep people dry.

The chemicals resist breaking down, however, which means they stay around in the environment and have a hard time breaking down in the body. There is a wide range of health harms now associated with exposure to certain PFAS, including low birth weight, cancer and liver disease.

The Wisconsin case

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in a case brought by the state’s largest business group, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which sued the DNR in 2021 on behalf of Leather Rich, a dry cleaning business in Oconomowoc.

Leather Rich became aware of PFAS contamination in 2018 and was working on cleaning it up when the DNR posted a message online in 2019 saying it now considered PFAS chemicals a hazardous substance. The agency ordered the dry cleaner to test its groundwater for PFAS but didn’t tell the business which compounds it needed to test for or what levels would be considered dangerous.

WMC and Leather Rich argued the DNR can’t force businesses to test and clean up contamination from emerging pollutants like PFAS without first designating them as hazardous substances. That process can take years and requires approval from the Legislature. All that time, polluters could harm the environment and put people’s health and safety at risk with no obligation to begin cleanup, the DNR argued.

But Leather Rich argued that businesses have a right to know which substances are subject to regulation before spending time and money on cleanup.

A Waukesha County judge and the state appeals court sided with Leather Rich.

The DNR appealed, saying the lower court’s ruling would neuter the state’s “spills law,” which was designed to confront pollution.

That law, enacted about 50 years ago, requires anyone who causes, possesses or controls a hazardous substance that’s been released into the environment to clean it up.

“Wisconsin’s Spills Law safeguards human health and the environment in real time by directly regulating parties responsible for a hazardous substance discharge,” Justice Janet Protasiewicz wrote for the majority.

No state law required the DNR to implement a rule before requiring Leather Rich to begin cleaning up the site, she wrote.

“The DNR has explicit authority to enforce a threshold for reporting the discharge of hazardous substances,” Protasiewicz wrote.

The court’s four liberal justices were joined by conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn in the majority. Conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented.

In the dissent, they said the ruling allows bureaucrats to “impose rules and penalties on the governed without advance notice, oversight, or deliberation. In doing so, the majority violates three first principles fundamental to preserving the rule of law — and liberty.”

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and environmental advocates hailed the decision.

“This is a historic victory for the people of Wisconsin and my administration’s fight against PFAS and other harmful contaminants that are affecting families and communities across our state,” Evers said in a statement.

Rob Lee, attorney for Midwest Environmental Advocates, called the ruling “a victory for the health and wellbeing of the people of Wisconsin” that reinforces “a bedrock environmental and public health protection that has kept Wisconsinites safe from toxic contamination for almost 50 years.”

But Scott Manley, a vice president at WMC, said the ruling leaves it up to businesses and homeowners to guess about what is hazardous, leaving them subject to “crushing fines and endless, costly litigation.”

“This ruling blesses a regulatory approach that is fundamentally unfair, unworkable, and impossible to comply with,” Manley said.

Fight over PFAS regulation

Since the lawsuit was filed, additional state and federal regulations of PFAS have been put in place.

Federal regulators placed the first-ever national standards on PFAS in drinking water last year, but the Trump administration said in May that it planned to weaken those limits.

The state has imposed less restrictive limits on PFAS in surface and drinking water, defined as piped water delivered through public systems and noncommunity systems that serve places such as factories, schools and hotels.

But it has not implemented PFAS standards for groundwater, the source of drinking water for about two-thirds of Wisconsin residents. The agency stopped efforts to draft them in 2023 after determining that compliance would be too expensive.

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.

Wisconsin Supreme Court delivers win for environmentalists in fight over ‘forever chemicals’ is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The seven members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court hear oral arguments. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

In a 5-2 ruling on Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) authority to regulate polluters who produce hazardous substances such as PFAS through the state’s toxic spills law. 

The court’s ruling reverses the decisions of the circuit and appeals courts that could have threatened the DNR’s ability to force polluters to pay for the environmental damage they cause. For more than 40 years, the spills law has allowed the DNR to bring civil charges and enforce remediation measures against parties responsible for spills of “harmful substances.” 

The lawsuit was brought by an Oconomowoc dry cleaner and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), the state’s largest business lobby, after the owner of the dry cleaner, Leather Rich Inc., found PFAS on her property. 

In preparation to sell the business, Leather Rich had been participating in a voluntary DNR program to remediate contamination on its property in exchange for a certificate of liability protection from the department. During that process, the DNR determined that PFAS should be considered a “hazardous substance” under the spills law and communicated that on its website. 

If PFAS were present on a site, the DNR stated, participants in the voluntary program would only be eligible for partial liability protection. 

While conducting a site investigation through the program, Leather Rich determined three of four wells on the property exceeded Department of Health Services standards for PFAS concentration in surface or drinking water. The DNR requested that future reports from Leather Rich to the department include the amount of PFAS found on the property. Leather Rich responded by withdrawing from the program and filing suit. 

At the circuit and appeals courts, Leather Rich was successful, with judges at each level finding that the decision by the DNR to start considering PFAS a “hazardous substance” under the spills law constituted an “unpromulgated rule” and therefore was against the law. That interpretation would have required the DNR to undergo the complicated and often yearslong process of creating an administrative rule each time it determines that a substance is harmful to people or the environment.

SpillsLawDecision

In the majority opinion, authored by Justice Janet Protasiewicz and joined by the Court’s three other liberal leaning justices and conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, the Court found that the DNR spent nearly 50 years administering the spills law responding “to about 1,000 spills each year, without promulgating rules listing substances, quantities, and concentrations that it deems ‘hazardous substances.’”

Protasiewicz wrote that when the Legislature wrote the spills law, it left the definition of “hazardous substance” intentionally open-ended but required a potentially harmful substance to meet certain criteria if it would apply under the law. 

“The definition of ‘hazardous substance’ is broad and open-ended in that it potentially applies to ‘any substance or combination of substances,’” Protasiewicz wrote. “But the definition is limited in that the substance or combination of substances must satisfy one of two fact-specific criteria.” 

She wrote that the law considers “a substance or combination of substances is ‘hazardous’ if,” its quantity, concentration or characteristics may cause or contribute to an increase in mortality or serious illness or may pose a potential hazard to human health or the environment

Leather Rich and WMC had argued that the Legislature’s failure to include chemical thresholds in the statutory text left while including the use of terms like “significantly,” “serious,” and “substantial,” meant that the law was ambiguous and therefore any DNR determinations of what counts as hazardous must be delineated in an administrative rule. They argued that under this interpretation of statute, spilling milk or beer on the ground could constitute a toxic spill. 

Protasiewicz wrote if that were the case, “then scores of Wisconsin statutes on a wide range of subjects would be called into doubt,” and that their hypotheticals are undermined by the text of the statute. 

“It is possible for an everyday substance like milk or beer to qualify as a ‘hazardous substance,’ but only if it first satisfies [the statute’s] fact specific criteria,” she wrote. “A mug of beer or a gallon of milk spilled into Lake Michigan may not ‘pose a substantial present or potential hazard to human health or the environment,’ but a 500-gallon tank of beer or milk discharged into a trout stream might well pose a substantial present hazard to the stream’s fish and environment.” 

The majority opinion also found that communications the DNR made on its website and in letters to Leather Rich counted as “guidance documents” not as rules.

Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley, who once gave a speech to WMC in which she declared to the business lobby that “I am your public servant,” wrote in a dissent joined by Chief Justice Annette Ziegler that the majority’s interpretation of the spills law left the state vulnerable to a “tyrannical” government that could both create the rules and enforce them. 

“This case is about whether the People are entitled to know what the law requires of them before the government can subject them to the regulatory wringer,” she wrote. “The majority leaves the People at the mercy of unelected bureaucrats empowered not only to enforce the rules, but to make them. Americans have lived under this unconstitutional arrangement for decades, but now, the majority says, the bureaucrats can impose rules and penalties on the governed without advance notice, oversight, or deliberation. In doing so, the majority violates three first principles fundamental to preserving the rule of law — and liberty.” 

After the decision’s release, Democrats and environmental groups celebrated its findings as an important step to protecting Wisconsin’s residents from the harmful effects of pollution. 

“This is a historic victory for the people of Wisconsin and my administration’s fight against PFAS and other harmful contaminants that are affecting families and communities across our state,” Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement. “The Supreme Court’s decision today means that polluters will not have free rein to discharge harmful contaminants like PFAS into our land, water, and air without reporting it or taking responsibility for helping clean up those contaminants. It’s a great day for Wisconsinites and the work to protect and preserve our state’s valuable natural resources for future generations.”

But WMC said the Court’s interpretation leaves businesses guessing what substances count as hazardous under the law. 

“The DNR refuses to tell the regulated community which substances must be reported under the Spills Law, yet threatens severe penalties for getting it wrong,” Scott Manley, WMC’s Executive Vice President of Government Relations, said in a statement. “Businesses and homeowners are left to guess what’s hazardous, and if they’re wrong, they face crushing fines and endless, costly litigation. This ruling blesses a regulatory approach that is fundamentally unfair, unworkable, and impossible to comply with.”

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Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a revolutionary new tool that uses artificial intelligence to scan satellite images and quickly detect wildfires is set to run out at the end of this month due to delayed federal funding.

The post Delayed federal funding will halt work in Wisconsin on new wildfire detection tool appeared first on WPR.

As the federal government resumes its collections for student loan debts, the head of a Wisconsin student debt help group says there are ways to manage repayments. 

The post Wisconsin student loan borrowers could now face debt collection appeared first on WPR.

The clock is ticking for Wisconsin homeowners who want to take advantage of tax credits for clean energy and home energy efficiency as Republicans in Congress seek to phase out those incentives.

The post Time is running out for Wisconsin homeowners to make use of home energy tax credits appeared first on WPR.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

For Pepper Roberts, running a successful farm comes down to managing risk and planning for potential challenges.

While other farmers sold their crops last fall, Roberts used grain bins to store half of his corn harvest, betting that he’d get a better price once corn supplies grew scarce. 

In January, Roberts sold the corn at an inflated rate, which helped cover bills left over from last year. The funds also provided a financial buffer for the current growing season.

“The Good Lord blessed me,” said Roberts, who grows soybeans, cotton, corn and other grains on a 6,250-acre farm in Belzoni, Mississippi. “There’s opportunities out there for (every farm) — it doesn’t matter what size.”

Like many other farmers, Roberts is now preparing for a year of uncertainty and tight margins. Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has enacted sweeping tariffs on imported goods, igniting trade disputes and disrupting global markets. Farmers were already facing high input costs and falling crop prices entering 2025, and many relied on government aid to offset losses last year.

Despite these headwinds, however, Roberts steadfastly supports the tariffs.

“In the long run, it’s going to be the best thing that ever happened,” he said, predicting that the levies will pressure trade partners like China to negotiate new purchasing agreements with the U.S.

Roberts is not alone. Though there’s been plenty of backlash from the agricultural sector, Trump’s tariffs have also drawn support from a subset of farmers, who see them as a means of regaining an edge in an increasingly competitive global economy.

A May survey of 400 U.S. producers found that 70% believe the tariffs will strengthen their industry in the long term. The same poll found that just 43% of respondents think the levies will hurt their earnings this year, down from 56% a month earlier. Respondents were based around the country and ran operations that grossed above $500,000 annually, according to the survey authors.

Much of this support reflects the belief that the tariffs will lead to better trade deals for American farmers. China is a top destination for U.S. agricultural exports like soybeans, and getting it to buy a set amount of crops each year would guarantee a market for producers without the threat of competition, one economist explained. That certainty, in turn, would stabilize commodity crop prices.

A new trade deal with China “locks in a source of demand” for U.S. farm products, said Will Maples, a professor at Mississippi State University’s Department of Agricultural Economics.

That guaranteed demand is essential for the 10 states bordering the Mississippi River, where agriculture exports collectively surpassed $57 billion in 2023. Though some Mississippi farmers worried the tariffs could backfire and worsen market conditions, others said they would be willing to weather a difficult year or two for increased trade opportunities down the road.

“Coming into all of this, we were already facing a downturn in the ag economy,” Maples said. “(If) you think about … Trump’s base, most of these guys probably voted for him. So it seems like they are willing to give him (the) benefit of the doubt in the short term.”

A high-stakes gamble

Trump’s trade war has proven divisive for American farmers — a group that overwhelmingly backed the president during last year’s election, according to a county-level analysis by Investigate Midwest.

When the White House imposed tariffs on most foreign imports earlier this year — including a staggering 145% tax on Chinese goods — many farmers and trade groups sounded the alarm, warning that the levies would raise supply costs domestically and threaten U.S. crop sales overseas. China retaliated with its own tariffs throughout the spring, though both countries have since scaled back their steepest duties.

In May, a federal court declared many of the president’s tariffs illegal. A separate court allowed them to remain in place while the administration appeals the decision.

As of June 11, the U.S. and China have reportedly reached a tentative accord to deescalate their trade dispute without inking a significant deal. According to the New York Times, some tariffs will remain in place on both sides.   

As the administration continues to adjust the size and scope of its levies, the agricultural sector has already sustained losses. China has canceled mass shipments of American farm products, and industry groups warn that a lengthy trade dispute could further reduce demand for U.S. exports.

China has been steadily developing agricultural markets in other parts of the world, primarily Brazil, explained Mike McCormick, president of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation. 

“They’re developing a lot of farmland there, and (China is) buying a lot of their products,” McCormick said. 

Of particular concern to McCormick is China’s growing reliance on Brazilian soybeans, which are used as livestock feed. Soybeans remain the United States’ largest agricultural export to China, and they’re mostly grown around the Mississippi River Basin, with Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota accounting for nearly 40% of the nation’s total production in 2022. But Brazil has dominated China’s soybean import market for more than a decade.

Should Chinese demand for soybeans increase amid a prolonged trade standoff with the U.S., experts say Brazil is uniquely positioned to fill that void.

“Brazil could convert an additional 70 million acres of pasture land into crop production without knocking down a single acre of forest,” said Joe Janzen, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. That’s over 80% of the total soybean acreage grown in the U.S. last year.

Proponents of Trump’s trade policies hope the tariffs will bring China back to the negotiating table, culminating in a trade deal similar to the one announced during the president’s first term.

In January 2020, Trump and China inked an agreement that called for China to purchase $80 billion in U.S. agricultural products through 2022. Crop prices soared in the next two years, though Maples at MSU stressed that market forces beyond the agreement — namely higher global spending in the latter stages of the pandemic — contributed to the increases.

The problem with Trump’s more expansive and erratic tariff strategy this time is that it risks alienating trade partners and further destabilizing markets, which in turn would drive down crop prices, Maples explained. Farmers base yearly planting decisions on what they can reasonably expect to earn for each crop, and the president’s on-again, off-again tariffs have made these projections significantly more tenuous.

“You can’t plan well when there’s so much uncertainty,” said Maples. “As long as we keep dealing with this, it’s going to be hard for prices to recover.”

Planning for pain

Roberts plans on sticking to his usual crop rotation this year despite the tariff-fueled uncertainty. The rotation has “paid for itself” in past years, he said, and he’s hoping to squeeze enough profit out of this year’s cycle to balance out expenses. He also has some savings from past years to fall back on if things go south.

“You can’t hit a grand slam every year,” Roberts said. “We all want the biggest profit we can ever make, but when I cross (the) break-even point, I’m ready to lock something in.”

Other farmers are more bearish about their prospects this season. In Clarksdale, Mississippi, Cliff Heaton has struggled to keep up with ballooning production costs on his 15,000-acre farm, where he grows cotton, corn, soybeans and other grains. Consecutive years of falling crop prices on top of high input costs created a perfect storm for Heaton, who suffered record losses in 2024. “I lost more money last year than I’ve lost in my entire life put together,” he said. “And it looks like this year’s heading in the same direction.”

Heaton said he supports the goal of securing better trade deals for U.S. producers, but he worries farmers may not survive the tariffs and their financial fallout without ample government assistance. He says recent market conditions have forced some of his friends to give up farming, and he’s considering a 40% reduction in operations if conditions don’t improve by harvest time.

“Inflation is taking its toll on us in our industry, and we’re not seeing (improvements) on our sales side,” said Heaton. He says particularly for products without a significant domestic market, like cotton, “as long as we’re dependent on selling into a world market … we need help.”

On March 18, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that her agency would distribute up to $10 billion in subsidies to help farmers bounce back from 2024. The funds, authorized by Congress at the end of last year, have helped Mississippi farmers reduce outstanding debts and secure crop loans for the current growing season, according to McCormick.

As Trump fights to preserve his tariffs in court, McCormick said his members may be willing to “stand a little bit of pain” if the trade dispute leads to new markets. “We just gotta hope that we can get better deals and … a quick resolution,” he said.

Maples worries that pain could prove too great for some local producers, especially those who are new to the industry and lack the capital to withstand an extended tariff onslaught. The trade dispute could fast-track retirement plans for some older farmers in the state, he added.

These farm closures would have ripple effects across entire communities, affecting people and companies that rely on their business, Maples concluded.

“A bad farm economy hurts rural America at the end of the day,” he said.

Nick Judin contributed reporting.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

Trump’s tariffs are hurting US agriculture. Some farmers support them anyway. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Scott Johnson, the founder and director of the Low Technology Institute, visited WPR's “The Larry Meiller Show” to talk about how he's bringing the methods of the past into the future.

The post The lowdown on the Low Technology Institute appeared first on WPR.

More than 250 lake districts manage water quality, boat safety and habitat restoration.
The Little Green Lake Protection and Rehabilitation District details a new boating ordinance, and the new Callahan Mud Lake District details a need for a dam reconstruction.

The post Wisconsin’s 250 lake districts implement boating ordinances, manage water quality and habitat restoration appeared first on WPR.

President Donald Trump signs a Congressional Review Act resolution Thursday, with congressional Republicans looking on. Left to right are Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Rep. John Joyce of Pennsylvania, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, Rep. John James of Michigan, House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. (Screeenshot from White House webcast)

President Donald Trump signed a Congressional Review Act resolution Thursday that revokes California’s authority to set tailpipe emissions standards, upending policy in California and 17 other states that tie their standards to that of the Golden State.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Democratic attorneys general in 10 other states immediately sued to block enforcement of the law. Through a process that allows Congress to undo recent executive branch rules, the law repeals a U.S. Environmental Protection Act waiver allowing California to set a schedule for emissions standards for cars and trucks.

Trump signed two other resolutions that repeal the state’s authority to ban sales of new gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035 and to regulate emissions on heavy trucks.

At a White House signing ceremony, Trump said the law would allow greater consumer choice and lead to less expensive vehicles.

“Your cars are going to cost you $3,000, $4,000 less and you’re going to have what you want,” he said. “Again, you can get any car you want.”

Simple majority vote

The procedure used to pass the law was controversial because of the use of the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, which allows a simple majority vote in the U.S. Senate instead of the chamber’s usual 60-vote threshold.

Both the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the EPA waiver was not a rule and that the CRA could not be used. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune used the procedure anyway, and the measure passed 51-46.

The states suing over the law argued that process was illegal, saying that the CRA was “deemed inapplicable by every nonpartisan arbiter and expert who analyzed the question.”

“While all fifty States consented—through their Senators—to these expedited procedures for congressional disapproval of federal rules, no State consented to the CRA as a means for Congress to negate state rules,” the Democratic attorneys general wrote. “Nor would any State have done so.”

The states joining California in the lawsuit are Colorado, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Vermont and Washington.

Clean Air Act

The federal Clean Air Act of 1970 generally prohibits states from setting their own air quality standards. But a section of the bedrock environmental law allows California, which had stringent environmental standards at the time the federal law was passed, to set its own standards.

While the other 49 states may not set their own standards, any state can adopt California’s standards as its own.

That means the law Trump signed Thursday has effects far beyond California’s borders, which the president noted.

“The federal government gave left-wing radicals in California dictatorial powers to control the future of the entire car industry, all over the country, all over the world, actually,” he said.

The law, which both chambers of Congress passed last month, applies to 17 states that follow California standards. In addition to those suing, those states are Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Rep. Tony Kurtz testifies on his proposed legislation to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Organizations representing wildlife, land conservation and local governments testified Wednesday at a public hearing to push for the passage of a Republican bill to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program while advocating for a number of amendments to the bill’s text. 

The proposal’s authors, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), say the current version of the bill is a starting point for negotiations. Without a deal, the 35-year-old program will lapse despite its popularity among voters. 

The challenge for legislators is that despite overwhelming public support for land conservation, a subset of the Republican members of the Legislature have grown opposed to the grant program. In their view, the grant program allows land to be taken off the local property tax roll and blocks  commercial development. 

That opposition has grown stronger since the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision last year that the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee’s authority to place anonymous holds on stewardship grant projects is unconstitutional. 

Kurtz has said that without returning some level of legislative oversight, the Republican opposition to the program won’t get on board with reauthorizing it. But the bill also needs to be palatable to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers so that he will sign it and any Republican opposition to the bill could make the votes of Democratic legislators more important. 

In an effort to recruit  Republican holdouts, the bill includes a provision that requires the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to submit a list to the Legislature each January of any major land acquisitions costing more than $1 million the department plans to purchase with stewardship funds that year. The Legislature would then need to approve each proposed project in a piece of legislation and provide the required appropriation. 

To gain the support of environmental groups, the bill allows stewardship dollars to be used for the first time to fund habitat restoration projects. 

Following a recent trend of Republican-authored legislation, the bill separates the policy changes to the program from the budget appropriation to fund it in an attempt to sidestep Evers’ partial veto pen. 

Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives at non-profit land trust organization Gathering Waters, said in his testimony at the hearing Wednesday that the bill’s authors had to “try and thread a challenging political path towards reauthorization.” 

At the hearing, testifying members of the public mainly highlighted two areas for improvement on the bill — clarifying how the DNR should prioritize habitat restoration, facility upkeep and land acquisition in award grants and more clearly laying out how the legislative approval process for major land acquisitions will work. 

As currently written, the bill would require the DNR to prioritize property development over land acquisition projects. 

Brian Vigue, freshwater policy director for Audubon Great Lakes, said those types of grants are so different that they should be considered separately. 

“Because habitat management projects are so different from land acquisition projects, it really will make it difficult for the DNR to determine which of the two types of grant applications would have priority over the other,” he said. “It’s kind of an apples to oranges comparison to make so I think a practical solution to this challenge is to create a separate appropriation for wildlife habitat grants.” 

A number of organizations testifying called for more direct language outlining how the legislative oversight process will work, such as binding timelines for when the Legislature must consider the projects on the DNR list, clear guidelines for how projects will be evaluated and quickly held votes on project approval. 

Representatives of organizations that work to purchase private land and conserve it through conservation easements or deals with the state said that the opportunities to purchase a piece of land and save it for future enjoyment by the broader public come rarely and that those real estate transactions can often be complicated and take a long time. If a deal is largely in place except for the required legislative approval — which could potentially take years or never even come up for a vote — landowners might be unwilling to participate in the process. 

“Opportunities to provide such access sometimes only come once in a generation,” said Tony Abate, conservation director at Groundswell Conservancy, a non-profit aimed at conserving land in south central Wisconsin. “We are concerned with the funding threshold and the logistics of the proposed major land acquisition program. Real estate near population centers is expensive, and we often compete with non-conservation buyers to secure farmland or recreational lands.”

Abate said that of the conservancy’s 16 current projects, four would surpass the $1 million threshold and require legislative approval. He suggested raising the threshold to $5 million.

Carlin, with Gathering Waters, said the provision as currently written could indefinitely delay projects. 

“We appreciate legislators’ concerns with oversight, and we welcome discussion about how to provide effective and efficient oversight,” he said. “Unfortunately, the current proposal lacks defined timelines, transparent evaluation processes or mechanisms to require timely votes. Without these elements, worthy conservation projects could languish indefinitely. So we would ask that any review process include binding timelines, transparent project evaluation and timely votes to ensure strong oversight while maintaining predictability for applicants.”

At the hearing, members of the committee asked few questions of the testifying groups and members of the public. Democrats on the committee pushed more than once to make sure they see the partner bill providing the money for the program before voting on the policy changes. 

All of the testimony at the hearing Wednesday was either to provide information only to the legislators or in favor of the bill. The committee received one written comment against the bill’s passage, from the Wisconsin Bear Hunters’ Association.

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Republicans on the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee rejected a funding request from the City of Ashland to build a new boat launch at Kreher Park. (City of Ashland)

A pair of Republican lawmakers has introduced legislation that would re-authorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, a popular program that allows the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to fund the purchase of public land and the upkeep of recreational areas. 

The decades-old program is set to expire next year and despite its bipartisan support among the state’s voters, a subset of Republicans in the Legislature — largely from the northern part of the state — have become increasingly opposed to the program due to concerns that it stops land from being developed for commercial activities. 

Until a 6-1 decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court last summer, members of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee had the ability to place anonymous holds on proposed grants through the program, which resulted in many projects being delayed or prevented altogether. Without that ability, Republicans who were already wary of the program became more opposed because of what they characterize as a lack of legislative oversight. Proponents of the program say the Legislature exercises oversight through the budget writing process when it allocates funding for the program. 

In recent years, the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program has received $33 million annually in the state budget. In his budget request this year, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed re-authorizing the program with a $100 million annual budget. Republicans stripped that provision out of the budget along with most of Evers’ other proposals. 

Last week, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) introduced a bill that would keep the program alive with $28 million in annual funding. The bill would also create a major land acquisitions program for stewardship grant awards which would require the DNR to annually submit a list of all its proposed land acquisitions costing more than $1 million for that year. 

Those acquisitions would need to be approved by votes of the full Legislature. 

Additionally, the bill would create a sub-program to use stewardship grant funds for habitat restoration projects, require the DNR to prioritize projects that develop already existing public lands over new land acquisition, require local governments to match 20% of the state funding, get rid of the current 10-acre minimum size requirement and limit the state’s contribution to 40% of the total cost if the sale of a piece of land is already closed when stewardship funds are applied for. 

In a co-sponsorship memo, Kurtz and Testin, who did not respond to requests for an interview about the bill, said the initial proposal is meant to be the start of negotiations, not the final version of the bill. 

“It’s important to note what we’re proposing is not an agreed upon deal,” the memo states. “It’s a first offer to provide a starting place for negotiations on this important program. It’s very likely the bill will continue to change during the legislative process, but it’s important to put something forward to allow feedback, have open-minded conversations and ultimately find a good place to ensure the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program’s legacy continues.” 

At a meeting with the Wisconsin chapter of the Audubon Society in April, Kurtz said the program was on “life support” and he was trying to save it from dying but any bill would need to put some oversight on the DNR in order to receive enough Republican support. 

The opposition to the stewardship program from a subset of the Republican caucus in both chambers means the bill might require Democratic votes to pass the Legislature and reach Evers’ desk. 

Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) has spent months pushing for the program’s reauthorization – often pointing to a stewardship grant project in her district that was subjected to an anonymous hold, the Cedar Gorge Clay Bluffs on Lake Michigan. She said the hold on that project angered a lot of her constituents of both parties. 

“That really got people upset,” she told the Wisconsin Examiner. “People would not at all want to see a reenactment in any fashion of that anonymous objection process.” 

Habush Sinykin said that she’s closely watching the bill to make sure it protects a program that enjoys wide support outside of the Capitol building and will stir up significant opposition if it’s allowed to die. 

“Once people understand that this program is at risk, they are coming forward to express their opposition to any permanent damage to the program,” she said. “And so what we are engaged in right now is this process to keep it going forward, and there is going to be ongoing negotiation, because the devil is in the details. We need to make sure that what is one step forward will not ultimately be two steps backward.” 

Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives for Gathering Waters, a non-profit aimed at land conservation across Wisconsin, said that Kurtz and Testin should be credited for working to get the conversation started and provisions in the bill like the habitat restoration program. But he added that there are still a lot of questions about how provisions such as the requirement for legislative approval will work. 

“I think part of what they are trying to balance here is a recognition that this is an incredibly popular program with voters, while trying to balance that against the fact that there are a handful of legislators who are deeply skeptical of the DNR and deeply skeptical of additional investments in conservation,” he said. “So I see that major land acquisitions component as a way for them to try and balance those competing interests. The way that that major land acquisitions program is currently described in the bill just leaves a lot of question marks.”  

The bill is set to receive a public hearing in the Assembly Committee on Forestry, Parks and Outdoor Recreation Wednesday at 11 a.m.

Wisconsin might lose federal funding that supports state staff working to keep air, water and lands clean under proposed budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The post Wisconsin might have to pick up tab to retain pollution protections under proposed budget cuts to EPA appeared first on WPR.

Anti-Line 5 graffiti at Enbridge’s pumping station in Mackinaw City, Mich. (Laina G. Stebbins | Michigan Advance)

Canadian energy company Enbridge’s Line 5 traverses an extremely sensitive ecological area across northern Wisconsin, 400 rivers and streams as well as a myriad of wetlands, in addition to a path under the Mackinac Straights between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, all the while skirting the southern shore of Lake Superior. Such close proximity to the Great Lakes, lakes that hold over 20% of the world’s fresh surface water, lakes that supply drinking water to nearly 40 million people, yes, that does indeed make Line 5 a ticking time bomb.

Northern Wisconsin is also a very culturally sensitive area, home to the Bad River Reservation. The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa were guaranteed rights to their lands by an 1854 treaty with the U.S. government. The easements for Line 5 across the reservation, granted to Enbridge by the Chippewa, expired in 2013 and the Bad River Band chose not to renew them. Enbridge continues to operate the line, illegally and in direct violation of the Bad River Band’s right to sovereignty over their land.

The Bad River Band has a guaranteed legal right to their land. They also have a right to Food Sovereignty, the internationally recognized right of food providers to have control over their land, seeds and water while rejecting the privatization of natural resources. Line 5 clearly impinges on the Band’s right to hunt, fish, harvest wild rice, to farm and have access to safe drinking water.

A federal court ruled that Enbridge has been trespassing on lands of the Bad River Band since 2013 and ordered the company to cease operations of Line 5 by June of 2026 (seems that immediate cessation would make more sense), but rather than shut down the aging line, Enbridge plans to build a diversion around the Bad River Reservation. They plan to move the pipeline out of the Bad River Band’s front yard into their back yard, leaving 100% of the threats to people and the environment in place.

Liquid petroleum (crude oil, natural gas and petroleum product) pipelines are big business in the U.S. With 2.6 million miles of oil and gas pipelines, the U.S. network is the largest in the world. If we continue our heavy and growing dependence on liquid fossil fuels, we must realize that we will continue to negatively impact the climate and the lives of everyone on the planet. 

Instead of moving to a just transition away from fossil fuels, liquid or otherwise, the government continues to subsidize the industry through direct payments and tax breaks, refusing to acknowledge the cost of pollution-related health problems and environmental damage, a cost which is of course, incalculable. 

There are nearly 20,000 miles of pipelines planned or currently under construction in the U.S., thus it would appear that government and private industry are in no hurry to break that addiction, much less make a just transition. While no previous administration was in any hurry to break with the fossil fuel industry, they at least gave the illusion of championing a transition to cleaner energy. 

The current administration is abundantly clear. Their strategy is having no strategy. They don’t like wind and solar and they plan to end any support for renewable energy. They don’t care if they upend global markets, banking, energy companies or certainly any efforts to help developing countries transition away from fossil fuels.

Pipelines are everywhere across the U.S., a spiderweb connecting wells, refineries, transportation and distribution centers. The vast majority of pipelines are buried and many, if not all, at some point cross streams, rivers, lakes and run over aquifers. Pipeline ruptures and other assorted failures will continue and spillage will find its way into the bodies of water they skirt around or pass under. It’s not a question if they will leak, but when.

Enbridge controls the largest network of petroleum pipelines in the Great Lakes states, and they are hardly immune to spills. Between 1999 and 2013 it was reported that Enbridge had over 1,000 spills dumping a reported 7.4 million gallons of oil.

In 2010  Enbridge’s Line 6B ruptured and contaminated the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. Over 1.2 million gallons of oil were recovered from the river between 2010 and 2014. How much went downstream or was buried in sediment, we’ll never know.

In 2024 a fault in Enbridge Line 6 caused a spill of 70 thousand gallons near Cambridge Wisconsin. And Enbridge’s most infamous pipeline, the 71-year-old Line 5 from Superior Wisconsin to Sarnia Ontario, has had 29 spills in the last 50 years, loosing over 1 million gallons of oil.

Some consider Line 5 to be a “public good” because, as Enbridge argues, shutting the line down will shut down the U.S. economy and people will not be able to afford to heat their homes — claims they have never supported with any evidence. A public good is one that everyone can use, that everyone can benefit from. A public good is not, as Enbridge apparently believes, a mechanism for corporate profit.

Line 5 is a privately owned property, existing only to generate profits for Enbridge. If it were a public good, Enbridge would certainly be giving more attention to the rights of the Bad River Band, the well-being of all the people who depend on the clean waters of the Great Lakes and to protecting the sensitive environment of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. They are not. Their trespassing, their disregard for the environment, their continuing legal efforts to protect their bottom line above all else, only points to their self-serving avarice.

The Bad River Band wants Enbridge out, and in their eyes it is not a case of “not in my back yard” they do not want Line 5 in anyone’s back yard. 

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The prairie chicken of central Wisconsin is an elusive grouse that is rarely seen, and its conservation efforts are connected to Aldo Leopold. But over the past 70 years, the prairie chicken population has steeply declined.

The post Preserving Wisconsin’s elusive prairie chicken, whose population has steeply declined appeared first on WPR.