Gov. Tony Evers signed the budget, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 15, at 1:32 a.m. in his office Thursday, less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The budget that Governor Tony Evers recently signed was a missed opportunity for Wisconsin. It’s also a cautionary tale about the consequences of a Democratic leadership style that cedes power and demobilizes the public in the face of an increasingly authoritarian opponent.

During the budget process, Wisconsin Democrats had more leverage than they have had since the 2000s, holding the governorship and, due to fairer maps and GOP divisions, the deciding votes in the state Senate. Combined with an unusual state budget surplus made possible by Biden-era policies, and the striking unpopularity of the GOP’s budget stands on the big issues, this was a golden opportunity to start to undo the damage wrought by Republicans during the administration of former Gov. Scott Walker. This budget could have begun to reverse Wisconsin’s long term disinvestment in public education and local government services, expand BadgerCare, start to address the affordability crisis in child care, housing, home energy, and health care, and build a buffer against a coming tsunami of slashing cuts from President Donald Trump’s Big Ugly Bill.

But rather than marshalling all the power at his disposal to achieve progress on at least some of these objectives, the Governor gave away his leverage by not bringing Senate Democrats into negotiations until the very end, and then signing off on a concessionary bargain without a public fight, even whipping Democratic votes to support the disappointing deal. 

Despite improved leverage, Evers followed the script of his first three budgets. In 2019, facing a gerrymandered supermajority, Evers appeared to have a fighting spirit. I was there with dozens of Citizen Action members when he seemed to throw down the gauntlet, memorably declaring days after Republicans removed BadgerCare Expansion from the budget: “I’m going to fight like hell.” Democratic legislators and advocacy groups were blindsided when he suddenly backed down.

The governor and his team are spinning the latest deal as the kind of bipartisan compromise necessary under divided rule in a purple state, hoping that voters will not read the fine print. Republicans were right to brag during the floor debate that the one-sided deal was much closer to their priorities than the ultra moderate blueprint Evers proposed. 

The budget lowlights include the first $0 increase in general school aid in decades. (after inflation, that amounts to a real dollar cut in state support for public schools contrasted with yet another large increase for unaccountable voucher schools); a cut in support for child care in the midst of an affordability and access crisis; a $0 increase for mass transit at a time the state’s largest transit system is facing service cuts; and $1.5 billion on regressive tax giveaway which, according to a Kids Forward analysis of the original legislation, funnels nearly 60% of the benefit to the wealthiest households, and a miniscule proportion to Black and Latino families. It contains a huge giveaway to the hospital industry, the Capitol’s most powerful lobby, with no requirements to reduce cost and increase access for patients, or keep facilities open in underserved areas, while missing yet another opportunity to expand BadgerCare in the last year Wisconsin can secure the full financial benefit of 95% federal funding.

After Evers’ second budget surrender in 2021, I wrote a column for the Wisconsin Examiner arguing that hand-wringing over the leadership of establishment Democrats like Evers is counterproductive because it deflects responsibilities away from grassroots progressives for not building enough power to force their hand. As Shakespeare put it in Julius Caesar, “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” 

This year, the reaction from the organized grassroots was dramatically different. For the first time organizing groups and education unions, representing tens of thousands of Wisconsinites, publicly campaigned for the governor to fight by wielding his potent veto power and appealing over the heads of the Legislature to the public. As Ruth Conniff reported for the Wisconsin Examiner, at a joint lobby day in late May a raucous crowd filled the hallway at the State Capitol leading to the governor’s office to deliver a letter demanding that he veto any budget that did not meet minimum standards on education, health care, child care and criminal justice. In the weeks leading up to the deal, grassroots leaders kept the pressure on. 

The governor’s concessionary bargain also divided his own party. Dozens of rank and file Democrats at the party convention wore stickers urging Evers to veto a bad budget. A striking number of progressive state legislators spoke out against the budget deal, and despite the administration using the power and resources of the governor’s office to whip votes, 80% of Democratic legislators rejected a budget Evers touts as a victory.

The reaction against Evers’ refusal to fight is parallel to the growing frustration with the failure of national Democratic leaders to adjust their leadership to the authoritarian situation. The critique of establishment Democrats focuses on two dimensions: their willingness to cede power to authoritarians, and their lack of appreciation of the increasingly important role of mass public organization and mobilization as traditional inside levers of power lose their effectiveness. 

The Republicans began shredding the 20th century governing norms well before the rise of Trump. The national GOP has steadily devolved from the conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan to the Newt Gingrich insurgency, the Tea Party, Mitch McConnell’s power grabs during the administration of President Barack  Obama, and finally MAGA, into an authoritarian populist movement seeking to totalize its grip on power by erasing what remains of the checks and balances of the liberal constitutional order.

Wisconsin’s GOP has followed a parallel path towards authoritarianism, including voter suppression laws targeting Democratic constituencies, the scuttling of settled law by a former Republican-backed majority on the Wisconsin  Supreme Court to legally sanitize Walker’s gross violations of campaign finance laws, a lame duck session stripping Evers of powers, and the unprecedented refusal to confirm the governor’s appointments to cabinet positions and state boards so they can be fired at will by the Legislature. Wisconsin did not meet the accepted political science definitions of democracy in its lawmaking branch of government from 2012-2024 because of a partisan gerrymander so severe that, as in Viktor Orbán’s Hungry, one party was guaranteed victory. 

In the face of the  onslaught in the second Trump administration, establishment Democrats at the national level are violating historian Timothy Snyder’s well-known first lesson in fighting authoritarianism: Do not freely cede power by obeying in advance. Emblematic was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to supply the votes needed to keep the government open. Schumer ratified many of Trump’s illegal cancellations of programs without the consent of Congress, arguing that in a shutdown he would have even more power to ransack federal agencies. In effect, Trump and his allies took the government hostage, reaping the rewards of their own lawlessness. 

Evers also rewards his opposition for the damage they are willing to inflict on the body politic, wrapping appeasement in the tinsel of a mythic bipartisanship which borders on delusional in the face of an increasingly authoritarian GOP. Evers has long argued that using his power to veto a bad budget, or force an impasse to mobilize public opposition, would empower Republicans to do worse damage by “going back to base.” The “base,” in Wisconsin budget-ese, is the last state budget, which would, factoring inflation, constitute a massive cut in all state programs. By Evers’ logic, a bad deal is better than no deal.

The second lesson in an authoritarian situation violated by the likes of Schumer and Evers is the necessity of empowering mass mobilization. There is an overwhelming consensus among democracy scholars that resistance to authoritarians requires the large-scale and sustained marshalling of the power of the public. An impressive body of political science research documents that large scale peaceful nonviolent resistance movements are the most effective vehicles for overturning authoritarian regimes.

This populist orientation is not entirely new. In the early 20th century Wisconsin’s progressive Gov. Fighting Bob La Follette and Progressive Era presidents mobilized the public to break the stranglehold of the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age, winning the power to enact major reform.

The lesson also applies to the liminal status of the U.S., somewhere between healthy democracy and autocracy, where traditional levers of power are losing their effectiveness, and large-scale popular resistance is an essential power to slow and ultimately reverse the authoritarian advance.

In this light, the problem with Evers’ approach to governing is that by making it entirely an inside game of bargaining with the Legislature, he freely gives away power, cutting out civil society groups that want to mobilize on behalf of his agenda and denying the public clear rallying points for exerting pressure on the process. This leadership style also erodes democracy by failing to deliver for average people, building an audience for authoritarian scapegoating of marginalized people and fake solutions.

If Evers had established a clear bottom line in the budget process on popular issues like public education and health care, and used both his veto power and the need for Democratic votes in the Senate to block a budget that did not include them, then he would have been in a position to work with grassroots groups and use his bully pulpit to rally public opinion against his opponents ahead of an election where control of the Legislature is in play, exerting tremendous pressure. Instead the public is left with no clear understanding of why they still can’t afford health care and child care, and why more schools are closing or cutting vital academic programs, as property taxes skyrocket to pay for less and less.

Despite these catastrophic failures in leadership, the future of multiracial democracy does not depend on Evers or other Democrats. It depends on  us. Political parties and social movements make leaders, not the other way around. Grassroots organizing groups and education unions made progress this budget cycle, but we need more people to join and commit, and greater investments in organizing, to win a more progressive Wisconsin. The national resistance to Trump, as measured by the number of people coming to rallies, is gaining steam, but that does not mean we are winning. The history of mass resistance shows that large scale mobilizations lose momentum over time unless enough people actively participate in permanent community-rooted organizing groups that demand bold and transformational leadership. The beating heart of democracy is direct personal engagement in cause-driven voluntary groups. In the end, it’s up to all of us.

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Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Prairie du Chien) speaks at a hearing in the House of Representatives. Van Orden claims to have engineered the Wisconsin State budget deal that mitigated the Medicaid cuts he voted for. | Screenshot via Youtube

Success has many fathers, but U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden is not one of them. Contrary to Van Orden’s triumphant tweets, he did not “secure” $1 billion for rural health care in Wisconsin. He had nothing to do with the bipartisan state budget deal that was drafted and rushed to completion in order to capture those funds — which, by the way, represent just a fraction of the billions the state stands to lose in Medicaid funds under the Republican mega bill Van Orden approved.

What Van Orden did do was vote to cut Medicaid and Affordable Care Act health insurance, with the result that tens of thousands of rural Wisconsinites now face losing their health care coverage and several rural Wisconsin hospitals are in danger of closing. As he prepared to join the narrow, four-vote majority that passed the disastrous federal bill, Van Orden sent some last-minute messages to Gov. Tony Evers urging him to hurry up and sign the deal Evers had already reached with state legislators. Now Van Orden is taking credit for Wisconsin leaders’ work mitigating the harm he caused. It would be laughable if the consequences were not so dire. 

For months, Evers and leaders of the Wisconsin Legislature met behind closed doors to hammer out a deal, even as massive federal cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and other programs essential to the wellbeing of Wisconsinites loomed. Among the issues Evers and legislative leaders agreed on was the importance of getting the budget done before the federal mega bill was signed, so the state could still qualify for $1 billion in soon-to-expire Medicaid matching funds. 

Evers signed the budget in the nick of time last week, at 1:30 a.m. on July 3, just before the U.S. Congress granted President Donald Trump’s wish and sent him his “big beautiful bill” to sign on July 4. 

Van Orden immediately began taking credit for both budgets.

“I just helped secure $1,000,000,000 a year for BadgerCare and $500,000,000 for rural healthcare infrastructure,” Van Orden boasted on X. The $500 million he claimed credit for was added to the bill by U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and other Senate Republicans worried about the bill’s devastating impact on rural hospitals. Van Orden had nothing to do with it. Nor is the money earmarked for Wisconsin — it’s a nationwide program meant to blunt the blow Van Orden and his GOP colleagues have just dealt to rural health care. 

But the biggest whopper Van Orden told is that he somehow led the bipartisan budget deal between Evers and the Legislature. 

It seemed weird at the time when Van Orden, on the brink of voting for the federal law that will cause so many Wisconsinites to lose their health care, started shouting at Evers on X to hurry up and sign the state budget.

Now it’s clear that he was simultaneously preparing to vote to take health care away from his constituents and planning to take credit for saving them from the effects of his own vote.

After both budgets were signed, Van Orden repeatedly shared a copy of a letter he wrote to Evers on July 2 emphasizing the “importance of signing the proposed state budget into law without delay.” According to Van Orden, the letter and a conversation he claims to have had with Evers caused the governor to sign the deal the next day. 

“Not true,” Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback wrote on X in response to Van Orden’s bragging. “You never personally advocated to @GovEvers or our office to increase the hospital assessment in the bipartisan budget deal until it was already in the deal. And you had zero to do with Gov. Evers deciding to sign the budget before the reconciliation bill was signed.” 

What Van Orden did do was to vote for a bill that will push an estimated 30,000 rural Wisconsinites off Medicaid and will take away food assistance from another 90,000 people in the state, 1 in 3 of whom are children.

Van Orden was one of several Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who expressed concern about the food assistance cuts in the GOP mega-bill — and then voted for the cuts anyway. 

Those cuts only got deeper after the bill moved to the U.S. Senate, and the bill’s cost in massive increases to the federal deficit also grew from $2.5 trillion in the House version to $3.4 trillion in the final deal. Still, Van Orden stayed on board, voting for the bill a second time when it came back to the House and sending it to President Donald Trump to sign into law.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan compares Van Orden to an arsonist who takes credit for recommending the residents of the house he torched take steps to put out the fire. “You know, he poured gasoline around the house. He started throwing matches around, and then he said, ‘you better use that extinguisher,’” Pocan said at a press briefing this week.

Van Orden continues to obfuscate. In between doubling down on his preposterous claims and slinging insults at his detractors on social media, the congressman who has been rebuked by Senate leaders of both parties for yelling vulgarities at high school pages claimed to have given Evers a lesson in civility and bipartisanship:  “Why did Tony sign the bill at 1:30 am? Because I asked him personally to put politics aside,” he declared this week. 

For all his posturing on X, Van Orden still hasn’t been willing to face his constituents in a town hall to stand behind his vote. Pocan decided to hold one for him last month, to explain the details of what he called the worst budget bill he’s seen in 30 years in politics. At a press conference Pocan said, “I think this month I may have to do another visit.”

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Reading Time: 4 minutes

Former Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl violated multiple state laws when her office failed to count nearly 200 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, according to a draft report released Wednesday by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

The commission cited a lack of leadership in the clerk’s office, referring both to Witzel-Behl and the deputy clerk who assumed control during her vacation shortly after the election.

Witzel-Behl, who was put on leave by the city after the error and then resigned, broke state law by failing to supervise absentee ballot handling, neglecting post-election processes, and by not training poll workers to check the bags used to transport ballots, the commission concluded.

“There is no evidence that the City Clerk took any steps to investigate the uncounted ballots once they were brought to her attention,” the commission wrote. “The evidence demonstrates that the City Clerk began her vacation on November 13 and then had little to do with the supervision of her office until almost a month later.”

The draft report follows a months-long investigation into the 193 ballots that went missing on Election Day. The ballots were found over the next several weeks — some of them before final certification of results — but were never counted. Commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, jointly led the investigation alongside Republican commissioner and former Chair Don Millis.

For months, Madison election officials have been saying that the ballots that went uncounted were delivered to two polling sites but weren’t unopened. But the commission found no evidence the ballot bags were ever delivered. A chief inspector at one site testified he was confident there was no unopened bag in the supply cart sent to his ward.

The errors have already prompted significant changes in Madison’s election processes. Officials have overhauled ballot tracking procedures, which Madison and Dane County leaders say should prevent a repeat of the 2024 mistake.

Still, the commission emphasized “it is essential that the public understands what has occurred, so that municipalities throughout the state can review their own processes and make certain that they too do not find themselves in this very unfortunate situation.”

The commission’s sharp criticism extended beyond Witzel-Behl, noting that “the staff of the City Clerk’s office failed to take any action regarding those ballots.”

Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick said that his post-election involvement was “minimal” and that he didn’t think it was his job to do anything about the missing ballots, the commission’s findings state.

“However, he did not attempt to speak to the City Clerk about the matter,” the review continues. “There was nobody who took responsibility for these ballots. It was always someone else’s job.”

Madison Interim Clerk Mike Haas said in a statement that the city is reviewing WEC’s report and that he hopes that it can provide lessons that prevent similar errors in the future. He did not respond to a request for further comment.

Former clerk violated laws, gave contradictory statements

The report focused on lapses in training by the clerk’s office. For example, it said, Witzel-Behl stored absentee ballots in green courier bags, but didn’t mention that in poll worker training, and the bags weren’t labeled as carrying absentee ballots. She also failed to train poll workers that absentee ballots could also be stored in red security carts, which the commission said contributed to the ballots going uncounted. That lack of training broke state law, the commission stated.

The commission also found that Witzel-Behl violated a law requiring her to supervise absentee ballot handling. In her deposition, she “could not answer basic questions about absentee ballot handling procedures in her office.”

The commission’s report highlights contradictions between Witzel-Behl’s actions in office and deposition testimony. Although she claimed not to know about the uncounted ballots until December, the commission said she messaged an election worker in late November with instructions on how to handle the first batch of uncounted ballots.

Upon learning of the missing ballots in November, the commission said, Witzel-Behl should have alerted the city attorney, the County Board of Canvassers and the commission and immediately investigated her office’s procedures — but she didn’t.

The commission also alleged she violated laws by printing pollbooks too early, failing to oversee poll workers and inadequately preparing for the city’s review of election results.

Draft findings include several orders for Madison compliance

The report lists draft recommendations that the commissioners will vote on at their July 17 meeting. These include requiring the Madison Clerk’s Office to create a plan detailing which employee oversees which task; printing pollbooks no earlier than the Thursday before each election; clearly labeling and tracking the bags carrying absentee ballots; checking all ballot bags and drop boxes before the city finalizes election results; and explaining how it’s going to comply with each of the orders.

Witzel-Behl’s office printed pollbooks for the two affected wards on Oct. 23 — nearly two weeks before Election Day — despite state guidance to print them as close to the election as possible.

Had they been printed later, absentee voters whose ballots had already been returned would have been marked automatically, alerting poll workers that those ballots were in hand but not yet counted. 

But printing pollbooks no earlier than the Thursday before an election could be challenging, said Claire Woodall, who was formerly Milwaukee’s top election official. Cities like Madison and Milwaukee must print tens of thousands of pollbook pages, often using private printers, and distribute them to chief inspectors.

“It seems like you’re rushing a process” with the Thursday requirement, Woodall said. “The last thing you want is for voters to show up at 7 a.m. and discover you don’t have the correct pollbook.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin Elections Commission alleges former Madison clerk broke laws 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: 9 minutes

This story was originally published by The 19th.

Yessenia Ruano’s home in Milwaukee is in a state of limbo. Some of the family’s belongings have been sold. Some were gifted, out of necessity, to friends and family, including plants Ruano offered to her coworkers. The most essential — clothing, her daughters’ American birth certificates — were packed into suitcases. 

Ruano’s husband, Miguel, is now contending with the rest: two cars in their driveway waiting to be sold, travel documents for their dog, boxes with additional household items he promised to pack up and ship before he, too, departs for El Salvador in a few weeks. 

In May, The 19th wrote about Ruano’s fight to remain in the country despite a pending order of deportation. Ruano, a teacher’s aide at a local public school and the mother of twin daughters who are U.S. citizens, argued that her deep roots in her community and her pending application for a visa should at the very least buy her more time. 

Ruano was among the millions of immigrants living in the United States who lack permanent authorization. They now face the Trump administration’s intensifying efforts to drive up the number of immigrants deported or otherwise removed from the country. That includes many immigrants who, like Ruano, have been in the country for a decade or longer, who have no criminal record, and whose ties to the country include young children — some of them U.S. citizens — and also careers and community. 

Before her first check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following Trump’s inauguration, Ruano decided to make her struggle public, summoning the help of her local community to avoid deportation. A petition in her support gathered 2,800 signatures within its first 24 hours, and a fundraiser for the family had raised close to $16,000 as of the week of July 1, with the average donation hovering under $60. 

The Trump administration’s message has been that the focus of its efforts is on people who have committed crimes and pose a threat to public safety. In order to reach their ambitious deportation goals, immigration officials have also targeted immigrants who are among the easiest to locate and remove: people like Ruano, who regularly attend check-ins with ICE. 

As of last month, Ruano had attended 19 in-person check-ins with ICE over her 14 years in the United States, in addition to logging dozens of virtual check-ins and, for a time, submitting to 24-hour monitoring. 

Ruano appeared for her last check-in at the end of May, holding a much-awaited “receipt number” from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency showing that her visa application for victims of human trafficking was being processed. Before Trump, such an application would have likely paused deportation proceedings. Instead, Ruano was told she was expected to depart the country within days and given instructions for how to confirm she had arrived in El Salvador through ICE’s monitoring app. Failure to do so could lead to her immediate detention. 

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Ruano and her daughters, Eli and Paola, 10, boarded a United Airlines flight scheduled to leave Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport on June 17 at 11:35 a.m. local time. The girls’ first time on an airplane was with a one-way ticket out of their first and only home. 

Ruano, who by the time of her departure had captured the attention of many people in Milwaukee and elsewhere in the country, spoke to news cameras and a group of supporters in the hall of the airport. She pleaded for a fix to the nation’s immigration system for herself and millions of immigrants in a similar situation.

“For the good of the United States, given this ongoing chaos, our political parties need to have serious conversations about our immigration system — and stop treating it like political soccer,” Ruano said. 

As Ruano started to speak, she was interrupted by an automated message from the mayor that rang over the intercom, reminding travelers that in Milwaukee, “there’s so many opportunities to live, work and have fun.” 

Ruano continued, thanking her school community and her broader community in Milwaukee for their support. 

“To my immigrant community, I want to say that we cannot live in fear. We need to keep working for our children’s futures. … Our love and our togetherness is what will get us through.” 

Ruano exchanged hugs with many of the people gathered: relatives, colleagues, supporters. Then, she joined her daughters to go through airport security. 

Hours before their scheduled flight, Ruano said that the girls were experiencing a convoluted mix of emotions. They vacillated between afraid and sad, and somewhat excited, “as if they were going on vacation.” Ruano chalked it up to their age and the fact that the flight coincided with the end of the school year and the start of summer.

At the terminal, Ruano sat between her two daughters, chatting and sending messages to loved ones until it was time to board. 

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The family’s departure bore a hole in the community they had built in Milwaukee.

With most of their relatives in El Salvador, Miguel, Yessenia and their twin girls came to lean on his sister and her family, who in turn, leaned on them. They would trade rides to school, handiwork around their homes when something broke and child care — all of the normal beats of extended families. 

“We were there for each other for anything the other needed, a tool, a favor,” Miguel said. “It was just the two of us.”

Days before Ruano and the girls boarded their flight, the family got together for what was supposed to be a 10th birthday celebration for the twins. It was the last occasion they got to mark together, and with Ruano’s departure imminent, the focus shifted in part to goodbyes. 

Miguel said he and his sister will continue to lean on each other during his final days in the United States. Her close circle of support will be permanently altered once he leaves.

Arriving home from the airport without his family to an empty house, Miguel said, was one of the hardest moments of his life. 

“It’s an ugly feeling. I’ve never been alone without them,” Miguel said. 

Before he joins them later in the summer, Miguel is packing up boxes to ship to El Salvador. Each box costs $450 to ship. Some boxes hold his tools. Others hold extra clothes and shoes for his daughters, along with some of their toys and trinkets. Miguel is packing pots, pans and other kitchen items for Ruano, “so she can feel like she has her things, like she’s home.”

The first box to be packed and ready is covered in a criss-cross of duct tape. “One of three boxes holding 14 years of dreams and hard work,” Miguel said. “Sometimes I think this was all just a nice dream that now we have to wake up from, but it’s not fair, not for my girls.” 

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The heart of Ruano’s support was her school community at ALBA School, a bilingual public school in Milwaukee known in Spanish as Academia de Lenguaje y Bellas Artes. Sarah Weintraub, a middle school teacher at ALBA, said she became invested in Ruano’s plight, and in the lead-up to Ruano’s February appointment with ICE, began rallying community support from organizations like the local teachers’ union.

Weintraub and Ruano had worked together over the years and connected over the looming threats and challenges facing immigrants in the United States. Weintraub said she has loved ones in a similar situation. Weintraub’s daughter also attends ALBA and bonded with Ruano even though she was never her student. 

Weintraub described ALBA as “a very tight-knit school.” Ruano’s absence will be sorely felt. 

“Many of us have our own kids at the school. I have my kids there. Her kids are there. So, much of the staff is just very close in general,” Weintraub said. “My daughter loves her so much and has never been in any of her classes, just knows her from the school and the cafeteria.”

Weintraub said Ruano’s absence is a significant loss for the school as a workplace. 

“Right now, it’s summer break, so we’re not in our usual routine. But I know already, just thinking about going back and her not being there will be — her absence will be very felt.”

Ruano, she said, was the type of colleague who “jumps in right away” when there’s a need, and “you don’t just find the energy every day.” The school district, like the rest of the country, is struggling with a shortage of teachers — especially bilingual educators. “I don’t even know if her position will be filled right away,” Weintraub said. 

Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant advocacy group, worked closely with Ruano and her colleagues at ALBA to elevate Ruano’s story as they worked to avert her deportation. Through events, news releases and outreach to elected officials, her story reached many people who didn’t know her, but saw themselves in her situation.

For Milwaukee’s immigrant community, Ruano’s departure brought home the reality of life under the new administration, said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, co-founder and executive director of Voces de la Frontera. “It definitely highlights that we’re in a new time,” she said, adding that there’s a “cruelty” and “senselessness” to the way the administration is handling immigration enforcement. 

For the members of Voces de la Frontera, Neumann-Ortiz said, “there’s a feeling of sadness because it’s not what people want, or fought for.” During a meeting following Ruano’s departure, many members said they wanted to find ways to stay in touch with immigrants who are removed and deported, including Ruano. 

Ruano also left behind her church community at Nuestra Señora de la Paz, where she was an active member of the prayer group and a mentor for a group of children preparing for their First Communion. 

Blanca Cisneros, 70, said Ruano was a constant presence at the church’s community activities, always willing to volunteer when help was needed. “She’s really special: She’s both really humble and really strong,” Cisneros said. “Her situation just breaks my heart. It will be a big loss for our group because she has a strong desire to serve.”

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On a recent Monday, Ruano woke up early to help her sister prepare grains of corn for milling, setting a large pot over a wood fire on the patio that was still glowing red hours later. In a video call from a rural community in Comasagua, El Salvador, where they’re living, Ruano said her family is slowly adjusting to their new life. 

Ruano and her daughters were reunited with her mom, a grandmother whom the girls had only met through video calls. They’re also spending time with aunts, uncles and cousins; Ruano’s sister lives next door, and they take turns cooking for the entire family. There are no playgrounds or parks nearby, and shopping options are very limited. But recently, Ruano took the girls on a hike near the vast mountain range she grew up calling home. They picked guavas right from tree branches, a highlight of the last few weeks for the girls, and, Ruano said, “a lesson in living more with Mother Nature and less with things that are artificial.” 

In many ways, the adjustment has been hard for all of them. 

Ruano says she feels blessed to have been able to purchase a small, modest home for her mother last year, a home with a bright blue door that they now all share. But the roof leaks when it rains — which is nearly every day — so at night, Ruano and her girls move their bed from one end of their room to another to avoid the largest drips. They have to walk across the yard at night to use the nearest bathroom, which Ruano says no one has gotten used to. 

“They got here happy, telling me they were relieved I wouldn’t be sad anymore and that we were all together,” Ruano said. “But after a few days, seeing how life is — it’s nothing like Milwaukee — they started to cry. And that breaks my heart.” 

As for Ruano, a huge weight was lifted off her shoulders as soon as she boarded their plane out of Milwaukee, having shed the worry of being detained by ICE. 

“I traded one burden for another,” she said. 

Now, she and Miguel have some difficult decisions to make: where to send the girls to school, how to find gainful work. “I’ve already felt that feeling again that I felt when I was young, the feeling of wanting to flee,” Ruano added.

In a video recorded shortly after taking off in Milwaukee, one of Ruano’s daughters says in the background, “Las casas parecen casas de muñecas” — the houses look just like doll houses — while the camera points to the city’s skyline. 

“Adiós, Milwaukee,” Ruano then says, popping into the frame. “Es mi segunda casa, donde vine a madurar, donde vine a aprender más, a realizar mis sueños económicos y familiares.”

Goodbye, Milwaukee. This is my second home, where I came to mature, to learn, to realize my dreams financially and for my family.

This story was originally reported by Mel Leonor Barclay of The 19th. Meet Mel and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Photos and additional reporting from Milwaukee by Jamie Kelter Davis.

‘Adiós, Milwaukee’: A family uprooted, a hole left behind 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.

Bill Berrien is the second Republican to officially launch his campaign for governor and criticized Gov. Tony Evers in his ad for wanting to raise taxes, his actions handling the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, vetoing a bill that would have banned transgender girls from participating on sports teams in an ad posted to YouTube and X. (Screenshot from campaign ad)

Bill Berrien, a Republican businessman and former Navy SEAL, officially launched his campaign for governor Wednesday, comparing himself to President Donald Trump and declaring his support for cutting taxes, deportation efforts and barring transgender girls from locker rooms.

Berrien is the second Republican to officially launch his campaign for governor. He joins Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann who announced in May and has already been on the road pitching himself to fellow Republicans. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany has also been considering a run for the office. 

“Just like President Trump, I’m a political outsider and a businessman. It’s time that we fire the bureaucrats and hire a businessman to fix the problems and take our state back,” Berrien said in a statement. It’s a shift for Berrien, who supported Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican presidential primary and donated over $30,000 to her campaign — a track record that led to pushback against his candidacy from some Wisconsin conservatives. 

In an ad, Berrien spoke over a clip of Trump pumping his fist after last year’s assassination attempt. 

“A Navy SEAL is never out of the fight,” Berrien said as the clip played. “We’ve seen that fighting spirit from President Trump. It’s the same fight it takes to run a Wisconsin manufacturing business.”

“I’ll shake up Madison like he’s shaking up D.C.,” Berrien added. 

For the last 13 years, Berrien has worked as the owner and chief executive officer of Pindel Global Precision Inc. and Liberty Precision New Berlin contract manufacturers that make machined parts for an array of industries including aerospace, agricultural products, medical and firearms. 

A December 2024 report from WUWM details Berrien’s recent role as vice chair of the Wisconsin Defense Industry Council, a collaboration of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, that seeks to push for more weapons production in Wisconsin. At the time, Berrien said he wanted to figure out how to encourage companies to supply directly to the Department of Defense and also connect businesses with “defense primes” — companies including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. 

Prior to working in the private sector, Berrien served as a Navy SEAL for nine years. He currently lives in Whitefish Bay with his wife and is the father of three. 

The Republican  hopefuls  have bashed incumbent Gov. Tony Evers, who hasn’t decided whether he’ll run for a third term. Evers said he would decide after the state budget process, which was completed last week, and this week said at a visit to Milwaukee to highlight the budget that he expects to announce a decision in a “couple weeks.”

Berrien criticized Evers in his ad for wanting to raise taxes, his actions handling the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, vetoing a bill that would have banned transgender girls from participating on sports teams and locker rooms that align with their gender identity and for using the term “inseminated person” in a section of his budget proposal on artificial insemination. 

Berrien also criticized the movement of manufacturing jobs to China by “globalists” and took a swipe at “career politicians.” 

“Enough,” Berrien said. “I will cut taxes, increase wages and make Wisconsin the manufacturing powerhouse to the world, again.” He also said he would use law enforcement to keep “criminal illegal” immigrants out of Wisconsin and “keep boys out of our daughters’ sports and locker rooms.” 

“President Trump is taking back Washington for the American people,” Berrien said at the end of the ad — naming Trump for the fourth time during the 99 second spot. “Now it’s time to take back our state.” 

Berrien launched his “Never Out of The Fight” PAC in April to help “further” conservative causes and push Republican candidates to “get back to winning.” It reported raising $1.2 million in its first three months, according to WisPolitics.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Devin Remiker criticized Berrien, saying he was “rich enough to buy himself some attention and clueless enough to think that’s going to work — just like Elon Musk did this past April only to see his political career end.” 

The state party is “already building on our playbook that helped take down Brad Schimel, Tim Michels, and Eric Hovde,” Remiker said. “We have no doubt we’ll be in an even stronger position to defeat whoever Trump hand picks to do his bidding in the primary and emerges as the nominee.”

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An absentee ballot drop box used by the city of Madison. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

The Wisconsin Elections Commission found that the city of Madison failing to count nearly 200 absentee ballots cast in last year’s November election was the result of a “confluence of errors” and a “complete lack of leadership” in the city clerk’s office, according to a draft report of WEC’s investigation into the incident. 

The Madison city clerk’s office told the elections commission in a memo Dec. 20 about the lost ballots from two Madison wards. A bag containing 68 unprocessed absentee ballots from two wards was found Nov. 12 in a tabulator bin, the memo stated. During reconciliation of ballots on Dec. 3, clerk employees found two sealed envelopes containing a total of 125 unprocessed absentee ballots from another ward. The discovery of the missing ballots was announced to the public Dec. 26. 

The missing ballots were not enough to change the result of any local, state or federal elections.

WEC’s investigation into the matter was led by the commission’s chair, Ann Jacobs, a Democratic appointee, and Don Millis, the commission’s most recent Republican-appointed chair. The investigation took six months and involved 13 depositions and the review of more than 2,000 documents. 

The report on the investigation, which goes to the full commission for approval in a meeting next week, found five counts in which the city’s clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, acted “contrary to” state election law. 

Witzel-Behl resigned from her position in April after nearly 20 years as city clerk. 

The investigation found that the city exposed itself to mistakes by printing the pollbooks for polling places — the log in which election staff records when a voter’s ballot has been received and counted — three weeks before Election Day. That time frame meant that by the time polls opened on Nov. 5, the record in the book of which voters had already returned their absentee ballot was out of date. 

Additionally, the city “failed to track absentee envelopes and bags” meaning that large manila envelopes and courier bags full of absentee ballots weren’t numbered and organized by ward. 

“This meant that the polling places would not know how many Courier Bags or Carrier Envelopes to expect and with what seal numbers,” the report states. “Had they been given those numbers, they would have been able to immediately know if they were short a bag or an envelope and could have immediately looked for the missing item.”

According to the report, the most likely explanation for the ballots not being counted at the polling places on Election Day is that they were never delivered to the polls. 

Much of the report is a blistering criticism of Witzel-Behl’s leadership and response to the missing ballots, particularly her decision to leave on vacation on Nov. 13 — while the city was still working through the ballot reconciliation process. 

“The lack of action by the City Clerk with regard to the found ballots is astonishing,” the report states. “She demonstrated no urgency, let alone interest, in including those votes in the election tally. At the time the Ward 65 ballots were found, the county canvass was continuing, and those ballots could have easily been counted. That would have required the City Clerk to take the urgent action that the situation demanded.” 

“Instead, she went on vacation and, per her testimony, never inquired about them again until mid-December,” the report continues. “There was nobody who took responsibility for these ballots. It was always someone else’s job. Rather than acknowledge these significant errors, the City Clerk and her staff either ignored the issue or willfully refused to inform the necessary parties and seek assistance. These actions resulted in nearly 200 lawful voters’ votes going uncounted – an unconscionable result.  This profound failure undermines public confidence in elections.”

The report found that Witzel-Behl potentially violated state law by abusing her discretion to run Madison’s elections, printing the pollbooks too early, failing to maintain records on the handling of absentee ballots, failing to properly oversee the staff responsible for counting the absentee ballots and failing to inform the city’s board of canvassers about the missing ballots. 

“It was the job of the City Clerk to immediately take action once notified about the found ballots, and she did nothing,” the report states. “It was the responsibility of the Deputy Clerk to take action in her absence, and he did nothing.  These ballots were treated as unimportant and a reconciliation nuisance, rather than as the essential part of our democracy they represent.”

If the report is approved by WEC, it will require Madison to certify it has taken a number of actions to correct the problems from November. Those requirements include developing an internal plan delineating which employee is responsible for statutorily required tasks, printing poll books no earlier than the Thursday before elections, changing the absentee ballot processing system so bags and envelopes aren’t lost, updating instructional materials for poll workers and completing a full inspection of all materials before the scheduled board of canvassers meeting after an election. 

WEC is scheduled to vote on the report’s findings at its July 17 meeting.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for the state to institute a ban on conversion therapy.

The court ruled that a Republican-controlled legislative committee’s rejection of a state agency rule that would ban the practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ people was unconstitutional.

The 4-3 ruling from the liberal-controlled court comes amid the national battle over LGBTQ+ rights. It is also part of a broader effort by the Democratic governor, who has vetoed Republican bills targeting transgender high school athletes, to rein in the power of the GOP-controlled Legislature.

What is conversion therapy?

What is known as conversion therapy is the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.

The practice has been banned in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank. It is also banned in more than a dozen communities across Wisconsin. Since April 2024, the Wisconsin professional licensing board for therapists, counselors and social workers has labeled conversion therapy as unprofessional conduct.

Advocates seeking to ban the practice want to forbid mental health professionals in the state from counseling clients with the goal of changing their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in March to hear a Colorado case about whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.

What is happening in Wisconsin?

Since April 2024, the Wisconsin professional licensing board for therapists, counselors and social workers has labeled conversion therapy as unprofessional conduct.

But the Legislature’s powerful Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules — a Republican-controlled panel in charge of approving state agency regulations — has blocked the provision twice.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the committee has been overreaching its authority in blocking a variety of other state regulations during Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration. That clears the way for the conversion therapy ban to be enacted.

Republicans who supported suspending the conversion therapy ban have insisted the issue isn’t the policy itself, but whether the licensing board had the authority to take the action it did.

Evers has been trying since 2020 to get the ban enacted, but the Legislature has stopped it from going into effect.

Evers called the ruling “incredibly important” and said it will stop a small number of lawmakers from “holding rules hostage without explanation or action and causing gridlock across state government.”

But Republican Sen. Steve Nass, co-chair of the legislative committee in question, said the ruling gives Evers “unchecked dominion to issue edicts without legislative review that will harm the rights of citizens.”

Legislative power weakened by ruling

The Legislature’s attorney argued that decades of precedent backed up their argument, including a 1992 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling upholding the Legislature’s right to suspend state agency rules.

Evers argued that by blocking the rule, the legislative committee is taking over powers that the state constitution assigns to the governor and exercising an unconstitutional “legislative veto.”

The Supreme Court agreed.

The court found that the Legislature was violating the state constitution’s requirement that any laws pass both houses of the Legislature and be presented to the governor.

The Legislature was illegally taking “action that alters the legal rights and duties of the executive branch and the people of Wisconsin,” Chief Justice Jill Karofsky wrote for the majority. She was joined by the court’s three other liberal justices.

Conservatives decry ruling

Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley said the ruling “lets the executive branch exercise lawmaking power unfettered and unchecked.” She and fellow conservative Justice Annette Ziegler said in dissents that the ruling shifts too much power to the executive branch and holds the Legislature to a higher legal standard.

“Progressives like to protest against ‘kings’ — unless it is one of their own making,” Bradley wrote.

Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, in a dissent, said the court’s ruling is “devoid of legal analysis and raises more questions than it answers.”

Hagedorn argued for a more narrow ruling that would have only declared unconstitutional the legislative committee’s indefinite objection to a building code rule.

The issue goes beyond conversion therapy

The conversion therapy ban is one of several rules that have been blocked by the legislative committee. Others pertain to environmental regulations, vaccine requirements and public health protections.

Environmental groups hailed the ruling.

The decision will prevent a small number of lawmakers from blocking the enactment of environmental protections passed by the Legislature and signed into law, said Wilkin Gibart, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates.

The court previously sided with Evers in one issue brought in the lawsuit, ruling 6-1 last year that another legislative committee was illegally preventing the state Department of Natural Resources from funding grants to local governments and nongovernmental organizations for environmental projects under the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.

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 clears the way for conversion therapy ban to be enacted 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.

People gather for a "Save the Civil Service" rally hosted by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) on Feb. 11, the day President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling on DOGE to cut federal jobs. The Supreme Court said Tuesday those cuts could proceed, for now. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

The U.S. Supreme Court late Tuesday lifted lower court injunctions that had blocked attempts by  President Donald Trump and his DOGE Service to restructure the federal government.

Labor unions, advocates and local governments that sued to block the cuts said the president exceeded his authority with the executive order by moving to dismantle the federal government without congressional approval.

A U.S. District Court judge in Northern California agreed and issued preliminary injunction to stall the executive order while the case was heard. A divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision.

But the White House pressed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, arguing that Trump’s executive order did not restructure the government but merely called for reductions in force, which it said is within the president’s power.

The Supreme Court agreed in a one-page order Tuesday, saying the government was likely to prevail on its claim and the injunction should be stayed while the case proceeded.

In a sharp, 15-page dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the district court judge had determined that the administration plan would not just cut jobs but would “fundamentally restructure” the federal government. He made a “reasoned determination” that the order should be stayed while the case was heard, she wrote.

“But that temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this Court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture,” she wrote.

“At bottom, this case is about whether that action amounts to a structural overhaul that usurps Congress’s policymaking prerogatives — and it is hard to imagine deciding that question in any meaningful way after those changes have happened,” she wrote. “Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a brief concurrence, said she agreed with Jackson that the president does not have the authority to remake government without congressional approval. But she said the executive order and an implementing memo from the Office of Management and the Office of Personnel Management call for the changes to be “consistent with applicable law,” and it’s for lower courts to determine if they are.

A White House spokesperson called the decision a “another definitive victory” for the Trump administration.

“It clearly rebukes the continued assaults on the President’s constitutionally authorized executive powers by leftist judges who are trying to prevent the President from achieving government efficiency across the federal government,” the spokesperson, Harrison Fields, said in a written statement.

But labor unions, advocates and political leaders say that the decision undermines the value of federal employees, threatens the operation of federal services, and could even endanger American citizens.

In a statement Tuesday evening, the American Federation of Government Employees, along with the rest of the coalition of unions, nonprofits and municipalities bringing the suit against the administration, decried the Supreme Court’s decision as a “serious blow to our democracy.”

The coalition said the decision put “services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy.”

“This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution,” the statement read. “While we are disappointed in this decision, we will continue to fight on behalf of the communities we represent and argue this case to protect critical public services that we rely on to stay safe and healthy.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said that as a state with a high concentration of federal workers, “any action against our federal employees is a direct strike against Maryland’s people and economy.”

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling on AFGE v. Trump will embolden President Trump in his mission to dismantle the federal government and threatens to upend the lives of countless public servants who wake up every day to deliver essential services and benefits that people rely on,” Moore said in a written statement. He noted that thousands of Maryland residents have already been laid off from federal agencies under the Trump administration.

In a post to X on Tuesday evening, U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-5th) wrote that Trump and OMB Director Russell Vought are continuing to “vilify and traumatize the patriots serving our nation, unconstitutionally reorganizing the federal government.”

“The Supreme Court’s decision today demonstrates that federal employees, their families and livelihoods, and the vital services they provide to the American people are of no concern to the Trump Administration,” Hoyer wrote. “I stand with our federal employees against these attacks.”

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-8th) said in an X post that the ruling “will give Trump’s wrecking crew more awful ideas about sacking critical federal workers,” referencing layoffs at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who help notify state and local agencies about impending dangerous weather.

U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) added that layoffs could also put Americans at risk by “decimating essential public services” like food inspections and Social Security.

“As Justice Jackson put it in her dissent, ‘this was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground,’” Van Hollen said in a statment. “She is right. The Court’s decision to allow this damage to be done before ruling on the merits shows how detached they are from the reality of the moment.”

Van Hollen said the administration’s plan “isn’t about efficiency, it’s about rigging the government to only benefit the wealthy and powerful special interests.”

“We are not done fighting in Congress, in the courts, and in our communities to defend the dedicated public servants who go to work on behalf of the American people day in and day out,” he said.

The Feb. 11 executive order directed federal agencies to prepeare for “large-scale reductions in force” and to work with members of the Department of Government Efficiency — the DOGE Service that was run at the time by billionaire Elon Musk — to develop a plan to reduce the size of the workforce. Military personnel were exempted, but virtually every other federal agency was affected.

The order was quickly challenged in court by labor unions, taxpayer and good government groups and by a hafl-dozen local governments: Harris County, Texas, Martin Luther King Jr. County, Washington, and San Francisco City and County, California; and the cities of Chicago, Baltimore, and Santa Rosa, California.

They argued that the goals of the executive order far exceeded the president’s authority to reduce the size of agencies. Under the DOGE plan, they argued to the Supreme Court, “functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost, and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs.”

“There will be no way to unscramble that egg: If the courts ultimately deem the President to have overstepped his authority and intruded upon that of Congress, as a practical matter there will be no way to go back in time to restore those agencies, functions, and services,” their court filing said.

That was echoed by Jackson, who said the district court judge was in the best position to determine if the president’s order consisted of “minor workforce reductions” or whether it was a massive reorganization that overstepped executive authority.

“With scant justification, the majority permits the immediate and potentially devastating aggrandizement of one branch (the Executive) at the expense of another (Congress), and once again leaves the People paying the price for its reckless emergency-docket determinations,” she wrote.

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org.

A farmer on a tractor sprays soybean crops. (Photo by Westend61/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump’s administration will pursue a ban on Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland as part of an effort to strengthen farm security, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Tuesday.

Appearing alongside other Cabinet officials, Republican governors and members of Congress at an event outside the U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters in Washington, D.C., Rollins announced a department initiative to block “foreign countries of concern” from owning U.S. agriculture lands.

Rollins said officials will even try to revoke lands already owned by China-backed entities.

The administration will “take swift legislative and executive action to ban the purchase of American farmland by Chinese nationals and other foreign adversaries,” she said.

The executive branch will also work with state and local officials “to do everything within our ability, including presidential authorities, to claw back what has already been purchased by China and other foreign adversaries.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the nation’s food supply was a national security issue on par with energy and water supplies.

Plan details

The seven-part initiative, titled the National Farm Security Action Plan, is based on the idea that “farm security is national security,” according to a preamble to USDA’s written plan.

U.S. farmers dominate the global industry, the preamble said.

“Because that dominance is earned and not assured, it is critical we continuously adapt our approach to American agriculture security and elevate it to the top echelon of national security priorities,” the document read.

To protect U.S. farmland, the USDA, with help from the Justice Department, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and cooperative state and local governments, will seek to block investment by foreign adversaries and launch an online tool to help farmers report on potential unknown foreign ownership.

The administration will look for vulnerabilities in the agricultural supply chain and attempt to ensure crop and nutrition programs are not being used to fund terrorist or criminal activity, while cutting down on fraud and abuse. The plan instructs the administration to strengthen biosecurity measures.

The initiative also calls for making sure foreign governments cannot access USDA research grants or other department funding programs.

The USDA will continue to work with the national security establishment and law enforcement to protect the agriculture sector’s critical infrastructure, according to the plan.

After Republican Sens. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Roger Marshall of Kansas at the event criticized the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an executive branch agency, for not having a spot for the Agriculture secretary, Rollins said she would be joining the panel as of Tuesday afternoon.

Farmland security

At the Tuesday event, speakers offered few specifics about the initiative but praised the administration for elevating the issue of foreign investment in farmland.

“A country has to be able to feed itself, fuel itself, and fight for itself to truly be free,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “We now have a president who understands it and is willing to do everything within his power to make sure the United States continues to be the greatest country on the face of the planet.”

“Our farmland is not just dirt, it is our national security, it is our economic future, it is our children’s heritage,” Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said. “And it is under threat, and the leaders here recognize that.”

Speakers emphasized what they called the threat of Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland.

“Today, we tell China to get the hell out of American agriculture,” Marshall said.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen said his state had moved to ban Chinese equipment from telecommunications infrastructure and has worked to deny Chinese companies from owning farmland. He related a story of stonewalling Chinese-owned Syngenta, which sought a meeting with the governor.

“I said, ‘I have no interest in having a meeting,’” he said. “‘Have no interest in you being in Nebraska. My suggestion would be to leave. My suggestion would be to get a different job.’”

The company later sold their assets in Nebraska, Pillen said.

Alabama and China

Tuberville, who is running in the state’s gubernatorial race next year, appeared to say China owned 2.2 million acres of farmland in his state alone – a number that actually describes the acres of land owned by all foreign entities in the state. Chinese entities own no acres in Alabama, according to USDA data.

“China is a threat,” he said. “They’re not a threat. They are dominating us in almost everything that they do because we’ve sat back and the politicians have been counting their money instead of doing what’s right and helping this country stay in the front. We’ve got to be number one. We can’t be number two. We’ve got to fight back.

“They are coming into our country and buying our farmland. In my state of Alabama alone, they own 2.2 million acres of farmland. That’s right in Alabama. Foreign adversaries.”

Asked about the comment, Tuberville spokesperson Mallory Jaspers said he was referring not only to Chinese ownership but all foreign adversaries and indicated that he opposed any foreign ownership of U.S. farmland.

“Sen. Tuberville believes American farmland should be owned by Americans,” she wrote in an email.

The most recent year-end USDA report on foreign investment, in 2023, showed Chinese-linked investors held about 276,000 acres of U.S. farmland nationwide.

An analysis from the American Farm Bureau, an advocacy group, estimated Chinese investors accounted for only about .02% of all foreign owned U.S. agricultural land.

GOP governors back plan

In addition to Lee, Huckabee Sanders and Pillen, who spoke outside of USDA, the Republican governors of Indiana, Idaho, Iowa, South Dakota and Oklahoma signed a Tuesday letter to Rollins in support of the plan.

“As America First Governors, we firmly stand together in our unwavering support of President Donald J. Trump and his administration’s National Farm Security Action Plan,” they wrote. “This plan is a critical and decisive response to the invasion of our land, food system, and sovereignty by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”

Advocates for LGBTQ people and for the environment praised a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling Tuesday that bars the Legislature's Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules from blocking a rule that bans therapists from trying to "convert" a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. (Getty Images)

Gov. Tony Evers along with advocates for the environment and for LGBTQ people as well as Democratic Party lawmakers hailed Tuesday’s state Supreme Court ruling that strips a Wisconsin legislative committee’s power to block state regulations.

Republican leaders in the Legislature — who’ve deployed that power successfully against the Evers administration for the last six years — condemned the Court’s action as consolidating power in the executive branch.

Tuesday’s ruling, written by Chief Justice Jill Karofsky for the Court’s four-member liberal majority, found that state laws giving the Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) the power to block state regulations were unconstitutional.

The ruling said that in doing so, the committee was rewriting state laws that affected the rights and duties authorized for executive branch officials.

JCRAR has repeatedly thwarted Evers administration rules since the governor first took office in 2019. Tuesday’s ruling was the result of a lawsuit Evers filed in 2023 challenging the committee’s actions in suspending a rule that bans conversion therapy and indefinitely blocking an update to the state building code.

“The people of Wisconsin expect state government to work — and work better — for them,” Evers said in a statement Tuesday applauding the ruling.

“For years, a small group of Republican lawmakers overstepped their power, holding rules hostage without explanation or action and causing gridlock across state government,” Evers said.

“Today’s Wisconsin Supreme Court decision ensures that no small group of lawmakers has the sole power to stymie the work of state government and go unchecked,” the governor said. “This is an incredibly important decision that will ensure state government can do our important work efficiently and effectively to serve Wisconsinites across our state.”

Conversion therapy ban maintained

The ruling ensured that a rule will continue barring therapists treating LGBTQ people from using conversion therapy to try to change sexual orientation or gender identity.

JCRAR suspended the rule in early 2023 after it was last promulgated. The professional board that had enacted the rule reinstated it in April 2024 after the Legislature concluded its 2023-24 session. Tuesday’s ruling will prevent JCRAR from blocking the rule again.

“The continuous suspensions of the rule represented legislative overreach in the rule-making process and threatened the ability of professions in Wisconsin to create their standards,” said the National Association of Social Workers Wisconsin Chapter (NASW-Wisconsin) in a statement welcoming the Court’s ruling.

The association has sought the conversion therapy ban since 2018.

“After seven and a half years of trying to ban the harmful, discredited and unethical practice of conversion therapy and having the rule repeatedly blocked by the Joint Committee on the Review of Administrative Rules, I am thrilled by this ruling,” said Marc Herstand, the social worker association’s executive director. “Professions have the right to establish their own conduct code, and no social worker should ever engage in the practice of conversion therapy.”

Republicans attack ruling

Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), chair of the committee, criticized the Court’s ruling.

“Today the liberal majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ended nearly 7 decades of shared governance between the legislature and executive branch agencies aimed at protecting the rights of individuals, families and businesses from the excessive actions of bureaucrats,” Nass said in a statement.

“The liberal junta on the state supreme court has in essence given Evers the powers of a King,” he said.

Nass also attacked Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, charging that in the budget that lawmakers passed on the evening of July 2 and Evers signed shortly after midnight, Vos “gave away the power-of-the-purse-string for the next two years, so our options of defunding bureaucrats are now off the table.”

Vos also released a statement attacking the ruling.

“For decades, case law has upheld the constitutionality of the legislative rules committee to serve as a legitimate check on the powers of the Governor and the overreach of the bureaucracy,” Vos said. “The absence of oversight from elected representatives grows government and allows unelected bureaucrats to increase red-tape behind closed doors.”

Praise for the decision

Democrats, LGBTQ allies and environmental advocates said it was JCRAR’s practices, often shrouded in secrecy — not the rule-making process — that interfered with democracy.

“Today’s court decision is a victory for Wisconsinites, who deserve the freedom to have a government responsive to everyday people, not special interests and right-wing extremists,” said Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison). “This decision sends a clear message: We are working toward making Wisconsin a place where everyone can build a better life.”

State Supreme Court curtails legislative committee’s right to stop regulations

Abigail Swetz, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Fair Wisconsin,  called the outcome “a powerful step in the right direction towards ending the harmful practice of conversion therapy,” and credited the advocacy of NASW-Wisconsin and other community members and partner groups.

Swetz also urged lawmakers and the governor to take “an even more powerful step” by passing SB 324, legislation banning conversion therapy in all licensed professions.

In a joint statement the Legislature’s LGBTQ+ caucus called the ruling “a victory against the abusive and discredited practice of ‘conversion therapy’ and a victory for LGBTQ+ people who want to live as their authentic selves.”

Environmental impact

Environmental rules were not at the heart of the Court’s ruling Tuesday, but environmental groups said the outcome would strengthen efforts to enact stronger environmental protections.

“The bottom line is that good environmental rules now face a much easier path to getting to the finish line and becoming law—which is good for the environment and public health,” said Evan Feinauer, an attorney for Clean Wisconsin, in a statement the organization issued.

Clean Wisconsin said JCRAR has  blocked regulations on PFAS contamination, nitrates, surface water pollution and remediating contaminated lands.         

“Far too often in recent years JCRAR’s ability to object to any proposed rule, for almost any reason, or no stated reason at all, prevented agencies like DNR from doing their jobs,” Feinauer said. “That political gridlock prevented our government from being responsive to environmental and public health challenges.”

In a statement from Midwest Environmental Advocates, executive director Tony Wilkins Gibart said that through JCRAR’s control of the rulemaking process, “small groups of legislators have been able to block the implementation of popular environmental protections passed by the full legislature and signed by the governor.”

MEA filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Wisconsin Conservation Voters and Save Our Water, a group of residents affected by PFAS contamination in and around Marinette and Peshtigo.

When JCRAR blocked a rule in December 2020 that regulated firefighting foam containing PFAS, it perpetuated the discharge of PFAS-contaminated wastewater in the Marinette wastewater treatment plant, MEA said Tuesday.

“Committee vetoes were anti-democratic because they allowed a handful of legislators to make decisions that affect the entire state,” said Jennifer Giegerich, government affairs director of Wisconsin Conservation Voters, said in the MEA statement. “We’re pleased this ruling restores constitutional balance and strengthens accountability for environmental decisions that impact all Wisconsinites.”

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Protesters gather outside of the Milwaukee FBI office to speak out against the arrest of Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

A federal magistrate judge recommended on Monday that the criminal case against Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan proceed. Dugan has been indicted on charges that she helped an immigrant without legal status who came to her courtroom for a hearing on a misdemeanor charge evade federal immigration authorities. 

Dugan was arrested in April and indicted in May. She’s pleaded not guilty to charges of concealing an individual to prevent arrest and obstruction. 

The case has become an example of the Trump administration’s effort to punish judicial interference with its escalation of immigration enforcement. In April, 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz was in Dugan’s courtroom when federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI arrived at the Milwaukee County Courthouse to arrest him. 

Prosecutors say Dugan helped Flores-Ruiz out a side doorway to avoid arrest but the doorway Dugan led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney use led to the same hallway in which the agents were waiting and one took the elevator down with them. Flores-Ruiz was arrested on the street outside. 

In May, Dugan had filed a motion to dismiss the charges against her, arguing she is immune from prosecution because she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and that the arrest violated Wisconsin’s sovereignty as a state by disrupting a state court hearing and prosecuting a state judge. 

On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Joseph recommended that the motion to dismiss be denied. The final decision on dismissal is up to U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, who does not need to follow Joseph’s recommendation. 

“We are disappointed in the magistrate judge’s non-binding recommendation, and we will appeal it,” Dugan attorney Steven Biskupic, a former federal prosecutor, said in a statement. “This is only one step in what we expect will be a long journey to preserve the independence and integrity of our courts.”

In her recommendation, Joseph wrote that judicial immunity applies when a judge is being sued for civil damages, not criminal charges. 

“A judge’s actions, even when done in her official capacity, does not bar criminal prosecution if the actions were done in violation of the criminal law,” she wrote.

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Chief Justice Jill Karofsky, shown here during oral arguments in January, wrote for four justices that laws empowering the Legislature's Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative rules violate the Wisconsin Constitution. (Screenshot/WisEye)

State laws that let a 10-member committee of the Legislature override regulations are unconstitutional, a majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling hands the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers a victory in an ongoing battle with the Legislature’s Republican leaders.

It also affirms that the state Legislature cannot renew its attempt to block regulations against conversion therapy for LGBTQ people, and appears to clear the way for an update of Wisconsin’s building code that was suspended nearly two years ago.

The ruling finds five statutes, granting power to the Legislature’s committee that reviews and periodically suspends administrative rules, violate the Wisconsin Constitution.

Taken together, wrote Chief Justice Jill Karofsky for the four justices making up the Court’s liberal wing, the statutes give the Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules the power to effectively change state laws without going through the full legislative process.

“The ability of a ten-person committee to halt or interrupt the passage of a rule, which would ordinarily be required to be presented to the governor as a bill [to block the rule], is simply incompatible with Articles IV and V of the Wisconsin Constitution,” Karofsky wrote.

The Court’s three conservative justices took issue with the majority opinion, asserting that rulemaking itself involves legislative power and that Tuesday’s ruling improperly constrains the Legislature as the elected representatives of the people.

‘Legislative veto’ lawsuit 

The decision is the second to come from a lawsuit Evers filed in the fall of 2023, Evers v. Marklein, accusing the Republican leaders of the Legislature of exercising an unconstitutional “legislative veto” hampering the lawful powers of the executive branch to make administrative rules.

The Evers administration argued that five statutes granting JCRAR the power to review, object to and block rules before or after they are promulgated violate the state Constitution. Those include a law enacted in December 2018, after Evers was elected governor but before he took office, that allows the committee to lodge “indefinite” objections blocking a rule.

The Court majority agreed with the administration’s argument.

The Wisconsin Constitution requires that for a law to be enacted, it must pass both the Assembly and the Senate and then be presented to the governor to be signed or vetoed.

“By permitting JCRAR to exercise discretion over which approved rules may be promulgated and which may not, the statute empowers JCRAR to take action that alters the legal rights and duties of persons outside of the legislative branch” without going through the lawmaking process, Karofsky wrote.

The indefinite objection “prevents the agency from promulgating a rule unless the Legislature passes a bill enacting the rule,” she wrote. “Said another way, legislative inertia after an indefinite objection could permanently stop the promulgation of a rule.”

Evers, lawmakers, advocates praise Court’s ruling on regulations

The law allowing the committee to pause a rule for 30 days before it is promulgated “essentially allows JCRAR to capture control of agency rulemaking authority from the executive branch during the 30-day pause period,” Karofksy wrote.

The pause, which can be extended to 30 days “operates as a ‘pocket veto,’” she wrote. “Even if such an interruption is relatively brief, the constitution does not contemplate temporary violations of its provisions.”

Similarly, after the rule has been promulgated, JCRAR’s power to suspend it multiple times “means that even after promulgation, JCRAR could suspend a rule repeatedly in perpetuity with no other checks in place,” the chief justice wrote.

Clearing way for conversion therapy ban, new building code

In overturning the five statutes, the Court majority also revoked two earlier rulings that had affirmed some of JCRAR’s powers — one from 1992, upholding the committee’s temporary suspension of a rule, and the other from 2020, endorsing the power to suspend a rule multiple times.

Evers’ suit focused on two rules that JCRAR blocked, both produced under the umbrella of the state Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS).

One rule prohibited therapists from using discredited conversion therapy to try to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ people. It was adopted by the Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board.

“When the Board created new professional conduct rules banning conversion therapy, it exercised its statutory authority,” Karofksy wrote. “But when JCRAR objected to the rule it effectively blocked the Board’s authority” under Wisconsin law “to govern the professional conduct of its licensees.”

The conversion therapy rule was suspended in January 2023, but reinstated after the Legislature concluded its work for the 2023-24 session.

With “the multiple suspension provision,” however, Karofsky wrote, “JCRAR has the authority to suspend this rule again, in perpetuity.”

Another rule updated the state commercial building code to international standards set in 2021.

“The goal of these chapters is to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public,” Karofsky wrote. JCRAR’s indefinite suspension of the code in 2023  “prevented DSPS from completing its statutory rulemaking duties,” she wrote.

Conservative justices object

Justice Brian Hagedorn, one of three members of the Court’s conservative wing, wrote an opinion that concurred with the majority on narrow grounds but dissented on finding the five laws at issue unconstitutional.

The JCRAR indefinite objection to the building code rule is unconstitutional under a 1992 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, Hagedorn wrote.

He argued that the conversion therapy rule is now outside the Court’s purview, however.

“This ethical rule is already in effect; it is no longer suspended,” Hagedorn wrote. “Since a ruling on JCRAR’s actions with respect to this rule would have no legal effect, this claim is moot, and we have nothing further to decide.”

Hagedorn criticized the decision’s far-reaching findings that whole statutes were unconstitutional, however. He said it also failed to grapple with arguments about the constitutional status of regulation by executive branch agencies.

“The effect of the majority’s decision is to greenlight executive alteration of legal rights and duties outside the lawmaking process while prohibiting legislative alteration of legal rights and duties outside the lawmaking process,” Hagedorn wrote.

Former Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and Justice Rebecca Bradley published separate sharply worded dissents.

Ziegler wrote that the majority ruling was the outcome of “this court’s misguided quest to restructure and unbalance our state government, culminating in even more power and control being allocated to the executive branch.”

“The legislature has delegated executive branch agencies broad rulemaking authority with the understanding that it will be able to oversee administrative rulemaking through JCRAR,” Ziegler wrote. “The majority now pulls the rug out from under the legislature…”

Bradley, invoking lyrics from Bruce Springsteen’s song “Badlands” in which the singer says “a king ain’t satisfied ‘til he rules everything,” charged that the majority “lets the executive branch exercise lawmaking power unfettered and unchecked.”

Her dissent offered a full-throated attack on the administrative state and executive branch regulatory authority.

“The majority invokes the Wisconsin Constitution to take power from the People’s elected representatives in the legislature and bestow it on the executive branch, empowering unelected bureaucrats to rule over the People,” Bradley wrote.

2025-07-08_SCOWI_Evers v Marklein – JCRAR

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Jacobson launched her campaign outside an elementary school in Ridgeway that was closed after the Dodgeville school district combined two elementary schools into one. (Photo courtesy Wisconsin State Senate Democratic Committee)

With the Wisconsin state budget completed just last week, Senate Democrats are gearing up for 2026 elections and their shot at a majority. Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon), surrounded by a group of current Democratic senators, launched her campaign Monday for Senate District 17, currently represented by one of the Senate Republicans central to shaping Wisconsin’s budget. 

There are about 16 months until November 2026 when half of the state Senate, the entire state Assembly and the governor’s seat will all be up for election. This will be the first time the new legislative maps adopted in 2024 will be in place for the 17 odd-numbered Senate seats.

Democrats gained four seats in the Senate in 2024 — breaking the GOP supermajority and leaving Senate Republicans with a margin of 18-15 majority. They will need to win at least two seats if they are to win the majority for the first time in more than 15 years.

Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), the co-chair of the powerful budget committee, is the incumbent, having first been elected to the seat in 2014 after serving two terms in the Assembly. 

Lisa White, a Democrat who runs an interior painting business, is also running for the seat.

Jacobson, who is serving her second term in the Assembly, told the Wisconsin Examiner that she is challenging Marklein in part because he hasn’t been listening. 

Marklein won the district with 60% of the vote in 2022, but Senate District 17 changed considerably under the new maps. According to an analysis by John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University, the district leaned Democratic by 1 percentage point in the 2024 presidential election and by over 4 percentage points in the 2024 U.S. Senate race. 

“The biggest thing that I see about this district is that people really want somebody who’s going to represent what they’re fighting for, what they need and listen to them, and even listen to them when they don’t necessarily agree,” Jacobson said. “They’ve been not receiving that in their current state senator.” 

Jacobson cited a report in the Monroe Times of a Marklein listening session in Belleville in January — coincidentally on the same day that Jacobson was holding one there. 

“There was a list of rules of what would and will not be happening in that listening session,” Jacobson said. “That, to me, is the starkest example of what it means to listen to your community, because I was inviting anybody… there are no rules. I’m open to having a conversation with anybody at any time.”

Marklein’s notice told residents that it was “designed for the senator to receive input and ideas about issues facing residents in the 17th Senate District” and he didn’t “plan to answer questions, debate ideas, challenge the ideas, or otherwise comment because he is seeking to hear every point-of-view equally.” The notice said that “the goal is for every attendee to feel comfortable sharing their input.” It also advised those attending that  their comments might be subject to a time limit. 

Jacobson launched her campaign outside an elementary school in Ridgeway that was closed after the Dodgeville school district combined two elementary schools into one. She called Marklein a “classic politician” who she said has “failed” the Senate district. 

“Our district has time and again been forced into referenda to fund our schools because Howard Marklein has chosen power over people,” Jacobson said. “He has chosen ideology over voting for the needs of the district. That is irresponsible governing.” 

Jacobson first ran for the state Assembly for an open seat in 2021 and said her service on the Oregon village board showed her how local government intersects with state government and why it’s important to shape the latter.

Her announcement came less than a week after lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers completed the state budget. The Republicans’ narrower Senate majority led to a new dynamic during the budget process. With Democratic votes necessary to pass the bill, Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) became involved in budget negotiations.

Hesselbein joined Jacobson at her campaign announcement Monday, along with Sens. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska). 

Jacobson has been fighting for public school funding, Hesselbein said. “In the Senate, she will dedicate herself to lowering costs for your families, to creating a bright future for your children, and making our state stronger every day,” Hesselbein said. “We are excited and proud to be standing behind her in this campaign and we look forward to her joining us and helping us win a Democratic majority.”

Jacobson voted against the budget, joining 37 other Assembly Democrats.

Democrats credited the new maps and the Senate’s closer margins for the budget agreement, which included an increase in funding for special education, the University of Wisconsin system and child care. The bill passed thanks to five Senate Democratic votes, although a recurring theme among Democrats whether they voted for or against the budget, including Jacobson, was that it wasn’t perfect. 

Jacobson said that was part of the reason she launched her campaign. 

“I was hoping under these new maps — with even more voices talking so loudly about the fact that they need state assistance when it comes to affording child care, they need more funding for our schools, they need real help on the everyday costs that are facing Wisconsinites — that under this new more competitive district that would be represented in the state budget,” she said. “What we’re seeing is that the cycle of referendums is not going to end under this budget… and that was a missed opportunity in this budget.” 

During the final discussions over the budget, Marklein emphasized that the document was a “compromise” between Republicans and Democrats while highlighting items affecting his district, such as funding for the UW system that would help the Platteville campus. Marklein did not respond to an email from the Wisconsin Examiner on Monday asking about his 2026 plans and his response to Democrats targeting SD 17.

Jacobson said she doesn’t view Marklein’s long tenure as a state lawmaker as a challenge. She said she is more concerned with the size of the Southwest Wisconsin Senate district, which encompasses Iowa, Lafayette, Green, Crawford and Grant counties as well as parts of Dane County.

“It’s a big district, but the benefit of that is that it’s filled with these amazing rural communities that when people think about Wisconsin that’s what they think of…,” Jacobson said. “Sure [Sen. Marklein has] been an incumbent for a while, but has he been out? How much is he doing outside of walking a parade to really listen to the district?” 

Jacobson, a mother of three children, said public education funding will be one of her top issues, though she is also more concerned about hearing from others. She said she has been traveling the district over the last few weeks and hearing an array of concerns from residents.

“They’re concerned that they’re going to have to have more referenda because of the lack of school funding to increase their property taxes even more,” Jacobson said. “They’re concerned that without meaningful work or support from the state — our health care system in that area… seven hospitals… multiple clinics — those are going to potentially be in jeopardy.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the number of seats Democrats need to gain in 2026 to win a Senate majority. 

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Pelican River area in Wisconsin (Jay Brittain | Courtesy of the photographer)

When Gov. Tony Evers made his 2025-27 budget proposal in February, it included an annual $100 million appropriation to fund the broadly popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program for another 10 years. The budget he signed after 1 a.m. Thursday included zero money for the program, which is set to lapse next summer. 

While a separate piece of legislation to re-authorize the program has been introduced by Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), the failure to provide added money in the budget has raised concerns that the program — which allows the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to provide grant funding to acquire, conserve and maintain public lands — could fail to survive the political tumult of divided government and die. 

Even though the conservation of public lands is widely popular among both Democratic and Republican voters in the state, a handful of Republican legislators have grown increasingly hostile to the program, particularly since the state Supreme Court ruled last year that the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance doesn’t have the authority to hold up grants issued by the DNR through the program. Republicans complain that the acquisition of public land takes parcels off the property tax roles and prevents development projects. 

The Kurtz and Testin proposal aims to reach a compromise by re-authorizing the program while adding more legislative oversight by requiring that any land purchases over $1 million be approved through legislation. 

“While I recognize all that has gone into reaching this compromise budget, I must share that I am deeply disappointed that Republican leaders would not agree to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program — even for just one more year through 2027,” Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) said in a statement. “Here’s the situation now: Knowles-Nelson reauthorization expires on June 20, 2026, giving the Legislature one year to take action before the deadline, and Republicans have indicated they will bring this back to the agenda this fall. Trust that I will keep up the pressure on Republicans and hold them to their word. I will continue to be a strong advocate for this long-standing bipartisan promise.” 

The lack of stewardship program funds in the final state budget led Evers to use his partial veto authority to prevent spending money on five individual public lands projects that legislators had earmarked in the bill. 

“I object to providing an earmark for a natural resources project when the Legislature has abandoned its responsibility to reauthorize and ensure the continuation of the immensely popular Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program,” Evers stated in his veto message.  “Instead of renewing the program and helping the many, the Legislature has opted to benefit the politically connected few. The Legislature must do its job and renew the Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program.”

Timber strategic plan 

The DNR budget also includes funds for a $1 million grant to the Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association (GLTPA) and the Wisconsin Paper Council to craft a Forestry Industrywide Strategic Plan. 

This provision was included by the Joint Committee on Finance in its late night session last Friday and has raised concerns from some environmental groups that it is a giveaway to industry groups to push for increased extraction of resources from the state’s forest lands. 

“Taxpayers should not be made to underwrite private industry studies with no public benefit or input. Would they decide how to manage local, state, and federal forests in this study? Would it be published?” Andy Olsen, senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said. “One million dollars is very generous with taxpayer dollars for a sketchy study  with no public benefit.”

The GLTPA has been involved in efforts in Wisconsin’s Northwoods to oppose conservation projects and move local land use policies to be more pro-extraction by encouraging increased logging and the expansion of the state’s mining industry. 

The association’s director, Henry Schienebeck, has been influential in Oneida County’s effort to rewrite its comprehensive plan to be friendlier to industry and worked with American Stewards of Liberty, a Texas-based right-wing anti-conservation group, to oppose land conservation such as the Pelican River Forest. 

DNR spokesperson Andrea Sedlacek said the department is “monitoring this and all other relevant DNR budget motions as the process plays out” but did not yet have information on what the development of the strategic plan would look like or if other people or groups would be involved in its development. 

But despite the grant being given only to industry groups, some environmental advocates say it’s a win. 

Fred Clark, former executive director of Wisconsin Green Fire, said the development of such a plan is something the organization has been advocating for over the past several years. Clark pointed to a study of the health of the state’s forests Green Fire published last year and said that because the state’s paper mills have largely been shuttered, there are fewer  places for the state’s foresters to bring their timber, destabilizing the industry. 

Without a plan to find new uses for the state’s timber, the economics of Wisconsin’s working forest lands could change, resulting in land sales and development that results in forests being cut down to use the land for other purposes — ultimately harming the health of Wisconsin’s forests. 

“The focus that we would like to see there is not necessarily on producing more timber, because we already grow a lot more timber than we harvest,” Clark said. “What we really think the state needs is a strategic focus on developing new forest products and helping expand and refine forest products markets so that we’ve got places for our wood to go.”

Clark said he foresees the development of the plan working through the state’s Council on Forestry, which includes members representing industry, environmental groups, state and federal agencies, legislators and landowners. He added that for the project to succeed it needs input from all those groups, including those with records such as the GLTPA. 

“We need everybody at the table for this, and there’s a wide range of points of view in the forestry community,” Clark said. “Great Lakes Timber Professionals have been an active member of the Council on Forestry almost since day one. We won’t succeed if we don’t have a pretty strong consensus all the way from the environmental groups to groups like Great Lakes Timber Professionals. So I think there’s a lot of common ground there. The most important next step for us is to see that there’s a really broad based committee within the Council on forestry that’s helping guide this work.”

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A student draws with chalk on an outdoor court at a New York City public school in 2022. If states don’t receive billions in congressionally approved funding for K-12 education that the Trump administration is withholding, officials say programs for migrants, English-language learners and kids in need of after-school care will be at risk. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

The U.S. Department of Education’s decision last week to hold back $6.8 billion in federal K-12 funds next year has triggered alarm among state education officials, school leaders and advocacy groups nationwide over how the lack of funds will affect their after-school, enrichment and language-learning services.

The Trump administration’s decision to freeze the funding has put states in “triage mode” as they scramble to decide what programs may be cut without that funding, said Mary Kusler, senior director for the Center for Advocacy at the National Education Association. The money was approved by Congress to support education for English language learners, migrants, low-income children and adults learning to read, among others.

As of July 1, school systems are unable to draw down funding, jeopardizing summer programs, hiring and early-year planning for the 2025–26 school year.

The funding freeze affects several core programs: Title II-A (educator training and recruitment), Title III-A (English learner support), Title IV-A (student enrichment and after-school), as well as migrant education and adult education and literacy grants. Trump has proposed eliminating all those programs in his proposed budget for next fiscal year, but that proposal hasn’t gone through Congress.

State superintendents sent out missives to school districts early this week and now are scrambling to make choices.

“This is not about political philosophy, this is about reliability and consistency,” Alabama state Superintendent Eric Mackey said to Politico. “None of us were worrying about this.”

The administration says it is reviewing the programs.

“The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities,” the U.S. Department of Education wrote to states in its announcement June 30.

Historically, the department releases allocations by July 1 to ensure schools can budget and plan effectively for the coming school year. Withholding the money could result in canceled programs, hiring freezes and the loss of essential support for English learners, migrant children and other high-need populations, education and state officials told Stateline.

“America’s public school leaders run district budgets that are dependent on a complex partnership between federal, state, and local funding,” said David R. Schuler, executive director of the School Superintendents Association in a statement. “For decades, school districts have relied on timely confirmation of their federal allocations ahead of the July 1 start of the fiscal year — ensuring stability, allowing for responsible planning, and supporting uninterrupted educational services for students.”

The states facing the largest withheld amounts include California ($810.7 million), Texas ($660.9 million), and New York ($411.7 million), according to data from the NEA and the Learning Policy Institute, an education think tank.

For 17 states and territories, the freeze affects over 15% of their total federal K-12 allocations, according to the Learning Policy Institute. For smaller jurisdictions such as the District of Columbia and Vermont, the disruption hits even harder: More than 20% of their federal K-12 budgets remain inaccessible.

Colorado Education Commissioner Susan Córdova urged school districts to begin contingency planning in case funds are not released before the federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond hinted at possible legal action, which has become a trend as states fight the second Trump administration’s funding revocations or delays.

“California will continue to pursue all available legal remedies to the Trump Administration’s unlawful withholding of federal funds appropriated by Congress,” Thurmond said in a statement.

The NEA and the NAACP have filed for a preliminary injunction, calling the administration’s delay an illegal “impoundment” — a violation of the federal Impoundment Control Act, which bars the executive branch from withholding appropriated funds without congressional approval.

Education advocates warn the recent decision by the Trump administration to withhold funding reflects a broader pattern of federal disengagement from public education.

Community nonprofits said the withholding could devastate their programming too. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America could have to close more than 900 centers — bringing the loss of 5,900 jobs and affecting more than 220,000 children, said President and CEO Jim Clark in a statement.

The 1974 Impoundment Control Act lets the president propose canceling funds approved by Congress. Lawmakers have 45 days to approve the request; if they don’t, it’s denied. Meanwhile, agencies can be directed not to spend the funds during that time.

A White House statement shared with States Newsroom this week said “initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”

“Kids, educators, and working families are the ones losing,” said Kusler, of the NEA. “We need governors and communities to step up — now.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Created 1776, The United States Declaration of Independence is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. The Declaration explained why the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states no longer under British rule. With the Declaration these new states took a collective first step toward forming the United States of America. The declaration was signed by representatives from New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. | Getty Images

Today, on July 4, we are running the text of the Declaration of Independence in full as a reminder of the nation’s foundational ideals.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

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Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed a new two-year budget in the early morning hours Thursday in a race against Congress to ensure the state gets a federal Medicaid match that it would lose under President Trump’s tax and spending cuts package.

In an extraordinarily rapid succession of events, Evers and Republican lawmakers unveiled a compromise budget deal on Tuesday, the Senate passed it Wednesday night, and hours later just before 1 a.m. on Thursday, the Assembly passed it. Evers signed it in his conference room minutes later.

Democrats who voted against the $111 billion spending bill said it didn’t go far enough in meeting their priorities of increasing funding for schools, child care and expanding Medicaid. But Evers, who hasn’t decided on whether he will seek a third term, hailed the compromise as the best deal that could be reached.

“I believe most Wisconsinites would say that compromise is a good thing because that is how government is supposed to work,” Evers said.

Wisconsin’s budget would affect nearly every person in the battleground state. Income taxes would be cut for working people and retirees by $1.4 billion, sales taxes would be eliminated on residential electric bills, and it would cost more to get a driver’s license, buy license plates and title a vehicle.

Unprecedented speed

There was urgency to pass the budget because of one part that increases an assessment on hospitals to help fund the state’s Medicaid program and hospital provider payments. Medicaid cuts up for final approval this week in Congress cap how much states can get from the federal government through those fees.

The budget would increase Wisconsin’s assessment rate from 1.8% to the federal maximum of 6% to access federal matching funds. But if the federal bill is enacted first, Wisconsin could not raise the fee, putting $1.5 billion in funding for rural hospitals at risk.

In the rush to get done, Republicans took the highly unusual move of bringing the budget up for votes on the same day. In at least the past 50 years, the budget has never passed both houses on the same day.

“We need to get this thing done today so we have the opportunity to access federal funding,” Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said at the start of debate just before 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Governors typically take several days to review and sign the budget after it’s passed, but Evers took just minutes.

Bipartisan compromise

In a concession to the Democratic governor, Republicans also agreed to spend more money on special education services in K-12 schools, subsidize child care costs and give the Universities of Wisconsin its biggest increase in nearly two decades. The plan would also likely result in higher property taxes in many school districts due to no increase in general aid to pay for operations.

The budget called for closing a troubled aging prison in Green Bay by 2029, but Evers used his partial veto to strike that provision. He left in $15 million in money to support the closure, but objected to setting a date without a clear plan for how to get it done.

Republicans need Democratic votes

The Senate passed the budget 19-14, with five Democrats joining with 14 Republicans to approve it. Four Republicans joined 10 Democrats in voting no. The Assembly passed it 59-39 with six Democrats in support. One Republican voted against it.

Democratic senators were brought into budget negotiations in the final days to secure enough votes to pass it.

“It’s a bipartisan deal,” Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein said before the vote. “I think everybody left the table wishing it was different, but this is something everyone has agreed on.”

Democrats said newly drawn legislative maps, which helped them pick up seats in November and narrow the Republican majorities, led to greater compromise this year.

“That gave us leverage, that gave us an opportunity to have a conversation,” Democratic Sen. Mark Spreitzer said.

But still, Spreitzer said the budget “fell far short of what was needed on our priorities.” He and other Democrats said it didn’t go far enough to help fund child care, K-12 schools and higher education, in particular.

Evers vetoes prison closure deadline

The budget called for closing a troubled aging prison in Green Bay by 2029, but Evers used his partial veto to strike that provision. He left in $15 million in money to support planning for the closure, but objected to setting a date without a clear plan for how to get it done.

The governor noted in his veto message that the state has “painful experience” with trying to close prisons without a fleshed-out plan, pointing out that the state’s youth prison remains open even though lawmakers passed a bill to close the facility in 2017.

“Green Bay Correctional Institution should close — on that much, the Legislature and I agree,” Evers wrote. “It is simply not responsible or tenable to require doing so by a deadline absent a plan to actually accomplish that goal by the timeline set.”

Jim Rafter, president of the village of Allouez, the suburb where the prison is located, issued a statement Friday saying the veto shows how broken state government has become.

“The time for studying has come and gone,” he said. “The village of Allouez and our community demand action and the certainty they deserve about when this facility will be closed.”

Governor kills grant as payback for ending stewardship

Evers used his partial veto powers to wipe out provisions in the budget that would have handed the town of Norway in southeastern Wisconsin’s Racine County an annual $100,000 grant to control water runoff from State Highway 36. The governor said in his veto message he eliminated the grant because Republicans refused to extend the Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship Program.

That program provides funding for the state and outside groups to buy land for conservation and recreation. Republicans have complained for years that the program is too expensive and removes too much land from property tax rolls, hurting local municipalities. Funding is set to expire next year. Evers proposed allocating $1 billion to extend the program for another decade, but Republicans eliminated the provision.

Evers accused legislators in his veto message of abandoning their responsibility to continue the program while using the runoff grant to help “the politically connected few.” He did not elaborate.

The town of Norway lies within state Rep. Chuck Wichgers and Sen. Julian Bradley’s districts. Both are Republicans; Bradley sits on the Legislature’s powerful budget-writing committee. Emails to both their offices seeking comment weren’t immediately returned.

Rep. Tony Kurtz and Sen. Pat Testin, both Republicans, introduced a bill last month that would extend the stewardship program through mid-2030, but the measure has yet to get a hearing.

Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed to this report.

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 Gov. Tony Evers signs budget in early morning to secure Medicaid funds 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.

Gov. Tony Evers signed the budget, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 15, at 1:32 a.m. in his office Thursday, less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers signed the $111 billion two-year state budget bill into law overnight following a marathon day of overlapping Senate and Assembly floor sessions where the bill received bipartisan support from lawmakers. The budget cuts taxes by $1.3 billion, makes investments in the University of Wisconsin system, boosts public schools’ special education reimbursement rate to 45% and allocates about $330 for child care. 

Evers signed the budget, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 15, at 1:32 a.m. in his office Thursday, less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. Just before signing it, he thanked legislative leaders for working with him and said the budget reflects the fair legislative maps that he signed into law in 2024 and that were in place during November elections. 

“We need to work together,” Evers said. 

As the Assembly and Senate prepared to meet for debate Wednesday evening, Evers was outside of the east wing of the Capitol for Concerts on the Square and telling people not to “drop meatballs” on themselves. 

“I was actually chatting with people about tonight outside,” he said. “Many of them were saying ‘How about that? Compromise.’ Compare that to what’s going on in Washington, D.C., and it’s significantly different, so I’m very proud to sign it.”

The passage and signing of the state budget comes two days after the end of the fiscal year.

Following months of negotiations and the announcement of a deal between Evers, Republican legislative leaders and Senate Democrats on Tuesday, the Legislature worked for about 15 hours Wednesday to get the bill over the finish line.

Their goal was to get the bill signed by Evers before the federal reconciliation bill made it to President Donald Trump’s desk.

One reason for the rush was a provision in the state budget that increases a Medicaid-related hospital assessment from 1.8% to 6%, the current federal limit, to supplement the state’s Medicaid resources. It’s estimated to result in over $1 billion in additional Medicaid revenue that will go back to Wisconsin hospitals, but the state’s ability to make that change is set to be restricted under the federal bill.

“We want our health care system to be in good shape, and in order to do that, we’re going to need help from the federal government,” Evers said. 

Governor uses partial veto

In addition to signing the budget, Evers exercised his partial veto on 23 items . He had agreed not to partially veto any part of the deal that he came to with lawmakers, but other pieces of the legislation were fair game. 

Evers vetoed language that set 2029 for closing Green Bay Correctional Institution. He said he supports closing the facility, but said more needs to be done before a date is set.

“We need more compromise on that. We need to get things going before we start taking people out of Green Bay,” Evers told reporters. “Saying that we’re going to do Green Bay by ’29 doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

He also partially vetoed $750,000 in grants to the Lakeland STAR Academy, a Minocqua charter school that specializes in serving students with autism and diverse learning needs; vetoed language excluding two of Wisconsin’s 11 federally-recognized tribes from a grant program; and vetoed $25,000 for a street project in the village of Warrens. 

In addition, he vetoed funds for five projects that would go through the Department of Natural Resource. 

“I object to providing an earmark for a natural resources project when the Legislature has abandoned its responsibility to reauthorize and ensure the continuation of the immensely popular Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program,” Evers stated in his veto message. 

Lawmakers said they are still working on legislation to continue the program. “Instead of renewing the program and helping the many, the Legislature has opted to benefit the politically connected few,” Evers wrote.  “The Legislature must do its job and renew the Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program.”

Evers said if he would change anything about the budget, he would have wanted “more in the area of specificity in child care.” The budget will spend about $330 million on child care including $110 million to extend direct payments to providers for another year, $65 million to a new program for providers serving 4-year-olds and $123 million to increase the reimbursement for child care costs for low-income families under the Wisconsin Shares program.

Evers also rejected the calls of some advocates that he veto the entire budget, noting the uncertainty that could result and the funding that could be put at risk by starting from scratch on a budget.

“Failing to reach consensus and vetoing this budget in its entirety was an untenable option, not just for me, but for the people of our state,” Evers wrote in his budget message. 

Evers told reporters he wasn’t caught off guard by the number of Democratic lawmakers who didn’t support the budget.

“They have to do what they think is right, and everybody’s kind of looking for what’s going to happen in a couple years, and so I’m not surprised,” Evers said. “But there’s a whole bunch of Republicans that supported it so God bless them.” 

Republican lawmakers also said throughout the day that the prospect of losing hospital funding if the budget wasn’t signed ahead of the federal reconciliation bill moving through Congress played a role in wanting to get the budget done as quickly as possible.

“That’s why we’re working really fast to get it done,” Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said during a press conference Wednesday morning. “We will get the bill to the governor’s desk prior to the President [Trump] signing the Big Beautiful bill.”

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said at a mid-afternoon press conference he expected Evers would sign the legislation late Wednesday or early Thursday.

“It’s about a billion dollars that will be able to flow to an awful lot of rural hospitals, people who are taking care of those with urgent needs,” Vos said. “We want to get it done and we want access to those dollars.”

Senate approves budget 19-14  

The Senate took action on the bill first, passing it 19-14 shortly after 9 p.m. Five Democratic senators, including Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton), joined 14 Republicans to pass the bill. Four Republicans, including Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk), voted with the 10 Democrats against the legislation. 

Democrats’ votes were needed to pass the budget bill in the Senate after several Republicans expressed concerns about the legislation. Hesselbein was at the negotiating table as a result. 

The hospital funding, which led to lawmakers rushing work to pass the budget in one day, was also the top reason that Felzkowski voted against the budget.

Democrats voting yes, in addition to Hesslebein, were Sens. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D- Appleton), Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska), Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) and Jamie Wall (D- Green Bay).  Republicans voting no, in addition to Felzkowski were Rob Hutton (R- Brookfield), Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) and Steve Nass (R Whitewater).

Felzkowski said she felt bad because there were good things in the budget, but that she was appalled the budget didn’t address the cost of health care, noting Wisconsin has the fifth highest health care costs in the country.

Felzkowski said that there should be other health care reforms if hospitals were going to get a “windfall” of over $1 billion a year and blamed Evers and hospital lobbyists for opposing those, including additional hospital price transparency measures.

“Gov. Evers, you failed Wisconsin,” Felzkowski said. “You failed constituents. You failed employers.” 

Evers rejected the claims, calling them “bulls – – t.”

“The people that work in those hospitals are working real hard,” Evers said. “The last thing we need is to have hospitals going belly up in the middle of the pandemic or something.” 

Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), who voted no, mentioned Evers’ previous vetoes of Republican tax cuts and said the current budget bill leveraged those vetoes “to hide the 12% increase in spending” as well as a structural deficit.

“In a time of economic uncertainty, when our spending decisions warrant further restraint and discernment, we need a budget that creates proper spending priorities and puts taxpayers first,” Hutton said. 

Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) called the budget an “orgy” of spending in a statement explaining his “no” vote. Implicating fellow Republicans, he criticized lawmakers for spending the state’s $4.3 billion surplus on one-time earmarks and “funding for special interests” instead of larger tax cuts.

Despite the handful of opponents, the majority of Senate Republicans supported the budget, touting the tax cuts that they secured and some of the investments.

LeMahieu called it “a responsible budget that invests in core priorities” and touted the $1.4 billion tax cut. 

At the Senate GOP press conference Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) singled out some of the University of Wisconsin system funding that will “put the thumb on the scale…to help some of those campuses like UW Platteville that have had declining enrollment over the last decade.” The budget allocates $53 million for UW system funding, distributed through two formulas: one for declining enrollment and another for the number of credit hours undergraduates complete.

The University of Wisconsin system will also get $840 million for capital projects, $94 million for staff wage increases, $54 million for recruitment and retention and $7 million for virtual mental health services.

Sen. Dan Feyen (R-Fond du Lac), who voted yes, said the budget didn’t do everything he wanted it to do and included some things he didn’t support. 

“I always have, and always will, advocate for a smaller, smarter state government,” he said in a statement. “I’m glad to see that this budget cuts over 300 vacant positions from state government.”

Feyen highlighted his support for special education funding and child care provisions in the document. He said if people want a more “conservative” budget, then Republicans would need to expand their majority and elect a Republican governor in 2026.

Senate Democrats, whether they voted for or against the bill, all had a similar message: it doesn’t do enough. 

“What we have on the floor today is better than it would have been if Senate Dems had not been at the table, but let me be clear, it is not perfect,” Hesselbein said at a Wednesday morning press conference. She described the budget as a “bipartisan deal” where “everybody left the table wishing it was different, but this is something that we can agree on trying to move forward.”

Asked about the advocates who called for lawmakers to vote against the budget and Evers to veto it, Hesselbein said she knew some people were upset.

“I’m glad they’re making their voices heard,” she said. “That’s why today, we’re going to be fighting for every single Wisconsinite.”

Day of drama delayed

The Senate convened a little after 10:30 a.m., but didn’t pass the bill until after 9 p.m. 

The first several hours of debate centered on Senate Democrats’ 25 proposed amendments  that ranged from increasing funding for the UW system, K-12 education and child care to expanding postpartum Medicaid. The body got through about half of those amendments before pausing for several hours to caucus.

During the delays, Republicans were working on a 35-page “technical amendment” with several changes, including an added requirement that the UW system conduct an efficiency study on declining student enrollment and future operations. 

When the Senate reconvened around 7 p.m., it tabled the rest of the Democratic amendments and started debate on the full budget bill. 

Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) said Democrats helped improve the budget but that it l would not allow people in Wisconsin to thrive.

“We understand the urgency to act. Congress is actively restricting our future funding. This budget must move forward, but that does not make it a good budget,” Spreitzer said.

The budget broke the “rule of 17” — the Senate Republicans’ practice of making sure 17 members support a measure before it’s put on the floor — Spreitzer said, and criticized them for not breaking the rule to pass other measures, including postpartum Medicaid expansion or funding for the Knowles-Nelson Conservation program in a bipartisan way. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just get it done today?” he said. 

Spreitzer said the Democratic votes on the budget were not an endorsement, but were rather an acknowledgement that it was better than it would have been without bipartisan negotiations. Asserting that the budget didn’t deserve one more vote than was necessary to pass it, he voted against it.

Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said the optimism after Evers introduced his budget in February soon faded and criticized the governor for not fighting harder for his priorities.  The result is “grossly” insufficient and “will do more harm than good,” he said

“It’s a ‘failure to fight’ budget,” Larson said. “This budget is cowardice. We all deserve so much better.” 

Assembly passes budget 59-39 

“We have a guarantee that we’re going to have a transformation budget that works for everyone,” Vos said during the Assembly floor debate. “I assume, like in the state Senate where Democrats and Republicans are going to vote for the budget, we would have the same thing here in the Assembly, if people are serious about saying we want to work together.” 

The Assembly concurred in the bill 59-39 at around 12:40 a.m. Seven Democrats voted with Republicans in favor of the bill: Reps. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse), Steve Doyle (D-Onalaska), Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire), Maureen McCarville (D- DeForest), Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh), Sylvia Ortiz-Velez (D-Milwaukee) and Tara Johnson (D-Town of Shelby). 

One Republican  — Rep. Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) — voted with Democrats against the bill. Rep. Calvin Callahan (R-Tomahawk) was not voting. 

Assembly Co-Chair Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said the budget process this time was different from any other that he’s worked on. This is his fourth as co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee. 

“We did spend more time working with the governor’s office, the governor and Democrats,” Born said, and called the budget  “more conservative”  than the state’s 2023-25 budget, to his surprise. He noted that the $1.3 billion tax cut will get signed into law, unlike previous tax cuts that Evers has vetoed. 

The budget spends the state’s estimated $4 billion budget surplus down to about $800 million, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The budget also has a 6% increase in general purpose revenue spending and a 12% increase overall.

While Republicans highlighted the bipartisan nature of the budget and measures included, Democrats throughout the day focused on their critiques and the measures that didn’t make it in.

Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said at a press conference Wednesday morning that she was appreciative of Evers and Hesselbein for being at the negotiating table and getting what they could — but it wouldn’t be enough to win her vote. 

“This proposal is a far cry from the budget that Assembly Democrats would have written,” said Neubauer. She said she was not at the table when the budget deal was made.  With a 54-45 majority, Assembly Republicans had the votes to pass the budget without the Democrats, Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) said at a GOP press conference.

Neubauer said that as a consequence, the Assembly Democrats “were not part of those negotiations.”

School districts will get an increase in the special education reimbursement rate from about 32% to 42% in the first year of the biennium and 45% in the second year. It will be the highest that the rate has been in many years, but still lower than the 60% advocates and Democrats wanted.

Democratic lawmakers said that without increases in general aid or schools, districts will have to continue relying on property tax increases to keep up with costs.

“You didn’t set out to stop the cycle of [property tax increase] referendums, you set out to continue it,” Rep. Robyn Vining (D-Wauwatosa) said on the Assembly floor. “When 96 of 99 Assembly districts have gone to referendum recently and the statewide demand for public school funding increases isn’t partisan for our constituents, why are we fighting so hard to get Republicans to adequately fund our schools? This isn’t a Democrat versus Republican issue across the state, and it shouldn’t be a Republican versus Democrat issue in the state Capitol.”

The four-member Wisconsin Legislative Socialist Caucus — including Reps. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) and Francesca Hong (D-Madison) — voted against the bill. In a joint statement they called the agreement between Republican lawmakers, Senate Democrats and Evers a “catastrophic failure of leadership that surrenders to Republican austerity.” They cited the lack of a general school aid increase for public schools, the special education reimbursement not meeting 60% and the failure to expand Medicaid.

“This is not a compromise, this is capitulation,” the caucus said.

Assembly Republicans mostly focused on the parts of the state budget they were appreciative of but also took jabs at Democrats for saying they would vote against the bill. 

The Agriculture Roads Improvement Program, which was created in 2023 to support local agricultural road improvement projects statewide, will get an infusion of $150 million. 

“That’s a big deal in my community and up in the rural part of the northwest,” Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) said. “It helps our state’s largest industry by improving the quality of our roads to get their products and goods out and inputs and services that farmers need into the field as well.” 

Rep. Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek) said lawmakers committed to providing tax cuts for seniors and Wisconsinites as a whole through the elimination of the utility tax, a policy Evers had advocated for. 

“I know that some people on the other side of the aisle said that people are not seeking tax relief,” Rodriguez said. “Yes, they have been. You just haven’t been listening.”

The Office of School Safety, housed in the Department of Justice, will get 13 permanent staff positions and $1.57 million in the budget.

The office provides training and grants to schools for safety and runs the Speak Up, Speak Out tipline where students can anonymously report safety concerns. Funding for the office became a flashpoint of criticism in the 2023-25 budget debate. 

Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) touted the new budget’s provision for the office and spoke about working with Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul on getting the funding in this year’s budget. He also credited lawmakers on the finance committee for helping to keep the office going.

“The process is ugly, but working together to get something done is a really great thing, so I will defend this budget. I will run on this budget,” Novak said.

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said on the floor that lawmakers who voted against the budget shouldn’t take credit for any of its accomplishments in the budget later  or attend groundbreakings for projects it funded.“If you vote against this, do not show your face,” Kurtz said. “You didn’t have the courage to vote yes.”

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Thousands of protesters marched up State Street and past the Wisconsin Forward statue at the state Capitol on Saturday. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

It was an encouraging week in Wisconsin. The state Supreme Court finally invalidated a cruel 1849 abortion ban, and Gov. Tony Evers declared victory after he and state legislative leaders reached a deal on the state budget he signed in the early morning hours on Thursday that adds back some badly needed support for schools and child care. The budget deal is not what a lot of Democrats and advocates wanted, but it’s better than the brutal austerity Republicans in the Legislature have imposed in the last several budget cycles. Most encouragingly, the end of gerrymandering forced Republicans to negotiate, since they needed Democratic votes in the Senate to get the budget passed.

Some Democrats still refused to vote ‘yes” on the budget. They pointed out that, while it includes a significant boost for special education, it leaves schools struggling with zero general state aid. A majority of school districts will see revenue go down, and most will have to beg local property owners to raise their own taxes. To make matters worse, the Trump administration is freezing billions in promised aid to K-12 schools. 

Child care advocates who fought for desperately needed state support got about one-quarter of the aid Evers had originally proposed. Some were relieved, but others told Examiner Deputy Editor Erik Gunn that it’s just not enough to save centers from going out of business and parents from losing access to care.

The health care outlook is also bleak. With the feds poised to make Medicaid cuts that could cause 60,000 Wisconsinites to lose health care, the state budget fails to expand Medicaid and won’t even cover postpartum care — making us one of only two states to refuse health care to low-income mothers of newborns.

The worrisome backdrop to all of this is the federal budget plan President Donald Trump and Republicans are pushing through Congress that simultaneously runs up giant deficits and takes an ax to safety net programs on a scale we’ve never before experienced. 

The massive bill that passed the U.S. Senate this week slashes health care and nutrition assistance and will lead to the closure of rural hospitals, decimate green infrastructure projects that have been a boon to Wisconsin and will make life harder and more expensive for most people — all to funnel millions of dollars in tax cuts to the richest Americans and to fund a chilling escalation of a militarized immigration police force. 

Our own U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson threatened to vote against the House version of the bill, which was projected to increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion, because, he said, the deficits it created were “mortgaging our children’s future.” But Johnson then voted for the Senate version, which ratchets up the deficit even more, to $3.3 trillion. So much for the self-described “numbers guy.” Kowtowing to Trump and making permanent the tax cuts Johnson personally benefits from was more important to him than his alleged concern about deficits.

It makes sense that much of the news about the Republican budget deal has centered around the devastating health care cuts and the ballooning federal deficit. But the $170 billion in the budget for immigration enforcement is sure to change the landscape of the United States — escalating raids, deportations without due process and a massive new system of private detention centers on the model of the detention camp in a Florida swamp that apparently thrilled Trump when he visited it during congressional budget deliberations.

Brace yourself for the impact of the supercharged ICE budget. Unlike Texas — where terrorized immigrant workers are staying home after raids, causing farmers to fear they’ll  go under as their labor force disappears — we haven’t experienced big workplace raids in Wisconsin. If ICE has a lot more manpower, that could change.

I spoke this week with a dairy farmer in the Western part of the state who reported that, despite the terrifying videos circulating online of violent arrests by masked immigration agents, his employees are carrying on as usual, coming to work, going out, not changing their plans. “We haven’t had any raids on dairy farms in Wisconsin,” he pointed out. 

It’s eerie how normal life continues to be in rural Wisconsin, where 70% of the labor on dairy farms is performed by immigrant workers, almost all of whom lack legal documents to live and work in this country, because Congress has never created a visa for year-round, low-skilled farmwork. The farmer I spoke with said he had just returned from watching a soccer match among immigrant workers and everyone was in a good mood.

He added that officials in Trump’s agriculture and labor departments have repeatedly reassured an industry group he’s part of that the administration understands how dependent employers are on their immigrant workers and that they don’t want mass deportation to harm them.

Wisconsin dairy farmers and other employers are hoping Trump continues to be influenced by the people in his administration who tell him he shouldn’t destroy the U.S. agriculture, construction and hospitality industries. They felt encouraged by Trump’s recent statement that “we’re going to take care of our farmers and hotel workers,” and his claim that he’s working on deportation exemptions for whole classes of immigrant workers who don’t have authorization, but on whom U.S. industries rely.

But the Stephen Miller wing of the administration doesn’t care about any of that. 

The whole narrative promoted by Miller, Trump’s anti-immigrant deputy chief of staff, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump himself, that the U.S. is suffering an “invasion” by a large number of immigrants who commit violent crimes is nonsense. Immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. born citizens. They are an absolutely essential part of the U.S. economy. And they are loved and valued members of our communities. Most of the people the Trump administration has been rounding up have never been convicted of any crime, let alone violent crime. They are landscapers, roofers, farmworkers, students, parents driving home from work — just like the  people Trump claims he is going to protect. As the administration ramps up its program to incarcerate and deport them, with a militarized push on a scale our country has never seen, Trump is trying to have it both ways — reassuring employers that he won’t target the “good” immigrants who work for them, while peddling the lie that there are tons of “bad” immigrants who deserve to be kept in cages in an alligator-infested swamp. 

The idyllic, peaceful atmosphere in Wisconsin, where we feel far away from violent kidnappings by unidentified, masked federal agents, could change in a dramatically dark fashion once the ICE receives the tens of billions of new dollars in the Republicans’ federal budget plan. We saw the showy arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan and immigrants who, trusting the legal system, showed up for their court dates in Milwaukee. We saw the needlessly cruel forced departure of Milwaukee teacher’s aide Yessenia Ruano and her U.S.-born little girls back to El Salvador — the country Ruano fled after her brother was murdered there by gang members and where she felt her life was threatened.

With tens of billions of dollars in new money to spend and quotas to meet for its mass deportation program, ICE could begin rounding up the hardworking immigrants who keep our dairy industry going, in parts of the state that overwhelmingly vote for Republicans.

That spectacle, along with the hideous cuts to health care, education, food assistance and other programs that make life livable in Wisconsin, will surely provoke a backlash against the politicians who enabled it. Let’s hope it’s not too late.

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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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