A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is pushing a fix to a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that hampered the public’s ability to obtain attorney fees in certain public records lawsuits against public officials — but the top Assembly Republican remains noncommittal about the bill.
The case, Friends of Frame Park v. City of Waukesha, involved a public records dispute between the city and a citizen group. Waukesha was working to bring a semi-professional baseball team to town. A group of concerned residents, Friends of Frame Park, submitted a public records request to the city seeking copies of any agreements the city had reached with the team’s owners or the semi-professional league.
The city partially denied the request and refused to produce a copy of a draft contract. Friends of Frame Park hired an attorney and sued. A day after the lawsuit was filed, and before the local circuit court took action, the city produced a copy of the draft contract.
The case eventually worked its way to the state Supreme Court, which determined that Friends of Frame Park was not entitled to attorney fees because it technically had not prevailed in court — the group received the record without action from the circuit court.
The ruling “actually incentivizes public officials to illegally withhold records because it forces requestors to incur legal costs that may never be recovered,” said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, during a public hearing about the bill.
Max Lenz, an attorney representing the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, said the state Supreme Court ruling incentivizes public officials to “effectively dare the public to sue.”
“The Supreme Court’s ruling in Friends of Frame Park flipped the public records law presumption of openness on its head,” he said.
The legislation, spearheaded by state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, would supersede the high court’s ruling and allow a requestor to obtain attorney fees if a judge determines that the filing of a lawsuit “was a substantial factor contributing to that voluntary or unilateral release” of records, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
The bill has garnered support from an unusual coalition of organizations. Seven groups, some of which frequently lobby, have registered in support of the bill, including the liberal ACLU of Wisconsin and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
A similar version of the bill was approved by the state Senate last session but did not receive a vote in the Assembly. The legislation was approved by the state Senate last week.
The legislation’s path forward remains unclear. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters recently that “our caucus has never talked about it.”
“It’s certainly something we could discuss, but we don’t have a position on it at this time,” Vos added.
Are you interested in learning more about public records? Here’s a primer on what types of records should be accessible to you — and how to request them.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee used its first working meeting on the state’s next two-year budget to scrap Gov. Tony Evers’ recommended spending plan — but it offered clues to which of the public’s priorities remain in the mix and which are DOA.
Using committee rules, Republicans put a prohibition on committee members discussing certain ideas put forth by the governor — including proposals relating to some of the public’s top priorities: education funding, health care and child care — but left the door open to discussing some of his ideas even as they struck them from the budget document.
The Joint Finance Committee’s action marks the fourth time in four budget cycles that it has scrapped hundreds of the Democratic governor’s proposals — though some of them can return to the budget, in some form or another. GOP lawmakers on the committee have gotten used to “the way we have to manage Gov. Evers’ budgets,” committee co-chair Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, told reporters, adding that the governor’s plan called for too much state spending.
Democrats on the committee denounced their GOP colleagues for tossing Evers’ budget.
“People are struggling, and it’s a challenging world,” said Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha. “The one thing we should not be doing, the one thing that nobody votes for their legislator to do, is to make their life harder.”
Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, panned the idea that Evers’ proposals were the only way to address certain issues in the state.
“This idea that the door is closed on all these things is pretty ridiculous,” he said during the committee’s meeting.
There is more than “one way to address issues and those will all be debated and built over the next couple of months,” Born added.
Here are issues legislators will and won’t be able to discuss as the committee crafts a spending plan over the next two months.
Education funding
The committee closed the book on a number of education issues. That includes a $148 million proposal from Evers to make school meals free to all K-12 students in Wisconsin regardless of income. The program would have taken effect for the 2026-27 school year.
The committee also shut down a $500,000 proposal to fund a grant program for peer-to-peer suicide prevention programs, $5 million in funding to help school districts encourage people to pursue a career in teaching and $1 million to pay for feminine hygiene products that can be distributed to Wisconsin students at school.
Though the committee voted to scrap scores of other Evers proposals, it did not vote to end the discussion on certain issues that were priorities for the governor and raised by the public at committee hearings.
One thing scrapped by the committee but left open for discussion was Evers’ $1.13 billion request to have the state pay for 60% of Wisconsin school districts’ special education costs. The state currently covers a third of such costs for public schools and upwards of 90% of costs for some private voucher schools. Multiple public hearing attendees said their public school districts have transferred thousands of dollars from their general funds to their special education funds to cover costs that have not been reimbursed.
The committee also tossed out a $212 million proposal to increase general per pupil aid and a $168 million request to fund school-based mental health services, but left the door open for future discussion on both topics.
The committee’s decision to definitively shut down some proposals but leave open others suggests lawmakers could increase spending for certain programs funded by Evers, just in different ways or amounts.
Health care
As it has throughout Evers’ time in office, the committee rejected a proposal to accept federal Medicaid expansion and used committee rules to block further discussion of the topic. Medicaid expansion has been a top priority for the governor during his six-plus years in office, but Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to expand the program.
Wisconsin is one of 10 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has defended that decision as insulating the state from the federal government scaling back Medicaid reimbursements.
Republicans on the committee also closed the door on a $100 million proposal from Evers to fund a program focused on lead hazard remediation. The funds would have been used to help low-income families remediate lead in homes built before 1950.
The committee also clipped a $1.4 million request from Evers to pay for a study to assess so-called “forever chemicals” and identify potential methods for limiting further human exposure. PFAS, as the chemicals are commonly known, have contaminated water sources across Wisconsin. Two years ago, the Legislature approved $125 million to help address PFAS contamination in the state. The funds have so far not been released, with Evers and Republicans at odds with how the money should be spent.
One key item lawmakers threw out but did not block future consideration of is postpartum Medicaid expansion. Wisconsin is one of two states that have turned down a federal expansion of Medicaid coverage for up to 12 months for new moms. Wisconsin’s coverage currently lasts 60 days after birth, far shorter than what health experts recommend. Evers’ proposal would have expanded coverage to one year.
A stand-alone bill that would provide Medicaid coverage to new moms for 12 months is currently working its way through the Legislature. It is co-sponsored by a majority of the Legislature’s 132 members. All six Senate Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee voted in favor of the stand-alone bill last month. Including it in the state budget could provide lawmakers a way to circumvent opposition from Vos, who has criticized the bill as welfare expansion.
Child care
Among the Evers provisions discarded by the committee without a possibility of future consideration were programs that would provide financial assistance to child care providers, assist workers with licensing and certification and pay down debt associated with child care accrued by certain qualifying families.
Child Care Counts was established in 2020 using federal funds to provide monthly stipends to child care providers to cover costs of their services and support the recruitment and retention efforts of child care workers in Wisconsin. But funding for the program is set to expire at the end of June.
Evers’ budget proposal would have allocated $442 million over the next two years to make the program permanent, funding annual payments to child care providers. The recommendation would also fund four new positions at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families to oversee the program.
Without continued state support for the program, around 25% of child care centers in Wisconsin face the threat of closing once current funding runs out.
Another program removed from the budget would have provided a $4.5 million grant to Wonderschool — an organization aimed at meeting the demands of child care — to continue expanding child care in Wisconsin. The program also would provide $5.5 million to the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association to support child care workers in the state, including assistance with the licensing and certification process.
Another cut program would have used federal funds to reduce child care debt for qualifying parents.
Child care access and affordability have been a persistent problem in Wisconsin, with some families expressing concern over how they will cover the costs of child care without state support.
The Joint Finance Committee will continue its work on the budget throughout May and June. The state’s current fiscal year expires on June 30, but if a new budget isn’t yet in place, funding will continue at existing levels.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A Democratic bill seeks to bring down house prices in Wisconsin by blocking hedge funds from buying single-family homes in the state.
“We know that there’s an access and affordability crisis in housing right now,” lead bill sponsor Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi, told Wisconsin Watch in an interview, calling it a nationwide problem. “And as a state legislator, I want to see if I can do something about that crisis locally.”
Hedge funds pool money, generally from wealthy investors, and invest it in a range of markets seeking to make a profit, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That sizable pool of cash “really gives them almost unlimited power to buy what they would like at prices that are often out of reach for a typical purchaser,” Keyeski said.
Hedge funds’ ability to outbid other prospective home buyers, especially individuals, increases housing costs and prices out middle class families, Keyeski argued.
While the Democratic lawmaker acknowledged the practice of investor-backed groups gobbling up houses isn’t widespread in Wisconsin, she noted that groups with deep pockets bought more than a thousand houses in the Milwaukee area beginning around 2018.
Three companies, VineBrook Homes, SFR3 and Highgrove Holdings, owned about 1,500 homes as of the end of 2022, according to a 2023 analysis from John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education.
VineBrook and SFR3 together owned almost 1,200 homes, deploying a “buy-to-rent” business model, Johnson said. However, in some instances, they were willing to flip their recently purchased homes. SFR3 paid about $2 million for 23 properties, Johnson found, later selling them for a total of $4.2 million.
Vinebrook now owns 703 properties, and SFR3 is down to 188, Johnson told Wisconsin Watch in an email.
There was an increase in investor-backed groups buying single-family homes in 2024, though still at a lower rate than before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from RedFin, a real estate brokerage and mortgage company. In the fourth quarter of 2024, for example, investor-backed groups bought 17% of the American homes sold in those three months.
The share of homes owned by large investment groups in the Milwaukee area was 14.9% in the last three months of last year, RedFin found, lower than the national average.
The increase in investor purchases was focused on single-family homes, RedFin found, as interest from deep-pocketed groups waned for townhouses, condos and multifamily properties.
Keyeski sees her bill as “a preemptive move” to protect other Wisconsin communities, she said.
The legislation also fits into a larger package of bills from Democratic lawmakers seeking to bring down costs for Wisconsin residents, Keyeski said.
The bill currently has 42 cosponsors — 41 Democrats and one Republican. But she said she has heard a positive response from both Democratic and Republican voters about the bill and is hopeful the legislation could get a hearing this session.
Legislative Republicans have so far not introduced any bills seeking to curb housing costs, according to a Wisconsin Watch review of legislative proposals. Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, who chairs the Senate Committee on Insurance, Housing, Rural Issues and Forestry, did not respond to questions about whether Keyeski’s legislation would get a hearing this session.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Want to understand the levers of power in Wisconsin? Our statehouse team writes a weekly preview of what’s on the agenda in state politics and why it matters. It’s called Forward. The analysis below is an example of what you can expect in your inbox every Monday if you subscribe here. (Our newsletters are free, like all of our journalism).
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested on Friday for allegedly helping a man living in the United States without legal status evade federal immigration authorities. Dugan faces two federal felony counts — obstruction and concealing an individual.
Dugan’s case is similar to a 2019 case brought by federal prosecutors against Massachusetts Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph. In that case, Joseph was accused of helping an unauthorized immigrant avoid an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after a court appearance.
In both cases, federal officials alleged the state judges allowed the defendants to exit their courtrooms through alternative routes to avoid federal immigration officials waiting outside the courtrooms in publicly accessible areas.
In a criminal complaint filed last week, federal officials alleged that Dugan confronted immigration enforcement officials outside of her courtroom as they waited for a defendant who was scheduled to appear before her finished his court business. Witnesses reported that Dugan “was visibly upset and had a confrontational, angry demeanor,” according to the complaint. Dugan asked to see the warrant the immigration officials were acting upon and then referred them to see the county’s chief judge.
After returning to the courtroom, Dugan then escorted the man and his attorney through a door that leads to a “nonpublic area” of the courthouse, the complaint states.
A similar series of events unfolded in the Massachusetts case. After learning that an ICE agent was waiting to arrest a defendant, Joseph eventually had the man exit the courtroom through a nonpublic exit, federal authorities alleged in a 2019 indictment. A separate court official then helped him exit the building through a back door.
The Massachusetts case was dismissed in 2022. In exchange, Joseph referred herself to the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct, per The New York Times.
One key difference between the two cases: Joseph was indicted. Dugan was served a criminal complaint. To secure an indictment, prosecutors have to present evidence to a panel of everyday Wisconsin residents and convince them there is probable cause a crime has been committed. For criminal complaints, officials only have to get the sign-off of a federal judge, but then later have to secure an indictment from a grand jury, two former federal prosecutors told Wisconsin Watch.
Now, the federal government has 21 days to seek an indictment, according to Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former federal prosecutor.
“It is unusual that this happened with an arrest and complaint because there really is no indication that the Judge was a flight risk or danger to the community,” she told Wisconsin Watch in an email. “They easily could have gone to the grand jury first and summoned her in IF the grand jury wanted to indict.”
Stephen Kravit, a Milwaukee area attorney and former federal prosecutor, said criminal complaints are rare in the Eastern District of Wisconsin and are usually reserved for “an exigent situation where the defendant’s whereabouts aren’t specifically known or the presence in this area is temporary.”
“None of that applies to a sitting Circuit Court Judge,” he added in an email.
Instead, Kravit said, “this was done in a hurry to make a political point.” He added, “Normally, a person charged even with felonies aged 60+ with no record and no chance of fleeing would be summoned to show up at an appointed time for booking and arraignment. Not here. And that was the point.”
🚘 Budget road trip. The Joint Finance Committee will hold a pair of hearings on Monday and Tuesday this week, stepping away from the Capitol in Madison to hear from Wisconsin residents in Hayward and Wausau about what they want included in the state’s next two-year budget.
It will be the third and fourth time so far that the committee has heard from the public on the spending plan. But as the GOP-controlled committee continues to go through the motions of crafting the budget, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, indicated last week that Republican lawmakers could punt on passing a new budget altogether.
Vos was reacting to a Wisconsin Supreme Courtdecision that left intact a move from Gov. Tony Evers that provided for annual public school funding increases for the next 400 years. “It’s certainly a possibility if we can’t find a way for us to get to a common middle ground,” Vos said of spiking the funding plan last week on the “Jay Weber Show.” “But that’s not the goal.”
“It’s something we’re talking about, but it wouldn’t be the first go-to,” Vos added, noting that it has never happened before. The state has passed a budget every two years since 1931, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
But even if the Legislature were to pass on sending a new spending plan to Evers, things in the state wouldn’t shut down. In Wisconsin, the state continues operating at the existing spending levels until a new budget is approved.
📈 Student homelessness rising. Homelessness among K-12 Wisconsin students reached a new high in 2024, increasing 9% over the previous year despite total enrollment declining slightly.
That’s according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, which found that a little more than 20,000 Wisconsin students were homeless in 2023-24. If that figure seems high, it’s because it is. Homelessness among students is counted using a definition that is more expansive than the one employed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal McKinney-Vento Act defines homeless children and youth as those “who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.”
It’s the third straight year that student homelessness increased in Wisconsin, the report found, reaching a new high since the state Department of Public Instruction started keeping data in 2019.
“The number of students affected by homelessness has grown and is likely to continue to remain high in the near future as an insufficient supply of affordable housing remains a lingering problem throughout the state,” the report concludes. “Addressing the needs of this high-risk group of students could benefit not only them but also Wisconsin’s educational outcomes overall.”
Wisconsin Watch’s Hallie Claflin has been documenting the state’s rural homelessness crisis, including in her latest report about police departments transporting homeless people outside their jurisdiction. We’ll be watching the budget process closely to see if lawmakers address this issue or similarly treat it as out of sight, out of mind.
Susan Crawford’s win in Tuesday’s record-smashing Wisconsin Supreme Court election paves the way for the court’s liberal majority to continue to flex its influence over state politics.
The Dane County Circuit Court judge’s victory guarantees that liberals will control the court until at least 2028.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is at the center of state politics. It has been since 2020, when it denied Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and has continued to make headlines — especially since flipping to liberal control in August 2023.
For the past two years, Justices Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky, Janet Protasiewicz and Ann Walsh Bradley — who collectively make up the court’s liberal majority — have flexed their authority and remade Wisconsin’s political landscape. Crawford, who will be sworn in on Aug. 1, will replace the retiring Walsh Bradley, who has served on the high court for 30 years.
Here’s what Crawford’s victory could mean for some key issues.
1. Abortion rights
The Wisconsin Supreme Court seems poised to, in some form or the other, strike down the state’s 1849 abortion law — which bans almost all abortions in the state.
The court’s current justices in November 2024 heard oral arguments in the lawsuit challenging the statute. It was filed by Attorney General Josh Kaul in the days after Roe vs. Wade was overturned. The lawsuit asks the court to determine whether the 1849 law applies to consensual abortions. It also asks whether the 1849 ban was “impliedly repealed” when the Legislature passed additional laws — while Roe was in effect — regulating abortion after fetal viability.
A Dane County judge ruled in late 2023 that the 1849 statute applied to feticide, not consensual abortions. Abortion services, which were halted in the state after Roe was overturned, have since resumed.
Crawford’s opponent, conservative Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, argued during the campaign that the liberal majority was delaying its ruling in the case “to keep the 1849 law a live issue” in the race.
While working in private practice, Crawford represented Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin in litigation related to abortion access.
Crawford’s victory on Tuesday ensures the court’s upcoming ruling is likely to remain intact — at least for now — meaning abortion will remain legal in Wisconsin.
2. Congressional redistricting
The liberal majority’s decision to throw out the state’s Republican-gerrymandered legislative maps, breaking a GOP lock on the state Legislature, has been its most influential ruling since taking power. As a result, Democrats picked up 14 seats in the Assembly and state Senate in 2024 in a good Republican year nationwide.
However, during the same time period, the high court denied a request to reconsider the state’s congressional maps without stating a reason. The maps were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, but under a “least change” directive from a previous conservative court, so they remained GOP-friendly. But in the liberal court’s legislative redistricting decision, it overturned the “least change” precedent. Crawford’s victory opens a window for Democrats and their allies to once again challenge the maps, potentially using the argument that the current lines were drawn under rules that have since been rejected.
The future of the congressional districts were a key issue in this year’s state Supreme Court race.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice-elect Susan Crawford, left, celebrates alongside Justice Rebecca Dallet after her win in the spring election on April 1, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Elon Musk, who spent some $20 million to boost Schimel’s candidacy, said at a rally in Green Bay last weekend that a potential redrawing of the maps is what made the race so important.
He called Tuesday’s election “a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives.”
Democrats have pushed a similar idea.
The Democratic leader in the U.S. House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, last week called Wisconsin’s congressional lines “broken.”
“As soon as possible we need to be able to revisit that and have fairer lines,” he said during an event with DNC Chair Ken Martin. “The only way for that to be even a significant possibility is if you have an enlightened Supreme Court.”
Crawford’s win makes the court friendlier to a potential congressional redistricting lawsuit.
3. Labor rights
A Dane County judge ruled late last year that provisions of Act 10, a Scott Walker-era law that kneecapped public sector labor unions, violated the state constitution. Under the ruling, all public sector workers would have their collective bargaining restored to what it was before the law took effect in 2011.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court in February declined to fast-track an appeal in the case, meaning it must first be decided by a conservative branch of the state Court of Appeals, likely ensuring it won’t come before the high court before the end of the current term.
That means Crawford, who challenged aspects of Act 10 while working as a private attorney, will be on the court when it comes before the justices.
She didn’t answer directly when asked during the race’s only debate if she would recuse herself from the case. But she did note that the provision currently being challenged is different from the one she brought a lawsuit over.
“If the same provision that I was involved in litigating back in those early days was challenged again, I most likely would recuse,” she said.
But with conservative-leaning Justice Brian Hagedorn having already recused from the case, Crawford could step aside and liberals would still have the votes needed to overturn the law.
4. Environmental issues
The high court is currently also considering a case about enforcement of the state’s “Spills Law.”
Enacted in 1978, the law requires people or companies discharging a hazardous substance “to restore the environment to the extent practicable and minimize the harmful effects from the discharge to the air, lands or waters of this state.”
The lawsuit was filed by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s powerful business lobby, in 2021. It argued that the DNR could not require people to test for so-called “forever chemicals” contamination — and require remediation if they’re present — because the agency hadn’t gone through the formal process of designating the chemicals, known as PFAS, as “hazardous substances.” The court’s liberal justices seemed skeptical of WMC’s position during oral arguments in January.
WMC has been a perennial spender in state Supreme Court races. It spent some $2 million targeting Crawford during this year’s race.
Any forthcoming ruling in favor of the DNR is likely safe with Crawford on the court. She was endorsed during the campaign by Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
A reader asked: Was Elon Musk’s endorsement of Brad Schimel a violation of lobbying laws because of Musk’s status as a federal employee?
We’ll get to that question in a second, but we also wondered about the answer to a related question: Are the cash giveaways from Musk’s America PAC ahead of the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election legal?
Musk, the centibillionaire tech CEO turned efficiency czar for President Donald Trump, has dominated the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in recent weeks. Musk and affiliated groups have poured cash into the race between liberal candidate Susan Crawford and conservative candidate Brad Schimel, which will determine ideological control of the high court and could have national ramifications.
America PAC and Building America’s Future, two groups that are funded by Musk, have spent more than $16.7 million on advertising and voter mobilization efforts meant to aid Schimel’s candidacy. Musk has also donated $3 million to the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which can transfer the money to Schimel’s campaign.
Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, is offering registered Wisconsin voters $100 if they sign a petition opposing “activist judges.”
“Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas,” the petition reads. “By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”
Participants can also get $100 for referring another petition signer.
Late on Wednesday the super PAC announced that “Scott A.” from Green Bay had been selected to win $1 million after filling out the petition. That mirrors a move America PAC deployed in last year’s presidential race.
It’s less clear whether America PAC’s “special offer” violates Wisconsin’s election bribery statute, according to Bryna Godar, a staff attorney with the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
(1m) Any person who does any of the following violates this chapter:
a. Offers, gives, lends or promises to give or lend, or endeavors to procure, anything of value, or any office or employment or any privilege or immunity to, or for, any elector, or to or for any other person, in order to induce any elector to:
i. Go to or refrain from going to the polls.
ii. Vote or refrain from voting.
iii.Vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person.
iv. Vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular referendum; or on account of any elector having done any of the above.
The $100 reward for signing the petition “definitely falls into a gray area because (America PAC) is paying people to sign the petition,” Godar said. “The question is whether the payment is being given in order to induce anyone to vote or refrain from voting.”
“These payments kind of walk an uncertain line on whether they are amounting to that or not,” Godar added.
Godar also noted that you have to be a registered Wisconsin voter to receive the payment, “so it does seem like it is inducing people to register to vote.” That violates federal law for federal elections, she said, but “federal law doesn’t apply to this election because there aren’t any federal offices on the ballot.”
“Under the state law, that’s not specifically one of the listed prohibitions,” Godar said. “It’s definitely in a gray area and sort of walks the line.”
Elon Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, that he would incentivize voting in Wisconsin with $1 million checks. The post appears to have been taken down. An X user asked the platform’s AI chatbot, Grok, whether Musk’s plan was election fraud. The bot responded that the plan likely violates Wisconsin election law.
Late on Thursday, Musk announced he would “give a talk in Wisconsin” in a social media post that has since been taken down.
“Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” he wrote. “I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”
An AI chatbot on Musk’s own social media site flagged the activity in the post as potentially illegal. “Though aimed at boosting participation, this could be seen as election bribery,” the AI profile @grok replied to someone asking if the post was legal.
In a follow-up email, Godar said giving “the payment for voting instead of for signing the petition much more clearly violates Wisconsin law.”
On Friday afternoon, Musk posted again: “To clarify a previous post, entrance is limited to those who have signed the petition in opposition to activist judges.”
“I will also hand over checks for a million dollars to 2 people to be spokesmen for the petition,” he wrote.
UPDATE (March 31, 2025, 9:00 a.m.): On Friday afternoon, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit to bar Musk and America PAC from promoting the “million-dollar gifts.” The suit also sought to prohibit Musk and America PAC “from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote.” The case was randomly assigned to Crawford, who immediately recused, and then reassigned to Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voigt. Voigt declined to hear the petition prior to Sunday’s event, so Kaul went to the Court of Appeals and subsequently the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Both turned down his request to stop Musk from giving away two $1 million checks, which he did on Sunday evening.
Violating the statute is a Class I felony, which can carry a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment of up to three-and-a-half years, or both.
A county district attorney or the Wisconsin attorney general would be responsible for filing criminal charges for violations of the statute, Godar said. It’s also possible someone could try to bring a civil claim to have a judge halt the payments. So far that hasn’t happened.
Now back to our reader question about Musk’s political activities as a federal employee.
Musk, in his role as a “special government employee” leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is bound by the Hatch Act, a law prohibiting “political activity while you’re on duty, while you’re in the workplace, and the use of your official position to influence the outcome of an election,” said Delaney Marsco, the director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center.
But special government employees like Musk are only bound by the Hatch Act while they’re on duty representing the federal government, Marsco said, so the world’s wealthiest man “is allowed to engage in political activity that might otherwise be prohibited as long as he’s not on duty when he’s doing it.”
The Hatch Act is intended to “maintain a federal workforce that is free from partisan political influence or coercion,” according to a memo from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.
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