Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued two orders Wednesday, declining to hear cases challenging the constitutionality of the state’s congressional maps. 

Democrats had hoped that the liberal wing of the court retaining majority control of the body in this spring’s election would give them an opportunity to change the congressional lines. Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight congressional seats, and Democrats hoped they could flip the 1st and 3rd CDs under friendlier maps. 

Before Republicans drew new congressional lines in 2010, Democrats controlled five of the state’s seats. The current maps were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and approved by the state Supreme Court when it was controlled by conservatives. That Court had required that any proposed maps adhere to a “least change” standard that changed as little as possible from the 2010 maps. 

While Evers’ maps made the two competitive districts slightly closer contests, they’re still controlled by Republican U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden. 

The two lawsuits were brought by the Elias Law Group representing Democratic candidates and voters and the Campaign Legal Center on behalf of a group of voters. The cases argued the maps violated the state’s constitutional requirement that all voters be treated equally. 

The challenges against the maps drew national attention as Democrats hope to retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections. 

This is the second time in as many years that the Supreme Court, under a liberal majority, has declined to hear challenges to the congressional maps. 

In both cases, the Court issued unanimous decisions without any explanation as to why they weren’t accepting the cases. 

Aside from declining to hear the cases, Justice Janet Protasiewicz issued an order denying requests that she recuse herself from the case. Republicans have called for her recusal from redistricting cases because of comments she made during her 2023 campaign about Wisconsin’s need for fairer maps. Previously, after Protasiewicz joined the Court, as part of a new liberal majority, it declared the state’s legislative maps, which locked in disproportionate Republican majorities in the Legislature, unconstitutional. 

“I am confident that I can, in fact and appearance, act in an impartial manner in this case,” she wrote. “And the Due Process Clause does not require my recusal because neither my campaign statements nor contributions to my campaign create a ‘serious risk of actual bias.’”

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Kristen Crowell, executive director of Fair Share America, speaks Saturday in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., the first stop for Fair Share America's bus campaign to oppose the Republican budget reconciliation bill currently in the U.S. Senate. (Photo courtesy of Fair Share America)

Over the next three weeks, a band of advocates in a bright green bus is traveling across the U.S. with a message aimed at members of Congress — and at the voters who live in their districts.

To the voters, the message is that they will be hurt by the Republican mega-bill taking shape in Washington — a bill that would extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 that primarily benefit the wealthy and pay for them by slashing Medicaid and other federal programs that critics of the measure argue broadly benefit the public.

To U.S. senators and representatives, the message is: Vote against the measure, or face the wrath of voters in 2026.

The bus trip was launched by  Fair Share America, a coalition of groups focused on  beating back attempts to extend the 2017 tax cuts, one of the signature pieces of legislation from President Donald Trump’s first term. The organization is made up of unions, organizations favoring progressive taxation, and progressive social justice and policy groups.

Fair Share America’s executive director is Kristen Crowell, who lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. In 2022 she helped lead a campaign in Massachusetts when voters approved a constitutional amendment that created a 4% surtax on earned income over $1 million.

“That increase is now generating $3 billion annually that is dedicated for education and transportation,” Crowell told the Wisconsin Examiner.

The Boston Globe reported that the campaign to pass the Massachusetts “millionaires’ tax” raised $27 million, nearly twice as much as the $14 million raised by business-backed opponents of the measure. Crowell said the campaign succeeded by appealing to voters on the issue of fairness.

“We know that when we ask the wealthy to pay a little bit more, to pay their fair share, we can fund the investments that our neighbors and families and communities deserve — and really importantly, right now in this moment, they need in order to to get ahead,” Crowell said in an interview.

Opposition group launched in 2024

The 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of this year. With that date on the calendar, Fair Share America launched in September 2024 to oppose renewing them.

“We started organizing before we knew the outcome of the election and were handed a different reality than we might have hoped for,” Crowell said.

Since then, the organization has helped “lead the pushback at the state level to make sure that constituents and the public understand what’s happening behind closed doors in Washington, D.C., and to really bring the fight to key districts and geographies across the country where lawmakers, in particular the GOP members of Congress, have shut out their constituents,” she said.

The bus trip started on Saturday in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., stopped in Philadelphia on Sunday and will hit four more cities across Pennsylvania on Monday. Stops in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa follow. After that, the bus will double back on its route for three Wisconsin stops, in Racine and Oshkosh on Monday, June 30, and La Crosse on July 1.

The schedule will continue through the middle of July, stopping in Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada before concluding in Bakersfield, California on July 14.

The tour isn’t the start of the organization’s campaign. Fair Share America and its partners with other advocacy groups have been holding town hall meetings in 33 states across the country, Crowell said — including one in Racine in April that featured former Social Security commissioner Martin O’Malley.

Crowell was at the Racine event, to which the local member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville) was invited but didn’t show up. “Over 200 people came [from] across the political spectrum.” Crowell said.

At that town hall and other such events across the country, she’s seen energetic opposition to the new Trump administration as well as the priorities of the current Congress, she said.

“Fair Share America’s not speaking to one side of the aisle vs. the other,” Crowell said. “This is a populist moment.”

Public opposition to budget bill

A poll on behalf of three of the coalition’s member groups found that even before they were given information about details of the GOP budget reconciliation bill, the American voters surveyed had a negative opinion of it.

According to the pollsters 38% of those surveyed said they support the bill, 46% said they oppose it and 16% said they don’t know enough to have an opinion.

Fewer than one-third of voters surveyed — 30% — have heard a lot about the bill. Another 40% have heard “just some” about it, and the remaining 30% said they’ve heard little or nothing about the measure.

The more people heard, however, the less they liked it, according to the report from the polling firm, Hart Research. Opposition increased among all groups after pollsters told people about various details — its changes to Medicaid and to SNAP federal nutrition aid, for example.

“By being in the rooms and town halls and knocking on doors here in Wisconsin, that is what we are hearing and seeing,” Crowell said.

With its slogan, “Stop the billionaire giveaway,” Fair Share America’s bus tour aims to amplify the bill’s cuts to programs that benefit the public and to center the message that its tax cuts favor the wealthy.

Congressional Republicans “have not engaged with their constituents” in Wisconsin and elsewhere about the reconciliation bill, Crowell said. Fair Share America’s goal is to break down the details in terms that people will understand and respond to.

“When you tell them what’s at stake, what’s coming down, they are furious and they want to know how to get in the fight,” Crowell said. “They want to know how to organize their three or four neighbors. So it is incumbent on all of us to shed light on the horrors of this reconciliation bill and do everything it takes to get the word out.”

Funding values and priorities

In Wisconsin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has said he opposes the bill and has threatened to vote against it, criticizing it for not making deeper federal spending cuts. 

While that’s the opposite of Fair Share America’s agenda, “voting ‘No’ is voting ‘No’ at the end of the day,” Crowell said.

She is skeptical that Johnson will follow through on his threat, however.

“When push comes to shove, I don’t think Sen. Johnson is going to cross the White House or cross GOP leadership. I expect him to fall in line,” she said. “But we’re here to push back and say, ‘Absolutely not. We will hold you to that No vote and we do want you to understand what the stakes are for your constituents.’”

While the campaign’s goal is to stop the bill, there’s a second message regardless of the outcome, Crowell said.

“We are building a movement that is strong and durable and it crosses partisan lines,” she said. “If they in fact do go ahead and pass this, there will be hell to pay for those members who abandoned  and threw their constituents and their communities under the bus.”

Crowell said her more than two decades of activism started when, as a working mother, she opposed Milwaukee public school budget cuts. Her daughter, who was in kindergarten then, is now 29.

She went on to organize with “We Are Wisconsin,” the grass-roots coalition that sprang up in reaction to Act 10 — the 2011 law stripping most collective bargaining rights from most public employees, introduced and signed by Scott Walker in his first term as governor.

Act 10 was billed as a “budget repair bill.” Crowell said that working against it she saw clearly the connection between government budgets and policy.

“If progressives want to really win … and fund the things that we care about, we have to compete for what happens in the budget process,” Crowell said. “We have to compete for a fair and just tax code. We have to compete for the revenue that funds all of the issues that we care about, whether that’s health care or climate or education or child care.”

A budget “can be used either to fund our priorities and reflect our values or attack the things that we deeply care about,” Crowell said. With the federal budget reconciliation bill, “we’re watching the GOP members of Congress do exactly that — looking to further harm our communities through advancing this budget.”

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Randy Bryce in a still from the video for his 2026 Congressional campaign. (Bryce campaign photo)

Randy Bryce, the former iron worker who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Wisconsin’s First District in 2018, is taking another shot at the seat, focusing again on a pitch for voters to send an everyday worker to Washington.

Bryce announced Tuesday he would seek the Democratic nomination to run against Republican incumbent Bryan Steil in 2026.

Bryce said he expects the top issues in the race to be preserving Social Security and other safety net programs, resisting  President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs and attacks on immigrants and pushing back against the general climate of fear as Republicans enact the Trump agenda. 

“I cannot sit and just watch this happen,” Bryce said in an interview Monday. “And with Trump it’s even worse now, with people literally being afraid.”

Bryce’s first 2026 campaign video, launched Tuesday morning, hearkens back to the 2018 campaign, when “one man stood up to Washington,” in the words of the opening narration. “He’s not a politician or a billionaire. He’s something much more rare in Congress, someone who actually works for a living.”

The video puts Trump and his policies front and center, and it depicts the 2026 campaign as finishing a job that Bryce began in his first run for the seat.

When the president’s image first appears, the narrator says, “as old enemies come out of the shadows…” A follow-up shot shows a welder — Bryce — in a darkened workshop, and the narrator says, “we need him one more time.”

“I’ve never left the job unfinished,” Bryce tells the camera. “For 20 years, I’ve helped build Wisconsin with these hands while they shipped our jobs overseas. I stayed right here fighting for working families. Trump promised to bring manufacturing back. Eight years later, we’re still waiting.”

Bryce made national headlines with the 2018 race — a  campaign he launched the year before with the intention of running against the district’s 20-year incumbent, then-U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan.

Ryan, who by then was U.S. House Speaker, unexpectedly declined to run for an 11th term however. Since then Bryce has claimed credit for having “chased Paul Ryan out.”

Steil, a corporate lawyer who was once a Ryan congressional aide, ran in Ryan’s place after handily overcoming five primary election challengers.

Bryce’s campaign was widely seen as energetic and novel for the district, which has been in Republican hands since the 1994 election. With the exception of Rob Zerban in 2012, Ryan’s Democratic challengers since 2004 garnered only about a third of voters, ranging from 30% to 37%. In 2018, Bryce finished with 42%. Since that election, Democrats have cleared from 40% to 45% in the 1st CD.

Since that campaign Bryce has headlined a fundraising operation raising money for progressive political candidates, many of them with working-class backgrounds akin to his.

Bryce is entering the 2026 campaign midway through the first year of a Trump term. Progressive and Democratic Party groups who asked if he would run again pointed out that his last campaign had roughly the same timing in Trump’s first term, Bryce told the Wisconsin Examiner, and the decision to run has “been gradually building.”

Cuts to the Veterans Administration is another issue that helped push him to run, said Bryce, a U.S. Army veteran. The agency is one of several that have been disrupted by the DOGE operation (the “Department of Government Efficiency,” although it is not an official U.S. government department) that until recently was run by billionaire and Trump supporter Elon Musk.

The campaign video plays up Bryce’s longtime social media nickname, “IronStache” — trading on the thick mustache he has sported for decades. While it shows flashes of Steil’s face and includes snippets of voters who are criticizing the incumbent, neither the narration nor Bryce mention the incumbent by name.

In the interview, Bryce said in addition to working with the union and grassroots progressive groups that rallied behind him in his first race, he would make an appeal to disaffected Trump voters who are being harmed by current federal policies.

“I want to go places where Democrats normally haven’t gone,” he said. “I want to bring more people together.”

Steil is “listening to his leadership [in Congress] and his donors, he’s not listening to the people that voted for him,” Bryce charged. “And he’s not doing anything to stand up to Trump. The Constitution was drawn up to stop somebody like Trump. But Congress isn’t doing their job. They’re helping enable whatever Trump wants to go on.”