Aborted fetal cells are not used to manufacture the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine today, though the original rubella vaccine was made using human fetal embryo fibroblast cells obtained from two elective abortions in the 1960s.
The rubella vaccine is one of many vaccines that use the cell lines from those aborted fetuses, meaning they descend from the original fetal cells, but are not taken directly from new fetal tissue. These cells were chosen because the womb’s sterile environment does not contain the viruses often found in animal cells.
During the manufacturing of the MMR vaccine, the vaccine virus is purified and cellular debris and growth reagents are removed, breaking down trace DNA until there is none or almost none left.
Most of the major world religions that oppose abortion, including the Roman Catholic Church, have deemed vaccines permissible to prioritize the health of pregnant women, children and the wider population.
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Responding to an order from President Donald Trump, several federal agencies are seeking to block undocumented immigrants and some immigrants with legal status from accessing programs that provide literacy classes, career education, medical and mental health care, substance abuse treatment, free preschool and more.
A range of institutions — including colleges, government agencies and nonprofits — manage the affected programs.
The order has caused widespread confusion about which organizations must check immigration status of the people they serve and how they could do that. Parts of the order appear to conflict with federal law.
Wisconsin joined 20 other states in a lawsuit challenging the new restrictions.
A group of federal agencies announced in July that at least 15 federally funded health, education and social service programs would exclude undocumented immigrants and some who are living in the country legally.
Responding to President Donald Trump’s February executive order to “identify all federally funded programs currently providing financial benefits to illegal aliens and take corrective action,” the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Justice and Labor listed programs that provide literacy classes, career education, medical and mental health care, substance abuse treatment, free preschool and more.
In Wisconsin alone, the state Department of Justice estimates the new federal restrictions “put at risk more than $43 million each year in substance abuse and community mental health block grants that fund services in all 72 counties, 11 Tribal nations, and approximately 50 nonprofit organizations.”
Wisconsin Watch contacted more than a dozen Wisconsin organizations, government agencies and national experts to learn about the new policy’s effects. But we found more questions than answers. Most are unsure who is subject to the new rules or how to comply.
While we were reporting this story, Wisconsin joined 20 other states in a lawsuit challenging the new restrictions. That suit is still pending, but the parties have agreed to a deal that would delay most of the restrictions in those states until September.
Confusion created by the guidance could have serious consequences, experts say. Some providers might delay or cancel programs unnecessarily out of an abundance of caution, while some immigrants may avoid services for which they remain eligible, such as health care and education.
While much remains unclear, here’s what we know so far.
Which immigrants would be barred?
A 1996 law already prohibited certain immigrants from receiving 31 “federal public benefits,” including Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and cash assistance. The Trump administration’s new guidance bars the same immigrants from additional programs, according to the National Immigration Law Center.
Those ineligible include:
People with Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
People with nonimmigrant visas, such as student visas, work visas and U visas for survivors of serious crimes.
People who have pending applications for asylum or a U visa.
People granted Deferred Enforced Departure or deferred action. This includes Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients — those who entered the country as children.
Undocumented immigrants.
Lawfully present immigrants who don’t fall into categories below.
People in the following groups would remain eligible:
Lawful permanent residents (green card holders).
Refugees.
People who have been granted asylum or withholding of removal.
Certain survivors of domestic violence.
Certain survivors of trafficking.
Certain Cuban and Haitian nationals.
People residing under a Compact of Free Association with Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.
Why the confusion?
A range of institutions — including colleges, government agencies and nonprofits — manage the affected programs. Many did not previously check the immigration status of the people they serve; creating a process to do so may add costs and logistical challenges. It could prove especially daunting for organizations like soup kitchens and homeless shelters, which provide urgent services to people without easy access to documents.
Meanwhile, entities that administer these federal funds include nonprofits and federally funded community health centers, which operate under laws that conflict with the guidance.
Health and Human Services said its settlement with the suing states “will permit the agency to consider, as appropriate, whether to provide additional information” about the restrictions it announced.
How would the changes affect health care in Wisconsin?
Wisconsin has 16 federally qualified community health centers serving patients at 217 sites. They receive money from Congress to provide primary care to all, regardless of their ability to pay. Nationally, such clinics serve more than 32 million patients, making up 1 in 10 people in the United States and 1 in 5 people in rural America, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers.
Aside from emergency rooms, they are often the only care options for undocumented immigrants or those with limited English proficiency, said Drishti Pillai, director of immigrant health policy at KFF, a national nonprofit providing information on health issues.
Federal law requiring those clinics to accept “all residents of the area served by the center” contradicts the Trump administration guidance.
Layton Clinic is shown on May 9, 2018, in Milwaukee. Wisconsin has 16 federally qualified community health centers serving patients at 217 sites. New Trump administration rules seek to bar certain immigrants from such services, but they appear to contradict federal law. (Andrea Waxman /Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
The national association said in a July 10 statement that it’s working with experts and legislators to understand the impact of the new rules and ensure centers “have the information and resources needed” to continue serving their patients.
Access Community Health Centers, a nonprofit that provides medical, dental and mental health care at five south central Wisconsin clinics, will make “adjustments” if further federal guidance comes, CEO Ken Loving said.
“We don’t have the information we need to understand how this is going to impact us and how we can adapt to help our patients,” he said.
How would the changes affect education in Wisconsin?
The Wisconsin Technical College System has followed 1997 guidance that said public benefit restrictions did not apply to such educational services, spokesperson Katy Petterson said. She’s not sure how the updated guidance might affect the system, which will “wait to learn the impact of the lawsuit.”
If community-college-operated programs begin checking immigration status, ineligible immigrants may remain able to take federally funded classes through nonprofits that are subject to different rules.
A textbook lies on a table during a Literacy Network of Dane County English Transitions class at Madison College’s Goodman South Campus on July 9, 2025, in Madison, Wis. Some adult education services are on the list of federally funded programs that the Trump administration is targeting for immigration status checks, but the effects of the new rules are unclear. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The nation’s 1,600 Head Start agencies, which provide free early childhood education and family support services for low-income families, fall under the restrictions announced in the Department of Health and Human Services notice. But the document doesn’t say whether Head Start staff must verify the immigration status of children, parents or both.
“It’s very ambiguous about who this impacts. … If you read the language, it’s 26-plus-ish pages of legal jargon, and it’s shifting,” said Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, which supports the state’s roughly 300 Head Start service sites.
One thing Mauer wants families to know: Children already enrolled in Head Start won’t be forced out.
“We want to follow the rules, but Head Start is not required to redetermine eligibility,” Mauer said, noting it has never been required to do so in 60 years. She’s been telling the center directors to sit tight, even as worried parents ask questions.
One entity that won’t start checking immigration status: K-12 schools. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that denying education to undocumented students violated their constitutional rights.
Must nonprofit providers start checking immigration status?
Probably not. The 1996 law restricting public benefits says nonprofit charities are not required to “determine, verify, or otherwise require proof of eligibility of any applicant for such benefits.”
At Literacy Network, a nonprofit offering a variety of free ESL and basic education classes in Madison, staff aren’t planning changes based on the new rule.
“It could certainly impact many of our students in other areas of their lives and therefore their ability to participate in our programs, but not who we can serve,” spokesperson Margaret Franchino said.
Still, guidance from the Department of Education is vague. It states that the exemption for nonprofits is “narrowly crafted,” and “the Department does not interpret (it) to relieve states or other governmental entities … from the requirements to ensure that all relevant programs are in compliance.”
Ryan Graham is the homeless systems manager at Wisconsin Balance of State Continuum of Care, a nonprofit that supports agencies responding to homelessness across most of the state.
As his agency discusses updates with partner agencies, it is preparing for an “increased administrative burden on already stretched staff.”
“We don’t yet know whether there will be delays caused by having to check or validate someone’s citizenship status, especially in emergency situations where time is critical,” Graham said.
When do the new rules take effect?
The notices published in July took effect immediately, though some federal agencies said they would likely not enforce them for about a month. The Trump administration later agreed to pause enforcement until Sept. 3 in the 21 states that sued.
The Department of Health and Human Services, meanwhile, has voluntarily stayed enforcement of its directive in all states until Sept. 10.
What is the basis of legal challenges?
The multistate lawsuit argues the Trump administration failed to follow proper procedures in implementation and that it can’t retroactively change the rules after states accept grants to administer programs. Requirements to check the immigration status of every person served would unreasonably burden program staff and possibly force programs to close, the states argue.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul speaks at a press conference at the F.J. Robers Library in the town of Campbell, outside of La Crosse, Wis., on July 20, 2022. Kaul joined 20 other states in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to require more federally funded programs to check clients’ immigration status. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
States “will suffer continued, irreparable harm if forced to dramatically restructure their social safety nets and render them inaccessible to countless of the States’ most vulnerable residents,” the plaintiffs wrote.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Head Start groups nationwide had already sued before the Trump administration published new guidance. That suit argued staffing cuts, funding delays and bans on diversity efforts threatened to destabilize Head Start — a long-standing, congressionally mandated program. A hearing in that suit was held Aug. 5 on a request to temporarily block the Health and Human Services notice.
What does the Trump administration say?
The 1996 public benefits ban exempted federal programs that offered services available to all people on the grounds that they were “necessary for the protection of life and safety.”
Trump calls that exemption too broad.
“A surge in illegal immigration, enabled by the previous Administration, is siphoning dollars and essential services from American citizens while state and local budgets grow increasingly strained,” the White House said.
Citing studies from congressional committees and groups that seek to severely curtail immigration, the White House argues that allowing broad access to federal resources incentivizes illegal immigration and costs U.S. taxpayers. The recent federal spending package also eliminated access to Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps for some authorized immigrants, including refugees and asylees.
Experts worry the confusion about the new rule could have a chilling effect, leading even eligible immigrants to stop using services.
Pillai of KFF noted that the restrictions on community health centers, alongside congressionally approved changes “that limit health coverage to a smaller group of lawfully present immigrants,” will likely make immigrant families even more reluctant to seek health care and social services.
The changes “may increase their reliance on emergency room care, which can be more costly in the long term,” she added.
Graham, the homeless systems manager, believes the Trump change will create “a direct barrier to safe and stable shelter for undocumented individuals and mixed-status families” and qualified immigrants or citizens who “may not have identification or the means to attain identification after fleeing a dangerous situation or crisis.”
It could also prompt administrators of some programs not covered by the rule to start screening participants as a precaution, or shut down programs to avoid screening challenges.
That has happened before. When Trump issued an executive order in January saying the administration would no longer “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” gender-affirming health care for people under 19, some providers stopped offering those services even though state law protected them.
Braden Goetz, who worked for more than 20 years in the U.S. Department of Education and now works as a senior policy adviser at the New America Foundation’s Center on Education and Labor, said it’s unusual for federal guidance to be so sparse and ambiguous.
“Maybe that’s the intention: to confuse people and chill services to people who are not citizens or not legal permanent residents, and scare people,” Goetz said.
Five things to know about the new public benefits rule
The rule bars some immigrants with legal status, as well as all undocumented immigrants. That includes people with TPS, DACA, guest worker visas or pending asylum applications.
Children already enrolled in Head Start can continue attending, regardless of their immigration status. That’s because Head Start programs aren’t required to redetermine eligibility, according to Wisconsin Head Start Association executive director Jennie Mauer.
Nonprofit charitable organizations appear to be exempt from the new requirement. That means immigrants barred from services under the new guidelines may still be able to get services through nonprofit organizations.
Community Health Centers are required by law to accept all people in their area. It’s not clear how the new rules, which state that these federally funded health centers should only be available to “qualified immigrants,” will work with that law.
The new rules do not affect access to K-12 education, which the U.S. Supreme Court has found to be a right of every child regardless of immigration status.
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success in Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Sreejita Patra is statehouse reporting intern for Wisconsin Watch.
Editor’s note: This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing “988.” Or you can send a text message to 988 or use the chat feature at 988lifeline.org.
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Older adults account for 1 in 5 suicides in Wisconsin, with the rate among men over 75 twice the statewide rate for everyone.
The latest data from 2023 show suicide rates among older people declined over the previous year, when they were higher than the national average.
The state budget includes additional mental health resources in the Fox Valley and for Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Oshkosh. Republican lawmakers are calling for additional telehealth resources, while Democrats want to reinstate the 48-hour waiting period for gun purchases.
Earl Lowrie doesn’t spend a day of retirement without thinking about suicide.
The disabled 66-year-old lives with two grandchildren in the village of Cameron in northwest Wisconsin, where he is $50,000 in debt and suffering from multiple autoimmune diseases. Nowadays, Lowrie spends his time trying to elude a pernicious voice, telling him “there really isn’t any recourse now” and to “take some opioids and go to sleep.”
Nationwide, adults over 65 have some of the highest suicide rates by age group, though they are among the least likely to seek or receive mental health support. They made up 20% of all suicide deaths in Wisconsin between 2018 and 2023 — but in 2023, only 3,142 older people used county mental health services, down from a peak of nearly 4,000 who used them in 2018.
Wisconsin Watch spoke to policymakers, health professionals, advocates and older adults about the current mental health landscape for older people in Wisconsin and the possible roads to geriatric suicide prevention in the future. Their goals beyond prevention are to help older adults realize that they are not forgotten and to raise awareness about community supports at every stage of life.
That’s what Lowrie is working to remember.
Older men kill themselves at two times the statewide rate
In 2023, 184 older Wisconsin adults ended their own lives, out of 921 total suicides. The statewide age-adjusted suicide rate was 15 out of 100,000 residents, while the rate for those between 65 and 74 years old was 15.7. Suicides among those 75 and older were higher at 17.1.
That’s down from the previous year, when Wisconsin adults above 65 died at a higher rate than the national average, 18.6 vs. 17.7. It’s unclear why the numbers went down or whether it will continue in future years.
Nonetheless, depression and anxiety disorders “have really picked up” recently for the patients of Kenneth Robbins, a geriatric psychiatrist based in Rock County. He has especially noticed issues with older men, who died from suicide at more than two times the statewide rate in 2023.
Robbins said that one of the biggest contributors to this suicide rate is isolation.
“What’s unique about older white men is that many of them are not very socially adept,” Robbins said. “When they retire, they’re not quite sure what to do with their lives exactly and often become very lonely and feel like they’re not doing anything meaningful and start to wonder, ‘What’s the point of living?’”
Robbins also noted that older adults who struggle with medical problems, such as dementia or cancer, are highly likely to attempt suicide for fear of physical pain and becoming a “burden” to their loved ones.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, more than half of residents 55 years and older who died by suicide in 2023 had health problems that “appeared to have contributed to their deaths.”
Sen. Jesse James, R-Thorp, said he was at a wedding when his wife’s great-grandmother, suffering from dementia, told him to kill her. James’ father told him he would rather die by suicide than live with the disease.
“I’ve had many family members state they would rather die by suicide than to remain on the Earth if they were attacked by dementia,” said James, who worked to ensure the recently approved state budget included more mental health services in the Chippewa Valley.
Older adults in rural Wisconsin face extra challenges
Lowrie retired from truck driving in 2019 after he had a fall at work and needed a spinal fusion for his back. Around that time, he developed rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis, and later stage 4 cancer.
“My mental illness went off the rails,” he said. “The only reason that I didn’t (take my life) was because I’ve seen how painful it is for others around you.”
The pain Lowrie was referring to was the loss of his youngest son, Justin, who shot himself a little less than a decade ago. Ever since then Lowrie retreats for long periods into a depression “closet” that lets very few people inside.
“I’ve been trying to break out of that here more recently,” he said. “Often you don’t have that trigger that you needed to get you out of the closet to go out and find something that’s going to bring you out of this slump.”
Earl Lowrie pours a glass of the kombucha he’s been fermenting in the kitchen at his home, June 21, 2025, in Cameron, Wis. Lowrie, who has struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts throughout his life, sees a therapist he found after calling the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) hotline and getting connected to the organization’s Chippewa Valley local affiliate in Wisconsin. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Lowrie’s home county has an age-adjusted suicide rate lower than the statewide average, but many rural counties in the state have significantly higher than average rates. Of the 184 suicides among older adults in 2023, 115 were in areas with populations under 50,000 and 42 were in areas with populations under 10,000.
Older adults in rural areas often live far away from mental health providers, many of whom don’t accept Medicare, according to Robbins. They also often live far away from family and community.
“That further adds to the hopelessness you feel and the loneliness that you feel,” Robbins said. “Nobody’s noticing that you’re getting more and more depressed, and becoming less and less functional.”
No legislation geared toward geriatric mental health
Though there is no legislation circulating to address geriatric mental health and suicide prevention, legislators are pushing broader bills related to mental health, substance abuse and gun control, which they say will start to help.
Gov. Tony Evers’ initial 2025-27 state budget recommendations included $1.2 million and six full-time equivalent positions for Mendota Mental Health Institute’s geropsychiatric treatment unit, which serves mentally ill, disabled or drug-dependent older adults who require more specialized services than are generally available.
The request was for hiring additional staff and moving the unit to a nearby building with larger treatment space. Jennifer Miller, the communications specialist for Mendota, said the Wisconsin DHS made the request because it is seeing an increase in older patients who need mental health services.
With the new space, “there (would have been) additional capacity at (Mendota) to serve these individuals in a space designed to meet the unique mental health treatment and service needs facing an aging population,” Miller said.
However, legislative Republicans removed the additional funding for Mendota. Instead, the budget provides almost $16 million to address the current deficit at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute’s “civil patient treatment program” for 2025. Winnebago, located in Oshkosh, treats patients legally ordered to undergo mental health treatment, but the funding is not specifically for geriatrics.
The budget also includes $10 million in funding for the development of a mental health campus and $1 million for reopening a substance abuse treatment facility in the Chippewa Valley, which has a significantly higher suicide rate than the statewide average.
Earl Lowrie displays an X-ray showing the spread of his cancer, June 21, 2025, in Cameron, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Earl Lowrie holds a glass of tincture made from mushrooms he grew himself, June 21, 2025, in Cameron, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
James and Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, who co-authored the provisions, said the campus will restore the region’s mental health beds lost after two nearby hospitals closed last year. Moses also said that he has been working on general telehealth bills that would help bridge gaps in mental health care for older adults in rural areas.
“It’s about making sure they’ve got access — (especially) if they don’t have family members — to someone they can talk to,” Moses said. He believes older adults should be able to do an online video meeting rather than drive 45 minutes or an hour to talk to someone about their issues.
For suicide prevention, Democrats have circulated multiple bills related to gun safety, one of which would reinstate the previous 48-hour mandatory handgun purchase waiting period repealed by Republicans in 2015.
Former Democratic state Rep. Jonathan Brostoff — who last year purchased a handgun and killed himself within hours — had argued for reinstating the waiting period, saying it had prevented his own previous suicide attempts.
Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, a close friend of Brostoff who reintroduced the bill to the Senate in June, said the law had protected an “untold number of people.”
“There’s the false narrative of, ‘if you don’t have a gun, you’re not safe,’ right? … (But) the statistics show that most suicides that end in death are with a handgun,” Larson said. “The more time we can put in between the time that somebody is trying to obtain a handgun and when they actually get it, it saves lives.”
People 65 and older carry out 25% of all firearms suicides in Wisconsin and use firearms for suicide at by far the highest rate. Lowrie disagrees that gun legislation would prevent suicides and said older adults start to feel a “very large sense of helplessness” when their guns are taken away.
Finding community
Lowrie attributes suicide challenges and reluctance among older adults to seek mental health support to the way his generation was raised.
Organizations such as NewBridge, a Madison nonprofit dedicated to serving low-income older adults, seek to proactively address the issue by providing older adults with community programming and case management, but especially mental health care.
Kathleen Pater, the mental health manager at NewBridge, described older adults as a “forgotten group” who “might not be the best advocates for themselves.” Her team is often the first human interaction their clients have in a long time and the first to have honest conversations about mental health.
We need to “really focus and see the importance of this stage in life and how much seniors can really offer the community back,” Pater said. “It’s connecting them back into the community with intergenerational programs, and just a societal shift in seeing our elders as valuable and knowledgeable and having all this life experience rather than being isolated and forgotten.”
Earl Lowrie stands alongside his Harley-Davidson motorcycle in his garage June 21, 2025, in Cameron, Wis. “You wouldn’t know what light was if you hadn’t found darkness,” Lowrie said. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
In January, Lowrie finally sought out help for his mental illness after an interaction with his ex-wife sent him into a “tailspin” of anxiety and suicidal thoughts. When an online artificial intelligence therapist didn’t work, his best friend Wes told him about the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Initially, Wes had suggested a NAMI chapter in Rice Lake, about seven miles away from his village. But Lowrie soon found the Rice Lake office was closed, and the nearest location in Eau Claire was 50 miles away.
Despite “talking (himself) into it and out of it above half a dozen times,” Lowrie took a leap of faith with the encouragement of Wes and his granddaughter and went to Eau Claire. He now describes NAMI as “a rope pulling me out of the water, keeping me from drowning.”
“There’s people from every walk of life and every different kind of problem that you could imagine, but mine was no more twisted and weird than their own,” Lowrie said. “It was through them I found enough encouragement and ideas of finding more help.”
Through NAMI, Lowrie was connected to individual, weekly counseling, a nutritionist, a dietitian, and a mental health prescription that gives him hope. He continues to attend NAMI Eau Claire’s biweekly meetings, and his cancer is now in complete remission.
Despite newfound support, Lowrie said he is often “suffocated” by his mental illness and that most of the time, he would rather be dead than suffer. In his worst moments, not even his favorite things, like the laughter of children or the breeze on his skin, can draw him out.
But Lowrie doesn’t intend to stop fighting.
“I am going to do everything in my power to get to the other side of my mental illness,” Lowrie told Wisconsin Watch. “I’m on a mission, and I’m not holding back at all … I’m coming out the other side one way or another.”
If you or someone you know is in immediate physical danger, call 911.
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis:
In 2023, the average S&P 500 CEO earned $17.1 million in total compensation compared with $63,800 earned by the average worker in an S&P 500 company. For the CEO that works out to $46,849 a day.
Because average compensation rates include extreme outliers, it’s notable that median pay differences between CEOs and workers in 2023 also yielded similar results.
The median S&P 500 CEO earned $16.3 million in 2023 while the median worker for those companies earned around $81,400. Outliers notwithstanding, CEOs still earned their workers’ annual pay in a little less than two days.
This phenomenon continued in 2024 as the median S&P 500 CEO pay jumped nearly 10% and worker compensation increased by less than 1.05%.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Gov. Tony Evers’ 2023 partial veto increased K-12 public school districts’ revenue fundraising limits by $325 per student each year until 2425, but that doesn’t guarantee property tax increases each year.
Revenue limits set how much a district can increase funding through a combination of property taxes and general state aid. School districts could raise property taxes in order to reach the maximum revenue, or the Legislature and governor could provide more general aid through the biennial budget. The average limit across districts last year was $13,363.
This year, the Republican-controlled Legislature kept general state aid flat. School boards can raise property taxes up to their allowed maximum funding in their annual budgets.
In future budgets, the Legislature and governor could provide enough state aid to cover the limit increase in whole or even exceed it, which would force districts to reduce property taxes. They also could repeal the 400-year revenue limit provision.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Republicans on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee canceled last Thursday’s Joint Finance Committee meeting after two GOP senators voiced discontent and Gov. Tony Evers called a possible $87 million cut to the Universities of Wisconsin system a “nonstarter.”
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and JFC co-chair Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, said they had chosen to return to negotiations with Evers to guarantee tax cuts in the final budget and shared hope that Senate Republicans “will come back to the table to finish fighting for these reforms.”
Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, and Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, indicated they are unlikely to vote for the budget in its current form.
Senate Republicans have an 18-15 majority, so they can only lose one Republican vote without picking up a vote from a Democrat. To pass the budget, both the Assembly and the Senate must vote for it, and Evers must sign off. Evers can use his partial line-item veto or veto the whole budget.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said conversations were heading in an unaffordable direction and Senate Republicans were ready to pass a budget “that cuts taxes and responsibly invests in core priorities.”
Negotiations initially broke down on June 4 when Republicans walked out of conversations with the Evers administration, failing to agree on tax cuts and education spending.
With delays and cancellations in approving the budget, it has become increasingly likely the next biennial budget will not be approved by the July 1 deadline. If it is not approved by the end of the month, the 2023-25 budget would carry over into the next fiscal year.
That’s not entirely unusual, though the latest Evers signed his first three budgets was July 8. In 2017, under former Gov. Scott Walker, the budget was not signed into law until September.
Democrats said if the budget is not approved before July 1, local school districts and municipalities will have to delay hiring because they won’t know how much funding they will receive from the state.
Also, the looming federal budget puts Wisconsin at risk of losing out on federal dollars and programs if a budget is not passed soon.
“We see a horrible budget bill being debated in Washington that could contain really, really significant cuts for services that all Wisconsinites rely on, thinking about, obviously health care, but certainly things like education, transportation, natural resources, agriculture,” Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said.
Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha, also criticized Republicans for “allowing extremists within their caucus to hijack this budget and go against the will of the people.”
Vos told reporters Wednesday afternoon the Republican caucus supports an $87 million cut to the UW system budget, yet an Evers spokesperson said any cut to the UW system would be a “nonstarter.”
The UW system requested a record $856 million funding increase, which was scheduled for action on Tuesday and then removed from the agenda. Last budget cycle, Republicans withheld pay raises from the system and approval of UW-Madison’s new engineering building, eventually signing a deal to freeze diversity, equity and inclusion spending in exchange for the release of the funding.
Vos signaled the potential cuts to the UW system are also about leverage over campus culture. The Trump administration has similarly threatened to withhold and ultimately cut federal grants from universities unless they comply with demands aimed at reshaping campus culture and combating antisemitism.
“It’s not about cutting money. What it is, is about getting some kind of reforms to the broken process that we currently have,” Vos said. “There is still too much political correctness on campus. We don’t have enough respect for political diversity.”
Democrats decry prison budget as ‘kicking the can down the road’
The budget committee voted 11-3 along party lines to increase funding for prisons by $148 million over the biennium, though Evers had requested $185 million.
Some of the key differences included the Legislature providing about $20 million less for community reentry programs and 50 fewer contract beds in county jails than Evers proposed.
During the budget committee meeting, Democrats accused their colleagues of “kicking the can down the road” by not funding programs that reduce recidivism in the approved motion.
Republicans said that their budget motion is “realistic” and that it expands on “huge improvements” in prison guard vacancies made by the 2023-25 budget.
Upper middle income earners get bulk of GOP tax cut
The Wisconsin Republican tax cut plan will give middle to upper income earners the largest tax cut, while taxpayers earning under $40,000 will receive less than 1% of the total, according to a report last week from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Wisconsin taxpayers earning $100,000 to $200,000 would receive 58.5% of the tax decrease, with an average cut of $242 for tax year 2025. In Wisconsin, those making between $100,000 and $200,000 account for a third of tax filers, according to the fiscal bureau.
Some lost federal disaster assistance gets state support
The committee passed a motion to provide additional funding for the Department of Military Affairs for emergency planning — a sign of some bipartisan agreement on alleviating the effects of federal funding cuts.
While the bill included most of Evers’ requests, the approved motion, introduced by Republicans, did not include Emergency Management Programs Sustainment funding, which would have replaced $1.13 million over the biennium in revenue lost as a result of federal cuts.
Previously, FEMA awarded $54 million in grants to Wisconsin to address environmental risks in the state, but federal cuts have canceled $43 million, reducing federal funding for natural disaster prevention by nearly 80%.
The measure adopted Tuesday with bipartisan support would allocate $2 million in 2025-26 for pre-disaster flood resilience grants and $3 million for state disaster assistance programs. The funding would prepare Wisconsin for disasters and provide assistance to mitigate consequences if a natural disaster were to occur.
Republicans add more assistant district attorneys
The budget committee voted 11-3 to add 42 additional assistant district attorneys in counties across the state, including seven positions in Brown, six positions in Waukesha and four positions in Fond du Lac.
Each county would now have staffing levels at approximately 80%, according to a workload analysis from the Wisconsin District Attorneys Association. Currently, 15 counties are below 60% of the staffing level suggested by the WDAA workload analysis, and 33 of 71 counties are below 70%.
The state has been struggling with a shortage of rural attorneys for several years, an issue Larry J. Martin, the executive director for the State Bar of Wisconsin, has called “a crisis that policymakers in our state Capitol must address.”
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Wisconsin incarcerates more people per capita than the majority of countries in the world, including the United States.
Wisconsin Watch and other newsrooms in recent years have reported on criminal charges against staff following prison deaths, medical errors and delayed health care and lengthy prison lockdowns linked to staffing shortages in Wisconsin prisons.
The state prison population has surged past 23,000 people, with nearly triple that number on probation or parole. Meanwhile, staff vacancies are increasing again across the Department of Corrections.
A reader called this situation a “mess” and asked how we got here and what can be done to fix it.
The road to mass incarceration
The first U.S. prison was founded as a “more humane alternative” to public and capital punishment, prison reform advocate and ex-incarceree Baron Walker told Wisconsin Watch. Two years after Wisconsin built its first prison at Waupun in 1851, the state abolished the death penalty.
For the next century, Wisconsin’s prison population rarely climbed above 3,000, even as the state population grew. But as America declared the “War on Drugs” in the 1970s and set laws cracking down on crime in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Wisconsin’s prison population began to explode.
“In the early 1970s … the rise in incarceration corresponded fairly closely with increases in crime,” said Michael O’Hear, a Marquette University criminal law professor. “The interesting thing that happened in both Wisconsin and the nation as a whole in the ‘90s is that crime rates started to fall, but imprisonment rates kept going up and up.”
According to O’Hear, Wisconsin was late to adopt the “tough-on-crime” laws popular in other states during that era. But by the mid-1990s, the state began to target drug-related crime and reverse leniency policies like parole.
Green Bay Correctional Institution’s front door reads “WISCONSIN STATE REFORMATORY,” a nod to its original name, in Allouez, Wis., on June 23, 2024. Many have pushed for the closure of the prison, constructed in 1898, due to overcrowding, poor conditions and staffing issues. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
“There was a period of time in which Milwaukee was just shipping bazillions of people into prison on … the presumption of being a dealer with the possession of very small amounts of crack cocaine,” UW-Madison sociology Professor Emerita Pamela Oliver said. She cited this practice as one of the reasons Wisconsin’s racial disparities in imprisonment are the worst in the nation.
Starting in the late 1990s and 2000s, Wisconsin’s “truth-in-sentencing” law, which requires people convicted of crimes to serve their full prison sentences with longer paroles, resulted in both a cycle of reincarceration and a large prison population full of aging inmates with low risk of reoffending.
Then in 2011, the anti-public union law known as Act 10 caused a mass exodus of correctional officers as working conditions in the state’s aging prisons continued to deteriorate.
Extended supervision
Along with mandating judges impose fixed prison sentences on people convicted of crimes, truth-in-sentencing requires sentences to include an inflexible period of “extended supervision” after a prison term ends. This is different from parole, which is a flexible, early release for good behavior and rehabilitation.
Judges often give out “extraordinarily long periods of extended supervision,” according to Oliver, at least 25% of the incarceration itself by law and often multiple times that in practice. To her, it is simply a “huge engine in reincarceration.”
According to DOC data, of the 8,000 people admitted to Wisconsin prisons in 2024 more than 60% involved some kind of extended supervision violation, known as a “revocation.” Half of those cases involved only revocation.
Extended periods of supervision after release from prison do little to improve public safety, research suggests. The long terms “may interfere with the ability of those on supervision to sustain work, family life and other pro-social connections to their communities,” Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School professor of criminal law, wrote in a 2019 study examining 200 revocation cases.
Substance abuse problems contributed to technical revocations in an “overwhelming majority” of cases, Klingele wrote, because “agents have few options to impose meaningful sanctions other than imprisonment.”
“Fewer, more safety-focused conditions will lead to fewer unnecessary revocations and more consistency in revocation for people whose behavior poses a serious threat to public safety,” Klingele added.
Streamlining the standard supervision rules would require the Legislature to act.
Oliver attributes Wisconsin’s high rates of revocations to parole officers failing to reintegrate people into society in favor of playing “catch-somebody-offending.”
“You get reincarcerated, (and) all that time (in prison) doesn’t count,” Oliver said. “You can stay on a revolving door of incarceration and extended supervision for five times longer than your original sentence.”
People behind the statistics
The factors behind both crime and incarceration are complex, with socioeconomic factors relating to poverty, race, location and more increasing the chances of contact with the judicial system.
According to O’Hear, overall crime rates began increasing in the ‘90s during the War on Drugs in part due to prosecutors “charging cases and plea bargaining more aggressively.”
A study by the Equal Justice Initiative found that plea bargaining perpetuates racial inequality in Wisconsin prisons. White defendants are 25% more likely than Black defendants to have charges dropped or reduced during plea bargaining, and Black defendants are more likely than whites to be convicted of their “highest initial charge(s).”
Prison reform advocate Beverly Walker, whose husband, Baron, was formerly incarcerated and is now a reform advocate, speaks in 2016 at a gathering organized by the faith-based advocacy group WISDOM to raise awareness about poor water quality at Fox Lake Correctional Institution. (Gilman Halsted / WPR)
In the 53206 Milwaukee ZIP code where Baron Walker grew up, nearly two-thirds of Black men are incarcerated before they turn 34. Recalling his youth, Walker said “it seemed like almost all the males in my family were incarcerated at one point in time.”
During his time in the prison system, which included stints at Waupun, Columbia and Fox Lake correctional institutions, Walker struggled with accessing his basic needs.
“Their water came out black, dirty. It had a stench,” Walker said. “It sinks into your clothing, even when you wash them … you consume this water, it’s what they cook the food with.”
Water quality in Wisconsin prisons has been a consistent concern of inmates and activists in the past 15 years. Despite multiple investigations into lead, copper and radium contamination at these maximum- and medium-security prisons, recent reports found unhealthy radium levels in the drinking water — with no free alternatives.
“They would microwave the water (at Fox Lake) and the microwaves would spark up and blow out,” WISDOM advocate Beverly Walker, Baron’s wife, told Wisconsin Watch. “The water at the time was $16 to just get a case of six bottles of water … it so ridiculously high.”
EX-incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) of Wisconsin peer support specialist Vernell Cauley’s issues within Wisconsin prisons were more personal. His daughter died during his intake into Dodge Correctional Institution, and Cauley wasn’t allowed a temporary release to attend her funeral.
“It had some deep effects on me,” he said. “Some of the things I didn’t realize I had until I was actually released, when you understand that you didn’t get the proper time to grieve.”
Cauley was put in solitary confinement during that time, and for three months total over the course of his prison stay. According to DOC data, the average stay in solitary confinement across Wisconsin prisons is 28 days, though that’s down from 40 days in 2019.
Furthermore, inmates who struggle with mental illness are overrepresented in solitary confinement across U.S. prisons. Multiple inmates have committed suicide due to long stints of solitary, particularly during recent prison lockdowns.
Working conditions
A Wisconsin Department of Corrections advertisement of open prison staffing positions is seen near Green Bay Correctional Institution in Allouez, Wis., on June 23, 2024. Chronic staffing shortages have played a role in lengthy lockdowns and deteriorating conditions within Wisconsin prisons. (Julius Shieh / Wisconsin Watch)
Joe Verdegan, a former Green Bay correctional officer of nearly 27 years, said he and most of his coworkers “conducted (them)selves pretty professionally” and “always had a lot of respect” for inmates. This respect went both ways, he said, because guards built relationships with inmates for decades at their post.
According to Verdegan, being a correctional officer used to be a “career job” where “nobody left.” Despite the dangers and odd work hours of the post, the guards had a strong union and good benefits and could climb up the ladder as they gained seniority.
But it “all went to hell” after Act 10 was passed.
Senior staff left in droves, leaving remaining guards with 16-hour shifts and “bad attitudes” that perpetuated the worsening work culture, Verdegan said. Religious, medical and recreational time was cut for inmates due to staffing shortages, and the respect between correctional officers and prisoners dwindled.
“When you’re not getting out for chapel passes or any of that kind of stuff, it just builds that hostility,” he said.
The changes caused Verdegan to retire from corrections at 51, earlier than planned. He and many of his friends took financial penalties by retiring from the Department of Corrections early and ended up working other jobs at bars, grocery stores and factories.
They also went to funerals. Many former coworkers “drank themselves to death” due to their experiences within corrections, Verdegan said.
Coming home
In 1996, when Walker was sentenced to 60 years in prison for his role in two bank robberies, no one expected him to serve more than a third of his sentence — not even the victims.
But when truth-in-sentencing passed, mandating judges to impose definite, inflexible imprisonment lengths on people convicted of crimes, Walker’s hopes for an early release quickly disintegrated.
Walker was released from prison in 2018 on probation, an alternative to incarceration offered on condition of following specific court orders. He was released after being denied parole six times in the seven years since he first became eligible.
In the aftermath of Walker’s imprisonment, he and Beverly have had their “most beautiful days,” along with some trials. Walker said he has struggled to adjust to independent living, and he would have been at a “complete loss” for adapting to 20 years of technological change if he hadn’t studied it in prison.
“You are programmed and reprogrammed to depend on someone for your anything and everything, whether it be your hygiene products, the time you shower, your mail, your bed, your bedding, your food,” Baron said. “Now, suddenly, you cross out in(to) society … and you’re told now as an adult you’re responsible for your independence, your bills, your clothing, your hygiene, your everything.”
Walker has also struggled with finding employment, despite earning “a litany of certifications and degrees” in food service, plumbing, welding, forklift operating and more while incarcerated. He said the DOC’s reentry programs need “overhaul” and more companies should be encouraged to hire formerly incarcerated people.
As of 2021, Wisconsin spent $1.35 billion per year on corrections, but only $30 million on re-entry programs. Less than a third of the re-entry funding is allocated for helping ex-prisoners find jobs — even though studies show employment significantly decreases the likelihood of reoffending.
Looking ahead
To Oliver, a significant barrier to solving issues within the prison system is changing sociopolitical attitudes.
“People imagine that if you’re punitive enough, you will have no crime,” Oliver said. “It’s really hard to get the general public to realize you ultimately reduce crime more by creating the social conditions that help people live productive lives without committing crime.”
O’Hear believes a key solution to problems within Wisconsin prisons is addressing the “mismatch” between large prison populations and available resources. He argues that “for a couple generations now, there’s been more of a focus on cutting taxes than on adequately funding public agencies” like the DOC.
O’Hear also said that judges should consider shorter prison sentences because “most people age out of their tendency to commit crimes” and that there should be “more robust mechanisms,” such as more compassionate release and parole laws for elderly inmates.
“We have people in prison in their 50s and their 60s and their 70s and even older who are really past the time when they pose a real threat to public safety,” O’Hear said. “Health care costs alone for older prisoners are a tremendous burden on the system, and they’re contributing to overcrowding.”
The Walkers are continuing their advocacy for prison reform by opening up the Integrity Center, which supports incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals with navigation, re-entry, employment assistance and more. They also advocate permanently shutting down aging prisons such as Green Bay and Waupun correctional institutions.
“All of our people who are eligible for release should be released, and people who are eligible to move into minimum facilities should be moved,” Beverly Walker said. “We don’t need any new prisons if we just utilize what we have.”
Verdegan said that he doesn’t believe the Legislature will ever pass a bill closing Green Bay in his lifetime and that “both political parties are to blame for this mess they’ve created with the Wisconsin DOC.” “Throwing money” at corrections officer positions will not fix staffing vacancies, he said, without the guarantee of eight-hour workdays and adequate job training.
He and Cauley both said supporting the mental health of prisoners before and after incarceration is key. Verdegan supports training staff to work with mentally ill prisoners. Cauley would rather see prison abolished altogether.
“Most people who end up in prisons, they have things going on mentally, these issues not getting met,” Cauley said. “Prison only makes people bitter, more angry … you know, it traumatizes them.”
Correction: This story was updated to reflect the average stay in solitary confinement is 28 days. Also 60% of the more than 8,000 people entering prison in 2024 involved a revocation, but half of those cases also involved a new crime.
Police agencies across the country have different requirements for surveilling officers on the job. While eight states require police to wear body cameras, all but one of them since the 2020 murder of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody, Wisconsin leaves the decision up to individual agencies.
Most agencies in the state use either body cameras or dashboard cameras, according to a 2021 survey conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Of the 436 agencies surveyed, 88% said they used one or the other, and 48% said they used both.
To request the body-worn or dash camera footage from a police shooting in Wisconsin, you must submit what’s known as a “public records request” to the police agency involved in the shooting. Bodycam footage must be maintained for at least 120 days after being recorded and, for serious incidents, until an investigation or case is resolved.
This can be done with a web search for the agency’s name and “public records” or “records request.” Many agencies have a page with a phone number, email and/or mailing address alongside a form to fill out. General open records letter templates and advice are available at websites such as the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.
When filling out the form or submitting the written request for a police shooting video, it’s important to be as detailed as possible about the information you are looking to receive. Ask for body-worn camera and/or dash camera audio-video recordings, and write a detailed summary of the shooting in question. Relevant information can include the date, location and time of the shooting, the people involved and any other case knowledge you have.
How quickly an agency fulfills your request depends on whether your record is “simple” or “complex,” or where it is chronologically in the police agency’s record requests log, depending on the records custodian. At many agencies, the more precise you are with your request, the more likely it is to be categorized as “simple” and completed quickly. Wisconsin law only requires that agencies provide or deny records “as soon as practicable and without delay,” but for simple requests the attorney general has suggested it should be no more than 10 days.
Under a 2024 Wisconsin law, police agencies are allowed to require payment before providing video to cover the cost of redacting, pixelating and/or editing it for privacy. Individual requesters must attest that they do not plan to use the footage for financial gain, or face a flat $10,000 fine.
In at least one case, a police agency has threatened to fine a reporter for sharing requested footage with a news publication though ultimately apologized and never went through with it. WFIC President Bill Lueders said he has never heard of a police agency actually levying fines against requesters.
“If push comes to shove, I think (the issue) would probably end up in the courts and maybe (the law) would be struck down. But push has not come to shove,” Lueders said.
Finally, though anyone can request police bodycam footage under the public records law, the state allows police agencies to deny the request if they demonstrate how “harm done to the public interest by disclosure outweighs the right of access to public records.”
Should this occur with your request, you may go to court and ask for the record’s release. Wisconsin law stipulates that you may also request the attorney general or district attorney of the county where the record took place to go to court on your behalf, but Lueders said he could “probably count on one hand” the amount of times this has been done in the past 20 years.
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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