U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan speaks with furloughed federal workers on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. Pocan, a Democrat, brought pizza for the group and discussed the current federal shutdown. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Ellie Lazarcik worked in a few different industry jobs after moving to Madison in 2017. None of them really fit, she says. Then she learned that the U.S. Forest Service Forest Products Lab in Madison was hiring.

Coincidentally, she knew of the lab from a visit she made “way back when I was in college, for a wood sculpture class of all things,” Lazarcik said Wednesday.

“Over a decade had passed since then, and I saw a job opening come up in the lab and thought, ‘Why not? That place was really amazing when I visited. They had really cool stuff going on then, and they probably still have really cool stuff going on,’” she recalled.

She applied and got the job.

That was five years ago. Her job title is physical science technician in the lab’s building and fire science program. Her work supports other members of the research team — setting up lab tests, preparing samples and then running them through the testing or analysis process and sorting through the data afterward.

“And I love what I do,” Lazarcik said.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, “there have been a lot of really sort of rapid-fire changes,” she said. “We’re on our toes a lot trying to figure out what we can or can’t pursue in terms of research.”

Still, she has continued to find the job engaging. “We’ve been able to keep doing cool projects,” Lazarcik said. “I’ve been involved in some interesting stuff in the lab — but it has been challenging.”

Since Oct. 1, however, Lazarcik has been furloughed along with hundreds of thousands of federal workers on account of the federal government shutdown.

“This is my first furlough and I’m not particularly enjoying it,” she said. Missing a paycheck is one reason, but it’s not the only one.

“It is pretty uncomfortable not knowing when I will get paid next, when I can go back into the lab and continue working on projects that got stopped abruptly,” Lazarcik said, “It’s stressful.”

Lazarcik is married and  her husband “has a job and a paycheck, which definitely helps,” she said. “But going from a two-paycheck household to one has been a pretty stark difference.”

On Wednesday, Lazarcik brought her toddler in his stroller over to the Social Security Administration office on Madison’s far West Side. U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) and members of his staff stopped by a little after noon with boxes of pizza as a token of appreciation for some of the furloughed federal workers.

About 18,000 federal employees live in Wisconsin, and about 8,000 are expected to be out of work currently due to the shutdown, the state labor secretary, Amy Pechacek, said at a virtual news conference on Thursday, Oct. 18.

“We’re seeing you and we very much appreciate what you’re doing,” Pocan told the group of just over a dozen federal employees who turned out. “We understand the sacrifice you and your families are making.”

Even before the shutdown, the Trump administration fired about 200,000 federal workers, Pocan said.

“These actions are illegal,” he said, but added that they are likely to drive some people out of the federal workforce. “We’re going to lose a lot of good, qualified people with experience.”

Pocan said communication in Washington, D.C., between the Republican majority in both the House and the Senate and Democrats has been at a standstill.

“I’d prefer we were there now, negotiating to get things done. But we’re not,” Pocan told the group. “We’re seeing a lot of things happen this session that aren’t normal.”

In September the Republicans sought to pass a continuing resolution on spending that if enacted would have averted the shutdown. A majority voted for the measure in the House, but in the U.S. Senate there were not enough votes to clear the 60 needed to advance most bills in the upper chamber.

Democratic support is necessary to meet that threshold, but Democratic lawmakers argued that in return for their votes they should have an opportunity to have some input into the continuing resolution.

Their demands have included extending enhanced subsidies for health insurance premiums sold through the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace and reversing cuts to Medicaid that Republicans included in their big tax cut and spending cut bill enacted in July.

In previous spending standoffs, Pocan said, leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress have been able to hash out agreements, usually avoiding a shutdown altogether or else managing to resolve one before it drags on.

“This time, though, so much has changed,” Pocan said.

A bipartisan deal failed in December after Trump and Elon Musk opposed it. Congress managed to approve another stopgap spending bill two days later that carried the federal government to March 2025.

“Then we had to start over in March,” Pocan said. That measure was unpopular with Democrats, he said, but enough Senate Democrats voted for it to pass,  funding the federal government through Sept. 30.

“And immediately we saw recissions — illegal again — and more illegal actions by the Trump administration taking funds away,” Pocan said. That history over the last 10 months has made Democrats wary of a deal that doesn’t address their priorities, he added.

Lazarcik hopes Congress acts soon to pass legislation that ends the shutdown. In the meantime, she gets by, tapping into savings, “looking at where you can squeeze a little bit tighter,” and skimping on putting aside funds for retirement — “which is really hard.”

Not everyone understands, however.

“I hear a lot  of people talk about, ‘Oh, man, that must be cool.’ It’s really not,” she said. “It’s pretty stressful having to try to plan when you can’t know when your next paycheck is coming.”

She is grateful for a support network of close friends and family members. “[They] do understand furlough is not just some crazy vacation you get to go on,” Lazarcik said.

The forest products lab has had a strong feeling of community that Lazarcik has always enjoyed. That has persisted during furlough, “even in this time when we’re not all going to the same building every day.”

Coworkers have stayed connected, reaching out to each other to meet up, talk and “de-stress,” Lazarcik said. “Even though we’re not all working on a regular schedule and we’re not getting paychecks, we still are supporting each other, and that’s been really great.”

A produce cooler at Willy Street Co-op in Madison, Wisconsin. FoodShare funding from the federal government will stop Nov. 1 if the federal government shutdown continues. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Unless the shutdown ends by that date, Wisconsin’s FoodShare program, which serves more than 700,000 Wisconsin residents — about 12% of the state’s population — will run out of funds Nov. 1, Gov. Tony Evers said Tuesday. FoodShare is funded through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, previously known as Food Stamps.

Two Wisconsin Head Start early childhood education programs are at risk for not receiving their expected federal authorization that was to start Nov. 1, according to Jennie Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association.

“Our social safety net is stretched,” Mauer said Tuesday. “This is just going to really short communities, and I think providers are bracing. We just don’t know the tidal wave that’s going to hit us, so everybody is really concerned.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture notified states earlier this month that the SNAP program would not have enough funds to pay full benefits to the program’s 42 million participants nationwide.

The department directed states to hold off on the transactions that move SNAP funds onto the electronic benefit cards that FoodShare members use to buy groceries.

FoodShare “may not be available at all next month if the federal government shutdown continues, leaving nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites without access to basic food and groceries,” the governor’s office said in a statement Tuesday.

“President Trump and Republicans in Congress must work across the aisle and end this shutdown now so Wisconsinites and Americans across our country have access to basic necessities like food and groceries that they need to survive,” Evers said.

Both the FoodShare and Medicaid programs refer to their participants as members. “FoodShare benefits are 100 percent funded by the federal government and the shutdown will need to end before members can begin getting benefits again,” the state Department of Health Services announced in the FoodShare news page Tuesday.

If FoodShare benefits stop in November, they won’t be lost, but they will be delayed, said Matt King, CEO of the Hunger Task Force in Milwaukee. When the shutdown ends, benefits will become available again, including those not paid during the shutdown.

The Hunger Task Force supplies food pantries throughout the greater Milwaukee area. If benefits stop, food pantry operators and suppliers expect to see a sharp increase in the need for their services.

“FoodShare is the first and most critical line of defense against hunger,” King said Tuesday. “The food pantry network across Wisconsin acts as a safety net to help people in an emergency. It’s not set up to be a sustainable source of food to meet all of their grocery needs.”

While helping people get access to food in an emergency, the food pantry network also works to connect people with “more sustainable and ongoing resources like the FoodShare program,” he said.

The impending pause on FoodShare funds will compound a need that has already increased by 35% across the state in the past year, King said. “The longer the government shutdown goes on, the more strain it will put onto the emergency food system.”

Mauer of the Head Start association said two of the state’s 39 Head Start programs were to receive authorization for their next round of funding starting Nov. 1, and with them the ability to draw on their federal grants for the next several months.

So far, the authorization hasn’t been received, Mauer said. In addition, however, if the authorization is issued but the shutdown remains in effect, “there’s no money” until a budget is enacted, she added. “They need money in the coffers for [Head Start agencies] to draw down.”

The issue will repeat for programs that must reauthorize by Dec. 1 and Jan. 1 if the shutdown continues.

The remaining Head Start programs are not believed to be in peril, Mauer said, because their grants have already been funded by the previous fiscal year’s appropriations.   

The Head Start program operated by the Sheboygan Human Rights Association is one of the two awaiting its Nov. 1 reauthorization and the new round of funding that would ordinarily begin then.

“At this point, we are unsure how we will be affected,” said Theresa Christen-Liebig, the executive director of the nonprofit. The agency is using “some state funding resources to continue services until mid-November,” Christen-Liebig told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email. The agency’s board will meet next week to consider its steps for the rest of November and beyond, she said.

“The uncertainty makes the situation stressful and hard on our staff and families,” Christen-Liebig said. “We are keeping everyone updated as we try to work things out and decisions are made to continue to provide services.”

Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development's secretary designee, Amy Pechacek, right, with Gov. Tony Evers at a 2023 DWD event held at the Plumbers Local 75 training center in Madison. Pechacek held a news conference online Thursday where she spoke about the impact of the federal government shutdown on DWD and the state. (Photo courtesy of DWD)

As the federal shutdown drags on, Wisconsin is likely to feel the impact — in employment, in agriculture and in the safety net for workers, according to the state’s labor secretary.

“Right now, we have the ability to continue to operate and our goal is to not disrupt our current workforce programs or state workforce,” said Amy Pechacek, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, during an online news conference Thursday.

Governments in some other states have started to reduce their workforces, Pechacek said. Wisconsin is holding off on filling vacancies and taking other steps “to try and preserve all of the funding we can so that we don’t have programmatic or employment disruptions,” Pechacek said.

Nevertheless, 75% of the DWD’s $500 million annual budget — three out of every four dollars — comes from the federal government, she said.

The remaining 25% that comes from the state isn’t “just one big pot,” Pechacek added, but funds specific programs. For example, the state workers compensation program, which covers treatment costs and lost income for people injured on the job, is entirely state funded. That includes the cost of administering the program.

But job support services — local job centers, career counseling, unemployment insurance administration, state apprenticeship programs, and the division of vocational rehabilitation for people with disabilities — are “all tied to federally funded programs,” Pechacek said.

“We need the federal government to come together, come up with a funding mechanism and continue to support their obligations to all the states and to all the people to ensure that we can move forward with the economic health and prosperity that we have enjoyed without this chaotic massive interruption,” she said. “The longer this goes, the continued adverse and exponentially worse impacts to our workforce will compound.”

Pechacek’s virtual news conference Thursday took the place of DWD’s monthly report on Wisconsin employment data. The usual reports draw on the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys that poll employers on the number of jobs they have and poll households to calculate the unemployment rate.

The data BLS compiles and analyzes is one of the casualties of the shutdown, Pechacek said, hampering employers, job seekers, nonprofits, economic development agencies and governments.

All of them rely on BLS data “to guide fiscal decision making, determine whether to open or expand their businesses, determine if they’re going to hire or lay off, figure out how to allocate resources, and understand really how best to train their current workforce,” Pechacek said. Without that information, “employers are putting off important decisions, essentially fumbling around in the dark until Congress can get around to turning back the lights on.”

Unemployment claims can serve as one indicator, and Scott Hodek, section chief in the DWD Office of Economic Advisors, said the department is looking at other data sources to fill in some of the missing information. Those sources include various private sector organizations as well as the regional federal reserve banks.

“But really it’s pretty difficult to get an accurate picture of what’s happening,” Hodek said. “It will get more difficult as time goes on.”

Another federal report on inflation is expected to be released soon, even with the shutdown, because the findings are used to calculate annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients, Hodek said.

That report will also figure into the deliberations of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee when it meets at the end of October to decide whether to cut interest rates. The Fed’s dual mission includes keeping inflation as close to 2% as possible while encouraging maximum employment.

“That becomes very difficult to do if you don’t have any of that data to make those decisions,” Hodek said.

Looking at the coming months, Pechacek said, the process of applying for H-2A agriculture visas is on hold. The visas enable about 3,000 migrant workers to come in annually to work in specific seasonal agricultural operations, including planting, harvesting and food processing, she said.

DWD is required to verify that there is a worker shortage in the occupations to be covered, and the U.S. Department of Labor must certify the state’s verification report before the federal government issues the visas, she said, but the federal certification of the state’s report is on hold because of the shutdown.

December and January are the months when the most requests come in for H-2A visas, Pechacek said, so if the shutdown continues for too long, the agricultural employers depending on those workers would be unable to get the needed certification.

Pechacek said the department is also watching to see how many federal employees file for unemployment insurance.

There are about 18,000 federal employees in Wisconsin, and DWD has estimated that 8,000 might be affected by the shutdown. By comparison, she said, one of the largest layoffs in Wisconsin took place in 2018 when a larger retailer shut down, laying off 2,200 employees.

So far, however, there have been just 30 initial claims from federal workers, Pechacek said.

If federal workers who file unemployment claims get back pay when they return to work, however, they’ll have to repay the unemployment insurance fund.

Pechacek noted that President Donald Trump has threatened to permanently fire federal workers in the shutdown as well as to withhold back pay for furloughed federal workers who return to work. Between uncertainty about those threats and court rulings that have blocked some mass federal layoffs, however, “it is really an ongoing situation,” she added.

Pechacek several times criticized Trump and the Republican leaders in Congress for the shutdown.

“The president and congressional Republicans have shut down our nation’s government trying to force massive health care cuts and cost increases to the nation’s working and middle class families and we are in a stalemate,” she said.

“We really need our federal government to return to work so they can restore some predictability and reliability to our economy and continue to be the partner that we need to ensure the economic health and prosperity of Wisconsin workers.”

South Central Federation of Labor President Kevin Gundlach addresses a rally in support of Group Health workers seeking union representation on Monday, Oct. 13. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

A stalemate between Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin and employees who have been seeking union representation for the last 10 months shows little sign of breaking soon.

At a mass meeting Monday at the Alliant Center in Madison, members of Group Health, sometimes called GHC for short, passed a motion directing the co-op to voluntarily recognize the union as the employees originally petitioned in December — covering three departments and a series of health care professionals.

The motion set a deadline of Friday, Oct. 17. Marty Anderson, Group Health’s chief strategy and business development officer, said Thursday that action on all the motions would likely be deferred, probably until November.

“We communicated clearly ahead of the meeting that all motions are advisory in nature,” Anderson said. “Any deadlines that would be in any of the motions would also be advisory in nature.”

Monday’s mass meeting was the first of its kind for Group Health members to ask questions of the co-op administration and express their opinions about the union drive. About 172 people attended, according to a Group Health spokesperson. Group Health has more than 50,000 Class A and Founding members — the two groups that were considered eligible to attend, according to the co-op.

In the spring, a volunteer committee met with the board to argue in favor of recognizing the union. 

People attending the Monday meeting described the crowd as strongly supportive of the union, and the voice votes in favor of recognizing the union and other motions favored by union supporters were unanimous, according to Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin. 

Growing dissatisfaction 

At a rally outside the Alliant Center before the meeting, South Central Labor Federation President Kevin Gundlach, a Group Health member, charged that the co-op “has lost its way” in its response to the union organizing drive.

“We want GHC to listen to the workers,” Gundlach said. “And these workers know, and it says on my shirt here” — he pointed to his chest — “it’s better in a union.”

Group Health has rejected charges that it’s trying to thwart the union drive, contending that it simply wants health care employees in all departments to take part in the union representation vote — not just those from departments and job classifications that were included in the original union petition.

Union supporters say that claim is disingenuous and a ploy to “dilute the vote,” in the words of several workers interviewed — racking up votes against the union from employees in departments that don’t have the same concerns.

Anderson denied the charge. “We don’t know” what the votes will be, he said.

According to workers involved in the union drive, the Group Health union campaign grew out of increasing dissatisfaction in specific co-op departments with working conditions and what they contend was a lack of input into the co-op’s practices.

“I feel like we can improve the patient care that we provide through unionization and through increased involvement in decision-making,” Dr. Nisha Rajagopalan, a family physician who has worked at Group Health for 22 years, said Thursday.

Pay practices, employee turnover and a voice at the table are all reasons employees have cited for supporting the union.

“GHC leadership stopped collaborating with us and despite our many patient care concerns and our many meeting requests,” said Julie Vander Werff, a physician assistant, the lead speaker at the Monday rally.

Who should be in the union?

Complicating the organizing campaign is the conflict over exactly who among Group Health’s workers should be included in the union.

Union supporters involved in the organizing drive originally proposed that the union represent a bargaining unit of about 220 people. They were doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and nursing staff in three departments: primary care, urgent care and dermatology. Their petition also included physical therapists, occupational therapists and health educators.

The petition was filed Dec. 12, 2024. Group Health filed a brief asserting that the unit the employees sought “was an inappropriate unit,” said Anderson, the Group Health executive.

To resolve the differences, a National Labor Relations Board staffer held a meeting on Dec. 30 in Madison, where he moved between separate rooms, one housing Group Health executives and the co-op’s lawyer, the other housing SEIU Wisconsin staff and Group Health employees leading the union drive.

The NLRB staffer suggested to the union group that they narrow their petition to a single clinic, Group Health employees wrote in a letter to the Group Health board of directors Feb. 10, 2025. Hoping to get an agreement, they took the suggestion.

Group Health opposed the single-clinic unit, however. In subsequent hearings the co-op management’s lawyer argued the vote should include all direct care employees, including in departments that weren’t part of the union’s original petition.

After reviewing briefs from both sides, the NLRB regional director in Minneapolis who heard the case ruled that the single clinic unit that the union had proposed would not be an appropriate bargaining unit. The decision issued by Regional Director Jennifer Hadsall stated that the unit proposed by the employer, Group Health, was appropriate and set an election among all the co-op’s health care employees.

SEIU Wisconsin, however, moved to block the election. A raft of pending unfair labor practice charges against the employer could scare employees from voting for the union, SEIU charged. Hadsall agreed to block the vote until the charges are resolved.  

As a result, the vote is on hold. The NLRB investigation of the charges is on hold as well, because of the federal government shutdown.

Shared concerns, conflicting concerns

In her order, Hadsall also included a footnote that states she did not address the unit that the employees had originally asked for because it had not been formally litigated.

“We had always argued that we are a clinically integrated organization,” Anderson said. “Our staff floats between various parts of the organization and different clinics. And the bargaining unit was established [consisting of] all of our clinical sites and all of our direct care employees.”

But pro-union employees say there are concrete differences between employees who are in the groups that they had originally included in the union petition and the rest of the Group Health staff — including direct care providers.

“Initially our bargaining unit included employees who were in primary care and urgent care,” said Rajagopalan, the family doctor. “We practice similarly and we share the same concerns. There are other departments within GHC that don’t share the same concerns [and] practice very differently than we do. That’s why our initial bargaining unit is an appropriate unit.”

Pat Raes, president of SEIU Wisconsin and a nurse at UnityPoint-Meriter hospital in Madison, said that throughout her health care career she’s seen many workplaces where only some groups of workers are unionized.

“At the bedside or at the side of the patient, it doesn’t make a difference because the priority is patient care,” Raes said. “It’s not whether you’re unionized or not.”

Addressing the rally before Monday night’s meeting, Steve Rankin said it was “entirely normal” for workers in a single workplace to be represented by different unions or no union depending on their department or position.

“There is no reason that everyone at Group Health has to be in the same union,” said Rankin, who joined Group Health when it was founded in 1976 and has been active in marshalling Group Health patients to support the union effort. “We call on GHC to recognize the bargaining unit chosen by the workers themselves and to commit to bargaining in good faith toward the contract.”

While the board has yet to consider the motion that was passed at Monday night’s meeting, Anderson said Thursday that voluntary recognition was unlikely. 

“We want an NLRB sanctioned and overseen vote,” he said. “That’s always going to be our criteria.”

Gov. Tony Evers speaks to reporters in March 2025. Evers has written the Department of Energy urging officials not to cancel $1.5 billion in funds for Wisconsin projects. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

With more than $1.5 billion in federal energy investments in Wisconsin at risk, Gov. Tony Evers is urging the Trump administration not to roll back previously awarded funds in the face of rising energy costs.

Evers’ response, in a letter to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, followed multiple news reports in the last week about energy projects on target lists for cancellation.

The governor’s office has compiled a list of 22 projects for which federal Energy Department funding totaling $1.56 billion has been marked for cancellation.

“Federal support plays a critical role in advancing the Wisconsin Idea and American innovation, lowering energy bills for families across America, supporting clean energy development to improve energy independence and resilience, creating good-paying jobs in innovative industries and sectors, and maintaining our nation’s leadership in science and technology,” Evers wrote Tuesday in his letter to Wright.  

“Given these clear benefits and the importance of these investments to Wisconsin’s and our nation’s economy, I was deeply concerned to see reporting last week containing a list of over 600 DOE funding awards that are potentially going to be targeted for termination with no clear reasoning or justification.”

Evers’ letter mentions several Wisconsin projects and companies on the target list, including several that the Wisconsin Examiner reported on this week.

The letter also notes forecasts of rising costs for electric power that the energy policy think tank Energy Innovation attributes to the tax and spending cut megabill that President Donald Trump signed July 4.

“Terminating these funding awards at a time of record-high energy demand and rising costs would be counterintuitive, reckless and ill-advised,” Evers concludes in his letter to Wright. “I urge you to reaffirm DOE’s commitment to honoring these funding awards and to continue supporting these investments that drive Wisconsin’s and the nation’s energy landscape forward.”

Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) attacks the Assembly Democrats in a floor speech on Tuesday, Oct. 14. (Screenshot/WisEye)

During an Assembly floor session in which most of the bills passed on voice votes that were unanimous or nearly so, the chamber’s Democrats took the occasion Tuesday to make pointed arguments with amendments that were quickly quashed.

Republican lawmakers lashed back with accusations of politics and grandstanding, while Democrats retorted that they were raising issues relevant to their constituents that the GOP majority has ignored.

On a bill that includes a pilot program for enabling video communications between callers and public safety call centers, Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) offered an amendment to restrict the video recordings from being shared.

“My amendment tightens the guardrails on the pilot program to clarify that no real-time video could be shared with private contractors or masked federal agents with ICE or any other actors not relevant to the incident being reported,” Phelps told lawmakers.

In recent door-to-door visits with constituents, “most of them have been saying they want to protect and expand Medicaid, public schools, they’re worried about the economy,” he added. “Zero percent said that they want more government surveillance.”

The amendment was rejected 54-42.

“What is the bar?”: Wisconsin Legislature divided as it passes resolution honoring Charlie Kirk 

The official theme of the day — set as always by the Republican caucus — revolved around public safety, and was cued up with the first hour set aside to honor first responders from each of the state’s 99 Assembly districts.

On the floor, the Assembly passed bills to ban gadgets that can automatically hide or swap out a driver’s license plate (SB 66); increase the penalties for impersonating police, fire fighters and other emergency service personnel (AB 136); punish people who harass search and rescue dogs (AB 239); increase the penalty for human trafficking (AB 265); and require drivers to move over for disabled vehicles on the highway just as they must already give a wide berth to a stopped emergency vehicle (AB 409).

The body also concurred — on a voice vote and without debate — with a Senate bill that split lawmakers on party lines in the 2023-24 legislative session and was vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers.

The legislation, SB 25, would shield police officers involved in the fatal shootings of civilians from judicial investigations under Wisconsin’s John Doe law if prosecutors decline to issue charges unless new evidence is produced. The bill passed a divided Senate in March.

Amendments as talking points

On Tuesday, disagreement only broke open when Democrats used the amendment process to highlight some of their policy priorities that weren’t otherwise up for discussion.

Each time, Rep. Kevin Petersen (R-Waupaca), filling in in the speaker’s chair, ruled the amendments out of order, and the Assembly Republicans agreed in party-line votes.

The first of the Democratic amendments was on SB-183, which came to the Assembly after passing the Senate earlier Tuesday.

The legislation increases the Medicaid reimbursement for emergency medical services when drivers arrive to pick up a patient but the person ends up forgoing a trip to the hospital.

Rep. Alex Joers (D-Waunakee) offered an amendment to increase the state budget by $69.2 million to offset increases in the state’s cost to run the federally funded FoodShare program.

Rule changes that Republicans enacted in the tax-cut and spending-cut megabill that President Donald Trump signed July 4 set an “impossible standard” for Wisconsin to meet, he said. “We want to prevent another multi-million dollar heist by Trump and his followers.”

When the vote came on the bill itself — which passed by a unanimous voice vote — the bill’s Assembly author, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) angrily scolded the Democrats.

“I’m a little bit taken back by the amendment that was thrown on to this bill,” Kurtz said. “I understand you want to get your political points, that’s fine. But there’s other bills you can do that with. This was a disrespect to those first responders that were here today.”

The next bill to get that treatment was SB 309, giving dispatchers and 911 call center operators immunity from any civil liability if they transfer a caller to the national 988 suicide and crisis line. That bill also passed with a unanimous voice vote.

First, however, state Rep. Joan Fitzgerald (D-Fort Atkinson) proposed an amendment to restore $25 million a year for the current two-year budget that would go to municipalities to improve or expand their EMS operations. The money was included in Gov. Tony Evers’ budget proposal but removed by the Joint Finance Committee’s Republican leaders.

“Today, you have the opportunity to change that and do the right thing and make sure municipalities get the money they need to fund these essential services,” Fitzgerald said. The Assembly voted 54-42 against the amendment. 

Raising Epstein

A few bills later came SB 76, requiring prosecutors to get a judge’s approval before dismissing or amending charges for a broad group of crimes. That bill passed on a 53-43 party-line vote, with only Republican support.

There was no discussion of that bill’s content, however. Instead, Democrats offered an amendment requiring the governor to issue a formal notice calling for the release of the federal files on deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Even before Epstein’s name was uttered in the chamber, Majority Leader Rep. Tyler August (R-Walworth) launched a broad verbal attack on the Democrats.

As with the other amendments, August raised a “point of order,” objecting to the amendment’s relevance to the legislation. He accused Democrats of “political gamesmanship” and pursuing “gotcha votes” to embarrass Republicans, and charged that “they just flat-out lie” in political campaigns.

“And so this is just another embarrassing moment for Assembly Democrats,” August said. “And then they wonder why they’re never going to be in charge of this place.”

Rep. Clint Anderson (D-Beloit) retorted just as sharply.

“You know what’s embarrassing is getting mad about us talking about holding a pedophile accountable,” Anderson said. “I think it is time that we send a message that we think no matter how powerful, how wealthy, and how politically connected you are, you will be held accountable if you traffic children.”

Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) argued that the amendment was relevant because the original bill was about restricting deferred prosecution.

“We all just voted unanimously to increase penalties for human trafficking and extend the statute of limitations,” Snodgrass said. “You simply cannot vote for that and then vote down this amendment.”

When Rep. Randy Udell (D-Fitchburg) began recounting some of the names of Epstein’s reported victims, Petersen interrupted.

“How do any of these names relate to Wisconsin?” Petersen said.

Udell: “They are all victims of Epstein and these files should be released.”

Petersen: “Did they happen in Wisconsin?”

Udell (who represents the 47th Assembly District): “We don’t know. The files haven’t been released.”

Petersen: “Representative from the 47th, on the point of order — not on national politics.”

Electric power lines. Clean energy projects, including several that involve improving the efficiency of electric power grids, are at risk of losing federal funding that was promised during the Biden administration. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The projects are on a list that covers three groups of cuts proposed in May, on Oct. 2 and this past week. The online news outlet Semafor reported the third set of proposed cuts, which alone totals $12 billion, on Tuesday, Oct. 7, and published a link to a list that covers all three groups.

“However, it’s not clear whether, or when, the full list of cancellations will be enacted, or if President Donald Trump is instead looking to use them as leverage in negotiations over the [federal government] shutdown,” Semafor reported.

The Wisconsin grants on the list are a mix of projects that help boost energy efficiency, including supporting the expansion of energy storage battery systems. One potential casualty is more than $1 million to prepare young people to enter apprenticeships in the skilled trades.

Clean energy holds the promise of addressing air pollution and climate change as well as revitalizing the state’s industrial base, said John Imes, director of the Wisconsin Environmental Initiative (WEI), a nonprofit that advocates policies benefiting the environment and the economy.

“These are all win-win that all of us want regardless of our political affiliation,” Imes told the Wisconsin Examiner. “This is all bottom-line stuff.”

Rolling back projects that enhance cleaner and more efficient use of energy will likely increase the cost of energy, Imes said.

“It means higher electric bills, higher energy bills, fewer choices and lost jobs,” he said. “We’re going to lose momentum.”

Battery power and rural grid upgrade

The two largest Wisconsin projects on the Department of Energy list of targets involve one company, Alliant Energy. They account for more than half of the Wisconsin funds targeted for cancellation.

The projects are being undertaken by Alliant’s Wisconsin Power & Light unit. They include a $50 million grant for upgrading the rural electrical grid and $30 million for a power storage system using a technology based on carbon dioxide this is to be built near Portage, Wisconsin.

“We understand the Administration and Department of Energy (DOE) are working through their budgets and have notified some businesses of changes to grant announcements,” said Cindy Tomlinson, Alliant senior manager for communications, in an email message last week.

“At this time, we have not been made aware of any changes to the announced DOE grants for our Alliant Energy projects,” Tomlinson said. “We are optimistic the value and viability of these projects is clear and that they will remain fully funded. These projects deliver economic and customer benefits.”

The electrical grid upgrade project received a conditional commitment from the energy department in December, but a final award agreement hasn’t been executed, Tomlinson said, and no federal funds have been received or spent.

The federal grants accounted for about one-third of the total planned investment for each project. If the grid upgrade grant is canceled, the project is still expected to go forward, Tomlinson said, “however at a slower, more gradual pace than the fast, concentrated fashion outlined in our grant application.”

Other potentially affected grants include $28.7 million for Johnson Controls, based in the Milwaukee suburb of Glendale, to support the company in its expansion of heat pump manufacturing.

The grant’s total value was $33 million at the time it was awarded to the company. According to USAspending.gov, a federal site that tracks the status of federal outlays, the business has received $4.4 million of the total.

Johnson Controls announced the grant in November 2023, part of an investment to scale up heat pump manufacturing at plants in Texas, Kansas and Pennsylvania and increase production by 200%, the company said at the time.

The company did not respond to inquiries Thursday and Friday by email and by telephone about the status of the grant or its planned heat pump manufacturing expansion.

Energy efficiency and innovation

Another Wisconsin recipient with grants on the list that are slated for elimination is Slipstream, a Madison-based nonprofit that provides consulting services on energy efficiency and innovation.

“We’re trying to make our energy systems more efficient and better so everybody’s paying less for energy,” said Scott Hackel, Slipstream’s vice president for research.

Hackel said Slipstream is working with other organizations on the list of targeted projects, and some of those organizations have been notified of grant terminations.

Slipstream also has two direct grants on the list, but has not received any notification that those grants are being terminated, Hackel said.

Slipstream had been awarded $5.2 million for work on equipping buildings with technology that enables them to automatically manage their power demand — reducing the building’s electrical load when demand on the grid is high and amping up the load when broader demand eases.

The organization is in the middle of a project implementing demand management technology in a group of buildings. The information gained from that test could be used to develop incentive programs for building owners to adopt that kind of technology, Hackel said.

If that gets cut off before it’s finished, other buildings in Wisconsin “would not have this example to look to,” he said.

A second grant awarded to the organization, $4 million, is to be used to train inspectors, building designers and others in how to effectively comply with and make the best use of building codes, particularly energy codes.

“Everything we’re doing is trying to make buildings and homes more affordable to live in with lower utility bills,” Hackel said. “If we’re not able to do that, that’s also a cost to people in Wisconsin.”

Two Universities of Wisconsin grants, one for $10 million and the other for $2.9 million, are on the list. Both involve projects to test technology innovations, according to the federal grant information documents.  

‘Electric city’ upgrades and a job-training program

A grant for the city of Kaukauna, Wisconsin, to install battery storage and make related electrical grid upgrades is also on the list. The original grant totaled $3 million, and so far $59,362 has been paid out, according to USAspending.gov, leaving $2.95 million that could be canceled.

The storage system is to bolster Kaukauna’s hydroelectric power generation operation, which dates to 1913 and led to the community’s adoption of “Electric City” as its nickname.

“Collateral damage from the Trump administration’s remarkably poor governance record continues to collect, this time in Kaukauna,” said Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson. “I can’t think of something more insulting than making the electric grid of a place known as ‘Electric City’ less safe or efficient.”

Also on the list is the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership, a Milwaukee nonprofit that provides training and certification to prepare people to enter apprenticeships in the skilled trades. WRTP was awarded a $1.5 million grant for training in skills related to transportation electrification. So far $112,470 has been paid out. 

Dan Bukiewicz, head of the Milwaukee Building Trades Council and co-chair of the WRTP board of directors, said that the board hasn’t been notified that its grant might be at risk of being taken away by the Trump administration.

“I won’t say we’re surprised,” however, Bukiewicz said. “They’re just trying to roll back a lot of the green energy and infrastructure [investments]. … It’s trying to make time stand still, and it just won’t if the United States is going to compete globally.”

WRTP students typically come from underserved communities and are the most in need, Bukiewicz said. The program’s training emphasizes job safety, introduces students to the construction industry, equips them with basic skills that an apprenticeship will build on, and acquaints them with how the industry and the technology are changing and where they might find a place that suits them.

If the federal grant is pulled, “these dollars are irreplaceable,” Bukiewicz said. “It’s not just taking money away and eliminating classes. It’s eliminating opportunities and a chance for generational change for people who really need it.”

Sen. Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) speaks at a press conference Wednesday morning about the Senate Democrats' "Affordable Wisconsin Agenda." (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

If there’s one word at the top of Democratic Party political discourse this year, it’s “affordability.”

Whether focused on a particular issue — child care, health care and housing are the most frequent examples — or on the cost of just about everything, making goods and services and life “affordable” figures high in the opening pitches of candidates across the state.

“I think the No. 1  issue that we need to focus on is affordability,” said Mitchell Berman, a Racine County nurse, when he announced in August he would seek the  Democratic nomination to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District.

Trevor Jung in Racine launched his state Senate campaign in September with a focus on “affordability” and “good-paying jobs.” Corrine Hendrickson, a former child care proprietor in New Glarus, said “affordability” is the top issue for her state Senate bid — and she wasn’t just talking about child care.

Democrats campaigning to be the party’s nominee for governor as diverse as David Crowley, Missy Hughes, and Francesca Hong have all uttered the word in introducing themselves to the public.

On Wednesday, the State Senate Democratic Committee had a press conference outside the Capitol to announce the Democrats’ focus on affordability, both for their upcoming legislative agenda and with an eye on the 2026 elections.

“Right now in Wisconsin, 65% of families are saying they are just getting by or they are struggling,” said Sen. Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton), the Senate minority leader. A spokesperson said the July Marquette University Law School poll was the source for the survey finding.

State Senate Democrats plan to spend the next few weeks traveling Wisconsin and hearing from state residents. Hesselbein said those conversations will become fodder for “tangible policy solutions that will help working families keep more of their hard-earned money, and we’re calling it the Affordable Wisconsin Agenda.”

Nathan Kalmoe, a University of Wisconsin political scientist, said via email that emphasizing poor economic conditions could be risky for Wisconsin Democrats running in state elections. While Republican lawmakers “may take some blame, the governor is a Democrat,” and voters tend to hold the chief executive responsible for economic conditions, he said. 

Kalmoe added that focusing on the economy exclusively at the expense of concerns for the most marginalized or concerns about Trump administration actions that threaten democracy would be “disturbing, and dangerous.”

Nevertheless, polling trends in the last several months suggest why Democrats nationwide have been focusing on inflation and the economy, said John D. Johnson, a research fellow and political analyst at Marquette University.

In Marquette polls shortly after President Donald Trump was elected to a second term in November, and again before he took office in January, 41% of adults nationally said they believed his policies would reduce inflation.

In Marquette’s most recent national poll, conducted in mid-September and released Oct. 2, “that had fallen to 25%,” Johnson said in an email to the Wisconsin Examiner. “Meanwhile, the share believing Trump’s policies would increase inflation grew from 45% to 60%.”

In the September poll, 40% of adults named “inflation and the cost of living” as the top issue in the U.S. “Another 19% chose ‘the economy’ more generally,” Johnson said.

“Overall, 29% of adults approved of Trump’s handling of ‘inflation and the cost of living’ while 71% disapproved,” Johnson said. (On “border security,” meanwhile, 55% of those polled approved Trump while 45% disapproved.)

In May, 68% of Republicans and 23% of independent voters told the Marquette pollsters they approved of how Trump was handling “inflation and the cost of living.” By September, Republican support had slipped to 57%, but among independents, support had plummeted to 14%.

“In other words, this is (1) an issue where there is a lot of daylight between how Republicans and Independents rate Trump, and (2) an issue where Trump is falling with both Democrats and Independents,” Johnson said.

At the Senate Democrats’ news conference Wednesday, a succession of senators — along with one state representative who is a Senate hopeful — spoke of how the issue of affordability cuts across a wide range of topics. And each laid blame for inaction on their Republican rivals.

“Senate Democrats have already been leading the fight to lower the cost of housing, whether trying to expand the homestead tax credit or preventing hedge funds from buying up available housing stocks, but undoubtedly more needs to be done,” said Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick).

Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon), who has the endorsement of the Senate Democrats as she seeks the party’s nomination in the 17th Senate District next year, pointed to “reckless federal policies” hitting farmers and hiking grocery bills.

Democratic state lawmakers have proposed a free school meal bill along with grants for farmers who provide food to food pantries, replacing a federal program cut by the Trump administration, she said; both are “examples of some of the kinds of policies that we can advance to lower everyday costs.”

Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) warned of coming spikes both in health insurance costs and in the rates of people without health insurance because of the expiring Affordable Care Act premium subsidies at the center of the federal shutdown fight in Congress. “We need Congress to get to work and renew these ACA subsidies,” she said.

Meanwhile, bills in the state Legislature to lower prescription drug costs and cap the price of asthma medication “haven’t even gotten a public hearing,” Dassler-Alfheim said. “We could be doing more here in Wisconsin to make life a little bit more affordable for everyone.”

Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) said Wisconsin continues to face “a child care crisis,” with too few options for working families. Care is increasingly costly, “not because child care providers are making huge profits,” she said. “It’s because we can no longer underpay those doing the child care work, mostly women.”

Democrats have been pushing for expanding child care support, “yet Republicans in Madison stand in the way every single time,” Keyeski said.

Hesselbein said that the Senate Democrats hope that they can follow up on their conversations with voters across the state by “bringing those ideas back to the state Legislature, working on them and hopefully being able to pass them in a bipartisan manner.”

At the same time, however, she blamed inaction on Republican lawmakers who “are mired in internal conflict, unwilling to cross the aisle and get stuff done for Wisconsinites.” The  2026 election will enable voters to “turn the page,” she said, “and vote for a vision that puts Wisconsinites first, that puts you and your families first.”

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) speaks about impending insurance price increases due to the sunset of enhance subsidies for health insurance policies purchased at HealthCare.gov. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Sometime in the next 10 days, Wisconsin residents will see directly what the stakes are in the ongoing standoff in Washington over the federal shutdown, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) said Wednesday.

That’s when people who buy health insurance through the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will find out their likely premiums for 2026.

“In the next probably 10 days, we’re going to have a lot more information,” Pocan said at a press conference in the state Capitol along with small business owners and state lawmakers. “Health care is going to start getting very expensive for everyone beyond what it costs now — but for some people it’s going to be so cost prohibitive that they’re going to actually wind up losing their health insurance.”

Most Democrats in the U.S. Senate have refused to vote to advance a Republican continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded and have said they won’t do so if Republicans won’t negotiate with them on the bill.

In demanding changes to the stopgap spending bill, Democrats have focused on enhanced premium tax credits that provide subsidies for most people who buy health insurance on the federal marketplace.

The enhanced subsidies, enacted in 2021 and extended in 2022, will expire at the end of this year, driving up the premium cost for health insurance policies sold on the marketplace.

Pocan said that with the premiums on ACA policies going up and losing the additional subsidies, “a couple 60 years old making $85,000 in my district could see somewhere between a $16,000 and $17,000 increase next year in their premiums.” The projections are the product of KFF, the independent health research, policy and news organization.

Macy Buhler owns a child care center. She said her own health insurance comes through her husband’s job, but some of her employees have relied on the ACA and HealthCare.gov to buy insurance. With the possibility that they won’t be able to afford those plans any more, she said, she’s been inquiring with insurance companies about their potential options.

“I’m doing the best I can,” Buhler said. “But when people don’t see that this is going to affect our workforce, it frustrates me. It will absolutely affect our workforce. It will absolutely affect families who are middle class and lower. It will affect our farmers.”

Kyle LaFond, who  owns a custom manufacturing business, said he and his team of eight employees have relied on the ACA for health insurance.

“The ACA really leveled the playing field in terms of being able to provide coverage,” LaFond said.

Among his employees, the projected increases for health insurance will range from $2,000 to about $12,000. “For a growing family, those price hikes are almost insurmountable. It’s unconscionable,” La Fond said.

With the increased subsidies expiring, “I might lose some good people,” he added. “So I’m talking about the future of my business.”

Democrats tried to make extending the subsidies part of the tax- and spending-cut megabill that President Donald Trump signed in July, but the procedure Republicans used to pass that legislation allowed them to move it through the process without Democratic votes.

Pocan said the Democrats are not willing to trust the Republican majority to  negotiate on the ACA subsidies if the Democrats first agree on the GOP bill and simply reopen the government.

Previous deals in December and in March on stopgap spending bills fell apart, he said. “Then Donald Trump did recissions, which are against the law, and started taking away funding that we did. Article 1 of the Constitution gives the power of the purse to Congress and he took it away. So they get all of that.”

Pocan said the recurring Republican claim that Democrats are holding out “because they want to give hundreds of billions of dollars of health benefits to illegal aliens — PolitiFact gave that an outright false.”

Pocan refrained from using a barnyard epithet for the claim. “Manure is what it is,” he said, glancing around at the ornately decorated Assembly parlor. “It’s a pretty room. I got to talk pretty.”

But, he said, “by federal law, not one dime can go directly to someone who’s an undocumented person — I’m going to use that terminology — from Medicare, Medicaid, or the Affordable Care Act. So, nothing. So, it’s not true.”

Public awareness about the shutdown could be lagging. Pocan said his office had 85 calls last week about the shutdown.

By contrast, in the last nine months, his office has taken 14,435 calls about health care. “So this is something that people really care about.”

Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) speaks before a vote on a housing-related bill in the state Assembly Tuesday. (Screenshot/WisEye)

A group of housing bills that Republican lawmakers have fast-tracked since they were first announced two weeks ago made it through the Wisconsin Assembly Tuesday — most with unanimous support, but not without criticism from Democrats.

In a floor speech before the Assembly began voting Tuesday, Rep. Kalan Haywood (D-Milwaukee), assistant minority leader, said the GOP housing package fell short of what might have been possible with bipartisan discussion.

“While there is support for many of these bills on our side, we are by no means satisfied,” Haywood said.

Haywood complimented the Republican chair of the Assembly’s Housing and Real Estate committee, Rep. Robert Brooks (R-Saukville), for his “willingness to listen and work together.”

He described bills enacted in the 2023-24 session as “a bipartisan housing package that we could build on this session,” and said that in the spring, bipartisan work had begun on a new round of bills, accompanied by “honest communication with both sides and with stakeholders.”

Those discussions stopped abruptly in June, Haywood said, and when the bills came out two weeks ago the results were “half baked.”

“There are some good things in these bills that may help create some additional housing, but we could have done much more,” Haywood said.

A series of procedural votes on the floor Tuesday surrounding one bill — AB 455, creating a grant program for condominium conversions from multi-family homes — was emblematic of the gap between how Democrats and Republicans viewed not just the legislation but the larger issue of housing.

In the Housing and Real Estate Committee meeting Friday, Oct. 3, Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) managed to persuade three Republicans to join the panel’s Democrats to pass an amendment that expanded the bill to include housing cooperatives, not just condominiums.  

After the amendment was adopted, Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) sent an email written in red to all state lawmakers of both parties, mocking Clancy’s amendment as applying to “communes” and criticizing its Republican supporters.

When the bill reached the floor Tuesday, the original author, Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Greenville), submitted a rewrite, known as a substitute amendment.

The rewrite included another amendment, from Democrat, Rep. Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh), giving tenants of a building being converted to condos the right of first refusal to purchase their residence. But it omitted the Clancy amendment.

“We had a brief and awesome moment of bipartisanship this last week, and then we had an all red email from Senator Nass,” Clancy said on the Assembly floor. “I did not realize that my Republican colleagues were beholden to him and not even their own leadership there.”

The substitute amendment, Clancy said, would “strike out this bipartisan amendment and just turn it into another handout to developers.”

Brooks, the housing committee chair, had announced at the Republican press conference before the floor session that cooperatives would be stripped out, calling the approach “very difficult to manage because of the financing mechanisms and other things.”

Clancy said he would vote for the legislation despite the removal of his amendment. “But it is so disappointing to have to do that because we had something better in front of us,” he added.

The bill, like most of the bills up for a vote Tuesday, passed on a voice vote.

Others that passed with broad support included AB 424, updating requirements for the rental of mobile and manufactured homes; AB 451, allowing cities and villages to designate residential tax incremental districts to help fund infrastructure improvements; AB 452, allowing land subdividers to certify their designs and public improvements comply with state requirements; and AB 456, making a variety of changes to real estate transaction practices.

A handful of measures labeled as housing bills passed with little or no support from Democrats.

AB 453 would require local communities to grant rezoning requests for housing developers if they meet certain conditions, including that the area is projected as residential in the community’s comprehensive plan. The party-line vote was 55-39.

Rep. Mike Bare (D-Verona) said the measure fell short of what could have been done and that it lacked funding for local governments that would have to bear the cost it would impose. The bill’s author. Rep. David Armstrong (R-Rice Lake) vowed to seek funding in the next state budget.

AB 450 would put off the effective date of Wisconsin’s updated commercial building code until April 1, 2026. Originally blocked in 2023, the new code was reinstated by the the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) after a state Supreme Court ruling this July held that state laws allowing the Legislature to block executive branch administrative rules indefinitely were unconstitutional.

The current effective date is Nov. 1.

Rep. William Penterman (R-Hustisford) said delaying the code further was needed “for clarity” because builders had been planning projects under the previous code.

After the GOP majority rejected an attempt by Democrats to replace the bill with language that increased funding for DSPS on a 54-41 party-line vote, the legislation passed on a voice vote — but with substantial, audible cries of “No” from Democrats.

AB 366 would allow landlords to demand a written statement from a licensed health professional attesting to a tenant’s need for an emotional support animal.

“There are numerous people that have contacted us about the fraudulent means of how you can get a service dog,” state Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), said at a Republican press conference before the floor session.

On the floor, Clancy criticized the bill for potentially harming people for whom emotional support animals are a necessity but who are unable to see  a health professional.

“To the extent that there is a problem, where we want to actually certify that some animals are supportive and some are not, we can fix that problem,” Clancy said. “But that requires actually talking to the stakeholders before taking pen to paper.”

Dr. Lauren VanDeHey speaks at a press conference on Tuesday in favor of legislation to require insurers to cover infertility treatment. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Treatments for infertility can cost tens of thousands of dollars, leaving some couples to borrow huge sums to cover the expense and others to decide against having children at all.

Lawmakers are circulating a draft bill to change that by requiring health insurers in Wisconsin to cover infertility procedures. If the measure is enacted, Wisconsin would join 22 states and the District of Columbia in providing some form of coverage for fertility treatments, according to advocates.

“Infertility is a medical issue,” said state Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) at a Capitol press conference Tuesday. “And like any other health condition, it deserves the medical treatment to be affordable and accessible. Yet right now, too many individuals and couples are forced to choose between financial stability and the chance to start a family. That’s a choice no one should ever have to make.”

Emerson is the lead Assembly author of the proposal, along with Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), the lead Senate author.

Roys described infertility as a deep source of disappointment for many couples who want to have children. “One of the things that it shouldn’t do, though, is bankrupt you,” she said. “Everyone should be able to access treatment for health conditions and diseases like infertility without regard for the type of insurance you have.”

Dr. Bala Bhagavath, an infertility specialist based in Madison, told reporters that he previously practiced in New York and Rhode Island, where state laws mandate coverage for infertility treatments. Relocating to Wisconsin “has been a rude awakening,” he said.

“Although some patients get coverage for diagnosis of their condition, most pay out of pocket for both diagnosis as well as treatment,” Bhagavath said. “It’s quite common for patients to take out loans and second mortgages so that they can build a family. I’ve had patients taking a second job or moving south of the border to Illinois as they would get insurance coverage for infertility treatment.”

Dr. Lauren VanDeHey, a medical resident in obstetrics and gynecology, said that as a cancer survivor she underwent a procedure to preserve embryos to avoid the risk of damage from chemotherapy and radiation. She was able to get free medication and the cost of some of her in vitro fertilization services discounted, but is still faced with a $17,000 bill she and her husband  will have to pay off over the next several years, she said.

“I am fortunate I will be able to pay these debts off when I complete my medical training,” she said. “For others, taking on this expense is simply not an option. Support for this bill needs to be a bipartisan effort because cancer and infertility can affect anyone.”

Attorney General Josh Kaul speaks to residents of Marinette during a visit in 2019. (Photo by (Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Attorney General Josh Kaul announced Tuesday he will run for reelection in 2026 — taking his name off the list of potential Democratic contestants in the race for governor.

“This is a pivotal time for our nation,” Kaul said in a written statement. “Some of our most basic rights are under threat. Severe cuts have been made to programs that provide opportunities and have helped communities move forward. It’s critical that we continue to have an AG who will stand up for our freedoms and the rule of law.”

Kaul was first elected to the office in 2018, when Tony Evers won his first term as governor. Both won second terms in 2022, although Kaul by a narrow margin.

After Evers announced in July that he would not seek a third term, turning the 2026 race for governor into a wide-open contest, Kaul was among the Democrats who were widely assumed would seek the nomination to succeed him. In his first press conferences after the Evers announcement, Kaul demurred when asked about his plans.

In the months since Evers said he would step aside, more than a half-dozen Democrats have announced they would campaign to be the state’s chief executive, while Kaul remained on the list of “potential” candidates.

“In Wisconsin, we’ve made meaningful progress, and we need to build on that progress,” Kaul said in his announcement statement. “As my track record shows, I’m committed to working to protect public safety and to looking out for the interests of Wisconsinites.”

“Josh Kaul has been a champion for Wisconsin and a bulwark against the MAGA extremist politicians and the Trump administration who have been trying to subvert our democracy, attacking our personal freedoms, and stealing from everyday working people,” Devin Remiker, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin said in a statement. “Wisconsinites are fortunate to have Josh Kaul as Attorney General, and our state will be lucky to have him serve another four years.”

 So far the Democrats who have announced they will run for the open governor’s seat include Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, former economic development CEO Missy Hughes, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison). Milwaukee factory worker and baseball stadium beer vendor Ryan Strnad and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey.

AG Josh Kaul speaks at a town hall in Green Bay in April 2025. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Trump administration has backed away from a threat to demand that states cooperate with federal immigration enforcement if they want access to federal funds to aid crime victims, according to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul.

Wisconsin was one of 20 states and the District of Columbia that sued the administration in August over a demand that states join in federal immigration enforcement efforts if the wanted access to Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grants.

Fees, fines and penalties collected in federal court proceedings  are distributed under VOCA to states to use on victim services, including operating community-based organizations such as domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers and victim-witness offices within county district attorneys’ offices. 

The Wisconsin Department of Justice estimated the state would have lost more than $24 million in grant funds if the threat had been  carried out.

The U.S. Department of Justice abandoned the plan after the lawsuit was filed, Kaul said Monday.

“This is funding that helps make a difference for victims of crime,” Kaul said in a statement. “The Trump administration shouldn’t have tried to tie states’ access to this funding to their assistance with immigration enforcement.”

A builder frames a house under construction. An Assembly committee advanced a dozen bills Thursday, with several aimed at expanding the construction of affordable workforce housing. (Spencer Platt | Getty Images)

A dozen bills, some aimed at addressing the need for affordable workforce housing according to their Republican authors, passed the Assembly’s Housing and Real Estate Committee Thursday, with all but three gaining bipartisan support.

Several of the measures have already been put on the tentative calendar for the Assembly floor session scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 7.

AB 182, would modify Wisconsin’s low-income housing tax credit and require the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA) to ensure that 35% of the tax credits it allocates are for projects in rural areas of Wisconsin.

AB 449 would require local municipalities with zoning to permit accessory dwelling units on the property of existing single family homes.

AB 451 would create residential tax incremental districts, to encourage residential developments with the resulting increases in property tax collection used to fund infrastructure investment. That measure passed the panel 12-2.

AB 454 would establish a workforce home loan fund through WHEDA to provide gap financing for new construction or significant rehabilitation of a single family home for the borrower.

AB 455 would establish a grant program at WHEDA for the owners of apartment buildings to offset converting their properties to condominiums. In an unanimous vote, the committee approved an amendment from state Rep. Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh) requiring grant recipients to give current occupants in a building being converted an opportunity to purchase their unit.

State Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) persuaded a majority of the committee, including four Republican members, to adopt an amendment allowing the proposed grants to be used for conversions to housing cooperatives as well as condominiums.

“Housing co-ops are an important alternative for households in our communities that lack the means to individually purchase and maintain stable housing,” Clancy said in a statement issued after the vote. “They provide the assurance of predictable costs, create the potential for innovative forms of cost sharing and cost reduction, and help strengthen the communities that embrace this well-proven model.”

Clancy’s statement also included a thank-you to the Republicans who voted with the committee’s five Democrats to pass the amendment, as well as the committee chair, Rep. Robert Brooks (R-Saukville), “for giving my proposed amendment to AB 455 a fair hearing.”

Clancy’s statement prompted Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) to email Republicans and Democrats in both chambers castigating Clancy and the Republicans who voted for his amendment for adding “communes” to the bill.

Four other bills involved largely technical matters, one lowering real estate transfer fees, one updating the requirements for renting mobile homes, one enabling subdivision developers to certify that improvements comply with state requirements, and one on changes in real estate practices for single- to four-family homes. All passed with unanimous or nearly unanimous votes.

Divided on party lines

Committee members split on a bill that would allow landlords to demand a written statement from a licensed health professional attesting to a tenant’s need for an emotional support animal.

The bill’s author, state Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), asserted at a public hearing that there was a “rising trend of emotional support and service animal misrepresentation in Wisconsin.” All nine committee Republicans voted for the bill and all five Democrats against it. 

On a second party-line vote, a bill giving developers an automatic rezoning right for residential projects if they met certain conditions passed with only the Republicans voting in favor.

The committee also passed on party lines legislation that would put off the effective date of Wisconsin’s updated commercial building code until April 1, 2026.

The building code update had been blocked in 2023, but a state Supreme Court ruling this July held that state laws giving the Legislature the power to block executive branch administrative rules indefinitely were unconstitutional.

After the Court’s ruling, the Department of Safety and Professional Services moved ahead to promulgate the new code, originally setting a Sept. 1 starting date. The department later postponed the effective date to Nov. 1.

In addition to the committee’s 9-5 vote Thursday on the bill postponing the date again, 29 Republican lawmakers sent DSPS Secretary-designee Dan Hereth a letter Wednesday also seeking to postpone the effective date to April 1. 

A nurse holds a vial of COVID-19 vaccine and syringe. (Getty Images)

Wisconsin clinics and hospitals are stepping up the rollout of the newest version of the COVID-19 vaccination.

UW Health started offering the new edition vaccine to patients Wednesday and will start scheduling COVID-19 shots beginning Monday.

The Madison-based hospital and clinic system previously began giving the vaccine to people older than 65, considered the highest-risk population for the respiratory infection, according to Dr. Jim Conway, an infectious disease specialist and medical director for the UW Health immunization program.

The 2025-26 version of the vaccine is “built around the most current, circulating strains of COVID that are out there,” Conway said in an interview Wednesday. “As we all learned during the entire pandemic, these strains are mutating constantly, and so they’re constantly changing . . . You try to keep up with what’s the most prevalent.”

Major pharmacy chains typically get the first available allotments of the vaccine and have already, Conway said. In the meantime, UW Health and other health systems have been preparing to offer the shot and preparing their scheduling systems.

The vaccine’s components are developed following discussions among health experts for the World Health Organization and other agencies, Conway said. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) take part in those discussions.

In the weeks leading up to Sept. 19, when the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) opened its most recent meeting, public health professionals were apprehensive that the body might limit access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has a long history of embracing unfounded claims critical of vaccines. Kennedy replaced the members of the ACIP with people viewed as skeptics of vaccination. Susan Monarez, appointed CDC director earlier this year by President Donald Trump, testified at a congressional hearing in September that Kennedy fired her for refusing to agree to his demand that she endorse ACIP’s recommendations without reviewing them.

Ahead of ACIP’s meeting, “we were all really nervous,” Conway said. Medical professional groups emphasized their endorsement of the COVID-19 shot to counter messaging from Kennedy and other HHS officials that appeared to cast doubt on the vaccine.

“Our professional societies make recommendations every year, but this year we really leaned into making sure people were aware of those and really were promoting those as … evidence-based, data driven,” he said.

When ACIP met just two days after Monarez’s testimony, the panel left in place the CDC’s recommendation for COVID-19 vaccinations from the age of six months to 64. While the panel’s recommendation highlighted concerns about risk, ACIP rejected a proposal to require a prescription for the shot.

“It’s actually in some ways reassuring that even people that may come across as skeptics and doubters at some level as they were repopulating the ACIP — even they couldn’t be swayed from how clear the evidence and the data is that these vaccines are really valuable and really safe,” Conway said. “It was a very pleasant surprise.”

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers issued an executive order to ensure COVID-19 vaccine access and the state Department of Health Services followed up with a health order that functions as a statewide prescription for the shot. The Office of the Commissioner of Insurance also issued guidance that insurance companies in Wisconsin are expected to cover the vaccine without requiring a patient co-pay.

Conway said with those actions insurers began announcing in the last week their coverage plans, which set the stage for providers to set up their vaccine programs.

The first objective of a vaccine is “to prevent you from getting serious disease,” Conway said, so patients don’t have to go to a doctor, “or aren’t getting admitted to the hospital or aren’t getting in the ICU [intensive care unit] or aren’t going on a ventilator or, God forbid, aren’t dying. That’s the ultimate goal, and that’s what the vaccines are really very good at.”

If the shot prevents a person from getting sick from the virus at all, that’s a bonus,  “but we know that that’s never completely possible with these kinds of respiratory viruses,” he added. “But we know that even if you get ill, you’re much more likely to have a very, very mild case.”

Vaccination also helps prevent the spread of disease as it reduces the amount of virus infected people are shedding, Conway said. That can reduce the chances that others will be exposed to the virus, helping to protect people whose immune systems are suppressed due to age or an underlying medical condition.

With enough people vaccinated, that allows  community immunity — “what used to be called herd immunity” — to develop, Conway said. That reduces the risk of outbreaks, “but it also starts to protect the really vulnerable parts of your population.”

The vaccine’s availability came as good news Wednesday to Patricia Fisher, a graduate student and the mother of a six-month-old. Fisher was disappointed this week when the vaccine wasn’t available at her baby’s check-up.

“It’s not just about my baby,” said Fisher,  who is enrolled in a sociology Ph.D. program at the University of Wisconsin. “The community is safer if more people are vaccinated.”

Fisher has a master’s degree in public health. While her own research focuses on food systems, climate change and health, she said she’s learned enough about population health outcomes to make her alarmed at the prevalence of anti-vaccine attitudes.

“I find it really, really frightening how anti-vaccine some people are, and that people are particularly worried about [vaccines for] COVID, flu and RSV [respiratory syncytial virus],” Fisher said. “COVID is a very clear and present threat to infant health and so it’s very worrying to me.”

Between the national upsurge in measles that has surfaced in Wisconsin, surges in pertussis (whooping cough) in the last couple of years, influenza and COVID-19, “there’s a lot of threats out there,” she said. “I just didn’t think that infectious disease would be the thing about parenting that would be the most stressful, but it definitely is.”

On Wednesday she made an appointment for her child’s COVID-19 shot in mid-October. “I’m thrilled it’s going to be available,” she said.

Conway said the flood of both information and misinformation about the vaccine can overwhelm people. “Sometimes the natural human response is to just hunker down and do nothing,” he said.

He counsels patience and keeping messaging simple: pointing to the decades of data on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines along with the number of professional medical organizations that have made recommendations on the basis of scientific evidence.

“I think people should understand that there’s an opportunity here to protect themselves and their families from these really potentially very unpredictable diseases that can devastate individuals, families and communities,” Conway said.

Stephanie Johnson, whose husband died after living with Parkinson's Disease for 13 years, speaks at a news conference Wednesday, Oct. 1, about legislation to create a state Parkinson's registry. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

A bipartisan group of Wisconsin lawmakers announced legislation Wednesday to  create a statewide registry for Parkinson’s Disease.

Parkinson’s, a neurological condition that is characterized by tremors, but also by a variety of other symptoms, has been increasing disproportionately, according to Dr. Brian Nagle, a movement disorder specialist.

“It’s the second most common neurological disease after Alzheimer’s disease, but it’s the fastest growing,” Nagle said in an interview Wednesday.

The speed with which Parkinson’s diagnoses are increasing is outpacing the aging of the population, “which suggests that it’s not just due to our population getting older, but that there may be some sort of risk factor that is causing it to grow more rapidly,” Nagle said.

A statewide registry of Parkinson’s patients could help provide clues about factors, such as environmental conditions, that may be at the root of the illness, he said.

State Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Fox Crossing) and state Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) began circulating a draft bill Wednesday to create the proposed state registry.

“Right now, when patients and their doctors are looking for answers, we struggle a little bit,” said Cabral-Guevara, who is a nurse practitioner, at a press conference to announce the legislation.

“We simply don’t have the data that we need,” she said. “We don’t know who is infected. Where the disease is hitting the hardest. Are there environmental factors that impact this, that cause this, that make it progress even faster? That lack of the clear picture of this is a barrier.”

The legislation was the brainchild of Stephanie Johnson, director of the Parkinson’s Disease Alliance of Wisconsin. Johnson told reporters Wednesday that her husband, Rick, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s 15 years ago when he was 61. After living with the illness for 13 years, he died in December 2023.

“I think we typically think of Parkinson’s as tremors or shuffling,” Johnson said, “but Rick had dangerously low blood pressure that would cause him to pass out. He had cognitive changes that made it very, very challenging for him to communicate. And he had visual hallucinations and many other non-motor symptoms.”

Johnson said she was also diagnosed with Parkinson’s three months after her husband’s death — a finding that astonished her. Then she learned that in the neighborhood where they had previously lived for 20 years, they were two of six residents who developed Parkinson’s disease, she said.

“And I thought, this can’t be a coincidence,” Johnson said, “And I wondered, is this a disease cluster? I didn’t know.”

“We don’t have a systematic way of tracking the incidence and prevalence of Parkinson’s in Wisconsin,” Johnson said.

The proposed legislation is aimed at filling that gap. The bill’s authors have named it in memory of Johnson’s husband at her request.

Fourteen U.S. states have some form of registry for Parkinson’s Disease, with some tracking other conditions as well, according to the Michael J. Fox foundation, a national research nonprofit named for the TV actor who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease when he was 30.

The draft legislation calls for the establishment of a registry at the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. The registry would include a website with annual reports on the incidence and prevalence of Parkinson’s Disease in Wisconsin.

Health care providers would file information with the directory about patients they treat for Parkinson’s or closely related conditions. If patients don’t consent for their information to be shared, the incidence would be reported and nothing else, according to the bill.

Parkinson’s Disease is the subject of “a lot of mysteries,” Subeck said. “The reality is we are not going to get closer to curing Parkinson’s unless we do the research, unless we collect the data, and unless we enable that data to be used in meaningful ways.”

Rachel LaCasse-Ford, right talks to Sen. Tammy Baldwin about her use of the Affordable Care Act marketplace to buy insurance during a meeting Baldwin held with small business owners and others in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, on Sept. 25. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Matt Raboin owns Brix Cider, a farm-to-table restaurant, and brews apple cider in the Dane County village of Mount Horeb.

His wife’s full-time job with benefits provides the family with health insurance, but for Raboin, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has made an important difference for some of his employees.

“We don’t offer insurance ourselves,” Raboin said during a recent round table discussion set up by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin). “A lot of small businesses in small towns aren’t in a financial place to do that.”

Like Raboin, some of his employees get their coverage through a spouse or because they also work another full-time job that provides benefits. But over the years, the ACA and the HealthCare.gov marketplace created under the law have been a critical source of health coverage for many of his employees, Raboin said.

Recently he polled a number of them. One memorable response came from a part-time employee who also has a part-time job with a local church. She buys her health insurance on HealthCare.gov. Thanks to an increase enacted in 2021 in tax credit subsidies, she’s been able to afford the premiums, Raboin said she told him.

“So without it, she’s like, ‘I can’t keep working for you. And I don’t think I keep working for my church. I think I have to find a different job,’” Raboin recalled.

The ACA and HealthCare.gov have made it possible for millions more Americans and thousands more Wisconsin residents to obtain health insurance.

But less visibly, the health care marketplace that the ACA created has also helped support many small businesses. If the enhanced tax credit subsidies that lowered the cost of health insurance for millions over the last three years aren’t renewed, small business owners and employees say they could be especially hard hit.

Nearly half of people who get their health insurance through the HealthCare.gov marketplace are self-employed or small business owners, or else work for small businesses, according to KFF, an independent nonprofit that researches and reports on health policy.

To expand access to health care, the ACA created the HealthCare.gov marketplace to make buying health insurance easier for people whose jobs don’t provide coverage and who don’t qualify for government programs such as Medicaid.

To make coverage more affordable, the law provides tax credit subsidies for people with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty guideline. Those subsidies were increased in 2021 and expanded to people with higher incomes.

The enhanced subsidies will expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress extends them — driving up the cost of health insurance for millions.

The enhanced subsidy “saves more than 230,000 Wisconsinites an average of $500 every single month,” Baldwin said during a Zoom press conference Tuesday.

For Chrysa Ostenso and her late husband, the enhanced subsidies lowered their premiums from nearly $2,000 a month to about $300 a month, Ostenso said.

Ostenso lives in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, where she and her husband operated an optometry clinic for more than three decades, raising four children along the way.

“We always struggled to afford health insurance but of course we had to buy it,” Ostenso said in an interview. “As a family of four kids with a small business, you can’t go without health insurance.”

The family’s high deductible plans required them to pay $6,000 a year out of pocket before insurance would cover their health care. By 2020, when the children were grown and the health plan just covered Ostenso and her husband, they were paying $1,979 a month, she said.

They hadn’t qualified for the original ACA subsidies. When the enhanced subsidies were enacted in 2021, however, Ostenso said their premiums went down to $300 a month, increasing to $500 a month in subsequent years.

“It actually meant freedom to go to the doctor, because we were spending so much money on our premiums [previously] that we actually couldn’t afford to go to the doctor,” she said.

Standoff over extending subsidies

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday night’s federal shutdown, Democrats in Congress demanded that Republicans rescind sweeping changes to Medicaid that were part of the major tax- and spending-cuts megabill that President Donald Trump signed July 4.

They also demanded an extension of the enhanced ACA subsidies.

Baldwin has coauthored legislation that would make the enhanced subsidies permanent. She spent part of the just-concluded congressional recess traveling Wisconsin and meeting with people who expect to see their health costs go up sharply if the increased subsidies end.

During Tuesday’s press conference, Baldwin related a conversation with a  bakery owner who worried about how she and her family will afford health insurance, “but also that increased costs on the [HealthCare.gov] exchange will mean that her employees at her bakery may have to quit to work for big companies that offer insurance.”

During Baldwin’s press conference, Gigi Gastevich, an artist who owns a retail space in Stoughton, said the ACA and the enhanced subsidies had made it possible for her to launch and grow her business.

Gastevich is a 15-year cancer survivor. When starting her business, she qualified for BadgerCare — Wisconsin’s main Medicaid program — which covered the ongoing medical monitoring she requires as a cancer survivor.

In 2025, with her income above the limit for BadgerCare, she found an insurance plan on HealthCare.gov that included her existing health care professionals in its network and had an affordable deductible.

The plan’s premium was $481 a month, Gastevich said, but the enhanced subsidy  brought it down to about $100 a month.

Without the subsidy, she said, she will have to switch plans — possibly losing her long-standing group of providers if they aren’t in the network. She said her choices include taking a high-deductible plan that would put some of the regular care she’s been recommended as a cancer survivor out of reach financially; or closing down her business. 

“[That] would mean not only abandoning my dream of entrepreneurship and being a self-employed artist, but taking away an income source for the dozens of artists and artisans whose American-made work I sell here,” Gastevich said.

It would also forestall her plans to scale up her business to sell her own line of textiles and employ others. “I won’t be able to do that if my health and well-being is tied to being on an employer-based health care plan,” she added.

Uncertain future

During her tour of the state, Baldwin stopped in Mount Horeb on Thursday, Sept. 25, where she spoke with Brix owner Matt Raboin and four other business owners as well as local health care providers.

The round table took place at the Upland Hills Health Mount Horeb clinic. The urgent care clinic is part of a broader system that includes a hospital in Dodgeville and clinics in surrounding communities.

Dr. Mark Thompson, Upland Hills CEO, said system executives expect to see about $400,000 a year in additional uncompensated care based on projections of people leaving the insurance rolls because they don’t think they can afford the new ACA premiums.

Jay Goninen sat in as a board member of the Upland Hills system, but he’s also an employer for whom the ACA has made it possible to provide health benefits.

Goninen owns a business that helps connect the auto repair industry with high schools and technical schools. For the last few years, he’s opted to have employees of the firm purchase health insurance on the ACA.

The company pays a portion of the cost. Goninen likens the arrangement to a common practice of employers who offer a group health plan and split the cost with their employees.

“I do really worry about just the individual person and their ability to afford to live right now, in general,” he told Baldwin. “It is tough.”

In addition to worrying about what will happen to employees who bought coverage at HealthCare.gov if they lose their subsidies, Raboin said he’s also concerned about the broader ripple effect in the community.

“Our clients aren’t rich,” Raboin said. “Not everybody can go out to eat all the time, and if you start taking away that expendable income, that’s less people coming out to eat. So I think it would depress the whole economy.”

Rachel LaCasse-Ford owns a campground with her husband and also heads the Mount Horeb Chamber of Commerce.

“I’ve never really had a job that offers health care,” LaCasse-Ford told Baldwin. “I’ve always worked in small business, so we have always used health care from the ACA.”

The enhanced tax credits “definitely benefited” the couple, she said. “And if those go away, that will make our budgets tighter, and it will make things more challenging for us.”

With every new job, LaCasse-Ford said, she considers its impact on their health coverage and whether she can stay with a nonprofit employer such as the chamber, work for a small business, “or if I need to look for a larger employer that offers benefits.”

Former WEDC CEO Missy Hughes launched her campaign Monday to seek the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin governor. (Hughes campaign photo)

Missy Hughes, Wisconsin’s former top economic development official, says she offers a distinctive choice in the 2026 Democratic primary for governor — an effective non-politician with a strong economic track record.

“Listen, I’m not a politician. I’m different than other folks you’ve seen run for governor. That’s the point,” Hughes says in her launch video released Monday morning.

Hughes, a lawyer who served as Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. (WEDC) CEO and secretary for six years, becomes the seventh Democrat to join the field for the party’s nomination after Gov. Tony Evers announced in July that he will not seek a third term in 2026.

“I think right now, there’s a moment where we’re looking for a Democrat who understands the economy, who understands how to build the economy, who understands how to move Wisconsin forward, and so I happen to have the chance to meet that moment,” Hughes told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview Monday. 

“As governor, I’ll create a Main Street economy that includes you and works for you,” Hughes says in the launch video. “Where we strengthen our Main Streets, make sure Wisconsinites have higher wages and housing they can afford, our families have child care and health care that doesn’t break the bank, and our public schools prepare our kids for the future.”

Hughes was an executive for 17 years at Organic Valley before Evers appointed her to lead the WEDC. In her campaign video, she says that the cooperative, which markets organic dairy products sourced from more than 1,800 farms across the U.S., topped $1 billion in revenue during her tenure.

She took the reins at the WEDC Oct. 1, 2019, where she headed Wisconsin’s negotiations with major employers expanding their operations or relocating to the state. She resigned Sept. 19, 10 days before launching her campaign.

During her tenure at the agency, “major companies like Milwaukee Tool, Microsoft, Eli Lilly, Kikkoman and more committed to invest over $10 billion and create 45,000 good-paying jobs across Wisconsin,” the Hughes campaign stated in a debut email.

Hughes also raised the department’s profile in small business and local community economic development. The WEDC oversaw many of the state’s COVID-19 relief programs, which focused heavily on small business recovery from the short but sharp economic hit brought on by the pandemic.

Among the highest profile efforts was the Main Street Bounceback, which directed $10,000 grants to more than 9,500 small businesses across Wisconsin.

The WEDC is also the lead state agency involved in Wisconsin’s successful application for federal support to establish a technology hub centered on the state’s biohealth sector.

Hughes is the second Democrat with an Evers administration background to seek the party’s nomination in the August 2026 primary. Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez was the first to enter the race, declaring her candidacy less than 24 hours after Evers announced he was not running.

Other declared hopefuls are Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison). Milwaukee factory worker and baseball stadium beer vendor Ryan Strnad and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey are also seeking the nomination.

Hughes told the Wisconsin Examiner that economic concerns and how she’s addressed them in her career are central to her case. 

“I think the economy is something that Wisconsinites think about day to day,” Hughes said. “No matter what, we know that folks are going to be thinking about those issues, those kitchen table issues that are really important to how they live their lives every day.”

Her campaign message that she’s “not a politician” aims to convey “that I’m in it to serve the people of Wisconsin and to support them as they go through their daily lives trying to make ends meet and have a little bit of fun at the same time,” Hughes said.

“I’m not someone who has spent a career working in politics and working to shout louder than the person standing next to me,” she said. From working with farmers to community economic development projects, “my job has always been about having economic impact and helping people to succeed.”

While centering an economic message, her campaign has also nodded broadly to themes of personal freedom and democracy that have been the foremost concerns of some voters. 

In the video, over shots of the White House and then a gleaming urban office tower, Hughes says, “I’m not going to go looking for a fight, but I’ll stand up to anyone, from the White House to Wall Street, who comes after your rights or tries to make your life harder.”

Hughes reiterated that message in the interview, adding that she  believes it’s possible to cut through political  polarization. 

“Certainly, folks are talking about what rights are on the table, how we’re interacting with each other and either supporting our rights or taking them away,” she said. 

From her home community near Viroqua in Southwestern Wisconsin to her  travels around the state, Hughes said people are yearning for greater harmony. 

“Everyone is just so exhausted by the division and the ongoing fighting and they want someone who says, ‘Let’s come to the table. Let’s find common ground,’” Hughes said. 

“I feel like there’s a complete path to victory that involves making sure that we’re building a strong economy, and at the same time, we’re bringing people together so they can talk about their differences, and they can work on projects and have an impact together.”

This report has been updated.

The offices of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, in Madison. The department administers the state unemployment insurance program. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

A change to unemployment compensation that would penalize people who receive federal disability payments has made it into a draft bill to revise Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance law — despite vocal opposition from Democrats in the state Legislature.

For people who receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) income, the change would sharply reduce their jobless pay if they lose work. For many, it could wipe out their unemployment compensation entirely, according to Victor Forberger, a veteran unemployment insurance lawyer.

The SSDI provision is part of the agreed-upon draft legislation that was approved Wednesday by the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council.

The council includes an equal number of management and labor representatives and was established in 1932 to give labor and management an equal voice in shaping the state’s unemployment insurance (UI) program. The council’s members negotiate and draft changes to the state’s UI laws every two years.

On Wednesday Forberger called the council’s 2025 draft bill “a terrible deal for workers.”

Less than a week ago, the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) walked back an earlier proposal to penalize SSDI recipients who apply for jobless pay. The return of a similar provision in the draft bill caught critics by surprise.

“I was pretty shocked when I heard about it this morning,” said state Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), a vocal critic of the earlier proposal. “I thought it was put to rest.”

The SSDI unemployment pay ban

Since 2013, under a law enacted in then-Gov. Scott Walker’s first term, people who receive SSDI income are automatically disqualified from collecting unemployment insurance — despite the fact that many SSDI recipients hold part-time jobs and would otherwise qualify for jobless pay if they get laid off.

In July 2024 a federal judge ruled that 2013 law violated two federal laws: the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. The ruling came in a lawsuit that a team of lawyers including Forberger filed on behalf of SSDI recipients who were denied unemployment compensation when they were thrown out of work.

This summer, the judge, William Conley, ordered DWD to stop disqualifying unemployment compensation applications simply because an applicant also receives SSDI.

In August, Conley ordered the department to reconsider the applications of people denied UI because of the ban since 2015 and to award them the jobless pay they would have qualified for without the ban. Conley also ordered DWD to repay applicants who had originally received jobless pay, then had it clawed back after the department belatedly found that they were also SSDI recipients.

Also in August, the joint labor-management advisory committee reviewed a dozen proposed changes in state unemployment insurance law requested by DWD.

One of those proposals was to repeal the 2013 state ban on unemployment pay for people on SSDI. The memo noted the court’s ruling invalidating the ban.

But that proposal also called for offsetting an SSDI recipient’s weekly unemployment pay by the weekly value of the SSDI income. The memo acknowledged that the proposal would probably eliminate unemployment compensation for most SSDI recipients who applied.

“In 2024, the average SSDI payment in Wisconsin was $1,500 per month,” the DWD proposal memo stated. “The average weekly SSDI payment for UI purposes is calculated at $346.20 per week. This weekly amount will in many cases fully reduce the UI benefit a SSDI recipient can receive.”

The memo concluded, “In summary, most SSDI claimants will not be able to receive UI benefits. While some may be able to receive UI benefits, it is expected that the weekly UI payment would be small.”

Offset proposal walked back — then returns

The proposal sparked backlash from Forberger and Democratic lawmakers. On Sept. 18, DWD submitted an amended version of the proposal to the advisory council.

The revision removed the offset provision entirely and called for simply repealing the ban on jobless pay for SSDI recipients.

The department noted in its amendment memo that the process of paying past unemployment insurance applicants under the court order had begun, and that those payments were being made without a deduction for SSDI income.

“The Department is amending its proposal to repeal the SSDI disqualification provision and remove the offset provision,” the Sept. 18 memo stated. “This will align with the effect of the court’s order that is now allowing claimants who receive SSDI to be eligible for the full amount of their weekly benefit without a reduction for any SSDI received.”

At the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council’s meeting on Wednesday morning, the body approved a draft bill for updates to Wisconsin’s UI law on a unanimous vote.

The draft includes a repeal of the SSDI unemployment compensation ban. Despite DWD’s Sept. 18 memo, however, the draft includes language that claws back some of an SSDI recipient’s jobless pay.

“If a monthly social security disability insurance payment is issued to a claimant, the department shall reduce benefits otherwise payable to the claimant for a given week by one-half of the amount [of a] security disability insurance payment that is allocated for that week,” the draft bill states.

While the offset in the draft bill is half what the original DWD proposal called for, Forberger said Wednesday that even the 50% offset would likely mean no unemployment pay for many SSDI recipients.

Sinicki and state Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) introduced a bill of their own earlier this month to repeal the ban.

“Receiving SSDI should not prevent working Wisconsinites from receiving unemployment insurance if they’re laid off,” Dassler-Alfheim told the Wisconsin Examiner on Wednesday. “That’s why Rep. Sinicki and I have proposed legislation to remove that ban from state statute, and I’m really hoping that we can see it across the finish line and put this problem to rest once and for all.”

The draft bill is the product of provisions worked out by each caucus — management and labor — in separate closed sessions. The Wisconsin Examiner contacted two senior representatives in the labor caucus of the council for comment Wednesday on the process, but received no response.

“I’m looking forward to finding out how this language got in there,” Sinicki told the Wisconsin Examiner Wednesday afternoon.

“If that language is in there, it is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and you know the courts have already said that. I’ve already said that,” Sinicki said. “And now they’re just going to end up right back in court with this. It makes no sense to me.”

Sinicki has long championed the advisory councils for unemployment insurance as well as for workers comp for negotiating legislation that represents the interests of both labor and management. She’s often chided Republican lawmakers who have authored and passed bills affecting either of those systems without going through the councils.

This time, “I’m struggling with it — I’ll be honest — because it is the agreed-upon bill,” Sinicki said of the unemployment insurance draft. “But first of all, as a Democrat and as somebody who prides herself in the fact that we take care of our most needy, I can’t vote for this.”

Sinicki said the legislation after it’s introduced is subject to being amended like any other bill, and that she would expect an amendment removing the offset proposal.

By tradition, the bill that comes from the advisory council is introduced under the names of the committee chair and the minority party ranking member on the Assembly’s labor committee — which is Sinicki.

Unless the draft is changed, however, “I will not be putting my name on this bill,” she said.

Megan Hufton, seen here with her sons AJ, left, and Asher, center, is education and training specialist with the Autism Society of South Central Wisconsin. (Photo courtesy of Megan Hufton)

Megan Hufton’s two sons, AJ and Asher, both have been diagnosed with autism. Neither speaks.

But she doesn’t see autism as the “horrible, horrible crisis,” President Donald Trump described at a Washington, D.C., press conference Monday. 

Nor does she agree with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said at an April press conference that “autism destroys families” and is an “individual tragedy as well.”

Hufton said Monday that the message she hears in such statements is that “it’s going to be a horrible, horrible tragedy” if a family member is autistic. “It’s not the way I describe our family or our lives at all.”

People with autism, their family members and advocates said the messages coming from the Trump administration are harmful and wrong. 

”People with autism are being identified as [a] population of people whose existence the government seeks to prevent or change into people who are more ‘normal,’” said Beth Swedeen, executive director of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities (BPDD), in a statement Monday. “Autistic Americans have the same unalienable rights as all Americans, the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. We all find different ways to achieve these things, and it is the individual, not the government, who decides our own worth.”

“People with autism have always existed,” said BPDD Chair Sydney Badeau. “We are part of what humanity looks like, and we are amazing.”

In interviews, four Wisconsin residents with autistic family members and an adult autistic self-advocate expressed similar views.

After years in which attitudes towards autism and understanding of people with autism have been improving, “this is taking everything back,” said Heather Murray, a Waunakee child care provider whose 20-year-old son has grown up with autism.

“It’s frustrating to hear it still being called a disease,” Murray said. Autism encompasses a broad spectrum of behaviors that might come with mild or severe disabilities for some people, she said, but it’s not a disease that can be cured.

“It is a way of being,” Murray said. “It is who they are. You can’t take the autism away from them.”

Jenny Price of Madison has a 16-year-old son who is autistic. An active volunteer in advocating for Wisconsin parents whose children have disabilities, Price said she’s been paying attention to how Kennedy has talked about autism since he took office at HHS.

Kennedy has said “that autism is something to be feared, it is epidemic, it steals our children, it ruins families — which are all things we know are not true and I just find it pretty unhelpful,” Price said.

At the Monday press conference Trump and Kennedy focused on claims that linked the use of Tylenol (acetaminophen) during pregnancy to autism. Medical experts said the evidence does not support those claims.

“Current research shows an association, but it is limited and inconclusive,” said Rechelle Chaffee, executive director of Autism United of Wisconsin, based in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa. “Autism we know is not caused by a  single factor. It’s caused by multiple variables.”

In addition to being the parent of two autistic teens, Hufton is the education and training specialist for the Autism Society of South Central Wisconsin.

“Some of the strongest scientific evidence that we’ve seen shows that there is no causal link” between acetaminophen and autism, Hufton said. “We support scientific based research, but also we want to make sure that research is grounded in science, it’s grounded in compassion and respect for these individuals, and really just making sure that we’re promoting inclusion.”

Trump also made references to debunked claims linking vaccines to autism.

“We’ve studied vaccines,” Hufton said. “They’ve been studied for decades and the research doesn’t support this claim. So it definitely makes us concerned about this messaging that is once again just kind of implying that there’s this single cause of autism and the fear behind it.”

Chaffee said that while $418 million was spent in 2020 on autism research, just 8% of that went to research on improving the quality of support and services for people with autism and their families.

“That’s not a significant amount of money going to improve the lives of people,” she said. “That is a missed opportunity to say the least.”

Price doesn’t expect that to improve in the current administration.

“Are they doing research into what supports or what types of programs make the lives of people with autism better? It’s pretty clear they’re not,” Price said. “Are they going to look for ways to support kids with autism or other learning disabilities in school? No, they’re going to remove anything with the word inclusion from the Department of Education grants.”

Erin Miller, 40, is a resident of Milwaukee’s south suburbs and has lived with autism her whole life. 

“I’m really growing weary of all of the speculation around what causes it.” Miller said.

She wants to see more research on how to help people who have autism and are trying to live full lives now. Those include research on subjects that range from accommodations for autistic women in nursing homes, to research on sleep to improving education services and employment practices that recognize the needs of autistic people.

“I would like to see more practical services that improve our life today,” Miller said.