The Republican Party of Wisconsin mixed up former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (left) and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (right) in a post to X on Monday.
The Republican Party of Wisconsin mixed up the two Black Democratic candidates for governor in a social media post on Monday before deleting and reposting it.
Wisconsin’s open race for governor has led to a crowded Democratic field in the primary, and the state’s Republican party sought on Monday to call out two of those candidates by name in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“[State Rep.] Francesca Hong, [former Lt. Gov.] Mandela Barnes, and other radical progressives are trying to destroy our state. From wanting to defund police, raise property taxes, and bring socialism to Wisconsin, it is clear that they are out of touch with the needs of Wisconsin families,” the post states.
However, the initial post made by the party included a graphic of Hong and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, not Barnes. A screenshot of the original post was posted by Civic Media Political Editor Dan Shafer on X.
Crowley is the first Black person to serve as Milwaukee County executive and Barnes, a former candidate for the U.S. Senate, served as the first Black lieutenant governor in the state of Wisconsin. The two Democrats are the only Black candidates in Wisconsin’s race for governor. There are no Black candidates in the Republican field.
A hemp plant at a Cottage Grove farm. Hemp, used for industrial purposes and now grown legally in Wisconsin, is made from a variety of the cannabis plant that is low in THC, the active ingredient that is responsible for the intoxicating effect of marijuana. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Wisconsin lawmakers are backing competing visions for the future of hemp in the state. One proposal, (SB 682), was discussed during a Thursday meeting of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Revenue. The bill would create a regulatory structure for hemp-derived cannabis products which would preserve the state’s hemp industry despite a federal ban set to take effect in November. Without state-level intervention, or the federal government choosing to reverse course, hemp growers and distributors fear that Wisconsin’s $700 million industry and about 3,500 jobs will disappear.
Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), chair of the Agriculture and Revenue Committee presented the bipartisan hemp bill to his committee, which he authored with bipartisan support. Testin’s legislation would define hemp as cannabis plants with no more than 0.3% of delta-9 THC (or the maximum concentration allowable under federal law up to 1%, whichever is greater) and define “hemp-derived cannabinoids” as any such compound extracted from the hemp plant. THC concentrations would be determined using specific high-performance testing methods.
Wisconsinites would need to be at least 21 years old to purchase hemp-derived cannabinoid products under the bill, which mandates that products undergo independent lab testing to ensure that they contain the amount and type of cannabinoids described on the product’s label. This practice, known as truth-in labeling, is something the hemp industry has called for in recent years.
Products could not be sold under the bill without labeling including contact information for the manufacturer or brand owner, serving sizes per container of product, ingredient lists including allergens, potency labeled in milligrams, and any necessary warnings. Under the bill, hemp-derived products could not contain more than 10 milligrams of THC in a single serving.
Testin said Thursday that globally, the industrial hemp market was valued at roughly $11 billion in 2025, and is expected to reach $48 billion by 2032. “Despite its wide availability, the regulation of [hemp-derived cannabinoid] products is essentially non-existent, leaving a patchwork of different approaches taken by states across the country,” he said.
In Wisconsin, such products “are generally recognized as legal but unregulated,” Testin said. “There are no state laws that restrict the sale to minors, regulate the potency or content of [hemp-derived cannabinoid products], or establish labeling or packaging requirements.” Minnesota, Kentucky, Tennessee and other states have moved to enact their own regulations, Testin said. “Regulations are needed to eliminate the current uncertainty regarding the status of [hemp-derived cannabinoid products], provide stability and certainty for businesses looking to enter this segment of the economy, and enact public safety regulations.”
Both Testin and Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) have worked on hemp laws for Wisconsin since the federal Farm Bill passed in 2018. “I’ve actually grown hemp,” said Kurtz, recalling that in 2019 “it was kind of a wide open market.” People that Kurtz and others called “bad actors” throughout the hearing also rode the hemp wave, seeing it as a “get rich quick scheme.” Kurtz said that today, the hemp industry is filled with people who want to do the right thing, but that “bad actors” have persisted.
Kurtz said SB 682 is designed to ensure that Wisconsinites “get the very best product, and they know what they’re getting.” He stressed that “if we do nothing, then hemp is going to be illegal at the federal level…but it will still be legal here in the state of Wisconsin. So I think it would behoove us to work together, get a good compromise, a good common sense piece of legislation to make sure that we — in my humble opinion — protect our constituents, but also protect an industry that I think is needed.”
Although hemp would be illegal at the federal level, a state-level industry could still operate similarly to the way some states have fully legal recreational or legalized cannabis programs, largely because the federal government has not cracked down on those industries.
Testin added that “regardless of anyone’s thoughts as it relates to cannabis and cannabinoids, it’s here. And obviously we have a lot of different approaches as to how to best move forward.” He repeatedly took aim at the “stupidity” of what he described as “our overlords” in Washington D.C., but also criticized other hemp-related bills being pushed in Wisconsin. Whereas some Republicans are seeking to ban hemp products outright, others have differing ideas about how a legal industry should be regulated.
A bill introduced by Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), SB 681, would require that manufacturers and distributors of hemp-derived cannabinoid products have permits. Products would be sold under a three-tier system, and would be regulated similarly to alcohol under the Division of Alcohol Beverages, a component of the Department of Revenue, which would be renamed to the Division of Intoxicating Products.
Although both Testin and Wimberger’s bills have gained bipartisan support, Testin described Wimberger’s bill as “the dead bill” and “deader than dead.” Testin argued that SB 681 would over-regulate the hemp industry, and even lead to a monopolization effect where a small number of entities could control who gets hemp permits, shape an otherwise competitive market, and operate in a “good ol’ boys club” manner.
Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) highlighted the divide among state Republicans over hemp and cannabis products, stressing that Democrats are not the ones holding up legalization and regulation.
The committee room was filled with people from across the hemp industry who listened to the conversation. When lawmakers questioned how to ensure that children do not acquire intoxicating hemp products, distributors and manufacturers pointed to age-verification software even for online sales, which require a photograph and image of a driver’s license to approve an order. There was also discussion about how to prevent products from being marketed to children using cartoon-like advertising and appealing candy wrappers.
Some veterans testified, describing how hemp helped them alleviate pain, kick addictive pain killers, soothed PTSD symptoms, and calmed the body for sleep. Other testimony centered on the danger involved in crossing state lines to Michigan or Illinois to acquire cannabis to treat various medical conditions. Hemp farmers stressed that they need to know now how they will be affected by a looming federal ban as they decide when or whether to plant their crops in the spring.
Much of the public testimony was supportive of Testin’s bill, though some speakers said that it needed to be amended to protect farmers and growers, and also expand the kinds of products it would cover including drinks and gummies.
“Yes, we are now in a scenario where there are intoxicating hemp products,” said Testin. “But just no different than anything like beer, wine, or alcohol, we need to have some sensible regulations put in place, which this bill aims to do just that.”
As for “concerns about getting baked or getting high from these products,” Testin added, “it’s no different than those individuals who go out and consume too many old fashioneds at fish fry on a Friday night, or have too many beers. It’s about personal choice and responsibility, but at the same time making sure that we have some regulations put in place.”
The hemp industry deserves to “thrive and grow,” Testin said, while the public deserves protection and to know “that this stuff isn’t falling into the hands of people it shouldn’t be in, like kids.”
Sen. André Jacque (R-New Franken) and Rep. Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc) argued that a measure regulating the use of student names and pronouns was needed to standardize policies across the state. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
A bill that would require school districts to inform parents when students want to use pronouns and names that differ from the ones given to them at birth received significant pushback Tuesday during a Senate Education Committee hearing.
The committee also took testimony on a bill to add video requirements to human growth and development curriculum as well as to opt the state into a federal school choice tax credit program.
Under SB 120, Wisconsin schools would be required to adopt a policy on name and pronoun changes by July 1, 2026. Policies would not require written authorization if school staff are using a shortened version of a student’s first or middle name.
Sen. André Jacque (R-New Franken) and Rep. Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc) argued that the measure was needed to standardize policies across the state and ensure parents are involved in conversations related to pronoun and name changes for students. Many testified in opposition to the bill, saying it would do harm to students and infringe on local decision making.
“It is deeply troubling to me that school staff are being encouraged to keep parents out of major life decisions concerning their children, while at the same time these same officials cannot give them aspirin without parental approval. Why would schools promote secrecy in such a way?” Jacque said. “Something has gone terribly wrong in our education system if officials inherently perceive parents as harmful to their own children. Parents are legally accountable for the health and welfare of their own children… Hiding from us important things that are going on in their lives is not only disrespectful to parents, it is harmful to our children.”
Jacque said the legislation would be consistent with a 2023 ruling by a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge, which found that a policy that allowed students in the Kettle Moraine School District to change their names and pronouns in school violated the rights of parents to make medical decisions for their children. The school district now has a policy that requires express parental consent for staff to use different names and pronouns.
“To me, if there’s going to be a name and pronoun change the school should be working together with parents and students to advance that together,” Dittrich said.
Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) pushed back on the Republican bill, saying it would infringe on local communities’ ability to make decisions about policies and would harm students.
“You could sub out the words ‘parental decision making’ and say that the Legislature is going to have the best authority of what should happen — instead of parents, instead of local governments, instead of local school boards. You’re saying that you guys know better,” Larson said.
“That’s a total distortion of what the bill does,” Dittrich said.
Larson asked the bill authors to consider a situation where parents may not be accepting of a student who wants to use a different name and pronouns.
“You are expediting that situation by making it come to a head when there are parents who are less than understanding, who are brought up under a very strict and very incorrect… and you are forcing the question in a vulnerable population that is already overly targeted with transphobia with this, which is already overly targeted for bullying, which is already higher than the average rates of suicide and mental health. You are bullying them by bringing this bill forward,” Larson said.
“You are saying we should hide information and not facilitate those conversations,” Jacque replied. Dittrich added that Larson was “trampling all over parental rights.”
Paul Bartlett, a father of two transgender children, said the bill works to “prioritize the unfounded fears of conservative parents over the well-being of children.”
“Like any parent, I want my children to thrive and be happy. They are well supported against these continued legislative attacks, but many trans and nonbinary kids are not,” Bartlett said. He said that school should be a refuge for unsupported students, “not a place where teachers are obligated to out and humiliate them.”
Bartlett pointed out that lawmakers recently approved a law, known as Bradyn’s Law, that seeks to protect young people from being sexually extorted online.
“That everyone agreed on [that bill] was important because what we were doing was preventing teenagers from killing themselves basically from humiliation… and yet these bills, they do the opposite,” Bartlett said.
Bartlett noted that anti-trans laws have a negative effect on young transgender people.
According to a 2024 survey by the Trevor Project, 45% of transgender and nonbinary youth have reported that they or their family have considered moving to a different state due to anti-LGBTQ+ politics and laws, and about 90% have said that their wellbeing was negatively affected by recent politics.
The Trevor Project survey, which pulled from the experiences of over 18,000 LGBTQ+ youth, also found that 39% of LGBTQ+ young people, including 46% of transgender and nonbinary young people, had seriously considered attempting suicide.
“I just don’t understand, like, why do we keep doing this?” Bartlett said.
Abigail Swetz, executive director of FAIR Wisconsin, said bills that target transgender youth contribute to the mental health struggles they face.
The bill is part of a slate of bills that Wisconsin Republicans introduced related to transgender people, including children, last year. According to the 2025 anti-trans bills tracker, there were over 1,020 bills introduced across the country including 20 in Wisconsin.
“Inclusive policies, like making it possible for students to use an affirming name and the pronouns that best represent their identity in school in an easily accessible way — those policies are a pressure valve making it possible for [youth] to live fully and healthily,” Swetz said.
Swetz said when she previously worked as a teacher she helped support students that were preparing to share information about themselves with their family and said it was important to follow the child’s lead.
“The youth themselves are the experts in their own experience and have a better understanding than anyone about the challenges they might face when it comes to acceptance and safety at home. I have witnessed that conversation go well, and I have seen it go badly,” Swetz said. She said the bill that lawmakers were pushing “aims to traffic in distrust while a process like this, one that is directed by a well-supported young person, is actually how we can build trust between parents, children and school staff.”
Peggy Wirtz-Olson, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), said she was speaking out against the bill on behalf of the students who would be “devastated” by the bill.
“All students deserve safe and welcoming schools, not only some of them, every single one of them, and that includes our trans students,” Wirtz-Olsen said. “The simple use of preferred names and pronouns is associated with a large decrease in depressive symptoms, suicidal thoughts and even suicidal attempts. Respecting preferred names and pronouns is a proven measure to show respect, earn trust, affirm our students, so they can feel safe, and they can focus on learning.”
Requiring videos of fetal development
Lawmakers also took testimony on a bill to add requirements for schools that offer human growth and development education.
Human growth and development is optional for Wisconsin school districts, but for those that do opt in, state law includes some requirements including encouraging abstinence for students who are unmarried.
SB 371 would add requirements that explanations of pregnancy, prenatal development and childbirth include a high definition video that shows the development of the brain, heart, sex organs and other organs, a rendering of the fertilization process and fetal development as well as a presentation on each trimester of pregnancy and the physical and emotional health of the mother.
The bill would also require that instruction on parental responsibility include information on the importance of secure interpersonal relationships for infant mental health and on the value of reading to young children.
Bill coauthors Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) and Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) rejected the assertion that the bill is a mandate, noting that school districts do not have to teach human growth and development.
“Today’s youth are technologically and visually inclined learners. We should lean into this to better convey this important information,” Felzkowski said. She also added that there should be bipartisan agreement around “preparing the young women of today with all the knowledge they could need to prepare for motherhood and young men for fatherhood.”
“Being able to actually see the real life process of fetal development in action will be more tangible to students than textbooks or seeing it in a still diagram or a drawing. We have a resource at our disposal to bring science into our classroom and we should use it to our advantage to give students a stronger educational experience,” Nedweski said.
Nedweski also said it “might not be obvious to some people that using an iPad as a babysitter is not healthy” and that it is “far more important for their health to read to children and to bond with them.”
Larson asked the lawmakers what type of research they had to back up the change to state law.
“There’s not one specific scientific research that we’re relating this to,” Felzkowski said. “Just Google it and numerous things will pop up, or we can have our staff do that for you.”
No one spoke against the bill.
The Wisconsin Public Health Association (WPHA) and the Wisconsin Association of Local Health Departments and Boards are registered against the bill, according to the Wisconsin Lobbying website. The organizations outlined their concerns with the Assembly version of the bill in a statement to the Wisconsin Examiner.
The organizations said they opposed the legislation in part because it doesn’t do anything to restore the educational standards that were in place under the Healthy Youth Act. The former state law, which included a more comprehensive policy that required providing age-appropriate instruction in human growth and development, was adopted in 2010 but was later repealed in 2012 during a special session under former Gov. Scott Walker, who reestablished abstinence-only education.
“Evidence-based, comprehensive instruction is essential to equip students with accurate information and skills necessary to make informed decisions about their sexual health, reducing rates of unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. It also promotes healthy relationships, consent, and emotional well-being, contributing to overall public health and safety,” the organizations said in the statement.
DPI spokesperson Chris Bucher told the Examiner in an email that the state already has similar guidelines for human development instruction in state law and said the bill is an example of infringing on local control.
“It is up to districts to determine human development curriculum for what best fits their community. This is also another unfunded mandate for districts choosing to offer human development. District budgets are already stretched thin,” Bucher said. “If the Legislature wants to mandate specific instruction, they should provide funding for curriculum.”
Federal choice tax credit program
SB 600 would instruct Gov. Tony Evers to opt Wisconsin into a federal school choice tax credit program.
Gov. Tony Evers has previously said he will not opt Wisconsin into the program, and if the bill were passed by the Senate and Assembly instructing Evers to take action, he could veto the legislation.
A provision in the federal law signed by President Donald Trump in July, which goes into effect in 2027, will provide a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 to people who donate to a qualifying “scholarship granting program” to support certain educational expenses including tuition and board at private schools, tutoring and books.
However, governors in each state must decide whether to opt in and have until Jan. 1, 2027 to do so.
Felzkowski said it would be “shortsighted and self-defeating” to not opt into the tax credit, noting that other states including North Carolina, Tennessee, Nebraska, Texas, South Dakota and Iowa, are already opting in.
If Wisconsinites opt into the federal tax credit, the money will be directed to private schools outside the state if the law does not pass, Felzkowski said. “Our dollars will be going to those states… instead of our students here in the state of Wisconsin.”
On a warm fall afternoon, dairy farmer Chris Kestell pushes through prairie brambles taller than himself, tracing a path overgrown with thickets and swarming with bees as he hikes toward a hidden waterway.
Though the route is unidentifiable to the untrained eye, Kestell, 47, has lived here, in the small town of Waldo, Wisconsin, for nearly all his life. His father first walked this path 70 years ago, and his two young boys, 8 and 10 years-old, mark the third generation to follow this practiced journey.
After several minutes, he comes to rest beside a fallen tree. In its petrified tangle of roots, guarded by a tiny plastic gnome, a collection of spoons, bowls, and mugs fit like perfect puzzle pieces. Kestell takes a silver ladle from the snarl and kneels over a wall of dirt, from which a steady trickle emerges.
These are the headwaters of the Milwaukee River, known locally as Nichols Creek. According to Milwaukee Riverkeeper data, it is the “most pristine” monitored waterway in the entire 900 square-mile rivershed, and one of the only regional waters where brook trout reproduce naturally.
As he has done since he was a young boy, Kestell brings the water to his lips. “By a certain age, everybody drinks here,” he says. “The creek is a landmark for this area. When you’re a kid, you’re like, ‘Wow, this is pretty awesome.’ It’s a special place.”
The headwaters of the Milwaukee River, known in Waldo, Wis. as Nichols Creek — one of the only regional waters where brook trout reproduce naturally. (Christian Thorsberg / Circle of Blue)
Deep in this quiet wooded alcove, Nichols Creek is a cultural touchstone and habitat of ecological importance. Safe and secure for generations, residents fear it is suddenly at risk of severe damage from a new era of energy transition in Wisconsin.
The waterway — along with drinking water wells, protected woods and wetlands, and newly restored floodplains — is caught in the spreading network of high-voltage power lines.
According to Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC) documents, more than 400 miles of new high-voltage power lines are either under review or approved in Wisconsin. Similar projects have also been greenlit in Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and the other three Great Lakes states in recent months, together totaling well over 1,000 miles.
As part of its Plymouth Reliability Project, the American Transmission Company (ATC), a local electric utility, plans to install seven miles of high-capacity lines through the Waldo area. Part of the route would pass directly over Nichols Creek, raising concerns over deforestation around the county’s only stream designated as “outstanding” by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
Meanwhile, a second ATC expansion, the Ozaukee County Distribution Interconnection project, proposes the construction of five new energy substations and corresponding transmission lines just southeast of Waldo. The preferred route would require the clear-cutting of old-growth forest and intersect the Cederberg Bog Wilderness — “the most intact large bogs in southeastern Wisconsin,” according to the Wisconsin DNR, and a registered National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
“Our entire business is based on people coming away from the city and spending the weekend here in the trees,” said Katy Rowe, who co-owns Abloom Farms, a resort and wedding venue located on the northern edge of the bog. “Eminent domain should not be used as a weapon against normal American citizens that have decided to live a quiet life in the country.”
According to ATC’s website, these projects are “needed to ensure electric reliability and address current and future energy needs in the community and the surrounding area.” But those needs aren’t due from the smattering of dairy farms, lonely county roads, and modest old homes that comprise rural Waldo, population 467.
Nearly two dozen data centers in southeastern Wisconsin alone are either proposed, built, or in-development, but the two newest are not like the others. More than 20 miles away, in the city of Port Washington, a 672-acre campus built by Vantage Data Centers broke ground on Dec. 17. Even farther, some 70 miles south, Microsoft is building a 315-acre facility near Racine.
Chris Kestell drinks from Nichols Creek. (Christian Thorsberg / Circle of Blue)
Though seemingly far enough away to be irrelevant to Waldo, the new sites’ thirst for power knows few bounds. When fully built, the Vantage and Microsoft locations will together require a 24/7 electricity supply totaling 3.2 gigawatts — greater than all of Wisconsin’s homes combined.
Power generated by natural gas, nuclear, coal, solar, wind, and battery storage stations across the state’s central and eastern regions are all in the mix to bring data center campuses online. Transmission lines, running through Waldo, will transport the electricity they demand.
When reached, ATC declined to comment on the Plymouth Reliability project.
But the company in public testimony has downplayed the project’s potential effects on wetlands and says it will take measures to minimize the impact.
The project as proposed “will not directly impact stream channels or have direct discharges to streams,” Erika Biemann, senior environmental project manager for ATC, wrote in testimony before Wisconsin’s PSC.
Existing transmission lines near Abloom Farms in Saukville, Wisconsin. (Christian Thorsberg / Circle of Blue)
Waldo’s story is not a one-off. New state and federal legislation are incentivizing data center development and encouraging power lines’ rapid rise across the region, potentially running roughshod over other communities.
In February, Illinois — which by one count leads the Great Lakes region with more than 200 data centers — enacted a law allowing tax incentives for the construction of new battery storage facilities and high-voltage transmission lines. A month later, lawmakers in Indiana (75 data centers) enacted a law aiming to make transmission lines more efficient and cost-effective to construct. Similar legislation went into effect in Ohio (192 data centers) in August.
On a national scale, President Trump signed an executive order this January declaring an energy emergency and ordering agencies to “expedite the completion of all authorized and appropriated” energy infrastructure. The order directs the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to speed up their review of permit applications to develop wetlands for transmission lines and other energy projects. The Corps is reviewing such permits for new lines in Wisconsin and other states.
In late October, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to change permitting and rulemaking procedures to “significantly reduce” the amount of time and oversight required to bring data centers onto the grid.
Literally caught in the middle of a new epoch of surging energy demand and supply in the Great Lakes region, residents say they are contending with powerful economic trends that could be devastating to the environment, and already are weighing on their spirits.
Back at his family home, Kestell points to a large rock on his front lawn. The new power lines, Kestell said, would run right over his uncle’s final resting place.
“This is not rural electrification anymore, bringing power to poor farms” said Kestell’s father, Tom, also a farmer in Waldo. “This is an elite, wealthy class of people who are invested in these power stations and data centers, who are going to make probably trillions of dollars off this. And the people who they infringe on in the meantime? They’re just collateral damage.”
Homes and ponds face risk
JoAnne Friedman’s two-acre retention pond. (Christian Thorsberg / Circle of Blue)
What’s developing in Waldo is a case in point. The wetland area through which Nichols Creek flows is the source of local residents’ well water.
“Water comes, goes back down into the ground, and then becomes a collection of underground springs,” said JoAnne Friedman, the town chairperson of Lyndon, Wisconsin. “When you try to imagine how much water is underground here, it is a phenomenal amount.”
The water recharge process, and the natural filtration trees and other plants provide, is threatened by the right-of-way easements that the 138-kilovolt power lines require. All vegetation between 60 feet and 110 feet to either side of the lines would need to be cleared during their construction.
The loss of maple and cedar tree cover, Kestell said, threatens both the warming of Nichols Creek and soil erosion on the side of county roads that already slump and flood when storms roll through.
“With all of these projects, they don’t realize how much mitigation people who have these properties have done to prevent erosion,” said Friedman, who has needed to enlarge her property’s 20-foot-deep retention pond from half an acre to two acres to manage gushing ephemeral streams during springtime snowmelt and heavy rains.
Living at the bottom of a small sloped valley, she said she has planted so many trees she “lost count,” all to help redirect flows from damaging her home. If ATC’s transmission line route is built, she said, this cover would all be clear-cut.
Hundred-year-old trees would also be razed from the backyard of Randy Pietsch, a retired dairy farmer who has lived along the banks of Nichols Creek for more than 50 years. The trout pond he keeps on his property has long been open to friends and family for fishing, though he closed it several years ago and has no plans now of reopening.
“I’m not hopeful for anything,” he said. “Why they have to come through here is beyond me. I can’t imagine that electric line’s good for fish. They just want to steal the land, that’s all. It’s sad, it’s stressful. You lose a lot of sleep at night.”
Randy Pietsch stands on the banks of Nichols Creek, which flows through his backyard. (Christian Thorsberg / Circle of Blue)
ATC says the project will not significantly affect the creek.
“The loss of forested riparian habitat along Nicholas Creek would not be significant, especially considering the large riparian forest buffer both upstream and downstream from the proposed route crossing,” Biemann, the ATC environmental project manager, wrote in public testimony.
Olivia Poelmann, a PSC environmental analysis and review specialist, testified that the project’s cumulative environmental effects are “not expected to be significant and are mostly temporary, with a large majority of impacts occurring primarily during the construction phase of the project.”
But most startling, residents say, are the effects of ATC’s preferred route on their properties, many of which have been in their families for multiple generations.
In some cases, the transmission lines’ right-of-way easements extend several feet inside peoples’ homes. One resident, Nolan Harp, said that the lines would run within 40 feet of his front door, placing half of his house within an easement. As a result, five 40-foot tall trees in his yard would be cut down, and his private well would need to be moved.
“That’s my sole source of water. It’s an old well, but it works, it’s clean, and it’s good,” Harp said. “But you can’t have something like that under power lines.”
Harp said that ATC has offered to dig up the open well, its casing, tank, and pump, and replace them elsewhere on his property. But the headache of additional construction, and the obvious hazard of power lines running above his house, has him considering other options.
“I don’t want to move, but if they insist on putting that power line up, I don’t think I can live here,” Harp said.
In late January, the $33.5 million Plymouth project was approved by the PSC, though it added a condition that prevents ATC from using eminent domain to build their power lines. ATC subsequently petitioned to reopen the application on the grounds that PSC cannot revoke that right, which is protected under Wisconsin state law. In April, this petition was granted.
Kestell, who founded an organization called Neighbors 4 Neighbors to fight against the project in court, estimates that residents have spent $250,000 of their own money on legal fees.
At the end of the day, their homes and health are the most important concerns.
“When they put these towers in, some of them are going down 30 or 40 feet, possibly hitting the aquifer when they’re digging foundations,” said Kestell, who estimates his own front door will be within roughly 20 feet of an easement. “We’re just not sure about contamination.”
A 15-year-old was taken to a medical facility with minor injuries after being struck by a pickup truck while crossing the highway on their way to a school bus Monday morning, reported WBAY News.
According to the news report, deputies and EMS personnel responded to the incident around 7:23 a.m. Authorities said the school bus was stopped in the northbound lane with its flashing lights activated and stop arm extended, when the teen attempted was crossing the highway.
Investigators determined the teen was hit by a 2018 Ford F-150 traveling southbound. The truck was reportedly driven by a 59-year-old man from the Village of St. Nazianz.
The teen sustained minor injuries and was transported to a medical facility for treatment. A second bus from the Valders Bus Company was dispatched to the scene to transport the remaining students.
Police sited the pickup driver for failure to stop for a school bus and inattentive driving. The sheriff’s office said no additional details would be released. Officials used the incident as a reminder that children’s safety is a shared community responsibility, urging drivers to remain alert around school buses, obey stop requirements, slow down, watch for children in the roadway and at school bus stops, and exercise patience during school pickup and drop-off times.
Banners from the group Save the Portage County Health Care Center. The group opposes which opposes the privatization of the county facility. (Photo courtesy of Karlene Ferrante)
As counties across Wisconsin sell off publicly-owned nursing homes to private companies, communities worry that privatization will bring understaffing, declining quality of care, and more regulatory violations, driving many residents to fight back.
After Karlene Ferrante broke her femur, she underwent major surgery and was transferred to a skilled nursing facility to recover. She spent a little over two months at the county-owned Portage County Health Care Center in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
“I lucked out and got sent to the Portage County Healthcare Center. They took wonderful care of me for that whole summer and until I was able to go home,” Ferrante said. “Because of that great care that I got, I am able to walk. I have my leg. I didn’t get an infection and I didn’t fall. They were adequately staffed and they provided really good care.”
There are only two skilled nursing facilities in Stevens Point. The publicly-owned Portage County Health Care Center, which has served the community for nearly a century and has a five-star rating from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the privately-owned Stevens Points Health Services, which has a one-star rating from CMS. Ferrante was relieved to get into the county-owned facility, but the relief faded when she returned home and learned that the county was considering selling Portage County Health Care Center to a private company.
“When I found out that they were trying to privatize it, I decided then that I’m going to work on this,” Ferrante said. “I’m not going to let that happen, because other people should be able to get the same kind of care that I got.”
Across Wisconsin, County Boards have been voting to sell their skilled nursing facilities as local communities fight the sales, especially in rural counties. In Portage County, retired professor Ferrante, a two-time patient at the Portage County Health Care Center, has joined the Save the Portage County Health Care Center group, which opposes the privatization of the county facility.
“We are the only five-star skilled nursing facility in Portage County,” said Nancy Roppe, a lifelong resident of Portage County and one of the group’s organizers. “The quality of care is stellar… people clamor to get their care here, because they know when they press the call button, somebody will respond.”
In 2018, Portage County residents approved a four-year, $5.6 million referendum to support the facility’s operations. Then, in 2022, they passed another measure authorizing tax increases to fund the construction of a new facility.
Roppe said the referendums signaled public strong support for Portage County Health Care Center, but Portage County is trying to sell the health care center to The Ensign Group, a private company which has purchased other nursing facilities in the state.
A billboard in Portage County. (Photo courtesy of Nancy Roppe)
In Lincoln County, Wisconsin, the County Board voted over the summer to sell the county-owned Pine Crest Nursing Home, which had been serving the county for over 70 years, to Ensign. Just a few months after the transition from county to corporate ownership, members of the Lincoln County community have seen noticeable changes in the quality of care.
“We are already seeing the changes,” said Pastor Mike Southcombe, the senior pastor at St. Stephen’s United Church of Christ in Merrill, the county seat of Lincoln County. “The staffing is less than it was when the county ran it.”
Research consistently shows that publicly-owned facilities not only maintain higher staffing and care standards but also serve as essential safety nets for vulnerable populations, ensuring access to long-term care for residents who might otherwise be turned away by for-profit operators.
A 2022 report by the Center for Medicare Advocacy warned that privatizing county-owned nursing homes often led to lower staffing levels and diminished quality of care, as for-profit operators prioritized revenue over residents’ needs. The report found that promised cost savings rarely materialized, while accountability and public oversight were significantly reduced.
An academic study also found that privatizing county-owned nursing homes increased regulatory violations and reduced residents’ quality of care and quality of life, while failing to improve access for Medicaid recipients.
Working Class Storytelling reported that during a February town hall in Lincoln County, data presented by LeadingAge Wisconsin indicated that publicly-owned nursing homes in the state provide higher-quality care than private or nonprofit facilities.
While some Lincoln County officials said that the county did not have adequate funding to continue the operation of Pine Crest, Eileen Guthrie, a retired accountant who lives in Lincoln County and regularly volunteered at Pine Crest, crunched the numbers and found that Pine Crest was bringing in a profit.
“I started looking at all of the public records, whether they were from the finance committee or the county board, or online… I kept digging and digging,” said Guthrie, who was an active member with People for Pine Crest. When she looked through all the 2023 and 2024 financial statements, she found that Pine Crest had a positive balance upwards of $400,000 in 2023 and a positive balance above $550,000 in 2024. Guthrie said part of this positive balance was due to the state’s Medicaid reimbursement policies.
People for Pine Crest hosted community town halls. (Photo courtesy of Eileen Guthrie)
Lincoln County officials said the sale of Pine Crest would help relieve the county’s deficit, though they did not clarify what expenses were driving that deficit.
“I know not everybody’s happy about it. I understand that all of us, most of us, have people in Pine Crest, and I understand that, but I’m comfortable with Ensign, that they’ll be here and they’re going to serve the community properly,” said County Supervisor Greg Hartwig at a July County Board meeting, according to WXPR.
As the county pushed forward with the sale, many residents felt their voices were ignored. Among them was Scott Doerr, a Lincoln County resident who had worked in local factories for more than 30 years before retiring. Frustrated by the way local officials handled the Pine Crest sale, he filed paperwork to run for County Board Supervisor.
“I just felt that the county board wasn’t listening to the citizens,” Doerr said. “I’m probably going to be campaigning on giving the voice back to the people.”
The sale has raised deeper concerns about the future of the facility.
“Being county-owned was a comfort and now we have to wonder, year to year, if they’re going to sell it for profit and make things worse instead of better.” Doerr said.
That concern about the future of nursing care is shared by others who see the facility as more than just a business, but as a vital community resource.
“People have been paying taxes on [Pine Crest], volunteering at it, supporting it, all those years, with the expectation that it would be around for them when they needed it, or be around for family members when they needed it,” Southcombe said. “The population up here, as it is everywhere, is aging. The elementary schools are shrinking. The need for nursing homes in home care and just general health services is just going to increase. And we’re also going to need people to work at those places.”
People for Pine Crest at the Christmas Parade in Lincoln County. (Photo courtesy of Eileen Guthrie)
For Guthrie, the sale of Pine Crest is not necessarily the end of the fight for better community services.
“The loss was significant, but there is a win in there,” Guthrie said. “All of these people worked together for the good of the community, for the good of the employees and the residents. And maybe that’ll be enough to say, okay, yeah, we lost, but there are other things that we can do, so I’m hoping that there will be more to come.”
As the Save the Portage County Health Care Center group has watched other sales, like those in Lincoln County, happen, they are working to get creative about spreading the word across the county ahead of deciding votes. They have started sharing information in newspaper ads, billboards, and online videos.
“We’ve had to go and reinvent the wheel. We’ve come up with new ways to reach the public. And how does the public react when they know? They are angry,” Ferrante said. “They’re surprised. After voting twice to support the referendums and paying the taxes to have the nursing home continue and be rebuilt, people have been shocked to learn that the current administration in the county is just selling it.”
With the county’s vote looming this week, local community advocates said the stakes feel like a matter of life and death, and they aren’t slowing down.
“Where do we find the energy to fight [for Portage County Health Care Center]? For me, I feel like I owe them,” Ferrante said. “They kind of saved my life.”
Under a settlement in a federal lawsuits a northern Wisconsin town has agreed to make voting machines available that can help people with disabilities cast a ballot. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
A Rusk County community that more than two years ago rejected the use of electronic voting machines has agreed to provide them so people with disabilities can vote in federal elections.
The agreement, signed in federal court in Madison earlier this month, ends a lingering legal dispute over voter access in the northern Wisconsin town of Thornapple that prompted a federal investigation.
The case underscores the importance of provisions in the federal Help America Vote Act, enacted in 2002, which includes voting rights guarantees for people with disabilities, according to Lisa Hasenstab, public policy manager for Disability Rights Wisconsin.
“Access to accessible voting is something that is not always a top priority in the mix of everything that has to happen for elections,” Hasenstab told the Wisconsin Examiner on Tuesday. “But it is the law. It’s federal law. and state law as well, that accessible means of voting be provided at every polling place. If at even one polling place that option is not provided, that is a violation of voters’ rights.”
Hasenstab said a variety of voting machine systems include provisions tailored to people with disabilities who have difficulty marking paper ballots. Systems also include headphones for voters who can’t see, so they can listen to the names of candidates on their ballots.
The Help America Vote Act requires every polling place to include such machines for people who need them, and any voter is able to use them, Hasenstab said.
Thornapple Town Chairman Tom Zelm declined to tell the Wisconsin Examiner in a phone conversation Tuesday why the town had stopped using voting machines and said he would have no comment on the settlement that the town and the U.S. Department of Justice signed in federal court on Dec. 12.
According to a May 13, 2024, report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Thornapple town board voted in June 2023 to stop using electronic voting machines and use only paper ballots.
That same summer, Douglas Frank —profiled in the Los Angeles Times as a purveyor of “baseless claims about suspicious voting trends and secret algorithms used to steal elections” — visited the area, giving talks that stoked conspiracy theories about voting machines, according to several published reports.
After the April 2024 Wisconsin presidential preference primary, a local Democratic Party activist called another town board member to complain about the absence of voting machines that could be used by some people with disabilities. She recorded the call, in which the board member repeated false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump and blamed voting machines. The activist then posted the recording on YouTube.
DOJ lawyers wrote to the town’s chief election officer on May 7, 2024, referring to reports received by the department that the town board “may have voted to remove all electronic voting machines in all elections,” including presidential primary.
The DOJ letter stated that some voters with disabilities had reported their requests to use accessible voting machines in the primary election were not granted. It quoted the Help America Vote Act’s requirement for all polling places to include systems that enable voters with disabilities to cast their ballots.
The Lawrence Town Board in Brown County also passed a measure in 2023 to stop using voting machines. Lawrence reversed its decision Sept. 9, 2024,according to DOJ, and signed an agreement with the feds to comply with HAVA.
Thornapple did not reverse its voting machine ban, and DOJ sued the town. That October a federal judge issued an injunction, requiring the town to use accessible voting machines in the November 2024 election.
Separately, the Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered the town and its elections clerk to “take affirmative steps” and comply with Wisconsin’s law that also requires accessible electronic voting equipment at polling places to accommodate people with disabilities.
The town appealed the federal court injunction, losing before the 7th Circuit Court of Appealsin July.
Under the Dec. 12 settlement, Thornapple and the town’s election officials “will ensure their voting systems are accessible to people with disabilities as required by HAVA.” The deal requires the town to use an electronic voting system “or other voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities at each polling place in the state, for each election for federal office.”
Town officials are also required to be trained on how to implement accessible voting systems that comply with HAVA, to keep the equipment in working order and provide all software and other updates. The deal also requires them to certify after every federal primary and general election that they have complied with the agreement.
Because the cases was originally pursued by the DOJ in the last year of President Joe Biden’s term, Hasenstab acknowledged that voting rights advocates watched the progress of the case with some concern after President Donald Trump took office and began reversing many Biden administration policies.
“We did have some nervousness that they wouldn’t pursue a final resolution to the case,” Hasenstab said Tuesday. “We’re pleasantly surprised that an agreement ended up being reached and that the Department of Justice stuck with that case.”
If Democrats win a majority in one or both chambers of the Legislature in 2026, the party will have more power to govern than any time in more than 15 years.
Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, said she saw a sign of what that future could look like during the state budget-writing process earlier this year. With just a three-seat advantage in the Senate, Republicans needed to work across the aisle to advance the budget, and Senate Democrats had a seat at the negotiating table, Hesselbein said.
For the past 15 years of Republican majorities in the Senate and the Assembly, GOP lawmakers have been able to operate largely without input from legislative Democrats. In 2011, following the Republican midterm surge during President Barack Obama’s presidency, a GOP trifecta in the Legislature and the governor’s office advanced legislation aimed at cementing a permanent majority.
They passed laws such as Act 10, which dismantled Democratic-supporting public sector unions; strict voter ID, which made it harder for students and low-income people to vote; and partisan redistricting, which kept legislative Republicans in power with near super-majorities even after Democrats won all statewide offices in 2018.
“We have an open door policy as Democrats in the state Senate. We will work with anybody with a good idea,” she said. “So we will try to continue to work with Republicans when we can and seek common values to really help people in the state of Wisconsin.”
Newly redrawn legislative maps put into play during last year’s elections, when President Donald Trump won Wisconsin, resulted in 14 flipped legislative seats in favor of Democrats. Following those gains in 2024, Senate Democrats need to flip two seats and hold onto Senate District 31, held by Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, to win a majority next year.
The party’s campaign committee is eyeing flip opportunities in seats occupied by Republican Sens. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green; Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield; and Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, which are all districts that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, according to an analysis last year by John Johnson, a Lubar Center Research fellow at Marquette University.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, in an email to Wisconsin Watch said a Democratic majority in the chamber “won’t happen.”
With political winds during a midterm year typically favoring the party not in control of the White House, Democrats could see gains in the Assembly as well, although there are more challenges than in the Senate. All of the Assembly seats were tested under the new maps last year, but Democrats still made gains during an election year when Trump’s name on ballots boosted Republicans. Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this month that she is “optimistic” about chances to flip the Assembly, where five seats would give Democrats control of the chamber for the first time since 2010.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about how Republicans might work with Democrats if the party wins a majority next year.
If there is a power shift in the Capitol in 2026, few lawmakers have experienced anything but Republican control of the Legislature. Just 11 of the 132 members across both political parties previously held office at a time when Democrats controlled both legislative chambers.
Some of the longest-serving Democrats said they agree with restoring more bipartisanship in the legislative process if the party gains power in 2026.
“I don’t want to repeat the same mistakes as the Republicans did,” said Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, who was elected to the Assembly in 1984 and the Senate in 2002. “We have to give them an opportunity to work on things.”
Carpenter and Rep. Christine Sinicki, D-Milwaukee, who was elected to the Assembly in 1998, said if the party wins one or both majorities they want to make sure members are prepared for governing responsibilities they’ve never experienced, like leading a committee.
“It’s a lot more work,” Sinicki said of being in the majority. “But it’s very fulfilling work to actually be able to go home at night and say, ‘I did this today.’”
Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, speaks during a Senate floor session Oct. 14, 2025, at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Hesselbein said if Senate Democrats secure power in their chamber next year, members will continue to focus on affordability issues that they’ve proposed during the current session. Some of those bills included providing free meals at breakfast and lunch to students in Wisconsin schools, lowering the cost of prescription drugs and expanding access to the homestead tax credit.
LeMahieu, though, said Democrats have “no credibility” on affordability issues.
“Senate Republicans delivered the second largest income tax cut in state history to put more money in Wisconsin families’ pockets for gas and groceries while Senate Democrats propose sales and income tax hikes to pay for a radical agenda nobody can afford,” he said.
Senate Democrats in the meantime are holding listening sessions across the state and working on a list of future bills to be ready to lead “on day one,” Hesselbein said. “If we are fortunate enough.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The Covering Wisconsin webpage. The nonprofit, housed at the University of Wisconsin Extension, is a navigator agency to help people understand their options when buying health insurance through the HealthCare.gov marketplace. (Screenshot)
About 4,000 fewer people in Wisconsin signed up at the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace in November for a health plan for next year than did in November 2024 for coverage this year, recently released numbers from the federal government show.
It’s too soon to tell for sure whether that will forecast a significant drop in health coverage through the marketplace, according to William Parke-Sutherland of the Wisconsin family policy research and advocacy group Kids Forward.
Parke-Sutherland and others who pay close attention to health care access in Wisconsin are watching those numbers closely, however.
Monday, Dec. 15, marks a critical deadline — the last day that people who purchase a health plan through the marketplace can sign up for coverage that starts Jan. 1, 2026.
The Healthcare.gov marketplace was created as part of the Affordable Care Act. Enacted in 2010 to drive down the ranks of Americans without access to health care, the ACA established the marketplace to make it easier and cheaper for people without coverage from an employer or through government programs such as Medicaid to buy health insurance.
Enhanced tax credit subsidies first enacted in 2021 on health plans sold through the marketplace have helped boost enrollment to new records over the last four years nationally and in Wisconsin. More than 300,000 state residents received their health coverage for 2025 through the marketplace.
Those enhanced subsidies expire at the end of this year, however, leading to forecasts that enrollment will decline in 2026 as the cost of insurance climbs.
“Many Wisconsinites will see their premiums double, and some will see staggering increases of over $30,000 a year,” Gov. Tony Evers said Wednesday during a press call with the ACA advocacy groups Protect Our Care and Main Street Alliance. “That’s ridiculous and unattainable for many.”
The event was held both to alert people about Monday’s open enrollment deadline and to urge voters to lobby Congress to extend the subsidies.
“Each year, the Affordable Care Act and open enrollment has ensured hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites having life-saving health care coverage,” Evers said. “These tax credits are not luxuries — they are lifelines that make the difference between kids and families and communities getting care or going without it.”
This year, 88% of Wisconsin residents who enrolled at HealthCare.gov qualified for the enhanced subsidies and saved $644 a month on average, Evers said.
Thad Schumacher, a Fitchburg pharmacist who also joined the call, said losing coverage would lead people to forgo “their primary care visits, their medications, for chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension, and preventative care that keeps people healthy.”
Early numbers send mixed signals
The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid reported that from Nov. 1 to 29 this year, 84,398 Wisconsinites enrolled in coverage through the marketplace. From Nov. 1 to Nov. 30, 2024, Dairy State enrollment totaled 88,189, according to CMS.
Nationally numbers are up, however — 5.76 million in November this year, compared with 5.36 million in November last year, according to CMS.
While Wisconsin’s decrease of less than 4,000 people signing up may look small, “It’s just hard to know what this means,” Parke-Sutherland told the Wisconsin Examiner.
In the years going back to 2022, the first month of open enrollment saw anywhere from 29% to 42% of that year’s total HealthCare.gov sign-ups, he said.
At Covering Wisconsin — a federally licensed navigator that helps guide people through the process of enrolling in HealthCare.gov plans — the volume of November calls and contacts through the navigator’s web-based chat portal have been about even with the same month last year, said Allison Espeseth, the Covering Wisconsin director.
In 2024, however, there was “a pretty big spike” in contacts in the first two weeks of December leading up to the Dec. 15 deadline for coverage to start Jan. 1.
“This year, we are definitely continuing to have people call us, but we haven’t seen that spike,” Espeseth said.
She offered several possible reasons for that. Some people may have seen higher premiums for their plans and decided to go without. Others may think that there won’t be any subsidies, despite the fact that smaller subsidies that were part of HealthCare.gov plans from the beginning remain in place.
And some have wondered whether they should hold off on signing up in case Congress does reach a deal and extend the subsidies, Espeseth noted.
“We’ve been encouraging people to please sign up regardless,” Espeseth said. “Don’t wait.”
Over the past year, RENEW has expanded its capacity to identify and respond to local barriers to distributed renewable energy (rooftop solar as an example), with a particular focus on identifying and addressing county and town drafting of restrictive local ordinances. RENEW has developed a framework for tracking county and town activity and coordinating with installers and developers on submitting comments to local board meetings. RENEW continues to communicate with county and town boards, when necessary, to advise on policy and legal implications of overly restrictive local regulations on distributed energy resources.
As part of implementing this strategy, RENEW communicated directly with Jefferson County regarding their 2025 Solar Energy Systems Ordinance Draft, providing a detailed legal analysis of how key provisions conflicted with state law and Court of Appeals precedent. RENEW’s analysis resulted in the redrafting of the proposed ordinance. When the ordinance was presented to the County Board of Supervisors, RENEW called for comments from RENEW members and impacted installers and developers. The strategy resulted in the Jefferson County Board returning the proposed ordinance to the zoning committee for further review, to reduce restrictions on solar energy systems.
The experience has helped RENEW identify potential litigation and policy strategies to empower our advocacy for balanced local rules that do not unduly restrict renewable energy production. RENEW is communicating and coordinating with other stakeholders to lay the groundwork for future model ordinance work and to support potential litigation that can clarify local authority on regulating renewable energy siting and production.
In parallel, RENEW has supported homeowners facing Home Owner Association (HOA) barriers to rooftop solar. RENEW worked with two homeowners and prepared a legal advisory letter to the Theofila Estates HOA explaining the limited authority of HOAs under state law, demonstrating how the HOA’s rejection of south-facing solar installations based on aesthetic rules would significantly increase costs, reduce system efficiency, and disqualify projects from Wisconsin’s Focus on Energy rebate, and therefore constitute an unlawful restriction on solar.
Together, this local and HOA focused work is helping RENEW build a practical toolkit that RENEW can deploy statewide to defend solar rights and promote uniform, lawful treatment of distributed renewable energy.
A new vision for passenger rail is on track in southeastern Wisconsin. The MARK Rail project — short for Milwaukee Area-Racine-Kenosha Passenger Rail — has officially launched, replacing the long-discussed KRM commuter rail proposal with a faster, more focused intercity rail plan connecting Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Chicago.
The MARK Passenger Rail Commission held its inaugural meeting on Dec. 5, 2025, at Racine City Hall, where members adopted bylaws, elected officers and approved the next step in seeking federal funding. This marks a fairly significant milestone in a decades-long effort to restore passenger rail to the Lake Michigan shoreline.
“We believe this is a really transformative option for this region,” one project consultant said during the meeting. “It connects Racine, Kenosha and Milwaukee to a world-class economic region and cultural center to jobs, education, redevelopment and attracting new businesses.”
New name, new approach
This is not just a rebranding of the KRM proposal. Instead, MARK Rail is a strategic shift from a commuter model to intercity passenger rail, in line with new federal funding opportunities.
Unlike KRM, which envisioned multiple local stops, MARK Rail will prioritize speed and direct service between urban hubs. This change not only improves travel time but also positions the project for funding through the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor Identification and Development Program, which supports intercity rail.
Federal funding pathway chosen
After reviewing options, the commission chose to pursue funding through the FRA’s Corridor ID program, rather than the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts program, which had been used in past KRM planning. The Corridor ID program offers a higher federal match, more technical support and a phased development structure.
“The Corridor ID program has a lower local match and allows us to build capacity over time,” said Wendy Messenger of DB Engineering & Consulting. “It’s a better fit for this project and gives us more flexibility with service design and coordination.”
According to documents shared at the meeting, the federal share under the FRA program can reach 90% during early phases, compared to 60% under FTA’s New Starts.
The newly formed MARK Passenger Rail Commission replaces earlier planning bodies such as the Southeastern Regional Transit Authority and the KRM Steering Committee. Its structure and purpose are outlined in the proposed bylaws, which were adopted at the Dec. 5 meeting.
“The purpose of the Commission is to advance the public interest by pursuing the development, implementation, and provision of passenger rail service,” the bylaws state.
The commission is governed by representatives from the cities of Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha, with Racine Mayor Cory Mason as chair, former Revenue Secretary Peter Barca as vice chair, and Milwaukee Ald. Bob Bauman as secretary/treasurer. Each seat will be elected annually.
The bylaws allow for both regular and special meetings and permit in-person, virtual or hybrid formats to improve public access.
Partnership with Metra moves forward
Since the proposed rail line would share the Union Pacific corridor currently used by Metra’s UP-North line, coordination with Metra is essential. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the MARK Commission and Metra was introduced at the meeting, laying the groundwork for collaboration on scheduling, fares, equipment and infrastructure planning.
“Metra and the MARK Commission will work together to develop the Operations Plan that is mutually agreeable,” the MOU states. It also specifies that Metra’s support beyond standard duties may require a reimbursement agreement.
The MOU confirms that Metra will not be the operator, but will be a key stakeholder because of its current presence along the corridor and its expertise in rail operations.
Next steps and timeline
The commission voted to authorize preparation of an application for the next Corridor ID grant cycle, expected in early 2026. If selected, the project would then move into the Service Development Plan phase, followed by preliminary engineering, environmental review and, eventually, construction.
“We’re already doing a lot of the work now,” said Clayton Johanson of DB. “There will need to be refinements, but we’re in a really great position to continue to advance.”
The full timeline could stretch over several years, with local match funding becoming necessary starting in Step 2 of the Corridor ID process. Officials have discussed using remaining funds from Racine’s federal planning grant to help meet those needs.
A regional vision focused on cities
One strategic decision behind the project’s current direction is its urban focus. By centering the effort in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha, the commission is avoiding the jurisdictional and political complications that kept KRM from becoming a reality.
This includes sidestepping debates over governance authority — particularly since regional transit authorities are no longer permitted under Wisconsin law. The MARK Commission, on the other hand, is legal under state statutes and modeled after similar rail commissions elsewhere in Wisconsin.
This story was originally published by Racine County Eye and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
State funding of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has been reduced by more than $100 million per biennium in the past 30 years.
A key factor: smaller debt payments.
DNR received $334.3 million in state general purpose revenue in the 1995-97 state budget and $226.2 million in 2025-27.
That’s a reduction of $108.1 million, or 32%.
Between the two periods, debt service dropped from $234.7 million to $103.4 million.
A Wisconsin Reddit user posted Nov. 22 about the cuts.
A 2023 report on DNR by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum said those savings have been used to fund Medicaid, K-12 schools, prisons and tax cuts. Republicans have controlled all or part of the state budget process for all but one cycle since 1995.
The DNR is charged with protecting and enhancing air, land, water, forests, wildlife, fish and plants and provides outdoor recreational activities.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Christine Neumann Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, speaks at a press conference on the Wisconsin Supreme Court case challenging the legality of Wisconsin law enforcement agencies' cooperation agreements with ICE | Photo via Voces de la Frontera Facebook video
In Wisconsin we have been watching in horror as President Donald Trump’s lawless immigration crackdown terrorizes communities in our neighboring states of Minnesota and Illinois.
Here at home, so far, things are mostly quiet. Farmers in western Wisconsin report no ICE raids on the dairies where 60% to 90% of workers are immigrants without legal status. There have been a few high-profile arrests and deportations in Milwaukee, Madison and Manitowoc, but nothing like the scenes of chaos in the streets of Chicago and Minneapolis, where masked federal agents are aiming guns at civilians, smashing out car windows and dragging parents from their children, hustling them off to detention centers to be fast-tracked out of the country without due process.
One of the most disturbing things about this campaign of terror is that it seems to be directed by the president’s whim. In a Thanksgiving post full of invective and schoolyard insults directed at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, Trump denounced the Somali community he claimed was “completely taking over the great State of Minnesota.” One week later, CBS News confirmed that ICE operations were underway targeting Somali immigrants in the Twin Cities.
Since we can’t count on the federal government to stay inside the bounds of reason or the law, it is critical that local and state leaders stand up to the racist, unconstitutional and unAmerican assault on immigrants.
It was good news when, on Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court accepted a case filed by the state chapter of the ACLU on behalf of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, contending that Wisconsin law enforcement agencies do not have the authority to make arrests or keep people in jail on detainers based solely on ICE’s administrative warrants.
Tim Muth, the ACLU of Wisconsin’s senior staff attorney, said hundreds of people throughout the state are being illegally held for days.
“It is extremely important for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to determine whether any law enforcement in Wisconsin has the legal authority to put or keep people in jail when they have not committed a crime and when no judge has issued an arrest warrant,” Wisconsin immigration attorney Grant Sovern wrote in an email to the Examiner. “Anyone in Wisconsin would want dangerous people to be kept from the public. But ICE is currently making no determinations about dangerousness or the likelihood to show up for a hearing if a summons is issued. A summons is a perfectly rational and legal way to address a civil legal question like someone’s immigration status. Jailing people before any independent adjudicator determines someone to be dangerous is against the Constitution and not the Wisconsin way.”
At a press conference Wednesday, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces, told the story of a landscaper in Green Bay who was picked up for driving without a license (immigrants without legal status are barred by a 2007 state law from obtaining driver’s licenses). He was sent to county jail and then handed over to ICE. “He was a grandfather, very active in his church,” Neumann-Ortiz said, describing him as “someone who does not represent any kind of threat to society at all” and who, on the contrary, is a pillar of his community and beloved by his family.
Voces helped fight the deportation in a case that is still working its way through the courts. “At least he’s out and together with his family,” Neumann-Ortiz said. “But that’s an example of how people can be impacted by this.”
As it scrambles to meet arbitrary deportation quotas, ICE sends detainers even for people who have never been convicted of a crime and have only minor charges pending in Wisconsin courts.
Voces has been fighting at the local level since the first Trump administration for local law enforcement to refuse to collaborate with ICE unless there is a judicial warrant for someone, meaning that person is being sought in connection with a serious crime. As a result of Voces’ efforts, that is now the standard in Milwaukee County. The state Supreme Court case is an effort to establish the same standard statewide.
Neumann-Ortiz said she’s grateful the Supreme Court justices recognized the urgency of the issue in agreeing to take the case on an expedited basis, “given the current level of abuse that we’re seeing happen, and which will only escalate.”
And, she added, “We certainly very much anticipate Milwaukee being one of the cities that will be targeted for militarized occupation with these aggressive sweeps.”
Whether or not Wisconsin communities can protect people from the kind of violence we’ve been seeing in other states depends on the courageous actions of state and local officials, advocates and informed community members. It begins with recognizing that the Trump administration’s actions are wrong and then standing up.
At the press conference, a reporter asked about ICE’s assertion that the agency doesn’t have room for everyone in its detention facilities and therefore needs space in county jails. Muth responded: “Detain fewer people.”
Neumann-Ortiz added some clarifying context. “They are profiling people, they are just grabbing people without any probable cause. So it’s a very racist program that is using violence against people and is trying to hijack, through bribery and through threats, local law enforcement to be part of this mass deportation machinery,” she said.
“We’re seeing, at the local level, community come together,” she added, “to reject these efforts to undermine local law enforcement — which is supposed to play a public safety role — into just this arm of deportation driven by xenophobia and racism. And which is making a lot of money for the for-profit prison industry.”
This year, communities across the state have pushed back on 287g partnership agreements between local law enforcement and ICE that turn sheriff’s departments into an arm of the federal immigration agency. Palmyra, Ozaukee and Kenosha counties rejected ICE’s offers of money to transform their sheriffs into agents of federal immigration enforcement.
The Kenosha sheriff’s office made its decision not to participate after the ACLU and Voces had already named it in the Supreme Court lawsuit, along with Walworth, Brown, Sauk and Marathon counties. Palmyra also reversed a decision to accept a large payment from ICE to participate, responding to public outrage.
“Resistance is happening, it’s successful, it’s building community,” Neumann-Ortiz said. “But we do need state protections to uphold our rights.”
The state of Wisconsin generally cannot consider U.S. citizenship or national origin in hiring for state jobs.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany of northern Wisconsin, who is running for governor in 2026, said Nov. 17 he would ensure state jobs “go to Americans.”
His congressional and campaign offices did not respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that statescannot restrict public employment to citizens.
Both public and private employers are generally barred by federal law from treating people differently based on national origin or ethnicity.
Wisconsinlaws prohibit discrimination by public or private employers based on national origin or ancestry.
The state’s hiring handbook says the state can hire only people legally in the U.S., but “shall not refuse to hire aliens based on their foreign appearance, accent, language, name, national origin, citizenship, or intended U.S. citizenship.”
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The shore of Lake Superior near Ashland. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
A rule to protect Wisconsin’s cleanest waterways from being harmed was finalized last week over the objections of Republican legislators and allied lobbying groups.
The rule highlights the ongoing dispute between the Legislature and the administration of Gov. Tony Evers over the level of oversight legislators are allowed to have over the administrative rulemaking process. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling that curtailed the ability of the Legislature to kill administrative rules.
The new rule, which was published in the state’s administrative register Nov. 24 and is set to go into effect July 1, is the result of a decade of wrangling.
In 2015, the U.S. EPA updated the Clean Water Act’s antidegradation regulations — which guide how states are required to protect high quality lakes and rivers from pollution.
Dozens of creeks, rivers and lakes are classified as outstanding resource waters and exceptional resource waters under Wisconsin’s administrative code and will be protected as “high quality waters” under the new rule. Additionally, a body of water can be considered a high quality water if it has contaminant levels that are better than an established statewide standard.
“This means that a waterbody can be high quality for one or more parameters, even if it is impaired for a different parameter,” Laura Dietrich, manager of the Department of Natural Resources’ water evaluation section, said in an email. “For example, a waterbody may be impaired for phosphorus, but chloride levels are better than the chloride water quality criterion. The waterbody would be considered high quality for the purposes of considering new or increased discharges of chloride, but would not be high quality for phosphorus.”
Under the new rule, the DNR will be required to conduct a review before regulated entities are allowed to discharge new or increased levels of contaminants into the water body. Discharges may be allowed if found to be necessary through a “social or economic analysis.”
The rule’s finalization is the end of a process that began in 2023 and has included multiple public hearings and the input of several legislative committees.
Last month, the Assembly committee on the environment voted 4-2 to request modifications to the rule, but the DNR and the Evers administration moved forward with finalizing the rule anyway.
That action has angered Republicans who want more say in the process.
“Representative government has been taken away and we now have rule by king,” Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) said in a statement. “We don’t want a king and the current path forward is dangerous.”
Lobbying groups have also complained about the rule’s finalization.
Scott Manley, a lobbyist for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business group, told Wisconsin Public Radio that the rule going into effect is “terrible from a representative government standpoint.”
Erik Kanter, government relations director with Clean Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner that he thinks the rule represents the DNR finding a solid compromise between environmental and business concerns and that WMC was involved in the entire process through an advisory committee.
“DNR engaged the stakeholder group regularly over the 30-month process it took to put the rule together at the DNR, and so WMC, along the way, had all the opportunity, and certainly took the opportunity, to make their thoughts [known] on how to put this rule together,” Kanter said. “It almost feels like it was never going to be enough for WMC.”
Kanter also said that because the rule aligns the state with the EPA regulations, the state doesn’t have a choice if it wants to retain regulatory authority over its own water.
“Wisconsin has to do this. We have to update our own rules to comply with federal changes to the Clean Water Act,” he said. “There’s no two ways about it if we want to maintain our delegation authority and have state regulators in charge of administering the Clean Water Act. It’s something we have to do.”
The alternative would be for the federal EPA to administer the act in Wisconsin, he said.
“I think a lot of folks in the business community wouldn’t want EPA and the federal government breathing down their neck,” Kanter said. “And so this delegated authority situation is, I think, better for everybody.”
On a dry, rocky patch of his family’s farm in Door County, Wisconsin, Dave Klevesahl grows wildflowers. But he has a vision for how to squeeze more value out of the plot: lease it to a company that wants to build a community solar array.
Unfortunately for Klevesahl, that is unlikely to happen under current state law. In Wisconsin, only utilities are allowed to develop such shared solar installations, which let households and businesses that can’t put panels on their own property access renewable energy via subscriptions.
Farmers, solar advocates and legislators from both parties are trying to remove these restrictions through Senate Bill 559, which would allow the limited development of community solar by entities other than utilities.
Wisconsin lawmakers considered similar proposals in the 2021-22 and 2023-24 legislative sessions, with support from trade groups representing real estate agents, farmers, grocers, and retailers. But those bipartisan efforts failed in the face of opposition from the state’s powerful utilities and labor unions.
Community solar supporters are hoping for a different outcome this legislative session, which ends in March. But while the new bill, introduced Oct. 24, includes changes meant to placate utilities, the companies still firmly oppose it.
“I don’t really understand why anybody wouldn’t want community solar,” said Klevesahl, whose wife’s family has been farming their land for generations. In addition to leasing his land for an installation, he would like to subscribe to community solar, which typically saves participants money on their energy bills.
Some Wisconsin utilities do offer their own community solar programs. But they are too small to meet the demand for community solar, advocates say.
Utilities push back on shared solar
Around 20 states and Washington, D.C., have community solar programs that allow non-utility ownership of arrays. The majority of those states, including Wisconsin’s neighbor Illinois, have deregulated energy markets, in which the utilities that distribute electricity do not generate it.
In states with “vertically integrated” energy markets, like Wisconsin, utilities serve as regulated monopolies, both generating and distributing power. That means legislation is necessary to specify that other companies are also allowed to generate and sell power from community solar. Some vertically integrated states, including Minnesota, have passed such laws.
The Wisconsin utilities We Energies and Madison Gas and Electric, according to their spokespeople, are concerned that customers who don’t subscribe to community solar will end up subsidizing costs for those who do. The utilities argue that because community solar subscribers have lower energy bills, they contribute less money for grid maintenance and construction, meaning that other customers must pay more to make up the difference. Clean-energy advocates, for their part, say this “cost shift” argument ignores research showing that the systemwide benefits of distributed energy like community solar can outweigh the expense.
The Wisconsin bill would also require utilities to buy power from community solar arrays that don’t have enough subscribers.
“This bill is being marketed as a ‘fair’ solution to advance renewables. It’s the opposite,” said We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway. “It would force our customers to pay higher electricity costs by having them subsidize developers who want profit from a no-risk solar project. Under this bill, the developers avoid any risk. The costs of their projects will shift to and be paid for by all of our ‘non-subscribing’ customers.”
The power generated by community solar ultimately goes onto the utility’s grid, reducing the amount of electricity the utility needs to provide. But Conway said it’s not the most efficient way to meet overall demand.
“These projects would not be something we would plan for or need, so our customers would be paying for unneeded energy that benefits a very few,” he said. “Also, these credits are guaranteed by our other customers even if solar costs drop or grid needs change.”
Advocates in Wisconsin hope they can address such concerns and convince utilities to support community solar owned by third parties.
Beata Wierzba, government affairs director of the clean-power advocacy organization Renew Wisconsin, said her group and others “had an opportunity to talk with the utilities over the course of several months, trying to negotiate some language they could live with.”
“There were some exchanges where utilities gave us a dozen things that were problematic for them, and the coalition addressed them by making changes to the draft” of the bill, Wierzba said.
The spokespeople for We Energies and Madison Gas and Electric did not respond to questions about such conversations.
A small-scale start
To assuage utilities’ concerns, the bill allows third-party companies to build community solar only for the next decade. The legislation also sets a statewide cap for community solar of 1.75 gigawatts, with limits for each of the five major investor-owned utilities’ territories proportionate to each utility’s total number of customers.
Community solar arrays would be limited to 5 megawatts, with exceptions for rooftops, brownfields and other industrial sites, where 20 megawatts can be built.
No subscriber would be allowed to buy more than 40% of the output from a single community solar array, and 60% of the subscriptions must be for 40 kilowatts of capacity or less, the bill says. This is meant to prevent one large customer — like a big-box store or factory — from buying the majority of the power and excluding others from taking advantage of the limited community solar capacity.
Customers who subscribe to community solar would still have to pay at least $20 a month to their utility for service. The bill also contains what Wierzba called an “off-ramp”: After four years, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin would study how the program is working and submit a report to the Legislature, which could pass a new law to address any problems.
“The bill is almost like a small pilot project — it’s not like you’re opening the door and letting everyone come in,” said Wierzba. “You have a limit on how it can function, how many people can sign up.”
Broad support for community solar
In Wisconsin, as in other states, developers hoping to build utility-scale solar farms on agricultural land face serious pushback. The Trump administration canceled federal incentives for solar arrays on farms this summer, with U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announcing, “USDA will no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland.”
But Wisconsin farmers have argued that community solar can actually help keep agricultural land in production by providing an extra source of revenue. The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation has yet to weigh in on this year’s bill, but it supported previously proposed community solar legislation.
The bill calls for state regulators to come up with rules for community solar developers that would likely require dual use — meaning that crops or pollinator habitats are planted under and around the panels or that animals graze on the land. These increasingly common practices are known as agrivoltaics.
The bill would let local zoning bodies — rather than the state’s Public Service Commission — decide whether to permit a community solar installation.
Utility-scale solar farms, by contrast, are permitted at the state level, which can leave “locals feeling like they are not in control of their future,” said Matt Hargarten, vice president of government and public affairs for the Coalition for Community Solar Access. “This offers an alternative that is really welcome. If a town doesn’t want this to be there, it won’t be there.”
A 5-megawatt array typically covers 20 to 30 acres of land, whereas utility-scale solar farms are often hundreds of megawatts and span thousands of acres.
“You don’t need to upgrade the transmission systems with these small solar farms because a 30-acre solar farm can backfeed into a substation that’s already there,” noted Klevesahl, a retired electrical engineer. “And then you’re using the power locally, and it’s clean power. Bottom line is, I just think it’s the right thing to do.”
A version of this article was first published by Canary Media.
The Waukesha County Sheriff Department. An audit of the department's use of data from the Flock surveillance camera system shows inconsistent reporting the reasons on the reasons investigators access the information, a problem common among police agencies. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Like other Wisconsin law enforcement agencies, the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department (WCSD) uses Flock cameras for many reasons, though department personnel don’t always clearly document what those reasons are. Audit data reveals that staff most frequently entered “investigation” in order to access Flock’s network, while other documented uses are raising concerns among privacy advocates.
Flock cameras perpetually photograph and, using AI-powered license plate reader technology, identify vehicles traversing roadways. Flock’s system can be used to view a vehicle’s journey, even weeks after capturing an image, or flag specific vehicles for law enforcement which have been placed on “Be On The Lookout” (BOLO) lists.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
As of March 2025, the company Flock Safety was valued at $7.5 billion, with over 5,000 law enforcement agencies using its cameras nationwide. At least 221 of those agencies are in Wisconsin, including the city of Waukesha’s police department as well as the county sheriff . The Wisconsin Examiner obtained Flock audit data from the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department through open records requests, covering Flock searches from January 2024 to July 2025, and used computer programming to analyze the data.
Over that period of time, more than 6,700 Flock searches were conducted by WCSD using only “investigation”, as well as abbreviations or misspellings of the word. The searches, as they appeared in the audit data, offered no other context to suggest why specifically Flock’s network had been searched. Lt. Nicholas Wenzel, a sheriff’s department spokesperson, wrote in an email statement that “investigation” has a broad usage when Flock is involved.
“A deputy/detective using Flock for an investigation is using it for a wide range of public safety situations,” Wenzel explained. “Flock assists in locating missing persons during Amber or Silver Alert by identifying their vehicles and has proven effective in recovering stolen cars. Investigators use Flock to track suspect vehicles in serious crimes such as homicides, assaults, robberies, and shootings, as well as in property crimes like burglaries, catalytic converter thefts, and package thefts. The system also supports traffic-related investigations, including hit-and-run cases, and enables agencies to share information across jurisdictions to track offenders who travel between communities.”
Widespread use of vague search terms
Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that terms like “investigation” are too vague to determine whether or not Flock was used appropriately. At least some responsibility falls on Flock Safety itself, Maass argues. “They’re setting up a system where it’s impossible for somebody to audit it,” he told the Wisconsin Examiner. “And I think that’s the big problem, is that there’s no baseline requirement that you have to have a case related to this…They say you have to have a law enforcement purpose. But if you just put the word ‘investigation’ there, how do you know? Like, how do you know that this is not somebody stalking their ex-partner? How do you know whether this is somebody looking up information about celebrities? How do you know whether it’s racist or not? And you just don’t, because nobody is checking any of these things.”
The audit also stored other vague search terms used by WCSD such as “f”, “cooch”, “freddy”, “ts”, “nathan”, and “hunt” which Lt. Wenzel would not define.“The search terms are associated with investigations, some of which remain active,” he wrote in an email statement. “To preserve the integrity of these ongoing investigations, no further description or clarification of the terms can be provided at this time.”
A Flock camera on the Lac Courte Orielles Reservation in Saywer County. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner
In August, Wisconsin Examiner published a similar Flock analysis that also found agencies statewide entering only the word “investigation,” with no other descriptor, in order to access Flock. At nearly 20,000 searches (not including misspellings and abbreviations), the term “investigation” was in fact the most often used term in that analysis, which relied on audit data obtained from the Wauwatosa Police Department.
While data from the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department appeared in that first Flock story, that analysis focused on broad trends which appeared among at least 221 unique agencies using Flock in Wisconsin. This more recent analysis focuses specifically on the Waukesha County Sheriff Department’s use of the camera network.
The August report found that the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department appeared among the top 10 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies that used Flock the most. The report also found that some agencies also only entered “.” — a period — in the Flock system field to indicate the reason for using the system. The West Allis Police Department led Wisconsin in this particular search term, followed by the Waukesha Police Department and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office.
In response to an inquiry from the Wisconsin Examiner, a Waukesha Police Department spokesperson said that an officer who’d conducted nearly 400 Flock searches using only “.” as the reason had been provided extra training, and that the officer’s behavior had been corrected after the Wisconsin Examiner reached out. The West Allis Police Department, on the other hand, did not suggest that its officers were using the Flock network improperly.
Use of vague search terms is chronic across Flock’s network, Maass has found. He recalled one nationwide audit that covered 11.4 million Flock searches over a six-month period. Of those some 22,743 “just dots” appeared as reasons for Flock searches. Searches using only the word “investigation” made up about 14.5% of all searches, he said.
“So yeah, that’s a problem,” Maass told the Wisconsin Examiner. Reviewing a copy of Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department audit data, Maass saw the same vague search terms that have been reported by the Examiner. Although some terms can be reasonably guessed — such as “repo” perhaps meaning repossession, or ICAC, which usually stands for Internet Crimes Against Children — others aren’t so easy.
Surveillance cameras monitor traffic on a clear day | Getty Images Creative
“‘Hunt’ can mean anything,” said Maass, referring to a term which appeared 24 times within the Waukesha Sheriff’s data. Maass points to the search term “f”, which the Wisconsin Examiner’s analysis found WCSD used to search Flock 806 times.
Maass highlights that each search touches hundreds or even thousands of individual Flock networks nationwide. “If I’m one of these agencies that gets hit by this system, how am I to know if this is a legitimate search or not?” Maass said. “Now, maybe somebody at Waukesha is going through their own system, and like questioning every officer about every case. Maybe they’re doing that. Probably not.”
Wenzel of the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department said that although some searches appear vague, deputies and detectives are required by department policy to document their use of Flock in reports. Although a case number category does appear in the audit data, this column was rendered blank, making it impossible for Wisconsin Examiner to determine how often Flock searches had case numbers, or whether those case numbers corresponded with specific investigations the sheriff’s department had on file.
“The Sheriff’s Office understands the concerns surrounding emerging technology and takes very seriously its responsibility to protect the privacy and civil rights of the community,” Wenzel said in a statement. “The use of Flock license plate recognition technology is guided by clear safeguards to ensure it is only used for legitimate law enforcement purposes.”
The department’s policy, Wenzel explained, “prohibits any use outside of legitimate criminal investigations.” He said that deputies undergo initial and ongoing training to use the camera network. “All system activity is logged and subject to review,” said Wenzel.
Maass says the department can’t back-check the searches conducted by other agencies using the Waukesha Flock network, however. “Because when we’re talking about millions of searches coming through their system, you know, every few months…like hundreds of thousands at least every month…how are they actually quality controlling any of these?” Maass told the Wisconsin Examiner. “They’re just not.”
An eviction notice posted on a door as the lock is changed. (Stephen Zenner | Getty Images)
Wenzel said that “the technology is not used for general surveillance, traffic enforcement, or monitoring individuals not connected to an investigation.” The Wisconsin Examiner’s analysis, however, detected 43 searches logged as “surveillance” and 30 searches logged as “traffic offense.” The audit data also contained at least 357 searches logged as “suspicious” or variations of the word, as well as another 14 logged as “suspicious driving behavior,” 52 searches for “road rage” and 36 logged as “identify driver”.
There were also 62 searches related to evictions, which privacy advocates contend go beyond the public safety roles that the cameras were originally pitched to serve.
“Evictions can be unpredictable and potentially dangerous situations,” said Wenzel. “The removal of individuals from a residence often creates heightened emotions, uncertainty, and sometimes resistance. For this reason, safety is the top priority for both the residents being evicted and the deputies carrying out the court order. Flock is utilized to determine if the former tenants have left the area or could possibly be in the area when the court order is being carried out.”
Jon McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, said in a statement that the Waukesha Sheriff’s use of Flock has extended “far beyond the public safety justifications for which these tools were originally sold.” McCray Jones told the Wisconsin Examiner, “These systems were introduced to the public as a means to reduce violent crime and aid in solving serious investigations. However, when they are used for non-criminal purposes, such as evictions, they cross a dangerous line.”
Waukesha’s uses for evictions were particularly concerning for McCray Jones. “What’s happening here is surveillance technology, operated by taxpayer-funded public servants, being weaponized at the behest of private landlords and corporations,” he said. “That is exactly the kind of mission creep communities are most worried about when it comes to police surveillance. If Flock cameras can be repurposed to target tenants today, what stops law enforcement tomorrow from using facial recognition to track people who fall behind on rent, or phone location data to monitor whether workers are ‘really sick’ when they call off? We’ve seen documented cases where law enforcement misused surveillance systems to track down romantic interests. Once the floodgate is opened, the slide into abuse is fast and quiet.”
Wenzel said that access to the Flock network is limited to personnel who are properly trained and authorized to use the software, and the department’s policy is regularly reviewed by those personnel.
“Searches are limited to legitimate law enforcement purposes per department policy,” he wrote in an email statement. The department has conducted its own Flock audits, Wenzel explained, and no sheriff department staff have ever been disciplined or re-trained due to Flock-related issues. Although the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department is part of the federal 287(g) program, in which local law enforcement agencies participate in federal immigration enforcement, Wenzel said that Flock is not used as part of the program, and the Wisconsin Examiner didn’t find any clear examples of immigration-related uses by the sheriff’s department.
McCray Jones considers the Waukesha Sheriff’s use of Flock to be an example of why “surveillance technology in the hands of law enforcement must be tightly limited, narrowly defined, and rigorously transparent.” He stressed that every use “must be clearly logged and justified — not with vague categories like ‘investigation’ or ‘repo’, but with meaningful explanations the public can actually understand and evaluate. Without strict guardrails, audits like this reveal how quickly tools justified in the name of ‘safety’ turn into instruments of convenience or even private gain.”
With the growth of surveillance technologies and the civil liberties implications they raise, McCray Jones said that the public “deserves clear proof that it is being used only to reduce crime — particularly violent crime — and not to serve the interests of landlords or corporations. Accountability and transparency aren’t optional add-ons; they are the bare minimum to prevent abuse.”
As we enter the season of thanks, togetherness, and gift-giving, those of us at RENEW Wisconsin wanted to talk about that last one. As a nonprofit that focuses on policy and legislation that helps to accelerate the clean energy transition, we depend on the kindness of individuals, businesses, and a number of grants to keep the advocacy work moving.
There are several avenues we’ve made available to clean energy advocates to provide financial support (and ideally, a little tax break for you). Below is a quick breakdown of all the ways to give.
A One-Time Donation
The most straightforward way to give! We will gladly take any amount of money that you’re willing to part with to support our mission. At $50/year, you are officially an individual member, which gives you voting privileges during our annual board elections.
Any monthly donation that totals $50/year over 12 months makes you a member. That’s as little as $5 a month — less than most places charge for a cup of coffee these days.
It might sound crazy, but we also accept stocks. Have a junk stock that’s just not performing? Want to reduce your capital gains tax exposure? You can quickly and securely donate your stock to us. And just to be clear, we never touch the stock. When you support us through stock donations, they are immediately sold, and the funds go straight to the bank.
However you choose to give, we appreciate it — and if you can give this time, we understand. Whatever you choose to do, we have one other ask. When you’re talking with family, friends, or neighbors about what you can do to combat climate change, reduce pollution, or support our local economy, consider spreading the word about RENEW and how together we can make the clean energy revolution happen.
It’s that time of year again, the one every nonprofit organization spends many a sleepless night over. Is it out of excitement for an opportunity to reach out to our supporters, dread over how much money we may or may not raise, or both? Regardless, it’s Giving Tuesday, and if you’re in the giving spirit today, we’d like to ask you to help us reach our goal of raising $15,000 in individual donations by the end of the year.
We are certain this is one of many requests you’re getting today, and we know there are many vital missions to support. It is, however, our hope that you believe, like us, that climate change is quite possibly the greatest issue facing our planet today. A donation today helps us combat the climate crisis through advocacy for policy and legislation that will accelerate the clean energy revolution.
Despite the headwinds against us, the renewable energy industry isn’t going anywhere. Nor are we! We’re committed to helping solar installers, utility-scale energy developers, and everyone in between put the pedal to the metal to reach our clean energy goals. With that said, we need support from individuals like yourself to keep RENEW going strong.
With your help, we’ve been able to develop our Net-Zero Roadmap, push renewables-friendly updates to housing codes, draft and support net metering legislation, and help gigawatts of clean energy projects secure state approval. Despite all we’ve achieved together, there’s so much more to be done. We hope you’ll stick with us and see this clean energy revolution through to the end.
In the Wisconsin Senate’s last floor session of 2025, lawmakers debated and voted on bills that appear destined for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ veto pen.
One of the bills, which passed the Republican-led Assembly in September and is on its way to Evers’ desk, would prohibit public funds from being used to provide health care to undocumented immigrants. Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, the bill’s Senate author, argued it would protect Wisconsin taxpayers, citing Democratic states like Illinois where enrollment and costs of a health care program for noncitizens far exceeded initial estimates.
But several Senate Democrats lambasted the proposal as a “heartless” attempt by GOP lawmakers to gain political points with their base with 2026 elections around the corner. Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, hinted at its likely future in the governor’s office.
“It’s going to be vetoed,” Carpenter said.
Plenty of bills in the nearly eight years of Wisconsin’s split government have passed through the Republican-controlled Assembly and Senate before receiving a veto from the governor. Evers vetoed a record 126 bills during the 2021-22 legislative session ahead of his reelection campaign and 72 bills during the 2023-24 session. The governor has vetoed 15 bills so far in 2025, not including partial vetoes in the state budget, according to a Wisconsin Watch review of veto messages. The number is certain to rise, though whether it will approach the record is far from clear.
A few Senate Democrats seeking higher office in 2026 said some recent legislation that is unlikely to make it past Evers, from a repeal of the creative veto that raises school revenue limits for the next 400 years to a bill exempting certain procedures from the definition of abortion, looks like political messaging opportunities to ding Democrats. They anticipate more of those proposals to come up next year.
“For the last eight years we’ve had divided government, but we’ve had a heavily gerrymandered Legislature,” said Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, who is among at least seven candidates running for governor in 2026 and voted against those bills on the floor. “For Republicans in the Legislature, there has been no cost and everything to gain from pursuing the most radical and extreme proposals in their party.”
Evers is not seeking a third term as governor in 2026 and is entering the final year of his current term, which no longer makes him vulnerable to political fallout from vetoing bills. But legislative Democrats, particularly in the Senate where the party hopes to win the majority in 2026, can be forced into difficult decisions in their chambers where Republicans control which bills get votes on the Senate and Assembly floors.
“It was all this political gamesmanship of trying to get points towards their own base and/or put me or others, not just me, into a position to have to make that tough vote,” said Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, of the bill banning public dollars spent on health care for undocumented immigrants. Smith, who is seeking reelection in his western Wisconsin district next year, holds the main Senate seat Republicans are targeting in 2026. He voted against the bill.
Smith said the immigration bill saw “a lot of discussion” in the Senate Democratic Caucus ahead of the floor session on Nov. 18, particularly on where Smith would vote given the attention on his seat. The bill passed the chamber on a vote of 21-12 with Democratic support from Sen. Sarah Keyeski, D-Lodi; Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska; and Sen. Jamie Wall, D-Green Bay, who are not up for reelection next year but represent more conservative parts of the state.
“Many people thought the easy vote would be to just vote with the Republicans because it’s not going to be signed,” Smith said. “But I’ve still got to go back and explain it to my voters.”
A spokesperson for Majority Leader Sen. Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about how Senate Republicans consider what bills advance to the Senate floor. Neither did a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.
In a social media post after the Senate session, Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, listed “all the things WI Senate Democrats voted against,” which included “prohibiting illegal aliens from getting taxpayer-funded healthcare.”
Scott Kelly, Wanggaard’s chief of staff, said a potential veto or putting Democrats on the record on certain issues largely doesn’t influence the legislation their office pursues.
“Our job is to pass bills that we think are good ideas that should be law,” Kelly said. “Whether other people support or veto them is not my issue. The fact that Democrats think this is a political ‘gotcha,’ well, that just shows they know it’s an idea that the public supports.”
Not all of the bills on the Senate floor on Nov. 18 seemed aimed at election messaging. The chamber unanimously approved a bill to extend tax credits for businesses that hire a third party to build workforce housing or establish a child care program. In October, senators voted 32-1 to pass a bipartisan bill requiring insurance companies to cover cancer screenings for women with dense breast tissue who are at an increased risk of breast cancer. The Republican-authored bill has yet to move in the Assembly despite bipartisan support from lawmakers there as well.
Assembly Democrats last week criticized Vos and Assembly Majority Leader Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth, for blocking a vote on Senate Bill 23, a bipartisan bill to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage to new Wisconsin moms. Assembly Minority Leader Rep. Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, in a press conference at the Capitol called the move “pathetic.”
But health care is a top issue for Democratic voters and less so for Republicans, according to the Marquette University Law School Poll conducted in October. Illegal immigration and border security are the top issue for Republican voters in Wisconsin. About 75% of GOP voters said they were “very concerned” about the issue heading into 2026, though only 16% of Democrats and 31% of immigrants said the same.
Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center and political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said political messaging votes can have impacts on elections, especially in what will be some of the close Senate races in 2026.
“It’s kind of a messaging opportunity, not really a policymaking opportunity. It’s also maybe a way for Republicans to let off some steam,” Burden said. “They have divisions within their own caucuses. They have disagreements between the Republicans in the Assembly, Republicans in the Senate. They can never seem to get on the same page with a lot of these things, and there are often a few members who are holding up bills. So, when they can find agreement and push something through in both chambers and get near unanimous support from their caucuses, that’s a victory in itself and maybe helps build some morale or solidarity within the party.”
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