A vast majority of the roughly 1,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in Wisconsin between January and October of last year had prior criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. But arrests in Wisconsin of immigrants with no criminal history were ticking upward. Roughly 17% had no prior criminal convictions or pending charges. Roughly half of those without criminal histories were arrested at DHS’ downtown Milwaukee office, often while checking in on the status of their immigration cases.
DHS’s claims about arrestees’ criminal histories do not always match court records. Among the two dozen immigrants arrested in Manitowoc last October — the largest ICE raid in Wisconsin since Trump took office — was Abraham Maldonado Almanza, a dairy worker from Mexico. DHS claimed he had a prior conviction for identity theft, but court records in Wisconsin and Iowa, where Maldonado Almanza lived before moving to Manitowoc, show nothing to corroborate the claim. DHS also claimed that the Manitowoc operation netted a Honduran national charged with sexual assault of a child, but that man, Hilario Moreno Portillo, had been in ICE custody for months at the time of the Manitowoc arrests, court records showed.
Even without enforcement surges like those in Illinois and Minnesota, the Trump administration’s immigration policy overhauls are reshaping Wisconsin. We recently documented the consequences for two immigrant workers in key sectors of the state’s economy: a Mexican engineer at an aluminum foundry in Manitowoc and a Nicaraguan herdsman who lacks legal status while working on a dairy farm near Madison. Their employers, who rely on immigrant labor to expand or maintain their operations, are also feeling the pinch, as will consumers if farmers’ and manufacturers’ hiring woes drive up prices.
You can find more of our immigration coverage here.
As we continue reporting on the White House’s immigration crackdown, we want to hear from you. What questions would you like us to answer? What are we missing? Where should we look next?
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Officials from the town of Carlton and Cloverleaf Infrastructure told Wisconsin Watch the company is no longer pursuing a data center project near the Kewaunee Power Station.
The resolution happened in late 2025.
Cloverleaf Infrastructure is still interested in building a data center in northeast Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, plans for EnergySolutions to build a new plant at the Kewaunee Power Station are slowly moving forward. The company submitted files to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week.
Leaders of data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure have decided against pursuing land to build a data center in the town of Carlton in Kewaunee County after local residents opposed the idea.
The company scrapped its plans in the northeast Wisconsin farming community in late 2025, Cloverleaf and town of Carlton officials confirmed last week.
“The town chairperson said, ‘I don’t support data centers. I don’t think this is a good fit,’” Cloverleaf’s Chief Development Officer Aaron Bilyeu said. “We shook hands and said ‘thank you.’”
Cloverleaf’s decision to back off makes Carlton one of the latest towns to fend off companies looking for the space to erect often-massive data warehouses powering artificial intelligence, social media and cloud computing.
Wisconsin Watch reported in October that some Carlton residents were nervous about selling local farmland to build a data center after town officials said interested developers reached out to them.
Those fears were stoked by news that Carlton’s shuttered nuclear power plant may see new life. The plant’s owner is seeking government approval for a new nuclear power station at the site because it believes data centers and artificial intelligence will increase the state’s energy demand.
“I’m against big business,” said town Chairman David Hardtke, who has pushed back against the idea for months. “People in the town of Carlton do not want the AI (data) center.”
Similar dilemmas have played out in other rural Wisconsin communities, as residents try to block tech giants from settling in their towns.
In recent weeks, Cloverleaf offered to buy property for a data center in Greenleaf, a village in Brown County. The move drew outrage from community members, leading Cloverleaf officials to ax the proposal last week.
The decision in Carlton was a much quieter conclusion for residents of a county where cattle outnumber people by nearly 5 to 1. Some community members told Wisconsin Watch they were nervous about what losing more farmland would mean for local families and business owners.
“Once they take land away, you know, it’ll never come back,” Chris Kohnle, president of the local Tisch Mills Farm Center, told Wisconsin Watch in September.
David Hardtke, town of Carlton chairman and third-generation farmer, poses for a portrait next to one of his many vintage tractors on Sept. 16, 2025, in Kewaunee, Wis. Hardtke confirmed that Cloverleaf Infrastructure is no longer looking to build a data center in the town. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Others were less concerned, telling Wisconsin Watch that Kewaunee County has stagnated since the nuclear plant shuttered. They shared hopes that investment from big business could create more economic activity, well-paying local jobs and a reason for young people to stay in the area.
“If you bring in an employer like that who is paying, you’re going to see development. You’re going to see new homes being built, and more businesses move in,” Kewaunee County resident Dan Giannotti said in August. “Because right now we’re just stagnant … nothing’s happening to speak of.”
Despite striking out in Carlton and Greenleaf, Bilyeu said Cloverleaf is still looking for a data center site in northeast Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is attractive to developers because of the tax incentives it offers and its cool climate. Data centers need cooling methods to prevent overheating — making Carlton’s proximity to a massive water source particularly attractive.
“We’re not the only ones looking for data center sites in the area,” Bilyeu said. “We’re just the only ones that are forthright, and we’ll actually talk to people and identify ourselves and let people know what we’re doing and what we’re interested in.”
Carlton still remains on the precipice of much potential change, as the Kewaunee Power Station project inches forward.
Last week, plant owner EnergySolutions submitted files to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that company spokespeople describe as “an important next step” in getting government approval to bring nuclear power back to the site. The permitting process is lengthy, and even if everything goes smoothly, they don’t expect construction would begin until the early 2030s.
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Skilled immigrant workers like Ricardo Manriquez and dairy herdsman Alex are integral to Wisconsin’s foundries and farms but face growing uncertainty under shifting federal immigration rules.
Manriquez, on a temporary TN visa, helps design complex metal castings in Manitowoc but has a tenuous path to permanent residency as visa policies and fees change.
On a dairy near Madison, Alex, who lacks legal status, struggles to recruit and retain workers as immigration enforcement tightens and labor pipelines dry up.
Wisconsin employers in manufacturing and agriculture say the changing immigration landscape is shrinking labor pools, complicating hiring and long-term workforce planning.
Ricardo Manriquez starts his shift at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry headquarters in Manitowoc long before the sun rises. More than 100 miles away, on a dairy farm near Madison, a herdsman named Alex is heading out to the barn with his crew to milk a few hundred cows.
Both are middle-aged fathers with neat haircuts and sensible work boots. Both studied at technical schools and have years of hands-on experience in their fields. Both are immigrants from Latin America who settled in Wisconsin over the past two decades. The Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement and overhaul visa rules leave both men and their employers in difficult positions.
The recruitment pathway that brought Manriquez, an engineer from Mexico with a temporary work visa, to Wisconsin remains mostly untouched by the Trump administration’s overhaul of federal immigration policy, but his prospects of securing permanent residency in the foreseeable future have faded. Alex, an undocumented immigrant from Nicaragua, is in a more precarious position. His small team is poised to shrink, and finding new hires is more difficult than ever.
At least one in 20 Wisconsin workers is a noncitizen, and many Wisconsin employers have watched recent federal immigration policy changes sever, clog or redirect their hiring pipelines. Those employers — in manufacturing, dairy and innumerable other segments of Wisconsin’s economy — are finding their bearings in the new policy landscape, and more shake-ups or reversals may lie ahead.
Ricardo Manriquez, Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry project manager, is shown at the company’s main plant in Manitowoc, Wis., Dec. 5, 2025. (Paul Kiefer / Wisconsin Watch)
The Tijuana engineer pipeline
Manriquez’s office sits near a door to the Manitowoc plant’s labyrinthine production floor, where the motion alarms on forklifts periodically cut through the hum of heavy machinery and a Nirvana album blasting from a worker’s portable speaker.
“All my life I was involved with grease and cars and steel,” Manriquez said. His father was a mechanic, he said, and his hometown, Tijuana, is a manufacturing powerhouse. Relatively low labor costs have drawn hundreds of manufacturers to cities near Mexico’s northern border, which now serve as a hub for the North American electronics, automotive parts, aerospace and medical device industries.
With an electro-mechanical engineering degree from a local technical university in hand, Manriquez found work at Prime Wheel, an American automotive parts company with a corporate office and fabrication facilities in one of Tijuana’s factory districts. He spent nearly a decade there, working long shifts with tedious commutes while attempting to raise a family. “In Mexico, we work 48 to 60 or even 80 hours a week without extra pay,” he said. “You get paid $50 to $60 a day … If you have a family, it really doesn’t help. You need to do a side job.”
Though his supervisor promoted him from designer to project engineer, Manriquez saw few opportunities to climb higher at Prime Wheel’s Tijuana plant. Prime Wheel did not respond to a request for comment.
An employee works at his desk at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The TN visa program was Manriquez’s ticket to cross the border. A product of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the TN visa provides a three-year work authorization to Mexican and Canadian nationals with job offers for a limited number of high-skilled professions.
Compared with other types of employment-based visas, like the H-1B favored in the tech and health care industries, the TN visa offers a straighter path to the U.S. for skilled Mexican workers. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved nearly 16,000 TN visas for Mexican nationals in 2024, compared to just under 2,000 H-1B visas for Mexican nationals. Only 42 Canadians received TN visas that year.
Manriquez learned about an opening in Manitowoc through word of mouth, and Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry was already primed to use the TN visa program to recruit skilled engineers.
When Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry purchased a metal castings manufacturer in New Hampton, Iowa, in 2024, the company absorbed the plant’s team, including four TN visa holders. It has retained those workers and hired three more since the acquisition, including Manriquez, who joined the company last February. Most came from Tijuana’s metals industry.
The company is trying to build a domestic pipeline. It has a relationship with Wisconsin’s technical college system, which trains engineers for a range of manufacturing roles, including on quality control teams like Manriquez’s. “It’s really hard to say if (those) skill needs are growing or shrinking,” said Ian Cameron, dean of Northcentral Technical College’s School of Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing, noting that day-to-day responsibilities and compensation for engineers with similar titles vary between companies.
But attracting and retaining talent for plants in small Midwestern towns is a constant challenge, said Michelle Szymik, the company’s human resources director. New Hampton, population 3,500, sits in a quiet stretch of northeast Iowa, and skilled engineers with U.S. citizenship tend to favor less-isolated workplaces.
Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry’s product line compounds its recruiting challenges. The foundry produces intricately detailed castings for Dodge sports cars and SpaceX satellites, among other clients, and few students of U.S. technical colleges have mastered the skills needed to design those castings by graduation. “It takes a long time to come up to speed on that kind of stuff,” Szymik added. “So we do internships, but at the end of the day, it’s really nice when you can find somebody who’s already got the skill set.”
An employee walks through the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Mexico’s advanced manufacturing industry provides a straightforward solution. Engineers like Manriquez come with years of experience and, Szymik said, are more willing to settle in small towns to “take care of their family and build a career.” Manriquez can earn more in two hours than he did in a day in Tijuana, and he no longer spends hours of his day trapped in gridlock.
The visa comes with trade-offs. Manriquez’s wife and children remain in Mexico, and while they are eligible to join him in Manitowoc as dependents, his wife would not receive work authorization.
The TN visa is not a path to permanent residency, and Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry would eventually need to sponsor Manriquez for another employment-based visa before helping him secure a green card and a long-term career with the company.
One of the more common paths would involve securing Manriquez an H-1B visa, which would allow him to simultaneously hold a “nonimmigrant” visa and apply for a green card. But the company would first need to prove it can’t find an equally qualified U.S. citizen for the job. If it finds a qualified candidate, Manriquez would be out of a job and on his way back to Tijuana.
The company spent nearly $12,000 to transition another employee from a TN to an H-1B visa, most of which went to legal fees. The Trump administration raised that hurdle even higher last year, introducing a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications — a price tag few employers can afford, including Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry.
Wisconsin’s manufacturing sector could bear the brunt of the new H-1B fees. Of the more than 1,600 workers employed in Wisconsin who received H-1B visas or renewed their visas last year, roughly a quarter worked in manufacturing. No other sector in the state sponsored more H-1B visas in 2025.
Manriquez can still renew his TN visa, but the breakneck pace of the Trump administration’s policy changes gives him reason to wonder whether that will remain true. “Suddenly, one day to another, (things) probably can change,” he said.
Completed aluminum disks lie in a pile at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wanted: ‘a good future for our children’
On a chilly morning in early December, Alex wore only a long-sleeve thermal shirt and a vest as he checked on the herd.
“We deal with the cold and the heat. We’re out there in all of that,” Alex told Wisconsin Watch in Spanish. “And it doesn’t matter to us because what we want is to work. What we want is to build a good future for our children.”
Alex is at ease around the animals. He studied agricultural sciences at a technical high school, and he was partway through a veterinary degree at a university in Managua 15 years ago when he headed north from Nicaragua to the U.S. He feared that the country’s security apparatus would some day come for him — a vocal opponent of authoritarian President Daniel Ortega.
He eventually approached an attorney about obtaining legal status, only to learn he had missed the eligibility window, which ended a year after his arrival. Because he lacks legal status, Wisconsin Watch has agreed to use only his first name.
“After 15 years in this country that respects your rights as a person, as a worker,” he said, going back to Nicaragua feels unthinkable. His brother, who spent four years working in Wisconsin, recently returned to care for his son, reporting back that allegiance to the ruling party is now required to access government services.
Alex has worked in dairies and manufacturing since arriving in Wisconsin, settling down at his current workplace in south-central Wisconsin to join his partner, with whom he has U.S.-born children. To minimize their risk of crossing paths with immigration enforcement, Alex’s family has cut back on all but the most basic errands. “We no longer think, ‘Oh, it’s a summer weekend. Let’s go to the mall. Let’s take the kids to an amusement park,’” he said. “We’ve reduced it to the minimum: if we need to go to a clinic or a hospital for a medical appointment, to school, to buy food.”
Alongside his daily duties leading a crew of fellow immigrant workers — all from Nicaragua — Alex serves as the farm’s recruiter. He’s held the role for the past five years, giving him a front-row view of the federal immigration crackdown’s impact on hiring.
“It’s been eight months since the last person came (to ask for work),” he said. “Before, people came here constantly.”
A worker is shown cleaning the milking barn at a farm in Wisconsin on June 11, 2024. (Ben Brewer for Wisconsin Watch)
With two members of his small crew preparing to leave the U.S., Alex now relies on his extensive network of former colleagues and acquaintances across Wisconsin to drum up replacement candidates. He’s competing with manufacturers who can offer overtime, but the farm’s isolation is now a selling point.
“Right now, security is a consideration. A farm is more separate, less involved, fewer moving people and cars,” he said. “The working conditions will be a little harder, but there’s more security.”
The farm’s owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid drawing the attention of immigration enforcement officials, added that skilled dairy workers can now be more selective when searching for new jobs. “The (labor) pool is clearly getting smaller,” he said. “If you don’t have a number of things — a nice, comfortable, attractive facility, one that people want to work in, if you don’t have a good company culture, and if you can’t provide housing, you’ll have a hard time hiring and retaining people.”
Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Van Ruden expects the labor drought to inflate farm wages. “You’re going to have to pay more to keep help,” he said, “which means paying someone $25 an hour versus $15.” Not all farms will be able to afford the new labor market, he added.
Alex’s employer says he has looked into the H-2A program, which provides temporary visas for hundreds of thousands of seasonal farmworkers each year, as a backup if his current crew shrinks. At least 16% of the agricultural employers that hired through the H-2A program last year own dairy herds, up from just 6% in 2020, but most sought agricultural equipment operators in seasonal job listings submitted to the U.S. Department of Labor. But the H-2A program does not provide visas for year-round roles like milking cows — a core responsibility of Alex and his crew. With that source of labor off the table, the farm’s recruitment options are slim.
While some farmers are exploring reducing labor needs through automation and rotary milking parlors, akin to a lazy Susan for cows, those options don’t eliminate the need for workers entirely.
While automation may reduce the need for some types of labor on dairy farms, some workers may simply shift to other tasks, said Hernando Duarte, a farm labor management outreach specialist with UW-Madison.
“Maybe you can need less people in the parlor,” he said, “but who is going to feed the calves? All the calves have to be fed two or three times a day. I’ve also seen more people moving more into tractors and feed work.” Rotary milking parlors, he added, also require trained staff to operate and clean.
Many workers who will learn to operate the automated milking equipment, Duarte added, will likely come from the same labor pool that currently keeps many Wisconsin dairies afloat: immigrants. But Wisconsin’s technical colleges are also preparing dairy science students for the industry’s technological frontier. Greg Cisewski, dean of Northcentral Technical College’s School of Agricultural Sciences, Utilities and Transportation, said several graduates have gone on to manage automated milking operations.
Meanwhile, Alex is preparing for the worst. He and his partner have arranged to temporarily transfer custody of their children to a U.S. citizen if they are arrested or deported, and he has been sending money back to Nicaragua for years to build a backup nest egg.
When Alex came to the U.S., he left behind a 1-year-old son. He has kept in touch, and his now-teenage son recently shared his plans to study veterinary medicine. “The degree I couldn’t finish is the degree he’s going to study,” he said.
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In a flurry of activity at the Capitol last week, Wisconsin lawmakers held more than 30 public meetings and two Assembly floor sessions, advancing bills on issues from eliminating taxes on tips and overtime to placing regulations on data centers.
For the first time in two decades, none of the actions were live-streamed, video-recorded or archived for those who sought to follow the legislative process outside of the building in Madison.
It’s a stark change at the Capitol where, since 2007, lawmakers, lobbyists, journalists and the public could rely on WisconsinEye — the nonpartisan public affairs network that functions sort of like Wisconsin’s version of C-SPAN — to record and archive legislative committees, floor sessions, press conferences and other political events around the state.
After more than 18 years, WisconsinEye went offline in mid-December after it did not raise enough funds to operate in 2026. The organization launched a GoFundMe on Jan. 12 to raise $250,000 to get back online, equal to about three months of its operating budget. About $13,000 was raised as of Friday afternoon.
“Without this funding, WisconsinEye could lose up to four highly skilled staff members,” the online fundraiser states. “Thus putting the network at considerable risk of failure.”
This WisconsinEye screenshot shows Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, during a May 14, 2024, floor debate. (WisconsinEye)
While the gap in live video coverage continues in Wisconsin, this is not an issue for four of Wisconsin’s neighboring states where the legislatures provide recordings rather than rely on a separate entity. Legislative chambers in Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan provide video streams and recordings of floor sessions and committee meetings, Wisconsin Watch found.
The Illinois Channel, a public affairs network founded in 2003, provides programming on state government, but the network no longer has cameras in the legislative chambers after the Illinois General Assembly began providing video and audio feeds in the House and Senate.
The approach varies around the country. In 2022, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported half of the states, including Wisconsin, televised broadcasts of the legislature. Some of the entities responsible for recording the sausage-making process are connected to public broadcasting stations, and others are tied to state governments. The Connecticut Network, for example, is a partnership between a nonprofit and the state legislature, but is solely funded by the Connecticut General Assembly. WisconsinEye has historically been privately funded, except for two one-time grants from the state prior to 2023.
WisconsinEye’s creation as a separate network from state government stemmed from a 1995 legislative study committee that recommended televised coverage of the Legislature be done by an organization independent of state funding, said WisconsinEye President and CEO Jon Henkes.
“Based on the recommendation of the study committee itself and the donor reality at that time … the cornerstone was laid as an independent, nongovernment-controlled, nongovernment-funded public affairs network,” Henkes said.
Over the last 18 years, Henkes said WisconsinEye’s reputation for independent coverage of state government assuaged concerns from donors over whether the organization could receive state support. The Legislature created a $10 million endowment for the network during the 2023-25 budget process. But those funds can only be accessed if WisconsinEye raises a private amount equal to a request it makes of the Joint Finance Committee. The 2025-27 budget provided $250,000 to WisconsinEye from that $10 million fund without any match requirement.
Since WisconsinEye’s departure from the Capitol, Republican lawmakers have also started to strictly enforce rules prohibiting people from recording and filming during committee meetings, although credentialed journalists are still able to do so. The Wisconsin Senate’s chief clerk in a memo this month said the Senate’s rules on prohibiting filming supersede the state’s open meetings law.
Rep. Jerry O’Connor, R-Fond du Lac, told the Wisconsin Examiner there are concerns about whether video filmed during committees can be filmed for political aims, particularly the political ads that will be blanketing TV and online media this upcoming fall. That wasn’t the case with WisconsinEye, which prohibited use of its videos for political or campaign purposes in its user agreement.
Democrats blamed Republicans for allowing legislative activities to continue “in darkness.”
“This is a step in the wrong direction and it erodes the public’s trust in this institution,” said Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, in a press briefing last week dismissed the idea that enforcing the rules banning recording while WisconsinEye is not operating lessens transparency at the Capitol.
“I think we have had about 48,000 bills passed before WisconsinEye went into effect, and I think the public was well served by the media reporting on them,” he said. “We’ve had literally hundreds of session days, thousands of session days, so this idea that if some activist is not allowed to record people, that that’s not transparent, we’ve got plenty of transparency. That’s why we’re here today.”
Other state legislatures
While Wisconsin’s neighboring states record legislative proceedings, each state differs on what is recorded, the resources available to provide video of the legislature and whether there are any restrictions on filming.
In Michigan, the state House and Senate separately handle video streaming for their own chamber. Videos in both chambers are prohibited from use for political purposes, according to Michigan House and Senate rules.
The Michigan Senate has a TV Department that records all Senate sessions and up to three committees at the same time, a Senate staff member told Wisconsin Watch. Video recordings from 2020 onward are posted to the Senate’s streaming website, but the chamber has an archive of offline videos dating back to 2003.
The Michigan House provides “gavel-to-gavel” coverage of session and committee proceedings, including archived videos, which can be accessed on its website and YouTube channel, according to the state’s House clerk.
The Minnesota House and Senate also individually handle video recordings of their chamber’s legislative activities through nonpartisan media departments. In the Minnesota House, the Public Information Services department controls the TV production of the chamber’s floor proceedings, committees and select press conferences. The department has 12 permanent staff and brings on 14 part-time staff members when the legislature is in session, according to the department’s executive director. Minnesota’s House and Senate media departments do not have any bans on the use of footage in campaign materials, staff said.
In Iowa, specific individuals in each chamber are in charge of the livestreams of legislative activities. All floor sessions and committees are filmed while legislative subcommittees are not, the Senate clerk’s office told Wisconsin Watch. It did not respond to questions about whether the state has limitations on how videos can be used.
But while Wisconsin’s neighboring state legislatures provide the live footage of legislative proceedings, Terry Martin, the executive director of the Illinois Channel, questioned if there could be limitations placed on a state-offered service depending on who is in power, pointing to Rod Blagojevich, the former Democratic Illinois governor who was convicted of corruption-related crimes.
“Somebody like Rod Blagojevich, if we had been funded by him, by the state, would have said, if you don’t do it my way, I’m going to cut your funding,” said Martin, who ran for Congress as a Republican in Illinois in 2022.
The Illinois Channel has not accepted funding from the state of Illinois for its operations, Martin said.
The path forward
Both Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and legislative leaders said they are open to options that can resolve the gap left by WisconsinEye.
Vos said he hopes there can be a “bipartisan answer.” Democrats and Republicans have had discussions on the topic, but there is no concrete next step yet, Neubauer said.
Evers told reporters he would not support simply giving WisconsinEye the money allocated without matching funds.
“I think there has to be some skin in the game,” Evers said.
Jon Henkes (Provided photo)
Neubauer told reporters the endowment’s $10 million matching requirement may not have been realistic for WisconsinEye.
“We would, of course, like to see more fundraising,” Neubauer said. “But I don’t think we set them up for success with the provision that was in the budget.”
Henkes said WisconsinEye is simply asking state leaders for support by providing nine months of its operating budget and then, in following years, investing the approved endowment funds and directing the earnings annually to the network. WisconsinEye would still require private support. A $10 million endowment conservatively invested can generate a half-million dollars each year. WisconsinEye’s annual budget is about $900,000.
That specific scenario is not how the language in the budget that created the WisconsinEye endowment is set up to work, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Changes to the law would likely be needed to direct the state to invest those dollars, LFB staff said.
Henkes said he hopes a decision comes soon.
“I mean, frankly, if this cannot be resolved in the next several weeks, WisconsinEye will have no choice but to fold up the tent and everybody goes home,” he said.
In two recent polls, a majority of U.S. adults said they use social media to get health information.
July 2025 by KFF, a leading health policy research nonprofit: 55% said they use social media “to find health information and advice” at least occasionally. Less than one in 10 said “most” of the information is trustworthy.
September 2024 by Healthline: 52% said they learned from social media health and wellness tools, resources, trends, or products they tried in the past year. About 77% expressed at least one negative view, such as “there is a lot of conflicting information.”
An April 2024 medical journal article said that over one-third of social media users perceived high levels of health misinformation, and two-thirds reported “high perceived discernment difficulty.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is conducting a long-term study to determine how social media affects the physical/mental health of adolescents.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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As Wisconsin’s workforce ages and universities nationwide see fewer traditional college-aged students, UWGB is trying several unorthodox efforts to attract older learners.
The university offers short-term certificates that advance workers’ job skills, ungraded courses that keep older people socially engaged and classes in local nursing homes.
Leaders hope the initiatives will keep the region’s growing retirement-age population sharp and socially engaged — and potentially in the workforce for longer — while also bolstering enrollment.
Inside University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Christie Theatre, retired judge Mark Warpinski leads a discussion about how judges decide on the sentences they impose. Roughly 50 students nod along, take notes and eagerly wave their hands in the air to debate how they’d sentence someone for a hypothetical crime.
The unusually lively audience betrays that this isn’t a typical sleepy morning lecture — most of Warpinski’s students are over the age of 50.
“We pay attention. We ask questions. We’re not sitting on our cellphones and scrolling … like I guess most college students nowadays do,” said 76-year-old student Norman Schroeder.
Classrooms full of older adults are becoming more common at UWGB.
As Wisconsin’s workforce ages and universities nationwide see fewer traditional college-aged students, UWGB is trying several unorthodox efforts to attract older learners. That includes more short-term certificates that advance workers’ job skills,ungraded courses that keep older students socially engaged and classes in local nursing homes.
University leaders hope these moves will keep the region’s growing retirement-age population sharp and socially engaged — and potentially in the workforce for longer — while also bolstering enrollment.
“We’re not just an 18-year-old campus. We’re not just a campus where you live in the dorms and have a traditional experience,” said Jessica Lambrecht, UWGB’s continuing education and workforce training executive officer. “There’s hundreds of universities you can pick from that offer that type of experience. So how are we gonna stretch and serve more?”
From left, Anita Kirschling, Theresa Reiter, Judy Rogers and Linda Chapman work on knitting projects during a class through the Lifelong Learning Institute at UWGB. They are among more than 800 members of UWGB’s Lifelong Learning Institute. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
In fall 2025, UWGB joined the Age-Friendly University Global Network, an international web of universities that focus on including all ages. The college must follow the network’s 10 principles, which include supporting those pursuing second careers; expanding online education options; and promoting collaboration between older and younger students, among other tasks. Lambrecht hopes this commitment leads more community groups to help UWGB in its pursuit of older learners.
UWGB’s focus on enrolling people outside the typical 18-to-24 age group has helped the college’s enrollment climb over the past decade, at a time when many universities are seeing the opposite trend.
University leaders hope to do even more to cater to retirees and other older adults in coming years, starting with more courses in assisted living facilities and building ways for older people to mentor younger students and workers.
Addressing Wisconsin’s aging workforce
Wisconsin’s aging population has caused ongoing trouble for its workforce.
For years, there haven’t been enough working-age people to fill the jobs left by those retiring. That trend is expected to continue into 2030.
Lambrecht said UWGB leaders are thinking about how they can “encourage and invite that pre-retirement age population to stay engaged in the workforce a little bit longer.”
They think offering more short-term certificates can help.
Perhaps more commonly offered by two-year colleges, short-term certificates show someone completed a handful of courses focused on a skill or topic. An increasing number of people in the U.S. are seeking these credentials, as they’re cheaper and less time-consuming than degrees. They’re also often marketed as a way for workers to gain knowledge that will help them advance in their career and earn more money, though studies and data have indicated a mixed payoff.
UWGB offers 20 short-term certificate options, ranging from topics such as utilizing artificial intelligence to English-to-Spanish translation.
“Your job is going to continuously change, and with the exponential growth of information, how are you going to stay relevant in the workforce?” Lambrecht said. “So that’s really where continuing professional education programs come into play. It’s giving you short-term, bite-sized programming that’s going to help you refine a skill set that you now are faced with.”
University leaders also want to create more opportunities for younger students and employees to learn from people reaching retirement age. Lambrecht said she’s thinking about how they can “marry those two audiences to be of continued value in our workforce.” For example, last summer, they debuted an “intergenerational” program aiming to connect older adults and youth through several educational workshops.
‘Learning for its own sake’
The quest for more older students isn’t just about keeping them working. It also helps keep the region’s aging population mentally sharp and socially engaged.
UWGB’s Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) is geared toward older adults who want to “enjoy learning for its own sake.” There are no tests, no grades and no prerequisites. The volunteer-led club offers between 150 and 250 courses each semester — the most popular including history, film and documentary classes, guest lectures and tours around the region.
“When I retired, I realized I’ve got to keep doing things. You can’t just sit in the chair,” said Gary Lewins, a 10-year LLI student. Last semester, he took a class that taught him how to digitize all of his old photo albums.
Anita Kirschling works on her knitting project during a Lifelong Learning Institute course at UWGB. LLI offers 150 to 250 courses each semester. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
Norman Schroeder began taking LLI classes in 2018. The retired family doctor said it was good for more than just learning — he quickly made several friends. Today he helms LLI’s Board of Directors and tries to get more people to join.
“LLI is not only just the cognitive stimulation, the brain stimulation of the classes and learning — it’s also the social engagement,” Schroeder said. “Those are important elements for good health. Particularly in older patients, there’s a high incidence of depression, and some of that comes from social isolation … I kind of promote LLI as good for your health.”
The institute has over 800 members, who pay $150 for a year of access to classes. University professors often volunteer to teach classes related to their expertise, happy to teach to a highly engaged audience, Schroeder said.
In early 2025, the Rennes Group, which operates assisted living facilities in northern Wisconsin, gave a $300,000 grant to the institute. UWGB has used the money to host classes at Rennes’ nursing homes, upgrade technology to livestream classes to residents living in them and take residents on outings, such as a tour of the Green Bay Correctional Institution.
“Just because you live in an environment that provides maybe some extra help, doesn’t mean … you shouldn’t have access to things like lifelong learning,” Rennes Group President Nicole Schingick said.
Enrolling ‘the bookends’
UWGB’s focus on older learners comes as the so-called traditional college student, aged 18 to 24 years old, makes up a smaller share of enrollment nationwide.
In September, Chancellor Michael Alexander sent a letter to faculty and staff outlining how the university must “reinvent” to topple trends like these. To do so, he wrote, UWGB leaders must recognize “every person is a potential student over their lifetime, not just at 18 with stellar high school academic credentials.”
In their quest to grow enrollment, college leaders have trained their focus on not just older learners, but younger ones, too.
“(We’re) trying to think about the bookends of the population, knowing that the 18- to 24-year-old is a shrinking demographic,” Lambrecht said. “If we’re going to thrive as a university, we have to think outside the box.”
In 2020, for example, the college launched a program for high schoolers to complete associate degrees through the university for free. High schoolers have comprised a growing share of the university’s student population over the years, from 16% in fall 2018 to more than a third of enrollment today.
Anita Kirschling, left, and Theresa Reiter work on knitting projects during a Lifelong Learning Institute class at UWGB. University officials want to do more to reach older adults in the coming years, particularly those who can’t come to campus. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
In 2024, 12% of UWGB’s students were over the age of 30, though that figure only includes students who are taking classes for credit and does not include students like those involved in the Lifelong Learning Institute.
These approaches have helped UWGB’s total enrollment grow over 3,300 students in the last decade, while nearly every other UW school has seen a net decrease over the same time frame.
It’s common to see people of all ages on the Green Bay campus. In the summer, UWGB rents out its empty dorms as “snowbird housing” to older adults. But college leaders want to do even more in coming years to reach older people — particularly those who can’t come to campus.
“The reality is, some of our members have mobility issues,” Schroeder said. “When you’re an 18- to 20-year-old college student, walking any distance is not a big deal. But if you’re on the campus at UWGB, sometimes it’s a long walk from the parking lot to get into the classrooms.”
UWGB leaders hope to offer more virtual classes for older students who are home-bound or have physical limitations. To assist those with hearing loss, they want to add “hearing loops” to classrooms, which transmit sound from a microphone directly into a hearing aid. Eventually, they want Rennes residents to have access to the full catalog of lifelong learning classes virtually, in real time, Schingick said.
“That would really be able to open the doors globally, if you will, to all of our residents and all of our communities, no matter where they are in the state,” Schingick said.
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A 422,000-square-foot Art Deco building overlooking Lake Monona in Madison was the home of state employees for nearly 100 years. It most recently served as the offices of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
Today large “For Sale” signs bookend the historic structure, which sits vacant just a few blocks from the Capitol. A brochure for the property describes redevelopment opportunities such as a boutique hotel or mixed-use space. It also notes its proximity to a potential future commuter rail station in another state-owned building occupied by the Department of Administration.
The sale of the building, announced in December, is merely one piece of a multiyear initiative of Gov. Tony Evers’ administration known as Vision 2030. The plan seeks to make state government smaller and save taxpayers money through “rightsizing” underused office space and supporting hybrid work to grow the number of state workers across the state, according to the Department of Administration.
Since its launch in 2021, state agencies have sold millions of dollars worth of buildings and consolidated more than 589,000 square feet of office space, nearly 10% of the state’s total building footprint, according to DOA reports. The funds from building sales are used to cover outstanding state debts and then transferred to the state’s general fund.
“I see this really as a win-win both for state workers and for taxpayers,” DOA Secretary Kathy Blumenfeld said in an interview with Wisconsin Watch. “One of the things that we’re looking at is modernization and how can we be more efficient and be good fiscal stewards for the state.”
Vision 2030 fits with a long-standing desire by Wisconsin’s leaders of both parties to reduce the physical footprint of state agencies and create a presence outside of Madison. Former Gov. Scott Walker also sought to move state divisions and to seek efficiencies for taxpayers by reducing private leases. Walker’s administration oversaw the construction of a new state office building that opened in Madison in 2018 and is home to eight state agencies today.
These ideas on building a smaller, modernized state government are likely to continue when Evers leaves office next year. Former Evers Cabinet member Joel Brennan, who led DOA when it launched Vision 2030 in 2021, is one of at least eight Democrats running for governor this year.
Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, a Republican candidate for governor running against U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, announced in December a “Shrink Madison” plan to require state employees to return to in-person work, sell state office buildings in Madison and eventually move key agencies to different regions across the state. His plan specifically mentions continuing Evers’ Vision 2030 efforts.
But he also goes further to move agencies out of liberal Dane County and into more conservative parts of the state — a potential source of political patronage. Schoemann proposes moving the Department of Veterans Affairs to La Crosse, the Department of Natural Resources to Wausau, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to Stevens Point, the Department of Financial Institutions to Green Bay, the Department of Tourism to Rhinelander and the departments of Children and Families and Workforce Development to the Kenosha/Racine area.
Those moves would take years, but Schoemann in an interview said he sees it as a way to improve the relationships between state government and its citizens.
“I think this is about people, first, affordability and accountability and changing the culture of state government, which to me, ultimately, is just entirely too focused on itself … and getting it back focused on the people,” Schoemann said.
Why Vision 2030?
The Evers administration’s plan grew out of the pandemic when conditions required remote work, deferred maintenance costs for state buildings kept rising, and there was a growing need for workers to fill state jobs — all colliding at the same time.
“All these things were swirling at one time, and we launched a study in 2021 trying to get our arms around that,” Blumenfeld said.
Hybrid work opportunities meant state agencies took up less space and could hire workers outside of Madison and Milwaukee, which Blumenfeld refers to as the “Hire Anywhere in Wisconsin” initiative. Remote work also meant the state could get rid of underused office space through consolidation or sales, she said. In Milwaukee, the state sold a former Department of Natural Resources headquarters in 2022 and purchased 2.69 acres for a new office building. But as of last year it planned to work with a private developer to create a multitenant public-private space instead.
Expected moves in Madison this year include the sale of the former human services building along Lake Monona where offers are due in March. Other expected moves in 2026 include the spring listing of two adjacent general executive offices in downtown Madison, the brutalist GEF 2 and GEF 3 buildings, at a combined total of 391,000 square feet, Blumenfeld said.
The historic Art Deco state government office building at 1 W. Wilson Street in Madison, Wis., seen Jan. 6, 2026, was the home of state employees for nearly 100 years. It most recently served as the offices of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. (Brittany Carloni / Wisconsin Watch)
Blumenfeld said DOA has seen limited opposition to building sales and agency moves to reduce office space, but the Republican-led Legislature has pushed back on remote work following the pandemic. Lawmakers have argued that in-person work ensures more accountability for state employees. Evers in October vetoed a Republican bill that would have required state employees to “perform assigned work duties in physical office space for at least 80 percent” of their work time every month.
“The important progress my administration has made on our Vision 2030 goals means that it would not be possible to return to largely in-office-only work arrangements without leasing more space,” Evers wrote in his veto message. “Or having to re-open buildings that are slated for closure and sale — both of which will cost taxpayers more money.”
Blumenfeld said she can’t predict what the next governor will do when it comes to government efficiency, but changes in the state’s workforce needs and updates to work spaces are unlikely to slow down.
“Our hope is that we’ve laid a really solid foundation for utilizing space efficiently, effectively, for hiring the best talent, for bringing in people from all over the state and bringing family-sustaining jobs to all 72 counties,” Blumenfeld said.
Wisconsin’s next governor
Wisconsin voters will choose the next governor later this year, with primary contests in August and the general election in November.
Other than Schoemann’s plan, gubernatorial campaigns that responded to questions from Wisconsin Watch shared different perspectives on how they would address state government’s size and efficiency.
Tiffany, the Northwoods congressman and Schoemann’s primary opponent, said he supported then-Gov. Walker’s move of the DNR’s forestry division to Rhinelander when he served in the Legislature, but his goal is focused on rooting out “waste, fraud and duplication” in state government.
“I’ve supported changes like that when they make sense, but my focus is making government smaller, more accountable, and more efficient, not just rearranging the furniture,” Tiffany said.
Among Democratic candidates, plans for state government include making sure state agencies are effectively helping Wisconsinites and that citizens can access resources.
“Mandela Barnes’ priority as Governor is to deliver for Wisconsin families and lower costs — which includes ensuring state agencies are serving communities effectively, are spending taxpayer dollars efficiently, and that Wisconsinites in every corner of the state can access the services they rely on,” Cole Wozniak, a spokesperson for the Barnes campaign, said in a statement.
Brennan, who helped develop Vision 2030, in a statement said state government should continue to work for and be led by Wisconsinites.
“Any conversation about the future footprint of state government should start with access, effectiveness, and responsible use of taxpayer dollars,” Brennan said.
Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said the state should invest in modernizing its technology so agencies can deliver better services to citizens across the state. Republicans in the Legislature have pursued a “fiscally irresponsible starvation of government for decades,” she said.
“There’s a huge opportunity to make state government work better and deliver better outcomes for people at lower cost to taxpayers,” Roys said. “But it does take that upfront investment and political capital, frankly, to say it’s actually worth spending a little money to save bigger in the long run.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin agencies are navigating funding losses and layoffs after the Trump administration halted most refugee admissions. Some are resettling South Africans under a controversial Trump program, out of principle and to preserve a system they say will be needed again.
Treading on Wisconsin’s frozen lakes has gotten more dangerous, creating cost for taxpayers and business owners and calling into question the future of an important state pastime.
Iowa (14.5%), Illinois (22.7%) and Michigan (14.6%) were net-exporters.
Wisconsin imported more in previous years:
2023: 14.8%
2022: 18.4%
2021: 14%
2020: 15.7%
About 10% of U.S. electricity generation is traded across state lines.
Wisconsin participates in a grid run by Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which aims to ensure power flows across 15 central U.S. states.
Electricity rates in Wisconsin, which produces most electricity from coal and natural gas, have exceeded regional averages annually for 20 years.
Wisconsin utility ratepayers owe nearly $1 billion on coal-powered plants that have been or soon will be shut down, Wisconsin Watch recently reported.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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A federal pause on most refugee admissions has forced Wisconsin resettlement agencies to lay off staff and shut down some programs. The slowdown follows a historically busy four-year stretch in which about 5,000 refugees arrived in the state.
Providers warn that if Wisconsin’s resettlement infrastructure withers, the state could be unprepared for a future surge of refugees.
The Trump administration is prioritizing South Africans — primarily Afrikaners, a white minority — among the limited refugee admissions it plans to allow.
Eleven South African refugees arrived in Wisconsin in September, followed by another 32 later in 2025 — the only refugees resettled in the state this year.
Zabi Sahibzada’s team of refugee resettlement caseworkers has shrunk. The Trump administration’s pause on refugee admissions in January 2025 dealt a blow to Sahibzada’s employer, Jewish Social Services of Madison, which previously counted on federal funding tied to each new refugee arrival to support its resettlement program.
A few new arrivals trickled in over the following months, entering the U.S. with special immigrant visas available to Afghan and Iraqi nationals who worked with the U.S. government or its international partners. The same visa enabled Sahibzada, a former USAID employee from Afghanistan, to reach the U.S. in 2022.
But even those admissions have now halted. The State Department in November stopped issuing any visas to Afghan nationals after authorities identified the man who shot two West Virginia National Guard members near the White House as an Afghan special immigrant visa holder.
Though the Trump administration says it will permit up to 7,500 refugees to resettle in the U.S. this fiscal year, it plans to prioritize South Africans – primarily Afrikaners, a white minority descended largely from Dutch, French and German settlers.
Eleven South African refugees arrived in Wisconsin in September, followed by another 32 in late 2025. They were the only refugees resettled in the state since last January, U.S. State Department records show.
The dramatic slowdown leaves agencies searching for ways to maintain Wisconsin’s resettlement infrastructure until the refugee pipeline widens again. For some agencies, that includes resettling South African refugees, even if some remain skeptical of the Trump administration’s motives for privileging them in admissions. Jewish Social Services lacks that option: Federal officials did not include the nonprofit in the South African refugee program.
The offices of Jewish Social Services of Madison are shown in Madison, Wis., Dec. 19, 2025. The nonprofit laid off refugee resettlement staff after the Trump administration halted most refugee admissions. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Providers warn that if Wisconsin’s resettlement infrastructure – trained caseworkers, volunteers and employer partnerships — withers, the state won’t be prepared for any future surge of refugees.
Trends in refugee resettlement
The near-total shutdown of refugee admissions followed the most active period for resettlement in decades.
More than 5,000 refugees reached Wisconsin between October 2020 and September 2024 – a span in which refugee resettlement in the U.S. reached the highest annual peak since the early 1990s.
Most recent refugee arrivals came from Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Those figures do not include special immigrant visa holders, asylees or immigrants with humanitarian parole, many of whom come from the same countries as those admitted as refugees. Roughly 370 Afghans with special immigrant visas settled in Wisconsin between October 2020 and October 2025.
Refugees reach Wisconsin through a network of international, federal and state agencies, national nonprofits and state-level partners. In the process, they pass through a series of screening interviews, background checks and medical examinations.
Six organizations currently contract with Wisconsin’s Department of Children and Families to provide resettlement services, connecting new arrivals to housing, employment and English language courses. Relying on a mix of federal and state funding, they provide some services for up to five years after an arrival. The federal government ties much of its funding to the number of refugees resettled.
Resettlement agencies cut staff
Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan planned to resettle more than 400 people in fiscal year 2025. Instead, it resettled 163 people between October 2024 and January 2025, after which it received only a half-dozen new arrivals, resettlement director Omar Mohamed said. All were Afghans with special immigrant visas who arrived in Wisconsin without ties to a resettlement agency and reached out for help.
“At least 27 people were scheduled to arrive in January when the stop work order happened,” he added. President Donald Trump’s inauguration day order to suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program rendered their plane tickets useless.
The sudden shift prompted Lutheran Social Services to cut nearly a third of its resettlement program staff, Mohamed said.
Most Wisconsin refugee resettlement agencies face similar predicaments. Jewish Social Services in Madison laid off two case workers and a housing specialist. Hanan Refugee Relief Group, a relatively new nonprofit operating out of an office above a South Side Milwaukee pizzeria, cut 10 members of an already small team. World Relief Wisconsin, which resettles refugees in the Fox Valley, also laid off staff.
Tables and computers sit in a classroom that hosts English as a second language classes and other programs, Dec. 1, 2025, at Hanan Refugee Relief Group’s office in Milwaukee. The nonprofit cut 10 members of an already small team due to the Trump administration’s pause on most refugee admissions. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Green Bay, which has resettled hundreds of refugees in northeast Wisconsin in recent years, ended its resettlement program after its national affiliate, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, severed its partnerships with the federal government in April.
But Sean Gilligan, the diocese’s refugee services director, says Catholic Charities is still providing housing referrals, English classes and other basic services to refugees who already settled in greater Green Bay.
Resettlement agencies are still receiving some federal funds to support refugees who arrived within the past five years, along with state grants for educational and health programs.
That funding may temporarily help the agencies stay afloat.
Hanan Refugee Relief Group is ramping up its focus on employment training, Executive Director Sheila Badwan said. That includes offering on-the-job English language training for refugees employed at a Milwaukee Cargill meat processing plant.
But the loss of funding from new arrivals leaves Hanan and other agencies scrambling to find donors to support their work.
Sheila Badwan, executive director of Hanan Refugee Relief Group, listens to Maryam Durani, cultural program coordinator, Dec. 1, 2025, in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
“We are hoping just to keep our doors open to serve not just the ones we welcomed (recently),” said Uma Abdi, the nonprofit’s refugee program director, “but all of those refugees and immigrants that still need support.”
The International Institute of Wisconsin, an older and well-established resettlement agency, is an outlier. It’s growing as others scale back. Revenue from contracts with medical clinics and other businesses to provide translation services has allowed it to grow as others scale back.
“We can operate without any government contracts,” President and CEO Paul Trebian said.
Trump opens doors to South Africans
With the doors closed to refugees from most of the world’s conflict zones, some Wisconsin resettlement agencies are now turning their attention to South Africans.
The Trump administration launched the South African refugee admissions program through a February executive order, filling in the details after the fact. Alleging a “shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights,” the order pointed to a 2024 South African law that allows the state to seize land without compensation in limited circumstances.
The law’s supporters call it necessary to redistribute land from the country’s white minority, who own much of South Africa’s farmland, to a Black majority still recovering from decades of racial apartheid that ended in the 1990s. Trump decried the law as “racially discriminatory” and accused the South African government of “fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”
Trump’s order specifically offered refugee status to Afrikaners, but his administration has since said the resettlement program is open to members of any racial minority in South Africa, including those of English or South Asian descent, so long as they can “articulate a past personal experience of persecution or fear of future persecution.” Unlike most refugees, South Africans may apply for refugee status only while living in South Africa.
Refugee advocacy groups and the South African government have criticized the program for legitimizing false claims of “white genocide” and bypassing some steps through which refugees from other countries must pass.
But the Wisconsin resettlement agencies participating in the program say their responsibility is to welcome refugees, not to determine who deserves refugee status.
“We’re here to serve everybody,” said Lutheran Social Services President and CEO Héctor Colón, whose nonprofit expects next year to resettle up to 75 new arrivals, mostly or all South Africans in the Milwaukee area.
Colón adds that working with South Africans keeps his organization’s resettlement infrastructure in working order during the pause in other admissions.
“We’ve been through ebbs and flows, we understand how this works,” he said, “but our organization has made a commitment that we want to keep this program up and running. There are many programs all across the country that cannot absorb the hit.”
But World Relief Wisconsin Regional Director Gail Cornelius, whose nonprofit helped resettle South Africans this year, noted that some of the South Africans who arrived in Wisconsin last year have already moved on to other states.
Revetting of refugees promised
A wave of federal rules changes following the November attack of National Guard members further complicates the work of resettlement agencies.
Among the changes: halting green card and citizenship applications for immigrants and refugees from 39 countries, including Afghanistan and Myanmar.
“People that were going in for their citizenship oath were actually pulled out of line,” Cornelius said.
The Trump administration also vowed to revet and reinterview all refugees who entered the U.S. during the Biden administration, regardless of their current legal status. Such a review could affect thousands of Wisconsin refugees, but resettlement agencies are still awaiting clarity about how the administration will follow through.
“How are they going to review all of these cases?” Badwan asked. “Do we even have the resources to do that?”
Zabi Sahibzada, resettlement director for Jewish Social Services of Madison, in his office Dec. 19, 2025. Three years after arriving in the U.S. on a special visa available to Afghan and Iraqi nationals who worked with the U.S. government or its international partners, he wonders if he’ll face revetting from the Trump administration. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Sahibzada wonders whether he, too, will face revetting. Meanwhile, the White House’s bar on immigrant visas for Afghan nationals placed his plans to reunite with his wife and children on hold. They remain in Kabul, his daughters confined to their home after the Taliban forbade girls from attending school.
“I was waiting for things to be calm,” he said, referring to the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan that previously stalled his efforts to secure visas for his family. “I talk to my kids every morning, and they’re asking me that question, like, what’s gonna happen? I have no answer to them. I’m just saying, maybe things will get better.”
Working with Afghan families who made it to Wisconsin before the door closed is bittersweet, Sahibzada added. “Even if my kids are not here, at least they are here.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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A Shorewood homeowner has drawn ire for aggressively chasing people off the Lake Michigan beach in front of his property, reigniting debate over who can use Wisconsin’s Great Lakes shoreline.
Unlike neighboring states, Wisconsin grants private owners exclusive use of publicly owned beach up to the Ordinary High Water Mark, which expands private control during low-water years.
A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor deliberately walked the disputed beach, got ticketed for trespassing and wants to lose in court and appeal to challenge Wisconsin’s unusual shoreline law.
The homeowner’s elaborate beach compound has previously triggered local and state scrutiny over permitting and alleged shoreline violations.
Reports have surfaced in recent months of a not-so-jolly buccaneer working Lake Michigan’s Caribbean-clear waters just north of Milwaukee. He has gained an almost mythical status among southeastern Wisconsin’s swimmers, boaters and internet surfers.
He is not shaking down sailors for sugar, silk or gold. He is after something arguably more precious – the sole right to use the Lake Michigan beach behind his home and yard on the 4000 block of North Lake Drive, the second property north of Atwater’s swimming beach in the village of Shorewood.
“I dont want to be the dick but I stopped swimming there because a dude would always come out in a little black zodiac (raft) and yell. Stuff like ‘this is a historical site you cant be here,” grumbled one Redditor in an early December post. “…Watched the dude chase off all approaching boats too.”
Added another: “dude who lives just north of atwater is a menace. Hes yelled at me for swimming 100+feet off shore and came out in his little zodiac. Yall know the house lol.”
The house he is talking about is indeed an eye-catcher.
Distinct among other waterfront properties in Shorewood, this residence has a cluster of huts and an expansive deck at the bottom of a private cable car built to shuttle the owners from the main house on Lake Drive to the beach some eight stories below.
To call the beachfront development a patio, deck or even cabana doesn’t do it justice. It looks more like someone bought the set from the 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” — walled cabins, thatched roofs, boat ramp, surfboards, the works — and plopped it on a sandy Wisconsin beach that’s frozen half the year.
“Someone needs to introduce them to some Jimmy Buffet,” another Redditor posted in the December conversation. “You build a tiki porch… you share drinks and make new friends. Isn’t that a requirement to get the building permit approved?”
And that raises a question: How did regulators from the village of Shorewood and the state Department of Natural Resources allow this homemade Margaritaville to be built so close to the public’s lake?
Wisconsin’s curious shoreline law
Paul Florsheim is a 66-year-old clinical psychologist and a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor who grew up on Lake Drive several houses north of Atwater Park. That was an era when he says the beach behind all the private homes perched atop the bluff was commonly treated as a public right of way, like a sidewalk. People were free to walk up and down it and enjoy it — within reason. Walking a kid and maybe a dog, yes. Tapping a keg or having a luau smack in front of someone’s house, of course not.
Signs warning against trespassing are posted on Jan. 8, 2026, at the border of Atwater Park in the village of Shorewood, Wis. Tiki compound owner Daniel Domagala seeks to preserve exclusive access to public beach along Lake Michigan’s shoreline. Unlike neighboring states, Wisconsin grants private owners exclusive use of publicly owned beach up to the Ordinary High Water Mark, which expands private control during low-water years. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
That’s why it bugged Florsheim when he moved back to Milwaukee after a tenure on the faculty at the University of Utah and saw signs posted at the edge of Atwater Park that read “Private Property Beyond this Sign – Trespassers may be subject to citation.”
Florsheim didn’t see things that way and, legally, they aren’t.
Those signs should actually read: “Public property beyond this point: No trespassing.”
And if that doesn’t make sense to you, it didn’t to Florsheim either.
Two of Wisconsin’s neighboring states on Lake Michigan – Indiana and Michigan – have laws that ensure public access to the lake’s shoreline, as long as beach walkers leave their limbo sticks at home, keep moving and stay below the “Ordinary High Water Mark” (OHWM), commonly understood as where the sand stops and terrestrial vegetation starts.
Wisconsin is different. It acknowledges public ownership of the beach up to that line, but it gives “exclusive” use of that public beach to the private property owner adjacent to it. The law is based on a 1923 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that beachcombers are free to walk the shoreline, so long as they stay in the water, even if it’s only enough to keep their feet wet.
This means, if you want to abide by the letter of the Wisconsin law while walking the beach, you have to skitter along the beach like a sandpiper, only in reverse – ever chasing the lapping waves back toward the water instead of running away from them.
And, while the Ordinary High Water Mark remains relatively fixed, the water level does not.
The level of Lake Michigan can, in fact, fluctuate by 6 feet over a period of several years. This means in low-water years, such as 2025, what was just recently a submerged public lakebed becomes vast expanses of exposed sand that becomes, in essence, private beach.
A Shorewood beach showdown
Florsheim wants that to change, so in late July he walked down the 100-some steps to the beach at Atwater Park. Then he crossed the park boundary by scrambling over a dock-like concrete structure (called a revetment) jutting into the water separating Atwater Park from the neighbors to the north.
On the other side of the revetment that morning was tiki compound owner Daniel Domagala, who was preparing to take his kids out on their kayaks on an 80-degree, flat-as-glass water morning, conditions he described in courtroom testimony last month as “perfect.” Then he saw Florsheim, whom he did not know, making his way over the revetment with a couple of dogs.
“You’re in my backyard,” Domagala said he told the stranger after he cleared the concrete structure. “Why don’t you turn around and go back to Atwater?”
“No, I’m not,” he said Florsheim replied before ambling north.
Domagala said he was baffled by what he saw as a brazen attitude toward his property rights.
“Just imagine somebody is in your house telling you: This is not your house,” he testified.
Domagala said he remained calm and courteous during the exchange. He called police, but Florsheim was gone by the time they arrived.
Signs noting security cameras and warnings against trespassing are posted on Daniel Domagala’s beach compound along Lake Michigan just north of Atwater’s public swimming beach in the village of Shorewood, Wis., on Jan. 8, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
A surveillance camera Domagala has placed at his beach compound revealed Florsheim returned to walk the dry sand above the water line in the following days. Florsheim even cordially ignored face-to-face warnings from Shorewood police who, cordially, told him to stop.
Police finally wrote him a trespassing citation that packs a $313 fine. Florsheim was happy to get what he saw as a ticket to where he really wanted to go — Shorewood Municipal Court.
On Dec. 2 Florsheim appeared at trial without a lawyer to make his argument that Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan shoreline should be open to the public up to the Ordinary High Water Mark.
At the conclusion of the folksy four-hour trial (Florsheim called his 95-year-old dad to testify that he and his shorefront neighbors always viewed the beach abutting their homes as public property), Shorewood municipal judge Margo Kirchner said she would render a decision in the coming weeks.
Florsheim said he hopes to lose so he can appeal his case all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which he hopes will see things his way.
The ramifications of Florsheim’s summer hike are potentially staggering. In low-water years, such as 2025, vast expanses of dry sandy beach can appear in places where, just a few years earlier, that lakebed was completely submerged. If Florsheim were to take his case all the way to the state Supreme Court and get a favorable ruling, the result could open untold thousands of shorefront acres on Wisconsin’s roughly 800 miles of Great Lakes shoreline to the public for beach walking, at least in low-water years.
Signs are posted on Daniel Domagala’s beach compound along Lake Michigan just north of Atwater’s public swimming beach in the village of Shorewood, Wis., Jan. 8, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Records show past shoreline violations
Meanwhile, it appears the compound owner has his own history of violations on the same stretch of beach Florsheim was ticketed on.
Shorewood Planning & Development Department records show in August 2015 Domagala, who did not respond to emailed questions from Wisconsin Watch, applied to build a fence and a covered patio on the beach adjacent to his property, in front of an aged concrete breakwater at the base of the bluff.
Domagala didn’t stop with the covered deck and the fence that separates the public beach from his property. He ultimately built a larger deck that, in high-water years, stretches almost to the water along with two enclosed cabins. Most of that work received permits, but not all of it.
In 2018 the village notified Domagala that one of those cabins was out of compliance with village regulations because Domagala, who identifies himself as the contractor in documents submitted to the village, equipped it with a bathroom that had no connection to the village sewer system.
A letter from the village instructed Domagala to “Remove all plumbing fixtures including the Separett toilet, shower stall and sinks from the boat storage house as it is in violation of State Plumbing Codes and Village of Shorewood Municipal Codes.”
Separett toilets are composting devices that are designed to aerobically decompose waste but require regular disposal.
Domagala told the village he installed the plumbing so his family and guests wouldn’t have to shuttle up and down the towering bluff just to relieve themselves.
“This issue is important to me because I cannot imagine hanging around the beach all day without a toilet or running water,” Domagala wrote to the Shorewood planning department in October 2018.
The village stood firm and ordered the removal of all plumbing fixtures – toilet included.
These photos of Daniel Domagala’s compound along Lake Michigan in Shorewood, Wis., were included in June 4, 2020, correspondence between the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Shorewood Planning & Development Department.
Two years later, on April 6, 2020, an anonymous person complained to the village that a boat ramp attached to Domagala’s compound appeared to have been built inside the Ordinary High Water Mark, where development is prohibited.
Domagala was not happy.
“I’m really bothered by the complaint,” Domagala wrote to Shorewood building inspector Justin Burris. “These people have nothing to do but be in my business. I think we have some good track record of working together and following the rules. I once lived in the country full of communists who thought they can tell you how to live…. This is deeper than a complaint for me. It’s the idea, and if it continues I will move out of the area.”
Domagala went back to the village later in summer 2020 after his wife reported a drone flying over their property during an unsettling time due to the pandemic and public demonstrations against the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“Can you confirm that it was not (a) village of shorewood drone?” he wrote to building inspector Burris, who informed him he did not believe it was.
“… This situation is becoming more and more annoying. Between People from out of town who want to use my front lawn as their own, My driveway being constantly blocked by cars on a day like yesterday,,Atwater being occupied by A crowd that does not live in shorewood where I can’t go to the playground with my own kids and perhaps meet a neighbor, the trespassers, the riots and finally the village chasing me whenever there is some communist with the idea that they want a piece of my beach, I’m trying to find reasons to stay in shorewood and Justify 25K spent on taxes every year.”
Burris, who described Domagala as cordial and cooperative in all his dealings with the village, nevertheless ordered the ramp shortened so it did not trespass on the public’s lakebed.
“I ask that you obtain a permit for the deck/boat launch structure that was constructed without a permit,” Burris wrote on June 19, 2020. “The structure will have to be modified so it does not project beyond the OHWM.”
(Courtesy of Milwaukee Riverkeeper)
Domagala did that work but he also drew attention from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources that summer for installing piles of rocks directly in front of his compound to protect it from encroaching water after Lake Michigan water levels had climbed dramatically. State regulators found that the fortification was in an area they considered clearly below the Ordinary High Water Mark, where structures are not allowed without meeting rigid permit requirements.
“This would require a DNR permit for a structure on the bed of a waterway,” the DNR’s Michelle Hase wrote to the Shorewood Planning & Development Department on June 4, 2020. She said the DNR wasn’t about to grant such a permit. “Even if this area was exempt from permitting for rip rap/revetment, this project would not meet the exemption standards and would require a permit. It is also very unlikely we would permit this amount of fill/type of structure.”
Several days later, the DNR backed off.
“We received some guidance on Lake Michigan erosion control projects and unless there is a major resource impact, the DNR is not pursuing active enforcement,” Hase wrote to Shorewood’s planning department.
After hearing that news from the village, Domagala asked Burris if he should ask the DNR whether it would require any other modifications.
“You could contact the DNR, but how I read it was that they’re not going to be following up or asking you to remove or modify anything,” Burris wrote to Domagala. “That isn’t to say that they may not in the future, but the old adage says, let sleeping dogs lie.”
The DNR did not answer Wisconsin Watch’s question about why it took no enforcement action. A spokesperson wrote: “A member of DNR’s compliance team did reach out to the property owner regarding unpermitted shoreline erosion control, but the matter did not result in elevated enforcement.”
Lake Michigan’s waters crash on the beach near Atwater Park and Daniel Domagala’s property, Jan. 8, 2026, in Shorewood, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Questions about shoreline enforcement
Since then it seems most of the barking has been coming from Domagala; he testified at the Dec. 2, 2025, beach-walking trial that he had called police to report people trespassing on the beach last summer “at least” 50 times.
Todd Ambs, a former head of the DNR’s water division, says the agency does not routinely police Wisconsin beaches for development violations. It instead relies on public complaints to point out potential problems that, in turn, prompt the DNR to investigate.
The standing-room-only trial last month has indeed riled an avid lake-advocating community eager to point out potential problems with Domagala’s property. It includes Cheryl Nenn of the conservation group Milwaukee RiverKeeper. She has spent more than two decades working to protect the region’s waterways, and when she looks at the compound that has sprouted from the Shorewood sands in the past decade she is left with one word to describe it.
“Crazy.”
She is not alleging the compound as currently configured is out of compliance but says, from her experience with waterside developments, it appears that the compound may at least partially sit in the no-build zone below the Ordinary High Water Mark, especially when she compares it to the high-water line the DNR drew for nearby Atwater Park. That line goes right up to the greenery at the base of the bluff.
“It would be a good idea to have someone from the DNR get down there and delineate the Ordinary High Water Mark,” she said of the beach in front of Domagala’s compound, adding she isn’t looking to cause trouble for the homeowner. Quite the opposite. The no-build rule below the high-water mark, she says, “protects the lake and public rights, but it also protects the landowners …because the lake can be a mean, mean bitch.”
Dan Egan is the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Death and Life of the Great Lakes” and the Brico Fund Journalist in Residence at the Center for Water Policy in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences.
This story was produced in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Investigative Journalism class taught in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Click here to read highlights from the story
The state reported five deaths from people falling through the ice on Wisconsin lakes last winter, compared with seven over the previous five years.
There were 10 Madison lake rescues the previous two winters (plus another one in the last week of December 2025) after only one in 2023.
More dangerous ice conditions are having a negative effect on businesses and tourism.
When Alec Hembree fell through the ice on Lake Wingra last winter, he remembered, “it was instantaneous.”
It was just after dark on Jan. 20. The temperature was around 2 degrees. Hembree was riding his bike across the frozen lake from his work on Madison’s east side to his home on the west side, a commute he had tried successfully for the first time the previous week. When he fell in, his feet couldn’t touch the bottom. He barely had time to be scared.
“I think there were a couple people on the lake,” Hembree said. “They wouldn’t have been able to get to me before I got out.”
The air was so cold, Hembree’s leather gloves immediately froze to the icy surface of the lake when he tried to pull himself out. After about 30 seconds in the water, he was able to pull himself and his bike out. It all happened so fast, he wasn’t sure how he did it. He thinks his training from being an Eagle Scout helped.
“Everything was in an ice shell at that point,” he said. He biked 10 minutes to a co-worker’s house, where he used a hair dryer to thaw his jacket zipper and get out of his frozen clothes before his co-worker gave him a ride home.
Locals walk on a mostly frozen Lake Mendota on March 7, 2025. (Jess Miller for Wisconsin Watch)
Hembree’s experience is becoming more common on Wisconsin’s lakes. For some, falls prove deadly. The Department of Natural Resources last winter recorded five people statewide who died falling through the ice on off-highway vehicles across the state. Between 2020 and 2024, similar accidents accounted for a total of seven deaths.
According to the Madison Fire Department, the Lake Rescue Team was dispatched four times to rescue people who fell through the ice in 2025 and six times in 2024, though only once in 2023. Through the end of 2025, the department had responded to 39 incidents of people falling through the ice since 2016. On Dec. 27 (as this story was being finalized for publication) the department rescued another individual who had fallen through the ice on Lake Mendota.
But those are only the incidents where the Lake Rescue Team was dispatched, so the stories of Hembree and others who fell through the ice and managed to escape aren’t included.
“This (past) year has probably been one of the more dangerous years on ice that I can remember,” said Lt. Jacob Holsclaw, the Wisconsin DNR’s off-highway vehicle administrator.
Treading on Wisconsin’s frozen lakes has gotten more dangerous, creating cost for taxpayers and business owners and calling into question the future of an important state pastime.
A growing trend
Trekking on Dane County’s frozen lakes is a common winter activity for southern Wisconsin residents.
Some of the equipment used by Madison Fire Department’s Lake Rescue Team in performing ice rescues. (Jess Miller for Wisconsin Watch)
“Walking on frozen lakes” was the most common activity on the lakes among respondents to a 2010 Dane County Land & Water Resources Department survey. At 28%, that was more common than swimming, kayaking, boating, or fishing from a boat or pier. Other ice-related activities such as skating and fishing were more popular than water skiing, jet skiing and sailing. The study authors estimated that close to 110,000 Dane County residents — more than a fifth of the population — walked on the county’s frozen water bodies at least once in 2010.
The heavy usage of the frozen lakes provides a revenue stream for numerous Dane County businesses and nonprofits. For example, the Clean Lakes Alliance hosts the annual Frozen Assets Festival, in which hundreds of participants take part in a fundraising 5K on frozen Lake Mendota and others enjoy scientific demonstrations, ice skating, kiting, boating and other ice-related activities.
But the future of frozen recreation in Dane County is in peril. Madison winters are getting shorter and less predictable. And falls through the ice are becoming more common.
Ron Blumer, a Madison Fire Department division chief who heads the department’s Lake Rescue Team and has been with the city since 1995, said in recent years his team has conducted “a lot more responses” to calls to rescue people who fell through the ice.
Part of the uptick can be attributed to climate change and the shrinking number of days of 100% ice cover on the Yahara lakes. Since 1855, when the Wisconsin State Climatology Office began consistently tracking Lake Mendota’s freezing and thawing dates, the lake has stayed frozen for an average of 102 days every winter. But only in four of the last 25 years has Mendota been frozen that long. During the 2023-24 winter, the lake was frozen for 44 days — a more than 20-year low. Last winter it froze for 69 days.
There’s no ‘safe’ ice
While information about how thick ice should be for walking or driving varies between sources, there is some consensus: No ice is ever completely safe.
“We really shy away from saying that there’s ever any ice that’s 100% safe,” Holsclaw said. The DNR’s website offers no hard and fast rules for what’s considered a “safe” thickness.
“You cannot judge the strength of ice by one factor like its appearance, age, thickness, temperature or whether the ice is covered with snow,” the website reads. “Ice strength is based on a combination of several factors.”
Air temperature is just one of those factors. But others include wind, sunlight, whether the ice is near a spring or other moving water, and whether the ice is frozen water (black ice) or mixed with snow (white ice).
“Black ice can withstand a lot more force (than white ice),” said Adrianna Gorsky, a freshwater and marine sciences Ph.D. candidate at UW-Madison. “Even if you have really thick white ice, it might not be as strong as if you had black ice only.”
Cracks form in the ice along the shore of Lake Monona on March 8, 2025. (Jess Miller for Wisconsin Watch)
Fluctuations in temperature during winter can also have a marked effect on ice thickness and quality. In January and February of 2025, it wasn’t uncommon for temperatures to fluctuate by tens of degrees within a single week in Dane County. On Jan. 21, the day after Hembree fell through the ice, Madison temperatures were in the single digits. A week later, on Jan. 28, the high temperature was 49 degrees. This frequent melting and thawing back and forth, Gorsky said, could result in mixed layers of black and white ice that would compromise the ice’s structural integrity.
Variations in temperature can also make lake ice expand or contract, causing pressure heaves or large cracks to form in the surface of the ice.
“And there will be a gap in there where there’s thin ice or no ice at all,” said Jon Mast, a lieutenant on MFD’s Lake Rescue team. These areas can be especially dangerous to walk near.
For as much that is known about factors affecting ice thickness and qualities, “there is a lot of unknown,” said Gorsky. That’s because winter limnology is relatively understudied compared to other areas of marine science.
“There’s a lot of things we still don’t know and a lot of theory that we’ve based off summer open water season that doesn’t really hold true for winter,” Gorsky said.
Increasingly visible effects of climate change on lake ice have precipitated “a cry for more research” in winter limnology, Gorsky added. And it can’t come soon enough. Because falls through the ice are costing local businesses, nonprofits and taxpayers money.
The cost of thin ice
In Madison, there are no fines associated with being rescued from falling through the ice. Because, Blumer said, “we want people to enjoy the lakes and to have fun.” But that fun still comes at a cost.
Businesses and organizations that rely on the ice for income are feeling the strain of weakening lake ice too.
A sign warns of thin ice in Madison, Wis., on March 18, 2025. (Jess Miller for Wisconsin Watch)
In 2024 the Clean Lakes Alliance canceled all on-ice events for its Frozen Assets Festival, including the annual 5K. According to Sarah Skwirut, the Clean Lakes Alliance’s marketing coordinator, only around 200 participants participated in the on-land “winter workout” the organization hosted in lieu of the 5K, down from 800 who ran the 5K the previous winter, which generated around $30,000 for the nonprofit.
“If the lack of ice becomes more common in the future,” Skwirut said in an email, “we will need to adapt and find new ways to engage the community and promote our work.”
Small businesses are equally if not more affected by the phenomenon. In 2022, Pat Hasburgh purchased D&S Bait and Tackle in Madison, “very aware of what I was getting myself into as far as climate change and running a business that kind of depends on ice,” Hasburgh said. He admitted the recent, mercurial winters have made it difficult to plan for the ice fishing season.
“I mean, I had a pile of augers waist high in 2022,” Hasburgh said, citing that people are less likely to need such a high-powered tool to break through the ice in warmer winters. And 2024 was even worse.
“We had four weeks of ice, as opposed to three months,” he said. “That was a rough one to try to make it through as a business.” Hasburgh is used to around a third of D&S’s business coming from ice fishing, but guessed that it was probably less than a quarter in 2024.
Beyond Madison
The increase in falls through the ice is easier to see in a populous part of the state like Dane County. But the trend is apparent across Wisconsin. And in many cases, the cost is more than just lost business or an icy bike ride.
The five deaths this past winter happened in Pewaukee, Kenosha, Fond du Lac, Superior and Westfield, an hour north of Madison, where a man died on Jan. 6 after falling through the ice on Lawrence Lake while riding a UTV.
In a Facebook post, the Marquette County Sheriff’s Office urged the public “to avoid venturing onto frozen lakes or rivers unless they have confirmed the ice is thick enough for safe activities.”
The temperature in Westfield on Jan. 6 was below freezing and had been every day the previous week.
An October 2024 study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment warned that lakes between 40 and 45 degrees north latitude — a range that includes all of Wisconsin south of Wausau — could lose all safe ice for the winter sometime this century.
A solution may lie in more research. Gorsky said predicting the future of what winter is going to look like for lakes “is a really big research topic.”
For Hembree’s part, he considers himself lucky to be alive. But he has “no concerns” about going back on the ice. He’s enjoying it while he still can.
“If I do go out commuting on the lake again I will be, certainly, more cautious,” he said.
The Madison Fire Department offers these tips for those planning to go out on the ice this winter:
No ice is ever considered safe, regardless of how long it’s been cold or how thick the ice may appear to be. A variety of factors can create a dangerous situation unexpectedly, for one reason or another.
If you do go on the ice, never go alone, and bring your cellphone with you in case something happens.
Avoid areas where there are cracks or signs of upheaval. These are areas where pressure has caused the ice to crack and move, exposing fresh water and creating areas of thin ice and instability.
Be equipped at all times with personal safety devices such as a flotation device/life jacket and ice picks, which can be used to help pull yourself back onto the ice shelf if you fall in.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
More than a decade ago, I covered the opening of a tuition-free charter school aimed at growing the Fox Cities’ advanced manufacturing workforce.
Students are still enrolling at Appleton Technical Academy, getting hands-on experience, accessing paid apprenticeships and completing courses for college credit.
So I wondered: How is the school really doing? Has it met the goals education and industry leaders set?
I pitched the idea to reporter Miranda Dunlap, and she dug in.
Her reporting shows mixed results, and it’s a strong example of the type of solutions journalism we prioritize at Wisconsin Watch.
Solutions journalism is just what it sounds like: rigorous, evidence-based reporting on responses to problems.
Every solutions journalism story reports on four elements:
The response to the problem.
Evidence on how the response is (or isn’t) working.
Insights.
And limitations.
ATECH was created to address a shortage of advanced manufacturing employees in the Fox Cities.
The response from local industry and education leaders was to create a public charter school housed inside Appleton West that would not only introduce students to these careers, but also jump-start their journey to a certification or degree in the field. The story examines how the school got started, the application process and the four areas students can choose to study.
Nuance comes in with the evidence. Data or anecdotes fit the bill. Miranda’s story includes comments from ATECH students about why they chose to enroll. Their thoughts illustrate the need for the school.
However, the industry leader who helped found the school told Miranda ATECH didn’t become the employee pipeline he hoped. His business is no longer closely tied to the school.
The limitations of ATECH vary. The cost to run the school is one challenge. It takes a lot of metal to teach students how to weld, for example. School leaders look for donations from businesses to help with supplies and equipment.
They also mentioned a stigma that the broader public has against technical education.
Insights tend to be the trickiest pillar. I try to answer this question when I look for insights: What nuggets of information would be important to know if I were trying to implement this response in my community?
For ATECH it’s the need for industry mentors. The school needs those connections not only for students to meet professionals working in the field, but also to teach ATECH educators how to use the latest technology.
Miranda also includes context about the push for more career and technical education training, as well as how these efforts are funded at the state and federal levels.
I hope you read her story to get a full, unvarnished look at how ATECH is doing.
The U.S. Postal Service adopted a rule effective Dec. 24 clarifying that some mail is not postmarked when it is first received – at a post office, for example – but rather on a later date, during processing.
The rule doesn’t change practices, but instead is “intended to improve public understanding of postmarks and their relationship to the date of mailing.”
Postmarking can affect whether local officials accept election ballots.
Fourteen states, including Illinois, accept a mailed ballot if it is received after Election Day, as long as it is postmarked on or before Election Day.
Thirty-six states, including Wisconsin, require absentee ballots, including those cast by mail, to be received by the local election office by Election Day. They aren’t affected by the rule change.
Almost half of all private school students in Wisconsin now receive school vouchers, signaling a rapid reshaping of the state’s educational landscape powered by state taxpayers.
When it launched in 1990, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation’s first modern private school voucher program, included just 300 students at seven secular private schools. The students came from families earning less than 175% of the federal poverty level, and state taxpayers covered $2,446 of tuition for each.
The total price tag that year: about $700,000, or $1.78 million today adjusted for inflation. It was a pittance compared to the $1.9 billion of state aid and $2.4 billion of property taxes provided to public schools in Wisconsin that year.
By 2011, enrollment in Milwaukee’s voucher program reached 23,000 students, or about three out of four private school students that year.
Former Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature helped spur the creation of three more private school choice programs similar to MPCP: one for students in Racine (RPCP), one for students elsewhere in the state (WPCP) and another for students with special needs (SNSP). This expansion was part of a national effort to boost private school education with support from Walmart founders, the Walton family, according to previous Wisconsin Watch reporting.
Flash forward to last school year: Nearly half (46%) of all private school students in Wisconsin received vouchers across the state’s four programs. Taxpayers this school year will spend more than $700 million to defray tuition costs for about 60,000 students. Almost all (about 96%) attend religiously affiliated schools.
The vast growth of the voucher system has helped Wisconsin’s private school system grow modestly as public school enrollment declines. Critics, particularly Democrats and public school teacher unions, describe the state as funding two school systems.
Supporting a second school system with public money
Taxpayers through school district budgets provide $10,877 for each K–8 voucher student and $13,371 for each voucher student in grades 9-12 who enrolls in one of the three voucher programs. Each student who participates in the Special Needs Scholarship Program receives $16,049. Those amounts will increase by 4%, 3.2% and 2.6% respectively next school year.
Except in Milwaukee, where the program is directly funded by the state budget, the funding is deducted from the state aid to each school district. This school year, $357.5 million was deducted.
For public schools, state aid roughly represents 45% of school funding. Federal aid, property taxes and other revenue cover the rest. Although the exact amount varies by district, public schools collected an average of $14,104 per student in property taxes and state general and categorical aid during the 2024-25 school year.
When the state redirected aid from public schools to pay for the Racine, statewide and special need vouchers, school districts were still allowed to raise revenue as if the private school student were attending the public school. So while the district pays $10,877 to the private school for a K-8 student, it can still collect roughly $13,362 in state general aid and property taxes, keeping the difference to pay for other students still in the public system.
In the meantime, Republican lawmakers proposed “decoupling bills,” which would have the state fully cover the Racine, statewide and special need voucher programs, similar to Milwaukee. That would prevent the money from passing through the public school districts, reducing the net revenue school districts have been able to collect for the past decade.
“The funding system is broken, and the link in current law between school choice funding and property taxes needs to be repealed,” said Carol Shires, vice president of operations, School Choice Wisconsin, an advocate group for the voucher system, in an email to Wisconsin Watch.
Private school market stabilizes with public funds
As homeschooling has gained considerable popularity over the past decade, the voucher program has saved many private schools from losing enrollment and likely closure.
“There really would not be a private school sector in Milwaukee, with a few exceptions, if it wasn’t for the voucher program,” said Alan Borsuk, senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School, “because nobody had the money to pay tuition, and there was just no way to afford schools.”
Wisconsin private schools gained 1,687 students from 2011 to 2024, a stark contrast to public schools, where enrollment declined by more than 65,000 students. Homeschooling grew even more, by nearly 13,000 students.
There are fewer private schools, but more are participating in the voucher program
A Wisconsin Watch data analysis found that about half of the private schools that joined the voucher program between 2008 and 2024 grew their student population.
A debate on effectiveness
When the voucher program was introduced in Milwaukee, lawmakers envisioned the program empowering low-income parents who couldn’t otherwise afford private schools to choose where their children are educated, bridging the education gap, and improving education quality for both the private and public school systems.
“Choice gives poor students the ability to select the best school that they possibly can,” former Gov. Tommy Thompson said in a telephone interview with the New York Times in 1990. “The plan allows for choice and competition, and I believe competition will make both the public and private schools that much stronger.”
About 35 years after the program’s introduction, people still cannot come to a consensus on whether it improves education quality.
“Taxpayers fund choice students at a lower dollar amount than they fund public school students, yet those choice students achieve better outcomes,” Shires wrote, referring to the school year 2024-25 state testing results from DPI.
The DPI data cited by the organization showed a higher average test score for voucher students compared to their peers in public schools.
However, that methodology has been criticized by reviewers affiliated with the National Education Policy Center, a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder’s School of Education. The reviewers criticized the approach of directly comparing standardized test scores of voucher students with those of public school students, arguing that such comparisons are overly simplistic and misleading.
In his review, Stephen Kotok, an associate professor at St. John’s University, wrote that simply comparing average test scores between the two groups without accounting for nonrandom selection into voucher programs overlooks other factors that may influence student performance besides school quality. He also wrote that relying solely on standardized test scores to judge educational quality or productivity is a “crude” measure.
DPI uses report card systems to provide a more comprehensive review of school performances in addition to test scores. Last year, 85% of public schools and 85% of voucher schools met, exceeded or significantly exceeded expectations. However, less than half (43%) of the voucher schools were scored due to insufficient data. DPI cited small student populations and low test participation rates among voucher students for not assessing those schools.
Several recent studies indicate that the academic benefits of voucher programs are marginal.
An analysis of 92 studies on school choice students’ academic achievements published between 1992 and 2015 found a very slight rise in standardized test scores among students who transferred from public schools to voucher schools, according to Huriya Jabbar, an associate professor at the University of Southern California.
Borsuk wrote that the voucher system does not improve the overall quality of education in a column for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He noted the education quality of voucher schools varies by school, with a mixture of excellence and disappointment.
In addition, state laws do not protect private school students from discrimination as they do in public schools. Previous reports by Wisconsin Watch have found some voucher school students have faced discrimination because of their disabilities or sexual orientation.
Not just providing choice for public school students
RPCP and WPCP generally do not accept students previously registered in private schools, but the program makes an exception for grades K4-1 and 9.
This year, one in four (1,129) newly enrolled WPCP students studied in a private school the previous year — even more than the 948 students who transferred from Wisconsin public schools. Comparatively, most newly enrolled Racine students came from public schools or had not previously attended any school.
MPCP does not have a similar requirement, and DPI stopped publishing the source of enrollment data in 2006.
Bringing religion into classrooms
Enrollment at MPCP jumped in 1998 as the program began incorporating religious schools after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-2 the program didn’t promote state-sponsored religious education.
As of the 2025-26 school year, nearly all of the voucher schools are religiously affiliated.
Parents cite the religion-based curriculum, safer environments, strict discipline and small classrooms in their decision to send their children to private schools.
Parents of voucher students may opt out of the religious curriculum under the law, yet no available data show how often that happens.
“Almost 30 years now, if there have been 25 cases of opt-outs, I’d be really surprised,” Borsuk said. “If you’re going to a religious school and don’t want to be there, then why are you going to that school? It’s basically as simple as that.”
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It’s a new year in Wisconsin, and an election one, too. There are many state government and politics storylines we plan to follow at Wisconsin Watch in 2026 from major policy debates to races that could determine the future of the state.
But we value accountability here, including for ourselves. Before we dive into predictions for the year ahead, we want to look back at what our state team thought might happen in 2025.
Here’s what we predicted and what actually happened.
2025 prediction: The Wisconsin Supreme Court will expand abortion rights.
Outcome:True.
The court in a 4-3 July ruling struck down Wisconsin’s 1849 near-total abortion ban, determining that later state laws regulating the procedure enacted after the ban superseded it.
There are still restrictions on when someone can receive an abortion, including a ban on the procedure 20 weeks after fertilization and a 24-hour waiting period and ultrasound before an abortion is performed. President Donald Trump’s big bill signed in July has also threatened Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in Wisconsin that offer abortions. A federal appeals court in December paused a lower court ruling and allowed the Trump administration to continue enforcing that part of the law.
2025 prediction: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature will again strike a deal to increase funding for public education and private voucher schools, similar to the compromise they made in 2023.
Outcome:Mixed.
Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature did reach an agreement on K-12 education funding during the budget process, approving a $500 million boost for special education funding. But this wasn’t like 2023, when conservatives secured significant funding increases for private voucher schools.
General school aid was kept at the same level as previous years. The Department of Public Instruction in October said, because of that decision, 71% of school districts will receive less general aid during the current school year. Private voucher school funding increased based on past per pupil funding adjustments. As a result of revenue limits going up $325 a year for the next 400 years (no change there from Evers’ creative veto in 2023) and general aid staying flat, property taxes increased significantly.
2025 prediction: The state Supreme Court election will set another spending record.
Outcome:Nailed it!
Total spending for the 2025 state Supreme Court race between liberal candidate Susan Crawford and conservative Brad Schimel hit $144.5 million, shattering the record set in 2023. The spending in last year’s race broke records even without a $30.3 million giveaway from tech billionaire Elon Musk to conservative voters in the state.
As Larry Sandler recently reported for Wisconsin Watch, it was another year demonstrating how expensive and highly political Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court elections have become over the years.
2025 prediction: Ben Wikler will be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Outcome: Swing and a miss!
Former Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair Ken Martin was elected chair of the Democratic National Committee in February. Wikler was the runner-up in the contest.
Following the DNC chair race, Wikler announced in April he would not seek reelection as chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Devin Remiker took on the leadership role following the state party’s convention in June.
It’s not clear what’s next for Wikler. He announced in October he would not seek the Democratic nomination for governor.
Wisconsin Watch predictions for 2026
There is a lot on the line this year, especially with several key elections on ballots in the spring and fall. Here are storylines we expect to follow in 2026.
2026 prediction: The Wisconsin Supreme Court election will NOT set a new spending record.
The big factor here is that the outcome of the April race won’t determine who controls the majority of the court, which lowers the stakes compared to elections in 2023 and 2025. The contest is expected to be a race between Appeals Court judges Chris Taylor, a liberal, and Maria Lazar, a conservative.
A clearer picture of the fundraising for the 2026 race will appear after campaign finance reports are released this month. Lazar entered the race in October, so her campaign fundraising since then is not yet available.
Taylor, who announced her campaign in May, reported raising more than $584,000 as of July. Following the August announcement that conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley would not seek reelection, a spokesperson for Taylor’s campaign said it had raised more than $1 million.
2026 prediction: Data centers will continue to be a major subject of public interest in Wisconsin as public outcry causes the Public Service Commission to delay approvals of new power plant projects.
Public protests against data centers punctuated the 2025 news cycle as tech giants saw pushback in communities where they sought to build. The Marquette University Law School poll conducted in October shows a majority of Wisconsin voters across the state believe the costs of data centers outweigh their benefits.
The public opposition to data centers and rising utility bill costs will lead to closer scrutiny of power plant projects, which the Public Service Commission is set to review this year.
2026 prediction: In the governor’s race, Republicans will focus on rising property taxes. Democrats will focus on rising health care costs. But the ultimate X factor will be the public mood about what’s happening at the federal level — just as it was in 2018.
Already in December, Republicans have slammed Evers’ 2023 creative veto that increases public school funding for the next 400 years as a centuries-long property tax increase. Democrats have condemned Republicans for not voting to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which expired at the end of December.
Federal issues and public opinion about Trump will ultimately be what sways voters to one party or the other. During the 2018 governor’s race between Evers and then-Gov. Scott Walker, health care was a key issue with Walker authorizing a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act and Evers calling to expand BadgerCare. But as we’ve noted before, the public is turning against public education in favor of lower taxes, which could keep Republicans in Wisconsin from suffering major swings the party has seen in other states in 2025 off-year elections.
2026 prediction: Democrats will flip at least one chamber of the Legislature for the first time in nearly two decades (not counting that short-lived Senate flip after the 2012 recall elections).
New legislative maps being used for the first time in state Senate races and midterm elections favoring the opposite political party from the one in the White House are signs it could be a good year for Democrats to secure at least one chamber of the Legislature — if not both.
The more likely of the two is the Senate, where Republicans hold an 18-15 majority. Democrats need to flip at least two Republican seats and hold onto the Eau Claire area seat held by Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, to win the majority. The party is targeting GOP districts currently held by Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine; Sen. Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield; and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, where new maps have yet to be tested. Kamala Harris won those three districts, and Democrats running in other states in 2025 have made double-digit gains.
The Assembly, where Republicans hold a 54-45 majority, could also be in play, but Democrats need to flip five Republican-held Assembly seats. Of the 12 Assembly districts in 2024 decided within less than 5 percentage points, five were won by Republicans. Assembly Democrats would need to flip those five seats and hold onto the other seven close districts from 2024 to win the majority.
2026 prediction: Fundraising by candidates for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District will exceed 2024, especially as that seat draws national attention in the Republican fight to keep the U.S. House majority.
Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden defeated Democrat Rebecca Cooke by less than 3 percentage points in 2024. Van Orden raised nearly $7.7 million and Cooke brought in nearly $6.4 million during the 2024 cycle, outraising all other Wisconsin congressional candidates at the time, according to Open Secrets.
The 2026 race for the 3rd District is likely to be a rematch between Van Orden and Cooke, who have already raised millions for the 2026 cycle. As of late September, Van Orden reported bringing in about $3.4 million and Cooke nearly $3 million. National attention on who wins the U.S. House majority will also bring more money into the race. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put the 3rd District on a list of “offensive targets” for 2026.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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