Wisconsin Senate Democrats and their candidates for two districts key to determining control of the Senate in 2027 promised Thursday to pass bills to bring down the cost of health care, housing, groceries, energy and child care. 

At a press conference outside the state Capitol, Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) chastised Republican lawmakers for not taking action on an array of issues.

“We have to watch the Senate Republicans play this really strange game of what they’re doing with this special session,” Hesselbein said. “They refuse to go into the special session and get the job done for the people of Wisconsin.” 

This week lawmakers gaveled in for a special session called by Gov. Tony Evers who wanted the Legislature to take up a constitutional amendment that would  ban gerrymandering. Typically, Republican lawmakers have gaveled in and then immediately gaveled out of Evers’ special sessions, but on Tuesday, lawmakers gaveled in but then adjourned until Thursday. They said they were leaving the session open and they wanted to have more discussions with Evers, who said there wasn’t anything to talk about. 

Lawmakers returned on Thursday afternoon to postpone again until April 21. 

The state Assembly and Senate have both completed their regular session work this year, although  Evers and lawmakers are still trying to reach a deal on using some of the state’s $2.5 billion budget surplus to provide property tax relief to Wisconsinites and fund public schools. Discussions have still not resulted in action since they began in February.

Hesselbein said Senate Democrats are committed to working to improve affordability in the next legislative session and promised to pass a slate of 18 bills if they win the majority. Democrats have already introduced the bills in the current session, but they did not advance in the Republican-led Legislature. 

“Senate Democrats are here. We are ready to work,” Hesselbein said. “We could get these bills passed this legislative session and we could lower costs right now, but instead Republicans behind me in this building continue to use their last gasp of power to waste time and ignore the pressing needs of every single person in the state of Wisconsin.” 

The state Senate is currently controlled by an 18-15 Republican majority, meaning Democrats would need to hold all of their current seats and flip two additional seats to win control. The last time Democrats held a majority in the state Senate and Assembly was the 2009-11 legislative session.

There have been five announced retirements by Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) and two incumbents in districts that will be key to determining control. 

Hesselbein said she is “surprised” by the number of retirements. 

“It is curious that now that we finally have fair maps, a fair number of them have decided to not run,” Hesselbein said. 

Hesselbein and current Democratic senators were joined by two of their preferred candidates in key districts for the press conference who spoke to the bill packages. 

Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon) laid out the health care and housing bill package. She is running in a three-way primary in Senate District 17. The winner of the primary will face Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), the budget committee co-chair who is running for his fourth term in office. The other two Democratic candidates in the primary are Corrine Hendrickson, a child care advocate and Lisa White of Potosi, a small business owner. 

“There’s no question that two of the most pressing concerns and most expensive aspects of life in Wisconsin are homeownership or rent and the cost of health care and medication,” Jacobson said. “As property values skyrocket, hedge funds buy up single-family homes. As we face limited supply and algorithmic price hikes designed to maximize profit, we are left with the landscape that makes it more and more difficult for folks to afford rent and the age for the average first-time homeowner is at an all-time high.”

The policies covered in the health and housing package of bills include: 

• Eliminating cost-sharing payments for prescription drugs under the BadgerCare program
• Capping the cost of insulin at $35 
• Capping the cost of asthma medication at $25 and the cost for related medical supplies at $50 a month
• Eliminating sales tax on over-the-counter medicines
• Increasing the limit on the homestead tax credit, which provides relief to low-income homeowners and renters, from about $24,000 to $35,000
• Banning hedge funds from buying Wisconsin homes
• Prohibiting the use of algorithmic software to set rental rates and penalizing landlords who use such software for that purpose

Trevor Jung, the Racine transit director, is running in Senate District 21, which is currently represented by Sen. Van Wangaard (R-Racine). Wanggaard, who has served in the Senate since 2010, announced his retirement last month. He introduced the “Families First” package, which seeks to address child care, energy and grocery costs. 

“The Wisconsin Republican-controlled Legislature has ignored the crisis of rising prices across the state,” Jung said. “When I join these folks behind me in the Wisconsin State Senate, I will get to work…Our work will ease the burden of rising costs on Wisconsin families.” 

The policies include: 

• Using state funding to extend Child Care Counts, the state program launched with pandemic relief funds to support child care centers
• Making the child and dependent care tax credit refundable, meaning that a taxpayer would get a cash refund for the difference between a filer’s tax liability and the credit’s full value
• Raising the threshold for eligibility for the Wisconsin Shares program to 85% of the state’s median income, so more families are eligible for a state subsidy for child care
• Regulating data centers by requiring they cover the cost of expansions of the energy grid, creating a new “very large” class of customer and mandating 70% renewable energy use by the centers 
• Requiring utilities to spend 2.4% of their revenues to fund energy efficiency and renewable resource programs
• Expanding the state investment in low-income energy assistance programs to $10.4 million a year from $6 million
• Requiring a state program to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy for low-income households 
• Providing free school meals to all Wisconsin students
• Restricting the use of algorithms to set prices in grocery stores
• Prohibiting dynamic price gouging of consumer goods in retail stores

Even with a majority in the Senate, the odds of having the bills become law will depend on the state Assembly, which is currently controlled by a Republican majority, as well as  the new governor. 

Democrats will need to hold all their current seats and flip five additional seats to win the Assembly majority. This election cycle will be a test-drive for the odd-numbered Senate districts up for election this year, but every Assembly seat has already been up for election under the new maps.

Hesselbein said she is confident that voters will elect Democrats up and down the ballot in November, including in the Assembly, but added that the bills should have bipartisan support. 

“These are not fringe issues that people are talking about. These are things that we’ve been hearing about from Rhinelander to Madison to Racine to Mount Horeb. Everywhere around the state people are talking about rising costs and what we can do to combat them, so I think we should have Republicans regardless of what the makeup of the state Assembly or the state Senate is.”

There will also be a new governor in 2027. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany is competing on the Republican side. There are seven major Democratic candidates, and Hesselbein said she believes each will be supportive of the Senate’s bills.

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Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette announced Thursday she’s getting into the 2027 race for Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

Brunette previously served as the Clark County district attorney, after she was elected as a Democrat, serving in that office from 2012 to 2018. Her announcement comes just days after liberal-leaning Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor stormed to a 20 point victory over conservative Judge Maria Lazar in this year’s Supreme Court race. 

Brunette was elected to the circuit court in 2018 and ran unopposed for reelection in 2024. She said in a statement that she was running for the Supreme Court to protect Wisconsinites’ freedoms. 

“I’m running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court because it has never been more important to have state courts dedicated to protecting fundamental rights and freedoms and holding people, and the government, accountable when they break the law,” Brunette said. “Every person who enters a courtroom is seeking the same thing: fairness, justice, a system they can trust. That’s the kind of court I want to protect for every Wisconsinite, and for my own family. Whether it’s protecting personal healthcare rights, safeguarding voting rights, or supporting public safety, we need to protect a majority on our state Supreme Court who will fairly and impartially uphold our laws.”

Her message closely matches the argument Taylor worked to make on the campaign trail over the last year. 

Brunette is running for the seat currently held by conservative Justice Annette Ziegler, who has already announced she’s not running. A victory would mean that Justice Brian Hagedorn, who has occasionally sided with the Court’s liberals, is the only conservative left on the seven-member Court. 

Before being elected as the first woman to serve as Clark County district attorney, Brunette was the county’s corporation counsel and worked in the Hennepin County attorney’s office in Minneapolis. She got her bachelor’s degree from UW-Eau Claire and her law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. She lives with her five children and husband in Neillsville.

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The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) told lawmakers on Wednesday that it did not violate open meetings law during a 2024 standards setting meeting and that additional staff would help fulfill open records requests.

Republican lawmakers and conservatives have continued to scrutinize the agency over new state standards that were adopted in 2024. Recently, they have turned their attention to a four-day meeting held in June 2024 at Chula Vista, a water park resort in the Wisconsin Dells. The purpose of the meeting was to set new state testing standards for the Forward Exam, the standardized test that Wisconsin third graders through eighth graders take each year. The event brought together 88 educators and DPI staff to discuss and help set the new standards.

Republicans on the Assembly Government Operations, Accountability and Transparency Committee (GOAT) called the informational hearing to ask the agency about its policies, procedures and compliance regarding open meetings laws and open records laws as well as the standard-setting and benchmarking process for the Forward Exam.

The hearing was scheduled one day after the Institute for Reforming Government (IRG), a conservative-leaning nonpartisan think tank, filed a complaint in Adams County, alleging that the state agency violated open meetings law with the 2024 meeting. The suit asks that the Adams County district attorney bring charges against DPI and seek a declaration that they repeatedly violated Wisconsin’s open meetings law. The DA has 20 days to decide.

Rep. Nate Gustafson (R-Omro) said there appeared to be “a lot of fog” around the meeting.  

“You have this meeting that happened that we have no records of other than a private vendor worked with DPI on standardized testing,” Gustafson said. “Then we have the superintendent come out and lower standards across schools, and there is this cost with no record of what the standard is.”

Andrew Hoyer-Booth, DPI legislative liaison, told lawmakers at the start of the hearing that it’s a “distraction” from DPI’s work.

“Modernizing our standards and assessments to align with the education landscape in Wisconsin and meet the needs of our students was a multi-year effort,” Hoyer-Booth said. “While those who don’t like the outcome seek to attack the process, the DPI is focused on the pressing issues of school funding, student academic achievement, educator recruitment and retention and student mental health.” 

Lawmakers were prompted to look into the waterpark meeting by a report from Brian Fraley for the Dairyland Sentinel and complaints that the paper’s open records requests weren’t fulfilled for more than a year by DPI.

“I just think the public expects that when a record is requested that they do receive it in a reasonable amount of time, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to think that this amount of time is an unreasonable amount of time,” Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) said. 

Rich Judge, an assistant state superintendent, said Data Recognition Corporation (DRC), the vendor DPI works with each year to update the assessment and ensure it is valid and up to date, is a private company not a governmental body subject to Wisconsin’s open meeting laws.

“DRC is not a government body. It is a private contractor in the same way that Microsoft is not a government body, Apple’s not a government body. People who do business with the Department of Public Instruction — those are contractors who perform a service for it,” he said.

Judge compared the work DRC did for DPI to the Legislature hiring lawyers to help with  redistricting or state agencies contracting with engineering firms or software companies. 

Judge likened the meeting to “a lot of middle-aged people taking the SAT for an entire day or two.” He said the content of the meeting was confidential because it involves evaluating real test questions that could go before students. 

“The standard-setting information is all public information, and it’s all readily available information, and it gets reviewed regularly, but as it relates to the specific meeting or this specific part of that conference, that was not a public meeting,” Judge said. 

Rep. Mike Bare (D-Verona) said he didn’t see a reason for the committee hearing. 

“It seems to me the motive behind this hearing — and the complaint  — is it fits the majority’s ongoing and systematic efforts to dismantle public education,” Bare said. 

“You’re required by a statute to do this work,” Bare told DPI representatives.  It’s in the public interest that you do this work. I think we appreciate that you do this work and just like all state government entities, you do value openness, complying with those statutes, complying with open records, complying with open meetings where it’s appropriate, where it makes sense. You gave a good argument for why, in this case… those laws don’t apply.”

DPI paid more than $368,000 for the meeting and work by the contractor. 

The meeting, according to DPI, cost about $219,000, which included lodging, meals, travel reimbursement, meeting expenses, laptops and hotspots. The remaining cost was for the work done by DRC included planning, facilitating the meeting and writing a final report.

Nedweski said the amount is “pretty mind-blowing.” DPI said, however, that the cost is less than what other states pay for similar efforts.

DPI said the total cost of the standards-setting work was about $30,740 per grade and subject. Similar work done by DRC for other states has ranged from $48,500 to $94,000 per grade/subject, according to DPI. 

Judge noted that the “distinguished” co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) found the meeting to be a “routine conference.” Lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee delayed the release of funds for the agency so they could review the spending for the conference after the Dairyland Sentinel report. Born made the comments after the committee decided to release the funds to the agency. 

“All due respect to my esteemed colleague, I’m in disagreement with him on this being an appropriate amount to spend,” Nedweski said. “Only one-third of the kids in the state can read at grade level. What are we getting for this?”

Judge said he thought Nedweski was making a “political argument” that was out of the scope of the hearing’s purpose. He added that there are only about two contractors in the U.S. who do the type of standards-setting work needed.

“There are plenty of folks who think that assessments are not appropriate, but this legislative body is not one of them. They have regularly required that we have state assessments. It certainly would be in your power as a legislator to say we’re not going to do standardized testing anymore,” Judge said.

When it comes to timing on fulfilling requests, Hoyer-Booth said the agency is in compliance with state law, but noted that DPI has received over 1,000 open records requests between Jan. 1, 2023 and April 2026. He said there are two factors that affect response times: the simplicity of the request and the agency’s finite staff. There are no staff members dedicated to fulfilling these requests.

“The same staff responsible for investigating teacher licensing and educator misconduct are the same individuals tasked with fulfilling open records requests,” Hoyer-Booth said. “DPI believes firmly that our agency must prioritize urgent matters, particularly investigations involving student safety. We hope the committee does that as well.”

Bare suggested that lawmakers advocate for additional staffing resources for the agency to fulfill requests in a more timely manner. 

“If you’re interested in pushing in the next budget for DPI to have the resources that they need to be responsive in a more timely way. Would you be interested in a bill now to get them attorney positions, records specialists to get them what they need to be more timely compliant?” Bare asked Nedweski. “Are you willing to commit to that?”

“The taxpayers are getting more and more frustrated because they’re not seeing outcomes. We’re spending more and more per student, and we have less outcomes —  we’re not going to talk about that,” Nedweski said.

“That’s what the hearing’s about,” Bare said. 

“I think that they have plenty of resources. One of the things they could do is probably bring people back to work in the office,” Nedweski said. “They have so many people working remotely.”

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U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin introduced a new bill Tuesday aimed at making it simpler and cheaper for people to watch professional sports. 

Currently, for a fan in Wisconsin to watch every Packers, Brewers and Bucks game in a year it costs more than $1,500 annually to purchase the necessary streaming services and subscriptions — a cost that Baldwin said Wednesday benefits league and streaming service executives, as well as the billionaire owners of sports teams, at the expense of fans. 

“This isn’t just a Packers or a Wisconsin issue. This has become an American issue,” Baldwin said during a Wednesday news conference. “What used to be grabbing the remote and hitting a button or two has turned into a maze of streaming subscriptions, unexpected blackouts or a sky high payment. To top it all off, there is no consistency, and it is flat out confusing for fans.” 

She said at the news conference she was introducing the bill without any co-sponsors specifically to start conversations in Congress about the issues in the bill. 

Baldwin’s For the Fans Act includes two major provisions meant to make it cheaper for people to watch their favorite teams. The first would prohibit league-owned streaming services, such as MLB.Tv or NBA League Pass, from blacking out games that are played locally or on a third-party streamer. The second would require the leagues to provide a way for local fans to watch all games for teams based in the state in which they live. 

The proposal comes after the Green Bay Packers v. Chicago Bears playoff game in January was only available on local TV in Wisconsin in the Milwaukee and Green Bay markets — meaning that in five of the state’s markets, fans were forced to subscribe to Amazon to watch the game. 

The bill would apply to professional sports teams playing baseball, basketball, football, basketball, hockey and soccer. Minor league teams and leagues with fewer than eight teams are exempted. 

Baldwin has also previously introduced the Go Pack Go Act, which aims to make sure the Wisconsin households assigned to Michigan or Minnesota television markets are able to watch Packers games.

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The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has warned that the severe storms that brought tornadoes, high winds, flooding and hail to Wisconsin Tuesday evening could inspire “storm chasers” to come to the state to scam homeowners seeking repairs. 

DATCP said in a news release Wednesday that door-to-door repair crews travel to communities hit by severe weather, offering quick fixes only to do poor quality work or take money up front and perform no work at all. 

The agency said the best way to avoid these scams is to hire local workers, ask for recommendations from trusted sources and make sure there is a written contract and documentation of all transactions. 

The Wisconsin Builders Association made a similar warning Wednesday, saying in a news release that scammers often skirt state laws regulating contractors. Those include laws that prohibit contractors from offering to pay portions of a homeowner’s insurance deductible or from negotiating with insurance companies, and a law that forbids contractors from refusing to cancel parts of contracts if insurance claims are denied. 

“Severe weather can create urgency for homeowners, but that urgency can also make them targets for bad actors,” said Wisconsin Builders Association President Andy Selner. “Taking a few extra steps to verify a contractor can prevent costly mistakes and protect the investment made in your home.”

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Most Americans support banning members of Congress and their families from trading stocks in individual companies.

So says a 2023 University of Maryland study that surveyed about 3,000 registered voters.

Lawmakers in Washington are privy to information the general public may not be and can use it to make advantageous stock trades.

And “the problem is getting worse,” said Kedric Payne, director of the ethics program for the Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog in Washington. His team focuses on enforcing existing ethics laws and advocating for tougher ones.

Payne believes the public should know “their elected officials are protecting the public interest and not their own personal interest.”

The STOCK Act, a federal law passed in 2012, requires members of Congress to disclose their trades within about 30 days of the purchase or sale. But the penalty for filing a disclosure report late is a meager $200.

Payne said his organization used to file ethics complaints for congressional stock trading. It’s rare that they file those complaints now since the most common violation is a late report, and the legal penalty for filing late is so insignificant.

While disclosure requirements can help reveal actual or perceived conflicts of interest, Payne said, disclosing conflicts of interest also lessens the public’s trust in government. In effect, the increased transparency doesn’t alleviate whether the trade looks corrupt or is corrupt.

U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, a freshman congressman elected to the Wisconsin 8th in 2024, is no stranger to stock trading. The Republican represents the northeastern portion of the state, and his investment activity consistently outpaces Wisconsin’s other congressional representatives.

A businessman from De Pere who was elected to his seat by a wide margin in 2024, Wied formerly owned a gas station chain in the Green Bay area. His district encompasses parts of Door County, Green Bay and Appleton. Like every other member of Congress, his seat will be up for grabs this year in the midterm elections. Wied has said publicly he plans to seek reelection.

Wied recently reported buying between $760,000 and $1.6 million in stock between Feb. 3 and Feb. 19, according to The Badger Project’s analysis of Wied’s periodic transaction report. The disclosure laws only require that members report ranges and not exact values. In the same time period, Wied also wholly or partially sold stock valued between about $600,000 and $1.5 million.

Members of Congress are required to file periodic reports with the Clerk of the House about 45 days after they, their spouse or their dependent children buy or sell a financial asset worth more than $1,000. Wied’s most recent report, filed in March, is five pages long and lists 25 separate transactions. His largest single transaction was a purchase of between $500,000 and $1 million in U.S. treasury bills, a low-risk, low-reward investment.

In comparison, no other representative among Wisconsin’s U.S. House members — Reps Mark Pocan, Gwen Moore, Scott Fitzgerald, Derrick Van Orden, Glenn Grothman, Brian Steil and Tom Tiffany — have filed periodic transaction reports in the last year.

Members must also submit yearly financial disclosures, which list their assets and liabilities.

The sum of Wied’s assets disclosed in his latest annual disclosure ranges from about $6 million to $13 million, according to a review by The Badger Project. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who has millions in commercial real estate and stocks, is the only member of Wisconsin’s delegation in Washington to top that. Johnson reported assets ranging from about $17 million to $81 million in 2025.

Wied’s staff wrote in an email to The Badger Project in January that the congressman’s trades are solely managed by an independent financial advisor and that Wied complies with all ethics laws and guidelines.

Wied’s office did not respond to The Badger Project’s request for comment for this story.

Payne told The Badger Project that Wied isn’t on his group’s radar.

“We haven’t seen anything that would draw this congressman to our attention,” Payne said.

But a congressman’s trades can be aboveboard and still raise suspicion because lawmakers who trade at a high volume will eventually make a transaction that either overlaps with their professional duties or appears to, Payne said.

“It’s only a matter of time for him to have trades over his career that are gonna raise questions whether or not he did anything wrong,” Payne said about Wied. “And when people question if their elected official is prioritizing their interest or prioritizing the official’s personal interest, you have a problem.”

That’s why Payne and his organization have endorsed the bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act. The bill was introduced last September and has been stuck in committee since. Among the bill’s 131 co-sponsors are Van Orden and Pocan. If it passes, the proposed legislation would bar members of Congress as well as their spouses and dependent children from both owning and trading individual stocks. Further, members would be required to either divest their current holdings or place them into a blind trust.

“It is a real legislative solution to the problem,” Payne said.

The bill is facing competition as Democrats and Republicans have since introduced their own, “watered down” versions, Payne said. The Stop Insider Trading in Congress Act, introduced by Steil, a Republican, and mentioned by President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address, would prohibit members of Congress from buying individual stocks. But members could continue to own their stocks and sell them. The Restore Trust in Government Act, the Democratic version, would include the president and vice president in the members included in a stock trading ban.

Payne said he has faith that the original bill will pass eventually, but that it will take another scandal to get the public to pay attention and demand Congress to take action.

Tony Wied’s trades in February 2026

SALES
MIN	MAX	STOCK	TRADE DATE
$15,001	$50,000	Paycom Software Inc	2/12/26
$50,001	$100,000	Block Inc Class A	2/12/26
PARTIAL SALES
$15,001	$50,000	Fortinet Inc	2/19/26
$15,001	$50,000	Broadcom Inc	2/19/26
$50,001	$100,000	Western Alliance Bancorp	2/19/26
$15,001	$50,000	Salesforce Inc	2/17/26
$50,001	$100,000	Lam Resh Corp	2/12/26
$100,001	$250,000	Artista Networks Inc	2/12/26
$50,001	$100,000	Take-Two Interactive	2/11/26
$50,001	$100,000	Block Inc A Class	2/11/26
$50,001	$100,000	Western Alliance Bancorp	2/9/26
$50,001	$100,000	Lam Resh Corp	2/9/26
$50,001	$100,000	Take-Two Interactive	2/3/26
$15,001	$50,000	Artista Networks Inc	2/3/26
$50,001	$100,000	Lam Resh Corp	2/3/26
$15,001	$50,000	Ulta Beauty Inc	2/3/26
PURCHASES
$50,001	$100,000	Visa Inc Class A	2/19/26
$15,001	$50,000	Labcorp Holdings Inc	2/19/26
$50,001	$100,000	Charles Schwab Corp	2/19/26
$15,001	$50,000	Micron Technology Inc	2/19/26
$500,001	$1,000,000	U.S. Treasury Bills	2/13/26
$15,001	$50,000	ServiceNow Inc	2/4/26
$50,001	$100,000	Him & Hers Health Inc	2/3/26
$15,001	$50,000	Hubspot Inc	2/3/26
$50,001	$100,000	The Trade Desk Inc Class A	2/3/26

This article first appeared on The Badger Project, an independent, reader-supported news nonprofit in Wisconsin. It is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Republican lawmakers left open Gov. Tony Evers’ special session on gerrymandering on Tuesday, saying they want to have further conversations with Evers about the issue. Evers and Democratic lawmakers criticized the lack of action. In a statement, Evers said “there’s nothing to negotiate.” 

The open-ended special session began even as lawmakers and Evers continue to discuss a possible deal on property taxes and school funding.

Evers announced his intention to call the special session in February, urging lawmakers to pass a constitutional amendment to ban partisan gerrymandering. He officially ordered the session in March. The constitutional amendment would include language to expressly prohibit drawing districts that give a disproportionate advantage or disadvantage to any political party. It would not lay out a new process for drawing maps.

Wisconsin adopted new legislative maps in 2024 following a state Supreme Court decision that found the previous maps were an unconstitutional gerrymander. The maps will be in place until 2030 when redistricting happens again. Unless there is a change to the current process, lawmakers will again be in charge of drawing new maps in 2031.

Ahead of the noon start time for the session, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) announced their intentions to leave the session open in a statement. They said they did so in “an effort to continue meaningful dialogue.”

“We view the Governor’s proposal as a first step on which to build a more comprehensive, workable solution for Wisconsin,” the leaders said, adding that they want a face-to-face meeting with Evers to discuss ideas. “We’re committed to a transparent and balanced solution that reflects the interest of all Wisconsinites.”

Evers, who is serving his last year in office, has called special sessions many times over his two terms including on abortion, gun violence and the state budget. Republicans typically have gaveled in and out of them without taking action or have completely rewritten his proposals.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said in a statement that “any changes to the current process have to be made intentionally and specifically using normal legislative procedure” and that “leaving the special session open allows the legislature to gain public input in order to make an informed decision on how to proceed.” 

“In nearly every instance in which Republicans did not immediately gavel out of the governor’s special sessions, Republicans simply quietly gaveled out months later, largely to avoid press interest, bad headlines, and public scrutiny and accountability,” Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback wrote in a social media post.

The Senate and Assembly adjourned until Thursday morning. 

Evers said in a statement after that there is “nothing to negotiate” and urged lawmakers to take action on the constitutional amendment. 

“Rigging maps so that one political party stays in power is wrong, it’s anti-democratic, and it’s un-American — there’s nothing to negotiate because there’s no room for compromise when it comes to making sure Wisconsinites’ voices matter and their votes count,” Evers said. “This is a first step — if we don’t get a ban on partisan gerrymandering put in Wisconsin’s constitution, lawmakers will never be forced to create the independent and nonpartisan redistricting process Wisconsinites deserve. Lawmakers either want to ban partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin or they don’t.” 

As the Republican leaders in the Assembly and Senate gaveled in and adjourned the sessions, Democratic members remained on  the floor of each chamber to voice their opposition to Republicans’ lack of action.

Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) and Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) held a press conference to criticize Republican lawmakers for not showing up to debate the measure.

“It is a shame that Senate Republicans are refusing to do their jobs when the Senate Democrats are in the Senate chamber, ready to discuss, debate and pass the constitutional amendment banning partisan gerrymandering,” Hesselbein said. 

Hesselbein said every Senate Democrat would have voted in favor of the proposal. She also said that none of her Republican Senate colleagues had contacted her and she didn’t know whether they actually planned to come back. 

Spreitzer said that gerrymandering has led to elected officials ignoring issues that matter to voters. 

“We’re seeing the last vestiges of that right now, as lame duck Republicans who are afraid to run on fair maps aren’t even coming in to take up this issue ahead of this coming election,” he said. “We only have fair legislative maps now because of court action, but our work is not done. There will be another redistricting cycle after the next census after 2030, and we need to lock in constitutional protections to make sure that our maps are never gerrymandered again.” 

Spreitzer noted that the constitutional amendment would also provide legal grounds for a court challenge if there are gerrymander attempts in the future.

As a constitutional amendment, Evers’ proposal would need to pass in two consecutive sessions of the state Legislature before it would go to voters for the final say. 

Bianca Shaw, the Wisconsin state director for Common Cause, told the Wisconsin Examiner that the lawmakers subverted expectations for the session, but that she hopes it isn’t just about “optics” and that policymakers will take the time to listen to Wisconsinites about the issue. 

“I think that what the constituents want, what voters want, is most important,” Shaw said. “I think that it is constructive that it wasn’t outright dismissed but words alone won’t help reform, and so what I’m looking for is for legislative leaders to go into their communities and see what their constituents want.” 

Shaw said she thinks there are some shifts happening in lawmakers’ openness in part due to upcoming elections and as many are facing competitive races.

“I think that what is happening right now in the state of Wisconsin is our legislators, on both sides, on all sides, are understanding that they have to earn their votes.”

Shaw said the constitutional amendment would be a valuable signal, but not the full solution. Common Cause, which is a part of the Fair Maps Coalition, supports an independent redistricting commission proposal, which would take the job of drawing maps out of lawmakers’ hands. 

Negotiations on property taxes, school funding

Gerrymandering is not the only issue lawmakers and Evers are considering as they continue to seek a deal on tax relief and school funding. 

Wisconsin has a surplus of more than $2 billion and policymakers are seeking to tap it to provide property tax relief to citizens, who have seen large increases in their bills, as well as to  provide additional funding to school districts, which have seen a steady decline in state aid.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Evers told reporters on Monday that he and lawmakers were still talking about a potential deal.

“Before they disappear completely from Madison we need to get that done,” Evers said. “So we’re still talking.” 

According to WisPolitics, Vos said in a social media post that he had been in discussions with Evers for nearly a month and “our proposal encompasses property tax relief, rebate checks, tax exemption on tips and overtime, and enhanced special education funding for schools.” 

Other members of the Assembly Republican caucus, including Rep. Calvin Callahan (R-Tomahawk) also posted about the framework for the deal. 

However, it is unclear whether Senate Republicans are part of those negotiations or whether they are close to agreeing. LeMahieu declared that he was excluded from previous negotiations and the Senate did not go along with what Vos and Evers agreed. 

“Let’s hope we can convene the Legislature (we need the GOP State Senate to agree) soon so we can get this package enacted,” Vos said.

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Wisconsin Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) is dropping his challenge to Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) — making him the fifth Senate Republican to announce his retirement from office.

James had initially announced that he would be running for reelection in October in Senate District 31, which is currently represented by Smith, saying that he would be coming “home.” James and Smith were drawn into the same district under the legislative maps adopted in 2024, and James moved to continue to represent Senate District 23.

James’ retirement announcement comes after his daughter was charged with stealing funds from his campaign. He turned in his daughter to police in 2024, after discovering that, while  working as his campaign treasurer, she withdrew $32,000 from the campaign account over the year without authorization. She had withdrawn the funds to help with her small business.

James, who was first elected to the Senate in 2022, said in a statement that it has been the “opportunity of a lifetime” to serve in the Legislature, but “this role came at a price, a price of being away from my family.”

“For this reason, and for other personal reasons I have decided to retire from the Wisconsin State Senate,” he said.

James’ departure from the race means Republicans are losing the advantage that comes with having an incumbent candidate in yet another key state Senate district.

Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) and Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) have both announced their retirements, and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) is the only incumbent Republican running for reelection in one of the four Senate Districts that Democrats are targeting as a part of their plan to win a majority.

Senate District 31 includes the entirety of Eau Claire County and parts of Dunn, Trempealeau and Chippewa counties. It’s one of 17 odd-numbered districts that will be up for election for the first time under new maps.

Other Republicans not running for reelection include Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater).

According to a Democratic Party of Wisconsin analysis, Senate District 31 voted in April this year for Justice-elect Chris Taylor, who was backed by the party, by 30 percentage points.

According to an analysis by John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University, the current 31st Senate district leaned Democratic in the 2024 presidential election by 2.2 percentage points and went Democratic by 4.7 percentage points in the 2024 Senate race. 

Devin Remiker, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said in a statement that Republicans “know that they’re in big trouble without rigged maps designed to protect them from the outrage voters have about rising prices and the disastrous Trump administration.”

“With last week’s blowout victory, the likes of which this state has not seen for over a decade, we will double down to ensure we can deliver real change for working people in November,” Remiker said. “For the Republicans who are staring down the most competitive elections of their lifetimes, with their leaders and colleagues continuing to flee the sinking MAGA ship, I would urge you to join them in retirement before the wave hits this November.”

Another Assembly Republican declines to run 

Rep. Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) also announced his intentions to not run for reelection on Tuesday, saying he would be taking a “sabbatical” from elected office. Allen lost his bid for the office of mayor of Waukesha last week to Alicia Halvensleben, a Democrat. 

“We are blessed with living in the greatest country of all time. Service is the rent that we pay for such privilege,” Allen, one of the most right-wing members of the Assembly, said in a statement. “Protecting our freedoms and opportunities takes work and when we begin to take them for granted, we run the risk of losing them.”

His campaign statement noted that “this action by Rep. Allen may be the only thing that he has ever done that will thrill liberals.”

Allen joins six other Assembly Republicans, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), in not running for reelection.

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The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources held a public hearing Tuesday on a request from the AI data center company Vantage for an air quality permit to operate 45 diesel backup generators at the company’s proposed hyperscale data center in Port Washington.

The department has already granted a preliminary approval to the permit request. Members of the public complained at the virtual hearing that the DNR chose not to conduct a full environmental impact assessment — despite southeastern Wisconsin’s existing classification as a high air pollution region. 

Michael Greif, an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates, said that all 45 generators operating at once for one hour would emit the same amount of nitrogen oxides as more than 5 million cars driving over one mile of nearby Interstate 43 — or seven times the hourly nitrogen oxide emissions for all of Ozaukee County. Exposure to nitrogen oxides have been tied to respiratory issues such as asthma. 

“It is also one of the first hyper scale AI data centers proposed in Wisconsin,” Grief said. “So it raises new and unreserved questions about energy use, climate impacts, air pollution and public health, and for all those reasons and more, DNR is legally required to prepare an EIS for the Vantage data center.”

Residents of the area put it more simply, complaining about the air pollution they’re already dealing with every day. 

“Our lakeshore is at capacity,” Sheboygan resident Rebecca Clarke said. 

Many speakers also expressed frustration at their lack of a voice in the state’s surge in data center development and proposals. 

“This community has not been given a fair process,” Port Washington resident Carri Prom said. “We’ve been speaking about this process for months. We’ve largely been ignored, and yet, here we are.”

The air pollution permit is one of the DNR’s few chances to weigh in on a data center proposal that has drawn widespread opposition in Port Washington and across the state. The Public Service Commission, the agency that regulates utility companies in Wisconsin, has given the public little confidence it will do enough to prevent electric bills from increasing.

Local zoning boards and city councils, enticed by the promise of property tax revenue, have often signed off on data centers after agreeing to non-disclosure agreements to keep the details away from their constituents. 

“I think things are very backwards, and that we’re proceeding with all of these projects before we even have any idea of how to protect residents,” said Sarah Zarling, an environmental organizer who’s been involved in the data center fight. 

Over the past year, as the number of data centers operating, under construction or proposed has continued to increase, public opposition has grown. Multiple pieces of legislation for regulating data centers were proposed by lawmakers of both parties, yet none passed  before legislators adjourned for the year. Data centers have become a big issue in the Democratic primary for governor and a number of environmental groups have called for a moratorium on data center development until stricter regulations can be put into law. 

Brett Korte, a staff attorney at Clean Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner in a statement after Tuesday’s hearing that the disconnected government approval process only highlights Wisconsin’s lack of a coherent plan.

“One of the pressing issues related to the data center boom currently underway in Wisconsin is that there is no overarching plan to ensure they don’t harm communities in our state,” he said. “Nor is there even an effort to fully understand the harm they will cause. Local governments make zoning decisions, the PSC approves the construction of power plants and transmission lines, and the DNR implements water regulations and issues air permits.” Yet no state office is responsible for looking at all of the issues raised by data centers at once.

Korte added that a better process for planning future renewable energy sources, stronger carbon emission standards and a more concrete plan for achieving Gov. Tony Evers’ goal of powering the state with 100% clean energy by 2050 would help the state better manage data center growth. 

“No one is asking: Do the benefits of data centers outweigh their environmental harm?” he continued. “That is why Clean Wisconsin continues to call for a pause on data center construction until the state has a comprehensive plan to regulate their development.”

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Kris Seals, a Brookfield alderman, has resigned following public outcry over anti-Muslim social media posts he made. Though Seals initially resisted calls for his resignation, he has since backpedaled and apologized for his comments, which discussed violence against Muslims. 

“I would like to apologize to the Muslim community for my insensitive and inappropriate statements I made online,” Seals said in an emailed statement which was shared by Brookfield City Attorney Jenna Merten, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. 

Shortly after Seals was reelected in an uncontested race on April 7, Fox 6 Milwaukee reported on numerous posts the alder made on LinkedIn. “They will take over your country with out (sic) one shot,” read one of Seals’ posts. “They will out vote you in less then (sic) 30 years and then you will be living under Sharia Law.” Fox 6 Milwaukee said the posts were first noticed by a local resident who shared them with the TV news station. “They are a sick religion,” Seals wrote in  another post. “This must stop. deport them all.” In yet another post Seals wrote “It’s time to wipe out the immigrants from Britain and all of the EU.” Another of his  posts referred to shooting Muslims and Somalis with  “bacon rapped (sic) bullets,” topped off with laughing emojis. 

Seals had also made a post reading “Obummer is not the President anymore! So Presidential immunity is Mute. Hang him for treason,” and another one suggesting that criminals should be shot twice in the head to save “the people tons of money in court cost and prison cost, also eliminating the dems from becoming involved in trying to save their voter base.” Images of another post have been shared with the Examiner, with the posts alleging that “every blue state has Billions in fraud” which Seals re-posted and commented that, “I think it’s way past time for Public Executions.”

Fox6 Milwaukee reporters questioned Seals at his home. Seals said “it’s obnoxious, these people,” referring to what he called “extreme Muslims” and asking the reporter to “put that word in there, because it’s not all Muslims.” Grinning, Seals admitted to making the posts about bacon-wrapped bullets, a discriminatory trope mocking the Muslim prohibition on eating pork. Seals told the reporters that the only post he regretted was the one calling for criminals to be shot. “Sometimes we say a lot of things online that we don’t necessarily mean,” Seals said. He later claimed that his LinkedIn posts were  bringing attention to important issues. “Those are problems,” said Seals. “I have a right to say how I feel.”

The comments caused an uproar and Muslim community organizations called for Seals to resign. “Public officials take an oath to serve all constituents, not to demonize them,” said Robert McCaw, government affairs director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Seals’ violent and dehumanizing remarks targeting Muslims and immigrants are not just offensive, they are dangerous. This rhetoric fuels hate, legitimizes discrimination, and puts real people at risk. It is fundamentally incompatible with the responsibilities of public office.” 

Seals said in his resignation statement that he spoke with a member of the Muslim community. “I appreciate they are willing to forgive me for the rude statements I made,” he said. “I look forward to meeting with them and to get an even better understanding of the Community.”

The common council will now need to determine how to fill Seals’ empty seat. It wasn’t the first time Brookfield’s common council had to contend with inflammatory comments made by Seals. 

In 2023, Seals drew attention for speaking against a proposed affordable housing development in his wealthy, mostly white suburb. “The problem that I have is the future of Brookfield,” said Seals. “What we are trying to do is step down to a West Allis or a Wauwatosa. No, we’re Brookfield. We don’t step down to allow the people who can’t afford to live in Brookfield to come in, because then we become West Allis, then we become Wauwatosa. This is not what Brookfield is. I’ve been here 60 years, this is not Brookfield.” Seals also said people who want to live in Brookfield need to “put your nose to the grindstone” until they can afford to live there. 

An attempt to censure Seals for his comments on affordable housing failed, with 16 local residents appearing to speak in support of the alder. One woman called his opposition to the housing project “exemplary.”

Brookfield Ald. Michael Hallquist pushed for Seals’ censure in 2023. In an emailed statement to Wisconsin Examiner, Hallquist applauded his common council colleague’s resignation over three years later.

“First and foremost, I want to reassure the Muslim members of our community that you belong here, you are loved, and you are every much as Brookfield as my family is,” said Hallquist. “You are our neighbors and we will continue to show up for you.”

Hallquist said that Seals “represents an ever-decreasing attitude of hate and intolerance in our community. While I appreciate his apology, I hope he sincerely intends to learn more from his neighbors on his pathway to forgiveness, and I wish him well on that journey. It speaks volumes to the kindness of our Muslim community to offer him the opportunity to do-so.” Hallquist concluded that, “Brookfield is what we make it, so I hope we continue to create a culture for our city where everyone feels safe, appreciated, and welcome.”

This article has been updated with comment from Ald. Michael Hallquist.

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Wisconsin lawmakers agree on the importance of providing public access to state government meetings through livestreams, but they finished their work this year without an agreement on a short-term or long-term plan to fund the Capitol livestreaming service WisconsinEye. The nonprofit organization faces an uncertain financial future. Jon Henkes, president and CEO of WisEye, now says the organization is hoping for further action in a special or extraordinary session.

Henkes, who was not available for an interview, said in a statement that WisconsinEye “remains hopeful of some level of support from the state, but right now that’s a big question given both houses of the legislature adjourned without agreement on a plan to be supportive.” 

WisconsinEye was started as an independent nonprofit in 2007 to livestream and archive government meetings and legislative sessions. For most of its history, WisconsinEye has relied on donations and is run independently from the state Legislature, but since the pandemic, Henkes has said the organization has had trouble raising funds for its operations. It has a budget of about $900,000 a year. 

The organization, which shut down it operations and pulled its archives offline for several weeks in December and January, turned to state lawmakers for help at the end of last year, but the path to a solution reached a halt as lawmakers deadlocked on what to do.

On March 23, WisconsinEye released a public statement saying that “access to the WisconsinEye archive may be curtailed to facilitate needed preparations for a possible permanent shutdown of the network.” It also said on its GoFundMe that “coverage of upcoming events is being reduced due to funding constraints.”

“There was much hope as leadership of both parties and houses energetically expressed support and gratitude for the mission and work of WisconsinEye,” Henkes wrote in his April message. “Bringing their good intentions across the finish line can still happen but it’s going to take an extraordinary or special session of the legislature, and the support of Governor Evers to come through for us. And by ‘us’ I mean all citizens who care about transparency and access, and who appreciate the network’s 18 years of exceptional public service.”

Gov. Tony Evers and lawmakers have talked previously about taking additional action in a special or extraordinary session this year, but those discussions have been centered around property tax relief and school funding, not WisconsinEye. It’s unclear whether additional issues could become wrapped up in those negotiations, though one Republican leader previously said a bill would focus on taxes and wouldn’t be a “mini budget.” 

There were two legislative efforts to address the crisis at WisconsinEye leading up to the final regular floor session this year.

A bipartisan Assembly bill would have placed $10 million, which had already been set aside in the form of matching funds for WisconsinEye, in a trust fund to accrue interest that the nonprofit would then be able to use for its operational costs, without the requirement that it match those funds. WisconsinEye still would have needed to raise a few hundred thousand dollars each year for its operations. 

The Wisconsin Senate passed a separate bill, which was amended to provide some stopgap funding for WisconsinEye and would have opened up the possibility of replacing WisconsinEye with another streaming service, launching a “request for proposals” (RFP) — or a bidding process for the job of livestreaming government proceedings. 

Neither body took up the other body’s proposal.

Other states have also navigated conflict over livestreaming government proceedings, including disagreements over funding, what is shown and how it is shown, according to a 2016 Stateline report. There are two legislative chambers in the U.S. that don’t livestream floor proceedings: the North Carolina Senate and the Missouri Senate. The latter has been debating allowing video livestreaming.

It’s unclear whether there is enough of an appetite from Wisconsin lawmakers for further action this year to ensure continued streaming into the future. The state Legislature finished its regular session business this year in March, meaning that action from lawmakers will be limited for the remainder of the year as many turn their attention to running for reelection.

Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), who voted for the state Senate proposal, told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview that he is open to exploring a long-term solution over the next nine months. 

“We’re not back in session till 2027 and so the opportunity really to implement the results of an RFP wouldn’t really be there, and so I have no objection to spending the next nine months exploring, what might be out there to provide this service through an RFP,” Spreitzer said, “The real question… is what are we doing between now and next January? Are we providing some funding to keep WisconsinEye going?”

Spreitzer voted for the Senate proposal after amendments addressed some of his key concerns including providing stopgap funding to WisconsinEye to get it through the next year and the inclusion of some accountability measures. He said the sense of urgency to come to a solution faded after the session came to an end.

“I mean to be really blunt there was a sense that perhaps the only reason that they got stopgap funding for the month of February was that [Assembly] Speaker [Robin] Vos wanted his farewell address to be on WisconsinEye,” Spreitzer said. “I think once the legislators, who want their own speeches to be televised aren’t in session anymore, even though there are other government meetings, I think the urgency does fade, which is a problem.”

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), who is retiring at the end of his term, said at a WisPolitics event last month that he prefers having an independent organization responsible and that he thinks the Assembly proposal is the better option. 

“The idea that we’re going to go out to bid for a money-losing proposition that requires you to cover every hearing for free… doesn’t seem to be one that’s workable,” Vos said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I don’t know.”

The bill’s lead author Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) did not respond to requests for an interview. Spreitzer noted that Bradley has said he is open to providing state funding, but it would be open to those submitting proposals to speak to that. 

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), who is also retiring at the end of his term, also did not respond to a request for comment. 

Vos said that while he hopes WisconsinEye will “survive” and “make it to the next budget cycle,” after that, “frankly, I’m gone” next session. 

Spreitzer said there should be some urgency attached to the recent update provided on March 23 from WisconsinEye. He said maintaining access to the archives is important, even when there are fewer legislative meetings going on to be livestreamed. 

“People don’t just want to watch meetings live. They want to be able to go back and see what happens,” Spreitzer said. “There’s an election coming up, and voters want to see what their elected officials were actually saying and doing during the session, and to not be able to go back and do that and have that accountability, I think would be a huge loss.”

In February, the Joint Committee on Legislative Organization voted to provide $50,000 to WisconsinEye to resume coverage, but the organization hasn’t received additional funds in the following months despite saying that it needed them. 

Spreitzer said he would support providing a “minimal monthly amount” to WisconsinEye to keep operations going until at least 2027, whether that has to be done through committee action or through a special session as suggested by WisEye. The Senate bill would have set aside over $580,000 and, if approved by JFC, the money would be paid out to WisconsinEye in monthly payments of about $48,000.

“That’s, you know, obviously up to Republican leadership,” Spreitzer added.

Spreitzer said taking the time to think through the long-term solutions is important, especially with a number of concerns about WisconsinEye and how it has navigated its advocacy efforts. He noted that the organization appears incapable of doing the fundraising that it has done in the past. 

“I did not feel like they were as up front or direct in communicating about that as they should have been, particularly with the Legislature,” Spreitzer said, adding that he received no direct communication and only saw press releases and messages posted to WisconsinEye’s website. “I just found that really inappropriate. We’d go on their website and we’d see — “if we don’t get money by this date we’re going to turn the archives off,” then they did turn the archives off. It felt more like extortion than somebody actually coming forward and saying, ‘Here’s our business model, here’s what’s not working, please help us.’ I just am not a big fan of handing a check to somebody that acts that way, at least not without accountability measures to make sure that doesn’t happen in the future.”

Ahead of the temporary shutdown in December and January, WisconsinEye said it had raised no funds for the year. It then launched a GoFundMe for small-dollar donations, and as of April 13, the nonprofit’s GoFundMe has raised over $94,000. The amount is less than half of WisEye’s $250,000 goal, which would cover three months of its operating budget.

The organization has said that coupled with a “solid state commitment” that raising the additional funds for its operating budget would be achievable, and donors view that approach with “confidence.” 

While he wants to see a short-term solution to continue access, Spreitzer said he thinks the conversation about a long-term solution should not be led by LeMahieu or Vos. 

“Speaker Vos and Majority Leader LeMahieu are not going to be the two people in charge next session,” Spreitzer said, adding they have been “running point” on the issue and were incapable of finding an agreement. “We should let them provide some gap funding to get us to next year, but I don’t see any reason why they should be part of a long-term conversation here when they’re not going to be here next year.”

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who would need to sign off on any legislation, is also on his way out of office at the end of his term. 

Spreitzer said he thought his bill was a good starting point for the conversation, but he didn’t know whether he would pursue creating a state-run public affairs network next year. Democrats are putting their efforts towards winning the Senate majority, which would put them in a better position to shape legislation.

“That’s a conversation we would all need to have as Democrats if we’re in the majority again — whether you do something fully public, or you do something that is more similar to the Assembly bill this session [and] WisconsinEye makes some changes to its board and how it operates in order to get public money,” Spreitzer said.

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Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) announced his reelection bid on Monday — seeking a fourth term in the state Senate as other longtime Republicans are opting out of running.

Marklein was first elected to the state Senate in 2014 after serving two terms in the Assembly. He last won reelection in 2022 with 60% of the vote. This will be his first time running for reelection to the redrawn Senate District 17 under new voting maps adopted in 2024. 

“I am running again to keep investing in our shared priorities, protect Wisconsin’s checkbook, continue working across the aisle to solve problems, and move Wisconsin forward,” Marklein said in a statement. “We have made a lot of progress, but there is more work to do.” 

The district includes Crawford, Grant, Green, Iowa and LaFayette counties as well as the southwestern corner of Dane County. According to an analysis by John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University, the district leaned Democratic by 1 percentage point in the 2024 presidential election and by over 4 percentage points in the 2024 U.S. Senate race.

Marklein’s decision to run again could help Republicans defend their majority in the state Senate, since his incumbency gives him an advantage, especially as other Republicans, including leaders and longtime incumbents in critical seats opt out of seeking another term. 

Republicans currently hold an 18-15 majority in the state Senate, meaning they can only afford to lose one seat as they struggle to hold control of the chamber.  The GOP has held the Senate majority since 2011.

The retirements of Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) and Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) could diminish  Republicans’ chances of holding the Senate majority as the party loses the advantage of incumbency in two key districts. 

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) are leaving at the end of their terms.

Last week, Rep. Rob Brooks (R-Saukville), who has served in the Assembly since 2015, and Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond du Lac), first elected in 2022, both announced they won’t seek reelection this fall.  

“While I am stepping away from office, I still care deeply about the future of Wisconsin,” Brooks said in a statement. “Strong leadership in Madison matters, and it is important that we continue to elect people who understand our communities and are willing to stand up for them.” 

Other announced retirements include Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), Rep. Kevin Petersen (R-Waupaca), Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Hortonville) and Rep. Rick Gundrum (R-Slinger).

Marklein is the co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, a position that has given him a hand in writing Wisconsin’s two-year state budget for the last three sessions, deciding which state programs receive funding. He pointed to his work on the committee in his statement, saying it has given him a “a front-row seat in shaping Wisconsin’s budget and priorities.” 

“I have always used that position to ensure that our communities are well represented when decisions about state spending are made,” Marklein said. “I am proud to have led three successful bipartisan state budgets that have made historic investments in our K-12 schools, local governments, and infrastructure, strengthened our hospitals and healthcare system, and returned billions of dollars to taxpayers through tax relief for the middle-class and retirees. We accomplished this all while putting Wisconsin in one of the strongest fiscal positions in the country, boasting record surpluses and continuing to pay off debt and invest in the rainy day fund.” 

Marklein could face one of three Democrats, who are competing in a primary: Rep. Jenna Jacobson, who has the backing of the State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, Corrine Hendrickson, a child care advocate and Lisa White of Potosi, a small business owner.

While he didn’t launch his campaign until Monday, Marklein had been fundraising and reported in January that he raised $194,137 during the most recent six-month period, a number that tops what any of the Democratic candidates raised.

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A legal brief filed late last week seeks to have a Dane County judge declare that an 1897 law banning the practice of fusion voting is unconstitutional because it restricts the rights to a “free government,” equal protection and freedom of speech through a law that was passed to explicitly create a partisan electoral advantage. 

The motion was filed on Friday in a lawsuit brought last year by United Wisconsin, a nascent centrist political party hoping to offer voters an alternative to the “duopoly” of the Democratic and Republican parties. The group is represented by the voting rights focused firm Law Forward. 

Fusion voting is a practice through which multiple political parties can nominate the same candidate to the ticket. Under the system, a minor party such as United could choose to nominate its own candidate, but more often the party would endorse one of the major party candidates. Voters would be able to cast their votes for the same preferred candidate under either party line. 

At a conference on fusion voting hosted at UW-Madison last year, political scientists and proponents of the system said that in theory it can give minor parties more influence. A third party candidate under the current system is unlikely to win, but a minor party’s policy preferences are harder to ignore if the party has just enough sway to swing an election result in either direction.

The brief describes a hypothetical congressional race in which United cross-endorses the Democratic candidate, given the name Olson. After the hypothetical votes are counted, the Republican candidate has earned 48.2% of the vote on the Republican ticket while Olson has earned 45.9% of the vote on the Democratic ticket and 4.9% on the United line. When added together, this gives Olson the win with 50.8% of the total vote. 

In Wisconsin, where elections are often decided by single digit margins, this could result in meaningful considerations of the desires of the minor party voters — rather than the current system under which third party candidates, such as Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election, are seen as spoilers who can pull enough support away from the closest ideological major party candidate to help the other side win. 

“That is fusion voting in action. United Wisconsin will claim, with merit, to have helped her over the finish line,” the brief states. “No doubt Olson will be more attentive to her ‘home’ party, but if she’s a competent politician, she won’t ignore the priorities of the moderates and centrists in the United Wisconsin Party. If she does, United Wisconsin, and its key bloc of voters, might cross-nominate her opponent in the next election.”

Fusion voting is often considered alongside ideas such as ranked choice voting and multi-member congressional districts as a reform proposal that could help prevent the country from sliding into an authoritarian government. 

“Fusion offers the opportunity to create meaningful new political identities,” the legal brief states. “It allows voters of all ideological stripes to vote for their values without having to support a rival or opposing party with a mostly intolerable program.”

In the 19th century, fusion voting was used across the country. The practice was phased out in most of the country but exists currently in New York and Connecticut. The brief, which includes as many examples from history and political science as it does legal citations, states that Wisconsin’s fusion voting ban was enacted by the Republican Party in 1897 as it surged to become the state’s dominant political force in a direct effort to limit the ability of the Democratic Party and other minor parties to win. 

“History shows the ban was enacted as a form of invidious political discrimination,” the brief states.

The lawsuit argues the state has no direct interest in maintaining the power of the Democratic and Republican parties, so the law must be put under “strict scrutiny” for fundamentally restricting the speech of Wisconsinites. 

“When political parties cannot nominate their candidates of choice, they cannot effectively organize, campaign, advance priorities, or exercise political power,” the brief states. “They are relegated for perpetuity to a spoiler role, whereby any electoral effort they make is not only futile in advancing their own candidate and platform, but also seriously risks helping their least-favored major-party candidate win the race and get to govern. While the ban still allows political parties to nominate most candidates, it prohibits them from nominating the only candidates who can win; and while it allows political parties some degree of speech, it constrains their speech in the context for which political parties exist — the ballot.”

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Wisconsin will officially allow DACA status holders to obtain an occupational license under a bill Gov. Tony Evers signed into law last week. 

AB 759, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 240, allows DACA status holders to apply for and obtain professional credentials from the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS).

Evers said in a statement that it was the right thing to do to help “Dreamers… pursue their higher education and career goals to give back to the communities that raised them” and to help the Wisconsin economy by ensuring “smart, talented and capable people can join our workforce in high-need areas.” He signed the bill while surrounded by advocates at the Nuevo Mercado El Rey in Milwaukee.

“Here in Wisconsin — whether it’s restrictions on obtaining a driver’s license to operate a vehicle or certain work-related credentials — unnecessary barriers are holding hard-working people, as well as our workforce, economy, and communities, back,” Evers said in a statement. “Immigrants play a critical role in our economy and our communities in every corner of our state — and they have for generations. In Wisconsin, we’ve always believed that if you work hard, obey the law, pay taxes, and play by the rules just like everyone else, you should have a fair shot at pursuing the American Dream, including having the opportunity to join our professional workforce.” 

The bill made it through Wisconsin’s Republican-led Legislature and to Evers at a time when the federal government has been cracking down on immigrants, detaining more than 260 DACA recipients and deporting more than 80. 

Proponents of the legislation got it over the finish line using the tag line, “This is not an immigration issue; this is a workforce issue.”

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), adopted in 2012 under President Barack Obama, provides temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. The program does not provide recipients with legal status, a path to permanent residency or citizenship. 

According to a September 2025 report by the Migration Policy Institute, there are about 505,000 active DACA recipients from close to 200 different countries of birth in the U.S, about 5,100 of whom reside in Wisconsin.

DSPS issues thousands of licenses for more than 200 types of jobs in the health, business trades and other fields each year in Wisconsin. Nurses, real estate agents, cosmetologists, plumbers, dentists and emergency medical technicians all receive licenses through DSPS.

Without the change in state law, DACA recipients have been ineligible to apply, limiting the types of jobs they can do in Wisconsin. 

Under the law, workers will still be required to have a valid, unexpired employment authorization document issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and as long as the federal work authorization is renewed, their Wisconsin credentials may continue to be renewed. 

Under the law, the bill will only apply to DACA recipients under the original DACA program. President Donald Trump rescinded the DACA program in September 2017. The provision in the state law means that should DACA be reopened to new applicants, they would not be eligible for occupational licenses.

Erika Colón, who has been a nurse for more than 30 years, told the Examiner that the legislation could help relieve the nursing shortages in Wisconsin. Colón, who spoke to the Examiner in her personal capacity, is the president of the Milwaukee Chapter of the Hispanic Nurses Association. 

“I’ve never worked in a hospital where we were fully staffed, and it wasn’t because the hospitals didn’t want to hire. It’s just that the people didn’t exist,” Colón said. 

According to a 2024 Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) report, the state faces a projected deficit of 12,000 to 19,000 registered nurses by 2040.

In her work with the Hispanic Nursing Association, Colón said that she has met students pursuing nursing who were DACA holders, but had to relocate out of the state to practice. She noted that the shortage issue is a nationwide trend. 

“In the big picture, it does help that they became nurses, and they’re helping other states, but they’re from here. They lived here many years. Their families are here. Their roots are here, and essentially we need them here,” Colón said. “We have so many job openings to fill that people could be filling easily, and unfortunately, because of the licensure barriers, they have to pick up everything and move out.”

Advocates worked hard to push through the new policy allowing DACA recipients to work in Wisconsin, instead of moving and taking their skills to other states.

A bill allowing DACA recipients to get occupational licenses was first proposed in 2023 by former Rep. John Macco, a Republican from Brown County. He worked on a package of bills, including one to allow DACA recipients to become police officers and one to allow DACA recipients to be eligible for in-state tuition at Wisconsin’s universities, with Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez (D-Milwaukee). He had heard from local law enforcement in Green Bay that one of their employees was not eligible to become a police officer due to his status. The bills did not advance that session and Macco opted not to run for reelection in 2024. 

“For me, it was a jobs bill,” Macco told the Examiner in an interview. “We are graduating nurses… They went to grade school here, high school here, college here, and then they have to leave the state of Wisconsin to get a license and to sit for their nursing boards and practice somewhere else. It’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen. They can’t even be a barber in the state of Wisconsin.”

This session, Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) signed on as lead coauthor this session alongside Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and Ortiz-Velez. The lawmakers intentionally decided to focus their efforts on just the occupational license bill.

Ortiz-Velez told the Examiner that getting the bill done was a team effort. She said the recent national environment surrounding immigration was in the background as lawmakers and advocates worked on the bill. 

“People have such negative images, and they automatically assume that this is gonna promote illegal immigration and where they don’t understand is this is a finite group of people,” Ortiz-Velez said. “It took a lot of us explaining and educating people and being very precise in the messaging that we were using to make sure that people understood. This is not an immigration bill.”

There were obstacles to getting committee hearings. Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers), the chair of the Assembly committee where the bill got a hearing, is a staunch supporter of Trump’s immigration agenda. He ended up speaking in favor of and voting for the bill, but some Republicans who share his views on immigration were opposed to the measure from the beginning. When it came to the final floor session, the bill was not initially listed on either the Assembly or Senate’s calendars.

Ortiz-Velez said it was helpful to keep the conversation focused on Wisconsin, rather than federal immigration policy.

“As a state, we have to put Wisconsin first, and regardless of what’s going on at the federal level, we have job openings that we have, and we have people that are qualified… I think for Republicans that was important to them — the idea of losing workforce,” Ortiz-Velez said. 

Ortiz-Velez said it was unclear during the Assembly’s last week in session whether the bill would get a vote. But in the end, Republicans and Democrats spoke in favor of the bill and it passed in a bipartisan voice vote.

Macco remained involved in the effort to get the legislation over the finish line including in the Senate. 

“My point to the Legislature was, look, conservative Republicans can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Macco told the Examiner in an interview. “We can both be against illegal immigration and breaking the laws and criminals coming into our country at the same time, we want to make a path for citizenship to all of those DACA recipients, and Congress needs to do that.” 

Macco testified at the committee hearing on the bill. He also made calls to his former Republican colleagues.

“I called a bunch of them. I remember calling [Senate President] Mary [Felzkowski] and she called me back,” Macco said. “I had that conversation with her on how this is so important while I was riding on a ski lift… My request to her was, would you be willing to waive the 17 rule or go to a voice vote.” 

The “rule of 17” is an informal rule sometimes invoked by Republicans in the state Senate, who have insisted that only bills that have the support of the majority of the Republican caucus should be allowed to come up for a vote. This informal rule has stymied bipartisan efforts that could have passed with votes from members of both parties. With an 18-15 Republican majority, any two Republican senators can block a bill from getting a floor vote under the “rule of 17.” 

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), who is retiring at the end of his term, broke the rule to pass a handful of bills during the Senate’s final floor session this year.

On the last day of the Senate floor session, the DACA licensing bill was still not on the calendar. Ortiz-Velez said that was a purposeful maneuver to avoid any amendments on the bill that could have killed it.

The bill passed in the Senate 31-2. The only opposing votes came from Sens. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken) and Steve Nass (R-Whitewater). 

After the vote, Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) said in a statement that it was a “great accomplishment” for the state.

“Dreamers came to our nation as children, brought by their parents because America has long held itself to be the land of opportunity,” Carpenter said. “That is the same reason that many proud Americans live freely in our great nation today, because our ancestors once had that same dream of building a better life for their children.”

Colón said her members wrote to lawmakers and Evers as a part of their advocacy efforts and worked to educate and win support of people who wouldn’t be directly affected. Before they heard about the bill, she said, “a lot of people didn’t know that DACA recipients could not obtain the license.” 

“We need this. Licensed professionals are highly needed in the state. It’s not like they’re taking other people’s jobs,” Colón said. 

Colón said she knew of at least two nurses who would be able to move back from Illinois. 

“This will be able to bring two people back to the workforce here and to care for our communities that greatly need it,” Colón said.

Ortiz-Velez said she is hopeful the success of the law could open the door to additional legislation for DACA recipients. She said in-state tuition is one of her top priorities. She said she also hopes that working with others on these issues could also “reinvigorate” a conversation about a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, so that “they can be fully members of our society.”

Macco said that he would like to see the state take more action to address the barriers that DACA recipients face, however, he also called them “Band Aid approaches.”

Macco said he wants to see the federal government allow DACA recipients to apply for a green card. He said that he plans to speak with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Tony Wied about the issue. 

“[It] doesn’t mean they’re going to get it. It just allows them to apply, and so if [the federal government] would just simply do that, to me, I think that’s a win,” Macco said.

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The headlines following Wisconsin’s April 2026 spring election told a story of Democratic triumph: Chris Taylor expanded the  liberal majority on the State Supreme Court, and in a stunning upset, the candidate supported by Democrats, Alicia Halvensleben, defeated Republican state Rep. Scott Allen to win  the nominally nonpartisan mayoral race in the city of Waukesha, in the heart of a Republican-leaning area that has been key to past Wisconsin GOP victories.

But further down the ballot, a quieter, more granular political battle reached a turning point. In school board races across the county, a multi-year, well-funded right wing project to seize control of school policymaking came to a grinding halt due to years of community-led organizing.

Since 2021, the Republican Party of Waukesha County’s WISRED initiative has systematically targeted down-ballot races as part of a precinct-focused strategy aimed to energize conservative voters in low-turnout elections. This relied mostly on manufacturing outrage around “culture war” topics in public education and resulted in partisan majorities installed on school boards across the county.

2026 saw another installment of this effort. This time the county was blanketed by a range of competing, and in some cases overlapping, endorsements from a variety of organizations including WISRED, Moms for Liberty, The 1776 Project PAC, The Heartland Post, Blue Sky Waukesha, The Waukesha Dems, KM Alliance, the Alliance for Education Waukesha, Grassroots Germantown, and Grassroots Menomonee Falls.

This cycle, however, marked a dramatic reversal of fortune for right-wing groups. So-called “conservative” candidates backed by WISRED, Moms for Liberty, and The 1776 Project PAC won around 60% of their races in this Republican stronghold, hardly the dominant track record of previous cycles. 

This shift is not merely the result of a tarnished MAGA brand. It is the direct outcome of parents, students and activists working at the local level to reclaim their school boards for their communities.

There are four districts that stood out this election cycle:

• Menomonee Falls: In perhaps the most decisive result, the school board flipped from partisan control back to a nonpartisan, community-focused majority. All three candidates backed by WisRed, Moms for Liberty and the 1776 Project were defeated in their bids.
• Elmbrook: Considered one of the last holdouts against the partisan takeover, the Elmbrook School District successfully defended its nonpartisan board. Incumbent Sam Hughes lost his race despite receiving over $30,000 in in-kind support from conservative PACs, a huge blowout for the WISRED initiative.
• Waukesha: In the county’s largest district, the Waukesha GOP’s slate was largely defeated. While partisan-backed incumbent Bette Koenig retained her seat, the other two candidates on the WISRED ticket lost. This race also involved a new group, Forward Wisconsin, a PAC exclusively funded by former Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, that backed those same GOP-supported candidates. The district will now see two community-backed members, Diane Voit and Mitch Gallagher, on the board, up from one.
• Hartland: Even in the very heart of Republican Waukesha County, the trend held. In the Hartland-Lakeside School District, the WisRed-backed challenger, who had appeared at campaign events with the chair of the Republican Party of Waukesha County, failed. Incumbent Morgan Henning, the non-partisan candidate, successfully retained her seat.
• Kettle Moraine: One school board candidate, Jay Crouse, stood out for receiving endorsements from each of WISRED, Moms for Liberty, The Heartland Post, Blue Sky Waukesha, the Waukesha Dems, and KM Alliance. Unsurprisingly, Crouse won his race.

After several election cycles, communities are beginning to see and react to the negative consequences of partisan-controlled school boards. The 2026 results show that there is a path for communities to flip the script on the MAGA takeover of public education.

Correction: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly identified Sam Hughes as a challenger instead of an incumbent on the Elmbrook school board.

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Gov. Tony Evers signed bills into law this week that will legalize sports betting, provide funding to the University of Wisconsin system to help student athletes get paid for the use of their name, image and likeness as well as measures that address internet crimes against children. 

AB 601, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 247, will legalize online sports betting in the state. This will be an expansion of access to sports betting, which has been legal in Wisconsin since 2021, but only in person at tribal casinos. 

Following a legal framework first used in Florida, the law will allow for the servers that manage the bets to be housed on tribal land. The law was designed this way because the Wisconsin constitution requires that any legal gambling be managed by the state’s federally recognized Native American tribes.

The bill faced a complicated path through the state Legislature. At first it sped through the hearing process, only to be pulled from the Assembly floor calendar. It finally received  a vote about three months after it passed committee. When it passed the Senate in a 21-12 vote, with some opposition from both Democrats and Republicans, one Republican senator said the bill would be the reason Republicans lose their majority in this year’s midterm elections. The bill also faced opposition from lobbying groups representing the country’s largest online sportsbooks. 

Evers said he signed the bill because it is his obligation to “always to respect the sovereignty of Tribal Nations in Wisconsin,” and because it will provide an opportunity to put revenue paid into the state into mental health programs and efforts to combat the opioid crisis. However, he said, he also had “reservations” about signing the bill. 

“This legislation is the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one,” Evers said in a statement. “The real work begins today.” 

Online sports betting will not become immediately available since  the tribes and the state will need to renegotiate their gaming compacts. The governor is tasked with the responsibility of negotiating compacts with the tribes under the Wisconsin Constitution. A new agreement would then need approval from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

Before the bill passed the Legislature, Evers had expressed concerns about getting support from all of the tribes. 

All 11 tribes then signed a letter saying that each was on board with the legislation, according to WisPolitics.

“Each of the 11 Tribes must now work diligently — and together — to shape the future of sports betting in Wisconsin,” Evers said. “What I will not accept is a plan that fractures this opportunity into unequal pieces, allowing some Tribes to reap great benefits while leaving only crumbs for others. An approach that exacerbates long-standing inequalities among Tribal Nations is not good for Wisconsinites or Wisconsin.” 

Wisconsin is the 33rd state to legalize online or mobile sports betting since a 2018 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law that had barred betting on football, basketball, baseball and other sports in most states.

“A joint venture — with each Tribe contributing, and each Tribe benefiting in equal shares — is gaining traction in these discussions, and I strongly support pursuing this or a similar model,” Evers said in his statement. “This is an opportunity to avoid the mistakes of past compact amendments that left some Tribes and their members in poverty while only lifting up a few.”

Student athlete name, image and likeness

Evers also signed a bill this week to help University of Wisconsin student athletes in getting paid for the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL) and to provide the UW system with funds so it can help provide NIL opportunities to those athletes.

AB 1034, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 203, provides $14.6 million annually in state funds to go towards debt service for the costs of UW-Madison’s athletic facilities, $200,000 for the UW–Milwaukee Klotsche Center and $200,000 for the UW-Green Bay soccer complex. Providing the state funds is meant to free up other funds so the UW can provide students with opportunities for NIL agreements. The bill passed with nearly unanimous support in the Assembly with a 95-1 vote, but in the Senate the margin was much closer with a 17-16 vote. 

Evers partially vetoed the bill to remove language related to the funds going to “maintenance costs” saying he wanted to allow greater flexibility in how the UW system can use the funds. 

“I object to the potential confusion created by referring to ‘maintenance,’ and my partial veto will better reflect the intent that the funding alleviate existing debt service. I also object to how this bill unnecessarily restricts the use of funds appropriated for athletic facilities within the University of Wisconsin System,” Evers wrote in his veto message. “I believe that greater flexibility is necessary to ensure this funding can be used effectively and allow the system to maximize the state’s investment.” 

The law codifies some policies that UW-Madison and other campuses already have in state law, including prohibiting NIL contracts that conflict with school policies and providing money in exchange for athletic performance, as well as those that require student athletes to endorse alcoholic beverages, gambling, banned athletic substances or illegal activities or substances. It also includes a requirement that student athletes disclose third-party NIL deals they enter. 

UW schools are also going to be able to contract with organizations that can help student athletes find NIL opportunities.

The law also includes language exempting records related to the “generation, deployment, or allocation of revenue generated by an intercollegiate athletic program” from the state’s open records law in an effort to “protect competitive interests and student privacy.” Open records advocates expressed concerns about the provision as the bill was debated. UW representatives said the provision would only be used to clarify what is already the UW’s existing practice of denying access to student athlete NIL agreements and certain university records that are related to NIL strategy, allocation, revenue generation. 

Addressing internet crimes against children

Evers signed four bills into law to help combat internet crimes against children.

The laws build on previous efforts to address online crimes affecting children. Last year Wisconsin passed a law that defined  “sextortion” as a crime. Lawmakers started working on that legislation after 15-year-old Bradyn Bohn from Kronenwetter, a village outside of Wausau, died by suicide after being targeted online by a perpetrator who convinced him to share nude photos of himself and told him that he needed to send money or face major consequences. He suffered through hours of threats and was coerced into sending money before his death.

AB 923, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 215, will allow for victims of a sexual extortion to sue their perpetrator for damages including for emotional distress, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and investigation costs. In the case that someone died by suicide due to sexual extortion, a victim’s family would be able to file a wrongful death suit. 

Sexual extortion has become a growing threat in the U.S. in recent years. From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations received over 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion of minors that included at least 12,600 victims, mostly boys, and led to at least 20 suicides.

The other bills give the DOJ additional resources and tools to address internet crimes against children. 

AB 957, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 216, provides $400,000 in each year of the 2025-27 state budget to the state Department of Justice (DOJ) to enforce laws against internet crimes against children and AB 958, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 217, provides four new DOJ positions that will focus on internet crimes against children. 

AB 964, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 21, gives the attorney general administrative subpoena authority in the case of a sextortion crime if the victim was a child at the time of the violation.

AB 966, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 219, will require the DOJ to conduct a children’s online digital safety awareness campaign and provide materials on digital safety awareness to schools for free.

Other bills Evers took action on 

• AB 1027 was vetoed. It would have instructed the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to turn over data related to SNAP to the Department of Health Services to provide to the U.S. Department of Agriculture information. Evers said in his veto message that he objected “to sharing Wisconsinites’ most sensitive personal data, including their Social Security numbers, without the federal government having to meaningfully demonstrate how Wisconsinites’ personal data will be appropriately secured, will not be able to be accessed by broad swaths of federal employees, and will not be shared inappropriately both within and outside of the federal government.”
• AB 759, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 240, was signed into law. It will make Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status holders in Wisconsin eligible to apply for occupational licenses.
• AB 373, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 241, was signed into law. It creates a $2,000 nonrefundable income tax credit for parents of a stillborn child. The credit is meant to provide financial relief to help parents with expenses associated with the stillbirth.
• AB 918, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 202, makes adoption a required topic to be covered for school districts that choose to offer human growth and development instruction, also known as sex education. Wisconsin school districts are not required to offer human growth and development instruction.
• SB 782, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 245, extends a penalty for falsely texting 911 to report an emergency. Violators could face fines between $100 and $600 and/or up to 90 days in jail for a first offense. A subsequent offense committed within four years of the first would be a Class H felony.

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A state Senate committee put off taking action despite threats from lawmakers to fire unconfirmed members of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents after two regents shared more details Thursday about the decision to fire former UW President Jay Rothman. 

While the regents were legally prevented from sharing specific details about the firing, they said, they described their sense that Rothman moved too slowly to act on pressing issues including developing a UW policy on artificial intelligence.

The UW Board of Regents voted unanimously in a virtual meeting Tuesday to fire Rothman, who had refused to leave his position voluntarily. The decision took effect immediately and the the search for the next leader has already begun. Rothman, who will get six months of severance pay, told the Associated Press after the vote that he was “blindsided” by the ousting but wasn’t going to challenge it.

Republican lawmakers had come to the defense of Rothman after the news broke about the effort to oust him. Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) said lawmakers should reject the regents’ nomination if they fired Rothman without cause. The Senate Technical Colleges and Universities committee quickly scheduled Thursday’s public hearing and executive session on the consideration of the nominations of the ten unconfirmed Gov. Tony Evers’ appointees, including Bogost and Nixon. 

Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) said at the start of Thursday’s meeting that the decision required an explanation.

“Transparency is the foundation of public trust, and when decisions are made without explained justification, it further erodes confidence, not just to the Board of Regents, but in the institution itself,” Hutton said, adding that lawmakers could provide oversight of state entities. “We are faced with a sudden leadership shake-up at risk, creating instability at a time when the chancellor turnover is high and our flagship university is losing its CEO.”

Regent President Amy Bogost and Regent Timothy Nixon said that Rothman had been told about the changes the regents wanted to see. Their decision to let him go, they said, was not made lightly and came after he failed to make those changes. They also said that his decision to take his complaints public was harmful to the UW system.

Bogost has served on the Board for the last six years, including as president since 2024. Nixon has served as a regent for the last two years. Neither has received a confirmation hearing, which has become standard procedure for the Republican-led Senate, which has left most Evers appointees unconfirmed. 

Until the meeting, the regents hadn’t given any additional details about the decision to fire Rothman, other than that the decision came after an annual review was conducted by Bogost and that Rothman was “not without notice” and the process was not “sudden.”

Evers stood behind the regents’ decision in a statement released during the meeting, saying the choice was their and that they decided to make a leadership change, “nothing more, nothing less.” 

“Republican lawmakers should resist their temptation to turn this into a political conversation, because it isn’t one,” Evers said. “The UW Board of Regents is not supposed to be an extension of any politician or political party. The Regents are responsible for doing what’s best for our UW System, and they should be able to do their jobs without political interference from elected officials.” 

Evers also warned it would be a “mistake” if the lawmakers used it as an opportunity to fire people and that that would “jeopardize our continued bipartisan work this session.” 

“It’s pretty simple: I trust that the Regents are doing what is best for students, faculty, staff, and our UW System — lawmakers should, too.”

At the start of the hearing, Bogost told lawmakers that she would be as transparent with them as she legally could. 

“President Rothman knows exactly what he is doing. He is a sophisticated professional who understands that personnel matters are confidential,” Bogost said. “The confidentiality surrounding his evaluation was not arbitrary… It is what law requires and is what our obligation is to these universities, and yet, President Rothman, who understands all of this, has chosen to use that constraint as a shield — making public statements, he knows I cannot deny, and framing a narrative he knows I cannot correct.” 

Rothman was a Milwaukee lawyer and CEO of the law firm Foley and Lardner before being chosen to serve as the UW president in 2022.

Bogost told lawmakers that she would also be willing to walk the committee through the details of the conversations held in closed session with Rothman and the decision to fire Rothman if he waived his confidentiality.

Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) asked why Bogost thought he hadn’t waived his confidentiality. 

“I believe that his objective is to be able to get his narrative out and be one-sided…He knows the truth, and he understands what this is all about, and we were hoping that he would move on,” Bogost said. “To do the media circuit that he’s on denigrates our wonderful universities, and that makes me really sad, because I know that he worked tirelessly for the universities, and I really was hoping to celebrate his past accomplishments… it’s unfortunate that he’s taking that path.”

Before firing Rothman, the regents had offered him the opportunity to resign. Rothman refused, saying he hadn’t been given clear reasoning for his firing and that he thought he had accomplished a lot during his tenure as president.

Nixon also said offering at-will employees the option to leave voluntarily is standard procedure within the UW system and in private businesses. As an example, he noted former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who served as interim president of the system between 2020 and 2022 and voluntarily stepped down from the position. He also noted James Langdon, who, according to WisPolitics, wrote in an email that Rothman fired him in a similar way from his position as vice president of administration. 

Nixon added that the same practice applies to corporate CEOs, who are routinely let go by companies that don’t want to harm their brands. “You try not to have these public blow-ups, alright,  and so nothing here in my mind [is] unusual, and not only that, it follows UW practice.”

In a statement, Rothman said his recent evaluation from Bogost was “overwhelmingly positive.” However, during the hearing, Bogost said that when giving reviews it is typical to “give at least four positives to every negative,” which is what happened with Rothman. 

“He was very disheartened by those… I was surprised. These were things that we tried to work on. It was not sudden,” Bogost said. “Mr. Rothman knows that it was ongoing situations that we had many discussions with him about.”

Bogost said there is not an evaluation document, but that she took notes and delivered the evaluation in person to Rothman.

Bogost said Rothman was the right person to lead the UW system as it sought to deal with a tough financial and operational situation. During his time as president, Rothman oversaw the “right-sizing” of campus budgets and the closure of campuses. Nixon said when it comes to other accomplishments Rothman has touted, he is “a bit like the rooster crowing and then taking credit for the sunrise after.”

As the UW system is addressing other pressing issues, the regents said Rothman was too slow to act. 

Nixon noted that U.S. News and World Report ranked the 50 most innovative universities in the U.S., and the only Wisconsin school on the list was Marquette University. 

“Thank God, one higher education institution in the state has made the list,” Nixon said. “Change is not Mr. Rothman’s strong suit, yet change is what we desperately need.”

Nixon said there was a “lack of urgency” coming from Rothman, adding that coming from a law background he tends to move deliberately to ensure that every i is dotted and every t is crossed. 

As an example, Nixon said the regents started asking for a system-wide policy on artificial intelligence in November, but they still had not received one. 

“We can’t take a year and six months to decide and think about every single issue. This is no different than moving on to a new quarterback — no matter what you thought of the previous quarterback or what they did,” Nixon said. 

Nixon said he had also spoken with Rothman about reassigning some of the over 500 employees who work for the UW system administration to campuses, but there had not been changes. 

Sen. Rachael Cabral Guevara (R-Fox Crossing) thanked Nixon for giving the committee some concrete reasons for its decision  rather than staying in the “gray zone.”

The regents said that the timing of the decision was partly the result of state budget negotiations and the implementation of the state budget. In the most recent state budget, the UW system received a boost in state funding, which came as a result of negotiations between Evers, Democratic and Republican lawmakers and advocacy efforts from UW stakeholders. Republican lawmakers had initially sought a cut to the UW budget. 

At the end of Thursday’s hearing, the committee delayed its vote on whether to recommend confirming the nominees.

Hutton told reporters afterwards that there was more information the senators needed to consider and it would have been “premature” to vote. He said that he wants to see more documents related to Rothman’s evaluation and hear from more of the regents. 

“Based on some of the information we requested from the board president, really thought that was beneficial to receive that information, let the committee go through that a little bit more, maybe ask some additional questions before we go to exec[utive session],” Hutton said, adding that Bogost was “very willing” and “cooperative” when it came to providing information. 

Hutton said that there would need to be a conversation with the Republican caucus leadership on whether the full Senate, which has adjourned for regular session work, will come back to take a long-delayed vote on the regents’ nominations.

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Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who is one of seven Democrats vying for the nomination in this year’s primary for governor,  is calling domestic violence a “public health emergency” after learning about the killing of a Kenosha woman, Makayla Plaza, 28, allegedly by her estranged ex-husband. Plaza’s attempts to get a restraining order against her ex-husband were shot down by a Kenosha County judge. 

In February, Plaza told the court she feared for her life and the lives  of her young children. But the judge denied her request for a restraining order. Markus Plaza, her 33-year-old ex-husband, was taken into custody after a 24-hour man-hunt following her death on April 1 TMJ4 reported that law enforcement found the man, Marckus Plaza, hiding in the basement of a salon. 

Makayla Plaza’s boyfriend said that her ex-husband would take her keys from her, lock her inside the house, and listen in on her phone calls. The Kenosha Police Department said that the husband had a history with the department, including an arrest for battery in February which resulted in no charges being filed. 

In a statement released through his campaign, Crowley said that “I have been sitting with this since I heard the news because I am also grieving,” recounting how his own friend Nancy Metayer — vice mayor of Coral Springs, Florida — was allegedly killed by her husband just days ago. Metayer was soon to announce her campaign to run for Congress. “Two women. Two states. The same devastating, preventable outcome. How many more?” Crowley said in his statement.

“I need Wisconsin to understand that this was not a fluke,” Crowley said. “This was not an isolated failure.” Rather, he said, tragedies like Plaza’s death are the result of underfunded shelters, understaffed courts and setting the legal  bar for protection “so impossibly high that a woman has to prove she is already in danger before we will act to prevent it.” He called for treating domestic violence as “the public health emergency it is.” 

Wisconsin has the tools and research it needs to make a difference, Crowley said, as well as the expertise of  social workers, survivors and advocates. “What we have lacked — what Wisconsin has lacked for too long — is the political will to act,” he added.  “I am done waiting.” If he is elected  governor, he said, tackling domestic violence would be a priority, including changing  how restraining orders are processed statewide, ensuring that survivors and their families have legal assistance and investing in mental health and substance use disorder treatment, as well as in domestic violence prevention and crisis support programs in all 72 counties. 

“So to the women of Wisconsin who are living this right now — I see you,” said Crowley. “If you are afraid, if you are trying to find a way out, if you have asked for help and been turned away or doubted or made to feel like what is happening to you isn’t serious enough — I want you to hear this directly from me: You are believed. What is happening to you is real. You deserve a system that fights for your life the way you are fighting for it every single day.” 

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Democrats seeking the party’s nomination for governor talk about many of the same goals when it comes to Wisconsin’s health care system: expanding access, reducing costs and ensuring quality.

Some of their proposals to those ends are almost identical. But key details vary. 

“If there’s one thing that’s a certainty, the context will change between now and when one of us takes office and has a Legislature that hopefully is going to work with us,” said Joel Brennan, former secretary of the Department of Administration, at a forum Wednesday conducted by Wisconsin Health News. “That context will change in the next nine to 10 months and we better be ready to change with it too.”

Brennan said his campaign’s health care policy will rest on four principles: broadening access to health care, particularly in rural areas; reducing costs; fostering a pathway to increase the health care workforce; and ensuring that mental health is “a basic part of health care.”

Other candidates have issued more detailed plans.

Former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes announced a list of 10 proposals Wednesday.

“I’m really wanting to make sure that we’re addressing a very, very complicated problem in every different way,” Hughes said at the Wednesday forum.

Expanding Medicaid

Almost all of the seven major Democratic hopefuls have endorsed expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — opening up the health insurance plan for low-income Americans to people with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty guideline.  When the ACA was enacted the federal government paid states that accepted expansion 90% of the additional cost.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers made repeated attempts to enact expansion after he took office in 2019, but couldn’t do it without the support of the Republican majority in the state Legislature because of a law passed the month before Evers was sworn in.

Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has made Medicaid expansion the central focus of his health care policy pitch. He has promised to veto the state budget if it doesn’t include Medicaid expansion.

“The fact that so many folks aren’t covered right now is a problem for everybody,” Barnes said at a forum Monday, because health care providers pass the cost of uncompensated care on to other patients or their insurance companies. The Monday forum was conducted by ABC for Health, a nonprofit law firm that assists low-income Wisconsinites trying to navigate health care coverage and medical debt.

Hughes also lists expanding Medicaid — referred to as BadgerCare in Wisconsin — among her 10 proposals. She would connect BadgerCare expansion to the creation of a public option health insurance plan that Wisconsinites could purchase through the ACA marketplace, HealthCare.gov.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley also favors combining expanded Medicaid with a public option for people to buy into the plan. “We already have the BadgerCare infrastructure that is already in place,” Crowley said at the Wednesday forum. “So I think it’s our responsibility to expand the people’s ability to actually pay into a BadgerCare public option.”

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez favors BadgerCare expansion as well as a public option health plan. Rather than combining them, however, she lists them as two of three health care initiatives she would pursue as governor. The third initiative is to institute a stabilization fund program to support struggling rural providers.  

The public option plan, to be sold on the ACA marketplace, “would be able to put downward pressure on costs across Wisconsin and have some price transparency within that,” Rodriguez said at the Monday forum. She pointed to examples in other states, including Colorado, where a public option health plan is also required to reduce its premium costs by 5% each year.

“Secondly, I do think that we should expand Medicaid in the state of Wisconsin,” Rodriguez said, noting Wisconsin is one of just 10 states that have not done so.

Rodriguez also observed that the 2025 “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill enacted by the Republican majority in Congress and signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, “makes it a little harder” for the state to expand Medicaid.

State Rep. Francesca Hong also included BadgerCare expansion and “a robust public option” health plan in a longer list of priorities during the Monday forum. Along with those, she called for lowering prescription drug costs, acting to “crack down on private insurers,” among other goals.

A Medicaid expansion dissent

An exception on Medicaid expansion is Sen. Kelda Roys. Although she has advocated Medicaid expansion going back to her years in the Assembly a decade ago, she argues now that it’s no longer practical.

An August 28 memo from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services declares that the 2025 tax and spending law includes “several traps making it cost and policy prohibitive for Wisconsin to expand Medicaid.”

The law requires Medicaid participants to prove they’re eligible every six months instead of annually as now — which advocates argue will lead more qualified recipients to be kicked out of the program. In addition, a $1.3 billion boost that Wisconsin would get for expanding Medicaid will end Dec. 31.

Expansion “is not feasible given the changes that the Trump administration has made right now,” Roys said Wednesday.

Instead, she has proposed allowing the general public to buy into the state health insurance plan that covers state employees. Wisconsin employers could buy into the plan to cover their workers, or individual Wisconsin residents could buy into it as an alternative to other private health insurance plans.

“We can lower costs, reduce uncompensated care, expand access to coverage, especially for small businesses,” Roys said.

Brennan has also proposed opening the state plan to the public, because it has broad participation as well as higher reimbursement rates for health providers, he said Wednesday. 

But he added that he thinks details on the public option should wait until the next governor takes office, so that experts in the state as well as from other states that have instituted a public option “can be part of that conversation.”

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There were over 70 school referendum questions on ballots across Wisconsin Tuesday, and according to preliminary results, about 62% passed and 38% failed.

The results determine whether school districts can keep up with costs, will need to make difficult decisions about cuts or even put themselves on a path to consolidation or dissolution. April ballot measures are just the latest round of school funding requests as school districts continue to struggle under the state’s current funding system.

Department of Public Instruction (DPI) Superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement that the slate of referendum requests this spring is a “clear signal” that the state is falling short of providing every child in Wisconsin with a quality education. 

“Years of chronic underfunding from the state, combined with rising costs, have pushed too many districts into an unsustainable cycle, forcing communities to repeatedly turn to voters just to meet simple, basic needs like keeping schools staffed and the lights on,” Underly said. “This is unfair to students, educators, and taxpayers alike, and it is placing an increasing strain on communities across our state.”

Underly called on the state to reinvest in students and the state’s public schools to ensure districts can “deliver the high-quality education students deserve, without being forced to rely on repeated referendums to survive.”

School districts in Wisconsin go to referendum in order to exceed state-imposed revenue caps by getting approval from voters. The practice became a part of Wisconsin’s school funding equation in the 1990s when lawmakers put caps on school revenue as part of an effort to control local property taxes. School districts’ revenue limits used to be tied to inflation, but that ended in the 2009-11 state budget, instead leaving increases up to state lawmakers and the governor, who have not provided predictable increases budget to budget. 

As a result, school districts have increasingly gone to referendum to secure funding through local property tax increases.

There were 56 nonrecurring operational requests on the ballot in April, which are revenue limit increases with an end date. In addition, there were six recurring operational requests, which do not have an end date — totaling over $1 billion in requests.

Of the nonrecurring requests, 32 passed and 24 were rejected. Of the recurring requests, five were successful and only Sauk Prairie School District’s request was rejected. 

There were 12 capital funding requests this April. Nine passed, including Howard Suamico’s $147 million funding request, and three failed, including Whitefish Bay School District’s $135 million request. 

The passage rate is a slight increase from the last election year and comes as Wisconsinites have become more concerned about property taxes, according to recent polling. In the spring of 2024, there was a passage rate of 60.2% with 103 requests on ballots. A Wisconsin Policy Forum report notes that passage rates tend to be higher amid the higher voter turnout of presidential and midterm election years. 

Some districts’ results were decided by thin margins. Butternut School District’s $2 million nonrecurring referendum request passed by one vote. Lena School District’s $6 million nonrecurring request failed by 17 votes. The Hustisford School District sought a two-year nonrecurring referendum for $1.875 million each year. It failed by about 200 votes and now the district is looking at possibly dissolving. 

A third attempt for an operational referendum by Dodgeville School District, one of three districts the Examiner profiled before the election, was rejected in a 1,680 to 1,619 vote. 

District Administrator Ryan Bohnsack said in a Facebook post that the failed referendum is not the “end of the conversation.” He told the Examiner ahead of Election Day that the district was already looking at going to referendum in November if the April request was rejected, and the request then will likely be higher. 

“It is a continuation of our next steps together,” Bohnsack wrote. “The financial challenges we face remain, and we will need to continue working through them thoughtfully and responsibly. Our focus will be on developing a plan that prioritizes our students and our staff.” 

Bohnsack also encouraged community members to advocate at a statewide level as Dodgeville’s challenges aren’t unique. 

“I encourage you to stay in contact with our state legislators and continue to ask for clear communication, transparency and long-term solutions to how schools are funded in Wisconsin,” Bohnsack wrote.

In February, a group of Wisconsin teachers, parents, students and other stakeholders represented by progressive firm Law Forward and the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union, sued the state Legislature over the school funding formula in Eau Claire County Circuit. The lawsuit argues that the current system is unconstitutional because it does not meet the state’s constitutional obligation to provide educational opportunities to all students.

Voters rejected the $5.8 million four-year nonrecurring request by Necedah Area School District, one of the parties to the lawsuit, that was aimed at replacing the district’s last nonrecurring referendum which was first approved in April 2022 and was expiring. The request would have allowed the district to access $1.2 million in the first year, $1.4 million in the second year and $1.6 million in the third and fourth year.

Tanya Kotlowski, who has served as superintendent of the district for nine years, told the Examiner that the district has been “blessed” to pass two referendums in the past, but the recent result is “disheartening.” 

“To have this one fail after that kind of devotion we’ve tried to create, it’s hard, it’s heartbreaking, but I also am very aware of the burden that we’re placing on our taxpayers because of how schools are funded,” Kotlowski said. 

Kotlowski said the school board has not had a conversation about whether they will try again, but that cuts are likely.

“We do not have enough fund balance or enough savings to offset the costs that we’re going to have the next two years, so if, you know, if our board doesn’t have that, and we can’t run a deficit budget because we don’t have enough money in our savings account to run a deficit budget, it forces them to have to make decisions, so they will be in that position, for sure,” Kotlowski said. “Certainly we will have that conversation in April and beyond when we’re talking reductions and what the next game plan will be.”

Kotlowski said her district’s previous referendum was helping cover the full costs of special education, which are federally mandated services. The state currently picks up a little over a third of special education costs for public schools, despite promises during the state budget cycle to cover 42% this school year.

Even with the referendum, Kotlowski said her district will need to pull some money from savings to balance the budget. Now that the referendum has failed, the district will be looking at cuts, including to staff and programming. 

“We’re going to come up with as much as we can,” Kotlowski said. “If we came up with $1.4 million in one year of reductions, it would be pretty devastating, so we will come up with what we can. We’ve had conversations already today… I can say with certainty, everybody’s going to be impacted in our community.”

Kotlowski said the referendum result and the school district’s circumstances are one example of why the state’s funding formula is unsustainable and why the lawsuit is needed. 

“We’re really trying to figure out a path to financial stability, where we can anticipate and plan and predict adequate funding for the needs that we have of children within our school district,” Kotlowski said.

Wisconsin has fallen to 26th in the nation in per pupil K-12 education spending and is spending 10% below the national average, according to 2023 census data. In 2002, the state was ranked 11th and spent 11% above the national average.

“For our Necedah School District, when you look at our revenue limit, which is the authorized revenue we can bring in annually based on state law, when you look at the percentage our local taxpayers pick up and what percentage the state picks up, we have a significant gap. Our taxpayers are picking up almost 80% and the state’s picking up 20[%],” Kotlowski said. “Is it a state responsibility or local taxpayer responsibility?”

Kotlowski said that since the announcement of the lawsuit, a group of about 40 residents in the county have formed a taxpayer advocacy group. She said she thinks that the residents, who will show up to vote in November, will have a louder voice when it comes to advocating for a change in the way the state funds schools. In November, Wisconsin voters will decide who should fill the governor’s office as well as who should control the state Assembly and Senate.

“I had a taxpayer who said to me, ‘My first question for anybody who’s running for office is, How are you going to change the formula for how you fund public schools?’ That’s their first question, and depending on your answer, will decide if I vote for you,’” Kotlowski said. “We are at a breaking point, and if our community doesn’t represent that … I don’t think there’s any story that can express the lack of tolerance we have right now to fund schools the way that we have done it now for decades.”

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