A group of Ashland residents held a protest Wednesday against the use of municipal water for constructing the controversial reroute of Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline across northern Wisconsin. 

The reroute has been protested and challenged in court by locals, members of the nearby Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and environmental groups for years. 

“Michels Construction, a subcontractor of Enbridge, is taking precious water from Lake Superior out of the City of Ashland municipal water supply to build Line 5,” the protesters said in a joint statement. “This sacred water is being used to devastate our wetland and forest ecosystems and being returned with unknown contaminants for our community to deal with. This is a violation of the Great Lakes Compact and a direct threat to Anishinaabe Treaty Rights. Ashland needs to stand by their resolution of support to the Bad River Tribe and demand a halt to Michels’ water usage.”

Locals have seen Michels construction trucks being filled with water at the Ashland water station. Ashland municipal water comes from Lake Superior. Locals argue the public hasn’t been notified of a contract with Michels for the water use nor has there been a discussion over how much water would be used. 

Enbridge plans to use a process called horizontal directional drilling to pass 30,000 feet of pipe underneath 23 bodies of water in the region, according to the project’s environmental impact statement. About 15% of the relocated pipeline is being installed using this process, through a contract with Michels Construction. 

Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said in a statement that using city water helps the company make sure it comes from a clean source.

“Buying water from a municipal source, instead of permitting water taken from area lakes or rivers, ensures the water is properly treated – and compensates the city fairly,” she said.

HDD involves drilling a hole underneath the body of water through which the pipeline is then fed. The drilling process requires water to be mixed with clay and other additives to use as lubricant for the drills and other tools. The other additives are contain “proprietary ingredients” that are kept from public view, however the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources documents show the company agreed that any ingredients used will comply with state standards. 

“The drilling fluid would consist primarily of water (approximately 95%) and bentonite, which is a type of clay,” according to the environmental impact statement. “Water for the drilling fluid would be obtained from a known safe source free of bacterial and chemical contamination. Additives could be included in the drilling mud to improve its ability to transport cuttings to the surface, provide a stable hole, and lubricate the drilling tools. Enbridge has stated in its Construction Site General Permit application that the company will only use additives that are considered pre-approved for use in potable well drilling or are listed on the DNR’s Approved Horizontal Directional Drilling Products List.” 

However the HDD process can often cause inadvertent releases of the lubrication slurry, raising concerns among residents. 

As a community on one of the Great Lakes, Ashland is subject to the Great Lakes Compact, an agreement among the American and Canadian governments dictating how the lakes’ water can be used. The compact requires that any water taken be returned in a clean state. 

The Ashland city administrator did not respond to a request for comment about the approval of the water usage.

Recent polling from the Democracy Defense Project found that three out of every 10 Wisconsin voters aren’t confident this year’s elections will be conducted accurately. 

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, has often been a vocal election conspiracy theorist — including voting against the certification of the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021 and appearing at events with people who insist that election was stolen. 

Republicans in control of Congress have spent months debating bills to add restrictions to voting while President Donald Trump has signed  executive orders demanding states turn over voter data, sent FBI agents to Democratic cities across the country — including Milwaukee — to investigate the 2020 election and uses the bully pulpit of the White House to rehash the debunked theories that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and that Democrats are unfairly winning elections because large numbers of immigrants who are ineligible to vote are illegally casting ballots. 

Since Trump’s return to office last year, fears that he will send armed federal agents to polling places have percolated across the country. 

With less than 50 days until Wisconsin’s primaries for governor, congressional and state legislative seat and four months until the Nov. 3 midterm election, the past six years of Republican efforts to reduce faith in the country’s election systems have created a whirlwind of headlines, social media rumors, court rulings and fearmongering.

All of that is set to collide this summer with Wisconsin’s actual election administration system — which involves thousands of clerks, volunteers and state officials managing the polls, counting ballots and certifying the results. 

Ann Jacobs, a Democrat on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said that getting too worked up about the potential risks can turn people off from voting, even if they wouldn’t have been affected. 

“There’s a lot we can prepare for, and scaring people in advance of the election is the worst thing we can do, because we don’t need to depress our own turnout,” she said.

TR Edwards, staff counsel at the voting rights focused firm Law Forward, told the Wisconsin Examiner that people’s fears often don’t exactly match with what happens on the ground. 

“A lot of it is just fear-based and not necessarily rooted in what’s possible, but that being said, I am understanding of that,” he said. “I recognize why people are concerned, and I do think, particularly with some of the actions the administration has taken over the last six months, that they have every right to be concerned. I just don’t know if the level of concern matches either the level of preparation or the reality on the ground.” 

Edwards said that he and Law Forward are focused on three areas ahead of the elections: the threat of the federal government seizing 2020 election ballots, building trust between election clerks and local law enforcement and working to prevent Trump’s election-related executive orders from taking effect. 

Ballot seizures

The FBI over the last year has been re-investigating long debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Agents have already seized ballots and documents in Fulton County, Georgia and Maricopa County, Arizona. They’ve also been conducting interviews in the Milwaukee area, raising worries that ballots there will also be seized. 

In Milwaukee County, nearly 180,000 absentee ballots from the 2020 election have yet to be destroyed because of ongoing efforts from election deniers to obtain the ballots through the state’s open records law. 

Under normal Wisconsin election law, ballots and other election materials are destroyed 22 months after an election is held. But because of the ongoing litigation, the county’s ballots still exist. 

State officials have raised concerns that the federal government could seize those ballots, revealing how thousands of Milwaukee residents voted up and down the ballot in 2020. 

Don Millis, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told WISN’s UpFront on Sunday that the ballots need to be destroyed as soon as possible. 

“Those ballots should have been destroyed. No one’s entitled to see those,” he said. “Our Constitution was built on the idea of a secret ballot, and I’m just frustrated that this hasn’t happened. I just wish the decision makers who are in charge of this would see that and move more quickly.”

But the discussion of the 2020 ballots has raised fears that the administration will attempt to do the same with this year’s ballots. 

Jacobs told the Examiner there isn’t much an individual voter can do if that’s what happens — but that local elections officials and voting rights advocates are preparing for the possibility and planning to head off any attempts in the courts. 

“I am thoughtful and cautious about how I talk about things that might affect an election, right, and in part it’s because there’s only certain things we can or cannot affect going into an election,” she said. “You know, ‘Donald Trump’s going to come in and steal all our ballots.’ Well, there’s absolutely nothing a voter can do about that if that’s in fact what’s going to happen, right? An individual voter has nothing they can do about that, so I don’t want them to not vote, thinking that that’s going to happen with me, and so I’m concerned that there’s a certain amount of fearmongering around what might or might not happen in a fall election.” 

She added that with proper planning — having court documents pre-written, knowing which local judge will be on duty to hear a case right away — challenges to these kinds of actions can be made “in minutes instead of hours.” 

Cops and feds 

Edwards pointed to Riverside County, California, where the local sheriff — a Republican candidate for governor — seized ballots and opened an investigation into the state’s recent primary election, as an example of the risk posed by law enforcement intrusion into elections. In Wisconsin, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling has often been at the center of the state’s election skeptic circles. 

Edwards said that the goal this summer is to build trust between cops, outside groups and local clerks ahead of the election so everyone knows what the law says and where it’s appropriate for law enforcement officers, local, state or federal, to be. 

“We are less concerned about law enforcement being present, as long as they are in compliance with applicable law,” Edwards said. “But I am more concerned with ensuring that voters can cast ballots free from intimidation. Our goal is to make sure clerks and voters understand their rights and that any conduct that violates state or federal law, or could reasonably be viewed as voter intimidation, is identified and addressed appropriately.”

If law enforcement is entering areas of polling places that they shouldn’t be, the remedy would be filing lawsuits to get a judge to remove them. 

Jacobs said this threat again comes down to planning. 

“Certainly I can contemplate the possibility that a goal would be to go into a minority community and essentially stand around with guns and try to intimidate voters,” she said. “Unfortunately, our nation has a history of that, and it wouldn’t be the first time that has happened. That said, we can also plan ahead for that. … if that is something where a person is like, ‘Boy, if that happens, I would be really scared to go to a voting place.’ That person should be encouraged to vote absentee, right?”

In addition to voting by mail, voters can cast absentee ballots in person at drop boxes or at their local clerk’s office.

Executive Orders 

Trump has signed executive orders that aim to require additional proof of citizenship to register to vote, restrict absentee ballot use and more tightly manage how the U.S. Postal Service handles absentee ballots. All of the orders have been hung up in the federal court system. 

At a Senate hearing Wednesday, U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner said that under his agency’s proposed rule, the post office won’t deliver mail-in absentee ballots in states, including Wisconsin, that have refused to comply with Trump’s order to turn over voter data to the federal government.

Since Trump returned to office, his administration has been working to obtain voter registration lists in a number of states, including Wisconsin. So far, the state elections commission has resisted these efforts, arguing the administration is trying to gain access to personal voter data that can’t be released. 

Jacobs said that the executive orders and any proposed rules from the USPS are going to be challenged in the court and are unlikely to be in effect by the fall election. 

Edwards said that Law Forward has filed amicus briefs in the lawsuits against the orders and is working to help overworked local election officials digest information about potential changes. 

“There’s no way [clerks] can keep up with the velocity of everything that’s going on, so we’ve been trying to do what we can to partner with people to help make sure they have all the information they need,” he said.

A Columbia County coal plant previously slated for retirement that is expected to receive millions of dollars from the Trump administration to “modernize” its operations dramatically increased its pollutant emissions in 2025. 

Columbia Energy Center in Pardeeville is jointly owned by Alliant Energy, Madison Gas & Electric and Wisconsin Public Service and was initially set to close by the end of 2024. But that retirement was pushed back first to 2026 and then to 2029. 

Earlier this month, the Trump administration listed the plant as one of the beneficiaries of more than $700 million in spending to prop up the coal industry. The plant is expected to get $19 million through funding from the Defense Production Act. 

“Our action will allow these facilities to invest in upgrades that will extend their operational lives for decades into the future, reinforce the reliability of our electric grid, which is really the biggest beneficiary, and most importantly, keep electricity prices very low for the American people,” Trump said in a June 4 Oval Office news conference. 

Department of Natural Resources records show that the pollution emitted by the plant massively increased last year — a sign that the utility companies were ramping up the plant’s usage beyond its planned retirement date. 

In 2024, according to the DNR data, the plant emitted 3.9 million pounds of carbon monoxide. That jumped to 6.6 million pounds last year. Carbon dioxide emissions increased from 11 billion pounds in 2024 to 14 billion in 2025. 

Emissions of particulate matter, which is connected to health problems such as asthma, nearly doubled from 362,833 pounds to 685,876. 

The amount of nitrogen oxide, ammonia, lead, arsenic and cyanide pumped into the air by the plant all increased last year, the DNR report shows. 

Alliant Energy spokesperson Cindy Tomlinson told the Examiner that the plant’s life had to be extended to meet the midwest’s energy demand.

“In recent years, to meet MISO requirements and the energy needs of the Midwest, the plant has run more frequently, however it continues to operate in the normal range and in full compliance with the air permit requirements,” she said. “Our application and the potential $19 million grant award, provides us with an opportunity to cost-effectively modernize Columbia — an existing cornerstone in the American energy infrastructure. If awarded the grant, funds would be used to lower costs on several planned projects that are designed to maintain reliable and safe operations at the plant.”

But climate and health advocates say that the utility companies’ refusal to transition away from fossil fuels, and the Trump administration’s embrace of the industry will have dramatic effects on the health of Wisconsinites. 

“Coal makes us sick, coal kills people, coal poisons our water, coal causes so much harm that is so well documented that it is almost unthinkable that in 2026 our government would use our taxpayer dollars to continue with this technology,” Brittany Keyes, clean air policy manager for Healthy Climate Wisconsin, said. “There’s no such thing as clean coal, and the utilities running with our taxpayer dollars to continue to burn coal longer is taking Wisconsin backwards.” 

Modeling data from the EPA shows that shutting down the plant would result in 2,600 fewer asthma attacks, 1,200 fewer missed school days, and at least four fewer premature deaths statewide each year.

Amy Barilleaux, spokesperson for Clean Wisconsin, says that the state and its utilities are making that health tradeoff even though the coal needs to be imported from elsewhere. 

“I think Wisconsinites know we don’t have coal here. We have to get coal shipped in or trained into Wisconsin,” Barilleaux said. “It’s extremely expensive, so we have the extreme expense on the front end. Wisconsinites are being asked to foot the bill to keep expensive coal plants open, because of AI. Because the Trump administration says we need to support all the energy demands that are needed by tech companies. Then at the same time you have this giveaway potentially to fossil fuel companies saying, ‘Well, we’re gonna, you know, make it really hard, as hard as possible,’ to have clean energy that we do make in Wisconsin. We do have sunshine, we do have wind.” 

The plant’s life has been extended at a moment when the future of Wisconsin’s energy is at the forefront of the state’s political debate. The massive energy demand of the hyperscale data centers being constructed across the state and the rise in electric bills that have followed have drawn frustration from voters across the political aisle. 

The state’s Republicans are running on a desire to continue the reliance on fossil fuels. When Trump appeared at an Eau Claire dairy farm for an event earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, running for reelection in the hotly contested 3rd Congressional District, touted the president’s support of “beautiful, clean coal.” U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, has for years fought against the development of solar energy in his northern Wisconsin district. 

Democrats meanwhile are running on lowering energy costs. State Rep. Francesca Hong has run on a statewide data center moratorium while former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has promised to appoint people to the Public Service Commission who will work to keep utility rates frozen. 

Barilleaux said the state would be less susceptible to outside influence on its energy policy if it enacted “integrated resource management,” a system used in other states that requires public utilities to get their future plans approved and publicized by state regulators. 

“Wisconsin does not have to be hurt by these mandates coming down from the Trump administration, these rolling back of regulations,” she said. “If our utilities had just gone ahead and kept their word and shut down the coal plants when they said they would, we wouldn’t have to be having a conversation like this right now, so we could have protected ourselves from this moment, and we still can, like other states.” 

She said Wisconsin needs lawmakers who are willing to stand up to the utility companies. 

“Wisconsin does not have to be as vulnerable as it is to both this Wild West of energy plans that we’re in right now, and to the whims of whoever is in the presidency, we don’t have to be hurt by the way we produce energy, we don’t have to be in this situation,” she said.

Former Dane County Judge James Troupis and a pair of other former Trump aides pleaded not guilty Tuesday to felony forgery charges for their role in planning the fake elector plot that played an instrumental role in what became the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

Troupis, attorney Kenneth Cheseboro and Trump campaign aide Mike Roman entered the pleas in Dane County Circuit Court Tuesday. The trio is accused of falsifying Electoral College documents to say President Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the state. 

The three men face 11 felony forgery charges which are each punishable by up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. They argue they committed no crime and were just keeping the president’s appeal options open. 

Prosecutors argue that the three men misled Wisconsin’s 10 Republican electors, telling them the Electoral College votes for Trump were only being cast in case the various court challenges against the election results were successful. Those challenges ultimately failed, but the Electoral College votes were presented to Congress as a pretense to reject the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. 

Troupis has spent months trying to avoid his prosecution. He penned a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice late last month asking for more than $3 million from Trump’s since-scrapped “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate him for the “nightmare” of facing the charges against him. Last week, he filed a motion seeking to have his case moved to Jefferson County Court, arguing he can’t receive a fair trial from the liberal jurors in  Dane County. He’s also filed to have the case against him dismissed because he was pardoned by Trump for any potential federal charges related to the fake electors scheme.

More than 500 people filled an Eau Claire event center Saturday evening to drink old fashioneds while connecting over a collective desire to prevent “oligarchs” and big tech companies from constructing AI data centers in the region. 

On a beautiful early summer evening in the highly contested and swingy 3rd Congressional District — with the closing game of the NBA Finals and early games of the FIFA World Cup competing for attention — attendees from across the political spectrum expressed their frustration  with a world that appears to favor the financial interests of billionaires promising to wipe out swathes of jobs with a new technology and the associated data centers threatening the natural beauty and resources of Wisconsin’s driftless region. 

“For us the land really matters,” Cyndi Greening, the leader of Chippewa Valley Indivisible, said. “This is where we swim and play and raise our kids. I think it’s a bigger issue here, because a lot of us are much more tied to the land.” 

The Uniting Western Wisconsin event was hosted by a number of groups, including Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin, Great Lakes Neighbors United, the Wisconsin Farmers Union, Healthy Climate Wisconsin and Indivisible. 

While data centers have been popping up across the state, most notably the hyperscale data centers constructed by Microsoft, Meta and Vantage in Mount Pleasant, Beaver Dam and Port Washington, there has been less frenzied development in western Wisconsin. But still, a proposed center in Menomonie was killed last year after opposition from residents pushed local officials to change zoning rules to put more onerous restrictions on proposed data centers. 

The event Friday included speeches from a number of anti-data center activists, musical performances from the Eau Claire-based band Them Coulee Boys and Boyceville native Madilyn Bailey and a headlining performance by the comedian Charlie Berens, creator of the popular online “Manitowoc Minute” series, who has become a high-profile anti-data center voice in the state. 

Blaine Halvorsen, who helped lead the fight in Menomonie and one of the event’s main organizers, said his goal was to move the data center fight away from “angry villager energy” opposing a development in specific  neighborhoods to a more proactive discussion about how to build stronger protections for communities so they aren’t rolled over by the power of big tech. 

That aim was reflected during Berens’ set. One of his  largest applause lines in the mixed political crowd of Wisconsin voters came when he advocated for giving the state’s Department of Natural Resources more regulatory authority over development. 

In an election year when so much attention and resources will be devoted to earning the votes of people in this area, organizers reiterated their belief that candidates had to take the intensity of data center opposition, and by extension a rejection of artificial intelligence, seriously. 

“This is a big election year, and I know all candidates should be expecting, if they’re not already, a lot of questions about data centers and how they’re going to deal with hyperscale data center proposals, and how they’re going to be the best candidate, whether it’s for governor, state Legislature, Congress, whatever it may be,” Danny Akenson, an organizer with Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin  said. “And I would say that we are going to be looking out to see that candidates are answering to the people in their communities, we believe that the people closest to the problem are the closest to the solution, and that local control is something that should be protected, so whether it’s data centers, whether it’s frack mines 10-15 years ago. We need to make sure that communities have a voice in the decision making, and I hope that the candidates that make sure that local control is protected are the ones that people really think about.” 

Among the attendees, people were drawn to the event for a variety of reasons. Some told the Wisconsin Examiner they were concerned about the harm data centers can pose to local land, water and air; others were concerned about the massive energy demand of data centers increasing their utility bills and some simply knew the issue is one that’s drawing a lot of attention and wanted to learn more. 

Ron Demotts, a Menomonie resident who works near the proposed data center site, said he knows it’s an issue that people in his community have been upset about, but without any social media he’s just seen yard signs around town with “no impression” about why it’s become such a prominent debate. 

“I don’t know the first thing about the topic,” he said. 

But others came more fired up. Jan Schneider connected the proliferation of data centers to the Trump administration’s immigration policies — saying that both reflect a disregard for humanity. 

“I do not support the data centers, I don’t support the energy they take, the land that they take, the fact that AI is probably what they’re supporting, and that just isn’t something that I think we’re ready for, because there’s no regulations or anything on that,” she said. 

Chippewa Falls residents Elizabeth Yost and Luke Ballard said they moved to Wisconsin from Illinois for college and then stayed after graduating specifically because of the abundant access to fresh water. 

“We’re really concerned about water access and water quality,” Yost said. “That’s why we moved to Wisconsin, so we could have fresh water to swim in and drink.” 

She added that as a younger person, she’s frustrated with AI being foisted upon her at work and on her devices. 

“A lot of the AI use that I do is kind of forced on me in my email or in my text messages, where it’s not that I’m opting in, instead it’s being forced on me because I use Gmail, because I use, like, an iPhone, so that’s frustrating,” Yost said, “definitely, that you don’t really have a choice, which is why I think it’s really important on the systemic and societal scale to have change made. Because it’s not going to be just opting out of ChatGPT that’s going to save the day.”

Last July, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany authored legislation that will allow a Forest County concrete supplier to purchase 14 acres of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. In October, the owner of the business made his first ever political contribution — $520 to Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaign. 

Tiffany’s bill, the Wabeno Economic Development Act, would allow Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix to buy the national forest land adjacent to the company’s current property for “market value.” The purchase of the land includes the mineral rights for extracting underground resources from the current public lands. 

The 14 acres involved in the sale amounts to a miniscule portion of the more than 685,000 acres of federal land in Forest County. Tiffany and other northern Wisconsin officials have frequently complained that the massive amount of public land in the area prevents the growth of private industries. 

But Tiffany also has a history of opposition to public lands, including joining with right-wing anti-conservation groups working to prevent Wisconsin from protecting large swathes of the state’s Northwoods. In Forest County, he assisted efforts to rewrite local land use policy to be friendlier to extractive industries such as logging and mining. 

Tony Smith, the company’s owner, wrote a letter to Tiffany in January 2022 asking for help because his current property was running out of the raw materials he uses to make concrete. 

“We are currently projected to run out of aggregate materials in the next 2-3 years,” Smith wrote. “I have talked to Forest Service district ranger, Mike Brown, several times about the possible trade of these properties and he stated, ‘this would not be a priority to them.’ Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix currently owns the west and north side of the proposed property to trade, and we are aware there is adequate material there to continue running Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix for many years to come. I have also searched privately owned properties in Forest and surrounding counties with no luck in finding material within a sustainable distance to remain profitable.” 

Last June, Tiffany introduced the legislation, stating in a news release that the sale would allow the company to stay in business. 

“This conveyance will deliver long-term economic growth and protect local jobs for the people of Wabeno and Forest County,” Tiffany said. “It will ensure Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix stays open and continues serving the community for years to come.”

The bill passed the House in a 410-1 vote in July. Aside from Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who didn’t vote, all of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation voted in favor of the bill. On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources voted to advance the legislation. 

A few months after the bill advanced out of the House, Smith gave $520.51 to the gubernatorial campaign of the lawmaker writing legislation that directly benefits his business. State and federal campaign finance records show that Smith has no prior history of political giving. 

In a statement to the Examiner, Tiffany’s campaign noted the bill’s bipartisan support and touted the legislation as an example of Tiffany fighting for small businesses. 

“Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix, a small business with roughly 17 employees, contacted my office in January 2022 after years of getting nowhere with the U.S. Forest Service,” Tiffany said in a statement supplied by the campaign. “I first introduced this bill in 2024, and it has since earned strong bipartisan support, including from Wisconsin Democrats Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan. Standing up for Wisconsin small businesses when federal agencies fail them is part of my job, and I’ll continue to fight for them.” 

The campaign ignored questions about the contribution from Smith. 

In a news release, the Sierra Club of Wisconsin complained that handling the sale through legislation prevents the public from getting to weigh in on the transaction. Sales conducted through the standard U.S. Forest Service process are subject to public input. 

“Tom Tiffany’s track record shows he’s willing to sell the public lands — which belong to all of us — off to the highest bidder for private profit,” Sierra Club spokesperson Megan Wittman said.

Smith was unavailable for comment Thursday afternoon but his statement will be added later if he responds to the Examiner’s request.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a challenge to the state’s congressional maps. The case is the second congressional maps lawsuit the Court has accepted in recent weeks, again raising the ire of the Court’s conservative minority. 

The case, Bothfield v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, was filed last summer and argues that Wisconsin’s congressional districts are illegally gerrymandered for partisan advantage. Following a law enacted by Republicans under former Gov. Scott Walker, the case was sent to a panel of three circuit court judges. In March, the panel dismissed the case, finding that it was too similar to previous failed challenges against the congressional maps. 

Late last month, the Court also agreed to hear an appeal of a different judicial panel’s decision in Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy v. WEC, which challenged the maps on the grounds that they’re illegally anti-competitive. 

As in the previous case, the Court’s liberal majority agreeing to hear challenges to the congressional maps — which currently give Republicans control of six of the state’s eight districts — drew pointed criticism from conservative justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler. 

“An astonishingly activist court will once again revisit precedent it doesn’t like in order to do the bidding of its political masters,” Bradley wrote. “The Democratic Party bought multiple seats on this court to achieve yet another outcome unobtainable democratically. Like last time, the United States Supreme Court will likely reverse the majority’s unlawful ruling and protect our Republic. No kings. No queens either.”

With less than five months until this year’s November elections, and the candidates for those elections having already filed to get on the ballot, neither map challenge will be completed in time for new maps to be in place before the midterms. 

But the ongoing lawsuits keep Wisconsin involved in the ongoing national battle over gerrymandering congressional maps. Republicans across the country have moved to draw maps that will protect the party’s slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision weakening the Voting Rights Act that kicked off a round of southern states redrawing their maps to reduce Black political representation.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Wednesday rejected challenges to the nominating papers of four candidates, including three people running to replace U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany — who is stepping down to run for governor — in the state’s 7th Congressional District. 

At the meeting on Wednesday, WEC finalized all the candidates who will be on the ballot this fall. 

The commission considered most of the ballot access challenges it received in a meeting Tuesday, however four remaining cases were pushed a day because the incumbent officeholders were not seeking re-election but did not file declarations of non-candidacy. 

In the meeting on Wednesday, the commission approved the nominating signatures in the 7th CD for Democrat Fred Clark and Republicans Michael Alfonso and Kevin Hermening. The signatures of all three candidates were challenged by Jessi Ebben, who is also running in the district’s crowded Republican primary. The other Republican candidates in the race did not face any challenges.

WEC also approved the signatures for Jon Aleckson, a Republican running to replace state Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon) in the 50th Assembly District, which covers Green County and part of southern Dane County. 

Aleckson’s nominating papers were challenged by Morgan Hess, the executive director of the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee. 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission met Tuesday to adjudicate more than a dozen challenges to the nominating signatures of candidates for the Legislature, U.S. Congress and Secretary of State. 

During Tuesday’s more than three-hour meeting, the commission largely rejected the candidacy challenges and approved candidates’ efforts to place their names on the ballot. The challenge process gives opponents and political parties a chance to disqualify a candidate before any votes are even cast. Anyone is able to challenge a candidate’s nomination papers — usually on the grounds that the signatures are missing information, not collected from within the proper district, that the forms include errors or the candidate did not fully comply with the nomination requirements. 

Because the challenge process represents a chance for candidates to reduce their competition, challenges are sometimes made to try to winnow out potential primary candidates or get an opposing party candidate off the November ballot. 

Earlier this week, right-wing radio host Dan O’Donnell reported that in a “highly unusual move” the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee had filed challenges against two incumbent Assembly Democrats — Milwaukee Reps. Russell Goodwin and Sylvia Ortiz-Velez. 

Both Goodwin and Ortiz-Velez have at times been at odds with the rest of the Assembly Democratic caucus. Goodwin voted with Republicans on anti-trans legislation while Ortiz-Velez has frequently clashed with Democratic leadership in the chamber. 

The ADCC denied that it challenged Goodwin’s candidacy and records show that the challenge to his nominating papers came from his primary opponent Jordan Roman, who alleged that Goodwin’s papers included addresses that didn’t exist and forged signatures. The commission found that those allegations couldn’t be proven and approved Goodwin’s candidacy. 

However Morgan Hess, the ADCC’s executive director, did file and then withdrew a challenge to Ortiz-Velez’s nominating papers, WEC records show. 

Hess also filed challenges against Republican candidates in the suburban Milwaukee Assembly Districts 9 and 21 and in the Stevens Point area Assembly District 71. The only successful challenge was against Veronica Diaz, a Republican attempting to run in AD 21, who was disqualified from the ballot because 10 of her signatures came from people outside of the district and she didn’t file the proper paperwork declaring her candidacy and disclosing her financial information with the state Ethics Commission. Diaz’s papers were also challenged by her primary opponent Zach Pfaffenbach. 

Challenges were also made in a number of congressional races. 

In the 3rd Congressional District, where Democrats are seeking to unseat incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in a closely contested race, the state Republican party filed a challenge against Rustin Provance, who is running for the seat as an independent. 

The party argued that Provance should be disqualified because he used the state’s standard declaration of candidacy form, which includes a line in which candidates swear they’ve never been convicted of a felony — because state law prevents convicted felons from holding state or local office. There is no similar prohibition for federal candidates, and Provance has been convicted of a felony and has publicly referenced his conviction on his campaign materials. 

In the challenge, the party argued that Provance had falsified his information by signing and filing the declaration with the non-felony conviction line included. WEC denied the challenge and granted Provance access to the ballot. 

In the 6th Congressional District, Brian Norby, the chair of the Jefferson County Republican Party, filed a challenge against Democrat Elizabeth Anne Fitzgibbon — arguing that her invalid signatures included college students at UW-Oshkosh whose address was only listed as the residence hall they live in. 

WEC denied the challenge on the grounds that those students’ mail can be delivered with just the dorm listed instead of a street address. 

In the 8th Congressional District, the Republican Party of Brown County and Democratic primary candidate Rick Crosson filed challenges against Democratic candidate Mark Scheffler, arguing that Scheffler’s signatures were collected on the wrong forms and listed the wrong election date. 

WEC denied the challenges and granted Scheffler access. 

In the 2022 election, Democrats challenged the ballot access of Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels because of confusion over which municipality should be listed as his residence on the papers. Michels was allowed to get on the ballot. 

In this year’s governor’s race, no official challenges were made against any candidate’s nominating papers. But left-wing political gadfly and Minocqua Brewing Company owner Kirk Bangstad was officially denied access to the ballot Tuesday after the commission voted to certify that he only turned in 1,504 of the required 2,000 valid signatures. 

Bangstad’s initial nominating papers had a number of problems, including circulators omitting their municipality of residence and missing or incorrect dates. Bangstad filed 15 affidavits in an effort to correct his errors, but WEC did not agree that the errors were fixed. 

This year, the only statewide race to see nomination challenges was the contest for Secretary of State. Challenges were made against Republicans Nathan Pollnow and Cindy Werner and Democrat Eileen Newcomer. Pollnow and Werner were approved but Newcomer was denied access to the ballot because her papers included a number of duplicated signatures. 

WEC is scheduled to meet again Wednesday afternoon to consider more ballot challenges in races for which the incumbent is not seeking re-election but didn’t file a declaration of non-candidacy.

Hess, the ADCC’s director, filed a challenge against Jon Aleckson, a Republican running to replace Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon) in south central Wisconsin’s Assembly District 50. In the race to fill Rep. Tom Tiffany’s open 7th Congressional District seat, Republican Jessi Ebben filed challenges against Republicans Michael Alonso and Kevin Hermening and Democrat Fred Clark. 

WEC is scheduled to meet at 3 p.m. Wednesday.

President Donald Trump held a roundtable discussion Friday at Custer Farms in Chippewa Falls to tout his administration’s efforts to help farmers. 

Trump’s visit is his first to Wisconsin during this year’s election season. First to take the stage on Friday were U.S. Reps. Derrick Van Orden and Tom Tiffany, signaling the importance of the 3rd Congressional District and the Wisconsin gubernatorial contest  for Republicans this year. 

Despite Trump’s waning approval ratings, Van Orden and Tiffany tied themselves to the president, effusively praising him.

Trump appeared on stage for the roundtable with both congressmen as well as U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, farm owner Ken Custer, Jake Leinenkugel, Olympic speed skater Jordan Stolz and Joe Thomas, a Hall of Fame former NFL player who played for UW-Madison and now owns a western Wisconsin beef farm. 

Despite its billing as a roundtable discussion of agriculture policy, Trump spoke for more than 40 minutes straight, at times appearing to read from a script and at others riffing on a number of favorite topics including former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, “Dumbocrats in Congress,” the allegedly “rigged” 2020 presidential election, transgender people, his multi-million dollar D.C. renovation projects and the southern border. 

“These are some very sick puppies that I’m looking at that are running for office and on the other side,” Trump said. “I call them the Dumocrats, D-U-M, you take out the B, a lot of people don’t know, dumb has a b, a lot of people don’t know. You take out the b and change the E, you put the you and you have a Dumocrat, but they are, their policy is just outstandingly bad, and it’s really bad for the farmer, because we were having record stuff, and then we had to put out a fire, we had to extinguish a nuclear weapon.” 

With six months until November’s midterm elections, many of Trump’s signature policies have directly affected the bottom line of Wisconsin farmers. Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran have greatly increased the cost of essentials such as fertilizer and gas while limiting access to foreign markets for corn and soybeans. In western Wisconsin communities close to where he appeared on Friday, Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota’s Twin Cities extended into the Dairy State, directly striking the undocumented migrant labor the region’s farmers rely on. 

“If anybody you hear says that Donald Trump doesn’t care about the farmers, you can look him straight in the eye and tell him that’s a pile of manure, because the man is right back there,” Van Orden said. “We’re going to make sure our farmers don’t have to wring their hands at night because they’re worried about paying bills.” 

Trump and other speakers promised that the administration and congressional Republicans are working to ease the burden on American farmers, but offered little in the way of concrete proposals for how fertilizer, seed, gas and equipment will get cheaper or how milk, corn and soybeans will get easier to sell. 

“Your fertilizer prices are going to go way down, just like they were four months ago,” Trump said. “Your fertilizer is down, your energy’s down, your oil, your gas is all coming way down. And frankly, I thought it would go much higher than it did.” 

In the days leading up to Friday’s event Democratic politicians and Democratic-aligned groups rolled out a series of tours, roundtables and online events to highlight complaints about administration policies on all manner of things. 

“Wisconsin farmers do backbreaking work to produce world-class products that feed the world and drive our rural economies. President Trump came into office promising to support our farmers, but instead has taken every opportunity to jack up their costs, limit their customers, and cut into their margins,” U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) said in a statement. “Between Donald Trump’s trade war, unnecessary war in Iran, and attacks on our health care system, Wisconsin farmers are paying more for everything, and Donald Trump has no solutions to the problems he’s caused. As President Trump visits Wisconsin, he owes our farmers more than lip service – they need real relief from the high costs they are paying.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court voted Thursday to create a committee that will study and assess the state’s recusal rules for judges and justices — delaying immediate action on an issue that has gained public prominence as the cost of the state’s Supreme Court elections has risen. 

The Court voted after holding a public hearing and open conference on a petition from a group of retired judges to update the state’s recusal rules, which currently put the decision of recusal in the hands of each individual judge or justice.  

The existing rules were adopted in 2010 and largely written by two powerful lobbying groups, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association. In 2017, the Court’s then-conservative majority voted 5-2 to reject a petition to enact stricter recusal rules. 

In recent years, as the Court’s liberals worked year by year to gain a majority, the conservative justices and many Republican officials in the state have complained that they were in league with the state Democratic party and called for the recusal of justices on high profile issues. Those accusations continued Thursday. 

“I oppose the creation of this committee, because I think it will ultimately waste the time of all of the members,” Justice Rebecca Bradley said. “Because if the committee proposes anything that represents true reform in the recusal arena, the court, as currently constituted, will never adopt anything that will interfere with the successful formula for electoral success in recent elections, which is to telegraph how you will rule on cases and receive up to $10 million from a party, and then sit on that party’s cases. So I ultimately think it’s going to waste a lot of people’s time.”

During the public hearing, the petition authors were among the speakers pushing for a committee to study the issue rather than adopt the suggested new rules because of the complexity involved. Speakers questioned how recusal rules might conflict with the First Amendment, whether they would adhere to existing state law, the state of Wisconsin’s legal culture and Supreme Court campaigns were questioned. 

“We want to have the correct rule, the best rule,” said retired Dane County Judge Richard Niess, one of the petitioners. “There is no one single rule that is demanded by the circumstances. There are a number of options, but they all need to be vetted within the context of Wisconsin and within the context of the constitutions, both state and federal.” 

Throughout the day, Justice Brian Hagedorn was especially vocal, pushing speakers to say what they hoped to accomplish with a new rule. He noted that every member of the Supreme Court has decided cases in which one of the parties spent money campaigning for or against them. 

“A lot of this feels like PR cover to me that doesn’t really do anything, and so I’m trying to figure out what problem you’re trying to solve,” Hagedorn said. “Who should have recused that’s not recusing, that you think this rule is meant to resolve. Like your petition is described as something ‘toughening recusal.’” 

He added that it “goes both ways. From my perspective, I don’t know whether it matters whether somebody campaigned for or against somebody, so for example, SEIU [the Service Employees International Union], they spent, according to public records, under $40,000 campaigning against me. I sat on the case. They gave $400,000 plus to the Chief Justice [Jill Karofsky]. She sat on the case. Is that problematic? None of us, neither of us seem to think it was under those circumstances.” 

The justices also debated how modern campaigns have affected the issue of recusal — with political parties and their allies spending millions of dollars to elect their preferred candidate while the candidates themselves more directly reference their personal views  on important issues. 

“There’s this question about what kind of legal culture we want in the state of Wisconsin,” Hagedorn said. “What kind of judicial elections we want in the state of Wisconsin. When I travel around the country, frankly, judges of all stripes kind of aghast at what has become of Wisconsin’s elections. We’re kind of considered a bit of a national disgrace about how elections are run nowadays, and part of that’s the resources that flow into these races. Part of it’s the nature of how campaigns have played out, because they’re no longer about often the legal questions.” 

Karofsky said that those frustrations about Wisconsin’s system also go the other way, noting that observers are just as annoyed by nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court telling senators they’ll just “call balls and strikes” when clearly they will bring a political frame to the Court. 

“The utter frustration of members of the Senate, members of the public, members of the legal community who know that’s probably — and as it turns out, in many cases — just not the truth, and that there’s this veneer that they hide behind and say that they are just going to be fair and impartial,” she said. 

During the hearing, Ann Jacobs, a former president of the Wisconsin Association of Justice and chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said that whatever the rule is, the Court needs to be careful that it doesn’t punish attorneys for being politically involved. 

“It appears that in considering recusal, a judge has to consider a lawyer’s or a litigant’s prior political activities, and what does that mean? Door knocking, signature gathering, fundraiser holding, social media posts, hours spent on behalf of a campaign, meetings attended,” she said, referring to the draft rule written by the petitioners. 

“How does a judge ascertain this?” she asked. “Does a lawyer have to divulge this as a matter of course, does the judge have to question lawyers about their political activities? Is a judge required to search the internet looking for political activity?”

Jacobs warned against the prospect of “a system where parties, litigants, their lawyers, etc. are cross examined” about their political activity and possibly excessive partisanship.

She said she has a “selfish interest in this” because she’s a co-chair of a Democratic party caucus, a partisan appointee to a state commission and sits on the board of a political organization.  

“I’m sort of the definition of politically active, and what I can’t tell from this proposed rule is whether and when and how my political activity that I am proud of, within the party of my choosing could cause the recusal of a judge,” she said. “We must be extraordinarily careful not to penalize lawyers and litigants for being politically active. That’s the heart of our democracy. It’s what we want people to do.”

The state of Wisconsin and Tyco Fire Products have reached a settlement agreement to help clean up the environment and provide clean drinking water in Marinette, where the company’s actions have caused PFAS contamination in the city water supply. 

Under the settlement, Tyco agreed to pay $10 million into the state’s PFAS remediation trust fund, provide clean drinking water to residents in the affected area and work with the Department of Natural Resources to clean up the contamination. The agreement concludes a lawsuit filed by the state Department of Justice against Tyco in 2022 in which the state accused Tyco of failing to notify the state of the PFAS discharge and then failing to properly remediate the pollution. 

A separate legal action in which the state sued the manufacturers of products containing PFAS, including Tyco, is still pending. 

Officials on Thursday celebrated the settlement as a historic first for the state in its efforts to hold polluters accountable for the PFAS pollution that has affected communities across Wisconsin. 

“Today is a historic and important milestone in our fight to make sure every Wisconsinite has access to clean and safe drinking water, whether they live in Marinette or Stella or on French Island or anywhere in between,” Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement. “While today is an important victory, we know our work cannot stop. For the folks in Marinette, this day has been a long time coming, but we know that for so many families and communities across our state, dealing with PFAS pollution is still a daily reality. Here in Wisconsin, we must keep working to tackle PFAS head-on, and that includes continuing to hold PFAS polluters accountable for the damage they’ve caused and are causing across our state.”

PFAS are a group of manmade chemical compounds commonly called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the body or environment. They’ve been used in household goods such as non-stick pans and fast food wrappers, as well as certain kinds of firefighting foam. PFAS have been connected to health problems, including birth defects and certain types of cancer. 

The settlement marks another action by the state this year to address the state’s PFAS problems. In April, Evers signed into law a bill that will release $125 million to help communities test for and clean up PFAS contamination in the local water. 

The enactment of that law ended a multi-year legislative saga to reach bipartisan agreement on how to best structure the clean up programs and who should be held responsible for the pollution. 

“Municipalities like Marinette and Peshtigo have waited far too long for this day to come. Now, the work begins to turn this settlement into relief for pollution victims,” Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Gillett), the PFAS law’s main author, said in a statement. “Now, every single dollar from the Tyco settlement will go into the PFAS Trust Fund and be used to support affected victims and communities.”

But clean water advocates in the area said in a Thursday evening press release they’re disappointed in the settlement — mostly due to the state’s agreement to reduce the area for which Tyco is being held responsible. SOH20, a Marinette-based group that has pushed for better protections of PFAS-affected communities across the state, said that the boundaries the state agreed to means that 80 households with contaminated private wells won’t get the support they need.

“Safe drinking water should never become a competition between contaminated communities,” said SOH2O. “By placing these funds into a statewide PFAS trust fund, impacted residents across Wisconsin are now forced to compete against one another for limited resources, despite all communities being equally deserving of clean, safe drinking water.”

This report has been updated with a statement from SOH20 in Marinette.

A total of 333 people filed nomination papers with the Wisconsin Elections Commission to run for office in Wisconsin this fall — the first official act in a campaign season that will see the state elect a new governor and potentially change the balance of power in the state Legislature. 

In the races for statewide offices such as the governor’s race, candidates are required to collect at least 2,000 signatures. Candidates for Congress must file at least 1,000 signatures while state Senate candidates must file 400 and Assembly candidates 200.

Any member of the public can challenge the sufficiency of a candidate’s nomination papers. To challenge a candidate, a person must make a verified complaint to WEC by 5 p.m. Thursday. The candidate will get an opportunity to respond, and the commission will meet June 9 to certify or deny ballot access.

The seven major candidates in the Democratic primary for governor all filed enough signatures to ensure ballot access, according to WEC records. 

Minocqua Brewing Company owner and political gadfly Kirk Bangstad did not reach the 2,000 signature threshold after listing the wrong date on a number of signature forms — writing the date of the Aug. 11 primary rather than the Nov. 3 general election. Circulators who gathered signatures for Bangstad also omitted information on the forms such as the municipality they live in. 

Bangstad, who did not announce his run for governor until early May, will have until Sunday afternoon to file affidavits seeking to fix the errors on the forms. 

“Bangstad is NOT DEAD YET,” a post on the Minocqua Brewing Facebook page stated. 

Former Democratic state Rep. Brett Hulsey, who has regularly turned up at political events around Madison in recent months to draw media attention and tout his run for governor, did not file any signatures with the commission, records show. 

On the Republican side, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany filed nearly 4,000 signatures. Tiffany cleared the field of serious contenders after he was endorsed by the Republican Party of Wisconsin and President Donald Trump earlier this year. But 27-year-old medical services technician Andy Manske filed 2,040 signatures to get on the Republican primary ballot.

In the race for lieutenant governor, Democrat Sarah Godlewski and Republican Will Martin filed enough signatures. But WEC only counted 1,977 valid signatures from Republican David Varnam. 

In the state’s congressional races, the once-crowded Democratic primary in the 1st Congressional District to unseat Rep. Bryan Steil will have four candidates: Miguel Aranda, Mitchell Berman, Peter Burgelis and Lorenzo Santos. 

Randy Bryce, an ironworker who previously ran for the seat in 2018 and was the first to announce his intention to challenge Steil for 2026, did not file any signatures and announced he was suspending his campaign. 

In the 3rd Congressional District, where Democrats are again focusing their attention in an effort to unseat Rep. Derrick Van Orden, Democrats Rebecca Cooke and Emily Berge both filed enough signatures to gain ballot access. Berge was the first candidate in the entire state to file her signatures with WEC. Two independents, Alexander Valiensi Kent and Rustin Provance, also filed to run in the race. 

Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore in the Milwaukee area’s 4th Congressional District is set to face a primary challenge from Democratic Socialist Amy Donahue. 

Six potential challengers filed to run in the 6th Congressional District, held by Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman. Seven candidates, including three Democrats and four Republicans, filed enough signatures to run in the 7th District to replace Tiffany, and three candidates filed to run in the 8th District Democratic primary to challenge GOP Rep. Tony Wied. 

In four races, candidates were given an extension until 5 p.m. Thursday because Tiffany, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Hortonville) and state Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon) did not file declarations of non-candidacy. Murphy is retiring while the other three are running for higher office.

Wisconsin State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), one of the leading candidates in the Democratic primary for governor, is being sued by Capital One Bank over nearly $30,000 in credit card debt, court records show. 

The lawsuit was filed May 26 in Dane County Circuit Court by the bank due to Hong “failing to make the minimum payment” on her Discover credit card — which the records show she’s had since September of 2011. The suit alleges breach of contract and account stated, meaning Hong was notified of the total balance due of $29,344.48 and did not object. 

Hong’s campaign manager Becky Cooper said in a statement that the campaign “will have a letter shortly confirming this debt is paid in full.” 

Since she entered the race last year, Hong, a member of the Legislature’s Socialist Caucus, has emerged as a surprise contender. With two and half months until the Aug. 11 primary, she’s been leading or at the top of a number of polls, picking up early support and energy through an active social media campaign and non-traditional events across the state. 

Hong has centered her campaign on issues of affordability and income inequality, focusing especially on increasing taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents and protecting people from rising utility bills caused by the proliferation of hyperscale data centers in Wisconsin. A chef and former restaurant owner, she was first elected to the Legislature in 2020 after highlighting the toll the COVID-19 pandemic took on working class people. 

Cooper said Hong’s debt is emblematic of the struggles many Wisconsin residents have faced recently. 

“Like 80% of Americans, Rep. Hong has debt, specifically from business expenses that rose astronomically during the pandemic,” Cooper said. “She leads from a place of knowing the endless struggles with bills and the stress that places on families every day. Her policies will help Wisconsin residents develop greater economic stability and success.”

The world’s largest meat and dairy companies, many of which operate in Wisconsin, have made hundreds of claims that their practices are sustainable and promises of future climate protection initiatives. But a report released last month in the journal PLOS Climate found that hardly any of those claims are legitimate. 

The report, authored by researchers at the University of Miami, assessed publicly made environmental claims and promises of the 33 largest meat and dairy companies in the world. The corporations assessed in the report includes companies with Wisconsin operations such as Saputo Cheese, Tyson Foods, JBS, Hormel Foods, Dairy Farmers of America and Nestle. 

Since 2021, the corporations made 1,233 environmental claims but, according to the report, 98% of those claims can be called “greenwashing” because they were made without supporting evidence. Only three of the claims were backed with actual peer reviewed studies. 

“This study is consistent with what we have experienced: big claims, big promises, but little in the way of quantifiable improvement in environmental quality,” said George Kraft, the former Director of the Center for Watershed Science and Education at UW-Extension and UW-Stevens Point who now sits on the science council of Wisconsin’s Greenfire. 

The report’s authors argue that it’s important to assess the claims of these companies because corporate meat and dairy operations cause a huge proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

“Meat and dairy companies, which produce disproportionate amounts of pollution relative to other kinds of foods, have prioritized climate change in their sustainability initiatives,” the report states. “They make many promises and provide very little supporting evidence. Like the fossil fuel industry, which has used greenwashing over the last several decades to delay meaningful climate action, the meat and dairy industry may be misleading consumers and investors regarding whether and to what extent they are addressing environmental impacts, including climate change, with even less time to spare.” 

In Wisconsin, economic forces have for decades pushed the state’s dairy industry to get bigger. Hundreds of factory dairy farms are now permitted to operate in the state, putting more cows on more concentrated plots of land while the state’s corporate dairy interests fight at the local and state level to prevent government regulation. 

Tara Greiman, the Wisconsin Farmers Union’s director of conservation and stewardship, told the Wisconsin Examiner that corporate agriculture has been the dominant force in the industry for the last 50 years and the effect of that control on the environment is clear. 

“They can say as much as they want, ‘look at all of our promises, look at what good stewards we are,’ but the fact of the matter is that our groundwater quality is depleting in the sectors that they control, our ecological habitat diversity depleting, we are losing farmers at the same time,” she said. “There’s other economic factors, but speaking in terms of just the climate measurements, they’re not doing a good job.” 

Earlier this month, the environmental organization Clean Wisconsin released a report outlining the steps Wisconsin’s agricultural industry will need to take to help the state achieve its climate emissions goals. The research found that reducing nitrogen fertilizer use, reducing the amount of acreage used for corn-based ethanol production, practices such as no-till and cover crops, better livestock management and the planting of perennials instead of commodity crops would help put Wisconsin on the right track. 

Chelsea Chandler, Clean Wisconsin’s climate, energy and air program director, told the Examiner the fact that corporate agribusiness feels the need to make sustainability claims is a first step. She said that sometimes companies are intentionally “overstating the benefits” of a practice, lack enough data or are extrapolating too much across different parts of the world. Still, the discussion can lead to helpful action and the adoption of scientifically backed solutions. 

Clean Wisconsin’s climate solutions roadmap can help, Chandler said,  “because it’s based on the latest science, it’s tailored specifically to Wisconsin, and it’s checking some of those claims that are overstated when it comes to the climate impacts.” 

Chandler hopes that providing good information will affect investment and support, “whether that’s coming from private companies who are trying to improve their sustainability in their operations, or if that’s coming from governments through different kinds of incentive mechanisms and channeling those into the things that are really having an impact” 

Both Chandler and Greiman said that deliberate choices built the food system we have today and it will take deliberate choices to build something more sustainable. 

“We need a new food system. Growing corn, even if you’re doing no-till, even if you’re cover-cropping after it, if you’re only growing corn and soybeans, it’s not a regenerative system. Full stop,” Greiman said. “We have to have new markets, otherwise we’re just rearranging deck chairs, and the research is saying this.” 

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the state’s congressional maps on the grounds that they’re an anti-competitive gerrymander, the Court ruled Friday afternoon. 

In an order that again showed the Court’s partisan divide spilling out into the public, the Court’s four liberals voted to accept the case while Justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler accused the majority of acting as tools of the Democratic party. 

The lawsuit against the maps was brought last summer by a bipartisan business group, Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy Coalition, represented by the progressive nonprofit Law Forward. Rather than challenging the state’s congressional maps on the grounds that they’re an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander — a tactic that has repeatedly failed — the lawsuit argues the maps purposefully protect incumbents from realistic challenges. 

Because of a state law passed by Republicans in 2011, the lawsuit was first heard by a panel of three circuit court judges. In a ruling late last month, the panel dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the claims were essentially the same as those made in a partisan gerrymander challenge and therefore a question for the executive and legislative branches. 

The panel’s ruling was immediately appealed to the Supreme Court because the 2011 law states that appeals of these panel rulings can’t be heard by the Court of Appeals. 

While accepting the case, the Court denied a request that it be heard on an expedited schedule. With candidates for this fall’s midterm elections required to file ballot access signatures by June 1 and ballots are set to be printed shortly after, it’s unlikely the case will be concluded in time to change the state’s maps before November. 

In response to the Court accepting the case, Bradley and Ziegler vehemently objected — arguing that accepting the case is signaling the majority’s intent to redraw the maps. 

“An astonishingly activist court will once again revisit precedent it doesn’t like in order to do the bidding of its political masters,” Bradley wrote. “The Democratic Party bought multiple seats on this court to achieve yet another outcome unobtainable democratically. Like last time, the United States Supreme Court will likely reverse the majority’s unlawful ruling and protect our Republic. No kings. No queens either.”

Bradley, who frequently cites sources from a wide range of non-legal texts, also quoted George Orwell’s “1984” in her dissent. 

Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote a concurrence to the ruling, defending the majority from the conservative justices’ criticisms and calling them “false, inappropriate, and disingenuous.” 

“Deciding to hear a case does not reflect any weighing of the merits of any party’s claims, let alone prejudgment about who will prevail and why,” Dallet wrote. “Instead, we must — as a majority of this court does — stick to our neutral role, and let the parties argue their case before we render judgment. When the time comes to issue our decision, we will follow the law wherever it leads.”

James Troupis, the former attorney for President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign who played an instrumental role in the fake elector scheme that led to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, has applied for $3.2 million through Trump’s “weaponization” fund. 

Troupis, a former Dane County Circuit Court judge, was part of the trio of Trump campaign aides who conceived the plan to have Republicans posing as members of the Electoral College cast ballots for Trump and send those ballots to Washington D.C. to be certified by Congress as the official results. The false slates of electors were the mechanism through which the Trump-aligned “stop the steal” efforts were organized — culminating in the Jan. 6 attack aimed at forcing Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence to certify Trump as the winner of the 2020 election. 

Troupis also represented Trump in the campaign’s failed lawsuit seeking to have the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturn the 2020 election results. 

After participating in the plan, Troupis was investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice under President Joe Biden and is currently facing felony charges of forgery for his role in the fake elector plot. He also settled a civil lawsuit against him for his involvement in the plan. 

In a letter to Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, Troupis complains that his life has been upended because of the justice system’s effort to investigate and charge him with crimes. 

“I was honored to represent President Trump in the Wisconsin Recount,” Troupis wrote in the letter posted to social media by right-wing radio host Vicki McKenna. “Sadly, my life (and the lives of my entire family) has been a nightmare since I stepped forward to represent President Trump … The total real financial cost now exceeds $1.7 million, the annihilation of my reputation and law practice, thousands of hours in preparation and response to those legal actions, five years of time lost with my children and grandchildren, loss of retirement funds used for defense costs and ongoing legal expenses that will likely cost me our family home and the balance of my retirement funds. I now face spending the rest of my life in prison!” 

Troupis adds that he’s become a “poster-child” for the weaponization of the law. Last year, a Dane County judge denied Troupis’ effort to have the state criminal charges against him dismissed. 

“Troupis does not show that the First Amendment protects the right to commit forgery, does not show that the government violated his right to due process by entrapping him into that forgery, and does not show prosecutors must exercise discretion to charge an accused of his preferred offense,” Judge John Hyland wrote. 

Troupis’ cause has become a favorite of right-wing figures, including U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson — who himself was involved in the fake elector scheme. 

The $1.776 billion fund created by the DOJ as part of a settlement in Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS has been criticized as a tool the Trump administration can use to pay out its allies and the foot soldiers of the Jan. 6 attack. Figures such as Enrique Tarrior, the former leader of the militia group the Proud Boys, have applied for funds through the fund. 

Jeff Mandell, the president and general counsel of Law Forward, a voting rights-focused firm that brought the civil lawsuit against Troupis, said that the request for $3.2 million in taxpayer money continues Troupis’ pattern of refusing to accept the consequences of his actions.

“Wisconsin attorney and former judge Jim Troupis was the primary architect of the national fraudulent-electors scheme,” Mandell said. “As Law Forward’s groundbreaking civil litigation discovered and made clear, absent Troupis’s actions, there never would have been an insurrection on January 6. He is facing criminally prosecution, and we have a pending ethics complaint seeking his disbarment. On January 6, Troupis texted congratulations to one of his colleagues on the fruits of their labor. Troupis was paid by the Trump campaign for the work he did then, has consistently been unwilling to accept personal responsibility for his misconduct since, and now wants to be paid again by the American taxpayers. His actions now continue to be as disgraceful as his misconduct was in the wake of the 2020 election.”

On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee in the race for governor of Wisconsin, said at an event that he believes some people charged with crimes after Jan. 6 could “possibly” be entitled to compensation — though not if they assaulted law enforcement officers. 

Wisconsin Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein (D-Middleton) responded to the fund Wednesday by introducing the “No Taxpayer Dollars for Insurrectionists Act” which would apply a 100% state income tax on any money Wisconsinites receive through the fund. She said the fund was the “height of corruption.” 

“Put simply — if you’re from Wisconsin and you stormed the Capitol, you will not receive money from the slush fund,” Hesselbein said in a statement. “Wisconsinites are tired of the chaos and corruption caused by the Trump administration. From reckless tariffs to the conflict with Iran, the President continues to harm hard-working Wisconsin families and businesses by driving up costs. At a time when Wisconsinites continue to struggle with the rising cost of groceries, gas, and housing, our taxpayers must not foot the bill.”

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U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said at an event Tuesday in Madison that if elected governor he’d return the state’s current budget surplus to taxpayers while also cutting property taxes, eliminating taxes on tips and overtime and overturning Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year school funding increase while also increasing the rate at which public schools are reimbursed for special education services. 

Tiffany said he’d do all of that even though he has not “penciled out in detail” how he’d pay for it all. At the event Tuesday hosted at the Madison Club by WisPolitics.com, Tiffany repeatedly lamented “Madison math” that makes people ask what will be cut from the state budget if lawmakers cut taxes, reducing state revenue. 

Several times during the moderated interview and to reporters after the event, Tiffany compared the state budget process to household budgeting. 

“Families figure out what their priorities are, and then they spend accordingly,” he said. “Education is going to be one of my priorities. Transportation will be a priority. Healthcare is going to be a priority. Those things take first call on the budget, and then when we get down to the wants, if some of them fall off, so be it. We’re going to make sure that we take care of the basics first.”

Tiffany is running for governor during a midterm election cycle in which Democrats are planning for the possibility that they can hold trifecta control of Wisconsin’s government for the first time in more than 15 years. President Donald Trump’s declining approval rating, the national political landscape and new voting maps that could end years of Republican legislative control mean that Tiffany is campaigning against the political current. 

Repeating a line from his speech at the Republican Party of Wisconsin convention earlier this month, Tiffany said he was running for governor rather than continuing to hold his safe Republican seat in Congress because he wants to reverse what he sees as a “state in decline.” 

Loyalty

Tiffany, who was first elected to the Legislature in 2010 and then elected to represent northern Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District in 2020, said “people who know” him know that he’s always been loyal first to the people of Wisconsin rather than the Republican executives — former Gov. Scott Walker and Trump — he’s worked with. 

Tiffany is a member of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus and has rarely broken from Trump while in Congress. Following the 2020 presidential election, Tiffany joined Republican efforts to overturn Trump’s loss. Last week, he told reporters he still had concerns about “improprieties” in the administration of the 2020 election. 

On Tuesday, Tiffany wouldn’t say that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, only that Biden was the president from 2021 until 2025. He said that he had concerns about the administration of the election in “a number of states.” 

“We should make sure that those things that were done wrong did not unduly damage that election,” he said. “On January 6 of 2021 it was decided by the Congress that Joe Biden won the presidency, and he became president … and I accepted that. I referred to him as President Biden, and, but I gotta tell you, it was a bad time for the United States of America when you had 10 million people that came in illegally, when we lost our energy independence, when we tucked tail and ran in Afghanistan … it was not a good period of time, but he was president for those four years.” 

Tiffany said he was still “studying the details” of the U.S. Department of Justice’s $1.776 billion slush fund for compensating people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. But he said he didn’t think people who assaulted law enforcement officers should receive any of that money. 

Asked to point to other examples in which he disagrees with Trump, he said he didn’t believe the federal government should allow more Chinese students to attend American public universities such as the University of Wisconsin. 

During the audience question portion of the event, Tiffany was asked about the undocumented workers who make up a large portion of the state’s dairy workforce. Tiffany responded by criticizing Biden-era immigration policy, attacking “sanctuary” policies and claiming that the national decline in violent crime is because of Trump’s crackdown on immigration. 

But Tiffany wouldn’t say if Immigration and Customs Enforcement went too far during its occupation of the Democratic-run cities Chicago, Minnesota and Los Angeles. 

“The President made a decision that he thought that things should be done differently after what happened in Minneapolis, and I think that decision will be born out here as we go forward,” he said. “But remember, Minnesota was an anomaly, Immigration and Customs Enforcement works very closely with law enforcement. Here’s what I would do: I would make sure that local, county and state law enforcement works closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and coordinate their efforts to make sure what happened in Minnesota does not happen in Wisconsin.” 

Madison issues 

Tiffany also weighed in on a number of issues that lawmakers in Madison have taken up this year, including the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, the legalization of online sports betting and the growth of hyperscale data centers in the state. 

On the stewardship program, which is set to expire at the end of June after legislators failed to reach a deal on extending it past 2026, Tiffany said he’d sign a bill to re-authorize the program if it focuses on maintaining “what we have” rather than acquiring new state land. Tiffany in recent years has often joined Republican state lawmakers in opposing land conservation projects in the northern part of the state through the program. 

Earlier this year, lawmakers enacted a law that would allow the state’s Native American tribes to begin operating online sports betting operations. The bill will require the state’s gambling compacts with the tribes to be re-negotiated. 

Tiffany said he doesn’t support expanding gambling opportunities in the state but that he’d “have to review the details” of the law to weigh in on the compact negotiations. 

Over the past year, the construction of massive AI data centers has become one of the most potent political issues in the state. Tiffany said that the controversial data centers in Port Washington, Mount Pleasant and Beaver Dam have taught the state lessons on how to move forward. He said he would repeal a provision included in the 2023-25 state budget that exempted data center construction costs from the state sales tax, prevent data centers from being built on “productive farmland,” work to keep utility rates stable and prevent the tech companies building the data centers from making local governments sign non-disclosure agreements. 

However he wouldn’t say if legislation would be required to achieve those goals, only saying that “my Public Service Commission” would handle it.

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A federal judge on Thursday dismissed the request from the U.S. Department of Justice for Wisconsin’s unredacted voter rolls. The ruling marks a defeat in the Trump administration’s renewed effort to scrutinize the election administration of swing states that President Donald Trump lost in 2020. 

The federal government first requested Wisconsin’s unredacted voter registration list last summer,  making a similar request to most other states. The Wisconsin Elections Commission denied the DOJ request, citing state privacy laws, and pointed the department to the publicly available redacted list. 

The DOJ responded by suing WEC for the unredacted list. The federal government has filed similar lawsuits in 30 other states. 

Republicans and their allies have for years alleged that the data management practices of state election administrators are vulnerable to fraud. Voting rights groups and Democrats have countered that the Trump administration is seeking to fan the flames of election conspiracy theories and meddle in state elections by collecting massive amounts of voter data. 

U.S. Judge James Peterson found that the personal information of voters, including birthdays, Social Security numbers and driver’s license details, isn’t a record the DOJ can demand under the Civil Rights Act. 

“Defendants and their amici contend that the government’s position fails for multiple reasons, specifically: (1) a voter registration list is not a record subject to production under Title III; (2) the government has not provided an adequate statement of basis and purpose, as required by the statute; (3) the government has not explained why it needs an unredacted copy of the voter list, as opposed to the publicly available redacted version; and (4) the government’s request is barred by state and federal privacy laws,” Peterson wrote. “The court agrees that a voter registration list is not a record subject to production under Title III, so it will dismiss the complaint on that ground without considering defendants’ other arguments.”

The DOJ has lost parallel efforts to obtain this type of data in eight other federal district courts. 

After Peterson’s ruling, attorneys from Law Forward and the ACLU celebrated the decision, stating that it protects Wisconsin’s voters from potential intimidation. 

“Requiring Wisconsin to disclose this sensitive personal information despite laws prohibiting just that would have threatened the privacy of Wisconsin voters and the removal of eligible voters from voter rolls for no reason,” said Doug Poland, Law Forward’s director of litigation. “Federal law leaves it to states to administer their own elections, and Wisconsin already has reliable processes for maintaining its voter rolls.”

Poland said the purported premise behind the federal demand — to uncover evidence of noncitizens voting in elections — was a pretext.

“Given the rarity of noncitizen voting, this lawsuit, and similar efforts in other states, are thinly-masked efforts to manipulate and subvert future elections,” he said. “The court recognized this as an illegal attempt to gather and weaponize data on Americans, dressed up in the language of voting rights enforcement. We will continue to stand up to the Trump administration’s illegal schemes to interfere with elections administration and erode the rights of voters in Wisconsin.”

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In the six years since U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden first entered Wisconsin’s political landscape, Democrats have often run against the Prairie du Chien Republican by pointing to his long list of perceived character flaws. 

The multiple instances of yelling at teenagers, attending the protest that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the gun he brought to the airport, tirades against constituents, the hundreds of tweets he sends every week, lying to the press that he didn’t vote to cut Medicaid. Just this week, he’s made online posts calling Palestinians “unrepentant savages” and said a pro-Palestinian protester in New York should “catch a 5.56 with his face,” referring to a type of ammunition commonly used by the military and in AR-15 style weapons. 

Van Orden has also refused to debate his Democratic opponents and has never appeared for an in-person town hall with constituents. People and local government officials in the district complain that he’s difficult to reach for help on local issues — and often openly antagonistic when the people asking for help are Democrats.

Those objections to Van Orden’s temperament are motivating to the Democratic base of the 3rd Congressional District. At the No Kings rally in La Crosse in late March, just the mention of Van Orden was met by one attendee with a fart noise.  

But since Van Orden won the seat following Democrat Ron Kind’s 2022 retirement, those character complaints have not been enough. After losing to Kind in 2020, Van Orden defeated state Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) in 2022 and former nonprofit leader Rebecca Cooke in 2024. 

Van Orden’s seat is once again a national priority for a Democratic Party trying to win back a House majority. Running in the Democratic primary Aug. 11 to unseat him is Cooke and former Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge. Former Ho-Chunk legislator Rodney Rave had been running for the nomination but dropped out of the race and endorsed Berge last week. 

Both women told the Wisconsin Examiner that they believe the key to winning over Wisconsin’s swingiest congressional district is persuading voters they will do the work to show up for the people of western Wisconsin. 

‘Pragmatic’ or ‘bold change’?

“You can’t just be pointing out why the other side is bad. I think it has to also be like, if Democrats win back the House, if I’m able to flip this seat, what are we going to do differently?” Cooke said. “So talking about what I intend to do in Congress versus just what the failures of Derrick Van Orden, I think is what people are really looking for in what feels like a very hopeless time for a lot of people.”

To instill hope for a future without Van Orden, “I’m talking about the ideas, and policy that I’ve heard, frankly, from voters in this district,” Cooke said.

Berge said that since he was first elected, Van Orden has become increasingly difficult to work with. She pointed to a conversation she had with him about housing and homelessness in Eau Claire a week before President Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term last January. Van Orden “just yelled and he blamed,” she said.

“What I’m telling people is that we can make change, we just have to elect people that are focused on the voters, we have to elect people that want to bring people together, and to actually create real change,” Berge said. “I am in these small rural towns and cities and villages, and people are showing up like they are ready for a representative to show up and to hear what they have to say and to understand what they’re going through, and that’s different right now.”

The two candidates have identified similar issues as the largest problems facing residents of the district — most notably access to healthcare and the increasing cost of housing, groceries and childcare. Cooke, who calls herself a centrist, tends to propose more moderate ideas than Berge. 

On healthcare, for example, Cooke wants to expand Medicare to cover vision, dental and hearing while working to improve the insurance available to people under the Affordable Care Act. Berge has proposed making Medicare coverage available to all Americans.

“I think that having that kind of broad base of support is going to be helpful in moving things across the line within my own party, within the majority,” Cooke said. “But also I think having that pragmatism of how do we work across the aisle to actually get things done is something that I’ve talked about in all of my campaigns of being more of a centrist and wanting to actually move the ball forward.”

That entails finding “ways to build relationships within the House and even within the Senate to get things done,” she said. “I know that that’s going to be the goal of Democrats is to not just walk the walk when we have a majority this fall.” 

Berge said that rather than thinking about the issues on an ideological spectrum between conservative, moderate and liberal, she views them through the lens of class and the gap between the richest people and the poorest. 

“People want bold change,” Berge said. “It’s not left versus right or middle, it’s bottom versus up, and people are sick of it. You know, we have one billionaire, one billionaire in the 3rd Congressional District, and yet all these federal policies that make his life better.”

She didn’t name names, but John Menard, the home improvement retailer and an Eau Claire resident, is believed to be the district’s only billionaire.

“What about the other 749,000 people?” Berge said. “Like we all deserve a shot at a good life, and that’s the sentiment that people want. So, I don’t know how to categorize that, if that’s moderate, left or right, but it’s just what people want.”

Lopsided odds vs. winning record

Since Cooke announced last March that she’d be running again for Van Orden’s seat, she has been the Democratic front-runner. She’s been endorsed by national political figures including Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and is running with the support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 

Cooke has also built a sizable fundraising operation. Despite a promise not to take corporate PAC money, she raised nearly $6.5 million in the most recent filing period — more than Van Orden. Berge, meanwhile, raised $565,000 for that same period. 

Cooke told the Examiner that her campaign’s recent internal polling shows she has a 46-point lead in the primary. An internal poll the campaign released in March, when it was still a three-way race, showed Cooke was favored by 43 points.

But Berge says that neither the money nor those out-of-state endorsers are registered to vote in the district, adding that she’s not afraid to push against the party’s establishment to stay in the race. 

“It’s this myth that whoever has the most money will win elections,” Berge said. “On one hand, people say let’s overturn Citizens United, and then the other hand they say, ‘well, we have to only support the person with the most money,’ but we need to support people that are showing up for people in local communities, and let the primary play out, and not put fingers, thumbs on the scale.”

Citizens United was a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found it is unconstitutional to place limits on the political spending of corporations and labor unions on the grounds that doing so violates the 1st Amendment. 

When voters in the primary head to the polls in August, they’ll be weighing if they should nominate Cooke — who previously lost the 2022 primary for the seat, won the 2024 primary but went on to lose that year to Van Orden. Berge said that on the trail, voters frequently mention Cooke’s 0-2 record as a concern. 

“That does come up as probably the number one thing that people say is that well, she’s lost twice, and that’s why they’re voting for me, because they appreciate I’ve been elected three times,” Berge said. 

But Cooke says that her loss to Van Orden by less than three percentage points, in a year in which the national political landscape favored Republicans, is an asset, not a flaw. 

“I don’t think there is any skepticism about electability,” she said. “I outperformed every Democrat on the ticket in 2024. I outperformed [Kamala] Harris by 9,000 votes, and I outperformed our senator, Tammy Baldwin, by 5,000 votes in this district. And so, in what was a red wave year to perform that well, I think we’re feeling really good about our chances this cycle.”

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