In Milwaukee at H.W. Longfellow School’s Community Learning Center, which is operated by the South Side nonprofit Journey House, staff are always finding new ways to immerse students in art and culture.
To help, Cherise Myers, Journey House director of community partnerships, said the nonprofit utilizes state Child Care Bridge payments to bring in instructors specializing in art, dance, digital media and more.
Now Longfellow and other Milwaukee Public Schools-based before- and after-school programs must grapple with how to continue exposing students who don’t often get exposure to art while losing thousands of dollars in stabilization payments.
“This is kind of putting the nail in the coffin,” Myers said. “Not being able to have the money to contract or work with these opportunities.”
The Child Care Bridge Payments Program was the state’s temporary solution to the federal government sunsetting Child Care Counts, a monthly federal child care stabilization program born out of the pandemic that supported nearly 1,400 child care providers in the city of Milwaukee.
The Wisconsin Legislature budgeted for a year of Child Care Bridge payments, which ended last month.
Journey House received over $6,300 from the state in 2026 to support the Longfellow Community Learning Center. About 90 MPS-based before- and after-school programs collectively received $1.2 million in 2025.
Activities to be cut
Milwaukee Recreation, which received Child Care Bridge funding to operate child care as part of its programming at MPS locations, has struggled to attract and retain high-quality staff with competitive wages.
The monthly Child Care Counts and later state Child Care Bridge funding were critical in raising wages and giving employee bonuses, Community Learning Center coordinator Leighton Cooper said.
Cooper, who coordinates Community Learning Centers through Milwaukee Recreation, said the funding helped staff stay longer at their programs overall.
“It’s causing us less and less to have to go out and find and recruit more and more staff to operate our programs,” he said.
Now that Child Care Counts and Child Care Bridge payments have ended, Cooper said Milwaukee Recreation may have to cut funding for some supplies and activities, stop giving bonuses and cut staff positions beyond the required ratios from the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.
“Our staff wages certainly can’t be changed,” Cooper said. “Staff are paid and that’s going to help us to keep staff in spaces.”
Journey House received less funding than other Community Learning Centers, and Myers said the organization already can’t always compete with wages at other schools.
Myers said the ended funding may not affect new employees who were hired on starting pay, but veteran employees may leave if pay drops. Many already rely on other jobs to make ends meet, she said.
Still, Myers said the money helped Journey House bring in instructors from local colleges, universities and community organizations to lead activities because those instructors aren’t always free.
Myers said Journey House programming depends on student needs, but the organization runs chess and Lego clubs, flag football, basketball and cheerleading classes, painting and metal classes and more.
500 programs across state losing funds
Across Milwaukee, about 90 MPS-based Community Learning Centers and before- and after-school camps received $1.2 million in 2025, according to Wisconsin Department of Children and Families data.
Randy Neve, lead of the Wisconsin Out of School Time Alliance, estimates more than 500 before- and after-school programs serving school-aged children statewide are losing monthly stabilization payments. Milwaukee’s MPS-based programs are among them.
Many of the providers who received state and federal stabilization payments were early-childhood centers serving infants and toddlers, NNS reported in June.
But Neve said these programs, including the ones across MPS, serve thousands of 4- to 12-year-olds. The loss of stabilization payments will affect that population of children and families.
“In the long run, the kids are the ones that lose out and are hurt,” Neve said.
Push for the state
The state budgeted for one year of Child Care Bridge payments in the biennial budget.
Legislators including state Sen. LaTonya Johnson, who represents District 6 on Milwaukee’s North Side, proposed SB 322 to support child care providers, but the bill didn’t get a hearing, NNS reported.
Neve said the Wisconsin Out of School Time Alliance is working with other organizations to advocate for greater funding for before- and after-school programs like the one Journey House hosts at Longfellow. He and other partners are educating policymakers about what the loss of this funding will mean for providers and families.
Myers said many of the families at Longfellow are already struggling with the rising cost of living, and the loss of stabilization payments will ultimately hurt students and families.
“Things are tough, and it’s sad to say that this is just going to make things tougher,” Myers said.
Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Every morning, rising senior Chris Hutcherson takes two Milwaukee County Transit System buses to get to Audubon Technology and Communication Center on Milwaukee’s South Side.
Hutcherson said he doesn’t mind his daily commute on MCTS, except when the buses are delayed. If his bus hits traffic, he sometimes misses his transfer.
“Then the 57 don’t come for like a good, good 20 minutes,” Hutcherson said.
Hutcherson is one of about a fifth of Milwaukee Public Schools high schoolers who district officials say ride MCTS buses to school. The district is now deciding on whether to send more students on county buses as part of a transportation system overhaul.
To hit its transportation budget for the year that began in July 2026, MPS needs to cut roughly $3.5 million, according to figures the administration presented to the school board in June.
MPS Senior Director of Transportation Services David Fifarek said the district will not implement most changes until the 2027-28 school year, to allow for community engagement and to determine which recommendations are most practical.
Betting on the bus
Hutcherson tracks county buses on Google Maps, which he said is the most reliable of the apps he’s tried, though it isn’t foolproof.
“I was actively watching that app on my phone, and I remember getting on the bus, and it’s saying that it didn’t leave,” Hutcherson said.
MCTS buses are on time 80% of the time, which, by its definition, is within one minute before or five minutes after the scheduled departure time, according to transit officials.
Fifarek said students who live more than seven miles from their high school are assigned to MCTS, while those within seven miles typically ride a yellow bus.
“You can’t have a yellow bus running effectively more than seven miles from starting point to destination without having to run at least an hour long to do it,” Fifarek said.
MCTS buses will likely be most effective for students in high-density areas who can take a bus to school with no transfers, Fifarek said. It also alleviates some safety concerns because students are quickly on and off the bus without having to get off the bus and wait for another one to connect them to school.
He said things get tricky when students live on the opposite side of town and children have to transfer buses in an area that is unfamiliar to them.
Fifarek described a “tug of war” between MCTS covering more of the city with county buses and running them often enough so riders aren’t stranded waiting for a transfer.
MCTS is weighing that very dilemma as the agency begins its own overhaul of the county bus system to provide efficient service amid a looming budget deficit.
For the next 12 to 15 months, a spokesperson said MCTS will engage with stakeholders including MPS as part of the MCTS Forward system redesign.
MCTS has already made tough decisions to recover from a $14 million deficit, reducing frequency on routes like Hutcherson’s 57, and running the 55, the main line for commuting Reagan High School students, during peak hours. Midday service has since returned for the 55.
Fifarek said the district’s future plans will largely depend on how MCTS will change its coverage and ride frequency in the next year.
“If that coverage model changes, then we’re going to have to pivot and then reinstate some yellow buses or some other form of transportation to replace the void that might be created by the county transit system,” Fifarek said.
On July 15, MCTS proposed cutting bus service by 25% in 2027 to address the deficit.
Chronically late
Perry Perkins, a student at Lynde and Harry Bradley Technology and Trade School, was one of five students who said buses to Milwaukee Public Schools are routinely late in the morning. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
McQuinn Coleman said his yellow bus is late multiple times each school year. When he has too much trouble with the bus, he stays home.
Four other students at Barack Obama School of Career and Technical Education, Lynde and Harry Bradley Technology and Trade School and Milwaukee High School of the Arts said their buses are routinely late in the morning. They sometimes take MCTS buses as a result.
A district-commissioned analysis by 4MATIV presented at the June board meeting found that 73% of trackable bus trips to MPS are on time. But, looking at all trips, including about a third that have no GPS data, less than half of MPS bus trips could be confirmed as arriving on schedule.
Coleman said he dealt with so many transportation issues that he lost a credit and had to take summer school.
‘On point ever since’
One day, Coleman said he got robbed as he left summer school.
He said he doesn’t feel safe waiting at stops anymore and stays vigilant on his walks to and from the bus.
“I’ve been on point ever since,” Coleman said.
Hutcherson said he generally feels safe taking MCTS buses, but he also makes sure to stay aware of his surroundings.
Other male high school students who spoke to NNS said they feel safe walking to and from their stop and waiting for the bus.
Students like Coleman are the ones School Board Director Darryl Jackson thinks the district should consider when forming a transportation plan.
He said cost saving measures are important, but safety shouldn’t be overlooked in favor of cost.
“Currently, a lot of adults don’t want to walk through certain neighborhoods,” Jackson said. “We got to keep that in mind with having our students walk through certain areas.”
Fifarek said safety is one of the biggest concerns as MPS reviews the recommendations and overhauls the district transportation system.
The report presented to the school board in June estimates $11 million in savings if the district consolidated stops, for example. But Fifarek said implementing such a step by only considering distance could potentially send young children crossing busy streets like Capitol Drive or Fond du Lac Avenue.
“Eleven million dollars of savings in stop consolidation would have to completely wipe out this concept of no cross streets,” Fifarek said. “You might create some safety issues and risks in the process.”
Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
The massive Interstate 94 construction project in Milwaukee County is expected to wrap up in 2033, according to a timeline on the state Department of Transportation’s project page.
Construction began on the I-94 East-West corridor in late 2025, meaning eight years will pass before utility and roadway construction are estimated to end in 2033.
The project covers 3 ½ miles of I-94 between 16th and 70th Streets in Milwaukee County and prompted long-term closures of several roads.
Plans include widening the freeway from three to four lanes in each direction, eliminating left-turn ramps, redesigning the Stadium Interchange and reconstructing aging roads.
Crash rates in the corridor are higher than the statewide average, and 13 bridges do not meet clearance standards, according to the DOT.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Protesters burst into a Thursday news conference about the police shooting of a homeless man in Madison, taking the microphone from the police chief and arguing with some attendees who said they wanted to hear more about the investigation.
The group of roughly 20 protesters burst into the room at the Madison police station, shortly after Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Common Council President Sabrina Madison identified the man killed by police as Corey Durell Ruiz, a homeless resident.
Ruiz, 38, was shot and killed Wednesday after police said he resisted arrest and injured an officer with a knife.
Police Chief John Patterson stepped away from the microphone when the protesters were shouting, and one man in the group took his spot at the podium. The event quickly devolved into a shouting match.
A vigil for Corey Ruiz was held Thursday at the intersection of Williamson Street and South Baldwin Street in Madison, where Ruiz was fatally shot by a Madison police officer. We spoke to several Madison residents about the fatal shooting. Madison Police Department’s police chief, John Patterson, said Ruiz’s death will be investigated as a homicide during a press conference shortly before the vigil. The Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating the shooting. #wisconsinwatch#coreyruiz#mpd#madisonshooting#madison
One protester held a sign saying “Corrupt cops deserve to die too!!!”
Moments earlier, the mayor said the shooting will be “rigorously investigated.”
“It does not matter who you are or what your past is, you should not lose your life as a result of an encounter with law enforcement,” Satya Rhodes-Conway said.
Madison, for her part, said “Corey could have been my brother because my brother is homeless and he often rides a bike.”
Court records show Ruiz had been in and out of jail over the past decade on charges including failing to pay child support, driving a vehicle without consent, jumping bail, threatening authorities, taking a vehicle without consent, possessing drug paraphernalia, resisting an officer and retail theft.
“He’s a human being. He had a family. He has parents who loved him who brought him home, who cared for him,” Madison said, adding that she’s struggling to understand what she’s seen in videos of the shooting that have circulated on social media.
“My first thought is, when the officer’s walking away, why isn’t he walking away in cuffs,” Madison said. “I’m angry, there’s no way around it.”
Once the protesters quieted down, the chief resumed his presentation, promising his department’s full cooperation with the state investigation.
Police have released few details
The shooting has roiled Wisconsin’s capital city, with Gov. Tony Evers calling for “transparency and accountability” and Madison community members gathering Thursday at a growing memorial.
Protesters march after a Madison police officer shot and killed a man, July 22, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Kayla Wolf / Associated Press)
None of the four officers who were detaining the man wore body cameras, but passersby recorded the confrontation on video, and accused the officers of overreacting.
“I thought, ‘Holy cow — what could have warranted that?’ It looked to me like they had him under control,” David Ortiz-Whittingham, who saw officers swarming and heard the gunshots, said Thursday. “Even now, knowing about the knife, did he have to die for it? Could this have been de-escalated without him losing his life?”
The police chief released few details Thursday, saying the investigation into the officer-involved shooting must run its course.
Earlier Thursday, Madison’s independent police monitor, Aeiramique Glass, said police have not yet shared evidence or the officer’s identity with her office, which will review the case and can recommend to the district attorney that charges be filed if warranted. She said the department and city are “obstructing what the community and the public” want.
“Let me do my job,” she said.
Patterson said the police were committed to cooperating with Glass as the independent monitor’s investigation is carried out, at the same time as the state’s probe.
The chief urged people not to draw conclusions
Patterson has urged caution in reading too much from the cellphone videos. He said none show the perspective of the officers, and additional video that hasn’t been released is being reviewed.
The officer who fired his weapon is a veteran of the force, the chief said. He and the three other responding officers will be placed on administrative leave pending an independent investigation by the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation, as required under state law.
Patterson said police were responding to calls that someone was attempting to enter parked vehicles, and the suspect fled on a bike before the officers surrounded him. One deployed a taser, but Patterson said he didn’t know if the taser worked. Those efforts failed to control the man, Patterson said.
In the videos circulating online, the man can be seen standing before he’s brought to his knees as the officers struggle to force him into a prone position. Then he falls quickly to the pavement after what sounds like three gunshots and seems motionless as the officers handcuff him behind his back. Arriving officers then escort one of the officers a short distance away.
Patterson said he did not know the extent of the injuries sustained by the officer who was injured by the knife.
“This situation was clearly dangerous,” Patterson said. He later continued, “I am incredibly saddened by the loss of life.”
A neighborhood now accustomed to police shootings
The shooting happened in the middle of an intersection in the popular Marquette neighborhood, which is lined with restaurants, bars, shops and homes less than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the state Capitol. The bystander videos show numerous cars at the scene, with people watching and commenting as it unfolded.
A man crouches to light candles at a memorial site as mourners gather during a vigil at the site where Corey Ruiz was fatally shot by Madison police, July 22, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Wes Hogg for Wisconsin Watch)
“I saw everything! I saw everything! You did not need to kill him! … We watched it all!” a woman yelled in the video recorded by Ortiz-Whittingham. Three loud shots could be heard among the sirens, followed by screams.
Residents who dealt with two other police killings within the same few blocks expressed their frustration on Thursday.
In 2015, a white police officer shot and killed Tony Robinson, who was biracial, on the same street. Large protests followed, but the district attorney filed no charges, determining the officer was justified. In 2012, Paul Heenan, a white musician, was fatally shot after he had been drinking and mistakenly entered his neighbor’s house. That officer was exonerated as well.
The chief acknowledged that the neighborhood “has experienced a lot of trauma” and urged people to support one another.
“I want transparency, I want accountability,” Patterson said.
A man addresses a crowd as marchers and mourners converge at a vigil for Corey Ruiz, who was fatally shot by a Madison police officer, on July 22, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Wes Hogg for Wisconsin Watch)
Questions about race and technology emerge
The race of the officer who fired his gun on Wednesday and that of the man he killed were not released by police.
But Black advocacy groups, protesters and politicians spoke out against the crime and said they believe the man was Black.
The shooting also focused attention on the Madison Police Department’s lack of body-worn cameras. The force of around 500 is among the largest in the Midwest that doesn’t use the devices.
Common Council President Sabrina Madison said Thursday that she expects a police request for $400,000 to be approved, enabling the cameras to be phased in over the next three years. Others lamented that cameras aren’t already being used.
Attendees gesture during a candlelight vigil where a Madison police officer shot and killed a man Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Kayla Wolf / Associated Press)
“Nobody can agree on anything,” said Katey Nelson, a member of the police civilian oversight board and operations director at YWCA Madison, a racial justice group. “Now we’re here, looking at another police shooting where we don’t have what we need to make sure the officers are held accountable.”
The mayor said her budget, which has not yet been released, will include funding for body-worn cameras. Rhodes-Conway said the city needs to put together a policy for the use of the cameras, and said that will be completed before the budget takes effect in January.
And now it’s a talking point in the governor’s race
Wisconsin State Rep. Francesca Hong, a Democrat running for governor, embraces a woman at a vigil for Corey Ruiz, hours after a Madison police officer fatally shot Ruiz, on July 22, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (Wes Hogg for Wisconsin Watch)
Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin, has a long history of organized protest dating back to the 1960s. More than 100,000 people marched on the state Capitol in 2011 in favor of union rights. There were large demonstrations that turned violent after the death of George Floyd in 2020.
And so the shooting quickly infused itself into the race to succeed Evers as governor, with voting already underway in the Aug. 11 primary.
“This state sanctioned violence was an execution,” posted Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist candidate who appeared with a bullhorn at the scene just a few blocks from her campaign office. She has called for defunding the police.
Another Democrat in the race, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, said while the details must become public, “these reports are painfully reminiscent of the tragedies we have witnessed in Kenosha, Minneapolis, and far too many communities across our country.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany called on his rivals to let the state investigation “establish the facts without politicians rushing to judgment or stoking division” in a statement that also said he would “work to end revolving-door criminal justice policies.”
Associated Press writers Ed White in Detroit and Jake Offenhartz in New York contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: The Associated Press erroneously reported George Floyd was shot and killed by police. An officer in Minneapolis murdered Floyd by pinning him to the pavement and putting a knee to his neck. This story has been updated to reflect the correction.
Wisconsin election officials have reignited a legal battle over absentee voting with July guidance stating that voters cannot void a returned absentee ballot and cast a new one, even if Election Day is weeks away or the candidate they supported has dropped out.
Three Democratic residents in Dane County on Thursday sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission over the guidance, which was adopted by the commission on July 9, calling it an unconstitutional violation of the state’s absentee voting laws. All three plaintiffs voted for a gubernatorial candidate who has since dropped out of the primary, and under the commission guidance they cannot change their votes, even though those votes have not yet been counted. The legality of spoiling ballots just to change a vote has long been disputed.
The lawsuit says WEC’s guidance means the plaintiffs “will all be disenfranchised from meaningfully participating in this August election unless this Court steps in.”
Thursday’s lawsuit is the latest development in a legal dispute that began in 2022 and was reopened by an appeals court decision earlier this year. It was filed two days after the Democratic Party of Wisconsin sent the commission a letter urging it to rescind the guidance. The letter raised many of the same concerns later cited in the suit, including that the policy could disenfranchise voters and was adopted after early voting in the primary had already begun.
The July 9 guideline for clerks reverses the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s previous position and Attorney General Josh Kaul’s legal arguments on the agency’s behalf that voters should be allowed to replace absentee ballots they have already returned as long as they comply with statutory deadlines.
The WEC spent years arguing in court in favor of that broader definition of ballot spoiling, but its latest guidance effectively restores the rule imposed by a 2022 court ruling that banned the practice.
The commission adopted the guidance after clerks had already mailed ballots for the Aug. 11 primary and, notably, after multiple candidates in the crowded Democratic gubernatorial race dropped their bids.
“It seems to me exceedingly likely that this is something that people are going to keep fighting about,” Jeff Mandell, founder of the liberal law firm Law Forward, said ahead of the lawsuit.
He added that the timing of the guidance was unusual: Typically courts are skeptical of efforts to change rules close to an election. Some absentee voters in this election cycle probably cast their ballots under the assumption that they could spoil their ballot and cast a new one if their preferred candidate dropped out or they just wanted to change their vote, Mandell said.
Even if the commission’s guidance is in line with Wisconsin law, it creates a clear discrepancy between in-person Election Day and absentee voters, said Sam Liebert, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local and a former municipal clerk.
Election Day voters can receive up to three ballots at the polls if they make a mistake, he pointed out. On the other hand, he said, absentee voters now get no second chance once they return their ballots, even if Election Day hasn’t arrived yet.
“The inconsistency is hard to ignore,” he said, and it presents a policy question for the Legislature — or maybe the courts.
Spoiling controversy blew up amid similar political dynamics in the 2022 primary
The WEC’s more permissive August 2022 guidance on ballot spoiling was prompted by similar dynamics as that of the present: highly contested primaries with candidates dropping out throughout the race and at the last minute.
In September 2022, GOP voter Nancy Kormanik sued over that guidance allowing absentee ballot spoiling, arguing that clerks can only reissue an absentee ballot if a voter returns an absentee ballot in a “spoiled or damaged” condition. Voiding a ballot that’s already been submitted and getting a new one over a voter’s own mistake or a candidate dropping out didn’t fall under that category, she argued.
Kaul, the state’s Democratic attorney general, saw the issue differently. A few different laws allow ballot spoiling, he said in a court filing, and “none requires the elector to explain how or why the ballot is ‘spoiled.’”
The ban stood until February of this year, when an appeals court vacated the lower court ruling. But the new ruling wasn’t on the merits of the case. Rather, it came because the court said Kormanik didn’t properly serve documents to a legislative committee at the start of the suit.
After the February ruling, clerks sought the commission’s updated guidance about how to deal with spoiling. They didn’t receive it in time for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, and some municipalities offered instructions on how to spoil ballots. But with midterm primaries coming up — and particularly as rumors of gubernatorial candidates dropping out swirled — clerks were especially eager to know if the commission planned to stand by its earlier interpretation of the law and allow absentee ballot spoiling again.
On July 9, the commission provided an answer: It voted 4-2 that absentee ballot spoiling is prohibited after a voter returns an absentee ballot. Democratic commissioner Carrie Riepl, a former clerk, voted with the three Republicans in favor of the guidance. Democratic commissioners Mark Thomsen and Ann Jacobs voted against it.
The guidance came just one day after Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, dropped out of the race and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez for governor. Just over a week later, Rodriguez dropped out of the race and Crowley reentered.
Over 36,000 Wisconsin voters had already returned ballots by the day the commission issued its guidance, commission data shows. Voters had returned nearly 68,000 ballots by the time Rodriguez dropped out.
At the July meeting, commission chair Don Millis, a Republican, argued that voters should only be able to void — or spoil — ballots before they return them to the clerk.
“Once you’ve turned your ballot in, that’s it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Thomsen noted that in-person voters on Election Day can mark a ballot and receive a replacement ballot if they make an error, as long as the first ballot isn’t tabulated yet. But under the new guidance, an absentee voter couldn’t spoil a returned ballot even if it’s weeks from being tabulated.
“Why are we treating people that use mail differently than me if I show up?” he said.
On one hand, voters can argue that the inability to spoil ballots effectively disenfranchises them if they vote for a candidate that has since dropped out, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
On the other hand, she said, others can cite the Wisconsin law calling absentee voting a privilege, not a right, and argue that voters who exercise that right accept some risk in casting an absentee vote that can’t be taken back.
“The issue of whether ballot spoiling is or is not allowed under Wisconsin statutes hasn’t been definitively resolved,” she said.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
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UW Health leaders created a new company called WorkForward to help health care systems and state agencies nationwide create their own apprenticeship programs.
UW Health officials started offering apprenticeships to their employees in 2018.
The program has helped the company fill entry-level roles and retain existing staff while filling gaps for in-demand positions.
But experts say apprenticeships aren’t a silver bullet: They require clinical staff to supervise apprentices; employers have to pay staff for hours they’re in school; and each state has its own regulations for apprenticeships.
Violet LaClair was ready to leave her job.
As a certified nursing assistant at UW Health in Madison, she used the skills she developed while caring for her dying grandmother for nine years. Her co-workers had supported her through her gender transition. She’d even won an award for providing “extraordinary” care.
She loved her workplace, but after four years, she wanted a change.
“I felt like I’d done it all,” LaClair said. “I felt like at some point I needed to challenge myself more.”
She thought about going back to school, but that didn’t seem doable. She was already in her 40s and didn’t have time or money to spend.
Then she learned she could get trained to be a medical assistant for free, while working, through an apprenticeship program UW Health started in 2018. She pays no school costs, and she gets paid for the time she spends in class.
Three days a week, she works at the company’s Union Corners clinic, where she gets patients situated, takes blood pressure, flushes ears and more.
“I can pretty much do anything the doctor asked me to,” LaClair said. Two days a week, she takes classes on pharmacology, laboratory procedures, and law and ethics.
“I think the program is great,” LaClair said. “It’s given me a whole new chapter in my life, and something to be excited about.”
Opportunities like these are novel, but increasingly common. The idea is simple: Maybe the country’s next nurses, surgical technologists and medical assistants are already working in hospitals and clinics. The people who’ve spent years booking appointments or drawing blood might jump at the chance to train for new careers — if their employers will help them do it.
UW Health now offers apprenticeship options for 17 professions, including surgical techs, pharmacy technicians, respiratory therapists and registered nurses. Apprentices pay nothing for their course work, and they get paid to be in class.
To date, more than 1,000 apprentices have graduated.
Bridgett Willey, who oversaw the launch of those apprenticeships, said they’ve helped fill a critical gap. Wisconsin colleges alone just aren’t graduating enough students to meet the needs of the three major health systems in southern Wisconsin, Willey said.
The popular programs, which attract far more applicants than they can accommodate, have helped the company fill entry-level roles and hold onto existing staff. Before it began offering apprenticeships, as many as 3 in 10 positions for medical assistants, nursing assistants and pharmacy technicians were unfilled, Willey said. Today, it’s around 1 in 10.
“We’ve increased our supply by growing our own and training our own folks,” Willey said.
UW Health isn’t the only health system trying this model. Apprenticeships, once a rarity in health care, have become increasingly common at hospitals and clinics nationwide.
But offering this kind of on-the-job training isn’t always easy. Now, UW Health plans to use what it’s learned to help other states overcome the financial and bureaucratic barriers that can stand in the way. In May, the health system announced it created a separate company called WorkForward to help health systems and state agencies elsewhere set up apprenticeships. Willey, who directs that new project, thinks it’s the first such initiative by a U.S. health care company.
The health care apprenticeship surge
Historically, apprenticeships have been a key on-ramp to technical trades like plumbing and carpentry, allowing trainees to earn as they learn.
Now, apprenticeships are flourishing in U.S. hospitals and clinics, too. In just five years, the number of registered apprentices in the health care field has grown by more than 40%, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, as employers have expanded existing programs and others have started new ones.
Stethoscopes are pictured at UW Health on July 16, 2026, in Madison, Wis. UW Health started its apprenticeship program in 2018. To date, more than 1,000 apprentices have graduated. (Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch)
The boom comes as demand for health care workers has shot up across the country, triggered by the growing needs of an aging population and a wave of longtime health care workers retiring. By 2038, the country will be short about 109,000 registered nurses, 61,000 physical therapists, 33,000 pharmacy technicians and 13,000 respiratory therapists, according to projections by the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis.
Meanwhile, vocational and on-the-job training is becoming increasingly popular across the board, said Susan Skillman, senior principal research scientist at the University of Washington Center for Health Workforce Studies.
“Apprenticeships in general are growing,” Skillman said. “We’re kind of in that place in the nation where the pendulum is moving away from four-year college degrees.”
Staff seize opportunity to advance
Some health apprenticeships last months while others last years. At UW Health, apprentices training to become medical assistants finish in 10 months while future registered nurses train for four years.
No matter the length or industry, all apprenticeships involve a combination of on-the-job training and classroom instruction. In the case of Wisconsin’s registered apprentices, who are approved through the state’s Department of Workforce Development, employers must pay apprentices for the time they spend in class. In some cases, the employer pays for the apprentices’ school costs, too.
At UW Health, the employer covers tuition. The health system’s staff also coordinate the apprentices’ work and school schedules to avoid conflicts.
Violet LaClair practices drawing blood from a mannequin arm while Lisa Fahey, manager of Ambulatory Apprenticeships, observes. (Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch)
Those were big selling points for Brianna Matheson, 35, who had worked as a medical assistant for 12 years when she learned last spring that UW Health was starting a three-year surgical tech apprenticeship. She’d spent time in the operating room before, and she liked helping with clinical procedures.
“I was just ready for something more,” Matheson said. “I was in clinics for so long, doing the same thing for so long. I wanted to learn again, be a student again, and be a novice.”
When the application opened, she was the first to apply.
“I had kind of given up on the idea of going back to school because I, like so many others, need full-time income, and I didn’t really want to give up all of my free time to work full time and go to school in the evenings and weekends,” said Matheson, who now processes and delivers supplies to the operating room at Madison’s University Hospital.
Not only does she not pay tuition, but the Department of Workforce Development offers a stipend for scrubs, reimburses mileage to and from school, and even covers some daycare costs for apprentices with kids, Matheson said.
The position also let Matheson keep her prior $25 hourly wage, reflecting the raises she’d earned during more than a decade on the job. When Matheson graduates in May 2028, she’ll earn surgical tech wages, which range from around $30 to $44 an hour, according to current UW Health job listings.
“I would not have been going back to school at this point in life to pursue this without the support of specifically the apprenticeship program that UW Health is offering,” Matheson said. “I wouldn’t have done it on my own.”
Apprenticeships attract new job applicants
Offering apprenticeships could help health systems draw entry-level job applicants like 25-year-old DeForest native Alex Lippman.
Lippman trained as a certified nursing assistant in high school, then worked at a skilled nursing facility in Madison. He started college at Arizona State University with plans to become a doctor, but moved back to Wisconsin when his grandmother fell ill in his sophomore year. He wanted to continue his education but figured he’d missed his chance.
Then, in 2023, UW Health announced it was starting the state’s first apprenticeship for registered nurses. That apprenticeship, like all of UW Health’s multiyear apprenticeships that lead to degrees, are open only to employees who’ve worked for the system for at least six months.
“I had a plan of trying to get into this program because going back to school on my own was no longer feasible,” Lippman said. He got a job as a certified nursing assistant and began the apprenticeship the next year.
Today he takes classes at Madison College and works three night shifts a week caring for patients with brain and spine injuries in University Hospital’s neuro intensive care unit. He’s on track to graduate in 2028.
Violet LaClair works three days per week as a medical assistant in a UW Health clinic, where she gets patients situated, takes blood pressure, flushes ears and more. “I can pretty much do anything the doctor asked me to,” she said. (Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch)
UW Health’s shorter training programs, meanwhile, are open to new applicants as well as current employees. Already, some have finished one and moved onto another, looking to advance their careers, Willey said.
“What we’re seeing is that people come in through one of our entry-level (apprenticeship) programs like medical assistant or nursing assistant, get their feet under them working in that capacity, and then now they’re applying for our degreed registered apprenticeship programs,” Willey said.
This isn’t the first time the company has built its own pipeline of health care workers. In 2013, Willey started a program called Health Occupations and Professions Exploration, or HOPE, where high school students spend a Saturday learning to do CPR, place a breathing tube in a mannequin, and more. The goal, Willey said, is to show students the range of careers available in health care. The program has trained about 6,500 students.
How much can the model grow?
Apprenticeships offer a unique way to address workforce shortages and help employees move up on the job, said Andy MacCracken, who coordinates health workforce planning for North Carolina at the NC Center on the Workforce for Health. That, he said, is one reason the number of apprentices and apprenticeships in the health care field has soared in recent years.
Still, he said, it’s not clear exactly how much of the health worker shortage can be solved through apprenticeships.
“We need to have a realistic view about what we’re actually aiming for when deploying apprenticeships as a solution,” MacCracken said. “I think apprenticeships are a really helpful tool in the toolbox. They’re not the only one.”
One challenge: It’s expensive to pay the clinical staff needed to supervise apprentices, so it can be hard for health system leaders to make the business case to their boards. Even health systems that embrace apprenticeships may not be able to accept as many apprentices as they’d like.
UW Health pays for its apprenticeship program with a mix of its own funds, private donations and public funds, though Willey said the latter is usually only available for starting up a new program.
Mannequin arms wait for UW Health staff to practice drawing blood on July 16, 2026, in Madison, Wis. UW Health created a company called WorkForward in May to help health care systems and state agencies build their own apprenticeship programs. (Narayan Mahon for Wisconsin Watch)
Still, there are always far more applicants than openings. When the registered nursing apprenticeship launched in 2023, 200 employees applied for 16 slots. Last year, 70 people applied for 40 medical assistant apprenticeships.
Another challenge: Each state has its own laws about what counts as an apprenticeship and what standards an employer must meet when offering one. Likewise, the regulations for each profession may vary from state to state too. And then there are the accrediting agencies that approve educational programs, which are still getting used to the idea that students might get paid for their clinical training hours.
Willey said WorkForward will publish research on apprenticeship approaches that work, lobby for resources to support such programs and help other states identify potential funding sources. The company is a nonprofit, she said, which will apply for private and public grants. It will not receive direct funding from UW Health.
Currently, she said, WorkForward is working in Massachusetts with Tufts Medicine and Mass General Brigham — the state’s largest health care employer — and 12 of the state’s community and technical colleges.
“It would be great if we could take the solutions that we’ve built and spread (them at) scale across the U.S. … Health care continues to be a driver of new jobs for the U.S. economy,” Willey said, “and we have an aging population who needs more care, and so we need to be addressing these things now.”
MacCracken said he hasn’t heard of another health care employer taking on this role, but he thinks it makes sense, as employers may be more willing to listen to other employers.
In North Carolina, he said, he’s already seen how a few model programs can pave the way for others.
“I think because of the successes of some of the early adopters who have put these programs in action, we’re seeing great results, and so that’s helping inspire more action and scalability and replication.” MacCracken said.
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Technology companies are pursuing projects that would launch data centers into space — efforts called Starcloud at Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Project Suncatcher at Google.
According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, the idea is that, instead of consuming land, power and water on Earth, the orbiting data centers would harness the sun’s energy for unlimited power.
The projects are in the early stages of development, according to reporting from National Public Radio, and viability remains in question over the cost of launching servers into space, where the heat from the servers will go, and the logistics of maintaining and upgrading the technology.
While data centers in space are unlikely to happen in the next few years, studies, including one from Southern New Hampshire University, conclude space-based data centers could be a reality in the next decade.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
A Madison police officer shot and killed a man after that man produced a knife, Madison Police Chief John Patterson said.
The same officer who fired the shots was injured by the man’s knife, according to Patterson.
The incident happened at about 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, according to an incident report posted by the Madison Police Department that afternoon. Multiple streets in the area were blocked off Wednesday afternoon — and crowds gathered in protest.
Patterson said officials had notified the deceased man’s family about his death. However, Patterson declined to disclose the man’s race or name during a news conference just before 5 p.m. Wednesday. He said the man was in his 30s.
Patterson said one officer fired shots, although a total of four officers were involved in the incident and have been placed on leave. The Division of Criminal Investigation at Wisconsin’s Department of Justice is investigating the incident.
Patterson said police initially responded to a call about a man who was checking cars in Madison’s Marquette neighborhood. When officers arrived, Patterson said the man fled on his bike.
The chief said the man produced a knife while officers were trying to arrest him.
“This is not a small folding knife,” Patterson told reporters. “It’s a large fixed blade knife that was there and present.”
During the incident, Patterson said, police used a stun weapon on the man.
“A less lethal device, a Taser, was deployed,” Patterson said. “Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful.”
During the incident, Patterson said a second officer was injured, but police do not believe that officer was injured by the man’s knife.
“It’s not clear how that occurred,” Patterson said.
A video posted to social media on Wednesday shows police cruisers arriving at an intersection with sirens on. A person can be seen riding into the intersection and then falling off a bike onto the pavement, before multiple officers are on top of the person. The video shows the person trying to get away. Then, an officer appears to fire multiple shots at the person.
Madison Police officers block the intersection of Williamson Street and S. Baldwin Street in Madison, Wis., after police shot and killed a man on July 22, 2026. (Alyssa Allemand / WPR)
The video was posted by Richard Hegwood, who lives at the intersection and witnessed the shooting. He told a reporter he began recording when he saw police chasing a man on a bike.
“They catch the dude, they have him on the ground. He’s struggling, he’s struggling to get up, and that’s when they shot him. They shot him three times,” Hegwood said. “I never saw a weapon. He never brandished a weapon.”
Hegwood said three officers had been struggling with the person before the shots were fired.
A second video from a closer vantage point was taken by resident Michael Doubek, who said he saw an officer knock the man from a bike.
“He was on the ground, he had nearly been handcuffed, he had already been tased,” Doubek said. “One of the officers says he has a knife, after which one of the officers pulls a taser, yells, ‘Taser taser taser,’ tases him. Then all three, all of them sort of all fall on the ground together, after which one of the cops stands up kind of on one knee and shoots him three times in the head point blank while he is on the ground.”
Doubek said he does not know the details of what led to the confrontation. “But from where I was standing 10 feet away, that looked an awful lot like an execution to me,” he said.
After the shooting, the area was closed off by police tape. The person’s bicycle remained on the ground.
Advocates for Madison’s Black community said the man killed was Black.
“Another Black man is dead on a Madison street, and our community watched him die before we even knew his name,” said Brandi Grayson, the head of the Madison-based Black community advocacy group Urban Triage. “That is the cruelty of state violence.”
Hundreds of protesters gathered near the scene Wednesday evening before marching together to the state Capitol where a Concerts on the Square event was underway.
Protesters chanted and held signs with slogans, including “no justice, no peace” and “Madison police executed a human today.” Some concertgoers showed support by clapping and raising fists.
The concert was eventually canceled by organizers.
Protesters gather at the Wisconsin Capitol during Concerts on the Square on July 22, 2026. The demonstration followed the fatal shooting of a man by a police officer on Madison’s east side earlier that day. (Angela Major / WPR)
During Wednesday’s news conference earlier in the afternoon, Patterson asked Madisonians to “please take a moment to to reflect and offer some support to one another.”
He referenced the man who died, and added, “I want to take a moment to honestly and sincerely offer my my heartfelt sympathies to his family for this loss.”
Wednesday’s shooting took place in the same neighborhood where a Madison police officer fatally shot Tony Robinson, a 19-year-old Black man, inside an apartment building in 2015.
Robinson was unarmed. The Dane County district attorney did not issue charges against that police officer, after determining the officer had reason to fear for his life after concluding that Robinson had physically assaulted the officer at the top of the stairs within the building.
“I want to start with an acknowledgement that today involves a very traumatic incident,” Patterson said, referencing the Robinson shooting during Wednesday’s news conference. “A traumatic incident that has occurred in a neighborhood that has experienced a lot of trauma in the past.”
In an update sent just before 2:45 p.m. Wednesday, District 6 Madison Ald. Davy Mayer said he was “aware of an officer-involved shooting on Williamson and Baldwin Street earlier this afternoon.”
“My priority is to make sure the community remains safe and that the public receives full details about what happened as soon as possible,” Mayer wrote in the blog post.
For six months now, Wisconsin Watch has made a concerted effort to report on data centers. We’re publishing major stories at WisconsinWatch.org and, each Monday, we provide data center news nuggets in our Forward newsletter (subscribe here).
Here’s a month-by-month summary of what we’ve reported.
January: Wisconsin Watch revealed that officials in at least four Wisconsin communities (the number has since grown) signed nondisclosure agreements that hid details of billion-dollar data center proposals from the public.
February: We detailed how a $1 billion data center is being proposed for Grant County in the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin.
March: In a sign of the impact of artificial intelligence data centers, we reported that just three Wisconsin companies have done more than $1 billion in business supplying the facilities. We also disclosed more NDAs and other ways local governments have tried to keep data center details secret.
April: We were the first to report on an official estimate that state government will forgo $2 billion in revenue because of a sales tax exemption for data centers that was adopted in 2023.
June: We spent months gathering behind-the-scenes details on what happened to the Driftless Area proposal.
July: We detailed how land sales for the data center under construction in Port Washington turned homeowners and farmers into millionaires and, in some cases, created generation-changing wealth.
Monday afternoon brought the Milwaukee community together to honor late baseball icon Henry “Hank” Aaron.
The day’s festivities included a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new mural featuring Aaron and a proclamation from Mayor Cavalier Johnson recognizing July 20, 2026, as Henry Lewis “Hank” Aaron Day.
A mural of Hank Aaron by Milwaukee artist Rosy Petri hangs on the outside of Clinton Rose Senior Center, 3045 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, during a ceremony honoring baseball icon Henry “Hank” Aaron.
Cookies with the number 44 on them in honor of baseball icon Henry “Hank” Aaron.
Hammerin’ Hank’s history
Aaron, who died on Jan. 22, 2021, spent the first 12 years of his career playing for the Milwaukee Braves, before the team moved to Atlanta.
His love for Milwaukee brought him back to the city to play his last two professional seasons for the Brewers.
“I knew how much he loved this place, this community and these people,” said his wife, Billye Aaron.
Billye Aaron continued to appreciate all that Milwaukee had done for Hank.
“Thank you to each of you for the love that you showed him and for the legend that you continue on his behalf,” she said.
Billye Aaron, widow of Henry “Hank” Aaron, talks about her late husband.
It was in Milwaukee 50 years to the date when Aaron hit the 755th and last home run of his career. At the time it was the most ever hit by a player.
Aaron’s 755 home runs are still the second most hit by a player all-time in Major League Baseball. Brian Anderson, the voice of the Brewers, said Aaron is still the all-time home run king. His monstrous home runs earned him the nickname of “Hammerin’ Hank.”
Bud Selig, former commissioner of Major League Baseball, talks with Billye Aaron, widow of Henry “Hank” Aaron.
For those who he impacted, his legend grew beyond just the name of baseball.
“The number 755 represents much more than a milestone. It represents perseverance, excellence and strength in the face of adversity,” Anderson said.
Attendees listen to Bud Selig, former baseball commissioner, during a ceremony honoring baseball icon Henry “Hank” Aaron.
City figures chime in
Politicians and other public leaders were also in attendance for Monday’s celebration and mural unveiling.
They underlined the importance of celebrating Hank Aaron as not only a baseball player but a Milwaukee icon.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson talks during a ceremony honoring baseball icon Henry “Hank” Aaron.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley speaks during a ceremony honoring baseball icon Henry “Hank” Aaron.
“His legacy reminds us that greatness isn’t measured only by records and awards, it’s measured by character, perseverance and service,” said Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. “Those are the values that continue to define our community in Milwaukee.”
Johnson also touched on the vitality of Aaron’s Milwaukee presence.
“It’s a lasting tribute to a man whose story belongs in the hearts of people right here in neighborhoods like this,” he said.
Henry “Hank” Aaron holds a shovel during a groundbreaking ceremony for a 24-acre park along the Hank Aaron State Trail in the Menomonee Valley in 2012. (Edgar Mendez / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
Bud Selig, former commissioner of Major League Baseball, also attended the ceremony. Selig, a friend of Aaron’s for over 60 years, was instrumental in returning baseball to Milwaukee after the Braves left for Atlanta in 1966.
“I will always be very grateful. He was the greatest player of our generation and maybe the greatest human being of our generation,” said Selig.
Bud Selig, former commissioner of Major League Baseball, talks about baseball icon Henry “Hank” Aaron.
Inspiring the future with art
The new mural of Aaron unveiled during the ceremony is completely textile fabric. Milwaukee artist Rosy Petri created the piece as a part of a series that celebrates African American cultural contributions through baseball. She interweaved traditional African patterns and used kente cloth. The version that hangs above the Clinton Rose Senior Center, 3045 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, is an installation version of Petri’s textile art.
A mural of Hank Aaron by Rosy Petri hangs on the outside of Clinton Rose Senior Center.
“I made it for myself, but I hoped that someday it would end up some place where people could see it, appreciate it and learn from it,” said Petri.
Now, it hangs high in Bronzeville – her own neighborhood.
Artist Rosy Petri applauds during a ceremony honoring baseball icon Henry “Hank” Aaron.
Throughout her creative process, she said she made sure to portray an aura that doesn’t normally attach itself to Aaron’s legacy.
“They talk about him as a humble man and very down to earth, but I wanted the piece to have some swagger to it,” Petri said.
That swagger plays out in the bold white and black color contrast and Aaron’s stance.
Petri hopes that kids playing baseball in the park across the way can see it and be inspired.
“They’ll know that there was somebody else that came before them and did the thing,” Petri said.
Despite the many years since Aaron crushed his last home run, his figure continues to live and inspire in Milwaukee and beyond.
“When we celebrate icons like Hank Aaron, we’re not just looking back on history, we’re inspiring the next generation of leaders,” Crowley said.
Attendees view the new Hank Aaron mural.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Wisconsin state government is not spending $2 billion on data centers.
The campaign website of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong stated that Wisconsin is “spending over $2 billion in public money” on data centers “this year.”
The article made clear that the $2 billion is forgone revenue, not an expenditure. The LFB estimated the state will forgo $2 billion in revenue over a period of years because data centers are exempt from paying state sales tax.
It’s unclear whether the three artificial intelligence data centers under construction in Wisconsin would have been built without the tax incentive, which most states offer.
Some states are rolling back the exemptions or imposing requirements for receiving them.
Texas’ Republican governor has called for elimination; Ohio’s GOP governor and Arizona’s 2027 budget paused exemptions.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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The Pulaski Community School District summer school program attracts more than 2,500 kids – 68% of the district’s enrollment.
The free program has become a lifeline for parents at a time when affordable child care can be hard to find.
Students can sign up for fun classes such as cooking and swimming lessons. Those who need academic support get it.
One of the biggest challenges officials ran into initially was – ironically – child care for educators. Now there’s “a babysitting room” where fellow teachers and students interested in early childhood education take care of a handful of babies.
On a Thursday in early July, more than 1,000 children flooded the halls of Pulaski Community Middle School. Heaps of backpacks were piled in corners of classrooms and hallways. Bikes crowded the racks outside. At lunchtime, lines of children snaked around the building as they waited for hamburgers.
Summer school: a phrase usually wielded as a threat to keep students on task in the classroom.
Not in Pulaski.
For six weeks each summer, the northeast Wisconsin village’s middle school transforms into the “place to be,” instead of a punishment.
More than 2,600 kids — 68% of the school district’s enrollment — sign up for summer classes ranging from knitting and cooking to swimming lessons and science experiments. Students who need extra academic help get it, but the focus is on exploring new interests, spending less time on screens and nurturing kids’ creative sides in a way classwork doesn’t always encourage.
At a time when affordable child care can be hard to find, the free program has become a lifeline for the community. Signing up for classes is as competitive as queuing to buy Bruno Mars tickets, staff said — the most popular classes fill up in minutes.
“You get to see a lot of kids from other schools that you don’t get to see normally,” sixth grader Xiomara Lloyd said as she strung beads to add to the stack of bracelets on her wrist, each adorned with her nickname, “Xio.” “I love it.”
The classes help students build a positive association with school, explore new hobbies, get offline and into the real world — and, of course, learn.
“There’s a lot of anxiety and different things as soon as they get close to those (school) doors because now they’re asked to do a lot of things that are difficult for them to do,” said Pulaski Area Community Education Director Mark Heck, who leads the summer school. “But when we can have them come in and have great success and really enjoy it, that’s a win.”
Pulaski students move through the hallways as they go to their next summer school session. More than 2,600 students — or 68% of the school district’s enrollment — take at least one summer school course. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
‘A little different type of learning’
Walking through the halls is like stepping between different worlds.
In one classroom, students dressed in Halloween costumes have a dance party. In another, students take turns using American Sign Language to describe emotions. Upstairs, students cook pizza from scratch in a home economics classroom. And in the gymnasium, shrieks and shouts echo as kids play an intense game of dodgeball.
But the chaos is organized — every classroom has at least two adults, and kids wear a badge printed with their name and their schedule, so adults know where they belong if they get lost.
“Summer school is stuff that you learn new, like swimming floats, or you learn how to make diamond art, or even make hearts made out of clay … Summer school lets you have fun in the summer, if you don’t know what to do at your house,” said elementary student Ava Lentz.
And it’s not all fun and games. Those behind in classes or on tests take reading and math classes designed to catch them up. Several teachers also host tutoring sessions.
But generally, the classes take a more creative approach. That includes a science class where kids gleefully partake in a series of science experiments — on that Thursday, they combined soda and Pop Rocks and watched the fizzy reaction.
Student Quinn Kitzman watches balloons inflate after dropping Pop Rocks into bottles of soda as part of a class called edible chemistry. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
“It’s really great learning, but it might not be exactly what they’re learning during the school year, where (educators are) worried about standards, and worried about the tests that they’re going to be getting kids ready for, and things like that,” Heck said.
“All of those things are very important, but during the summertime we can do a little different type of learning.”
That philosophy has guided the program for two decades.
When Pulaski leaders launched the summer school 22 years ago, it was a small program consisting of one or two classes at several schools because the state would only fund a few hours a day.
Busy parents begged for a full-day program. Not long after Pulaski schools started offering afternoon programming at a cost, the state’s rules changed. Now, schools can get funding for eligible programs all day, all summer long. So Heck dreamed of something bigger.
“I just had this idea in my head that was going, ‘I think we could do something a lot better than this.’ … I want to make a program where your kids say, ‘No, I want to go to summer school,’” he said.
Nowadays, they do.
“When we can have them come in and have great success and really enjoy it, that’s a win,” Mark Heck, pictured at right, said of Pulaski’s summer school program. Heck oversees summer school as director of Pulaski Area Community Education. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
Kids beg to sign up to be where their friends are. About 68% of the district’s 3,800 students will enroll in at least one summer school course. Signing up for classes is “an Olympic sport,” staff say. Parents take off work to refresh the computer. They post to Facebook the night before registration, wishing each other luck. The best classes fill up in minutes.
It takes a village
Keeping such a behemoth summer school running smoothly takes a village. But in the tight-knit community, it works.
The district employs roughly 130 teachers, 25 classroom aides, various high school and college students and other community members to keep over 2,500 students busy.
“When we hire our teachers … The first thing I say is, if you weren’t here right now, what would you be doing?” Heck said.
Those answers often become classes. For example: A local farmer teaches kids about horses, even bringing in equestrians as guest speakers and taking kids to visit the farm animals. Two food service workers teach students how to cook. A hobby fisherman took students to different ponds in the area during a previously offered course.
Running such a major operation has also brought challenges. It was tough getting all of the departments — transportation, food, academics — on board. But that’s much easier to do in a small district like Pulaski, Heck said.
Ironically, another major challenge: child care.
Many educators have young children who are too young to attend summer school but still need care during the workday. Without viable child care, they couldn’t commit to working in the warmer months.
The district’s solution: One classroom is transformed into a “babysitting room,” where fellow teachers and aspiring early childhood educators change diapers, make bottles and keep a handful of babies entertained.
Kyoung Krueger takes care of a young child as part of a babysitting service offered to instructors for Pulaski’s summer school program. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
For aspiring educators like Cori Adelman, who studies early childhood education at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, the room offers hands-on experience working with young children.
The program has become a workforce pipeline, too. Heck estimates about 15 young adults who first worked summer school have since returned as full-time educators either in Pulaski or in neighboring districts.
‘A lifesaver’
Affordable child care has become increasingly difficult to find, and securing spots in summer camps is notoriously competitive. For that reason, the free summer school that turns away no one has become a lifeline for local families.
Parent and Pulaski Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Stacey Von Busch said her kids have participated in the camp for years, calling its affordability a “lifesaver.”
“To have something like this in our community, where we don’t have to drive 30 minutes to get our kids to (other camps), is huge,” she said.
The district provides bus transportation for students who need it, and thanks to a federal grant, children can eat breakfast and lunch at school.
While by law the school must be tuition-free, the district may charge modest fees for supplies, such as beads for making bracelets or yarn for knitting and crocheting. Course fees range between $0 and $40 for each two-week term.
Stephanie Breitenbach, black suit, dances with students as she teaches a class called “holiday hoopla” as part of the Pulaski Community School District’s summer school program. Officials encourage summer school educators to pitch courses on topics they’re interested in, such as fishing, horsemanship and cooking. (Mike Roemer for Wisconsin Watch)
The school is funded by the state — Wisconsin schools can receive funding for summer school classes that meet certain academic requirements. Rather than paying schools a flat amount for each student, the state bases funding on the total instructional time students attend. Therefore, Heck is on a mission to keep enrollment high: More students involved equals more funding.
That includes everyone. Parents of children with disabilities often struggle more to find summer schools and camps that serve them, Heck said. He didn’t want that to be the case in Pulaski.
Many of the district’s special education employees staff a classroom dedicated to children with disabilities. That includes those who require federally mandated “extended school year instruction,” an individualized academic program meant to stop students from regressing over break.
“I look forward to this every year,” said special education teacher Tessa Badtke. “You just get to know them in such a different way because there’s not this academic pressure like at school, so you can just build these relationships.”
And then, Badtke said, students have a better school year. Heck agreed.
“What’s the win out of it for us? We got our kids to walk through the school doors and actually not be angry and upset when they came in,” Heck said. “They’re coming in and they’re happy. Our hope is maybe next year, when they come back in the fall, they’re coming in and they’re saying, ‘I’ll give it a chance.’”
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Find her on Instagram and Twitter, or send her an email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.
This story was updated to correct the number of students who attend summer school. Wisconsin Watch regrets the error.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A scam operation targeting Spanish-speaking injured workers is laying traps in Wisconsinites’ email inboxes.
Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development issued an alert this week about a possible “multi-state fraud scheme” that lures targets into fake worker’s compensation hearings to collect fees under false pretenses.
DWD spokesperson Haley McCoy told Wisconsin Watch that 10 Wisconsin workers reported receiving emails instructing them to attend “online workers’ compensation hearing(s)” via video call. The emails’ senders generally use “.org” addresses and bill themselves as government agencies like the “Workers’ Compensation Board.”
Workers who joined the calls via Zoom, WhatsApp, Teams and other video conferencing platforms sat through elaborate staged hearings complete with judges, bailiffs and attorneys, ending in a verdict in the workers’ favor. The fraudsters then told the injured workers that they could collect their compensation payout only after paying a fee to “finalize” the case. In some cases, victims also shared their Social Security numbers.
At least four Wisconsin workers have lost money to the scam since January, McCoy said, paying a combined $30,000 in sham legal fees.
McCoy also emphasized that attorneys involved in Wisconsin worker’s compensation cases must be licensed to practice law in the state. “Any ‘attorney’ not licensed in Wisconsin may be a fraudster,” she wrote in an email on Monday.
The DWD exclusively communicates with injured workers, employers and insurance carriers via mail, and telephone numbers on DWD correspondence will have Wisconsin area codes.
A June alert from the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau cited other examples of the same fraud scheme targeting injured workers — primarily Spanish speakers — in Illinois, Indiana and Oregon.
Neither the bureau nor Wisconsin’s DWD has determined how the scam’s organizers obtained the email addresses of injured workers.
People who believe they’ve been victims of identity theft should contact the agency’s Consumer Protection Hotline at 800-422-7128 or DATCPHotline@wisconsin.gov, the agency said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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More than 108,000 Wisconsinites are in default on student loans, according to federal data analyzed by the Associated Press and shared with Wisconsin Watch.
The number of borrowers in default surged nationwide since 2024, when pandemic relief measures ended.
Advocates expect it to worsen, with borrowers facing higher monthly payments and longer repayment terms after the Trump administration ended existing relief options.
Wisconsin student loan borrowers who attend for-profit colleges are twice as likely to be 90 days behind on payments compared to peers at public and nonprofit private colleges, AP data shows.
The number of Wisconsinites many months behind on student loan bills has risen by nearly 50% since last fall.
That’s according to federal data analyzed by the Associated Press, which found that more than 108,000 people in Wisconsin haven’t made payments on their loans in more than 360 days.
Across the country, the number of students in student loan default has surged by millions since a four-year pandemic reprieve ended in 2024, and advocates say it’s poised to worsen as President Donald Trump’s administration has ended existing relief options.
Borrowers are placed in default after missing payments for nine months. The status triggers a raft of devastating consequences. The entire balance becomes due at once, and the loan is sent to collections, crashing the borrower’s credit score. That can make it harder to borrow, rent or even find work.
Around 34,000 Wisconsinites entered student loan default since September 2025, the AP found. Of the roughly 709,100 people in Wisconsin who hold student loans, one in seven is currently in default.
Here’s how we got here: As a pandemic relief measure, the federal government allowed borrowers to suspend student loan payments until 2023, and President Joe Biden’s administration then provided a one-year grace period. That ended in fall 2024, allowing loans to enter into default after nine months of missed payments.
A surge in defaults followed, and today around 9.5 million borrowers nationwide — over 1 in 5 — are in default, including those whose loans were well past due before the pandemic, according to the AP analysis. The previous record for borrowers in default had been 8 million in December 2019.
Meanwhile, many borrowers are facing much higher monthly payments since the Trump administration ended the SAVE repayment plan, which offered more flexibility and lower payments than any other. In its absence, borrowers will see longer repayment terms and “unpredictable payment spikes,” wrote Michele Zampini, associate vice president of federal policy and advocacy at the Institute for College Access and Success, in a February blog post.
“I am seeing despair and outrage and despondency and just a very wide mix of pretty extreme emotions, the likes of which I have not seen before,” Alan Collinge, the founder of grassroots advocacy group Student Loan Justice, told the AP.
The federal government can garnish wages and Social Security payments from borrowers in default, but the Trump administration in January walked back plans to begin collections on their loans. A Moody’s Analytics report this spring said garnishments are likely to begin within the next year, warning of “an additional headwind in an increasingly fragile economy.”
Governments and colleges may also impose additional penalties on borrowers in default, including restricting access to further financial aid, withholding transcripts and suspending professional licenses and driver’s licenses.
“These measures are not only punitive, they’re also self-defeating: by undermining someone’s ability to cover basic expenses, return to school to finish a degree, keep their job, or even drive a car, the default system makes it harder for someone who is already struggling to secure their financial footing,” Zampini wrote in 2025.
For-profit colleges, lower repayment rates
Students who attend Wisconsin’s for-profit colleges are far less likely to satisfy their loan payments than their peers at the state’s public and nonprofit private colleges, the AP data shows.
AP reporters analyzed data from the Office of Federal Student Aid on students whose loan payments first came due between January 2020 and May 2025, typically because they either graduated or left school. The analysis does not include students at schools with fewer than 100 borrowers.
The data shows students who have attended for-profit schools in Wisconsin are twice as likely as their peers to be at least 90 days behind on payments. At Wisconsin’s public and private colleges, one in seven of these borrowers had fallen behind on payments by May of this year. At for-profit schools, the rate was more than one in four.
Nonpayment rates were highest for students who attended for-profit cosmetology schools.
Nearly half of the 300 borrowers in the sample who attended Tricoci University of Beauty Culture’s Janesville campus were at least 90 days late.
The Paul Mitchell beauty schools in Madison — which has since closed — and Milwaukee have 40% nonpayment rates. The nonpayment rate for the Salon Professional Academy in Kenosha is 36%, and the rate at State College of Beauty Culture is 35%.
Elinor Mittlestat, owner of State College of Beauty Culture, found the nonpayment rate surprising. She noted that many people graduate from the school without any loans.
“It has been a strained economy, and I do understand that newly graduated students sometimes struggle to make student loan payments,” she said.
One reason for the low repayment rate could be that cosmetology graduates tend to have relatively low incomes. On average, graduates of the Paul Mitchell school in Milwaukee, the Salon Professional Academy in Kenosha and State College of Beauty Culture make $7,000 to $12,500 less than the median Wisconsin high school graduate, according to an analysis of earnings data from Open Campus and The HEA Group.
Meanwhile, student borrowers who don’t finish school have to make loan payments too, even though they don’t have a credential to help them get a better job. Those who don’t graduate are more than twice as likely to end up in default, according to research by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
“The most important thing that you can do to be able to repay any loans you take out is to finish your program,” Carole Trone, executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt, told Wisconsin Watch in January. People leave school for all sorts of reasons, including family commitments and job changes. “A lot of that can be really unavoidable … but those are the borrowers that often have the most difficulty in repaying their loans.”
Around 25,000 students who recently attended Wisconsin public colleges are at least 90 days behind on their payments too, though they represent a far smaller share (13%) of those borrowers.
Students who attended Gateway Technical College have the highest nonpayment rate of the state’s public schools, with three in 10 recent students not making payments.
Gateway communications manager Lee Colony said the college needs to use a “personal touch” to see what’s driving people to not pay their loans.
“We will reach out to those students and see if there is any help we can provide to them for repayment options,” Colony said. “Some of that outreach will also include ways to educate them on finances and how to properly borrow money to pay for college.”
By comparison, the University of Wisconsin campuses in Oshkosh, Stevens Point, Superior and Whitewater all have nonpayment rates of 10%, while UW-Madison’s rate is just 3%. At all of those schools, most students receive some form of financial aid besides loans.
Nationwide, AP’s analysis found 133 schools where more than half of recent students are at least 90 days behind on payments. Nearly all of them are for-profit schools, and more than half of them are barber or beauty schools.
This story was reported in collaboration with The Associated Press through its Localize It initiative, which provides datasets, reporting and story ideas for local newsrooms.
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Find her on Instagram and Twitter, or send her an email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
As early voting starts next week in the Aug. 11 primary to determine who will be on the November ballot, Democrats hope to flip two U.S. House seats in Wisconsin.
Republicans took control of the House in 2022 and currently hold six of Wisconsin’s eight seats. The primaries feature several political newcomers and could offer insight into which wings of each party are exerting the most influence.
Here are the four House primaries we are watching in August:
Congressional District 1
Democrats are targeting this district to unseat four-term U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who defeated Democratic challenger Peter Barca in 2024 by 10 percentage points. Barca wasn’t new to Wisconsin politics, having served in Congress and the state Assembly as minority leader. He also served as secretary of the state Department of Revenue before his 2024 run.
“On paper, it’s a competitive district,” said Barry Burden, University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center. “The trouble is Steil is a really formidable incumbent.”
Because Steil, who succeeded former House Speaker Paul Ryan in 2019, has a fundraising advantage and is not a controversial figure, Burden said this district is much harder to flip regardless of national Democratic efforts. Since the start of his latest term, Steil has raised $3 million, received more than $2 million from other committees and has $6.1 million cash on hand.
ER nurse Mitchell Berman has established a clear edge in the primary. He has received multiple lawmaker endorsements, including Reps. Ann Roe, D-Janesville; Ben DeSmidt, D-Kenosha; and Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha. He recently launched a six-figure ad buy, highlighting his experience as a nurse working with veterans and his campaign on protecting health care and lowering costs. He has raised over $650,000 and has about $220,000 cash on hand.
Milwaukee Ald. Peter Burgelis suspended his campaign after the July 15 campaign finance filing deadline and offered to support Berman. Burgelis’ report showed he had raised just over $54,000 in the most recent quarter. He had been campaigning on lowering costs, making communities safer and defending voting rights.
Lorenzo Santos, a Navy veteran and the former Young Democrats of Wisconsin chair, previously ran for the seat in 2024, but suspended his campaign before the primary. His top priorities include raising the federal minimum wage to $26 by 2030, universal Medicare and supporting veteran mental health services. He has about $10,000.
Miguel Aranda is the Whitewater Unified School District Board vice president and the associate director of PreCollege Programs at UW-Whitewater. His campaign emphasizes that he is the only Spanish speaker in the race, and his priorities include criminal justice and immigration reform, supporting unions and protecting Medicare. He has more than $13,000 cash on hand.
What we’re watching: In what’s supposed to be a good year for Democrats and a bad year for incumbents, will a relatively unknown Democratic nominee give Steil any trouble?
Congressional District 3
The top Democratic target in Wisconsin is U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden. The 2024 Democratic nominee Rebecca Cooke and former Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge are running in the Democratic primary.
Burden said this is the only congressional district in the state seriously in play for Democrats.
Van Orden has had a controversial political career after succeeding longtime Democratic moderate Ron Kind. He is known for his incendiary tweets and past clashes such as scolding teenage Senate pages in 2023 and confronting a La Crosse library worker over an LGBTQ+ book display in 2021. He also closely aligns with President Donald Trump, who won Wisconsin in 2024 but has since seen his approval ratings crater.
“He’s in real jeopardy,” Burden said. “This could be a district that Republicans lose.”
Cooke lost to Van Orden in 2024 by less than 3 percentage points. Burden said her high-profile endorsements, including U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Bernie Sanders and state Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska, give her a leg up in the Aug. 11 primary. Cooke leads in fundraising at nearly $7.5 million in the latest quarter with $2.5 million cash on hand while Van Orden raised $5.2 million with $4.7 million in the bank.
Cooke has faced criticism for portraying herself as a political outsider while working as a Democratic fundraiser and as a political consultant for controversy-courting Minocqua Brewing Company owner Kirk Bangstad. She has more recently worked with the center-left think tank Third Way.
Her biggest campaign priorities include expanding Medicare, supporting farmers and lowering costs for working families.
Berge is running for the seat for the first time. She has received endorsements from legislators including state Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, and state Rep. Tara Johnson, D-town of Shelby. She touts her prior elected experience and supports universal health care and affordable housing. Berge has raised $686,000.
What we’re watching: What will Democratic turnout in the August primary tell us about Van Orden’s chances compared with 2024?
Congressional District 7
This far northern Wisconsin district has two loaded primaries as U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany wraps up three terms in Congress to run for governor. Five Republicans are vying to keep the seat red while three Democrats make their bids in what will likely remain a safe Republican district.
Alfonso leads the fundraising race at $1.25 million, with Ebben trailing behind with just over $460,000.
Hermening, a Marine veteran, has raised $103,000 for his campaign but also gave himself a $1 million loan. He is endorsed by lawmakers including state Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, and state Rep. Pat Snyder, R-Schofield. His top campaign issues include protecting Social Security and Medicare and supporting veterans.
Raihala said some of the biggest issues constituents have in the district are illegal immigration and the Jeffrey Epstein files, and he said he would continue to support deportations of immigrants lacking permanent legal status and the full release of the files.
Baum holds a more moderate view of immigration, saying that while she supports border security, she says immigrants are essential in Wisconsin and wants to create a “functional legal pathway” for workers. She also supports a data center moratorium and wants to uplift Wisconsin farmers. Baum has raised about $6,000.
Similar to Raihala, Ebben holds border security high on her priority list, as well as pro-life values, Second Amendment rights and strengthening rural communities. She also emphasizes her intense support for Trump, though she did not receive his endorsement for her campaign.
Trump’s endorsement went early in the race to Alfonso, 26, who also received endorsements from House Speaker Mike Johnson and four of the six Wisconsin Republican congressional incumbents. His top priorities include states’ rights, pro-life values and supporting school choice.
Burden said the Trump endorsement might not be enough to pull Alfonso through.
“Alfonso has these other liabilities,” Burden said. “His youth and inexperience are serious. He’s just old enough to serve in Congress and really has not had any experience being employed or working in party politics in any meaningful way.”
The wealthy Republican Uihlein family split their donations in this district. Richard Uihlein donated to Alfonso’s campaign and gave $1 million to a PAC supporting him. But his wife, Elizabeth Uihlein, donated to Ebben’s campaign and gave $1 million to a PAC supporting her. Burden said this highlights the divide among party insiders whether to follow Trump’s lead or not.
What we’re watching: Is Trump’s endorsement enough to override concerns about inexperience and nepotism in northern Wisconsin?
Congressional District 8
Three Democratic newcomers are competing to unseat freshman U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, who won by about 15 percentage points against obstetrician-gynecologist Kristin Lyerly in 2024, in this solid Republican Green Bay area district.
Mark Scheffler, a retired business owner, heavily campaigns on the idea of a “sustainable society,” which includes affordable health care, privacy rights and economic prosperity. He also prioritizes conservation and protecting the environment. Scheffler has raised just over $107,000, compared to Wied’s $1 million haul.
Rick Crosson is an Army veteran from Green Bay. His campaign says he wants to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs for more timely and quality treatment, fighting agriculture corporations to support small farmers and supporting rural reproductive health care. He has raised just over $63,000.
Democratic Socialist Katrina deVille, a transgender woman, advocates for a $22 federal minimum wage, universal health care and free child care. She also says she wants to file articles of impeachment against Trump on her first day if elected. She has raised just under $3,000.
What we’re watching: Can Democrats mount a credible challenge in northeast Wisconsin in what could be a blue wave year?
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
The upcoming Wisconsin midterms could shift the balance of power in the state Legislature, and the August primaries will determine which candidates voters want to see on the November general election ballot.
Democrats are aiming to flip both the Assembly and Senate in hopes of securing a trifecta in the state government. The party must flip two of the four competitive Senate seats to win a majority. The Assembly is a larger challenge as Democrats must flip five seats to claim a majority for the first time in 16 years.
The 2024 election was the first election under new legislative maps, which ended a Republican gerrymander that had been in place since 2011. Democrats flipped 14 legislative seats.
Those results provide some insight for the upcoming elections. Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center, said Democrats have an advantage in the 2026 Senate races, which are the first contested since the new maps took effect. Senate terms are for four years, and the even-numbered Senate districts on the ballot in 2024 were more favorable to Republicans, yet Democrats still flipped four seats.
“This year is different because Trump is not on the ballot, the national environment is helping their party more and the odd-numbered districts — which are up this year — are just gonna be tougher for Republicans,” Burden said.
Winning the Assembly will likely be more difficult for Democrats. Burden said the Assembly has a lot of Republican incumbents and not many competitive districts. However, he pointed to the nine Republican retirements in this election cycle, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, none of whom are running for another office.
“It looks like some Republican officeholders have realized this is going to be a tough year for them and they would prefer not to go through a difficult campaign and potentially lose their own seat and maybe lose the majority in the Assembly,” Burden said.
Three Assembly Democrats are also not seeking reelection, though all are running for higher office.
While Burden said the Assembly is “genuinely up for grabs,” he concluded Republicans still hold a slight advantage.
He also said most of the primaries themselves “are not especially consequential” because most incumbents are not facing primary challengers and contested primaries tend to be in districts that heavily favor a specific party with no chance of flipping. Still, he said these elections remain important because they often determine the eventual winner in these safe Democratic or Republican districts.
Here are some primaries that we’re watching:
Senate District 1
Four Republicans face off to replace Sen. André Jacque, R-New Franken, after his two terms in the Senate.
The candidates all campaign on similar issues: affordability, defending constitutional freedoms and supporting agriculture and veterans. But there are some differences.
Current Jacque staffer Nic Cravillion puts protecting the state’s outdoor spaces as a priority. His campaign emphasizes Wisconsin’s hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities, and he says he will support public access and conservation efforts.
Katie Baney, a director at Delta Defense, prides herself as the only mother in the race. She also highlights her support for school choice and the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement, popularized by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Barbara Bittner, a farmer from Stockbridge, chairs the Republican Party of Calumet County. She emphasizes what she describes as traditional family values and defending the sanctity of life. But she also supports the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, largely seen as a more Democratic issue after the Republican-controlled Legislature removed funding for the land conservation program from the 2025-27 state budget and it expired last month.
While each candidate campaigns on veteran support, Jacob VandenPlas, a Sturgeon Bay farmer, marks veteran mental health as one of his key campaign issues. As a veteran who experienced brain trauma and PTSD himself, he founded a program to aid veterans’ recovery and suicide prevention, using farming as a form of therapy.
Cravillion leads in fundraising for this race having collected more than $75,000 since January. Baney raised about $47,000, Bittner raised about $17,000, and VandenPlas raised $1,900.
The winner of the Republican primary will face independent Mark Becker, the former chair of the Republican Party of Brown County.
What we’re watching: What will this primary tell us about how Republican voters feel about the future of state land conservation efforts?
Senate District 17
Three Democrats are looking to unseat three-term Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, a co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee.
Rep. Jenna Jacobson, D-Oregon, who has served in the Assembly since 2022, has received the State Senate Democratic Committee’s endorsement. She serves on the Assembly’s agriculture committee and has authored numerous bills on farming, one of her top campaign issues. She had about $200,000 on hand as of June 30, compared to Marklein’s $1 million.
Corrine Hendrickson, a child care consultant and former New Glarus School Board member, is advocating for increased public school funding and affordable child care. Hendrickson had about $12,000 on hand.
Lisa White, a small business owner, holds similar policy stances as both Jacobson and Hendrickson. Her campaign emphasizes changing the public school funding system, particularly how heavy funding relies on property taxes. She also says she is a strong advocate for rural health care, conservation and small businesses. White was down to about $800 on hand as of June 30.
What we’re watching: Will the preferred Democratic candidate win the primary as Democrats look to flip a district that Kamala Harris won in 2024?
Senate District 25
Former state Reps. Erik Severson and Angie Sapik will face off in the Republican primary to determine who will replace Sen. Romaine Quinn, who is running in the redrawn 23rd Senate District. The winner faces Democratic Bayfield County Board member Charly Ray in the November election. Democrats are targeting this district to flip the Senate.
Severson, a family medical doctor, served in the Assembly from 2011 to 2015. He describes himself as a strong pro-life, pro-family advocate, and his campaign emphasizes using his medical background to help improve health care in Wisconsin. He is endorsed by Pro-Life Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Family Action PAC, an advocacy group for conservative family values.
Sapik serves on the Douglas County Board and served in the Assembly from 2023 to 2025. She supports the Second Amendment and says less government involvement will give Wisconsinites “more autonomy.” She also wants to lower taxes and repeal a provision Gov. Tony Evers created in state law that increases funding limits for public schools every year for the next 400 years. Sapik has been endorsed by 10 current Republican state representatives, Sen. Cory Tomczyk and a handful of former state representatives.
Burden pointed to this district as an interesting primary to keep an eye on.
“You’ve got a Republican primary with two candidates who are duking it out to be the nominee there, but also a very credible Democratic candidate who has no primary opposition,” Burden said. “It’s possible the Republicans will sort of go at one another during the primary, and the Democrat will continue to raise money and build his campaign to get ready for whoever he faces.”
Ray has raised about $119,000. Sapik trails close behind having raised about $117,000. Severson raised about $39,000 in the first half of the year.
Burden pointed to how the area, which is in U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany’s 7th Congressional District, has gotten more Republican under President Donald Trump. However, he said it’s likely to be a competitive race in November. He added that if Democrats win this district, it could indicate that they’re doing well at “the top of the ticket” and the success has “trickled down” the ballot.
What we’re watching: How much will the Republican candidates spend to get nominated and where will that leave the nominee in comparison to the Democratic candidate?
Assembly District 21
David Liners, former state director of WISDOM, and Oak Creek Mayor Dan Bukiewicz are running in the Democratic primary to replace Joint Finance Committee member Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, R-Oak Creek, who won in 2024 by 3 percentage points and is not seeking reelection.
Liners is more progressive than Bukiewicz and is endorsed by multiple Democratic Socialist lawmakers, including gubernatorial candidate Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, and Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, as well as the Wisconsin Electoral Socialists. He has advocated for data center moratoriums and allowing immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. He also says he wants to change how public schools are funded by initially freezing property taxes and using Wisconsin’s surplus budget instead.
Bukiewicz has been the Oak Creek mayor since 2017 and is endorsed by U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, as well as state lawmakers including Sen. Dora Drake, D-Milwaukee, and Rep. Christine Sinicki, D-Milwaukee. He has said he would advocate for a $20 state minimum wage, public school funding and lowering the cost of living.
Bukiewicz leads the fundraising effort with about $62,000 cash on hand as of June 30 while Liners trails with about $12,000 in the bank.
The winner of the primary will face Republican Carroll University student Dylan Pfaffenbach, who has about $7,400 on hand, in November.
What we’re watching: In a clash between establishment Democrats and Democratic Socialists, who wins?
Assembly District 26
Three Republicans will compete in the primary to determine who will face Rep. Joe Sheehan, D-Sheboygan, in the general election. Sheehan, an Assembly freshman who has raised more than $32,000 this year for his campaign, flipped the 26th District in 2024 when he unseated former state Rep. Amy Binsfield by 3 percentage points. Binsfeld had a falling out with the Sheboygan County Republican Party when she clashed on some core GOP issues.
Tyler Schneekloth, a self-employed 25-year-old from Wilson who has raised $756, said he wants to eliminate the state income tax for families making under $125,000 a year, give interest-free mortgages to families and first-time buyers and put a moratorium on data centers.
Former Sheboygan Ald. John Belanger prioritizes affordability, growth of small businesses and government transparency in his campaign. In April he lost the city council race as an incumbent. He said he will be an independent voice for Sheboygan. He has raised $1,250.
James Brotz of Sheboygan says he wants to end Evers’ 400-year veto, end emissions testing and implement a tick eradication program. He also campaigns for election security and reduced government. He has raised no money for his campaign.
What we’re watching: Which Republican will emerge to try and retake this Sheboygan-focused seat?
Assembly District 61
Brian Bock, Ben Brist and Lawanda Chambers will face off in the Democratic primary to determine who will challenge Rep. Bob Donovan, R-Greenfield, in the general election. Donovan won in 2024 by 3 percentage points. Democrats are targeting this race to flip control of the Assembly.
Bock, a pharmacist, was elected to the Greendale School Board in 2024 and serves as its treasurer. He said he’s running to “deliver practical, results-driven leadership” and is largely focused on improving access to affordable health care through lowering the price of prescription drugs and expanding Medicaid. He is backed by 3.14 Action, a national group dedicated to electing Democrats with STEM backgrounds to public offices. The group also supported Evers, a former science teacher, in his gubernatorial reelection campaigns.
Brist, an Army veteran who served as a paratrooper and infantry officer, said he’s running as a candidate who understands the strain of rising prices while wages “struggle to keep up.” He is campaigning to lower property taxes by fixing the state’s funding formula for public schools, aiming to have more funds go to schools to allow them to rely less on property taxes for funding.
Chambers is the founder and CEO of LIFE Wellness & Counseling, which provides mental health services to individuals in need. She said she will be “focused on solutions, not political drama.” Her campaign emphasizes public safety, and she plans to give first responders and law enforcement more resources to feel supported and be properly trained to do their jobs. She is endorsed by Democratic representatives Darrin Madison, Supreme Moore Omokunde and Margaret Arney.
Brist has raised nearly $24,000. Chambers has raised more than $21,000. Donovan raised $20,000 this year, but has $70,000 cash on hand. Bock has raised $3,800.
What we’re watching: What kind of candidate will Democrats nominate in a key race for control of the Assembly?
Assembly District 76
Five Democrats are competing in a primary to replace Rep. Francesca Hong, who ran unopposed in 2024 and is running for governor. The winner will face Republican Nina Chat in this solidly Democratic district.
Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford was elected to the Madison City Council in 2023, making her the first openly transgender woman to be on the council. She highlights her time being paid $2.33 as a food service worker, her experience with homelessness and her lack of health care for much of her life. Her campaign focuses on raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour and lowering property taxes. She has been endorsed by nearly 70 current and former elected officials, more than 60 community leaders and about a dozen political organizations. She has raised the most money in this race at $56,000.
Juliana Bennett, a swim instructor and bartender, is a member of the Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America and was previously elected to the Madison City Council. Some of her priorities include raising the minimum wage to $23 an hour, legalizing rent control and passing a tenant bill of rights. With nearly $35,000 raised for her campaign, she has been endorsed by the national Democratic Socialists of America and current Democratic Reps. Angelito Tenorio, Maureen McCarville and Margaret Arney.
Isaia Ben-Ami has been a policy director for Rep. Kalan Haywood, D-Milwaukee. He was also the chief of staff and research assistant for Rep. Shelia Stubbs, D-Madison. He prioritizes affordable housing, saying the state needs to relieve property taxes, pass a tenant bill of rights and build more housing. Ben-Ami has raised $32,000 and has been endorsed by Democratic representatives, including Haywood, Renuka Mayadev, Maureen McCarville and Priscilla Prado.
Zoe Sullivan, an audio producer and writer, said she wants to create legislation to roll back the private school voucher program to help with public school and university system funding. She has raised $13,200 for her campaign. She also said she wants to work to close prisons to decrease the population of incarcerated individuals to free up funding for the university system.
Tony Castañeda, an artist and musician, is prioritizing keeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of Wisconsin and providing more funding to teachers and the public school system. He has raised $6,600.
What we’re watching: In a safe Democratic district, will voters elect another Democratic Socialist or will experience or endorsements drive the result?
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
A 2023-25 budget provision granting a sales tax exemption to data centers was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in July 2023.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau said in March that the tax break will cost the state more than $2 billion in sales tax revenue, mostly from massive data centers in Beaver Dam, Port Washington and Mount Pleasant. When the budget was approved in July 2023, hyperscale data centers were so new the fiscal bureau didn’t estimate how much an exemption would affect state tax collections.
While the high cost has drawn scrutiny, the incentive was originally designed to drive economic growth. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 38 states offer tax incentives on data centers.
Wisconsin has about 50 data centers, largely in the Milwaukee and Madison areas.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Stepping out of a traditional dugout canoe, called Maeqtek-ōs in the Menominee language, canoe creator Wayne Swett raised his fist high in the air and proudly proclaimed: “We made history.”
Until Wednesday, no one could remember the last time Menominee people paddled a dugout canoe down the Menominee River. That very question drove a group of Menominee water protectors, led by Dawn M. Wilber and Swett, to launch a dugout.
Since June 15, Wilber, Swett and several community members have camped on the banks of the river, burning, scrapping, debarking and sanding a 17-foot-long pine log into a traditional canoe. They did their work in the Chappee Webster Learning Center, a historic 1824 trading post located in their ancestral homelands in a place that is central to Menominee culture.
“(This) has been a long time coming,” said Oralann Caldwell, a Menominee and Anishinaabe elder who traveled over 60 miles from Keshena, Wisconsin, to attend. “It’s about time that door is reopened.”
To the north are Menominee burial mounds, a traditional dance ring and the largest Indigenous agricultural site in the eastern United States. To the south is the Menominee peoples’ birthplace, the mouth of the Menominee River where it meets Lake Michigan.
Two Menominees paddle a traditional dugout canoe around the Menominee River on July 15 as part of a historic journey to bring the traditional boat back to Menominee homelands. (Amelia Schafer / ICT)
“I am beyond excited,” Swett said. “The ancestors are happy. The river’s happy. The fish are happy. The creator’s happy. Everybody’s happy. I’m beyond happy because my work is done.”
The canoe’s construction took two weeks longer than scheduled, delayed by intense heatwaves gripping much of the Midwest. Overall, it took exactly one month to complete the massive boat.
“It was definitely a test because we had to deal with the heat, 100-degree heat,” Swett said. “We had to deal with storms. There’s times where we had to call a rain day and then a heat day. … It’s a weight off my shoulders.”
The canoe belongs to the community, Wilber said.
“I’m thinking about our ancestors, I’m thinking about what they did, how much time that they would put into stuff like this, and how they would sacrifice themselves because a canoe is communal,” Wilber said. “When it’s made, it doesn’t take ownership. It’s for everybody, everybody to use in the community. So it wasn’t just like yours or mine. That’s the purpose of it.”
Dawn M. Wilber, Menominee, smiles after successfully paddling a dugout canoe she helped create around the Menominee River on July 15. (Amelia Schafer / ICT)
Prior to launching, a group of roughly a dozen community members gathered for a water ceremony to send the canoe off properly. Following the ceremony, canoe creators Swett and Wilber climbed into the canoe to be the first to paddle it. To their surprise, there were absolutely no leaks in the canoe. It floated perfectly.
“I didn’t realize how emotionally beautiful it was. That’s what got me is the emotion,” said Wilber, who is Menominee. “Not just looking at her but feeling her and being able to give her her first drink today before we put her in the water.”
Wilber and Swett paddled the canoe around the river before allowing community members to take it for a spin.
Prior to colonization, countless Menominee families navigated the river in dugout canoes each day — as did countless other Indigenous families in the North American eastern woodlands.
Initially, Swett and Wilber said, they planned to take the canoe out on the eighth annual canoe journey organized by their group, Protectors of the Menominee River. However, because of weather-related delays, Swett stayed and continued to work on the canoe during the four-day journey.
Two Menominee citizens bask in the feeling of paddling a dugout canoe around the Menominee River, part of their ancestral homelands, on July 15. (Amelia Schafer / ICT)
After a solid month of carving, burning and shaping the pine log into a full-fledged canoe, the end result was far more beautiful than anyone had anticipated. The sanded and finished inside revealed silhouettes of different woodland animals, a sign of all the animals who interacted with the tree during its century of existence, Caldwell said.
Menominee elder Oralann Caldwell and another community member take off paddling in the dugout canoe on July 15. (Amelia Schafer / ICT)
“It’s like an imprint, a reflection to us,” Caldwell said. “The spirits of all those animals were out there. It’s a love, an honor, a respect. It’s a love for our culture, for our mother (earth).”
Caldwell said inside she spotted silhouettes of a wolf, a bear, a snake and a red-tailed hawk. Other community members pointed out different animal shapes as well, she said.
“The animals: birds, four leggeds, were all with us,” Caldwell said.
She said she and Wilber were struck by the sheer number of community members who supported them during their journey and helped work on the canoe.
“All of the love, all of the gratitude, all of the giving, all of the sharing, everybody, and just everything that everybody has done for us,” Wilber said.
Later this year, the Protectors of the Menominee River plan to use the canoe to harvest wild rice, Wilber said.
“We are the original caretakers of the land, and we’re still doing it,” Caldwell said.
Cedar Fernandez, Menominee, smiles as they paddle around in a traditional dugout canoe. Canoes like these were used by their Menominee ancestors for thousands of years. (Amelia Schafer / ICT)
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Several U.S. states are experiencing an outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a stomach infection that causes frequent, watery, “explosive” diarrhea. More than 5,000 cases have been reported as of July 16 across the country, according to several state health departments, with most cases in Michigan and New York.
The infection doesn’t transmit from person to person: It’s spread through eating food or drinking water that has been contaminated with feces. While public health officials are still investigating the exact source of the current outbreak, previous outbreaks have been caused by contaminated lettuce, raspberries, cilantro, and basil.
Cyclosporiasis usually spreads more easily in the summer because of the heat, given that “the parasite in the stool, in the environment, and in vegetables within high temperatures can become infectious,” Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist and associate dean at the University of California, San Francisco, tells Public Good News.
Read on to learn more about the current cyclosporiasis outbreak.
Less common symptoms include vomiting, headaches, and low-grade fever.
What should I do if I have symptoms?
If you have symptoms, stay hydrated, and contact your health care provider. The only way to diagnose cyclosporiasis is to get your stool tested. If your sample is positive, Dr. Chin-Hong explains that your doctor may prescribe an antibiotic to treat it.
What is causing this outbreak?
Michigan has reported over 4,000 cases as of July 16. Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive for the state, tells PGN that “based on our early signals, that there is some implication that lettuce, bagged lettuce or bagged salad kits could be involved in this outbreak.”
However, other foods have not been completely ruled out, and the exact source of the outbreak in other states is unclear.
How can I protect myself from cyclosporiasis?
Chin-Hong explains that you don’t have to avoid eating all fruits and vegetables, especially if you live in a state where cases are low.
In Michigan, Bagdasarian says, “if you are going to eat a salad or lettuce right now, the safest way to do that is to buy a whole head of lettuce to remove the outer layers and remove any damaged parts, and then of course washing.” Bagged lettuce is harder to wash again at home, while whole heads let you remove the outer leaves where contamination is more likely.
Additionally, she says that “if it’s something that can be peeled, you should peel it, [and] if it’s something that can be cooked, cooking is actually the best way to reduce your risk.”
Overall, the CDC says that to prevent cyclosporiasis, you should take the following precautions when it comes to fresh produce:
Wash your hands with soap and water before touching raw fruits and vegetables.
Wash all fruits and vegetables before eating or cooking (However, keep in mind that washing fruits and vegetables can reduce dirt and some contaminants, but it may not completely remove cyclospora.)
Cut damaged areas of fruits and vegetables.
Refrigerate cooked, cut, or peeled fruits and vegetables within two hours.
What are the differences between cyclosporiasis and other types of food poisoning (caused by bacteria like E. coli or salmonella)?
The main difference, according to Chin-Hong, is that cyclosporiasis can last longer and a person can get better and then get symptoms again. However, similarly to other types of food poisoning, the frequent diarrhea can cause dehydration, which, he adds, can lead to people being hospitalized.
Another difference is that unlike other similar illnesses, cyclosporiasis symptoms don’t begin right away. Most people become sick about one week after eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water, though it can take anywhere from two days to about two weeks.
Who’s most at risk?
Bagdasarian says that people who face a higher risk with cyclosporiasis include those who are immunocompromised and people who are at higher risk for dehydration, including very young children and older adults.
She adds that “if you have people in your family, in your household who fall into any of those categories, it would be wise to be extra cautious about the food you’re eating, including when you go out to eat at a restaurant or a fast food chain.”
For more information, talk to your health care provider or local health department.
This story was produced and originally published by Public Good News, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to community health. It partners with trusted local voices throughout the U.S. to distribute accurate, accessible, and inclusive health news in English and Spanish.
Disclosure: The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is a partner of The Public Good Projects, the organization that owns Public Good News.
What to know about cyclosporiasis is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley jumped back into the race for governor Saturday in a last minute attempt to take control of the contest just 24 days before the August primary.
Crowley’s campaign also got a boost with an endorsement from Gov. Tony Evers, who had previously declined to back a candidate in the Democratic primary.
The late maneuvering underscored a schism in the state Democratic Party between traditional Democrats and Madison Rep. Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist who has energized the party’s progressive base.
This past week, a group tied to the Republican Governors Association began running a multi-million dollar ad campaign that many Democrats viewed as an attempt to boost Hong in the Democratic primary.
What worries some Democrats is that Hong’s brand of politics is too liberal for a general election and would ensure a victory in November by Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany.
At his campaign re-launch in Milwaukee, Crowley said the RGA is “bankrolling millions of dollars, not to attack a Democrat, but to boost one up” without mentioning Hong by name.
“Democrats cannot afford to head into this general election with a nominee who lacks the experience, who lacks the record, or the coalition necessary to win this race, especially with Republicans actively trying to hand us that exact outcome,” said Crowley. “This election is too important to gamble on, and that’s why today I am re-entering this race.”
Crowley said it’s time for Wisconsin Democrats “to make our choice” and fight back.
“My record proves that I can do it, and I am ready for this fight on day one!” said Crowley.
In a statement, Hong said she welcomed Crowley back to the race, and looked forward to the perspective he’d bring as the candidates make their cases to voters in the next three weeks.
“Competition is good for democracy, and voters deserve a substantive debate about the future of our state,” Hong said.
Not all Democrats were as understanding.
While the theory of Crowley’s return to the race is that he’ll unite the party and prevent Hong from advancing and losing in the general election, there’s also a clear chance it could divide Hong’s Democratic opponents just enough to ensure she wins the primary.
The campaign of former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who was the only candidate to come close to Hong the last time Marquette University released a public poll on the race, issued a statement that criticized Crowley, titled “David Crowley Left This Race For A Reason.” The statement noted that Crowley had only received 3 percent in three Marquette surveys on the race.
“With just 3 weeks until Election Day and after nearly 70,000 people have voted, this Hail Mary serves no purpose other than playing spoiler and handing our state to Trump’s handpicked candidate in Tom Tiffany,” said Barnes Campaign Manager Darby O’Connor.
Evers endorsement a wild card
One factor Crowley will have going for him in this home-stretch run that he didn’t have earlier is the public backing of Evers.
In a social media post Saturday, the governor said he didn’t plan to endorse anyone in the race, “because I know each of the candidates” and wanted to give them time to make their case to Wisconsin residents.” But he said in a tight race, Democrats need to rally behind Crowley to prevent Tiffany from winning the governorship.
Today, I'm endorsing @DavidcCrowley to be Wisconsin’s next governor.
I'm urging Wisconsinites to join me in uniting and supporting David in the upcoming August 11 primary and the November election.
We’ve got a lot to do and only a short time to do it, folks. Let’s get to work! pic.twitter.com/KvArA2cZdt
“Wisconsin only knows one direction to go, and that’s Forward, and let’s unite to make sure David is our next governor so we can keep building the future our kids and grandkids deserve,” said Evers. “We’ve got a lot to do and only a short time to do it. Let’s get to work.”
The governor declined to get involved in the primary earlier, despite several candidates in the race who’d held prominent roles in his administration.
That includes Barnes, Evers’ first lieutenant governor, and current Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who ended her campaign for governor Friday amid financial turmoil. It also includes Joel Brennan, the former secretary of Evers’ Department of Administration, whose campaign said he would remain in the race.
“Joel Brennan is in this race to win it,” read the statement. “Wisconsin needs a candidate who can beat Tom Tiffany in November and get to work for Wisconsin families from day one. That was true yesterday, and it’s still true today — no matter who else is in or out.”
Madison Sen. Kelda Roys has also said she’ll remain in the race, regardless of who gets in.
“I have a lot of respect and affection for David, but I would hope that he makes the right choice for the party, which is that we should be moving forward,” Roys said during a Friday interview with WISN-TV. “What I am hearing from people is that they want to see consolidation of support behind a candidate who can actually win this primary.”
Republicans seemed to relish the last-minute scramble by Democrats, which has given Tiffany the chance to run millions of dollars in ads boosting his brand.
“Remember,” said state GOP Chair Brian Schimming on X, “for all the absurd antics among Wisconsin Democrats right now, there is an irrefutable, undeniable fact: it’s all about stopping #FrancescaHong. All. Of. it. Full stop.”
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