When Larry Jones arrived at the Wisconsin State Capitol on March 12, he didn’t know what he was getting into — let alone that he would be a viral internet sensation the next day. 

The 85-year-old self-described conservative had been invited by his grandson to a public hearing on a Republican-authored bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth in the state. He decided to make the short drive from his home in Milwaukee. 

“I thought, ‘OK, I’ll go up there and listen to a couple people moaning about some kind of problems and be there for a couple hours and be long gone,’” Jones told Wisconsin Watch. “I got into something that I really didn’t know a heck of a lot about.” 

The hearing was packed with speakers there to testify either for or against the bill. Most people were limited to two minutes, but the hearing lasted more than eight hours. Jones was there in support of the bill, but wasn’t intending to get up and speak. But after listening to nearly seven hours of testimony, he put his name down. 

“I have very little knowledge of gay people and things like that there, so when I came here, my eyes were opened,” he told the state Assembly’s Health, Aging and Long-Term Care Committee just after 9 p.m. “I was one of the critics that sat on the side and made the decision there was only two genders, so I got an education that was unbelievable. And I don’t know just exactly how to say this, but my perspective for people has changed. … I’d like to apologize for being here, and I learned a very lot about this group of people.”

After he spoke, several attendees applauded.

Shortly after, his grandkids told him about a video of his testimony going viral online — as of Sunday the video had nearly 1 million views on YouTube. They called him a hero.

“Thank you for the compliment, but what the heck are you talking about?” he recalled responding. 

Jones told Wisconsin Watch he doesn’t think he did anything out of the ordinary and spoke because he felt like he owed it to the people there protesting the bill. He never thought a few sentences would garner such attention. 

“After a day or two, my 15 minutes of fame were long gone, and I went back to who I am, just plain old Larry,” Jones told Wisconsin Watch. 

Others saw an act of courage.

“Listening to his testimony was incredible,” one user commented under the viral video of Jones on Instagram. “It is powerful and brave to admit that you were wrong and have learned. I wish many of our legislators had that same strength.”

The bill

Republican politicians in recent years have frequently targeted transgender rights. One of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders the day he took office disregarded biological nuance in declaring there are only two sexes, male and female, which can’t be changed, and that gender identity “does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.” A later order declared the country wouldn’t fund transition of youth from one sex to another or medical institutions that provide such health care.

Wisconsin Assembly Bill 104 would ban gender-affirming health care, including puberty-blocking drugs, hormone replacement therapy or surgery, for those under the age of 18. Under the bill, medical providers found to be providing this care could have their licenses revoked. The legislation faces a certain veto by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who has vetoed a similar bill before. 

The authors of the bill — Sen. Cory Tomczyk, R-Mosinee, and Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha — say it would “protect minors from making life-altering, irreversible decisions that cause mental and bodily harm.”

“They’re not voting on this bill as a person, they’re voting Republican party lines,” Jones told Wisconsin Watch. “That shouldn’t be that way. … Party line is a bunch of garbage.” 

It was just one of four bills raised in the Legislature in recent weeks targeting transgender youth in Wisconsin. Two others are aimed at banning transgender girls and women from participating in high school and collegiate women’s sports. Another would prohibit school employees from using a student’s preferred name and pronouns without parental consent. 

For hours, Jones listened to the stories of kids who wanted to transition and said it seemed like “their brain was tearing them apart.” He now believes the decision to receive gender-affirming care should involve a child, a qualified doctor and a parent — not lawmakers. He likened the issue to lawmakers banning doctors from providing abortions.

Just the introduction of such bills can have negative effects on LGBTQ+ kids, research shows. The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that works to end LGBTQ+ youth suicide, found in a 2024 national survey that 90% of LGBTQ+ young people said their well-being was negatively impacted due to recent politics. Research also shows that transgender youth who are called by their preferred names and pronouns are happier and healthier.

Jones said a 14-year-old transgender teen — one of the youngest speakers who advocated for their right to go on hormones — helped to change his perspective at the hearing. In their testimony, they shared that they had recently contemplated suicide.

“I started to listen to this kid, and it wasn’t some kind of whim or something like that. This kid was actually suffering,” Jones said. “And I thought to myself, nobody has to do that. You’re only a kid.”

The GOP-controlled committee voted to advance the bill. Republican lawmakers in the Assembly passed it last week. 

“Children are not allowed to get tattoos, sign contracts, get married, or smoke — so why would we allow them to physically change their gender?” Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth, said in a statement. 

Jones had a different take. 

“All of these kids, they deserve a chance to see where they belong,” he said. 

Who is Larry?

Jones grew up in a small, rural unincorporated town in northern Michigan before moving to Milwaukee when he was 19 years old. 

“When I moved to the city, it was like I was a kid in a candy store. I discovered books, and once I discovered books, I discovered the world,” he said. 

For most of his life, he worked in the maintenance department at the Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center  — a prison formerly known as the House of Corrections. There, he encountered gay men and women, but said he had never met someone who was transgender. 

“If there’s something you don’t understand or don’t know anything about, it kind of frightens you a little bit,” Jones said. 

When he was younger, he said LGBTQ+ people were “hidden.” 

“In the area where I grew up … men were men,” Jones said. “I was taught by men who had their own visions of what gay people were like. They were called ‘queers’ and ‘fairies’ and off-the-wall, ungodly names back in the day. As I grew older … the whole world changed.” 

Jones calls himself conservative, but said he’s willing to look at both sides of an issue. He mostly tunes into Fox News and local TV stations. He said he still has a lot to learn about the transgender community, and he’s made that his mission for the next six months or so. 

Prior to the hearing, he said he believed that someone who was transgender was “play acting” and simply changed their name and clothes along with a few other cosmetic things. 

“It’s through no fault of their own. I don’t think there’s a medical problem. I think these kids were born this way,” Jones said. “I looked at it through a different perspective, from a different set of eyes, and I promised myself that I would look into this with a clearer sense of understanding.”

After his testimony, a young woman handed him a note that read, “Thank you for being open to hearing all this and being open to changing your mind. That’s brave.” Jones kept it. 

His advice to others? “Don’t wear a pair of blinders and walk down the road. Keep an open mind.”

Wisconsin Watch reporter Jack Kelly contributed to this report.

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‘Just plain old Larry’: A Wisconsin man’s testimony about gender-affirming care went viral. Here’s his story. 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.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers continue to dig in their heels during a yearslong tug-of-war over how regulators should hold property owners liable for contamination caused by “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.

They are pushing competing proposals to protect so-called innocent landowners — those who didn’t knowingly cause their PFAS pollution — from liability under Wisconsin’s decades-old environmental cleanup law.

Evers’ two-year budget proposal, introduced last week, exempts some owners of residential and agricultural land. The proposal would also fund testing and cleanups of affected properties.

His budget takes a narrower tack than the approach spearheaded by a Republican who has long sought to protect innocent landowners.

During the previous legislative session, Sen. Eric Wimberger of Oconto co-authored an innocent landowner bill that lawmakers passed along party lines before an Evers veto.

The governor accused Republicans of using farmers as “scapegoats” to constrain state authority. His staff warned that if Republicans present the same proposal this session, Evers might veto it again.

Wimberger says Evers’ staff has failed to respond to his requests for an outline of innocent landowner exemptions Evers would support. Wimberger is now circulating two draft bills co-authored with state Rep. Jeff Mursau, R-Crivitz, that contain provisions virtually identical to the vetoed legislation. Those include grants for municipalities and owners of PFAS-contaminated properties.

The proposals also would limit the Department of Natural Resources’ power to require property owners to pay for cleanups and extend liability exemptions to certain businesses and municipalities.

“The governor needlessly vetoed the plan over protections for innocent landowners,” Wimberger said in a statement. “Now, after delaying this relief for a year, he says he wants to protect innocent landowners. While it’s encouraging to see him change his mind, he is no champion for pollution victims.”

How does the state handle PFAS-contaminated farmland?

Wisconsin’s spills law requires reporting and cleanup by parties that pollute air, soil or water or if they discover contamination from a past owner. That is because, in part, allowing pollution to remain on the landscape could be more dangerous to human health than the initial spill.

The DNR has held parties liable for PFAS contamination they didn’t cause but also has exercised discretion by seeking remediation from past spillers instead of current property owners. 

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a family of more than 12,000 compounds commonly found in consumer products like food wrappers, nonstick pans and raincoats along with firefighting foam used to smother hot blazes. Some are toxic.

The chemicals pass through the waste stream and into sewage treatment plants, which commonly contract with farmers to accept processed sludge as fertilizer.

Testing is now unearthing PFAS on cropland from Maine to Texas. Several hot spots are located in Wisconsin too, among the more than 100 PFAS-contaminated case files the DNR currently monitors.

The agency maintains it has never, and has no plans to, enforce the spills law against a property owner who unknowingly received PFAS-contaminated fertilizer. But Republican lawmakers don’t trust those promises.

How do the budget and draft bill proposals compare?

Evers’ bill would exempt only residential and agricultural properties polluted with PFAS-contaminated sludge. Affected landowners would have to provide the DNR access to their property for cleanup and not worsen the contamination.

Evers’ innocent landowner exemption would sunset by 2036. 

Meanwhile, the Republican draft bills would prevent the DNR from enforcing the spills law when the responsible party qualifies as an innocent landowner and allow the department to clean up its property at its own expense.

The first bill focuses on innocent landowner provisions, while the second, larger proposal adds grant programs without specifying appropriations. Wimberger explained introducing two bills would “ensure the victims of PFAS pollution get the debate they deserve” and prevent Democrats from “playing politics” with PFAS funding and policy.

Unlike Evers’ budget proposal, the draft bills don’t release $125 million in aid to PFAS-affected communities that has sat in a trust fund for 18 months.

The Legislature allocated the funds in the previous two-year budget, but its GOP-controlled finance committee hasn’t transferred the cash to the DNR.

Lawmakers in both parties have bristled over the languishing money, with Democrats contending the committee could transfer it without passing a new law. The nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Council says lawmakers would be on “relatively firm legal footing” if they did so.

Republicans, meanwhile, say transferring the dollars without limiting DNR enforcement powers would not effectively help impacted landowners. They say the DNR could treat a landowner’s request for state assistance as an invitation for punishment.

The previous, vetoed bill garnered support from all three Wisconsin local government associations, but environmental groups, the DNR and Evers said it shifted PFAS cleanup costs to taxpayers.

Environmental groups also feared Republicans on the finance committee would continue withholding the $125 million even if the legislation had advanced — protracting the stalemate while weakening the DNR.

Nor would risking “unintended consequences” of weakening the spills law be worth $125 million, which would scratch the surface of remediation costs, environmental critics said.

Expenses in Marinette County alone, which is coping with PFAS contamination linked to a firefighter training site owned by Johnson Controls International, already exceed that amount.

The Milwaukee Business Journal reported the company upped its reserves by $255 million to finance the cleanup. With the increase, the company has recorded charges of about $400 million since 2019.

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Who pays for PFAS? Governor, GOP lawmakers wrestle over cleanup liability 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.

A bill that would empower Wisconsin municipalities to block the construction of solar and wind farms in their backyards has been introduced a second time.

Currently, local governments possess limited authority to regulate the siting and operations of solar and wind farms, but as the number and size of projects grow — solar panel fields spanning thousands of acres and wind turbines as tall as the Statue of Liberty — some residents from the Driftless Area and central Wisconsin say the state’s system for approving energy projects unfairly stacks the scales of power against communities that live alongside the facilities.

Meanwhile, a clean energy advocacy group and former Wisconsin utility regulator said the bill would enable a discontented minority to dictate energy policy for the entire state, effectively kill renewable energy development and generate uncertainty for businesses.

The Republican-backed proposal comes amid a wave of construction after federal lawmakers invested billions of dollars during the Biden administration to slow the pace of climate change. The ensuing backlash and enactment of local restrictions are playing out across the country.

Here’s what you need to know:

Some context: Investment in renewable energy has been a state priority for decades and a requirement for Wisconsin’s utilities. It also is central to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ ambitious climate goals. Wisconsin seeks to operate a carbon-free electric grid by 2050. 

In 2023, 9% of net electricity generated within the state came from renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The governor’s Task Force on Climate Change expects most future emissions reductions to come from large-scale utility projects, especially the replacement of aging coal plants with solar farms.

In 2016, the state generated just 3,000 megawatt-hours of electricity from utility-scale solar facilities. Seven years later, it increased to 1.2 million. Nearly two dozen more solar farms are in the pipeline.

Wisconsin’s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, oversees the approval of large projects, but opponents say gaps in state oversight make Wisconsin attractive to private developers, who aren’t mandated to share project expenses or evaluate ratepayer impacts.

They don’t have to demonstrate the energy created by the new installation is even needed at all — requirements if a public utility were to construct the facility. (The commission considers costs when utilities want to purchase power or an energy facility.) But developers can sell solar and wind farms to Wisconsin utilities. Ratepayers shoulder the infrastructure costs and pay state-authorized rates of return.

The commission reports that, compared to the Midwest and national averages, Wisconsin residents pay higher rates but less on their monthly bills because they consume less energy.

Opponents of large-scale projects also criticize the state’s disclosure requirements, which enable developers to acquire land rental agreements, often confidential, before communities are officially notified.

Residents often accuse industry of minimizing their concerns over impacts to wildlife, roads, aesthetics, property values, utility bills, health, topsoil and water quality. 

Yet climate change jeopardizes those same things, and land rental and municipal payments can be a lifeline. The construction of solar and wind farms can divide towns and neighbors. Public hearings quickly get messy. 

Organizers have mounted challenges, playing out in boardrooms, courthouses and the Legislature. Several towns enacted restrictions on renewable energy projects, a push supported by Farmland First, a central Wisconsin advocacy and fundraising group. Last year, a developer sued two Marathon County towns over their wind farm rules.

President Donald Trump is the latest to seed doubt over the merits of large-scale renewable projects after issuing a Jan. 20 executive order that suspends federal permitting for any wind farm while agency officials review government leasing and permitting practices.

The bill: The proposal requires solar and wind developers to obtain approval from every city, village and town in which a facility would be located before the Public Service Commission could greenlight the project.

Senate Bill 3’s authors, Rep. Travis Tranel, R-Cuba City, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, said the measure responds to constituents who feel their concerns over continued development in the Driftless Area continue to fall on deaf ears.

“We are hoping to kick-start a conversation because the way I view it now, renewable energy projects are essentially the wild wild West,” Tranel said. “People have figured out that they can profit exorbitant amounts of money off these projects, and they are just popping them up left and right, and our current attitude is long-term ramifications be damned, and I don’t think that that makes any sense.”

Currently, the commission reviews proposals for energy facilities with a capacity of at least 100 megawatts. For scale, an average wind turbine in 2023 had a capacity of 3 ½ megawatts. A megawatt of solar generation might cover 7 ½ acres.

Local governments review projects less than 100 megawatts in capacity, but municipalities can impose restrictions on solar and wind farms only in limited instances, such as demonstrating they will protect public health or safety — a tall order. Additionally, municipalities that enact siting restrictions on wind farms cannot impose criteria more stringent than commission rules.

The bill would apply to any solar or wind farm with a 15-megawatt capacity or more. If a municipality fails to take action within an allotted period, the proposed facility would be approved automatically. 

An identical proposal introduced during the previous legislative session, exclusively backed by GOP lawmakers, failed to receive a committee hearing.

Yea: Some of the bill’s backers view the influx of large energy projects as the harbinger of “utility districts” across Wisconsin’s rural spaces, primarily for the benefit of urbanites.

It’s not that proponents of local control snub clean energy, said Chris Klopp, a Cross Plains organizer who has joined challenges to transmission and solar projects. Rather, regulators could respond to climate change more equitably.

“This idea that you can just decide you’re going to sacrifice certain people, well, I think there’s a problem with that,” she said. “Who decides, and who gets sacrificed? None of that is a good conversation. It should be something that works for everyone.”

Nay: Representatives from EDP Renewables, NextEra Energy, Pattern Energy and Invenergy — developers with a Wisconsin presence — didn’t respond to requests for comment.

But former Public Service Commission Chair Phil Montgomery said local governments lack the agency’s battery of professionals it takes to evaluate whether an energy project would meet the state’s energy needs.

Empowering Wisconsin’s 1,245 towns, 190 cities and 415 villages to weigh the facts against their own standards would spell disaster for ratepayers, he said.

Michael Vickerman, former executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a renewable energy advocacy nonprofit, said the bill unfairly targets wind and solar.

“You’re deciding that this industry will no longer be welcome in this state,” he said. “It becomes such an arbitrary and mysterious, unstable, unpredictable process that the developer says, ‘Screw it. I’ll just go to Minnesota. I’ll go to Illinois.’”

What’s next? More than 20 co-sponsors, all Republicans, signed on to the bill, and it has been referred to a Senate committee. Klopp hopes to rally more lawmakers to obtain a two-thirds, veto-proof majority.

Montgomery said even if it leads nowhere, the bill certainly sends a message to investors.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify information provided by former Public Service Commission Chair Phil Montgomery.

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Republican bill seeks more local control over wind, solar farms 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.