Vice President JD Vance is promoting a Trump administration plan to siphon off federal money that helps working parents afford childcare and use it to subsidize parents who stay at home. The man who ran for office mocking “childless cat ladies” is now trying to stir up a cat fight between working and stay-at-home moms. That’s not remarkable coming from a federal government run by social media trolls. But the main effect of the actual policy Vance is promoting will be to make the lives of already stressed working class families, especially in Wisconsin, even harder, more expensive and noticeably worse than before.

Childcare funding has been in crisis in Wisconsin ever since the pandemic relief money that briefly stabilized providers ran out. Without that money, which “prevented system collapse” according to the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, supporting more than 430,000 children in nearly 6,000 programs, parents are priced out of care and one in four providers say they will likely have to close their doors. 

Unlike Massachusetts and Vermont, Wisconsin does not treat childcare as a state budget priority. Ours is one of only a handful of states including Idaho, Indiana, Nevada and Ohio that failed to spend any money on childcare beyond what was required to draw down federal dollars, according to a 2025 report by the advocacy group ChildCare Aware. In 2026, the state created a new school readiness program for 4-year-olds. It was a first step toward acknowledging the needs of preschoolers and their parents. But it did nothing to address the massive shortage in care for infants and toddlers.

That’s all fine with JD Vance, who wrote on X that “normal Americans care more about their families than their jobs, and want a family policy that doesn’t shunt their kids into crap daycare so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.”

But Vance is not offering to do anything about the fact that the U.S. is the only wealthy nation on Earth that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, even though 68% of mothers with children under 6 are employed. Nor is he promoting the kind of high-quality early childhood education system that allows parents in Denmark, after their six months of paid parental leave, to enroll their preschoolers in beautiful, enriching childcare programs they don’t have to feel guilty about.

Instead, what Vance is proposing is to take an already paltry federal childcare subsidy and make working parents fight over crumbs with nonworking parents. Mainly, his aim seems to be to punish single parents. That’s not going to leave anyone in good shape — least of all children. 

One of the saddest aspects of the attack on childcare is that very recently parents, educators, business leaders and politicians of both political parties were finally coming together around the idea that childcare is an essential public good that requires public support.

The “mommy wars” attack Vance wants to revive is long out of date. It has been decades since most American families had the luxury of subsisting on a single wage-earner’s income, trad wife fantasies notwithstanding. 

Another major recent breakthrough is policymakers’ realization that the magic of the free market is not going to provide childcare parents can afford. 

“It was the Biden administration that put a ton of money into childcare during COVID, and we learned from that,” says Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. “The lesson was not just the importance of keeping childcare open so that essential workers could work, but the other piece that’s really interesting is that it demonstrated what can positively happen in childcare when you put a little more money into it.”

Thanks to direct payments to providers during the pandemic, center closures dropped off, the number of teachers leaving the workforce slowed down, tuition stopped climbing and, Schmidt says, “this industry for the first time was finally able to say, ‘Our work is important. It is essential to the functioning of our country. It’s worth investing in, because if you invest in it, these positive things can happen.”

Then came Trump. 

Schmidt calls the rollout of Trump policies that slashed supports for families “death by 1,000 cuts.” During the second Trump administration, cuts to food assistance, Medicaid and Head Start, along with the federal government’s move to loosen safety standards and increase staff ratios in childcare centers have taken a huge combined toll on Wisconsin families.

If it were just ideological — if the Trump administration were actually pursuing the kinds of pronatalist policies that make getting married and having children more attractive, as Vance likes to claim, it wouldn’t be as bad. But instead, while spouting rhetoric about valuing families, this administration is subjecting little kids and their parents to more and more misery.

Wisconsin could do more to protect vulnerable kids. Before leaving the Capitol to hit the campaign trail, state legislators failed to pass a bill that would have used state money to fill the gap after federal childcare stabilization funds lapsed. That set off a vicious cycle, says Paula Drew of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. Subsidies for families were cut and their out-of-pocket payments skyrocketed, so cash-strapped parents withdrew their kids from care. Under-enrollment meant less revenue for childcare centers, so they raised their rates. “It just sort of snowballed,” Drew says. “Programs said things like, ‘We’re gonna have to lower salaries for staff.’ … so I think we’re going to lose our educators, and in fact I think we’ve already lost a big percentage of our skilled, seasoned educators.”

An unintended consequence of the state’s investment in 4-year-old pre-K is that it creates a disincentive to provide care for infants and toddlers, which is already more expensive, Drew says. “Wisconsin serves very few infants and toddlers in regulated care,” she says. “And now, with additional funding going into the Get Kids Ready pre-K program, we expect that to be even lower a year from now.”

To make matters worse, the state no longer has a surplus of federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds, which it has used to cover some childcare costs for low-income families. 

Sooner or later, Wisconsin is going to have to start dedicating state revenue to childcare. Schmidt and Drew hope that, with a new governor and a new Legislature, Wisconsin will use the state surplus, payroll taxes or a tax on hemp products and gambling, as Louisiana has done, to subsidize childcare. Only then can Wisconsin reduce the astronomical tuition rates that parents pay ($13,000 for home care and $17,400 for center-based care, according to state data), give providers a better wage (currently $13.55 per hour), and stop the wave of childcare closures. 

They especially want the state to shore up disappearing infant and toddler care and retain experienced teachers — not just by giving them a raise but also by allowing them to continue to get higher education “and make this a profession, not just a fleeting step to something else,” says Drew. 

“We need supply of care; supply means educators that can work in programs. And then we want to help parents pay for care on the demand side. … You can’t do one and not the other, because it simply won’t work,” says Drew. “You can’t just help parents pay for care, but not tend to the supply of care available. And you can’t just tend to the supply of care available, but pretend you don’t see that parents are literally going into poverty to try to pay for childcare.”

“Childcare is infrastructure,” says Schmidt. “If we turned around and said to parents with 5-year-olds, you’ve got to start paying $17,000 a year for your child to be in school, we would see empty classrooms, right? We treat these as two very dramatically different concerns. But all of it is about families’ ability to work outside the home, impact the economy, all those kinds of things. “ 

It’s also about having a decent society that values families and takes good care of children. That’s the kind of society we need to come together and focus on, instead of being distracted by the rage-baiting bluster of internet trolls. 

Gov. Tony Evers is taking his final back-to-school tour of the state, visiting K-12 classrooms across Wisconsin to meet students, families and staff and tout his record as the “Education Governor.”

If you don’t happen to live in one of the 72 Wisconsin school districts that went to referendum last spring, begging local property taxpayers to cover basic costs the state is not meeting, you might get the impression from Evers’ valedictory tour that he is leaving office having solved the urgent problem of chronic underfunding of Wisconsin schools. 

“After a decade of disinvestment, Gov. Evers has spent the last almost eight years working to invest in public education at every level,” a statement released this week by the governor’s office declares. “During his time in office, Gov. Evers has enacted budgets to restore two-thirds funding for public schools for the first time in over two decades, provide the largest special education aid increase in state history, and bring per pupil aid to its highest level ever.”

Sounds like a strong record of accomplishment!

But wait, why does a lawsuit filed this year by the Wisconsin PTA, students, parents, teachers and communities across the state charge that Wisconsin “has seemingly abandoned its commitment to the education of Wisconsin’s public school children” and is violating its own constitution by failing to adequately fund public schools? 

The short answer is that Evers, along with the Republican legislative leaders who are the targets of the lawsuit, are using misleading language to pass off austerity for schools as generosity.

Take Evers’ claim about restoring the state’s long-abandoned commitment to two-thirds funding for schools. That two-thirds number is based on counting money in the state budget that schools are not allowed to spend. While the money is technically allocated for education, the state did not lift school revenue caps, so it can only be spent for property-tax relief. 

“Meeting the state’s two-thirds funding commitment doesn’t put a single new pencil in a classroom when you provide zero dollars in new spending,” explains Heather DuBois Bourenane of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, “and the current budget provided zero dollars in new spendable aid for both years of this biennium.”

Far from reaping a historic investment, students and teachers are starting the year in Wisconsin with no new money for schools. 

The state’s share of special education funding, which fell from a high of 70% in the 1970s to hover around 30% in recent years, did get a bump in the last budget, reversing a dire drop-off. But the “largest special education increase in state history” only amounted to a jump from 30 to 35% last year — considerably less than the 42% reimbursement rate state officials originally projected. 

Finally, in a sense, Evers did bring per-pupil aid to its highest level ever, but like his other claims, this is more a rhetorical victory than a concrete benefit to schools. Using his line-item veto, Evers extended school districts’ ability to raise $325 in revenue per pupil from local taxpayers for the next 400 years. This move infuriated Republicans, and they used it as a reason for not giving schools any new money in the current budget. But the $325 per pupil increase is not hard cash, it’s just revenue-raising authority granted to districts, which are allowed to raise property taxes by that amount if they choose to. Some, having exhausted the good will of local taxpayers with repeated referendum asks, have not done so. 

All in all, schools in Wisconsin are in bad financial shape, and property taxpayers are weary of filling the gap left by the state abandoning its obligation to kids. 

“The Legislature is selling kids short,” says Jeff Mandell of Law Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs in the school funding lawsuit. The Wisconsin Constitution guarantees every child an equal opportunity for a sound, basic education. But for years, the plaintiffs argue, the state has been breaking that promise.

Adams-Friendship school district, one of the parties in the lawsuit, used to have five elementary schools within its 500 square miles. Now, because of school closures due to low enrollment and shrinking budgets, it has only one K-12 school. Kids spend hours riding the bus to a single school building with aging infrastructure where many classrooms are unusable on hot days. 

Huge challenges are also facing urban districts. In Beloit last year one in eight students was homeless. 

“There is this fictitious idea that everyone has budgets, the schools just have to tighten their belts,” says Mandell. The reality is, even as the challenges schools face pile up, the state has steadily decreased funding, to the point where many now face an existential crisis.

The current lawsuit is not the first challenge to Wisconsin’s school funding formula based on the idea that the state is not meeting its constitutional obligation to provide a basic, free education to all children. 

Back in 2000, a divided Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a similar argument in the Vincent v. Voight case. 

In that case, “the Court said the system is not bad enough right now to violate the constitution,” Mandell says. But since then, two full generations of kids have completed kindergarten through 12th grade, and conditions have deteriorated dramatically.

When Vincent v. Voight was decided, school revenue limits were still automatically pegged to inflation. A state law, abolished in 2003, still held that two-thirds of school funding should come from the state.  A popular program, abolished in 2018, still kept class sizes small and offered extra supports to children living in poverty to help them succeed academically.  Overall, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, school funding has not kept pace with inflation in Wisconsin since 2009, a major reversal from the early 2000s, when Wisconsin schools were among the best funded in the nation. 

“The situation keeps getting worse and worse and worse, and we’re saying the court needs to give this another look,” says Mandell.

This is where the hopeful part comes in. Like the gerrymandering lawsuit that prompted the Legislature and the governor to pass fair voting maps in Wisconsin, Mandell believes the school funding lawsuit could trigger major legislative reform. As in the gerrymandering case, “the court’s job is to tell the Legislature, ‘What you have here is not good enough,’ and then give them a short window to fix it,” Mandell says.

It’s not the court’s job to come up with a new funding formula, but if the governor and the Legislature can’t agree, it could impose its own solution.

As the November elections approach, ushering in a new Legislature and a new governor, there’s a real opportunity for change. 

“There is growing momentum and understanding of what the problem is, and what the issue is, on both sides of the aisle,” says DuBois Bourenane. 

She and the other public school advocates in her organization are deeply disappointed that the governor and the Legislature failed to hammer out a deal to give more money to schools, after dangling the idea at the end of the last session. “It’s just criminal that they’re even willing to entertain the idea of sending these kids back to school with nothing again,” she says. “We’ve got 70-plus districts going to referendum again this fall … over a third of our districts went to referendum this calendar year.” 

DuBois Bourenane agrees with Mandell that the lawsuit could spur a breakthrough. 

“I’m just glad that everybody’s talking about it,” she says, “and I hope that they’re paying very close attention to what’s actually possible if we elect people who all agree that we have to fix this broken problem.” 

There’s no bigger issue in the Wisconsin governor’s race than data centers. Republican candidate Tom Tiffany, who was hoping to run on not canceling Thanksgiving, quickly pivoted after democratic socialist candidate Francesca Hong lost the primary, moving to capture the issue that galvanized Hong’s supporters: opposing data center development. Tiffany spent the first week of the general election campaign attacking his Democratic rival by labeling him “Data Center David Crowley,” warning that Crowley’s pro-data-center policies would mean “our lakes run dry, family farms paved over.” 

Crowley, meanwhile, has not come up with a message that satisfies the Hong supporters who embraced her call for a statewide moratorium on data center construction. Neither he nor Tiffany favors a moratorium. In fact, as Baylor Spears reports, despite Tiffany’s attacks, the two candidates don’t appear to be very far apart on data center regulation. Both say they will protect communities’ right to reject new data center construction; both say the state must ensure that ratepayers aren’t stuck with higher utility bills; both promise to protect Wisconsin’s land and water and insist on transparency in data center contracts. Both have also taken money from data center supporters — Crowley from the building trade unions that want to construct the new facilities, and Tiffany from the lobbyist for the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition, which supports nondisclosure agreements and data center tax exemptions.

Crowley, as the county executive of an industrial hub that has suffered from the loss of manufacturing jobs, has a more optimistic view of the job-creation and economic development potential of new technology than many voters in Wisconsin, a majority of whom see proposed hyperscale data centers as eyesores and energy hogs. But Tiffany, as Spears reports, is not that different. He voted for a bill in Congress that would have banned states from regulating AI and has called data centers “exciting new technology.”

What specific policies should Wisconsinites demand from their political leaders on data centers?

“There’s a simple answer,” says Joel Rogers, a University of Wisconsin professor who created a center for the study of “high-road” development based on shared prosperity, environmental sustainability and democracy. “First, inspect everything that has already been approved and make sure it conforms to labor, environmental and design standards,” Rogers says. “Second, no public money for people who are richer than Mammon. We are spending hundreds of millions on tax breaks we can’t afford on these data centers. That should stop immediately.”

Rogers is not against data centers in general. “Water and noise are the big issues,” he says. He wants to see strict regulation that compels companies to design structures that dampen noise pollution. Water use, he says, is not a big concern inside data centers with closed-loop, water recycling systems. Rather, it’s the massive generation of electricity that, without intelligent planning, will tax Wisconsin’s water supply. “If you produce energy in an inefficient way, it creates lots of excess heat,” he explains. “The way to cool it is with water. That’s catastrophic.” Discharging warm water into lakes and streams causes thermal shock, fish kills and algal blooms. 

But creating a more efficient and sustainable electric grid is, in Rogers’ view, a big potential upside of data center development. His hope is that data centers could spur serious investments in renewable energy and reduce the tremendous waste involved in our current electricity-generation system. That could mean more plentiful, cheaper power for ratepayers and a more rational, environmentally friendly energy grid.

“If you increase power production investment, that should be good for ratepayers, not bad,” Rogers says. “A bigger base means lower rates.”

The problems with data center development currently is “intermediate,” in Rogers’ view. “States are trying to attract data centers, there’s inappropriate siting, like in dry areas. It messes up farming and ordinary water usage.” 

“But if we are serious about climate we should be for heat pumps for all … electrify everything,” he adds.

Rogers’ position is similar to that of a candidate who didn’t get a lot of traction in the Democratic gubernatorial primary — state Sen. Kelda Roys. 

Roys’ plan to stop unregulated data center development includes passing a bill that gained 49 cosponsors in the Legislature, laying out sturdy environmental, labor and transparency regulations. In addition, Roys called for repealing tax subsidies and incentives for data center developers (something Crowley has declined to endorse), creating a statewide public negotiation team to help local communities drive a harder bargain with Big Tech firms, and demanding big upfront payments from those firms to fund a clean energy infrastructure bank. 

“Wisconsin has no fossil fuels, so every dollar we spend on hydrocarbons leaves our state,” Roys points out. Investing in clean energy is good for the state economy as well as the climate. Her plan leverages data center development to make a faster transition to a green economy. 

That’s a step further than Crowley has gone, although he is campaigning on a pledge to make data center developers “bring your own clean energy.” Tiffany has been attacking Crowley precisely for his clean energy pledge, warning that it will disfigure the landscape by blanketing Wisconsin with solar panels. A recent Tiffany campaign press release declared that “using solar to generate the equivalent annual electricity needed for just the Mount Pleasant and Port Washington data centers would consume roughly 100,000 acres of Wisconsin land.”

But just saying no to both renewable energy and data centers does not amount to a plan. For one thing, there are already 47 existing data centers in Wisconsin. Local communities are struggling over how to regulate them separately all over the state. Melissa Scanlan, the director of UW-Milwaukee’s Center for Water Policy, told the Examiner’s Henry Redman that Wisconsin’s failure to address data centers comprehensively will soon put a big strain on the state’s utilities.

“Doing it in a piecemeal way, where you’ve got local governments deciding about hosting, but then utilities that are committed to supplying the electricity and water, is going to very quickly bump up against the realities of our ability to generate electricity in a responsible way,” Scanlan told Redman. 

Rogers remains optimistic. “Data centers are coming, whether they are in Wisconsin or nearby it doesn’t matter,” he says. He doesn’t favor a moratorium in one state that drives massive hyperscale data center development over the border, when everyone in the region relies on the same water resources. “I’m not for rivalry and scarcity,” he says.

Instead, he maintains, thoughtful policymakers could address worries about data centers by creating policies that address the larger, existential environmental issues that confront us all. 

Imagine that.

Wisconsin’s crazy rollercoaster of a Democratic primary is finally over. After staying up all night waiting to see David Crowley declared the winner by one-half of one percentage point at 2:30 Wednesday morning, a lot of voters are feeling dizzy and seasick. 

Many Francesca Hong supporters are angry. Their grassroots campaign, the best organized, most energized, with the boldest vision throughout the race, was big-footed by Gov. Tony Evers’ last-minute endorsement of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. Adding insult to injury, Crowley had already dropped out when Evers urged him to jump back in with a big boost from late campaign cash, apparently for the sole purpose of thwarting Hong. 

Crowley supporters are relieved. They saw Hong as an inexperienced candidate who would lose a winnable general election to Republican Tom Tiffany, a Donald Trump enabler and election denier who has plans to sell off public lands and bring back a total abortion ban. 

National media viewed the Wisconsin primary as a test of the left which, according to the New York Times, the left clearly failed with Hong’s “stunning” loss. 

But feverish punditry about the significance of Wisconsin’s primary has distorted the real meaning of the results. Polls showing Hong was on track to win by double digits were less accurate than the anecdotal experience of voters who knew their friends and neighbors were fretting about how to vote and hadn’t made up their minds right up until Election Day. Those voters moved to Crowley in big numbers at the very end of the race, as he came to seem like the safe alternative. But Hong’s near-miss is hardly a stunning defeat. On the contrary, it showed real strength for a candidate who, when she started, was counted out.  

If your main exposure to Hong was the video of her appearance on Fox News, where she talked in circles about an old tweet in which she recommended canceling Thanksgiving, refusing to either disavow or endorse the idea, the worry made sense. 

It wasn’t just old, establishment types who felt it. “A lot of our members had to be talked down off the fence, they were so worried about electability,” says Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, which endorsed Hong. 

For those voters, the big struggle in the primary was a contest between hope and fear. Kraig sees this as a natural phenomenon. “People are hard-wired to be risk-averse,” he says. Especially when the stakes are high, people’s fears, and the sense that they have to protect what they have, overcome their aspirations for something better. Kraig spent time trying to persuade people that they needed to be more imaginative, to consider that many candidates who once seemed improbable, including President Barack Obama and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, changed people’s views of “electability.” 

Hong’s priorities — free childcare, a massive expansion of healthcare, a big minimum wage hike, fully funded schools paid for with a tax increase on the rich — and her assertive, take-it-to-the-hoop attacks on Tiffany, whom she called a “traitor,” resonated with a lot of Wisconsin Democrats. It was the fear that she was not ready for prime time, that she would lose regular voters by speaking the lingo of the academic left, more than her socialist policy positions, that caused them to jump ship. That doesn’t mean the Hong movement failed, or that Democrats can afford to ignore it now that Crowley pulled off his narrow win.

As Kraig points out, voters are not particularly attached to “moderate” policy positions. Progressive ideas can generate big support among a cross-section of voters. Hong’s campaign demonstrated that. 

It makes sense that people who were the most fed up, who felt they had the least to lose, supported Hong. Some were young DSA members. But also, Kraig says, some of his group’s organizers who are “standard liberals” — doctors who are deeply concerned about the systemic failures of healthcare — pushed hard for the group to endorse Hong because of her recognition of the need for radical change in the healthcare system.

The night before the election, I watched Hong fire up canvassers at her campaign office on the east side of Madison. A young, excited group of volunteers clearly felt like they were part of something historic. That movement energy has not been lost. It’s up to Crowley to tap it and to Democrats to recognize its significance. It would be a huge mistake for the Crowley campaign, having pulled off its narrow victory, not to try to connect seriously with the grassroots energy that animated Hong’s supporters. 

Kraig and Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the executive director of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, which also endorsed Hong, both hold out hope that Crowley, a former community organizer, will not just talk about “unity” with Hong voters, but will listen seriously to them and adopt some of their positions. 

Kraig suggests that Crowley take a page from President Joe Biden, who invited the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic party to help him shape policy after he won in 2020. “It would be good to be credible. To take some positions. Not just call for unity. He could do events with Fran on some issues he wants to lean in on,” Kraig says.

Crowley could make inroads with an energized voting base by taking a stronger position against rapacious AI data centers — one of the issues that animated the Hong campaign. That could be complicated for him with his trade union endorsers. But Hong was the first to recognize what others now see: Voters are demanding a stronger stance.

“It’s going to be really important to connect to those organizer roots and to be bold, not to be timid and move to the center or the right,” says Neumann-Ortiz. 

Voces embraced Hong because she was deeply engaged in defending immigrant rights, including through the Statewide Community Defense Network. “People are coming together to support immigrant families being persecuted by ICE,” Neumann-Ortiz says. Crowley could do more to connect to that, taking a clear stand in support of measures that protect immigrant families.

 “We are in a period of growing authoritarianism — people see that, and growing economic inequality — people feel that,” says Neumann-Ortiz. “We need a movement that brings working people together and challenges the divisions of the right and Tom Tiffany. That’s what’s needed; not to lose that fighting spirit.” 

People are fed up with the lesser-evil argument that “you have no choice,” she adds. And they aren’t putting up with it. “We have seen the emergence of candidates that are much more progressive,” she says. “They come out of a community organizing culture and are willing to demand more.”

More progressives are going to continue to run for office, Neumann-Ortiz predicts. Real political power, she says, “comes from that organized community. They are doing the real democracy work, not just in elections, but the ongoing work of people coming together.” 

Crowley won with a boost from Evers, although he dismisses the idea that he is a creature of the “establishment.” Kraig thinks that’s silly – of course he got a big establishment hand up. But that doesn’t have to be how he governs. 

“Progressive Era champions put into office by the political machines turned against them and became reformers,” Kraig points out. He holds out hope that Crowley, connecting with his organizer roots, might follow in that great Wisconsin tradition. 

It’s hard not to get caught up in the increasingly contentious Democratic primary battle that’s mostly being waged online this week. But outside of the social media echo chambers, people who are taking the brunt of a vicious, authoritarian regime are asking deeper questions about how to build political power.  

Union and immigrant-rights organizers in Wisconsin held a joint press conference Thursday to talk about their efforts to get Latinos, newly naturalized citizens and struggling workers to the polls to elect people who will take a stand against the Trump administration’s terrifying crackdown on immigrants as well as Trump administration policies driving the crushing cost of living.

Roselia Navarro, a naturalized citizen who leads Voces de la Frontera’s New American program, helps guide other immigrants through the process of becoming citizens. She gave a touching account of how much citizenship and participating in American democracy means to her. She described it as a privilege to help other immigrants, many of whom have waited as long  as 20 years to obtain their naturalization papers and become eligible to vote. 

“I’m very proud to say I’m the first person that is able to vote within my family,” she said. “And that feels rewarding because when I vote, I feel that I’m not only making decisions for something that would benefit my kids, but it also inspires my family to see that I’m motivated and I’m involved.”

“I want to also invite the people in our community, especially the Hispanic community, that we can come together and we need to vote,” she added. “It’s extremely important for us to be part of the decisions that are being made in our state.”

First-time voter Yondo Borrera, who sat next to Navarro on the panel at the Voces office in Milwaukee, told reporters, “I will be voting to make a change in my community. I don’t like how everything is super expensive right now — gas, food, housing, rent. And I don’t like how ICE is in the community snatching people up, deporting people, taking people away from their families, and that’s something that I’m trying to change.”

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Voces’ executive director, described the power of Latino voters in Wisconsin, a tippy purple state where elections are often decided by razor-thin margins. Over the last decade, “the Latino population, including the Latino voting population, has continued to grow in force statewide,” she said. She cited data from the 2024 election that showed high turnout among registered Latino voters about 84.9%  of whom voted, “yet this only represents 63% of the estimated eligible Latino citizen voting age population statewide,” she said. 

Immigrant rights’ organizers aim to drive the participation rate higher.

There is something poignant about that aim, which, in other election years, would seem like a run-of-the-mill exercise in civics. This is no ordinary election year, however. 

Armed federal agents have been dragging people out of their cars in Milwaukee. A young mother with no criminal record who fled violence in Colombia and was going through the U.S. asylum process, checking in with the government regularly as her case progressed, was grabbed along with her 8-year-old son out of their home in the Wisconsin Dells and is now incarcerated along with her little boy in an ICE detention facility in South Texas. 

This is just one case of the thousands across the country. Neumann-Ortiz described a few more in Wisconsin. “We’ve seen mothers and fathers and children and the larger community traumatized by the violence and the persecution and the racism, which is completely unchecked right now,” she said.

People who have full legal status are wary of being grabbed by rogue ICE agents looking to fill quotas in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Going to the polls in this environment is fraught. And yet, advocates say, it’s more important than ever. 

“We are in an unprecedented time of income inequality, with unwanted wars in the Middle East, and a quarter of a trillion of our national budget being used for the violent persecution and racial profiling of Black and brown people, Asian people, and shifting away these critical resources from healthcare and public schools and childcare and things that people need,” Neumann-Ortiz said. 

The only way to change all that is for people who are suffering under this terrible regime to grab control of their government.

Adrian Bracy, a worksite representative for the Service Employees International Union, spoke on the panel to people who feel that their vote doesn’t matter, that the system is too broken to be fixed at the ballot box. 

“Working for a union for 20 years, I know that uniting and standing strong and fighting firmly for what we believe in, it can make the difference,” she said. “It can definitely change things.” She urged people to encourage their friends and neighbors to vote.  “Let them know how important it really is, and that they do matter,” she said. “It does matter. It makes a difference …  in spite of the tactics they may use to intimidate or discourage or discredit our voters.”

As it happens, the effort to discourage and discredit voters is led by Wisconsin’s representatives in Congress. U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville), who chairs the House Committee on Administration, is demanding information from the state Department of Corrections on voting by felons. The case that prompted Steil’s letter to DOC Secretary Jared Hoy involves a man convicted of theft who was one day shy of having served his full sentence on community release. Had he voted the following day, his ballot would have been legal. This single case, which did not affect the outcome of any election, is fodder for a campaign Steil is spearheading to cast doubt on the legitimacy of elections and disenfranchise likely Democratic voters by making them jump through hoops before they can vote, all in the name of rooting out exceedingly rare cases of voter fraud.

The main targets of this campaign are, of course, the supposed masses of noncitizens casting ballots and tilting elections to Democrats. 

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Prairie du Chien), like Steil an enabler of election conspiracy theories, also took a big stand this week, demanding that Gov. Tony Evers turn over the personal data of FoodShare recipients in an effort to root out “fraud.” People who get food assistance in Wisconsin are already seeing their benefits cut, just as grocery prices skyrocket, under the massive tax cut and spending bill both Van Orden and Steil supported.

These attacks are related. After voting for policies that make life much worse for the people they represent, our Republican members of Congress are trying to make sure voters can’t hold them accountable. 

“The challenges facing our economy and our democracy are inseparable,” says Taifa Smith Butler, president of Demos, a nonprofit progressive public policy organization. Demos rolled out its 2026 national policy agenda this week:  “Power Policies: How to Get and Keep People Power in the United States.” 

“For too long, public debate has centered on short term wins, but the more important question is what happens after power shifts,” Smith Butler said at a press conference announcing the new report. “History shows that periods of political upheaval can also create opportunities for transformative change. Previous generations have used these moments to advance civil rights, expand democracy, and build economic security.”

Rising authoritarianism is linked to the erosion of both economic and political power for most people, Alix Gould-Werth, Demos’ chief of programs and strategy, said at the same event. It’s important to stop that erosion in order to fight back.

The solutions the group lays out in its progressive policy plan include affordable housing, universal childcare and a robust national wealth tax, as well as nonpartisan redistricting and automatic voter registration.

Rebuilding democratic institutions in the current environment seems like a huge hill to climb. But starting on the state and local level, it’s possible to protect “laboratories of democracy” that will serve as models for a larger shift, Gould-Werth said. 

Community housing grants and low-cost loans are one example Demos offers.

Here in Wisconsin, which long ago served as the laboratory for New Deal programs and progressive reforms that grew into lasting federal institutions, there is an opportunity to stand up and defend a better vision of society. 

It’s scary. And it’s challenging. But it’s a relief to see advocates at both the local and national level light a torch and keep us focused not just on the short-term crisis we are enduring, but how it fits into the long-term fight for a better world. 

A rock concert sized crowd packed the Overture Center in downtown Madison on Friday, July 17, eager to hear former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler talk about his new book, “This is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy.”

People are desperate for a little optimism and a sense of direction and Wikler offers both, served with a big smile and a hefty dose of energetic encouragement. To enthusiastic applause, he described, during an hour-long conversation on stage with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, how Wisconsin has played a starring role in the fight against authoritarianism and the destruction of democracy by a greedy, corrupt elite. He cast the long battle against former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in heroic terms, connecting it to progress during Gov. Tony Evers’ two terms in office, the end of Republican gerrymandering, the defeat of Elon Musk’s preferred candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the election of a new liberal Court majority and, prospectively, a Democratic sweep of state government this fall. 

The Walker fight was a warmup for the battle against Donald Trump and the unprecedented destruction of society he unleashed, Wikler said. Our state is an example to the nation, leading the way in a people-powered fight to restore a more humane, civilized society.

Listening to him you could forget for a moment how tenuous Wisconsin’s political situation is, and how rocky the Democratic primary has been right up to the eve of an election that will determine who faces Trump’s choice for governor, Tom Tiffany, in November.

But the lesson Wikler is offering is not that political victory is a sure thing. The “plan” he’s devised involves a lot of hard work and a difficult fight. The outcome is far from certain. But he makes a solid case that organizing is the best antidote to despair and has resulted in some impressive victories here in Wisconsin.

It took years after the massive, historic protests of 2011 to defeat Walker, who survived a recall effort and went on to be elected to a second term before Evers beat him by a narrow 1-point margin in 2018. 

Evers hasn’t unwound all the damage Walker and the Republican Legislature did to workers, state agencies and, most of all, public schools in Wisconsin, but in Wikler’s opinion he did a great job playing defense against an arrogant, destructive Republican majority in the Legislature and put the state on the right path. Now that we have fair maps, the days of Republican supermajority control are over and Wisconsin is on its way to restoring labor rights and a once-great school system, Wikler says. Some public schools advocates who feel deeply disappointed by the “education governor” might disagree. Schools all over Wisconsin are in desperate financial shape and the ever-expanding private school voucher program, which is draining their resources, coupled with austerity budgets passed by the Republicans and signed by Evers, have left Wisconsin public schools in desperate shape. Advocates are angry that Evers didn’t get more done.

But broadly, Wikler makes a good case for optimism. And that is not just helpful, it’s necessary. Reminding people of past triumphs and encouraging them to fight for something better is the only way out of our current fix.

We are living in dangerous times. We need leaders to help bring us together. 

In the governor’s race, we saw yet another top candidate drop out this week under a cloud of damaging allegations. 

Meanwhile Wisconsin is reeling from a horrible police shooting, and a powerful tornado just leveled several communities days after wildfire smoke blanketed parts of the state, a reminder of the existential threat of climate change.

In the face of these challenges, and under a violent authoritarian regime, it’s easy to see how things can spin out of control. People are angry, desperate, divided.

Wikler offers a better vision. We could pull together and recommit to a peaceful, generous and unifying vision. It’s helpful to reflect on how we’ve done that before.

In the primary, ultimately voters have to come together behind a single candidate or just accept losing a high-stakes race.

But the same idea applies to communities buffeted by natural disasters. Politicians who deny what’s happening are betraying all of us, regardless of political party. We need to prepare and protect ourselves from the undeniable bad weather that’s going to continue to come our way and we need to organize ourselves to stop destroying the planet before there’s nothing left to protect.

On a smaller scale, Madison leaders need to engage with the protesters on Willy Street, take meaningful steps to address the series of appalling police killings in that neighborhood, and figure out how to allow the life of the neighborhood to go on, as tempers fray over an indefinite encampment on the site where Ruiz was shot.

Division and fear are part of what plagues the Madison neighborhood where a police officer killed Ruiz by shooting him in the head after knocking him off a bicycle in a shocking, broad-daylight encounter. Well-meaning neighbors and local officials have blocked streets and canceled community events in part to show solidarity with the protesters and mourners who set up the encampment, but also out of fear that those protesters will disrupt more events after they shut down the Concert on the Square, the Dane County Farmers’ Market, and a city press conference following the shooting. The fear is a symptom of our mutual isolation of an anxious, segregated city that wants to be progressive but has a long way to go toward fostering real inclusion. It ought to be possible to accommodate political speech and healthy public dialogue about racism, violence and injustice right in the same common space where local businesses remain open and we hold inclusive community events. The shutdown and the silent standoff with no visible movement by either the city or the protesters is becoming dysfunctional and driving people further apart. 

In a way it’s not surprising that the wheels are coming off the wagon in local communities as we face more rage, despair and bleak news every day. We are living in a click-bait world. We need to get out of fight-or-flight mode and connect with each other, discover our common interests and organize to build the society we want. 

That’s Wikler’s vision. It beats the hell out of being divided and conquered.

Like two sides of a coin imprinted with the nation’s motto, “e pluribus unum” — out of many, one — America’s political factions are cast in opposition, but they are intrinsically bound together as parts of a larger whole.

From the beginning, the United States has aspired to build a more perfect union. When our founders convened the Constitutional Convention in 1787, they disagreed about the structure of government, the balance of power and the protection of individual versus collective rights. But when they debated — and they often did, with great conviction and intensity — they honed their arguments on what they thought was best for the entire country, guided by the shared vision of a new nation established on the ideals of individual freedom, equality and opportunity.

Today, that shared commitment to America’s founding creed is under strain.

Most Americans feel exhausted by politics, and a growing number are unhappy with the way the political system is working. Worse, this unhappiness is showing up in unhealthy ways, with low trust in government and each other — a sense that the other side is the problem. 

We are painfully aware that partisanship and distrust have grown. We see this too often, when people are reduced to disparaging labels, states are cast as simply red or blue, and the hostility in our politics produces no progress, leaving us all no better off, or worse than before. Our political parties appear deadlocked in a struggle for power, forgetting that they are inseparable sides of the nation’s democratic system, which depends not on who wins but on a shared commitment to the common good. Central to that commitment is a willingness to listen to opposing views, not simply to respond but to understand.

Disagreeing is one thing — it is rooted in our pluralist republic. But when we cannot find ways to work together, it becomes impossible to solve our problems. The founders understood this. They argued passionately, but they shared a deeper allegiance to the nation’s success and its posterity, and they were partners in creating and safeguarding a system that we all continue to rely on.

Whether we choose to engage in political warfare or civil debate is up to each of us. That’s as true in statehouses and city councils as it is at the family dinner table, in the community center, on the debate stage, or standing on opposite sides of a free speech zone. In each of these venues, we can choose to practice democracy by engaging in debate that is spirited, healthy and rooted in strong arguments rather than name calling — or worse, heeding the impulse to withdraw from political engagement altogether. 

There are glimmers of hope.

Here in Chicago, as part of the nation’s largest public policy gathering of state legislators and staff from all 50 states and U.S. territories, our organizations, the National Conference of State Legislatures and The Pew Charitable Trusts, are working together to build connections across the political spectrum and share policy ideas and best practices that strengthen legislatures and serve communities nationwide. This follows a series of events held around the country, including a February “America at 250 Forum,” to bring people with opposing views together to discuss issues that matter to everyone. All of the events demonstrate a serious commitment to strengthening our democratic muscles at this historic moment for the country.

Legislators from different parties sitting together to discuss not only their politics but also their human connection and shared belief in the country demonstrates that, despite the spotlight on our divisions, the time is ripe to unite for a common cause. We need to see more unity from our leaders — and be willing to try it ourselves.

Today, Americans must recognize that our political differences are not inevitably divisive, because our futures are fundamentally connected. Politics are difficult, yes, but they do not need to be ugly. Finding common ground is welcome, but at a minimum, Americans need to find the space to connect with one another and the courage to engage in healthy and substantive discussion. We can do that by building up state and local institutions where individuals get to know each other personally and by overcoming the silos and sides we’ve allowed to define us. A far better approach is to deal with people face-to-face and with respect, even when we profoundly disagree.

In a time when polarization and mistrust are treated as inevitable, we encourage all Americans to recommit to the principles and institutions that bind us together: a common belief in individual rights and equality, the rule of law, the legitimacy of representative democracy and our shared pursuit of national prosperity.

As America honors its 250th anniversary, it’s important to say, unequivocally and collectively, that we’re grateful to our country’s founders for starting this great experiment. We care about each other, and we want our fellow citizens to be successful. And we are proud to be part of this diverse, complicated and hopeful country.

Shared beliefs like these are central to the American experiment. E pluribus unum — out of many, one — if we so choose.

Tim Storey is the CEO of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Sue K. Urahn is the president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Small wonder nearly half of voters haven’t decided who to back in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s next governor. If you sent in your ballot early, you might have voted for the candidate who won the straw poll at the Democratic party convention only to flail her way through a dramatic public scandal, run out of money and quit. The latest Marquette Law School poll, released this week, still had her name as a candidate, but didn’t include the candidate who dropped out two weeks ago before getting back in the race with Gov. Tony Evers’ endorsement. 

Meanwhile, the frontrunner in poll after poll, as Baylor Spears reports, is Francesca Hong. 

Some Democrats are so sure Hong, as a democratic socialist, will lose in a general-election matchup with Republican Tom Tiffany they’re desperately hopping from horse to horse, searching for an alternative. One of those horses, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, stumbled badly and collapsed. Now we’ve got Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, whose late endorsement by Evers generated a backlash against the “Democratic establishment.”

Whoever’s running the “establishment’ might be overbearing, but they sure don’t seem to be adept at picking winners. Days after his reentry, Crowley is struggling with negative stories about crude posts to an old Twitter account.

The problem Democrats in Wisconsin face is less about party bosses behind the scenes calling the shots than it is lack of any organization. A little leadership from Evers earlier in the process might have staved off disaster.

At a minimum, he could have made up his mind to back Crowley before Crowley dropped out. He could have had painful but necessary conversations with Joel Brennan, Sara Rodriguez and Missy Hughes, the other members of his administration who campaigned at least partly on their association with him. “Look, I see a bright future for you in politics, but I’ve decided to go with Crowley in this race,” he might have said. Then Crowley (or whoever Evers decided to support) could have built some strength over the course of the campaign.

Instead, we have the current mess.

Wisconsin’s messy primary is also a symptom of Democrats’ general disarray. Unable to come up with a plan to effectively counter the frightening power of a violent, kleptocratic regime in Washington, they are waffling between trying not to alienate swing voters by sounding too radical versus tapping into the energy and outrage of the anti-Trump electorate.

Looking over their shoulders at the Republicans, several Democratic campaigns point to the millions of dollars in TV ads the Republican Governors Association bought featuring light criticism of Hong. The ads appear to be a transparent effort to boost Hong in the primary, since Republicans think they can beat her in the general election. So what? Hong appears to be winning the primary anyway, with or without the RGA boost, through her straight talk, superb social media strategy, grassroots ground game and the enthusiasm she’s generating, especially from young voters who don’t trust normal politicians and institutional Democratic party politics. 

That doesn’t mean she’s the best candidate to beat Tiffany. But instead of buying into the Republican political analysis, or as one Democrat did, running an ominous attack ad trumpeting that Hong is a “proud socialist!” (the horror!), Democrats should be trying to steal a page from Hong. That ugly ad, featuring photos of the three candidates of color, labeling them all unelectable, and then toggling to Joel Brennan, the only white guy in the race, is a good example of what Democratic primary voters want to reject.

It’s no surprise Hong is catching fire. People like candidates who say what they mean and aren’t afraid to be themselves, as opposed to candidates who seem to be trying to tell them what they want to hear or pretending to be just like them. They want to see courage and conviction in the face of bullying and corruption. They do not particularly like seeing Democrats tearing each other apart — especially not by drawing on the kinds of smug, bigoted attacks made by the other side. 

Imagine a Democratic party that includes democratic socialists and more middle-of-the-road candidates, promoting an uplifting message about protecting a decent society, functional government and human rights. 

That’s the vision people are hungry for. Wisconsin Democrats should not be afraid to serve it up. 

In a recent guest column, I argued that Wisconsin’s clean energy future is about affordability, jobs, manufacturing and economic competitiveness.

The next question is equally important:

How should we build that future?

Not one regulatory docket at a time.

Wisconsin stands at one of the most consequential energy crossroads in its history. Artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and electrification are driving electricity demand faster than anyone anticipated. The Public Service Commission’s draft Strategic Energy Assessment projects peak demand could increase by more than 40 percent by 2032, with more than 70 percent of that growth tied to just three proposed hyperscale data centers.

Those investments present tremendous economic opportunities. They also require smarter planning.

Today, the PSC is evaluating the Foundry Ridge and Red Oak Ridge methane gas plants alongside transmission projects, data center tariffs, utility investments, and other major infrastructure. Each proceeding examines a single project. None asks the broader question:

Taken together, are these investments the lowest-cost, lowest-risk path to Wisconsin’s energy future?

Without comprehensive resource planning, regulators have little opportunity to compare alternatives before committing customers to decades of infrastructure costs.

Affordable electricity is economic development.

The decisions made today will determine what Wisconsin families, businesses, manufacturers, and farmers pay for electricity for decades. They will also affect water resources, public health, and our state’s long-term competitiveness.

This is not an argument against growth. Wisconsin will continue to attract investment in advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and data centers. The question is not whether growth occurs, but whether it is planned responsibly so that large energy users pay the costs they create rather than shifting risks onto everyone else.

Planning should begin by comparing complete portfolios of resources instead of evaluating projects in isolation.

Before approving new methane gas plants, regulators should determine whether expanded battery storage, demand response, distributed energy resources, energy efficiency, and additional wind and solar generation can provide the same reliability at lower long-term cost and lower financial risk.

The cleanest megawatt is often the one that never has to be generated.

Demand response is infrastructure. Every megawatt shifted away from peak demand reduces pressure on the grid and can delay or eliminate the need for costly new power plants. Large customers, including data centers, have enormous opportunities to shift demand through operational flexibility and advanced controls.

Battery storage also deserves greater attention. Increasingly, it competes directly with natural gas by providing reliability during periods of peak demand while avoiding decades of fuel costs and emissions.

Water belongs in this conversation as well.

Both data centers and methane gas plants can require substantial water for cooling. The proposed Red Oak Ridge facility alone could consume hundreds of thousands of gallons each day. In rural Wisconsin, where farms, private wells, trout streams, wetlands, and local economies depend on reliable water supplies, those impacts deserve careful scrutiny before permits are approved.

Natural gas will likely remain part of Wisconsin’s energy mix during the transition. But every new gas plant also commits customers to decades of fuel-price risk driven by commodity markets, pipeline constraints, extreme weather, LNG exports, and geopolitical uncertainty. Clean energy resources, by contrast, have no fuel costs and are often the lowest-cost, fastest-to-deploy options available.

Reliability and clean energy are not competing goals.

Modern planning can deliver both.

Wisconsin should also modernize its regulatory framework by evaluating the cumulative impacts of related infrastructure investments. Generation, transmission, data centers, water use, and utility planning are interconnected. They should be planned together, not approved one docket at a time.

Wisconsin has everything it needs to lead: world-class manufacturers, innovative businesses, skilled workers, abundant renewable resources, productive farmland, and a clean energy economy that already employs more than 75,000 people.

Wisconsin does not have an electricity shortage.

It has a planning challenge.

Planning reduces costs. It improves reliability. It protects water resources. It strengthens economic competitiveness.

Most importantly, it allows Wisconsin to build an energy system designed for 2050, rather than one modeled in 1990.

Instead of approving Wisconsin’s energy future one docket at a time, let’s build it through one comprehensive plan.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has made its position clear. The agency refuses to require its agents to follow Milwaukee’s law banning masks. Since it is unable to come to this common sense conclusion itself, the remedy is for Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke to sue. This is how we keep secret police at bay.

Goyke has taken the first step. In a July 17 letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, he defends the ICE out MKE ordinance, stating that masked law enforcement “increases the risk of dangerous interactions with the public, undermines accountability and police community relations, and stokes confusions, fear, and intimidation.”

Milwaukee prohibits ICE agents from wearing masks. The Department of Homeland Security staunchly refuses to follow this sensible rule despite a Milwaukee Police Department standard operating procedure that models this basement level of transparency. We need to know what ICE is doing. We need to know who you are. We need to see your faces.

DHS claims that it won’t follow Milwaukee’s ordinance because of the Supremacy Clause. Their claim asserts that municipalities cannot create rules that prevent employees from performing federal duties and, in most cases, the Supremacy Clause makes sense.

We wouldn’t want a city ordinance to keep the U.S. Census Bureau from collecting population data. We wouldn’t want municipalities to prevent the National Weather Service from studying tornados. At the same time, identifiable and transparent federal law enforcement is not at odds with the rule of law. 

Clarity and accountability is at the heart of our Fifth Amendment’s promise of due process. The Supremacy Clause does not supersede our Constitution’s protections. The clause itself is a component of our Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2) and no article or clause may violate the Bill of Rights. 

The Mask-Free MKE ordinance took time to create. Over and over again, our church members returned to the Common Council’s galley seats as the rule was amended, re-written and reviewed by our city attorney, Evan Goyke. Goyke’s job is to make sure that the proposed ordinance is constitutional and enforceable. Goyke’s verdict is that the people of Milwaukee can prohibit masked law enforcement.

Consider the current situation of Giovanni Sosa, a 20-year old with no criminal record. Gio came to the United States when he was 4 years old. Recently, he was snatched by masked ICE agents, leaving his wife Litzy without her husband and his 2 year old daughter without her father.

Gio has worked construction jobs since he was 14 and has never run afoul of law enforcement. Last week, while heading to the barber, his car was surrounded and blocked. His window was smashed and he was handcuffed and dragged to  detention. As he was shoved into a government car, Gio had the presence of mind to yell out his mother’s phone number. Had he not done so, he simply would not have returned home from the errands he was running. Who took him? Where was he? Was his detention legal? Was the use of force necessary?

Our Constitution protects us from having to ask these questions. The Fifth Amendment states that “no person” shall be deprived of life or liberty without protections against arbitrary government actions. Surely, masks cross this line.

DHS claims that it must allow its employees to wear masks for their safety. Lauren Bis, a DHS spokesperson, states, “Sanctuary politicians attempting to ban our federal law enforcement from wearing masks is … a flagrant attempt to endanger our officers.” 

The Trump administration’s immigration enforcers fear that without masks, their employees’ actions would instigate such a strong public outcry that they would be forced to hold officers accountable. They don’t want the public to identify officers responsible for using excessive force. How can DHS officials be opposed to basic transparency before the public it serves?

This is where City Attorney Evan Goyke can help. DHS has convinced itself that the Supremacy Clause supersedes the Constitution. Its insistence that secrecy and obfuscation is a means to serve the people is a slippery rationalization that leads to a secret police force. City Attorney Goyke should sue ICE and require the agency to comply with the law. It is for the good of the residents of Milwaukee, for ICE’s own agents, for MPD officers and for our democratic heritage. This moment of trial will turn our commitment to defend our rights into steel. Our’s is a nation without a secret police. Masks cross a line. At this pivotal hour, Milwaukee must lead.

Last week, for a brief, beautiful span of days, all three of our young-adult daughters were immersed in nature, reveling in the delicious freedom of summertime. One, a camp counselor, was leading a group on a two-week trek through Yellowstone National Park. She sent us photos of the mountains, campfires, sweaty, grinning campers, a herd of bison they encountered by the side of the road. The other two sisters were on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. They paddled from lake to lake, fell asleep to the sound of loons, woke up early to plunge in the crystal clear water.

Just as all three girls were ending their trips, more than a dozen wildfires swept through the Superior National Forest, prompting the Forest Service to close all entry points to the Boundary Waters. Some visitors were stranded. Eight Forest Service rangers paddled in to rescue people throughout the 150-mile stretch of wilderness on the U.S.-Canadian border. Our daughter who led the trip to Yellowstone returned to her base camp in Grand Marais, Minnesota, to learn that further trips have been canceled. A group of campers who were stuck in the Boundary Waters had to be rescued by helicopter. The smoke was chokingly thick. “It feels like the apocalypse,” she texted.

In Madison we woke up Thursday morning to the stinging haze of wildfire smoke blanketing the city, drifting down on us from the same forest fires.

The abrupt end of summer’s idyll is a heartache, not just for the immediate shock, but for what it means — a world on fire, a feeling of dread of the losses to come. There is no escape from the rapidly accelerating disasters caused by climate change. All of us are touched by it in our interconnected world. Yet somehow, we can’t get our act together to respond. As a country, we seem determined to kid ourselves about what we are seeing with our own eyes. Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor, has called warnings about extreme weather triggered by climate change “doomsaying, sky-is-falling rhetoric.”

Last summer, Tiffany and fellow Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, along with three of their Republican colleagues from Minnesota wrote a letter to the Canadian embassy to complain that wildfire smoke was ruining summer across the Midwest.

“In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things,” Tiffany and his colleagues wrote, demanding to know what the Canadians planned to do about it. Tens of thousands of Canadians were being displaced by raging fires at the time. “With all the technology that we have at our disposal, both in preventing and fighting wildfires, this worrisome trend can be reversed if proper action is taken,” Tiffany and his colleagues wrote.

Wildfires are getting worse because of climate change. The problem is particularly acute for Canada, where the Arctic region is rapidly warming and hotter, drier summers are turning forest land into a tinderbox, where a stray lightning strike can start a conflagration. The same thing is happening in the Superior National Forest this summer, where the fires are caused by lightning and the hot, dry conditions that are not letting up.

Instead of working to mitigate the threat, the Trump administration has dismantled the arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that researches wildfires and other climate-related threats, as well as the Forest Service’s firefighting teams. In 2025, the Forest Service lost nearly 6,000 employees. Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget aims to cut the Forest Service budget by 75%. 

Tiffany’s scolding letter to Canada aside, the policies he has supported under Trump have directly increased fire hazards. To the eight rangers now searching the Boundary Waters for people trapped by the fires, the Forest Service office in Minnesota is hoping to add back some of the staff they’ve lost to Trump’s ill-advised reorganization and cuts. 

“We are actively trying through our existing staff to reach out to former staff that have retired or moved to another position off-forest that still have firefighting skills and credentials,” Forest Service spokesperson Christine Kolinski told the Minnesota Star Tribune. 

This summer’s fires are more than just a wake-up call. They are a five-alarm emergency alert. We are losing so much so fast. We all have a stake in facing it and acting now. It does no good to pretend the disaster isn’t happening or to blame our neighbors, as if they could fix things for us by getting out their rakes. The least we can demand of our political leaders is that they stop dismantling the only tools we have to fight the incineration of our world. We owe that much to every kid who looks forward to every future summer.

I’m no political consultant, but I don’t think I would make “fraud” the theme of the Trump administration’s midterm election campaign push. 

At least not while the reflecting pool disaster remains in the news, the White House is doubling down on sticking with its no-bid contract for the company that oversaw the algae-infested, peeling pool mess, and President Donald Trump is making headlines for raking in $2.2 billion since he came back into office, including $1.4 billion from the Trump family’s cryptocurrency scheme.

“We have got to have a governor who takes fraud as seriously as the President of the United States,” Vice President JD Vance declared Wednesday in Milwaukee during a speech apparently intended to boost Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany.

Vance’s remarks, delivered ahead of a $10,000-per-couple fundraiser ($35,000 if you wanted a photo with the VP), could be read in different ways. 

One way is in the context of the poster-sized photo Vance displayed of a Black woman “with the smug look and a Louis Vuitton bag,” as Vance put it —  one of the people who owned prenatal care coordination businesses that a 2022 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found had defrauded Medicaid, costing the state more than $15.5 million among them between 2019 and 2022. 

Vance, although he was elaborately praised by other Republicans at the Wednesday event in Milwaukee for leading the Trump administration’s crackdown on healthcare fraud, had nothing to do with uncovering the prenatal care scandal in Milwaukee. That was the dogged work of the Journal Sentinel reporters whose efforts led the state Department of Justice to investigate, cut off Medicaid to the fraudulent businesses and pursue criminal charges — all of that years before Vance took office. But Vance saw an opportunity in Milwaukee to connect various Trump administration claims about fraud to a picture of someone Ronald Reagan would have called a “welfare queen.” In his speech, Vance moved directly from that photo to the Trump administration’s efforts to “kick illegal aliens out of our country.” 

Black people, immigrants and people who receive food assistance and Medicaid are the “fraudsters,” according to Vance and Republican Reps. Tiffany, Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil, who joined Vance on stage in Milwaukee. They denounced Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for not sharing sensitive personal data on SNAP recipients with the Trump administration. Vance called Evers’ refusal “borderline criminal.” 

“Why won’t Tony Evers turn over the SNAP rolls? ‘Cause he’s cooked the books!” Van Orden hollered.

Steil connected claims about fraud in SNAP and Medicaid to discredited allegations of voter fraud, calling the federal takeover of elections Trump has been trying to force on Congress as “total common sense.” 

When a reporter asked Vance about Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s request to talk to him about the harassment of election workers by FBI agents deployed to Milwaukee to “investigate” nonexistent voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, Vance implied that Johnson is trying to cover up the fraud. 

All of this hype about fraud and repeated assertions by the GOP chorus in Milwaukee that the Trump administration had saved the taxpayers of Wisconsin billions of dollars by rooting it out, is meant to cover up a much, much bigger problem.

Medicaid cuts pushed by the Trump administration and supported by Tiffany, Van Orden and Steil, coupled with the same Republicans’ refusal to renew Affordable Care Act tax credits, have already pushed about 22,000 Wisconsinites off their health insurance. A new KFF report shows that insurers on the ACA marketplace are planning another double-digit increase in rates this year, driven by inflation and the loss of the tax credits, which will cause even more people to lose coverage. Altogether, more than 258,000 Wisconsinites will lose health coverage by 2034  because of Trump administration policy changes, according to an analysis by the Joint Economic Committee Democrats using data from the Congressional Budget Office. 

While Van Orden was yelling from the stage in Milwaukee about people who are ineligible for SNAP allegedly signing up for the program and “literally taking the food out of the mouths of hungry babies,” Wisconsinites know that he voted for SNAP cuts and changes to eligibility rules that led to 15,500 Wisconsinites losing food assistance. 

Instead of adequately funding healthcare, food and a decent society, Republicans pushed through trillions of dollars in tax giveaways to corporations and the very rich, tens of billions of dollars for a domestic paramilitary organization that is conducting violent arrests of people who pose no public safety risk, and hundreds of millions of dollars for an obscene White House ballroom and no-bid contracts for Trump’s vanity projects on the national mall. That is the real fraud.

Republicans are screaming about “waste, fraud and abuse” to try to distract voters from all of this destruction and graft. But their “fraud” talk just reminds people of the stunning theft of public resources they’ve enabled and are now trying to cover up with flimsy, slanderous lies.