U.S. Reps. Tom Tiffany and Derrick Van Orden were hyped on Friday afternoon, yelling to the crowd at a Chippewa Falls “farm roundtable” about how great  President Donald Trump is for American farmers and how thrilling it was to have him here in Wisconsin. Was that flop sweat on their glistening foreheads? 

Trump’s approval rating hit a new low of 38% according to a Marquette poll released two days before his rural Wisconsin visit, with most respondents saying Democrats do a better job handling the economy. In rural Wisconsin, the Northern Ag Network reports, high fuel and fertilizer prices have been weighing heavily on farmers ever since Trump began his protracted military entanglement in Iran, while farm income is down and projected to drop further this year.

Van Orden, who is trying to hold onto his 3rd Congressional District seat and Tiffany, who wants to be Wisconsin’s next governor, have been faithful to Trump, voting for his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” with its historic cuts to Medicaid and food assistance that will fall especially hard on rural areas. The five-year, $50 billion rural healthcare fund added to the bill in the U.S. Senate — which Van Orden touted at the Chippewa Falls event — will not come close to making up for the OBBA’s $137 billion in permanent Medicaid cuts to rural areas, according to KFF health policy research. Those cuts will lead to the closure of rural hospitals and, combined with the rollback of the Affordable Care Act, will leave an estimated 30,000 Wisconsinites without healthcare. 

Trump’s visit to Wisconsin was a kind of Hail Mary. “Who’s excited that Donald J. Trump is here?” Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins shouted hoarsely. “Can I get an amen?” 

It was not an intellectual appeal. As Henry Redman reports, the so-called roundtable mostly consisted of a meandering speech by Trump, who insulted Democrats, mocked former President Joe Biden and showed pictures of his revamp of the Washington, D.C. reflecting pool. Instead of policy, the event offered vibes. But vibes can only do so much to overcome the cold, hard economic reality confronting rural voters.

Tiffany and Van Orden, who helped inflict Trump’s disastrous policies on rural Wisconsinites, are hoping Trump’s star power will propel them to victory. 

Wisconsin GOP Chair Brian Schimming took a stab at justifying the cognitive dissonance that will require of Republican voters, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Trump is forcing them to go through pain now so that he can fix long-term structural problems and bring them future prosperity. 

It was a pretty good try. Wisconsin farmers have demonstrated tremendous resilience in the face of brutal economic cycles. Those who are still around have persevered as more than half of the state’s dairy farms disappeared over the last two decades, through both Democratic and Republican administrations. Trump has denounced the global trade deals embraced by both political parties and promised to stop global trade from harming U.S. workers and farmers. For people who lived through massive consolidation, vertical integration and the commodification of farm products that sent prices plummeting, major structural change, even if it involves some short-term pain, sounds good. But how much longer can those early promises stay fresh? And how much faith do voters have that Trump really has a long-term plan? 

In Chippewa Falls, Trump spent a lot of time bragging about better than expected recent jobs numbers and ignoring underlying weaknesses in the economy that are a danger sign. He complained that the stock market didn’t share his rosy outlook. And he crowed about stopping illegal immigration, telling Wisconsin farmers who rely heavily on immigrant labor that he has stopped “people from mental institutions” and “murderers” from coming across the border. Wisconsin farmers are the wrong crowd for that red meat.

The most significant thing Trump said, before rushing through the brief “roundtable” section of the program, leaving just enough time for the assembled Republican politicians, two athletes, a beer company executive and one farmer to shower him with praise, was a promise of a massive farm subsidy. “I got $28 billion for the farmers in the first term,” he said, referring to the Market Facilitation Program that paid out big checks to farmers just before the 2020 election, to offset the effects of tariffs and trade wars. Once again, he said, he’s  “working on something” to help farmers, “because what happened to you was artificial.” 

Van Orden and Tiffany are hoping that will be enough to stave off reality a little bit longer.

“It really blew up our world,” public schools advocate Heather DuBois Bourenane says of the failed school funding and tax-cut deal that Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Tony Evers trumpeted as a “blockbuster” before it fizzled in the state Senate, ending in finger-pointing and recriminations. 

“It was the first time the carrot had been dangled so close to public schools,” DuBois Bourenane says, describing the “moment of utter euphoria” when her group, the Wisconsin Public Education Network, made up of parents, teachers and school officials from every corner of Wisconsin, first heard about the deal. “It seemed like what we’d been fighting so hard for for so long was finally about to happen.”

But then DuBois Bourenane and the other members of her organization got the details.

The funding for special education was not locked in at 50% in the second year of the plan as they’d hoped. Instead of a “sum-sufficient” or guaranteed allocation to cover a set percentage of costs, the 50% was an estimate. If costs go up, that percentage would go down. As for the $300 million increase in general aid to schools, as a Legislative Fiscal Bureau analysis explains: “the additional aid would provide property tax relief but not additional resources for school districts.”

Tax cuts made up the lion’s share of the deal — about 80% of the total $1.8 billion. Those included property tax cuts, interest earnings reductions, no tax on tips and overtime and, biggest of all, an $870 million income tax rebate that would have put $300 checks in the mail to people who earned enough money to qualify. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected that the deal would leave the state with a nearly $3 billion deficit. 

Most of that deficit would be caused not by school spending, but by what Dubois Bourenane describes as a wasteful tax giveaway. “What the heck?” she says. “You’re wasting the surplus while pretending to fix the thing [school funding] you broke the worst!”

School funding in Wisconsin was broken by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s historic budget cuts. The damage has compounded each year for more than a decade and a half as school budgets haven’t kept pace with inflation. In such dire circumstances there were, DuBois Bourenane acknowledges, public school advocates who felt anything was better than nothing. But the two-year stopgap deal Evers and Republican leaders reached did not come close to fixing the long-term problem. 

On the bright side, says Dubois Bourenane, at least politicians in both parties have stopped pretending the last several budgets actually funded schools sufficiently. The need to address the funding crisis in Wisconsin public schools has become a bipartisan talking point. Even Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany (who, as a legislator, voted for former Walker’s massive cut to schools) lists it as a top priority.

A recent Marquette poll showed that 80% of Wisconsinites who were contacted about the rushed deal right after it failed, with little time for discussion or analysis, and asked if they would like to receive $300 in the mail from the state, said yes. But voters deserve a full, public discussion of their options, and whether tax rebates worth $278 to most individual Wisconsin tax filers and $574 to most married joint filers, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, are worth putting the state in a $3 billion hole with no long-term fix for the school funding crisis. 

DuBois-Bourenane wishes the Legislature would take up a bill introduced in March that would guarantee a 60% special ed reimbursement from the state, easing the burden on local property taxpayers, who have been filling the hole by passing local referendum requests at record rates, raising their own taxes as the state reneges on its obligation to fund schools. 

But couldn’t committing the state to once again cover the real costs of public education put us in a deficit? Maybe, says DuBois Bournenane. “We’d have to cut money in other ways. But we would stop balancing the budget on the backs of children” — instead of acting as though the state can always avoid paying its biggest bill.

“There’s not really a surplus here,” she adds. “There’s just a pool of money that used to be used to fund public schools that now is not used at all.”

That’s the pool of money Walker “saved” by cutting funding for schools, and Evers and Republican leaders wanted to dole out over the next two years — 80% of it in the form of tax cuts and 20% to schools. 

She finds Evers’ public expressions of frustration with Democrats for not supporting his deal mystifying. “It seems to me it’s a predictable problem he could have solved in advance by consulting with his colleagues on the deal before moving forward.”

But most of all, for public schools, kids and communities across Wisconsin, the whole thing was “incredibly cruel,” she says.

“If we were being led by adults they’d laugh it off and get back to the table and get a new deal,” she says. Instead, the long-term problems threatening public education in Wisconsin continue, with no real fix in sight. 

“I know it doesn’t look like it from a distance, but it’s not about the money,” DuBois Bourenane says. “It’s about are the kids OK? Can we meet their needs?”

The answer, coming from districts that are facing steep cuts, growing class sizes, fewer extra curricular activities and school consolidations and closures, is no. The kids are not OK.

Compounding the damage is a looming crisis that was not part of the budget deal discussion at all. In 2026 all caps come off Wisconsin’s school voucher program. An unlimited number of families will be able to send their kids to private schools at taxpayer expense, and the funding for that program, under a law signed by Walker and supported by Tiffany, comes off the top of state funds. As school voucher programs have steadily grown in Wisconsin, most new students enrolled come from families that already had their kids in private school. The potential explosion in new families joining that group will put the current school funding crisis in a long shadow.

Still, DuBois Bourenane is optimistic Wisconsin can fix the problem. Her group is part of a lawsuit charging the state with failing its obligation to provide a “free, adequate public education” to all Wisconsin children. 

She believes the problem could be solved right now, and that “it’s irresponsible to walk away from the table” after the budget deal disaster. And that the pride and anger of the politicians who don’t want to keep trying is hurting Wisconsin kids.

But she also sees a huge opportunity for voters to put pressure on the politicians running for office this fall to change the attitude in the statehouse and “elect people with more energy to do things for our communities.”

“I don’t think all is lost. We will fix it in the long run. But we could fix it now,” she says. “And we’re choosing not to.”

America’s story cannot be told honestly without recognizing the extraordinary contributions of Muslims. Long before today’s political noise, fearmongering and divisive rhetoric, Muslims were helping build this nation with their labor, intellect, sacrifice, entrepreneurship, patriotism,and unwavering belief in the American dream. From medicine to business, from the military to science, from civil rights to community service, Muslim Americans have strengthened the soul and foundation of this country for generations.

At a time when some attempt to portray Muslims as outsiders or threats, Americans must remember a simple truth: Muslims are no strangers to America. They are part of America’s heartbeat. They did not come to weaken this nation; they helped build it.

Historians estimate that a significant number of enslaved Africans brought to America were Muslims. Though stripped of their freedom, language, names and identity, they carried with them traditions of scholarship, discipline, faith and resilience. Even under unimaginable cruelty, their labor helped build the economic foundations of early America. Their sacrifice became part of the nation’s rise.

Generation after generation, Muslim immigrants and Muslim Americans continued building America brick by brick. They opened grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, factories, trucking companies, hotels and small businesses in neighborhoods many others had abandoned. They worked double shifts, sacrificed comfort and poured every dollar into educating their children and creating opportunities for future generations. Their journey reflects the very essence of the American dream: hard work, sacrifice, faith and hope.

Today, Muslims contribute enormously to America’s economy, innovation and global leadership. Thousands of Muslim physicians serve communities across the nation, including rural and underserved areas facing severe healthcare shortages. Muslim scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and researchers are helping drive technological breakthroughs, medical discoveries and economic growth. Muslim-owned businesses employ countless Americans and contribute billions to local economies every year.

One of the most powerful examples is Muhammad Ali. He was not only one of the greatest athletes in history, but also one of the bravest moral voices America has ever produced. Ali stood firmly for his beliefs even when it cost him his heavyweight title, public support and years of his career. History eventually vindicated his courage, and he became one of the most admired Americans of all time. 

Muslim Americans have also excelled in public service as members of Congress, judges, educators, police officers, military leaders and civic activists dedicated to strengthening democracy and improving their communities. Thousands have proudly worn the uniform of the United States military, fighting and sacrificing alongside fellow Americans to defend freedom and national security. Their patriotism is unquestionable and deserves respect, not suspicion.

In business and technology, immigrants continue to fuel American greatness. America has always advanced because dreamers from every corner of the world came here willing to work, innovate and take risks. Muslim entrepreneurs embody that same spirit every day , creating companies, generating jobs, investing in struggling neighborhoods and helping America remain globally competitive.

After the tragedy of September 11, many Muslims faced discrimination, hatred and painful suspicion. Mosques were vandalized. Families lived in fear. Innocent Americans were treated as if they had to constantly prove their loyalty. Yet instead of turning away from America, Muslim communities leaned even further into service, compassion and civic engagement. They organized interfaith initiatives, fed the homeless, supported charities, helped disaster victims and worked tirelessly to build bridges between communities. They answered hatred not with hatred, but with humanity.

One remarkable example is the story of Richard “Mac” McKinney, a former Marine and Army veteran who once planned to bomb a mosque before engaging with the Muslim community and discovering the truth about Islam. Instead, he became president of that very mosque. His transformation was documented in the Academy Award-nominated film Stranger at the Gate. Another powerful example is Dr. Abdul-Munim Sombat Jitmound, who publicly forgave the man who murdered his son, embracing him in court and declaring that Islam teaches forgiveness and mercy. Former anti-Muslim extremist and KKK leader Chris Buckley also abandoned hatred after forming a friendship with Kurdish refugee Dr. Heval Kelli, eventually dedicating himself to peace and understanding. These stories remind us that human connection and engagement are much stronger than fear mostly created by politicians and social media.

Here in Wisconsin, I founded We Are Many – United Against Hate, a non-profit, non-partisan movement dedicated to building unity in our classrooms and communities by empowering young people and sharing the real-life stories of former hate group members who chose compassion over division.

What began as a local effort has grown into a powerful grassroots movement. Inspired by its impact, high school students across Wisconsin have launched chapters of the movement in their own communities. One of the most extraordinary examples of healing came after the tragic attack on the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, when the founder of a former hate group and the son of the temple president who was killed became close family friends united in promoting peace. Today, both serve on the board of our movement and courageously share their remarkable story with students and communities across the country.

Since its founding in 2016, our movement has become a national voice for unity, understanding, and hope, earning recognition from Joe Biden at the White House. Through this work, I have witnessed the people of Milwaukee and communities across Wisconsin come together across faiths, races, and cultures to welcome immigrants, reject hate, and build a stronger and more compassionate future for all.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Muslim doctors, nurses, healthcare workers and volunteers stood courageously on the front lines risking their lives to save others. Mosques and Muslim charities distributed food, medical supplies and financial assistance to struggling families regardless of religion, race or background. That is the true spirit of America,  neighbors helping neighbors.

America has always been strongest when it embraces diversity rather than fearing it. The greatness of this nation does not come from one race, one religion or one culture. It comes from people of different backgrounds united by shared values: freedom, opportunity, hard work, sacrifice, compassion, and human dignity.

Muslims are woven into that American fabric. They are teachers, veterans, scientists, truck drivers, entrepreneurs, engineers, police officers, nurses, students and public servants. They are raising families, paying taxes, healing the sick, creating jobs, serving communities and strengthening America every single day.

The attempt to marginalize Muslims or portray them as less American betrays the very ideals upon which this nation was built.

Muslims are not a burden on America. Muslims are part of America’s strength. They have helped make this nation more compassionate, more innovative, more resilient and more prosperous.

Muslims are not on the sidelines of the American story.  They are part of the lifeblood that keeps America strong. God Bless the Muslims and God Bless the United States of America. 

The announcement that Cargill is closing its Menomonee Valley plant and laying off 221 packinghouse workers is just the latest blow to Milwaukee’s industrial working class. It marks the end of more than 150 years of meatpacking in the Menomonee Valley. It is a cautionary tale illustrating how huge, highly concentrated industries dominate the United States economy to the detriment of workers, family farmers and consumers. 

Meatpacking was one of Milwaukee’s leading industries through much of the 19th  and 20th centuries. The industry and city grew together as firms slaughtered, processed and packaged livestock — particularly hogs and cattle — purchased from local farmers and distributed  products for regional, national and international markets. Because the work was hard, dangerous, cold and dirty, it provided an entry into the working class for Milwaukee’s newest residents — immigrants from Germany, southern and eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th Century, then from the Jim Crow South, Mexico and more recently even Myanmar and the Middle East

Some of Milwaukee’s most iconic names are associated with meatpacking. John Plankinton, for example, opened a butcher shop in 1844 on what is now West Wisconsin Avenue, and John and Frederick Layton opened Layton and Son a short time later on what is today North Water Street. In 1852 the Laytons partnered with another firm to establish a larger meatpacking operation in the Menomonee Valley. As the marsh was filled in and canal and rail networks developed, the valley’s large, flat areas emerged as an ideal location for the city’s fledgling meatpacking district that lasted until Cargill announced  it was closing its last remaining Milwaukee plant. 

The loss of the plant’s 221 jobs was not preordained or a consequence  of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Rather it was the direct result of anti-union corporate policies and the federal government’s failure to pursue existing anti-monopoly regulations that once protected regional meatpacking firms, their unionized employees and the ranchers and farmers who produced the cattle.

The fight against monopolies

The Sherman Antitrust Act, the nation’s first law to prohibit monopolistic business practices, was actually passed following a congressional investigation of price fixing in meatpacking. Five companies — Armour, Swift, Morris, Wilson and Cudahy, together known as the Beef Trust — controlled 55% of the market at the beginning of the 20th century. For decades, the federal government tried to break up the Beef Trust without success. But after an FTC inquiry concluded that these companies had conspired to raise prices and shared livestock information to lowball ranchers for their cattle, the Beef Trust members were forced to sign a consent decree in 1920.  

The agreement required them to sell off their stockyards, retail meat stores, railway interests and livestock journals. A year later Congress created the Packers and Stockyards Administration (PASA) to prevent price fixing and monopolistic behavior. These changes established federal oversight over the industry and helped reinvigorate packinghouse workers’ efforts to unionize, which culminated in the 1930 industrial union drives. In the decade after World War II, almost 90% of the industry was unionized. Pattern bargaining established master agreements that standardized wages, benefits and working conditions at the major packing companies. Smaller firms signed contracts that matched those at the larger firms. Packinghouse workers’ wages rose to 20% above average manufacturing wages.

For the next 50 years the large meatpackers competed with hundreds of small regional firms like those in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley. As recently as 1970 the nation’s four largest  meatpackers slaughtered only 21% of the nation’s cattle. 

But beginning in the 1960s packinghouse workers and their unions came under attack when Iowa Beef Processors was organized as a nonunion operation in the countryside of Iowa and Nebraska, far from the unionized urban meatpacking centers.  Currier Holman, one of its founders, was blunt, declaring, “Business, as we pursue it here at IBP, is very much like waging war.” Iowa Beef used its cost advantage to undermine the unionized packing plants. “The price cut should be deep enough to force some of our competitors . . . out of business,” declared IBP vice president Perry Haines in the early 1970s, according to an internal memo disclosed years later in court records.   

And Iowa Beef was successful. Profits at the country’s largest meatpacking firms  soared as labor costs declined and labor productivity increased.  In the late 1970s and early  ‘80s, more than a thousand packing plants closed. Between 1963 and 1984, the number of packinghouse workers in urban areas fell by more than 50,000; workers in rural plants went  from 25% of the national workforce to 50%.  Packinghouse workers’ wages were decimated. By the 1990s, packinghouse workers’ wages were 20% less than the average manufacturing wage. Today, meatpacking workers are among the lowest paid and most exploited manufacturing workers. 

A union defeat sets the stage for monopoly

In 1975, Milwaukee was the scene of a heroic fight that packinghouse workers and their union waged against the draconian cuts in compensation and to protect their jobs.  It began with a contract proposal from the Milwaukee Independent Meatpackers Association, representing eight companies in the city, that slashed wages and benefits. Local 248 of the Meat and Allied Foodworkers Union went on strike. 

The day the strike began, the eight employers began hiring replacement workers, some recruited from as far away as Nebraska and Texas. It was the first attempt by Milwaukee employers to bust a union since World War II. The Menomonee Valley filled with angry picketers — Black, Latino and white, rallying together to protect their jobs. But after 15 months, the employers association had their victory and decertified the union, while hundreds of hard-working union men lost their jobs. Full-time permanent employees were replaced by low-wage workers, frequently hired through temp agencies. The strike legitimized replacement workers, setting off  waves of attacks on Milwaukee’s working class and their unions,  including at Patrick Cudahy 10 years later, and contributed to the economic collapse of Milwaukee’s Black community.   

As the strike dragged on, Bernie Peck, the owner of Peck Packing, the largest of the firms in the employers’ association, bought out smaller firms in the group. He eventually sold the company to Sara Lee Meat Group in 1985. Sara Lee Meat Group was sold to Emmpak, which was eventually sold to Cargill Inc. — today one of four meatpacking firms that control the U.S. market.  Cargill shuttered most of the Milwaukee operations in 2014, laying off over 600 workers, leaving only the ground beef plant that is now being eliminated, the last remnant of the historic Menomonee Valley meatpacking district. 

Today, Cargill, the largest privately held company in the United States, and the other three giants  — Tyson Foods, JBS USA  and National Beef — dominate more than 80% of the U.S. fed-cattle market. That gives them near-total control over cattle prices and the national beef supply chain, a power they have abused relentlessly against ranchers and consumers alike. The words of Upton Sinclair from “The Jungle” ring as true today as when he wrote them in 1906: “They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying upon the people.”

In February 2025, JBS USA agreed to pay $83.5 million to settle a class-action antitrust suit alleging that the company, along with Tyson, Cargill and National Beef, colluded to suppress the prices paid to ranchers  and inflate downstream margins — one of several cases documenting the industry’s monopoly practices.  In October, Tyson and Cargill settled for a combined $87.5 million. These are not isolated incidents but part of a broader price-fixing economy, in which the meatpackers share market data, restrict capacity and move in lockstep to extract profit from both ranchers and consumers. The meatpackers also delay slaughter schedules to force ranchers into distressed sales and manipulate captive-supply contracts that lock independent producers into one-sided terms.

The repeal of Country-of-Origin Labeling (COOL) has amplified meatpackers’ power. With labeling transparency gone, packers can legally import cheap beef from Mexico, Brazil, or Argentina, blend it with U.S. product, and sell it under a domestic label. Consumers pay premium prices believing they’re buying American, while ranchers receive depressed bids for cattle amid increasing import competition. COOL’s repeal effectively legalized country of origin misrepresentation, enabling packers to and reap near-monopoly profits from deception and price fixing. 

While ranchers lose leverage and see their herds shrink, and consumers pay more at the supermarket, the meatpackers’ margins have soared. USDA data show that the gap between what ranchers are paid for cattle and what consumers pay for beef has widened sharply in recent years — clear evidence that meatpackers are capturing an ever-larger share of the final beef dollar even as U.S. cattle inventories decline.

How monopoly power costs workers — and the community

The result is a market that looks competitive on paper but operates like a monopoly — where a handful of corporations control price setting, labeling, and distribution from feedlot to grocery shelf.

The number of workers in the industry has fallen precipitously, while output per worker has increased by 79%, according to the Department of Labor. In essence, fewer people are producing more and working harder. As the meatpackers increased chain speeds, the number of debilitating injuries to workers caused by the repetitive motions of their arms, wrists and hands began increasing. Labor Department figures show that from 1973 through 1986, the number of workdays lost each year to injury or illness at  meat plants rose from 136.6 per 100 workers to 238.3. By contrast, among manufacturers overall, lost workdays over the same years hovered between 70 and 90 per 100 workers and at several points dipped below 70.

The attacks on packinghouse workers’ unions and the increased economic concentration of meatpacking firms are bad for workers, ranchers and consumers. And it is not an anomaly. Most important sectors of the United States economy — industries as varied as airlines, cereal, soft drinks, fire trucks and even concert ticket sales — are dominated by a handful of firms. The result is monopoly profits for the companies while workers are exploited. Meanwhile the  consumers and the suppliers that survive are at the mercy of these ravenous companies. 

The lack of antitrust action has destroyed an iconic Wisconsin industry and the jobs of its packinghouse workers. The end of Cargill is a canary in the coal mine for the U.S. economy.

Recently we paid $4.63 per gallon for gas while driving from Neenah, Wisconsin, to Nashville for our industry’s largest trade show. The trip is 633 miles each way. For years, loading up our company van with our booth and hitting the road was the affordable option for a small business like ours. Now even that feels out of reach.

We own OhmCo, a small, family-owned business that provides digital marketing and signage services for car washes across the United States. We are veteran-owned, woman-owned, and entirely self-funded. Every dollar we earn goes back into supporting our employees, growing our company, and serving our customers.

But right now, small businesses are being squeezed from every direction. 

Every extra dollar spent on fuel is money that cannot go toward hiring, healthcare, equipment, or growth. 

We understand that the recent inflation in the price of gas is driven by national policy and global events out of the state’s control. But that doesn’t make the escalating transportation and energy costs any easier for small businesses like ours to absorb, especially when travel, shipping, and logistics are essential to staying competitive.

Large corporations have dedicated legal, tax and compliance teams that can help them absorb rising costs more easily. Small businesses cannot.

What makes this even more frustrating is watching fuel prices climb while consumers are also dealing with higher costs tied to tariffs, supply disruptions, airline instability, and economic uncertainty. Working people and small businesses are left paying the price while political leaders seem more focused on spectacle than solutions.

At the same time, healthcare costs remain crushing for employers. Like many small business owners, we want to provide good coverage for ourselves and our employees, but premiums continue to rise beyond what many businesses can realistically sustain. Healthcare should not bankrupt employers or employees, and people should not have to stay trapped in jobs simply because coverage is tied to employment.

Through our advocacy with the Main Street Alliance, we have connected with entrepreneurs across the country facing the exact same challenges. Small business owners are delaying hiring, scaling back investments, and questioning whether they can continue operating under the weight of rising costs and instability.

We also need elected leaders, including our state Legislature, to prioritize regular working families and small businesses like ours instead of catering primarily to large corporations and powerful special interests. 

Small businesses are the ones sponsoring local sports teams, supporting community organizations, employing local workers, and reinvesting in our neighborhoods. Yet too often it feels like the needs of Main Street come last.

Large corporations have the resources to negotiate, litigate or exploit loopholes. They benefit from complicated tax systems and special carve-outs tend to benefit them over local businesses and communities.

Tax incentives may keep a large corporation from leaving the community, but when they contribute less, that burden still has to be made up somewhere, and it often falls on homeowners or small businesses. 

What small businesses need is not complicated. We need lower and more stable fuel prices and reduced tariffs that increase consumer and operating costs.

We need healthcare that is actually affordable for working families and employers, as well as affordable childcare. 

We need simpler rules for interstate hiring, because every state has different payroll registrations, labor laws, unemployment systems, tax requirements and compliance rules. Larger companies can afford teams of lawyers and HR departments to manage that. Smaller businesses usually cannot. 

We need stronger protections from predatory lending and excessive fees as well as easier access to loans. We need easier access to broadband internet and automation incentives.

We need more competition and affordability in transportation and energy markets. We need policies that support small business growth instead of squeezing us out — lower shipping costs, lower payroll processing and credit card processing fees, and stronger protections against large corporations that delay payments and dominate policy discussions to their advantage and our disadvantage.Most of all, we need elected leaders willing to prioritize regular people and small businesses over large corporations and special interests.

Small businesses are the backbone of this country. At OhmCo, we sponsor a local kids bowling team, and we travel around the country teaching businesses about technology, AI, marketing, and innovation. We believe deeply in our communities and in the promise of hard work.

But right now, many small businesses feel like we are being priced out of survival.

We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for leadership that prioritizes working families and small businesses instead of corporate profits and political theater. Americans deserve an economy where hard work actually leads somewhere again.

On his way out of office, Gov. Tony Evers has negotiated a school funding and tax cut bill with his fellow retirees, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. Call it a retirement celebration for three soon-to-be-ex politicians. Evers is promoting a big bump in school funding in the “blockbuster” deal and urging Democrats to vote for it. But the most joyful celebrants of this sudden windfall are Republican legislators, who have taken to calling it the “big, beautiful, bipartisan bill” —  a not-so-subtle echo of Trump’s triumphant name for the massive tax cut and spending bill he jammed through Congress.

Wisconsin Democrats are less than thrilled. On the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, the “blockbuster” proposal passed on a straight party-line vote, as Erik Gunn reports, with all of the Republicans on the committee voting in favor and all the Democrats voting against it. The bill is not so much a blockbuster as a budget-buster, said Joint Finance Democrats Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay), Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha). 

The problem with the legislation, according to its critics, is that it consists largely of one-time expenditures – including a temporary infusion of cash to schools and $300 checks to be mailed to Wisconsin state taxpayers — that will drain state coffers of about $2.9 billion after the whole package of proposals is paid out. While it effectively erases the state’s budget surplus, it won’t fix the structural problems with the way the state consistently underfunds schools and leaves property taxpayers to pick up the bill, or with the growing drain created by an expanding system of taxpayer-subsidized private schools, which will also get more money through this deal. Meanwhile, it creates the very real possibility that new legislative leaders and a new governor will be staring at a nearly $3 billion revenue hole when they begin to work on the next state budget, in an uncertain economic time.

The plan does include a burst of state funding for special education – sorely needed and, as Evers underscores, a big boost from current levels to a projected 50% reimbursement in the final year of the current budget cycle to school districts across the state. Evers’ office put out a comprehensive list of school districts and the millions in new money they will receive. The deal also allocates $350 million to bring down property taxes. And it eliminates taxes on tips and overtime, in keeping with Trump’s new federal policy. These are all popular proposals, and they provide a shot of relief to stressed and strapped school districts and taxpayers.

But advocacy organizations you would expect to embrace the governor’s move to increase funding for special ed have come out against the deal. 

“People with disabilities depend on programs and services that get state and federal funding,” Sydney Badeau, chair of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, said in a statement on the deal. “Spending down Wisconsin’s savings and reducing income when the state is already not providing enough funding to cover actual costs means there will be even less money next budget to pay for the programs people need. Less savings and less income means budget cuts next cycle at a time when many state programs, services, and infrastructure need more investment.”  

Kids Forward, the statewide antiracist policy center, also opposes the deal, saying it “relies on one-time money to paper over long-term challenges, all while legislators preparing to leave office pass the responsibility — and the blame — onto future lawmakers and families across Wisconsin.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are already turning the deal into campaign talking points on their most challenging issue – affordability

“Folks need help now,” declared Joint Finance Committee Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), adding that inflation has been a problem “for at least five years,” a spin on voters’ cost-of-living worries that conveniently avoids the Trump administration’s responsibility for surging gas prices and massive healthcare cuts, which are dragging down state Republicans as they campaign this year.

Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) touted the deal in a Tuesday press conference, saying Republicans have always been better stewards of the economy, and it was because of their wise leadership that Wisconsin built up a budget surplus in the first place (mostly by abandoning the state’s obligation to fund public schools). Now, she declared, it’s time to give all that money back to the taxpayers – “it’s their money” and rightfully belongs to individuals, she said, not “progressive politicians in Madison.” This is the drown-the-government-in-the-bathtub philosophy at work – defund schools and hand out checks to individuals. It works best if you are extremely wealthy and don’t mind trading in public education and other forms of public infrastructure for a pay-as-you-go system where you spend your own cash for private education, private health care and private security.  

Nedweski rolled directly into campaign mode, declaring that the benefits to taxpayers in the deal “would all be at risk” if the Democrats win control of the Legislature next year.

Without a doubt, Evers has handed Republicans a massive election-year gift.

Democrats, if they do manage to win legislative majorities – which has seemed more and more likely as Republicans flee the Capitol in droves, including some who represent key, swing districts — would be in a much stronger negotiating position than Evers is now. Instead of a one-time boost in school funding and a flurry of tax-rebate checks, they could recommit to guaranteed state funding for public education, as a lawsuit brought by students, parents and teachers argues they must under the state constitution. 

Now, as the national economy is in turmoil, they will confront the next budget cycle with a looming $2.9 billion hole – the budget surplus blown by a bunch of guys who are heading out of office and won’t have to worry about what comes next.

It was one thing for Evers to wrangle with Republicans and try to claw back funding for schools when the GOP-led Legislature was single-mindedly determined to block his every move. It’s a different matter to trade away the bulk of the state’s budget surplus now, in the waning days of his term, with everything up in the air.

The lack of communication between Evers and members of his own party has rankled Democrats for a long time. But the deal he is pushing to a reluctant Democratic caucus and delighted Republicans is a blow both politically and, more importantly, to the future health of the state. 

The Atwood Music Hall in Madison was packed Wednesday afternoon, as community members said goodbye to Stuart Dymzarov, the founding principal of Malcolm Shabazz City High School and, for many, many people, a beloved mentor and friend.

Colleagues and former students at Shabazz, the alternative school launched in 1971 with a grant from the Ford Foundation, remembered Stuart’s fierce advocacy for his vision of an open-minded, flexible school. “Education by any means necessary,” was his riff on the famous slogan of the school’s namesake, Malcolm X.

Hearing the eulogies for Stuart, a big bear of a man with a wild beard, radical politics and a radiant warmth, brought back the optimism and high spirits of a generation of Madisonians who protested the war in Vietnam, rejected careerist striving and established their own little cooperative communities in the idealistic belief that they were on the cusp of changing the world for the better. 

One of those starry-eyed idealists was my mother, Dorothy Conniff, who lived in a collective household with Stuart and a dozen other young radicals on Spaight Street on Madison’s East Side. She was in her 20s then and I was just a toddler. “We supported each other’s projects and ideals and had intense discussions about how to change the world,” my mom wrote in the online guest book for Stuart’s memorial. I remember a single check she kept in a scrapbook from the joint household account of those days, with 14 names in the upper lefthand corner — a testament to the trust and cooperation in that happy group. 

Like a lot of young people in the heady 1960s and 1970s in Madison, my mom, Stuart and their whole cohort felt progress over injustice and violence was underway and the world would soon be a brighter place.  “We were optimistic because the antiwar movement had forced Lyndon Johnson out of office,” my mom told me. A lot of former Madison radicals were in the white-haired crowd at the memorial service, including former Mayor Paul Soglin, former Alderman Billy Feitlinger and Jeff Feinblatt, one of the Shabazz teachers who, inspired by Stuart, nurtured and inspired a new generation of young people.

I remember Stuart as a big, benign presence in striped overalls, hoisting the kids in the Spaight Street household on his shoulders and rumbling around the house. Later he became a devoted father to his own three children with his wife of 50 years, Marsha (the two combined their last names, Dym and Zarov) and a beloved uncle, grandfather and father figure to hundreds of Shabazz students. 

Stuart’s nephew Miles Kietzer gave a touching tribute to the uncle who used to pick him up along with his sister after school and take them wherever they wanted to go, buying them treats and letting them fritter away his money on plastic trinkets with an easy-going smile.

Stuart’s brother Harvey described how Stuart would spend endless hours hanging out and having conversations with people, and when Harvey quizzed him on what they had said and what he had learned, he shrugged it off. “I like experiencing people,” he told Harvey. That acceptance and enjoyment of people with no particular goal in mind was classic Stuart.

Stuart was always willing to give people rides, day and night, including, according to one of his younger relatives, on a memorable night when he called Stuart from a biker bar where he was having a drug-induced attack of paranoia. Stuart drove across town in the middle of the night, appeared in the doorway of the bar, a looming presence in a khaki jacket and driving cap, wrapped his younger relative in a hug and took him home.

The feeling of safety and love he gave people is the strongest, lasting impression Stuart left.

He was a fighter — against the “fascist” politics he despised in the U.S. government, even before the current era, and on behalf of people he felt were not given a fair shake. His friends remember his ferociousness on the basketball court, his relentlessness in political arguments, and his tireless, aggressive advocacy at school board meetings and the superintendent’s office on behalf of the staff and students at Shabazz.

But mostly, Stuart made people feel cared for, appreciated, heard. It seems to me that quality is exactly what we need right now, to counter the epic cruelty, hatred and greed that is engulfing our nation and the world.

The sunny optimism of the 1960s counterculture seems far away today. But Stuart’s legacy lives on, not just at the still-thriving alternative high school he founded (where the family encourages people to make a donation to the scholarship program in his name), but also in the light he brought into the world by really seeing other people, accepting and loving them. Experiencing that quality in Stuart in small ways, one on one, is what made such a difference for people. More than any grand political program or analysis, it is a powerful antidote to despair. 

Louisiana is not experiencing ordinary political turbulence. We are watching democratic instability unfold in real time.

Within a matter of days, voters across this state have been forced to absorb three major disruptions at once: the dismantling of Black voting representation through the ruling in Louisiana v. Callais; the suspension of congressional primary elections already in progress; and a statewide constitutional amendment that could fundamentally reshape public education in East Baton Rouge Parish and beyond.

The timing could not be more critical. Election Day is May 16. Early voting began Saturday. Absentee ballots have already been distributed. Yet Gov. Jeff Landry’s executive order suspended Louisiana’s closed party congressional primaries after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the state’s congressional map. 

Voters are now left in a vacuum of information, told that congressional races will still appear on their ballots, but that their votes in these contests won’t count.

That should alarm every person in this state, regardless of party affiliation.

A democracy cannot function when election rules shift after the machinery of voting has already begun moving. This creates confusion and distrust precisely when public confidence is most fragile. 

Black communities, in particular, understand the historical weight of sudden procedural changes in elections. Louisiana does not get to separate this moment from that history.

This erosion of collective representation is not limited to the ballot box. It is also manifesting in the very structure of our local institutions. 

On the May 16 ballot voters are being asked to decide on Constitutional Amendment 2, which would formally recognize the St. George Community School System with independent authority to receive state funding and raise local revenues though taxes.

When coupled with its implementing legislation, the amendment mandates the transfer of public school lands, facilities and assets from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System to the new St. George system by June 30, 2027. Reports indicate that East Baton Rouge schools could lose roughly $100 million if this separation proceeds.

This is bigger than one city, one amendment or one election cycle. This is about fragmentation: the fragmentation of voting rights, public education and, ultimately, public trust. The people most harmed by this fracturing are always the communities with the fewest resources to absorb the blow: Black families, working-class families, disabled residents and children already navigating underfunded schools.

Supporters of these measures frame them as issues of local control or administrative necessity. But language matters less than outcomes. When systems repeatedly reorganize power away from collective accountability and toward isolated control structures, inequity expands. History has shown us this repeatedly.

The most dangerous part is how normalized this chaos is becoming. Louisianans are being conditioned to accept government by disruption. Maps change overnight, elections pause midstream, public assets become bargaining chips. 

That is not healthy governance. That is democratic erosion dressed in procedural language.

The people of Louisiana deserve clarity before elections begin, not after. They deserve stable representation and public institutions designed to serve communities rather than divide them into competing islands of power. Because once citizens begin believing their vote is conditional, their schools are negotiable, and their representation is disposable, democracy itself begins to fracture.

And fractured systems rarely fail equally.

International Workers Day on May 1 commemorates the great labor struggles of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when workers fought and died for decent wages and working conditions.

The militant energy of the early labor movement, long dormant in the United States, has been making a comeback recently as Americans chafe at economic instability, the destruction of health care and other basic rights and protections, and recoil from a government dedicated to further enriching billionaires at the expense of working people. Add to that the campaign of terror the Trump administration has launched against immigrants who do much of the manual labor in this country and the violent repression of the neighbors who try to protect them, and it’s starting to feel like 1886.

On Friday, May 1, labor unions and immigrants rights groups are coming together to organize mass walkouts in more than 3,000 cities across the U.S. “No work. No school. No shopping” is the tag line for the national campaign, joined in Wisconsin by Madison Teachers Inc., the Southcentral Federation of Labor, and myriad civic groups. 

This week’s protests grow out of “A Day Without Immigrants,” the May Day general strikes that began 20 years ago to oppose Wisconsin U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner’s federal bill that proposed making unauthorized presence in the U.S. a crime punishable by mandatory prison sentences. For the first time, in those May Day protests, “you saw largely Latino immigrant, working-class families … with grandparents and baby strollers, coming out in this peaceful wave of mass marches,” recalls Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, the Milwaukee-based immigrant workers’ rights group. “It really was like an earthquake, and it shelved that terrible bill and put the conversation of immigration reform back on the table.”

This year, national labor unions are showing up for the May Day actions in a big way. That’s inspiring, because it’s clear that massive resistance from a broad, working-class movement is what it’s going to take to stop the brutal repression and outright theft of public resources by the current regime.

“Workers’ rights and immigrants’ rights are the same,” Andy King, managing director of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) said on a May Day press call this week. His group’s May Day demands include no more funding for ICE and Border Patrol, permanent protections and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, and stopping the construction of megawarehouses for the mass detention of human beings. 

The fear-mongering about immigrants coming from the Trump administration is not an accident, Neumann-Ortiz said during the same call. “It’s a strategy to divide us, to scapegoat and to distract from the real challenges working families face, and in particular, the growing control of our economy by billionaires.” She talked about the heartbreaking case of Elvira Benitez, a mother of three from Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, who was arrested by ICE during a routine check-in after she was approved for a green card. Now she’s sitting in detention in Kentucky, and her youngest daughter is under medical supervision for suicidal thoughts related to the traumatic experience of being separated from her mom, Neumann-Ortiz said.

She also highlighted the case of Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, a legal permanent resident, who was detained by ICE in what appears to be a retaliatory arrest for his political speech defending Palestinian rights. 

A secretive police agency that whisks people away in order to silence dissent should worry all of us. “And these are not isolated cases, as we know,” Neumann Ortiz said. “It’s a system.”

Deaths in ICE custody have hit a new record since the beginning of Trump’s second administration. Yet the federal government plans to expand warehouse detention to house more than 92,000 people. Adriana Rivera of the Florida Immigrant Coalition told reporters on FIRM’s May Day press call, “our state has become ground zero for a system that warehouses human beings for top dollar, makes jokes and merch at their expense, where suffering is hidden and accountability is absent.”

“Shut down these disgusting warehouses and choose a path rooted in care,” she demanded.

What is happening to our country? What will it take to wake people up?

During the same week I listened to activists planning the May Day walkout, my phone rang and an automated voice informed me that Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson was holding an impromptu “telephone town hall” in the middle of a weekday afternoon. I stayed on and listened to Johnson tell his constituents that he favors eliminating the Senate filibuster in order to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security without the guardrails Democrats are seeking for ICE and Border Patrol. We’re living in too “dangerous” a time not to act immediately, Johnson said, and Congress is “too broken” to make these decisions in a deliberative fashion. That’s why, he explained, now that President Trump is in office and Republicans hold a majority, he has switched his position on ending the minority party’s power to filibuster legislation. Johnson wants to get Democrats out of the way to pass the SAVE America Act, which will severely curtail voting rights on the thoroughly disproven theory that undocumented immigrants are voting in large numbers and swaying U.S. elections. 

Johnson listened approvingly to voters on the call who recycled Trump’s Big Lie that Democrats are stealing elections. He expressed his enthusiasm for RFK Jr. and “progress” on his pet issue — getting rid of supposedly harmful vaccines. Some callers expressed anxiety about the Iran war, with Johnson reassuring them that it was going “perfectly.” One woman swore at him and was disconnected. But the most revealing part of the call came when a caller mentioned that a lot of people are worried about health care — a brewing crisis in Wisconsin where 63,000 people are losing Medicaid coverage because of Trump’s cuts and another 20,000 have dropped their Affordable Care Act coverage because of rising premium costs after Republicans refused to renew ACA enhanced tax credits.

The root cause of the problem with health care, Johnson said, is the government’s involvement. 

“Take a look at Amazon, what that private sector competitor has done to deliver products in hours, sometimes at a really low cost. So private sector consumerism works, but we’ve driven consumerism out of healthcare by having somebody else pay for it,”  he said. His solution? “Move to a rational system of catastrophic care plans, and then most of healthcare paid out of pocket with real consumerism.”

Never mind Johnson’s choice to hold up Amazon as a paragon of business, a company that was sued by the Federal Trade Commission for illegally blocking competition, inflating prices using its monopoly power, and stifling innovation. Never mind the multiple lawsuits brought by its drivers for high-pressure, inhumane working conditions and that unfortunate incident in which a warehouse worker died on the floor while his coworkers were allegedly told by management to ignore him and keep production rolling.

Setting all that aside, how many regular voters in Wisconsin agree that the best way to handle crushing healthcare costs is to make them pay out of pocket for every medication, office visit and procedure?

As Trump’s approval ratings reach a new low and gas prices spike, Johnson’s position that you should cover the full cost of your healthcare out of pocket is unlikely to give Republicans a bump.

The problem in our country is that we seem to have lost the class consciousness that animated the labor movement of the Progressive Era.

Instead, today, we have a right-wing populism that purports to defend the interests of blue collar workers but is, in fact, investing in the immiseration of the vast majority of Americans, the theft of their healthcare, their education, their wages and workplace protections, for the benefit of oligarchs like Johnson, who couldn’t care less if people suffer, sicken and die, so long as he remains rich. 

I don’t think people can put up with this for much longer. The inhumane treatment of regular, hardworking people, the pain and waste of the greed-driven regime we are living with should turn the stomach of every American. 

May Day is a sign of hope. 

The darkened sky in the early afternoon, the tornado sirens wailing as baseball-sized hail shattered windows and dented car roofs, sounding like a series of explosions as drivers hurried home at 4 p.m. last week — all of it felt like the eerie first scene in an apocalyptic movie. 

This is not a drill, I thought, watching the clouds tumbling and boiling overhead as my car radio and my phone began shrieking in unison and a robotic voice informed me that I should take shelter immediately from a tornado that was moving at 20 miles per hour directly toward my neighborhood. 

We’ve all grown accustomed to the low background hum of climate anxiety. Suddenly it’s as loud and immediate as the crack of a giant hailstone on the windshield. 

The changes to the planet we’ve been warned about for decades are suddenly hitting too close to home to ignore. Over the last year in Wisconsin we’ve endured smoke-filled skies from summer forest fires, massive floods, wild temperature swings and scarier, more serious storms. 

This should be a wakeup call. But instead of accelerating efforts to head off climate catastrophe, our federal government is canceling renewable energy contracts and pushing for more coal plants, more oil drilling, more toxic mining on public lands, undoing protections for clean air and water, and accelerating the destruction of our shared environment in order to extract resources and build more wealth for a handful of people in the short term. 

The price of this heedlessness is so enormous it hurts just to think about it. 

Two days after the hail storm and tornado warnings sent me and my neighbors scrambling for cover, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to allow sulfide mining in the Superior National Forest, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness — an inexpressibly beautiful place that is precious to my family, the scene of some of the most formative experiences of our girls’ childhood, and the most visited wilderness area in the U.S. The Forest Service spent years studying how acid mine drainage — the toxic byproduct of sulfide-ore mining — could contaminate the interconnected lakes and streams that make up the Boundary Waters. Once that contamination starts, there is no way to reverse it, which is why an overwhelming majority of Minnesotans weighed in against the mine, and the federal government blocked it. Until that protection was overturned last week.

Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith took a heroic stand on the Senate floor last Wednesday, arguing late into the night, trying to persuade her colleagues not just to hold off on destroying this pristine place, but to forgo using an obscure maneuver that, in a 50-49 vote, redefined land management and knocked down longstanding protections for every piece of national forest in the country. 

My colleague J. Patrick Coolican, editor of the Minnesota Reformer, described Smith pleading to an empty chamber, “I dearly hope the members of this body will think about their legacy in protecting the great places in this country.”

No future president can reinstate the mining ban that protected the Boundary Waters now that Congress used the obscure Congressional Review Act to strike it down. And it’s bigger than that. With their vote to open up mining near the Boundary Waters, “lawmakers have called into question the validity of every management plan issued by the U.S. Forest Service over the past several decades,” Alex Brown of Stateline reports. “That could result in legal chaos for thousands of permits covering logging, grazing, mining and outdoor recreation.” As Smith warned her Republican colleagues who want to protect the public lands they cherish in their home states, their vote means it’s now open season on those lands, too.

I couldn’t bear to talk with my daughters, who have spent every summer they can remember in the Boundary Waters, about the vote last week. 

But this week, Earth Week, it’s time to confront it. All is not lost. Just as they stood up to the masked federal agents who descended on Minneapolis to tear immigrant families apart, Minnesotans are organizing to fight Twin Metals, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chilean mining company Antofagasta, as it seeks state permits to open up its toxic mine. While mining proponents tout the mine as a job creator (ignoring the economic costs of destroying the nation’s most-visited wilderness), the Senate’s action mostly benefits a foreign mining company, which has a history of flouting environmental regulations and creating toxic spills in other countries, and which will likely sell the copper it extracts from Minnesota to China.

The least we Wisconsinites can do is to help our neighbors as they try to repel this deadly invasion and seizure of a priceless natural resource.

Friends of the Boundary Waters, based in Minnesota, is filing a lawsuit arguing that the congressional maneuver that opened up the mine is illegal. The group and its allies are also urging the Minnesota DNR to cancel Twin Metals’ leases for the mine, and pushing the Minnesota state legislature to ban mining in this sensitive area.

As Wisconsin Sen. Gaylor Nelson, the founder of Earth Day put it in his 1970 speech kicking off the modern environmental movement, protecting the environment is “not just an issue of survival, but an issue of how we survive.” 

“Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty,” he said. “….Our goal is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all human beings and all other living creatures. An environment without ugliness, without ghettos, without poverty, without discrimination, without hunger and without war.”

We need to protect that vision of life from the forces of greed and destruction that are engulfing us. We can’t let them write the end of the story.

What are the odds the soon-to-retire Republican leaders of the state Legislature are seriously considering Gov. Tony Evers’ call to end partisan gerrymandering? 

Evers called the special session that began and ended with no action this week, asking legislators to take up a constitutional amendment to ban the practice of drawing voting maps that give a disproportionate advantage to one political party. 

Legislators didn’t exactly refuse — they’ve kicked the can down the road, adjourning temporarily until later this month. As Baylor Spears reports, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu explained that legislators need to “gain public input in order to make an informed decision on how to proceed.” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Majority Leader Tyler August said they want to have more discussions with Evers to reach a “transparent and balanced solution that reflects the interests of all Wisconsinites.” 

Or maybe they just want to run out the clock, do nothing and then blame the governor for their failure to act. 

After all, President Donald Trump, the Republicans’ national leader, has been strong-arming GOP legislators in red states to hold extraordinary mid-decade redistricting sessions to draw him some extra seats to shore up an unpopular Republican House majority. Wisconsin Republicans would be swimming against the tide if they made their last act in office a good-government effort to lock in fair maps. 

Giving up power is not exactly on brand for Wisconsin Republicans. These are the same legislators who drew themselves into the most partisan gerrymandered districts in the country back in 2010. When it came time to draw another round of maps after the 2020 census, they gathered copious public input, holding hearings in which an overwhelming majority of voters told them that they wanted fair maps, and then ignored the public and gerrymandered the maps again. Only after the state Supreme Court declared those maps unconstitutional did they relent and accept 50/50 maps that lean slightly toward Republicans majorities.

Now they’re quitting in droves rather than work in a Legislature where they’ve lost the disproportionate power they conferred on themselves through gerrymandering.

Still, staring down the possibility of Democratic trifecta control of government, it’s possible Republicans could take the long view and try to protect their 50/50 stake before the other party has a shot at redrawing the districts. 

Then again, Republicans have shown very little appetite for that kind of sensible, good-government approach. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported this week, Republican legislative leaders are paying private attorneys $550 per hour in taxpayer money to defend their practice of hiring private attorneys at the taxpayers’ expense.

This freewheeling expenditure of your tax dollars follows a lawsuit filed by the public interest law firm Law Forward in February challenging the use of expensive private attorneys by GOP leaders. That practice started in the lame duck session after Evers was first elected, when Republican legislative leaders began frantically grabbing powers from the new Democratic administration. 

“It’s all about an unwillingness to exist within the bounds of checks and balances,” says Jeff Mandell of Law Forward. “It smacks of a sense that the Legislature, and particularly its leadership, is beyond accountability.”

That kind of arrogance is on its way out, along with the legislative leaders who, for more than a decade, treated government as their private club, hoarding power and ignoring the will of the voters. The best way to make sure it never returns is to permanently guarantee fair maps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are four districts that stood out this election cycle:

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

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

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