At least 10 people were killed and 35 injured when a pickup truck was driven into a crowd on Bourbon Street early Jan. 1, 2025, near the intersection of Conti Street. (Photo by Theron Sapp/Courtesy WVUE-TV)

NEW ORLEANS — At least 10 people were killed and 35 injured early Wednesday after a pickup truck tore through Bourbon Street where crowds were celebrating the arrival of the New Year.

The driver of the truck, who the FBI identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar of Texas, was killed after a shootout with police in which two officers were wounded, New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.

Weapons and a “potential IED,” or improvised explosive device, were founding inside the truck, and an ISIS flag was placed atop a pole on the truck’s trailer hitch, according to the FBI.

The police officers who were shot were taken to University Medical Center and were in stable condition, according to the police chief. She said the same facility is also treating 26 of the injured people, and others have been taken to other local hospitals.

At around 3:15 a.m., the driver of the truck steered around a police barricade at Canal Street meant to keep vehicles off of Bourbon Street and sped into a crowd, New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said. It appears the truck was able to travel three blocks before colliding with a lift vehicle near Conti Street.

“He was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” the police chief said.

Alathea Duncan, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge for the New Orleans district, said it is believed Jabbar did not act alone, and agents are looking into possible accomplices.

One of the people killed has been identified as 18-year-old Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux of Gulfport, Mississippi, The Times-Picayune reported. She had accompanied her cousin and friend to the French Quarter for New Year’s Eve, her mother said.

Protective bollards weren’t deployed

Steel bollards that rise from the street were installed along and near Bourbon Street in 2017 to protect pedestrians, but they were not deployed and are in the process of being replaced according to the city’s Department of Public Works website.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the bollards were being replaced in advance of the Super Bowl, which New Orleans will host Feb. 9. Kirkpatrick said police vehicles were in place at the bollard sites, but Jabbar was able to drive on the sidewalk around those barriers.

The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of terrorism. Bomb squad personnel were seen entering the French Quarter, where the FBI said other “potential” explosive devices were located. Several small booms were heard blocks away, which City Council members said were controlled detonations to clear possible IEDs.

An eight-block stretch of Bourbon Street remains closed to traffic, and some hotels in the French Quarter have been evacuated as a precautionary measure. The public is being asked to avoid a large portion of the historic neighborhood, which typically sees crowds larger than typical weekends for New Year’s Eve.

Hospitality and service industry employees reporting for work Wednesday morning were being turned away from cordoned-off areas.

New Orleans is hosting fans of the University of Georgia and Notre Dame for the Sugar Bowl. The college football playoff quarterfinal was scheduled for 7:45 p.m. Wednesday night at the Superdome, but the game has been postponed for 24 hours, Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley said.

Landry said he planned to attend the Sugar Bowl, emphasizing the event will be held safely, and he will order flags at state buildings flown at half staff in memory of the lives lost Wednesday morning.

University of Georgia President Jere Morehead confirmed on social media that a student. from the school “was critically injured in the attack and is receiving medical treatment.”

Multiple news sources reported the Superdome was locked down Wednesday morning for a security sweep. The venue will also host Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9.

At a news conference Wednesday afternoon in New Orleans, Gov. Jeff Landry said he has signed an executive order to declare an emergency in order to expedite state resources to New Orleans to assist local and federal investigators. A military police company of 100 soldiers from the Louisiana National Guard is also being assigned to New Orleans, the governor said.

President-elect Donald Trump called the incident “pure evil” in a post on his Truth Social platform.

The NOPD is asking anyone trying to connect with family who they believe were in the area to call 311, and not 911, for more information.

This is a developing story that will be updated.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

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Schools, the environment, health, criminal justice and the economy — those were some of the topics in the news in 2024. Here is a selection of the year’s most important stories and how they were covered in the Wisconsin Examiner.

A landmark election year

Wisconsin marked more than one milestone in the 2024 election.

The state helped return Republican former President Donald Trump to the White House — the second president in history to be elected to two non-consecutive terms and the first to win the Oval Office with a felony conviction.

Despite Trump’s victory, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin eked out a third term, as Erik Gunn reported, besting her Republican challenger, banker Eric Hovde, by close to the same 29,000-vote margin by which the Democratic presidential contender, Vice President Kamala Harris, lost in the state.

With newly drawn districts ordered by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that ended the lopsided gerrymandered control of the Legislature Republicans have commanded since 2011, Democrats ended a Republican super-majority in the state Senate and gained seats in the Assembly. While still in the minority, Democrats hoped the outcome would help them make some deals and advance their agenda in the Capitol, while Republicans indicated they don’t expect their priorities to change.

Baldwin’s victory, the strong Democratic showing in the Legislature and Harris’ narrow loss in Wisconsin have helped buoy the state’s Democratic Party chair, Ben Wikler in his campaign to lead the national Democratic Party.

Criminal justice

In mid-December Wisconsin’s capital city and the rest of the state were shocked after a 15-year-old student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison shot and killed a fellow student and a teacher and wounded a half-dozen others at the private school before killing herself. “I’m feeling a little dismayed now, so close to Christmas, every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever,” said Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes hours after the deaths. Henry Redman reported from the scene.

Republicans chose Milwaukee for their national nominating convention as part of their campaign to return Wisconsin to the GOP column. There, they were confronted with raucous but peaceful protests. The whole Examiner team was there, reporting both inside and outside the convention.

Fears of violence were largely unrealized with one grim exception: Police from Columbus, Ohio, who were among thousands from out of state deployed to keep order at the convention, shot and killed an unhoused man with two knives who was fighting with another man in a local park that had become a camping site for homeless people. The Examiner’s Isiah Holmes and Henry Redman broke the story.

Supported by a grant from the Public Welfare Foundation, the Wisconsin Examiner expanded its coverage of the state’s criminal justice system in 2024, with reporters Isiah Holmes, Henry Redman, Frank Zufall and Andrew Kennard probing police misconduct, the state Department of Corrections and law enforcement surveillance practices.

Immigration

Echoing his first presidential run eight years ago, Trump centered his 2024 campaign on immigration and undocumented migrants in the U.S., with false claims of widespread criminal activity among immigrants and promising mass deportations if elected.

The Examiner examined the much more sober reality for undocumented immigrants our state’s economy depends on, some of whom are trafficked and abused. Editor Ruth Conniff wrote about labor trafficking on Wisconsin farms, and also took a closer look at  how a large immigrant presence in  communities such as Whitewater has become distorted by right-wing demagoguery.

Reproductive rights

Reproductive health care and the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning a national right to abortion enshrined  half a century ago in Roe v. Wade loomed large in 2024. Reporter Baylor Spears followed the issue in Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments late in the year over whether an 1849 Wisconsin law was a widespread ban on elective abortion or actually only applied to feticide.

And while Democrats generally ran on restoring abortion rights, the issue was most prominent  in the 8th Congressional District, where Democratic ob/gyn Dr. Kristin Lyerly included it as part of her broader campaign but lost to Republican Tony Wied.

Environment

American Stewards of Liberty, an out-of-state right-wing group that opposes public land use conservation policies, made significant incursions into Wisconsin policymaking, including influencing Oneida County’s rewrite of its comprehensive plan. Reporter Henry Redman broke the story.

Redman covered a variety of pressing environmental stories throughout the year,  including a  Wisconsin initiative to address PFAS contamination in the state, including $125 million invested from the state budget, ran aground as the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican leaders in the Legislature deadlocked on how to move forward.

Throughout the year, local residents and government leaders grappled with how to address the spread of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in their communities

Economy

Political analysts have said that a spike in the prices for gas, groceries and other goods in the first couple of years of President Joe Biden’s term played a key role in the Democrats’ election-year losses, notwithstanding that inflation had cooled in most of 2024.

But the Biden administration’s hefty investments in the economy — funding technology innovation, boosting clean energy, expanding broadband access, replacing lead water pipes and supporting unions — appeared to get less traction with voters.

Erik Gunn reported on the economy throughout the year and along with other staff members continues to do so as new economic concerns hover on the horizon. Those range from persistent housing problems covered by Isiah Holmes to strains on the child care infrastructure, a significant challenge for families as well as employers who have struggled to fill job openings.

Education

In a large majority of referendum votes held in the spring and fall, voters agreed to raise their property taxes to increase funding for their local public school districts. The trend sets the stage for what could be a contentious state budget battle in 2025 as public school advocates push for more support from the state.

After Milwaukee Public Schools voters narrowly approved their district’s $252 million referendum request in the spring, however, the state Department of Public Instruction announced it was holding back some of the district’s state funds because MPS had failed to file required financial reports on time. District Superintendent Keith Posley, resigned under fire, and Gov. Tony Evers ordered an audit of the district.

Spears, who covers the education beat for the Examiner, reported on Evers and DPI, who spent much of 2024 at odds with Republican lawmakers who refused to  release money budgeted for new reading programs in Wisconsin schools.

Spears also did significant reporting into the use of seclusion and restraint policies in student discipline, practices that are supposed to be a last resort but remain widespread, according to advocates and families of children — frequently autistic children — who are subjected to these disciplinary measures.

Health

As COVID-19 remains an ongoing health concern, old respiratory illnesses such as pertussis have been on the rebound in Wisconsin in 2024, while new ones — most notably avian influenza — lurk around the corner. Erik Gunn reports that  a contributing factor has been a decline in vaccination rates, a trend that state health officials have been urging Wisconsinites to take seriously and reverse.

The importance of vaccination was highlighted in May when Wisconsin reinstituted a meningitis vaccination requirement that had been temporarily blocked by state lawmakers. A Fort Atkinson mother told Gunn the story of why she has for decades been urging the adoption of the meningitis vaccine requirement.

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The debate over the debt limit will likely flare tensions between centrist and far-right Republicans the closer the country gets to the real deadline sometime later in the year. (Photo by Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — When Republicans won unified control of government during the November elections, they also won the responsibility to address the country’s debt limit after the current suspension expires on Jan. 1.

Lawmakers will have a few months of wiggle room thanks to accounting maneuvers to broker a deal before the country would default for the first time in history — which most economists believe would kick-start a global financial crisis.

How long the Treasury Department will be able to use what’s known as extraordinary measures to give Congress more time to find agreement will lead to a high-stakes guessing game on Capitol Hill.

The debate will also likely flare tensions between centrist and far-right Republicans the closer the country gets to the real deadline sometime later in the year.

“That is always a tortured path,” West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said during a brief interview. “A lot of people that are here probably never voted for a debt limit increase, so I think it’s probably going to be a negotiated settlement with some, maybe constraints on spending and other things that would go along with that.”

Capito, who will become the Republican Policy Committee chair next year, said she doesn’t anticipate Congress will simply raise or suspend the debt limit without caveats.

President-elect Donald Trump threw a curve ball into those negotiations in late December when he publicly announced he wanted the party to suspend the debt limit for at least four years or eliminate it entirely before he takes office.

GOP leadership tried to suspend the debt limit for two years as part of a larger spending package, but ultimately withdrew that provision to avoid a government shutdown.

The 48-hour fiasco set the stage for considerable Republican disagreement next year.

“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling,” Trump posted on social media. “Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”

What is the debt limit, and why does it matter?

The debt limit allows the Treasury Department to borrow money to pay all the country’s bills in full and on time.

That borrowing authority is necessary because Congress has established a tax code that brings in far less revenue than the federal government spends on hundreds of programs.

During fiscal year 2023, the federal government brought in $4.4 trillion in revenue and spent $6.1 trillion, leading to an annual deficit of $1.7 trillion, according to data from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

When the difference between taxes and spending, or the deficit, is added up over decades, it accounts for the country’s $36 trillion-plus debt.

Congress requires itself to regularly give the Treasury Department more borrowing authority to pay for all the spending not covered by revenue. Lawmakers failing to take action to raise or suspend that debt limit would lead to a default.

How to reduce the deficit?

There are several ways for lawmakers to reduce the annual deficit of nearly $2 trillion, though most experts agree it will take a combination of tax increases and spending cuts.

Congress would also need to take a look at the major drivers of government spending — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

At the moment, Republicans are talking about using their unified control of government to pass two major packages on their own.

The first would focus on border security, defense and energy policy. The second package the GOP plans to move through the complex budget reconciliation process is aimed at cutting taxes.

One of the biggest questions GOP leaders will face in the new year is whether to go at it alone, relying solely on their members to raise the debt limit, or to negotiate with Democrats, which would require major concessions.

The debt limit has become something of a political hot potato for GOP lawmakers during the past couple decades, with many in the party viewing it as an inflection point to press for spending cuts. 

That’s not likely to change next year, though Republicans won’t be able to rely on Democratic votes to carry the bill across the finish line like they have in the past, if they choose to move it through the budget reconciliation process.

If, alternatively, the GOP moves a debt limit bill through the regular process, they’ll need the support of Democrats to get past the Senate’s legislative filibuster, which requires at least 60 senators to move bills toward a final passage vote.

Tax increases and spending cuts

Douglas Elmendorf, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, told the House Budget Committee during a hearing in December that getting the country’s borrowing under control in the long term will require both tax increases and spending cuts.

Elmendorf testified that stabilizing the country’s deficit over the next three decades would “require policy changes totaling a little more than 2% of (gross domestic product), which amounts to about $600 billion per year today.”

“Cutting spending that much would require large cuts to popular and important government programs and raising taxes that much would require large tax increases for many people,” Elmendorf said. “So the only realistic way forward is through a combination of those changes.”

California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock rebuked his own party during the hearing for not approaching reconciliation as a genuine way to reduce the deficit by bringing revenue and spending into alignment.

He argued that Republicans misused budget reconciliation when they had unified control of government during 2017 and 2018, the first two years of Trump’s last presidency.

McClintock said GOP leaders at the time “squandered this authority to chase shiny political objects — repealing Obamacare, then tax reform.”

“And because of the fiscal constraints of reconciliation, Obamacare ended up in this mangled mess that collapsed in the Senate and the tax cuts had to be made temporary,” McClintock said. “And we seem to be poised to repeat the same mistakes that got us here and that would be an immense national tragedy.”

Instead, McClintock said the Budget Committee should focus its attention next year on making the types of tough choices that would begin to reduce the annual deficit and then use the reconciliation process to put those in place.

Drivers of debt

Reconciliation is typically used only when one party controls the House, Senate and White House as a way to implement policy changes without getting the bipartisan support required to get past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.

When Republicans hold that power, they typically use it to cut taxes, but don’t always pay for those reductions in revenue, further exacerbating the deficit.

Georgia Republican Rep. Buddy Carter said during the same Budget Committee hearing that Congress must address the largest drivers of government spending, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, if it wants to bring spending closer to revenue. 

“If we don’t address that, we can do away with everything else and still not balance our budget,” Carter said. 

He also cautioned his party against going at it alone, saying “it would be political suicide for one party to try to do it by themselves.” That would mean the GOP needs to negotiate with Democrats, likely eroding some of the party’s goals.

‘Mortgaging our children’s future’

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson said during a brief interview the debt limit is “supposed to concentrate everybody’s minds on the fact that we are mortgaging our children’s future and that we ought to stop the madness.”

Johnson said Republicans could use the reconciliation process they’re planning to use to address defense priorities, border security, energy policy and taxes to cut spending, but he said deficit hawks will be constrained by the rules that govern the special legislative process.

“I’m completely supportive of doing two separate reconciliations — do something pretty simple, primarily focused on the border with real spending cuts. I don’t want to see any gimmicks in this thing. So, you know, I’ll approach it that way,” Johnson said.

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said in an interview before Trump’s announcements that GOP lawmakers have begun to discuss how exactly to address the debt limit next year, though he said no agreements have been reached.

“Some people want a separate debate on it and some people want to put it in reconciliation,” Grassley said. “I prefer reconciliation, but I guess whatever we decide to do, we’re going to have to do it.”

Nasal Narcan, used to reverse an overdose, stock the inside of Milwaukee County's first harm reduction vending machine. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)

The Wisconsin Department of Justice has been awarded a $7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to increase access to substance abuse treatment, the agency announced Friday. 

“Making treatment more accessible is important not only for those struggling with substance-use disorder but for public safety as well,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a statement acknowledging the grant. “This grant will allow for more to be done to help fight addiction.”

The Wisconsin DOJ was awarded the grant to implement the Wisconsin Deflection Initiative (WDI). The program aims to connect people struggling with substance use disorders to services before they have a crisis, an overdose or a criminal charge, according to the DOJ. 

Key components of the Wisconsin Deflection Initiative include self-referral and officer intervention programs, active outreach to at-risk individuals, better response to overdose incidents, comprehensive support services and coordination between law enforcement and treatment providers, the Wisconsin DOJ said. 

The program will be implemented across multiple Wisconsin jurisdictions and have a focus on urban, tribal and rural communities.

If programs like the Wisconsin Deflection Initiative lead to fewer people with a substance use disorder entering Wisconsin prisons, it would reduce strain on the state prison system’s programming. As of October, substance use disorder programming for incarcerated people had a waitlist of over 11,500. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections’ website says the agency tries to enroll individuals in programming close to their release date. 

“We would like to be able to serve every single person that we come into contact with at the highest level that they need in terms of intervention and more research,” Alisha Kraus, then-director of program services for adult prisons, said in an article published by PBS Wisconsin in June. “More resources would allow us to do that, more efficiently.” 

In the U.S. in 2022, nearly 108,000 people died from drug-involved overdose, including from illicit or prescription drugs. Drug overdose deaths in the United States have declined since then, but the fight against addiction continues. In Wisconsin, drug overdose deaths declined from 1,828 in 2022 to 1,771 in 2023. 

Funds directed toward fighting addiction in Wisconsin have included opioid settlement money from lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies. The Oneida Nation in northeast Wisconsin is considering an emphasis on prevention in the spending of $6.5 million in settlement money it estimates it will receive, to be allocated between 2020 and 2037, the Examiner reported last month. 

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Oneida Nation General Manager Mark Powless. | Photo by Andrew Kennard

Oneida community members shared wrenching stories about loss and addiction during a community meeting last Thursday evening at the Oneida Nation’s Norbert Hill Center, near Green Bay, Wisconsin.

During the tribe’s community meal and discussion, one man said he was 16 when his brother died of an opioid overdose, and he has five nieces and nephews who don’t have a father. 

The Oneida Nation estimates it will receive about $6.5 million in opioid settlement payments between 2020 and 2037, according to an informational packet provided at the meeting. The money is the result of lawsuits against companies involved in manufacturing and selling opioids in the United States. People who attended the meeting spoke passionately about how the tribe should use the funds. 

Data from 2021 shows that Native Americans and Black people in Wisconsin were hit particularly hard by the opioid epidemic. Native Americans died of opioid overdoses at close to three times the rate of white people, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Historical trauma, high levels of unemployment and poverty contribute to the vulnerability of Native Americans to addiction.. A total of 1,427 people died of opioid overdoses in Wisconsin in 2021.

“We did a little analysis of individuals that had overdosed in our community, and I want to say that more than 90% of the individuals that overdosed left children behind,” Oneida Nation General Manager Mark Powless told the Examiner.

Oneida data in a packet provided at the meeting showed 20 overdose deaths between October 2022 and September 2023. For each quarter of that year, between 380 and 516 active patients  received substance abuse services. 

Nationally, in 2022, non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native people died from drug overdoses at the highest rate of any racial or ethnic group.

Powless wasn’t surprised by the comments people made at the meeting, he said, but their testimony will contribute toward what the tribe is trying to do. He said he never gets used to hearing stories of losing a child, a parent or another family member to an overdose. 

“There was a few times tonight where I had to quickly regain my composure because it’s just so difficult to hear some of the things that people say and share,” he said. 

‘We want to prevent addiction, not simply treat addiction’ 

Powless told the Examiner about a concerning trend among children 5 years old and younger who are affected by drug abuse. He mentioned Head Start and Early Head Start programs, where staff are encountering families affected by substance abuse.

“Those areas are starting to encounter kids who are coming from homes where there’s either rampant substance use or a loss of a parent due to an overdose,” Powless said. “Or you have kids that were born addicted. So those kids are now entering into our programs and services, and that’s like a growing issue… We’re seeing more and more kids, and it’s more and more difficult to find spaces for them to get the services that they need.”

When you have conversations with the community about children who lost one or both parents to an overdose, you hear about those childrene experiencing challenges, including bullying, Powless said. 

There’s an understanding that only focusing on treatment means never overcoming the addiction problem, Powless told the crowd at the meeting. For the opioid settlement funds, the tribe is proposing an emphasis on prevention. Prevention is often underfunded, he said. 

Family-friendly events, programming in the school system and training about trauma and stigma are among ideas that could be funded by the settlement money. “We want to prevent addiction, not simply treat addiction,” Powless said. 

At the meeting, the man whose brother died from an overdose was disappointed to see the tribe not proposing spending more settlement funds on harm reduction. The only harm reduction proposal outlined would spend $5,000 on harm reduction kits in tribal vehicles. 

He expressed support for having Narcan, a medicine that can treat an opioid overdose, available in more areas in the community to prevent deaths. 

The Oneida Nation’s proposals for the settlement funds aren’t its only plans to prevent overdoses. Narcan is distributed through the Tribal Action Plan and behavioral health services, Powless said.    

“Yes, there is a need for vending machines, other ways to get even more [Narcan] out into the community,” Powless said. “But we haven’t talked about all of the work that is happening, and so some of that is missed in this conversation.”

How might the tribe use the funding?

The tribe has more ideas than it can pay for with the settlement funds and is continuing to add tothe list, Powless said at the meeting.  

There is not yet a final plan for how most of the money will be used, but there is agreement on a few items, he said. These include funding for future community meetings and  buying equipment for Oneida Nation High School students to develop anti-opioid multimedia content. 

“The youth voice and youth participation in this conversation has been really low, so we do want to get our youth engaged in this topic,” Powless said. 

One person at the meeting said that to her, providing transitional housing to people with nowhere to go should be a top priority. There are different models of transitional living the tribe might use to help people overcome substance abuse. 

One model is called “Housing First,” and it welcomes people still struggling with substance abuse and can be tricky to manage, Powless said. The idea is to satisfy a person’s basic needs, then help with recovery, he said.  

Powless isn’t sure if the tribe will go in that direction, but he said it will at the very least provide a safe and sober place to live for people coming out of treatment. This would aim to avoid scenarios where someone goes to treatment and then returns to an environment that may lead to relapse. 

“It’s really those early days of recovery [when] people need a lot of support,” Powless said. 

Some proposals are specific to Oneida culture. One idea Powless described involves people in recovery receiving training in the trades and then helping build a longhouse. Another idea involves hiring apprentices to learn the Great Law of Peace. One person does the majority if not all of the speaking for Oneida at Great Law recitals, Powless said, and the tribe doesn’t currently have people learning to replace him.

“The Great Law is one of the foundations for our culture,” Powless said, “one of the foundations for our community… We do need to pass on that information to other generations.”

State settlement money will help fight addiction 

The Oneida Nation may receive more opioid settlement funding from the state of Wisconsin. This would provide additional funding for a tribe that has more ideas about how to address addiction in the community than it can fund with its settlement money. 

Wisconsin is due to receive over $750 million through 2038 due to national litigation against the pharmaceutical industry, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ website. 

The state received about $31 million in opioid settlement payments in the state fiscal year 2023. (Wisconsin’s fiscal years run from July 1 to June 30 of each calendar year). Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized tribes received $6 million for prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery services for tribal members. The Oneida Nation received over half a million dollars. 

Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee passed a plan for using the state fiscal year 2025 payments. The state again allocated $6 million to the tribes. 

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