COVID-19 vaccines have not been linked to as many as 3.9 million deaths.
Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said on May 9, 2026, on “Real America’s Voice” that the 39,000 deaths reported on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System could be low and the real number could be 100 times higher because most people don’t report to the system.
VAERS, run by U.S. health agencies, is an early warning system for vaccine problems, but its data isn’t evidence that vaccines caused deaths.
VAERS says submitting a report does not mean the vaccine caused an adverse event. Reports are not analyzed for accuracy.
A 2022 review found potential links in 38 deaths out of 8 billion doses of vaccine administered. A 2026 analysis from the National Institutes of Health found no evidence COVID vaccines increased sudden cardiac death in healthy young adults.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
This year's Republican campaign has featured attacks on transgender people, including false statements about gender-affirming care for minors. (Stock photo by Vladimir Vladimirov/Getty Images)
In the 2024 election, Republican messaging that marginalized transgender Americans and attacked Democrats got widespread attention.
Opinion is divided among political analysts about whether anti-trans messagingcontributed to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s narrow loss — about 29,000 votes in Wisconsin and about a 1.5% margin nationwide — orwas irrelevant.
A 2023 Marquette University Law School poll found that a majority of respondents favored protecting trans people against workplace discrimination, but 70% also believed athletes should be required to play sports on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth.
But whether or not the strategy helped seal Donald Trump’s victory two years ago, Republican candidates in Wisconsin have been leaning into messaging that targets transgender and nonbinary people.
Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (Wisconsin Legislature photo)
Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), whose adult son is transgender, sees little reason to “rehash” the 2024 election. “I think it’s always important to make sure that we are advocating for our trans community and for kids and speaking out against hate,” she said. “I think the bigger concern is why a party feels the need to attack our trans kids and use that as an issue to rile up part of their base ultimately.”
Transgender individuals account for less than 1% of the adult Wisconsin population, about 36,000 people, and 3.3% of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17, fewer than 13,000 people — or 180 per county. The Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles Law School calculated those estimates based on survey data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collected between 2021 and 2023.
The Republican majority in the state Legislature has passed bills that would bar gender-affirming care for young people and ban kids from playing on sports teams that didn’t match the gender they were assigned at birth or their biological sex. Gov. Tony Evers has repeatedly vetoed those measures.
“We’ve seen this in the Legislature, that by somehow going after children and bullying them is something that they see as a winning issue,” Ratcliff said. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me. And that grown adults think it’s OK to bully kids is just gross.”
Meanwhile, with Trump’s inauguration to a second term, federal policy has turned against transgender people and also against a more expansive understanding of gender.
During the Wisconsin Republican convention in Wisconsin Dells on May 16, speakers attacked the transgender population, particularly youth, sounding the alarm about the possibility of trans girls playing high school sports, mocking the use of inclusive language and promoting the policing of bathrooms.
Republican nominee for governor Tom Tiffany opened his speech by asking the delegates, “Are you ready for a governor that’s going to protect girls’ sports?”
Sen. Ron Johnson inveighed against “Biological males competing against our little girls in sports. Biological males invading their locker rooms, their showers, their bathrooms.” He as well as former Gov. Scott Walker falsely claimed that minors identified as transgender can be subjected to surgical procedures.
And a May 19 press release by Republican press secretary Zach Bannon falsely claimed that more than 90 lawmakers were “emphasizing their support of sex-change surgeries for minors” in an open letter to two leading Wisconsin hospital systems.
The false claim was repeated three times in the press release, which attacked Democrats in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District who are running in the party’s primary to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden.
Theletter called on the healthcare providers, Children’s Wisconsin in Wauwatosa and UW Health in Madison, to resume gender-affirming care for minors, which both suspended early this year following threats to federal medical dollars from the Trump administration.
That form of care does not include surgery, however. A Children’s Wisconsin spokesperson said medical treatment prior to the suspension of care involved medication, and that Children’s still provides mental health and behavioral care.
“UW Health does not offer gender-affirming surgery to minors,” said Sara Benzel, a spokesperson for the Madison-based system.
Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said that for the youngest children who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria — a deep-seated sense that their gender identity doesn’t match their biological sex — the first step is extensive counseling with a therapist.
Gender-affirming care “is also age-appropriate, and this is the part that I think people miss all the time,” Swetz said in a recent interview. “There are no medical interventions until puberty for gender-affirming care.”
Interventions at puberty can involve medication but not surgery, Swetz said. Those can include hormone treatment to delay puberty and to redirect the body’s development.
“But that is all age-appropriate, and highly individualized, just like all good medical care is with the doctor,” Swetz said. “And always with full consent of parents and guardians. When we are talking about gender-affirming care for trans youth, that’s what we’re talking about. Not what the other side would like to pretend.”
Bannon did not respond to a Wisconsin Examiner email message seeking an explanation for the false statements in his press release.
A federal judge in April blocked the Trump administration from cutting off federal funds to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care. Thejudge’s order said the Department of Health and Human Services lacked the authority to override professional standards of care or to deny funding to healthcare providers following those standards.
Since then some health providers in other states, including Children’s Minnesota hospital, haveresumed providing gender-affirming care for minors.
Both UW Health and Children’s Wisconsin said they sympathized with patients who had been undergoing that care and their families, but that they believe they would remain in legal jeopardy if they resume care involving medication.
Ratcliff said that as someone whose family has gone through the experience of addressing the needs of a transgender child, it was important to her “to make sure that all trans kids and the trans community know that there are people in the Capitol that care about our trans community, that see them, that are fighting for them, and that we can push back again and fight back against all the hateful rhetoric toward our trans community.”
She said she believes Republicans are ramping up attacks on trans people as a deflection from the economic squeeze voters are feeling.
“We know that everyday costs are going up and they aren’t putting forward policies that actually help everyday lives of Americans or Wisconsinites,” Ratcliff said. “My child being trans is not causing these prices to go up. My child’s healthcare is not causing any difference in people’s lives except for my child’s life.”
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany addresses the 2026 Republican Party of Wisconsin convention. (Screenshot/WisEye)
At the Wisconsin Republican Party convention at Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells Saturday, elected officials, party leaders and former governors repeatedly warned that if Democrats do well in this year’s midterm elections they will turn the state into its more liberal neighbor of Minnesota.
“Look at Minnesota, if you must, look at where taxpayers have been fleeced of millions of dollars by Democrat politicians that chose to look the other way, take a look at Illinois, with their high tax rates, and their politicians that have passed out freebies to illegal aliens, and make no mistake, those same people, they have this state in their sights, and they want Wisconsin to be their next victim,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who was crowned Saturday as the party’s nominee for governor.
The warning comes after 15 years in which Republicans have controlled majorities in the state Legislature and hold six of the state’s eight congressional districts while Republicans hold both houses of Congress and the presidency. In his speech, Tiffany painted a Wisconsin in decline.
“This election is about more than politics. It’s about whether Wisconsin is going to continue down this path of decline,” he said.
The national political landscape, President Donald Trump’s sinking approval rating, a faltering economy and a less gerrymandered legislative map have Democrats dreaming of trifecta control of state government.
“The one thing I am scared about this election is the Democrats are motivated, and they truly believe we’re on the verge of a fascist day or something,” U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman said. “And because they are so motivated — you see it in the number of protests out there — we have got to match them. To be honest, we’re not matching them quite yet, but they do believe they’re on that verge of losing America, and that that is why they have so many volunteers out there, so many people who are gathering signatures. We have got to find a way to match that enthusiasm.”
State party chair Brian Schimming said Saturday that to staunch that blue wave, Republicans need to lean into “kitchen table issues.”
“Because wherever we are in this state on the big issues, the big kitchen table issues, the voters are with us,” said Schimming, who in recent weeks has faced internal efforts to oust him.
During a panel discussion of current and former Republican legislators, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said that the state’s residents are “feeling the economy.”
“When you look at what’s going on right now, it is affordability, it truly is,” Kurtz said. “Let’s not sugarcoat that. Everybody, at least in my district, we’re feeling the economy. So that’s where I think we, as Republicans, we have to say what we have done and what we will continue to do.”
But from the convention stage, officials such as Tiffany, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, former Gov. Scott Walker and U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden, railed against alleged election fraud, undocumented immigrants, trained protesters fighting the Trump administration and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“The left never, never talks about the victims of crime from illegal immigrants,” Johnson said. “But they take those two individuals who they trained and encouraged, put themselves into harm’s way, they died, and they turned them into martyrs and use them as an excuse to defund ICE, defund CBP, refuse to fund DHS, and put all of America, or continue to keep America at risk.”
Repeatedly, speakers highlighted their focus on eliminating protections for transgender people and preventing trans people of all ages from receiving gender-affirming care.
“Are you ready for a governor that calls moms moms not inseminated persons? Are you ready for a governor that’s going to protect girls’ sports?” Tiffany said in the opening line of his speech.
Throughout the day, party officials sought to paint Wisconsin Democrats as “radicals” who want to turn the country socialist.
“The Democrat candidates leave the answer simple: the government should provide,” said Schoemann, who briefly ran in the Republican primary for governor but dropped out after Trump endorsed Tiffany. “They want a government that provides your groceries, your education, your health care, your child care. Should I keep going?”
Speakers bashed the Democratic vision for a government that can solve people’s problems — labeling Wisconsin Democrats such as Attorney General Josh Kaul and state Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) as socialists. State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), who has been leading the polls in the Democratic primary for governor and actually is a Democratic Socialist, was also a frequent target.
Speakers also often criticized Democratic proposals to raise income taxes on the state’s millionaires, billionaires and corporations to offset rising property taxes.
In his often meandering 30-minute speech, Johnson argued that if Democrats win back a majority in the U.S. Senate this fall, they’ll use that power to end the Senate filibuster rule to “turn America into a one-party nation.”
So, he said, to preempt that effort, Republicans should end the filibuster this summer in order to pass the SAVE Act instituting much stricter rules on voting.
“We better end it first, so we can save this nation,” he said. “If we were to end it, we wouldn’t be doing it to turn this into a one-party Republican party nation. No, we would do it to preserve this nation, to preserve voter integrity, so that no matter who wins we have the confidence that that’s a legitimate result.”
It’s boom times for Wisconsin’s congressional delegation: Most members have seen their personal wealth substantially rise since arriving on Capitol Hill, according to a NOTUS analysis of congressional financial disclosures.
That surge in their financial portfolios is primarily driven by real estate, retirement accounts and, in one case, a well-placed billboard, NOTUS’ analysis indicates. In all, five of Wisconsin’s 10 delegation members reported median net worths of more than $1 million in 2024, the most recent year covered by federal disclosures.
Overall, the Wisconsin delegation is much wealthier than the average Wisconsinite, who has a median net worth of about $76,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s median net worth nearly tripled in recent years, from $24 million in 2010, when he was first elected to the Senate, to $64.9 million in 2024.
One of the assets driving the uptick in Johnson’s median net worth is an industrial building he and his wife own in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The property was worth between $1 million and $5 million in 2010. In 2024, Johnson valued it at between $5 million and $25 million, according to his latest financial disclosure.
In a decidedly political twist, part of Johnson’s wealth is tied up with his own reelection campaign committee. Federal Election Commission records indicate Johnson’s campaign owes Johnson more than $8 million from personal loans he’s made to the committee. In his 2024 personal financial disclosure, Johnson lists these loans as assets, valuing them between $5 million and $25 million.
Johnson’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Therein lies a major challenge in pinpointing lawmakers’ net worths: They are only required to publicly disclose the value of their assets and liabilities in broad ranges. So if an asset increased from $4.9 million to $5.1 million, it grew 4%, but the category range (going from $1-$5 million to $5-$25 million) would have increased 400%.
Lawmakers also aren’t required to disclose the value of several assets including personal property, vehicles or their personal residence, although they do have to declare the value of their mortgage as a liability along with other debts including credit card balances and student loans.
To best estimate lawmakers’ wealth, NOTUS calculated the median of their minimum net worth — minimum total assets minus maximum liabilities — and maximum net worth — maximum total assets minus minimum liabilities.
Johnson is hardly alone among Wisconsin lawmakers whose personal wealth has grown substantially while they earn a $174,000 annual salary.
Among the others: Republican Reps. Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steil, Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany, as well as Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan.
Steil, elected to Congress in 2018, and Grothman, elected in 2014, have both become millionaires since they entered Congress.
Grothman’s median net worth has more than doubled, from $885,000 in 2014 to more than $2.2 million in 2024. Several accounts Grothman disclosed owning in 2014, including state retirement accounts and two individual retirement accounts, steadily increased in value. And the value of a condominium he owns in West Bend, Wisconsin, greatly increased, from a reported minimum value of $15,001 in 2014 to $100,001 in 2024, according to his financialdisclosures. The condominium could be worth as much as $250,000, according to Grothman’s latest disclosure.
Grothman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Steil’s median net worth more than doubled from 2018 to 2024, from $812,000 in 2018 to nearly $1.9 million in 2024, according to his financial disclosures. Several of Steil’s brokerage and retirement accounts jumped in value, including Vanguard Target Retirement, Mid Cap Growth Index Fund and Strategic Equity Investor accounts. He also added a Vanguard U.S. Growth Fund account worth between $250,001 and $500,000 that’s now among his largest assets.
Steil’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Fitzgerald’s median net worth increased from $3.5 million in 2021, his first year in the House, to $6.3 million in 2024. His financial disclosure report from 2020, the year he was elected, is blank and has not been amended.
A spokesperson for Fitzgerald did not return a request for comment.
Fitzgerald’s wealth spike is primarily driven by real estate investments. The minimum disclosed value of his Wisconsin farm increased from $500,001 to $1 million over those three years, and he disclosed a property in Watertown, Wisconsin, in 2024 that’s worth at least $250,001. He also disclosed a Big Horn, Montana, property worth between $1 million and $5 million, although the property’s value range did not change between 2021 and 2024.
Tiffany’s median net worth ticked up slightly from $230,000 in 2020 to $296,000 in 2024, according to his latest disclosure.
Some of his income comes from on high: He owns a billboard in Oneida, Wisconsin, worth between $1,001 and $15,000 that consistently generates between $5,000 and $15,000 each year, according to his disclosures.
Tiffany’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Pocan’s median net worth has also risen, from $541,000 in 2012 to $778,000 in 2024.
Most of his net worth comes from Budget Signs & Specialties, a printing company Pocan fully owns. It sells custom signs, awards and apparel, as well as campaign materials to Wisconsin Democratic candidates, and is valued between $500,001 and $1 million. It was valued between $250,001 and $500,000 in 2012.
Political candidates and committees have paid Pocan’s Budget Signs & Specialties more than $1.2 million since 2004, according to FEC data. That includes about $12,700 so far during the 2026 election cycle, with $7,600 collectively coming from Pocan’s own congressional campaign committee and the committee of Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Baldwin’s campaign committees and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin are among Pocan’s biggest political customers over the last 22 years, FEC filings indicate.
The state Democratic Party has paid Pocan’s company more than $500,000 for materials such as yard signs and T-shirts since 2008. Committees for Baldwin’s House and Senate campaigns have collectively spent $171,000 since 2004.
In addition, Pocan’s campaign committee has paid his business more than $91,000 for printing and copying services and signs since 2018, according to FEC filings.
Pocan’s office declined to comment on the congressman’s net worth increase and business.
Baldwin’s median net worth has dipped slightly from $623,000 in 2012 to $588,000 in 2024, according to her financialdisclosures.
Baldwin’s office said in a statement that the Wisconsin Democrat has “no knowledge of where her assets are invested or the composition of her portfolio” and communicates with her trustee through the Senate Ethics Committee.
One of the delegation’s wealthiest members is also its newest.
Republican Rep. Tony Wied, whose median net worth is nearly $10.1 million, arrived in Washington in 2024 after selling his chain of dinosaur-themed gas stations and convenience stores.
Wied holds between $50,000 and $100,000 in Black Hills Corp., an electric and gas utility in the West, and at least $250,000 in companies that produce tractors, trucks and automotive parts, including an investment in the Canadian National Railway.
That’s notable because Wied sits on the House Agriculture Committee and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where he serves on the subcommittee for rural development, energy and supply chains. These committees have oversight jurisdiction for the industries in which Wied personally invests.
Wied reports his stock trades each month to the House Ethics Committee in compliance with current law and guidelines, spokesperson Aidan Strongreen said.
“Congressman Wied’s investments are managed solely through an independent financial adviser, and he has no role in any of their decisions,” Strongreen said.
Only two members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation have net worths below the Wisconsin household median, according to a NOTUS analysis of their annual financial disclosures: Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden and Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore.
Van Orden’s median net worth is -$88,000, while Moore’s is also in the red, at -$75,000, according to their most recent financial disclosures.
On her most recent disclosure, Moore reported no assets. She disclosed a mortgage balance on her home in the range of $50,000 to $100,000. Lawmakers are not required to publicly disclose the value of their personal residence, and most do not.
Moore’s net worth has dropped almost $100,000 from $24,000 in 2008, according to her disclosure.
Van Orden does have some assets, primarily a Navy Mutual Whole Life policy valued between $50,001 and $100,000, his disclosure shows. But his overall net worth is pulled down by a mortgage and a “revolving charge account,” a category that includes credit cards and home equity and personal credit lines.
This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel delivers his concession speech in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson sent a letter to the White House Wednesday recommending their nominees for U.S. Attorney in Wisconsin’s two federal court districts.
The appointment process for the two jobs has become more politically fraught than in the past after the commission was unable to agree on a nominee for the state’s Eastern District. The administration of President Donald Trump named former Republican attorney general and failed state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel as the interim U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee last year, which allowed him to serve for a limited time. The district’s judges ruled earlier this year that Schimel could no longer serve in his interim role, but former U.S. Attorney General gave him a new title that allowed him to continue working in the office.
“I appreciate the hard work and dedication of Brad Schimel, who continues to serve the people of Wisconsin and remains fully committed to his role as first assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Wisconsin,” Johnson said in a statement. “My bipartisan nominating commission with Sen. Baldwin submitted two well-qualified U.S. attorneys for the President’s consideration. Peter Smyczek and Chadwick Elgersma will apply the rule of law and serve the people of Wisconsin’s Eastern and Western districts well.”
Historically, the two senators from a state each appoint people to a bipartisan nominating commission which selects candidates to be recommended to the president. Presidents usually adhere to the recommendations of a state’s senators. The Wisconsin nominating commission had broken down but was restarted after Democrats objected to Schimel’s appointment.
Baldwin and Johnson named Peter Smyczek and Chadwick Elgersma to be the state’s top federal prosecutors. Smyczek has been an assistant U.S. attorney in the Milwaukee office while Elgersma was named to the job in January after working as an assistant prosecutor in the Madison office.
“This is proof that the hard work of this commission and finding common ground can work,” Baldwin said. “The candidates that the commission put forward appear well qualified, to have relevant experience, and committed to delivering justice impartially, and I support them moving through the next stage of the nomination process. Wisconsinites want these top law enforcement officials to work for them and uphold the constitution without fear or favor, and I will vet these candidates to ensure they meet that criteria and do right by Wisconsin families.”
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