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.

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President Donald Trump held a roundtable discussion Friday at Custer Farms in Chippewa Falls to tout his administration’s efforts to help farmers. 

Trump’s visit is his first to Wisconsin during this year’s election season. First to take the stage on Friday were U.S. Reps. Derrick Van Orden and Tom Tiffany, signaling the importance of the 3rd Congressional District and the Wisconsin gubernatorial contest  for Republicans this year. 

Despite Trump’s waning approval ratings, Van Orden and Tiffany tied themselves to the president, effusively praising him.

Trump appeared on stage for the roundtable with both congressmen as well as U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, farm owner Ken Custer, Jake Leinenkugel, Olympic speed skater Jordan Stolz and Joe Thomas, a Hall of Fame former NFL player who played for UW-Madison and now owns a western Wisconsin beef farm. 

Despite its billing as a roundtable discussion of agriculture policy, Trump spoke for more than 40 minutes straight, at times appearing to read from a script and at others riffing on a number of favorite topics including former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, “Dumbocrats in Congress,” the allegedly “rigged” 2020 presidential election, transgender people, his multi-million dollar D.C. renovation projects and the southern border. 

“These are some very sick puppies that I’m looking at that are running for office and on the other side,” Trump said. “I call them the Dumocrats, D-U-M, you take out the B, a lot of people don’t know, dumb has a b, a lot of people don’t know. You take out the b and change the E, you put the you and you have a Dumocrat, but they are, their policy is just outstandingly bad, and it’s really bad for the farmer, because we were having record stuff, and then we had to put out a fire, we had to extinguish a nuclear weapon.” 

With six months until November’s midterm elections, many of Trump’s signature policies have directly affected the bottom line of Wisconsin farmers. Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran have greatly increased the cost of essentials such as fertilizer and gas while limiting access to foreign markets for corn and soybeans. In western Wisconsin communities close to where he appeared on Friday, Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota’s Twin Cities extended into the Dairy State, directly striking the undocumented migrant labor the region’s farmers rely on. 

“If anybody you hear says that Donald Trump doesn’t care about the farmers, you can look him straight in the eye and tell him that’s a pile of manure, because the man is right back there,” Van Orden said. “We’re going to make sure our farmers don’t have to wring their hands at night because they’re worried about paying bills.” 

Trump and other speakers promised that the administration and congressional Republicans are working to ease the burden on American farmers, but offered little in the way of concrete proposals for how fertilizer, seed, gas and equipment will get cheaper or how milk, corn and soybeans will get easier to sell. 

“Your fertilizer prices are going to go way down, just like they were four months ago,” Trump said. “Your fertilizer is down, your energy’s down, your oil, your gas is all coming way down. And frankly, I thought it would go much higher than it did.” 

In the days leading up to Friday’s event Democratic politicians and Democratic-aligned groups rolled out a series of tours, roundtables and online events to highlight complaints about administration policies on all manner of things. 

“Wisconsin farmers do backbreaking work to produce world-class products that feed the world and drive our rural economies. President Trump came into office promising to support our farmers, but instead has taken every opportunity to jack up their costs, limit their customers, and cut into their margins,” U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) said in a statement. “Between Donald Trump’s trade war, unnecessary war in Iran, and attacks on our health care system, Wisconsin farmers are paying more for everything, and Donald Trump has no solutions to the problems he’s caused. As President Trump visits Wisconsin, he owes our farmers more than lip service – they need real relief from the high costs they are paying.”

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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 messaging contributed to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s narrow loss — about 29,000 votes in Wisconsin and about a 1.5% margin nationwide — or was 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 (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. 

The letter 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. The judge’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, have resumed 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.”

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U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said at an event Tuesday in Madison that if elected governor he’d return the state’s current budget surplus to taxpayers while also cutting property taxes, eliminating taxes on tips and overtime and overturning Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year school funding increase while also increasing the rate at which public schools are reimbursed for special education services. 

Tiffany said he’d do all of that even though he has not “penciled out in detail” how he’d pay for it all. At the event Tuesday hosted at the Madison Club by WisPolitics.com, Tiffany repeatedly lamented “Madison math” that makes people ask what will be cut from the state budget if lawmakers cut taxes, reducing state revenue. 

Several times during the moderated interview and to reporters after the event, Tiffany compared the state budget process to household budgeting. 

“Families figure out what their priorities are, and then they spend accordingly,” he said. “Education is going to be one of my priorities. Transportation will be a priority. Healthcare is going to be a priority. Those things take first call on the budget, and then when we get down to the wants, if some of them fall off, so be it. We’re going to make sure that we take care of the basics first.”

Tiffany is running for governor during a midterm election cycle in which Democrats are planning for the possibility that they can hold trifecta control of Wisconsin’s government for the first time in more than 15 years. President Donald Trump’s declining approval rating, the national political landscape and new voting maps that could end years of Republican legislative control mean that Tiffany is campaigning against the political current. 

Repeating a line from his speech at the Republican Party of Wisconsin convention earlier this month, Tiffany said he was running for governor rather than continuing to hold his safe Republican seat in Congress because he wants to reverse what he sees as a “state in decline.” 

Loyalty

Tiffany, who was first elected to the Legislature in 2010 and then elected to represent northern Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District in 2020, said “people who know” him know that he’s always been loyal first to the people of Wisconsin rather than the Republican executives — former Gov. Scott Walker and Trump — he’s worked with. 

Tiffany is a member of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus and has rarely broken from Trump while in Congress. Following the 2020 presidential election, Tiffany joined Republican efforts to overturn Trump’s loss. Last week, he told reporters he still had concerns about “improprieties” in the administration of the 2020 election. 

On Tuesday, Tiffany wouldn’t say that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, only that Biden was the president from 2021 until 2025. He said that he had concerns about the administration of the election in “a number of states.” 

“We should make sure that those things that were done wrong did not unduly damage that election,” he said. “On January 6 of 2021 it was decided by the Congress that Joe Biden won the presidency, and he became president … and I accepted that. I referred to him as President Biden, and, but I gotta tell you, it was a bad time for the United States of America when you had 10 million people that came in illegally, when we lost our energy independence, when we tucked tail and ran in Afghanistan … it was not a good period of time, but he was president for those four years.” 

Tiffany said he was still “studying the details” of the U.S. Department of Justice’s $1.776 billion slush fund for compensating people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. But he said he didn’t think people who assaulted law enforcement officers should receive any of that money. 

Asked to point to other examples in which he disagrees with Trump, he said he didn’t believe the federal government should allow more Chinese students to attend American public universities such as the University of Wisconsin. 

During the audience question portion of the event, Tiffany was asked about the undocumented workers who make up a large portion of the state’s dairy workforce. Tiffany responded by criticizing Biden-era immigration policy, attacking “sanctuary” policies and claiming that the national decline in violent crime is because of Trump’s crackdown on immigration. 

But Tiffany wouldn’t say if Immigration and Customs Enforcement went too far during its occupation of the Democratic-run cities Chicago, Minnesota and Los Angeles. 

“The President made a decision that he thought that things should be done differently after what happened in Minneapolis, and I think that decision will be born out here as we go forward,” he said. “But remember, Minnesota was an anomaly, Immigration and Customs Enforcement works very closely with law enforcement. Here’s what I would do: I would make sure that local, county and state law enforcement works closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and coordinate their efforts to make sure what happened in Minnesota does not happen in Wisconsin.” 

Madison issues 

Tiffany also weighed in on a number of issues that lawmakers in Madison have taken up this year, including the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, the legalization of online sports betting and the growth of hyperscale data centers in the state. 

On the stewardship program, which is set to expire at the end of June after legislators failed to reach a deal on extending it past 2026, Tiffany said he’d sign a bill to re-authorize the program if it focuses on maintaining “what we have” rather than acquiring new state land. Tiffany in recent years has often joined Republican state lawmakers in opposing land conservation projects in the northern part of the state through the program. 

Earlier this year, lawmakers enacted a law that would allow the state’s Native American tribes to begin operating online sports betting operations. The bill will require the state’s gambling compacts with the tribes to be re-negotiated. 

Tiffany said he doesn’t support expanding gambling opportunities in the state but that he’d “have to review the details” of the law to weigh in on the compact negotiations. 

Over the past year, the construction of massive AI data centers has become one of the most potent political issues in the state. Tiffany said that the controversial data centers in Port Washington, Mount Pleasant and Beaver Dam have taught the state lessons on how to move forward. He said he would repeal a provision included in the 2023-25 state budget that exempted data center construction costs from the state sales tax, prevent data centers from being built on “productive farmland,” work to keep utility rates stable and prevent the tech companies building the data centers from making local governments sign non-disclosure agreements. 

However he wouldn’t say if legislation would be required to achieve those goals, only saying that “my Public Service Commission” would handle it.

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As the long tail of the 2020 presidential election continues to reverberate through Wisconsin politics, a bipartisan pair of former elected officials sought to deliver a message of trust Tuesday in how the state counts votes and runs elections.

Meanwhile, the official Republican nominee for governor, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, has been ramping up his campaign refusing to admit President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, including in Wisconsin.

Former Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett appeared at Viterbo University in La Crosse Tuesday as representatives of the Democracy Defense Project, a bipartisan multi-state initiative to build trust in the country’s election systems. 

“The 2020 election has been litigated and relitigated and relitigated over and over again, and nothing has changed,” Barrett said. 

A day earlier, fresh off winning the GOP endorsement at the party’s weekend convention, Tiffany was asked at a campaign stop in Elm Grove Monday if Biden won the 2020 election. He replied that “the problem with the 2020 election was the improprieties that happened.” 

It was one of multiple appearances in which Tiffany declined to directly engage the outcome of the 2020 race.

Trump’s endorsement of Tiffany earlier this year helped clear out the Republican primary field for the three-term congressman. 

Tiffany was also one of the Wisconsin congressional delegation’s most ardent election deniers following Trump’s 2020 loss — which was affirmed by several reviews, recounts, investigations, audits and lawsuits in the years since. 

On Jan. 6, 2021, Tiffany voted against certifying election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania and told reporters at the time that he would have voted to not accept Wisconsin’s results as well. He also supported a lawsuit from the state of Texas that sought to overturn the election results of Wisconsin and three other states. 

The effort from right-wing congressional Republicans to reject the electoral votes for Biden from swing states was one of the mechanisms that led directly to the attack on the U.S. Capitol that day. 

In the days following the Jan. 6 attack, Tiffany appeared at a closed door rally with other right-wing figures who called for “war.” 

Tiffany’s comments come as the Trump administration has increased its effort to use the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI to relitigate the 2020 election. Swing states across the country have seen increased scrutiny surrounding previously debunked 2020 allegations and in recent weeks the FBI has begun digging into Wisconsin’s election administration — including questioning Milwaukee election workers. 

On Monday, Tiffany supported the FBI’s work. 

“Whatever they’re searching for, the investigation should be allowed to continue and let’s find out what happened there,” Tiffany told reporters. “If there’s improprieties that happened then there should be charges filed. If not, then you let the investigation cease.”

In La Crosse on Tuesday, Van Hollen and Barrett both lamented the FBI sticking its nose into an issue that’s already been closed. Barrett called the investigation a “fishing expedition” while Van Hollen criticized the waste of FBI time. 

“There are a lot of better uses for our FBI resources right now, so I don’t think that that is a great use of our resources,” Van Hollen said. 

The former attorney general also said the agency’s investigation didn’t concern him. 

“I don’t think the FBI is going to turn out and fabricate something, and if they, for some reason, uncovered something that we hadn’t known in the past, by all means, we want to make sure to enforce our laws as well, to make sure that people have confidence in our election system,” Van Hollen said. “So, is it something that I think is necessary? No. Do I think we should be concerned? Not necessarily.”

The Democracy Defense Project continues previous work done by state and local election officials across Wisconsin who have sought to respond to election conspiracy theories with basic facts about the state’s election system. 

During their visit to La Crosse, Barrett and Van Hollen highlighted Wisconsin’s decentralized election system in which local clerks across the state do the brunt of the work to administer the state’s elections and noted that those local officials are broadly trusted by their communities. 

“The general public believes very strongly in the folks in this room and other people who are running their local elections,” Van Hollen said, citing polling data from the project. “They believe you’re doing a good job, they recognize that you’re doing a nonpartisan job, a very important job.”

Polling shows that a majority of voters “have great respect for the people who are working the polls at a local level — yet they don’t necessarily have a belief that we have election integrity, which seems to me to be a bit of an oxymoron,” Van Hollen added. 

Lack of information is a primary culprit, he said. 

Many people are “just not informed as to the way our elections are run, and when we have so much misinformation out there,” Van Hollen said.

While calling it a problem involving Democrats as well as Republicans, he acknowledged Republicans have been a bigger contributor to the problem. 

“It comes from both political parties of late, certainly a lot more from my party,” Van Hollen said, “which has probably given rise to everybody’s desire to finally step forward and try to inform the public a little more.”

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.”

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Some of the top speakers at the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s annual convention in the Wisconsin Dells Saturday included 84-year-old former Gov. Tommy Thompson, 77-year-old U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, 71-year-old U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and 68-year-old U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, now officially the party’s endorsed candidate in this year’s governor’s race. 

As the old guard GOP leaders championed unity and warned of the dangers of “radical” Democrats, some took the stage to remind the party faithful they needed to look to the next generation of voters in Wisconsin to win in November.

“Welcome these young people,” said Waukesha County Republican Party chair Terry Dittrich, pointing to the Wisconsin Young Republicans, Turning Point USA and Americans for Prosperity —  groups that had speaking roles or tables with materials in the hallway outside the convention hall. “They are the future. They’re smart, they’re tech savvy and they just need guidance, and in some cases they need us to just listen to their ideas. …We’re all a bit older, but the bottom line is there’s a really nice fledgling group of young people who want to be involved in this process, and they’re the future.” 

Young people could be the key for Republicans hoping to win back the governor’s office and hang on to the Legislature this fall. Support from young men in particular helped President Donald Trump win in 2024, but that support has softened as the national mood has turned against the party that controls the White House and Congress. 

As Republicans attempt to connect with young people in 2026, they do so without Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA who was assassinated last year during an event on a college campus. Speakers and candidates on Saturday recognized the need to engage with young voters like Kirk did. 

Conservatives are still reeling from Kirk’s death and haven’t found someone like him to connect with young people, said Michael Alfonso, the 26-year-old Trump-endorsed candidate and son-in-law of U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy who is among four Republicans and three Democrats running to replace Tiffany in the 7th Congressional District.

“I think having young voices that are brave enough to step up is going to make a huge difference,” Alfonso said. “Because I don’t think one person could ever fill Charlie’s shoes, but I think maybe a thousand could.” 

A CBS exit poll from the 2024 presidential election shows that while voters under age 30 were overall more likely to vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump made inroads with that age group. In 2020, 60% of under-30 voters favored former President Joe Biden and 39% voted for Trump. In 2024, Harris received 54% of the under-30 vote and Trump won 43%.

A recent Harvard Youth Poll conducted by the university’s Institute of Politics found Democrats leading Republicans 45% to 26% in a generic ballot of registered voters ages 18 to 29. Just 35% of young people surveyed said they will “definitely” vote in this year’s midterm elections, but the Harvard poll found a political enthusiasm gap, with 55% of young Democrats saying they will vote this year compared with 35% of young Republicans and 25% of young independents. 

Former Gov. Scott Walker, who turned 43 the day he was first elected in 2010 and now runs the conservative group Young America’s Foundation, encouraged the mostly middle-aged and older crowd to reach out to young people and build enthusiasm as the country prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Walker noted many of the Founding Fathers were younger than 40 when they signed the document. 

“I tell you all those stories here this afternoon, not for a history lesson, although I love history, but to remind you and to remind those that we work with and serve with and live next to that you’re never too old or too young to fight for freedom,” Walker said on Saturday. 

The Republican Party of Wisconsin plans to visit college campuses across Wisconsin and tap campus resources to reach young voters and make the case for conservative candidates, state party chair Brian Schimming said. It’s important for Republicans to connect with young people early, when they’re more likely to stick with a political party throughout their lives, Schimming said. 

“We’re going to have a very active presence on the campuses and our coalition groups, who do campuses as well, AFP, Turning Point, all the other groups,” Schimming said. “We are not leaving the campuses alone.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who faces a nationally watched tight reelection race for the 3rd Congressional District this November, said Wisconsin Republicans should take young people seriously and engage them with facts about Republican priorities. He noted a lot of people in Saturday’s crowd had white hair matching his beard.

“I didn’t bleach this, so we got to make sure that we have more people with your color hair than mine,” he told reporters on Saturday.

He noted his youngest child is 27.

“These are the young people that were locked in their homes. They were forced to wear masks, they were forced to get an injection that they didn’t agree with or they would not be able to go to college. They were told if they write something wrong on the internet that they would be banned from everything,” Van Orden said. “They saw their hero, Charlie Kirk, assassinated live on television, so the younger generation is completely motivated because they want freedom and they look at the Republican Party as the party of freedom.” 

Tiffany emphasizes affordability as top issue

In the Wisconsin governor’s race, Republicans young and old have rallied around Tiffany as their best chance to retake the governor’s mansion. Wisconsin College Republicans endorsed Tiffany in September, before the party coalesced around his candidacy in late January after the Trump endorsement.

It’s Tiffany’s vision on affordability, from freezing property taxes to lowering utility costs, that has resonated with young Republicans and should connect with young voters across Wisconsin this fall, said Kyle Schroeder, the 29-year-old chair of Wisconsin Young Republicans, who spoke on stage at the convention Saturday.

“Even though that is a broad stance for everyone, it resonates so much with the younger generation,” Schroeder said about affordability. “We’re starting families and we are trying to plant our roots in a community post-college. We have great universities around Wisconsin. Whether we want people staying here in Wisconsin or moving to another state, we need to attract those workers and young workers, too.” 

Tiffany is about a decade older than the oldest top Democratic gubernatorial candidates. The current top-polling candidates, Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, are in their late 30s. Tiffany joined the state Assembly in the 2010 Republican wave that now risks losing legislative control for the first time in 16 years.

Tiffany told reporters Saturday he believes young people are pessimistic about economic opportunities in Wisconsin during Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ eight years in office, but emphasizing affordability will help him make inroads with young voters. 

“I want them to be optimistic about Wisconsin, and how you do that is you make the state more affordable,” Tiffany said. “We reduce property taxes, then freeze them. We reduce utility rates.” 

Emily Stuckey, a Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesperson, described Tiffany in a statement Saturday as the “GOP’s most expensive choice for governor.”

“From his unfettered commitment to Washington Republicans’ MAGA agenda that drives up healthcare premiums and guts coverage, to his support for tariffs that devastate farmers and policies that continue to drive gas and grocery prices higher by the day,” Stuckey said. “The Republican Party of Wisconsin endorsed a candidate who is ready and willing to squeeze every last dollar he can out of working Wisconsinites.”

At annual convention, Wisconsin GOP’s old guard urges party to engage young voters is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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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 financial disclosures. 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 financial disclosures.

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.

Here’s how much the wealth of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation has changed since going to Washington is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Four Republican members of Congress, including gubernatorial frontrunner Tom Tiffany, have introduced a bill that would exempt vehicles in southeast Wisconsin from federally mandated emissions testing. 

The bill was introduced by U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville) and co-sponsored by Reps. Glenn Grothman, Scott Fitzgerald and Tiffany. Tiffany, the only member whose district does not include the affected area of Milwaukee, Kenosha, Ozaukee, Racine, Sheboygan, Washington and Waukesha counties, also brought the issue up on the campaign trail late last month. 

Seven Wisconsin counties, including Milwaukee, are designated ozone nonattainment areas by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, which subjects vehicle owners in the area to additional regulations such as biennial emissions testing. Federal law allows a state to apply for the waiver if it can prove air pollution originates from out-of-state. 

The bill authors point to a Department of Natural Resources report that showed 10% of the ozone measured in the area comes from Wisconsin while more than a third of it comes across Lake Michigan from Illinois and Indiana. 

“Because of outdated federal rules, hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin drivers in seven counties are forced to complete emissions tests every two years just to renew their registration,” Tiffany said in a statement. “Wisconsin families should not be punished with costly and time-consuming mandates because of pollution drifting in from Illinois and Indiana.”

Studies have shown the highest sources of ozone in the region come from the urban centers of Chicago and Milwaukee.

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Tom Tiffany has received about $11,500 from the political action committee linked to We Energies.

Both state and federal records show the WEC Energy Group PAC shares an address with WEC Energy Group, which houses We Energies, the state’s largest utility provider.

Wisconsin campaign finance records show the PAC made four donations to Tiffany totaling $2,000 in 2010, 2012, 2016 and 2019. At that time, he was a Republican state lawmaker.

Federal Election Commission records, which capture his campaign for Congress, show the PAC made five donations totaling $9,500 to Tiffany between 2019 and 2023.

The PAC has not donated to Tiffany since he began his campaign for governor, records show.

Tiffany is far from the largest recipient of donations tied to We Energies.
The PAC contributes to both Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin, including six donations totaling $136,000 to Gov. Tony Evers’ campaign.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• State of Wisconsin Ethics Commission: WEC Energy Group PAC (WEC PAC)
• Federal Election Commission: WEC Energy Group Political Action Committee
• WEC Energy Group: About Us
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Some We Energies customers see utility bills spike for December 2025
• Wisconsin State Legislature: Senator Tom Tiffany
• Federal Election Commission: Tiffany for Wisconsin, Inc

Has We Energies donated thousands of dollars to Tom Tiffany? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Republican lawmakers have heard farmers’ concerns about President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda. Their response? Short-term pain, long-term gain.

Farmers faced a shrunken export market and operating costs after Trump enforced steep tariffs on key trading partners and farm materials last year. In response, the Trump administration will begin disbursing a $12 billion bailout to farmers due to “unfair market disruptions” at the end of this month.

Republican lawmakers from Wisconsin, a major agricultural producer, acknowledge the 2025 to 2026 crop season challenges, which resulted in an estimated $34.6 billion in losses for the industry, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. But they’re arguing that the success of specialty crops and rosier-than-expected economic indicators are evidence farmers can withstand any turmoil the tariffs have caused.

“Our farmers understand that we have to level the playing field. And how do you do that? You do that with these tariffs,” U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden said. “In order to get to the long term, you have to get through the short term, and that’s the reason that this money’s going back to people in the agriculture industry.”

A bipartisan group of agricultural experts said the Trump administration’s policies have “significantly damaged” the American farm economy in a letter to Senate Agriculture Committee leadership this month, as first reported by The New York Times.

“It is clear that the current Administration’s actions, along with Congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag research and staffing,” they wrote.

Wisconsin agriculture experts told NOTUS the administration’s bailout is undesirable and insufficient to cover many farmers’ lost revenue this year.

“They don’t solve the long-run problem of higher input costs and low prices; they are a Band-Aid to get us through this short-term problem,” said Paul Mitchell, the director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Agriculture professor and economist Steven Deller, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar view.

“We’re hemorrhaging thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and they’re giving us pennies,” Deller said, adding that farmers want “fair markets” and a “level playing field.”

Republicans in the state, however, are standing behind the president’s agenda, pointing to the administration’s stated goal to boost the manufacturing industry through baseline tariff rates for all countries, reciprocal tariffs and tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico.

“Wisconsin, at the end of the day, is going to benefit as we bring manufacturing back to the state,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the likely GOP nominee for governor.

He blamed the North American Free Trade Agreement for sending manufacturing companies packing for cheaper operations in China. Trump replaced NAFTA during his first term in office with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a deal Tiffany applauded.

Trump administration officials have defended tariffs in cable television appearances and in congressional hearings as key to transforming the American economy, even as some agricultural industries languish. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing earlier this month, Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on whether instability in the agricultural markets is a result of Trump’s tariff policies.

“It has nothing to do with the tariffs,” Bessent said.

Still, there are some signs the administration could be responsive to the backlash. The Trump administration is planning to roll back tariffs on some steel and aluminum goods due to concerns the tariffs are hurting consumers, the Financial Times reported.

The soybean industry is one of the hardest hit by tariffs, which temporarily cost farmers the U.S.’ largest soybean trading partner, China. Although China fulfilled its initial purchase agreement last month and has agreed to purchase tens of millions more metric tons over the next few years, American soybean producers withstood an unprecedented five consecutive months without purchases by China.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Republicans are looking past the short-term pain of Trump’s tariffs is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.