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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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