Vice President JD Vance is promoting a Trump administration plan to siphon off federal money that helps working parents afford childcare and use it to subsidize parents who stay at home. The man who ran for office mocking “childless cat ladies” is now trying to stir up a cat fight between working and stay-at-home moms. That’s not remarkable coming from a federal government run by social media trolls. But the main effect of the actual policy Vance is promoting will be to make the lives of already stressed working class families, especially in Wisconsin, even harder, more expensive and noticeably worse than before.

Childcare funding has been in crisis in Wisconsin ever since the pandemic relief money that briefly stabilized providers ran out. Without that money, which “prevented system collapse” according to the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, supporting more than 430,000 children in nearly 6,000 programs, parents are priced out of care and one in four providers say they will likely have to close their doors. 

Unlike Massachusetts and Vermont, Wisconsin does not treat childcare as a state budget priority. Ours is one of only a handful of states including Idaho, Indiana, Nevada and Ohio that failed to spend any money on childcare beyond what was required to draw down federal dollars, according to a 2025 report by the advocacy group ChildCare Aware. In 2026, the state created a new school readiness program for 4-year-olds. It was a first step toward acknowledging the needs of preschoolers and their parents. But it did nothing to address the massive shortage in care for infants and toddlers.

That’s all fine with JD Vance, who wrote on X that “normal Americans care more about their families than their jobs, and want a family policy that doesn’t shunt their kids into crap daycare so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.”

But Vance is not offering to do anything about the fact that the U.S. is the only wealthy nation on Earth that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, even though 68% of mothers with children under 6 are employed. Nor is he promoting the kind of high-quality early childhood education system that allows parents in Denmark, after their six months of paid parental leave, to enroll their preschoolers in beautiful, enriching childcare programs they don’t have to feel guilty about.

Instead, what Vance is proposing is to take an already paltry federal childcare subsidy and make working parents fight over crumbs with nonworking parents. Mainly, his aim seems to be to punish single parents. That’s not going to leave anyone in good shape — least of all children. 

One of the saddest aspects of the attack on childcare is that very recently parents, educators, business leaders and politicians of both political parties were finally coming together around the idea that childcare is an essential public good that requires public support.

The “mommy wars” attack Vance wants to revive is long out of date. It has been decades since most American families had the luxury of subsisting on a single wage-earner’s income, trad wife fantasies notwithstanding. 

Another major recent breakthrough is policymakers’ realization that the magic of the free market is not going to provide childcare parents can afford. 

“It was the Biden administration that put a ton of money into childcare during COVID, and we learned from that,” says Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. “The lesson was not just the importance of keeping childcare open so that essential workers could work, but the other piece that’s really interesting is that it demonstrated what can positively happen in childcare when you put a little more money into it.”

Thanks to direct payments to providers during the pandemic, center closures dropped off, the number of teachers leaving the workforce slowed down, tuition stopped climbing and, Schmidt says, “this industry for the first time was finally able to say, ‘Our work is important. It is essential to the functioning of our country. It’s worth investing in, because if you invest in it, these positive things can happen.”

Then came Trump. 

Schmidt calls the rollout of Trump policies that slashed supports for families “death by 1,000 cuts.” During the second Trump administration, cuts to food assistance, Medicaid and Head Start, along with the federal government’s move to loosen safety standards and increase staff ratios in childcare centers have taken a huge combined toll on Wisconsin families.

If it were just ideological — if the Trump administration were actually pursuing the kinds of pronatalist policies that make getting married and having children more attractive, as Vance likes to claim, it wouldn’t be as bad. But instead, while spouting rhetoric about valuing families, this administration is subjecting little kids and their parents to more and more misery.

Wisconsin could do more to protect vulnerable kids. Before leaving the Capitol to hit the campaign trail, state legislators failed to pass a bill that would have used state money to fill the gap after federal childcare stabilization funds lapsed. That set off a vicious cycle, says Paula Drew of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. Subsidies for families were cut and their out-of-pocket payments skyrocketed, so cash-strapped parents withdrew their kids from care. Under-enrollment meant less revenue for childcare centers, so they raised their rates. “It just sort of snowballed,” Drew says. “Programs said things like, ‘We’re gonna have to lower salaries for staff.’ … so I think we’re going to lose our educators, and in fact I think we’ve already lost a big percentage of our skilled, seasoned educators.”

An unintended consequence of the state’s investment in 4-year-old pre-K is that it creates a disincentive to provide care for infants and toddlers, which is already more expensive, Drew says. “Wisconsin serves very few infants and toddlers in regulated care,” she says. “And now, with additional funding going into the Get Kids Ready pre-K program, we expect that to be even lower a year from now.”

To make matters worse, the state no longer has a surplus of federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds, which it has used to cover some childcare costs for low-income families. 

Sooner or later, Wisconsin is going to have to start dedicating state revenue to childcare. Schmidt and Drew hope that, with a new governor and a new Legislature, Wisconsin will use the state surplus, payroll taxes or a tax on hemp products and gambling, as Louisiana has done, to subsidize childcare. Only then can Wisconsin reduce the astronomical tuition rates that parents pay ($13,000 for home care and $17,400 for center-based care, according to state data), give providers a better wage (currently $13.55 per hour), and stop the wave of childcare closures. 

They especially want the state to shore up disappearing infant and toddler care and retain experienced teachers — not just by giving them a raise but also by allowing them to continue to get higher education “and make this a profession, not just a fleeting step to something else,” says Drew. 

“We need supply of care; supply means educators that can work in programs. And then we want to help parents pay for care on the demand side. … You can’t do one and not the other, because it simply won’t work,” says Drew. “You can’t just help parents pay for care, but not tend to the supply of care available. And you can’t just tend to the supply of care available, but pretend you don’t see that parents are literally going into poverty to try to pay for childcare.”

“Childcare is infrastructure,” says Schmidt. “If we turned around and said to parents with 5-year-olds, you’ve got to start paying $17,000 a year for your child to be in school, we would see empty classrooms, right? We treat these as two very dramatically different concerns. But all of it is about families’ ability to work outside the home, impact the economy, all those kinds of things. “ 

It’s also about having a decent society that values families and takes good care of children. That’s the kind of society we need to come together and focus on, instead of being distracted by the rage-baiting bluster of internet trolls. 

Nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison have filed official charges with the National Labor Relations Board against the hospital’s parent company, SSM Health, for allegedly violating federal law by refusing to negotiate a contract with the recently established nurses’ union. 

The hospital’s nurses voted by a landslide earlier this summer to establish a union — a result that SSM fought to prevent the NLRB from recognizing. The efforts of management to prevent the union recognition were rebuffed by federal officials. 

In a news release on Tuesday, the nurses argued that hospital administration is wasting time engaging in anti-union activities when instead negotiations on a labor contract should be getting underway. 

The nurses have complained that the hospital administration has reduced staffing to unsafe levels, putting patient safety at risk. Staffing levels at St. Mary’s are the lowest of Madison’s seven hospitals. 

“SSM should be investing in staffing, support and retention of nurses, not wasting time and resources fighting our union, which is our voice to speak up for our patients,” St. Mary’s nurse Hannah Joers said in a statement released by the union. “Our number one goal is to win a contract which better takes patients’ level of sickness into account for staffing, and makes sure that we keep nurses by the bedside. SSM executives in St. Louis are abusing our empathy, making us do more and more with less and less. We’ve had enough, and the time has come to transform the system so that our patients’ needs come first. We will never back down and we are 1,000% determined to win a strong contract to provide the highest quality patient care.”

Labor union membership continues to climb in the United States, though the increase remains sharply divided by the politics of individual states.

Last year, the nation added more than 411,000 union members — the largest annual growth since 2008, according to a study published just ahead of the Labor Day holiday by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

At the end of last year, more than 14.6 million American workers belonged to a union — about 10% of the workforce, the study said. 

While union membership grew across the country, the State of the Unions report found that states that have sought to protect or strengthen collective bargaining rights added three times as many union members as so-called right-to-work states, which prohibit mandatory union membership or dues as conditions of employment.

“What seems to be the number one driver is the state of the state,” said one of the study authors, Robert Bruno, who leads the labor education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “If the policy is anti-union, it suppresses worker will. Where the law allows worker will to flourish, as I would argue it should, then you see higher numbers. So you can’t ignore politics. You can’t ignore policy.” 

State governments are nearly evenly divided on labor policy, with 26 states having right-to-work laws. Union membership rates sit at about 14% in collective bargaining states and 5% in right-to-work states, the study found.

The study shows that workers in collective bargaining states earn significantly more than those in other states. After adjusting for cost of living variances, the report calculated average hourly earnings of $34.16 in right-to-work states and $37.24 in collective bargaining states.

Union density is nowhere close to its record high. In 1954, more than a third of American workers belonged to unions. Today, that rate is about 10%.  And unions face major policy headwinds at the state and federal levels. In recent years, Southern states have passed new laws aimed at curbing union expansion. And President Donald Trump has sought to strip collective bargaining rights from more than 1 million federal workers. 

Researchers said it’s unclear how federal actions will affect union membership figures. Many of the president’s moves are being litigated in courts and more federal workers have sought to unionize under this administration. 

But public support for labor unions is growing among Republicans and Democrats, Gallup polling shows. 

“More Americans are turning to unions as a bulwark against the rising cost of living, and more public sector workers turned towards unions last year in the wake of some federal actions and federal headwinds,” said State of the Unions coauthor Frank Manzo IV, an economist at the left-leaning Illinois Economic Policy Institute. 

Conservatives have long argued that unions’ benefit on wage growth has been overstated by pro-labor interests. 

In a 2025 review of 147 studies, researchers at the free-market think tank Mercatus Center concluded that powerful labor unions can lead to slower job growth and fewer jobs for unionized workers, reduce company investments in research and development, and increase the likelihood of company closures. 

Researchers at the George Mason University think tank said the difference between the wages of unionized workers and nonunionized workers has declined in recent years and may even be negligible. 

“When powerful and adversarial unions operate with government-granted monopoly privileges and press for unsustainable terms, it can backfire and result in lost jobs and fewer opportunities for workers,” that report said.

This year, state lawmakers passed dozens of bills seeking to boost worker protections across 19 states, according to tracking by State Futures, a nonprofit coordinating hundreds of Democratic lawmakers across the states.

Those measures included three bills aimed at expanding collective bargaining.

Illinois lawmakers granted rideshare and gig drivers the right to organize and to bargain collectively. Washington state extended collective bargaining rights to certain university student employees.

And Virginia lawmakers approved a measure to repeal the state’s longstanding ban on public-sector collective bargaining. That would have expanded the possibility of union membership to half a million public employees in the commonwealth. But Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger vetoed that measure in May. 

The governor said she agreed with the goal of expanding collective bargaining rights. But she urged the legislature to adopt specific amendments, including delaying provisions of the bill until 2030 and shifting authority over how the system operates to a state board. 

“While preserving the enrolled bill’s focus on allowing public employees to achieve collective bargaining, my amendments would have also provided additional flexibility for public employers to take into account existing local budget timelines and processes,” Spanberger wrote in her veto message. “However, the General Assembly rejected these amendments.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

Wage gains for lower-paid Wisconsin workers have continued in 2026, but a halt in job creation suggests that might not last, says the author of a new report released ahead of Labor Day.

“The State of Working Wisconsin 2026” tells a good news-bad news story for Wisconsin’s workforce, but one that could become less favorable under current conditions.

“For working people in Wisconsin, the Labor Day 2026 picture is mixed,” the report states. “While overall unemployment remains low, the state isn’t adding jobs and Black unemployment is growing. While the median wage has reached an all-time high, surging inflation in 2026 means that wage growth is likely coming to an end.”

The report is a product of the High Road Strategy Center, based at the University of Wisconsin. It was written by Laura Dresser, the center’s associate director, along with Joel Rogers, the director, and Leslie Vasquez. The center was founded 30 years ago as the Center on Wisconsin Strategies (COWS).

The report’s best news is the continued wage growth, particularly for lower-wage workers, Dresser said in an interview. That has been consistent since about 2018, she said.

Except for a period early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when many businesses cut back and there was a brief, sharp increase in layoffs, the unemployment rate has also been consistently low, and employers have complained about the difficulty in filling jobs.

“Workers have more bargaining power, and they’ve managed to turn that into wage increases,” Dresser said. “That’s much more true in the lower-wage jobs than it is in the higher wage jobs.”

The lowest-paid 20% of workers have made the strongest wage gains, while the wage increases have been the smallest for the workers whose pay puts them in the 80th percentile —those who earn more than 80% of the workforce — she said.

Job growth, however, has slowed down in the last year and a half.

“Since late 2024, Wisconsin’s job market has gone flat,” the report states. From 2020 through most of 2024, Wisconsin’s economy was steadily adding jobs, setting new records.

In November 2024, the state hit a record high of 3,051,000 jobs, according to the report. Since then the total number of jobs has diminished, marking 3,042,900 jobs in July.

“We are not seeing increasing numbers of jobs over the last year and a half,” Dresser said — which, she observed, is parallel to a national trend of “anemic” job growth.

The construction industry remains particularly strong in Wisconsin job growth, according to the report, with jobs growing at twice the rate for construction jobs nationwide in the last six years, according to the report.

Wisconsin leisure and hospital jobs grew 1.6% in that period, while nationally they “barely grew at all,” according to the report. And manufacturing jobs are 4% below what they were in February 2020, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.

“Wisconsin is losing manufacturing jobs and losing them much more rapidly than the national decline,” the report states.

Tariff policies have shifted unpredictably since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 owing both to shifting policies in the administration as well as court cases that have overturned some of the administration’s tariffs.

The report cites research from the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., that concludes the tariff policies have done little to change the nation’s balance of trade with other countries, while reducing both imports and exports.

Wage growth could be coming to an end as well. If unemployment increases, workers may feel less able to seek better pay and working conditions, according to the report.

In 2026, inflation has driven up costs particularly for energy, fuel and utilities. “And national evidence is that inflation is growing faster than wage growth this year — that’s a big warning light that we’ll get thrown off that wage trend we’ve been on,” Dresser said.

While wage gains have been especially strong for Black workers over the last six years in Wisconsin — increasing 17% for Black women and 14% for Black men — the report also sees a persistent inequality along racial lines.

“Unemployment has stayed really low, but in the last year Black unemployment has gone up by a full percentage point while white unemployment has held steady,” Dresser said.

The failure of Wisconsin to raise the state minimum wage — which remains at $7.25 an hour — and the persistence of state laws enacted in the last decade weakening unions for public employees as well as in the private sector are also making it more difficult for workers, according to the report.

“Unions, made up of working people, help increase the power and standards of living of working people,” the report states. And they have been actively organizing in Wisconsin, although the renewed enthusiasm for unions hasn’t yet produced broad gains in membership, which has diminished to 5% of the private sector workforce.

Affordability has become a widespread buzzword in political campaigns for 2026, and the report suggests that can be viewed in more than one way.

“While the question of affordability is generally framed as a problem of the cost of living, the problem is equally or even better understood as a problem of suppressed pay,” the report states. “Raising the minimum wage and making it easier to join a union would both increase paychecks.”

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) walked through the shelves of pasta, olive oil, tinned fish and frozen pizzas at Fraboni’s Italian deli in Monona on Thursday as part of her statewide tour assessing how President Donald Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran are affecting small businesses. 

In May, the owners of the third-generation family business said that tariffs and increased gas prices had caused the cost of fresh tomatoes to increase about 40%. That price hike included domestically grown tomatoes because tariffs that increased the cost of imported tomatoes pushed up  demand for domestic tomatoes, while higher gas prices made even nearby crops more expensive to ship.
Store co-owner Bennett Fraboni added that his deli had done its best to avoid passing the increased cost of products on to its customers. 

“We always hope that it’s going to be a temporary increase, and that we can swallow it ourselves and not have to pass it on,” Fraboni said.

The deli, which has operated in the Madison area since 1971, sells Italian grocery items and operates a popular sandwich counter. Fraboni said that as the economy has fluctuated over the past year, he’s seen the two sides of the business move independently. When money is tight, he said, people are less likely to go out to eat, so sandwich counter sales slow but the sales of grocery items increase as people look to cook at home more. 

Baldwin said that hearing these stories from businesses across the state is especially frustrating because U.S. economic struggles are “self-inflicted.” 

Traveling the state during the Senate recess, she has heard from small business owners about the challenges they are facing because of  tariffs, trade wars and Trump’s war of choice in Iran, she said. “In many ways, they describe a very chaotic environment — volatile — and recognize that a lot of these things that are causing challenges for our small businesses are choices that this administration has made.”

Democrats across the country are  pushing a message about “affordability” and highlighting voters’ worries about high prices. While Congress doesn’t usually have a simple policy solution for lowering the prices of household expenses, Baldwin said if Democrats take control they can immediately act to end Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war. 

“The type of policies that this president has engaged in are extremely harmful to the consumer and to our small businesses and to our farmers who are producing these products,” Baldwin said.

WASHINGTON — A developing trade war with Canada could bite Republicans ahead of the upcoming midterm elections as voters worry about rising prices and industries in states with competitive races could suffer.

Maine’s lobster industry dodged what officials had warned could be economic havoc Thursday morning when Canada reversed its decision to tax lobster imports at 25%. But states including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Michigan and Wisconsin could see effects if Canada follows through on retaliatory tariffs on alcohol, automobiles, dairy, home appliances, steel and other goods.

Those products are among the 629 categories Canada’s Department of Finance announced Tuesday in response to President Donald Trump’s most recent tariffs on Canadian goods that went into effect over the weekend.

“On one hand you have the issue of the U.S. import tariffs, which voters are associating with affordability, but then on the other hand you have the retaliatory Canadian tariffs, which are going to impact businesses in those states,” said Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, a trade policy analyst with the libertarian think tank Cato Institute. 

“So you could have a sort of double whammy where there’s pressure on behalf of voters for the president to recede this policy,” he said.

Trade talks have completely stalled between the U.S. and Canada, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News on Wednesday evening, a day after Canada announced retaliatory taxes to start Sept. 8 on $27.6 billion worth of American goods. 

The duties on U.S. imports will match Trump’s new 50% tariffs on hundreds of Canadian products “dollar-for-dollar,” according to Canada’s Department of Finance.

Individual businesses and importers, rather than governments, pay the tariffs on goods. Economists warn increased costs on either side of tariffs can affect investment decisions and increase consumer prices.

States Newsroom documented accounts from numerous small business owners affected by Trump’s tariff policies during his second term.

Small portion of trade volume

The Yale Budget Lab estimates that under the Trump administration’s current tariff schedule, including its latest tariffs on Canadian goods, Americans will spend an additional $1,100 annually on household costs.

The increase in annual household costs pre- and post-Trump’s newest duties on Canadian goods, which took effect Aug. 22, ranges roughly between $27 and $33, according to the Yale Budget Lab’s comparison.

Of the massive and intertwined trade relationship between the U.S. and Canada, the new tariffs account for a small fraction of all goods traded. Canada is the U.S.’s second-largest trading partner, and the two countries exchanged $879.9 billion in goods in 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Major areas of trade between the two countries that are subjected to tariffs include automobiles, industrial supplies, steel, iron and aluminum.

“It’s not a huge magnitude. Both the Canadian and the American tariffs cover only about 5% of what each country exports to each other. We’re not talking about all of a sudden everything we get from Canada is going to get tariffs. It’s only a share of that. But this is the initial salvo,” Obregon said.

“If you are a company that relies on imports from Canada, and you’re sort of doing production on both sides of the border in that sense, then you are worried about where this could lead in the future,” he added.

Outsized politics

While tariffs are small in proportion to Canada and the U.S.’s entire trade portfolio, the politics are outsized.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who faces a tough race to keep her seat, told local reporters Wednesday she spoke with the Trump administration about protecting her state’s major lobster and seafood industry, which was spared Thursday.

Collins’ opponent, Democrat Troy Jackson, attacked the incumbent on social media Wednesday, blaming her for having “completely failed” to stop Trump’s tariffs.

The Republican candidate for Michigan’s open Senate seat, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, has not commented on the new tariffs, but Democrats in Michigan are seizing the issue.

Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel told the Michigan Advance the tariffs will “throw Michigan’s economy into chaos.”

Rogers’ opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, on Tuesday responded to Trump’s threat on Truth Social to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America.

“Whatever you call it, you just made all the goods we buy that come across our border more expensive,” El-Sayed wrote on X. “Michigan, he’s asking us to pay for his vanity trade war with our money.”

Trump signed an executive order Thursday renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America.

During comments to reporters, Trump said Canada “has been ripping us off a long time on trade, very sadly, even the military. You know, we defend Canada for nothing.”

He added: “They don’t pay for anything, and they want to be treated like a state, but they’re not a state.”

Imran Bayoumi, an expert on U.S.-Canada relations with the Atlantic Council, said Canadians are “angry, hurt and upset” about Trump’s rhetoric toward their country’s sovereignty. 

The country, which has long received scrutiny over its defense spending, has increased the allocation in recent years, said Bayoumi, a Canadian-American.

“There’s a recognition that you can’t change your geography, and so the two are going to need to find a way to work together … on shared defense challenges, economic priorities, the Arctic, the defense of North America,” Bayoumi said. 

“The challenge now is to either find a narrow way off this path that both sides are on, which seems to be spiraling downwards, or ensure the deterioration of relations in the economic and trade sector doesn’t spill into other areas.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney enjoys approval from 76% of Canadians for his decision over the weekend to walk away from trade talks with the U.S., according to the Canadian Angus Reid Institute. But the poll found two in five Canadians also fear for their job security.

Carney has already pledged a $7.5 billion package for businesses and workers who might be affected by the tariffs.

Trump administration officials remain dug in on the tariffs and denied any major effects of the Canadian retaliatory tariffs.

“The concept that this could have any kind of meaningful effect on the United States is quite limited,” Greer told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham Wednesday. 

“And guess what? If there’s something in there that has some negative effect that is brought to the attention of President Trump, he can do what he needs to do,” he added. “I mean, this is just not going to lead to any economic Armageddon.” 

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this story.

The unions that won a circuit court ruling to overturn Wisconsin’s Act 10, the 2011 law stripping most public employees’ collective bargaining rights, are asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reinstate that ruling after an appeals court reversed the lower court.

The plaintiffs filed their state Supreme Court appeal Monday. They include unions affiliated with the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters.

Act 10, one of the signature laws passed early in former Gov. Scott Walker’s two terms, ended collective bargaining rights for most state and local employees, making an exception for certain public safety employees. The law survived a series of court challenges in the years immediately after its passage.

In December 2024, however, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost ruled  that the law made an arbitrary distinction between the public safety employees who kept their union rights under Act 10 and other public safety employees who lost those rights.

State Capitol Police, University of Wisconsin Police, and state conservation wardens were “treated unequally with no rational basis for that difference” when they were denied collective bargaining, Frost ruled, and for that reason, Act 10 violated the Wisconsin Constitution’s equal protection clause.

The law remained in place pending appeals, and more than 18 months later, the 2nd District Court of Appeals overturned Frost’s ruling in a 2-1 decision July 29.

The Legislature’s reasoning for making the distinction wasn’t an issue, so long as there are “any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification,” Judges Mark Gundrum and Shelley Grogan wrote.

Judge Lisa Neubauer dissented, arguing that the unions that kept their bargaining rights had all supported Walker’s election in 2010 just months before he took office and signed Act 10 into law. Excluding them from the law while subjecting other public safety employees to its restrictions “is not based on any identified ‘substantial distinction’ that makes the first group really different from the other,” Neubauer wrote.

The new appeal quotes Neubauer’s dissent in arguing for the justices to take up the case.

“This Court should accept review and reaffirm that, as Judge Neubauer put it in her dissent, ‘rational-basis review is not a rubber stamp,’” the unions’ motion states. “Here, because Act 10’s classification between ‘public safety’ and ‘general’ employees cannot survive anything greater than rubber-stamp-level scrutiny, that classification violates Article I, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution.”

The new appeal also challenges a finding from the appeals court majority, which found Wisconsin’s equal protection clause was identical to the federal equal protection clause and that a 2013 federal appeals court ruling had already found Act 10 constitutional.

LANSING — The demolition and rebuilding of a landmark bridge in this idyllic town along America’s greatest river has prompted convoluted detours for commuters and hurt businesses in the city’s historic Main Street district.

The Black Hawk Bridge once spanned the Mississippi River to connect Iowa and Wisconsin, acting as a lifeline for Lansing for almost a century. It became regionally iconic, featured in a pivotal scene of the 1999 David Lynch film “The Straight Story.” Now, it is being replaced with a modernized lookalike.

The bridge’s era came to an end with its closure in October 2025 and its demolition — with thousands in attendance — two months later.

Shutting down the Black Hawk Bridge cut off Lansing from a crucial river crossing. The other nearest crossings are in Marquette, Iowa (more than 27 miles south), and La Crescent, Minnesota (about 35 miles north).

Lansing Mayor Mike Verdon said residents have felt the loss of the old bridge.

“Most of the residents of Lansing are either lifelong residents, or have a family history with the town, so they’re well acquainted with the history of the old bridge,” he said. “It’s hard to say goodbye to an old friend, but everyone is anticipating the opening of the new one.”

Many older residents of Lansing lament the loss of the old bridge’s iconic design and its “singing” — a reference to the hum produced by the steel grate road surface.

“I know people that work on both sides of the river that use that bridge to commute to work,” said Clayton Burke, the Iowa Department of Transportation’s project manager for the Black Hawk Bridge. “There are people that use it to get to medical services like dental services or the clinic, and there’s the grocery store in Lansing … and people use it to get to their loved ones.”

Those hardships will continue until the new bridge is completed, expected by spring 2027.

Why the Black Hawk Bridge was demolished

DOT employees started looking into a reconstruction project in 2003, Burke said.

At the time, they considered several possibilities. The bridge could be renovated in its current state to last a couple of years more, left alone until it became functionally unusable, or demolished and rebuilt entirely.

Demolition proved to be the best option due to the litany of issues with the old bridge.

For one, according to the DOT, the old bridge was just 21 feet wide with no shoulder, and its surface was made of a steel grate instead of concrete. Its replacement will be 40 feet wide with a concrete surface and a proper shoulder.

“If you break down, you can pull over and get out of the way, or if a very wide farm implement comes through, they will have space to get through without running into other vehicles,” Burke said.

The old bridge also pushed up abruptly against the Iowa side with a tight intersection near the edge of a bluff. The new bridge significantly expands the T-intersection.

“It’ll be easier for commercial vehicles to get through and turn and safely make that passage through,” Burke said.

Additionally, the navigation channel underneath the bridge has been widened by 100 feet, making it easier for barges to negotiate the Mississippi’s main branch.

The original estimate for demolishing the old bridge and building its replacement was $140 million. The federal government was to shoulder 80%, and Iowa and Wisconsin were to split the rest. However, the La Crosse, Wisconsin, Tribune reports the cost has risen to $160 million.

Building a replacement bridge has not come without other challenges.

Naturalist Erin Cubbon at the Driftless Area Education & Visitors’ Center, an environmental museum and organization, has witnessed the decline in the town’s commerce and visitor traffic.

“We have noticed that our numbers are a little bit lower this year, but again we’re very lucky not to be affected as (much as) many of the businesses downtown,” she said.

Mayor Verdon gave this problem a more statistical framing.

“There are about 8,200 people living within a 30-mile radius of the bridge who use it regularly in both their personal and professional capacities,” he said. “It was clear from the onset that there would be a severe impact on the daily lives of each of us.”

To alleviate some of this isolation, the Iowa DOT set up a ferry service to connect Lansing to the other side of the Mississippi.

A ferry from Cassville, Wisconsin, initially served the crossing during the winter months of 2025-26. In the meantime, the contractors worked out a deal with Newt Marine Services out of Dubuque for a more permanent solution.

Newt Marine “actually built a brand-new ferry barge while Cassville was operating,” Burke said.

He applauded the team for its determination to finish an urgent project for the people of Lansing.

“They worked night shifts to get it done in time, overtime,” he said. “They put in a lot of effort and recognized that this is a critical service that we need to provide.”

The ferry can accommodate 675 to 700 vehicles per day.

When building the ferry dock, the construction firm had to consult the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to measure the impact of construction on the floodplains along the river. Modifying these landscapes too much can lead to increased risk of flooding, a major concern in a town like Lansing, where many residents live next to the Mississippi.

“Anytime you build a structure in a floodplain, the Corps gets very interested in the size of that structure and any impact it may have on future flooding in the area,” Burke said. “We don’t want to build something that will flood somebody’s house out.”

Burke said he and his team had an easy time working with the Corps and getting their necessary permits.

“We got this permit in record time so we could start building right away,” he said.

Officials also needed to address the new bridge’s effect on a local population of endangered mussels.

“There’s protected species like the Higgins eye pearly mussel,” Burke explained. “A big part of our mitigation was hiring a service to come remove those mussels and relocate them so that we weren’t taking them or destroying those mussels.”

Higgins eye pearly mussels are native to the stretch of the Mississippi between La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Muscatine, Iowa, and are federally listed as an endangered species.

Conservation also comes in the design of the bridge. The Black Hawk Bridge was a local landmark and a symbol of the area.

“Maintaining that iconic image of the bridge for the communities in the area was very important, and it is also more cost-effective than maintaining the old bridge in perpetuity,” Burke said.

Through the old bridge’s eligibility for the Historic Preservation Act, the new bridge is being built to closely resemble the old one. One part of this preservation is using older construction techniques, Burke said.

“We don’t typically build trusses on the National Highway System anymore, but in this case, we’re able to do it to mitigate the loss of that historic structure,” he said.

Truss bridges have fallen out of favor for modern bridge construction due to changes in styles, high maintenance levels and a labor-intensive construction process, among other reasons.

More construction headaches lie ahead

The new bridge’s completion will not be the end of Lansing’s reconstruction. The town’s 1.32-mile Main Street is expected to be rehabilitated in 2028.

According to documents from the Regional Planning Commission, reconstructing the road will address concerns such as traffic safety, walkability, accessibility, environmental impacts, historic preservation, lighting and streetscape amenities.

Local Realtor Jack Sweeney was apprehensive about the timing of this second project for such a small town.

“If the DOT is going to come in and tear the street out, it’s too bad they couldn’t have done that at the same time and then the hurt would have been all at once,” he said about the bridge closure’s timing. “I feel sorry for those people down there in Lansing that are in business.”

Jackie Cooper is the executive director of Main Street Lansing, an organization whose mission is to enhance and support the historic district of Main Street.

As a result of the bridge’s closure, Main Street Lansing has stepped in to provide more community events to encourage people to stay in town. New events include the monthly “Cocktails & Connections” social and the inaugural Lansing Liberty Motorcycle Rally, which brought over 150 riders to town.

Additionally, many local businesses have hosted more events themselves, including live music and themed nights. These serve the important function of community continuity.

“While the bridge closure has presented real economic challenges, it has also highlighted just how committed Lansing is to supporting one another and adapting through difficult circumstances,” Cooper said.

This mission will become all the more important when the main avenue to get to the various businesses on Main Street will be shut off.

“Our focus will be on helping keep business owners, residents, and visitors informed with timely and accurate communication,” Cooper said. “This could include guidance on customer communication, business continuity planning, marketing strategies, signage, and ‘We’re Still Open’ campaigns to encourage people to continue shopping and dining downtown during construction.”

“Ultimately, we see this as an investment in Lansing’s future,” she said. “While construction will undoubtedly bring challenges, it’s also an opportunity to create a stronger, more vibrant downtown that will serve our businesses, residents and visitors for generations to come.”

A live webcam of the bridge construction is available here.