Gov. Tony Evers celebrates "historic" tax cuts in the last state budget. Schools are still facing austerity. Photo via Gov. Evers' Facebook page

As Republicans in Congress struggle to deliver President Donald Trump’s massive cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, education, health research and just about every other social good you can think of, in order to clear the way for trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the richest people in the U.S., here in Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and state lawmakers are working on the next state budget.

The one thing our Democratic governor and Republican legislative leaders seem to agree on is that we need a tax cut.

After throwing away more than 600 items in Evers’ budget proposal, GOP leggies now say they can’t move forward with their own budget plan until  Evers makes good on his promise to meet with them and negotiate the terms for the tax-cutting that both sides agree they want to do. Evers has expressed optimism that the budget will be done on time this summer, and said the tax cuts need to be part of the budget, not a separate, stand-alone bill. Evers wants a more progressive tax system, with cuts targeted to lower-income people. In the last budget, he opposed expanding the second-lowest tax bracket, which would have offered the same benefits to higher earners as the lower middle class.

But what if we don’t need a tax cut at all?

It has long been an article of faith in the Republican Party that tax cuts are a miracle cure for everything. Trickle-down economics is  a proven failure:  The wealthy and corporations tend to bank their tax cuts rather than injecting the extra money into the economy, as tax-cutters say they will. The benefits of the 2017 tax cuts that Congress is struggling to extend went exclusively to corporations and the very wealthy and failed to trickle down on the rest of us. 

 In the second Trump administration, we are in new territory when it comes to tax cutting. The administration and its enablers are hell-bent on destroying everything from the Department of Education to critical health research to food stamps and Medicaid in order to finance massive tax breaks for the very rich. 

If ever there were a good time to reexamine the tax-cutting reflex, it’s now.

Evers has said he is not willing to consider the Republicans’ stand-alone tax-cut legislation, and that, instead, tax cuts should be part of the state budget. That makes sense, since new projections show lower-than-expected tax revenue even without a cut, and state budget-writers have a lot to consider as we brace for the dire effects of federal budget cuts. The least our leaders can do is not blindly give away cash without even assessing future liabilities.

But beyond that, we need to reconsider the knee-jerk idea that we are burdened with excessive taxes and regulations, that our state would be better off if we cut investments in our schools and universities, our roads and bridges, our clean environment, museums, libraries and other shared spaces and stopped keeping a floor under poor kids by providing basic food and health care assistance. 

Wisconsin Republicans like to tout the list of states produced annually by the Tax Foundation promoting “business friendly” environments that reduce corporate taxes, including Wyoming, South Dakota, Alaska and Florida. They also like to bring up ALEC’s “Rich States, Poor States” report that gave top billing last year to Utah, Idaho and Arizona for low taxes and deregulation. 

What they don’t track when they lift up those states are pollution, low wages and bankrupt public school systems. 

I’m old enough to remember when it was headline news that whole families in the U.S. were living in their cars, when homelessness was a new term, coined during the administration of Ronald Reagan, the father of bogus trickle-down economics and massive cuts to services for the poor. 

Somehow, we got used to the idea that urban parts of the richest nation on Earth resemble the poorest developing countries, with human misery and massive wealth existing side by side in our live-and-let-die economy.

Wisconsin, thanks to its progressive history, managed to remain a less unequal state, with top public schools and a great university system, as well as a clean, beautiful environment and well-maintained infrastructure. But here, too, we have been getting used to our slide to the bottom of the list of states, thanks in large part to the damage done by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. 

We now rank 44th in the nation for investment in our once-great universities, and the austerity that’s been imposed on higher education is taking a toll across the state. Our consistently highly rated public schools have suffered from a decade and a half of budget cuts that don’t allow districts to keep pace with inflation, and recent state budgets have not made up the gap. 

Now threats to Medicaid, Head Start, AmeriCorps, our excellent library system, UW-Madison research and environmental protections do not bode well for Wisconsin’s future.

In the face of brutal federal cuts, we need to recommit to our shared interest in investing in a decent society, and figure out how to preserve what’s great about our state.

Tax cuts do not make the top of the list of priorities.

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SEIU Wisconsin and UnityPoint Health-Meriter hospital will meet May 29 to resume contract talks covering 950 nurses. But the hospital management and the union have given conflicting accounts about plans for earlier negotiations. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

SEIU Wisconsin and Meriter hospital management confirmed Wednesday plans to meet on Thursday, May 29 to resume negotiation on a new contract covering about 950 nurses.

Talks ended Monday without an agreement, and the union said it would go forward on Tuesday, May 27, with a five-day strike.

On Wednesday, however, the two parties gave contradictory accounts of the conclusion of their talks and the prospect of further negotiations before the walkout begins.

In Meriter’s initial statement on Tuesday after the strike was announced, the hospital reported that a bargaining session was scheduled for Monday, May 26.

In a statement Wednesday, however, the union bargaining committee said they had never scheduled talks for that day.

UnityPoint Health-Meriter issued an updated statement Wednesday asserting that “SEIU Wisconsin notified Meriter on Tuesday that they are no longer available to meet on May 26 and are now offering May 29 as their first available date to resume negotiations.”

The management statement quoted Meriter’s vice president of human resources Shana Wuebben: “SEIU Wisconsin has declined the bargaining session previously set for Monday, May 26 and has rescheduled bargaining sessions to Thursday, May 29 near the end of the 5-day strike period,” Wuebben said.

The bargaining committee flatly disputed the characterization that the Monday date had been agreed to.

“There was no agreement between the parties to meet on Monday May 26,” the committee’s statement said.

In the hospital’s statement, Wuebben said, “Meriter is listening. We have made great strides in our proposals and tentative agreements to date.  And we are ready to continue bargaining.”  

The union, however, charged that management — not the union — was responsible for ending the talks Monday.

“At our last bargaining session on Monday May 19, the union bargaining committee offered to stay as late as needed to reach an agreement,” the bargaining committee statement said.

“The union was clear that management needed to make movement on our core priorities — priorities we have been crystal clear about since Day 1 — in order to avoid a strike,” the committee said. “Instead of engaging in discussions about our priority issues, management chose to end the bargaining session.”

Wuebben reiterated that Meriter’s management negotiators are “ready to return to the bargaining table at any time.” 

The union statement said bargaining team members are also ready to return to the table, but said they would need to see evidence that management was willing to move on their issues relating to staffing ratios, stronger hospital security and compensation.

“The union bargaining team has consistently made themselves available to meet with Meriter management, and we will continue to do so,” the union statement said. “If Meriter management would commit to make meaningful movement on our priority issues before the strike, we would consider scheduling a meeting with them before Tuesday May 27.”

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Pat Raes, a Meriter hospital nurse and president of SEIU Wisconsin, addresses union nurses and their supporters at a rally April 8, 2025. On Tuesday the union announced it would strike starting May 27. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Nurses at Madison’s Meriter hospital plan to walk off the job for five days starting Tuesday, May 27, after negotiations on a new union contract ended Monday night without an agreement.

The hospital management and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin, which represents about 950 nurses at the hospital, are divided over pay, security provisions and whether the hospital should commit to specific ratios of how many patients are under a nurse’s care.

If the strike goes forward, it is scheduled to last for five days, with union members returning on Sunday, June 1.

Update: In a statement Tuesday, Meriter said there was a bargaining session scheduled for Monday, May 26, the day before the strike is scheduled to start. An SEIU Wisconsin spokesperson said Wednesday that the union never agreed to that session, and that a bargaining date has been scheduled for Thursday, May 29.

In order to allow hospitals to secure temporary replacement staff or move patients, federal law requires hospital workers to give at least 10 days notice before striking, which SEIU Wisconsin gave May 9. The union also opted for a fixed duration for the walkout.

“We don’t take going on strike lightly, but we truly feel in order to make the changes that are necessary we’re willing to fight to make things safe for our patients,” said Pat Raes, a long-time Meriter nurse and also president of SEIU Wisconsin, in an interview May 14.

“We’ve called a five-day strike because our goal isn’t to walk away from the table — it’s to make UnityPoint Meriter finally hear the voices of nurses,” Raes said Tuesday. “This timeline reflects the urgency of our demands while giving the hospital every opportunity to return to negotiations in good faith.”

She said the five-day window was chosen to match the standard five-day contract used by health care staffing agencies, such as would be called to cover the striking nurses, “to send a strong, clear message without unnecessary disruption to patient care. We hope Meriter uses these five days to come back with real solutions.”

The hospital, UnityPoint Health-Meriter, is one of 17 regional hospitals in the large, Iowa-centered nonprofit health care chain, UnityPoint Health.   

“We’ve been in a union environment for decades and know that a strike could happen. We always work very, very hard to avoid that,” said Sherry Casali, market chief nursing officer for the hospital, in a statement released to the press Tuesday. “I think both parties would prefer not to have a strike.”

The hospital statement said Meriter’s management was disappointed there were not more talks prior to Monday. “Meriter leadership will remain available throughout this week to return to the table and we encourage SEIU to do the same,” the statement said.

In past years, the union and the hospital have worked with federal mediators during contract talks. This year federal mediation wasn’t available after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March gutting the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), nursesan independent federal agency.

Although that order was blocked by a federal judge May 6, the union and hospital turned instead to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission.

Defined patient-nurse ratios have been a longtime goal for union nurses. California and Massachusetts both have state laws setting certain minimum ratios, according to  NurseJournal.org. A limited number of other states require hospitals to publish their nurse-to-staff ratios.

“The more patients you take care of once you get above that ratio puts every patient that you’re taking care of at higher risk for complications and higher risk for mortality,” Raes said.

The statement the hospital issued Tuesday acknowledged that “both parties agree on the importance of safe and effective staffing,” but said that mandated ratios “limit flexibility” and could make it more difficult “to adjust to patient needs and staff availability in real time.”

The hospital statement said the facility relies on its charge nurses, who “are key to staffing and have clear avenues to discuss any patient care needs throughout each shift.”

There are limits to flexibility, however, according to the members of the nursing staff. Flexibility “sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t,” said Amanda Husk, a postpartum nurse. “We just know there’s always a base need for nurses to make sure patients are safe.”

Husk said ensuring that the ratio of nurses is always sufficient “also prevents burnout and turnover of nurses. That’s a big deal.”

Raes said nurses also wanted stronger security measures — including metal detectors — in light of violent incidents at hospitals across the country that have led to injuries or deaths of health care workers.

The hospital’s statement said its security staff regularly updates security measures and plans additional unspecified changes this summer.

On pay, Raes said that while nurses in their first 12 years have had significant raises, those at the upper end of the scale for pay and longevity don’t see their pay keeping up.

The shift to a 401(k) retirement plan from a standard pension has diminished the incentive for more experienced nurses to stick around, said Raes, while the original pension plan encouraged longevity on the job.

Meriter’s statement said the hospital’s most recent pay offer would keep its nurses “some of the best-paid nurses in Wisconsin” as well as in Madison. 

This report was updated Wednesday with new information about when upcoming bargaining is to take place. 

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Brynne Schieffer is a child care provider in Cameron, Wisconsin. She addressed a gathering outside the state Capitol on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

After a week at the state Capitol to draw attention to their demand for a robust state fund for child care providers, advocates will spend the next couple of weeks back home to amplify their message.

Child care centers will reopen this week after closing their doors for all or part of the past week as providers sought to underscore the urgency of additional support for child care.

Providers will focus on raising more awareness in their local communities, said Corrine Hendrickson, co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), a coalition of providers and parents. Federal pandemic relief money that has bolstered providers since 2021 will run out completely by early July.

This week, WECAN is encouraging providers to do “larger [local] community actions to help inform the community,” Hendrickson told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We’re also going to be calling other child care programs, making sure they even know this funding’s ending.”

WECAN organized the week of action in Madison, calling it “State Without Child Care.”

A small group of providers shut down for the week to dramatize the loss of child care that they contend will be inevitable without strong state support. Others closed for a day or two, and still others opted to stay open while also endorsing the funding demand.

Earlier this month leaders of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed a $480 million child care funding provision from Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed 2025-27 state budget, along with more than 600 other items.

On Friday, Hendrickson and WECAN cofounder Brooke Legler were joined by parents and other providers in front of the Capitol to reiterate their case for restoring the funds.

“My family still currently pays 25% of our monthly income towards child care, and honestly that’s just after-school care and then summer camps,” said Katy Dicks of Sun Prairie, who has a 10-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son. When the children were younger, child care accounted for a third of the family’s income, she said — while “it has been suggested that 7% of a family’s income is what is affordable.”

Dicks leads the Wisconsin chapter of Mother Forward, a national advocacy group for child care, paid family leave and other policies to support families.

“We need policy that works for all families,” she said. “The quality of care for children approximately 3 months to 5 years should not be based on a child’s parents’ income.”

Also at the Capitol were Rochelle Navin and her husband. They have a 2-year-old daughter, and Navin is expecting twins. Their daughter is usually at Legler’s New Glarus child care center, The Growing Tree, while her parents work, but they juggled home care arrangements to support Legler’s decision to close the center for the week.

Navin told the Wisconsin Examiner it was disruptive to their routine, but the couple understood why Legler took that step.

“There’s two sides of it, right?” Navin said. “You fully understand why it’s gotten to this point, and why the extreme [response] needed to be taken, while at the same time being scared about what the future looks like.”

Evers’ proposal was to extend the Child Care Counts program, originally funded by federal pandemic relief money. The subsidy — originally $20 million a month, then cut back to $10 million a month in mid-2023 — enabled providers to raise wages without having to increase the fees parents pay for care.

A statewide survey conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty found that 25% of providers said they might close if the revenue isn’t replaced.

Hendrickson said in the coming weeks she and other providers who have been active in campaigning for the support will reach out to operators with messaging guidance for talking to parents as well as to their local lawmakers.

“This week was definitely about coming together as a group in solidarity and really standing up for ourselves and for our children and our families and our communities,” Hendrickson said Friday.

Over the course of the week at the Capitol, “we visited almost every single office, dropped off information, talked to staffers and really helped them see who it is that they’re hurting,” she said.

The providers who engaged in those conversations also aimed to show legislators “that their constituents actually know what they’re talking about — we know what we’re talking about with our businesses, we can speak to it and the reason why we need the funding, and it’s not a handout,” Hendrickson added.

In the Institute for Research on Poverty study, up to 40% of rural providers said they might close if the additional funding stops. That’s  nearly twice the projected closure rate of urban providers.

Brynne Schieffer operates a child care program in the community of Cameron, near Rice Lake in Northwestern Wisconsin.

“I have spent the entirety of my adult life caring for not only my own children, but other people’s children, raising them, raising them to be kind human beings that will hopefully one day go out and be carers themselves,” Schieffer told the group gathered on the Capitol steps Friday.

“The funding runs out in July, and to avoid closure we have to raise our rates between $35 and $50 per child per week. Whose pocketbook can handle that?”

Hendrickson told the Wisconsin Examiner that if rural providers have to raise their rates, they’re more likely to lose families who can’t afford the increase, with no one to replace them. In cities, she said, moderate- and low-income families will be hurt by the loss of child care, but there are likely to be more high-income families able to keep up with rising costs, so fewer providers would have to close.

All but one of the providers who made the trip to Madison last week were from rural communities around the state, Hendrickson said.

“People drove four or five hours to get here,” she said. “It’s because they don’t feel listened to [back in their districts]. And that’s what they said — ‘I’ve had to come all the way down here to get them to listen to me.’”

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A solar power array. Advocates say projects that help speed the conversion to clean energy, such as solar power, could be stymied by a U.S. House proposal to repeal clean energy tax credits. (Photo by Evan Houk/Maine Morning Star)

The tax cut legislation that U.S. House of Representatives Republicans are putting together in Washington includes measures that will cost thousands of jobs in Wisconsin and undercut the state’s progress toward cleaner energy, according to environmental and labor advocates.

To help pay for the extension of tax cuts enacted in the first Trump administration, the GOP-led House Ways and Means Committee is proposing to repeal clean energy tax credits, Politico reported this week. The tax credits were among the measures enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

“These credits are not just numbers on a balance sheet out in Washington D.C,” said Emily Pritzkow, executive director of the Wisconsin Building Trades Council, in an online press conference Wednesday. “They are representing real jobs, real economic growth, and real progress towards Wisconsin’s sustainable energy infrastructure. Since the IRA was signed into law in 2022 we have seen an unprecedented boom in clean energy development in the trades.”

The press conference was hosted by Forward Together Wisconsin, a nonprofit established to inform people about the Biden administration’s infrastructure and climate investments and to defend them.

“We’ve been seeing this real opportunity to drive energy costs down, and I cannot for the life of me understand why people want to reverse that progress,” said former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, president of Forward Together Wisconsin.

In addition to the tax credits that the U.S. House proposal would repeal, President Donald Trump in his second term has frozen federal clean energy grants that were part of the 2022 legislation. Those include grants to establish a network of electric vehicle charging stations — prompting a lawsuit by 15 states, including Wisconsin.

Solar energy investments that have boomed in the last three years are among those that are threatened by the House proposal, according to advocates.

“At a time when billions of dollars are being invested in states that overwhelmingly voted for President Trump, this proposed legislation will effectively dismantle the most successful industrial onshoring effort in U.S. history,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in a statement this week.

Since passage of the IRA, Wisconsin has seen $933 million in clean energy and transportation private-sector investments, along with just over $2 billion from federal grants and loans, according to Innovation Policy & Technology, a San Francisco climate change policy think tank. The organization tallied 61 new clean energy and transportation projects that got underway in the state, with 45 manufacturing American-made products.

“Lower investment and higher energy bills due to repealing these federal programs and tax incentives will cost nearly 5,200 Wisconsin jobs in 2030 and more than 6,400 jobs in 2035, compared to current policies,” Innovation Policy & Technology reported.

The advocacy group Climate Power has calculated that without the federal support $5.4 billion for 15 planned Wisconsin clean energy projects could be in jeopardy.

Of those projects, 12 — 80% — are in five congressional districts represented by Republicans, according to Climate Power. Three representatives of those districts — Bryan Steil in the 1st CD, Scott Fitzgerald in the 5th CD and Glenn Grothman in the 6th CD — voted against the IRA in 2022. The other two, Derrick Van Orden in the 3rd CD and Tony Wied in the 8th CD, weren’t in office at the time but publicly opposed the legislation.

John Jacobs, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 494 in Southeast Wisconsin, said the clean energy tax credits and related policies have spurred investment and employment for the union’s members.

“I see first-hand how the clean energy tax credits have delivered on their promise, creating good family-sustaining union jobs across Wisconsin,” Jacobs said. “Repealing these tax credits could be devastating to many, but would put thousands of jobs at risk and hurt a growing industry.”

The tax credits were “an investment in America,” he added. The jobs lost if the credits are repealed “translate to economic instability for families across our state.”

The IRA also included a provision that extends the value of the tax credits to nonprofit organizations and government agencies.

Thanks to that benefit, called direct support payment, the Menasha Joint School District in the Fox Valley has qualified for a $4 million reimbursement from the federal government for installing rooftop solar energy and geothermal energy systems in a school currently under construction, said Brian Adesso, the school district’s business services director.

Once the school is complete the district expects to save $159,000 a year on its electric bill, “which is cost savings to local taxpayers and money that can be invested back into the students and staff,” Adesso said at the Forward Wisconsin press conference.

Adesso said the tax credits gave the district “certainty” it needed to be willing to undertake the clean energy additions to the project. Killing the credits would make that choice harder for school districts and impose higher costs on local property taxpayers, he added.

“The bill making its way through Congress takes a sledgehammer to the tax credits,” Addesso said — ending some credits early and attaching “bureaucratic restrictions that could make many of the credits unusable.”

Barnes said Forward Wisconsin Together is calling on Congress to protect the clean energy initiatives. “The people of Wisconsin deserve better,” he said. “The country deserves better. Clean energy as we know is the future, and we have to continue to invest in it.”

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Pinwheels posted at Tree Top child care center in Ashland represent the families on the waiting list for the program. (Photo courtesy of Theresa Fredericks)

Theresa Fredericks grew up in the world of child care.

Her mother founded a child care center in Ashland 52 years ago, when Fredericks was just 5 months old. Fredericks started her career in early education as a teacher there, then took over management and ownership of the program, Tree Top Child Development Center and Preschool.

Fredericks has been proud of the center’s reputation in the community. Tree Top currently is licensed for 33 children at a time. With schedules staggered for some children, there are a total of 39 currently enrolled.

The waiting list is nearly twice that size: 72 children. This week Fredericks put up one pinwheel for each waiting list occupant on the law in front of the center, along with some signs. “Child care wanted,” one sign said. “Quality child care should be a right” said another. “Not a luxury,” said a third.

On Tuesday Fredericks was 300 miles away, at the state Capitol in Madison. Tree Top was closed, and Fredericks says it will be closed again on Wednesday and the rest of this week.

It was a tough decision, she said — but one she and her staff felt was necessary to make a point to Wisconsin lawmakers.

“Without state investment the parents can’t afford to pay rising tuition and staff can’t afford to stay at low wages,” Fredericks told the Wisconsin Examiner. “With investment, we will see a rise in teachers going into the field, we will see an increase in available programs.”

That’s why she and her staff decided to join the statewide strike called by child care providers.

Balancing better wages, affordable fees

The strike is a response to action May 8 by the Republican majority on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to strip $480 million from Tony Evers’ proposed budget. The money would provide child care centers with an ongoing monthly stipend, continuing support first provided through federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.

Child care providers have credited the money for enabling them to increase the wages of child care teachers while avoiding increases in the fees that parents pay.

“I know that there are many people who think that because we care for very young children that we don’t count as teachers,” said Tree Top teacher Betsy Westlund at a combination press conference and rally on the Capitol steps Tuesday. “But the work we do is highly skilled and deeply critical to our society, the economy, and our communities.”

She described a common suggestion that child care providers hear when they talk about funding shortfalls: increase tuition and expand enrollment.

“Never mind the tuition is already so high that so few can afford it, and never mind how difficult it is to find teachers willing to work for low wages with no benefits,” Westlund said.

“No one considers supporting the quality of child care by supporting skilled teachers because they assume anyone will do,” she added. “And that hurts. Man, does that hurt — because I know how much I have to put in to become educated in early childhood.”

Republicans favor expanding employer child care tax credit; providers skeptical

“We are not just babysitting — we are laying the foundation for lifelong learning,” said Amber Haas, a fellow Tree Top teacher.

The organizers of the strike are calling it “State Without Child Care.” They’re doing it “so that our elected representatives, especially on the Joint Finance Committee, can actually have an idea of what is going to happen this summer,” said Corrine Hendrickson, co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN) and the operator of a family child care center in New Glarus.

At the Assembly’s floor session Tuesday afternoon, child care providers sat in the overhead gallery. On the floor, Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) introduced some by name, adding that they “are here in the Capitol to advocate for $480 million in the budget for living wages for teachers in early childhood education.”

While some providers are going all in with the strike, many say they cannot — but they are equally concerned about the issue.

Assessing the risk

Angela Norvold has grown her child care program in Hudson from a family day care  serving eight children to two centers, each licensed for 43 children. One is for younger kids and the other for older children, including 4-year-old kindergarten.

“We thought hard and as a team,” about closing for the strike, Norvold said in an interview. She and the center’s administrators decided to send a letter to parents asking for their input. “They agreed that we should stay open, and my fear was that if we closed we would lose those people for good,” she said.

There’s a child care shortage in Hudson, Norvold said. At the same time, she added, there are several providers in the area to choose from, but many have rooms that aren’t in use because they cannot find teachers.

“I don’t know that [closing] would be making a statement where we are,” Norvold said. At the same time, though, “we did have some parents volunteer to keep their children home so that we could come [to Madison] today and tomorrow.”

Norvold said that her centers were once more affordable than those in Minnesota, drawing families who moved across the border to make their home.

“They didn’t just come for lower prices, they came for quality care, educated staff that wanted to stay, and a community that values raising children well,” she said in a brief speech at the rally.  

The funding providers received during the pandemic “didn’t just help families, it helped providers,” Norvold said. “It helped us retain and educate staff, it helped us keep costs down without sacrificing quality. It helped us build futures.”

If the support doesn’t continue, “we’re looking at yet another tuition increase — at least $30 per child per week,” Norvold said. “That will push our infant care to a level that is not sustainable for most working families. It is not sustainable for us either.”

Families show support

Families of children enrolled at Tree Top in Ashland have gotten behind the center’s decision to join the child care strike .

“Our families support us,” Fredericks said. “They know that we have done everything. We’re contacting our legislators, they’re contacting our legislators —over and over again, telling them how important it is.”

Tony Singler is the father of three children who have gone through Tree Top’s program, from the age of 3 months though 4-year-old kindergarten. His youngest child is now nearing graduation from the 4-K program.

“Everything that Theresa does there is just more in-depth and more one-on-one,” Singler said in a telephone interview Tuesday. For his kids, he said, the center has been an ideal place to help their children through their first years.

“There’s a lot of research and support that the early years are very important to the children,” Singler said. “Our pediatrician supports that, and it’s a choice we make to give our children the best chance they have.”

Singler is a certified public accountant; his wife is a nurse. “We’re not teachers,” he said. “We don’t know how to teach kids at that young age.”

Now they are juggling schedules and turning to friends for help while hoping their child can return to Tree Top soon.

“It’s tough,” said Singler, but he says he understands the position that Fredericks and the center’s employees are in.

“It’s been a very good center,” he said. “And if they don’t have the funding, and they lose the teachers because the teachers have to go somewhere else, and they have to cut the enrollment and people get cut — then you don’t have the opportunity to put your child into the center like that, give them the best chance forward in their early development.”

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Corrine Hendrickson, child care provider and advocate, waits to speak at a rally in front of the state Capitol Tuesday, May 13. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Republican lawmakers have filed a proposed bill expanding an existing state business development tax credit related to child care. Child care providers who want to see a permanent state investment in their work said the bill was an inadequate gesture.

The state’s current business tax credit for child care applies only to capital expenditures for an employee child care program. The proposed bill would expand that to include other costs, including operating a child care program for employees, reimbursing employees for child care costs and other costs related to child care benefits.

“These changes will increase the number of available child care slots and provide more options for families,” wrote Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Karen Hurd (R-Withee) in a memo seeking cosponsors. “While not a silver bullet, these changes are another step in the right direction to address the child care issue in Wisconsin.”

Critics dismissed the measure as inadequate.

In a press release Rep. Randy Udell (D-Fitchburg) sent out after the Assembly’s floor session Tuesday, he noted that last week the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee “shot down 612 budget items including $480 million in childcare funding, and they proposed a childcare tax credit in its place that would benefit corporations instead of childcare providers under threat of closure.”

Shawn Phetteplace, national campaigns director for Main Street Alliance, sent a memo to lawmakers Tuesday also dismissing the proposal.

“Providing a 15% refundable business tax credit for businesses providing child care benefits will not appreciably increase access to child care for Wisconsin workers,” Phetteplace wrote. “It will simply be another tax break for large corporations. A similar credit exists at the federal level, the 45F credit, which is widely regarded as not achieving the goal of increasing affordability and accessibility to childcare for employees.”

Corrine Hendrickson, co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), said at a Capitol rally Tuesday she would like to meet with Marklein, who cochairs the finance committee, as well as Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) the other cochair.

The business tax credit is refundable: The credit recipient receives the full value of the credit back from the state, even if it is more than what the recipient owes in taxes. Hendrickson criticized the lawmakers for “refusing to do the same for our hard-working families with the child and dependent tax credit.”

The state’s child and dependent care tax credit for families, which was expanded in legislation enacted in March 2024, is not refundable. That effectively makes the tax credit worth much more to people with higher incomes than to those with lower incomes, as the Wisconsin Examiner has previously reported.

“We are not going to accept anything more that will entrench the wealthy and well connected into our system of having success in life,” Hendrickson said.

Born issued a statement this week that declared Republicans were focusing on other alternatives to the proposal for $480 million in subsidies for child care providers.

“Legislative Republicans have consistently supported a targeted approach to helping families afford child care, build provider capacity, and support recruitment of child care professionals,” Born said. “Parents are best equipped to make decisions about the needs of their children and Legislative Republicans are committed to providing parents with options, helping families directly make child care more affordable.”

Born said the Legislature spends “almost $1 billion” for child care. 

Hendrickson said that virtually all that money is from the federal government and simply passes through the state budget. Only about $24.4 million comes from the state as a required match.

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Children play at The Growing Tree child care center in New Glarus. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

For more than two years Wisconsin child care providers have been warning that failing to provide ongoing support will mean their fees will go up and their numbers shrink drastically.

Starting Tuesday, some providers will try to give lawmakers and the public a taste of what that could look like — by staging a strike.

Their goal is to persuade Republican leaders on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to commit to including in the state budget a significant child care support program.

Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed $480 million child care measure was among more than 600 items the committee removed on Thursday, May 8, from the draft budget Evers proposed for 2025-27. The motion to remove the items passed 12-3 with only Republican votes.

“We are demanding that the Joint Finance Committee guarantees they will put $480 million of state dollars back into the budget” for child care support, Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus child care provider and advocate, told the Wisconsin Examiner Monday.

Until they get such a guarantee, some providers have decided to close their doors, Hendrickson said.

Providers who intend to shut down their operations on Tuesday will go to the state Capitol for a press conference organized by Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), which Hendrickson cofounded. They plan to remain at the Capitol at least through the rest of this week, she said.

“The goal is that Republicans and Democrats will stop by and talk to us about our concerns,” Hendrickson said. She added she was hoping for “a real conversation” about measures that child care providers favor as well as proffered solutions that they oppose — “since they keep leaving us out of these conversations.”

Hendrickson said Monday afternoon that about 100 participants — providers, child care workers and parents in support of their actions — were expected at the Capitol Tuesday. She said there was not a count yet of how many child care centers might close.

Organizers have established a donation portal with Community Change Action to raise funds that will be used to offset lost wages for child care workers and providers who take part in the walkout, Hendrickson said.  

‘Day Without Child Care’ events

The action planned to start Tuesday follows events across Wisconsin Monday for “A Day Without Child Care” —a national campaign to draw attention to the need for child care programs and their need for stronger financial resources.

At a rally Monday morning in New Glarus, parents, state officials both elected and appointed, education leaders, local economic boosters and child care providers took turns championing the need for a state investment that would strengthen child care providers.

“Whether you’re a parent, an employer, an educator or a policy advisor, child care affects each and every one of us and it touches our future as well,” Cortney Barry, director of the New Glarus Chamber of Commerce, said at the rally. “The current system is not working, especially in small communities like ours. It’s just stretched too thin. It’s fragile, and it’s scary to think just how close we are to a true crisis.”

Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski said business leaders she met with in central Wisconsin last week told her that child care was a pressing need for them to be able to hire locally rather than going out of state, and that they could not find workers “not because people don’t want to work for [them] — they can’t find a place to send their kids.”

Democratic lawmakers and parents have since 2023 pushed to continue the monthly Child Care Counts support program that Wisconsin began with the help of federal money during the COVID-19 pandemic. The funds bolstered child care providers’ revenues so they could raise wages without charging parents more for care.

“We lost 6,000 [child care] programs between 2010 and 2019,” Hendrickson said at the New Glarus rally. “You know what stopped [the decline]? COVID — when we started getting money. All of the sudden we had more programs open at the end of the year than we had at the beginning of the year. It worked.”

A proposal to continue Child Care Counts with state funds was stripped from Evers’ 2023-25 budget, and the Legislature’s Republican majority repeatedly rejected attempts to restore the funding. The Evers administration was able to continue a reduced support program, but that will end with the final payment to child care centers early this summer.

That has escalated a campaign to keep the program going with state funds. In a state survey released in April 25% or more providers said they might close without continued support at the level Child Care Counts provided.

Hendrickson said at the New Glarus rally 54% of providers in Green County in the survey expected to close after the state funding program ends. Half of providers will have to raise tuition, she said — including her family child care business, which cares for eight children.

Even with fee increases totaling $50 a week phased in over the months of August and September to replace lost Child Care Counts revenue and higher expenses, “I will still be taking a pay cut,” she added.

Brooke Legler, the other WECAN cofounder and operator of The Growing Tree child care center in New Glarus, said shutting down to protest starting Tuesday is “our last effort — it’s the only thing we have as a community, as a profession, that we can say, like, ‘No, I’m not going to subsidize the economy off of my pay, off of the teachers that work there.’”

Providers who can’t shut down

Other child care providers who took part in Monday’s Day Without Child Care campaign across the state said they cannot shut down in protest this week, but they support providers who choose to do so.

In Waupaca, Tracy Jensen, director of Sunny Day Child Care, used the day as a teach-in for parents. “We  were raising awareness about the true cost of child care and how important it is to have child care in our community,” Jensen told the Wisconsin Examiner.

About 75 parents came through the center Monday, and Jensen said she plans to continue the opportunities for more such parent education through the week.

Sunny Day is the largest center in Waupaca County, Jensen said, with a license for 292 children at one time. There are 350 families with children enrolled currently, and a waiting list of 70 families, she said.

Jensen said that given the center’s size it won’t take part in the organized shut down. She said she told employees that if they want to go to Madison Tuesday to voice their concerns they can do so, and she has tried to organize staffing to make that possible.

Tricia Peterson directs Future All Stars Academy in Juneau. On Monday she closed the center for a day and took 11 employees to an event in Waunakee, where providers, staff and parents rallied.

Peterson won’t close Future All Stars for the walkout starting Tuesday, however.

“I’m not in a position right now to do that,” she said, “But I will say I will do everything I can in support of that.”

The center’s long-term future will depend on the state budget, however.

“I’m one of those centers that if funding doesn’t come forward in June, we’ll have to close,” Peterson said. She’s already notified parents about that possibility.

“They understood where we were coming from,” Peterson said. “We didn’t have one parent complain.”

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Apprentice Josh Ermeling of Laborers Union Local 330 strips forms used to pour concrete for a box culvert. A report from the Midwest Economic Policy Institute says Wisconsin's apprenticeship programs could grow faster with some changes in state laws. (Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Laborers' District Council)

Wisconsin saw the number of construction apprentices grow in the last decade, but a new report suggests that growth might have been stronger with some changes in Wisconsin law.

One change would be to restore the state’s prevailing wage law on government construction projects. The other would be to repeal Wisconsin’s “right-to-work” law — a measure that prevents unions from requiring all workers that they represent to pay union dues.

The report was produced by the Midwest Economic Policy Institute, based in  La Grange, Illinois, and conducted jointly with the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“While increased public investment in the construction sector is having a positive impact on the apprenticeship system, it is clear that state policy interventions that erode workforce institutions that prioritize training have had the opposite effect,” U of I professor Robert Bruno, director of the Project for Middle Class Renewal, said in a statement.

Bruno said that in addition to reinstituting Wisconsin’ prevailing wage law and repealing the right-to-work law, states can increase their investment in pre-apprenticeship programs to boost the foundational skills for skilled trades workers. He also has suggested tax credits to give more employers an incentive “to invest in our long-term domestic labor supply.”

Looking at data from 2022, the study’s authors found that unionized construction companies account for 22% of the construction market in Wisconsin. Despite that, apprenticeship programs operated jointly by employers and unions enroll 77% of construction apprentices and account for 96% of the money spent in Wisconsin on apprenticeship programs.  

When it comes to training, “the unionized segment of the construction industry punches above its weight by a great deal,” MEPI economist Frank Manzo IV told the Wisconsin Examiner.

Funding advantage

Wisconsin also has certified construction apprenticeship programs operated by employers alone, but MEPI found that they enrolled only 23% of apprentices.

The investment in apprenticeship programs was similarly lopsided, the report finds. The spending on joint union-management programs totaled $64.3 million in 2022, compared with $2.9 million spent on the employer-only programs.

One reason for that gap is funding, Manzo said. Construction union labor agreements include a provision to cover the cost of apprenticeship programs as part of each worker’s total hourly wage and benefits.

“They’re funded by cents-per-hour contributions from employers that are used to train the next generation of skilled trades people,” Manzo said. “So, there’s always money for registered apprenticeship programs.”

By contrast, employer-only programs “rely entirely on voluntary contributions from those employers,” he said.

The study comes as the administration of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is proposing an administrative rule requiring that contractors employ apprentices as 10% of their workforce on state projects.

“These are all areas right now when we’re looking at how we can provide quality, middle class jobs,” said Kent Miller, president of the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council. The union represents a broad cross-section of construction workers.

“I’ve heard many times from members how an apprenticeship helped them get their first home,” Miller said. “As much as we can invest in Wisconsin workers it pays dividends down the road. That’s why the private sector union construction industry is making these investments in worker apprenticeship programs.”

Demands for skilled labor

MEPI’s study grew out of the nonprofit institute’s review of how states are responding to an increasing need for skilled labor.

“The construction industry is facing high demand for qualified tradespeople to modernize infrastructure, energy systems, domestic manufacturing facilities, and that’s really happening across the Midwest — across the Rust Belt,” Manzo said.

The research team expected to see Wisconsin among faster-growing states in apprenticeship enrollment. But while apprenticeship numbers have increased by nearly 50% from 2016 to 2024 in the state, “we found that this growth has actually lagged neighboring states that maintained policies that promote workforce training investments and policies that promote workers’ rights,” Manzo said.

The clearest correlation the researchers found was whether states required contractors to pay prevailing local wages on state-funded construction projects.

Just as a federal law known as the Davis-Bacon Act requires construction projects on federal facilities to pay prevailing wages, a number of states have similar laws for state and local government projects.

Contractors are hired for government projects typically based on the lowest bid. Prevailing wage laws require bidders to meet local wage standards, keeping them from cutting wages in order to win the contract.

The requirements “level the playing field,” said Miller, the Laborers union president. “It prevents out-of-state contractors from coming into Wisconsin, low-bidding taxpayer-funded projects, doing shoddy work and taking taxpayer dollars that we’d like to see stay here in Wisconsin.”

Wisconsin repealed its state prevailing wage law in 2017, however.

Encouraging training investments

The MEPI researchers found that in four nearby states — Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio — the number of construction apprentices increased by just over 63% from 2016 to 2024. All four states have maintained their state prevailing wage laws in that period, according to the report.

Prevailing wage laws “ensure that all firms — regardless of union status, by the way — would commit to these cents-per-hour contributions into registered apprenticeship programs while performing work on public works projects,” Manzo said.

Wisconsin’s “right-to-work” law, enacted in 2015, might also be holding down apprenticeship growth, the study’s authors suggest. Such laws forbid employers and unions from negotiating contracts that require all union-represented employees to either pay union dues or pay a fee towards the costs of the union’s work representing employees.

The law “is a government regulation that forces unions to represent nonmembers for free and erodes worker bargaining power by reducing the resources that unions would otherwise have to organize and provide resources and advocate for investments in training, job site safety and job quality,” Manzo said.

As he has in every budget he proposed, Evers included in his 2025-27 budget plan provisions to restore the state prevailing wage and end the right-to-work law. Both were among more than 600 items that the Republican majority of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed on their first day of budget deliberations Thursday.

Restoring Wisconsin prevailing wage law and repealing the right-to-work law would create an economic environment in which skilled trades workers know they will be supported, said Jacob Heger, an MEPI research analyst and coauthor of the report.

“They can go into these apprenticeship programs, they can get the quality training that they need and then they know that in public policy they’re backed up by what’s on the books [in state law], and that the people in their state capitols have their backs,” Heger said.

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An electric car charges up at a charging station in New York. Wisconsin has joined 14 other states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit against the Trump administration for cutting off federal funds that had been approved for states to build up their electric vehicle charging networks. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A group of states, including Wisconsin, that were promised federal funds to establish electric vehicle charging station networks sued the Trump administration and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy this week for cutting off the promised grants.

“The Trump Administration and Secretary Duffy are singlehandedly trying to block Wisconsin from receiving the investments we were promised,” Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement Thursday. “It’s bad for the people of Wisconsin, it’s bad for our infrastructure, it’s bad for our economy, and it’s illegal.”

The lawsuit alleges that President Donald Trump’s executive order blocking electric vehicle charging station grants was illegal.

The lawsuit was filed late Wednesday in federal court in the state of Washington, which is the lead plaintiff among the suit’s 15 states and the District of Columbia.

Trump’s order “Unleashing American Energy,” signed the day he was inaugurated, told federal agencies to pause the distribution of funds that were appropriated during the Biden administration as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act or the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.

The order said the pause was “including but not limited to funds for electric vehicle charging stations made available through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program.” The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, or NEVI, is part of the 2021 infrastructure law.

Wisconsin has been approved for $62.65 million in funding under the program for 15 EV infrastructure projects that were held up after Trump’s order. The governor’s office said several projects were “located in the congressional district that now-Secretary Duffy used to represent in the U.S. Congress.”

Trump’s order stated that it was written to eliminate an “electric vehicle (EV) mandate.” No such mandate exists, the lawsuit points out.

“But in the name of eliminating this fictional mandate, the Executive Order directs the Federal Highway Administration … to usurp the legislative and spending powers reserved to Congress by withholding congressionally appropriated funding for electric vehicle (“EV”) charging infrastructure required by statute to be distributed to States,” the lawsuit states.

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Main Street in the Wisconsin community of Cambridge. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

As a former small business owner for 27 years and a longtime board member of the Monroe Street Merchants Association in Madison, I’ve spent decades working to strengthen the small businesses and Main Streets that make our communities thrive. Today, I’m deeply concerned — because Main Streets across America are under threat like never before.

The sweeping tariffs imposed by the current administration are already fueling inflation, disrupting supply chains, and pushing small businesses to the brink. Local retailers, independent producers and small manufacturers — the very backbone of our neighborhoods — are being hit hardest.

Carol “Orange” Schroeder, our board chair at the Monroe Street Merchants Association and owner of Orange Tree Imports, a favorite Madison store, understands this better than most. This year, Orange is celebrating 50 years in business — an incredible milestone. Over the decades, she’s helped independent retailers nationwide weather many challenges, including fierce online competition. But as she recently wrote, not even the pandemic has matched the level of economic turmoil small businesses are facing today.

The problem is clear and devastating: suppliers can’t get the goods they need, vendors are questioning whether they can stay afloat and customers — grappling with rising prices and financial anxiety — are pulling back from shopping locally. Sales reps are going unpaid as orders are canceled, and stores of all sizes are bracing for empty shelves. In short, the social fabric that binds our communities is beginning to fray under the weight of uncertainty.

The National Retail Federation recently warned that these tariffs threaten the American dream — and they’re right. Small businesses aren’t just part of our economy; they’re central to our national identity, job creation, innovation and the strength of our local communities.

Now more than ever, Congress must step up and act. Policymakers have a critical opportunity to end these harmful tariffs, restore stability, and reassert balance in our trade policies. Just as importantly, Congress must reassert its constitutional authority over the power of the purse — a responsibility that rests with the legislative branch, not the executive alone.

The stakes couldn’t be clearer. Without immediate action, we face shuttered storefronts, lost jobs and an avoidable recession. According to Gallup, Americans’ economic outlook is now worse than at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic or the global financial crisis — a sobering indicator of just how fragile the moment is.

This is not a partisan issue. It’s a matter of economic survival, community resilience and protecting the American dream for generations to come.

Congress must act now. Small businesses, workers, and families across the country are counting on bold leadership. It’s time to end the tariff chaos, restore stability, and ensure Main Street can keep doing what it does best: creating jobs, driving innovation and strengthening the communities we all call home.

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Antwon King got help for his trucking business from the Minority Business Development Agency center in Milwaukee. On Tuesday, a federal judge issued an injuction that blocked a Trump administration executive order to close down the MBDA's operations. (Photo courtesy of Antwon King)

A federal judge in Rhode Island issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday, blocking a Trump administration executive order from effectively closing three federal agencies that support museums and libraries, promote labor peace and assist minority-owned businesses.

The agencies involved are the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). They were among the agencies that President Donald Trump listed in a March 14 executive order to be effectively shut down.

The order violates the federal Administrative Procedures Act “in the arbitrary and capricious way it was carried out,” wrote Judge John J. McConnell of the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island.

“It also disregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government; specifically, it ignores the unshakable principles that Congress makes the law and appropriates funds, and the Executive implements the law Congress enacted and spends the funds Congress appropriated,” McConnell wrote.

The lawsuit against the order was brought by 21 states, including Wisconsin, with attorneys general in Rhode Island, Hawaii and New York leading the litigation.

“Today’s preliminary injunction is a critical win for the public interest,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha in a statement. “When the Trump Administration attempts to dismantle these agencies, it is making a targeted, concerted effort to prohibit everyday people from accessing their full potential.” 

Trump’s order named seven agencies — including the three involved in Tuesday’s court ruling — and directed them to eliminate their “non-statutory components and functions . . . to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” It also directed them to “reduce the performance of their statutory function and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.”

McConnell wrote that the day after issuing the order, Trump signed a continuing appropriations bill “in which Congress funded IMLS, MBDA, and FMCS through Sept. 30, 2025 at the same level it funded these agencies in fiscal year 2024.”

Despite that, in the aftermath of the order, the three agencies “are rescinding or deferring appropriated funds and do not plan to spend them,” McConnell wrote.

The FMCS provides mediation in labor negotiations between employers and unions and was established under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. The IMLS, established in the 1990s, provides grants to museums and libraries while also providing research and policy analysis for museums, libraries and information services.

Help for minority-owned business

The MBDA, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, was launched in 1969 by President Richard Nixon and was given its present name 10 years later.

Over its lifetime “it’s gotten bipartisan support,” Henry Childs, who served as the agency’s national director from 2018 to 2020, the last three years of Trump’s first term, told the Wisconsin Examiner.

In 2021, the bipartisan infrastructure law enacted under President Joe Biden made the MBDA a permanent federal agency — the result of an amendment to the legislation promoted by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) with support from members of both parties. Baldwin went on to advocate for an MBDA center in Milwaukee, which was established in 2022.

After Trump returned to the White House this year, Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said at his January confirmation hearing that he did not support dismantling MBDA.

Last month, however, Milwaukee’s MBDA center abruptly closed when the federal grant that supported the program was canceled.

Carolyn Mosby, interim president of the North Central Minority Supplier Development Council, a nonprofit that had the federal contract to operate the center, said she received notice April 17 of the grant’s cancellation. The Milwaukee center was one of more than 40 across the country that were closed, she said.

“The MBDA and other programs are not about exclusion, they’re about inclusion,” Mosby told the Wisconsin Examiner. “These initiatives were created to address long-standing, well-documented disparities when it comes to access to capital and contracts and opportunities that have disproportionately affected minority businesses across this country.”

Antwon King started his Milwaukee-based trucking business in 2020 with a simple cargo van. He graduated to a semi-trailer cab unit and found his niche hauling loads on flatbed trailers across the country — everything from pipes to wire coils to farm equipment and heavy construction machinery.

Along the way, he needed help at times, primarily with access to capital, advice on business planning and connections with large corporations that had programs to encourage minority-owned suppliers.

Through coaching at the Milwaukee MBDA center, he got guidance on funding sources for new equipment and learned how to pursue opportunities targeted to minority owned businesses.

“Those resources were extremely valuable,” King said. “I was kind of shocked to hear they were shutting down. There were some things I was still working on.”

Democrats on the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation committee have written three times to the Department of Commerce demanding that Lutnick protect the agency from Trump’s order.

The third letter, sent April 30, quotes the closing notice that centers received stating they are “unfortunately no longer consistent with the agency’s priorities and no longer serves the interests of the United States and the MBDA Program.” The termination notice also stated that “MBDA is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda.”

The letter demands an explanation of what types of funded activities would be “consistent with the agency’s priorities” and would serve its interests. It also demands a “detailed explanation” of how MBDA will repurpose its funding.

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White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and press secretary Karoline Leavitt speak to reporters at the White House briefing on May 1, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Despite news that the U.S. economy has contracted since January, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s policies are working to “unleash this era of American prosperity.”

Miller, also a top adviser for Trump on immigration, dismissed fears from the small business community and American consumers when pressed by reporters during the final in a series of press briefings marking Trump’s first 100 days.

Questions centered on Trump’s steep 145% tariffs on any goods, including manufacturing parts, imported from China, as well as baseline 10% tariffs on products brought into the U.S. from nearly every other country.

Tariffs are an import tax paid to the U.S. government by American companies and individuals who purchase goods from abroad. A broad consensus among economists is that those costs are passed to consumers.

When asked what the administration’s end goal is for its trade war with China — the nation now charges 125% tariffs on American products entering its borders — Miller said “we need to have a trade relationship with China that does not do harm to our nation’s economic and national security.”

“At the same time, tariffs will bring significant revenue into this country that will allow us to pursue our dramatic plan of tax cuts and reforms,” he said, referring to the massive budget reconciliation package underway in the Republican-led House and Senate.

Tariff order, then a pause

Trump initially triggered much higher rates on products from major trading partners — for example, 20% on European Union goods and up to 46% on products from Vietnam — but paused them for 90 days at a baseline 10% after investor panic erased trillions from the U.S. stock market. The administration maintains it will have new trade agreements in place by the July deadline.

The Institute for Supply Management’s April manufacturing report cited tariff concerns and an “unknown economic environment” for the manufacturing sector’s second month of contraction.

Department of Commerce figures released Wednesday showed the U.S. gross domestic product — a country’s total value of goods and services — decreased at an annual rate of 0.3% since January, the first time GDP dipped into the negative since the first quarter of 2022.

Meanwhile, U.S. consumer sentiment saw its steepest percentage decline over a three-month period since the 1990 recession, according to the University of Michigan’s April survey of consumers.

Tax plans

In response to an inquiry about a U.S. Chamber of Commerce plea for small business tariff relief, Miller said Thursday, “The relief for small businesses is going to come in the form of the largest tax cut in American history.”

At the heart of congressional Republicans’ massive budget reconciliation package is the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax law. Wholesale extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is expected to reduce federal revenue by roughly $4.5 trillion over a decade. And, depending on how or if lawmakers pay for the tax cuts, the costs could shrink the economy in the long run, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s analysis of Congressional Budget Office figures.

Miller said Trump’s promise to businesses to revive and expand 100% expensing for business investments in the U.S. will make it “the most pro-small business tax bill in American history.”

House and Senate Republican leaders have indicated differing timelines for final passage of the tax deal — varying from Memorial Day to July 4.

Business community worries

An April 30 letter from the Chamber of Commerce to the administration warned of “irreparable harm” to small businesses, even if the administration strikes new tariff agreements over the next weeks or months.

“The Chamber is hearing from small business owners every day who are seeing their ability to survive endangered by the recent increase in tariff rates,” the letter stated.

Three Republican senators broke with the GOP Wednesday night and voted to rebuke Trump on tariffs. The largely symbolic measure ultimately failed after Republican opposition.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters Tuesday the administration is in conversations with 17 trading partners but would not give any details on talks with China.

Economists are now awaiting Friday’s “all-important” jobs report for any further snapshot of U.S. economic health, as Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics wrote Sunday on X.

“If payroll jobs increase by 150k, give or take, which is the consensus, all the weak economic data released during the week will be forgotten, at least for a bit. Fingers crossed. If employment increases by less than 100k, watch out,” he wrote.

An engineer works at a cargo port storage yard. Tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump have generated uncertainty about the economy for many businesses and consumers, according to economic forecasters. (Photo by Vithun Khamsong/Getty Images)

Over a buffet lunch Wednesday, a roomful of bankers got a mixed picture of the national economy in the short term. For Wisconsin, the longer term outlook appears more certain, although there may be little comfort from that.

Speaking at an economic forecast luncheon hosted by the Wisconsin Bankers Association and the news outlet WisBusiness, part of WisPolitcs.com, Dale Knapp, director of research at Forward Analytics, reviewed the persistent demographic slump that has put Wisconsin on a troubling trajectory for the coming decades.

That trajectory has been evident already for some 20 years, Knapp said, and it centers on the population bulge from baby boomers — people born between 1946 and 1964. That generation was 65% more numerous than the group born in the previous 19-year period, he said. And the subsequent generations have been about 20% smaller in number or even less.

The baby boom produced an explosion of demand for everything from toys to homes to schools and universities, Knapp observed. Now the last of that generation is passing into retirement, and with smaller populations in the generations that follow there are “worker shortages all across the state,” Knapp said.

Between 2020 and 2040, the working age population, ages 18 to 64, is projected to fall by 15% on average in all but six Wisconsin counties, Knapp said. Automation may pick up the slack in some industries, including manufacturing and possibly fast food service, he suggested.

Immigration is another remedy, Knapp said — but also “a challenge given what’s going on in the White House now.”

“We need to fix the border problem to a degree,” Knapp said. “If you do that, then maybe you can get the two parties in Washington together and say, ‘OK, we need to fix legal immigration by expanding it.'”

Knapp’s other proffered solution is to invest funds to offer families $16,000 to move to Wisconsin from out of state. With 3,000 families a year, the money could be repaid with the added income and sales tax revenues, “and we could fund it forever,” he said.

National economic uncertainty

Outlining the current state of the nation’s pocketbook and its near-term forecast, economist Andrea Sorensen of US Bank in Minneapolis said that the economy “is actually doing probably better than most people think.”

That’s despite the uncertainty that has ballooned since President Donald Trump took office in January, she said. That uncertainty also looms over the horizon, however.

The nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — the broadest measure of the overall economy — has been growing by more than 2% over the last couple of years through the end of 2024.

Data issued Wednesday morning showed GDP shrank 0.3% in the first quarter. Sorensen said that was for an unusual reason, however.

U.S. businesses stocked up on goods from overseas to get ahead of the tariffs Trump imposed after taking office, she said. She attributed the slight first-quarter dip to those imports, because their value is subtracted from GDP.

The GDP estimate released Wednesday is the first of three that will be produced for the quarter, and Sorensen said her economic team believes the next two estimates will be better.

She views other indicators as relatively favorable.

The national labor market remains strong. Month-to-month employment growth has cooled some since the hiring spikes that followed the economic crash from the COVID-19 pandemic.  Still, “we still consider it to be quite healthy,” she said.

“People who have jobs have money to spend,” Sorensen said. “So as long as the labor market is holding up, we think the economy could be OK.”

Consumer spending also remains strong, she said, even though surveys show dramatic declines in both consumer and business confidence.

“We know it means people are not happy and they don’t have high hopes,” Sorensen said. “But if we’re talking recession, that sort of depressed sentiment needs to translate into actual economic activity. And so far, it hasn’t. And we’re not actually sure if it will.”

Tariffs are a wild card

The Trump administration’s tariff policies, however, remain a major wild card.

A broad 10% tax on imports that took effect April 5 remains in place with a few exceptions. Tariffs of up to 50% on about 60 countries are on a 90-day pause. An active tariff remains on goods from China — initially 125% and more recently raised to 145%.

Overall that’s netted out to a U.S. effective tariff rate — the net tariff on all imports from other countries — between 25% and 30%. That’s 10 times the effective tariff rate of 2.5% a year ago.

“This hasn’t happened in over 100 years,” Sorensen said. “The economy is just structurally very different, and we can try to make forecasts and comparisons —  and we do all day every day —  but we don’t know. There is just so much unknown what this will do.”

For that reason, economic uncertainty is “sky high,” she continued. “I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going on.”

Businesses “are kind of paralyzed,” Sorensen said. “How can you make a business investment decision if you have no idea what tariffs are going to be tomorrow, next week, next year?”

Some larger employers have already begun announcing plans to reshore work in the U.S. But Sorensen said in response to one audience member’s question that isn’t an option for many smaller employers.

A company that sources products overseas might gain a temporary advantage by returning production to the U.S., she said.

“They can’t risk making the wrong choice,” however, Sorensen said. “What we’re hearing is they don’t trust that that tariff will remain in place. So, they can’t make the investment decisions to bring production back to the U.S. because they might want to undo it again as soon as policy changes.”

In addition, “our supply chains are so intertwined that everything has some input that’s imported,” she said.

Tariffs will also squeeze low- and middle-income households, where spending takes a larger share of their earnings — “households that were already struggling,” Sorensen said.

Migration presents another pressure point. Policies to reduce immigration and deport immigrants will hurt some states and some sectors of the economy more than others, she said.

Yet an additional unknown is how the escalating trade conflicts with the rest of the world will affect services — where the U.S. has a trade surplus.

“President Trump has never mentioned that, because he probably doesn’t want us to know that, right? It makes trade look a little more fair, but that’s not the story he wants,” Sorensen said.

So far, other countries haven’t targeted U.S. services in retaliation for the tariffs it has imposed.

Nevertheless, “if countries really want to get us economically, they would go after services,” Sorensen said.

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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks during a nomination hearing with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Capitol Hill on April 03, 2025, in Washington, D.C.  Paul was the sole GOP co-sponsor on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, of a resolution to terminate President Donald Trump's tariffs. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans defended President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs Wednesday, blocking a largely symbolic measure to terminate the president’s import taxes that have shocked the economy.

The resolution failed in a tied 49-49 vote Wednesday evening. Vice President J.D. Vance broke the tie on a subsequent procedural vote to stop the measure from receiving another chance on the floor.

Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky were the only three to break with their party in support of reining in Trump’s use of emergency powers to trigger tariffs on nearly every other nation across the globe.

Paul was the lone Republican co-sponsor on the Senate resolution, which was likely to go nowhere under House Republican leadership.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell missed the vote. Earlier in April McConnell joined Collins and Murkowski in voting to halt Trump’s tariffs on Canada.

‘Devastating’ economic news

The vote came hours after the release of figures showing the U.S. economy shrank during the first quarter of 2025. 

“The devastating economic news we got this morning should be enough for senators to vote yes tonight. The only winner today is China, which is scooping up markets and allies Donald Trump has left in the dust,” Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said on the floor just before the vote.

Wyden and Paul co-sponsored the resolution that aimed to block Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announced April 2 that caused market upheaval.

The president’s shockingly high taxes on goods imported from some of the nation’s closest trading partners — 20% on the European Union, 24% on Japan, 46% on Vietnam — rocked global markets, erasing trillions in wealth. Trump triggered the levies by declaring foreign trade as a national emergency.

Trump announced a 90-day pause on the tariffs starting April 9, but left in place a 10% universal import tax on nearly every country across the globe — excluding China.

The White House is now in an all-out trade war with the world’s no. 2 economy, raising tariffs on Chinese goods to 145%. China stopped at a 125% levy on American goods.

Kaine warning

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who also co-sponsored the resolution, told reporters on a press call Wednesday that he’s willing to “link arms” with Trump to fight what the U.S. views as China’s unfair trade practices, but he said Trump needs to “wake up and smell the coffee” on the damage to relationships with trading partners.

“When you put tariffs on allies what you do is push away the very nations you could be joining with to counter China,” the Virginia Democrat said.

Kaine also blamed Trump’s trade policy for Wednesday’s negative economic headlines.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis report showed the U.S. gross domestic product decreased at an annual rate of 0.3% in the first three months of this year.

“It’s the wrong economic strategy to turn the strongest economy in the world to one that has red flashing lights on it,” Kaine said.

Kaine said he believed some House Republicans would support the resolution but that “leadership has bottled it up.”

Trump blames Biden

Trump’s administration officials and his allies in Congress continue to defend the tariffs. The president himself blames former President Joe Biden for the economic “hangover,” as he described it in his Truth Social post Wednesday.

“This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!,” Trump wrote.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune similarly told reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday that economic reports are “short term.”

“They measure it sort of day by day, month by month, quarter by quarter. And as I said yesterday, I think that with the tariff issue that they’re playing the long game, but we’ll see,” the South Dakota Republican said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended Trump’s import taxes Tuesday from the White House briefing room, but also announced the administration’s reprieve on 25% taxes on foreign cars and auto parts.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed the vote Wednesday night.

“Leader Thune and Senate Republicans tonight voted to keep the Trump tariff-tax in place. They own the Trump tariffs and higher costs on America’s middle-class families,” the New York Democrat said in a statement.

Participants in Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council's Fresh Start program build a house, learning construction skills in the process. Program participants enroll in AmeriCorps and are paid an hourly wage for their work. (Photo courtesy of Western Dairyland EOC Inc.)

A coalition of 25 states, including Wisconsin, sued the Trump administration Tuesday to block the cancellation of AmeriCorps programs across the country.

The cancellation has upended plans at more than two dozen organizations in Wisconsin that have engaged AmeriCorps members in community service work, and stranded scores of participants in the midst of one-year stints in the program.

“I was completely blindsided,” Parker Kuehni told the Wisconsin Examiner on Tuesday. The University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate with a degree in global health was in his second year with AmeriCorps, working at a Madison free health clinic and preparing to start medical school in June when he learned Monday morning that the program was canceled.

Created by Congress in 1993 as the Corporation for National and Community Service, its official name, AmeriCorps has deployed community service workers across the country in the decades since. AmeriCorps members are usually recent college graduates who join the program for a year or two. They teach in schools, assist with disaster relief and take on a host of other roles. 

Wisconsin has 25 AmeriCorps programs that operate at more than 300 locations across the state, according to the office of Gov. Tony Evers. In Wisconsin, AmeriCorps operates through Serve Wisconsin, which administers its Wisconsin contracts and is housed in the Department of Administration.

On April 16, AmeriCorps placed about 75% of its employees on administrative leave with pay, the New York Times reported.

At 6:20 p.m. on Friday, April 25, Jeanne Duffy, the Serve Wisconsin executive director, received an email message that AmeriCorps grants and their recipients in Wisconsin were being terminated immediately “because it has been determined that the award no longer effectuates agency priorities.”

The form letter instructed recipients to notify all organizations and agencies with AmeriCorps-related projects. “You must immediately cease all award activities. This is a final agency action and is not administratively appealable,” the message said.

Lawsuit: Cancellation ‘usurps Congress’s power of the purse’

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Maryland charges the Trump administration’s cancellation of the program “flouts Congress’s creation of AmeriCorps and assignment of agency duties; usurps Congress’s power of the purse and thereby violates the Constitution’s separation of powers; and arbitrarily and capriciously — without any reasoned analysis — vitiates the agency’s ability to function consistent with its statutory mission and purpose.”

The suit charges that the program’s abrupt end also violates federal law, which states AmeriCorps can make “significant changes to program requirements, service delivery or policy only through public notice and comment rulemaking.”

“The attempt to dismantle AmeriCorps is part of a pattern from the Trump administration of disrespect toward those who serve others,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a statement. “That approach is not just shameful — it’s misguided. AmeriCorps volunteers and projects help strengthen communities. AmeriCorps should be thanked for its work, not abruptly dismantled.”

Evers’ office telegraphed Wisconsin’s plan to join the lawsuit late Tuesday morning.

“Once again, the Trump Administration is trying to cut federal funding that Congress already approved and Wisconsin is counting on to help kids, families, and communities across our state — all so they can pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires,” Evers said in a statement. “These latest reckless Trump and Musk cuts will hurt Wisconsin’s kids who are homeless or who need tutors for math and reading, folks who are working to overcome addiction and substance use, stop work on conservation projects, as well as all of the dedicated public servants whose livelihoods are depending on this work.”

Tutoring programs, health care clinics

AmeriCorps’ cancellation affected organizations and agencies all across the state.

In Madison, the United Way of Dane County enlisted 27 AmeriCorps members in two tutoring programs — one in math for high school students and the other in reading and literacy for elementary school children.

AmeriCorps members were placed in schools to help identify students who would benefit from tutoring, United Way officials said. They also screened and conducted background checks for more than 175 community volunteer tutors as well as serving as tutors themselves. More than 1,000 children have received tutoring in the two programs this year.

“And these kids are able to accelerate their academic success, which puts them on track for [higher] graduation rates,” said United Way CEO Renee Moe. “So, this is a really huge loss for us.”

AmeriCorps members were “really key to having successful volunteers support students in literacy,” said Emily Greene, director of Schools of Hope, the elementary program.

In the high school program, Achievement Connections, members have supported and trained other high school students as peer tutors. That helps those students “be engaged in their school in a way that they otherwise wouldn’t be and also gain some skills,” said Karl Johnson, director of Achievement Connections.

“We find that those relationships . . . are some of our strongest when it’s students helping each other out, and our [AmeriCorps] members are a pretty key part of facilitating that,” Johnson said.

The Wisconsin Association of Free and Charitable Clinics has deployed 30 AmeriCorps members throughout Wisconsin this year.

Some assist clinics, local health departments or the state Department of Health Services in administrative tasks, writing grants, collecting and analyzing data and related work, said Domonique Coffee, the association’s AmeriCorps program manager. Others staff clinics in a public health role, taking a patient’s blood pressure or other vital signs, teaching patients about managing their diabetes or hypertension or providing other direct care, she said.

The program allowed “free and charitable clinics to increase their services and capacity for services . . . to those who are underinsured or uninsured,” Coffee said.

It has also helped prepare the AmeriCorps members as future health care providers — “the future physicians and public health leaders of our next generation,” she added.

Fostering skills for careers and life

Parker Kuehni had graduated with a degree in global public health two years ago and was preparing to go to medical school. But he knew he first wanted to get more experience in directly working with patients.

He volunteered as a barbershop health screener for the Perry Family Free Clinic, which serves uninsured, low-income Madison residents. Through the clinic he connected with AmeriCorps and then shifted to helping with patient coordination, communication and scheduling, discussing care plans with patients and managing referrals to specialists.

The experience “built my empathy for people,” he said. The experiences he had “will contribute to me being an overall better future physician.”

While the typical AmeriCorps participant is a college graduate, the Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council in Eau Claire took a different approach with the program.

Since the late 1990s Western Dairyland has operated Fresh Start, an education, skills and career program for young adults ages 18 to 25. Participants often have a sparse job history and might not have completed high school.

The program engages up to 15 participants in a year-long house-building project. “We provide them with life skills and job skills and technical education, allowing them to then leave the program and either go on to school or attain full-time employment,” said Dale Karls, Western Dairyland’s communications coordinator.

The participants themselves become AmeriCorps members and earn an hourly wage on the job. Some 600 young people have gone through the program over the last three decades, building 45 homes, Karls said.

All the organizations the Wisconsin Examiner contacted Tuesday said the news of AmeriCorps’ cancellation came too recently  for them to know what they will do if the program isn’t restored.

Coffee said the Wisconsin Free and Charitable Clinics Association is trying to support its AmeriCorps members, “helping them find their footing.”

At United Way of Dane County, “We’ve spoken to our school district partners,” said Moe, the agency’s CEO. “We have reaffirmed with them that tutoring continues to be an important strategy to help with academic success. And so right now we’re trying to be creative around how to best keep really effective tutoring programs going.”

“We’re hoping that the funding will be reinstated,” said Karls of Western Dairyland. In the meantime, he added, “We have a half-constructed house in Strum, Wisconsin. We have to find a way to finish that.”

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Simulated gravestones are arrayed in front of the Madison Labor Temple on Monday, April 28, 2025, to commemorate Workers Memorial Day. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Some 112 Wisconsin workers died on the job in 2023, the AFL-CIO reported Monday as labor unions marked Workers Memorial Day to highlight workplace dangers.

“When a union is there at the workplace, injuries go down and lives are saved,” said Kevin Gundlach, president of the South Central Federation of Labor, representing union workers in Dane County and surrounding counties.

Workers Memorial Day serves both to remember those who have lost their lives at work as well as “fighting for the living” to have a safe workplace, Gundlach told the Wisconsin Examiner. The date, April 28, coincides with the anniversary of the date that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act took effect 54 years ago.

The AFL-CIO’s analysis draws on 2023 job fatality, injury and illness data along with workplace safety regulation enforcement data for the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2024.

Of the 112 Wisconsin worker deaths in 2023, 15 were from assaults and other violent acts, 37 from transportation incidents, 17 from falls, 19 from exposures to harmful substances or environments, and 23 from “contact with objects or equipment,” according to the AFL-CIO.

“Every worker in Wisconsin has the right to a safe job,” said Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Stephanie Bloomingdale. “We need collective bargaining rights and strong unions for all to best ensure that safety concerns are adequately and timely addressed in the workplace.”

Union groups around Wisconsin held events, including in Madison, Milwaukee, Eau Claire, La Crosse and Wausau.

At the Madison event, people working in health care, construction, education and as state game wardens came out. There was also testimony on behalf of immigrant workers in the construction industry.

“Many of these workers are exploited and don’t have a union,” Gundlach said. Recent attacks on migrants have made some “fearful to speak up for workplace conditions.”

The event also called attention to workplace violence as a danger, and the need for employers to address workplace safety issues.

In its report, the AFL-CIO criticized the administration of President Donald Trump, which marks its first 100 days this week, for “totally decimating the fabric of what makes government protections work for people through attacks on job safety, public health, union rights and the independence of federal agencies.”

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Foreign-made semiconductors are facing scrutiny and tariffs by the Trump administration, which would cause a ripple effect for manufacturing and price of most electronic goods, experts say. (Photo by Narumon Bowonkitwanchai/Getty Images)

The price of technology goods and services in the U.S. will likely rise in the next few months, experts say, as the White House continues to shift its strategy on tariffs for imported electronic hardware.

After initial reports that Chinese goods would receive as high as a 145% tariff, President Donald Trump said on April 13 that electronics like smartphones, computers and semiconductors — chips that process, power and transmit information — would be exempt. But Trump said later that day that imported semiconductors, and the electronics they’re embedded in, will likely be facing their own tariff structure in the coming weeks.

In tandem with Trump’s announcement, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced an official investigation into semiconductor imports, aiming to study the national security implications of importing manufacturing equipment and derivative products. The move is likely two-fold, tech experts say — Trump’s aim with foreign tariffs is to pressure American manufacturers to make more goods in U.S. facilities.

But his administration is also likely looking for cybersecurity risks that could be introduced through foreign manufacturing, like in compromised operating systems, embedded malicious code, or flawed designs, said Derek Lemke, senior vice president of product level intelligence at risk management firm Exiger.

“They power everything from advanced weapons systems and critical infrastructure to smartphones and laptops,” Lemke said. “Many of these components are manufactured abroad, often in regions with rising geopolitical tensions or limited transparency into supply chain practices.”

The U.S. is currently upping its manufacturing of semiconductors. It produced about 10% of the world’s semiconductors in 2022, and is projected to reach 14% by 2032 with the additional funding and infrastructure provided by the CHIPS and Science Act, passed during the Biden administration. But while many advanced chips are designed by American companies like Nvidia, Apple, Qualcomm and AMD, they are manufactured in Taiwan, which is currently negotiating tariff deals with the U.S.

Many electronics involve manufacturing processes from all over the world, making the tariff structure involved a complicated one. And while it’s a good idea for Americans to manufacture more of their semiconductors to diversify the global supply chain of chips, the country is nowhere near prepared to make as many as we need, said Nikolas Guggenberger, an assistant professor of law with a focus on antitrust, law and technology, privacy, and regulation at The University of Houston Law Center.

Guggenberger called semiconductor manufacturing “among the most complex industrial processes on Earth,” which would require years of planning, training and billions in investment for the U.S. to become a leader.

While the U.S. awaits more clarity over tariffs on electronic goods and the findings of the semiconductor probe, Guggenberger and Lemke say that American consumers should prepare themselves for higher prices on smartphones, laptops and other personal devices. Because semiconductors are used in so many everyday products, those price hikes could seep into wider spending, Guggenberger said.

“From a computer to everyday devices, like a garage opener, or a toaster,” he said. “It’s everything, it’s absolutely everything.”

Guggenberger said there’s a possibility that very high tariffs could also lead to a pause or slowdown in manufacturing in general, meaning consumers may see emptier shelves or a backlog on products in a few months.

Those on the software side of the tech industry will feel the effects, too, Lemke said. Software companies, AI developers and cybersecurity experts all rely on computing power from chip hardware, and disruption in the supply chain could slow innovation in these businesses, he said.

Even just the discussion of tariffs is having a ripple effect through the tech sector, Lemke said. Companies are having to evaluate their supply chains, their sourcing and maybe stockpile some components to their products.

“The uncertainty alone is enough to influence pricing, procurement strategies and investment decisions across the tech ecosystem,” Lemke said. 

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and state Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) listen to community members at an April 24 roundtable in Richland Center. (Hery Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

RICHLAND CENTER — In a 90-minute roundtable meeting at the Richland Center community center Thursday, President Donald Trump’s name was mentioned just twice. But community leaders highlighted how his administration’s policies are already wreaking havoc on the county with the sixth highest poverty rate in the state. 

About 15 area leaders representing small business owners, farmers, schools, hospitals and community advocacy groups met Thursday with state Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. Throughout the event, the attendees discussed how the policies and plans of Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to cut or diminish Medicaid, Social Security and education funding while instituting widespread tariffs on imported goods from countries around the world and making it harder for migrant workers to obtain visas could decimate their region. 

“None of this is right. Where I’m at that age in my life where I don’t get more thoughtful, I get more pissed,” Brett White, executive director of the Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program, said. “And because this is all not necessary, this is completely unnecessary, which means that it’s intentional.” 

The group noted repeatedly that a cut to programs in one area had a ripple effect across every other community institution. 

White, and Chris Frakes, the organization’s senior director, said that the cuts to Head Start early childhood education programming that have already come and are set to deepen under Trump are their biggest worry. 

There are currently about 70 kids in Richland County enrolled in Southwest CAP’s Head Start program, according to Frakes. If those programs are lost, poor kids in Richland County will never catch up, she said. 

“Because we know if you enter kindergarten already behind, there’s virtually no chance to catch up by third grade,” Frakes said. “If you’re not on grade level reading in third grade, we know your life prospects go down dramatically, right? So Head Start fills this critical, vital need to get those kiddos onto par with their middle class peers when they hit kindergarten, so that they are ready to learn, and their families have the sort of surrounding supports, whether that’s food, whether that’s access to transportation, for medical care.” 

If Head Start gets cut, the children who are affected will eventually reach Aaron Mithum, the middle and high school principal for the Kickapoo Area School District. Mithum says the district is “waiting for the other shoe to drop” on the future of the approximately $800,000 it gets annually from the federal government as Trump seeks to shut down the U.S. Department of Education. 

If Head Start leaves poor kids behind before they turn five, by the time they reach Mithum at a middle school that’s also struggling financially, there won’t be many options. 

“We’re getting them when they get into pre K or kindergarten, and now we’re trying to go from there, and now, all of a sudden, they don’t have any of that foundational aspect,” Mithum said. “It’s a building block, trickle effect, and not in a positive way. So now it’s that much harder for us to do what [Head Start wasn’t] able to do, and it continues to go up. And it’s just really hard to think about, what does that look like? What does that look like to be a parent with a special ed kid who needs speech services or reading services, or whatever. And the answer is, sorry, not our problem.” 

While the child care and education system of a community that’s already seen the closure of its local University of Wisconsin campus faces the prospect of being unable to keep poor kids from falling behind, the area’s food system is also being hit. 

Retaliatory tariffs on the area’s wheat, corn and soybean farmers are hurting their ability to find international markets for their products while tariffs imposed by Trump have made fertilizer and machinery more expensive, said Sally Leong, Wisconsin Farmers Union member and former professor of plant pathology at UW-Madison. 

Those struggles are continuing to push up the price of food, causing local families to rely on food pantries more than used to, according to Jackie Anderson, executive director of Feeding Wisconsin. 

Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) paused funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which Anderson said has amounted to about a 30% cut to what food banks are able to buy. USDA has also ended a program that connected local farms with food pantries to supply fresh produce. 

“Food banks are really looking at the bottom line and saying, like, ‘How are we going to be able to get that amount of food here?’” Anderson said. 

The tariffs are also affecting the companies providing jobs in the area. Marty Richards, the county tourism director, said that Rockwell Automation has delayed and cancelled orders because of Trump’s tariffs. Meanwhile it’s getting harder to find local workers and Trump’s restrictive immigration policies have made it nearly impossible to hire migrant workers. Richards said the company has had a hard time getting workers from its plant in Mexico to come to the U.S. even temporarily for technical training

Teri Richards, board member of the Greater Richland Area Chamber of Commerce, said the county desperately needs more people and she doesn’t know where to find them. 

“We’re obviously not having enough babies. We’re struggling to get that immigrant population and we can’t keep stealing from each other,” she said. “So it’s time to go into Chicago or Milwaukee, to even get a few of those folks moved out here? I don’t know.” 

With fewer people moving in and federal policies discouraging investment from the business community and cutting funds from schools and child care, the community is also facing the management of an aging population. About 30% of the population is older than 60 and 14% is disabled, according to Roxanne Klubertanz, manager of Richland County’s Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC). 

That aging population means the community is only going to become more reliant on federal programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Currently, the ADRC helps people in the community apply for Medicaid to pay for the services that will help them stay in their homes for as long as possible or move to an assisted living facility — currently a cost of about $3,800 per month, she said. 

Republicans in Congress are currently weighing a budget proposal that would slash Medicaid funding. Klubertanz said without the program people won’t be able to access those services and will ultimately get sicker and require a placement in a nursing home — a cost of about $10,000 per month. 

“So if that funding, that Medicaid funding, goes away, what’s going to happen?” she said. “Maybe right away, you’re going to see some decreases, but people are going to get sicker and need more services, and then they have to pay for that nursing home placement, which is almost three times the cost. So if you’re trying to fix something today, you have to think about what it’s gonna be like in five years. You’ve gotta have that long range thinking.” 

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