Wisconsin

From the Article:

COVID-19 cases are growing in Northeast Wisconsin, but the numbers aren’t significantly higher than a year ago.

A new variant, called JN.1, is spreading. According to a doctor we spoke with at Bellin Health, there’s a small change in part of the virus that’s causing more people who’ve already had COVID or were immunized to get this variant of the virus.

As of right now, the number of cases in our community is similar to this time last year.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services website, COVID hospitalizations in Northeast Wisconsin increased by 17% between Dec. 24 and Jan. 6. Specifically in the Fox Valley, hospitalizations grew 13% during that time period.

Overall, COVID symptoms are still fairly mild for people who’ve been vaccinated, according to doctors. People with a compromised immune system, underlying health conditions, and older adults still face significant risk.

If you think you have COVID, doctors urge you not to go to an emergency room to get tested unless you’re very ill and need to be evaluated by a provider.

“We just opened a fast lane clinic by [Austin Straubel] airport -- that’s new -- where people can get a test that’s ordered by their doctor or their nurse practitioner and get that test through the drive-through. So there’s easier ways than going to the emergency room and waiting a long time. We really want to make sure we’re protecting our emergency departments in this community when people truly need it,” Bellin Health Dr. Brad Burmeister said.

From the Article:

Verona resident Libby Belden and her husband chose to buy an electric vehicle almost a year ago. But as Green Bay Packers season ticket holders, they’ve run into hurdles trying to attend games at Lambeau Field.

Belden has tickets to two regular season games each season and a preseason game. Since buying an electric SUV, she has had to stop in Appleton for a charging station compatible with her vehicle before heading home to the Madison area.

While the charger isn’t one that requires the vehicle to be plugged in overnight, it still takes about an hour of waiting because it’s not a high-speed charger.

“We actually decided, after having done that for a few games, to skip a game we were planning to go to with a bunch of family this year, which was really heartbreaking,” Belden said. “It was a night game. We knew we were going to have to drive home, it was already going to be really late, and then it was probably going to be about a four-hour drive home with having to sit at that charger for an hour.”

Belden is not the only EV owner who has to meticulously plan trips throughout Wisconsin. That’s because the Badger State has fewer publicly accessible charging stations than most of its neighbors, according to data provided by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, or DOT.

Citing the Alternative Fuels Data Center Station Locator and state EV infrastructure plans, a DOT spokesperson said Wisconsin has 578 publicly accessible stations with 1,373 total ports, with 90 of those stations having high-speed chargers. Among surrounding states, only Iowa had fewer stations at 363 with 820 total ports.

From the Article:

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, who has pushed for full legalization of recreational marijuana, said Wednesday that he is open to a more limited medical marijuana legalization being promoted by Republicans.

"I would think that getting it all done in one fell swoop would be more thoughtful as far as meeting the needs of Wisconsinites that have asked for it," the Democrat said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But if that’s what we can accomplish right now, I’ll be supportive of that."

Republicans have been working behind closed doors for years on a medical marijuana bill and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said in December that they would unveil it this month. Republicans have repeatedly rejected calls from Evers and other Democrats to legalize all uses of marijuana, including medical and recreational.

Vos said the proposal would be limited and modeled after the medical marijuana law that had been in place in neighboring Minnesota before it moved to full legalization.

"I'm glad that the governor is open to supporting our proposal," Vos said Friday. "But if he keeps saying it’s only a precursor to recreational marijuana, it will kill this proposal."

From the Article:

Wisconsin's political party leaders met in the state Capitol for about six minutes Tuesday morning to determine which presidential candidates will appear on the primary ballot in the state: including former President Donald Trump.

The quick, no-hiccup meeting contrasts with two other states that have moved to bar Trump from the ballot. That decision was made by the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine's Democratic secretary of state based on an anti-insurrection clause in the 14th Amendment. The issue is likely to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last week, the Wisconsin Elections Commission quickly rejected a petition filed by Kirk Bangstad — a Democratic activist and owner of the Minocqua Brewing Co. — that sought to keep Trump off the ballot on those grounds. Bangstad plans to challenge the decision in Dane County Circuit Court, and hoped it would reach the state Supreme Court.

WEC does not place candidates on the ballot in Wisconsin. That decision is up to the bipartisan state Presidential Preference Selection Committee, which is made up of state Democratic and Republican party chairs, majority and minority leaders in the state Legislature, and others.

The six candidates named by the state Republican party include: former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former President Donald Trump.

The state Democratic party presented only one name for the ballot: President Joe Biden. Author Marianne Williamson and Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips are also running as Democrats.

State law requires the committee to include all names "whose candidacy is generally advocated or recognized in the national news media throughout the United States," and can include additional names.

The names now go to WEC, which contacts the candidates to inform them they will appear on the ballot unless they notify the commission by Jan. 30 that they do not intend to run.

From the Article:

Attorneys for Republican lawmakers are asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reconsider its 4-3 decision that found the state's current legislative maps unconstitutional and ordered them to draw new ones, arguing their timeline to do so is rushed.

The court ordered parties on Dec. 22 to submit map proposals by Jan. 12, and consultants are set to review them by Feb. 1. The Wisconsin Elections Commission has said maps must be in place by March 15 for the fall legislative races. Candidates must circulate nomination papers for an Aug. 13 partisan primary ahead of the Nov. 5 general election.

But Republicans argue instituting new maps as the 2024 elections draw closer would "needlessly disrupt the electoral process." They are asking those deadlines to be reconsidered and for the court to halt all proceedings in the meantime.

"Announced the Friday before Christmas, the parties have been given 21 days — a third of them falling on weekends and state holidays — to submit proposed remedies, lengthy remedial briefs and expert reports," attorneys wrote in a filing late Thursday.

From the Article:

Minocqua brewery owner and political gadfly Kirk Bangstad says he will go to court to force the Wisconsin Elections Commission to keep Donald Trump off of the state’s presidential ballots in 2024 under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Bangstad filed a complaint with the elections commission Thursday demanding Trump’s exclusion. The election commission’s dismissal came almost immediately afterward, in a letter saying that the complaint “is being disposed of without consideration by the Commission.”

Bangstad had anticipated the commission’s rejection, telling reporters immediately after he filed the document that he expected it would be dismissed and that he would sue the commission in circuit court to press the complaint’s demand. After receiving the dismissal notice Bangstad said he would follow up with a lawsuit next week.

Bangstad said that he views Article 3 of the 14th amendment as a clear-cut justification for keeping Trump from running for president again.

His elections commission complaint says, “Donald Trump disqualified himself and forfeited his right to serve as President of the United States of America by choosing power over the oath he took as an officer of the United States to uphold the Constitution of the United States and engaging in an insurrection against the Country he swore to protect.”

It calls on the six commissioners to find Trump “disqualified from serving as President of the United States of America” and to “refuse Donald J. Trump access to the 2024 Republican presidential preference primary ballot.”

The complaint cites a Wisconsin statute that allows a voter who believes that an election official’s action or failure to act “is contrary to law” or an abuse of discretion to file a complaint with the commission “requesting that the official be required to conform his or her conduct to the law.”

From the Article:

Wisconsin election officials have declined to review a complaint attempting to remove former President Trump from the state’s primary ballot, citing the 14th Amendment.

Madison, Wis., brewery owner Kirk Bangstad filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday, claiming Trump should be removed from the ballot due to his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

The commission said the complaint was thrown out for procedural reasons, and it lists members of the commission itself as respondents.

“The complaint was disposed of without consideration by the Commission,” spokesperson Riley Vetterkind said in a Thursday statement to the media. “It is the position of the Commission that a complaint against the Commission, against Commissioners in their official capacities, or against Commission staff, warrants an ethical recusal by the body.”

Bangstad’s complaint relies on the same arguments as removal efforts in Colorado and Maine, which have been accepted, pending legal appeals.

The 14th Amendment bars those who “engage in insurrection” from holding office. The Maine Secretary of State and the Colorado Supreme Court found that Trump’s Jan. 6 conduct fell under that definition.

The Hill has reached out to the election commission and Bangstad for additional comment.

Other states have also rejected similar 14th Amendment claims. On Wednesday, a Michigan court ruled that its Secretary of State does not have the authority to determine the eligibility of candidates using the “insurrection clause” of the amendment.

Trump’s campaign denounced the Maine decision Thursday as “election interference.”

“We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said. “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.”

From the Article:

Gov. Tony Evers ordered that flags will fly at half-staff across Wisconsin to honor the life of former Bucks owner, U.S. senator from Wisconsin and lifetime Milwaukeean Herb Kohl.

The executive order states that flags should be flown at half-staff from Dec. 28 through the date of interment for Kohl.

Kohl's death was announced Wednesday by the Herb Kohl Foundation. He was 88.

“A Milwaukeean and Wisconsinite through and through, U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl dedicated his life to serving our kids, our communities, our state, and our country," Evers said in a statement Wednesday after Kohl's death was announced. “Sen. Kohl was, without a doubt, nobody’s senator but ours. Kathy and I are devastated by the news of his passing."

Many friends, colleagues and Wisconsinites have remembered and shared stories of Kohl's storied life.

“Sen. Kohl was deeply committed to community, kindness, and service to others. Wisconsin’s seniors, students, teachers, and schools, and farmers and rural areas, among so many others, are better off because of his life and legacy, the impacts of which will last for generations," Evers continued in his statement.

“Kathy and I join the people of Wisconsin, friends and colleagues of Sen. Kohl, and the many people whose lives he impacted — both near and far — in offering our sincerest condolences to the Kohl family and the Herb Kohl Foundation in mourning the loss of this Wisconsin giant.”

From the Article:

Wisconsin’s economy ended 2023 in good shape with businesses hiring workers and the state’s unemployment rate at 3.3%, lower than the national average of 3.7%.

Jobs and employment data is still being gathered for December. However officials with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development said that in November the state had more than 3 million people working, which is a new high for the state, and in the month 1,700 employees were added to the workforce.

In 2023, roughly 32,300 workers entered the workforce in Wisconsin.

The biggest problem with the economy has been there aren’t enough bodies to fill the openings.

“As the Baby Boomers age out, we find that we need more and more workers just in general,” said Scott Hodek, Section Chief for DWD's Office of Economic Advisors, “This is the big piece that we’re seeing influence the workforce and the economy into the next decades.”

Hodek made his comments during the department’s virtual economic briefing in December.

“Students, right now graduating, have a great job market,” Hodek said. “We saw we’re getting more people into the labor force, and that’s good, but we need more.”

And while the job market is in workers favor, there might be some signs of hiring slowing down.

According to the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association and Commerce's most recent data from October, Milwaukee metro area employment averaged 862,000, a 0.3% increase from one year ago.

“A weakened overall employment trend, as well as negative manufacturing and unemployment indicators, suggest a sluggish metro area economy,” Bret Mayborne, MMAC vice president of economic research, said in the monthly report. “On the positive side, local housing and real estate indicators may be on the mend after registering declines for the better part of two years.”

There are still some workers who received bad news this year.

In December only one employer filed a WARN notice with the state: Dovenmuehle Mortgage, Inc., based in Brookfield, informed 17 remote workers that they would be laid off beginning Feb. 16.

In 2023, 6,727 workers learned they would need to find a new job, which is up from 5,563 a year ago, and up from 2,888 in 2021.

But that annual number is a fraction of the 39,756 workers that were laid off in 2020.

From the Article:

The fate of Kohler Co.’s decade-long effort to build a championship golf course atop wetlands and forest in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, remains in question following a court ruling applauded by the project’s opponents.

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals this month upheld an administrative law judge’s 2019 decision to rescind the company’s state-issued permit to fill wetlands.

The ruling was the latest in a theater of legal battles over the proposed golf course, including several in which Kohler Co. prevailed. The ruling may not kill the project, but opponents see it as a major step toward its defeat.

From the Article:

In early December, a rightwing Wisconsin organization called HOT Government sent out a breathless email: Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman turned election conspiracy theorist and staunch Donald Trump ally, had nominated an important Wisconsin politician for a dubious award.

The prize would go to the person who exemplifies “leadership in BEING AN OBSTACLE TO STOPPING ELECTION CRIME”, the email declared.

Lindell’s target wasn’t a Democrat, nonpartisan election official or even a moderate Republican – it was Robin Vos, the powerful Wisconsin Republican assembly speaker.

The nomination reflects a stark turn of fortunes for Vos, who has spent more than a decade using every tool at his disposal to cement Republican power in Wisconsin, touting a deeply conservative record including on voting.

Vos helped re-draw the state’s legislative maps in 2011, ensuring Republican control of the legislature ever since. The same year, he followed former Republican governor Scott Walker’s lead in creating the most restrictive voter identification law in the country and passing legislation to kneecap union power in a state where organized labor was once the core of the Democratic coalition.

Vos was elected speaker of the assembly in 2013 and has used his years in office since to shore up his party’s minoritarian lock on power in the swing state. When Republicans lost the governorship in 2018, the assembly quickly passed legislation that curbed the power of the incoming Democratic governor. And after Trump lost the state in 2020, Vos initiated an investigation into Wisconsin’s election, hiring a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” movement to lead it.

He was in all respects a loyal rightwinger. But Vos has drawn a line at embracing Trump’s false claim that he actually won Wisconsin in 2020 and refused to join colleagues who suggested overturning the 2020 election. His unwillingness to cross that line has turned him into a pariah on the far right, a target of Lindell, an enemy of Trump and a symbol of the current state of the Republican party where loyalty to Trump is the key litmus test.

Now, Vos is fighting elements of his party that rejected the results of the 2020 election and have come to view him not as a hardline conservative who has done more than almost anyone else to strengthen Republicans’ power in the state, but as a corrupt establishment hack complicit in Trump’s undoing.

With the Trump flank of the grassroots Wisconsin Republican party as strong as ever ahead of the 2024 election, Vos is scrambling to appease his hardline party detractors so he doesn’t become a casualty of the movement he helped create.

“There’s a segment of the Maga crowd who despises him, because they adamantly believe President Trump was cheated,” said a veteran Wisconsin GOP operative, who spoke anonymously given his role within pro-Trump circles. “Where he is right now is kind of emblematic of the fight going on within the Republican party – here in Wisconsin and across the nation.”

From the Article:

Wisconsin's Republican-drawn legislative district boundaries are unconstitutional and must be redrawn before next year's presidential election, the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided in a landmark split Friday ruling that has the potential to dramatically alter the state Legislature's makeup.

In a 4-3 ruling, the state's high court ruled that the current, Republican-drawn maps violate the Wisconsin Constitution's requirement for legislative districts to be contiguous.

The majority decision, signed onto by liberal justices Jill Karofsky, Rebecca Dallet, Ann Walsh Bradley and Janet Protasiewicz, urged the Legislature to draw new maps but said it will "proceed toward adopting" remedial maps in case the legislative process stalls or Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoes any proposals.

The court's three conservative justices, Annette Ziegler, Rebecca Bradley and Brian Hagedorn, dissented in the ruling.

The redistricting case was filed the day after Protasiewicz won the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history, shifting the court to a 4-3 liberal majority for the first time in more than a decade.

The lawsuit argues the state's legislative maps passed in 2022, which are largely similar to previous maps drawn in 2011, are unconstitutional and must be redrawn.

The Republican-controlled Legislature, which drew the maps, allege the plaintiffs are merely using the state Supreme Court's new liberal majority to revisit the court's 2021 ruling adopting the current maps. That ruling was delivered by the previous 4-3 conservative-majority court.

Attorneys in the case say 54 of the Assembly's 99 districts and 21 out of 33 of those in the Senate violate requirements in the state Constitution that districts be contiguous. Though the Wisconsin Constitution requires legislative districts "to consist of contiguous territory," many contain sections of land that are not actually connected. The resulting map looks a bit like Swiss cheese, where some districts are dotted with small neighborhood holes assigned to different representatives.

The Legislature has argued for a more liberal definition of contiguous that allows for the creation of districts where all land masses are not physically touching. The Legislature also argued that Wisconsin's redistricting laws, backed by state and federal court rulings over the past 50 years, have permitted districts under certain circumstances to be noncontiguous.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the state's set of 10-year legislative and congressional maps early last year after Evers vetoed Republicans' preferred maps in 2021.

After calling for maps that made minimal changes to previous legislative district boundaries, the state court selected Evers' preferred legislative and congressional maps. But Republicans alleged the governor's legislative maps included a racial gerrymander and appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The nation's highest court then struck down Evers' legislative maps but accepted his preferred congressional maps. The Wisconsin Supreme Court then selected the GOP-drawn legislative maps.

The current maps heavily favor GOP majorities in both chambers, with Republicans holding a 64-35 majority in the Assembly and a 22-11 supermajority in the Senate.

From the Article:

A Wisconsin family has agreed to sell 407 acres of their land, which includes a local pumpkin farm attraction, to Microsoft — for a total of $76 million, reported the Milwaukee Business Journal. The local government initially offered the Creuziger family in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin about a third of that sum in 2017 as a part of an agreement with the Foxconn Technology Group. But the family refused, opting to hold out for a better offer.

“The family wishes the village and Microsoft well, and they would appreciate people respecting their privacy,” the family’s attorney David Barnes told the Business Journal.

The land, which also includes the Land of the Giants pumpkin farm and a nine-acre corn maze, neigbhors another 641 acres of land purchased by Microsoft from the village of Mount Pleasant — for a total of $99.7 million. The end goal for Microsoft is to build a data center campus in the area, in which it plans to invest over $1 billion.

All told, the sale is a happy ending for the village, after several years of confusion and mixed signals from Foxconn. It’s only been two years since Foxconn drastically scaled back its promised $10 billion investment in Mount Pleasant, which would have included a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant.

The Milwaukee Business Journal reported that Microsoft plans to initially hire 200 employees at its Mount Pleasant data center — and could add over 460 jobs over time. But it’ll still be a fraction of the 13,000 jobs that Foxconn originally promised the area back in 2017.

From the Article:

Wisconsin’s bipartisan elections commission, for a second time, has unanimously rejected a complaint against fake presidential electors who attempted to cast the state’s ballots for Donald Trump in 2020.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission first rejected the complaint in March 2022. But a judge in May ordered the commission to rehear the complaint, this time without one of its members who served as one of the fake electors for the former president.

The commission released its unanimous 5-0 decision to reject the complaint Wednesday without explaining why. The elections commission’s discussion of the complaint, as well as its vote on Tuesday, was conducted in closed meetings.

The complaint asked the elections commission to investigate the fake electors’ actions and declare that they broke the law.

Last year, when it rejected the complaint the first time, the commission attached a letter from the Wisconsin Department of Justice that said that Republicans who attempted to cast the state’s 10 electoral college votes for Trump did not break any election laws. The state Justice Department concluded that Republicans were legitimately trying to preserve Trump’s legal standing as courts were deciding if he or Biden won the election.

Fake electors met in Wisconsin and other battleground states that Trump lost in 2020, attempting to cast ballots for the former president even though he lost. Republicans who participated in Wisconsin said they were trying to preserve Trump’s legal standing in case his defeat was overturned in court.

The fake electors settled a lawsuit filed against them by Democrats seeking more than $2 million in damages. The case is proceeding against two of Trump’s attorneys.

Under the settlement, the Madison-based liberal law firm Law Forward which filed the original complaint with the elections commission against the electors agreed to withdraw the second complaint. But the elections commission was still free to take action on the complaint, which its attorney noted on Wednesday when announcing it was rejected.

One of the Wisconsin fake electors was Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the elections commission. He voted to reject the complaint last year, but did not participate this time after he agreed that his involvement was improper. There have been calls for Spindell to be removed from the elections commission over his role as a fake elector.

From the Article:

The Republican lawmaker who forced the Universities of Wisconsin to reduce diversity positions called Tuesday for an in-depth review of diversity initiatives across state government and repeated his claim that he has only begun to dismantle equity and inclusion efforts in the state.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos made the remarks after the Legislature’s employment committee voted to release $107.6 million to cover a 6% raise for about 35,000 UW employees. The vote resolved a six-month battle over the raises; the state budget Republicans approved in June included funding for the raises, but Vos refused to allow the employment committee to release the money, using it as leverage in his fight against campus diversity initiatives.

Vos and Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman finally reached an agreement earlier this month. The deal called for the regents to freeze diversity hires, re-label about 40 diversity positions as “student success” positions, drop an affirmative action faculty hiring program at UW-Madison and create a position at the flagship university focused on conservative thought. In return, Vos agreed to hand over the money for the raises as well as tens of millions of dollars for construction projects across the university system.

The regents voted to approve the deal last week despite intense criticism from students and faculty that they were selling out students of color and LGBTQ+ students. Vos, who is white, said after the regents’ vote that he had only just begun to remove “these cancerous DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) practices” from UW campuses.

From the Article:

The majority leader of the Wisconsin Senate on Monday rejected Democrats’ calls to rescind his appointment to the state elections commission, who was one of the Republicans who served as fake electors for former President Donald Trump in 2020.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said in a statement that his appointee Bob Spindell and the other fake electors had invoked a “failed legal strategy” and “not a sinister plot to overturn an election.” For that reason, LeMahieu said he will not rescind his appointment of Spindell to the nonpartisan elections commission.

Spindell was one of 10 Republicans who signed certificates in 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won Wisconsin. President Joe Biden won the battleground state.

Spindell and other nine fake electors conceded in a legal settlement last week that Biden had won the state and agreed to not serve as electors in next year’s election or in any in which Trump is running. They also agreed that their actions were “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results.”

From the Article:

One year after a federal law was passed to protect same-sex marriages, Wisconsin Democrats announced they’ll introduce legislation to do the same at the state level.

One proposal would remove language in Wisconsin’s constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. The other would update state family and marital laws to include same-sex marriages.

The legislation was announced Wednesday, on the one-year anniversary of the passage of the federal Respect for Marriage Act, which codifies same-sex and interracial marriages in the event that U.S. Supreme Court cases protecting those institutions are overturned.

The Wisconsin legislation’s authors say that, although same-sex marriage is the law of the land, aspects of Wisconsin family law still presume that any married couple comprises a man and a woman. The proposal would replace that language with gender-neutral references to “spouses.”

“There are many examples in our state statutes that have these outdated references, including things as mundane as a husband-and-wife hunting or fishing license, and things as critical to families as insurance coverage, retirement and death benefits,” said state Sen. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, who authored the bill.

The changes would especially affect parental rights, which Spreitzer said can be obfuscated by state law’s current gender-specific language. The bill would allow married couples to jointly adopt children and to jointly claim a child conceived through artificial insemination. And it would change language about how to establish “paternity” to “parentage,” for purposes of determining which adults are legally the parents of a child.

A separate proposal would remove language from the state constitution that was inserted in 2006 defining marriage as being only between “one man and one woman.”

Although that language is unenforceable because of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which codified same-sex marriage into federal law, it sends an unwelcoming message, said state Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee.

An openly gay lawmaker, Carpenter recalled when the constitution was first changed to proactively exclude same-sex marriage.

“One of the worst days in the Legislature was when that constitutional amendment passed in 2006, and some of my colleagues came up to me afterwards and said, ‘Don’t take it personal,'” he said. “It’s been personal, and it’s been in our constitution for about 17 years and it’s time to repeal it.”

Amending the state constitution again would require that the plan be passed through two consecutive sessions of the Legislature and then go before voters.

“I think it would be a great step to try and let people know that everyone is invited and welcome here in the state of Wisconsin,” Carpenter said. “It’s time to pass a constitutional amendment that brings back a person’s civil rights.”

LGBTQ+ advocates across the country have worked to codify same-sex marriage into their state laws after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federal abortion protections last summer. They argue that the same fate could befall federal marriage equality, sending the legality of people’s marriages back to the states.

If that happened, the federal Respect for Marriage Act — of which Wisconsin’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin was a lead sponsor — would offer some protection. It would require states to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages if they were performed in places that legally allow such marriages, even if the couple lives in a state that does not allow them.

From the Article:

Gov. Tony Evers and environmental regulators announced Wednesday that the state is devoting a record $414 million to addressing aging wastewater and stormwater systems in Wisconsin.

The financing will be available to 84 communities for building or improving wastewater and stormwater infrastructure through the Clean Water Fund Program overseen by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. The funding can be used to reduce phosphorus in discharges, which can contribute to algae formation on lakes and streams. The money can also address aging equipment, and it's being targeted to small and disadvantaged communities.

"Helping communities replace and modernize aging systems to ensure they meet federal and state regulations is a critical part of our work to ensure every Wisconsinite has healthy, safe, and clean drinking water from their tap," said Evers in a news release. "These dollars will help communities ensure they have the infrastructure their residents can trust to address wastewater and stormwater and be even better prepared to handle any future challenges that may arise."

The funding is a mix of state financing under the Clean Water Fund Program with additional funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed two years ago.

The vast majority of the funds will be made available as low interest loans while around $56 million will be awarded as principal forgiveness, which means it reduces the amount that must be repaid.

From the Article:

In an unexpected move Saturday, the board overseeing state public universities narrowly rejected a deal University of Wisconsin System leaders brokered with the state's top Republican over campus diversity efforts.

The UW Board of Regents voted 9-8 to strike down an agreement "reimagining" campus diversity efforts, which many saw as selling out students of color in exchange for $800 million in employee pay raises and building projects.

The deal would have restructured dozens of diversity staff into positions serving all students and frozen the total number of diversity positions for the next three years.

"The Legislature has made decisions over the years that have proved to have a negative lingering effect on our public universities," Regent Angela Adams said during the hastily-called special meeting. "But to finally and begrudgingly propose to start funding the universities in exchange for insulting people historically excluded and underrepresented in higher education is a nonstarter for me. It's divisive, it's polarizing, and will ultimately lead to even more negative effects on the university system for decades to come."

Months in the making, UW System President Jay Rothman and UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin brokered the deal with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Burlington. The details announced Friday looked to cap a contentious six months of negotiations over diversity, equity and inclusion programming.

"No one is going to look at this agreement and love every piece of it," Mnookin said Friday. "But I do think this approach to bridging a divide makes sense. This compromise allows us to hold on to our core values, and that includes our commitment to diversity."

Campuses view DEI programs and staff as critical in supporting a broad range of students while conservatives cast the effort as wasteful and racially divisive.

Vos made the first move in May when he called for the elimination of all campus DEI positions. Over the summer, Republicans cut $32 million from the UW system budget and pulled the UW-Madison engineering building from its funding list. Vos raised the stakes again this fall when he withheld UW employee pay raises already approved by the Legislature.

The board's divided vote was rare. Most resolutions pass overwhelmingly.

Vos said what he agreed to was "our best and final offer."

"We negotiated in good faith and expected the same," he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a text message Saturday. "It was It's a shame they've denied employees their raises and the almost ($1 billion) investment that would have been made in the UW System to continue their ideological campaign to force students to believe only one viewpoint is acceptable on campus."

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg could not be immediately reached Saturday but was noncommittal about the deal on Friday, saying only that his caucus would deliberate.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who appointed the majority of the board members, urged the Legislature to release the already approved UW employee pay raises and find common ground with UW as negotiations continue.

“It’s clear the regents are deeply divided over this proposal, have immense concerns about this process and the difficult position they were put in, and are all committed to their charge—doing what’s best for our past, present, and future students, faculty, and staff, and the institutions that have defined our state for generations," he said in a statement. "I believe that’s what they did today in voting their values, and I understand and support their decision and vote."

From the Article:

Foxconn Technology Group is approved to collect $6.3 million in Wisconsin state tax credits for reaching 1,029 jobs and spending about $26.7 million on buildings and manufacturing equipment in 2022.

That tax credit award means Foxconn since 2019 has received a total of $43.7 million in tax credits from the state of Wisconsin, largely tied to the campus of manufacturing buildings it constructed near Interstate 94 in Mount Pleasant. The Taiwanese tech company has reported a combined $571.2 million in capital spending to date in Wisconsin, according to tax credit reports released this week by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.

Foxconn’s activity through 2022 is approaching the benchmarks set the prior year, when the state of Wisconsin and company struck a new incentive agreement to replace the original one from 2017. That 2017 deal included up to $2.85 billion in tax credits if Foxconn created 13,000 jobs with a $10 billion LCD screen production plant.

Foxconn canceled its plans for the LCD screen plant and is instead pursuing opportunities to manufacture data servers and other technology in Mount Pleasant under contracts with other companies. Enphase Energy Inc., for example, announced in July that it hired Foxconn to manufacture computer parts for solar power generators in Mount Pleasant.

Under its current deal with the state, Foxconn can collect up to $80 million in total tax credits if it completes $672 million in capital projects by 2026, and maintains 1,454 jobs.

Foxconn on Thursday issued a printed statement regarding its activity in Wisconsin.

"Foxconn is committed to Wisconsin and looks forward to growing with the state, county and village," the statement reads. "Today, in 2023, Foxconn has invested over $1 billion in Wisconsin and created approximately 1,000 jobs, a 42% increase over a three-year period and comprising a fifth of our workforce in the United States."

Foxconn has agreed to have Microsoft Corp. buy hundreds of acres that were prepared for development in Mount Pleasant under agreements with Foxconn. Proceeds of the public land sales to Microsoft will help cover Foxconn's obligations to the village of Mount Pleasant and Racine County.

Some highlights from Foxconn’s 2022 activities include about $53 million in wages paid, according to an analysis of the company’s records by accounting firm Deloitte LLP. Spending and job creation in 2022 were lower than Foxconn reported for the previous two years.

Much of the capital spending reported for 2022 was for manufacturing and IT equipment that would be installed in the buildings Foxconn completed in earlier years in Mount Pleasant.

The bulk of the company’s hiring and capital spending activity in 2022 was through Foxconn Industrial Internet, or Fii, a division that makes circuit boards, servers and other tech under contracts with other companies.

"Foxconn currently manufactures data servers and microinverters in Wisconsin, and the campus remains a strategic asset for the company to respond to market demand with speed and flexibility,” Foxconn said Thursday.