Tag: Wisconsin state government

Reappointment vote ends in partisan deadlock for battleground Wisconsin’s top elections official

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A vote on the future of Wisconsin’s top elections official ended in partisan deadlock Tuesday amid Republican calls for the nonpartisan administrator of the statewide elections commission to resign over how she ran the 2020 presidential contest.

A stalemate between elections commissioners on whether to reappoint Meagan Wolfe creates uncertainty over who will be in charge of elections in a battleground state so narrowly divided that four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point. Wolfe has staunchly defended the decisions she’s made and fought back against false claims of election fraud, including those made by former President Donald Trump.

“When your constituents challenge you about the integrity of Wisconsin elections, tell them the truth,” she wrote to lawmakers just days before the vote on her reappointment. “When people perpetuate false claims about our election systems, push back publicly. Election officials cannot carry the burden of educating the public on elections alone.”

Republican legislative leaders say there will be no substantive changes to the state budget, meaning that a cut in funding to the University of Wisconsin that puts the entire spending plan in jeopardy of being vetoed will remain.

The Republican-authored Wisconsin state budget includes a $3.5 billion income tax cut covering all income levels, a cut to the University of Wisconsin System and more money for public K-12 and private voucher schools.

Income taxes would be cut across the board by $3.5 billion under a plan passed by Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature’s budget-writing committee.

Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has signed a bipartisan bill that sends more money to Milwaukee and gives both the city and county the ability to raise the local sales tax in an effort to avoid bankruptcy.

The six members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission are evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Republican commissioners voted to reappoint Wolfe, but Democrats abstained from Tuesday’s vote for fear that reappointing her would allow the Republican-controlled state Senate to reject her confirmation. Commission actions require at least a four-vote majority.

“Meagan Wolfe is the best person to run our agency, and that’s why I’m abstaining. I will take my shots with the court rather than at the Senate,” Democratic Commissioner Mark Thomsen said.

The impasse means it could be months before commissioners or lawmakers choose someone to lead the elections agency through the 2024 presidential race and beyond, if they do so at all.

A recent Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling appears to allow Wolfe to continue as administrator, even after her term ends on Saturday. But relying on that decision, which has allowed Republican appointees to stay on state boards, raises unanswered legal questions.

“We are in unprecedented territory,” Wolfe said at a news conference after the vote. “I have a very clear intent here, and that is to make sure that our commission, our agency, our local election officials, that they have the stability they need as we move forward.”

Commission Chair Don Millis, a Republican, warned that having a holdover administrator would only decrease stability by encouraging conspiracy theorists and drawing questions about Wolfe’s authority during the 2024 election.

“It’s more than a bad look. It’s going to create problems for us and for elections officials across the state,” he said.

Wolfe has served as the state’s elections administrator since 2018 and has become one of the most respected elections leaders in the nation. Before defending her record in a letter to state lawmakers, she called on commissioners to vote for the option they believe offers the most stability for Wisconsin elections even if that’s not her.

If the commission eventually appoints Wolfe or someone else to replace her, they will need to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled state Senate.

Some Republican state senators have vowed to vote against reappointing Wolfe, who has sparred with them over election conspiracy theories on numerous occasions. If a commission appointee is rejected by the Senate, then commissioners would need to make a new appointment within 45 days or else a legislative committee controlled by Republicans could choose the next administrator.

Relatively few people meet the legal requirements or hold the experience necessary to serve as Wisconsin’s top elections official. An appointee for elections administrator cannot have ever worked in a partisan office or donated to a partisan campaign in the past year, and the state’s elections system is one of the most decentralized in the country.

The commission’s vote comes as a divided GOP struggles to move past election lies that Trump and his followers have promoted since his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020. Republican state lawmakers across the country have sought to expand their control over elections in recent years, and far-right candidates have won seats in local government with platforms built on election skepticism.

But by and large, election denialism has hurt the GOP. Most candidates in 2022 in swing states including Wisconsin who supported overturning Trump’s defeat lost. A draft Republican National Committee report obtained by The Associated Press earlier this year reviewing the party’s performance in recent elections called for candidates to stop “ relitigating previous elections.”

In Wisconsin, the outcome of the 2020 election has withstood two partial recounts, a nonpartisan audit, a conservative law firm’s review, numerous state and federal lawsuits, and a Republican-ordered review that found no evidence of widespread fraud before the investigator was fired. The GOP-controlled Legislature has rejected attempts to decertify the results.

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Associated Press writer Scott Bauer contributed to this report.

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Harm Venhuizen is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Harm on Twitter.

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June 27, 2023
Republican leaders say no more money for University of Wisconsin or school safety office

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republicans plan to make no substantive changes to the state budget, meaning that a cut in funding to the University of Wisconsin System that puts the entire spending plan in jeopardy of being vetoed will remain, legislative leaders said Tuesday.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has threatened to veto the two-year spending plan if UW funding for diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programming is cut. The plan passed by a Republican-controlled budget committee reduces UW funding by $32 million and eliminates nearly 190 positions, money and staff dedicated toward DEI staff salaries and programs.

However, the budget does allow UW to come back and get the $32 million if it shows how it would be spent on workforce development efforts, and not DEI programs.

The Republican-dominated North Carolina legislature has swept six vetoed bills into law. The House and Senate completed the efforts on Tuesday following a succession of votes with margins large enough to overcome Democratic Gov.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers says in a newspaper report that he won’t sign the state budget if Republican lawmakers cut funding for the state’s university system’s diversity officers and initiatives.

New St. John’s coach Rick Pitino has thrown out a ceremonial first pitch at the Subway Series between the New York Yankees and New York Mets.

Republican lawmakers have suspended a vote on funding for University of Wisconsin campuses, just hours after a top GOP leader promised to slash the college system’s budget as part of an ongoing fight over diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Evers also has the power to make more limited line-item vetoes, but he could not increase funding with a partial veto. Evers on Sunday told WISN-TV that he was waiting to see the final budget text before making decisions on vetoes. His spokesperson Britt Cudaback referred to those comments Tuesday when asked about the governor’s plans.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he “can’t imagine” that Evers would veto the entire budget because of the UW funding cut. But Vos says he had not spoken with Evers about it.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on passing the budget on Wednesday. It would then go to the Assembly, which would have to pass an identical version before it would go to Evers. The Assembly could make changes, which would then send it back to the Senate for another vote.

But Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu and Vos told The Associated Press in separate interviews Tuesday that no changes were planned.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, along with school and law enforcement leaders, have been pushing Republicans to increase funding for the state’s school safety office. That office, created by Republicans in 2018, was designed to prevent violence in schools after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The office provides safety grants to Wisconsin schools, maintains a 24/7 tip hotline, offers training and maintains blueprints of school layouts to assist law enforcement when reacting to emergencies. The Legislature’s budget committee voted to cut funding for the office this month, a move that Kaul said would essentially gut it and not allow it to provide all the services it currently does.

The office would have more than half a million dollars in funding to pay for nearly four full-time positions. It currently employs 16 people, with 12 of them paid for by time-limited federal funding that came during the pandemic.

Vos defended the cut, saying the Legislature won’t replace pandemic-era federal funding and that the core functions of the office can continue with the money provided.

If Kaul wants to make a case to the Legislature later for additional funding, “we’re always willing to take a look at it,” Vos said.

Kaul said he was “certainly disappointed” that the Legislature doesn’t plan to continue current funding levels. If funding isn’t found to replace it by the end of the year, Kaul said programming that helps schools around the state may be lost.

Kaul said that all avenues to maintain current funding, including going back to the Legislature, will be pursued.

Democrats and child care providers have also been pushing to restore funding for a pandemic-era child care subsidy program that Republicans cut. Advocates have argued that the move would be devastating for needy families and the state’s economy.

Kaul, the UW System and others advocating for additional funding have argued that it could be done given that the state has a projected budget surplus of nearly $7 billion. Republicans have instead focused on cutting taxes.

The state budget includes a $3.5 billion income tax cut for all taxpayers, a plan Democrats have derided because wealthy people will get a bigger reduction than lower earners. The budget also includes $1 billion more for K-12 public schools, additional funding that Evers secured as part of a deal with Republicans to increase state aid to Milwaukee and other local communities.

Evers signed the past two state budgets passed by Republicans and took credit for tax cuts they included.

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June 27, 2023
Biden outpacing Trump, Obama with diverse judicial nominees

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WASHINGTON (AP) — For the Biden White House, a quartet of four female judges in Colorado encapsulates its mission when it comes to the federal judiciary.

Charlotte Sweeney is the first openly LGBT woman to serve on the federal bench west of the Mississippi River and has a background in workers’ rights. Nina Wang, an immigrant from Taiwan, is the first magistrate judge in the state to be elevated to a federal district seat.

Regina Rodriguez, who is Latina and Asian American, served in a U.S. attorney’s office. Veronica Rossman, who came from the former Soviet Union with her family as refugees, is the first former federal public defender to be a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

With these four women, who were confirmed during the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term, there is a breadth of personal and professional diversity that the White House and Democratic senators have promoted in their push to transform the judiciary.

“The nominations send a powerful message to the legal community that this kind of public service is open to a lot of people it wasn’t open to before,” Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, told The Associated Press. “What it says to the public at large is that if you wind up in federal court for whatever reason, you’re much more likely to have a judge who understands where you came from, who you are, and what you’ve been through.”

Klain said that “having a more diverse federal bench in every single respect shows more respect for the American people.”

The White House and Democratic senators are closing out the first two years of Biden’s presidency having installed more federal judges than did Biden’s two immediate predecessors. The rapid clip reflects a zeal to offset Donald Trump’s legacy of stacking the judiciary with young conservatives who often lacked in racial diversity.

So far, 97 lifetime federal judges have been confirmed under Biden, a figure that outpaces both Trump (85) and Barack Obama (62) at this point in their presidencies, according to data from the White House and the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. D-N.Y. The 97 from the Biden presidency includes Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, that court’s first Black woman, as well as 28 circuit court judges and 68 district court judges.

Three out of every four judges tapped by Biden and confirmed by the Senate in the past two years were women. About two-thirds were people of color. The Biden list includes 11 Black women to the powerful circuit courts, more than those installed under all previous presidents combined. There were also 11 former public defenders named to the circuit courts, also more than all of Biden’s predecessors combined.

“It’s a story of writing a new chapter for the federal judiciary, with truly extraordinary folks representing the broadest possible types of diversity,” said Paige Herwig, a senior White House counsel.

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The White House prioritized judicial nominations from the start, with Biden transition officials soliciting names of potential picks from Democratic senators in late 2020. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, swiftly moved nominees through hearings and Schumer set aside floor time for votes.

Particular focus was placed on nominees for the appellate courts, where the vast majority of federal cases end, and those coming from states with two Democratic senators, who could find easier consensus in a process where there’s still significant deference given to home-state officials.

Democrats hope to speed up the tempo of confirmations next year, a goal more easily accomplished by a 51-49 Senate that will give them a slim majority on committees. In the past two years, votes on some of Biden’s more contested judicial nominees would deadlock in committee votes, requiring more procedural steps that ate up valuable Senate floor time.

Republicans had also picked up the confirmation pace considerably in Trump’s final two years in office, after GOP senators put in place a rule change — now being used by Democrats — that significantly shortened the time required to process district court nominees.

Schumer said he also hopes to install more judges in appeals courts that shifted rightward under Trump, an effort that the majority leader described as rebalancing those courts.

“Trump loaded up the bench with hard right ‘MAGA’ type judges who are not only out of step with the American people, they were even out of step with the Republican Party,” Schumer said in an interview, using shorthand for Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

Schumer added: “We had a mission, it’s not just a predilection. It was a mission to try and redress that balance.”

Despite their limited power to actually derail Biden’s judicial picks, some Republicans have fought ferociously against many of them, arguing that their views were out of the legal mainstream despite Democratic arguments otherwise. The precarious 50-50 Senate, where Schumer’s plans were often thwarted by ailments or absences, meant several Biden nominees languished for months and were never confirmed before the Senate wrapped up its work this year.

Democrats also say certain judicial nominees, particularly women of color, were unfairly targeted by their GOP critics, leading to tense fights in the Judiciary Committee.

“The Republicans have just got a problem with this. Not all of them, some do,” Durbin said in an interview. “And when you call them out on it … ‘Why is it consistently women of color that are the object of your wrath?’ and they can’t answer.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a committee member, said Biden’s picks were “very, very left, but unapologetically so.” He said Durbin’s assertions about Republicans were “absurd.”

“I think the president made a commitment to his base that he was going to put people who shared a very left-wing worldview, who are generally quite critical of, for instance, the criminal justice system, think that it is systemically racist,” Hawley said.

Despite the strengthened Democratic majority, the White House could nonetheless confront some challenges when it comes to nominating and confirming judges over the next two years.

For instance, Biden has made barely a dent in the number of vacancies for district court judges in states that have two Republican senators, confirming just one such person: Stephen Locher, now a judge in the Southern District of Iowa. Senators still adhere to a practice that allows home-state senators virtual veto power over district court picks — a process known colloquially as the “blue slip” — and Democrats are facing an increased push from advocates to discard the tradition, arguing that it only allows for Republican obstructionism.

For instance, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin earlier this year blocked action on William Pocan, nominated to serve in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, after initially recommending him as part of a bloc of nominees to the White House. Durbin has said he would reconsider the current “blue slip” practice if he sees systematic abuse by senators, especially based on a nominee’s race, gender or sexual orientation.

But cases like Pocan’s have been rare, Durbin said, and other influential Republicans are affording some level of deference to the Biden White House when it comes to judges.

“I can’t think of a system where Republicans get all their judges and Democrats get none of theirs,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who will be the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee next year. “That’s not a viable system.”

One matter Biden has not been willing to address: the structure of the Supreme Court.

Any push to change the highest court in the land, even in small ways, has found little footing at the White House, with Biden aides instead highlighting the president’s push to nominate federal judges as the best and most substantial way to secure a Democratic legacy in the judiciary.

As Biden took office in 2021, calls for changes to the Supreme Court were growing louder, after Trump named three new justices that tilted the court’s makeup far to the right.

In June, the 6-3 conservative majority overturned the landmark decision Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional protections for abortion that had existed for nearly 50 years. It did so despite a majority of people in the United States believing abortion should be legal. In the same term, the justices also weakened gun control and curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to manage climate change.

Polls have shown a dip in approval for the court and respect for it. A Gallup Poll found Americans had the lowest level of trust in the court in 50 years.

Biden has spoken out about the rulings, and argued the court is more of an “advocacy group these days.” But he has not embraced calls to expand the court or even to subject justices to a code of conduct that binds other federal judges. He has not spoken publicly about a study he commissioned on the future of the Supreme Court that finished last year and suggested term limits, mandatory retirement and judicial ethics codes as ways to restore trust in the institution.

White House officials similarly have declined to weigh in on potential changes, even as those advocating for change believe the push will grow stronger this term, as voting rights, clean water, immigration and student loan forgiveness come before the justices.

“I wouldn’t, in any way minimize the progress and the importance of what President Biden is doing on the lower courts,” said Chris Kang of Demand Justice, an advocacy group leading the push to expand the court. “But at the same time, we need to look at the core problem, which is the Supreme Court, and what can be done to fix the issues.”

For now, the White House’s focus will remain on the people who sit on the courts.

It’s a particularly meaningful achievement for Biden, a former Judiciary Committee chairman himself, and for Klain, who was chief counsel for Biden on that committee and a lawyer who worked on judicial nominations in the Clinton White House.

“With all due respect to my predecessors, I’m sure this is a higher priority for me,” said Klain, who meets weekly with the judicial nominations team. But, referring to Biden, Klain added: “The fact that he makes it such a priority, makes it a big priority for me.”

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December 30, 2022
Today in History: December 30, fire killed 600 in Chicago

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Today in History

Today is Friday, Dec. 30, the 364th day of 2022. There is one day left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Dec. 30, 1903, about 600 people died when fire broke out at the recently opened Iroquois Theater in Chicago.

On this date:

In 1813, British troops burned Buffalo, New York, during the War of 1812.

In 1853, the United States and Mexico signed a treaty under which the U.S. agreed to buy some 45,000 square miles of land from Mexico for $10 million in a deal known as the Gadsden Purchase.

In 1860, 10 days after South Carolina seceded from the Union, the state militia seized the United States Arsenal in Charleston.

In 1922, Vladimir Lenin proclaimed the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which lasted nearly seven decades before dissolving in December 1991.

In 1954, Olympic gold medal runner Malvin G. Whitfield became the first Black recipient of the James E. Sullivan Award for amateur athletes.

In 1972, the United States halted its heavy bombing of North Vietnam.

In 1994, a gunman walked into a pair of suburban Boston abortion clinics and opened fire, killing two employees. (John C. Salvi III was later convicted of murder; he died in prison, an apparent suicide.)

In 2004, a fire broke out during a rock concert at a nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 194 people.

In 2006, a state funeral service was held in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda for former President Gerald R. Ford.

In 2009, seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer were killed by a suicide bomber at a U.S. base in Khost (hohst), Afghanistan.

In 2015, Bill Cosby was charged with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. (Cosby’s first trial ended in a mistrial after jurors deadlocked; he was convicted on three charges at his retrial in April 2018 and was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction in June 2021 and Cosby went free.)

In 2020, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said he would raise objections when Congress met to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, forcing House and Senate votes. President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to overturn his election loss in Wisconsin; it was his second unsuccessful appeal in as many days to the high court over the result in the battleground state. Dawn Wells, who played the wholesome Mary Ann on the 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” died in Los Angeles at age 82 from what her publicist said were causes related to COVID-19.

Ten years ago: Recalling the shooting rampage that killed 20 first graders in Connecticut as the worst day of his presidency, President Barack Obama pledged on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to put his “full weight” behind legislation aimed at preventing gun violence. A tour bus crashed on an icy Oregon highway, killing nine passengers and injuring nearly 40 on Interstate 84 east of Pendleton.

Five years ago: A wave of spontaneous protests over Iran’s weak economy swept into Tehran, with college students and others chanting against the government. Forecasters issued winter weather advisories across much of the Deep South ahead of plunging temperatures expected as the new year arrived.

One year ago: In a phone conversation lasting nearly an hour, President Joe Biden warned Russia’s Vladimir Putin that the U.S. could impose new sanctions against Russia if it took further military action against Ukraine; Putin responded that such a U.S. move could lead to a complete rupture of ties between the nations. A wildfire driven by wind gusts up to 105 mph swept through towns northwest of Denver, destroying hundreds of homes and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee. (The wildfire would cause more than $2 billion in losses, making it the costliest in state history; it was blamed for at least one death.)

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Russ Tamblyn is 88. Baseball Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax is 87. Folk singer Noel Paul Stookey is 85. TV director James Burrows is 82. Actor Concetta Tomei (toh-MAY’) is 77. Singer Patti Smith is 76. Rock singer-musician Jeff Lynne is 75. TV personality Meredith Vieira is 69. Actor Sheryl Lee Ralph is 67. Actor Patricia Kalember is 66. Country singer Suzy Bogguss is 66. Actor-comedian Tracey Ullman is 63. Radio-TV commentator Sean Hannity is 61. Sprinter Ben Johnson is 61. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is 59. Actor George Newbern is 59. Movie director Bennett Miller is 56. Singer Jay Kay (Jamiroquai) is 53. Rock musician Byron McMackin (Pennywise) is 53. Actor Meredith Monroe is 53. Actor Daniel Sunjata is 51. Actor Maureen Flannigan is 50. Actor Jason Behr is 49. Golfer Tiger Woods is 47. TV personality-boxer Laila Ali is 45. Actor Lucy Punch is 45. Singer-actor Tyrese Gibson is 44. Actor Eliza Dushku is 42. Rock musician Tim Lopez (Plain White T’s) is 42. Actor Kristin Kreuk is 40. Folk-rock singer-musician Wesley Schultz (The Lumineers) is 40. NBA star LeBron James is 38. R&B singer Andra Day is 38. Actor Anna Wood is 37. Pop-rock singer Ellie Goulding (GOL’-ding) is 36. Actor Caity Lotz is 36. Actor Jeff Ward is 36. Country musician Eric Steedly is 32. Pop-rock musician Jamie Follesé (FAHL’-es-ay) (Hot Chelle (shel) Rae) is 31.

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December 29, 2022