Two people were killed and another two injured in a mid-air collision Saturday involving a helicopter and a gyrocopter near Oshkosh, Wisconsin, officials said, while another two other people were killed in a separate incident in which a small plane crashed into a nearby lake.
A spokesperson for the Experimental Aircraft Association told CBS News in a statement that the mid-air collision occurred a little before 12:30 p.m. local time in the area of the Wittman Regional Airport.
The Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department told the EAA that two people were killed and two injured in that collision, the spokesperson said.
The National Transportation Safety Board informed the EAA that the aircraft belonged to individuals attending the EAA’s annual fly-in convention in Oshkosh, but who were not involved in the air show, the spokesperson added.
The Federal Aviation Administration identified the aircraft as a Rotorway 162F helicopter and an ELA Eclipse 10 gyrocopter, with two people aboard each.
Separately, at about 9 a.m. Saturday, a small North American T-6 plane carrying two people crashed into Lake Winnebago near Oshkosh after departing Wittman Regional Airport, the FAA said.
Both people aboard died, according to the sheriff’s office.
The FAA and the NTSB are investigating both incidents. The names of the victims in both crashes were not immediately released, and the exact circumstances of the crashes were unclear.
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A Green Bay woman wasn’t mentally ill when she killed and dismembered a former boyfriend and scattered his body parts at various locations, a jury found Thursday.
The same Brown County jury that deliberated less than an hour Wednesday before convicting Taylor Schabusiness, 25, of homicide, third-degree sexual abuse and mutilating a corpse in the February 2022 killing of Shad Thyrion, 24, needed less than an hour Thursday to find she didn’t suffer from mental illness or defect at the time.
Brown County Circuit Judge Thomas Walsh set sentencing for Sept. 26, CBS affiliate WFRV-TV reported.
After deliberations, Taylor Schabusiness has been found responsible for the murder and dismemberment of Shad Thyrion. Phase two of the trial was to determine if she was not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect.https://t.co/cX2Zfr52dQ
Schabusiness strangled Thyrion at the Green Bay home he shared with his mother, sexually abused him and dismembered his body, leaving parts of it throughout the house and in a vehicle, authorities said.
Thyrion’s father testified that his understanding was that Schabusiness and his son were friends from middle and high school, WFRV reported. He described her as “polite.”
She appeared to suffer from a range of mental issues when she was evaluated at the Brown County Jail in 2022 and 2023, said Diane Lytton, an independent psychologist who testified for the defense Thursday.
Schabusiness, who had thrown a plastic chair at Lytton during an evaluation, was a “psychotic person,” the psychologist testified.
Defense attorney Christopher Froelich said Schabusiness was under a civil commitment order in April 2021 “because she was mentally ill.”
Brown County Assistant District Attorney Caleb Saunders said the issue for jurors was the defendant’s mental state when she committed the crime, not in 2021.
If the jury had found Schabusiness was mentally ill, she would be sent to a mental institution instead of prison.
Walsh ruled in March that Schabusiness was competent to stand trial.
In February, Schabusiness attacked her previous attorney during a hearing before a deputy wrestled her to the courtroom floor.
During the trial, the prosecution showed a photo of Schabusiness lying next to her phone, showing a photo of Wisconsin serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, WFRV reported.
Schabusiness’s father testified that her mother died in her sleep and the death took a took a toll on the family, WFRV reported. He said he sent her to Texas to live with her grandparents in 2017, the station reported.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s Supreme Court will flip from majority conservative to liberal control in August and Democrats have high hopes the change will lead to the state’s abortion ban being overturned and its maps redrawn to weaken GOP control of the Legislature and congressional districts.
Democrats in the perennial battleground state focused on abortion to elect a liberal majority to the court for the first time in 15 years. The Democratic Party spent $8 million to tilt the court’s 4-3 conservative majority by one seat with the election of Janet Protasiewicz, who spoke in favor of abortion rights and against the Republican-drawn map in a campaign. Her April victory broke national spending records for a state Supreme Court race.
Still, there are no guarantees. Republicanswere angered when a conservative candidate they backed in 2019 turned out to sometimes side with liberal justices.
While the court is widely expected to weigh in on abortion and redistricting, liberals also are talking about bringing new challenges to school choice, voter ID, the 12-year-old law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers and other laws backed by Republicans.
“When you don’t know the extent of the battle you may have to fight, it’s concerning,” said attorney Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. “It’s very concerning.”
Some issues could take years to reach the court, said liberal attorney Lester Pines, who like Esenberg has argued numerous times before the state Supreme Court. Unlike under the conservative majority, Pines said the new liberal court will be unlikely to rule on cases before lower courts have heard them.
“They’re not going to do it,” Pines said.
There is already a pending case challenging Wisconsin’s pre-Civil War era abortion ban, and a circuit court judge ruled earlier this month that it can proceed, while also calling into question whether the law actually bans abortions.
The case is expected to reach the Supreme Court within months. Protasiewicz all but promised to overturn the ban by repeatedly speaking out for abortion rights, winning support from Planned Parenthood and others.
“When you’re a politician and you’re perceived by the voters as making a promise, and you don’t keep it, they get angry,” Esenberg said.
There is no current redistricting lawsuit, but Democrats or their allies are expected to file a new challenge this summer seeking new districts before the 2024 election.
The state Supreme Court upheld Republican-drawn maps in 2022. Those maps, widely regarded as among the most gerrymandered in the country, have helped Republicans increase their hold on the Legislature to near supermajority levels, even as Democrats have won statewide elections, including Tony Evers as governor in 2018 and 2022 and Joe Biden in 2020.
Protasizewicz declared those maps to be “rigged” and said during the campaign they should be given another look. Democrats also hope for new congressional maps improving their chances in the state’s two most competitive House districts, held by Republicans.
“What we want to see is maps that are fair and that represent the will of the people and the actual make up of their state,” Democratic strategist Melissa Baldauff said.
Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point. The outgoing conservative court came within one vote of overturning Biden’s win in 2020. The new court will be in control to hear any challenges leading up to the election and in the months after.
That includes voting rules. Courts have repeatedly upheld Wisconsin’s voter ID requirement, in place since 2011, but some Democrats see a chance to challenge it again, particularly over what IDs can legally be shown. There is also a looming fight over the state’s top elections administrator.
“It seems to me that the most consequential topics that could come before the new court would have to do with elections,” said Alan Ball, a Marquette University Law School history professor who runs a statistical analysis blog of the court and tendencies of justices.
Considering comments Protasiewicz made during the campaign, “it’s really hard for me to imagine she would not side with the liberals on those issues,” Ball said.
A national Democratic law firm filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking to undo a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling last year banning absentee ballot drop boxes. The case could make its way to the state high court before the 2024 presidential election.
Other sticky issues that have garnered bipartisan criticism, including powers of the governor, also could come before the new court.
Evers surprised many with a veto this year putting in place a school spending increase for 400 years. Republicans said a challenge was likely.
In 2021, the court struck down three of Evers’ previous partial vetoes but failed to give clear guidance on what is allowed.
A Wisconsin governor’s veto power is expansive and used by Republicans and Democrats, but the new court could weigh in on whether it should be scaled back. Esenberg, who brought the previous case challenging Evers’ veto powers, said he expected another legal challenge in light of the 400-year veto.
This story corrects the name in paragraph 6 to Lester Pines.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) used his line-item veto power to expand school funding in the state for the next four centuries on Wednesday, a blow to Republicans who were livid with the crafty use of executive power.
The governor vetoed a selection of words, numbers and a hyphen in the state’s new budget, which effectively stretched out an expansion in school funding for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years to an annual increase every year until 2425.
The initial budget allowed school districts to raise an additional $325 per student annually, ending the next school year. But the deletion of certain wording effectively expands that policy for 400 years, a change the governor said would “provide school districts with predictable long-term increases for the foreseeable future.”
The red text was deleted with the governor’s veto.
“In many ways, Republicans in the Legislature have failed to meet this historic moment, sending my budget back to my desk absent critical investments in key areas that they know — and publicly acknowledge — are essential to the success of our state, all while providing no real justification, substantive debate, or any meaningful alternative,” Evers said in a veto message on Wednesday. “That decision is, to put it simply, an abdication of duty.”
The change could be undone by a future legislature or governor. The legislature could also override his vetos, but that is unlikely as the Assembly would need a two-thirds majority to do so.
Evers, a former public school educator, made 51 line-item vetoes in total, notably changing Republican-approved tax cuts for wealthy residents from $3.5 billion to $175 million. Republicans had hoped to condense the state’s income brackets, which would have provided massive cuts for top earners.
Republicans, who control both houses of the Wisconsin legislature, were livid with the move.
Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, said the increase in funding would impact homeowners who could suffer from “massive property tax increases in the coming years.”
“Legislative Republicans worked tirelessly over the last few months to block Governor Evers’ liberal tax and spending agenda,” Vos said in a statement. “Unfortunately, because of his powerful veto authority, he reinstated some of it today.”
Evers responded to the passage later Wednesday, posting of a photo of himself sipping from a mug to his official Twitter account.
The Associated Press notes that Wisconsin governors from both parties have had line-item veto power, which allows them to reshape state budgets in a legislative dance with lawmakers. Voters outlawed the “Vanna White” veto in 2000, which saw some governors delete specific letters to create new meanings.
The top election official in Wisconsin appears poised to remain in her post for now – after state election commissioners deadlocked Tuesday on her reappointment.
Meagan Wolfe, the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, has been targeted by Republican lawmakers and conservative activists ever since the 2020 election saw Joe Biden flip this crucial swing state on his way to the White House. Her term was slated to end Saturday.
The stalemate has added to uncertainty about the future of election oversight in a key presidential battleground ahead of the 2024 elections.
During a meeting Tuesday, a majority of the six-member commission that oversees elections voiced support for Wolfe, a widely respected nonpartisan administrator. But Democrats on the state elections commission effectively blocked an up-or-down vote on her reappointment, saying they had no assurances that the Republican-controlled state Senate would confirm Wolfe for a second, four-year term.
In the end, all three Democrats abstained on the question of her reappointment. The commission, evenly divided between Democratic and GOP appointees, requires at least four “yes” votes to take action.
In a news conference immediately after the vote, Wolfe said she had not “fully digested” the commission’s actions. But she said her intention was to ensure that the agency and local election officials “have the stability” needed to carry out next year’s elections.
Democrats relied on a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling to argue that Wolfe could remain in her post. In that case, the then-conservative majority on the court ruled that lawmakers cannot replace an appointed official until their post is vacant. The justices held that the end of a term does not constitute a vacancy.
Commissioners said they were aware that litigation over Wolfe’s status was likely.
“Absent a promise from the Senate to confirm Meagan Wolfe, I don’t think we should even play this game,” Democratic Commissioner Mark Thomsen said as he opposed even holding a vote on the reappointment. “I will take my shots with the court, rather than at the Senate.”
The commission’s chair, Republican appointee Don Millis, said he was “very concerned” that Wolfe’s status as a holdover would lead to questions about the legitimacy of her future actions and further feed election conspiracy theories in the state.
Wolfe has defended the 2020 election and pushed back against rampant, unfounded claims that widespread election fraud marred the results of the presidential contest that year. Biden won Wisconsin by nearly 21,000 votes, a victory that has survived multiple lawsuits and election reviews.
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.
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.
A car smelling like marijuana is enough for police in Wisconsin to justify searching a person in the vehicle, even though substances legal in the state can smell the same, the state Supreme Court said on Tuesday.
The court’s conservative majority ruled 4-3 that Marshfield police had grounds to search the driver of a vehicle that smelled like marijuana, overturning lower court rulings that said officers couldn’t be sure that what they smelled was not CBD, a legal, marijuana-derived substance. The scents of CBD and marijuana are indistinguishable.
Two officers searched Quaheem Moore in 2019, who was alone in a vehicle that smelled like marijuana when he was pulled over for speeding. Moore told police that a vaping device he had contained CBD and that the car was a rental belonging to his brother. Police did not smell marijuana on Moore.
Moore argued in court that police had no reason to believe he was responsible for the smell.
To justify searching someone, police need enough evidence to believe that person has likely committed a crime. When they obtain more evidence through an illegal search, it’s not allowed to be used in court.
Moore was never charged with possessing marijuana, but officers charged him with possessing narcotics when they discovered small bags of cocaine and fentanyl in his pocket during their search.
A circuit court judge and an appeals court had previously moved to disqualify the drugs that police found, saying the search…
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Who will oversee the 2024 presidential election in the critical battleground state of Wisconsin remains clouded with uncertainty just weeks before the state’s nonpartisan top elections official reaches the end of her term.
Republicans who control the state Legislature could finally have a chance to oust the elections head they’ve sparred with over conspiracy theories and install their own appointee. But a recent state Supreme Court ruling appears to offer her an avenue to get around Republicans and stay in office.
And that’s if Meagan Wolfe, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and one of the most respected election leaders in the nation, even wants to keep the job when her term ends on July 1. All across the country, election officials have left the profession after an unrelenting 2020 election cycle that brought unprecedented challenges related to the coronavirus pandemic but also an onslaught of harassment and death threats triggered by false claims about voting and elections.
Wolfe has declined to comment on whether she plans to seek reappointment.
The situation plays out as both parties are looking for every advantage they can get in Wisconsin, where the presidential winner has been determined by less than 1 percentage point in four of the last six elections. The outcome of the 2020 election in Wisconsin 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.
Unlike most states, where partisan secretaries of state run elections, Wisconsin’s top elections official is the nonpartisan administrator of the statewide elections commission. This person plays a crucial role in carrying out decisions from a panel of six partisan commissioners and giving guidance to the more than 1,800 local clerks who actually run the state’s elections.
The administrator can’t single-handedly reverse election results, or decide not to certify results, but a partisan appointee who embraces conspiracy theories about elections could cause significant trouble. Such an appointee could publicly promote election lies, push the limits of their freedom to interpret instructions from commissioners and hire partisan staff and legal counsel within the commission.
Wolfe got the job in 2018 after her predecessor was rejected by the Senate. How she handled the 2020 election angered Republicans, who had voted unanimously in 2019 to confirm her. If she seeks reappointment when her term ends, “there’s no way” she will be confirmed by the state Senate, said Senate President Chris Kapenga, a Republican. Senate rejection of her confirmation carries the effect of firing her.
“I will do everything I can to keep her from being reappointed,” Kapenga said. “I would be extremely surprised if she had any votes in the caucus.”
If Wolfe’s position becomes vacant, election commissioners can recommend a new administrator for Senate approval. If 45 days pass without a nomination, a legislative committee controlled by Republicans can appoint a temporary administrator for up to a year.
But for lawmakers to stall the process in order to install a partisan administrator is “extraordinarily hypothetical,” according to Kathy Bernier, a former Republican state senator and county election official who chaired the Senate elections committee during the 2020 election and was outspoken against claims of election fraud.
“I don’t see that happening,” she said. “I think cooler heads prevail in the Legislature.”
Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu did not respond to an email asking about Wolfe’s reappointment. He also walked away from reporters after a Senate session last week without taking questions.
In a statement, Wolfe called it “deeply disappointing that a small minority of lawmakers continue to misrepresent my work.”
“Lawmakers should assess my performance on the facts, not on tired, false claims,” Wolfe said.
If Wolfe wants to avoid the possibility of Senate Republicans rejecting her confirmation, she could decide to simply stay in office without asking for reappointment.
That path would raise unexplored legal questions, but the ruling appears to imply that Wolfe could only be removed by impeachment or a vote by a majority of the elections commissioners. Senate Republicans in April gained the two-thirds supermajority they need to convict an office holder at an impeachment trial.
In addition to her more than 10 years working at the elections commission and its predecessor, Wolfe has served as president of the National Association of State Election Directors and chair of the bipartisan Electronic Registration Information Center, which helps states maintain accurate voter rolls and has been targeted by conspiracy theories.
“Administrator Wolfe has done an outstanding job,” said Democratic Commissioner Ann Jacobs. “Wisconsin has been lucky to have her in this position for our recent elections.”
Jacobs did not say whether she planned to vote for Wolfe’s reappointment.
Following President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, Republicans called on Wolfe to resign for carrying out a commission decision to send absentee ballots to voters in nursing homes, instead of sending special voting deputies to assist them as state law requires. Nursing homes were not allowing visitors at that time because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think in some ways that they think I’m an easy target — I’m not,” Wolfe said in response.
Commissioner Bob Spindell, a Republican appointed by LeMahieu, said he would not be voting to reappoint Wolfe, even though “she’s been accused of a lot of things that were really not her doing.” Spindell, who served as a fake elector for Trump in 2020, came under fire earlier this year for bragging about decreased turnout among Black and Hispanic voters in the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee.
All four Republican candidates for governor last year supported either abolishing or overhauling the elections commission, saying it had failed as an agency. The Legislature’s powerful budget-writing committee last month killed a bipartisan plan to create a new office under the elections commission tasked with addressing voter complaints and building confidence in elections. Republicans instead signaled support for directing elections funding to local clerks.
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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.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature on Wednesday plans to take the final step needed to stop Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration from requiring 7th graders to be vaccinated against meningitis.
The state Senate and Assembly plan to take action that would block the proposal. There is no current meningitis vaccination requirement for Wisconsin students.
The Legislature’s vote would also make it easier for parents to get an exemption from a chicken pox vaccine requirement that is in place for all K-6 students. Evers’ administration wanted to require parents seeking a chicken pox vaccination exemption to provide proof that their child has previously been infected.
The Advisory Council on Immunization Practices — experts who advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — has recommended that students get vaccinated against meningitis since 2005.
However, some parents complained at a public hearing that the proposed requirements violated their liberties. Health officials said they were trying to protect students’ health.
Meningitis is an infection of the brain and spinal cord that can also cause blood infections. It can be deadly or cause lifelong disability. Rates of the disease have declined in the United States since the 1990s and remain low in Wisconsin and across the country, according to the CDC.
Vaccines for both meningitis and chicken pox are widely used and have been proven to be safe and effective.
In March, a Republican-led legislative committee voted to block the proposed policy changes, just as it did two years ago and despite the objections of Democrats and health officials. The Legislature’s vote Wednesday is the final step needed to stop enactment of the policy.
More than half the country lives in areas where child care is difficult or impossible to come by. Two mothers in Wisconsin decided to take matters into their own hands. Meg Oliver has the story.
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School bus driver Imunek Williams was just two blocks away from dropping a group of students off at the Milwaukee Academy of Science on Wednesday morning when she suddenly smelled something burning. Minutes later, the bus was engulfed in flames.
Williams, 24, has been a bus driver for a little under a year. With a 1-year-old and another little one on the way, she credits her motherly instincts for what she did next.
“I had the driver window down and thought the smell was coming from another car at first but then the smoke started coming through my heater so I pulled over,” Williams told CNN. Putting her fears aside, Williams calmly evacuated all 37 students, ranging from elementary to high school, from the smoking bus. “Fifteen to 30 seconds after the last child got off the bus, I turned around and the bus was up in flames,” Williams said.
Some students pulled out their cellphones to record the blazing bus while others stood in shock until another bus came to take them to school.
First responders arrived on the scene, putting water hoses through the bus windows to put out the fire. Williams, who is expecting a baby boy in August, was transported to a local hospital as a precaution.
“I’m fine, the baby is fine. I’m just thankful I was able to help those kids,” she said. “If my son was on that bus, I would want the driver to protect the kids at all costs.”
Williams has received an outpouring of love and appreciation from her community. Thanks to her heroic act, all 37 bus riders involved are safe and out on summer vacation.
Some of the largest U.S. cities challenging their 2020 census numbers aren’t getting the results they hoped for from the U.S. Census Bureau — an effort by Memphis to increase its official population resulted in three people being subtracted from its count during an initial appeal.
Some successes have come from challenges to totals of “group quarters” — dorms, jails and nursing homes. They were among the most difficult to count as campuses closed and prisons and nursing homes were locked down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Census Bureau created a separate program to handle these challenges.
The Census Bureau has received more than 100 submissions in total for its two challenge programs from cities, towns and villages of all sizes across the U.S.
The challenges won’t affect how many congressional seats each state got during the apportionment process, or the more detailed numbers used for redrawing political boundaries. But new numbers could shape how the federal government distributes $1.5 trillion for transportation, health programs and other funding, which is most pertinent for cities.
State, tribal and local governments have until the end of June to file challenges, and any changes will be reflected in future population estimates that are calculated each year between censuses.
Here’s where the challenges stand for Austin, Boston, Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee and Phoenix.
AUSTIN
Austin, determined to be the 11th most populous U.S. city with 964,000 residents, claimed that 7,329 housing units were missed. With an average Austin household size of almost 2.4 people in 2020, that could mean more than 17,500 residents overlooked.
The Census Bureau, however, added only a single housing unit, and provided little information on its methodology, officials in Texas’ capital said.
“This outcome is incredibly disappointing and disheartening,” Mayor Kirk Watson said in a letter to the bureau.
City officials plan to meet with Census Bureau officials in the near future to get a more detailed explanation of how bureau officials reached their decision.
BOSTON
Officials in Boston, a hub of higher education, believed the 2020 census missed more than 6,000 students living in university housing and 419 inmates at local jails. The Census Bureau approved the submission from Boston, which had 675,647 residents in the 2020 census, of which the city claimed 41,776 were students living in student housing.
“It’s no surprise that many of these special populations were miscounted due to the untimely and completely unanticipated emergence of a global pandemic that just happened to perfectly coincide with the 2020 count,” said Susan Strate, senior program manager at the UMass Donahue Institute, which assisted Boston in its challenge.
DETROIT
Detroit filed two challenges. One said the count shortchanged Michigan’s largest city by 8% of its occupied homes, overlooking tens of thousands of residents. The 2020 census found 639,111 Detroit residents, down from its 2019 population estimate of 670,052.
Detroit succeeded only with its group quarters challenge, adding 1,478 more people in 61 group quarters, said Corey McIsaac, the city’s deputy director of media relations.
Detroit plans to challenge its annual population estimates through a separate program.
MEMPHIS
Memphis launched two challenges, saying the census missed 15,895 residents, and that Memphis grew since 2010, for the first time in 50 years. The 2020 census, however, found 633,104 residents, a drop of 13,785 residents from 2010.
Memphis was unsuccessful in its appeal of its housing count in which the city said more than 10,700 people were missed. The Census Bureau actually subtracted a housing unit and three residents, a result Memphis is disputing. The other challenge deals with misapplied geographic boundaries impacting more than 5,100 people, and is still pending.
“The Census count was wrong,” Allison Fouche, Memphis’ chief communications officer, said in an email. “The gains we have seen in investments in Memphis, especially in the core city, over the last few years tell a different story.”
MILWAUKEE
Wisconsin’s largest city succeeded with its claim that more than 800 jail inmates were missed, part of a challenge organized with other Wisconsin municipalities.
Milwaukee’s other appeal is still pending, claiming 16,500 residents were overlooked in houses and apartments, primarily in communities of color. The 2020 census put Milwaukee at 577,222 residents, down about 3% from 2010.
PHOENIX
Phoenix awaits a response to its challenge of its group quarters count, claiming 3,500 people in 192 facilities were missed, according to a letter from Mayor Kate Gallego obtained through a public records request.
The city said two jails were overlooked, along with drug and alcohol treatment centers, a group home for people with diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease and a residential facility for juveniles needing mental health treatment.
The census determined that Phoenix was the fastest-growing big city in the U.S. between 2010 and 2020, increasing by 11.2% to 1.6 million residents and making it the fifth most populous U.S. city.
Wisconsin’s conservative-controlled Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a hospital could not be forced to give a deworming drug to a patient with COVID-19, saying a county judge did not cite a legal basis for ordering the facility to administer ivermectin.
Ivermectin became popular among conservatives after commentators and even some far-right doctors held up the antiparasitic drug as a miracle cure for the coronavirus and other illnesses. But the Food and Drug Administration has not approved it for use in treating COVID-19 and warns that misusing ivermectin can be harmful, even fatal.
The Wisconsin lawsuit is one of dozens filed across the country seeking to force hospitals to administer ivermectin for COVID-19. The drug is commonly used in cattle and also approved for human use to fight parasites and certain skin conditions. But some members of online alternative medicine groups have reported self-administering highly concentrated, veterinary-grade ivermectin to treat illnesses. The FDA warns that self-administering the drug, especially in doses intended for animals, can be lethal.
In Tuesday’s ruling, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in favor of Aurora Health Care, with three liberals and three conservatives in support and only conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley dissenting.
The decision upholds an appeal court’s ruling against Allen Gahl, who sued Aurora in October 2021 when doctors refused to treat his uncle, John Zingsheim, with ivermectin. Gahl was authorized to make medical decisions for Zingsheim and had researched the drug online after Zingsheim was put on a ventilator to treat COVID-19 complications.
Gahl obtained a prescription for ivermectin from a retired doctor who had never met Zingsheim or his medical team, but hospital staff said the drug did not meet their standards and refused to administer it. None of the information in the complaint Gahl subsequently filed against the hospital came directly from medical professionals, according to court documents.
The Waukesha County Circuit Court ordered hospital staff to give Zingsheim the drug but later modified its decision to say Gahl would have to provide the drug himself, as well as a doctor to administer it. An appeals court overturned that decision after Aurora’s attorneys argued a judge could not force a medical provider to give treatment they had determined to be substandard. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in January.
“We do not know what viable legal claim the circuit court thought Gahl had presented,” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley said in the court’s opinion.
Gahl was represented by the Amos Center for Justice, a conservative Wisconsin law firm that has brought litigation against ballot drop boxes and promotes conspiracy theories about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines on its website. His attorney, Karen Mueller, did not immediately return a voicemail Tuesday seeking comment.
Communities along the Mississippi River in states including Iowa and Wisconsin are experiencing some of the worst river flooding in decades as snow melt feeds into the river. Meteorologist Nick Stewart has more.
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A train derailment in southwestern Wisconsin on Thursday sent two derailed containers into the Mississippi River, and at least one crew member received medical attention, according to the train’s operator.
The train derailed around 12:15 p.m. local time near the village of De Soto, and all crew members have since been accounted for, according to BNSF Railway.
At least a dozen train cars were off the tracks, according to video that witness Caitlin Nolan shot. Other images on social media, along with the video Nolan shot, show some of the train cars in the river.
BNSF personnel were headed to the scene, and the cause of the incident is under investigation, the railway said.
The train was carrying hazardous materials, according to Marc Myhre, a Crawford County emergency management specialist. But none of hazardous materials, believed to be batteries, were in the train cars that went into the river, Myhre said.
BNSF said some of the containers that derailed – but stayed onshore and didn’t enter the water – contained paint and lithium-ion batteries. But neither of the two containers that went into the river contained hazardous materials, BNSF said.
“It was reported to us that there were hazardous materials on the train itself, but it is not believed to be a concern to the public or the responders at this time as those cars were contained,” Myhre said during a news conference.
The units that derailed were two of the train’s three locomotives and “an unknown number of cars carrying freight of all kinds,” BNSF said.
The main track was blocked in both directions after the incident, and an estimated time for reopening the track wasn’t available, BNSF said.
Heavy rain has recently brought parts of the Mississippi River to near flood stage, but the railroad tracks at the site of the derailment were above water, Myhre said.
National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy told CNN the agency is gathering information about the derailment. The agency said it has not yet verified whether hazardous materials were on the train.
US Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents the area, said his office was coordinating with state officials, BNSF and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to “get answers on what occurred.”
The congressman’s staff was traveling to the site of the derailment and will “continue to monitor the situation and determine next steps,” his statement reads.
Nolan was on her way to college at around noon central time when she saw the derailed train, she told CNN in an interview.
“I didn’t see a fire or smell anything but witnessed multiple cars in the water on both sides of the tracks,” she told CNN. “There hadn’t been any emergency help until after I had passed by,” she said.
MILWAUKEE ― A few weeks before her victory, Janet Protasiewicz, the liberal ― and de facto Democratic ― nominee for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, issued a warning about what could happen if her conservative opponent, Dan Kelly, managed to pull off a victory: It could flip the 2024 presidential election.
“Don’t you think our elections should be fair and free?” Protasiewicz asked HuffPost. “Don’t you think there should be a Supreme Court justice who wasn’t going to vote to overturn the 2024 election results? If they don’t come out the way that he wants, that’s what I think will happen.”
The idea that an off-year April election could swing control of the presidency would’ve seemed ludicrous not long ago, before the GOP’s lurch toward authoritarianism and whole-hearted embrace of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the election. But for thousands of liberals and Democrats across the country who poured cash into Protasiewicz’s campaign, the threat was a central motivator.
Protasiewicz’s eventual 11-point victory was the latest example of how Democrats have made major progress in clawing back power at the state level, with party leaders in key states effectively turning state-level elections into extensions of national political causes, tying them to the outcome of the next presidential election and hyping up the importance of state-by-state battles over abortion rights.
The strategy has fired up college-educated voters, who are more likely to vote in off-year elections, and convinced liberals around the country to pour small-dollar donations into electoral contests once considered far too obscure to merit outside investment.
The results of these tactics speak for themselves: 57% of Americans live in a state with a Democratic governor. The 17 states where Democrats have a trifecta ― meaning they control the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature ― equal 41.6% of the country’s population. The 22 Republican trifectas, mostly built in smaller states, amount to just 39.6% of the country.
But as the party continues a long slog back from its 2010 wipeout ― when Republicans jumped from 9 trifectas to 22 in a single night and gained control of a redistricting process enabling them to lock Democrats out of power in states across the country ― the chances for further progress are shrinking.
“We have to be realistic,” said Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan state senator whose viral speech defending gay and transgender rights helped raise millions to power Democrats’ eventual victory in the state’s legislative elections last fall. “People asked me how it feels for everything to change overnight. But it wasn’t overnight. There has been a persistence and a dedication to down-ballot races from Republicans that Democrats simply haven’t had.”
Recent weeks have shown the promise and peril of the comeback so far. Victories in Wisconsin, and Michigan’s moves to repeal an abortion ban and right-to-work legislation, have been offset by the Wisconsin GOP’s pick up of a state Senate supermajority and the defection by a Democratic state legislator in North Carolina, both of which illustrated how stop-start the party’s progress is, and how fragile its gains can be. And the expulsion of two Democrats from the Tennessee House of Representatives shows how helpless the party remains in some states more than a decade after the 2010 wipeout.
Republicans now have supermajorities in 20 states, having picked up veto-proof majorities in three states with Democratic governors since the 2022 midterms: Wisconsin, where the GOP won a special election the same day as Protasiewicz’s victory, and in North Carolina and Louisiana, where Democratic legislators switched parties.
Many states where the party is at its weakest are in the South, with some of the largest Black populations in the country, giving the party little power to defend its most loyal voting bloc. Of the 10 states with the largest Black population share, seven have GOP governors, seven have GOP legislative supermajorities and six have both.
“We have to admit that we have a problem before we work to address a problem,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist in South Carolina and political adviser to House Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.). National Democratic groups should “continue to prioritize the South, the rural South and the constituencies that primarily make up the South and that’s Black folks.
A Badger State Revival
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler brought techniques and strategies he learned running the national progressive group MoveOn to his home state, helping revitalize the state party.
Daniel Boczarski via Getty Images
Wisconsin is both a case study for Democrats’ new appreciation of the stakes of state-level fights and a reminder of how the gerrymandering that emerged from the 2010 election continues to stand in the party’s way.
When Republican Scott Walker became Wisconsin’s governor in 2010, he set out to shift state politics rightward through gerrymandering and the evisceration of the state’s once-powerful labor unions. Trump’s victory in the Badger State in 2016, just eight years after Barack Obama carried it by 14 percentage points, spoke to Walker’s success in that endeavor.
Amid public outrage over Trump that helped Democrats make inroads in the suburbs, the party ousted Walker in 2018. But in April 2019, conservatives narrowly triumphed in a statewide supreme court race that liberals had hoped to win.
Witnessing that defeat was one of the reasons that Ben Wikler, a Madison native then serving as Washington director of MoveOn.org, decided to jump back into politics in his home state. He was elected chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin in June 2019.
Leveraging skills and contacts, he had acquired in the world of national grassroots organizing, Wikler turned the state party into a fighting force. Among other techniques, he used his growing social media following to raise funds for the party, which he plowed into a hiring spree, prioritizing field organizing as well as communications. The latter ignited a virtuous cycle in which the party got more press coverage and thus generated more fundraising that enabled it to continue hiring.
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin now boasts 118 paid staffers, including some interns and part-time workers ― up from 24 employees when Wikler took over.
“The Republican infrastructure in the state of Wisconsin used to be far superior to the Democratic infrastructure,” said a Milwaukee-area Republican strategist who requested anonymity to speak freely. “[Wikler] has built a finely tuned, fast-moving, well-oiled machine. And so they are playing better on the field than they used to.”
The party’s advances under Wikler, and a concurrent shift toward Democrats among highly educated voters who are more likely to show up in off-season elections, helped a liberal justice win a state supreme court race in April 2020 and subsequently flip the state for Biden that November.
This year, presented with the chance to shift control of the state supreme court from conservatives to liberals, Wikler didn’t hesitate to mobilize the party’s resources to their fullest. Ironically, thanks to a set of campaign-finance reforms that Walker oversaw in 2015, there were no restrictions on how much the Democratic Party of Wisconsin was able to transfer to liberal Justice-elect Janet Protasiewicz. The party ended up giving Protasiewicz more than $9 million in her bid for the officially nonpartisan office.
Democrats’ involvement in Protasiewicz’s bid sparked allegations from conservatives that she would serve as a partisan activist rather than an impartial judge ― a charge she sought to defuse by promising to recuse herself from cases involving the state party.
For Wikler, though, the net benefits of electing Protasiewicz, including the possibility of obtaining less Republican-leaning congressional and state legislative maps, made campaigning for Protasiewicz an easy decision.
“Republicans are not shy about doing everything in their power to elect far-right judges,” he told HuffPost in late March. “And Democrats have a choice: Either they can roll over and let the extreme right dominate the courts, or they can fight back with everything they’ve got.”
That bet paid off. But Protasiewicz’s coattails were not quite enough to carry Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin, an attorney, across the finish line in a special state Senate election in the same Milwaukee suburbs that have been trending more Democratic in recent years. Habush Sinykin’s narrow defeat gave Republicans a two-thirds majority in the state Senate, enabling them to impeach and expel Democratic elected officials on a party-line vote. That could theoretically endanger everyone from liberal judges and prosecutors to Protasiewicz and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D).
Wikler isn’t too worried, though. If Republicans target Protasiewicz or other liberal judges, Evers would have the power to name those officials’ replacements. Wikler also called Habush Sinykin, the unsuccessful Democratic contender for state Senate, a “dynamite candidate” who had suffered from the gerrymandered nature of her district.
“What’s happened in Wisconsin can be a playbook for Democrats across the country,” Wikler said.
Officials in other state parties are already trying to learn from the strides made in Wisconsin. Following the dramatic expulsion of two Black Democratic lawmakers in Tennessee, Wikler spoke to the Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Hendrell Remus about “what the channels are to fight back.” The Democratic Party of Wisconsin also sent out an email fundraiser for its Tennessee counterpart and matched the first $25,000 of the $38,000 the email raised.
“Republicans are abusing supermajority powers that they haven’t earned,” Wikler said. “Tennessee Democrats have a chance to make that backfire.”
Money And Media In Michigan
Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s speech defending herself against GOP attacks went viral a year ago this week, enabling her to tap into a national donor base that has become invested in previously obscure state legislative contests.
McMorrow’s speech, delivered a year ago on Wednesday, came after a GOP colleague implied she was a “groomer” for supporting transgender rights and opposing Republican-led efforts to block discussion of gay rights and racism in public schools.
The speech went viral, attracting millions of views and helping McMorrow soon raise $1.2 million, 85% of it from outside the state. Much of that money was sent to help state legislative candidates. She said the key was airing television ads turning those candidates into actual people rather than just ballot lines with a D or R next to their names, noting that surveys have shown that 80% of Americans can’t identify their state legislator.
“We connect to stories of people,” McMorrow said. “Trying to sell the story that we’re just trying to flip a state legislature is not relatable.”
McMorrow said that keeping the money coming in relied on repeatedly connecting to national audiences by emphasizing national battles happening on the ground in Michigan.
“Something that we really tried to do intentionally was to continue to seek out national media opportunities, to tell the story of what’s happening in Michigan, but making that connection to national politics because that’s the only way to break through to people,” McMorrow said.
Helping McMorrow and others out was a liberal media ecosystem fully ready to talk about state-level contests. After her speech, McMorrow was twice a guest on “Pod Save America,” the liberal podcast founded by former staffers for President Barack Obama. The podcast also held a special episode in Madison to draw attention to Protasiewicz’s campaign.
The way Democrats have been able to tap into national small-dollar donors to fund state races was visible in Wisconsin. In providing Protasiewicz with $8 million of the $14 million she raised, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin counted on a surge in grassroots donations that complemented the big checks that came in. In the nearly four years since Wikler took over as chair, the state party took in more than 777,000 donations, compared with just under 65,000 over the same period preceding Wikler’s arrival.
“It takes resources to run your own operation, but when you do, it means that every individual candidate will have a political network and a volunteer network that takes years to build,” Wikler said.
Protasiewicz also outperformed her conservative opponent, Dan Kelly, in direct fundraising from small-dollar donors, raising nearly 25,000 donations of $50 or less, compared with Kelly’s 3,800.
The big picture gap is most evident from how the Democratic Governors’ Association (DGA) has been able to develop a small-dollar fundraising program the Republican Governors’ Association (RGA) has so not been able to match, enabling the former group to come close to matching the GOP dollar-for-dollar in key races for the first time in decades. (Both the DGA and RGA take extensive sums directly from corporations and wealthy donors, but the RGA has long had more success in that area.)
Laura Clawson, the DGA’s digital director, said the committee was able to build its online donor base by drawing people in with e-mails touching on national issues and figures, then explaining how giving to governors can matter, even if it increased the digital difference between opening an initial email and making a donation.
“A lot of people’s goal is to just get someone onto that contribution page with as little friction as possible,” Clawson said. “Implementing that flow allowed us to do donor education about why this matters. And we’ve seen a huge, huge increase in our donations.”
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, the chair of the DGA in the 2022 cycle, said the committee was able to spend three times the amount it did in 2018. The party picked up governorships in Maryland and Massachusetts while losing Nevada, marking only the second time since 1934 the president’s party has increased its governorships during a midterm.
“Who your governor is matters more than ever,” Cooper said, citing pandemic response and fights over abortion rights. “Democratic governors demonstrated we will protect your pocketbook, your freedoms and the foundations of our democracy.”
Problems Money Can’t Solve
Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pearson, expelled from the state legislature and then reinstated, has shown Democrats do not always need electoral power to push for change.
The expulsion ― and lighting-fast reappointment ― of Tennessee Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones was, like McMorrow’s speech, a singular moment for Tennessee Democrats to seize the advantage. Pearson and Jones became instant superstars, with national leaders like Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) raising money for them online.
In a different state, the momentum could carry Democrats to a modicum of power. But after losing control of both legislative chambers in 2010, the party has only spiraled downward in the Volunteer States. Heavily gerrymandered maps mean Democrats only have one congressman left in the state, and Republicans hold more than three-quarters of the seats in the state House and the state Senate.
And most of those seats are deep red: Only four of the 75 Republicans in the state House received less than 60% of the vote in their most recent election. While strategists in the state hope the party can use gun violence as an issue to potentially flip a handful of seats in the growing suburbs of Nashville, it shows how if the Democratic comeback is built on maps, money and media, the latter two can’t matter much without the first.
“Republican extreme gerrymandering really locked Democrats out of power artificially for the last decade and created artificial barriers that you can’t overcome with a standard campaign,” said Kelly Burton, the former president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
The NDRC, chaired by former Attorney General Eric Holder, was founded in 2016 as a counterpoint to longstanding GOP efforts to shape legislative and congressional maps. It spent millions pushing for referenda to block partisan gerrymanders, challenging GOP-drawn maps and backing candidates in judicial, legislative and governor’s races.
But gerrymandering does not explain away all of the Democrats’ struggles in Tennessee. Trump’s margin of victory in 2020 was 23 percentage points, and the state is heavy on white working-class voters and evangelical Christians.
While Democrats have progressed in many states, most deep red states remain firmly in control of the GOP. In places like the Dakotas and the deep South, Republicans don’t need to gerrymander to maintain a firm grip on power.
When Pearson talked to HuffPost’s Phil Lewis earlier this month, he encouraged Tennesseans to do more than just vote to make a change in the state: “We need people who are actively, consistently, consistently engaged in democracy. [People] who protest, who make phone calls, who show up to hearings, who stay engaged, all the time, all year round.”
Of course, Pearson and Jones have shown you do not necessarily need electoral power to create change. Their protest, and the subsequent GOP overreaction, shined a brighter light on a legislature riven with problems but largely ignored by the public. It also created momentum for Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, to push for a red flag law.
Tennessee’s legislative session ended on Friday without any actions on guns and with many Republican legislators still deeply opposed. But Lee said he would soon call for a special session on gun reform, citing the “broad agreement that dangerous, unstable individuals who intend to harm themselves or others should not have access to weapons.”
It’s a reflection of the public pressure Pearson and Jones brought.
“Throughout history ― Southern history and Black history ― it has always taken some sort of shockwave event for folks to tune into our issues and our communities in a very intentional way,” Seawright said. “What happened in Tennessee was another of those shockwave events in history.”
Two police officers and another person were killed in an exchange of gunfire during a traffic stop in northwestern Wisconsin on Saturday, authorities said.
The gunfire erupted after an officer from the Chetek Police Department conducted a traffic stop in Cameron around 3:38 p.m. local time, according to a news release from the Wisconsin Department of Justice.
A Chetek officer and an officer from the Village of Cameron Police Department were both pronounced dead at the scene, the state agency said.
The “involved individual” was taken to a hospital and was later also pronounced dead, the news release said.
Neither the officers nor the third person killed have been publicly identified. Authorities did not provide information on what prompted the traffic stop or how the shooting unfolded.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice said it is investigating the “officer involved critical incident.”
The department’s Division of Criminal Investigation “is continuing to review evidence and determine the facts of this incident and will turn over investigative reports to the Barron County District Attorney when the investigation concludes,” the news release said.
Two police officers were fatally shot during a traffic stop Saturday afternoon in the northwest Wisconsin village of Cameron, authorities said. A suspect also died in the incident.
The situation unfolded at about 3:38 p.m. local time, when an officer with the Chetek Police Department conducted a traffic stop, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice (WDOJ).
At some point during the stop, there was an exchange of gunfire, the WDOJ said, and the Chetek officer — along with a Cameron Police Department officer — were both struck. The two officers died at the scene, the WDOJ said.
The suspect was taken to a hospital, where they later died, the WDOJ said.
Neither the officers or the suspect were immediately publicly identified.
The circumstances that led up to shooting were not provided. Several state agencies were involved in the investigation, the WDOJ said.
Cameron is located about 90 miles east of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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The Supreme Court in Wisconsin, a state often described as a “democracy desert” in the Midwest, has allowed Republicans to draw highly partisan maps that practically cement their control of the state legislature. They’ve overruled Democratic governor Tony Evers, who called the court’s decision last year to accept the maps another “erosion of democratic institutions” in the state, which was also a target of Trump’s illicit efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Most notable among those efforts: a lawsuit seeking to have more than 200,000 ballots in Democratic-leaning areas invalidated. The state Supreme Court rejected the Trump campaign’s suit, but only narrowly in a 4-3 vote. If Kelly had won, his opponents warned, there would be no guarantee that the will of the people would be followed in 2024, when the state will once again be a presidential battleground. Protasiewicz’s victory, by that token, will help ensure the integrity of next year’s election, and possibly opens the door for Wisconsin to become more democratic in the years following.
“Wisconsin has been stuck in an authoritarian doom loop,” Wikler said when I got him on the phone Wednesday morning, his voice still full of energy from the Protasiewicz victory the night before. “The result is a purple state that has policies that look like Alabama or Mississippi,” he said. “This election changes everything.”
Abortion—one of the most animating issues of the 2022 midterms—also loomed large over this race. Following the fall of Roe last year, a more than 170-year-old state ban on abortion was allowed to take effect once again in Wisconsin, dramatically limiting access to reproductive health care in the state. That law is being challenged by Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul, and the case is likely to end up at the state Supreme Court. During his campaign, Kelly attempted to downplay his conservative record, but has previously made his view of abortion clear: It “involves taking the life of a human being,” he wrote in 2012. Protasiewicz, meanwhile, has been outspoken in favor of reproductive rights, drawing criticism from Kelly but earning the support of influential pro-choice groups like EMILY’s List, which made its first-ever endorsement in a statewide judicial race in throwing its weight behind the Milwaukee judge this year.
“This election…has huge consequences,” said Dr. Kristin Lyerly, an OB/GYN, member of the Committee to Protect Health Care’s Reproductive Freedom Taskforce, and a plaintiff in Kaul’s challenge to the 1849 ban. “And women’s rights are at the core of that.” Lyerly, a sixth-generation Wisconsinite temporarily practicing in Minnesota because of the abortion law, told me ahead of the April 4 election that she hoped a “progressive majority that actually serves the people” could change the dynamic in the state. “Everything,” she told me, “is at stake.”
Voters, for their part, seemed to recognize just that. Not only was the race the most expensive of its kind—it also saw record-breaking turnout for a spring election, thanks in part to high levels of engagement among young voters who often waited in long lines to cast a ballot, according to Kristin Hansen, Wisconsin state coordinator with the Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project. “Students knew how consequential this election was,” Hansen told me Wednesday morning. “The activity on campuses rivaled that of the [November elections], if not bettered it.”
