Evers Tony Gov
flipped gov vs bad old scott walker days; state scotus
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jdv snap fraud bs 7 26
green bay sweep troupis ron johnson
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an 7 26
I’m no political consultant, but I don’t think I would make “fraud” the theme of the Trump administration’s midterm election campaign push.
At least not while the reflecting pool disaster remains in the news, the White House is doubling down on sticking with its no-bid contract for the company that oversaw the algae-infested, peeling pool mess, and President Donald Trump is making headlines for raking in $2.2 billion since he came back into office, including $1.4 billion from the Trump family’s cryptocurrency scheme.
“We have got to have a governor who takes fraud as seriously as the President of the United States,” Vice President JD Vance declared Wednesday in Milwaukee during a speech apparently intended to boost Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany.
Vance’s remarks, delivered ahead of a $10,000-per-couple fundraiser ($35,000 if you wanted a photo with the VP), could be read in different ways.
One way is in the context of the poster-sized photo Vance displayed of a Black woman “with the smug look and a Louis Vuitton bag,” as Vance put it — one of the people who owned prenatal care coordination businesses that a 2022 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found had defrauded Medicaid, costing the state more than $15.5 million among them between 2019 and 2022.
Vance, although he was elaborately praised by other Republicans at the Wednesday event in Milwaukee for leading the Trump administration’s crackdown on healthcare fraud, had nothing to do with uncovering the prenatal care scandal in Milwaukee. That was the dogged work of the Journal Sentinel reporters whose efforts led the state Department of Justice to investigate, cut off Medicaid to the fraudulent businesses and pursue criminal charges — all of that years before Vance took office. But Vance saw an opportunity in Milwaukee to connect various Trump administration claims about fraud to a picture of someone Ronald Reagan would have called a “welfare queen.” In his speech, Vance moved directly from that photo to the Trump administration’s efforts to “kick illegal aliens out of our country.”
Black people, immigrants and people who receive food assistance and Medicaid are the “fraudsters,” according to Vance and Republican Reps. Tiffany, Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil, who joined Vance on stage in Milwaukee. They denounced Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for not sharing sensitive personal data on SNAP recipients with the Trump administration. Vance called Evers’ refusal “borderline criminal.”
“Why won’t Tony Evers turn over the SNAP rolls? ‘Cause he’s cooked the books!” Van Orden hollered.
Steil connected claims about fraud in SNAP and Medicaid to discredited allegations of voter fraud, calling the federal takeover of elections Trump has been trying to force on Congress as “total common sense.”
When a reporter asked Vance about Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s request to talk to him about the harassment of election workers by FBI agents deployed to Milwaukee to “investigate” nonexistent voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, Vance implied that Johnson is trying to cover up the fraud.
All of this hype about fraud and repeated assertions by the GOP chorus in Milwaukee that the Trump administration had saved the taxpayers of Wisconsin billions of dollars by rooting it out, is meant to cover up a much, much bigger problem.
Medicaid cuts pushed by the Trump administration and supported by Tiffany, Van Orden and Steil, coupled with the same Republicans’ refusal to renew Affordable Care Act tax credits, have already pushed about 22,000 Wisconsinites off their health insurance. A new KFF report shows that insurers on the ACA marketplace are planning another double-digit increase in rates this year, driven by inflation and the loss of the tax credits, which will cause even more people to lose coverage. Altogether, more than 258,000 Wisconsinites will lose health coverage by 2034 because of Trump administration policy changes, according to projections by the Congressional Budget Office.
While Van Orden was yelling from the stage in Milwaukee about people who are ineligible for SNAP allegedly signing up for the program and “literally taking the food out of the mouths of hungry babies,” Wisconsinites know that he voted for SNAP cuts and changes to eligibility rules that led to 15,500 Wisconsinites losing food assistance.
Instead of adequately funding healthcare, food and a decent society, Republicans pushed through trillions of dollars in tax giveaways to corporations and the very rich, tens of billions of dollars for a domestic paramilitary organization that is conducting violent arrests of people who pose no public safety risk, and hundreds of millions of dollarsfor an obscene White House ballroom and no-bid contracts for Trump’s vanity projects on the national mall. That is the real fraud.
Republicans are screaming about “waste, fraud and abuse” to try to distract voters from all of this destruction and graft. But their “fraud” talk just reminds people of the stunning theft of public resources they’ve enabled and are now trying to cover up with flimsy, slanderous lies.
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Wisconsin governor says he's not afraid after Trump official ...
_AP News_
https://apnews.com › article › wisconsin-evers-arrest-ho...](https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-evers-arrest-homan-trump-ice-fd0078ee94a84e184198f8b9fed67343)
May 2, 2025 — Tony Evers said Friday that every American should be concerned about “chilling” suggestions from President Donald Trump's top border adviser ...
Guidance Evers' administrationScott BauerDeSantis signs law creating...
[### Evers pushes back after Trump's border czar suggests ...
WPR
https://www.wpr.org › news › evers-trump-border-czar-s...](https://www.wpr.org/news/evers-trump-border-czar-state-arrested-impeding-ice)
May 2, 2025 — Tony Evers is pushing back after Trump's border czar suggested state officials like Evers could face felony charges if they're found to have ...
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AN 525
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers hit back Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump's border czar suggested the Democratic leader could be arrested for distributing guidance to state employees on what to do if confronted by federal immigration agents.
The guidance is straightforward and unremarkable, instructing state employees to "stay calm," ask federal agents for their name and badge, contact an attorney, and decline to answer questions or provide agents access to any documents without a lawyer present.
"State employees may not grant [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] or another agent access to any such data or information absent authorization from their legal counsel pursuant to a valid judicial warrant," the guidance reads.
In a speech addressed to Wisconsinites and the nation, Evers said that the "goal of this guidance was simple—to provide clear, consistent instructions to state employees and ensure they have a lawyer to help them comply with all federal and state laws."
"But Republicans and their right-wing allies, including Elon Musk, lied about this guidance, spread misinformation, accused me of doing things I didn't do or say, and fueled a fake controversy of their own creation," Evers said.
One Republican member of the Wisconsin State Assembly on Friday morning posted an AI-generated image of Evers in handcuffs at the state capitol, with Trump standing behind him in police uniform.
"I'm used to Republicans and the right wing lying about me. It comes with the job," Evers said Friday. "But, this time, these lies came at a cost. I haven't broken the law. I haven't committed a crime. And I've never encouraged or directed anyone to break any laws or commit any crimes."
"But when President Trump's hand-picked appointee, Tom Homan, was asked about me and this guidance after he apparently threatened to arrest elected officials across the country, he said, 'Wait 'til you see what's coming,'" the governor continued.
"Overnight, Republican lawmakers piled on, encouraging the Trump administration to arrest me."
Watch Homan's comments to reporters:
Homan's thinly veiled threat against Evers and other officials came days after FBI agents arrested Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan on obstruction charges alleging that she helped an undocumented immigrant evade arrest by misdirecting federal authorities. Dugan's legal team says she is innocent and will be vindicated in court.
Evers said Friday that Homan's threats are "chilling" and "should be of concern to every Wisconsinite and every American who cares about this country and the values we hold dear."
"These threats represent a concerning trajectory in this country," said Evers. "We now have a federal government that will threaten or arrest an elected official—or even everyday American citizens—who have broken no laws, committed no crimes, and done nothing wrong."
"And as disgusted as I am about the continued actions of the Trump administration, I am not afraid," he added. "I have never once been discouraged from doing the right thing, and I will not start today."
Watch Evers' remarks in full:
The Wisconsin governor's full address is transcribed below:
Good morning, Wisconsin. Governor Tony Evers here.*
I’m speaking to you today as your governor but also as a concerned American.
Yesterday, a Trump administration official, in not so many words, apparently threatened to arrest me for distributing guidance that asked state agency employees to consult with an attorney if federal agents show up at state buildings with legal documents.
The goal of this guidance was simple—to provide clear, consistent instructions to state employees and ensure they have a lawyer to help them comply with all federal and state laws. Nothing more, nothing less.
But Republicans and their right-wing allies, including Elon Musk, lied about this guidance, spread misinformation, accused me of doing things I didn’t do or say, and fueled a fake controversy of their own creation.
Now, I’m used to Republicans and the right wing lying about me. It comes with the job. But, this time, these lies came at a cost. I haven't broken the law. I haven't committed a crime. And I’ve never encouraged or directed anyone to break any laws or commit any crimes.
But when President Trump's hand-picked appointee, Tom Homan, was asked about me and this guidance after he apparently threatened to arrest elected officials across the country, he said, "Wait 'til you see what's coming." Overnight, Republican lawmakers piled on, encouraging the Trump administration to arrest me.
Chilling threats like this should be of concern to every Wisconsinite and every American who cares about this country and the values we hold dear.
We live in the United States of America, folks. We are a country of laws. The rule of law matters. Following the law matters.
In this country, the federal government doesn't get to abuse its power to threaten everyday Americans. In this country, the federal government doesn’t get to arrest American citizens who have not committed a crime. In this country, we don't threaten to persecute people just because they belong to a different political party.
These threats represent a concerning trajectory in this country. We now have a federal government that will threaten or arrest an elected official—or even everyday American citizens—who have broken no laws, committed no crimes, and done nothing wrong.
And as disgusted as I am about the continued actions of the Trump administration, I am not afraid. I have never once been discouraged from doing the right thing, and I will not start today.
I swore an oath when I took this office to support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of Wisconsin and to faithfully discharge the duties of this office to the best of my ability. I will never waver from that promise.
I hope and pray every elected and appointed official in this country, including the president of the United States of America, will do the same.
Forward, and for Wisconsin, always.
Thank you.
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AN 4 25
Smart, progressive women pose a serious threat to MAGA supremacy. Just ask Elon Musk, who wasted millions of dollars in Wisconsin trying to win a seat on the state Supreme Court for MAGA candidate Brad Schimel, only to watch Susan Crawford clean Schimel’s clock.
From his first presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016, “Lock her up!” has been Donald Trump’s battle cry. Restoring the greatness of a white, male-dominated America apparently requires menacing displays of dominance over women in positions of authority. Who can forget Trump acting like a stalker, invading Clinton’s personal space and looming behind her during a 2016 debate?
On Friday, a few weeks after MAGA lost its bid to disempower the progressive female majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Trump administration sent federal agents to arrest Hannah Dugan at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Trump’s attorney general and the man he chose to lead the FBI gleefully posted pictures of Dugan’s “perp walk” in handcuffs, crowing about this unprecedented assault on the dignity and authority of a judge and the sovereignty of local courts.
On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended Dugan. “In order to uphold the public’s confidence in the courts of this state during the pendency of the criminal proceeding against Judge Dugan, we conclude, on our own motion, that it is in the public interest that she be temporarily relieved of her official duties,” the state’s highest court said in a two-page letter ordering Judge Dugan “temporarily prohibited from exercising the powers of a circuit court judge.”
It’s a perplexing decision. It didn’t arise from any complaint; the Court acted on its own. And Dugan had already been relieved of her duties while she focuses on her defense by the chief judge in Milwaukee, who assigned her calendar to other judges to cover.
Worse, the suspension gives the impression that the federal charges against Dugan are indeed serious. But that impression is not supported by the only evidence the government has produced.
The justification for Dugan’s arrest, laid out in a federal criminal complaint, is that she impeded federal law enforcement agents when she objected to ICE disrupting her court’s proceedings and ushered the man they came to arrest out a side door. The defendant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who was appearing before Dugan on a misdemeanor battery charge unrelated to his immigration status, exited into the public hallway where the agents were waiting for him. Then they followed him outside and made their arrest — unimpeded.
Fox News claimed Dugan concealed Flores-Ruiz in a jury room. But that assertion is contradicted by the sworn testimony in the government’s own criminal complaint.
The complaint features breathlessly sexist descriptions of Dugan appearing “visibly angry” and “walking quickly,” as if that were evidence of wrongdoing. But any actual wrongdoing is hard to pinpoint.
“Whatever you think of the actual conduct the complaint alleges,” says Dean Strang, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a long-time Wisconsin criminal defense lawyer, “there is a real question about whether there’s even arguably any federal crime here.”
The government’s behavior, meanwhile, is “extraordinarily atypical,” for a nonviolent, nondrug charge involving someone who is not a flight risk, says Strang.
The handcuffs, the public arrest at Dugan’s workplace, the media circus — none of it was normal, or justified. Then Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel began posting pictures of Dugan in handcuffs on social media to brag about it.
“So what is it they are trying to do?” asks Strang. His conclusion: “Humiliate and terrify, not just her but every other judge in the country.”
The bigger issue here, beyond an unprecedented, public display of dominance and intimidation by the Trump administration, is that, in turning federal law enforcement into an arm of his personal, vengeance-themed reality show, Trump is running roughshod over the constitutional principle of federalism, which respects the sovereignty of the states, the integrity of the courts and public safety. Scaring defendants, witnesses and victims away from making court appearances makes it harder to administer justice and makes all of us less safe.
But you’d never know that to listen to Republican state officials, who are championing federal agents barging into courts, schools and churches, forgetting everything they ever said about local control and states’ rights. In a letter released Tuesday, Assembly Republicans led by Speaker Robin Vos sent a letter to Gov. Tony Evers, declaring “our caucus believes it is imperative that our laws reflect the need for local law enforcement to comply with these efforts.”
Republicans accuse Evers of issuing guidance to state officials that impedes federal ICE raids.
“Unfortunately, recent events in Milwaukee have underscored the importance for our state to legislate and enforce compliance with federal immigration law,” their letter declares, citing Dugan’s arrest.
The Republicans demand that Evers rescind guidance telling state agencies that they need not answer questions, hand over files, or allow ICE to enter non-public areas without a warrant.
Capitulating to an administration that has admitted to deporting U.S. citizens and defied court orders to effect the return of a man it admits was mistakenly sent to a Salvadoran prison is a terrible idea. Big law firms that agreed to drop clients and offer free legal work to appease the Trump administration have eroded trust in the law. Authoritarian undermining of our legal system is a grave danger.
The least the most timid among us can do is insist that the federal government follow the law before caving in. That’s what Dugan did, when she asked if the agents who came to her courtroom to arrest Flores-Ruiz had a judicial warrant. They did not. Nor do they have proof that Dugan herself broke any laws.
The last thing we need right now is more capitulation to MAGA bullying. Stand strong.
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Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.
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an 2 25
Wisconsinites voted for Donald Trump by a narrow margin in November. Does that mean a majority of voters here want to cancel farmers’ federal contracts, shut down Head Start centers across the state and turn loose Elon Musk to feed federal agencies into the woodchipper while hoovering up private citizens’ financial information?
The new Trump era is putting Republican nihilism to the test. In our closely divided swing state, the first official indication of whether Trump voters are developing buyers’ remorse will come, fittingly, on April Fool’s Day.
In the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, candidate Brad Schimel has received Elon Musk’s endorsement and is benefitting from a huge ad buy by Musk’s political action committee. And while some Republicans have expressed qualmsabout Trump and Musk’s assertions that they have unchecked power to ride roughshod over judges and the U.S. Constitution, Schimel has, notably, sided with Trump and Musk against the courts.
Last month, Schimel took to Vicki McKenna’s rightwing talk radio show to denounce the prosecution and sentencing of the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol after Trump lost in 2020, saying juries in Washington, D.C., were too liberal to deliver a fair verdict. Recently, on the same talk radio program, he criticized federal judges for blocking the ransacking of federal agencies by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), accusing the judges of “acting corruptly” by daring to issue temporary restraining orders.
The race between Schimel and Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford will determine the ideological balance of the Court and, it seems, whether a majority of justices believe in the integrity of the court system at all.
Also on the April 1 ballot is the race for state schools superintendent, which pits a lobbyist for the private school voucher industry against a defender of public schools — an existential choice as the growth of schools vouchers is on track to bankrupt our state’s public school system and enrollment caps on voucher programs are set to come off next year.
The ideological struggle over the future of our state was on stark display this week as Gov. Tony Evers presented his budget plan — an expansive vision that uses the state surplus to boost funding for K-12 schools and the University of Wisconsin, health care, clean water and rural infrastructure, and leaves a cushion to help protect communities against what Evers called the “needless chaos caused by the federal government” under Trump.
In a familiar ritual, Republican legislators immediately shot down Evers’ plan, denounced it as “reckless spending” and promised to throw it in the trash and replace it with a stripped-down alternative based on austerity and tax cuts.
“Wisconsin voted for Donald Trump and his agenda to cut spending and find inefficiency in government,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos declared.
But did they?
It’s not clear that most Wisconsinites wanted what Trump and Musk are delivering — cuts to health care and veterans’ services, the claw-back of infrastructure projects, mass firings at the park service and the chaotic suspension of promised federal funds for child care and other essential services in Wisconsin.
For generations, Republicans have complained about “red tape” and “big government” and promised “freedom” and lower taxes to constituents who liked the sound of all that. Under Trump, we are seeing anti-government ideology reach its full, unchecked fruition. Trump’s No. 1 private donor, the richest man in the world, is laughing all the way to the bank. He’s using his access to trillions of dollars in taxpayer funds to cancel food programs for poor children and to bolster federal contracts that enrich himself.
This, in the end, is what privatization is all about — taking the collective wealth of millions of people who contribute to maintaining a decent, healthy society and concentrating it in the hands of one very rich, self-interested man.
The long-term, existential struggle between private wealth and the public good in Wisconsin includes the fight over whether to fund public schools or give away money to subsidize the tuition of private school families. It includes whether to be the second-to-last state to finally offer 12 months of postpartum Medicaid coverage to new mothers — something even our Republican legislators support, minus Vos. The two sides of our divided government are locked in a battle over whether our universities, public parks, infrastructure, clean water and affordable housing are a boondoggle or something we ought to protect.
Given what’s happening to our country, Wisconsinites will have to think hard about which side they’re on.
Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.
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2 25
Republican state lawmakers said Tuesday they would introduce a bill to force local law enforcement to verify the citizenship status of people in custody for a felony offense and to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if citizenship cannot be verified. Counties that do not comply would be at risk of losing state money.
Lawmakers said that Wisconsin needs to assist President Donald Trump and the federal government with its work deporting “illegal immigrants” from the United States. Since inauguration day, federal agents have arrested more than 8,000 people, including some people who had no criminal history.
State Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) said at a press conference that the legislation is meant to “keep communities safe” and that the message to sheriffs is “do not put your personal politics above the safety of the citizens who elected you.”
Under the bill, noncompliance by a sheriff would result in a 15% reduction in the county’s shared revenue payments from the state in the next year. Counties across Wisconsin rely on those payments to fund public safety, emergency medical services, transportation and other services. Sheriffs would have to certify compliance each year with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
The bill would also require sheriffs to comply with detainers and administrative warrants received from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for individuals held in the county jail for a criminal offense. Sheriffs would also need to seek reimbursement from the federal government for any costs incurred while holding people.
“We don’t want Wisconsin on the hook for this,” Bradley said.
The only thing this proposal accomplishes is to bankrupt Wisconsin law enforcement both morally and fiscally.
– Milwaukee County Supervisors
The bill would also require sheriffs to keep a record of people who were verified as unlawfully residing in the U.S. and submit the information to the Legislature in a biannual report.
Lawmakers said that sheriffs would continue to have discretion over whether to report people who aren’t detained for a felony offense.
Bradley said that only “far left extremists in this country believe that someone here illegally that commits a felony should be allowed to stay.” He noted that the Laken Riley Act, which expands the mandatory detention requirements of immigrants charged and arrested on petty and other crimes, passed Congress with the help of 46 House and 12 Senate Democrats. He said the issue should be one with bipartisan support and called on his Democratic colleagues to sign on.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported the legislation after obtaining a copy of the draft bill.
Similar legislation was enacted in North Carolina last year.
Democratic opposition
Gov. Tony Evers has already committed to vetoing the legislation should it make it to his desk.
In a statement released to the Journal Sentinel, Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback called the bill an “unserious proposal” that is “trying to micromanage local law enforcement decisions by threatening to gut state aid by 15% for our local communities — that’s a non-starter.”...
https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/wisconsin-governor-slams-his-trump-backed-gop-opponent-as-a-danger-to-our-democracy/
super maj plus gerry plus gov = one party rule
In the 2022 midterms, MAGA election deniers haven’t necessarily been as overt as Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake or her Pennsylvania counterpart Doug Mastriano. Some have never acknowledged that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election but avoid discussing the Big Lie. In Wisconsin, however, Democrats are slamming Republican gubernatorial nominee Tim Michels for saying “the quiet part out loud” and essentially promising that if he defeats Democratic incumbent Gov. Tony Evers on November 8, he would simply throw out any election results that he doesn’t like.
Evers and the liberal group American Bridge 21st Century have tweeted a recording of Michels, during an event in Jefferson County, Wisconsin on Halloween, telling the crowd, “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I'm elected governor.”
The liberal groupAmerican Bridge 21st Century, in response, tweeted, “GOP #WIGov nominee Tim @MichelsForGov said the quiet part out loud: ‘Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I'm elected governor.’ Democracy is on the line in Wisconsin. Michels must be stopped.”
READ MORE: **How Democrats 'played with fire' in Arizona — and may be getting burned: report**
In response to Michels’ promise to throw out election results he doesn’t like, Evers tweeted, “Folks, we’ve known this for a while – Tim Michels is a danger to our democracy. When you head to the polls on Election Day, remember that we’re fighting to protect our democracy, voting rights, and free, fair, and secure elections.”
Democratic strategists and organizers have grown worried over what they’ve been seeing in polls of statewide races in Wisconsin. Incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has had single-digit leads over Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes in a long list of recent polls, and the governor’s race is tight. Fox News and Data for Progress polls released during the second half of October found Michels leading Evers by 1 percent.
Michels, endorsed by former President Donald Trump, is a far-right MAGA candidate who has trafficked in conspiracy theories and promoted the Big Lie. And Evers isn’t shy about calling Michels “a danger to our democracy.”
Business Insider’s Hannah Getahun, in an article published on November 1, reports, “Michels, a candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has questioned the results of the 2020 election and has declined to answer questions as to whether or not he would certify presidential election results as governor should a Democrat win the state in a national election. Michels also suggested that he could pursue an unconstitutional effort to decertify (President Joe) Biden's 2020 win in Wisconsin once he became governor, telling local station WKOW that he would ‘need to see the details.’”
READ MORE:**Doug Mastriano shredded by Philly paper for 'chilling' plans to overturn future elections**
Evers spokesperson Sam Roecker told Business Insider, “Democracy is on the ballot in this election. Tim Michels has made it clear he will do anything in his power to make it harder for Wisconsinites to vote and could even overturn the fair results of our elections if he doesn't like the outcome.”
A variety of political voices, from election law expert Rich Hasen to “Real Time” host Bill Maher to Never Trump conservative and former GOP strategist Tim Miller, have been sounding the alarm about how perilous things could become in the United States in 2024 if enough “Stop the Steal” Republicans and MAGA election deniers win gubernatorial and secretary of state races in 2022. The fear is that if a Democratic presidential nominee wins the popular vote in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and/or Michigan in 2024’s presidential election, Republicans could refuse to certify the election results and try to give the electoral votes to the Republican candidate — thus setting off a major constitutional crisis and widespread unrest. Maher has commented that post-election, late 2024/early 2025 might be a good time to be away from the United States.
READ MORE:**The State of the Midterms: Here's Where Things Stand in 5 Key Swing States**
an 2 22
no lnx twt
John Eastman wrote another 'election subversion memo' — this time for Wisconsin: report
Alex Henderson February 08, 2022
Throughout much of U.S. history, the types of things that Republican attorney and Donald Trump ally John C. Eastman did following the 2020 presidential election would have been unthinkable. Eastman wrote an infamous memo in which he laid out a plan for overturning the election results and keeping now-President Joe Biden, who legitimately won the election, out of the White House.
Now, according to Rolling Stone’s Washington, D.C bureau chief, Andy Kroll, Eastman is arguing for decertifying the election results in Wisconsin. And one of the far-right MAGA Republicans who is very much in favor of that is Wisconsin State Rep. Timothy Ramthun.
In an article published by Rolling Stone on February 6, Kroll reports, “Nowhere is this crusade to subvert the 2020 election result more on display than in Wisconsin. Even though Republicans there do not control all the levers of power — thegovernor, Tony Evers, is a Democrat— they have launched a multi-front effort to cast doubt on the 2020 election, intimidate local officials, and, in Ramthun’s case, throw out the state’s presidential-election result.”
Kroll notes that Ramthun is not universally loved by Republicans in Wisconsin.
“In Wisconsin, as in other states, the energy in the conservative movement burns hottest among those voters who believe the Republican-controlled Legislature should empower people like Ramthun and throw out Biden’s 2020 victory,” Kroll explains. “Moderate Republicans have responded by ostracizing Ramthun or blasting their party’s descent into a post-fact cult of conspiracy theorists.”
But Ramthun, according to Kroll, has an ally in Eastman.
“Ramthun…. received an eight-page analysis from John Eastman, the same lawyer who wrote the infamous memos arguing for how (Vice President Mike) Pence could overturn the election result on January 6, 2021,” Kroll writes. “Eastman’s memo for Ramthun, dated December 30, 2021, argues that if there was ‘acknowledged illegality’ in an election, then the result of that election was rendered null and the State Legislature had the power to pick the electors ‘as it sees fit.’”
Kroll interviewed Evers for his article, and the Democratic Wisconsin governor lamented that MAGA Republicans in his state have been tireless in their assault on voting rights.
Evers told Kroll, “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment here. If I weren’t able to veto bills without the Republicans overriding my veto, we’d be Georgia right now. We’d be Texas. We’d be Arizona.”
Kroll warns that the MAGA campaign against voting rights in Wisconsin will only grow worse if Evers isn’t reelected in the 2022 midterms.
“The threat to democracy in Wisconsin isn’t coming from a lawless election commission, hacked voting machines, or illegal ballots coming out of nursing homes,” Kroll writes. “It comes from a political party that united around suspicions and lies, and sought to bend reality to its will. Wisconsin is more than a laboratory for new policies and bold ideas; it’s a trial for whether democracy can survive at all.”
stokes violence then sez only he can stop THOSE PPL:
https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trumps-signal-to-his-followers-is-clear-violence-and-chaos-are-my-only-hope/
no twt vid link
prez trump’s signal to his followers is clear: Violence and chaos are my only hope
Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon August 31, 2020
President Trump was having a normal one on Sunday morning, tweeting and retweeting 89 times over the course of three and a half hours. Many of them were tweets of polling numbers from obscure firms showing him in the lead after the Republican convention. But most of the tweets and retweets were incitement to violence among his true believers and complaints about “Democrat cities,” an ongoing mantra which he seems to think is a slam dunk to get him re-elected.
He repeatedly insulted and mocked Joe Biden, of course, and Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler will undoubtedly have to change his phone number after the president of the United States posted it on Twitter so his followers could call and demand his resignation.
He also showed support for one of his fans in Wisconsin:
[]
It was a manic tweet spree and one that couldn’t have show the president’s state of mind any more clearly. Biden has said Trump is “rooting for violence,” and I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue with that.
In fact, Trump’s surrogates are saying it right out loud. Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump whether she agreed with White House counselorKellyanne Conway’s assertion that “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.” Lara answered, “Well, I think it paints a very clear picture.” She might as well have said, “You go, boys!”
On CNN on Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., agreed with Trump that the shootings by a 17-year-old Trump fan last Tuesday night in Kenosha were understandable:[]
What the president did was he offered to surge manpower and resources so the violence could end. The governor did not accept that that day, that night tragically two people lost their lives because citizens took matters into their own hands. I’m not for vigilantism. I’m not sure that’s what was happening. People felt, because the governor — local officials were looking for help.The governor did not accept the help, and so there was not the resolve to end the rioting, and so people took matters into their own hands, and that’s what ended up happening. People die.
Johnson is confused about everything, as usual. Trump publicly berated Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for failing to call in the National Guard hours after Evers had already done so, telling his followers that Evers wasn’t protecting the city. Johnson basically said that people felt they needed to take matters into their own hands because the president had lied to them and told them the governor wasn’t protecting them. Yet somehow he’s against vigilantism. Everything about that is a grotesque inversion of anything one could call “law and order.”
Trump was at it again later on Sunday, tweeting in response to a press conference by Wheeler, the Portland mayor. Trump called him a “dummy” and ranted on, saying, “He would like to blame me and the federal government for going in, but he hasn’t seen anything yet. We have only been there with a small group to defend our U.S. courthouse, because he couldn’t do it.”
Conway’s little gaffe in which she admitted that the White House and the Trump campaign believe street violence is good for them illuminates the president’s fanning of the flames. He has finally grasped that he cannot unilaterally sending in a bunch of federal cops, as he did in Washington to stage his photo-op last June. Instead, he’s not-very-subtly signaling to his gun-toting fans that they are going to have to take action on their own if they hope to scare people into voting for him. Leave the propaganda to him, just ramp up the chaos.
He tweeted that MAGA “protesters” who came to Portland in a caravan on Saturday night were “Great Patriots!” and later explained why their behavior was understandable:
The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein wondered on Twitter whether “suburban voters look at these pictures and say, ‘yes, where I belong is in the same political coalition as men who crowd into pickup trucks w/guns, as in Bosnia 1998 or a Third World dictatorship?'” (Those huge flags flying behind them reminded me of men crowded “into pickup trucks w/guns,” as in news photographs of ISIS fighters.)
It’s a jarringly familiar sight, but it doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen in America before.
There was an actual shooting that night and someone died. It’s unclear what exactly happened. But it is very clear that this kind of confrontation is something that Trump and his henchmen are actively stoking for political gain.
As I wrote on Friday, this is hardly the first time Trump has deployed crude, racist fear-mongering. He’s been doing it for years, going all the way back to the full-page Central Park Five ad. If it isn’t marauding gangs of Black teenagers, it’s Muslim terrorists or Mexican rapists or left-wing anarchists. There’s always some bogeyman coming to get you.
The only thing he knows how to do is point a finger at “the other” and then promise people that he’s the only one who can save them. He feels confident that he’s got the troops to back him up, one way or the other. He gave an interview with Breitbart back in 2019 in which he made this explicit:
You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.
Yes, it would be very bad. The question is whether or not anyone will believe that Donald Trump is the man who can save America from all this mayhem he is creating. After all, he’s been promising to do that ever since he came down that elevator. Here he is at the 2016 Republican convention:
I guess that’s yet another promise he’ll fulfill after he makes America Great Again — Again.
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/meet-the-billionaire-trump-donor-pushing-for-recall-of-wisconsins-governor-over-stay-at-home-order-after-claiming-the-media-is-overblowing-covid-19/
no lnx
Meet the billionaire Trump donor pushing for recall of Wisconsin’s governor over stay-at-home order after claiming ‘the media is overblowing COVID-19’
Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein
Written by Alex Henderson April 22, 2020
In the business world, supporters of stay-at-home orders and aggressive social distancing have been arguing that ending them prematurely — and causing unnecessary deaths from coronavirus — will ultimately hurt the U.S. economy a lot more than the financial pain that is presently being felt. But one person who doesn’t see it that way is billionaire shipping magnate Liz Uihlein, a major GOP donor and an economic adviser to President Donald Trump. And Bloomberg News reporters Anders Melin and Polly Mosendz, in an April 21 article, describe some of the actions Uihlein is taking politically to discourage social distancing and stay-at-home orders.
Uihlein, Melin and Mosendz report, is supporting a petition to recall Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for his stay-at-home order.
“As protests grip Wisconsin and other states with Democratic governors, the debate is dividing neighbors, politicians and business executives,” the Bloomberg journalists notes. “Big company CEOs — Democrats and Republicans alike — have generally urged caution about reopening because of the health risk, yet some of the GOP’s biggest donors have been pushing hardest on the side of lifting restriction.”
Melin and Mosendz observed that although Koch Industries Chairman Charles Koch has “questioned blanket shutdowns…. few have objected more strongly than Liz Uihlein, chief executive officer of closely held Uline.”
Uihlein has a history of downplaying the severity of COVID-19. In a March 13 e-mail to Illinois politicians, the Uline CEO asserted, “The media is overblowing COVID-19. At what point do we go back to our normal lives? This has been a huge disruption.”
But the pandemic that Uihlein believes the media are “overblowing,” according to researchers at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, has killed at least 178,845 people worldwide (as of early Wednesday morning, April 22). And that includes over 45,000 deaths in the United States, which has become the coronavirus epicenter of the world.
Uihlein has been criticized for not doing enough to encourage Uline employees to work from home. Melin and Mosendz note that Uline is offering an extra $5 per hour to employees who work on site rather than working from home.
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aN 420
‘enormous gamble’: Wisconsin Republicans slammed for discouraging mail-in voting ballots during deadly coronavirus pandemic
In Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers and other Democrats have — in response to the coronavirus pandemic — been encouraging alternatives to in-person voting. But they have run into a bricK...
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DEM!
Wisconsin Governor Signs Bill Criminalizing Pipeline Protesters
Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers has signed a bill making it a felony to trespass on the grounds of an oil or gas pipeline. Critics say the bill was inspired by ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — and pushed through the Wisconsin legislature by the American Petroleum Institute. Opponents of the law include members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, whose reservation is crossed by the Enbridge Line 5 tar sands oil pipeline. The tribe’s chair, Mike Wiggins, said, “Over and over, we’ve seen peaceful, nonviolent protests met with militarization, threats of violence and actual violence from some of these corporate mechanisms.”
TOPICS:
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2019/06/26/right-wing-network-fights-proposed-wisconsin-minimum-wage-hike/
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ proposal to increase the state’s long-stagnant minimum wage has run into stiff resistance from a well-coordinated influence network funded by the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation.
The proposed increase of 75 cents per year for the next three years would raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.50 per hour by 2023 and put more money in the pockets of Wisconsin’s working poor. Evers’ budget would also create a task force to study the feasibility of moving to a $15 per hour minimum wage.
Not surprisingly, the deployment of the Bradley Foundation’s right-wing infrastructure against Evers’ proposal has followed the right-wing playbook of “weaponized philanthropy” exposed in a series of 2017 investigative reports by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).
Following the playbook, a Bradley-funded “think tank” typically teams up with Koch-funded university programs to publish studies that match the corporate funders’ ideology and policy positions while giving them academic credibility. Those studies are then reported on by Bradley-funded groups’ “news outlets,” latched onto by political advocacy operations like Americans for Prosperity, and echoed by legislative members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
In the current Wisconsin fight, The Badger Institute, formerly known as the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, commissioned a “policy brief” through Marquette University’s economics department, “Minimum Wage: The High Cost of Increasing the Minimum Wage in Wisconsin to $15,” warning that the raise would lead to more than 350,000 workers losing their jobs. The report was authored by Badger Institute visiting fellows Ike Brannon and Andrew Hanson.
The Badger Institute has received at least $14,180,000 dollars in funding from Bradley, including $375,000 in 2018. It is an “affiliate” member of the State Policy Network (SPN), the group that The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer called “a coordinated collection of corporate front groups funded and steered by cash from undisclosed conservative and corporate players.” The Bradley Foundation has also gifted millions to Marquette University, and Charles Koch has provided another $100,000.
The Koch-funded Washington Free Beacon and the Franklin News Network (formerly Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity) aided in the report’s rollout. Franklin has been praised by Bradley as an “effective” and “valuable partner” in the state, leading the foundation to give Franklin $975,500 between 2010 and 2016.
From there, the findings were reported by WXPR, the journal *Economic Policy*, and elsewhere.
Wisconsin State Representative Barbara Dittrich (R-38), Vice-Chair of the Committee on Workforce Development and member of the Committee on Labor and Integrated Employment, took to Twitter, citing the Badger Institute’s research as a cause for concern “about making things worse for workers rather than better.”
During deliberations regarding Evers’ budget before the Joint Committee on Finance (JCF) in April, Republican state legislators argued that the minimum wage increase would hurt the economy, echoing sentiments put forth by the Institute.
This is the second time the Bradley infrastructure has been deployed to oppose Governor Evers’ budget. In February 2019, Wisconsin Republican State Senators Dave Craig, Duey Stroebel, and Chris Kapenga held a news conference to unveil findings that expanding Medicaid in the state (BadgerCare) would cost taxpayers a whopping $600 million. The findings were based on a report by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy (CROWE) that experts have criticized as biased and based on flawed methodology.
Between 2011 and 2018, WILL has received $5.2 million from Bradley and CROWE $400,000 between 2017 and 2018, a CMD analysis of tax filings and annual reports concludes. Sens. Craig and Kapenga are ALEC members.
Maximum Pressure Against Minimum Wage Raises
This year’s playbook mirrors past campaigns against raising the minimum wage in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Internal Bradley files examined by CMD show that funds went to the right-wing MacIver Institute for a 2015 minimum wage report that spun low wages as somehow good for the working poor.
Nationally, Bradley IRS filings detail more than $4 million to PR spin doctor Richard Berman’s Employment Policies Institute between 2009 and 2017, an organization that spreads misinformation on minimum wage increases. Berman’s Interstate Policy Alliance (IPA), a network that serves as a “discrete channel” for providing customized studies to state groups in order “to achieve maximum credibility in local and state media outlets,” received a dedicated stream of this funding.
Bradley’s 2018 IRS filing is unavailable, but in an interesting twist, Bradley discloses in its 2018 Annual Report $625,000 “to support the Interstate Policy Alliance” through the State Policy Network, not the Employment Policies Institute.
Bradley also funded Independent Women’s Forum to develop a “toolkit” on “economic opportunity for all women (alternative to the minimum wage, deregulation, job creation).”
Badger Institute Report Conflicts with Real-World Experience
The Badger Institute’s report warns that 350,000 people could lose their jobs if Wisconsin doubles its minimum wage to $15 per hour. Leaving aside the fact that Governor Evers budget only sets up a study of a $15 minimum wage while phasing in much smaller annual increases, the experience of other states and cities that have recently increased minimum wages conflicts with that conclusion.
Governor Evers’ proposal mirrors what Wisconsin’s neighbor, Minnesota, has done over the past decades. Under Governor Mark Dayton’s leadership, Minnesota raised its minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.50 between 2014 and 2017. Yet, an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report finds that Minnesota has outperformed Wisconsin on job growth and that “on virtually every metric, workers and families in Minnesota are better off than their counterparts in Wisconsin.”
The EPI report states that the “proximity and many similarities” of the two states make them “a compelling case study for assessing which agenda leads to better outcomes for working people and their families.” EPI found little evidence in Minnesota that the “decision to raise the state minimum wage… did anything to hamper job growth.”
Similarly, a University of California Berkeley study concluded that there was “no distinguishable decrease in employment in Seattle” due to the city’s move to a $15 minimum wage. The UC Berkeley report reached similar conclusions about five other cities that raised their minimum wage and is in keeping with a past study on New Jersey and Pennsylvania wage increases.
Approval of Evers’ budget is set to continue as a bitter fight between the Democratic executive and Republican-controlled legislature, with both indicating a refusal to budge on several key issues. Unless they agree on some form of a budget before July 1, base spending levels from the previous year will continue until they do.
WISCONSIN
Supreme Court puts Republicans back on PSC
Jeffrey Tomich, E&E News reporter
Published: Thursday, May 2, 2019
Ellen Nowak is back on the job as a Wisconsin utility regulator after the state Supreme Court overturned Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' decision to rescind her appointment to the Public Service Commission.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24012019/great-lakes-governors-climate-change-clean-enegy-pipelines-michigan-illinois-attorney-general-clean-power-plan-lawsuits
Climate change poses risks to the economy and identity of a Great Lakes landscape, much of it defined by bountiful farms, pine forests and clear waters. But political leaders haven't always treated it that way.
That's starting to change as a wave of new governors and attorneys general take office across the region with promises—and actions—to address climate change.
The regional changes may signal a new dynamic for national debates, as climate policy advocates broaden their base of support to include some of the country's hubs of manufacturing and farming. It also is happening at a time of growing urgency for concerted state-level efforts on climate change in response to the federal government's push to roll back greenhouse gas emissions rules.
"It's really crucial in this time when there are so many environmental policies going the wrong way to have more hands on deck," said Kim Smaczniak, a staff attorney for Earthjustice.
This year, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin each switched from a Republican governor to a Democrat. In both Michigan and Illinois, the governors have made moves on climate change issues in their first 10 days.
Michigan and Wisconsin also have new Democratic attorneys general replacing Republicans. The upshot from the 2018 election is that Democrats now hold both the governor's and attorney general's office in six of the eight states that border the Great Lakes.
[map]
Democratic electoral waves have hit the Great Lakes region before and given hope to environmental advocates, only to be undone by later political cycles. In 2007, a group of states and a Canadian province aimed to start a cap-and-trade system for reducing carbon emissions. But their Midwest Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord ceased to function by about 2010 as newly elected officials dropped their states' support for the plan.
Today, climate change is increasingly evident in the extreme weather, heat waves and algae blooms that hurt agriculture, drinking water and tourism, as the Midwest chapter of the 2018 National Climate Assessment describes.
Falling prices for renewable power are also shifting the energy landscape. While most utilities in the region still depend heavily on coal, many are now exploring expanding their use of clean energy and retiring coal-fired power plants early. There is potential for offshore wind energy in the Great Lakes and advancements in onshore wind, solar and energy storage. And the new governors are bringing different views on the construction of fossil fuel pipelines.
"We want it to be bipartisan. We want it to be pragmatic," said Tyler Huebner, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a clean energy advocacy group. "We want it to be everyone understanding the benefits so this transition can continue unimpeded."
Michigan: Challenging a Pipeline – and Trump
The new dynamic was on display on Jan. 2, when newly elected Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer started a legal fight against Enbridge Line 5, an aging fossil fuel pipeline that passes under the Great Lakes at the Straits of Mackinac.
She sent a letter to state Attorney General Dana Nessel seeking a legal opinion that could help to undo a plan to replace the pipeline. Nessel is also brand new to the job, and, like Whitmer, very different from her Republican predecessor.
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Wisconsin: Changing the Tone After Walker
At a renewable energy conference last week, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers also spoke about the need to address climate change.
"We shouldn't have to choose between investing in new industries and protecting our natural resources like our land, rivers and waters," Evers said.
His predecessor, Republican Scott Walker, was criticized during his tenure for ignoring climate change and for downplaying humans' role in causing it....