Monthly Archives: November, 2022

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s new wolf hunt plan doesn’t include a target number for the state’s wolf population.

The Department of Natural Resources on Thursday unveiled its new plan.

“The proposed draft Wolf Management Plan reflects the detailed and significant work done by DNR staff to ensure the health and stability of Wisconsin’s wolf population,” DNR Secretary Preston D. Cole said in a statement.

Wisconsin’s current wolf management plan has not changed since 2007, and has been a source of friction between hunters and environmentalists.

Perhaps the biggest change in the new wolf plan is the end to a specific number for Wisconsin’s wolf population.

“Moving away from a single numeric population goal and instead using an adaptive management process focused on balancing the [DNR’s] three main objectives,” the agency said in a news release.

Those main objectives include:

Ensuring a healthy and sustainable wolf population to fulfill its ecological role.Addressing and reducing wolf-related conflicts.Providing multiple benefits associated with the wolf population, including hunting, trapping and sightseeing.

While there is a hunting and trapping season included in the new wolf management plan, DNR is proposing that it be limited.

The plan calls for “reducing harvest registration times and issuing zone-specific wolf harvest permits to improve the department’s ability to effectively meet harvest quotas.”

There’s also a suggestion to “mechanisms to address localized concerns, including wolf harvest concerns near tribal reservation boundaries and focused wolf harvest in areas with a history of wolf-livestock conflict.” And revise “wolf management zone boundaries to better reflect current wolf distribution and habitat.”

There’s now a 60-day comment period before the plan can go to the DNR Board for a vote.

(The Center Square) – The top Republican in the Wisconsin Assembly says he’s willing to work on “solutions” with Gov. Tony Evers.

Speaker Robin Vos on Thursday said he sees Republicans offering the governor compromises on abortion, school choice and taxes.

“I think when you look at where we are, we need to make some potential changes to the 1849 [abortion] law. One of the things that I want to make sure of is that we have a law that can withstand court challenges,” Vos told News Talk 1130 WISN’s Jay Weber Thursday morning. “When Tony Evers said he wouldn’t even consider making exceptions for rape and incest because he wants radical, up until birth abortion laws, let’s put something in front of him and see if he really believes that.”

The governor said during the recent campaign that he wouldn’t sign an abortion exemption law because it would continue to ban most abortions in the state.

Many other Republicans in the legislature have said they have no plans to change Wisconsin’s abortion law, including the leader of the state Senate.

Vos also said he could see offering the governor a compromise on school choice.

“I want universal school choice, he wants more money for schools,” Vos explained. “That probably means we get both. We’re probably not going to do one or the other.”

Vos sees the same kind of possible agreement on taxes.

“He wants more money for government, I want more money in the hands of the people,” Vos added. “Maybe we can find a way to thread the needle, with most of the surplus going back to people but some of it going back to law enforcement at the local level. I think there should be things that we can find consensus on.”

Vos did warn that it could take a while to find a balance with the governor.

Gov. Evers bragged during his campaign about blocking Republican ideas. Evers vetoed more pieces of legislation, nearly 150 pieces, than any other governor in state history.

During his victory speech Tuesday, Evers hinted that he wants to invest more in public schools in the state and focus on climate change and green energy during his second term.

Lawmakers return to the Capitol for a new session in January.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ sweeping win in Florida on Tuesday has propelled his stature in the Republican Party just as candidates backed by former President Donald Trump struggled on election day, setting a more favorable stage for DeSantis ahead of a potential 2024 presidential primary matchup.

DeSantis won his gubernatorial race in 2018 by about 33,000 votes. This time around, with 99% of the total reporting, DeSantis leads his Democrat opponent by more than 1.5 million votes.

DeSantis’ win validated his brand of economically strong, anti-COVID restriction politics with an edge on culture war issues. He hammered home that message in his victory speech Tuesday night.

"We have embraced freedom,” DeSantis said. “We have maintained law and order. We have protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers, and we reject woke ideology ... We will never ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die!"

Miami-Dade County supported Hillary Clinton by 29 points in 2016 but swung hard for DeSantis this year. DeSantis won that county by about 11 points.

Miami-Dade and other regions showed an impressive number of Hispanic voters side with DeSantis, a fact that would be crucial in a potential general election in 2024.

Meanwhile, Trump’s candidates did not fare as well. Candidates like Dr. Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker, celebrities backed by Trump, struggled Tuesday. Oz lost his race, and Walker is headed for a Dec. 6 runoff.

One outspoken Trump supporter, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., is trailing as her race is near a dead tie and comes down to the wire.

“There’s no question this was a bad election for Donald Trump,” said Asher Hildebrand, former Capitol Hill Chief of Staff and current associate professor of the practice at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. “With the possible exception of Kari Lake in Arizona and Herschel Walker in Georgia, every governor and Senate candidate he endorsed in five main battleground states appears to have lost.

“…That combined with DeSantis’ strong showing in the Florida governor’s race increases pressure among Republican elites to find another standard bearer in 2024,” he added.

Others echoed that message.

“An election where Oz and Walker narrowly lose and where DeSantis romps by 20 points is the worst possible night for Trump and the best possible night for DeSantis,” Patrick Ruffini, a pollster for Echelon Insights, wrote on Twitter.

Likely aware of this narrative, Trump posted on TruthSocial Wednesday afternoon attacking DeSantis, whom he recently nicknamed “DeSanctimonious.”

During his 2016 primary campaign, Trump belittled his GOP rivals with crude nicknames.

“Now that the Election in Florida is over, and everything went quite well, shouldn’t it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 Million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 Million to 4.6 Million? Just asking?”

The stocks for TruthSocial’s merger partner, Digital World Acquisition Corp, dipped roughly 20% after Trump’s candidates did not fare well.

“While in certain ways yesterday’s election was somewhat disappointing, from my personal standpoint it was a very big victory – 219 WINS and 16 Losses in the General - Who has ever done better than that?” Trump wrote on the platform Wednesday.

Other analysts pointed out that regardless of whether Trump is the nominee in 2024, his style of politics isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“There may be an end of Trump but there won’t be an end of Trumpism,” said Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor and associate chair in Duke's Department of History.

(The Center Square) – The next four years at the Wisconsin Capitol are likely to be the same as the last four years.

Governor Evers took the governor's mansion. The Republicans held on to the legislature, but fell just short of a supermajority.

That means the same kind of split government that Wisconsin has seen for the past four years.

“Republicans won't have a supermajority in the state Assembly. Gov. Evers' veto pen is secure,” Wisconsin Democratic Party boss Ben Wikler said on Twitter after Tuesday’s election.

Republicans needed to flip one seat in the State Senate to get to a supermajority, they did that by winning Democratic Senate Minority Leader Janet Bewley’s seat in far northwestern Wisconsin. She didn’t run again.

Republicans needed to take five seats in the Assembly in order to get a supermajority there. They grabbed three seats.

The top Democrat in the Assembly, Rep. Greta Neubauer, said stopping a Republican supermajority is something to celebrate.

“With the governor’s veto power intact, Republicans in the legislature will be prevented from turning Wisconsin into ground zero for dismantling our democracy,” Neubauer said.

Gov. Evers made his veto power an issue in the campaign for governor, bragging that he vetoed more pieces of legislation than any other governor in Wisconsin history.

He scuttled nearly 150 different pieces of legislation passed by Republican lawmakers.

But Evers’ veto power will not stop Republicans from controlling the state budget.

Republicans ignored the governor’s first two budget proposals, both of which included billion-dollar-plus tax increases and several billion dollars more in spending.

The legislature will get to work on a new state budget when lawmakers return in January.

While Gov. Evers won comfortably over Republican Tim Michels, and Attorney General Josh Kaul narrowly won over Republican Eric Toney, the state’s race for Secretary of State remained too close to call Wednesday. Early vote totals also suggest that Republican John Lieber won the little-noticed race for Wisconsin Treasurer.

(The Center Square) – Tony Evers celebrated his victory after winning a second term as Wisconsin governor early Wednesday morning by telling his supporters that some people called him boring during the campaign, but he said it didn’t matter.

“You know what Wisconsin? As it turns out, boring wins,” Evers said.

Evers comfortably beat Republican Tim Michels, grabbing 51% of the vote.

Evers said Democrats “showed up” on Election Day.

“You showed up for reproductive rights and the freedom for you and your neighbors to make their own health care decisions,” the governor said during his victory speech. “You showed-up for our kids, our educators, and our public schools…You showed up for LGBT folks and trans kids who want to be safe and who they are in our state. You showed up for conservation, for clean energy, to take climate change seriously, and a future that doesn’t treat protecting our environment and good-paying jobs like they are mutually exclusive.”

Michels’ concession speech was brief, more of an acknowledgement that “the math doesn’t add up.”

“In hindsight looking back I don't know what we would have done differently. It was a very spirited effort,” Michels told his supporters. “But it wasn’t our night tonight.”

Evers is the first Wisconsin governor in nearly 30 years to be re-elected while his party sits in the White House.

He won thanks in part to a huge voter turnout in Dane County. Election managers there said nearly 90% of voters cast a ballot.

But Evers also picked-up votes in traditional Republican strongholds. Michels got fewer votes in many WOW county communities than Scott Walker did four years ago.

Evers’ victory did not come cheap.

Wisconsin’s race for governor was the most expensive in the nation, with a total price tag of at least $115 million.

Evers was not the only Democrat to win statewide, however. Late numbers gave Josh Kaul a win in the race for Wisconsin Attorney General. Those same numbers also showed Doug LaFollette winning another term as Secretary of State.

Earlier vote counts had Republicans winning both of those seats.

(The Center Square) – It’s all over but the official final count in Wisconsin’s race for U.S. Senate.

Democrat Mandela Barnes conceded the race Wednesday morning.

"Unfortunately, we didn’t get over the finish line this time," Barnes told reporters. "But just because we didn’t get across the finish line that doesn’t mean that it’s over."

Barnes added "I've fought the good fight. I've run my race. I've kept the faith."

Barnes’ concession came after the last votes were counted in Milwaukee County early Wednesday morning.

Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson said while the vote total is not official yet, there are not enough votes for Barnes to snag a last-second victory.

"There is no path mathematically for Lt. Gov. Barnes to overcome his 27,374 vote deficit. This race is over," Johnson said Wednesday morning.

Johnson went to bed earlier Wednesday telling his supporters the same thing.

“This race is over,” he said.

Johnson’s victory keeps Wisconsin’s Senate seat in Republican hands, and brings the GOP another step closer to a 50-50 split, or even a 51-49 lead. Nevada and Arizona remained too close to call early Wednesday, and Georgia’ Senate election appears headed for a December run-off.

Johnson said his win is a victory for the truth.

“I do believe, this time, that truth has prevailed over the lies, over the character assassination,” Johnson told his supporters early Wednesday morning. “But I will say it’s still a little close. And that’s a little depressing isn’t it?”

He added more later during an interview with News Talk 1130 WISN’s Dan O’Donnell.

"I don’t know how bad it can get before people who vote for these Democrat officials and Democrat policies are going to wake up and realize this is not good for America," Johnson said.

The race between Johnson and Barnes was one of the most expensive Senate races in the entire country.

Open Secrets says Johnson spent over $28 million in the race, and Barnes spent $32 million. There was another $125 million in outside money spent on ads in the race for and against each candidate.

(The Center Square) – A judge will not delay counting military ballots in Wisconsin.

A Waukesha County judge on Monday refused to sequester military ballots until they can be verified.

I felt that that was a drastic remedy, that I felt that it was at least at a minimum a temporary disenfranchisement of our military voters’ votes to say, 'let’s put them on hold and let’s figure out after the fact whether or not there’s bad votes cast,'” Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Maxwell said in his ruling from the bench.

State Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, asked the judge to intervene after she got three fake military ballots in the mail last week. She said she wanted to make sure that only military members were casting military ballots.

Wisconsin law allows military members to request a ballot online without having to register first or show any kind of voter ID.

The Thomas More Society joined the case as well, asking the judge for a temporary restraining order.

The judge’s decision means that military ballots will be counted, even though there are questions surrounding them in the state. A now-former Milwaukee elections official, Kimberly Zapata, is facing charges. The city’s mayor says she admitted to creating the fake ballots and sending them to Brandtjen, though it's unclear why.

Attorneys arguing against the sequestration of ballots argued in court that not counting the ballots would do little to stop what Zapata did.

Wisconsin’s Election Commission on Monday said there has not been a spike in military ballots in the state for this election.

WEC told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that there were around 2,700 military ballots requested for the 2018 election. About 1,500 were returned. This year, WEC said 2,747 military ballots have been requested, around 1,400 have been returned so far.

(The Center Square) – The slivers of information that Reince Priebus is seeing in Wisconsin has him expecting Republican wins up and down the ballot.

Priebus, who used to lead both the Wisconsin Republican Party and the RNC, told Jay Weber on News Talk 1130 WISN Monday that data collected by both organization shows independent and undecided voters breaking for Republicans.

“They are leaning overwhelmingly to Tim Michels and Ron Johnson,” Priebus explained. “When given the choice between Tony Evers and Mandela Barnes on the issues of education and crime – and in the case of Ron Johnson, inflation, gas, groceries – all of these things that are at the forefront of voters’ minds, by a longshot the Republicans are doing much better.”

Priebus says he doesn’t have an early or absentee vote count in the state, but said Republicans appear to be doing better than in 2020 when there was a flood of Democrats who voted early.

Priebus said Republicans, by and large, do most of their voting on Election Day.

Polls show both the race for U.S. Senate and governor in Wisconsin are essentially tied, though the last Marquette Law School Poll did give Ron Johnson a slight, two-point lead.

Priebus said if the polls show Michels and Johnson that close, it could be a comfortable victory for Republicans in Wisconsin.

“Look at Real Clear Politics, look at Walker-Evers in 2018. [Gov. Walker] out-performed that average,” Priebus said. “He was minus-two-and-a-half, minus-three, minus-four. Leading up to the election there were polls that had him minus-five, minus-six, minus-seven. Republicans don’t underperform in public polls.”

Gov. Walker lost that 2018 race by about 40,000 votes, which is a 1% spread.

Priebus said he will be watching voter data from East coast states to see if Republicans are going to have a good night Tuesday. But he said Wisconsin voters should watch three specific counties.

“I’d look at Brown County. I’d look to see how that’s breaking,” Priebus explained. “Then I’d combine Racine and Kenosha. If you look at those two counties in combination … if they are going for Ron Johnson and Tim Michels, forget about it. It’s done.”

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blasted a recently uncovered research program after reporting showed more than a million dollars in taxpayer funds were appropriated to find evidence that racism is to blame for poor sleep in minority communities.

“Critical Race Theory is a Marxist ideology based on bigotry and lies,” Cruz said.

Cruz’ comments come after The Center Square reported on the funding, which totaled nearly $1.2 million over three years. Cruz argued these health research funds would be better used finding medical cures.

“The National Institutes of Health should use taxpayer dollars to conduct actual scientific and health research in an effort to find real solutions and real cures,” Cruz said. “It’s outrageous that Democrats are sullying those efforts and funding the radical left’s poisonous agenda.”

The funding was allocated to Dr. Alexander Tsai, an associate professor at Harvard University who is carrying out the study through Massachusetts General Hospital, where he works as a psychiatrist.

According to grant documents in the federal database, the researchers’ hypothesis is that the disparity in sleep health in the Black community is “thought to be explained partially by experiences of interpersonal racial discrimination.”

“This application focuses on police use of deadly force on unarmed black Americans as a cardinal manifestation of structural racism,” the grant summary in the NIH database reads. “The central hypothesis is that police use of deadly force on unarmed black Americans leads to unhealthy sleep among other black Americans in the general U.S. population. This hypothesis has been formulated on the basis of strong preliminary data showing that police use of deadly force on unarmed black Americans leads to poor mental health among other black Americans in the general U.S. population.”

As the Center Square previously reported, NIH awarded $460,656 to Tsai in 2020, $439,970 in 2021, and $273,625 in 2022 for the research effort, which is titled “Racial disparities in police use of deadly force as a cause of racial disparities in sleep health across the life course.”

Other critics told The Center Square that the study is based on a false premise that doesn’t account for a myriad of other factors.

“It assumes that there is structural racism,” said Mike Gonzalez, an expert on critical race theory and diversity issues at the Heritage Foundation. “It assumes that the disparities are caused by structural racism and not a panoply of other reasons. There could be many, many hundreds of reasons why these disparities exist. That is the main problem with critical race theory … the disparities are real, but then it says well, the disparities are prima facie evidence that structural racism exists. … It’s not binary. There are decisions that people make. There are bad schools. There are problems with family formation.

“There are many, many things that could cause the disparities and by focusing on the ghost of structural racism, none of the other more practical reasons are explored and the problem never gets fixed,” he added.

Tsai has defended the program, saying “the study seems neither unsubstantiated nor grounded in racial ideology.” He also said the “public health significance” of the research justifies the taxpayer funding.

When asked whether lifestyle choices could be to blame for the sleep issues in his research, Tsai pointed out his study doesn’t address that but that it could be difficult to take that into account because those lifestyle choices could also be caused by racism.

“I think it would be a reasonable scientific undertaking to attempt to quantify and compare the magnitudes of the impacts of structural racism on sleep health vs. the impacts of certain health behaviors or health risk behaviors on sleep health,” Tsai said. “From an epidemiological perspective, one of the potential problems you might encounter is that both sleep health and these behaviors could have a common cause in structural racism (or, alternatively, these health behaviors or health risk behaviors could lie in the causal pathway between structural racism and sleep health). For example, if structural racism has a causal influence on alcohol consumption, and some threshold level of alcohol consumption is thought to have an adverse causal influence on sleep health, then it would be a difficult undertaking to make a direct comparison between the racism-sleep association vs. the alcohol-sleep association.”

Election day comes Tuesday, putting a range of major issues up for grabs as both parties battle for control of the House, Senate and gubernatorial races around the country.

The latest polling shows a tight but favorable electoral landscape for Republicans. FiveThirtyEight’s analysis and compilation of generic polls found voters overall prefer that Republicans control Congress by 1.2%.

Real Clear Politics’ polling projects Republicans will pick up four Senate seats, three governorships and roughly 31 House seats. RCP has Republicans up 2.8% on the generic ballot, while a Yahoo News-YouGov poll released Thursday has Democrats up by 2%.

This year’s midterm elections put several key issues up for grabs, including the future of many judicial nominees and the several-trillion dollars in congressional spending that kicked off during the pandemic and pushed the federal debt to more than $31 trillion this year.

On top of that, Republican lawmakers have laid out dozens of investigations since President Joe Biden took office on a range of topics, from federal funding of the controversial Wuhan lab some say was the origin of the COVID-19 virus, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s role in the pandemic, the Department of Homeland Security’s increasingly more aggressive censorship efforts with big tech, Hunter Biden’s affairs, and more. If Republicans win a majority, their investigations will have teeth.

“Everything is trending toward a Republican takeover of both chambers of Congress,” said Colin Reed, a Republican strategist, former campaign manager for Senator Scott Brown, R-Mass., and co-founder of South and Hill Strategies. “If the GOP does regain control, voters will expect them to deliver where the current leaders haven’t: tackling inflation, reducing the costs of energy and restoring a sense of confidence that is sorely missing right now.”

Close races are scattered in states around the country, taking the lion’s share of media attention and campaign dollars.

In Pennsylvania, Republican nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz has gained on John Fetterman in the Senate race there as Fetterman’s difficulty communicating after a stroke have come into the spotlight, in part because of a recent difficult debate. Polling has the two candidates tied just a few days out.

In Georgia, Republican nominee Herschel Walker has managed to stay competitive in his toss-up Senate race with Raphael Warnock despite accusations that Walker paid for two abortions years ago. Walker has denied those allegations. RCP has Walker up by 0.4%.

Senate races in New Hampshire, Nevada, and Arizona, among others, are close races as well.

Gubernatorial races have garnered national attention and may be creating rising stars within the respective parties. In Arizona, Republican nominee Kari Lake has drawn attention for her contentious interactions with the press, in particular over election integrity in a swing state that was at the center of the challenges to the 2020 presidential election results. RCP has Lake up by 1.8% against the Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs.

Wisconsin’s incumbent Democratic Governor Tony Evers is fending off Republican challenger Tim Michels in a nearly tied race, one of several tight gubernatorial contests.

Democrats saw a real chance of maintaining control of the House of Representatives after a surge in engagement following the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade earlier this year, but that support has dwindled since then.

A top issue in all these races is the economy. The U.S. Gross Domestic Product declined for two consecutive quarters earlier this year, the standard definition of a recession. The latest federal inflation data showed producer and consumer goods rose more than 8% in the last year, far outpacing wage gains. Gas prices hit a record higher over the summer, topping $5 per gallon. Despite a decline in gas prices since then, they remain higher than when President Joe Biden took office.

Reed said those economic issues would likely boost many Republicans to victory on election day.

“The 2022 midterm is shaping to end as it started: with a rout of the party in charge and a sizable GOP wave. With nearly every imaginable economic metric trending in the wrong direction, this election could not come at a worse time for the Democrats, who are out of time addressing the uncertainty hanging over everyone’s lives,” Reed said. “It’s hard to scare voters about what the out party might do when the current Congress has offered absolutely nothing in the way of an economic future.”

Polling data backs up that Americans are concerned about the economy. A Gallup survey from October showed 46% of Americans pointed to an economic issue as the “most important problem” facing the nation with 20% citing inflation and 18% picking the economy overall. For comparison, only 3% of Americans chose abortion and another 4% chose crime.

(The Center Square) – The Republican lawmaker who received fake military ballots in the mail says she isn’t sure they were sent to help.

Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, on Friday said the Democrats who run Milwaukee’s Elections Commission “ are not my friends.”

“If I did not know better, and I’m not really good at being a victim, I think this is more a case of some people trying to get some revenge,” Brandtjen said.

Milwaukee’s mayor on Thursday fired the city’s deputy elections director, Kimberly Zapata, after he said she admitted to ordering three fake military ballots and sending them to Brandtjen.

“These are the same people who I’ve [filed] open records requests on for [The Center for Tech and Civic Life] for at least 18 months,” Brandtjen explained. “Why would she risk her job, her pension, embarrassment, jail? All she had to do is pick up the phone and tell me this.”

Brandtjen added that she didn’t know Wisconsin’s MyVote system had a military ballot loophole until she got the ballots. Wisconsin law doesn’t require military members to register to vote or submit any form of photo ID in order to get a ballot.

Brandtjen said it’s not only disgusting that the woman allegedly faked military ballots, what she called stolen valor. She said it’s one more example of how the state’s voter system is open to the opportunity for voter fraud.

A Racine County man, Harry Wait, is facing charges there after he admitted to requesting ballots back in July for Wisconsin’s Assembly Speaker and Racine’s mayor. Brandtjen said another state lawmaker had someone request his primary ballot as well. And there are the unanswered questions about the Zuckerbucks, Democracy in the Park, and indefinitely confined voters that Brandtjen has been investigating since last year.

“Unfortunately, what we’ve seen so far, it’s literally as if someone has gone through our election laws and said ‘These are the loopholes we’re going to take advantage of,’,” Brandtjen added.

She said Wisconsin’s election loopholes and unanswered questions won’t be resolved until Republican lawmakers in Madison take action, hopefully with a new Republican governor after next week’s elections.