Yearly Archives: 2023

(The Center Square) – The future of Wisconsin’s elections administrator is likely headed for a couple of untested legal arguments.

The Wisconsin Senate on Wednesday approved a resolution that will try and force a confirmation vote on Meagan Wolfe from the Wisconsin Elections Commission. That resolution came immediately after Democratic members of the Elections Commission refused to approve Wolfe for a second term as election administrator specifically to avoid that Senate vote.

Rick Esenberg, general counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said both the Senate and the Elections Commission are banking on unique interpretations of state law and a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision.

“Democrats are trying to use [the Prehn case] to say that they can’t even vote on Wolfe because there is no vacancy…Now that position is, in and of itself, nonsense because it would leave the limitation of Wolfe's term to four years out of the statute,” Esenberg explained. “It would mean anytime there is an administrator who doesn’t want to leave, there’s no vacancy, and WEC can’t take a vote to replace that person. That is obviously not what the legislature intended.”

Esenberg said the Senate Republicans legal theory, that three elections commissioners voted for Wolfe, while none voted against her, thereby giving her a unanimous appointment is likely also not correct either. Esenberg said state law requires a two-thirds vote from the Elections Commission, which would be four votes.

Esenberg said the Democrats on the Elections Commission are, essentially, trying to game the system.

“This deadlock has been created artificially by the Democrats because they think it strengthens their legal position, and allows them to get this issue into court rather than have it go before the Senate or the Joint Committee on Legislative Organization,” Esenbeg said. “In my mind, it’s just another example of a problem that we have in the country. And that is people lose sight of their institutional role. And the institutional role of the Elections Commission is not to do what’s best for Democrats. It’s to do their jobs.”

Esenberg said by playing political games with its administrator, the Elections Commission is making it look like it is playing political games with Wisconsin’s electoral system.

“It looks like they are not honest brokers. It looks like they are just trying to do whatever will advance their side. And that’s not healthy,” Esenberg added. “And having a system which is perceived by the public as not healthy is a far bigger issue than whether Meagan Wolfe gets to continue as election administrator.”

Many Senate Republicans, and at least one Senate Democrat have promised to vote against Wolfe if her nomination comes before the Senate. They all continue to be unhappy with how Wolfe handled the 2020 election in Wisconsin.

No one is saying just when the Senate will vote on Wolfe, or when the first court case in the matter could be filed.

(The Center Square) – The majority of Wisconsin Republican state senators are on board with the new $99 billion state budget.

Almost every Republican voted for the two-year spending plan Thursday night.

"Overall, our budget invests in core priorities and returns a record amount of money back to the taxpayers,” Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu told lawmakers during the vote.

The budget spends $1 billion more on public schools in Wisconsin, increases pay for state workers, and earmarks hundreds of millions of dollars for road and bridge projects across the state.

The spending plan also includes a $4.4 billion tax cut, but Gov. Tony Evers may veto that out of the new budget.

Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, was one of two Republicans to vote against the new budget. He said it simply spends too much.

“The 2023-25 budget … will total more than $99 billion in spending (All Funds) for a state of only 5.9 million people. This is a $10.3 billion increase over the current budget (ALL Funds) or about an 11.7% growth in spending,” Nass said. “The budget submitted by the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) will take this state from a $7 billion structural balance to a $2.5 billion structural deficit at the start of the next budget period on July 1, 2025.”

Democrats in the State Senate also voted against the budget, because they say it doesn't spend enough.

“[Republicans] voted to turn their backs on families, on parents, and on children. And instead, they voted for a massive tax break for the wealthy. That will ensure that we cannot fund programs like childcare counts in the future,” Sen. Mark Spritzer, D--Beloit, said.

The budget also includes a $32 million cut to the University of Wisconsin aimed at the University of Wisconsin System’s diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Gov. Evers had threatened to veto the budget because of that cut, but over the weekend softened on that stance because lawmakers are giving the university a chance to spend the money elsewhere.

The State Assembly next takes up the budget Thursday afternoon.

After that, the spending plan will head to the governor’s desk for his signature or veto.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s race-based affirmative action admission policies violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Separate 6-3 and 6-2 rulings upend years of common practice at higher educational institutions around the nation and could have a major impact on how colleges discriminate based on race, and whether schools that have refused to do so can now receive federal funding. The courts three liberal justices – Elana Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented in the 6-3 ruling. Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case because she previously served on Harvard's board of overseers.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, saying that the court previously allowed for race-based policies in narrow circumstances and for limited time frames but that the current practices have far exceeded those parameters.

“University programs must comply with strict scrutiny, they may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and – at some point – they must end,” he wrote. “Respondents’ admissions systems – however well intentioned and implemented in good faith – fail each of these criteria. They must therefore be invalidated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

As The Center Square previously reported, the race-based admissions policies at Harvard and the UNC were challenged in two separate cases that were combined before the high court.

The nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions filed the lawsuits against Harvard and UNC in 2014, arguing that the policies were unfair to Asian and white students, who are disproportionately negatively impacted by the policies.

SFFA claims 20,000 members comprised of “students, parents, and others who believe that racial classifications and preferences in college admissions are unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.”

Higher educational institutions have considered race as a factor in admissions to promote a more racially diverse campus. The defendants in this case argued before the Supreme Court that the practice was standard in the field and that precedent was on their side, pointing to Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 case that allowed higher education institutions to consider race as a factor in admissions.

“Having failed to make the case that Harvard’s admissions practices contravene the court’s precedents governing the use of race in admissions, SFFA asks the court to overthrow them,” Harvard wrote in a filing last year. “But SFFA offers no legitimate justification for such an extraordinary step.”

Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion, saying that Thursday’s ruling flew in the face of previous court precedent.

“At bottom, the six unelected members of today’s majority upend the status quo based on their policy preferences about what race in America should be like, but is not, and their preferences for a veneer of colorblindness in a society where race has always mattered and continues to matter in fact and in law,” she wrote.

The majority opinion did make clear that there is an allowance for discussion of race and its impact on a student’s life in their application.

"Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent's assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today," Roberts wrote.

Edward Blum, president of SFFA, has pushed for years for fairness in admissions, saying earlier last year when the high court agreed to take up the case that “Harvard and the University of North Carolina have racially gerrymandered their freshman classes in order to achieve prescribed racial quotas.

“Every college applicant should be judged as a unique individual, not as some representative of a racial or ethnic group,” he added.

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin state Supreme Court’s ruling has given officers across the state the authority to search an individual in a vehicle if they smell marijuana, even though substances now deemed legal in the state can have a similar scent.

By a narrow 4-3 margin, the court’s conservative majority ruled that Marshfield officers were within their legal authority to search Quaheem Moore in 2019 after pulling him over for speeding and then detecting the smell of cannabis emanating from the vehicle. The state high court’s ruling overturns lower court rulings that found officers had no way of knowing for certain if what they were smelling was an illegal substance.

During the stop four years ago, Moore told officers that a vaping device he had contained CBD and that the rental vehicle belonged to his brother. As the legal proceedings played out, Moore argued that officers never smelled marijuana on him and had no reason to believe he was directly responsible for the smell.

Moore was formally hit with possession of narcotics charges after officers reportedly found small bags of cocaine and fentanyl in his pockets. With possession of marijuana not being among the charges he faced, Moore’s legal team argued that because police did not smell marijuana on him and given the legality of substances like CBD and hemp, officers did not have probable cause to conduct the search and that any drugs found as part of it should not be allowed as evidence.

In rendering the court’s majority opinion, Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote that with Moore being the only person in the vehicle, it was safe for officers to assume that he “was probably connected with the illegal substance the officers identified.”

The ruling comes as the latest twist in the ongoing battle between Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the state over the issue of legalizing marijuana, with the court’s three liberal judges immediately blasting the ruling as outdated and not accounting for all the possibilities.

“Officers who believe they smell marijuana coming from a vehicle may just as likely be smelling raw or smoked hemp, which is not criminal activity,” Justice Rebecca Frank Dallet wrote in a dissenting opinion.

Soon after the verdict was made public, Moore’s attorney Joshua Hargrove also warned “this opinion could subject more citizens engaged in lawful behavior to arrest.”

For years now, marijuana has been legal in neighboring states Illinois and Michigan, but with Republicans in firm control of the state legislature in Wisconsin, attempts by Gov. Tony Evers to legalize the drug have been rejected.

(The Center Square) – There are celebrations and concerns from Wisconsin’s advocates and elected officials on the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision.

The United States Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade one year ago this past Friday, returning the question of abortion to the states.

In Wisconsin that meant going back to the state’s 1849 law that bans almost all abortions in the state.

That was a theme from abortion rights supporters who marked the one-year anniversary of Dobbs with a call to action.

“For the past year, we have been living with fewer rights than we had 13 months ago, and millions of people are being denied essential health care and personal freedoms on a daily basis,” Lucy Ripp, a spokesperson for A Better Wisconsin Together, said. “As we reflect on the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that set us back 50 years, A Better Wisconsin Together is calling for immediate action to restore abortion rights in Wisconsin and nation-wide.”

“Politicians have absolutely no place playing the role of doctors. Abortion care is health care and I, along with the vast majority of Wisconsinites, believe that safe, comprehensive reproductive care should be accessible to all women, just like it had been for nearly 50 years,” Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard, D-Madison, said in a statement.

“Since the Supreme Court’s radical decision to repeal Roe v. Wade, we have seen women and girls in dire situations because of this ruling. We have seen young girls, who were victims of rape, forced to travel across state lines to access abortion care. We have seen women near death, experiencing sepsis with doctors in legal limbo afraid to care for their patients,” U.S. Rep Gwen Moore said on Monday. “We have seen women hustle up money to fly across the country to receive the abortion care they need. Before Roe, I was one of those women who relied on a network of middle-class women to receive an abortion in New York. I never imagined that reproductive rights would be rolled back more than 50 years.”

But Wisconsin’s pro-life supporters took time to praise the Dobbs decision.

““We celebrate the lives that have been saved post-Dobbs, and also recognize that our work is not done. More women than ever before in our state are in need of comprehensive resources and support when facing an unexpected or challenging pregnancy,” Gracie Skogman, Wisconsin Right to Life’s legislative director said. “Pregnancy help centers across Wisconsin have seen a massive increase in clients, and the need has never been greater. It is our duty as pro-life advocates to continue to ensure that mothers and their preborn children are provided with full support and resources.”

The future of abortion in Wisconsin remains in limbo.

A Dane County judge has yet to rule on a lawsuit from Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul that challenges the 1849 law. That lawsuit is expected to eventually end up before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which will by then have a liberal majority because of Janet Protasiewicz’s win in the spring.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s attorney general is dialing up the pressure this week in an effort to get Republican lawmakers to include his Office of School Safety in the next state budget.

“This is not about affordability,” Kaul told reporters at the statehouse on Monday. “The Office of School Safety can be funded for the next two years for less than one-tenth or 1% of our state’s budget surplus.”

Kaul said it’s about priorities.

Wisconsin lawmakers created the Office of School Safety back in 2018 with a $1.8 million federal grant. Lawmakers used $2 million in coronavirus stimulus money to pay for the office in the last state budget.

Kaul said lawmakers have yet to include more money for the office in the next state budget.

“The current budget would effectively dismantle the Office of School Safety,” Kaul claimed. “The budget includes 3.8 positions for that office. And just to put that into perspective, there are nine people who staff the 24/7 tip line alone.”

Kaul is not saying just how much more he is looking for, either in terms of money or people.

The Republican-controlled legislature is expected to finalize the state budget this week.

“I’ve personally met with every member of the Joint Finance Committee, and we’ve talked about the importance of the Office of School Safety,” Kaul said. “We really are at, really, the critical point where we will see in the days ahead the final decisions made on the budget.”

Republicans haven’t said why the new budget trims the funding for the school safety office, but Republicans have been clear that Gov. Evers’ original budget proposal spent too much.

State Rep. Deb Andraca, D-Whitefish Bay, reiterated Kaul’s point that this is not about money.

“More than 1,700 schools and law enforcement agencies in 63 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties have received at least one tip [to the tip line]. The hotline has received more than 7,000 contacts, half of them in the 2022-2023 school year alone,” Andraca said.

The Wisconsin Senate is expected to take its final budget votes on Wednesday, though it's not known when the Assembly will take its votes.

Enticing illegal immigration isn’t protected free speech, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.

In United States v Hansen, in a 7-2 vote, the court on Friday reversed and remanded the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, citing the arguments made by 25 Republican attorneys general in an amicus brief filed by the court.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Thomas filed a concurring opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

At issue is whether the federal prohibition on “encouraging” or “inducing” unlawful immigration for commercial advantage or private financial gain violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The court ruled it does not.

A California resident, Helaman Hansen, ran a “scam,” the Supreme Court ruled, profiting $2 million by soliciting and “advising” foreign nationals who were illegally in the U.S. on how to obtain U.S. citizenship. He was convicted and sentenced for violating federal law, including on two counts of encouraging or inducing illegal immigration for private financial gain under 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) (the “encouragement provision”) and (B)(i).

The encouragement provision of 8 U.S.C. makes it a felony to “encourage[] or induce[] an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.” Violating it carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, which can be increased to a maximum of 10 years when the violation is committed “for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain.”

“Helaman Hansen promised hundreds of noncitizens a path to U. S. citizenship through ‘adult adoption,’” the Supreme Court ruling states. “But that was a scam. Though there is no path to citizenship through ‘adult adoption,’ Hansen earned nearly $2 million from his scheme. The United States charged Hansen with, inter alia, violating 8 U. S. C. §1324(a)(1)(A)(iv), which forbids ‘encourag[ing] or induc[ing] an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such [activity] is or will be in violation of law.’

“Hansen was convicted and moved to dismiss the clause (iv) charges on First Amendment overbreadth grounds. The District Court rejected Hansen’s argument, but the Ninth Circuit concluded that clause (iv) was unconstitutionally overbroad. “Held: Because §1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) forbids only the purposeful solicitation and facilitation of specific acts known to violate federal law, the clause is not unconstitutionally overbroad.”

In response to the ruling, Montana Attorney General Ashton Knudsen, who led a coalition of attorneys general in filing a brief with the court, said he was “glad to see the Supreme Court agree with our position and uphold the law.” They filed the brief because the “border crisis and illegal immigration are causing massive economic, social, and financial burdens on states across the country,” he said.

Joining Knudsen were the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

They also filed the brief expressing concerns that the Ninth Circuit ruling “threatens widespread uncertainty in the states’ ability to enforce their criminal laws that use” the terms “encouraging” or “inducing.” Such laws govern solicitation, prostitution, and sexual abuse of children in Montana, for example, or capital felony or felony of the first degree and smuggling of persons, including concealing, harboring or shielding victims from detection, in Texas.

The ACLU, which co-represented Hansen, made an unconvincing argument that 8 U.S.C.’s encouragement provision violates the First Amendment “because it criminalizes a wide swathe of constitutionally protected speech.”

After the ruling, Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said the court “drastically limited the encouragement provision to apply only to intentional solicitation or facilitation of immigration law violations. As written by Congress, the law has left people wondering what they can safely say on the subject of immigration. Now we expect the government to respect free speech rights and only enforce the law narrowly going forward.”

The arraignment for the valet to former President Donald Trump was delayed Tuesday.

Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet who is accused of moving boxes of classified information for the president and misleading the FBI, has been indicted but had his arraignment pushed back after a slew of flight cancellations and delays in Florida kept Nauta from making it to his court date.

Nauta also reportedly does not yet have a lawyer who can represent him in Florida. The scheduled arraignment was delayed until July 6.

The case is directly connected to Trump’s indictment, where he faces 37 counts for his handling of classified documents and alleged refusal to give back those documents after leaving the White House.

Trump’s trial is set to begin in August, but the Department of Justice's legal team for Special Counsel Jack Smith has requested the judge move that date back until December of this year. Trump and his legal team could push to move the date back even further.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s governor is taking a wait-and-see approach to the new state budget, which is softer than his stance just last week.

Gov. Tony Evers was on UPFRONT on Milwaukee TV over the weekend, and walked back his promise to veto the budget of Republicans tax cuts, and the plan to trim $32 million from the University of Wisconsin’s budget.

“I'm not going to predict whether it's going to come this time in that fashion to begin with,” the governor said. “The fact of the matter is, there's lots of time left of the budget has not been concluded.”

The budget-writing Joint Finance Committee last week set the stage for the final budget votes, expected this week, by approving a $4.4 billion tax cut package, and the final UW budget.

Evers last week said he wouldn’t sign either of those pieces of the new spending plan.

“I want a middle class tax cut. I don't want it a tax cut that is primarily for the wealthy in the state of Wisconsin. And I believe the University of Wisconsin system should be well funded. And now we have a situation where, you know, at least that $32 million is is retained. And and so a lot of moving parts and I'm not backing off where my belief system is. And we'll just see what happens,” Evers added.

He said he is not abandoning his previous threats, but did try to walk a finer line.

“I'm not going to get into what I'm going to veto or something or not feel something, because I believe at the end of the day, we'll be in a good position,” the governor said.

Evers did say he will not veto the entire two-year spending plan.

“I think it would mess it up,” Evers said. “The fact of the matter is we passed the legislation making that happen, but the money is obviously part of the budget so we will see. As you know, I also have partial veto authority, and that is always something we are going to be looking at.”

Lawmakers return to the Capitol Tuesday. The new state budget is due to the governor by the end of the month.

(The Center Square) – The $4.4 billion tax cut plan approved by Republicans at the Wisconsin Capitol is the latest piece of the new state budget that Gov. Tony Evers is promising not to sign.

Republicans on Thursday okayed a tax cut package that will lower income taxes for everyone, but will give top earners in the state a larger tax cut.

“We are cutting income taxes by $3.5 billion and property taxes by $795 million, along with finally ending the personal property tax once and for all. The average taxpayer will see a $573 decrease in their state income taxes beginning in 2023,” Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green said.

Gov. Evers wants a tax cut as well, but he has called the Republican’s previous tax cut suggestions a “tax cut for millionaires.”

He used a similar line about this tax cut proposal as well.

“Tax relief should be targeted to the middle class to give working families a little breathing room – not to give big breaks to millionaires and billionaires who don't need the extra help to afford rising costs,” Evers said on Twitter. “That's just common sense.”

The governor did not say Thursday if he planned to sign the tax cut plan, he has said in the past that he would veto any budget that cuts taxes for top earners.

Marklein acknowledged that is a possibility.

“But we made tax cuts last time, and the governor approved them, signed them into law, and ran on those tax cuts last fall,” Marklein added.

The Republican plan as written would cut Wisconsin’s top income tax rate of 7.65% to 6.5%, which means a 15% tax break for married couples making over $405,550 a-year. The same married couple making between $36,840 and $405,550 would see their income tax rate go from 5.3% to 4.4%, which is a 17% tax cut. Married couples who earn less than $36,840 would see their income tax rate go from 4.65% to 4.4%, which would be a 5% tax cut. Wisconsin’s lowest earners, a married couple who is making $18,420 or less, would see a .04% income tax cut, from 5.54% to 5.50%.

“These are good policies, and proper actions to return some of the surplus to the people of Wisconsin, and we hope that the governor agrees with that,” Born added.

The Republican tax cut is just one piece of the new state budget that has the governor promising a veto.

Gov. Evers has suggested he would veto any cuts to the University of Wisconsin, particularly those targeted at diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at the school.

Lawmakers voted for $32 million in DEI cuts at the UW System on Thursday.

(The Center Square) – The plan to allow Milwaukee and Milwaukee County to raise their sales taxes and take themselves off a fiscal cliff are now state law. But the city of Milwaukee is preparing to go to court to fight the spending restrictions that are also now law.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told reporters at the Wisconsin Capitol Wednesday that’s a bad idea.

“It’s really disappointing,” Vos said. “We have literally spent months negotiating in good faith, saying that we were willing to flex on some of the things that were core priorities for us as conservatives, and it seemed like they were willing to flex on things that were important for them. To find that common-sense consensus. And to now say they are going to use the very dollars the state of Wisconsin gave them to sue the state is a really bad sign for future relations.”

Vos and his fellow Republicans included a number of spending restrictions in the shared revenue legislation, including requirements that Milwaukee spend its new money on police, fire, EMS, roads, and its struggling pension system.

The Republican restrictions also bar Milwaukee from spending money on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

Milwaukee Common Council President Jose Perez on Tuesday said he intends to not only ignore those spending restrictions, but take them to court.

“We will also be taking up legislation that would double the funding for the Office of Equity and Inclusion and Office of African American Affairs, [and] set aside funds for litigation to fight provisions of the bill that overstep our home rule,” Perez said in a statement. “Despite the Legislature’s efforts to impose their values on us, we are resolute in our promise to operate our government in accordance with the values of our diverse community.”

Vos said lawmakers tried to help Milwaukee with its fiscal crisis, and this is what they get in return.

“I certainly hope they rethink their decision as they try to focus on the good that was in the bill, rather than try and micromanage some of the things that have challenges with. Which, frankly, every single one of which improves their financial situation. Which was the goal of the bill anyway.”

Milwaukee is not wasting time in moving toward raising its sales tax by as much as 2%. The first vote on the tax will come next week, with a final vote coming two weeks after that.

Perez said waiting only costs Milwaukee. He said the tax will bring-in $16 million per month and he doesn’t want to let any of that money go uncollected.

(The Center Square) – Don’t look for Wisconsin Republicans to reverse course on their proposed diversity, equity and inclusion cuts at the University of Wisconsin.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Wednesday defended his plan to cut $32 million from the UW System’s budget if university leaders don’t shift it away from DEI efforts.

“The goal is really fairly simple, it is to say that if you are at UW System, on any of the campuses, you should be able to be taught. And you should be able to learn. It should not be indoctrination, where you’re only allowed to have one point of view,” Vos told reporters.

Vos has pushed against the UW’s DEI administrative force for the past month.

Back in May he said he wanted to find a better use for the $16 million that was spent last year on nearly 200 DEI administrators at the state’s 23 UW campuses.

He said that again on Wednesday.

“They tell me we don’t have enough people to be in engineering. We don’t have enough folks who are teaching an awful lot of careers. But. boy are they able to find millions of dollars to put into a curriculum and an ideology,” Vos added.

Gov. Tony Evers and top statehouse Democrats on Wednesday slammed Vos’ proposed cuts. The governor called the idea “disastrous for our UW System, almost certainly causing cuts to campuses and critical programs statewide, and will only hurt our kids, our state’s economy, and our state’s workforce in the process.”

The top Democrat in the Wisconsin Senate, Minority Leader Melissa Agard, echoed the same theme.

“Republican actions to cut funding from the UW System for their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives is small-minded, wrongheaded, and counterproductive to our state’s efforts to recruit and retain our future workforce,” Agard said in a statement of her own.

But Vos said the UW System chose to focus on DEI instead of the state’s workforce needs.

“We gave [the UW System] more than enough time to say ‘Let’s redouble our efforts, to take the money which is going into [DEI] any promote economic development, and careers that we know we need, and filling jobs that should be taught to kids in Wisconsin.’ And they kind of ignored that,” Vos added. “So, iIf they have extra money then I think it should be taken back, and the taxpayers of Wisconsin will have a chance to use it for something better than indoctrinating kids with left-wing ideology.”

The Republican-controlled legislature was supposed to vote on the UW System’s budget Tuesday night, but that vote was delayed because of the DEI spat.

Vos did not say when lawmakers will try and vote on the university’s budget again.