(The Center Square) – Western Wisconsin’s congressmen says he went to the U.S. southern border to see the entry point of the drugs killing people in Wisconsin.

Republican Derrick Van Orden took a tour along the Texas side of the southern border on Thursday.

“We know where [fentanyl] comes from. And we know how it gets here,” Van Orden told The Center Square. “We know with 100% certainty that the precursor chemicals, or the fentanyl itself, is manufactured in China. And then it's smuggled across the southern border.”

Van Orden said Customs and Border Protection reports show 90% of the fentanyl in the United States is smuggled across the southern border.

‘He said there is a direct link between weaknesses at the southern border and the skyrocketing number of fentanyl deaths in America, specifically in Wisconsin.

“We’ve had over 1,200 Wisconsinites die of fentanyl overdoses in 2021,” Van Orden explained. “Unfortunately our statistics aren't available for 2022 yet, but it’s not getting better. As a matter of fact, we’re on a trajectory to have more fentanyl come into this country in 2022 than we did in 2021.”

To make that point, Van Orden said Gundersen Health System in La Crosse reported nine fentanyl overdoses in January alone.

Van Orden also said he wanted to go to the board to see firsthand how millions of people have come into this country illegally.

“They are human beings. We are a compassionate nation, but we’re going to run out of capacity,” Van Orden explained. “I am the chairman of a subcommittee on the Veterans Affairs Committee that is responsible for taking care of homeless veterans. So if we’re housing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, then it is irresponsible to have one single homeless veteran.”

Van Orden made the trip to the border Thursday with fellow Republican congressmen Juan Ciscomani (Ariz.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Ore.), Jen Kiggans (Va.), and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

(The Center Square) – The top Republican in the Wisconsin Assembly sounds as if he is confident that lawmakers will find some money to repair American Family Field and keep the Brewers in Milwaukee, but he says Gov. Tony Evers is making it harder than it has to be.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Thursday blasted the governor for suddenly announcing a plan earlier this week to earmark $290 million for long term maintenance at the Brewer’s ballpark.

“You would think, like under Gov. Walker whose leadership was to bring Democrats and Republicans together, sit in a room and figure out a deal that we can all support. And that’s why the Bucks are here in Wisconsin,” Vos told Jay Weber on News Talk 1130 WISN. “But Tony Evers is so unbelievably inept as a leader that he just drops this bomb.”

The Brewers have been working for years to find the money to take care of about $400 million in maintenance at American Family Field. The Stadium District, which is responsible for the ballpark, has about $87 million in the bank right now. That leaves a gap of about $300 million.

Vos didn’t make any promises, but did say the Republican-controlled legislature will lead the conversation about closing that gap going forward.

“Tony Evers had abdicated being a leader,” Vos said. “We’re going to see if we’re going to be able to structure a deal like the Bucks, where it will be cheaper to keep them. We want to make sure that we have the players’ salaries where they pay income taxes in Wisconsin. If they leave, we lose that money.”

Back in 2016, then-Gov. Scott Walker signed a law that provided $250 million to help build Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. That money covered about half of the total construction cost. The new arena kept the Bucks in Milwaukee. The Bucks went on to win an NBA Championship in 2021. And Fiserv has gone on to host the canceled Democratic National Convention in 2020, and is slated to host the Republican National Convention in 2024.

Vos said the Brewers need to square away American Family Field to offset the challenges of being a small market team.

“The Brewers depend much more on ticket sales and the revenue generated on the stadium site than other teams are required to do, because of their TV deals,” Vos added. “So we need a state of the art facility.”

But Vos said, again, that the governor is making that much more difficult than it has to be.

“He’s really poisoned the well for an awful lot of people by pitting the taxpayers against the team, and it shouldn’t have to be that way,” Vos explained.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s governor is selling his plan to spend nearly $300 million in taxpayer money on the Brewers' ballpark as a way to keep professional baseball in Milwaukee for another 20 years.

Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday said he wants to earmark $290 million from Wisconsin’s record $7.1 billion surplus for long-term maintenance at American Family Field.

“As governor, and also someone who also happens to be a lifelong Brewers fan, I’m so excited about the historic opportunity we have today to keep Major League Baseball here in Milwaukee for another twenty years and to usher in a new generation of Brewers fans in Wisconsin who can grow up rooting for the home team just like I did,” the governor said in a statement.

The Brewers needed state help to build what was then Miller Park back in the late 1990s. The 1% stadium sales tax was the solution in 1996, but that tax was allowed to expire in March of 2020.

Still, the Brewers said they would need hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain the ballpark.

The Brewers are waiting on a study to settle on a price tag, but the cost for long-term maintenance is expected to be between $400 and $600 million. The Brewers have $87 million set aside for those costs.

Evers says his plan would save taxpayers from the cost of borrowing to pay for the work, and would generate $400 million in economic activity by keeping the team in Milwaukee.

“The Brewers are not only a cherished part of our state’s heritage but an essential part of Milwaukee’s and our state’s economic success,” the governor said.

Brewers President Rick Schlesinger on Tuesday said the team is looking for “creative solutions that garner bipartisan support” at the Wisconsin Capitol.

“We are not asking for the Stadium District to take on new financial obligations under the lease, or for a new ballpark – just the resources to make sure the Stadium District’s existing obligations are met,” Schlesinger said. “American Family Field has had a $2.5 billion statewide economic impact, created thousands of jobs, and made it possible for a team in a small market like Milwaukee to compete. We thank Gov. Evers and the Legislature for their consideration of this issue as we work with them, the Stadium District, and all key stakeholders on next steps.”

The top Republican in the Wisconsin Assembly, Speaker Robin Vos, on Tuesday said Gov. Ever’s surprise announcement might make it tough to find those “next steps.”

“When the Bucks had a similar situation, Democrats and Republicans worked together to find a solution on the best path forward. Instead, Governor Evers drops this bomb in the budget, never mentioning or attempting to collaborate with the Legislature in any way,” Vos said on Twitter. “These are typical antics for him not being a leader but rather dictating exactly what to do and how to do it. Gov. Evers’ style makes it difficult to generate consensus. I look forward to working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure that the Brewers stay in Wisconsin.”

(The Center Square) – The latest preview of Gov. Tony Evers’ budget proposal would make it earlier for people to get registered and vote absentee in Wisconsin.

The governor on Monday released another piece of his new budget, this time focusing on voting in the state.

“The right to vote is fundamental to our democracy, and we should be making it easier – not harder – for every eligible voter to cast their ballot without interference from politicians,” the governor said in a statement.

Among his ideas is a new automatic voter registration system that would merge the databases at the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Wisconsin Elections Commission so that anyone who has a state ID or a driver’s license would then be registered to vote.

The governor also wants to bring back voter registration in the state’s high schools. And he wants the University of Wisconsin to change its college IDs to be voter ID compliant.

Evers’ registration plans also include dropping the residency requirement from 28 days down to just 10, meaning people living in the state, a city, or even a ward could be in Wisconsin for less than two weeks and still get to vote.

Gov. Evers also wants to end some of the time restrictions on early voting to allow more people to cast a ballot before election day.

The governor is also talking about “investments” in local election offices across the state, including allowing local election managers to count absentee ballots the day before Election Day, and providing at least $400,000 for local clerks to buy electronic versions of the state’s voter rolls.

“These investments will help ensure eligible Wisconsinites can exercise their fundamental right to vote and that our local partners have the resources they need to continue administering elections safely, efficiently, and securely,” the governor added.

Few of the governor’s suggestions are likely to be in the state’s new budget. The Republicans who control the legislature, and the budget-writing process, have proposed tightening-up absentee voting and putting the Wisconsin Elections Commission under more scrutiny.

The governor will deliver his budget address to lawmakers Wednesday night. The legislature will then start to work on its own budget after that.

U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop is leveraging Twitter to expose how the company worked with the FBI to silence free speech, the latest in a series of his recent posts that have gained significant social media attention.

“The FBI sought to silence constitutionally protected speech & access internal Twitter data to further their spying & censorship regime,” the North Carolina Republican posted Thursday, along with a video clip from a recent House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing. “The Twitter Files only tell part of the story. How much did the FBI pressure other social media platforms, ones w/ even more users & influence?”

The Twitter files refer to thousands of internal Twitter documents exposed by CEO Elon Musk and journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and others that expose how the company handled numerous issues. This includes its moderation process for a New York Post article on the Hunter Biden laptop controversy; shadow banning; Donald Trump’s suspension from the platform; and FBI communications with the company’s Trust and Safety Team.

The video posted by Bishop on Thursday featured testimony from George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley, a nationally recognized constitutional law scholar.

“The question that gets at me is this,” Bishop says in the 1 minute, 52-second video clip of the committee hearing. “How could the FBI, which is sworn to protect the Constitution, ever justify using intense application of its resources, agents, etcetera, to urge social media platforms to use those standards to take down speech the Constitution protects?”

Turley replied that aside from the legal issues, there’s bigger questions at play.

“It’s a particularly ominous thing to have the chief law enforcement agency performing this role, an agency with incredible powers,” he said. “Here you had the government itself looking for citizens who should be silenced and targeted. That’s a problem in and of itself, whether it also triggers an agency relationship.

“Do we want to go back to the day when governments created those types of lists?” Turley questioned.

Bishop’s post generated more than 70,000 views, with over 1,800 likes and 660 retweets in about 17 hours.

One of his many Dec. 20 tweets about the 4,155 page, $1.7 trillion spending bill now has more than 24 million views. That was the tweet telling the world he and his team were reading the bill and would post "some of the most egregious provisions." Subsequent tweets generated hundreds of thousands to more than 1 million views each.

One of the follow-ups said, “The omnibus contains over $15 billion in earmarks. That’s nearly 700 extra pages – with over 7,000 total earmarks from BOTH parties.”

A Jan. 10 tweet, on Friday, was pinned on the congressman's page. It says the "The Deep State is on notice," referring to House Resolution 12 calling for a probe of the U.S. government and private companies collecting and sharing information. Late in the day, it had garnered more than 500,000 views.

Other Bishop posts to Twitter in recent weeks have also been popular. A Jan. 2 tweet asked why congressmen didn't get Rep. Kevin McCarthy's rules package at least 72 hours in advance. McCarthy infamously needed 15 rounds of voting to become speaker of the chamber.

A post that panned President Joe Biden’s State of the Union on Tuesday generated more than 41,000 views and nearly 850 likes: “This meeting could’ve been an email,” Bishop wrote.

(The Center Square) – There could be an option soon for a lifetime fishing license in Wisconsin.

Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point, on Tuesday said his plan would allow people to pay a fee once, and never have to renew their fishing license again.

“This bill would let anglers make a long-term commitment to their sport and to the future of fishing and conservation here in Wisconsin.

Fishing licenses in Wisconsin currently cost $20 a year. They also have to be renewed annually.

The proposed lifetime fishing license would cost just under $600. Testin said that’s essentially 30 years of annual fishing licenses.

Wisconsin also requires certain fish-specific stamps. Those cost between $10 and $20, and would still be required under Testin’s plan.

State Rep. Ron Tusler, R-Harrison, is the co-sponsor in the State Assembly. He said the hope is to take away as many barriers as possible for fishermen in Wisconsin.

“This is an opportunity for people of all ages to enjoy the outdoors and develop a lifetime hobby,” said Rep. Tusler. “The lifetime license is a great option for avid fishermen or as a gift for a young family member just getting hooked on the sport.”

The two proposed something similar back in 2019, but that legislation did not make it to Gov. Evers desk.

The lifetime fishing license plan has yet to be scheduled for a vote.

(The Center Square) – The Republicans who control the state legislature want to know why it’s taking so long for some people to get a professional license in Wisconsin.

The Legislature’s Joint Audit Committee on Tuesday ordered an audit of the Department of Safety and Professional Services.

Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Green Bay, said the audit comes after months of stonewalling from DSPS leaders.

“The Department of Administration failed to provide the Audit Bureau with even the most basic documents and information used to make federal funding decisions. The public has a right to know how priorities for this funding were determined and why,” Wimberger said.

DSPS has been facing questions for months about the months-long backlog for some people to get the license they need to work in the state.

DSPS says the average wait time is 45 days, but many professionals say it’s much longer than that.

Democrats at the Wisconsin Capitol on Tuesday said adding an audit to the to-do list at the department will only make things worse.

“DSPS is already understaffed and under-resourced and, given the limited resources available at the department as it is, conducting this audit will almost certainly require diverting those limited existing resources away from processing licenses and credentials and servicing professional organizations and workers across our state,” a group of Democratic lawmakers wrote to the Audit Committee. “If an audit is going to be conducted, then there must be specific measures the Committee is prepared to take to ensure this decision will not get in the way of the important work the department is doing to issue Wisconsinites their licenses.”

Wimberger agreed. He said the people of Wisconsin do need their licenses.

“Our state’s professionals are stuck in limbo while waiting for the Department of Safety and Professional Services to approve their licenses. Families, businesses and our state’s industries deserve answers on how this process can be improved. Government should not be a barrier to gainful employment,” Wimberger added.

(The Center Square) – Campaign ads are headed back to TVs across Wisconsin ahead of the election for a seat on the state Supreme Court.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz’ campaign on Friday announced a $700,000 ad buy in the race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She's one of four challengers trying to land the seat held by Justice Pat Roggensack, who has said she will not seek reelection.

Officially, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is nonpartisan; observers consider it 4-3 conservative, and it was considered 5-2 conservative before the 2020 election. Roggensack is considered a conservative justice, making the Feb. 21 primary and April 4 election between the top two vote-getters from the primary a battle for ideological control.

Protasiewicz is up against former state Supreme Court Judge Dan Kelly, Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Dorow and Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell. Kelly and Dorow are considered conservative, Mitchell and Protasiewicz liberal.

“Our campaign strategy has always been to heavily communicate with voters statewide about Judge Janet’s approach to bring change to the Supreme Court – away from the hyper-partisanship and extremism demonstrated recently by the court,” Protasiewicz's campaign manager Alejandro Verdin said in a statement.

The $700,000 for the ads comes from the nearly $1 million that Protasiewicz raised last year.

Campaign finance reports that were released this month show Protasiewicz with the strongest war chest. She raised $924,349 in 2022, including $756,117 in the last six months of the year.

Kelly has raised $312,359, Dorow $306,919, and Mitchell $115,689. Campaign finance records, according to Ballotpedia, show available balances on Dec. 31 were $734,962 for Prostasiewicz, $283,172 for Dorow and $276,554 for Kelly; the Mitchell campaign was $72,162 in the hole.

The most recent filing period gathered information from July 1 to Dec. 31.

The numbers do not include satellite spending, which is political spending not controlled by candidates or their campaigns. This can include political party committees, super PACs, trade associations, and 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups.

In November, a spokesman for Fair Courts America said it was "committed to spending millions of dollars" to help return Kelly to the bench.

All of the candidates participated in a Jan. 9 forum hosted by WisPolitics.

(The Center Square) – One of the conservatives running for Wisconsin Supreme Court this spring is once again calling out a liberal candidate for what she is saying on the campaign trail.

Milwaukee County judge Janet Protasiewicz said on Madison TV over the weekend that she is not hiding from her progressive politics.

"In regard to the progressive label, I embrace that when it comes to issues such as gerrymandering," she said on WKOW’s Capital City Sunday. "When we talk about the maps, when we talk about marriage equality, when we talk about women's rights, and women's rights to choose."

Conservative former Justice Dan Kelly, who is also running this spring, said Protasiewicz crossed a line.

“When a judicial candidate tells you her values, she's telling you she will let her personal politics influence how she decides cases,” Kelly told The Center Square. “But politics are poison to the work of the court. And yet Judge Protasiewicz said she would bring her political ‘values’ to the Supreme Court if she were elected.”

This is not the first time that Kelly has criticized Protasiewicz or the other liberal judge running this spring, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell. Kelly leveled the same politics-is-poison argument after Protasiewicz and Mitchell touted their progressive bona fides during a candidate’s forum earlier this month.

Judges are allowed to talk about their view of the court, and the balance between the judicial branch and the other branches of state government. They are not supposed to tell voters how they will rule on specific cases.

Kelly said Protasiewicz is essentially doing just that.

“Judge Protasiewicz admitted that she 'embraces' the label of ‘progressive judge.’ The whole point of judicial progressivism is to incorporate one’s own politics into the work of the court. This is a declaration of independence from the Constitution, and it breaks faith with the people of Wisconsin who have asked their courts to do one thing, and one thing only: Decide cases based on the law as it is written, not as a judge might wish it to be.”

Voters will decide between Protasiewicz, Mitchell, Kelly, and one other conservative candidate, Jenifer Dorow, on February 21. The spring election is set for April 4.

Heading into President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address Tuesday, his own party has little desire for a second Biden term, according to a new poll.

The poll, released Monday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, reports that only 37% of Democrats want Biden to run for a re-election.

That is a significant drop since just before the midterm elections last year, when 52% of Democrats supported a second Biden term. That decline may be explained by the recent scandal over classified documents found in Biden's possession.

Biden, who is 80 years old, has taken fire over high gas prices, inflation, the war in Ukraine and the chaotic and deadly withdrawal in Afghanistan. He’ll likely tout what he considers his victories in his speech Tuesday night, which includes several trillion dollars in new federal spending on a range of issues, relatively low unemployment, COVID relief, aide to Ukraine, and a litany of other projects.

The poll comes as another new poll shows American as a whole are still concerned about one issue that has plagued the Biden administration: inflation.

Gallup released new survey data Monday which found that 67% "expect inflation to rise in first half of 2023," and a record-high 48% say the "stock market will decline over next six months."

"Americans are more likely to predict negative rather than positive outcomes for five key aspects of the U.S. economy over the next six months," Gallup said. "Higher inflation, unemployment and interest rates, as well as reduced economic growth and stock market values, are all expected. Expectations for economic growth and the stock market are the most pessimistic in Gallup’s periodic trend."

(The Center Square) – There is going to be a flurry of spending by schools across the state of Wisconsin this spring as school districts race to use the last of their coronavirus stimulus money.

The Institute for Reforming Government’s new transparency report shows that nearly two-thirds of Wisconsin’s $1.5 billion in ESSER, Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, money remains unspent. Schools have until September of 2024 to spend or allocate that money, but the budgets for the 2023-2024 school year are being written now.

“We want to shine a light on how this money is being allocated,” Quinton Klabon, IRG senior research director, told The Center Square. “We want to refocus the conversation on whether districts are allocating it swiftly, are they putting it toward stuff that will move the needle for kids.”

So far, Klabon said, schools across Wisconsin have spent about half of their coronavirus money on kids and classrooms.

“Thirty-four percent has gone to teachers. That’s school-day teachers, that’s summer-school teachers, that’s after-school teachers, that’s bilingual for non-English speakers teachers,” Klabon explained. “We have 13% going to curriculum. And that’s not just books....”

Klabon said there is some worry that schools will have to find the money to keep all of those teachers once the federal money that’s been paying their salaries is gone.

But beyond that, Klabon said IRG is focused on spending this final round of federal coronavirus money because it may be the most important.

“ESSER I was basically hotspots and laptops, ESSER II was basically ‘Okay, the pandemic is still going-on. Let’s get them back in school,’ and now ESSER III is ‘Kids are behind, let’s catch them up.,’” Klabon said. “So the time to catch them up is now.”

This spring semester, and the next school year are milestones for many of the kids who were most impacted by Wisconsin’s coronavirus school shutdowns.

“Kindergartners who went home in March 2020 are about to wrap-up third grade. If you’re not on track with reading in third grade, everyone will tell you that is bad news and it’s really, really tough to get back on track,” Klabon said. “If you were in 9th grade when you went home in March of 2020, you’re about to graduate high school.”

Klabon said IRG wants to make sure the money is spent properly, and in ways that help the kids.

You can find IRG’s transparency tool for this federal money here.

Two politicians representing almost the entirety of Washington east of the Cascades in Congress want to stop a particular group of foreign nationals from owning, controlling, or profiting from American agricultural land.

U.S. Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, and Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, have introduced the “Prohibition of Agricultural Land for the People’s Republic of China Act” in the House of Representatives aimed at keeping members of the Chinese Communist Party from owning American agricultural real estate.

“Agriculture is Eastern Washington’s number one industry. We simply cannot allow companies from China to lock down our resources and undermine our farmers and ranchers’ ability to feed the world,” said Rep. McMorris Rogers in a statement. “Americans should not be forced to rely on China for the food they put on the table. Prohibiting the Chinese Communist Party from purchasing farmland in the United States is a no-brainer that will support domestic food production and decrease our dangerous dependence on foreign adversaries.”

The text of the bill calls on the president to “take such actions as may be necessary to prohibit participation in programs administered by the Secretary of Agriculture by nonresident aliens, foreign businesses, or any agent, trustee, or fiduciary associated with the Government of the People’s Republic of China.”

The wording is broad and aimed at preventing not just CCP members, but all affiliated persons and entities from meddling in the free market of American agriculture.

It also bans the same entities and individuals from participating in any United States Department of Agriculture program, with the notable exception of food safety inspections.

If adopted into law, the bill could have significant repercussions.

A recent report, from the FDA entitled “Foreign Holdings of U.S. Agricultural Land” notes that by the beginning of 2020, China already owns or indirectly controls nearly $2 billion in US agricultural land.

Another report from the USDA notes that in the previous decade Chinese investment in agriculture has risen by over 1000% outside its own borders.

Currently only six states – Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Oklahoma – have some form of legislation on the books banning foreign nationals from owning agricultural land. The bill would extend those protections to the rest of the nation.

“The Chinese Communist Party is a threat to American democracy,” co-sponsor Rep. Newhouse said. “The United States is engaged in a great power struggle with the CCP, and we must respond with tough policies that will protect our farmland and food supply chain.”

The bill is worded to prevent future purchases. It is unclear how, if enacted, this legislation would affect current holdings by CCP-affiliated entities.