Author: Scott Bauer

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers signed a new two-year budget in the early morning hours of July 3 in a race against Congress to ensure the state gets a federal Medicaid match that it would lose under President Trump’s tax and spending cuts package. A budget deal brokered by Governor Evers and Republicans, who control the state Legislature, cleared a key hurdle on July 1 in an extraordinarily rapid succession of events. The deal in the battleground state on a new two-year budget cuts income taxes, called for closing a prison, and increased funding for the Universities of Wisconsin despite...

A unanimous Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with the Democratic state attorney general on June 17 in a long-running battle over a law passed by Republicans who wanted to weaken the office in a lame duck legislative session more than six years ago. The court ruled 7-0 that requiring the attorney general to get permission from a Republican-controlled legislative committee to settle certain lawsuits was unconstitutional. The law is a separation of powers violation, the court said. The Republican-controlled Legislature convened a session in December 2018 after Democratic Governor Tony Evers and Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul defeated Republican incumbents....

Wisconsin could go down as billionaire Elon Musk’s last big spend on a political campaign. And it was a flop. Musk, the South African oligarch and richest person in the world, said on May 20 that he would be spending less on political campaigns. The announcement came as Musk is claimed to be stepping back from his role in the Trump regime, saying he will spend more time focused on his businesses, and just seven weeks after the candidate he backed in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race lost by 10 percentage points. Democrats in the swing state said Musk’s comments...

The high-stakes race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court has gotten most of the attention leading up to the April 1 election, but it is not the only issue voters will decide when they vote. Also on the ballot is a race for the battleground state’s top education official who will guide policies affecting K-12 schools during President Donald Trump’s second term. There is also a measure that would place the state’s voter ID law into the state constitution. Both of those contests have sharp partisan divisions, even though the spending and national attention have been far less than those...