#Gov. Tony Evers

[jasoncanty01]

MADISON – Gov. Tony Evers, a former public school educator, used his broad partial veto authority this week to sign into law a new state budget that increases funding for public schools for the next four centuries.

The surprise move will ensure districts' state-imposed limits on how much revenue they are allowed to raise will be increased by $325 per student each year until 2425, creating a permanent annual stream of new revenue for public schools and potentially curbing a key debate between Democrats and Republicans during each state budget-writing cycle.

Evers told reporters at a press conference in the Wisconsin State Capitol on Wednesday his action would "provide school districts with predictable long-term increases for the foreseeable future."

Evers crafted the four-century school aid extension by striking a hyphen and a "20" from a reference to the 2024-25 school year. The increase of $325 per student is the highest single-year increase in revenue limits in state history.

#Gov. Tony Evers #Wisconsin

[wausaupilot]

Ada Deer, influential Native American leader from Wisconsin, dies at 88

Earlier this month, Gov. Tony Evers proclaimed August 7, Deer's 88th birthday, as Ada Deer Day in Wisconsin.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Ada Deer, an esteemed Native American leader from Wisconsin and the first woman to lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has died at age 88. Deer passed away Tuesday evening from natural causes, her godson Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, confirmed on Wednesday. She had entered hospice care four days earlier. Born August 7, 1935, on a Menominee…

View On WordPress

#Ada Deer #afternoon update #Gov. Tony Evers

[cannabisbusinessexecutive]

LeMahieu says state-run medical marijuana dispensaries for Wisconsin are a 'nonstarter'

Having state-run dispensaries for medical marijuana in Wisconsin as proposed by Assembly Republicans is a “nonstarter” in the Senate, but there’s still the possibility of reaching a compromise that could pass, the Senate GOP leader said Jan. 11. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said at a WisPolitics.com event that the “challenge” for the Assembly bill is that many GOP senators are opposed to…

View On WordPress

#Devin LeMahieu #Gov. Tony Evers #Legal Marijuana #medical marijuana #Wisconsin Department of Health Services #wisconsin marijuana #wisconsin republicans

[reasonsforhope]

"Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) has vetoed a Republican-led ban on transgender high school athletes, saying that such legislation would needlessly harm the mental well-being of trans youth and make the state less safe for LGBTQ+ people. State Republicans reportedly lack the votes to override his veto.

“This type of legislation, and the harmful rhetoric we get by pursuing it, harms LGBTQ Wisconsinites’ and kids’ mental health, emboldens anti-LGBTQ harassment, bullying, and violence, and threatens the safety and dignity of LGBTQ Wisconsinites, especially our LGBTQ kids,” Evers wrote in his veto message.

“I am vetoing this bill in its entirety because I object to codifying discrimination into state statute and the Wisconsin state legislature’s ongoing efforts to perpetuate hateful and discriminatory rhetoric and policies targeting LGBTQ Wisconsinites including our transgender and gender nonconforming kids…. I will veto any bill that makes Wisconsin a less safe, less inclusive, and less welcoming place for LGBTQ people and kids,” Evers added.

He vetoed the bill in a public ceremony while surrounded by trans advocates, Democratic lawmakers, the mayor of Madison and others, NBC News reported.

The bill would have required public, private, and independent charter schools to designate each team by the gender of its participants, and then require participants to play on teams matching the gender listed on their birth certificates.

The bill would have overruled current policies, established in 2015 by the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, that allowed trans students to play on sports teams matching their gender identity as long as they provided a personal letter; supporting documentation from parents, teachers, and medical professionals; and proof of any gender-affirming care...

Last September [in 2023], Evers vetoed a Republican-led bill that would’ve banned gender-affirming medical care for minors."

-via LGBTQ Nation, April 2, 2024

#voting matters #tony evers #democrats #united states #us politics #transgender #trans issues #trans sports #trans kids #lgbtq #lgbtq issues #queer issues #trans positivity #lgbtq positivity #wisconsin #republicans #public schools #good news #hope

[foreverlogical]

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed new legislative districts into law on Monday to replace gerrymandered Republican maps that the new liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down in December. If the court signs off on the new maps, Wisconsin would finally get much fairer districts after more than a decade of tilted maps that have locked Democrats out of power in this longtime swing state.

Evers had recently proposed these maps to the court in the hopes that the justices would select them, but in a surprise, the Republican-run legislature passed them last week before the court could act. The court is still likely to review these new maps to ensure they comply with the criteria it laid down for any remedial plans, including that they be politically neutral.

As illustrated in the graphic at the top of this story, Joe Biden would have won an 18-15 majority of seats in the state Senate, while Donald Trump would have carried a 50-49 majority of state Assembly districts. (Click here and here for interactive versions with partisan and demographic data from Dave's Redistricting App.) The now-invalid Republican maps, by contrast, gave Trump an 22-11 edge in the Senate and a 64-35 advantage in the Assembly.

Because only half of the seats in the Senate will be up for election in November, Democrats would likely have to wait until the 2026 elections before they could flip the upper chamber. However, the new maps would give them a chance to take back the Assembly this fall.

Republicans may have opted for Evers' proposals because they are slightly more favorable to the GOP compared to other plans that were under consideration by the court. Nonetheless, Evers' maps are still much fairer than the current GOP gerrymanders, which let Republicans win a veto-proof two-thirds supermajority in the Senate in 2022 and nearly hit that mark in the Assembly despite Democrats winning most statewide races that same year.

#us politics #gerrymandering #us news #wisconsin

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[grison-in-space]

Via a conversation on Metafilter about the state of Florida's decision to crush its public institutions, a person I think is particularly wise left a comment about the state of the legislature on higher education in Wisconsin.

The situation in Florida is atrocious, but it's important to be aware of how widespread this movement on the part of MAGA politicians to ban all academic and support programs related to gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality is. I'm a professor in the Wisconsin state university system, where, in addition to my regular fulltime work in my home department I direct the LGBTQ+ Studies Program (a more-than-halftime job I have done for many years in return for zero additional salary, or summer funds, or course buyout, or any other compensation...).

This summer, the Wisconsin state legislature, gerrymandered into permanent Republican control, voted to ban all DEI programs in the state university system, and cut $32 million from the university budget, which it stated was amount of "taxpayer money being wasted on divisive indoctrination efforts" (to paraphrase Assembly Speaker Robin Vos). This comes after years of successive budget cuts and a ten-year tuition freeze and years of faculty and staff taking pay cuts in the form of "furloughs" through which we were expected to just keep working. The situation is now somewhat improved in that Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, vetoed the DEI ban, but he cannot restore the funding. Anyway: a few days after the legislative vote to ban DEI , I was giving a talk about the range of state bills attacking trans youth and adults, and there was a Democratic state legislator on the panel. When we were introducing ourselves and I told her I directed the LGBTQ+ Studies Program, she said, "Oh, but that's no longer legal. Well, unless Evers vetoes the ban; we'll see."

After doing some blinking, I responded by explaining the difference between DEI programs and academic programs. DEI programs provide student support services, which is deemed administrative work, in contrast to academic programs. The LGBTQ+ Resource Center and the LGBTQ+ Studies Program at my university are both vital and important. But the resource center organizes support groups and social activities for students, while the academic program teaches classes and sponsors academic talks. Academic programs are not part of the DEI system--and the very same legislature that voted for the DEI ban had spent years prior threatening sanctions against students and faculty for supposedly not sufficiently respecting the absolute value of free speech in academia. Legislators presented instructors as censorious ideologues, students as snowflakes in love with a victim narrative, and the legislature as the champion of teaching and discussing all ideas freely.

The image of DEI programs presented by Republican legislators is some kind of kink fantasy, in which cis straight white men are forced to prostrate themselves, declare themselves to be bad and deserving of punishment, and lick the boots of students who are trans and queer, of color and feminist. The reality is that university DEI programs are providing mental health services and tutoring and social support to college students, at a time when their levels of mental health challenges are very high. They have zero to do with the kink humiliation fantasy, they really are about inclusion, and it is ludicrous and cruel to cut social support to marginalized college students.

But even if the state ban were not vetoed, a DEI ban does not dismantle programs like Gender Studies or African and African Diaspora Studies or LGBTQ+ Studies, because they are academic programs, I explained to the Democratic legislator. But from her response, it was clear that not only did Republican Wisconsin legislators think they'd banned all academic programs examining race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and who knows what else (disability studies? Jewish studies and Islamic studies?), but that the Democratic legislators seemed to believe so as well.

The flip from "we are the party of free speech!" to "we are the party that bans books and entire academic disciplines!" happened with dizzying speed. But take it from me as a trans person--these legislative attacks can burst across the country in the space of months, shifting the landscape radically. The thing about the MAGA movement is that it is made up of people who believe that the situation is desperate, the American project is on the verge of failure, and the time has come to destroy or be destroyed. Most Americans, including non-MAGA Republicans, want to see the culture war cool down and Americans get along, but MAGA-sorts want it to go hot. And I have to admit some despair about what to do about this, because of the unpersuadability of this group. Take a look at Question 39 from this CBS/YouGov poll of Iowa voters last week, and what percentage of Republican voters there believe they are being lied to by various parties. The percentage of MAGA voters who said they said they believed they were being told the truth by Trump was 71%, in comparison to 63% for friends and family, 56% for conservative news sources, and 42% for religious leaders. Only 32% of Iowa Republicans generally believed they were told the truth by medical scientists. (The figures for Joe Biden and "liberal media" were 10% and 8% respectively.)

It is hard to persuade people with facts and logic and calls for empathy when they think you are a liar attacking their great leader with whom 99% say they identify. What we have to do is persuade others to stand up. And I don't want to be doomy, but my experience with resisting transphobic legislation and action causes me a lot of concern. It's not just "the face-eating leopards won't eat my face" problem. The fact is, frankly, that a lot of institutions and people are craven. This past year I was in a working group with medical and social scientists advising the HHS about creating guidelines for research with intersex and transgender populations, and then Libs of TikTok spread lies about hospitals supposedly performing "sex changes" on little kids, and several children's hospitals received bomb threats--and suddenly most of the medical researchers working with trans youth were pulled from the working group by the hospitals they were affiliated with. Hospital administrators are shutting down research on trans youth and clinics serving trans youth, rather than having the backs of threatened doctors and patients, handing a victory to the face-eating leopards who growled at them.

My conclusion is that we need to focus energy on teaching people who have not dealt with serious bullying before how to stand up to bullies. For people like concerned parents considering attending school board meetings to oppose book bans, we could teach basic mutual aid strategies, like forming a supportive group to attend together. But what we are to do about people like college administrators and corporate executives who would like to do the right thing for students and employees, but not as much as they'd like to avoid offending a wealthy donor or receiving negative conservative media attention. . . that's a big question to me.

I have left my own longer comment in the wider thread.

(If you also like longform, thoughtful text conversation, this is my regular plug for Metafilter as a platform. If you DM me an email address, I can send you an invitation link for a free account.)

#metafilter #education #public education #colleges #legislators #cannot fucking believe the DEI thing #the thing is I have collaborated with this person in the past and he is a deeply sensible human being #so if he says this is what the legislators think #I believe him

[tomorrowusa]

Wisconsin is ditching the GOP hyper-gerrymandered maps for its state legislature. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed a new set of maps into law which are vastly fairer.

Late last year the newly liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the gerrymandered maps. The court flipped after Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated a MAGA opponent last April.

Under the previous maps, Republicans held about two-thirds of both the state Assembly and Senate. Under the new boundaries, the state Assembly and state Senate will likely see more balance between the two parties. Republicans currently hold 64 out of 99 state Assembly seats under the Republican-drawn maps. Under the new state Assembly map, the districts are more evenly split. The new map has 46 districts that lean Republican and 45 districts that lean Democratic. The eight districts left are likely to be a toss-up between Democratic and Republican candidates. Under the previous maps, Republicans hold 22 out of 33 state Senate seats. Under the new state Senate map, 14 out of 33 districts are Democratic-leaning, while 15 are Republican-leaning. Four districts are competitive, where either party has a fair chance of winning them.

You can't take back America without taking back the states. And you can't govern the states if you neglect elections for state legislature and state supreme court (in states where the court is elected).

Celebrate this victory for democracy by looking up who represents you in your own legislature. If you are represented by MAGA Republicans, contact your county or state Democratic Party and ask what you can do to help flip your district.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

#wisconsin #wisconsin legislature #tony evers #gerrymandering #wisconsin supreme court #janet protasiewicz #state government #maga republicans #vote blue no matter who #election 2024

[follow-up-news]

Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed new legislative district maps into law on Monday that he proposed and that the Republicans who control the Legislature passed to avoid having the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court draw the lines. Democrats hailed the signing as a major political victory in the swing state where the Legislature has been firmly under Republican control for more than a decade, even as Democrats have won 14 of the past 17 statewide elections. “When I promised I wanted fair maps — not maps that are better for one party or another, including my own — I damn well meant it,” Evers said prior to signing the maps into law at the state Capitol. “Wisconsin is not a red state or a blue state — we’re a purple state, and I believe our maps should reflect that basic fact. Democrats are almost certain to gain seats in the state Assembly and state Senate under the new maps, which will be in place for the November election. Republicans have been operating since 2011 under maps they drew that were recognized as among the most gerrymandered in the country.

#wisconsin

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Children ages 14 and 15 would no longer need a work permit or parental permission to get a job under a bill Republican Wisconsin lawmakers released on Friday.

The proposal comes amid a wider push by state lawmakers to roll back child labor laws and despite the efforts of federal investigators to crack down on a surge in child labor violations nationally.

Under current law, 14- and 15-year-olds in Wisconsin are prohibited from working most jobs unless they have permission from a parent or guardian and have verified their age with the state Department of Workforce Development. The Department can revoke youth work permits at any time if it believes a child’s safety is being threatened.

Sen. Cory Tomczyk and Reps. Clint Moses and Amy Binsfeld, the Republicans sponsoring the bill, called youth work permits “needless administrative barriers that slow down the hiring process.”

“It’s important that young people have the opportunity to work without having to endure excessive government regulation,” they said in a statement asking other lawmakers to cosponsor the bill.

The bill continues to require employers to keep their own records of employees’ ages and hours worked, but without work permits verified by a state agency, companies caught violating child labor laws can more easily claim ignorance.

Earlier this year, the Labor Department fined Wisconsin-based meat packing contractor Packers Sanitation more than $1.5 million for employing at least 100 children, some as young as 13, to clean dangerous equipment such as bone saws and skull splitters in plants across the U.S. The company claimed it wasn’t aware that those workers were minors but said it has since taken steps to improve the way it verifies employees’ ages.

State lawmakers across the country, largely Republicans, have in recent years embraced legislation that would allow kids to work longer hours and in more hazardous occupations. Many such bills were proposed as solutions to worker shortages, but advocates against child labor have decried the measures as needlessly endangering children.

Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law in March eliminating permits that, similar to those in Wisconsin, required employers to verify a child’s age and obtain a parent’s consent. Sanders later signed separate legislation raising civil penalties and creating criminal penalties for violating child labor laws, but advocates worry that eliminating the permit requirement makes it significantly more difficult to investigate violations because there are fewer records of where kids are being employed.

Earlier this year, Wisconsin Republicans proposed allowing children as young as 14 to serve alcohol in restaurants and bars. If that bill passed, Wisconsin would have the lowest such limit nationwide, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

The work permits bill proposed Friday follows little more than a month after a 16-year-old boy in northern Wisconsin died while working at a sawmill. Initial reports suggest that Michael Schuls was performing work allowed by state laws when he was killed by a wood-stacking machine, but his death and the deaths of other teen workers this summer have brought increased attention to child labor rules.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is unlikely to sign either of the Wisconsin proposals into law if they pass the Republican-controlled Legislature. He vetoed a bill last year that would have let 14- and 15-year-olds work later hours during the summer.

Evers’ Republican predecessor, former Gov. Scott Walker, signed a bill in 2017 that removed work permit requirements for 16- and 17-year-olds.

#us politics #news #the associated press #ap news #2023 #republicans #conservatives #gop #republican family values #child labor #work permits #wisconsin #gov. tony evers #Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development #Cory Tomczyk #Clint Moses #Amy Binsfeld #deregulation #deregulate deeze nutz #Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders #Arkansas #Scott Walker

[wausaupilot]

Gov. Tony Evers warns of possible legal action on PFAS funding

If the PFAS funds aren’t allocated before the next budget process, they will remain in the supplemental fund that lawmakers control. Evers outlined a few actions he might take to try to shake loose the money.

by Baylor Spears, Wisconsin Examiner April 16, 2024 Three Democratic lawmakers on Wisconsin’s budget committee sat waiting in the state Capitol at 9:30 Tuesday morning — the start time for a special meeting called by Gov. Tony Evers to discuss the release of funds to combat PFAS and support hospitals in western Wisconsin. Republicans, as expected, never showed up. Evers himself made an…

View On WordPress

#French Island #Gov. Tony Evers #PFAS #PFAS contamination

[cannabisbusinessexecutive]

Wisconsin governor who called for marijuana legalization says he’ll back limited GOP proposal

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, who has pushed for full legalization of recreational marijuana, said Wednesday that he is open to a more limited medical marijuana legalization being promoted by Republicans. “I would think that getting it all done in one fell swoop would be more thoughtful as far as meeting the needs of Wisconsinites that have asked for it,” Evers said in an interview with The…

View On WordPress

#Gov. Tony Evers #Legal Marijuana #medical marijuana #wisconsin marijuana

[schraubd]

Wisconsin is a Failed State

Folks are cackling at a line-item veto Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) made which took a one-year increase to the school budget and, though some clever deletions, turned it into a four-hundred year increase. The veto goes "for the 2023-24 school year and the 2024-25 school year, add $325." The new version reads: "for 2023-2425, add $325."

Obviously, this is hilarious and, as trolling goes, it's trolling for good. And there's nothing new about this in Wisconsin either -- when I teach about the line-item veto, I show an example from former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, who similarly vetoed individual bits and bobs from an enacted law to create a brand new spending program where none previously existed.

But still, it's fair to say that this is not how a functioning government should proceed.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin Republicans have blocked a proposal to require schoolchildren be vaccinated against meningitis. It's become increasingly clear that the anti-vaxx takeover of the GOP no longer has anything to do with COVID, and has become a general opposition to public health initiatives of all stripes. While this isn't Wisconsin specific, it is another instance of the state's ludicrously-gerrymandered legislature drinking fully and deeply of the waters of the death cult.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the chaos that has afflicted the Wisconsin Supreme Court in recent years. Of course, we all remember when one justice on that august court tried to choke out his esteemed colleague. More recently, members of that Court have repeatedly flirted with 2020 election denialism. One former member compared affirmative action to slavery. And while it may be the single funniest thing I've ever witnessed, having the Court's liberal faction celebrate the victory of a progressive challenger by marching into a watch party room to "it's bad bitch o'clock" also probably isn't exactly the sign of a perfectly healthy judicial body.

So yeah, Wisconsin isn't in great shape. Maybe folks should try Minnesota instead?

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/GSl5s24

#education #health care #judiciary #line item veto #Minnesota #Tony Evers #Wisconsin

[beardedmrbean]

MADISON – Wisconsinites convicted of multiple counts of a sex offense will be required to register as sex offenders for life even if the counts were part of the same incident, under a bill signed by Gov. Tony Evers.

The law effectively nullifies a 2023 state Supreme Court ruling holding that multiple convictions stemming from the same criminal complaint do not necessarily classify someone as a repeat offender. The governor's signature brings resolution to a question officials have debated for years.

In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled in May 2023 that "the plain and ordinary meaning of 'separate occasions' does not refer solely to the number of convictions" in consideration of whether lifetime registration is required for an offender.

"It is undisputable that all sex offenses covered by the sex offender registration statutory scheme are heinous in nature, thus necessitating the use of the registry for the protection of the public. However, within that scheme, the legislature, not this court, made policy decisions regarding which offenders are categorically required to comply with registration requirements for life and which are required to comply for 15 years," Justice Jill Karofsky wrote in the majority decision.

The case involved Corey T. Rector, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to five counts of possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and 10 years of extended supervision on each of the five counts, to be served concurrently, and was ordered to register as a sex offender for 15 years.

The case made its way to the state's high court after the state Department of Corrections requested in 2019 that Rector's sex offender status be changed to a lifetime registration because he had been convicted of more than two sex offenses, relying on a formal opinion issued in 2017 by Republican then-Attorney General Brad Schimel.

Schimel issued the opinion in response to a request from then-DOC Secretary Jon Litscher, who had asked whether the state's "special bulletin notification" statute applied to offenders with multiple criminal convictions that occurred at the same time or stemmed from the same criminal complaint.

State law requires people who are convicted of a sex offense (or found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect) on two or more separate occasions to be classified as "special bulletin notification" (SBN) offenders, who trigger notification of law enforcement when they change addresses. These offenders are subject to lifetime GPS monitoring.

Schimel's opinion was that "separate occasions" referred to the number of convictions, "including multiple convictions imposed at the same time and based on the same complaint."

Evers' signature codifies Schimel's interpretation in state law, negating the court's 2023 ruling. It will apply retroactively, and offenders who were previously released from the registry will be notified that they must re-register.

The bill's opponents included a number of prison reform groups and the State Public Defender's office.

The agency's legislative liaison, Adam Plotkin, argued judges should have the discretion to determine whether an offender should be required to register for 15 years or for the rest of their life.

In testimony before a Senate committee last month, Plotkin noted that malfunctioning devices or poor cellular service expose offenders to potential felony charges for removal or tampering with a GPS tracker, and argued the policy would ultimately reduce the public safety benefit of registration and monitoring.

"If everyone is considered a risk to the point of lifetime monitoring, it dilutes the efficacy of tracking those that a court determined are of higher risk based on the individual facts of that case," he said.

The proposal was drafted in consultation with the Department of Corrections, whose legislative adviser Anna Neal testified that the agency was concerned the Supreme Court's Rector ruling "is not reflective of communities' and law enforcement's expectations regarding notice and monitoring of sex offender registrants."

"The Rector decision may limit or reduce the notifications law enforcement agencies receive from the Department regarding the release of individuals who have been convicted of multiple counts and the Department's ability to require GPS tracking of these individuals," Neal said.

#nunyas news #worried that someone busted for #something dumb like public urination #will be on for life #unless there's degrees and I didn't see it

[algebraicvarietyshow]

Gov. Tony Evers, a former public school educator, used his broad partial veto authority this week to sign into law a new state budget that increases funding for public schools for the next four centuries.

The surprise move will ensure districts' state-imposed limits on how much revenue they are allowed to raise will be increased by $325 per student each year until 2425, creating a permanent annual stream of new revenue for public schools and potentially curbing a key debate between Democrats and Republicans during each state budget-writing cycle. [...]

Evers crafted the four-century school aid extension by striking a hyphen and a "20" from a reference to the 2024-25 school year. The increase of $325 per student is the highest single-year increase in revenue limits in state history.

szép

[moontheoretist]

Me on my Tony Stark obsession yet again: THERE ARE IRON MAN COLORS IN THIS SCENE!

Also me on my Tony Stark obsession yet again: Because of X-Men Evolution I forgot that Forge looks like a native American variant of Tony Stark and if those two ever met they could make anything in the universe possible. Worrying about resources would be no longer an issue with a fucking billionaire genius backing you up, Forge. You wouldn't have to design horrible devices for this shitty gov then.

Can I just... put them in the same room and see them do science? Like pretty please, I will be a very good girl, just let those two meet Q.Q

#x-men 97 #x-men 97 spoilers #x-men 97 episode 4 #x-men 97 episode 4 spoilers #forge #tony stark