Wisconsin Right Now

"My message is very pure and simple. We want freedom, we want prosperity and we want security" - new Congressman-elect Derrick Van Orden Former Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden flipped a Congressional district in western Wisconsin that had been in Democratic hands for 26 years. It was a bright spot for Republicans on Tuesday. "There are people in my district who said, 'You realize I have not had someone I feel has represented me my entire life. That’s a big deal," Van Orden told Wisconsin Right Now in an interview shortly after the election. Van Orden, who won the seat vacated by Democrat Ron Kind, disputed media narratives that it was a bad night for Republicans nationally. Van Orden received 51.8% to 48.2% for Democrat Brad Pfaff. "The Republican Party across the nation garnered more than 1 million votes more than the Democratic Party," he said. "The problem was the expectations were set so high that people were disappointed that every

This column was written by former Navy SEAL and Wisconsin Congressional candidate Derrick Van Orden. This is the first Memorial Day in over 20 years that our nation is not involved in large scale combat operations. As always, this is a bittersweet day for our family having lost so many friends and colleagues over the years, but today has a surreal feeling as I now feel a much stronger bond with my Vietnam veteran brothers and sisters then ever after the shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan. The chaotic retreat that led to the abandonment of thousands of our fellow American citizens brings into question our nation’s decades long involvement in this conflict. Was the death of thousands of troops including the 13 lost in the war’s final days worth the sacrifice? Will the loss of American prestige embolden those who would see the destruction of our way of life leading to more conflict? Should we as a nation continue to involve ourselves in conflicts that in the balance seem to be

"For my brothers and sisters who served in Afghanistan, they did their duty, and they need to hold their head up high and walk with pride" - Derrick Van Orden Derrick Van Orden , the Republican Congressional candidate who is running for Ron Kind's soon-to-be-vacant seat, is slamming what he calls President Joe Biden's "incompetence" in exiting Afghanistan, calling Biden's approach a disaster and the "largest foreign policy debacle in the U.S. in my lifetime and that includes Vietnam." Van Orden called Biden's botched exit from Afghanistan the "greatest example of incompetency we have seen in the executive branch certainly in my lifetime. If you tried to do this worse, you would be hard-pressed...There's no way you can look at this from any angle and say this ship has a rudder." In 2020, Derrick Van Orden gave Democrat Kind the fight of his political career, losing by only 11,000 votes. Van Orden then announced a rematch

"This place is amazing. It's worth fighting for. It's worth dying for," Jason Church. If ever a person had standing to speak on Afghanistan, it's Jason Church. The Afghanistan veteran from Wisconsin lost two lower legs to an IED but finished law school, ran for Congress, and works for a U.S. Senator. He gave an emotional speech at a news conference this week, saying that what he is seeing on television now "rocks me to the core." "This has been some of the hardest days of my life," said Church. "Four days ago when I saw what was going on, I reached out to one of my men who served with me in Afghanistan. I knew based on our mission that there was a videotape of me being injured, of my men coming up to me and putting their lives on the line for their brother in arms. And for nine years I buried the scene. I knew it existed, and I didn't want to watch it." Church described how, the other day, he watched the video at long last