Wisconsin Right Now

  Lawmakers have threatened to revoke the appropriations for a federally-funded scholarship program that an audit found favors liberally leaning students over conservatives by a ratio of 10 to 1. The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation was established in the 1970s to award scholarships to students who “demonstrate outstanding potential for and who plan to pursue a career in public service.” An audit of those scholarships performed by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, though, reported strong liberal bias at the taxpayer-funded foundation. “While this role suggests these programs should include scholars who reflect a breadth of views, values, and interests, their participants instead display a stark ideological tilt,” AEI said in its report . The foundation does have members of both parties on its board, including U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, and U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kans. Notably, President Joe Biden's Education Secretary Miguel Cardona also si...

The Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections and the Senate Committee on Shared Revenue, Elections and Consumer Protection held a hearing Thursday with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, some local election clerks and Fond du Lac County’s district attorney. “We're not trying to get anybody into a bad spot here, or in a corner, or make accusations on that level,” Sen. Dan Knodl, R-Germantown, said. “We want our clerks, who are already stressed enough, to know that we are here to be there as an assist to them.” Rep. Scott Krug, R-Nekoosa, said he wants to make sure voters have faith in Wisconsin’s electoral process. “This is one of the topics that hit our inboxes quite a bit the last three months or so,” Krug added. “We thought it’s pretty important just to vet it out, to get all the information out to the public.” The Wisconsin Elections Commission was invited to Thursday’s meeting but didn’t attend because commissioners were having a meeting of their own. Bu...

  Lawmakers plan to interrogate the head of Eco Health Alliance, the group accused of conducting dangerous coronavirus research in Wuhan, China just before the COVID-19 pandemic. The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will hold a public hearing May 1 where Dr. Peter Daszak is expected to testify. Daszak is the president of Eco Health Alliance, a U.S. nonprofit health research company that used taxpayer-funded grants to conduct coronavirus research. The lawmakers on the committee also allege that newly obtained documents show Daszak’s previous testimony misled the committee or misrepresented the facts. “These revelations undermine your credibility as well as every factual assertion you made during your transcribed interview,” the letter said. “The Committees have a right and an obligation to protect the integrity of their investigations, including the accuracy of testimony during a transcribed interview. We invite you to correct the record.” One of those obt...

Wisconsin lawmakers are looking to send a laundry list of mental health proposals to Gov. Tony Evers. The Wisconsin Assembly on Tuesday queued up plans that would do everything from allow out-of-state mental health providers to work in Wisconsin, to set up a pilot program for first responders’ mental health needs, to expand mental health training for police officers, who Rep. Bob Donovan, R-Greenfield, said have become de-facto mental health professionals. “Typically, a call goes into the police when an individual is acting up in a community. The police respond and they try to diffuse the situation, depending on how violent the individual is. Often times these situations escalate, and the individual is arrested, put in the back of a squad, and taken-off either to jail or a mental health facility,” Donovan said. His plan would create a pilot program in both rural Wisconsin and the state’s larger cities that would pay, train, and equip police officers to better handle mental heal...

Wisconsin lawmakers won’t begin writing the next state budget until next year, but they are already being flooded with requests for billions of dollars more in state money. The Institute for Reforming Government is out with a new analysis that says Gov. Tony Evers' state agencies want $7.5 billion in new dollars for the 2023-2025 state budget. “While most of Wisconsin and Wisconsin’s families are sitting around the kitchen table trying to put together their budgets with the same amount of money coming in the door, even while prices are rising, the folks in Madison don’t seem bothered by inflation at all. In fact, they’re willing to take more money,” IRG’s Director of State Budget and Government Reform Alex Ignatowski told The Center Square Tuesday. IRG found the largest budget increase comes from Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction, which is asking for $2.5 billion in new funding. “They are trying to say that this money is going to trickle down to local schools,” ...