(The Center Square) – A group of Wisconsin lawmakers are asking their federal counterparts to reverse part of the Clean Air Act that allows for vehicle emissions testing in Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Sheboygan, Washington and Waukesha counties.
The group cited advanced technology and a low failure rate of 3.1% and 3.0% in 2021 and 2022 for a program the lawmakers say cost residents $271.4 million from when it started in 1984 through the 2023-24 fiscal year.
The program is funded by a 1 cent-per-gallon petroleum tax.
The letter was signed by Republican Reps. Bob Donovan, Scott Allen, Lindee Bill, Cindi Duchow, Barbara Dittrich, Rick Gundrum, Dan Knodl, Dave Maxey, Sylvia Ortiz-Velez, Jim Piwowarczyk, Chuck Wichgers, Robert Wittke and Paul Melotik along with Sens. Van Wanggaard, Julian Bradley, Rob Hutton and Chris Kapenga.
“The Wisconsin Legislature has previously considered measures to limit or terminate the program, reflecting local frustrations with its diminishing returns,” the letter said. “Repealing the mandate for inspection programs in nonattainment areas would represent an extraordinary step by Congress, and we realize the significance of this request.
“However, we believe that the continuance of this program will not significantly improve air quality and reduce emissions, but instead continue to tax Wisconsinites for a program that has outlived its usefulness.
The vehicle emissions testing in seven Wisconsin counties taxes Wisconsinites, despite vehicle improvements rendering the program obsolete.My colleagues and I in the State Legislature sent a letter to Congress urging action.Read our full letter: pic.twitter.com/OCMHRJSRN6— Rep. Bob Donovan (@RepDonovan) December 2, 2025
Kapenga sponsored a 2017 bill to end the emissions testing requirements but the bill failed in committee.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin hunters harvested 0.8% less deer than a year ago with 182,084 deer during the 2025 gun deer season, including 86,068 antlered and 96,016 antlerless deer.
The season ran from Nov. 22 through Sunday and the muzzleloader season runs from now until Dec. 10 with a statewide antlerless hunt coming Dec. 11-14 and an antlerless holiday hunt in select zones from Dec. 24 to Jan. 1.
With the bow and crossbow seasons included, hunters in the state have harvested 1.1% more deer than a year before with 294,757 deer registered.
Overall, Wisconsin hunters have bought 790,044 licenses with 550,611 for gun only.
“We essentially have a pretty stable license purchase and participation rate,” said Department of Natural Resources Deer Specialist Jeff Pritzl.
The busiest area for deer was Marquette County in the Central Farmland Zone, which saw 7.9 deer registered per square mile while Vernon County led the Southern Farmland Zone with 6.5 deer registered per square mile.
There were two gun-related incidents reported during the season, which included the death of a Fond du Lac County hunter after an accidental self-inflicted gunshot to the chest. It was the state’s first gun-hunting fatality since 2022.

(The Center Square) – Morgan Geyser’s lawyer wants her sent back to the state mental hospital.
Attorney Tony Cotton wrote the judge in Geyser’s escape case, asking that she be moved out of the Waukesha County Jail.
“Given that she has no new criminal charges in Waukesha County and given that she has been previously found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect on the underlying offense, it is our position that she should be housed in a mental health facility, not a correctional institution,” Cotton wrote to the judge.
Geyser has been in jail since last week when she was brought back from Illinois following her escape from a group home in Madison.
Geyser spent the better part of a decade in the mental hospital in Winnebago after being found not guilty of attempted murder because of mental defect or disorder.
Geyser and a second stabber nearly killed a third girl when they were all 12. Geyser originally pleaded guilty, but that guilty plea was later set aside. She was sentenced to 40 years in the mental hospital.
A judge ruled in March that her mental health had improved enough for Geyser to leave the mental hospital. After a few months of searching, she was released to a group home in Madison.
It was at that home that police say Geyser cut off her court-ordered GPS ankle bracelet and fled. She wasn’t reported missing until the next day and wasn’t captured until the day after that.
It’s unclear if Geyser will face new charges in Madison. Police there say that’s where she cut off her ankle monitor and made her escape.
There is also no word if the man who police say helped Geyser escape will face charges. His charges would come in Dane County.
Prosecutors there have been silent so far.

(The Center Square) – Mandela Barnes is entering a crowded race for the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin governor.
The former lieutenant governor ran for U.S. Senate in 2022 and lost to Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.
Barnes was lieutenant governor under Gov. Tony Evers from 2019 to 2023.
Barnes’ campaign announcement focused on Presisdent Donald Trump, saying that Trump has focused on distraction and a lack of accountability while lowering taxes for billionaires and raising taxes for working families.
“The only way for our state to move forward is to reject the Washington way and get things done the Wisconsin way,” Barnes said in a campaign announcement video. “It isn’t about left or right. It’s not about who can yell the loudest. It’s about whether people can afford to live in the state they call home.”
Other Democrats in the race include Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, State Rep. Francesca Hong, state Sen. Kelda Roys, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey.
Republicans in the race for governor include U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann.

(The Center Square) – Increased energy use from artificial intelligence data centers in Wisconsin will have a cost.
But the question is whether those costs will reach the residential utility payers on their home electric bills.
“And the tech companies are saying the right things and the utilities are saying the right things,” Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin Executive Director Tom Content said at a recent Wisconsin Technology Council panel on data centers. “All of our commission chairs are saying the right things that the cost causers are meant to pay.”
A big part of the reality is capacity, how much energy data centers need and how much the state’s utilities have to offer.
Alliant Energy’s Becky Valcq explained that utilities have constant infrastructure costs to ensure that the lights turn on when someone flips on a switch at their home or office. Having new large-scale customers like data centers that pay a large portion of infrastructure costs through their payment agreements with utilities can then offset those ongoing costs, which are a large portion of the bill that consumers pay.
“When we talk about growth, from a utility perspective, especially a utility that has a largely rural service territory, growth is good,” said Valcq, Alliant’s assistant vice president of regulatory affairs and data center services. “Why is it good? It’s because of all those fixed costs that we have regardless. The more customers we bring on, the lower those fixed costs are for all of our customers.”
Power capacity, however, is a large issue in the matter. Data centers in Port Washington and Mount Pleasant alone will use more energy than the rest of the consumers in the state.
It’s why Wisconsin leaders are pushing tax breaks for new nuclear plants.
Content explained that it took 120 years for We Energies to grow from 1 kilowatt to a gigawatt to five gigawatts of energy capacity but these two data centers will double that capacity need in a few years with more large-scale data centers coming, like a Meta data center in Beaver Dam.
“We’re in this inflationary environment already and now here come data centers,” Content said. “The utilities do have an obligation to serve and it’s always a question of at what time is the system ready for this project and can the system accommodate it?”
Data centers are expected to lead to the average American’s energy bill increasing from 25% to 70% in the next 10 years without intervention from policymakers, according to Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Jack Kemp Foundation.
The data centers are being brought in and given large-scale tax benefits, such as incentives negating property taxes along with sales taxes on everything from construction to servers to electricity, without the promise of many new employees and question marks on the lifespan of the developments.
“If you were trying to design the dumbest possible thing to subsidize, it would be a data center,” Center of Economic Accountability President John Mozena recently told The Center Square. “They are these big, dark buildings where virtually nobody works. Most of the high-value work at those facilities isn’t being doing by people on-site, it’s being done programmers in Silicon Valley or Shanghai or Mumbai or someplace like that.”

(The Center Square) – Improper restrictions for eligibility of federal food stamps is opposed by the Wisconsin attorney general.
Wednesday of last week, Attorney General Josh Kaul joined other state prosecutors in litigation against Secretary Brooke Rollins and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program originates in the USDA and is administered by the states.
“Improperly restricting eligibility for SNAP leads to more unnecessary hunger in our communities and an unnecessary increase in the strain on food banks and food pantries,” Kaul said in a statement. “The Trump administration must stop disregarding federal law and standing in the way of food assistance for people.”
The litigation seeks to help those illegally in the country benefitting from the program.
“Federal statutes make clear that many individuals protected under humanitarian programs become eligible for SNAP once they obtain their green cards and meet standard program requirements,” they wrote.
Wisconsin’s food stamps program is known as FoodShare. Some 700,000 people in the state who are enrolled.
This is Kaul’s fourth lawsuit or legal action against the Trump administration in November, and his 53rd lawsuit or legal action against the president this calendar year.

(The Center Square) – A group of Wisconsin lawmakers have proposed a series of laws to create tax credits for new nuclear power facilities.
One bill would create an energy tax credit for nuclear facilities that go online after 2030 and another would create up to five years of tax credit for construction materials to build a facility.
“Wisconsin needs more power,” said Sen. Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac. “We are currently a net importer of energy, consuming six times more power than we can produce. With demand for energy continuing to rise, we need to do everything we can to increase production in our state.”
Assembly Bill 472 creates the 10-year tax credit based on the megawatt capacity of the facility with a $12.5 million credit each year for a facility with a capacity of 1,250 megawatts.
“It’s been a long, complicated road,” said Rep. Shae Sortwell, R-Two Rivers. “… This is a huge step forward.”
Sortwell said that another nuclear facility bill would be coming later.
Assembly Bill 618 would credit the construction materials credit for facilities that are certified by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. that is good for up to five years until the company obtains its operator license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“We are going to need more energy and nuclear energy is clean, efficient and reliable,” Feyen said.
Wisconsin lawmakers approved a pair of bills earlier this year to create a statewide nuclear siting study and to create a temporary board to plan and hold a Wisconsin Nuclear Power Summit.

(The Center Square) – Democratic attorneys general from 22 jurisdictions sued the Trump administration Wednesday over ending food assistance for noncitizens who are legal permanent residents.
The lawsuit, which names the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins as defendants, was filed in the Eugene division of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. The suit argues the USDA’s guidance for the Supplemental Food Assistance Program violates the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and says the federal law keeps permanent legal residents eligible for SNAP benefits. The suit also says the USDA violated its own regulations by allowing only one day, instead of 120 days, for states to adjust to the new guidance, which was issued Oct. 31. The transition period ended Nov. 1, according to the suit.
“This guidance reads like someone took notes from the Grinch, taking food from families during the holidays,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters Wednesday during a virtual news conference, which also featured attorneys general from Massachusetts, Oregon and Minnesota.
“California will not stand by while families lose access to food because of unlawful federal action,” Bonta said. “So we’re taking Trump to court.”
The new USDA guidance deprives tens of thousands of lawful permanent residents across the U.S. of help, Bonta said, adding, “SNAP recipients are still recovering from the whiplash President Trump and his administration put them through in seeking to block November SNAP benefits during the government shutdown.”
“No president has fought harder to deprive hungry Americans from food,” he said, later adding, “No group of attorneys general has fought harder to make sure they are fed.”
Although the Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated SNAP eligibility for individuals who entered the U.S. as refugees or were granted asylum or humanitarian parole, it did not end the eligibility for noncitizens who became legal permanent residents, Bonta said. He added that under the federal law, refugees and people granted asylum or humanitarian parole become eligible for SNAP once they become legal permanent residents.
The lawsuit says the USDA guidance is contrary to the law, is arbitrary and capricious, and violates the Administrative Procedure Act.
The suit seeks a preliminary injunction to ensure families don’t go hungry, Bonta said.
Answering a question from The Center Square, Bonta said a federal court ruling could come in a matter of days or even immediately, depending on the judge. “We’ve sought restraining orders and secured them on the same day we file.”
The attorneys general are asking the U.S. District Court to rule as soon as possible, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said.
In the meantime, Massachusetts is working with food pantries and community organizations to keep families fed until a ruling is issued, Campbell said, answering a question from The Center Square. “So food pantries and many folks are working overtime to close the gap.”
Other attorneys general said their states were taking similar actions.
“The state and food banks have been stepping up to provide more support,” Bonta said about California.
Campbell, meanwhile, told The Center Square the coalition of attorneys general succeeded during previous efforts to preserve SNAP benefits.
“We were successful, this coalition, when we fought the Trump administration the first time during the government shutdown, to make sure SNAP benefits would continue to flow for the month of November and to ensure all folks in our respective states would see benefits in November and not partial but full benefits,” Campbell said.
Bonta said the attorneys general previously wrote a letter to the USDA, believing the department simply made a mistake in its guidance.
“We gave them a chance to start over,” Bonta said, but added, “The USDA’s silence in response tells us everything we need to know.” He said the new guidance was deliberate.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield told reporters that no one in the U.S., one of the world’s wealthiest countries, should go hungry.
And President Donald Trump must follow the law, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said during the news conference. Trump is welcome to try to get Congress to change a law that he doesn’t like, Ellison said, but added, “We won’t let him rule by fiat. We won’t let him break the law.”
Attorneys general said Wednesday’s lawsuit is the 48th one in California and Oregon against the Trump administration. For Minnesota and Massachusetts, it’s the 45th and 43rd one respectively.
Democratic attorneys general are winning more than 80% of their legal actions against the federal government, Bonta said, answering questions from The Center Square. He added he doesn’t anticipate that the latest lawsuit over SNAP will end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Besides California, Oregon, Massachusetts and Minnesota, Wednesday’s lawsuit was filed by New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.

(The Center Square) – A pair of Wisconsin legislators are proposing legislation that would create various fees for activities on state land to help fund the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
The fees include a hiking permit, which would cost $20 for adults and $10 for children ages 12 or older for anyone graveling on foot on state land and a $40 bike permit for adults using state trails and $20 for children 12 and older, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
The proposal also includes a foraging permit that will cost $40 per adult and $20 for children over the age of 12.
The proposed bills haven’t been filed yet and are sponsored by Rep. Chanz Green, R-Grand View, and Sen. Rob Stafsholt, R-New Richmond.
The Center Square was unable to obtain comment from Green and Stafsholt before publication.
The Wisconsin State Senate Democratic Committee said that the proposal was an example of Republicans refusing to address the increasing cost of living in the state.
“In response to this universal struggle, Wisconsin Republicans have decided to levy new taxes on the millions of people across our state who prefer to spend their time outdoors,” the group said in a statement. “This blatantly out of touch effort is yet another proof point that our state’s Republican party is unable to address the struggles of working families.”
The fees also include new permit costs for non-motorized boats and cross-country skiing on state land.
The cross-country skiing fee would be $40 for an adult and $20 for a child over 12.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission agreed to a $31.3 million increase settlement to residential rates for electricity and natural gas for Madison Gas and Electric customers over the next two years, according to preliminary estimates from the PSC sent to The Center Square.
The approval comes soon after similar approvals for Alliant Energy and Xcel Energy that amount to $300 million in increases, meaning the three combined increases will be valued at more than $330 million.
The increases will go into effect Jan. 1. The three utilities will hold 9.8% profit margins for investors.
The Madison Gas and Electric increases represented a $28.5 million decrease from the utility’s rate request.
The increase includes an estimated $19.2 million in electrical rate increases and $12.1 million in natural gas over the two-year span.

(The Center Square) – The beer man is out.
Democrat Ryan Strnad announced that he is dropping out of the Democratic primary for governor.
“I, Ryan Strnad, citing low poll numbers and the inability to raise large sums of dollars needed to compete with the sophisticated group candidates in the Democratic primary, have decided to leave the 2026 WI gubernatorial election effective immediately,” he wrote in an announcement.
Strnad was always a longshot candidate at best. He spends his summer selling beer in the stands at Brewer games, and he’d never run for office.
In fact, Strnad said he wants to focus more on his job as a beer vendor at American Family Field, though he’s not ruling out another run for office.
“I will put my focus on some newly arising labor issues affecting the vendors at American Family Field and contemplate a run for Waukesha County Executive (provided Paul Farrow chooses against a reelection),” he added.
Strnad said he is tossing his support behind Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in the crowded race for governor on the Democratic side next year.
“I am happy to endorse Milwaukee County Executive, David Crowley for the 2026 WI gubernatorial race!,” he wrote. “David is a proven leader who has earned my respect after getting to know him over the last several months!”
Strnad’s exit leaves six other candidates, including Crowley in the race.
There are also rumors that two other Democrats, former Department of Administration secretary Joel Brennan and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes might jump-in as well.
There are two Republicans in the race, Northwoods Congressman Tom Tiffany and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann.
Voters will make their choice in the primary in August.