(The Center Square) – A federal judge denied Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan’s request to dismiss charges against her based on judicial immunity in a Tuesday afternoon ruling.
“There is no basis for granting immunity simply because some of the allegations in the indictment describe conduct that could be considered ‘part of a judge’s job,’” wrote U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman.
Instead, Dugan will face the charges of obstruction of a federal proceeding and concealing an individual to prevent discovery or arrest. The obstruction charge could lead to up to a $100,000 fine and a year in prison while the second concealment charge can lead to up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Dugan’s lawyers had argued that she should not be prosecuted for her actions related to a defendant in her courtroom set to be arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers outside the courtroom due to judicial immunity
“According to the government, there is no general rule of immunity, and what defendant calls exceptions are simply examples of the types of prosecutions that have been brought against judges,” Adelman wrote. “A review of the relevant history reveals the government has the better of the argument.”
The next hearing on the case will take place in September.
Courthouse video showed Dugan walking a defendant through the court building past Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers there to arrest defendant Eduardo Flores-Ruiz.
Flores-Ruiz was ultimately arrested outside the courthouse after Dugan is accused of concealing Flores-Ruiz, who was previously deported and came back to the U.S., where he was facing charges in Milwaukee of domestic battery and abuse.

(The Center Square) – A group of Wisconsin Democrats are pushing to fund the state’s Knowles-Nelson Stewardship public land purchasing program with $72 million each year for the next six years while creating a new board to oversee future land purchases.
The program has become the subject of a power struggle between Gov. Tony Evers and legislative Republicans over who should oversee what is purchased and how the program’s funds are spent.
No new funding for the program was authorized in the recent two-year state budget and funding for the program is set to end in July 2026.
Evers had put $100 million for the program in his initial budget proposal while a pair of Republican lawmakers proposed funding for the program in a separate bill in June.
That proposal would include a requirement that all future land purchases over $1 million go into an annual proposal that must be approved by the full Legislature, something that Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, D-Whitefish Bay, said would “not prove workable in most circumstances” and would create “partisan gridlock.”
Habush Sinykin said that the Democratic proposal is funded between Evers’ $100 million proposal and $28.5 million in the Republican proposal.
Democrats on Tuesday called their proposal the start of a conversation and not a finished product.
“We hope our colleagues across the aisle will see this important gesture, said Rep. Vincent Miresse, D-Stevens Point.
Republicans have pushed back on the program, saying that too much land has been purchased while not enough maintenance has been done on current public-owned land and parks.
The program has acquired 646,000 acres of land in the state, according to Badger Institute, with three-fourths of the land in northern counties, including 60,000 acres in Oneida County and 16% of all land in Iron County.
Overall, the state holds about 5.9 million acres, one-sixth of the state, in undeveloped government-owned land.
“You live in this beautiful area of the state,” Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, told Badger Institute. “Well, yeah, we do, but we still need to pave our roads. We still need to educate our children.”
The Knowles-Nelson team put out a statement on the process, saying that it was concerned about the Republican proposal for full Legislature approvals of purchases.
“This standalone legislation has some positive elements—it provides stable funding for land trusts and local governments, offers four-year planning certainty, and creates new grants to help manage already-protected lands,” the team said. “However, it also includes concerning provisions that could make it harder to protect new land by always prioritizing management over acquisition. The proposed oversight process for major purchases lacks clear timelines or guarantees that projects will even get a vote.”
Instead, the team said that it prefers a process with a bipartisan advisory board to approve purchases.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources conservation wardens and county recreation deputies will be out Labor Day weekend looking to enforce and educate those driving all-terrain and utility off-road vehicles of state safety laws as part of a Think Smart Before You Start campaign.
There have now been 27 fatal ATV/UTV crashes this year, many which involved drivers not wearing helmets or safety belts.
The most recent include a 12-year-old who died after an Aug. 9 rollover in Wyocena where the driver lost control on a turn and the UTV came to rest on the driver. A 70-year-old man died on Aug. 19 when his ATV struck a deer on a road and he was ejected from the ATV.
Those under 18 must wear a helmet on a UTV and all riders must wear a seatbelt.
“These campaigns have been an effective tool for us to work with our partners and address risky behaviors that lead to crashes,” Lt. Jake Holsclaw, Wisconsin DNR off-highway vehicle administrator, said in a statement. “Things like operating while intoxicated (OWI), speed and careless operation are always a focus for us. At the end of the day, our goal is to prevent fatalities and make our trail and route systems safer for all users.”
Officers will be looking for those operating while intoxicated, speeding or carelessly operating and both helmet and seatbelt use.
Alcohol and unsafe speeds have been a factor in the fatal accidents along with helmet and seatbelt use.
“This gear takes very little effort to wear but makes a huge difference in the event of a crash,” Holsclaw said.

(The Center Square) – There are felony voter fraud charges for a woman who used to work for the Milwaukee Police Department.
Prosecutors filed charges against 45-year-old Marcey Patterson. Investigators say she voted in 12 city elections between 2018 and April 2025, despite the fact that she hasn’t lived in Milwaukee since 2018.
Investigators say Patterson filled out a new residency form in June that showed she moved to Glendale in 2018, and then moved to Brown Deer in March 2024.
“These forms, filled out and submitted by Patterson, established that for the entirety of her employment at MPD she did not (reside) within the City of Milwaukee,” prosecutors said in their charging complaint.
Patterson served as Milwaukee’s Police Community Relations Engagement and Recruitment Director from 2022 until she resigned last month.
Prosecutors say she listed both her house in Glendale, then her house in Brown Deer as her permanent residence, but also claimed that she stayed with her mother at her Milwaukee home from time to time.
While Patterson is facing voter fraud charges, she may also face charges for collecting Milwaukee’s city resident pay bump.
City workers who live in Milwaukee are eligible for a 3% bonus. Prosecutors say Patterson collected that bonus for years, totally more than $8,000.
The charging documents show that Patterson believed she qualified for the bonus because she lived within 15 miles of Milwaukee’s border. The mayor’s office, however, said there is no 15-mile exemption.
Patterson is the first person in Milwaukee to be charged with voter fraud since the city’s former Deputy Election Director Kimberly Zapata was charged with sending fake ballots to a state representative back in 2022. Zapata was convicted last year and sentenced to a year of probation.
Patterson could be sentenced to three years in prison if convicted.

(The Center Square) – A new lawsuit is fighting against a Wisconsin law that prevents the Public Service Commission from considering air pollution when approving power plants.
Midwest Environmental Advocates and Our Children’s Trust filed the lawsuit on behalf of 15 Wisconsin minors, who claim the dangers of fossil fuel power generation is endangering their health, threatening their homes and their futures while endangering their life and liberty.
“These laws force Wisconsin’s energy regulators to ignore the biggest crisis of our time,” said Nate Bellinger, Supervising Senior Staff Attorney at Our Children’s Trust and lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “Because of these unconstitutional laws, the Public Service Commission continues approving new fossil fuel-fired power plants while turning a blind eye towards Wisconsin’s smoke-filled skies, rising temperatures overflowing rivers, and harms to children’s physical and mental health.”
The lawsuit comes as Wisconsin faces a future with rising energy costs and more energy needs. A large factor in those energy needs is five large data center projects in the works.
A data center in Port Washington is set to use as much energy as the entire city of Los Angeles.
The lawsuit, meanwhile, connects the use of fossil fuel to, “mental health trauma” due to climate anxiety and lost access to lakes and rivers due to potential pollution.
“The bluffs on the Mississippi River in Wisconsin brought my ancestors to this great state in the 1860s because of its beauty. However, as a result of the climate crisis in Wisconsin, the bluff where my family and I lived became unstable and dangerous, and we were forced to move,” lead plaintiff Kaarina Dunn said in a statement. “Living this trauma in my home state was almost unthinkable and is directly linked to climate change. This fight to protect my right to life and liberty, to a stable climate system, and to access and enjoy our rivers and lakes does not end with my actions.”
Several Wisconsin lawmakers also have been pushing the development and re-development of nuclear power in the state. New laws will require a temporary board to plan and hold a Wisconsin Nuclear Power Summit and a nuclear siting study for identifying potential communities ideal for nuclear power generation, including both existing and new sites.
The plaintiffs in the environmental lawsuit are asking for the laws to be overturned to allow PSC to consider fossil fuel pollution in its approvals.
“These laws force my government to ignore science and pollution—that’s wrong and unconstitutional,” plaintiff Ted Schultz-Becker said in a statement. “Young people have power, even when we can’t vote. Our voices matter, and we trust our Constitution and courts to protect us.”

(The Center Square) – The authors of a Wisconsin hospital price transparency bill are committed to passing it in Wisconsin.
A 2019 federal rule that went into effect in 2021 created a federal requirement for the prices of many hospital services to be posted but a November report from PatientRightsAdvocate.org showed that just 30% of Wisconsin hospitals are fully compliant with the requirements.
Assembly Bill 353 was introduced in June and has not yet progressed in the Wisconsin Legislature.
The goal of the bill is to require the prices of specific hospital services to be posted so patients can see those costs ahead of a procedure, creating a more competitive environment where costs go down.
That could lead to a projected 27% drop in costs for some procedures, due to price transparency.
The bill co-authors are Sen. Julian Bradley, R-New Berlin, Sen. Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk and Rep. Robert Wittke, R-Caledonia.
“This will empower patients, lower costs, make sure no one delays care out of fear of a surprise bill,” Bradley said in a video promoting the bill. “Because sometimes, saving money can also mean saving lives.”
The Wisconsin bill would add enforcement of the requirements, which include a full list of standard procedures and process.
If a hospital isn’t in compliance, the first action is a written notice requiring corrective action and then a penalty will be enforced.
A publicly available list of the hospitals that are not in compliance would then be created with the dates the hospital did not fulfill the bill’s requirements.

(The Center Square) – The top Republican on Wisconsin’s Elections Commission isn’t sure President Donald Trump’s plan to end mail-in voting across the country is a good idea.
Commissioner Don Millis was a guest on UpFront over the weekend, and said Republicans in Wisconsin used absentee voting, including voting through the mail, to help the president carry Wisconsin last year.
“Among my many reactions are that if we eliminate mail-in ballots, we’re going to actually make it harder for Republicans who have historically used absentee voting to vote,” Millis said. “And I don’t think that’s good for the base of the Republican Party, so I’m not sure that’s a wise strategy.”
Trump last week took to Truth Social to say he wants to end mail-in voting.
Millis said he understands the lingering questions about ballot security, and the president’s desire to count every vote.
“I understand the impulse to go hand-count ballots,” Millis added. “For me, the most important requirement, the most important consideration, is that we have a hard copy of ballots in Wisconsin. The vast majority of people fill out paper ballots. They are stored. They can be recounted. For those who have a need for accessible touch screens, in one of two ways, there’s a record of that ballot. So that’s the most important thing, and we have that in Wisconsin right now.”
But Millis did acknowledge that there are lingering questions about Wisconsin’s vote-counting-history.
“Listen, I understand the president’s concerns, and I think a lot of us have concerns that there’s a perception that elections aren’t fair,” Millis said. “I think elections have been, (there’s) overwhelming evidence that elections have been fair, that votes have been counted.”
WEC chairwoman Ann Jacobs, who was also on UpFront on Sunday, said moving to hand-counts for every ballot would change elections in Wisconsin, and not necessarily for the better.
“We sure-as-shootin’ wouldn’t have the results late on the evening of Election Day or early the next morning,” Jacobs said. “You would be looking at weeks before ballots could be counted and results announced, and in a swing state like Wisconsin, that would make a big difference for the country. I think it would just be insanity.”

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin lawmaker has introduced a bill to prevent state and local governments from paying for health care services for undocumented individuals in the state.
Rep. Alex Dallman, R-Markesan, pointed to Minnesota’s expansion of MinnesotaCare to include undocumented individuals earlier this year as reasoning for the law, saying it will cost the state an additional $200 million over the next four years.
“I introduced AB 308 which will prohibit state and local taxpayer dollars from subsidizing health care for illegal immigrants,” Dallman said in a statement. “This bill will ensure hard-earned taxpayer money goes to Wisconsin citizens and not used to fund people here illegally.”
Minnesota Rep. Jeff Backer, R-Browns Valley, said earlier this year that 17,396 illegal immigrants are currently enrolled in MinnesotaCare.
“Taxpayer funds should not be going to fund welfare for undocumented illegal immigrants,” Dallman said in a statement. “I look forward to moving this bill through the legislative process and ensuring taxpayer dollars are spent on hardworking Wisconsinites.”
Fiscal estimates on the bill say that the Department of Revenue does not have detailed expense data and the Department of Public Instruction also does not have a count of how many individuals between students, staff or teachers would be impacted by the bill.
The Department of Corrections wrote that it was concerned about the bill conflicted with the Eighth Amendment in terms of providing health care.
“The 1976 Supreme Court case Estelle v. Gamble, established the deliberate failure to address medical needs of an inmate constitutes cruel and unusual punishment,” the Department of Corrections wrote. “In Fiscal Year 24, the Department’s cost of providing healthcare was $7,700/person. This amount excludes salary and fringe benefit costs of healthcare personnel.”

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s Republican legislative leadership is pushing back on Gov. Tony Evers’ attempt to push through rulemaking without legislative oversight.
Evers sent an Aug. 12 letter to his cabinet members stating “there no longer remains any statutory requirement to wait for legislative committee review before promulgating a rule once I have approved it.”
The ruling came in a pair of cases, including one where the court determined that the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules overstepped its power by indefinitely blocking a zoning rule until a new law could be created in the future.
But the court was careful to maintain who could retain the power in the rulemaking process.
“Before concluding we note that the Legislature retains power over the administrative rulemaking process regardless of our determination here,” the majority opinion from Justice Jill Karofsky said. “The Legislature created the current process. It alone maintains the ability to amend, expand, or limit the breadth of administrative rulemaking in the other branches—as long as it adheres to the constitution, including the provisions of bicameralism and presentment.”
In response to Evers’ recent directive, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate President Mary Felzkowski said “We are following the law and maintaining the fundamental checks and balances of lawmaking. The governor is flagrantly disregarding the rule of law and egregiously abusing the power of his office. If the governor’s actions go unchecked, Wisconsinites would no longer have an opportunity for public testimony on rules that carry the full force of law. We will not let this happen.”
Evers had advised cabinet members to review previous rulemaking and propose items that were blocked in the past.
“I am directing agencies to review your statutorily provided authority to promulgate rules and, where appropriate, initiate rules,” Evers wrote. “More specifically, I respectfully request that you analyze areas in which the Legislature’s prior abuse of power forestalled, delayed, or halted prior rulemaking in service of the people of our state.”

(The Center Square) – Unemployment rates rose in the majority of Wisconsin counties in July.
That came despite the overall adjusted unemployment rate dropping from 3.2% in June to 3.1% in July.
Localized data showed that 37 counties saw increased unemployment rates, 19 had rates remain the same and 16 saw decreased rates for the month.
That compares to year-over-year data with 28 seeing unemployment rate decreases, 19 counties seeing increases and 25 having the rate remain the same between July 2024 and July 2025.
The city and metropolitan area data showed that 14 of the largest 35 cities saw unemployment rate increases, 11 saw decreases and rates remained the same in the other 10. Sheyboygan was the only metropolitan area that saw a decrease while seven saw increased rates and six remained the same.
Milwaukee and Waukesha’s metropolitan area went from 3.6% unemployment to 3.7% over the month, the Madison area remained at 2.7% and Appleton went from 2.7% to 2.9%.
The city of Milwaukee had the worst unemployment rate again, going from 4.6% to 4.8%.
Fitchburg had the lowest rate, remaining at 2.4%.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin lawmakers are looking at a bill that would exempt tips from state income tax, a measure that would match an end to taxes on tips in a federal reconciliation bill.
The Wisconsin bill would be a tax that is capped at a $25,000 benefit for employees in jobs that are tip-based and an amendment assures that Assembly Bill 28 applies to both cash and credit-based tips.
“I really think we’ve got to do it and we’ve got to do it now,” Sponsor Rep. Ron Tusler, R-Harrison, said during a public hearing in the Assembly Committee on Ways and Means.
The bill would exempt an estimated $33.7 million in tip income from taxes. A 2013 study showed that about 20% of tips are cash.
Sen. Andre Jacque, R-De Pere, said that the proposal is similar to one proposed during the 2019-2020 session, which had bipartisan support, and a measure that Gov. Tony Evers put in his budget proposal.
Jacque noted that the measure would be more encouragement for tip-based employees to accurately report tips in taxes, something that can benefit them when looking for a home, mortgage or credit.
“Currently there is a disincentive for accurately reporting tips,” Jacque said.
Susan Quam, Wisconsin Restaurant Association Executive Vice President, said that while tips might not have been the group’s top suggestion for tax relief in the industry, it does support the measure in what is “overall a tight margin industry.”
She noted that the Internal Revenue Service carefully tracks tip reporting at restaurants, comparing the reported tips on credit against cash tips to ensure that a similar percentage of tips are reported for each form of payment and charging businesses if the percentages do not match.
Tusler was asked by a fellow lawmaker why tipped workers were being separated out for tax relief and noted that those workers are some of the most in need of tax relief as they attempt to make ends meet.
“I’m thinking about how to lower taxes every day,” Tusler said. “Less taxes would mean less government.”

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin cannot shake its home affordability problems.
The latest report from the Wisconsin Realtors Association says there are more homes for sale across the state, but prices continue to rise.
“Housing affordability is a national problem, and while the Midwest fares better than the other regions of the country, we’re not immune to the challenge,” Realtors CEO Tom Larson said in a statement.
The July 2025 report shows that total statewide listings improved 7.3% from July of last year. But prices also jumped 4.5% over the same 12 months.
The median price for a home in Wisconsin is now $322,500.
“The moderation of price appreciation and income growth both help, but the stubbornly high mortgage rates have kept Wisconsin affordability near record-low levels. Hopefully, we see mortgage rates improve over the next year,” Larson added.
While prices are up, Larson said price increases were under 5% for the third straight month.
Year-to-year home sales are down less than half-a-percent, while year-to-date home sales are up a half-a-percent.
“All of our measures of inventory improved in July, which continues a general trend we’ve seen since April. Addressing the inventory shortage is key to improving sales and moderating the rapid appreciation of prices,” Realtors board chair Chris DeVincentis added.
The Milwaukee-area and the Madison-area continue to lead Wisconsin’s home sales numbers. The two account for almost 55% of all homes sold in the state, though the Realtors said there has been an uptick in sales in northern Wisconsin.
“Rural regions led sales growth, fueled by stronger inventory. In the North region, supply rose 13% to 6.1 months, driving a 12% increase in closed sales compared to last year,” the report notes.
So far, the Realtors said, there have been 37,819 homes sold in 2025. That’s an increase of less than 200 homes from July of last year.