Wisconsin Right Now

(The Center Square) – State Sen. John Jagler is frustrated Milwaukee Public Schools seems to be ignoring the state law that requires police officers in the city’s schools. But, he doesn’t expect any changes either.

Jagler, R-Watertown, last week wrote a letter to the MPS board, asking when the city’s schools plan to follow the law and return school resource officers to their buildings.

Republican lawmakers included the school resource officer in 2023’s shared revenue deal. It required MPS to add 25 officers by Jan. 1. That didn’t happen.

“Now, I know it didn't get done fast enough last year. And to be honest, I kind of, to be fair, just kind of assumed it would be done in August of this year,” Jagler said on News Talk 1130 WISN on Tuesday.

Jagler said he realized that Milwaukee Public Schools may never return the officers to their buildings after hearing MPS school board vice president Jilly Gokalghandi dismiss a question about officers in schools during a question-and-answer session last month.

“We're going to continue to focus on restorative justice as the main lever of serving our kids,” Gokalghandi said. “So that is my commitment. I've said that. I've gone on record and said that over and over again. And so that is what I will focus on.”

Jagler said he was taken back by Gokalghandi’s dismissive attitude.

“Yeah, ‘chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, we're breaking state law, and we don't care.’ That just infuriated me. And not just the answer, which I guess I appreciate the honesty, but the just a flippant nature of it,” Jagler added.

There is no way for the legislature to force MPS to return school resource officers to its schools. The shared revenue law doesn’t include any punishments. Jageler said neither Gov. Tony Evers nor Wisconsin’s attorney general will “touch” the law to enforce it.

But, Jagler said, MPS may be creating a bigger problem by thumbing their nose at the law.

“What it's going to do, going forward, as we look at anything with MPS, [maybe a] bailout with new funding, how can we trust them to do anything?” Jagler asked.

Jagler said MPS responded to his letter with a promise to have an update on its school resource officer program at this week’s school board meeting. But he said the district isn’t promising to actually return officers to school anytime soon.

“‘We have been in discussions with stakeholders, including the teachers union, and the police department the goal to develop a plan in partnership with MPD which redefines the previous role of school resource officers,” Jagler read from MPS’ response to his letter.

The California legislature passed a bill allowing undocumented immigrants to make use of the state’s $150,000, 0 down, 0 interest home “loans.” The bill now goes to the governor’s desk, where he must either veto or approve the bill by the end of September.

California has one of the worst home shortages in the nation, with an estimated 4.5 million home shortage, and a nearly $1 million median home price.

"Many generational Californians can’t afford to buy a house in their home state thanks to Democrats’ unsustainable economic policies,” said State Senate Minority Leader Brian W. Jones, R-San Diego, in a statement urging California Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto the bill. "This policy is not only unfair but also sends a dangerous message: ‘Come to California, whether legally or illegally, and claim your $150,000 home loan.’"

California’s Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loans program allows applicants to secure “loans” of up to $150,000 or 20% of the home’s purchase price — or, about what a typical down payment is — with zero down payment on this state “loan,” and no payments. In exchange, the state receives the original loan amount plus 20% of the appreciated gain when the home is refinanced, sold, or transferred.

Last year, the state allocated $255 million for the program for 1,700 lucky “winners” of an application lottery. This year, the state did not fund the program at all as it narrowly balanced a $47 billion budget deficit.

It’s not clear what happens if a family decides to hold on to a home as there are no provisions on how long a property can be held for, which means certain kinds of trusts could potentially allow the loan to not be paid back.

The bill now goes to Newsom’s desk for approval where it faces an uncertain future. The governor has often used the state’s poor finances to justify vetoing bills popular with California Democrats but unpopular nationwide.

Tennessee conservative activist Robby Starbuck has continued to impact corporate policies on diversity, equity and inclusion and donations to pride events, most recently at companies such as Lowe’s, Jack Daniel’s, Indian Motorcycle and Polaris.

Starbuck previously made public policies at Harley-Davidson, John Deere and Tractor Supply that led to corporate statements on how the companies would shift policies to limit or eliminate DEI priorities.

This week, Lowe’s made a statement that it would stop participation in the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index along with stopping donations to pride events and ending its employee resource groups, which separate employees with specific characteristics such as sexual orientation or gender to provide corporate resources.

On Wednesday, Starbuck said that Ford did the same, ending involvement in HRC's index, pride donations and vowing that ERC groups will be focused on business. Ford also said that it does not have supplier or dealership quotas.

“We’re now forcing multi-billion dollar organizations to change their policies without even posting just from fear they have of being the next company that we expose,” Starbuck wrote. “We are winning and one by one we WILL bring sanity back to corporate America.”

Starbuck said that he was tipped off that Lowe’s was a company to look into after a pair of employees from Lowe’s DEI team visited his LinkedIn profile.

The Lowe’s changes were announced a week after Starbuck messaged its corporate leadership regarding the company’s corporate policies.

Starbuck was a 2022 Republican write-in candidate in Tennessee's 5th Congressional District after being removed from the ballot by the Tennessee Republican Party.

Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-Forman recently announced changes in its company, just as Starbuck said he was about to write about the company’s policies but after he had gone through many employee LinkedIn pages, meaning they received notification he was looking at their pages.

Jack Daniel’s also left the HRC Corporate Equality Index along with announcing that executive and employee bonuses and goals would be tied to business performance and not DEI and it would end specific training that Starbuck described as “woke.”

The U.S. Department of Defense is under scrutiny for refusing to release records about exactly how spending on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion helps with national security.

The Center to Advance Security in America in May filed with the DOD a Freedom of Information Act Request, the legal pathway to obtain government documents. The FOIA sought to find out what DOD officials estimate is the real impact on national security of DEI spending, for which Congress approved $86.5 million in fiscal year 2023.

However, James Fitzpatrick, an Army Veteran who leads CASA, told The Center Square that the DOD has confirmed it received the FOIA request but still has not released any documents more than 100 days later.

“The Department of Defense has stated that diversity, equity, and inclusion is the American military’s greatest strength but has rarely detailed how,” reads the FOIA, which was obtained by The Center Square. “Given the recent hiring freeze on DEI related positions, it must follow that national security has been affected in some way. The information obtained is necessary to evaluate the impact of DEI initiatives and financing on prioritizing efforts to advance national security.”

The FOIA request specifically asks for documentation about how DOD estimates a recent hiring freeze on DEI hires will actually impact national security. DOD regularly estimates readiness and national security impacts, especially in its funding requests to Congress for various kinds of equipment, programs and more.

The most recent National Defense Authorization Act ordered a hiring freeze on new DEI positions while the Government Accountability Office reviews that spending.

CASA filed suit against the DOD Wednesday, a lawsuit that was exclusively obtained by The Center Square.

“If diversity, equity and inclusion are truly the military’s greatest strengths, or there have been times where they have said it is critical to the success of the military, then if the DOD is imposing a DEI hiring freeze … then there must be a corresponding lack of national security that goes along with it, if their position is spending more on DEI means military gets better and stronger,” Fitzpatrick told The Center Square.

DOD officials and documents repeatedly emphasize the importance of diversity in defending the nation.

Under FOIA law, federal agencies are generally required to provide documents within about three weeks. THe DOD has staff dedicated to handling these requests.

“They are legally required to produce records,” Fitzpatrick said. “They haven’t. They are well over the friendly threshold to provide records, and really they just need to engage in a conversation. By this point they very well should have reached out and said they’ve started the search.”

DEI Pentagon spending has become increasingly common and controversial in recent years. DEI spending includes well-paid DEI hires, training programs on gender pronouns and white privilege for troops, and efforts to recruit non-white Americans for certain roles.

The DOD’s fiscal year 2022-2023 “Department of Defense Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Strategic Plan” typifies the kind of language federal officials use about the necessity of diversity spending.

Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness began the report with a message, saying that “leveraging this strategic diversity and expanding access to attract, retain, and advance the best talent our nation has to offer are the only way DoD will be able to outthink, outmaneuver, and outfight any adversary or threat.

“The 2022 National Defense Strategy highlights that for DoD to maintain the Joint Force’s military advantage globally and prevent attacks against our homeland, we must build a resilient force by developing and combining our strengths to maximum effect and investing in our people,” he continued. “Advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) across the Department is not about checking a box; it’s about obtaining the critical skills and experience to build the Total Force necessary to secure our nation for years to come.”

DOD did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

(The Center Square) – There is another lawsuit over another race-based program from the Biden Administration with a Wisconsin tie.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on Wednesday filed a lawsuit challenging the McNair Post Baccalaureate Achievement Program.

The McNair Program is a $60 million scholarship program open only to certain minority students.

“The government says that these groups are underrepresented. That may be, but that doesn’t give the government a right to discriminate against our clients and other students on the basis of race. Any attempt to balance the races – or create equal outcomes – is a dangerous and illegal policy,” WILL attorney Dan Lennington told The Center Square.

WILL is representing Young Americans for Freedom, a college-based program that teaches conservative values and thoughts. Its president is former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

“Denying a student the chance to compete for a scholarship based on their skin color is not only discriminatory but also demeaning and unconstitutional,” Walker said.

WILL’s suit claims Asian students, white students, Arab students, Jewish students and some Latino students are blocked from applying to the McNair program.

“Students excluded are being taught that their race is a negative, and that their government doesn’t value them as individuals,” Lennington added. “That’s an offensive and bigoted belief, and it harms the individual dignity of each student. All Americans have a right to be treated equally, and policymakers should never victimize Americans who they believe are ‘overrepresented.’.”

WILL has become one of the leaders in pushing-back against race-based programs at both the state and federal level.

“Race-based programs, whether called DEI or affirmative action, are pervasive in American society. They won’t go away by themselves -- we must root them out one at a time. Our goal is complete racial neutrality, and we won’t stop until America is truly a colorblind society,” Lennington said. “This is our 12th lawsuit against the Biden-Harris Administration. In our Equality Under the Law Project, which kicked off in 2021, we’ve represented 62 clients from 23 states. We handled 16 lawsuits so far and about two dozen other matters involving race discrimination.”

The Department of Education said the McNair program is designed to boost the number of low-income and minority students who are looking to get doctoral degrees. The department says students qualify if they are low-income, first-generation college students or are part of a “group that is underrepresented in graduate education."

A federal judge on Monday temporarily paused a Biden administration program that would grant a path to citizenship for the spouses of American citizens.

District Court Judge J. Campbell Barker paused the new Biden administration effort until a final ruling is made. The program in questions allows illegal immigrants who have married an American citizen to avoid deportation and start the path to citizenship.

The halt comes after a coalition of 16 states filed a lawsuit to challenge the program.

Proponents of the policy say it helps repair the immigration system and helps the migrants in limbo in the U.S.

Critics say it incentivizes illegal immigrants even more than they already are and that the policy violates the U.S. Constitution and breaks federal law.

“Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the federal government is actively working to turn the United States into a nation without borders and a country without laws. I will not let this happen,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who helped drive the effort, said in a statement. “Biden’s new parole workaround unilaterally grants the opportunity for citizenship to unvetted aliens whose first act on American soil was to break our laws. This violates the Constitution and actively worsens the illegal immigration disaster that is hurting Texas and our country.”

(The Center Square) – There was surprise the Wisconsin Supreme Court kept the Green Party on the state’s election ballot.

Lawyer Lane Rhuland told New Talk 1130 WISN on Tuesday she was surprised by the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision on Monday not to remove the Green Party from the ballot.

“I would like to think, non-cynically, that the DNC was just so wrong on the law, it was such an extraordinary relief sought by the DNC, that it was just a bridge too far for this Supreme Court,” Rhuland explained. “Others have theorized that they saw the implications for the more right-leaning parties that might take votes from Trump like the Libertarian Party, or the Constitution Party. And how if they ruled that the Green Party should be kicked off the ballot, then these parties should be as well. And that might not help the Democrats.”

The court ruled the Democratic National Committee “is not entitled to the relief he seeks.”

Rhuland, however, said the court didn’t explain just what that means.

“The ruling really doesn’t provide much guidance as far as the merits of the law, necessarily,” Rhuland explained. “It doesn’t necessarily foreclose future challenges in circuit court.”

Rhuland said it might be tough for Democrats to go through the full, lower court process.

Wisconsin’s Election Commission is expected to decide Tuesday who makes the November ballot, and those ballots are due to local election managers to be mailed-out to absentee voters by Sept. 19.

Rhuland added that changing the names on the ballot, or the rules for who makes the ballot, this late in the game could couple chaos or confusion.

Since the primary election runoff in late May and ahead of the November election, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office has been prioritizing cleaning up the voter rolls and issuing guidances to local jurisdictions about election law.

On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced the result of a statewide effort: more than 1.1 million people were taken off the Texas voter rolls, including 6,500 noncitizens who were illegally registered to vote. Among them, documentation about 1,930 with a voting history was handed over to the Attorney General’s Office for a potential criminal investigation.

The announcement comes after Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson issued warnings and guidances to local authorities about following state and federal election law.

One guidance directs elections officials to implement measures to ensure registered voters’ privacy rights. It was issued after complaints were filed about ballot information being publicized reportedly for political purposes.

It directs counties to redact any information that could connect a voter’s personal information to their ballot choices. She also warned that anyone “who choose[s] to publicize ballot information could face legal action under state and federal law if the release of information is tied to voter intimidation, bribery or coercion.”

Another reminder sent to county registrars directs them to maintain accurate voter rolls and remove ineligible voters, including noncitizens, felons and the deceased.

"Voting is a sacred right that must be preserved for citizens who qualify under our elections laws,” Nelson said. “My responsibility is to ensure free and fair elections and that only qualified voters participate.”

Her office updates the statewide voter registration database daily, but federal law prohibits large-scale updates from occurring 90 days ahead of a federal election.

After the May 28 primary runoff, Texas had until Aug. 7 to perform a sweeping voter roll update. Over the summer, aggressive measures were taken to ensure only eligible voters were on the rolls, her office said, saying it “continues to provide a multitude of data sets to counties in order to ensure accurate voter lists.”

As part of the SOS voter roll oversight process, records of potential non-citizens are sent to counties, and voter registrars are required by law to investigate and remove all ineligible voters. The SOS is also by law required to “withhold election funds from a county voter registrar for failure to approve, change, or cancel a voter’s registration in a timely manner,” according to a new law that went into effect in 2021.

Her office “monitors each voter registrar’s list maintenance activity on an ongoing basis for compliance with their voter registration cancellation duties,” Nelson said.

Nelson also reminded registrars that they have the right to initiate their own investigations, as do Texas voters.

All registered Texas voters “have the right to challenge the eligibility of any registered voter in their county,” her office says. Any Texan can challenge a voter’s registration they believe isn’t a U.S. citizen by filing a sworn statement with the county registrar. Doing so results in a hearing and potential cancellation of the voter’s registration if proof of citizenship cannot be produced. Noncitizens identified as registered to vote must be reported to the offices of the Attorney General and Secretary of State within 72 hours.

Nelson again reminded all election officials that state and federal laws prohibit noncitizens from registering and voting in any Texas election. When registering to vote, Texans must attest to being a U.S. citizen. Providing false information on a voter registration form subjects applicants to criminal penalties.

Cleaning of the voter rolls stems from several bills signed into law by Abbott. In 2023, he signed HB 1243 into law, which increased the penalty for illegal voting, including voting by noncitizens, to a second-degree felony.

In 2021, Abbott signed SB 1, SB 1113, and HB 574 into law. SB 1 implemented several changes, including increasing the penalty for lying on a voter registration form to a state jail felony, criminalizing ballot harvesting, banning local jurisdictions from distributing unsolicited mail-in ballot applications and ballots as Harris County attempted to. The law also requires ID to be used and matched for mail-in ballots. It also requires the Secretary of State to conduct randomized audits of elections every two years and ongoing citizenship checks of Texas voter rolls.

Senate Bill 1113 directed the Secretary of State to withhold funds from counties whose administrators fail to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls. House Bill 574 increased the penalty for those who knowingly count invalid votes or refuse to count valid votes to a second-degree felony. In 2017, Abbott signed SB 5 into law to increase the penalty for election workers who knowingly permit noncitizens and other ineligible persons to vote.

Nelson’s office also regularly obtains data about noncitizens from the Department of Public Safety and receives information from Texas courts about noncitizens excused or disqualified from jury duty and compares this information to the voter registration database. Records are also sent to county voter registrars to investigate voter eligibility.

“Those who are determined to be ineligible or who fail to respond within the allotted time are removed from the voter roll,” her office said.

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin lawmaker wants this to be the last school year that begins with cellphones in the classroom.

Sen. Dan Knodl, R-Germantown, released a column that outlines what he says is the need for a cellphone ban.

“There is a push in several states to push cellphone restrictions in the classroom. From red to blue states, legislatures across the country are coalescing around the idea that too much screen time is a negative mental health outcome. More succinctly, they are a significant distraction in the classroom and lead to a loss in learning,” Knodl wrote.

Currently, local schools set their own rules for cellphones in schools.

Some school districts have district-wide policy, while others allow principals in individual schools to set their own rules.

Green Bay Schools, for example, allow some high school students to use their phones when they are not in class.

Waukesha Schools allow students to bring phones to school, but say they must be "stored out of sight" during classes.

West Allis-West Milwaukee banned cellphones in class at the start of the 2022-2023 school year in an effort to cut down on the number of fights in school.

Knodl said it is clear that cellphones in school pose huge problems.

“Teachers are constantly battling with students over cellphone use and enforcement and punishment policies vary wildly leading to confusion from school to school and district to district,” Knodl added. “I plan to propose a new state law to alleviate this burden on our teachers and to take away this distraction from our students. I believe this will be a positive policy reform in our schools.”

Knodl hasn’t introduced that legislation yet, but there are some examples that Wisconsin could follow.

“Last year, Florida passed the first state law to limit cellphone use. Their law bans cellphone use during instructional time and the school’s Wi-Fi prohibits access to social media sites,” Knodl explained. “Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia have followed suit. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, signaled he would sign a bill going through their legislature. In addition, the largest school district in the nation, New York City, will follow through with these restrictions this upcoming school year.”

This week will mark the three-year anniversary of President Joe Biden’s chaotic and deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Biden committed on the campaign trail to withdraw U.S. troops, a move supported by his predecessor Donald Trump, but the process left 13 U.S. service members killed and the country within the hands of the Taliban.

The Taliban also received billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment because it was left behind.

Federal officials have pointed to an effort to render that equipment unusable, but the rapid collapse in the country left little time to actually finish and accomplish that destruction of equipment.

The Taliban held a military parade featuring U.S. military equipment earlier this month.

“What added insult to injury to all of this was the way in which it was conducted, the unnecessary impetus behind it which led to the … collapse” and even “armed our adversaries,” Robert Greenway, a former top intelligence and national security official in the U.S. government for decades who is now at the Heritage Foundation, told The Center Square.

He added that Biden left them “as the best armed terrorist state in the history of the world.”

An eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan has long been on the table as a possibility for both parties, but letting the country fall back into the hands of the Taliban was at one time considered unthinkable and eventually became expected by many experts.

“The Taliban never really had entirety of control over Afghanistan,” Greenway said. “This is the closest they’ve been to it.”

But he added that that grip is “tenuous” and “devolving.”

In the July before the withdrawal, Biden said that Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was “not inevitable and that he trusted Afghanistan’s government.

“It’s a – it’s a silly question,” Biden continued, when asked by a reporter if he trusts the Taliban. “Do I trust the Taliban? No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- – more competent in terms of conducting war.”

Afghanistan fell into the Taliban’s hands almost immediately, something intelligence and security experts predicted.

Greenway said the Taliban has called on the “faithful” to return to Afghanistan, which increases the threat to the U.S. homeland. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. were planned and launched from Afghanistan.

“Ultimately means a regional threat but more importantly means a threat against the U.S. homeland is on the march and actively coalescing,” Greenway said.

Greenway said Afghanistan’s Taliban takeover affects the Iran, Israel and Hamas conflict “a great deal.”

The loss of presence in Afghanistan has removed a sort of regional forward operating base across the world by which to act quickly in the Middle East, and that loss of deterrence leads to a more volatile region, Greenway said.

He also said the withdrawal sent a message to other powers like Russia, Iran and Ukraine that the U.S. didn’t have the will to act decisively and efficiently militarily, lowering the deterrence threat.

“I feel sorry for the people that are going to have to go back into Afghanistan when an attack happens on the U.S. homeland,” Greenway said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. armed forces are in a recruiting crisis, falling short of target recruitment goals across branches, something Greenway argues escalated after the Afghanistan withdrawal.

“If you don’t have confidence in leadership, in the commander in chief, you don’t have anything,” Greenway said.

Women in particular have suffered since the U.S. left, with the Taliban banning education for women over the sixth grade among other laws that essentially ban women from showing their faces or speaking loudly in public.

“Since 2021, the situation has worsened with the collapse of the economy and restrictions on women’s rights,” Gallup said in a release of a recent survey. “Gallup surveys have found that 96% of Afghan women are suffering under the Taliban, and most do not feel that women in Afghanistan are treated with respect."