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Bipartisan bill aims to protect youth victims of sex trafficking

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At the Capitol, bipartisan legislation to end the practice of charging youth under the age of 18 with prostitution had a public hearing on Thursday.

State Senator Alberta Darling (R-Rivers Hills) said it’s a recognition of the fact that those young people are victims of human trafficking.

“I think we have to make this really personal. Because what if this was your daughter, or your granddaughter . . or your niece or your nephew,” Darling told the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety. “All of us can look at people we care about and ask what if it were them.”

Advocates say human trafficking takes place in all 72 Wisconsin counties.

“It’s not just a real problem it’s a heartbreaking problem. And we need to do everything that we can to treat these young people as victims, and get them the help that they need,” said state Representative Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay).

State Senator LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) said the bill (SB 245) would bring Wisconsin into line with federal law, which treats children involved in commercial sex acts as sexually exploited children and victims of child abuse, not criminals. “This is bill does not legalize prostitution,” Johnson said.

UW System back to pre-pandemic levels of in-person instruction

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The University of Wisconsin System has returned to pre-pandemic levels of in-person instruction for the fall semester.

UW System President Tommy Thompson announced in a Tuesday press release that systemwide, 85 percent of undergraduate courses are being delivered in person. That exceeds the goal of 75 percent Thompson set in February, when more classes than usual were delivered remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Madison, La Crosse and Plattville campuses are all above 90 percent in-person classes, and all but the Superior campus are at or above 75 percent.

Restored Wisconsin State Capitol statues back on their pedestals

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Statues damaged during last summer’s unrest in Madison are back in place on the grounds of the state Capitol. Workers with the Wisconsin Department of Administration put the statues on their pedestals on Tuesday morning.

The two statues pulled down on the night of June 23, 2020 were of Forward, a female figure outside the Capitol at the top of State Street, and Colonel Hans Christian Heg, a Norwegian immigrant killed during the Civil War.

The action followed a day of demonstrations over the arrest of activist Devonere Johnson outside a Capitol Square restaurant.

The nearly year long restoration was done by a Michigan company. The bulk of the 80-thousand dollar project was paid for by federal grants, the remainder through insurance and donations to the State Historical Society.

Gableman says he’ll compel clerks to cooperate with investigation

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The former state Supreme Court justice overseeing a Republican review of the 2020 presidential election is telling local elections officials that they’d better cooperate

“As the officials directly responsible for administering elections, Wisconsin’s 1,922 county and municipal clerks have a duty to the people of our state to be forthcoming in this investigation,” attorney Michael Gableman said “It is my sincere hope that Wisconsin election officials will live up to that duty. But if they do not, we will use the power afforded to the office of special counsel to compel answers to these questions.”

Gableman released a six-minute YouTube video on Monday. “It’s critical to know that an obstruction of this office is an obstruction of each citizens right to know whether all ballots were appropriately counted, that our elections were managed with fairness, inclusivity and accountability.”

He also says the public can submit information regarding the election, although his Office of Special Counsel has no website or official email address.

New bill seeks to move Wisconsin Elections Commission to Wausau

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A Republican lawmaker from Green Bay is looking to move the state elections commission to Wausau.

Representative David Steffen says that the days of keeping offices in Madison for the sake of being in Madison are over. 

“It made sense 173 years ago to have everything together when a person like myself had to get on a pony, put on a powdered wig to walk over, to get over to someone else’s office, to sit by whale-oil light to make a decision but that’s no longer the situation.”

He says Wausau is a central location in the state on two major highways, and rent would be much cheaper than in Madison. 

“Their lease is expiring at the end of the year for office space that cost twice that of almost every other community in the state.”

This is not the first attempt to start moving state agencies out of Madison. There’s been an effort to move the DNR farther north for many years.

Bill would allow parents to opt kids out of sexual orientation curriculum

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At the Capitol on Thursday, a hearing on legislation that would allow parents to remove their K-12 students from any program “related to sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or gender expression.”

State Representative Donna Rozar (R-Marshfield) is a co-sponsor of the bill (AB-562).

“When you have belief systems being subtly introduced to young, developing minds that are in direct opposition to what a belief system is in the home that is detrimental, parents need to know that that is happening,” Rozar told the Assembly Education Committee.

Rozar insisted the Republican measure is not intended to “erase or alienate” LGTBQ youth, but LGBTQ Legislative Caucus chair, Representative Lee Snodgrass said it will run the risk of doing that if it becomes law.

“When children and young people are informed, they’re able to be more tolerant, more inclusive and have a better understanding. And without that you run the risk of their being things that they don’t understand,” Snodgrass said. “And frankly you run the risk of them bullying them this group of already marginalized individuals that they don’t fully understand some of the things that they might be dealing with.”

Snodgrass noted that Governor Tony Evers would be unlikely to sign the bill if it reaches his desk.

LeMahieu says he’ll fight gov’s order on COVID-19 testing for state employees

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State Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostberg) said he’ll be looking to challenge Governor Tony Evers’s order on COVID-19 testing for state employees.

The Wisconsin Department of Administration (DOA) on Tuesday announced a new weekly testing requirement for all executive branch employees, interns, and contractors. The testing requirement will go into effect beginning October 18, 2021, and will apply to all employees who have either not submitted their vaccination status or reported their status as not fully vaccinated.

LeMahieu calls the requirements an invasive overreach of governmental authority, and said the State Senate will explore all options to ‘protect the rights of citizens.’

Study: alcohol use declines, cannabis use increases among college students

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A new study shows college students reported record high marijuana use, and record low drinking in 2020.
According to the 2020 Monitoring the Future study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, alcohol use among college students dipped from 62 percent in 2019 to 56 percent.

The percentages reporting being drunk in the past month and reporting binge-drinking also declined. Also according to the report, 44 percent of college students reported using marijuana in 2020, an increase from 38 percent in 2015.

Researchers are unsure whether the pandemic may have driven the record in cannabis consumption.

Eighteen states have legalized recreational marijuana, 37 states have legalized it for medical purposes. Wisconsin allows neither.

Four people from Minnesota found fatally shot in western Wisconsin cornfield

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Four people found dead in a western Wisconsin cornfield over the weekend were all from Minnesota. The Dunn County Sheriff’s Office has identified them as 26-year-old Matthew Pettus, 30-year-old Jasmine Sturm and 35-year-old Loyace Foreman III, all of St. Paul, and 30-year-old Nitosha Lee Flug-Presley of Stillwater.

Their bodies were found Sunday, after a 911 caller alerted deputies to an SUV off a rural road in the Town of Sheridan, about an hour east of the Twin Cities.

Preliminary results of autopsies by the Ramsey County medical examiner’s office shows each died from gunshot wounds.

No arrests have been reported. The sheriff’s office has scheduled a press conference for 4:00 PM Tuesday.

 

Evers seeks to intervene in redistricting case

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Governor Tony Evers has signaled he wants to be involved in a redistricting case. Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul on Monday asked a federal court to allow Evers to intervene in a lawsuit filed last month by Democrats, that asks a federal court to draw the state’s next set of electoral maps.

The governor’s motion contends state law recognizes a joint role for both the governor and the Legislature in the redistricting process, and that the governor should be allowed to provide input in the litigation.

The Democratic governor said he intends to submit maps drawn by a commission he created to both the Legislature and the federal court for its consideration.