Welcome to our weekly DC Wrap, where we write about Wisconsin’s congressional delegation. Sign up here to receive the newsletter directly.
Quotes of the week
If my colleagues insist that this issue is a decision for the states and not for women, then I hope they can at least recognize the tremendous hardship their patchwork of laws has created. The rights you have as an American should not depend on what state you live in.
– U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, urging Senate Republicans to support her legislation to provide funding for those who have to travel out of state to get an abortion.
If Biden and Harris think Haiti is too dangerous for Americans to visit, why are they bringing Haiti to America?
– U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, criticizing the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies. The U.S. government has advised Americans against traveling to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest and limited health care.
This week’s news
— Wisconsin GOP U.S. Reps. Derrick Van Orden and Tom Tiffany and GOP U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson all voted against a measure to extend government funding for another three months.
All other Wisconsin Congress members voted to pass the legislation yesterday. The bill passed 341-18 in the House and 78-18 in the Senate, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk to avert a government shutdown in four days.
Van Orden, of Prairie du Chien, in a statement said he opposed the measure “to save American agriculture.” He is up for reelection in the swing 3rd CD this fall.
“Instead of cherry-picking Democrat programs from the committee’s farm bill to extend in the CR and playing politics with hungry children and production agriculture, we should be providing our farmers with the resources and certainty they need to do their jobs,” the House Agriculture Committee member said. “We cannot keep kicking the can down the road on a bill that our farmers needed authorized a year ago. I am unwilling to risk everything they have and continue to work for.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Town of Vermont, in a post on X knocked Van Orden’s response as “asinine.”
“Not only did @derrickvanorden’s GOP majority NOT pass a farm bill before the Sept. 30 deadline, he was willing to close down all of federal govt to make Donald Trump happy,” Pocan said.
Johnson, of Oshkosh, did not immediately return a request for comment.
The funding was approved after the GOP-majority House failed to pass a bill that would have kept the government funded through March with a GOP measure to curb noncitizen voting attached. The package was unlikely to come to a vote in the Dem-controlled Senate.
Trump had urged passage of the SAVE Act, which would require states to check voters’ citizenship status before registering them to vote, along with the funding bill.
But Dems argued the measure was unnecessary because noncitizens are already prohibited from voting in federal elections, and 14 Republicans joined them last week in voting against the joint proposal ahead of a looming government shutdown.
Tiffany, of Minocqua, in a statement to WisPolitics said “If we fail to secure our elections and fail to secure our borders, we are not a sovereign nation.”
“A clean (continuing resolution) without the SAVE Act opens the door to non-citizen voting,” he added.
Both Wisconsin House Dems criticized their GOP colleagues for failing to work across the aisle on government funding legislation.
“If House Republicans had only worked with the adults in the room to pass a full-year budget that works for the American people rather than partisan funding bills filled with extreme poison pill riders no one wants, we’d be in a much better place,” Pocan said in a statement. “Instead, we’re facing another shutdown threat in less than three months.”
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, argued Republicans had “wasted time and caused chaos” rather than work with Dems on a bipartisan funding bill.
“Yet again, House Democrats had to bail out the House Republican majority and provide the necessary votes to ensure Congress meets its basic responsibility of funding our federal government,” she said.
— U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson voted to confirm Green Bay personal injury lawyer Byron Conway to the federal bench after a drawn-out effort to fill the vacancy created by Judge William Griesbach’s retirement in 2019.
The U.S. Senate yesterday confirmed Conway 58-37 to the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Baldwin, D-Madison, in a floor speech said the state’s federal nominating commission proposed highly qualified, experienced candidates like Conway, calling him “an exceptional judicial candidate.”
“Byron Conway has both the experience and the temperament necessary to serve Wisconsin’s eastern district with fairness and impartiality,” Baldwin said.
Johnson’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Conway’s confirmation comes after Johnson opposed the nomination of Dem U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan’s brother, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge William Pocan, to the federal bench in 2022. Johnson, R-Oshkosh, raised concerns the judge had set low bail in an armed robbery case and didn’t have enough connections in the Green Bay legal community.
Baldwin and Johnson sent Conway and Brown County Judge Marc Hammer’s names to the White House for consideration in June of last year after they were both recommended by Wisconsin’s Federal Nominating Commission to fill the post.
— Johnson joined other senators to release a bipartisan interim report on the U.S. Secret Service’s “security planning communications and coordination failures” relating to the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump.
The report includes 12 key findings and five recommendations. The other senators involved in drafting the report are: Gary Peters, D-Michigan, Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, and Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut.
Johnson in a statement said the investigation is “not complete.”
“Federal agencies like the Secret Service, FBI, and DOJ continue to withhold records that are vital to this Committee’s work,” Johnson said. “There is still much more information that the public and Congress deserve to know. Going forward, this Committee must be prepared to use compulsory process to ensure that the American people have a complete and thorough understanding of the security failures that resulted in the multiple attempts on former President Trump’s life.”
The findings from the report include:
- The USSS failed to clearly define responsibilities for planning and security at the July 13 rally.
- The USSS failed to ensure the AGR Building was effectively covered.
- The USSS failed to effectively coordinate with state and local law enforcement.
- The USSS failed to provide resources for the July 13 rally that could have enhanced security.
- The USSS failed to communicate information about the suspicious person to key personnel and failed to take action to ensure the safety of former President Trump.
- The USSS’s counter drone system experienced technical problems that left it inoperable for hours.
- Several USSS officials reported experiencing technical problems with their radios at the rally.
The recommendations include better planning, responsibility, communications and coordination by the USSS, as well as strengthened intelligence and resources.
— Tiffany, R-Minocqua, says “voters deserve clear answers” after the Madison clerk mistakenly sent duplicate absentee ballots to around 2,000 voters in the deep blue capital city.
The city issued a statement this week saying the clerk’s office has been contacting voters about the error and telling them only to submit one ballot.
Tiffany in a Tuesday letter to Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl asked a myriad of questions about the issue, including whether law enforcement had been contacted to investigate whether the incident was “the result of simple incompetence or a deliberate nefarious act.”
“Given the history of controversial and legally dubious election practices carried out by Madison officials in the past – and your own personal history as an operative for the left-wing, ‘Zuckerbucks’ financed Center for Tech and Civic Life – I don’t have to tell you how important it is for the city to provide full transparency regarding how an “error” of this magnitude was allowed to happen at such a pivotal time,” Tiffany wrote.
Some Republicans have knocked the use of private money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life during the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, which primarily went to five cities: Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee and Racine. Voters approved a GOP-proposed constitutional amendment to ban private funding in Wisconsin elections in April.
Witzel-Behl in a response to Tiffany said election procedures, including barcodes on absentee ballot envelopes, ensure votes are counted accurately. She said occasionally human error occurs in the election process, and when mistakes happen, election officials are transparent about them.
“Our staff works incredibly hard to conduct elections in a professional, nonpartisan and fair manner and works to continually assess and improve our processes,” Witzel-Behl said. “This task is made more challenging every day as the conduct of elections becomes more complex and as election officials have become the target of attacks that seek to undermine the confidence of voters in our election results.”
— Trump will campaign in Prairie du Chien on Saturday, his campaign announced this week.
Multiple GOP sources told WisPolitics that Trump is also looking at stops in Madison and Milwaukee on Oct. 1.
The announcement about the stop focused on illegal immigration. Prairie du Chien was pulled into the national debate earlier this month after a noncitizen was arrested there.
Alejandro Jose Coronel Zarate of Venezuela, 26, faces charges of domestic disorderly conduct, two counts of domestic battery, strangulation/suffocation, physical abuse to a child, disorderly conduct and two counts of second degree sexual assault.
According to Prairie du Chien Police, Zarate is suspected to be affiliated with Tren de Aragua, a criminal organization based in Venezuela. The gang is involved in various criminal activities, including human smuggling and trafficking, gender-based violence, money laundering and drug trafficking.
— 8th CD candidates Dem OB-GYN Kristin Lyerly and GOP businessman Tony Wied will meet tomorrow for a debate hosted by WBAY.
The debate is set to air from 7 to 8 p.m. WisPolitics interviewed both candidates on its Capitol Chats podcast ahead of the debate.
Listen to Lyerly’s interview here and Wied’s here.
— WisPolitics and the State Affairs network have published new profiles of U.S. Senate races in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Arizona where Dems must win to keep control of the chamber.
Read about the races.
— Madison Mayor Satya-Rhodes Conway says the political “center of gravity” is moving toward Madison and Dane County, underscoring its critical importance for Democrats ahead of Election Day.
“Dane County is a very highly Democratic performing area of the state,” Rhodes-Conway said on WISN’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics. “I think we will continue to see that. I think we’re getting even deeper blue than we have before, and as our population grows, that just changes the calculus a little bit about where you need to win.”
Rhodes-Conway spoke at Kamala Harris’ rally Friday in Madison, urging Democrats to mobilize and volunteer during the next six weeks.
— Former Democratic congresswoman and 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is campaigning for Trump in key swing states and says Wisconsin “is such an important state.”
“He’s not taking any state or any vote for granted,” Gabbard told “UpFront.” “I think you’re going to continue to see both President Trump and many others visiting Wisconsin to really talk about what’s at stake in this election and how the choice is not traditional in the sense of this is about Democrats versus Republicans.”
Posts of the week
I had a very productive meeting with the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons, where all four representatives were fellow Wisconsinites. We focused on the issues impacting orthopedic surgeries and healthcare as a whole. pic.twitter.com/LdCdSEIwqA
— Rep. Glenn Grothman (@RepGrothman) September 25, 2024
As a Co-Chair of the @Labor_Caucus, I’m honored to lead over 100 Members of Congress in fighting for working people and protecting American jobs from unfair trade practices abroad. @Steelworkers, we’ve got your back! pic.twitter.com/ZcdS3laldR
— Rep. Mark Pocan (@RepMarkPocan) September 24, 2024
I’m working alongside @RepGwenMoore to bolster the 128th Air Refueling Wing with a KC-46 tanker. We sat down with Air National Guard Director Major General Duke Pirak to discuss next steps to bring the new aircraft to Milwaukee. pic.twitter.com/OnoGVvHfKD
— Bryan Steil (@RepBryanSteil) September 25, 2024
I was excited to meet with @BravoTopChef runner-up and proud Wisconsinite Dan to congratulate him, hear about his time on the show, and thank him for representing Wisconsin’s culinary scene on a national stage. Can’t wait to see what Dan cooks up next! pic.twitter.com/iFIETeDzsQ
— Sen. Tammy Baldwin (@SenatorBaldwin) September 19, 2024
ICYMI
New York Times: Baldwin, with Shapiro in tow, looks for ‘Trump-Tammy voters’ in Wisconsin
PBS Wisconsin: US Sen. Ron Johnson on voting against a federal IVF bill
WPR: Trump expected to hammer border security during stop in Prairie du Chien
La Crosse Tribune: Eric Hovde outlines pre-existing condition protections for ACA replacement in La Crosse
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Federal DOJ sues 2 northern Wisconsin towns over accessible voting machines
