PBS Wisconsin original production.
>> It's bad. And we still dealing with things around
here. >> Milwaukee. Cleanup
continues from floodwater. Calamity and FEMA officials
arrived to assess the damage to determine if
there will be federal aid. [MUSIC]
tonight on "Here& Now". While Milwaukee waits to
see if federal aid will emerge, the Red cross is
putting out an urgent call for volunteers.
[MUSIC] doubled since January. What
does this mean for people in Wisconsin? Presidential
threats to alter election systems renews
misinformation over mail in ballots and tabulators, and
changes to student loans may impact the job
landscape. It's "Here& Now" for August 22nd.
[MUSIC] >> Funding for Here and Now
is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and
Friends of PBS Wisconsin. >> Following historic
flooding in southeast Wisconsin, Milwaukee
County's latest estimates on damage to public
infrastructure has reached at least $34 million, a
figure that doesn't include individual property loss.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived
this week to help the state with a preliminary damage
assessment, the first step toward potential financial
assistance. >> Hi, I'm with FEMA.
>> FEMA is going door to door in southeast Wisconsin
over the next several days looking to understand the
magnitude of damage caused by recent record flooding.
>> Any rain water in your basement?
>> Our teams will go wherever the state and the
county requests that we go. We will see as much damage
as they ask us to see. We have four teams in
Milwaukee County, one in Waukesha County and one in
Washington County. >> Accompanied by local
officials, their objective is to ask questions and
collect information. >> Prior to this, we've
been working to coordinate all the information
reports so that we could give that picture to whim
and to the FEMA representatives of the
damage that we've experienced in the
community. >> 211 has been flooded
with thousands of daily calls from residents
reporting their losses. >> Flooded basements,
foundational damage. A lot of people with lost
possessions and couches and furniture and things like
that. So a lot of folks here are hurting.
>> You know, I'm disabled, I need help.
>> People like Tyrone Roberts.
>> We never had this much trash on our block. Now the
garbage man won't even come down the street, so we just
got to deal with it and do the most as we can as a
community. officials recommend calling
two, one, one. >> Two, and one can take
that damage information, residents with services in
their area that can help them.
>> But large scale aid is still a ways off.
>> We're really just trying to get a snapshot, a
representative sample of what has happened across
the county. step in the process toward
getting a major disaster declaration. So here we are
in the beginning phase of here, FEMA will make the
president. The president whether a disaster
>> When that could happen is still unknown. With FEMA
in Wisconsin following those devastating floods in
and around Milwaukee. The American Red Cross of
Wisconsin is issuing what it calls an urgent Call for
Disaster Action Team volunteers to help families
both locally and nationwide. Kathryn Halvorsen with the
Red Cross of Wisconsin joins us with more. And
thanks very much for being here.
>> Absolutely. Happy to be here. Thanks for having us.
>> So I know that the Red cross responded to
work did people with the Red cross do there?
>> Yeah, absolutely. We you know, we have had
volunteers responding around the clock to
Milwaukee. Originally we had opened two shelters and
then consolidated to Milwaukee Marshall High
School, down to one centralized location that
was more accessible to the clients that we were
serving there. And we were offering everything from a
place to stay and eat, to charge your phone. People
can stay as long or as little as they needed. And
then on top of that, we were always offering our
wraparound services. So mental health support,
disaster support, casework recovery resources outside
of us. It takes a huge effort and partnership in
the community to be able to help those that needed us
most. themselves of your services?
>> Unbelievable. We had 100 local Wisconsin Red
crossers respond, so we started as a level three
disaster, which is basically still managed by
the Wisconsin region. And then we upped it to a level
four disaster response operation. So now we're
starting to see that national leadership support
because the need is so great. So it's great that
now we have that national leadership supporting us.
>> So that sounds as though the Red cross maintains a
presence in Milwaukee. >> Absolutely. Like I said,
we've got seven levels for disaster. And when you hit
that four level for disaster, we've folks from
National that are really stepping in now to support
us and offer guidance and leadership to our regional
team. Of course, we don't want anyone to get burnt
out at the regional local level. So I believe in
total we have over 150 volunteers helping with
Milwaukee Steil. >> And now you're putting
out an urgent call for disaster volunteers. Why
are you doing that? >> Yeah. You know, we
respond to 65,000 disasters every single year. And in
the Red cross, there's a saying and it's we're in
continuous disaster response with disasters
happening more frequently. We're responding to a
disaster, new disasters within 15 days. So just to
to mention too, while we had this flooding happening
in Milwaukee, we also had to open a third shelter
unrelated to the floods because of an apartment
complex fire that displaced more than 40 people. So
this is nothing new to the Red cross. It's just about
building that capacity. Now we need more boots on the
ground, helping us be there for clients when it's
needed most. expect to be doing if they
signed on? >> Yeah, so we have a
really great process. When you sign up through
Redcross.org volunteer, we have a volunteer services
team that is fielding all these new applications, and
then they go through the process with you of
determining where you think your talents will be
utilized best. So I will say first and foremost, our
biggest need position is disaster Action Team. So
you're the first people helping families after a
home fire or flood. Aside from that, we have so many
other positions sheltering positions, casework, mental
health care. It's really an endless opportunities
available to those who are looking to make a
difference. And it doesn't require any previous
training. We offer all the training available through
our volunteer connection portal.
Halvorsen, we leave it there. But thank you and
thank you for your work. >> Absolutely. Thank you so
much for giving us this platform to talk about our
response. >> In other news, 13 county
jails in Wisconsin now cooperate with Ice, with
sheriff's departments either serving warrants or
identifying undocumented them for immigration
officials. And according to latest Ice data,
immigration arrests have more than doubled in this
state since January. As of late June. Ice made 445
arrests in Wisconsin. For more on the immigration
enforcement landscape here, we turn to Grant Sovern.
He's a Madison immigration attorney who helped found
the Community Immigration Law Center. And thanks very
much for being here. >> Yeah, thanks for your
interest. about the immigration
now? >> Well, I can say that in
Wisconsin, we're seeing a part of what's happening
across the country, which is dramatically increased
efforts to find people, to detain people and to try
and talk them out of being in the United States. There
are all sorts of coercive methods, but we have not
seen widespread raids like you see in some big cities
like Los Angeles and Chicago. But Ice is
definitely very active in trying to find people who
they have any sense whatsoever might be
deportable. But the difference is they just
have an idea and can allege that. But we don't actually
know that someone's undocumented or deportable
until they go through immigration court.
>> So are most of these individuals criminals or
facing criminal charges? >> That's an easy question.
No. Most of them are not criminals. Most of them are
people who are trying to figure out the immigration
system. A lot of people came in perfectly valid
status over the past 4 or 5 years, maybe 6 or 700,000
people in the United States who followed all the rules.
And now this administration has changed the rules or
ended their programs. So these majority of people
are folks who have been following all the rules all
along, and it's the government that's changing.
>> What kind of catch 22 is that for people?
>> It's really difficult because the government
seems to believe that the majority of people come to
America because of all the opportunities that are here,
and we acknowledge it's a great country. A lot of
people come here for jobs and opportunity, but there
is a really huge percentage of people who come because
they can't live where they are anymore. And
unfortunately, the approach that they're taking, the
government is taking is that everybody just wants
to be here and we can talk them into leaving.
>> Is there any reprieve for people who are like in
the system, in the immigration system,
awaiting a hearing? We're following the prior rules.
>> If you follow the law, the answer is yes. People
who are following the rules, waiting for their day in
court, filing everything the correct way. You are
waiting to be adjudicated about whether and how you
can stay, or whether you are indeed deportable. The
federal government right now is taking everybody and
accusing them of being criminals and saying, you
must leave. So everybody believes in the public and
even the immigrants themselves is that they
have no hope, whereas we have a due process system
that addresses all of these things, and the government
wants to circumvent that. So it costs less and they
can show more numbers faster. Despite whether or
not anyone is actually deportable.
>> What's an example of a case you've handled that
stands out? >> Well, I think right now
I think about a young woman and her children who came
to the US because they couldn't face the the kind
of persecution that was going on where they lived,
and they did not want to come to the US. They had to
leave their family. They had to leave their
community. And they government laid out to be
able to apply for asylum in the United States. And
we're seeing lots of people in this area who have valid
claims or not, but are waiting to find out who are
being deported before they even find out. The good
part is, there is still due process today. And if
somebody can get a lawyer and get through the system,
I think of this young woman who won asylum in
immigration court just in the past few weeks and is
able to stay. It's still fearful because, you know,
she has the color of skin is deportable or an accent
that people are going after. But if you get through the
system, you can stay and it's done legally.
>> Do attorneys like yourself learn where people
deported are being sent? >> That is one of the
hardest things we're dealing with right now.
It's part of the government's effort to make
the whole system more difficult is we represent
people who are normally kept in Wisconsin. But when
ICE learns that they have a lawyer, they move them or
they try and move them without even knowing about
their lawyers status, so that family can't find them
so that they can't make calls. Generally trying to
avoid due process because it slows down their efforts
to reach the numbers they want.
>> Because one thing of note that we saw was that
the ICE dashboard doesn't make recent removal numbers
public. >> I think that's partially
because they don't know what they're doing right
now. There is a lot of disarray where people are
just trying to get to the end numbers and skip over
the due process, so I think they don't actually know
who they're looking for or how many people they've
immigration issues. >> What's happening in
courthouses or in immigration courts where
Ice shows up? >> Well, right now Ice is
trying to make our communities less safe
because people are afraid to go seek justice where
public safety actually happens. Our police, our
sheriffs are trying to help with public safety. Ice has
a mandate to find as many people as they can, no
matter their immigration status, try to arrest and
detain them and deport them before they even find out,
and that that is a problem in between the two. Even
though Ice is considered law enforcement, when we
look at local law enforcement who care about
the community, who live in our community, who are
trying to make things safe, Ice has just one issue and
that they're interested in, and it's even making our
local law enforcement and justice systems much less
safe because people are afraid to take advantage of
them. >> Are you finding that
your client or the people that you work for are
afraid to go out to go to? >> Everybody is afraid
right now, and this is the part the government is
trying to make it so difficult. There are maybe
who are not U.S. citizens, but that goes everywhere
from people who have a green card, permanent
residence status, a work visa, DACA authorization,
and unauthorized. How is it that Ice is figuring out?
By looking at them walking down the street, that they
might be undocumented? They're using systems like
racial profiling or the accent they have. So any of
those people who have those issues are worried whether
or not you're undocumented, whether or not you have a
valid immigration status, and some U.S. citizens who
are worried about the current situation because
the government is overextending, going beyond
what the legal requirements and abilities are of the
government. >> Grant Sovern, thanks
very much. >> Thank you.
>> In a move that had state election officials sounding
the constitutional alarm, President Trump threatened
in an all caps social media post to get rid of mail in
ballots and target highly inaccurate, very expensive
and seriously controversial voting machines. He said he
would sign an executive order to do so. The
president went on to post that mail in voting results
in massive voter fraud. Election experts say this
is not true. The white House press office demurred
on Trump's call a day later, saying it could be a
subject for Congress to take up. But we wanted to
check in with a local election clerk for her take.
Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson joins us now. And
thanks a lot for being here. >> Thank you.
>> So what was your reaction when you saw the
call to abolish mail in voting and voting machines?
>> Just another piece that's trying to get some
false information out there to get some headlines. It's
not accurate. Those voting machines are extremely
accurate that we use. Been through nine recounts. And
it's not the machines that have issues. There are
highly accurate. It's usually somebody didn't
sign the envelope correctly. Something small. It's human
error not the machines. >> But beside that point,
can such a thing be done by presidential executive
order? >> I believe Congress has
the authority to change it, not the president. So and
each state actually sets their own rules for how
they run elections. Not not the president.
>> So again, in your experience, does absentee
or mail in voting result in fraud or massive fraud?
>> So the there's a check and balance through our
entire system. Some states mail out absentee ballots
Wisconsin we mail. We only mail you absentee ballot if
you have requested it. And to request it, you have to
be a registered voter. So there's lots of steps and
checks and balances that we go through in the entire
system. So it's not it's not randomly you just mail
in a ballot with nothing to back it up. There there's
checks all the way through the system.
>> What about voting machines or tabulators? How
do they work? >> So tabulators are not
connected to the internet. They are highly tested
before they can be certified at the federal
level and then at the state level. We do public tests
to make sure everything's working correctly before
the election. And then after the election, we do
audits to verify that they counted correctly also. And
again, if we need, we do a recount. And I've been
through nine. And again they don't. It's not the
machines that are the errors. It's it's human
error. It's they're highly highly accurate.
>> Where does all of this leave clerks who maintain
the integrity of elections when it comes to assuring
voters once again that these things, as you say,
are highly accurate? >> So it means we have to
explain again over and over. Sometimes the biggest thing
we can do is invite them to the public, test or or have
them be poll workers. Once they learn the system and
all the checks and balances in place, they feel more
comfortable with it and they understand all the
work that goes into an election.
the roller coaster of election conspiracies?
>> Well, I, I don't have a boring job that keeps me
very, very entertained. Sometimes some of the
things that come in. Yeah, it's up and down. Boring.
Might be nice every once in a while, but we keep
ourselves very, very. We're we're explaining things
constantly over and over. And sometimes that keeps us
from doing other things we'd like to be doing.
>> Like what? >> Getting ready for
another election or training more poll workers
or, you know, working right now, we're everyone's
working on their budgets for next year at all the
municipal levels. There's you know, we we a clerk
does not just do elections. We are basically in the
towns. They're the administrator of those
lot of other jobs that we do. We don't just do
elections. >> Is there cause, though,
to be highly vigilant when it comes to election
security? >> We are always highly
vigilant. We are constantly doing checks and balances.
We are checking security tags and chain of custody.
There's tons of pieces that we're always doing. They're
always in place so that that never goes away.
That's that's constant. >> All right. Well we leave
it there and we wish you luck with attending to the
many duties that you have on top of all of this. Rock
County Clerk Lisa Tollefson. Thank you.
>> Thank you. >> With Wisconsin trying to
tackle a physician shortage, new limits around graduate
student federal loans could dissuade some would be
doctors from going to medical school at all. New
federal provisions passed as part of the One Big
Beautiful Bill act, set lower borrowing limits for
medical and law students and eliminate grad Plus
loans for what the changes mean for graduates and
undergraduates. Were joined by a specialist in this
area, Nick Hillman, professor in the UW-Madison
School of Education. And professor, thanks very much
for being here. >> Of course. Thank you for
the invitation. >> How big of a sea change
is this when it comes to federal student loans?
>> It's significant for two main reasons. One is that
these are now amendments to the Higher Education Act.
So these are now laws. And a lot of student loan
policy has been done through regulations. And so
it's a big sea change because it really
galvanizes these changes into legal statutes. So
that's one thing. Which means it's also going to be
harder to change over time. But the other thing is that
it just really shifts the flavor of student loans,
how students are going to be interacting with the
loan system. And it brings some simplicities to the
system, but it also brings some complexities.
into that a little bit. But have you heard of medical
students say deciding not to attend medical school
because of kind of the caps on borrowing?
>> I've heard rumblings of this. I haven't heard that
directly from prospective students, but I have heard
concerns in different forums and through
different networks about what does this mean for me
in terms of how to pay for college? If loans are less
available to me, then I have two options. I can go
and try to find a loan in the private market which
might have high interest rates. Or I can decide
maybe I should do something else with my career. And I
think that's the tension that either people are
already feeling or they will soon be feeling.
>> So the law also eliminates I understand the
grad plus loan. What will that mean?
>> Well, the Grad Plus loan is pretty significant.
About 17% of all federal student loans are in that
program. And so this is a sizable share of federal
student loans. And if that's no longer available
to borrowers, then again, they'll likely go out to
the private sector, to banks or to different
lenders and take out loans that could be as high as
25% interest rates. These loans currently have. The
plus loans currently have like 8 or 9% interest rates.
>> Do you know what the justification for all of
this was? >> To save money for the
One Big Beautiful Bill act. I believe it's in the
hundreds of billions of dollars. 270 billion is one
Congressional Budget Office estimate of how much some
of these changes have saved the federal government. And
ultimately, that's the end game here, is to restrict
the amount of spending that the federal government does.
>> Back to details. There were also changes to loan
repayments. Is that significant?
>> That is in a couple of different ways. So this is
what I said earlier about the simplicity and the
complexity. There's some things that I think are
pretty popular about the new repayment options for
borrowers. There is now basically just two
different options that borrowers can have starting
in 2026. They could do a standard repayment plan
that's pegged to how much they borrowed, and then
they could do a repayment assistance plan that's
pegged to how much they earn. And so in either of
those cases, the idea is to have loan repayment be more
sensitive to borrowers economic circumstances.
However, there are some details that also make it
more difficult and even potentially punitive for
some of the lowest income borrowers.
>> Interestingly, also, there's new accountability
standards for undergraduates. What's that?
>> There are. And this is something that's really
much on my radar is essentially a bachelor's
degree recipient, has to earn more than a high
school graduate at some point in their future. And
that by itself doesn't seem very problematic. That's
kind of the whole point of education is to boost your
economic well-being. But there are a lot of majors
and academic programs where the gap between a high
school graduate and a college graduate are not
that large. And so these accountability measures are
going to starting in 2026, they're going to start to
identify what academic universities across the
country are showing that positive return above a
high school graduate. And I worry that maybe it's not
this year, maybe it's not next year. But at some
point down the road, a lot of programs that produce
graduates who go into public sector and nonprofit
work that tend to have low wages are going to be
either penalized by being with, you know, withheld
federal funds. Or colleges might just say, we're not
going to do this. It's too risky to run this program
anymore. >> Lastly, do you think
that student borrowers know about these changes?
>> No, I think there's a lot of confusion. And one
of the big struggles that I see and I'm hearing about
is the timeline of all of these changes are supposed
to be taking place July 1st, 2026. That's ten months
away. And so prospective students, current students,
and current borrowers are all wondering. There's
already been several years of a lot of
miscommunication, confusion and misunderstanding about
the student loan system. And I'm worried, especially
as the federal government of Education has laid off
at least 50% of staff at the Department of Education.
I'm very concerned about how this will be
implemented and how well it will be implemented.
>> Well, we will be watching a professor Nick
Hillman. Thanks very much. >> Of course. Thank you.
>> For more on this and other issues facing
Wisconsin, visit our website at PBS Wisconsin
and then click on the news tab. That's our program for
tonight I'm Frederica Freyberg. Have a good
weekend. [MUSIC]
. >> Funding for "Here& Now"
is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and
Friends of PBS Wisconsin.