Wisconsin. PBS Wisconsin original
production. >> You're watching "Here& Now"
>> You're out of order in my 2024 election coverage.
Senate, Republicans tried to undo Governor Evers vetoes in a
display of political infighting. >> And the Wisconsin Supreme
Court hears oral arguments on absentee ballot drop boxes.
Again I'm Frederica Freyberg tonight on here. And now we get
a preview of the Republican state convention with the party
chair. Then a look at the absentee ballot drop box case
before the high Court. Climate experts give Madison the moniker
of being a climate haven. But is it?
>> And finally, we speak with an outgoing academic dean whose
department got mired in political conflict.
>> It's "Here& Now" for May 17th. Funding for Here and Now
is provided by the Focus Fund for journalism and friends of
PBS. Wisconsin. In a lead up to the Republican National
Convention happening this summer in Milwaukee, the party's state
convention is happening this weekend in Appleton. The chair
of the Wisconsin Republican Party says, in this battleground
of all battleground states, they're ready and able to win up
and down the ballot. The Wisconsin GOP chair joins us
ahead of the state convention. Bryan Schimming, thanks very
much for being here. >> So great to be here. Thanks
for having me. >> So we know Wisconsin is
important, but just how important is Wisconsin this
election? >> The truth of the matter is in
Wisconsin, in the last 24 years, we've had 12 statewide races.
We're about 6 million people, right? We've had 12 races in the
last 25 years that were decided by 30,000 votes or less. So I'm
certainly feeling the attention of nationally, and I like that.
It's good for us. And frankly, as you know, it's why the
Republican National Convention is coming to Milwaukee.
>> What's at stake up and down the ballot here?
>> Just about everything. It's interesting, I was saying the
other day that, you know, here we are, Wisconsin. Remember, we
used to be called flyover country. Remember those years?
And now we're kind of fly in country. But there's a reason we
have a close presidential race. I think by anybody's telling,
it's a close race here in Wisconsin. We have a close us
Senate race, which six months ago people wouldn't have
guessed. But that we instantly had a close US Senate race to
target House races. Obviously, both houses of the legislature.
So Wisconsin, almost more than usual is really a focus of
national attention. And we feel it at the state party, too.
>> You were just talking with me about money. Will Republicans in
Wisconsin start to see the spigot flow?
>> Yeah, I mean, we're feeling it already in terms of the
support nationally. We, the great thing for us, with the new
leadership of the Republican National Committee, Mike Wadley,
they are completely focused on not just us, of course, but
other target states as well. So we just hired a new political
director this week. We're hiring, hiring additional field
staff. We're actually one of the more built out states in the
country already on field staff opening local offices. So yeah,
I mean, we'll have the resources we need, which voters other than
all of them. >> Will Republicans be specific
kind of targeting the president's hurting with a lot
of his base groups, young, young people, very, very close between
he and President Trump, Hispanics as well.
>> Biden is not doing nearly as well as he did with women when
he first ran. So as you look at those different groups, there
are plenty of opportunity for Republicans. But as I say to
Republicans around the state, you have to go get those voters.
You can't count on them not being unhappy with the incumbent
or whatever, but they are very, very unhappy with the incumbent.
>> Speaking of voters, you have been pushing early voting for
months, which is a total sea change for Republicans. Yeah but
the Republican Party of Wisconsin also officially
opposed the use of ballot drop boxes in a case before the state
Supreme Court. Right now, I understand you are in support of
those. What's the actual deal here?
because we feel as though there are that possibly is a subject
for some fraud. But almost more importantly, here we are just a
couple of months before the election again, and the state
Supreme Court is acting like a second legislature and going in
and changing campaign laws. Frankly, I don't think the drop
box issue will be the last one we see from this Supreme Court.
So I think there's a legitimate issue, and I get this from
clerks around the state that they don't want all these
changes, you know, to the law made in the run up to the
election. But yeah, we've opposed drop boxes. But to your
point, I say to Republicans across the state, I was the
first state chairman in the country to push early vote. And
whether it's drop boxes or other potential changes, I have to
deal with the laws as they are, and I'm going to.
>> Now, you say that was concerned Republican voters are
all in on on Donald Trump. Does that suggest that Republicans
have forgiven and forgotten January 6th and all that
happened before and after? >> Yeah, I don't know. It's a
matter of, you know, all those things that there goofing around
with in the courts. It's not a matter of forgiving or anything.
You know what's interesting about this race? It's not the
typical incumbent challenger race, right? It's essentially a
race between two incumbencies. And what we see in the polling
is that people now know they didn't know four years ago. Now
they know what they were going to get with Joe Biden, which has
been high inflation, high interest rates, bad GDP numbers.
Now they know what they're getting between the two. And
that's working for President Trump.
>> As to Wisconsin's key Senate race, other Republicans on our
air have said that it would be very, very tough to beat
Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin. You obviously don't
think that I don't. >> I mean, Tammy Baldwin's
numbers collapsed immediately after she got a tough opponent
in the race, and that has turned that into one of the most
competitive U.S. Senate races in the country. Even 4 or 5 months
ago, people were saying, Tammy's too tough to beat. The polling
doesn't show that. And that she's a 95% voter with Joe Biden
. new maps will change the
legislature there? >> Yeah, it's I think it's hard
to tell. I think the Senate seems like it's in a little
better position. Senate position or in an okay position.
The Assembly, I think, is more competitive. And as you know,
I've done a lot of Assembly races around the state. So I'm
familiar with the Assembly. But I, the Democrats, I feel as
though we'll keep both. And the Democrats are going to have to
find another excuse for losing, because I think we will be
victorious in both houses. And I know the state very, very well.
And while you're right, I think the numbers will change, does it
automatically flip houses? I don't think so.
>> We will watch in this pivotal election year, what is it like
for Republicans to be hosting the national convention in
Milwaukee? homer, so I'm all about having
the convention in Milwaukee. In fact, when I was doing radio in
Milwaukee, when the Democrats announced in Milwaukee I was I
was even happy about that because I want it to be good for
Milwaukee and for the whole state. The Republican convention
will be, too. I'm excited, obviously, state chairman to be
hosting the national convention, but it's money. About $200
million spend is 50,000 people coming to the state. But even
more just, you know, for the Wisconsin economy, it's
just the country, the whole world will be watching Wisconsin
and for Republicans, it's a way to pull our message together in
front of a national audience with a five day show that I
think is just going to be great for Wisconsin. I'm so excited.
>> All right, Brian Schimming, thanks very much.
>> We expect to talk with Democratic Party Chair Ben
Wikler ahead of their state convention next month on
absentee ballot drop boxes. The Republican Party weighed in
against their use in a Wisconsin lawsuit before the state Supreme
Court, which heard oral arguments this week. The case
seeks to overturn a ruling made by the court two years ago in a
case referred to as Teigen, which barred the use of drop
boxes after the 2020 election. Because law did not expressly
allow their use. >> Teigen, the principle of it,
something is not explicitlyif
can't be done, isn't that that
that turns everything else onle
>> What if we just got it wrong?
we now supposed to justake? Are
future?ate that mistake into the
cause Wisconsin argued for their use. Its executive director, Jay
Heck, joins us now. And Jay, nice to see you. Great to be
with you, Fred, and good to see you again. So in your mind,
should Wisconsin voters expect to see the use of absentee
ballot drop boxes for upcoming elections, from what you heard
in oral arguments, well, if the oral arguments are any
indication about what the court might do, I am very positive or
have a very good positive feeling about what the outcome
might be. >> You know, one thing it's
important to note is that we have had drop boxes in Wisconsin
for a number of years and of course, most famously during
2020, in the pandemic, they were a means for many thousands of
Wisconsinites around the state to be able to return their
absentee ballots in a safe, secure way. Rural voters, urban
voters, young voters, old voters , people with disabilities,
Wisconsin is now the only state in the upper Midwest, only
non-red deep red state that doesn't allow the use of them.
>> So but the concern on the part of Republicans is that
those boxes could result in fraud with ballot harvesting and
the unsecured nature of them. What about that?
>> Well, those are the those are the suspicions of election
deniers and conspiracy theorists during the 2020 election. Not a
single incident of a drop box being tampered with or fraud or
any of these things. This is the specter that is constantly
raised to try to reduce the ability of Wisconsinites to be
able to vote safely by absentee ballots, or sometimes even at
polling places. So there's nothing behind. And those fears,
and they ought to be available and hopefully will be for 2024,
so that we can have more voices and more people's votes counted
rather than fewer. >> So interestingly, the state
GOP is now pushing early voting, as we expressed to its chair.
That's a sea change for Republicans. But now they're
trying to figure out how they'll promote or dissuade the use of
drop boxes, depending what the Supreme Court does here, it
seems like this could be kind of complicated messaging.
>> Well, it will be, although you know, it early or early
voting, both early voting and absentee voting, which is the
same, is it benefits voters of all persuasions, not just
liberals or Democrats. Everybody benefits by being able to cast
their vote when it's convenient for them to do so, and so I
think the Republican Party and it sounds like they're wising up
even on the drop boxes, is that they will urge their voters to
utilize those drop boxes. They may continue to also raise the
specter that there could be fraud in case their side doesn't
win. That's often what happens. But I am confident that this
this will result in safe, secure voting for people all over the
state and that we'll have more voices and more votes to be that
will be able to be counted after the November election than than
fewer. chickens before they're hatched
because the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on this. But this
is the sense of people like yourself and others involved in
the case. And following it closely that that that was what
looked like the persuasion out of the oral arguments.
>> Yeah. You never want to predict for sure what the court
will do, but one thing we know about the Wisconsin Supreme
Court now is that it's a little easier to predict how they're
going to rule on any given issue than it used to be.
>> So also, this week, a near meltdown in the state Senate
chambers during override votes on Governor Evers vetoes.
>> So Gaber not veto the senator.
>> You are out of order. You're required to sit. You. You shall
care. You're out of order. >> You shall care. The Senate
has the Republican votes to override vetoes, but the
Assembly, if close, does not in your mind, J given that, why the
dramatic effort to override this week?
>> Well, first of all, what a complete and utter waste of the
taxpayers, the voters of Wisconsin's time and resources
for the majority in the Republican Republican majority
to come in and decide that they were once again going to try to
override vetoes that have previously been sustained and,
you know, put put Wisconsin through this exercise. Yes, they
had the votes in the state Senate, and yes, they were able
to vote to override five, five of the governor's bills. But
they knew that the Assembly didn't have the votes to do this
. So it was just an exercise in in political theater. It was
designed to message to their base that they're concerned
about issues and they're conservatives, and they're going
to fight for this stuff. But it did nothing to solve the
problems that Wisconsin needs to have addressed. And it's, again,
a reason I call it the last gasp of the hyper partizan
gerrymandered legislature, where hopefully after the November
elections, we'll have a legislature that more
what Wisconsin really looks like. And that would include
more bipartisan cooperation and actually working on things
Wisconsinites care about than that kind of political
theatrics. very much.
>> Environmental news, smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted
down into Wisconsin this week, putting Eau Claire and Marathon
counties under unhealthy air quality advisories, droughts,
fires, heavy storms and flooding are a daily reminder of how
climate change impacts people's lives and where they decide to
live. Select cities like Madison have been deemed climate havens
because it's believed they'll see less intense effects of
climate change. Here and now. Next generation intern Hannah
Ritvo has this story. >> The August that we left, it
was so dry and so hot that there were wildfires. Actually
encroaching on Austin as we were leaving, as we were driving down
the highway, it was literally just scorched black earth.
>> Jessica Mederson left Texas 12 years ago to escape the heat.
>> Everybody in the world wants to be in Austin and I loved it a
lot. But I hated the heat. >> Mederson is among many who
have left their homes to adapt to a changing climate. Over 3
million Americans have already moved due to climate change.
>> If you look at the US alone last year there had been $1
billion weather disasters almost every two weeks on average.
>> Some of these migrants could be headed to places called
climate havens. >> A climate haven is the idea
of a place that's a refuge or a safe spot from the impacts of
climate change. >> Madison is routinely cited as
one of six climate havens around the United States.
>> It's been hypothesized that this area of the country could
be a climate haven, because it might escape the worst of
climate change impacts. >> Steve Vavrus is the state
climatologist and co-director of the Wisconsin Initiative on
Climate Change Impacts. what we don't have. We don't
have hurricanes. We don't have big wildfires, and we're far
away from sea level rise. So the combination of those things has
made a lot of people speculate that our region of the country
could be very attractive to so-called climate migrants, but
it's not all sunshine and rainbows.
>> Vavrus says potential climate migrants should be aware of
Madison's own increasing climate extremes.
>> We get a lot of heavy rainfalls, we get a lot of
flooding. We often get heat waves, too, that are hot and
humid and then last summer we had so much wildfire smoke and
that caught people off guard. >> The 20 tens were Wisconsin's
wettest decade on record by far. >> We had a lot of flooding
events across the state in that decade, and one of the worst,
maybe the worst in that decade was in 2018. In August in Dane
County, where just about a foot of rain fell in 24 hours, which
was a statewide record. And it's an incredible amount of rain.
It's more like Hurricane amounts, and it certainly caused
terrible flooding. It even caused one fatality, he says.
>> The concept of climate havens started about six years ago.
>> This is something that I don't think scientists
anticipated would would draw so much public interest. It's
something that that was really kind of a groundswell of
interest from the masses. And that's caught the attention of a
lot of climatologists. >> And it's a debated notion
because there are many reasons that people move the cost of
, the availability of housing. living, the quality of education
Madison with high house prices >> This is a big issue in
escape disaster. and rents, and not everyone can
unable to move due to poverty or >> There are communities who are
social norms, or disability or age. We have a history of
locating polluting industries in low income and minority
communities. The environmental justice movement started as a
result of that. So these are the same communities that are
disproportionately affected by climate change.
executive director of the Human rights program at UW-Madison
>> I look at the link between human rights and environmental
issues, especially climate change, Atapattu says.
>> There is anecdotal evidence that individuals are moving to
Madison due to the impacts of climate change, but not enough
data yet to truly know. Nonetheless, climate migration
is already happening around the world.
relocated as we speak. Some communities are awaiting
relocation in, and people are moving, she says.
>> Climate change is a global problem with local impacts.
>> It's important for us to realize that the decisions we
take will have repercussions. Thousands of miles away, small
island states and people who are living there, they will be the
ground zero of climate change because they might lose
everything they have, including their country. So we don't
really know where those people will go and what will happen to
those countries. >> Atapattu says. The most
important thing we can do is educate ourselves and prepare
sufficiently for disasters and migration. And cities,
especially those deemed climate havens, must be ready to
accommodate an influx of potential climate migrants.
Experts estimate more than 1 billion people could be
displaced in the next 25 years due to changing weather.
>> Can their infrastructure handle a lot more people? These
are things that communities need to be thinking about anyway.
>> Some cities have already begun promoting themselves as
climate havens. >> Lake superior big enough for
everyone. >> Buffalo and Duluth are two
communities that have gone all in with advertising and
encouraging people to come to their communities, and hopefully
they have the ability to take in a lot of residents fairly
quickly. >> Madison hasn't promoted
itself that way, but Vavrus says it is important the city gets
ready for potential climate migrants, as it's clear the
Midwest may be more immune to severe climate impacts than
other regions. >> But again, people need to
recognize that we've got our own challenges when it comes to
climate and extreme weather here, too, that there's really
no safe place from the impacts of climate change.
>> For "Here& Now" I'm Hannah Ritvo in Madison.
>> Hannah Ritvo is graduating from Umms Madison and completes
her work with Here and Now this week. We thank her for her
contributions and wish her luck on her next endeavors. Also in
campus news, the Dean of the UW-Madison School of Engineering
has announced he is stepping down after 11 years in the role.
The school has been at the center of a political storm over
the last year, as Republican legislators held up approval of
the new engineering building in a fight over diversity, equity
and inclusion programs at the University. See "Here& Now"
Senior political reporter Zac Schultz sat down with Ian
Robertson to talk about why he's stepping down now and what the
new building means for students and the state.
>> I thought this was a good time because things are the
moment are very positive in the college. The trajectories are
all in the right direction. So this is a good time.
>> Your school is obviously been in the news a lot in the last
year, having to do with the new building and some of the
talk about the building itself first and what it will mean for
the ability to evolve into the future. What what the education
and the research does. >> Yes. So the new building did
take a little bit longer than we were expecting to get approved.
But the good thing is that did get approved. What's it going to
do for the state of Wisconsin? We're going to be able to take
more students, right? There is a high demand at the moment from
students to get an engineering degree from UW-Madison. We
currently have 4800 undergraduates. We're going to
grow to at least 5500. That's going to meet some of the
student demand. It's also going to help us meet demand from
industries in the state of Wisconsin for more engineers. As
I talked to the companies, they're saying, when will you
produce more engineers? Because we want to hire them and they
have jobs for them. So the new building will enable that part.
It's also going to allow us to actually expand our research.
Right. We will attract new faculty with the building. They
will bring in new areas and environmental sustainability. I
machine learning, autonomous that are important to Wisconsin
based industries and to the nation. So change our research
us to do the growth that's portfolio. It's going to allow
these are good things for actually needed. So I think
state. happening. It'll be good for the
you surprised when the building >> On the political side, were
became kind of a political football in the budget?
>> Yes. I mean, it took it did take longer. Right. And so it
was a surprise. But if we look at what really happened during
that whole period, the support we got from companies in
Wisconsin, from the people of Wisconsin, was actually just
amazing, right? These weren't all engineering companies. They
weren't all our engineering alum, it was people. Companies
said, we need more engineers. UW-Madison is a plan to attract
more engineering students that will meet demand. And they
actually voiced their support for the building. So I'd like to
just take this opportunity to thank all of them because I
can't thank them all in person. So this is a great opportunity
for me to say thank you for all of the support that you gave us
to get this new building. We won't disappoint. We will live
up to our end of the bargain. We will produce more engineers and
we'll develop great research. >> Some of the things that the
UW was asked to give up or to change had to do with DEI. You
have a vice chancellor for DEI. You have a very diverse student
body within the engineering school. How do those all factor
in together in terms of what the students felt about some of
those sacrifices, our commitment, the campus
commitment to providing an environment that's inclusive and
welcoming for all continues. >> That's not going to change,
right? All of us want to work in an environment that's that we
enjoy working in, that we enjoy learning in, and it's absolutely
essential that we do that here in the College of Engineering.
When I talked to industries, they tell me that it's important
that they hire a diverse workforce, right. They say that
the products that they get at the end are better if they bring
in different perspectives. And so we need to do the same. The
other part, I think that's important is that engineering is
facing a challenge in attracting more people. We currently have
shortages in the number of engineers that we produce. If I
think what's coming with the chips or semiconductors coming
back in, the manufacturing, come back to the US, the advances in
clean energy sustainability, we're going to need more and
more engineers than we can produce, not only here in
Wisconsin, but nationwide. So one of the challenges I see, and
why the hopes, is that we can get more people excited about
being in engineering and saying, this is a great career path,
because I can have an impact on society if I take this career.
So we need to do all of these things.
>> For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit
our website at PBS Wisconsin. Org and then click on the news
tab. That's our program for tonight. I'm Frederica Freyberg.
>> Funding for Here and Now is Have a good weekend.
Journalism and Friends of PBS provided by the Focus Fund for
Wisconsin in