The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.
>> People throw around words like unprecedented, but this is
a challenging time for higher education.
>> Universities, agriculture, child care and public health.
The hits keep coming as federal funding cuts persist.
[MUSIC] I'm Frederica Freyberg. Tonight
on "Here& Now" UW-Madison responds to growing top down
pressures. A ginseng farmer on the realities of a trade war
with China. [MUSIC]
The perfect storm of state and federal dollars for child care
disappearing. And what's next for poisonous lead levels in
Milwaukee schools? [MUSIC]
>> Funding for "Here& Now" is provided by the Focus Fund for
Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
>> Federal investigations over DEI programs and antisemitism.
International students having their visas revoked. Funding
cuts and threats of more. Higher education is coming under
scrutiny by the Trump administration. Wisconsin's
flagship campus, UW-Madison, has big federal dollars at stake.
With that in mind, we wanted to check in with Chancellor
Jennifer Mnookin. We offer this disclaimer. PBS Wisconsin is
part of UW-Madison. And Chancellor, thanks very much for
being here. >> Thanks for having me.
>> So the university is facing many headwinds right now. What
stands out as your biggest concern at UW-Madison?
>> Well, you're right, it's a challenging time in higher
education across the entire sector right now, including for
us. I think the biggest challenge is around questions
around federal funding, especially for research and also
more generally, federal funding. Is our single largest component
of our budget. And we're really proud to be an extraordinary
research flagship. We're doing research on so many different
kinds of topics from from cancer research to incredible studies
about Alzheimer's to public policy engagements and so much
else. And right now, there are a lot of questions about what that
funding is going to look like in the time ahead. So that's
probably my single biggest concern.
cuts to research overhead costs and funding losses?
>> Well, there have been a number of executive orders, but
several of them are have been paused through legal processes
right now. So there have been efforts to bring down the
facilities and administrative administration rates for NIH, as
well as the Department of Energy. And in both of those
cases, those are now on hold. Courts have imposed a hold in
both of those instances. >> Now UW-Madison is under
investigation by the Trump administration over DEI and
antisemitism. What kind of sanctions for funding and
program cuts has that resulted in?
>> So at this point, you're right that we are one of a great
many, many dozens of institutions all across the
country that do have title VI complaints connected to
antisemitism. One investigation was opened back in January 2024.
It actually is about a protest incident back in October, 23rd
October 2023. So nothing recent. And we certainly condemn
anti-Semitism in all of its forms and we are cooperating
fully with that investigation. But we have not heard anything
recently about it. And it's about an incident that happened
quite a long, a long time ago. >> Now, we saw that Harvard
University's president rejected the administration's demands and
saw an immediate federal funding cut of more than $2 billion.
Would you or could you reject whatever the demands are.
>> You know, that's a very speculative and hypothetical
question at this point. We're all watching Harvard and a
number of other institutions very carefully to see to see how
they are behaving. And proceeding. We are we're just
not in that situation right now. I mean, we are again, there are
many dozens, probably more than 100 schools that do have title
VI complaints. And we are among those schools, but we haven't
faced anything like what you're describing. There.
>> We know that international students have had their visas
terminated throughout the UW system, but more than two dozen
of them at UW-Madison. What is your response to those actions?
>> It's been very concerning. Frankly. We've had. You're
exactly right. We've had more than two dozen students, both
both current students and some recent graduates who are
lawfully working in the country this year face removal from the
system. And in many of these cases, we really we and they
don't know why or it's because of something literally as minor
as a traffic ticket. And some of these students were are
literally weeks away from graduation. Our in our community
international students are an incredibly important part of
everything we do here. You know, our very first international
student was actually part of our first class at UW-Madison back
in 1849. And we're proud that we've had global students and
staff and faculty throughout our history. And many of them go on
to do incredible things. Some of them stay right here in
Wisconsin. It's been interesting for me to learn that a number of
entrepreneurs here in the state got their start when they came
as international students or staff here to UW-Madison, and
then they've gone on to build companies right here in
Wisconsin. And so we absolutely want to support our students. I
do also recognize that those who come to our country have the
responsibility to follow the law. And that the administration
has the right to structure visa processes. But what's been very,
very concerning is that it doesn't it seems like some of
these students are being caught up in a dragnet when they really
haven't done anything wrong. >> Meanwhile, what are you
girding for at the state level around funding for the UW? In in
the midst of a legislative DEI audit which found millions of
dollars in DEI spending across the system was not tracked.
>> Yeah, thanks for that question. We're obviously also
in the middle of a state budget process, and we really
appreciate that the governor has prioritized the universities of
Wisconsin, including UW-Madison, in his in his ask. And we are
very hopeful that the state legislature will decide that
that we do need to make an investment in our system of
higher education, where an economic driver, we are
preparing students for the jobs of tomorrow, and we think that
we do offer a lot of benefit to our wonderful state. I also do
understand that there's people who have questions and concerns
about some of the things we do, and some of the choices that we
make, and we're happy to have those those conversations. And I
think we need to be open to asking, what do we need to do
better? What do we need to do differently? And we should be
open to change, but we should also recognize that we are
providing a transformative education to, you know, 52,000
plus students here in our great state of Wisconsin that our
graduation rates are at their all time high, that our
applicant application numbers are also at their all time high,
and that two thirds of our students are graduating. Two
thirds of our undergraduates are graduating with absolutely no
debt. And the average time to graduation is under four years.
So there's all of these amazing things happening in our student
community. And all of these successes. And so we need to
keep reminding people of all of the really great things, even as
we also take seriously whatever concerns or questions that
community members or others hav. >> Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin,
thanks very much. >> Thank you.
>> 1 farm crop in Wisconsin is being hit especially hard by new
retaliatory tariffs from China. Ginseng Wisconsin produces over
95% of the medicinal plant that's grown in the U.S, and
it's exported to customers in China. Our next guest is one of
the largest exporters of ginseng to Asia. From his farm in
Marathon County. But now with Chinese tariffs doubling the
market for his prized product is withering. Will Hsu is visiting
his markets in Asia, and he joins us from China. Thanks very
much for being here. >> Thank you for inviting me
today. achieve on your visit there?
>> Primarily, we're here to check on the market conditions
in light of all the news, the talks about tariffs and the
changes in the world economy, but also to reassure our
customers and clients that, you know, we're still trying to
service them as best as possible despite some of these headwinds.
>> Are you wanting to convince Chinese customers that the extra
cost of your ginseng with the tariffs is worth it?
>> It's a little bit of that, I think, but it's also part of my
trip. Prior to coming to China, was also looking at other export
markets. Given how dependent our industry is on the Chinese
consumer, the two stops I had prior to China were Singapore
and Malaysia, which do have a number of ethnic customers.
Ethnic Chinese customers, but not nearly the size of the
market of China. >> So you said that you reliving
a nightmare with these latest tariffs. How so?
>> Well, the first round of the trade war that was announced in
2018 took the tariff on our product from 7.5% to 32.5% with
the multiple rounds announced over the last two weeks, since
April 2nd. We are now at 117% tariff. And so it's reliving a
nightmare in the fact that every day you wake up and it's another
round of tariffs and it's another round of calls from
customers who are concerned, we're getting customers who are
delaying or canceling orders. Very similar to the pattern that
we saw in 2018 and 2019. During the first round of this trade
war. >> And so what has that done to
production of ginseng in Wisconsin?
Wisconsin has actually remained fairly stable over the last 5 or
6 years since the since the start of the first trade war.
Unfortunately, what has happened during that time, though, is the
price per pound has declined. And so about 6 or 7 years ago,
the price for ginseng off of the farm was probably closer to 50
to $60 a pound. Today, it's roughly half of that, about 25
to $30 a pound. And with the current or the most recently
announced tariffs, our expectation is that our
customers and they actually have been asking us to take price
reductions in order to offset the tariff that they're paying
to. The Chinese government. >> Is all of that sustainable?
>> It's not. We're currently at prices that are at or below our
cost of production. We have rising labor costs. We have
inflation in our input commodities. You know, things
like chemicals and fertilizer, even land prices are obviously
up as well. And so when you add all of those inflationary
elements into our production, and then you have customers on
the opposite side or consumers on the opposite side who don't
want to pay more for the product. Just like many
Americans don't want to pay more for our groceries. Chinese
consumers don't want to pay more for their ginseng. And so
they're asking the farmers who grow jinxi in Wisconsin to
consider taking a price reduction to offset the tariffs
so that the prices don't have to be increased to them, whether
that's possible or feasible or not will really depend on the
market conditions and whether farmers are forced to sell their
crop. We have a significant number of farmers who have not
sold their crop from 2024, and so it's a very real possibility
that if not this year, this fall's crop in 2020 5th May have
to see some changes made, either to the amount of production or
to the price. >> Do you think this is a
product and market that U.S. Trade representatives understan?
>> I think we've done a good job of explaining the impact to the
central Wisconsin economy, in particular, Marathon County. If
we don't have a crop and jinxing farmers, but I do believe the
way that tariffs have been rolled out in both phases of
this trade war, during Trump's first administration and now
during the second one, is it's a blanket statement. It's not
targeted. It's not necessarily pointed at specific industries.
You know, there are some specific industries that may be
getting additional tariffs, such as steel, aluminum, some of the
technology sectors. But when you're talking about broad
swaths of tariffs being rolled out across the board in equal in
equal measure, it's not really targeted. And so I think that's
what makes this difficult for many of us used to dealing with
a changing global environment is it might be one or 2 or 3 items
here. It's across the board. >> Will Hsu we wish you well and
we wish you luck on on your visit there and on your crop
back here at home. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you for having me. >> As we reported last week, the
city of Milwaukee and its health department are in crisis mode
right now, trying to clean public schools of lead
contamination. Lead that's resulted in the closure of
schools as mitigation to remove flaking lead paint and lead dust
from children's classrooms proceeds. And now the CDC has
alerted Milwaukee that it cannot help because federal cuts have
eliminated its lead program. We sat down with Milwaukee Health
Commissioner Mike Totoraitis for more on all of this. How big of
a public health emergency is this?
>> It is certainly a crisis. We, as you know, the district has
around 68,000 students district wide and over 100 buildings that
were built before 1978. When we started our investigation in
January, it was concerning to see the kind of systemic issues
of maintenance that did not maintain the lead painted
surfaces. And, you know, the cleaning practices that left a
lot of lead dust present in the classroom. So given the number
of buildings and the number of students in these buildings, we
were extremely concerned about what was happening.
>> So could a public health emergency be declared?
>> Yes. And generally we use those designations when there's
immediate legal action that has to happen that normally in my
role as a health officer for the city, you know, I am charged
with protecting the health and safety of our residents and
guests of the city. At the same time. I have a lot of authority
under state and local ordinance to protect the health of
everyone, and in this case, declaring an emergency wouldn't
have afforded me any different authority to say, close a school
or to require testing of students. The other really
important part is an emergency declaration doesn't actually
release any funds. So there aren't there isn't like a pot of
$1 million just waiting to be tapped for this moment. And
thankfully, we've been very fortunate in, you know, these
are mandated services that we provide as a department is
investigating lead hazards here to do this work. We're thinking
about long term ways to do that. But. At this point, we're not
going to declare one. >> How did it happen that
schools weren't made safe from lead?
>> We uncovered that the district wasn't following their
lead maintenance plan. So it's a plan that the district has
created that outlines what they will do on an annual basis to
ensure lead safe schools and classrooms where the students
are through our investigation, based on the level of paint
degradation and the level of dust that was identified through
our investigation, we've determined that this wasn't
something that happened overnight. This was, you know,
years in the making of the facilities not being maintained.
And now we're at this stage where there's significant lead
hazards present. For the students and staff.
>> But meanwhile, you're now told that the CDC cannot help
you because of federal budget cuts that eliminated its lead
program. Where does that leave Milwaukee?
>> It's, you know, a kind of a similar space of trying to
navigate the uncertainty. You know, we were really floored to
receive that notification that the team that we had been
working with since the beginning of the year on their childhood
lead team for the CDC, the nation's top lead experts, were
let go across the CDC, the HHS eliminated, you know, you know,
several thousand people, including the childhood lead
team. Really unprecedented time for the health of our country,
and particularly here in Milwaukee as we deal with this
crisis. We had planned to have these experts help us validate
what we were already doing, and they were going to bring
additional expertise to the epidemiologic investigation and
to was the child poisoned at their home? Were they poisoned
in the schools? As we screened more children.
>> Will all the schools be inspected?
>> Yep. So the plan right now, I think it's roughly 100 schools.
Essentially, we created a prioritization list based on age
of school, the age of the students in the school. You
know, recent renovations, those kinds of things to help rank
what schools needed to get inspected. Quickly and which
schools are newer and might not have any lead hazards present.
So that plan hopefully actually will be released either today or
on Monday. And then parents can have a general sense of when
their school might be closed, as they do renovations and
stabilization work, or if they're going to close part of
the school, only to do. Renovation and stabilization.
But the district has a mandate to ensure healthy and safe
schools across the entire district. And we're here to
enforce that. And really help the district equip themselves
with a sustainable plan to manage all of their buildings.
>> What about the children? Will they all be tested?
>> That's our recommendation to the district. So we are working
with them to put a testing plan in place. I think the part I
would reiterate is that parents can find out right now if their
kid has been poisoned. So whether they're working with
their primary care provider or their pediatrician, that
screening data will tell you right away as we work with the
district, to have them return to compliance. One of the ways that
we feel is warranted at this point is to require the district
to screen the children. >> What is your message to
citizens and parents and students and teachers in this
city on all of this? >> Continue to ask the questions
as the district releases their plan with the timeline for
future closures and future work. Parents should refer back to
that plan as well, and continue to ask the district additional
questions about progress made and other updates that might be
relevant to the learning experience of students here in
Milwaukee. >> All right. Commissioner,
thanks very much. >> Thank you.
>> Head start programs that help prepare young children from low
income families for school serve more than 700,000 households
across the country and 16,000 children here in Wisconsin. But
Head Start, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, could be eliminated by federal cuts. The regional
office that serves Wisconsin was already closed. The Head Start
program that serves four counties in western Wisconsin is
anxiously awaiting the other shoe to drop. Joining us is
Thanh Bui-Duquette, director of Head Start for the Western
Dairyland Community Action Agency. And thanks very much for
being here. >> Thank you so much for having
me. continued funding for your Head
Start program? And have you already seen cuts to your
program. >> At this time we haven't seen
any cut yet. We are expected to we our program is entering our
fiscal 2025 budget May 1st. So at this time, we are expected to
be fully funded for our fiscal 25 program. However, beyond
that, it's uncertain right now. >> Because how many children do
you serve? >> So we are currently serving a
total of 442 children. We are in four counties in western
Wisconsin, so we are in Buffalo, Jackson, Trempealeau and Eau
Claire counties in nine different centers. And our, you
know, out of the nine centers, only three of them are in rural,
in urban areas. And then the remaining six centers are in
rural communities. And many of them, we are the only licensed
providers in that community. >> Were you surprised to learn
of the possible elimination of the program?
>> Absolutely. I was surprised. I was devastated to hear that.
That is the that is in part of the proposal in the president's
budget. >> What would that mean for the
children and families that you and other Head Start programs
serve? >> Honestly, the impact is
clear. It will be devastating for every community across
Wisconsin. And frankly, our country. Children, thousands,
hundreds of thousands of children will not have access to
a safe and nurturing environments. Our parents, our
families will have access, will have no one to care for them.
They cannot go to work. And that will really create a major label
disruption. You know, when you think about it, it's already in
a market where employers already are struggling to find workers
and ultimately this will hurt rural communities the most. You
know, I've I'm in this community. I see the struggles
that they face every day. Scarce resources. There's very few
employment opportunities. And it will put more children and
families into poverty. And in the long run, it will end up
costing taxpayers even more >> Recent survey results of
child care providers across the state, say 1 in 4 could close
their doors with the end of the "Child Care Counts" program. How
devastating would kind of both these things be?
>> Honestly, it will be an economic disaster. Because Head.
Is an important pillar of the childcare infrastructure. So
headstart and childcare works together as two entities that
support working families. And so in addition to the potential of
headstart losing its funding and lose losing access to childcare
account for childcare providers. I would say the majority of the
Wisconsin workforce would have no place to send their children
to, and then they can't go to work. And so that would that
would be an economic disaster. >> Apart from the economics of
it. How successful is Head Start in helping young children with
early learning? >> Yeah, I think there's a
reason why we have had 60 years of bipartisan support. Right?
Because it works. The you know, there have been research done
that have shown children from low income families who have
gone through Head Start are more likely to graduate, graduate
high school, are more likely to. Go further their education to
secondary education, and are less likely to end up into the
criminal justice system. But when you think about the first
five years of life, those are the most important part of any
children's brain development. And Head Start provides that
stability and the support for the children and the families.
And, you know, for our program, 96% of the children that we
serve are either homeless, that in the they are in foster care.
They are living below the federal poverty or they are
receiving public assistance. These are families that would
not be able to have access to the support, nutrition, health,
health services that we provide. And we have proven success about
families who've gone through Head Start are more likely to be
out of poverty and less likely to rely on public assistance in
the long in the long run, and our saving to the economy.
>> Well, we need to leave it there, but we will be watching
this. And thank you for your important work.
>> Thank you so much for having me.
>> 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.
Have a good weekend. [MUSIC]
>> Funding for "Here& Now" is provided by the Focus Fund for
Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.