Wisconsin
Sandhill crane committee poised to discuss findings, potential legislation in Wisconsin
The Legislative Study Committee on Sandhill Cranes will meet Wednesday in Madison to begin discussing potential bills to address crane-caused crop damage in Wisconsin.
But first it will likely talk about a pair of documents titled “SHC Findings of Fact” and “SHC Conclusions.” The items were emailed Nov. 1 to committee members by legislative council staff on behalf of committee chairman Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc).
The email said the documents were “prepared by Rep. Tittl” but didn’t mention the author for both was Bruce Ross, executive director of the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association. Ross is not on the committee but testified before it and is a strong advocate for a crane hunting season in the state. The species is currently protected by state law.
The lack of transparency about the origin of the documents heightened tensions between those perceived to be working mostly to secure a committee vote in favor of a crane hunting season and those working to provide relief to farmers, according to several committee members.
“These documents were developed by someone who is not a scientist or a lawyer and who has a clear bias,” said committee member Meleesa Johnson, executive director of Wisconsin’s Green Fire. “I think it’s not a good look for the committee. I would hope we could do better.”
Tittl also has a record of supporting crane hunting in Wisconsin. He authored a 2021 bill to open a crane hunt in the state; it failed to get approved by the Legislature.
Tittl said Ross submitted the documents “unsolicited” and “aimed at helping the committee arrive at some agreed upon facts.”
“As I reviewed the documents I thought the approach would be a helpful first step for the committee to find areas of agreement, develop possible solutions and gain consensus on an appropriate path forward,” Tittl said in a statement. He did not say why he didn’t make it clear to committee members or legislative council staff that Ross had authored the documents.
Tittl said he has allocated a significant amount of time at Wednesday’s meeting to review the documents and suggest changes.
Ross said he submitted the documents as a “strawman” of items intended for discussion by the committee.
“It was my hope the committee will understand the logic, modify or create documents as they see fit, decide what they collectively can agree on, and make their final conclusions a part of the committee’s record,” Ross said.
The committee has become a stage for debate over sandhill crane management in Wisconsin, especially for providing relief to farmers for crane-caused crop damage and a potential crane hunting season.
The committee was formed in late spring and met Aug. 1, Sept. 4 and Oct. 1. Its goal is to “examine population trends and determine whether any changes to state law would effectively address the incidence and consequences of crop damage caused by sandhill cranes in this state,” according to the committee description.
Sandhill cranes were once threatened in Wisconsin but have recovered over the last century. Sandhills in Wisconsin are part of the Eastern Population which was estimated at 110,000 in 2023, according to a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources report.
Three states in the Mississippi Flyway offer crane hunting seasons. Two previous attempts to allow sandhill hunting in Wisconsin (2011 and 2021) failed to garner support in the Legislature.
The agendas of the first three committee meetings were heavily weighted with presentations related to crane hunting.
However in the first meeting, Kent Van Horn, a retired Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources waterfowl ecologist who helped write the 2010 sandhill crane management plan for Mississippi and Atlantic Flyway Council, said while the sandhill population in Wisconsin is large enough to support a limited hunting season, such a hunt would be designed to have a small, if any, impact on the crane population.
“It’s structured to be sustainable, so you’re not going to lower the population in Wisconsin by adding a hunting season,” Van Horn said to the committee.
No scientific study has shown hunting has reduced crane-caused crop damage in any of the hunted populations in North America.
The crane study committee includes four legislators and eight public members. In addition to Tittl, the legislators are Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Cameron), Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) and Rep. Dave Considine (D-Baraboo).
Public members include representatives of agricultural and conservation organizations, including the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association, Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association, Delta Waterfowl, International Crane Foundation, Wisconsin’s Green Fire and Wisconsin Waterfowl Association.
The restored population of sandhills in Wisconsin provides enjoyment for wildlife watchers and others but also causes an estimated $1.9 million in crop damage annually in the state, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most of the crop damage occurs in spring when cranes eat newly-planted corn. Other losses occur later in the year to crops including peas and potatoes.
Those seeking solutions for farmers are frustrated with the amount of time the committee has spent discussing hunting.
“Advocates for a (sandhill crane) hunting season have long promoted it as the solution to crop damage, but we know a hunting season is not going to help farmers,” said Rich Bielfuss, president and CEO of the International Crane Foundation, in a statement. “The science presented in this legislative committee has made clear that hunting will not provide meaningful assistance to farmers, not by way of population management, nor financially.”
If hunting for cranes were approved, it would allow farmers to file for compensation through the state’s wildlife damage abatement fund.
In 2021 the DNR estimated that as many as 200 sandhill damage claims, with an appraised value of $1.6 million, could be filed annually in Wisconsin, more than all other wildlife damage claims made to the program. Annual revenue to the fund from hunting would likely be less than $50,000. Thus the added burden from sandhill damage claims could soon make the fund insolvent, pointing to the need for other means to provide lasting relief to the state’s agricultural producers.
“We all need to roll up our sleeves and work together to find real solutions for Wisconsin farmers,” Bielfuss said.
Wednesday’s meeting of the Legislative Study Committee on Sandhill Cranes begins at 10 a.m. in Room 412 East at the Capitol.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin Weekend: Pride bar crawl, Father’s Day deals, and more
MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee has no shortage of ways to celebrate this weekend, from a Pride bar crawl to Father’s Day deals around the city and Juneteenth celebrations.
Summerfest and Northcott Neighborhood House are hosting a Juneteenth celebration filled with music and culture at the Summerfest grounds.
Watch: Kidd O’Shea breaks down this weekend’s events:
Wisconsin Weekend in a Minute: June 19-21
The event kicks off right after the traditional Juneteenth Day Festival wraps up.
Pride Bar Crawl
The 9th annual Pride Bar Crawl kicks off Saturday at 4 p.m. at Walker’s Pint.
Tickets include drinks and access to exclusive specials at partner bars. Twenty percent of proceeds will benefit the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center.
The crawl wraps up with an after-party and drag show at La Cage Nightclub.
Father’s Day
On Sunday, The Motor Restaurant at the Harley-Davidson Museum is offering a free beer for dad when purchased with a meal, along with free admission to the museum. Reservations are highly encouraged.
Families can also take dad to the Milwaukee County Zoo, where all fathers receive free admission on Sunday.
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Wisconsin
These Wisconsin swing voters say Trump’s war in Iran wasn’t worth it
Vessels are anchored along the Strait of Hormuz.
Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images
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Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images
The war in Iran was a costly blunder, according to swing voters in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
NPR observed two online focus groups on Tuesday featuring voters who supported Joe Biden in 2020 and then Donald Trump in 2024.
President Trump had just announced a framework agreement to end the war, which he signed on Wednesday.
Yet among the focus groups’ 13 participants, no one said they thought the conflict with Iran was “worth it,” and nine said they felt that the U.S. is coming out of this conflict weaker than before.
Corey M., a 33-year-old independent voter, said he is concerned that the U.S. expended “so much financially and so much of our arsenal,” with little to show for it. (All participants agreed to be part of the focus groups on the condition that they be identified by their first name and last initial only.)
“We essentially got nothing out of it,” he said. “It’s hurt our economy and increased expenses for the everyday American, and it accomplished the square root of nothing.”
Focus groups are not scientifically significant like polling. But they provide insight into how Americans are thinking about what they see in the news.

These focus groups — made up of 10 self-described independents, two Democrats and one Republican — were conducted by messaging and market research firms Engagious and Sago as part of the Swing Voter Project. NPR is a partner on the project.
Rich Thau, president of Engagious, moderated the focus groups. He has been asking voters in key states about this conflict since March. And he said voters have been consistent.
“They were never on board,” Thau said. “Not the beginning. Not in the middle. And as we just learned, not at the end either, judging from what we heard from Wisconsin swing voters.”
Sam M., a 30-year-old independent, said from what he read about the deal, it wasn’t leaving the U.S. in a better position than before the war. In fact, he said he thought the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration — which Trump backed out of — was a better deal for the United States.
Anger over high gas prices
For most voters, though, their biggest concern has remained the high gas prices that are a consequence of the war.
Tammy S., a 53-year-old independent voter, said Americans have been unfairly caught in the middle.
“I just don’t think the way that everybody else had to suffer through the tantrums of these two playing tug-of-war — I just don’t think that it was fair to the American people,” she said. “I don’t think that anybody was a real winner here.”

Several voters said they’ve felt squeezed by costs and as a result have given up something that had been a regular part of their life. They’ve cut vacations and eating out or are getting their hair done less often.
“I’ve given up all my extracurricular hobbies … paddleboarding, yoga,” said Jaylyn M., a 27-year-old who identifies as a Republican. “And then a lot of my subscriptions I’ve cut out, along with my daily coffee, which is minor, but all things that I’ve had to give up to make ends meet.”
“I had to raise all my deductibles on everything — my car insurance, my health insurance — to lower my premiums, so that I can continue to make it,” added Robyn T., a 63-year-old independent.
Trump owns the economic problems
The latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, out Thursday, finds that only a third of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the economy.
In the focus groups, nine of the 13 voters said they are more anxious about the economy than they were before Trump took office last year. And all but one voter said that “President Trump himself is responsible for those higher prices” because of the war.
“And 10 said he’s out of touch with their economic concerns,” Thau told NPR. “So for them, there’s a clear disconnect between how the president’s operating on the economy and what their needs are.”
And heading into what could be some tough midterm elections for Republicans, voters are really frustrated that Trump isn’t delivering a better economy by now.
“It seems to me, like, pick your issue, and things are not going well for him,” said Josh K., a 29-year-old independent voter. “I mean, we got this stupid war in Iran, and it turns out that we actually aren’t getting anything out of it. I mean, all we got was $4 gas. I mean, pick your issue — the economy, things are more expensive.”
Wisconsin
President of Wisconsin’s largest mosque released from ICE custody
A federal judge has ordered the release of the president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque, after finding that immigration officials probably detained him in retaliation against his public advocacy for Palestinian rights, suppressing his first amendment rights in the process.
The US district judge James Patrick Hanlon’s order on Thursday marked a sharp rebuke against Trump officials, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who had tried to paint Salah Sarsour as a national security threat.
“Salah Sarsour, who has lived in this country for more than three decades and served as a core pillar in his community without any issues, should never have been detained in the first place,” his legal team wrote in a statement. “While we continue to fight these baseless claims in court, today is about celebrating a family being reunited. It is also a sober reminder that, if the government can target Mr Sarsour, everyone’s free speech rights are at risk.”
Sarsour describes himself as a stateless Palestinian, according to the order. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says that he is a Jordanian citizen. He has lived in the United States for more than three decades, becoming a legal permanent resident in 1998. Immigration officials approved Sarsour’s citizenship application decades ago, though he did not naturalize.
Sarsour has garnered public attention as a champion for Palestinian rights, and serves as a board member of an advocacy group called American Muslims for Palestine.
But Rubio personally signed off on a memo to the DHS last year describing Sarsour as deportable despite his green card, because “his actions undermine US foreign policy to combat antisemitism around the world”. The memo, cited in Hanlon’s order, accuses Sarsour’s group of being “found to have been involved in activities providing funds to Hamas”.
A group of plainclothes ICE officers from at least 10 unmarked vehicles swarmed Sarsour on 30 March of this year, arresting him and putting him in deportation proceedings. ICE ultimately detained him in Clay county jail in Indiana.
Sarsour lost 30lb while detained, the order says. His lawyers told the court that he was “at constant risk of developing serious complications from diabetes given that the medical staff only checks his blood-sugar levels once a month”. Tightly controlling diabetes typically requires multiple glucose checks daily.
Hanlon’s order says that homeland security officials and Rubio probably trampled on Sarsour’s first amendment right to free speech and appeared to have arrested him in retaliation for his Palestinian rights advocacy.
The order cited a New York Times story and the website for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative thinktank that dreamed up Project 2025,
The Heritage Foundation presented the White House with the idea to present prominent foreign-born Muslims and Palestinian rights leaders as terrorists in order to sue them, deport them or pressure employers to fire them, the order says, citing reporting from the Times and Heritage’s own website. Sarsour was probably among the targets of that campaign, the order says.
The federal government, through its lawyers, contended that Sarsour should be deported based on two convictions from more than three decades ago in Israel – one for throwing a molotov cocktail and the other for attempting to store weapons and ammunition.
Sarsour denies having committed those crimes.
But Hanlon viewed those crimes as a non-issue for justifying his incarceration, noting that the federal government knew about them since the 1990s and approved his legal permanent residency and his citizenship application anyway.
Sarsour’s speech on Palestinian rights “is core political speech and squarely within the scope of the First Amendment”, the order says. “Mr Sarsour has submitted evidence allowing a reasonable inference that his protected speech was ‘at least a motivating factor’ in Respondents’ decision to detain him.”
A spokesperson for homeland security described Sarsour as a “terrorist”, citing the convictions from his youth in Israel.
Government lawyers had argued that Sarsour did not have the same first amendment rights as US citizens. If he were released, they said, he should have to pay a $25,000 bond, wear an ankle monitor, check in routinely with ICE and remain confined to his house.
Instead, Hanlon ordered his release on personal recognizance, meaning that Sarsour does not have to pay a cash bond to compel him to show up in court again. The order, however, requires him to remain in the state of Wisconsin.
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