Midwest
Milwaukee County judge found guilty of obstructing federal immigration agents in courthouse incident
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A jury found Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan guilty of obstructing federal immigration agents during an attempt to serve a warrant at a courthouse earlier this year.
She faces up to five years in prison on the felony obstruction count.
Dugan was arrested in April after helping Eduardo Flores-Ruiz avoid plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who were trying to serve him a warrant. Prosecutors said Dugan helped Flores-Ruiz and his attorney exit her courtroom through a back door on April 18, after learning that ICE agents were in the building to arrest him.
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Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan speaks at a pro-Ukraine rally on Feb. 24, 2025. (Lee Matz/ Milwaukee Independent via AP)
“While we are disappointed in today’s outcome, the failure of the prosecution to secure convictions on both counts demonstrates the opportunity we have to clear Judge Dugan’s name and show she did nothing wrong in this matter,” Dugan’s defense team said in a statement. “We have planned for this potential outcome and our defense of Judge Dugan is just beginning. This trial required considerable resources to prepare for and public support for Judge Dugan’s defense fund is critical as we prepare for the next phase of this defense.”
Jurors reached the guilty verdict after six hours of deliberations, though Dugan was acquitted on a misdemeanor count of concealing an individual to prevent arrest.
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Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan walks into the Milwaukee Federal Courthouse on May 15. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin Brad Schimel reacted to the verdict, saying Dugan “is certainly not evil nor is she a martyr for some greater cause.”
“It was a criminal case, like many that make their way through this courthouse every day, and we all must accept the verdict peacefully,” he said.
Schimel added that prosecutors “weren’t trying to make an example out of anyone.”
“This was necessary to hold Judge Dugan accountable in our assessment because of the action she took,” he said.
The surveillance footage released by Milwaukee County appears to show Dugan, wearing her black robes, confronting ICE agents in the courthouse hallway. (Milwaukee County)
Following the verdict, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Dugan “betrayed her oath and the people she served.”
“Today, a federal jury of her peers found her guilty and sent a clear message: the American people respect law and order. Nobody is above the law,” he wrote on X. “This Department will not tolerate obstruction, will enforce federal immigration law, and will hold criminals to account — even those who wear robes. Thank you to the men and women who keep us safe. We will always protect you.”
Under Wisconsin law, Dugan is no longer eligible to hold public office.
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In April, she was suspended with pay, a roughly $175,000 a year salary, by the Wisconsin State Supreme Court. It’s unclear if the court will make any changes to her employment status in the wake of the verdict, given that the defense is expected to appeal the decision.
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MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – Expect a sunny Saturday with heat expected to build up this weekend before an even hotter work week.
Saturday forecast
Local perspective:
Winds stay light out of the south with plenty of sunshine today.
There are hints of an extremely isolated thundershower, but the chance of that happening over any given area is extremely small.
Expect highs to peak in the upper 80s with dew points in the mid to upper 60s this afternoon.
Extended forecast
What’s next:
This forecast is hot.
Highs will peak in the 90s every day this upcoming week for the Twin Cities and a large portion of the area as well.
Dew points really don’t look to surge into the 70s but mainly stay in the lower to upper 60s depending on the day of the week.
Little to no precipitation forecast this upcoming week. Expect dry and sunny days.
The Source: This story uses information from the FOX 9 weather forecast.
Driving through the winding roads of Callaway County, often visible in the distance is a massive, 553-foot-tall concrete structure emitting what looks like white clouds.
“A lot of people think that’s smoke coming out of the top; it is not. That is water vapor,” said Travis Hart, manager of the Callaway nuclear power plant that produces 15% of Missouri’s electricity.
“The next structure that you see, this big rounded dome … that is the reactor building itself,” Hart said.
The single nuclear reactor near Fulton was built in the late 1970s and began generating electricity in 1984. Initially, the site was designed with two reactors in mind. But Hart said plans for a second unit came to a halt in the early ’80s due to decreasing electricity demand and rising costs.
Now, more than 40 years later, energy demand is growing due to increased manufacturing, adoption of electric vehicles and the development of AI data centers.
In a scramble for more power, tech companies and utilities are restarting formerly shuttered nuclear power plants, such as Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. In states like Missouri, politicians are eager to find ways to build new ones and expand existing plants like the one in Callaway County.
Debates about how to pay for the multibillion dollar projects resurfaced in the Missouri legislature this spring. While cost is the first hurdle to creating a new fleet of nuclear power plants in America, the actual construction of the facilities is the second.
Early this year, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed an executive order that creates the Advanced Nuclear Energy Task Force to “evaluate and guide” the state’s “strategic approach to nuclear energy development.”
Lost skills
The majority of the nuclear power plants in America were built between the 1960s and 1980s. Construction slowed in response to energy demand leveling out, increased safety regulations and public perception of nuclear power souring after the Three Mile Island accident.
Speaking at the University of Missouri in May, Director-General of the federal Nuclear Energy Agency William Magwood said building nuclear power plants is a skill, and America has gotten rusty.
“We used to be really good at building plants back in the ’60s and ’70s. How do we reconstruct that? That’s going to be a real challenge,” Magwood said.
The only new nuclear power facilities built in America in recent decades are the third and fourth reactors at the Vogtle electric plant near Waynesboro, Georgia. While the reactors came online in 2023 and 2024 and produce more than 1,000 megawatts of power each, the project was billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.
Magwood said a lot of what boggled the Vogtle construction was the lack of institutional knowledge about building nuclear power plants.
“We just didn’t know what we were doing,” he said. “We hadn’t built a nuclear plant in a generation. We didn’t have people who knew how to do it. We didn’t have the infrastructure. We didn’t have the supply chain. The regulator didn’t know what the hell they were doing. I was there, so I know.”
In South Carolina, efforts to construct a new nuclear power plant were abandoned after billions were spent and the company behind the project went bankrupt.
Kurt Schaefer is tasked with ensuring Missouri can avoid similar blunders.
The longtime politician and public servant has been dubbed “the leader of Missouri’s nuclear power renaissance” by UM System President Mun Choi, who has been enthusiastic about advancing nuclear power by hosting national energy leaders on campus in recent years.
In May, Kehoe appointed Schaefer as head of the state’s new nuclear power task force, a group of representatives from utility companies, higher education institutions, politicians, state utility regulators and trades workers all charged with finding a way to make new nuclear power a reality.
Schaefer said the first step to establishing more nuclear power in the state is finding the cash.
“It’s all about money,” he said. “It is expensive up front to build a plant and unless the federal government steps up, I just don’t see it happening.”
In June, the federal Department of Energy announced $17.5 billion in loans for utilities and energy companies to build 10 large-scale commercial nuclear reactors.
Schaefer wants one of those reactors to be in Missouri, ideally near the existing nuclear plant in Callaway County.
“We are really behind the eight ball here in the United States on nuclear power, but you’re seeing a big effort, particularly from the federal government, to move us in that direction,” he said.
As electricity demand continues to climb, Schaefer believes nuclear power is the best way for Missouri to meet that demand. The zero-carbon plants can generate energy around the clock, unlike solar and wind power that need the right conditions to produce power.
Plus, given the longevity of nuclear power facilities, Schafer sees them as a good investment. To him, a robust power supply means a booming economy.
“This is our future, this is what we have to do to keep Missouri economically viable and that’s what we’re gonna do,” Schaefer said.
Who goes first?
The ballooning costs of nuclear power plants isn’t a new issue.
“Any project that big takes years to complete and things may change in the meantime,” said Victor McFarland, University of Missouri energy historian. “The costs of your supplies might go up, the cost of labor might go up.”
Decades ago, when many of America’s atomic energy centers were built, inflation was high and budgets stretched beyond initial figures.
“So the original estimates for the construction of these plants that were true, say, in 1970, they weren’t true anymore in 1975 or 1980,” McFarland said. “There were big cost overruns.”
Now, as the world turns away from fossil fuels, Magwood said nuclear capacity needs to triple to meet the net zero by 2050 goals. Currently, the nuclear power industry does not benefit from economies of scale. Because new nuclear projects are rare, costs are high and supply chains aren’t fully developed, adding to the overall risk of the endeavor.
“One of the big problems is nobody wants to be first … everybody wants to go fourth,” Magwood said. “Believe it or not, that doesn’t work very well. Somebody has to bite the bullet. Somebody has to take the risk. And what I think the industry would really like would be if the government somehow put a safety net under the first projects.”
Ameren Missouri has been clear about its goals to develop additional nuclear power. The company is planning to add 1,500 megawatts of atomic energy to its portfolio by 2045.
Callaway nuclear plant manager Travis Hart is an electrician by trade and first set foot at the facility 25 years ago when he was hired to work on the refueling crew. He said that’s when he fell in love with the place.
“When I walked in here and saw the equipment, how it fits together, how it works, how the design was, it was just extremely interesting to me,” Hart said.
There are a number of reasons the Callaway site is suited for expansion, Hart said. The location has access to the power grid, water from the nearby Missouri River, and a largely supportive local community that fills the plant’s roughly 750 permanent jobs while the company pays $9.8 million in annual property taxes to Callaway County.
The Callaway Energy Center’s current operating license extends through 2044, and Hart is confident the company will receive approval to operate beyond that date.
“I tell my people here all the time, … ‘this is important, so we got to get it right, and we got to do a good job of it, and it’s okay to be proud of it, because it makes a difference,’” Hart said.
In the coming years, the state’s new nuclear power task force will assess Missouri’s readiness to provide the workforce, policies and supply chain needed to create the “nuclear power renaissance.”
This story was originally published by KBIA and shared through the Missouri News Network.
A pair of Nebraska basketball players were honored by the Big Ten Conference on Thursday. Rienk Mast and Callin Hake were chosen as Nebraska’s Outstanding Sportsmanship winners.
The Big Ten honored 36 players with the Outstanding Sportsmanship Award for the 2025-26 year. One member of each varsity sports team is nominated, and two winners are selected from each institution.
Mast averaged 13.3 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game in 2025-26 and helped Nebraska to the Sweet 16 for the first time in school history. He is working out with the Indiana Pacers during the NBA Summer League.
Hake averaged 7.2 points, 3.6 assists, 2.5 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game while drawing a single-season school-record 33 charges. She is also the first Husker to be a two-time Outstanding Sportsmanship Award winner across all sports after earning her first award in 2024-25.
Contact/Follow us @CornhuskersWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Nebraska news, notes and opinions.
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