Wisconsin
Add Ozaukee to the list of Wisconsin counties with deer baiting and feeding bans. Now there are 59.
The finding of chronic wasting disease in a buck at a Sheboygan County shooting preserve has caused a deer baiting and feeding ban in Ozaukee County. The ban is required by state rule.
A deer baiting and feeding ban kicked in Thursday in Ozaukee County due to the recent detection of chronic wasting disease at a Sheboygan County captive deer facility, according to the Department of Natural Resources.
The ban is linked to a CWD-positive 5-year-old white-tailed buck at Heavy Horn Whitetails LLC, a shooting preserve in Cascade, according to the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
Because the CWD finding was within 10 miles of the Fond du Lac, Ozaukee and Washington county borders, it affected deer baiting and feeding rules in each county.
State law requires the DNR enact a three-year baiting and feeding ban in counties where CWD has been detected and a two-year ban in adjoining counties within 10 miles of a CWD detection. If additional CWD cases are found during the lifetime of a baiting and feeding ban, the ban renews for an additional two or three years.
In this case, the CWD finding initiated a new two-year baiting and feeding ban in Ozaukee County. And it renewed existing bans in Fond du Lac, Sheboygan and Washington counties. Baiting and feeding is now banned in 59 of the state’s 72 counties, according to the DNR.
More: Outdoors calendar
Prior to the change, Ozaukee County was the only county in southern Wisconsin in which deer baiting and feeding was allowed.
Baiting or feeding deer encourages the animals to congregate unnaturally around a shared food source where infected deer can spread CWD through direct contact with healthy deer or by leaving behind infectious prions in their saliva, blood, feces and urine, according to the DNR.
The state agriculture department announced the Sheboygan County CWD finding on Jan. 25.
As a result of the disease detection, Heavy Horn Whitetails LLC has been placed under quarantine and will remain so while DATCP and U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarians and staff conduct an epidemiological investigation, DATCP said in a press release. The business has 92 deer on 90 acres, according to the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
Chronic wasting disease is a fatal neurological disease of deer, elk and moose. It is caused by a infectious, malformed prion, or protein, that affects the animal’s brain.
The disease is not known to affect livestock nor has it been shown to sicken humans. However the Centers for Disease Control and Wisconsin Department of Health Services recommend humans not consume meat from an animal that tests positive for CWD.
The disease was first identified in the 1960s at a research facility in Colorado. As of this month, CWD has been detected in 32 states and five Canadian provinces in free-ranging cervids or commercial captive cervid facilities, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The first detections of CWD in Wisconsin in both wild and captive deer were announced in 2002.
In Wisconsin DATCP regulates deer farms for registration, disease testing, movement and permit requirements while the DNR manages wild deer and deer hunting in the state.
The intended goals of the baiting and feeding ban include protecting the local wild deer herd and reducing the spread of disease, according to the DNR.
Bait and feed placed on the landscape, even in limited quantities, often attracts unnatural numbers of deer, according to DNR information. Deer are often concentrated at one bait or feed site, or between several sites in close proximity, allowing for increased contact that would otherwise not occur in natural feeding environments, the agency states.
Unnatural concentrations of deer and contact rates caused by baiting and feeding increase the risk of disease infection and transmission, according to the DNR.
For additional information on CWD in Wisconsin, visit dnr.wi.gov.
Sturgeon season update
Spearers registered 264 lake sturgeon through the first seven days of the 2024 sturgeon spearing season on the Winnebago System, according to the Department of Natural Resources.
Poor ice conditions have reduced participation and harvest this year. Last year at the same point in the season 1,073 sturgeon had been registered.
On opening day (Feb. 10) the DNR reported reported about 450 shanties on Lake Winnebago, down from 3,000 in 2023 and 6,000 in 2022.
None of the protective harvest caps is close to being hit and fisheries staff with the DNR expect the season to run the full 16 days.
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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