LANSING, Iowa (KCRG) – The Black Hawk Bridge, connecting Iowa and Wisconsin over the Mississippi River will come down Friday morning.

The Iowa DOT and Wisconsin DOT are partnering on the demolition, which is set for 9:30 am on Friday. You can watch the demolition live in this article when it happens.

The bridge has been closed since October with plans to construct a new bridge, planned to open in 2027.

The Iowa DOT laid out safety plans for the demolition:

• A zone around the bridge will be blocked off to protect people from debris.
• The Lansing Ferry service will not run from 6:00 p.m. on December 18 to the morning of December 22.
• Highway 26 will be closed from around 8:45 a.m. on December 19 and reopen around 30 minutes after the implosion. Detour signs will be posted.
• The demolition zone will be closed to recreational boat traffic on December 18 and expected to reopen during the night of December 19.
• No trains will run through Lansing for four hours on the morning of December 19.

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AP
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A jury found a Wisconsin judge – accused of helping an undocumented immigrant dodge federal authorities – guilty of obstruction Thursday, marking a victory for President Donald Trump as he continues his sweeping immigration crackdown across the country.

Federal prosecutors charged Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan with obstruction, a felony, and concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor, in April. The jury acquitted her on the concealment count, but she still faces up to five years in prison on the obstruction count.

The jury returned the verdicts after deliberating for six hours. Dugan faces up to five years in prison when she’s sentenced, but no date had been set as of late Thursday evening.

Dugan and her attorneys left the courtroom Thursday, ducked into a side conference room and closed the door without speaking to reporters. Steve Biskupic, her lead attorney, later told reporters that he was disappointed with the ruling and didn’t understand how the jury could have reached a split verdict since the elements of both charges were virtually the same.

US Attorney Brad Schimel denied the case was political and urged people to accept the verdict peacefully. He said courthouse arrests are safer because people are screened for weapons and it isn’t unfair for law enforcement to arrest wanted people in courthouses.

“Some have sought to make this about a larger political battle,” Schimel said. “While this case is serious for all involved, it is ultimately about a single day, a single bad day, in a public courthouse. The defendant is certainly not evil. Nor is she a martyr for some greater cause.”

According to court filings that include an FBI affidavit and a federal grand jury indictment, immigration authorities traveled to the Milwaukee County courthouse on April 18 after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.

Dugan learned that agents were in the corridor outside her courtroom waiting for Flores-Ruiz. She left the courtroom to confront them, falsely telling that their administrative warrant for Flores-Ruiz wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest him and directing them to go to the chief judge’s office.

While the agents were gone, she addressed Flores-Ruiz’s case off the record, told his attorney that he could attend his next hearing via Zoom and led Flores-Ruiz and the attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The US Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.

The case inflamed tensions over Trump’s immigration crackdown, with his administration branding Dugan an activist judge and Democrats countering that the administration was trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation.

Prosecutors worked during Dugan’s trial to show that she directed agents to the chief judge’s office to create an opening for Flores-Ruiz to escape.

Prosecutors also played audio recordings from her courtroom in which she can be heard telling her court reporter that she’d take “the heat” for leading Flores-Ruiz out the back.

Her attorneys countered that she was trying to follow courthouse protocols that called for court employees to report any immigration agents to their supervisors and she didn’t intentionally try to obstruct the arrest team.

This story has been updated with additional details.

Wisconsin students enrolled in short-term, workforce training programs will soon be able to use federal grants to pay their tuition.

Millions of low-income students rely on Pell Grants to pay for college, including more than 70,000 in Wisconsin. The awards have long been limited to courses that span a minimum of 15 weeks or 600 “clock hours.”

The Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” signed into law this summer will extend Pell Grant eligiblity to include short-term nondegree programs as short as eight weeks beginning July 1, 2026. The expansion is the largest in decades, making programs previously paid out of pocket – from truck drivers to machinists to nursing assistants – more affordable to students.

These types of programs are mostly offered by community and technical colleges, which have long lobbied for the change. They are studying their programs and deciding which need adjustments ahead of the eligibility expansion.