MADISON – Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, said she supports redrawing Wisconsin’s congressional maps, a matter currently before the state Supreme Court.

Neubauer’s comments came the day after former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Democratic candidate for governor, similarly signaled his support.

“I think that the current congressional maps are gerrymandered. Everyone knows that Wisconsin’s a purple state. It should be about 50-50. We’ve got six Republican congresspeople and two Democratic congresspeople,” Neubauer told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an end-of-year interview covering a variety of topics. “So I think that these maps are not fair, and I do hope that they will consider whether new maps should be drawn.”

Last week, the state Supreme Court’s liberal majority appointed two three-judge panels to hear lawsuits from liberal groups challenging Wisconsin’s congressional lines before the 2026 elections.

President Donald Trump earlier this year pushed Republican-leaning states to redraw their congressional maps in order to add GOP-held seats in the U.S. House. The effort prompted some Democratic-leaning states to embark on their own efforts to add blue seats.

Wisconsin, where partisan control is divided between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and a Republican-led Legislature, has not followed suit.

Evers, in a September interview with the Journal Sentinel, said it would be a mistake for Wisconsin to engage in the partisan arms race of attempting new congressional maps. Not only would it be “bad politics” for Democrats, he said at the time, he also didn’t think the party could pick up enough seats to make a difference.

The state’s current congressional lines were drawn by Evers. The state Supreme Court approved his set of maps in 2022 because it made the fewest changes compared to ones submitted by Republicans and others.

Conservative justices on the state’s high court strongly objected to the recent orders sending the lawsuits to three-judge panels, noting that the court has previously rejected challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional districts.

In its Nov. 25 orders, the liberal-led court concluded the two complaints constitute “an action to challenge the apportionment of any congressional or state legislative district” under a 2011 state law that requires such challenges to be heard by a panel appointed by the state’s high court.

Jessie Opoien can be reached at jessie.opoien@jrn.com.

(WLUK) — Several Northeast Wisconsin dairy companies have received new state funding, Gov. Tony Evers announced Thursday.

Dairy Processor Grants were awarded to 13 companies by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP). These grants are designed to help local dairy processors with projects that modernize and grow their businesses, produce new products or expand their markets, while also improving profitability. The goal is to sustain the long-term viability of Wisconsin’s dairy processing industry.

“We must be doing everything we can to ensure Wisconsin remains on top as America’s Dairyland,” said Evers, in part, in a news release.

I’m proud to have secured additional investments for this critical program in the most recent state budget I signed, and I’m glad to see these funds going out the door to ensure our dedicated dairy producers have the support and resources they need to compete and be successful.

A total of $600,000 was available for this year’s grants, with a maximum of $50,000 allowed for each company. Grant recipients are required to provide a match of at least 20% of the grant amount.

The selected winners in Northeast Wisconsin are:

• Briess in Chilton to invest in an upgrade of control systems
• Milk Specialties Company (Actus Nutrition) in Fond du Lac to investigate the potential of Milk Basic Proteins (MBP) as a value-added dairy ingredient
• Pine River Dairy in Manitowoc to modernize butter packaging equipment to increase production capacity, enhance product quality and expand market reach
• Pine River Pre-Pack in Newton (Manitowoc County) to install a natural gas line and replace the existing fuel oil-burning boiler and tank water heater at the processing facility
• Rosewood Dairy Inc. (Renard’s Cheese) in Sturgeon Bay to construct a stand-alone building to house several self-serve AI “smart coolers”
• Widmer’s Cheese Cellars in Theresa (Dodge County) to complete a new and improved milk intake design proposal

Since 2014, DATCP has received 283 proposals for Dairy Processor Grant, requesting more than $12 million. 148 of those proposals were funded, totaling $3.8 million.