Wisconsin’s class of 2024 is on the rise after a slew of four-star commitments in the last week. The group is up to No. 21 nationally and now boasts a blue chip ratio of 35%, both marks that would put the class among the best we saw during Paul Chryst’s tenure as head coach.
The class had a chance to rise even further today, as the program was hot on the trail for four-star defensive lineman Benedict Umeh. The Avon, Connecticut native visited Madison in early June and the Badgers were believed to be in the running along with Stanford, Duke and Penn State.
Well, not all recruiting battles can be won. Umeh announced his commitment to Stanford earlier this afternoon.
BREAKING: Elite 2024 DL Benedict Umeh tells me he has Committed to Stanford!
The 6’5 265 DL from Avon, CT chose the Cardinal over Wisconsin, Penn State, & others
Defensive line is a weakness for Wisconsin in its class of 2024, with three-star Hank Weber being the only commitment at the position. Needless to say, Umeh would’ve been a massive get for Fickell and his staff.
Instead, the four-star defensive lineman commits to play for former Wisconsin assistants Bobby April and Ross Kolodziej at Stanford.
Fickell and company will now turn focus to their other top targets in the class.
Alzheimer’s numbers expected to hit 13 million by 2050
Dr. Joanne Pike, CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association, talks about the challenges and hopes when it comes to this debilitating disease.
The Wisconsin State Assembly passed several bills, including increased penalties for threats against jurors and changes to campground trespass laws.
One bill removes the income cap for families seeking assistance through the Alzheimer’s Family and Caregiver Support Program.
Debate continues among lawmakers regarding tying funding to proposed bills.
MADISON – The Wisconsin State Assembly passed a line up of bills on June 24 as lawmakers continue to argue about whether funding should be attached to proposed bills.
Here are some of the bills the Assembly took up.
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Penalty for battery or threat to jurors
Passed by voice vote, this bipartisan bill would increase the penalty for battery or threat to jurors and their family members.
Under the bill, such actions would be made a Class H felony, allowing judges to prohibit convicted individuals from contacting jurors involved in their cases during their sentence or probation.
Bill co-author Rep. Shae Sortwell, R-Two Rivers, said on the Assembly floor that this bill ensures jurors will not be tampered with so that they can “decide the cases on its merits and not because of threats.”
Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, argued that it’s already a crime to threaten battery and a penalty enhancer to an existing crime is “empty messaging.”
“Incarceration has become this Legislature’s default response… Locking more people up, for more crimes and more years does not keep us safe,” Clancy said during the June 24 floor session.
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The bill passed in a 28-4 Senate vote on June 18, and is now on its way to the governor’s desk.
Criminal trespass at campgrounds
Passed by voice vote, this bill clarifies private campgrounds are not residences, and therefore guests can be evicted from the property and are not subject to landlord-tenant laws.
Under the bill, campground owners would be allowed to issue written requests to campers to vacate the property, with a list of reasons they are being asked to leave included. The owner of the campground must provide a refund for any payment covering the duration of the stay past the time campers leave.
If guests do not leave promptly after a written request is issued, they may be fined up to $100 or put into county jail for up to 30 days.
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Clancy said that this bill “kicks people when they are down.”
“This legislation fails to differentiate between somebody who is trespassing at a party in a campground and someone who’s lived there for weeks, months or years because they have no other housing,” Clancy said on the Assembly floor.
The bill passed in the Senate by voice vote on June 18, and is now on its way to the governor’s desk.
Alzheimer’s family and caregiver support program
In a voice vote, the Assembly passed a bipartisan bill that would repeal the current financial eligibility requirement for services for families caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease.
The bill would remove the current income cap set at $48,000 so more individuals with Alzheimer’s disease would be eligible for assistance from local agencies.
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“These families need a lot of support… This bill will help those and many of us who have seen the effects of Alzheimer’s has had on a lot of our family and friends,” bill co-author Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, said on the Assembly floor, adding that there have been leftover funds in the last few years and that it is important to get that money out to families who need it.
The Legislature created the Wisconsin’s Alzheimer’s Family and Caregiver Support Program was created in 1985 in response to a growing number of family members caring for loved ones with irreversible dementia at home.
AFCSP covers a wide range of services and goods including adult day care, in-home help, nutrition supplements, hobby supplies and meal delivery services.
An estimated 205,000 unpaid caregivers support a family member living with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia in Wisconsin, according to the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute. Caregivers often face significant emotional, physical and financial burdens.
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Unpaid caregivers contribute approximately 297 million hours of care annually, valued at over $5.5 billion.
The estimated fiscal budget for this bill is $3.05 million, according to a Department of Health Services statement on April 23.
The bill passed in the Senate by voice vote on June 18, and is now on it’s way to the governor’s desk.
Anna Kleiber can be reached at akleiber@gannett.com.
The NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory is a groundbreaking achievement for astronomers. Scientists and companies in Wisconsin made the endeavor possible.
Light from faraway galaxies can show us what the universe was like billions of years ago. But the movements and mysteries of those galaxies tell physicists that we still don’t know what makes up the vast majority of the universe.
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“How did it begin? When will it end? What is it made of?”
Keith Bechtol, a physics professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said these are some of the questions scientists will try to address with a new observatory in Chile featuring the biggest camera ever built.
The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, released the first set of images on June 23. The stunning images represent the fruits of a decades-long effort to push the study of the cosmos well past its current limits.
Building the Rubin Observatory, which sits on a summit in Chile’s Andes Mountain range, spanned three decades and involved parts and people from three continents. Some of the most important support came from Wisconsin.
‘Visionary’ Rubin Observatory provides detailed look at the cosmos
Beginning in October 2025, the Rubin Observatory will embark on the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Over the next 10 years it will scan the entire Southern Hemisphere sky about 800 times, providing the most detailed look at the universe to date.
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The plan going forward sounds deceptively simple.
Getting to the starting point was anything but that.
“The whole idea for the (Rubin) observatory was so visionary when it was conceived (in the 1990s) that many of the technologies didn’t exist at that time” said Bechtol.
Bechtol served as the System Verification and Validation Scientist for the international team in charge of the Rubin. He oversaw much of the testing that ensures scientists will reliably get the high-quality data they are seeking.
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Observatories usually face trade-offs between how big an area they scan, the resolution of the photos they take and how fast they can take them. The scientists designing the Rubin attacked these challenges on all three fronts.
The Simonyi Survey Telescope installed uses an innovative mirror system to reflect incoming light onto a camera the size of a car. After scanning one piece of the sky, the whole system rapidly spins to look in a different direction, rotating in coordination with its protective dome while maintaining near perfect alignment of the mirrors.
According to Bechtol, displaying one image at full resolution would require enough high-definition TVs to cover a basketball court.
The final step in building the Rubin — installing the 80-ton mirror system — was made possible by the Milwaukee-based company PFlow Industries.
Pieces of the telescope were assembled at a staging area but needed to be raised five stories to be installed in the dome. PFlow custom-built a lift capable of moving critical equipment from the assembly area to the dome. A video shared by Rubin Observatory shows this lift in action.
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During and after construction, Bechtol organized a series of “rehearsals” to simulate how the Rubin will operate. He accounted for details including the workflow of operating it, the challenge of transferring massive amounts of data from the summit, and even making sure the summit hotel was staffed and had food for its residents.
After nearly 30 years of dreaming, designing, building and testing, the first images from Rubin Observatory arrived.
Scientists share new images with the public
UW-Madison hosted a First Look Party on June 23 to view these images with the public. Nearly 100 people gathered in a physics department auditorium to watch a livestream of a press conference in Washington, D.C., before participating in a panel discussion with Bechtol and other scientists who will use data from the Rubin.
Even though Monday was the first chance for the public to see the images, some of the scientists involved in the project had a sneak peek.
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“I woke up in bed and saw messages” that the first images had come in, said Miranda Gorsuch, a graduate student at UW-Madison who has Bechtol as an advisor. “It was like waking up from a dream.”
Gorsuch plans to use the data to study the structure of the universe and how it evolves over time.
Rubin Observatory is named after Vera C. Rubin, an astronomer who first provided observations suggesting we might not be able to see most of the matter making up the universe. Understanding the properties of this “dark matter” is one of the top priorities for scientists who will use the collected data.
But there is so much more to learn; the Rubin is already showing outer space in incredible detail. Just one small slice of our solar system imaged by Rubin Observatory already led to the discovery of 2,000 new asteroids. In one image of the full field of view, scientists detected 10 million galaxies — many for the first time. By repeatedly scanning the sky, scientists hope to use the Rubin as an alert system for rare events, like supernovae, which they can then observe in more focused follow-up studies.
“This is when science works best – when you have this interplay” between new discoveries and the new questions they raise, Bechtol said.
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“There’s a science case (for building the Rubin), but any time you do this, there is also a set of questions you haven’t thought to ask yet” said Eric Wilcots, dean of the College of Letters and Science at UW-Madison.
While UW-Madison was just one of many universities involved in the international project, Wilcots believes its participation will inspire future scientists and attract them to Wisconsin.
Both Bechtol and Wilcots stressed the importance of sustained financial support from the NSF and DOE to bring the project to fruition.
Rob Morgan was one of the first graduate students advised by Bechtol, working on a Dark Energy Survey that served as a precursor to Rubin Observatory. According to Morgan, the Rubin is the culmination of the astronomy field’s shift towards a “big data” approach. Now, Morgan applies the skills he learned as an astrophysicist to his work at Google’s office in Madison.
“Google is where ‘big data’ is done for the rest of the world,” said Morgan.
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This week’s image release represented a beginning. Scientists will spend years collecting and analyzing data. Still, the opening provided a moment worth cherishing.
“We don’t get a lot of observatory openings,” said Alyssa Jankowski, who recently completed an undergraduate degree at UW-Madison. “It’s important to celebrate.”
After the U.S. struck three Iranian nuclear sites Saturday, Wisconsin federal lawmakers’ reactions were divided along party lines.
Republicans praised the strikes as a necessary step and said they were within the bounds of presidential authority. Meanwhile, Democrats criticized President Donald Trump for ordering the strikes without approval from Congress and said they risked creating a wider conflict.
In an interview Sunday on FOX News, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Trump had been clear that Iran could not become a nuclear power.
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“They were getting too close. They simply would not listen to him. They wouldn’t give it up,” he said.
He expressed disbelief that “anybody could have been surprised at this,” arguing the president had “telegraphed” his intentions.
Johnson said the U.S. was “not at war with the Iranian people.”
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“I hope they take this opportunity of the regime’s weakness to rise up and establish a more democrat, Western-leaning, prosperous Iran,” he said.
An electronic billboard beams an image of President Donald Trump alongside the message “Thank you, Mr. President” referring to the U.S. involvement in the war between Israel and Iran, in Ramat Gan, Israel, Sunday, June 22, 2025. AP Photo/Bernat Armangue
Meanwhile, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin argued that diplomacy, not war, was the way to keep Iran from having nuclear weapons.
“I have been clear-eyed that Iran is a threat to the safety of people across the world and cannot have a nuclear weapon,” she wrote in a statement Sunday.
That was why, she wrote, she supported former President Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal. She claimed Trump’s withdrawal from it “got us into this whole situation.”
“We should be learning lessons from our war in Iraq and what it means to engulf us in a conflict across the globe,” she wrote. “I did not support that war, and I don’t support this one.”
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House Republicans back Trump, Democrats back checks on presidential powers
Reactions were similar among Wisconsin’s U.S. House delegation, which is split between six Republicans and two Democrats.
U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Clyman, called diplomacy “our preferred path,” but argued Trump’s actions will “prevent a far greater conflict down the road.”
“Now is the time for Iran to reassess its path and choose negotiation over provocation,” the 5th Congressional District representative wrote in a statement Saturday.
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, characterized the strikes differently.
She said Trump was “putting American lives in jeopardy and choosing to escalate in a region already on edge.”
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“Rest assured, no one is sleeping safer or more secure because of the unfolding attacks,” she wrote on social media site X.
Demonstrators rally outside the White House, Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Washington, to protest the U.S. military strike on three sites in Iran early Sunday. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Meanwhile, Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, blamed “weak” previous Democratic administrations for emboldening Iran.
“I fully support President Trump’s actions to defend our greatest ally in the Middle East, Israel, and send a clear message to our adversaries that America does not tolerate nuclear intimidation,” he wrote.
U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Janesville, said Iran’s leadership bore blame.
“Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has squandered our good-faith efforts to negotiate for nuclear disarmament and left the US with few options other than to destroy Iran’s ability to have a nuclear weapon,” he wrote on X Monday.
Axios reported Trump was willing to meet Iran’s president in Turkey as recently as last week, but the Iranian side couldn’t reach Khamenei to greenlight the meeting.
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“Iran’s rulers have been vowing ‘Death to America’ for decades,” wrote U.S. Rep Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, in a statement. “President Trump understands that peace is achieved through strength, and strength means preventing a nuclear Iran.”
U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, R-De Pere, reposted an American flag shared by Trump and echoed the president’s “peace through strength” motto. But he also wrote that “now is the time for peace and an end to endless wars.”
Also writing on X, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat from the Town of Vermont west of Madison, urged Congress to pass a recently-introduced bill that orders the president to seek congressional authorization before military action in Iran.
The bill was written by Republican U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a conservative libertarian from Kentucky who frequently clashes with Trump. It’s cosponsored by 43 Democrats, including Moore and Pocan.
“Hot take: war is bad,” Pocan also posted Monday.
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The office of U.S. Rep. Grothman, R-Glenbeulah, did not respond to a request for comment, and as of Monday afternoon, Grothman had not shared a reaction to the attack on his social media accounts.
