Western Wisconsin residents are following the protests and clashes in Minneapolis-St. Paul over federal immigration enforcement actions with concern.

“It feels a bit like a pressure cooker over here,” Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge said Friday in an interview with WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” 

The Trump administration has surged some 2,000 federal agents in the Twin Cities, with plans to add 1,000 more. Many of them are agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and protests have broken out over their aggressive enforcement tactics. Those protests have intensified since an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Macklin Good in her car last week. On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said an ICE agent had shot a man in the leg in an enforcement action. 

In Wisconsin border communities including Hudson, many people make daily commutes to the Twin Cities for work, shopping or recreation. A Hudson resident who asked to remain anonymous over safety concerns said she has been involved in organizing to support protesters in the area. She said people all across the metro area have been making sure protesters and organizers have rides, are fed and are safe.

But the psychological effects of the unrest have been widespread. She said some of the students at the elementary school where she teaches are afraid to come to class.

“It is just the saddest thing to see tiny children who are just starting school have this kind of fear and uncertainty,” she said.

That echoes the experience of others in immigrant communities.

“Everybody is terrified,” immigration attorney Marc Christopher told “Wisconsin Today.” “They see what’s been broadcast on TV. They see the indiscriminate arrest of people. … The level of fear and anxiety in our immigrant community is off the charts.”

And Berge, who is also a Democratic candidate for Congress, said people in the Hmong community worry they will be targeted for being members of a minority group, regardless of legal status.

“Even though they’re American citizens,” she said, “they have to bring their documents with them, their passports or ID with them when they leave the house — even to walk their dog or bring their kids to school.”

In an interview with PBS Wisconsin’s “Here and Now,” GOP U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson placed the blame for the unrest squarely on Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other politicians he said were “inciting people to resist and obstruct justice.” 

Local officials respond to rumors, concerns about ICE enforcement

With attention focused on Minneapolis, unfounded rumors of ICE agents staging or planning large-scale operations in Wisconsin spread widely on social media. Officials in Baldwin, Wausau and Stevens Point all told WPR that social media chatter was false. 

Still, officials in many communities have felt pressure to review policies and plans should federal immigration enforcements scale up. 

The Hudson School District this week sent a message to parents reiterating its visitors policy and how district officials work with law enforcement.

Superintendent Nick Ouellette said there is not a separate policy for ICE, nor any branch of law enforcement.

“We’re not taking a political side of the argument,” Ouellette said. “We’re just saying this is how we handle things.”

If a district employee is approached on school property by a federal agent requesting information about a student or the student’s family, district policy and federal law prohibit the employee from sharing any student information without a valid judicial warrant or subpoena.

This includes confirming whether a student is enrolled at the school or within the district.

The Hudson School District serves about 5,000 students. Ouellette said it does not keep records of students who are not U.S. citizens.

WPR’s Evan Casey, Corrinne Hess, Danielle Kaeding and Liz Harter contributed.

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

This home marks a departure for The Inside Story. Not a grand build or lofty renovation, but a modest – almost poky – cabin on Lake Wandawega in Wisconsin. It’s a (totally unstaged) study in anti-trend interiors, cultural salvage and the idea that true luxury lies in provenance; not styled to appear vintage, but genuinely constructed from it.

The property’s history begins in the 1920s, when it was one of three tiny family-built cabins, sharing a single outdoor bathroom. In the 1950s, a stonemason took ownership, adding cladding, an indoor bathroom, a proper kitchen and two oversized stone fireplaces adorned with ‘pencil fossils’ – fertility symbols set into the mantels. By the 1970s, the cabin was home to an elderly PE teacher and her friend, a former college roommate who had become a nun. The cabin’s most recent chapter began when the team behind Camp Wandawega – a nostalgic ‘summer camp’-inspired resort near Elkhorn, Wisconsin – assumed stewardship and restored it, treating it as ‘a cultural object restored one artifact at a time’.

Over the course of nearly a year, the team deliberately resisted contemporary restoration clichés: no shiplap, no whitewashed surfaces. Instead, they focused on uncovering what already existed, in one case peeling back six layers of flooring to reveal the original tile. The result feels ‘less like renovation and more like ethnography’.

In the living room, original walnut panelling and cabinetry remain, as does the stonemason’s fireplace. Added: a carpet in ‘Hitchcock green’, its hue recalling dusty roadside motels and cocktail lounges, and furnishings including a Platner table found on Craigslist, 1940s Tyrolean chairs from Etsy, and a five-foot 1970s abstract oil painting. The space is layered with objects and curios: a folk-art ship sculpture, Frankoma pottery, and pieces drawn from Camp Wandawega’s own archive.

The bathroom, originally a deteriorating 1940s lean-to, was stripped back and rebuilt with custom-poured concrete walls and a sloped base, tinted in a variation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Cherokee Red’. The standout pieces here are a robin’s-egg blue 1960s toilet and sink by industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, discovered – improbably – in perfect condition in a Harley Davidson rider’s backyard seven hours away. A wood-lined skylight and a 1970s Yves Saint Laurent towel set, assembled from pieces scoured online, complete the space.

In the kitchen, beneath layers of plastic wood and successive decades of linoleum, lay the original 1940s tile. The original farm sink was retained, alongside a rare fold-out ‘Murphy sink’ typical of early tourist cottages. A Raymond Loewy-esque 1950s Kelvinator fridge and a Tappan appliance range sourced for free on Craigslist sit alongside a $70 Chromcraft table paired with 1940s Tyrolean chairs. A junk drawer in the kitchen revealed a time capsule of sorts, containing shot glasses from 50 years worth of parties.

The bedroom – diminutive at 8×10 feet – is wrapped entirely in wood panelling. The Hitchcock-green felt mat continues here, while furnishings include a Chinese MCM sideboard sourced via Facebook Marketplace, a mirror acquired during a McDonald’s parking-lot exchange, and 1940s barkcloth Navajo-print curtains. The headboard is a salvaged 1940s camp sign, and the bed is layered with textiles from across centuries: an 1880s Welsh coverlet, a 1940s woven spread and a vintage Bates plaid.

In a world dominated by high-end, high-spec resort interiors, this ‘little wooden shoebox’ of a home feels sincere – rooted in history, rich in narrative and effortlessly cool.

The president of the Wisconsin State Senate says making health care more affordable is a priority for Senate Republicans before this legislative session wraps up in March.

That goal echoes statements from Gov. Tony Evers on Monday, who said at a press conference his legislative agenda for his final year in office is centered around “addressing rising costs” for Wisconsinites. 

Senate President Mary Felzkowski, who represents the 12th district in northern Wisconsin, authored multiple bills related to health care costs during this session. One aims to address cost transparency in health care.

Felzkowski told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” her bill would better enforce existing federal rules around how hospitals inform patients about the cost of procedures and health services. She wants Wisconsin law to have “more teeth” to make up for what she sees as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ failure to enforce those rules. 

The bill would allow the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to take action and impose penalties against hospitals found not following federal transparency rules.

“The hospitals have fought us on this,” Felzkowski said. “They do not want that transparency, which is a little telling.”

A representative for the Wisconsin Hospital Association said at a legislative hearing that they oppose the “regulatory complexity” and “unlimited fines” on Wisconsin hospitals, “when robust federal regulation and enforcement already exists.” They also claimed no Wisconsin hospital had been fined for not following those federal rules since they were put in place.

During his press conference, Gov. Evers focused on insurance companies instead of hospitals. He called on the Legislature to pass laws that would audit insurance companies for denying claims at high rates, crack down on prior authorizations and expand the health care services that insurance companies are required to cover.