Wisconsin
Wisconsin Republican leader says party may need to embrace absentee ballot drop boxes
Reedsburg voters pick the winners of presidential elections
Reedsburg has a history of swinging back and forth and routinely voting for the winner of every major election, whichever party it is.
Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MADISON – The leader of the Wisconsin Republican Party is not ruling out urging voters to utilize absentee ballot drop boxes during the fall presidential election even as Republicans are in court seeking to stop their use.
Republican Party of Wisconsin chairman Brian Schimming said twice this week he will urge Republicans to take advantage of all forms of voting, including returning ballots to drop boxes, if the state Supreme Court overturns a ban on the use of drop boxes in a case the liberal-controlled court will likely decide in the coming weeks.
“I have spoken nationally, in the state, and at local levels about the need for Republicans to be realistic and if the state law that affects this election says we’ll have drop boxes or we end up with ballot harvesting, we’re going to do what it takes to win,” Schimming told reporters Saturday at the state GOP convention in Appleton. “All I can tell you as chairman is I’m not going to leave any potential advantage that we might have on the table. Period.”
Earlier this week, Schimming also said in an interview with WisconsinEye he is “not going to sit around and leave tools on the table.”
“You have to deal with reality when you’re state chair,” he said in the WisconsinEye interview. “I can see a situation where we have to deal with a change in state law on drop boxes … but we’ll be ready for all that.”
Schimming’s comments come as the state GOP and Republican National Committee have urged justices on the state Supreme Court not to overturn the court’s previous ruling banning the use of ballot drop boxes that are not inside election clerks’ offices.
“There is no justification here — special or not. Voters must deliver their absentee ballots in one of twoways: by mail or in person, to the municipal clerk. Drop boxes do neither,” attorneys for the state and national GOP wrote in a brief to the court as part of the lawsuit under review.
“Like anything of value, elections are targets for malicious actors. Even if fraud is rare, it is still a threat. And because elections are the very essence of our democracy, it is essential that people perceive them to be run according to the highest standard of integrity,” the attorneys wrote.
“Short-circuiting those safeguards — and imposing a novel drop-box requirement that the Legislature never enacted, the Governor never signed, and the voters never ratified — would contravene the manifest purpose of the statute.”
Supporters of drop boxes say clerks have wide discretion over what tools should be used to administer elections in their communities, noting drop boxes had been in use for decades leading up to a 2022 court decision that banned them. Liberal justices on the court questions the conclusion the former conservative majority reached in its 2022 decision.
Wisconsin Republicans have struggled to project a clear message on absentee voting since former President Donald Trump, the 2024 GOP presidential candidate, sought to sow distrust in his election loss in 2020 by blasting the safety of mail-in voting.
Schimming has for months sought to create a public campaign to the party faithful to embrace absentee voting in order to combat Democratic turnout. But at the same time, Trump continues to argue against the idea in visits to the state. During a rally in Waukesha earlier this month and in an interview this week with a local TV reporter, Trump said he his preferred voting strategy is one-day voting with paper ballots.
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel earlier this month, Trump did not commit to accepting the results of the election.
Schimming and the state’s top elected Republican, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, urged supporters of Trump at Trump’s April rally in Green Bay to also embrace early voting — a form of absentee voting that Democrats have heavily promoted in recent elections.
But when Trump took the stage at a rally in Green Bay, he again sought to dampen trust in the state’s election system by promoting the false claim that he would have won the presidential contest in Wisconsin 2020 if it had not been for election malfeasance driven by absentee voting in Milwaukee.
U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, a Republican from Janesville who represents the state’s 1st Congressional District, conveyed a different message during Saturday’s state GOP convention, however.
“If we want to win, if we want to win as Republicans and as conservatives, we need to use every legal tool in the toolkit to get the job done. And that’s going to require people going out, voting early, banking the vote, and driving out the turnout in the state of Wisconsin,” Steil said.
Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin judge sends Slender Man attacker back to mental health institution after group home escape
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin woman who almost killed her sixth-grade classmate to please the fictional horror villain known as Slender Man was ordered back to a state psychiatric hospital Tuesday after she escaped from her group home last month.
Waukesha County Circuit Judge K. Scott Wagner granted a state Department of Health Services request to revoke 23-year-old Morgan Geyser’s release privileges. Geyser told the judge through her attorney, Tony Cotton, last week that she would not fight revocation. Wagner then approved the request during a short hearing.
Cotton didn’t immediately respond to an email message seeking comment.
Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier lured their classmate, Payton Leutner, to a Waukesha park in 2014. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier cheered her on. A passing bicyclist discovered Leutner, who barely survived. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.
Geyser and Weier later told investigators they attacked Leutner in hopes of impressing Slender Man enough that he would make them his servants and wouldn’t hurt their families. Both of them were eventually committed to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute — Geyser for 40 years and Weier for 25 years.
Weier earned conditional release in 2021. Wagner granted Geyser conditional release this past September despite warnings from state Department of Health Services officials that she couldn’t be trusted.
Geyser was placed in a Madison group home. Authorities say that on Nov. 22 she cut off her GPS monitor and fled the state with a 43-year-old companion. Police arrested both of them the next day at a truck stop outside Chicago, about 170 miles (274 kilometers) south of Madison.
Geyser’s companion told WKOW-TV that the two of them became friends at church and had been seeing each other daily for the last month. Geyser decided to escape because she was afraid the group home would no longer allow them to see each other, the companion said.
Slender Man was created online by Eric Knudsen in 2009 as a mysterious figure photo-edited into everyday images of children at play. He grew into a popular boogeyman, appearing in video games, online stories and a 2018 movie.
MILWAUKEE – The FBI calls it an online crime against kids – perpetrators convincing kids to send sexual images of themselves and then blackmailing them.
Online crime against kids
The backstory:
The reality is settling in. This will be Brittney Bird’s first Christmas without her son, Bradyn Bohn, since he was born. That is because just nine months ago, the 15-year-old died by suicide, just hours after telling his family good night.
“This winter has been pretty heavy,” Bird said. “This will be a lot of first this year.”
Bird said Bradyn was the kind of kid who would always try to make you launch. The teen had a lot of friends, played sports, did well academically, and had big plans for the future.
“Definitely a kid who we were just so proud of,” Bird said. “Bradyn never struggled with or suffered from mental illness or depression or anything of that nature so immediately we knew, you know something’s wrong.”
Once police went through Bradyn’s phone, she said it came out he was the victim of the cyber crime, sextortion.
What is sextortion?
What we know:
“Sextortion is a form of online child exploitation where a child is coerced by a perpetrator to send compromising images,” said Jesse Crowe from the Wisconsin Department of Justice.
This week, the Wisconsin Department of Justice sent out a public service announcement on sextortion.
Officials say suspects often pose as someone else online. While exchanging messages, they convince a child to send images of themselves. Once they have explicit images of the child, they use the photos or videos to blackmail the child into sending even more images, money or ask for sexual favors.
FBI data, change in Wisconsin law
Dig deeper:
The FBI said victims are typically males between the ages of 14 and 17, but any child can be a target.
This crime led to at least 20 suicides between October 2021 and March 2023.
In the months after Bradyn’s death, change would come to Wisconsin. Earlier in December, Gov. Tony Evers signed Bradyn’s Law. It creates a new crime of sexual extortion in Wisconsin. It aims to ensure harsh penalties for those who exploit children online.
“It will bring, hopefully statewide, eventually nationwide attention to where every family is having this conversation with their kids,” Bird told FOX6 News.
Take action
What you can do:
The Department of Justice said the best thing to do if a child finds themselves in this situation is the following:
- Block the perpetrator
- Report the account, but do not delete the messages
- Tell a trusted adult
- Do not send any money
Resources available
The Source: Information in this post was produced by FOX6 News.
Holiday lights map
The City of Milwaukee Christmas Tree, Milwaukee Holiday Lights Festival and Candy Cane Lane holiday events make the season bright.
President Donald Trump declared Christmas Eve and Dec. 26 to be federal holidays this year.
The Dec. 18 executive order deems the days as work holidays for all federal departments and agencies, but adds some of them will remain open. Certain offices may stay open on one or both days for “national security, defense, or other public need,” the order reads.
But, what does this mean for other federal workers and services?
Here’s what to know in Wisconsin:
Are Christmas Eve, Dec. 26 official federal holidays?
Even though Christmas Eve and Dec. 26 have been declared federal holidays in 2025, they are not permanent additions to the holiday schedule.
Legislation must be passed by Congress and then signed into law by the president for a federal holiday declaration to be official.
Who gets Christmas Eve, Dec. 26 off in Wisconsin?
Only federal agencies are set to be closed on Christmas Eve and Dec. 26, according to USA TODAY.
Since these two days have not been designated permanent federal holidays, many businesses that follow the schedule will likely not give their employees a last-minute extended Christmas break.
Wisconsin state government and Milwaukee city offices are closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but will be open on Dec. 26.
Will mail still be delivered on Christmas Eve, Dec. 26 in Wisconsin?
Yes. The U.S. Postal Service will deliver mail and post office locations will remain open on Christmas Eve and Dec. 26, according to its website. Mail will not be delivered and locations will be closed on Christmas.
Will banks be open on Christmas Eve, Dec. 26 in Wisconsin?
Yes. Banks will follow the typical schedule of being open on Christmas Eve and Dec. 26, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve. Banks will be closed on Christmas.
Mary Walrath-Holdridge of USA TODAY contributed to this report.
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