The big news this week is the emergence of a progressive candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court. Judge Chris Taylor, who currently sits on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in District IV, has announced her candidacy. She will face current Justice Rebecca Bradley who is running for reelection. More about Justice Bradley below.

Judge Taylor served in the Wisconsin Assembly from 2012 to 2020, when Governor Evers appointed Taylor to the Circuit Court in 2020. She was elected to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in 2023. Before her election to the Assembly, she served as the public policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. You can read more about her values and her career at her website. See also her X (Twitter), her Facebook page, and her Instagram.

It's early days yet and it's possible other candidates will emerge in the next few months. But if you are so moved, you can donate online. Or you can donate by check. Make the check out to Chris Taylor for Justice and send it to PO Box 1921, Madison, WI 53701. Just remember: early money is like yeast; it makes the dough rise!

Now about Justice Bradley. Here she is in her own words after the election of Susan Crawford to the Supreme Court:

Her pretense of caring about judicial politicization is pretty rich, coming from a justice whose "right-wing partisan activism has earned her an award from the Federalist Society, an extreme group that seeks to exert dangerous right-wing influence on courts and judicial systems both nationwide and right here in Wisconsin" (from A Better Wisconsin Together Press Release, December 5, 2024). According to a piece in the Wisconsin Examiner, "the award was for her 'work on behalf of' the right-wing legal group’s 'legal principles.'”

In an undated McGiver Institute article, three of Bradley's dissenting opinions on the court come in for special praise. She has

As the campaign progresses, we are likely to hear much, much more from the "conservative" echo chamber that supports her and from the Taylor campaign.

Before turning our attention to the fire-hose of excrement emanating from D.C., there's news on the legal action with Judge Hannah Dugan. On Wednesday, July 9, there will be a hearing to handle pre-trial motions at the Federal Courthouse in Milwaukee. The trial date has been set for July 21. On both dates, rallies to support her will take place. Unless of course the motion to dismiss that her lawyers filed the day before she was arraigned is successful! The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes, however, that the motion to dismiss "will take time to play out. The government will need to reply, and then there may need to be oral arguments." Stay tuned for rally news!

The national news is both laughable — see Kristi Noem's explanation of the writ of habeas corpus — and dire. As Katherine Clark, Democratic Whip calls it, the "big, bad bill that benefits billionaires" will explode the deficit "so badly it will trigger automatic cuts, including over half a trillion dollars from Medicare." So the $880 billion cut from Medicaid that will cause more than "seven million Americans to lose health insurance and millions more to face higher medical costs" (a partial CBO estimate, The Bulwark, May 18, 2025) is not a big enough cut to make the bill revenue neutral. Meaning that it will not match new expenditures — chiefly the big, beautiful tax cuts for billionaires — with new revenue and so will increase the deficit. "According to the CBO, the bill's addition to the deficit would trigger a process known as sequestration under the Statutory Pay‑As‑You‑Go (PAYGO) Act of 2010" (Common Dreams, May 21, 2025). And that means BIG CUTS TO MEDICARE (and a lot of other stuff too).

You know what to do, right? Call your Congressional Representative and your Senators right now! Republicans don't have the votes yet to pass the monstrosity. In fact in an article published at noon today, ABC News is reporting that "a last-minute White House meeting that sources tell ABC News is between President Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republican holdouts on Wednesday afternoon comes as the 'One Big, Beautiful Bill Act' appears to be in big, bad trouble." So call NOW! The League of Conservation Voters has How to Call Your Members of Congress in 3 Steps to guide you through.

And this hot off the press: Talking Points Memo is covering the blow-by-blow of an emergency hearing before Federal Judge Brian Murphy today about more deportations without hearings, with the issue of criminal contempt in the mix. The judge has noted that the case involves a large number of errors, some perhaps verging on lies the government has offered under oath: "'Everyone who is involved in an illegal deportation risks criminal contempt from the lowest person involved all the way up,' Murphy said" (Talking Points Memo, May 21, 2025).

So while I was eating lunch, Judge Murphy issued a ruling: "the Trump administration had violated an order he issued last month barring officials from deporting people to countries not their own without first giving them sufficient time to object. The finding was one of the strongest judicial rebukes the administration has faced so far in a series of contentious cases arising from its sprawling deportation agenda." Exactly what Judge Murphy will do now is uncertain. And of course a number of other federal courts are engaged in examining similar issues.

On the retribution front, the Trump administration has now charged a sitting member of Congress with a felony and opened an investigation into Andrew Cuomo, now running for Mayor of New York City, and another into James Comey for some reason. Trump's also pursuing Attorney General Letitia James, Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan, and probably some dog catcher somewhere who once contributed to a Democrat. The charges against Ras Baraka, Mayor of Newark, have been dropped. I suspect these other ones will be too. Can the Trump Administration's lawsuits be dismissed as frivolous? That'll be the day.

TAKE ACTION

The budget reconciliation bill threatens to deliver severe blows to our less fortunate friends and neighbors. And the tariffs are going to exacerbate the problems by accelerating inflation. Each of us needs to call our House representative and our two senators, repeatedly, to register our opposition to the "big, beautiful bill" or ANY TAX CUTS FOR BILLIONAIRES and our opposition to the tariffs Trump capriciously imposes and changes at will. You can use 5 calls for a whole host of issues, including the two I have focused on here.

From the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin: Contact Your Assembly Rep: Support Extending Medicaid Services to 1 Year Postpartum. The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin supports the passage of Assembly Bill 97, the companion bill of SB 23 which was passed almost unanimously by the Senate on April 22, 2025! This bill extends postpartum healthcare for one year after giving birth for those who are Medicaid eligible. Currently, postpartum care for those who are Medicaid eligible is only 60 days, with Wisconsin and Arkansas as the only states not providing one year coverage.

We are asking voters to call their state legislators in the Assembly to urge them to request that the Speaker of the Assembly bring the bill to the floor for a vote and to pass AB 97. There is overwhelming bipartisan support for this bill–yet, the bill still has not passed for over 2 years because it has not been brought to the floor for a vote.

A phone call script and more info here. Find your legislators.

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