Good Morning!

🐻 Does anyone else know Bears fans who’ve become insufferable since a Chicago native was elected pope? Settle down, south-siders! If Robert Francis Prevost really wanted to give you a win, don’t you think he would’ve gone with Pope Ditka I instead of Leo XIV?! 

🚘 Of course, with the new pope being from Illinois, we should heed the warning from Dan Shafer of The Recombobulation Area that the “popemobile” is more likely than ever to cut you off in traffic—no doubt on the way up to a cabin up north! 

🏈 We wish you well, Leo, but don’t be seeking any special favors on Sunday afternoons at Soldier Field. We’re pretty sure you’re still outranked by Green Bay’s own St. Vince (Lombardi).

⏮️ Last Week: In light of the Milwaukee Bucks making another embarrassing first-round exit from the NBA playoffs, we wondered if some fans might be thinking the time had come to trade away Giannis Antetokounmpo, get the most value possible at his peak, and use those resources to rebuild.

❌ Absolutely not, you responded resoundingly. More than a couple of you would rather see a new coach. And then there’s Dave from Portage delivering the dagger! 

”If you want the Bucks to make the playoffs, trade Giannis,” he wrote. “If you want to win championships, trade the owner.” Ouch!

In place of our Question of the Week, we offer some gubernatorial trivia for today’s edition…

🔵 Wisconsin’s governors have come from five different political parties. There have been 31 Republican governors, 12 Democrats, one Progressive, one Whig, and one from the Reform Party coalition of 1873.

🔴 There was a second Progressive elected governor, but 1942 winner Orland Loomis died of a heart attack a month before his scheduled inauguration. Loomis Road in Milwaukee is named for him.

🟢 Why do we say “gubernatorial” anyway? There’s not a concrete answer, but the Latin root for “one who governs” is gubernator. The French changed the b to a v and gave us “governor, but early Americans retained the Latin form of the adjective. If you ask us, we’d say to go all the way and refer to our governors as gubernators from now on!

(Graphic by Community Change)

Some parents and employers are going to notice a disruption on Monday, when a number of daycare providers close their doors or take other actions to call attention to how the lack of affordable childcare options has reached crisis proportions in Wisconsin.

May 12 will mark the 4th annual Day Without Child Care. Some providers will close their doors or limit their hours in order to show why the childcare crisis deserves attention and funding from the Wisconsin Legislature.

But with federal pandemic aid running out, Republicans this past Thursday responded to parents, providers, and Gov. Evers with a middle finger of sorts by pulling Evers’ request for help out of the budget bill entirely.

There’s a chance Republicans could choose to provide a smaller funding level at a later date, but past actions and remarks indicate they don’t see the shortage as a problem worthy of their attention.

WATCH: Corrine Hendrickson, a childcare provider from New Glarus, says the problem was brewing long before the pandemic, but Covid-19 provided childcare workers the first public opportunity to seek respect as the essential workers that other “essential workers” rely on.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly was on our radio show this week, making the case that Republican lawmakers who’ve been underfunding public schools for the past 14 years have an opportunity to use a multi-billion dollar surplus to improve the fiscal stability of our education system.

“It’s a great opportunity, a tremendous opportunity to shape Wisconsin’s future,” Underly said. “The public, at the [Joint Finance Committee budget] hearings made it very clear that they value investing in public education. The Republicans and the committee can leave an indelible mark on the future of Wisconsin.”

Gov. Tony Evers is asking for a $3 billion increase for public education. Underly earlier urged the Legislature to consider $4 billion. But Republican lawmakers remain stuck on trying to pass tax cuts targeting higher income brackets before considering anything else in the next two-year state budget.

📱 Stay up to date all day with all of our team’s work through our social media feeds, including Instagram and TikTok.

1️⃣ –  612 Reasons the State Budget Won’t Be Bipartisan – The next step is underway in writing a new state budget. The Republican members of the Joint Finance Committee used a single motion to wipe out more than 600 of Gov. Tony Evers’ budget recommendations. The committee co-chairs, Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), tried to label them as “reckless spending and policy items,” but the list reads like a Who’s Who (well, a What’s What) of policies Wisconsinites have been seeking for years: cracking down on price gouging, freezing local property taxes, doing more to get PFAS out of drinking water, lowering costs for medications, addressing the childcare crisis, health insurance transparency, boosting child literacy, and more.

Evers’ reaction: “Wisconsinites are sick and tired of having a do-nothing Legislature. Republicans must get serious about getting things done.” 

2️⃣ – Ron Johnson: Cut Medicaid More – Even as moderate Republicans appear to have convinced House Speaker Mike Johnson not to make severe cuts to Medicaid, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson is mocking his colleagues and urging them to cut deeper into spending at all levels. In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Johnson said he could not support the current GOP plan with around $2 trillion in cuts because it’s not enough. “‘We can’t touch that, can’t touch that, can’t touch that,’” Johnson mimicked fellow Republicans who are shying away from harming families on Medicaid. “I would go through 2,400 lines and go, ‘Justify spending.’” 

3️⃣ – Ending the rigged congressional maps next? – When Republicans took control of the Legislature in 2011, they engineered a massive overhaul of the maps that set district boundaries for the Assembly, the state Senate, and Congress as well. Once voters gave control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to progressive justices, a challenge to the gerrymandered legislative maps led to new lines, agreed to by GOP lawmakers and Gov. Evers. The congressional maps may be next.

This past Thursday, Elias Law Group attorneys representing a group of voters filed a challenge to the congressional map, seeking relief in time for the 2026 elections. Despite Wisconsin having one of the narrowest partisan gaps among the states, Republicans drew maps that give Democrats only two of the state’s eight congressional districts.

🏁 Thanks for reading today’s update.

Have a great week.