☀️ Good morning!

It’s Sunday, December 28, 2025

📆 It’s “look back/look ahead” season. This week, we’re reflecting on the top stories of 2025. See if there are some you’ve already forgotten about — which is understandable, what a long year this has been. Next week, we’ll have a preview of 2026 coming attractions.

Before we do the top stories, there’s another story from this past week that won’t get much attention — and the attention it gets will be off-target. The subject is pardons coming from the governor.

🫆 Pardons are not to be given lightly. They’re not to be treated as payback for political praise or campaign cash. And they certainly shouldn’t go to drug kingpins and unreformed swindlers. But what the current president is doing with the abuse of pardon power is a discussion for a different day.

Done right, a politician’s pardon often involves a crime done in someone’s youth — someone who has since grown up, become a role model, and would do more good in the world if it weren’t for a long-ago conviction that’s preventing them from getting something like a professional license. A pardon does not expunge court records.

If you were to read through the most recent group of pardons issued by Gov. Tony Evers, you would see short summaries of 167 lives made better by second chances. After seven years in office, Evers has granted pardons to 1,807 individuals.

But this story isn’t about Evers. It’s about former Gov. Scott Walker, who granted zero pardons. He made no lives better through a process of review and compassion. He even disbanded the pardon board. You don’t have to be a very religious person to understand which governor was engaged in false piety and self-serving hypocrisy and which one practiced forgiveness. 

👉🏻 Walker and other politicians would rather play politics with the lives of these people who are now trying to be good parents, good colleagues, good citizens. “Soft on crime” is tossed around so casually it’s almost lost its true meaning. Do you want more hardened criminals? Tell people who are trying to reform themselves to go to hell.

Trump and Walker show the two extremes of pardon power. In a world of Trumps and Walkers, be an Evers. 

Have a great day. And as always, we invite you to stay up to date with our social media posts.

⏮️ Last Week:  Blocking better services

The state’s Department of Safety and Professional Services wants to improve customer service by using about $2 million in funds that have already been collected in licensing fees. But the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee allows funding requests to be blocked if one member objects, even anonymously; and that’s happening right now.

🔵 The vast majority of responses agreed that anonymous blocks are cowardly and prone to abuse as a way to throw sand in the gears of good government service. As described by Linda Z., “Unless the board knows what the objection is from the anonymous member, how can they make adjustments or compromises?”

🔴 About 10% of responses said anonymous blocks could stay if there were some kind of limits put in place that allow for some kind of discovery and debate rather than limitless abuse. Nobody wrote in to defend the current system.

⏭️ This Week: Pardon power

Having read above about the power of pardons and the ways that power can be abused, how would you change the current system for presidents, whose pardon power has no limits?

🄰  Not at all – Presidents have shown they can take their power to extremes, but it is still important that the nation’s leader has this one safeguard against abuses in the judicial system.

🄱  Remove it – Trump’s pardons of drug kingpins and swindlers shows we have lost all trust in such ultimate power. I would support a Constitutional amendment getting rid of that power altogether. 

🄲  Reform it – There are lots of options. For example, presidents could recommend pardons to a group made up of people from all three branches of government. Or flip it: Create an independent group that makes recommendations to the president for pardons. Or maybe you have a suggestion?

To answer this week’s question, hit reply or email me directly at pat@couriernewsroom.com, and we may share it in a future newsletter.

Many of the top political stories we covered in Wisconsin in 2025 were based in the return of Donald Trump to the presidency and the many actions of his administration and Congress. 

In fact, other than a liberal governor and a conservative justice making waves by bowing out of office, and a state budget debate that failed to fix the way we fund our schools, there was little in the way of Wisconsin political news this year that wasn’t smudged by MAGA fingerprints.

Gov. Tony Evers’ decision not to seek a third term in 2026 had the biggest impact on Wisconsin politics. By writing a “love letter” to Wisconsin and his family announcing his retirement, Evers set in motion a wide-open field of candidates. At this point, our state’s next governor may be found among a group of seven Democrats and two Republicans. The primaries will be held Aug. 11. Next year’s general election is on Nov. 3.

Anticipation was building for a 2026 race that would have seen conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley defend her seat, but she abruptly announced in late August her intent to not run for a new 10-year term next April.

The state of Wisconsin ends the year with a general fund surplus of nearly $4 billion, a figure that provides affirmation for legislative Democrats, who claimed the new state budget adopted in July was filled with missed opportunities to provide better investments in education, health care, child care, and services for homeless veterans. Republican legislators refused to provide any increase to state general school aid, continuing a 16-year streak of state aid failing to keep up with inflation and guaranteeing another busy year of desperate school districts seeking referendum approval from property taxpayers.

Milwaukee County Judge Hanah Dugan was arrested and later convicted after the Trump administration singled her out for prosecution for directing an undocumented immigrant to use a door that exited her courtroom steps away from the main door.

Conservative backlash to the September murder of conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk by people like US Rep. Derrick Van Orden created an environment reminiscent of disgraced Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s ‘Red Scare’ in the 1950s. Van Orden and others unleashed a torrent of social media posts that led to the firings, resignations, or other punishments to hundreds of Americans.

Wisconsin farmers and manufacturers were among the first to feel the impact of Trump’s return to a trade policy rooted in conflict and tariffs. China stopped importing soybeans from US farmers and turned to purchases from Brazil and Argentina. Other tariffs raised prices for every Wisconsin family and business.

The Trump agenda was all crammed into a bill he called big and beautiful, but it will inflict generational pain on Wisconsin families. More red tape was added to Medicaid, and enhanced tax credits that made health insurance more affordable were allowed to lapse. An estimated 270,000 in Wisconsin could lose coverage as a result. 

Veterans were another group that learned early on that Trump saw them as “waste” to be cut from the federal budget, with an estimated 80,000 firings expected, according to one memo.

Even Wisconsinites suffering weather disasters weren’t spared, as he refused some of the disaster aid requests that followed 1,000-year flash flooding in the southeastern part of the state. Trump’s rejection statement even included his ongoing false claim about the results of a presidential election from five years ago.

Who’s ready to put 2025 in the rearview mirror?

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

🏁 Thanks for reading our update.

Have a great week!