On July 22, Madison resident Corey Ruiz was fatally shot by a Madison police officer. The details from the incident are limited, and only shaky video footage exists. However, that has not stopped people from making claims about the shooting. For some, the video showed a man executed by police without justification. For others, it was a classic example of an officer acting in self-defense against an armed assailant.

This incident has made one thing clear: The Madison Police Department should require its officers to wear body cameras. The reality is that MPD has long wanted its officers to wear them, but Madison progressives stood in the way. That is the view of former mayor Paul Soglin, who argued that the City of Madison has failed to provide funding for body cameras because “the police want it.”

The first major push for body cameras happened after the fatal shooting of Tony Robinson by a Madison police officer in 2015. After that shooting, the Madison community was searching for answers. The public wanted to know what happened before the shooting, how the police interacted with Robinson, and if the police were ever in immediate danger. Without any body camera footage, the public was left with more questions than answers.

The police department wanted to implement cameras, but they first needed the funding. However, as public opinion was being gathered, it was clear the Madison community wasn’t in favor of body cameras. “After the information from the forums was tallied, it was indisputable, black and brown people don’t want body cameras in their communities,” said one community activist.

While progressive leaders wanted police reform, they did not think body cameras went far enough. They believed people would become complacent after minor reforms and would give up fighting for the changes many of the activist groups wanted. This ultimately led to Madison’s Community Policing and Body Camera Ad Hoc Committee voting against recommending a body camera pilot program in September 2015. “Right now we need to pay attention to the concerns of the community first. Take care of that, then possibly move forward in the future with the use of body cameras,” Committee chair Veronica Lazo said about the vote.

Another factor in the failure of body camera policies was the belief that they wouldn’t change how police acted. “The real question is who has the power to interpret the footage and frankly, who has the power to make a determination of wrongdoing?” said a leader of activist group Freedom Inc.

One of the most common concerns expressed by progressives was that the cameras would be used to surveil citizens. A 2021 feasibility study cited concerns regarding “the expansions of surveillance and intrusions upon privacy, the financial cost of BWCs and data storage, and data suggesting that BWCs expand criminalization of marginalized populations.”

Proposal after proposal to give the police department funding for body cameras failed, with the exception of a 90-day pilot program in 2024. Last November, the Madison Common Council rejected a plan to fund body cameras because it would have taken funding away from an independent office tasked with monitoring police actions. The council is now faced with a proposal to allocate $414,000 for a three year roll out program, which is long overdue.

All of this came even as the police department was open to a policy requiring officers to wear body cameras. “If the department is provided direction (and funding) to expand the use of body-worn cameras we will implement the program as effectively and efficiently as possible,” the Madison police department stated in 2018.

Since 2015, Madison has become an outlier. While Madison police do wear cameras in limited circumstances, they simply do not have the funding to implement them broadly. Almost all major police departments have instituted mandatory body cameras because they understood something the Madison community didn’t: Body cameras lead to more transparency and accountability.

Take the 2021 shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio. The police report stated Bryant had a knife and was attempting to stab an innocent bystander. The public was skeptical at first and many did not trust that the police report told the full story.

Protesters gathered in the streets of Columbus to protest and the situation was getting to a tipping point. However, body camera footage came out within hours, clearly showing Bryant was lunging at another person with a knife when the officer fired the first shot. The video mostly stopped the controversy before it got out of hand. It was clear to anyone who watched it that the use of force was, unfortunately, justified.

Body cameras don’t just help exonerate good cops. They also help root out bad ones. One example is the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols by Memphis Police in January 2023. The initial police report said Nichols attempted to fight the officers and even at one point tried to grab one of their guns. Like the Bryant incident, the public wasn’t convinced this is how the encounter went down, and their suspicions ended up being correct.

Body camera video didn’t substantiate the police report’s claims. Not only that, it showed the police attempting to beat Nichols multiple times while he never struck back at the cops and was even complying with their commands. After the video was released and an investigation was completed, six officers involved in the beating were fired. The footage allowed the public to understand what actually happened and ensured the blatantly false police report wouldn’t be the only side of the story heard.

Body cameras don’t just help with transparency. Some studies have also shown they can lead to a decrease in complaints over an officer’s use of force. A study performed by the Boston Police Department found there was a decrease in citizen complaints against police officers and their use of force. While there isn’t a causal relationship between body cameras and use of force, it has become evident they at least help to alleviate a lack of trust between the public and police.

Body cameras for the Madison Police Department are long overdue. There have been too many incidents of shootings where details are murky and police have to rely on evidence that lacks the conclusiveness of officer videos. There is no reason to continue holding out on small reforms solely because Madison progressives believe bigger reforms must come in the future.

Body cameras are a step in the right direction toward more public trust in law enforcement. They ensure the right information gets out so people aren’t left to make assumptions about these situations solely based on their preexisting notions about law enforcement.

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Federal funding for fetal tissue research was halted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison earlier this year due to updated policy guidelines from the National Institutes of Health. According to UW-Madison’s research page, NIH funds no longer permit human fetal tissue from elective abortions to be used in research. The change was effective in January 2026.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “ended the permitted use of human fetal tissue from elective abortion in agency-funded research” on January 23, 2026. This policy follows the Trump Administration’s “priorities to uphold the sanctity of human life and modernize biomedical science.”

The NIH distributes most HHS medical research funding. It has “long maintained policies governing the responsible and limited use of human fetal tissue in biomedical research” according to the press release. However, “NIH supported research using human fetal tissue has been in sharp decline since 2019.” It only supported 77 projects in fiscal year 2024.

“The science supports this shift, the ethics demand it, and we will apply this standard consistently across the Department,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in the press release.

According to the NIH, “this policy update underscores the Administration’s commitment to scientific excellence and responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”

Anita Bhattacharyya, an associate professor at UW-Madison, and her research group were affected by the NIH’s policy. “We were surprised by the ‘effective immediately’ announcement, as it gave us no time to respond and prepare,” Bhattacharyya said to The Federalist in an emailed statement.

Bhattacharyya’s research group conducted experiments using “post-mortem fetal brain tissue to understand how the brain develops differently in neurodevelopmental disorders” and “conditions that cause intellectual disability, such as Down syndrome and some genetic forms of autism.” Bhattacharyya explained that the brain forms prenatally, so this stage is when mistakes - or differences - usually occur.

Her group also identified mistakes in brain development by using human stem cells. “We need to validate that the things we see in cell culture are truly happening in the brain,” she said. “We need this comparison to be able to potentially replace the use of fetal tissue.”

The results from these experiments “have the potential to inform therapeutic strategies that can improve cognition and daily life for these individuals” and “will also provide insight into how the human brain forms.” Bhattacharyya said that this announcement only applies to NIH funding, and “it’s not a law.”

She believes the NIH should have communicated with the “scientific community” before the suspension. “Engagement with researchers in advance of policy changes helps ensure that NIH’s decisions are grounded in the latest scientific evidence and that the agency is fully informed about which lines of research may be constrained or lost due to its changes in oversight.”

Bhattacharyya has stopped receiving tissue and is not conducting research using the NIH funding.

“None of the experiments we do are illegal,” she said. Fetal tissue research continues to be “governed by a well-established ethical and legal framework that includes rigorous scientific review, robust informed consent, and prohibition of profit from tissue donation.”

The policy shift has been praised by advocates for the unborn. “Scientific research must always advance in ways that respect the inherent dignity of human life,” said John Shelton in a statement to The Madison Federalist. Shelton is the vice president of policy at Advancing American Freedom, a think tank founded by former vice president Mike Pence.

AAF has frequently criticized HHS under the second Trump administration, but Shelton said, “HHS deserves credit for barring taxpayer funding from destructive fetal tissue research and directing scientific research toward more ethical alternatives.” He believes, “The administration must do more to promote a consistent culture of life that protects both pregnant mothers and their unborn children.”

After “decades of technological advancement” there are “ethical alternatives to the continued dependence of research upon the intentional destruction of human embryos,” Shelton said. “A humane bioethics agenda would promote investment in these alternatives as a critical opportunity to protect the rigor and reputation of the scientific discipline.”

The NIH Office of Science Policy and UW-Madison administration did not respond to a request for comment from The Federalist.

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United Faculty and Academic Staff, the union that represents many University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty members, has endorsed state Rep. Francesca Hong for governor. Hong, a Democratic socialist who represents the 76th assembly district, is running for the Democratic nomination.

“I am incredibly honored and proud to have earned UFAS’s endorsement. This one is especially personal to me because my dad is a UFAS member,” Hong told The Madison Federalist via email. “Faculty and academic staff deserve a governor who respects their expertise, invests in the institutions they serve and stands with them in the fight for dignity and a meaningful voice at work.”

In a July 9 statement announcing its support, UFAS said Hong “will be an ally to working people in Wisconsin.” It cited her advocacy for a statewide moratorium on the construction of data centers, raising the minimum wage, and providing free health and child care as reasons for its endorsement.

UFAS also mentioned Hong’s “moral clarity” in supporting the 2024 UW-Madison encampment protesting Israeli actions in Gaza. Hong has continually been critical towards Israel, and controversially appeared on a livestream with leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.

UW-Madison faculty and academic staff can voluntarily join UFAS, which is not formally affiliated with the university. UFAS co-president Barret Elward told The Federalist via email, “Endorsements, like any major decision undertaken by our union, are democratic (small “d”) decisions that involve all of our members.” UFAS is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, a national teachers’ union. Elward did not answer a question about what proportion of faculty and academic staff are members of UFAS.

Presumptive Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany was not surprised by the endorsement. Tiffany represents Wisconsin’s seventh congressional district.

“It’s no surprise that a faculty that directs nearly 99 percent of its political contributions to left-wing candidates and causes is endorsing the open socialist in this race,” Tiffany told The Federalist. “They’re supporting the candidate whose Marxist ideology aligns with their own and whose agenda protects the higher education bureaucracy rather than the students who are forced to pay higher tuition year after year.”

UFAS supports Hong’s proposal to repeal Act 10, a collective bargaining law passed by the Wisconsin state legislature in 2011. A Wisconsin Legislative Council memo described the legislation as “eliminating collective bargaining with respect to hours and conditions of employment for municipal employees who are not public safety employees.”

“Act 10 stripped public employees of fundamental workplace rights and weakened their ability to advocate for fair pay, benefits and working conditions,” Hong told The Federalist. “Repealing Act 10 would restore those rights to educators, nurses, university employees and other public servants. Strong unions benefit all working people. When workers can negotiate for better wages, safer workplaces and family-supporting benefits, they raise standards throughout the labor market and strengthen their communities.”

Act 10 has long been opposed by Democrats because it weakened many labor unions. However, Republicans maintain support for the legislation, arguing that it saves taxpayer money.

“Repealing Act 10 would increase taxes by roughly $2 billion every year, forcing Wisconsin families to shoulder an even heavier tax burden,” Tiffany said. “Our state is already among the highest property tax states in the nation. Repealing Act 10 would push the dream of homeownership even further out of reach for graduates and accelerate the exodus of our best and brightest to lower-tax states with more opportunity and freedom.”

Affordability, especially for college students and young adults, has also become a key issue for both campaigns.

According to Hong, “Students would also benefit from my broader affordability agenda, including affordable housing and healthcare, stronger public transit, and better wages and workplace protections for student workers.” One of the ways Hong suggests to support this plan is through a progressive tax code. Her website states that she will cut property taxes by 44 percent while raising taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals.

“My commitment to fully funding Wisconsin’s public universities and technical colleges would most directly benefit students,” Hong said. “We should treat public higher education as a public good and ensure every student can receive a high-quality education without taking on crushing debt.”

Tiffany has been critical of recent tuition hikes for UW System students. He told The Federalist, “The biggest challenge facing many college students today is finding a path to success without being buried by rising costs, and that’s exactly what my agenda addresses. I’ll start by freezing tuition for Wisconsin students, making it easier to earn a degree without taking on even more debt.”

“I’ll lower taxes, end the 400-year property tax hike, and make Wisconsin more competitive so businesses create more good-paying jobs for graduates,” Tiffany said. “I want Wisconsin to be the land of opportunity for our graduates, not a place they feel they have to leave to build a better future.”

The primary is on August 11 and the general election is November 3. Tiffany faces longshot candidate Andy Manske in the Republican primary. In the Democratic primary, Hong is contending against former lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes, state Sen. Kelda Roys, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, and former secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Administration Joel Brennan.

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The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been a national leader in academic freedom for over a century, but the institution’s commitment to free speech has faced serious challenges throughout its history.

Wisconsin has often tried to be a bulwark for freedom of thought and speech, from the Board of Regents crafting the “Sifting and Winnowing” doctrine in 1894 to being the first college to willingly revise their restrictive speech code in 1999. But this history is not simple.

UW-Madison was the first college to willingly revise its faculty speech code, but it was also one of the first colleges to implement one in 1981. As higher education faces new institutional crises, reflecting on historical challenges and triumphs is informative for today.

This story begins in 1894. Professor Richard Ely gained fame on campus for his progressive ideas. He was a passionate supporter of organized labor and promoted government intervention to advance social reform. However, his ideas didn’t come without pushback. This eventually led to an investigation by the Board of Regents based in part on accusations that he was teaching students about socialism and other “pernicious doctrines.” However, in a triumph for free speech on college campuses, the regents exonerated Ely of all charges and their report made a much bigger statement.

“In all lines of academic investigation it is of the utmost importance that the investigator should be absolutely free to follow the indications of truth wherever they may lead,” the regents wrote. “Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”

Those words, forever etched on a plaque at the entrance of Bascom Hall, serve as a reminder of UW-Madison’s continual vested interest in promoting freedom of thought. However, UW leadership have often failed to uphold the principles of the Sifting and Winnowing doctrine.

In October 1967, student opposition to the Vietnam War grew rapidly on campus. Many students were agitated by the university’s cooperation with the Dow Chemical Company and CIA in their efforts to recruit students.

The tension boiled over on Oct. 18, 1967. That morning, students began protesting at the Commerce Building - now Ingraham Hall - where student job interviews for Dow Chemical Company were held. The protest started out peaceful, but the scene soon turned ugly as students and police both became agitated.

There are variations in what witnesses say happened that day. The campus police stated that the protesters are the ones that first became violent while many students say that the violence started after the police started beating protesters.

The events of the October protest served as a rallying cry for college students across the country. UW-Madison was propelled into the national spotlight, and the events encouraged anti-Vietnam protests at colleges across the country. Many students believed that UW-Madison wasn’t doing enough to protect student speech, a sentiment that would continue into the 1980s and 90s, resulting from the creation of UW’s student and faculty speech code.

UW-Madison formally adopted its first faculty speech code in 1981. In 1989, after incidents of alleged discriminatory harassment at UW-Madison, the Board of Regents formally voted to enact a student speech code.

This speech code regulated all expressive speech that “created an intimidating or hostile environment” and was demeaning “the race, sex, religion, color, creed, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry or age of the individual or individuals.”

The Board of Regents tried to address serious problems, but they created a student speech code that was so broad that it could regulate all disagreeable speech.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin ended up striking down the speech code in 1991 as being an unconstitutional regulation of student speech. Although colleges do have the right to regulate speech that incites immediate violence, they do not have the right to regulate all speech that is deemed intimidating or hostile.

UW-Madison’s stated goal for the speech code was to increase diversity on campus, but “the UW Rule does as much to hurt diversity on Wisconsin campuses as it does to help it,” according to the District Court. “By establishing content-based restrictions on speech, the rule limits the diversity of ideas among students and thereby prevents the ‘robust exchange of ideas’ which intellectually diverse campuses provide.”

Many on the UW-Madison campus believed that the university had ended all of their restrictive speech policies with the absence of the student speech code. However, the UW-Madison faculty speech code was still in effect. This code regulated expression that “debases the student on the basis of the student’s gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability” and wasn’t “germane to the subject matter of a course.”

It is difficult to define what is “germane to the subject of a course,” so the determination of what was permissible and what wasn’t would be left up to a committee hearing.

This ambiguity led to many investigations of things professors said during class. Lester Hunt, a professor of philosophy at UW-Madison, was investigated for using the term “Injuns” in class. A history professor at UW-Madison was investigated when they failed to use gender-neutral language during class. These professors weren’t ever found guilty of violating the speech code but those investigations had a chilling effect on campus.

Professors constantly worried about saying something that mildly offended someone for fear that they too would be investigated. UW-Madison revised the speech code in 1999 after pressure from the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights.

The 21st century has seen how past battles over freedom of speech have taken a new shape. Students often feel the need to self-censor because they fear social backlash from their peers, rather than the university.

There have been some notable incidents on campus, including high-profile speaker disruptions and newspaper trashings. UW-Madison is still navigating the effects of the anti-Israeli encampment of 2024.

While the encampment was illegal, the line between legitimate demonstrations and unlawful protests was blurred. Students certainly have the right to speak out on campus, but those protests must follow state laws and university policies. The university made the noble decision to enact a policy of institutional neutrality in its aftermath, but questions still remain about the university’s decision-making process.

Today, too many students are supportive of censoring their peers and disinviting speakers they find controversial. Nuanced political debate is as important as ever during this time of negative partisanship, and it starts with university administrators protecting every student’s right to speak freely and promoting intellectual diversity on campus.

Programs such as the Wisconsin Exchange appear to be steps in the right direction, but as our campus’s history has shown, good decisions are often followed by bad ones.

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The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project (AALDP) are calling on the University of Wisconsin-Madison to end its investigation into the registered student organization Animal Advocacy, arguing the university’s inquiry into flyers promoting a beagle rescue campaign violates the First Amendment.

In a June 25 letter addressed to Interim Chancellor Eric Wilcots, FIRE asserts the university is investigating the student group over constitutionally protected political speech after members distributed flyers advertising an event related to Ridglan Farms, a Wisconsin breeder of dogs for experimentation. According to the letter, university officials alleged the flyers may have encouraged criminal activity because they included a QR code linking to additional information about the campaign.

According to FIRE’s letter, Animal Advocacy members posted flyers reading, “Help Save 2,000 Beagles, Return to Ridglan Farms, April 19th, 2026,” alongside a QR code directing readers to additional information about the campaign. FIRE states the linked materials included information about a previous beagle rescue effort as well as suggestions for legal forms of advocacy, including joining the student organization, signing petitions, donating, sharing information on social media, and contacting lawmakers and regulatory agencies.

The Google document linked by the flyer stated, “On March 15th, 100 activists rescued 22 beagles from animal abuse at Ridglan Farms, a beagle breeding and experimentation center. Now, over 2,000 people have committed to returning to Ridglan Farms to rescue the remaining 2,000 beagles. Now is when we need to ACT.”

The document also included a link to a blog post by animal rights activist Wayne Hsiung. In the post, Hsiung wrote, “Rescuers will descend on Ridglan Farms from all directions and use every nonviolent means to breach the facility walls and rescue the dogs. If the police illegally attempt to stop us, we will shield one another from their attempts to hurt the dogs, and pressure them to enforce the law and protect the dogs.” Hsiung also said, “There are only around 400 deputies in Dane County (including those serving in jails and not on patrol) and 800 spaces for inmates in Dane County jails. If we can mobilize 2,000 rescuers, they can’t arrest and jail us all.”

According to FIRE’s letter, university officials informed Animal Advocacy that the organization was under investigation because the flyers allegedly “solicited others to enter Ridglan Farms and remove animals from the property” and therefore may have violated Wisconsin laws concerning solicitation to commit burglary and the unauthorized release of animals. The letter also states that an administrator warned the organization the flyers appeared to be “soliciting or encouraging individuals to participate in criminal activity.”

In an email to The Madison Federalist, FIRE Strategic Campaigns Counsel Amanda Nordstrom said the university is mischaracterizing the student organization’s advocacy. “Political speech does not lose protection simply because it discusses civil disobedience, links to an activist’s account of past events, or urges people to get involved in a contentious cause,” Nordstrom said. She added that the flyer “pointed people to information about animal welfare concerns and advocacy opportunities. That is classic political speech, not criminal solicitation.”

Nordstrom also told The Madison Federalist that “a student group’s flyer does not become punishable simply because it links to controversial material or to someone else’s description of unlawful conduct.” She added that “students have a First Amendment right to share information, criticize institutions, and direct people to outside sources about matters of public concern,” and said, “Universities cannot discipline students merely because their advocacy points readers toward controversial ideas or activists.”

When asked whether FIRE would pursue litigation if the university ultimately disciplines Animal Advocacy, Nordstrom declined to comment on potential legal action. “FIRE’s immediate goal is for UW-Madison to do the right thing: end this investigation and make clear that Animal Advocacy will not be punished for its protected expression,” she told The Federalist. “I can’t comment on the potential for litigation, but we’re exploring all our options at the moment and will keep the public apprised of any further FIRE advocacy.”

Nordstrom also argued the case reflects a broader issue affecting campus speech. In an email to The Federalist, she said, “This case fits a broader and troubling pattern: universities too often respond to impassioned political advocacy by investigating the speakers first and asking First Amendment questions later.” She added that “students should not have to wonder whether a flyer, a QR code, or a link to controversial commentary will trigger a conduct investigation. That kind of chilling effect is exactly what the First Amendment is designed to prevent.”

Animal Advocacy President Jackson Ray defended the organization’s actions in an email to The Madison Federalist. When asked why the group distributed the flyers, Ray said, “Because there were 2,000 beagles that deserved better lives.” He added that “Free speech is a foundation of activism that allows ordinary people to fight cruel and powerful institutions.”

Ray said he was not surprised but saddened that UW-Madison had chosen to investigate the organization. Responding to allegations that the flyers encouraged illegal activity, Ray said, “The First Amendment is not a gray area, we were within our rights, and we were solely advocating for political action.”

Looking ahead, Ray said he hopes the investigation leads to greater protections for student expression. In closing his response, he said, “I hope that UW-Madison chooses the right thing and we see a new university in which students’ voices are amplified not silenced.”

The AALDP also criticized the university’s investigation. In an email to The Madison Federalist, Litigation Fellow Steffen Seitz said, “The reputation of universities as bastions of dissident speech is not without basis. But it is also true that university administrations often embrace particular dissident speech only after the fact—acting repressively at the time, while embracing dissidents only after their cause has been shown to be on the right side of history.”

When asked whether his organization has seen an increase in universities disciplining student activists involved in animal rights advocacy, Seitz told The Madison Federalist that it has not. However, he said, “While we have not seen an increase in discipline against animal rights advocates on university campuses, we suspect this is because we haven’t seen many campus animal advocates organizing adjacent to direct action campaigns like the Ridglan effort. Were that to increase, it is possible—perhaps even likely—that there would also be an increase in university repression.”

The Madison Federalist contacted UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas on June 26 seeking comment on the investigation and sent follow-up questions regarding the university’s rationale for opening the investigation, its interpretation of the First Amendment, and the status of the case. As of publication, the university had not responded.

FIRE’s June 25 letter requests that UW-Madison respond by July 9 confirming that it will end its investigation of Animal Advocacy and refrain from imposing disciplinary sanctions on the student organization.

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Tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been increased for the fourth year in a row. While there are legitimate criticisms for how this increase came about, the extra cost may be necessary.

On June 4, the UW System Board of Regents approved a two percent hike in tuition for students in the 2026-27 academic year. This represents a two percent increase for in-state students and a four percent increase for out-of-state students, along with a 2.4 percent increase in the segregated fee rate, according to the UW-Madison Bursar’s Office.

There are good reasons to be concerned about this increase. Tuition has already been raised multiple times in recent years. Just last year, the tuition was increased by five percent.

UW Board of Regents president Amy Bogost has been accused of misleading lawmakers in April about the regents’ consideration of a tuition increase. Less than two months later, she voted to increase it, along with most of the board. After the unceremonious ouster of former UW System president Jay Rothman, this did little to promote public trust in the regents. Kyle M. Weatherly was voted to succeed Bogost in June, but she is still on the board. Regent Timothy Nixon was the lone vote against the increase.

Student debt is higher than ever. More and more graduates are laden with debt that will follow them for decades and keep them from achieving their own goals, starting businesses, raising families, or enjoying a fulfilling life. The people who will suffer the most damage from this are low to middle-income students who don’t qualify for enough aid. These students will be forced to take on more debt and spend more time paying it off and being held back from enjoying the prime of their lives.

It is important to ask where this money will go, as much may very well be wasted on a bloated administration. The students of Wisconsin have a right not to be okay with increased tuition until they can be certain their funds are going to programs and infrastructure that will benefit them. In the past decade, the UW System has lost about 16,000 students. However, it has gained more than 2,000 non-faculty staff members. According to an estimate from State Senator Eric Wimberger, $750 million could be saved by cutting back on administrative bloat. While not every new position necessarily should be removed, a university losing students should not endlessly expand its bureaucracy.

While these legitimate concerns should not be ignored, the decision to increase tuition was not made lightly.

UW-Madison’s tuition is low compared to many peer institutions, according to a report from the Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy. Despite scoring high in most college rankings, its tuition is in the bottom third of public members of the Association of American Universities.

Compared with many other states and schools, UW-Madison remains relatively affordable and offers an excellent return on investment.

The UW System employs over 41,000 people, and the fact is prices are rising: the cost of living grows every month, and more people than ever are struggling to pay the bills. It would seem fair to ensure that the hardworking faculty and staff of the UW System can continue to afford to live and provide their valuable services, knowledge, expertise, and all other facets of work that keep the UW System strong and provide world-class education to the people of Wisconsin.

Another important thing to consider regarding rising prices is the growing struggle of working-class families and lower-income households to send their children to a good university. Wisconsin ranks near the bottom of states in public funding for universities, so the tuition increase can be used to subsidize low-income students. This moves the burden of funding away from the lower-income households and onto richer native and out-of-state students.

With the recent uncertainties about federal funding, universities may need to find new funding sources for existing programs and infrastructure. Raising tuition, at least until conditions are clearer, would allow the UW System not only to preserve current initiatives but also to reduce its reliance on federal funds. Keeping big institutions running is not a cheap endeavor.

Higher education will become increasingly competitive as the college-age population continues to shrink for the foreseeable future. Universities form the building blocks of many important industries and drive innovation and growth across the public and private sectors. It is in Wisconsin’s best interest to continue attracting world-class students to its universities. There are great opportunities and incentives to increase the prestige and quality of Wisconsin universities to continue reaping their economic benefits and keep the UW System competitive with its peers. This effort will require large and long-term investments.

UW-Madison provides a world-class education, so it is not unreasonable to charge a premium for it. At the same time, the university must make cost-saving decisions when possible. Administrative bloat is one of the more serious – and solvable – problems it faces. While this tuition hike may be justified, the university should not rely on continued increases to fund an inefficient bureaucracy, and the Board of Regents must become more transparent.

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A study released by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in May found that faculty donors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and other top universities are highly concentrated on the political left.

The report “Faculty Ideology: Measuring faculty viewpoint diversity using campaign contribution data” examined more than 100,000 faculty members at 55 prominent universities, including UW-Madison. The study concluded that faculty donors have become increasingly one-sided in recent years.

It also found that UW-Madison faculty are more politically active and concentrated than a majority of other universities analyzed. “UW-Madison faculty are a bit more likely to donate than other faculty in the analysis, and they are less ideologically diverse than many of the schools in the sample,” said author David Primo in an email to The Madison Federalist. Primo is a professor of political science and business administration at the University of Rochester.

UW-Madison ranked near the middle of the schools analyzed regarding the level of ideological diversity found among university faculty, with the 23rd lowest. Peer institutions such as the Ohio State University and the University of Iowa exhibited greater levels of ideological diversity among politically active faculty compared to UW-Madison, while the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan exhibited less.

“UW faculty who donate to campaigns look similar to schools like Stanford, [the University of] Chicago, and Georgetown in terms of ideological diversity,” Primo said.

The university has taken many steps toward increasing viewpoint diversity on campus in the last two years. “UW–Madison has hired or is exploring hires in units including, but not limited to, public affairs, political science, law, history and economics, whose areas of expertise include conservative political thought, classical economic theory, and classical liberalism,” said university spokesman John Lucas in an email to The Federalist.

Last year, the university launched the Wisconsin Exchange, an initiative to promote pluralism and ideological diversity on campus. The Exchange has since awarded grants to student and faculty-led projects, launched a postdoctoral fellowship program, and hosted events. FIRE president Greg Lukianoff spoke at an Exchange event in March. “Dissent is essential for understanding the world as it is,” he said during a moderated conversation with former chancellor Jennifer Mnookin.

Lucas said Deliberation Dinners, the Discussion Project, and the new office of First-Generation and Limited-Income Services demonstrate the university’s “commitment to the value of diversity in all its forms, including diversity of thought, perspective, identity and background.”

Furthermore, “The university has continued to actively work with its external fundraising partner, the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association, to secure the philanthropic gifts [required] to fund additional endowed faculty chair and professorship positions in disciplinary areas related to conservative thought itself.” The university agreed to create this position in a deal with the Wisconsin legislature in 2023.

The FIRE report matched the faculty members to campaign contribution records contained in the Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections, which contains hundreds of millions of federal, state and local political contributions. The study focused on faculty members in undergraduate-facing departments and excluded positions such as medical school faculty.

Using these records, researchers assigned a “CFscore,” which is an ideological measure based on patterns of political giving. The methodology allows researchers to compare faculty donors, political contributors and elected officials on the same ideological scale.

According to the study, the median faculty donor scored approximately -1.0 on the report’s ideological scale. This score is comparable to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The report also found significant differences across academic disciplines. According to the study, faculty in the humanities were the most left-leaning. Business faculty were the least left-leaning, but those who made political contributions still generally leaned to the political left. Primo wrote that the least ideologically diverse and most left-leaning fields were among the most politically engaged.

The report acknowledges several limitations to its methodology. Primo noted that some faculty members may be reluctant to donate because campaign contributions are public and could reveal their political views. The report also notes that campaign contributions are only one way of measuring ideology and may not capture the political beliefs of faculty who do not donate.

“I hope the report prompts students, faculty, and administrators to think seriously about what these findings mean for teaching, research, and open inquiry on college campuses,” he told The Federalist.

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Survey Finds Overwhelming Ideological Imbalance Among UW-Madison Faculty

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Chancellor Mnookin’s Stable Leadership Will Be Missed

By Mike Nichols

This article was originally published by the Badger Institute.

Grade inflation continues unabated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The average GPA for undergraduate students at Wisconsin’s flagship university increased to 3.48 in the fall 2025 semester — up from 3.28 just 10 years ago and close to the 3.5 midpoint between an A and B average, according to reports available from the Office of the Registrar.

Grade point averages are even higher in some academic disciplines. The average undergraduate GPA in the School of Education, which had more than 2,400 students, was 3.63 last fall. The average undergraduate GPA in the School of Pharmacy, which had only 40 students, was 3.75.

The school or college with the lowest average GPA last fall was Agricultural and Life Sciences, where the average GPA was 3.39.

The problem is not entirely new. A study by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy in 2012, “Where A is ordinary: The evolution of American college and university grading, 1940-2009,” found that on average across a wide range of schools, 43 percent of all letter grades were an A, an increase of 28 percentage points since 1960 and 12 percentage points since 1988.

But the UW-Madison data suggests the phenomenon has grown worse.

Employers and graduate schools often have no way to know whether they are getting an excellent student or a mediocre one in this age of increasingly rampant grade inflation. A prospective employee with an ostensibly impressive 3.5 GPA may well, in fact, be a middling student.

Some Canadian universities, including the University of Toronto, solve that problem on transcripts by including class GPA averages for each course right next to the grade received by the individual. It is immediately apparent how an individual performed in comparison to peers in the exact same class.

That is “at least something to which they (UW-Madison officials) should give serious thought,” said Madison Professor Emeritus Donald Downs. “Absolutely.”

Downs said grade inflation began way back in the 1960s when some professors were wary of flunking students who could then be drafted into the military for service in Vietnam. Reasons for ever-increasing grade inflation, he said, are different today.

Even 10 years ago, when he stopped teaching, “giving a student a C was a tough thing to do,” he said. Students with low grades could cause trouble for a professor, he said, adding that he himself never experienced that. Student dissatisfaction, he added, might show up on evaluations.

There have been other forces at work as well, including a shift in how some universities and professors see their role. Downs cited a forthcoming book by Jonathan Alpert entitled “Therapy Nation” that will document the shift to a therapeutic mindset.

In a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, Alpert noted that the number of students receiving accommodations on deadlines or tests due to a diagnosed impairment such as anxiety or ADHD or depression has surged.

“Recent reporting indicates that nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates are registered for accommodations,” wrote Alpert. “Harvard reports roughly 21%, up more than 18 points over the past decade, with similar increases at Amherst and Brown.”

“Therapy was never meant to function as a governing model for companies and schools,” wrote Alpert. “But its language now substitutes for institutional judgment about standards, expectations and limits for student and employee behavior.”

Downs, a First Amendment scholar, says “political correctness has been replaced by emotional correctness.”

Questions submitted to UW-Madison Provost John Zumbrunnen were answered via an email from Gillian Drummond, the director of public affairs in the Office of Strategic Communication.

“The term grade inflation usually refers to a deliberate practice of course instructors awarding grades that are higher than merited by student academic performance. Over this time period, changes in academic policy, student experience and student support are more likely contributors to increasing undergraduate GPAs,” she wrote.

Drummond noted that a sharp increase in GPAs in 2020 was “was likely due to changes in COVID-era grading options that allowed students to not count certain courses in their grade point averages” and said that when the practice ended, GPAs returned to pre-pandemic levels.

GPAs increased from 3.279 in 2015-16 to 3.477 in 2020-21 before dropping to 3.392 in 2021-22 and then rising gradually to 3.483 last fall.

She added that the semester deadline to drop courses was extended during the pandemic as well and eventually became permanent, allowing more students to avoid completing the semester with a low grade.

A much higher percentage of freshmen are enrolling with prior college course experience, she said, which “may lead to stronger academic performance” and “more familiarity with academic support options.”

University of Toronto officials have long included course average grades on transcripts and are not the only ones to have at least thought of the idea. A Harvard University report is said to have noted that “recording the median grade for every course” on transcripts might help recruiters and “reduce the pressure students currently feel to take easily graded courses, since the benefits of doing so would be less.”

Professors still would have motivation to give higher grades to students who don’t really deserve them, but at least the façade of excellence attached to the kid with the 3.5 GPA would be revealed for what it is: an illusion.

Drummond did not respond to a question posed to Zumbrunnen about whether UW-Madison would consider including average course grades on transcripts next to individual’s grades.

Mike Nichols is the president of the Badger Institute.

This article was originally published by The College Fix.

By Ryan Dy-Liacco

A law school faculty fellowship for “candidates of color” is open to all applicants, the University of Wisconsin-Madison told The College Fix in response to questions.

The William H. Hastie Fellowship offers “aspiring scholars” $75,000 per year for two years so they can focus on building up their academic profile. Among its most prominent graduates is Kimberlé Crenshaw, who pioneered Critical Race Theory.

A listing on ProFellow, a database for graduate students, suggests non-white people will be favored during the process.

“The two-year law school Fellowship reflects a commitment to diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and especially encourages applications from candidates of color and other underrepresented communities in the legal academy,” the description states.

This differs from the current description on the university’s website, which reads:

The Fellowship reflects the Law School’s commitment to creating opportunities for people who might not otherwise have the chance to become law professors. It began as an effort to address discrimination and the lack of diversity in the legal academy.

Reached for comment, the school says its own website “accurately describes the William H. Hastie Fellowship, which is open to all qualified candidates, as the description clearly states.”

“The listing from ProFellow does not accurately list the criteria for the program,” Jennie Broecker, the associate director of communications for the law school, told The Fix on May 15. “We are requesting that ProFellow remove or correct the information on their website.”

The ProFellow description still lists the “candidates of color” preference as of May 26, when The Fix checked.

The school has included racially discriminatory language in recent history. In February 2023, the law school described the program as “a leader in guiding and increasing opportunities for lawyers of color and other underrepresented communities to become law professors.”

However, ProFellow’s description appeared verbatim on UW’s own official website as recently as September 2023—less than three years ago.

Archived versions of the Hastie Fellowship webpage show that the “especially encourages” language was consistent from at least 2020 through September 2023. This time frame means that, in the past, UW used a racially discriminatory description longer than it has used the current race-neutral one.

The language is reflected in its selection of fellows.

A College Fix examination of all previous fellows found that the UW-Madison Law School has never accepted a white male candidate into the program.

Of the 48 unique fellows selected over the program’s 53-year history, 47 identified as or were identifiable as minority candidates — only one, a white woman who served from 2022 to 2024, was not a person of color.

A civil rights attorney criticized the university’s use of racially discriminatory language.

“I see this as trying to pay lip service to the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] guidance that encourages employers to post jobs widely or to encourage diverse candidates to apply,” Shawna Bray told The Fix via a phone interview.

“I do think it crosses a line when it says, ‘especially encourages,’” Bray, general counsel with the Center for Equal Opportunity, said. This wording “raises a red flag,” Bray said, “and it’s probably why they seem to have deleted it.”

Several recent Supreme Court cases may have contributed to the change in language.

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard struck down race-based considerations in college admissions as unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment in a 2023 decision. Two years later, Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services affirmed federal civil rights law applies to members of majority groups as well as minorities.

“Ames clarified what has always been true under the Civil Rights Act, which is that you cannot discriminate against the majority any more than you can discriminate against a minority,” Bray said.

She said the Supreme Court allowed for a “little carve-out” for racial discrimination in higher education, which then people “mistakenly” believed “also applied to employment decisions,” Bray said.

“That was never okay. Never allowed. Never legal.”

Hastie Fellowship began as DEI hiring initiative

The Hastie Fellowship’s racial focus was not incidental—it was its original purpose. Since its founding, the program’s mission has always been to increase minority representation in the legal academia.

Confirmed this in a 2013 Wisconsin Law Review article, “The Hastie Fellowship Program at Forty: Still Creating Minority Law Professors,” the program’s mission has always been to increase minority representation in the legal academia.

The author, Thomas Mitchell, was a Hastie Fellow in 1994–1996 and former faculty chair of the Hastie Fellowship Committee.

He wrote that Professor Jones created the program in 1973 “[t]o provide advanced legal training to exceptional minority students to quality [sic] them for, and encourage them to undertake, the teaching of law.” Professor Jones’ autobiography shows that the program’s original name was “The William H. Hastie Minority Teaching Fellowship Program.”

As Mitchell writes, “By his [Jones’] actions, he showed us what it means to be a law professor who makes a real difference within and outside of the academy.”

Undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been required to take a course in “Ethnic Studies” to graduate for decades. While the university has updated its general education requirements to reflect a new system-wide policy, “Ethnic Studies” has been retained under a new name: “Civics and Perspectives.”

This fall, Civics and Perspectives course offerings include “Intersectionalities, Self Awareness, and Social Actions for Social Change,” “Mental Health, Self-Awareness, and Social Justice: Working in Diverse Communities,” “The Politics of Education Injustice in the US,” “Race, Intersectionality, and Equity in Education,” “Diversity, Oppression, and Social Justice in Social Work,” and “Buddhism and Anti-Racism.”

In July 2025, the Wisconsin State Legislature approved Act 15, which required the UW System to ensure that general education credits can transfer between UW institutions. The system established six Core General Education categories in response, but let individual universities decide what counts toward them.

While every University of Wisconsin institution had some form of an ethnic studies requirement, it was not formally included as one of the six categories. However, UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Parkside, and others opted to map them into the Civics and Perspectives category.

“UW-Madison mapped its prior general education categories to the Core General Education categories defined by the Universities of Wisconsin and designated courses based on those criteria,” director of public affairs Gillian Drummond told The Madison Federalist via email. The university did not change its graduation requirements, it only shifted its existing requirements to fit under the new categories. Students who enrolled prior to summer 2026 are not subject to the changes, and they will continue to follow their individual institutions’ older general education requirements.

“Courses that meet the Civics and Perspectives definition may be given that designation,” Drummond said. UW-Madison’s Core General Education Requirements policy, which has been approved by the Faculty Senate, defines Civics and Perspectives as:

Instruction designed to increase understanding of the circumstances, conditions, experiences, cultures, literatures, arts and contributions of persistently marginalized racial or ethnic groups in the United States that equip students to respond constructively to issues connected with our pluralistic society. Students in these courses learn to draw connections between historical and present-day circumstances and consider perceptions and cultural assumptions when examining questions and making decisions.

The determination of which courses count toward Civics and Perspectives “will follow existing governance processes and are currently being reviewed by the ad hoc committee that was formed to address Act 15 core general education requirements,” according to Drummond.

While this is separate from the Ethnic Studies Subcommittee, it has reached many of the same designation conclusions. In Summer 2026, there are 54 Ethnic Studies courses and 54 Civics and Perspectives courses – 52 of them overlap. In Fall 2026, there are 159 Ethnic Studies courses and 147 Civics and Perspectives – 144 of them overlap. This count is based on the Course Search and Enroll application, which double-counts cross-listed courses.

The Civics and Perspectives description contains nearly identical language to the university’s description of Ethnic Studies. However, Ethnic Studies courses have more extensive goals. These include ensuring “that students can identify and question the racial power dynamics that undergird social and political institutions” and challenging “students to think about their own racial and ethnic identities in relation to others.”

Courses do not need to be entirely focused on race or ethnicity to satisfy the requirement. Classes such as “Women and Gender in the U.S. Since 1870” and “Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer+ Studies” also count toward it.

“Civics and Perspectives courses explore different perspectives and experiences to help develop critical thinking, writing, ethical reasoning, cultural literacy, and communication skills that employers have consistently told us they value,” Drummond said.

WHAT DO STUDENTS LEARN IN ETHNIC STUDIES/CIVICS AND PERSPECTIVES COURSES?

The Madison Federalist obtained the syllabi for the courses that satisfied the Ethnic Studies requirement in 2025 or spring 2026 via an open records request. The content of the syllabi revealed ideologically lopsided readings, controversial assignments and language that suggests some instructors view the classroom as a platform for their political views.

Even courses with innocuous names are filled with progressive ideology. In the nursing course “Culturally Congruent Practice,” students must complete an “action-oriented” essay that “is an opportunity for you to practice STARTING THE CONVERSATION about a social justice issue in real life.” They also must write about a “self-defining experience” associated with their race. Students can also earn three extra credit points for completing a “social justice event reflection.”

In “Culture, Language, and Communication,” students had to complete a “cultural self-assessment” and “consider how others view the different aspects of your identity, as well as how your cultural and social identities influence your view of others, especially others with different levels of ability.”

Students are asked to write about their own identities in many of the courses. In “Black Research Approaches: Qualitative Methods and Collaborative Praxis,” students must write a “positionality statement” that “illustrates both your multiple identities and how those identities intersect with the research you want to do/are already doing with Black communities.” In “Race and the Developing Child,” students “will reflect and write up their own racial, ethnic, and cultural story.”

In “Multiculturalism and Social Justice”, students completed an “Intersectionality and Your Identity Project” worth 20 percent of their grade. In it, they gave a class presentation where they “reflect on how power shapes the various aspects of your identity, including gender, class, sexual orientation, race, age, and ability.” In another assignment, students must identify how they “will continue to engage with issues of social justice after this class.”

In “Dimensions of Latin@ Mental Health,” students complete a #MySocialIdentity project where students give a presentation to discuss “your racial and/or ethnic identity, what factors contribute to your worldview, who you feel most comfortable around, suspected blind spots about how you think about race or ethnicity, and experiences that have influenced your identity within your own racial or ethnic group.”

While it is difficult to precisely determine the degree of ideological lopsidedness, prominent conservatives are rarely included in course materials. For example, one work by Thomas Sowell is used in “Race, Ethnicity and Black Population Health in the United States,” but he is otherwise missing from the reviewed courses. Other notable scholars such as Glenn Loury and Heather Mac Donald are entirely absent.

Meanwhile, Nikole Hannah-Jones of The 1619 Project is cited in “Dimensions of Latin@ Mental Health,” “African American History since 1900,” “Black Education Studies: Blackness in U.S. Public Schools,” “Introduction to the City,” and “Inequality, Race, and Public Policy.”

Feminist writer bell hooks is cited in “Introduction to Theatre for Social and Cultural Awareness,” “Asian American Feminisms,” “Theorizing Intersectionality,” “Women in Ethnic American Literature,” “Introduction to African American Studies,” “Artistic/Cultural Images of Black Women,” “Multiculturalism and Social Justice,” “Art and Visual Culture: Women of the African Diaspora and Africa,” “Black Women’s Political Behavior,” “Race, Sex, and Texts,” and “History of Race and Inequality in Urban America.”

“Anti-racist” scholar Ibram X. Kendi is also cited in “History of Race and Inequality in Urban America,” as well as “Youth, Education, and Society” and “Black Campus Fictions.”

In many of the syllabi, instructors use language that suggests they view the classroom as a place for activism. “Introduction to Theatre for Social and Cultural Awareness” refers to students as a “community of scholar-artist-activists” who “will develop tools to apply to the practice of theatre in a variety of fields (acting, directing, design, scholarship) as well as tools for community engagement and advancing awareness and equity in everyday life.” The land acknowledgment in “Immigration, Education, and Equity” says “we will regularly engage with decolonial theories” and help “grow social action.”

The syllabus for “American Indian Women” vows to “promote decolonial practices in our classroom” and says decolonization is a “guiding principle in American Indian and Indigenous Studies.” “Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality in American Education” permits the use of generative artificial intelligence in a limited capacity, but warns that AI “replicates the prejudices and violences that shape our societies, particularly the white supremacy and colonialism that this course seeks to disrupt.”

In “Social Work in American Indian Communities – The Indian Child Welfare Act,” students are told in the syllabus that making certain arguments will result in a failing grade. It says, “Zero points will be given for responses that do not demonstrate understanding of ESR Learning Outcomes. For example, responses that clearly indicate ‘the past has not affected present day circumstances regarding race and racial inequities in the U.S.’” The syllabus for “Introduction to Language and Ideology” says, “We will approach these questions in an anti-racist framework, showing that perceptions towards certain English varieties are grounded in bias against certain demographic groups and not in linguistic facts.”

In “Latina/Latino/Latinx History,” students answer questions such as “How have queer people, sex workers, and men that have sex with men been excluded by immigration law and their communities on both sides of US-Mexico border?” One of that course’s learning outcomes is to “build an intersectional critical lens of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class as it relates to Latinx/e communities.”

While Ethnic Studies/Civics and Perspectives is impossible to evade, students can easily receive a passing grade if they choose the right class, as many instructors gave the overwhelming majority of students full marks in their courses.

In Fall 2025, 85 percent of students received As in “Youth, Education, and Society” and “Jazz in 20th Century America,” according to Madgrades. Nine out of 10 students in “Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality in American Education,” “Inequality, Race, and Public Policy,” or “Race, Intersectionality, and Equity in Education” received an A. In “Anthropology and Education,” every single student received an A.

The future of free markets in the United States is in danger, as support for capitalism among younger generations has fallen to an all-time low. According to a poll conducted by the Cato Institute in 2025, 62% of Americans aged 18 to 29 say they hold a “favorable view” of socialism. Perhaps even more troubling, 34% of young Americans say they hold a “favorable view” of communism.

This is a stark contrast from previous generations. Baby Boomers overwhelmingly hold a positive view of capitalism at 68%. Only 32% of our elder generation holds a positive view of socialism.

Many older Americans are baffled by the fact that so many Gen Zers could favor a system that has failed so horribly in the past. Baby Boomers and Gen X grew up during the Cold War, when socialist and communist ideologies spread across Eastern Europe and Asia. They witnessed, in real time, the authoritarianism, human rights abuses, and economic stagnation stemming from socialist policies that plagued entire countries.

When the Soviet Union fell on December 26, 1991, many thought that would be the end of the support for socialism and that free-market capitalism would dominate the Western Hemisphere for eternity.

However, the rising support for socialism among young Americans, the recent election of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in America’s biggest city, and the Democratic Party’s gradual embrace of policies once considered fringe, proved that hopeful sentiment wrong.

So, what happened? Why are the youngest Americans so pessimistic about their economic future and demand an overhaul of our free-market system?

Many older generations gripe that the reason why so many Gen Z are rallying against the capitalist system is due to a newfound sense of laziness and distaste for those who work harder than they do.

Ludwig Von Mises, a famous free-marketer and Austrian School economist, articulated this view in his book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality.

Capitalism, he says, is a system in which everyone is given the opportunity to achieve the most desirable positions in society. However, these positions and wealth can only be attained by a few.

According to Mises:

“​​What makes many feel unhappy under capitalism is the fact that capitalism grants to each the opportunity to attain the most desirable positions which, of course, can only be attained by a few. Whatever a man may have gained for himself, it is mostly a mere fraction of what his ambition has impelled him to win. There are always before his eyes people who have succeeded where he failed.”

The result is that people feel dissatisfied as they see people who have worked hard and attained the things they wished for themselves. This feeling of resentment leads people to cast blame on the system rather than take responsibility for the way their life has turned out.

While this explains why some socialists have a distaste for capitalism, it certainly does not explain the bulk of people who are going further and further left. Nor does it help to explain why there has been a recent uptick for socialism in the last decade, as it is unreasonable to believe that an entire young generation has a newfound sense of laziness and jealousy.

The Gen Z socialists are right about one thing: our “free-market” economy is not doing well, especially when compared to previous generations.

Gen Z grew up during an interesting economic time, with some of their first memories of economic impact coming from the Great Recession, where they saw parents lose their jobs and their homes and struggle to afford basic necessities in a stagnant economy.

Then, as many Gen Z were finishing their education and beginning to look for full-time jobs, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, halting the economy to a stop.

The Covid economy was first marred by rapid job loss, then historically high inflation, followed by surging home prices.

The post-Covid housing market has made the dream of owning a home unattainable for many young Americans. In 1985, the median home price was $84,300, which was 3.5 times the median income at the time. In 2023, the average home price was $428,600, which is 5.3 times the median income.

There has been a growing sentiment that earnings have been stagnating. One commonly cited statistic is that real wages have only grown by 0.7% since 1973. CEO pay has also undoubtedly outpaced worker wage growth, with top CEOs now making 281 times the amount of an average worker.

However, while many members of Gen Z are correct that there is a sickness in our economy, they are misdiagnosing the disease and are attempting to prescribe a dangerous treatment.

Many ascribe the perils discussed above as being by-products of an overly-free capitalist market. Gen Z socialists say wages are stagnating and CEO pay is increasing as a result of a corporate oligarchy wielding power over workers, which free-market capitalism has bred and allowed to continuously grow.

Therefore, they say, the only solution is embracing a democratic-socialist system where aggressive wealth redistribution, emboldening the welfare state, and implementing extensive regulation can keep greedy corporations and the billionaire class in check.

However, this is not the case. The actual culprit behind the lagging economy is not an overgrowth of the free market, but rather an encroachment of government power and regulation.

The reason why home prices are more than 5 times the median income is almost entirely the result of money that was artificially pumped into the economy during the Covid-19 pandemic. From February of 2020 to February of 2022, the U.S. money supply increased by an unprecedented 40.4%. This, coupled with the Federal Reserve’s choice to bring mortgage rates to an all-time low, caused housing prices to soar 54.9% between 2020 and 2025.

Additionally, heavy government regulation on the housing sector left builders unable to keep the housing supply up with demand, further pushing prices up.

This stimulus check that drastically increased the money supply during Covid is also the reason why we haven’t seen any gains in terms of real wages since the start of the pandemic. Inflation ticked up to a 40-year high, climbing to over 8%.

Data from a non-partisan organization, the Hamilton Project, has found that real wage growth since 2020 has been flat due to high inflation eating up nominal wage gains. Furthermore, the lowest levels of wage growth occurred in low- to middle-income jobs.

Regulatory capture is also driving market consolidation and increased corporate power as large corporations have successfully lobbied and influenced government officials to shape regulations in their favor. This tends to hurt small businesses and reduce competition by creating large regulatory barriers that only large incumbent corporations can overcome.

Again, this is not the result of the free market at work but rather crony capitalism, which is a direct result of the government becoming even more intertwined with our economic system.

Many progressives also tend to overstate the degree of economic stagnation or the issues that come with rising inequality.

For instance, the statistic that real wages have only grown by 0.7% since 1973 is misleading. 1973 was a previous peak for real wages, a bit of an anomaly, so to speak. This statistic also uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to adjust nominal wage growth and put it into real terms. As a report from the American Enterprise Institute points out, using 1973 as a base year and CPI to measure real wages greatly underestimates real wage growth.

If you use 1990 as the base year, which was another business cycle peak, and use Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) as the price index, real wages grew by 39% from 1990 to 2022.

Rising economic inequality is also often miscategorized and overstated. An article written by Senior Fellow Scott Winship points out that there are many issues with how think tanks calculate income inequality, such as the fact that they don’t take into account non-wage employee benefits or non-wage government benefits.

The Gini Coefficient (produced by the Congressional Budget Office), Winship argues, is a much better measure of income inequality, as it takes more factors into account. The Gini coefficient has only risen from 0.41 in 1989 to 0.43 in 2017. The Gini coefficient is 0 when everyone has the same income and is 1 when a single family has all of the income in a country.

Most of the growth in income inequality post-WWII actually occurred in the 1980s. Recent data has suggested that income inequality peaked in 2021 and has been dropping ever since.

Additionally, a piece on income inequality from the Hoover Institution points out that income inequality is not what we should be most concerned about. Rather, we should be looking at how many people are able to make their way out of poverty and have a good standard of living. According to the report, worldwide extreme poverty has fallen significantly in the past couple of decades, reaching an all-time low of under a billion people.

Moreover, the wealth that we are seeing concentrated among those in the top 1% is mainly driven by technological innovation. That technological innovation, which has flourished in the United States’ free-market system, has also translated to unprecedented growth within America’s middle class.

Winship’s article also highlights the massive growth that the middle and even lower classes have encountered in recent decades. “It is not the case that the poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer, contrary to the ‘falling behind’ rhetoric,” he says.

The Covid-19 pandemic also left a lot of people in isolation, closed-off from outside human interaction and experiences. Many began to fill the void by scrolling on social media for hours on end.

While social lockdowns removed people from real-world conversation and political discourse, the social media algorithm was pushing out flashy political content from creators who had little credibility but a huge incentive to gain virality.

Much of the political content on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram was intentionally inflammatory, expressing radical views from both the left and the right. The more users engaged with this kind of content, the more the algorithms continued feeding it to them.

Being isolated from their classmates, neighbors, and community members, many members of Gen Z forgot what political views and conversations looked like in real life and became consumed by the political jungle on social media.

As a result, these online platforms began to normalize radical views, such as support for tearing down capitalism, and were rarely ever challenged due to the lack of face-to-face conversations.

This was especially problematic since social media quickly became the main source of news for many Gen Zers. The Genesis 2021 report showed that cellphone and social media usage surged during the pandemic, with 46% of adolescents saying they used their phone more than three hours a day, with 62% of this usage going to just TikTok. Additionally, 50% of Gen Z used social media networks as their daily news source as of 2022.

This only further fueled the echo chamber effect. Many young Americans were being presented with radical and sometimes even non-factual content that was being packaged up as “news.” With little outside influence, many turned towards socialism, thinking it was a legitimate and necessary step towards solving our nation’s economic and social perils.

Lastly, another reason why support for socialism may be rising among Gen Z has to do with their changing definition of it, or at least of what they think socialism could be.

This could help explain why a poll from 2019 done by Gallup found that while 49% of millennials and Gen Z had a favorable view of socialism, 83% still had a positive view of ”free enterprise.”

When many Gen Z say they advocate for socialism, they do not necessarily mean securing the means of production and having a centrally-controlled economy like in the Soviet Union. Rather, they just want things like higher taxes on the wealthy, universal health care, and universal childcare, among other things.

To them, “socialism” more commonly means the democratic-socialist policies commonly associated with Scandinavian-style welfare states than traditional Marxist theory.

Samuel J. Abrams, another senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, points this out in his op-ed titled Capitalism Isn’t the Enemy—What Young Voters Really Want. This can be seen with the many democratic-socialist politicians that Gen Z is rallying behind, such as Zohran Mamdani and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Neither ran on the platform to have an economy entirely controlled by a central, authoritarian government. Rather, they mainly advocate for things such as free health care, lower prices, and higher wages.

However, it is important to note that politicians like Mamdani and AOC have also advocated for more explicit socialist policies, such as government-run grocery stores and price controls, which can quickly lead to serious economic problems.

Venezuela is a prime example of this, where government overreach, corruption, and central planning all contributed to the rapid downfall of a once prosperous Latin American country.

Part of Gen Z’s shift in attitudes may stem from the fact that they are decades removed from the worst horrors of socialism, where the older generations watched the economic system play out in full scale during the Cold War.

Gen Z is too young to have been alive to witness the devastating effects of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc’s eventual collapse. They only read about it in school, where even then it is inadequately taught.

The reality is that preserving personal freedom and democratic institutions is very difficult when a government is allowed to endlessly expand its power in the name of economic justice and equality.

Additionally, “well-intended” policies that focus on government-run enterprises, central planning, and aggressive wealth redistribution can quickly slide into an all-out-socialist economic system like in the Soviet Union. Many of the “democratic socialists” of Generation Z have yet to learn that.

The growing support for socialism among Gen Z in the United States did not come out of nowhere, nor did it simply come from a sudden change in mindset. It was the result of changing economic conditions, social media radicalization, and a new attempt to package up socialist ideas as being compatible with a free and prosperous society.

Many young Americans feel pessimistic about their ability to achieve the same American dream that was promised to previous generations and are turning to socialism to address rising costs and inequality.

Gen Z needs to be better educated about the historic failures of socialism. We need to make sure that the future leaders of the world are willing to embrace the economic system that has brought more wealth and prosperity to this world than any other economic system in human history.

In order to restore Gen Z’s faith in free markets, we must ensure that every young American understands that the current economic issues that we face today are not driven by capitalism, but rather government overreach in the form of corruption, mismanagement, inflation, and crony capitalism.

In other words, they need to understand that the blame assigned to capitalism really belongs to the growth of socialism.

This article was originally published by the MacIver Institute.

Stephen Macedo, a professor of politics at Princeton University, spoke about his newest co-authored book, “In COVID’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us,” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on May 4 in a lecture hosted by the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy. Macedo discussed the policies surrounding COVID-19 and how they reflected institutional dysfunction in the United States during the pandemic.

Macedo began by recalling early events of the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 and the fears felt by many. He explained the need for an “honest and critical” assessment of the policy decisions that were made. He referenced uncertainties and fears that contributed to the urgency early in the pandemic, many stemming from overwhelmed hospitals and climbing mortality rates.

According to Macedo, there were decades of pre-COVID pandemic planning studies conducted on the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as border closures, mask mandates and school closures. Macedo cited one particular study from the World Health Organization (WHO) from November 2019 that emphasized the low quality of evidence and effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions.

“Some measures were not recommended in any circumstances, including the most severe pandemic, and those measures included contact tracing, quarantine of exposed individuals, entry and exit screening, and border closures, things we all did with short order under COVID,” Macedo said.

Macedo also referenced additional pre-pandemic research from institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and the United Kingdom, which also warned about the limited evidence surrounding non-pharmaceutical interventions.

“It almost certainly will not be possible to contain or eradicate a new virus in its country of origin or on arrival to the UK. The expectation must be that the virus will inevitably spread, and that any local measures taken to disrupt or produce the spread are likely to have very limited or partial success at a national level, and cannot be relied upon even as a way to buy time,” Macedo said, citing a UK study from 2011.

Policymakers failed to acknowledge the lack of scientific evidence available, according to Macedo. He noted that billions of people were subjected to lockdowns within a matter of weeks, a response he argued was unprecedented given the lack of evidence backing these measures.

“By early April 2020, half the world’s population, 3.9 billion people, were living under some form of lockdown,” Macedo said.

Macedo also pointed out the role of political polarization in shaping the pandemic policies in the United States. He explained that Democratic states implemented stricter and longer restrictions during the pandemic, while Republican states were more likely to lift restrictions earlier. He suggested that these differences weren’t linked to measurable public health outcomes, but rather reflected broader political divides that influenced decision-making.

Macedo also argued that “truth-seeking” institutions, including science, journalism and universities, did not appropriately consider dissenting perspectives during the pandemic. He described this as a failure within these institutions, as differing viewpoints were often discredited or dismissed.

“Under the influence of polarization and politicization, we argued that disagreement was prematurely moralized and dissent was treated intolerantly,” Macedo said. He believed these institutions need to prioritize viewpoint diversity moving forward.

Macedo also highlighted the negative effects of pandemic policies in early education, noting “unprecedented drops in student learning in both reading and math, reversing roughly two decades of progress.” He also argued that prolonged school closures during the pandemic contributed to a loss of trust in educational institutions, pointing to the increase in school choice programs in Republican states.

“Chronic absenteeism rates doubled, now at one third of K-12 students nationwide, and losses greater in high-poverty districts, and for black and Hispanic students,” Macedo said.

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Beyond early education, there have been depressed rates of church attendance and volunteering, depopulation in business districts and large drops in mass transportation use, according to Macedo. He also noted negative effects on our social fabric, including increased mental health consequences and loneliness, especially in places with stricter lockdowns. Macedo said these outcomes make up a set of social costs that weren’t considered in early pandemic decisions.

Macedo concluded his lecture by emphasizing the importance of reflection moving forward, asserting the need for more openness, humility and tolerance of differing viewpoints in policy and public discourse.

Rev. Patrick Gilger, an assistant professor of sociology at Loyola University Chicago, gave a lecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School on April 6 about the “Birth of the Modern Catholic Self” and the role the Jesuit order played in bridging the divide between secular and spiritual concerns.

Gilger began his talk by discussing his first encounter with Jesuits when he was 17 years old at Creighton University, and at the time, he was not Catholic. “These people on campus, my fellow students, weren’t faking it or being posers,” Gilger said. “They were real people … with a combination of integrity and authenticity.” He describes the Jesuits he met as having a holy sense of competition. They were “integrated people living in a disintegrated world” through “spiritual direction and spiritual exercises.”

When Gilger first arrived at Creighton, he did not know how to pray, but he got the chance to learn. “At first I felt silly sitting there trying to talk to what felt like nothing,” he said. While in novitiate - the training to enter the religious order - Gilger and his fellow brothers learned Ignatian spiritual exercises that were written by St. Ignatius of Loyola, and he gave specific instructions for talking directly with God. These exercises taught them to live and see the events of the gospel through imagination and prayer. Over time, Gilger came to appreciate prayer, and under the influence of the Jesuits, he became a novice after four years.

“What is spirituality?” Gilger asked. He explained that it is “a style of life in the world built upon organizing thoughts, behaviors, producing experience based on the trinity resurrection, orienting us to achieving certain goods.”

Gilger built on this definition by discussing the great spiritualities, especially to the five main orders: Benedictines, Franciscans, Jesuits (Ignatians), Carmelites, and Dominicans. The spiritualities are “the infinite coming into relation with the finite” because humans cannot fully grasp God’s message.

All of the big five spiritualities would emerge at different times. The Benedictines emerged during the adoption of Christianity in Rome, the Franciscans during the growth of European markets, and the Jesuits and Carmelites during the democratization of information. This was near the beginning of the Protestant Reformation and the general religious revolution.

Gilger explains that the Ignatian spirituality came to be “God’s gift and answer to the question of modernity.” It gave a way to build a modern self while still being Catholic, which was the central dilemma during that time.

There were four main revolutions that Gilger discussed. The first was the religious revolution, which led to the privatization of religion. The second is the scientific revolution, which introduced new various ways of thinking and the democratization of knowledge. The third is the Industrial Revolution, which led to capitalism and made people even more restless and anxious about the world around them. Lastly, the political revolution split the Church and state, leading to the rise of democracy and the changing experience of the modern world.

All of these revolutions made people more individualistic and led them to dream of building and controlling the world, according to Gilger. These movements fundamentally transitioned people from a “porous self” to a “buffered self,” which are philosophical states coined by philosopher Charles Taylor.

A porous self is “open to spirits, superstitions, enchanted forests, and fairy tales,” and it seeks spiritual protection through the Church or other religious methods. The buffered self is in control of their own life and shielded from the spiritual world. Gilger explains that we are now buffered selves because the world is now, as Gilger said, “disenchanted”.

Both Ignatius and Gilger believed that there can be an “individual and traditional” Catholic. The modern Catholic self shares similarities, but it does not consider itself autonomous. It is aware of a lack of action and of the collaboration required with the spirits moving through it. Ignatius was crucial in forming a faithful modern Catholic self, and he refined the spiritual directions and exercises to be suitable for a modern world so humans could be “imitating the conduct of the master.”

During the time Ignatius was writing, many spiritual directors were spreading new ideas beyond the monasteries to people in the cities. Ignatius worked to systemize what was already established by taking classes and reading books under the guidance of a spiritual director, while also tailoring it to the person undergoing the exercise.

Gilger explained how Ignatius helped make the exercises accessible outside of hierarchy, but he also had to deal with many new problems in the modern world. He said Ignatius “made the process of the spiritual exercises, now a triadic relationship between God, the director, and the directed, thereby strengthening the exercise and the effect. The director is not just controlling experiences, but they are to be adapted to the person and the moment.”

Gilger explained that around the time of Vatican II, the Spiritual Exercises in the modern Catholic Church were done in groups rather than individually. After that, the exercises began to address people’s specific desires and became more of a self-help manual, not the radical change it had been before.

Now, people are seeking stable ground, avoiding conflict, and offering critiques of order and agency. Gilger says this was resolved by Ignatius long before these modern problems emerged, and now the problem is the divides in the internal structure of Roman Catholicism. He believed both worlds are needed to be a modern Catholic self.

Gilger concluded by saying that directors should act like a pointer on the balance when the directee communes with the Holy Spirit. He told the audience to “act against temptations, to break the balance” and “be unafraid of what we will find.”

This article was originally published by the MacIver Institute.

INTRODUCTION

In January of 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to restrict federal funding from being used to support gender transitions for individuals under 19. It mandated that federal funding not be used for puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgeries, and instructed federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid to deny coverage for these interventions.

The order also directed federal agencies to make sure that hospitals receiving federal funds were not using those resources to do gender-transitioning procedures on minors.

In response to this executive order, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, along with 14 other state attorneys general, signed onto a multi-state lawsuit challenging the policy.

But this is just one of over 40 lawsuits that Kaul has signed onto on behalf of Wisconsin since the beginning of Trump’s second term.

As these lawsuits continue to grow in number, so do questions about the scope of the attorney general’s power and whether this level of involvement in national political battles is what the state office was intended for.

THE ROLE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL & JOSH KAUL

The Wisconsin Attorney General’s role is to be the chief legal officer of the state. While the position was created in the Wisconsin State Constitution of 1848, the duties of the role are outlined in Wisconsin Statute § 165.25.

They appear before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, handle litigation for state agencies, and take part in other legal actions at the direction of the governor or legislature. The office also functions as legal counsel to state officials and provides guidance to district attorneys.

The attorney general serves for four years and is not subject to term limits. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul was originally elected in 2018, again in 2022, and will seek re-election against Republican candidate Eric Toney this fall.

Aside from the political lawsuits, Kaul’s tenure has not been without controversy.

In 2025, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Reporter Daniel Bice broke that Kaul had hired a new special assistant attorney role for environmental litigation whose salary is paid by the State Energy Environment and Impact Center at New York university law school. Controversially, the center was funded by Michael Bloomberg.

As MacIver’s Senior Fellow William Osmulski put it, “The State of Wisconsin got the lawyer for free. In exchange, SEIC got to use the authority of Wisconsin’s Attorney General to fight climate change. A quid pro quo.”

Taken together, these developments and the volume of lawsuits targeting a Republican federal administration have prompted concerns that the office is being used for political purposes.

In previous attempts to reign in the power of the attorney general, Wisconsin Act 369 was passed in 2017. Among other things, this legislation dictates that when the DOJ wants to discontinue or compromise a civil action, they must get approval from a state intervenor or the Joint Committee on Finance. It also requires that DOJ settlement funds are deposited into the general fund. This limited the attorney general’s ability to withdraw Wisconsin from lawsuits and increased legislative oversight.

While Kaul may not have been able to unilaterally withdraw Wisconsin from lawsuits filed by the previous conservative attorney general, it has not prevented him from signing onto a plethora of multi-state lawsuits against the current federal administration.

MULTI-STATE LAWSUITS

A multi-state lawsuit is any coordinated litigation between two or more attorneys general against the same defendant––typically the federal government and its agencies––over policies, regulations, or executive orders in federal district court.

It is not unprecedented for attorneys general of one party to co-litigate or sign onto lawsuits against the federal administration of the opposing party, but this tool has been used with increasing frequency since Trump’s first term.

In most of the coalitions that form these multi-state lawsuits, a few anchor states do the heavy lifting. These states usually draft the litigation, represent the coalition of states, and file the initial complaint. Often, the litigation is co-drafted by two or more states.

Democratic attorneys general in states like California and New York have been some of the most active in filing lawsuits against the Trump administration, with other major contributors including the AGs of Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington.

The Badger State, on the other hand, appears to take a more passive role. While Wisconsin filed a petition against the Environmental Protection Agency in 2025, in most other cases, the state joins as a sign-on plaintiff rather than serving as a lead plaintiff.

States do this because when multiple states join together, it strengthens and legitimizes their claim. It also increases the likelihood that a federal judge will issue a nationwide injunction, whether preliminary or permanent, preventing the federal government from enforcing a regulation or policy across the country.

To establish standing, plaintiff states must provide specific claims showing how the federal action harms their state. This is supposed to be evidence that the action harms residents, conflicts with state law, increases costs for the state, or exceeds federal authority, to name just a few examples.

It is difficult to know exactly how much Wisconsin taxpayers are spending on these lawsuits against the federal government. Wisconsin’s state budget and Department of Justice appropriations do not specify how much funding is allocated to individual cases. As a result, the public, which elects the attorney general, is left unaware of how much staff time and taxpayer money is being spent on research, filings, and coordination with other states in these lawsuits.

This raises an important question: if Wisconsin is repeatedly joining national litigation, what exactly is the state fighting for? Take a look at some of the major lawsuits Josh Kaul has signed-on to:

Birthright citizenship executive order— Kaul joined a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s executive order denying citizenship to certain children born in the United States.

Blocking Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood— Kaul joined litigation opposing a federal provision cutting off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood.

Restriction of Medicare and Medicaid for Transgender Interventions on Kids— Kaul participated in a lawsuit challenging an HHS declaration and related proposed rules aimed at limiting federal money on transgender interventions.

$100,000 H-1B visa fee— In another case, Kaul joined a coalition contesting a new $100,000 fee on H-1B visa petitions.

Freeze of federal education grant funding— Kaul also joined a lawsuit challenging the administration’s decision to freeze various education grants.

Firings of federal probationary employees— Kaul joined a challenge to the administration’s termination of many federal probationary employees.

Dismantling of the Department of Education— Kaul participated in litigation opposing the administration’s effort to cut the Department of Education’s workforce to shut down the agency.

Dismantling of AmeriCorps— Kaul joined a lawsuit challenging the administration’s effort to scale back AmeriCorps.

SO… CAN HE DO THIS?

Short answer, yes. The authority to sue the federal government on behalf of Wisconsin comes from state law and legal precedent. The better question is whether he should be doing it.

In some cases, conservatives also sue the federal government to protect state sovereignty and individual liberty when they believe federal actions infringe on them. Lawsuits themselves are not unusual in recent years. What matters is whether they are being used to defend legitimate state interests or are primarily driven by ideology and the goal of obstructing federal policy. These cases cost taxpayers money and can divert time and resources away from state matters.

Kaul’s claim of protecting Wisconsin interests is doubtful given he participated in all of two lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency during the Biden administration, despite federal policies, such as vaccine mandates, that many conservatives argued challenged state authority and individual liberty. Today, when Kaul signs onto new lawsuits against the Trump administration, he often announces them jointly with Governor Tony Evers, reflecting his political and policy alignment.

Time spent suing the Trump administration is time not spent on crime-related legal support, protecting Wisconsin consumers, enforcing laws against public corruption, and other state-level legal priorities that directly and immediately affect Wisconsin residents.

The question is not whether the attorney general can sue––he can. The question is when should he? And at what cost? That is what voters deserve to know, because DOJ leadership is elected and funded by Wisconsin taxpayers. Those taxpayers will decide their next attorney general this November.

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Parishes across the country are experiencing a large increase in young adults converting to both Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity. This trend has been seen in Madison, as Saint Paul’s Catholic Student Center and nearby Orthodox parishes have reported recent surges in conversions.

While some profess that this is a sign of a “religious comeback” in America, others are skeptical about how strong this religious wave really is. To get a better sense of the increasing number of converts to Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity in Wisconsin’s second-largest city, perspectives and data from both religious communities must be taken into account.

The Madison Federalist interviewed the staff involved in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) program at Saint Paul’s, located near the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus. Saint Paul’s serves both students at UW-Madison and other young professionals in the area, so the staff said the number of people in their OCIA program has greatly grown over the last few years.

In the past, Saint Paul’s confirmed around 10 to 29 people into the Catholic Church every year. This year, they reported over 100 confirmations. The OCIA program has been breaking new records in confirmations every year since 2023. In 2025, they recorded more than 80 confirmations, and in 2024, more than 70.

Saint Paul’s staff explained that a large reason behind the increased confirmation numbers is that “it really comes down to travel sports.” Due to the increase in travel sports participation, they reported that around half of those confirmed each year were raised Catholic, but delayed their confirmation. The other half of the people in the OCIA confirmation program are converts to Catholicism. Around half of these converts are typically coming from a Protestant background, with the exception of a few converting from Orthodox Christianity. The other half of converts are those coming from non-Christian backgrounds, which have included individuals raised atheist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim.

Many young adults in their program express a yearning for community and structure in their lives. The staff described this as a sign of the “loneliness epidemic” often experienced by Gen Z. While the staff said they have been noticing more young men becoming interested in Catholicism, conversions have generally been evenly split between the sexes. A staff member also pointed out that most female converts come from another faith. Another common theme among all of their converts is that they are “looking for something beautiful and true.”

While they are seeing an increase in people interested in the Catholic faith and the Church’s history, they are skeptical that increased confirmation numbers are a sign of a comeback of traditional Christianity, because many data points do not take into account the number of people disengaging with the faith each year.

The staff said they believe the “Catholic comeback in America” is “overstated,” especially due to the high number of people who left the faith during the COVID-19 era. Despite people leaving Catholicism, they hope to finally see more people coming into the church, which used to be scarce. From their experiences, converts are less likely to leave the Church in the future than those raised in the faith.

The staff members also believe that many people are being drawn to Catholicism from popular conservatives in public and media discourse, most notably Vice President JD Vance. In addition, they consider social media content — ranging from apologetics to Catholic influencers — to be a large factor that is drawing young people into the Church.

There are three Orthodox churches currently located in Madison. Fr. Gregory Jensen at Ss Cyril & Methodius Orthodox Church, located south of UW-Madison’s campus, reached out with an article he had previously written about young adult conversions, particularly concerning young men.

Jensen’s article, “Men Flocking to Orthodoxy: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” was published last year, and he said that there is not “enough data to support the idea that this is a mass movement.” The Orthodox Church in America largely serves immigrant communities and their children and will likely remain as a small fraction of the population.

Despite his claim, he wrote that there is increasing interest in liturgical tradition among young people, particularly young men, who have primarily not been raised Orthodox Christian. For those drawn to the Orthodox Church, he rejects the idea that it is the “masculine church,” as many women during the Soviet Union remained steadfast in their faith during a time of persecution.

Fr. John Chagnon at St. Ignatius of Antioch Orthodox Christian Church paints a slightly different picture. “We too have experienced the surge of young people, but also others coming in,” Chagnon said.

Significant portions of his congregation consist of former evangelical protestants and former atheists. He said that he used to be an Anglican pastor before converting to Orthodox Christianity. While most of their converts come from a protestant background, there have been a few converts from Catholicism over the years.

The number of converts flocking to St. Ignatius has been interesting to him since the church does not partake in “sheep stealing.” They only provide an option to those who seek them out. Additionally, teens as young as 15 and 16 years old have shown interest in conversion, whereas most converts are between the ages of 18 and 35.

Chagnon said that he prefers to take a more individualized approach for each convert, so chrismation and baptism dates can vary. This month, they will have around 15 to 20 people entering the Orthodox Christian faith.

The church has seen some young women converting to the faith, but the majority of their converts have been young men, especially those who are single. “Some of the young guys coming in have been so into their video and digital world – that it is hard for them to have actual relationships [with others],” Chagnon said.

He believes many of their converts come to them due to experiences with the Orthodox faith online, which can be both good and bad. Their young adult converts have reported a feeling of “emptiness” without a faith that adheres to tradition, instead of trying to appeal to current culture.

“Tradition is not the worshipping of ashes, but the passing on of fire,” and people are drawn to the “steadiness of the Orthodox Church,” Chagnon said. While Orthodox Christians are currently still a sliver of Wisconsin’s population, there is growing optimism about the future of the Orthodox Church in the state.

While it may be too early for some to describe this as a true religious revival, there are certainly shifts happening among young people in our society. Despite those raised in the Catholic or Orthodox faith slowly disengaging with traditional Christianity each year, Chagnon believes that the COVID-19 pandemic was a strong reminder of our own mortality, and it likely led more people to search for a deeper meaning in their lives.

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Conservative journalist and activist Christopher Rufo believes higher education may be changing for the better. “I know for a fact that we are in a better place than we were five years ago,” he told The Madison Federalist. “But the question is really: Are they sufficient structural changes long-term? The answer to that is obviously no, so we will have to do much more moving forward.”

Rufo gained national prominence for his reporting on critical race theory and DEI in governmental institutions, especially universities and public schools. Rufo has been instrumental in reshaping how the right approaches higher education reform, including advising Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He is currently a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Rufo sat down with The Federalist for an exclusive interview before speaking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on April 22. He was hosted by the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership and the Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy in an event titled “Making Universities Great Again.”

According to Rufo, higher education is facing a crisis of its own making, and conservatives in government should not shy away from using their power to fix it. “A lot of these institutions that have been fattening themselves in ideology and in politics are going to be put on a crash diet. They won’t be able to do what they’ve been doing moving forward,” he said. “And I think ultimately that’s what it’s going to take for these institutions to actually have a moment of seriousness.”

“Universities have essentially been printing taxpayer dollars for a half century, with no limitations. That can’t go on forever,” Rufo said. He believes federal and state governments are in a unique position to make change because “student demographics [will] start tipping and declining” in the coming years. As the percentage of the U.S. population aged 18-22 decreases, colleges will need to compete for students like never before. “I think you’re going to see a lot of people get much smarter in a much faster fashion than we’ve seen so far.”

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION

While the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Diversity, Equity, and Educational Achievement was closed in 2025, most of its employees were retained, and many departments continued to list DEI as a priority on their websites. An art exhibit sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives – which still claims to be part of the defunct central DEI office on its website – took down a flier advertising Rufo’s event and claimed it marked “the active presence of reactionary discourse on campus.”

According to Rufo, the continued presence of DEI on college campuses is widespread. He pointed to the New College of Florida, where he was a trustee, as the model for change. “We just fired everyone and said the DEI office is gone and all the employees are gone. That’s what you ultimately have to do.” Rufo said reform takes “decisive leadership.”

He believes conservatives “decisively won the debate in the realm of public opinion,” and even many within the university system recognize that DEI went too far. “When people are running away from their own ideas, when they’re trying to hide their own actions, and when they are denying their own previously stated beliefs, that shows you that public opinion has shifted dramatically against them.”

“The question is for legislators and administrators to translate public opinion into an administrative reality.” However, he wondered whether “toughness even exists in academia.” He believes that the university “chancellors, presidents, provosts” have largely been unable to drive meaningful change, so “political leaders” must fill the leadership void.

STATE-LEVEL SOLUTIONS

The Thompson Center conducted a recent survey about faculty political ideology, which found that the overwhelming majority of UW-Madison professors identify as progressive. According to the survey, nearly one-third of faculty said they would be less likely to support hiring a candidate with conservative views on abortion or immigration.

In states such as Texas, North Carolina and Ohio, state legislatures have addressed the viewpoint discrimination problem by creating civics education schools. At the Arizona State University and Florida State University, their respective civics school directors are former members of the UW-Madison political science faculty. Rufo believes the civic school model is “great,” but “there’s limitations of it.”

“One thing I’ve learned is that some of these centers are run better than others, without naming names,” he said. “Leadership is hard because you’re entering a larger institution that is generally hostile, and then you are also trying to manage and protect yourself and protect your scholars and create something under challenging conditions.”

“The key benefit for the civic schools is that you have a clear administrative unit that can do hiring, that can do course offering, and that can, in some cases, [offer] majors, and in fewer, but increasing number, of cases, train graduate students.”

To Rufo, their most important aspect is the creation of “a faculty pipeline” for right-leaning academics. “For many years, even Ivy League, conservative faculty members were telling their graduate students or their potential graduate students, ‘Don’t do this, because on the other side of your PhD, no matter how good your scholarship is, it’s a very brutal hiring environment.’”

Now, the faculty at civics institutes say they have a new problem: “We have a huge supply of positions open, and we’re struggling to hire.” Rufo believes the “pipeline problem” can be partially addressed by civics schools themselves as they begin to produce more graduates.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Rufo believes the Trump administration’s efforts to reform higher education “have stalled” since Elon Musk “left the administration.” Since that point, “I wouldn’t say that they’ve taken a heavy hand ... I would say the opposite.”

“I realized, having worked with the various agencies, on education, on civil rights law, on federal grant making, on DEI, those were issues that were kind of de facto delegated to Elon,” he told The Federalist. “The problem is that after Elon left the administration, a lot of the progress on the basket of issues that might be associated with anti-woke politics just kind of stopped.”

“That doesn’t mean there aren’t good people. There are many good people at the Department of Education, at the Department of Justice, at the White House Domestic Policy Council, at HHS, all these various agencies, they’re good people,” Rufo said. However, “Having Elon on the team, driving managerial disruption is much better than not having Elon on the team and having salaried functionaries trying to kick the machine into gear. They just can’t do it.”

STUDENT JOURNALISM

Rufo believes that student journalists can play a major role in exposing discriminatory practices in higher education. “The immediate cause is shedding light on what is happening around you for the people that live, work, and play around you,” he said. Because of this, journalists provide an important “service to the public, at least within your domain.”

He also views college newspapers as an important talent pipeline, as “the talent and instinct and craft” developed on campus “might be put to service on a larger playing field in the future.”

“All of these conservative-leaning student papers around the country seem to be magnets for not only talent, but a particular kind of talent,” Rufo said. “That demands a higher level of courage than your peers and competitors. And that’s something that holds true on the big stage.”

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The latest edition of THE MADISON FEDERALIST is available today! Featuring an exclusive interview with former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, cutting-edge investigative journalism, and bold commentary, this is our best issue yet.

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NEWS:

“Activist Art” Exhibit in Education Building Includes Depiction of Severed Trump Head

FIRE President Greg Lukianoff: UW-Madison ‘Can Do Better’ on Free Speech

UW System President Jay Rothman Fired by Board of Regents

COMMENTARY:

Chancellor Mnookin’s Stable Leadership Will Be Missed

Survey Finds Overwhelming Ideological Imbalance Among UW-Madison Faculty

David Keene, Conservative Visionary and UW Alum, Leaves Powerful Legacy

Write For Us!

An art exhibit hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI) includes pieces that depict Bucky Badger wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit, former Chancellor Rebecca Blank carrying a noose, and a man holding Donald Trump’s severed head with the White House burning in the background.

Alongside Da Hoodzeum, the OMAI presented a pop-up called In Direct Action: A Decade of Activist Art at UW-Madison, which is hosted at the School of Education Gallery. It began on April 5 and ends on April 24.

The “In Direct Action” exhibit features art created from activism and political movements over the past 10 years at UW-Madison. The exhibition contains walls of political t-shirts, sweatshirts and student artwork, such as posters and signs that were used in various protests. In addition to the student work, there are displays of historical relics - newspapers, flyers and everyday objects - from the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army.

The gallery also includes a flier for an upcoming campus event featuring conservative activist Christopher Rufo. The event will be hosted by the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership and the Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy (CROWE), where Rufo will discuss higher education reform on April 22. However, the exhibit says the flier is included because it marks “the active presence of reactionary discourse on campus.”

CROWE director Ananth Seshadri gave a statement to The Madison Federalist via email. “I strongly support the university’s role in hosting student-created art and historical artifacts, even when the content is provocative or controversial,” he said. “Free expression is foundational to a university.”

However, he felt that “true dialogue requires openness to counterarguments,” and “exhibits like these feel more like ideological reinforcement than an invitation to debate.”

The exhibit features a large cardboard caricature of former Chancellor Blank holding a noose with the caption “MAKE UW GREAT AGAIN.” Seshadri believes this is “profoundly distasteful, especially following her recent passing.” The use of this imagery “as protest art is a striking illustration of selective outrage.”

Even though Seshadri found the caricature “misguided,” it is protected by free speech, which Chancellor Blank heavily defended. “True commitment to free expression requires consistently defending even speech we find deeply objectionable,” he said.

Seshadri believes this exhibit “risks deeper division.” One of the pieces of clothing that was displayed read “All white people are racist.” This message “promotes a sweeping racial generalization that is not supported by evidence and substitutes collective racial guilt for individual accountability.”

He also believes the controversial exhibit is a sign that, “We need to get back to basics – excellence grounded by sifting and winnowing.”

Rufo tweeted in response to the Federalist’s reporting, “This is insane, left-wing activists at the University of Wisconsin are calling for assassinations.” He called for a strong security presence at his speech.

The OMAI “integrates traditional academics and cutting edge arts activism” and “empowers transnational leaders with new tools for inclusive community building.” It was a unit of the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Educational Achievement until the DDEEA was dissolved last year. Many former DDEEA staffers were retained by the university and kept their job titles, including in the OMAI.

The gallery description recognized the controversial nature of some of the pieces. It said, “You may question what belongs in a museum, what counts as history, what feels ‘appropriate.’ But ask yourself: Why does this disturb you– while monuments to slavery, colonialism, and state violence remain normalized? Why does this feel out of place—but Abraham Lincoln standing atop Bascom Hill does not?”

The Lincoln statue has faced criticism and calls for removal from left-wing activists in the past. A 2023 editorial from The Badger Herald suggested the statue was “racist memorabilia” and that “unfettered admiration of Lincoln is disappointing.” Before that, in 2020, calls for the statue’s removal grew so loud that then-Chancellor Blank released a statement defending its continued presence.

According to a video by The Badger Herald, Da Hoodzeum is a pop-up museum based in Wisconsin that centers on Black history and cultural movements. The pop-up was founded by activist Mike Davis, and it is “a home for over 4,000 artifacts” dating back to the 1800s to the present.

University spokesman John Lucas, said the Da Hoodzeum exhibit does not represent the views of UW-Madison or the School of Education, but they “support free expression, including conversations about difficult, complex, and sometimes polarizing issues.”

“While some of the imagery may portray violent themes, UW-Madison condemns acts of violence of any kind,” Lucas said.

The exhibit has not received any university funding, and Lucas is not aware of any complaints or reactions to the exhibit.

The OAMI did not return a request for comment from The Federalist.

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Professor Nicholas Eastman, a lay Dominican, gave a lecture on March 23 about the life of Father Vincent McNabb and the Catholic Land Movement as part of the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy’s Order and Influence series.

Eastman began his talk by discussing the end of McNabb’s life, explaining that on the day he died, he summoned a friar to make arrangements for his funeral. He emphasized that he did not want a brass coffin but rather an ordinary wooden box like he slept on every day. McNabb spent 25 years preaching at Hyde Park Marble Arch, and is sometimes called “the Gandhi of Kentish Town.”

Nearly all of London was familiar with him, and every lecture began with him wearing the same uniform with his strong and eccentric personality. McNabb also gave intricate instructions for after his funeral to ensure he will be preaching even after death.

He was born in 1868 in County Down, Ireland, and his family moved to Newcastle when he was 14. McNabb then joined the Dominican order during a time of renewal for the church in England.

There were many historic events, such as Bede Jarrett’s opening of the Blackfriars Dominican priory in Oxford in 1921, and Pope Leo XIII’s release of Aeterni Patris in 1879 and Rerum Novarum in 1891. Eastman continued by explaining that McNabb entered the order in 1885, earned his lector in sacred theology at the University of Louvain in 1894, and completed his STM in Rome in 1916.

Eastman discussed the significance of Rerum Novarum, explaining that it marked the launch of modern Catholic Social teaching. It rejected socialism and communism, enshrined the natural right to property, and advocated for a return to family and land. Sometimes called the workers’ charter by those of the time, it was profoundly influential on McNabb. He would frequently cite it in his speeches to the people of London.

For McNabb, industrialization, urbanization, and capitalism were contrary to the Gospel. He believed family was above the state, and the right to private property was rooted in providing for the family, which included growing or raising food.

“All men have the right to some property,” McNabb said. The earthly life of Jesus is important for understanding how we should act or strive for in our lives. The small town of Nazareth was his home, where Jesus began his ministry, not an important city like Rome or Alexandria. This shows that there is some virtue in living and existing in a small rural community.

The message of God is best understood by those who live in such environments. For McNabb, only a small community offers the possibility of real family life, saying, “The desire for home and family is written on the human heart.”

Eastman explained how McNabb stressed the distinction between things and tokens. Things are made of the land, and they do not lead to infinite desires. In contrast, tokens are more abstract and lead to infinite desire. Eastman used the example of Jesus multiplying the fish and loaves. The people had their fill of food, and there were even leftovers, explaining how the story would not have been the same if Jesus had begun to multiply money, in which case the people would have been greedy and never satisfied.

Eastman explained the distinction between things and tokens that McNabb emphasized. McNabb called for the economics of poverty, effectively to consume as little real wealth as possible and to produce as much as possible of real worth; both of these, he argued, are cultivated by family living and working on the land.

He also argued that the gospel was against big farming and herding, as shown in the parable of the rich man and the possessed swine herd. Eastman then continued explaining how Luke 12:21 is a great example of this. The core of McNabb’s argument was “to save civilization, by urban exodus and return to agrarianism, and back to the land.”

McNabb believed the best way to preserve a moral civilization was by turning away from the modern urbanized world and returning to the more agrarian and rural lifestyle of their ancestors. Eastman explained that an example of this was in Ditchling, Sussex, which was like Nazareth to McNabb. In this place, many third-order Dominicans set up a little village and tried their best to live off the land in an ever-changing world.

McNabb would even serve as a spiritual advisor of sorts to their small group for a time. McNabb saw the movement’s failure before passing away in 1943. The world was in the midst of war, and the tides of urbanization and industrialization had become established as the future. Eastman continued, explaining that McNabb “was not stupid” and “he understood practically that the tide had not turned.”

He saw that he had not changed minds, but he still fought for the ideals of the Catholic Land Movement until the end of his days. Despite having papal and ecclesiastical support, the movement lacked sufficient material support and was too opposed to the societal trends of the time, and it ultimately failed.

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Eastman concluded his talk by discussing the Catholic Land Movement in America today. He explained that, in some ways, there is now a resurgent interest in the movement in the U.S., with approval from Pope Leo XIV and Archbishop Grob. He explained that now more than ever, the relevance of choosing Nazareth or social chaos is more frank than ever.

He argued, however, that despite efforts and some support, “there are still many barriers, including a lack of material support from the hierarchy and laity.” This is alongside other barriers, such as insurance and legal barriers, and the cost of land. Eastman concluded by saying that the movement today faces “new challenges and old problems, however, now it may yet find success.”

Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin will leave the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the end of the spring semester to become president of Columbia University. Her time in office was not defined by dramatic reform, but rather, a series of measured decisions and political compromises that reflected the difficulty of leading a major public university in a deeply divided era.

Mnookin assumed the chancellorship in August of 2022 during a phase of mounting pressure on public universities. Amid political scrutiny, cultural division, and financial uncertainty, the role did not demand bold reinvention but rather careful navigation. Despite frequent (and often unfair) criticism from both progressives and conservatives, Mnookin provided a degree of stability that may only be fully appreciated in her absence.

Her tenure became most visible during the 2023 funding standoff with Wisconsin legislative Republicans. The eventual deal, which tied new funding to restrictions on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, was immediately controversial. The university agreed to restructure certain DEI positions and redirect resources toward other priorities, including faculty hiring and high-demand academic programs.

For critics on the left, the agreement represented a capitulation that weakened the university’s commitment to diversity efforts. For conservatives, the deal still did not go far enough. For others, it was a necessary compromise to break a political deadlock and secure funding without inviting deeper legislative intrusion into university affairs. Mnookin defended the deal as pragmatic, and whether it is seen as a concession or a strategy largely depends on how the role of a public university in a divided state is viewed.

A similar pattern emerged in her handling of campus protests, particularly during the wave of demonstrations related to the Israel-Hamas war in 2024. As encampments and protests unfolded at UW-Madison, university administration again faced criticism from all sides. Some argued Mnookin allowed disruptions to go on too long, while others believed the university acted too forcefully. However, the fact that her response was not fully satisfying to anyone reflected a leadership style that often aimed for balance, even at the cost of decisiveness.

Mnookin also made an effort, at least in principle, to address concerns about intellectual diversity in recent months. She supported free expression initiatives and welcomed a broader range of speakers to campus. While these efforts did not fundamentally reshape the university’s intellectual climate, they signaled awareness of the issues, something not all university leaders have been willing to acknowledge. The Wisconsin Exchange may end up being her most impactful legacy on campus, as long as support for the initiative continues.

Mnookin’s character also distinguished her in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. While many in academia– including at our own university– failed to grapple with the seriousness of his murder, she was not afraid to say his name. “What happened to Charlie Kirk was a tragedy. [...] College campuses should be one of the places within society where ideas are explored and bump up against each other,” she said. Condemning political violence may not be radical, but in the current context of higher education, it is.

Beyond these flashpoints, her time as chancellor was marked by continuity and a comfortable rise in rankings. UW-Madison remained academically strong, continued investing in research and STEM fields, and avoided the kinds of institutional crises that have defined leadership at other universities. In a moment when higher education has often lurched from controversy to controversy, Mnookin’s stable leadership carries its own weight.

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Perhaps the clearest way to understand Mnookin’s legacy was that she was not a transformative figure, but she was far from a disastrous one. She made compromises that frustrated many, avoided fights others wanted her to take, and rarely governed in a way that inspired strong enthusiasm. But she also kept the university functioning, intact and largely out of the national spotlight. In today’s environment, that may be more significant than it sounds.

Mnookin’s time at UW-Madison was not without flaws, but it was far from a failure. As the university transitions to new leadership, her reliable, cautious approach will be missed once it is gone. Meanwhile, Columbia will benefit from her steady hand.