Subscribe now

An event hosted by the “Living Wage Coalition” was held in Milwaukee on the morning of May Day 2026, as part of the effort to raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour.

The event was hosted by The Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization (MASH) and Citizen Action of Wisconsin, and featured three Democratic candidates for governor — State Sen. Kelda Roys, State Rep. Francesca Hong, and former lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes. Per a press release, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley also supports raising the minimum wage to $20 per hour, but was “unable to attend.”

You can see what each of the candidates had to say at the event here.

Remarks from Kelda Roys:

Remarks from Francesca Hong:

Remarks from Mandela Barnes:

After the event, I spoke with the candidates.

Roys spoke about how she is the “lead author” on legislation to raise the minimum wage, saying, “I am the progressive who can not only win the election, but actually has a track record of delivering on important progressive issues.”

Barnes talked about his working class upbringing, and said that “when it comes to experience, that’s where I lead the pack.”

Several of the speakers at the event were in the food service and hospitality industry. An issue that has come up frequently in recent years pertaining to those kinds of roles is about proposals to eliminate taxes on tips. I asked the candidates about those proposals and here’s what they said.

Barnes: “Eliminating taxes on tips would go a long way to help working people. I do think that’s something we should consider.”

Roys: “I think (eliminating taxes on tips) is really a false promise. We don’t discriminate against people based on how they earn their money. If someone pays you in cash versus direct deposit, you shouldn’t be paying more or less in taxes because of it.”

Hong: “I oppose the policy to have no tax on tips. I think that it distracts us from increasing wages and abolishing a tipped minimum wage. I think it is a way that actually keeps some of our lowest income earners in a certain income bracket by not working toward fair wages, and it’s a revenue loss for the state.”

Tony Evers recently vetoed a bill on no tax on tips, saying it was because the GOP-passed bill included a measure that would sunset the tax in 2028. Evers has advocated for a permanent change. Roys voted against the bill, and Hong abstained, because she is a “tipped worker,” she said. Find more on that from the Wisconsin Examiner here.

More from our May Day coverage:

REMINDER:

More details here:

Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

Thousands gathered in Milwaukee for the annual “May Day: Day Without Immigrants” rally and march on May 1.

Organized by Voces de la Frontera, the event began on Historic Mitchell Street on Milwaukee’s south side, with speeches from local elected officials, including Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson.

The march got underway at 11 a.m., made its way across the 6th Street bridge, and ended at the Federal Building in Downtown Milwaukee, where Christine Neumann-Ortiz, founding Executive Director of Voces de la Frontera spoke.

The Recombobulation Area featured live coverage of the march and rally on social media…

…and we have a few more photos to share with you here.

REMINDER:

Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

Our guest for this episode is Angela Lang, the co-executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities and an award-winning contributor here at The Recombobulation Area.

Whenever Angela and I get a chance to catch up, there’s always a lot for us to talk about, so for these episodes, we use a format we call “three headlines.” We’ve done this a couple times before, but if this is your first time hearing one of these episodes, we each bring three headlines or topics to discuss, they can be about anything happening in the news, but at least one of them has to be a Milwaukee story. We don’t show these to each other in advance, so you get some genuine reactions here.

Topics for this episode include:

• Recent flooding in Milwaukee and the questions that arise about the city’s infrastructure

• The recent candidate announcements for those running for Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2027, including Pedro Colón and Lyndsey Brunette (and Angela’s recent column)

• Detained Islamic Society president Salah Sarsour, and Congresswoman Gwen Moore’s recent trip to visit him at the Clay County Jail in Indiana — and free speech issues in the second Trump administration

• Milwaukee County’s tremendous success battling opioid overdoses, where the number of deaths have been cut in half since 2022.

• The city of Milwaukee’s recent decision to limit operating hours for food trucks downtown past 10 p.m.

• Milwaukee Alderman Peter Burgelis running for Congress in the 1st Congressional District — a district he does not live in, and the political fortunes of Republican incumbent Bryan Steil

Watch at the video above, or on our YouTube Channel here:

Angela and I will be part of The Recombobulation Area’s LIVE podcast event next week at Anodyne Coffee in Walker’s Point on Thursday, May 7. The great Kristin Brey will also be joining the event. Find all of the details here:

Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

The Recombobulation Area Podcast: LIVE! at Anodyne Coffee’s Walker’s Point Roastery has been rescheduled! We won’t be doing it on Milwaukee Day as originally planned, of course, but we’re still showing up for the 414.

This new event will feature Angela Lang, co-executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC); Kristin Brey, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist and 620 WTMJ radio host (and founder of As Goes Wisconsin); and Dan Shafer, founding editor of The Recombobulation Area. Special guests will be announced closer to the event date.

We’ll still be celebrating the city we call home, but with this event not happening on Milwaukee Day, we’ll be planning to spend a bit more time taking questions from those of you in attendance.

Given these changes, too, we want to give a special shoutout to our friends at Milwaukee Record, as co-founder Matt Wild was originally going to be part of this live podcast event, but is unable to make it on the new date. Go support their patreon and subscribe to their email newsletter, because Milwaukee Record is great.

Share

We’re very much looking forward to seeing all of you and sharing in this wonderful community we have here with The Recombobulation Area.

RSVP on Facebook to let us know you’ll be there, and we’ll see you on Thursday, May 7, at Anodyne.

We (still) love our country, Milwaukee!

Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

In the 2026 Spring Election in Wisconsin, Judge Chris Taylor won with more than 60% of the vote in her bid for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Being that Wisconsin’s statewide elections can often be decided by a single percentage point, this felt significant.

I actually spoke to Judge Taylor back before she announced her campaign and expressed my concerns about dog whistles and “tough on crime” messaging in past campaigns. She told me she wanted to run a different kind of campaign.

In past campaigns, voters were met with a barrage of TV ads and mailers that painted each candidate as “soft on crime.” The Wisconsin Supreme Court has little to do with crime in our neighborhoods, but you wouldn’t know that based on many recent campaigns. Research and polling have shown that these messages are not effective. Oftentimes, these messages are racist and feed into stereotypes that put communities of color at risk. Last year, I saw more people on social media and my non-political friends mentioned their frustration over the violent ads more than ever before. It felt like a tipping point. So, it was refreshing to hear that Taylor wanted to run a different type of campaign — and the election results prove that you can actually run on your values and win.

Share

We now have our first candidate who has announced for next year’s state Supreme Court race, Lyndsey Brunette, current Clark County Circuit Court judge and previously the Clark County District Attorney. Already, there has been some criticism. In 2013, when she was the Clark County DA, she said a police officer was justified in their use of deadly force.

This is already raising concerns and questions about whether this is the candidate the Democratic Party of Wisconsin will get behind. There is an opportunity to think outside of the box and add diversity to the court. Pedro Colon1, District 1 Court of Appeals judge, and Judge Everett Mitchell, Dane County Circuit Court judge, are both being mentioned as potential candidates.

There is a lot to unpack with Taylor’s win, but one of the main takeaways is that the formula for winning isn’t just filled with former prosecutors and DAs who run “tough on crime” ads. We can break out of the cookie cutter campaigns that have dominated previous elections.

Share The Recombobulation Area

Perhaps this being a relatively “safe” election for the Democratic-aligned candidate — no outsized spending from the likes of Elon Musk, ideological control of the court not being at stake, a significant fundraising advantage, etc. — meant a candidate like Taylor could take certain risks in the campaign. But even if it wasn’t a “safe seat,” can we still take “risks” and run on our values instead of compromising for the sake of winning?

This is worth considering for future elections in Wisconsin, especially when it comes to primaries. After Annette Ziegler, a right-wing justice, announced she wouldn’t be seeking another 10-year term on the court, we have an open race for state Supreme Court in spring 2027 — and there will likely be a primary. We also can take these lessons as we head into the August partisan primary in the race for governor. Primaries allow people to vote their values. Electability isn’t always a part of a voter’s analysis. In this race, voters have a range of strong candidates to choose from. The primary is an opportunity to really differentiate yourself from the field.

Candidates should lean into their progressive values, especially if it brings in new voters. Voters want to be excited about a candidate. In this political climate, excitement is a rare commodity — but one that should be embraced.

From the archives:

Refer a friend

Throughout my career as an organizer, I have heard time and time again about how we may need to run from our values in order to win. I was told once by a campaign manager that “we just need them to win now and they can be progressive later.” This does not help excite the base that you need to turn out and win.

Wisconsin has a long history of progressive values and it is core to who we are. We don’t need to run away from our values in order to win. This goes for where, regionally, certain messages can be expressed, too. A constant theme we’re hearing in so many organizing meetings is the idea that you need to have a “Black Milwaukee message” but it should be different (and sometimes in conflict) with other messages throughout the state. We don’t need to run a “Milwaukee only message” and then change messages for the rest of the state. Whether you’re in the northwoods or on the North side, people are struggling. Everyone is dealing with the gas prices and the effects of the war in Iran, or struggling with issues like child care, housing, access to affordable healthcare, and so much more — no matter where you live. Speak to the people. It is a crowded gubernatorial primary, but that just means there’s more opportunity to create your own lane and stand out.

Candidates should not throw Milwaukee under the bus for the sake of winning votes in the rest of the state — specifically Black and Brown Milwaukee. We are incredible voting blocs that you can’t win without. Speak to us. Speak to working class people. Speak to the people who are curious about what Democratic Socialism is, but then also speak to the people whose first protest was No Kings — and everyone in between.

There is a moment here. The moment is to embrace the frustration. Embrace the imperfection. The real way to win is to have clarity on the points of common ground but then to educate and organize further discussion.

Following Chris Taylor’s victory, there is a moment to strip away labels and have conversations around values. We can have robust conversations about police accountability and affordability, and demand more from our candidates. We don’t need to negotiate against ourselves and talk about “electability” when there are candidates who can excite people. We don’t need to push our values aside in order to get elected and then “be progressive later.” No matter who wins the gubernatorial primary, the candidate needs to do the difficult work of connecting with voters who you may not agree with, who may have supported someone else in the primary.

We’re at a critical moment in Wisconsin that, yet again, has national implications. We can have all of these considerations in the back of our minds, but we also can push for real action from candidates. I have faith in the people of this state that we can dream big and also have a sophisticated political analysis of what’s happening. It’s what this moment demands.

Angela Lang was born and raised in the heart of Milwaukee. She has an extensive background in community organizing. In the past, Angela served as both an organizer and State Council Director for the Service Employees International Union, working on such campaigns as the Fight for 15. Before founding BLOC, Angela was the Political Director with For Our Future Wisconsin. She is a graduate of Emerge Wisconsin. She currently is the Vice President of the ACLU of Wisconsin Board and sits on the board for Diverse and Resilient, a non profit organization that supports the LGBTQ community in Wisconsin, as well as on the board for the Milwaukee Parks Foundation.

Angela is motivated by making substantial and transformative change in her community while developing young, local leaders of color. Her journey in organizing hasn’t always been easy, but through it all she has remained a fierce advocate for securing more seats at the table for those who represent the New American Majority.

Subscribe now

The 18th annual Milwaukee Film Festival is happening from April 16 - 30, with nearly 250 films screening as part of the festival. The Recombobulation Area is proud to be a Community Partner on three films in the Documentary Festival Favorites Program — “The Dads,” “Seized,” and “Your Attention Please.”

If you missed it last week, we had the opportunity to talk with the filmmakers behind “Your Attention Please,” so be sure to check that one out.

For this episode, we are joined by the new Marketing Director at Milwaukee Film, Milan Zori, whose work you might also be familiar with as the legendary Milwaukee illustrator Dwellephant, and who is a friend of The Recombobulation Area (and a fellow Milwaukee Bucks superfan).

We talked about what’s unique about this year’s festival, the amazing film community that exists in Milwaukee, how the festival has grown over the years, and much more (including, of course, our beloved Milwaukee Bucks).

You can also watch on our YouTube Channel here:

Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

The Spring Election in Wisconsin was just a couple short weeks ago, and while the big headline statewide was on Chris Taylor’s landslide victory in the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, one of the local elections that drew a lot of attention was the race for mayor in the city of Waukesha, where Council President Alicia Halvensleben, a Democrat, defeated longtime Republican state representative Scott Allen.

Mayor-Elect Halvensleben will be sworn in as mayor on Tuesday, April 21, and she joins us here on the podcast on the eve of becoming mayor.

Topics discussed include: reflecting on the campaign, Election Day, shifting political tides in Waukesha County, and what’s next as she becomes mayor.

Watch the video above, or on our YouTube Channel here:

Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival officially kicked off last night with the premiere of “UECK” at the Oriental Theatre. Over the next two weeks, nearly 250 films will screen as part of the festival, which runs from April 16-30.

The Recombobulation Area is proud to be a Community Partner for several films at this year’s festival, all of which are part of the Documentary Festival Favorites Program, including “The Dads” (on fathers of trans and nonbinary children), “Seized” (on the police raid on the Marion County Record in the small town of Marion, Kansas), and “Your Attention Please” (on social media and the attention economy, and fighting back against Big Tech).

I recently had the opportunity to talk with the filmmakers of “Your Attention Please,” which screens on Saturday, April 18, and on Thursday, April 23.

Director Sara Robin and producer Jack LeMay joined us to talk about the film, and they will be in attendance at the Saturday screening at the Oriental Theatre at 1:15 p.m.

As someone who is entirely too online myself, this film gave me a lot other think about, both on a personal level and from a policy standpoint.

“Even over the course of making the film from 2023 to now, you can see this marked shift in the average person that you talk to,” said LeMay. “When we approached people three years ago and said, ‘is this one of the major issues we’re facing?’ or ‘is your relationship with your phone dysfunctional?’, (or) ‘is it at the root of some of the issues you have in your life?’, most people would say it probably has something to do with it, but they’d be skeptical of how deep that problem really gets. Now, we have a lot more people saying, ‘thank god this film is coming out, I’ve been thinking a lot about this’.”

“(Attention) is something that’s being taken away from us,” said Robin. “Our focus is not as much in our control as it used to be, and as we want it to be. So, I think understanding the immense power that’s on the other side of that is a really helpful first step to realizing that this is a really difficult battle for the individual, but it’s a really important one.”

Watch the trailer below, and find times to screen the film at the Milwaukee Film Festival here.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

Well, that was a pretty weird Milwaukee Day.

Yes, Milwaukee weather this time of year can be rather unpredictable, but a Milwaukee Day Tornado Watch (and later Tornado Warning) was a new one.

While it was unfortunate that we had to put the brakes on our live podcast event, it’s probably good that we did, considering the nature of yesterday’s severe weather. Apologies to any of you who made plans to be there and then had to scrap them at the last minute (or may have been there in person before seeing our announcement).

But soldier on we must! We are rescheduling this event and extending our Milwaukee Day subscription sale! We’re recombobulating, folks.

Share

The 41.4% off sale will run until midnight tonight, giving you an extra opportunity to subscribe with our biggest sale of the year. That means you can get a full-year subscription for just $29.50 (down from $50) or a monthly subscription for just $2.95 (down from $5). Not bad, right?

Subscribe here:

Get 41% off for 1 year

We will also be rescheduling this live podcast event for May 7 at Anodyne Coffee’s Walker’s Point Roastery.

We will have more details on the event in the coming weeks, but mark that date on your calendar for the next opportunity to recombobulate together at one of our live events.

So, for one last time…

Here is the link to go directly to our Milwaukee Day Sale.

And if you already subscribe, you can give a gift subscription at that same 41.4% off sale rate.

Give a gift subscription

Thanks to all of you who subscribe and support our work. The more of you who subscribe, the more we can do to cover news and politics in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. Simple as that.

Let’s keep recombobulating, folks.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Get 41% off for 1 year

ANNOUNCEMENT:

After reviewing the weather forecast for the evening, which includes a Tornado Watch for all counties in southern Wisconsin, including Milwaukee County, we have made the difficult decision to postpone our live podcast event.

We will be rescheduling this event for a later date. Apologies to those of you who have made plans to be there, but we don’t want to be potentially putting anyone in harms way.

Thanks to Anodyne and our special guests and partners in this event for understanding. Stay tuned for additional updates.

To quote the great philosopher Andre 3000, “You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can’t predict the weather.”

Alas, we hope to see you all real soon.

Get 41% off for 1 year

We will also be extending our Milwaukee Day sale through tomorrow, for those who might have been planning to subscribe at tonight’s event. It’s our biggest sale of the year, and you’re going to want to subscribe for 41.4% off, even if we can’t celebrate the 4-1-4 the way we planned.

Any questions? Send them to me at dan.shafer@civicmedia.us or therecombobulationarea@gmail.com, or directly here on Substack.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Subscribe now

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

Every year, the Recombobulation Area celebrates Milwaukee Day with our biggest sale of the year — 41.4% off to celebrate the 4-1-4!

Go right to the sale here. Subscribe!

Get 41% off for 1 year

We love Milwaukee. And we love Milwaukee Day.

We hope you’re out there celebrating this glorious made-up holiday. Maybe you’re out there having a brat and a beer for lunch. Why not!? It’s Milwaukee Day!

Or, maybe you’re like me, and wanted to make it down to City Hall for their official Milwaukee Day celebration!

Here’s my view of the official 414 flag being unfurled.

Immaculate vibes all around as we celebrated this glorious city.

And on the drive back, this really did happen.

Wild!

So, while you’re here in the Milwaukee Day spirit, take a moment and subscribe to The Recombobulation Area.

Get 41% off for 1 year

Already a paid subscriber? Give a gift subscription to a friend!

Give a gift subscription

Today is the best day of the year to subscribe — or upgrade to paid — because you are not going to get a better deal all year than with this one today. You can save more than $20 on a full-year subscription. What’s normally $50 is just $29.50 today. Not bad, right?

Or maybe you want to just test the waters with a subscription? Well, you can get a monthly subscription for just $2.95.

Our prices are already pretty low. We haven’t changed our subscription rates since we launched in 2019. What else can you say that about these days, am I right? And this deal is even lower! How could this be possible?!?

Share The Recombobulation Area

All hyperbolic sales pitches aside, subscribing to The Recombobulation Area today is a great way to help fund our work for the rest of the year. The more people subscribe, the more we can do. It’s that simple.

Every subscriber helps fund original reporting, commentary, analysis, podcasts, videos and all the work that we do all year round. We want to keep building, keep growing, keep doing more and more, and the best way to do that is with a subscription.

So, subscribe today. Help fund our work — and save some money in the process.

Oh, and attend our live event tonight at Anodyne Walker’s Point, 5:30 p.m.

[We are monitoring the severe weather situation unfolding in the state and will be sure to keep you posted if anything changes with our event this evening. Stay tuned!]

Details here:

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

Every year, the Recombobulation Area celebrates Milwaukee Day with our biggest sale of the year — 41.4% off to celebrate the 4-1-4!

Go right to the sale here.

Get 41% off for 1 year

The Recombobulation Area itself — the actual one, with the famous signs in the post-security area at Mitchell Airport — is a perfectly Milwaukee thing.

It is something that exists no place else; it uses a word that is not technically a word; and it imbibes an otherwise annoying, stressful situation with a sense of humor and a bit of whimsy. It is wonderful and clever and silly and unique — just like Milwaukee.

For everything else that we might have gotten wrong over the years here at The Recombobulation Area, we know we got one thing right — the name.

“Recombobulation” is a word and a name I’ve always been a bit enamored with, and back when I was working at another Milwaukee publication, I did a bit of research on how The Recombobulation Area came to be, and the story was actually quite simple. The former longtime director of the airport, Barry Bateman, just decided to go ahead and put the signs up and make this A Thing. That’s another great thing about Milwaukee: you can just do things.

Share

Just as that spirit is part of the actual Recombobulation Area, it’s part of ours here at this scrappy little publication, too. When we launched this effort nearly seven years ago now, it wasn’t entirely clear how this would take shape, but from the very beginning, along with creating a new place for locally-focused independent journalism here in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, we also made it part of our core mission to build community.

You, as our loyal reader and subscriber, have helped us build this community. This effort got off the ground because of you. It has grown because of you. We have built this place one piece at a time — one subscriber, one follower, one reader, one listener, one viewer at a time — and it’s this shared effort in building this community that has made this place a success. We’ll always be pretty proud of that.

And this community exists because of the city we call home. This community exists because of Milwaukee.

Milwaukee Day, too, is yet another example of inventive, creative spirit. The holiday was born in 2010 as a half-joking idea between friends Andy Silverman, Brent Gohde, and Timm Gable. They started a holiday. Now, it’s a signature celebration in a city that loves to celebrate. You can just do things!

And hey, that’s what we’re doing tonight. We’re just doing things. We’re building community. Along with our subscription sale — 41.4% off for the 4-1-4, don’t forget! — we’re getting together with some of our friends and supporters and collaborators and fellow Milwaukeeans to have a conversation and share in that community, at 5:30 p.m. at Anodyne Coffee’s Walker’s Point Roastery.

The event will feature Angela Lang of BLOC, Matt Wild of Milwaukee Record, and more special guests. The event is free (FREE!) to attend, doors open at 5 p.m., and we’ll be planning to get the podcast started at about 6 p.m.

Hope to see you there. Let’s recombobulate. Together.

Oh, and be sure to subscribe for the…

BIGGEST SALE OF THE YEAR!!!

Get 41% off for 1 year

Find more event details here:

Share The Recombobulation Area

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

Folks, we are just days away from MILWAUKEE DAY, the glorious holiday celebrating our wonderful city every year on April 14 (4/14). And in case you missed it, we’ve got plans to celebrate.

First, we are holding our biggest subscription sale of the year, where both monthly and full-year subscriptions will be 41.4% off. That means you can help support our work for a full year for less than $30, or become a monthly subscriber for less than $3 per month. This publication launched in 2019, and while we’ve never raised our prices, you’re not going to get a better deal this year than the one we’ll have on Tuesday. So, be sure to subscribe or upgrade to paid — and tell a friend, while you’re there.

Share

ALSO: We are hosting a LIVE PODCAST EVENT at Anodyne Coffee’s Walker’s Point Roastery on Tuesday, featuring Angela Lang of BLOC, Matt Wild of Milwaukee Record, and several special guests, including Milwaukee Day founder Andy Silverman and 414 Day Executive Director Mocha Harris.

Here are the event details:

• WHERE: Anodyne Walker’s Point, 224 W. Bruce St., Milwaukee, WI 53204

• WHEN: 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

  • Podcast is scheduled to start at 6 p.m.

• COST: Free!

• RSVP: Here, on Facebook

• BONUS: We’ll be giving away a pair of Club Level tickets to the Milwaukee Brewers game on April 25, courtesy of Civic Media, AND we’ll be giving away passes to the Milwaukee Film Festival. All the more reason to BE THERE!

Any questions? Send us a message right here on Substack…

… or email us at therecombobulationarea@gmail.com.

The Recombobulation Area is so proud to call Milwaukee home. We love this city. And we’re going to celebrate it every chance we get — especially on Milwaukee Day.

We hope to be celebrating with you fine folks, too. See you there!

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

Today is April 8, 2026, and that means we just wrapped up the Spring Election here in Wisconsin. There’s a whole lot to recombobulate on as we dig through the results from races across the state, but the big headline is from the statewide race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, where Chris Taylor delivered a resounding landslide victory over Maria Lazar, winning by an astonishing 20-point margin. Not only does this mean a 10-year term on the state’s highest court for Taylor, but it means the court will remain in liberal control through at least 2030.

ICYMI, here’s my column on Taylor’s astonishing victory:

There will be much more to dissect and analyze with this race and others across the state in the Wisconsin Spring Election — our usual “10 Takeaways” deep dive is coming soon — but first, we wanted to talk a bit more about this enormously important Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

To do that, we were joined by someone who knows these state Supreme Court campaigns well — Sachin Chheda, who has led or co-led six campaigns for Wisconsin Supreme Court, including three races to help win this majority, with Justice Rebecca Dallet in 2018, Justice Jill Karofsky in 2020, and Justice Janet Protasiewicz in 2023.

We talked about the big picture for these Wisconsin Supreme Court races, why candidates matter, how political realignment is driving some of these shifts, and how the template for success in these campaigns was set with Justice Dallet in 2018, which began the liberal winning streak, where five of the last six state Supreme Court races have been won by the Democratic-aligned candidate.

Share The Recombobulation Area

PLUS: A couple reminders:

1. On Saturday, April 11, Dan Shafer will be joining “Laughing Liberally Milwaukee” at their monthly political comedy show at Comedy Sportz. The show starts at 8 p.m., and features comics Raegan Niemela, Chloe Mikala, Diego Avila, Alecia Altstaetter, and sketch comedy troupe The Accountants Of Homeland Security. Details here and tickets here.

2. We are less than a week away from our LIVE PODCAST on Milwaukee Day, April 14! The event will be held at Anodyne Coffee’s Walker’s Point Roastery, beginning at 5:30 p.m. It’s free to attend, families are welcome, and the podcast will feature Angela Lang of BLOC, Matt Wild of Milwaukee Record, and several special guests. Find out all about it here, and RSVP to attend on Facebook here.

Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

While Chris Taylor’s astonishing 20-point landslide victory was the biggest story statewide for Wisconsin’s April 7 Spring Election, one of the biggest results of the night on the local level was Alicia Halvensleben winning the race for mayor in the city of Waukesha.

Halvensleben is serving in her second term on the Waukesha Common Council, first elected to a three-year term in 2022, and is in her second year as Council President. She has now won the open race for mayor by a 2.5% margin.

What makes this result especially interesting, though, is that Halvensleben is a Democrat. She has been active with Waukesha County Democrats for quite some time, and is currently the party’s chair for the 5th Congressional District. Her victory in the largest city in the former GOP stronghold of Waukesha County is a big, big deal.

Share

The Republican Party’s eroding support in the suburbs has been an ongoing story in recent years, particularly in the Trump Era where GOP candidates used to put up massive margins of victory in the county. Now in 2026, liberal state Supreme Court candidate Chris Taylor closed the gap in the county to just eight points. In nearby Ozaukee County, it flipped blue for the first time since 1964. The suburbs are indeed shifting, particularly in these types of elections.

When I interviewed Halvensleben for our feature story on mayoral elections in Waukesha County, she talked about helping start a team to do canvassing for local candidates, seeing the political shift unfold right from the street level.

“We knew there were always Democrats in Waukesha County, but we’ve had to (tell people), no, you’re not the only one,” she said. “Over the last 10 years when I’ve been knocking on doors, so many people are like, ‘Don’t tell anybody, but I’m the Democrat on the street.’ And I was like, ‘Actually, there are five of you.’”

Share The Recombobulation Area

While the city of Waukesha leans more Democratic than the county overall, Halvensleben’s victory is still a stunner. In this open race for mayor, she faced a far more well-known candidate in Scott Allen, a Republican who has served in the State Assembly for more than a decade and had been endorsed by Waukesha County Executive Paul Farrow. And while Waukesha has been trending left, it’s still a rather Republican-leaning county, and the city still broke for Trump by nearly 6% in 2024 and for Ron Johnson by nearly 9% in 2022.

Halvensleben will succeed outgoing mayor Shawn Reilly, who endorsed her campaign. Reilly’s political journey has been perhaps indicative of some of the shifts happening in Waukesha. A lifelong Republican, Reilly disavowed the party on Jan. 6, 2021, and endorsed Kamala Harris for president in 2024, telling The New York Times, “I’m very afraid of the direction our country will head in if Donald Trump becomes president. I think we’ll be heading down a road of authoritarianism and fascism.”

Reilly wasn’t the only former Waukesha mayor who endorsed Halvensleben’s campaign. Larry Nelson, who was elected mayor of the city in 2006, also endorsed her campaign, and is also a Democrat. As columnist James Wigderson, a Waukesha resident and former editor of Right Wisconsin, noted in a recent piece, “the conditions are right for a Halvensleben upset win,” following a similar roadmap from Nelson’s surprise victory in a year with the political winds in Democrats’ favor.

During our interview, I asked Halvensleben what it would mean if a Democrat were to win the race for mayor in Waukesha. Here’s what she said:

“I think that would be a huge message to the GOP. This is no longer your county, (and) you don’t have a stronghold here anymore like you thought you did. I think it would send a very powerful message that Democrats are in play in Waukesha County — and especially in the city of Waukesha. If we can have a big win, a big pickup, I think that it would mean a lot.”

Halvensleben said that while it’s not just Trump driving Waukesha County’s changing politics, the president is certainly a factor.

“I think the Trump thing was the impetus for people to feel like, even if I am the only one, I want to get out there,” she said. “And when so many people felt like they were the “only one,” then suddenly there were a bunch of people. We saw more and more volunteers… Then, you start to feel like maybe I could win if I step up, maybe I have a chance.”

On what’s changing in the county’s politics, she added, “I think there’s kind of a combination of factors. Trump started this, and the Democrats are finishing it. We’re continuing to step up. We’re continuing to be engaged. We have people that want to run for office. And we have people who are truly involved in our communities … I think especially with people like Trump, folks are done with the cult of personality. They’re sick of career politicians. I’m just a normal person. I work in sales, middle management. My life is pretty boring, but I’m really engaged in my community. I love this community and I want to step up. I think that there are a lot of folks who feel that way.”

Halvensleben also said she wouldn’t have run had incumbent mayor Shawn Reilly run for re-election. But once Scott Allen jumped into the race, she felt compelled to run.

“Our community deserves better than Scott Allen, and I know that I’m going to be better than him,” said Halvensleben in that late February interview.

Now, she’ll have her chance to do just that.

Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

In the 2026 race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, Chris Taylor was always seen as the clear favorite to win, but even the most optimistic prognostication from liberal supporters didn’t quite see this — a 20-point landslide blowout victory.

Taylor, the Court of Appeals judge from Dane County and former Democratic legislator, out-fundraised and out-campaigned her opponent on her way to the most decisive victory the court has seen in years. The electoral victories from Jill Karofsky, Janet Protasiewicz and Susan Crawford were all in range of a 10-point margin, and Taylor has blown those numbers away.

It was a big deal a year ago when Susan Crawford won 10 counties that were carried by Donald Trump just a few months prior in the 2024 presidential election. Taylor has pushed that a whole lot further, winning at least 24 Trump-won counties, including rural counties in western and central Wisconsin, swing counties in the Fox Valley, and sent the red WOW county wall crumbling by shrinking the Waukesha County margin to single digits and flipping Ozaukee County blue for the first time since 1964. She even won counties like Sheboygan (Trump+16), Jefferson (Trump+16), Marathon (Trump+19) and Vilas (Trump+23), and is within less than 1% of winning in Walworth (Trump+22) and Manitowoc (Trump+23).

It’s an astoundingly dominant victory. Taylor’s win also makes it four in a row for Democratic-aligned candidates in Wisconsin Supreme Court races, and will push the majority from 4-3 to 5-2, cementing liberal control of the court through at least 2030.

And this is in a state where Donald Trump won twice. While there are a great many factors driving this victory — turnout, realignment, so much more — perhaps Wisconsin voters want to see the check on Trump to be a judicial one.

Throughout the last decade of politics that make up the Trump Era, Republican candidates have fared reasonably well in congressional elections. Ron Johnson won in 2016 and 2022, Derrick Van Orden won close races in 2022 and 2024, and Bryan Steil has consistently overperformed. Part of what we’re seeing could be that voters might be more willing to support a Republican legislative agenda, but want to see the courts keep Trump in check. Because after the 2017 race where discombobulated Democrats didn’t field a candidate to challenge Annette Ziegler, they’ve gone 5-1 in Wisconsin Supreme Court races from 2018 to 2026, the only loss being to Brian Hagedorn by an especially slim 0.5% margin.

Such a check on Trump is obviously a sorely needed one. This was the closest court in the nation to siding with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, after all. By next year, all three of the right-wing justices who sided with Trump will be gone from the state’s highest court. And it was Trump’s appointees who led to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which emerged as a central issue in the last three state court races, in particular. Redistricting, too, has been an issue where the public has sided against Trump. And for as much as folks on the right like to characterize the court as being extreme, it’s currently the most favorably-viewed branch of government in the state, according to the latest polling from Marquette.

But voters who might want a judicial check on Trump would not on its own begin to explain the magnitude of this particular victory.

Last year, election forecasting and analysis website Split Ticket put out a piece before the election with the heading, “Wisconsin Republicans Have An Off-Year Turnout Problem,” followed by a post-election piece on how turnout helped drive the liberal victory in the Spring Election race, estimating that “voters who voted in the 2025 Supreme Court election backed Kamala Harris by 7 points in 2024.” The lower propensity voters who drove Trump’s 2024 victory were not showing up in Spring 2025, leading to the 72-county shift that happened a year ago.

That turnout problem was supercharged this year, both through Lazar’s lackluster campaign and Taylor’s especially strong one, fueled in no small part by a gargantuan fundraising discrepancy between the two.

But it’s also because of how coalitions are changing. The political realignment we’ve been experiencing is a major factor in races like the ones in the Spring Election. The more reliable every-election voters are now much more likely to be voting for Democratic-aligned candidates than they were in a pre-Trump era. For a Spring Election — or perhaps even a midterm, if we’re reading some tea leaves — that’s going to tip the advantage toward left-of-center candidates who now have a hyper-motivated base to show up time and time again for each and every election. Participation is power, and liberals have flexed that power in races like these — perhaps no place more than here in Wisconsin.

Taylor herself, too, deserves an enormous amount of credit for the race she ran. A few weeks ago, I attended Marquette Law School’s “Get To Know” event with Taylor, and came away especially impressed with her. I’d seen a number of those types of events in recent years, including another several weeks prior with Lazar, and Taylor’s really stood out. She was clear on her values and motivations, drew a stark but respectful contrast with her opponent, demonstrated a forward-looking vision for the court, emphasizing the importance of the judiciary in this current political moment. It was a home-run performance for someone who has proven herself to be a home-run candidate. She more than earned the 10-year term she’ll serve on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

One of the things Taylor said in that conversation was that she wanted to see the court “take more cases.” The April 7 election results here have given her and the court’s now 5-2 liberal majority a resounding mandate to do just that.

In the book “The Fall of Wisconsin” by Dan Kaufman, Chris Taylor, then a state representative in Madison, is among the individuals featured prominently, including a memorable scene on Election Day 2016 in the book’s prologue where she was not confident in wins for Hillary Clinton and then-senator Russ Feingold, recalling a challenging turn canvassing in Iowa County. A decade later, she’d win Iowa County by a whopping 34-point margin — a 26-point shift from 2024, among the biggest shifts in the state — en route to one of the biggest victories this swingiest of swing states has seen in ages. She proved herself to be the right candidate for the right time.

Now, through voters perhaps wanting a judicial check on an out-of-control president, by way of dramatic shifts in turnout and an ongoing political realignment, Wisconsin’s highest court will be in liberal control well after Trump is no longer president, and Chris Taylor will be on the bench until 2036. It’s quite the moment for Wisconsin.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.

Subscribe now

Today is the day of the Spring Election in Wisconsin, so first things first: Go vote.

Perhaps you’re one of the hundreds of thousands in the state who voted early, be it in person or by mail, and that’s terrific. Perhaps you’re the kind of person who likes to be there in person on Election Day, and that’s terrific, too. No matter how you get there, be sure to make your voice count and do your civic duty and vote today.

The statewide race for a 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court will be on everyone’s ballot across the state, but there are plenty of local races and referenda happening, so be prepared. Go to MyVote Wisconsin now and see what’s on your ballot so you don’t end up scrambling to search something on your phone while you’re in the voting booth (also: you can find where exactly your voting booth is).

This year’s race for Wisconsin Supreme Court isn’t quite like the one last year, with the astronomical spending figures and the absurd theatrics of Elon Musk wearing a cheesehead and handing out (possibly illegal) million dollar checks on stage at a rally in Green Bay, but it is still enormously consequential. This is a race for a 10-year term on the state’s highest court, and if the last 10 years is any evidence, a whole lot can happen over the course of such a term.

So, while the results of this race will not have the immediate outcome of flipping the balance of power on the court (like with Janet Protasiewicz’s victory in 2023) or preserving that new liberal majority from flipping back to right-wing control (like with Susan Crawford’s victory in 2025), we can’t overlook just how much the person elected to this role will be deciding on over the next decade. Changes in balance of power or not, this is a big, big deal.

Share

This is the second in a string of six consecutive years in which a Wisconsin Supreme Court race will be on the ballot in a Spring Election in April. With right-wing justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley not seeking re-election, it’s an open contest between liberal candidate Chris Taylor, a former Democratic legislator and current Court of Appeals judge from Dane County, and right-wing candidate Maria Lazar, a former assistant attorney general in the Walker Era state DOJ and a current Court of Appeals judge from Waukesha County. The two participated in the lone debate of the campaign last week, available to watch on WISN’s YouTube channel here.

I’d also encourage you to watch this pair of discussions from Marquette Law’s “Get To Know” series with each of the candidates. I was there in person for each and found them to be genuinely insightful.

While the balance of power and the overall makeup of the court should not be the top reason driving your decision at your polling place today, it is certainly worth examining. Should Taylor win — and she is unquestionably the favorite in this race — the court’s liberal majority would expand to 5-2. That would be a stunning turnaround in less than a decade following liberals’ nadir in these races in 2017, when they did not even field a candidate in the race against Annette Ziegler. Since, liberal candidates have won five of six contests, including the last three in a row. A Taylor victory would not only extend that winning streak, but secure liberal control of the court through the end of the decade.

Ziegler is not seeking re-election at the end of her term next year, so that means right-wingers will not have the opportunity to pick up a seat until the following year, when liberal Justice Rebecca Dallet’s term is up in 2028. If Lazar wins today and a conservative wins Ziegler’s seat next year, the election for Dallet’s seat would determine the court’s balance of power. But if Taylor wins today, that 5-2 majority would mean that right-wing candidates would need to go on a winning streak of their own to make the 2030 race, when Chief Justice Jill Karofsky’s term is up, one that could determine the balance of the court.

Because in 2029, the 10-year term for Brian Hagedorn, a conservative and one-time “swing vote” on the court, who has sided with liberals on key cases — including against the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — will come to an end. The three Wisconsin Supreme Court seats held by justices on the right are all up over the next four years, and they’d need to win each race in order to have a path to the majority in the 2030s.

All of that depends on what happens today. Every election is important, and you should be voting in every last one.

Turnout for this race won’t be expected to reach the near-midterm level turnout of a year ago where more than 2.3 million people voted, but perhaps it could be in the neighborhood of the more than 1.8 million people who voted in the 2023 race, or somewhere in between that and the 2020 race, where more than 1.5 million voted.

Share The Recombobulation Area

This is the first in a series of elections in 2026 that present a generational opportunity for the left in Wisconsin. Between this race today, the primaries in August, and the general election for the midterms this November, it’s going to be a busy year at the polls. At the end of it, Democrats could win trifecta control of state government after securing a 5-2 liberal majority in the state Supreme Court. It’s all in play.

As results roll in tonight, be sure to follow for live commentary on social media, on Twitter, Bluesky, Threads and here on Substack. We’ll be watching the Wisconsin Supreme Court race closely, of course, and will also have an eye on a number of local races across the state, and will be paying special attention to the mayoral races we’ve been covering in Brookfield and Waukesha.

Be sure to stay tuned for more commentary, conversation and analysis of the Spring Election over the next few days.

After you go vote (and tell a few friends and family to go vote, too), a few more quick things from those of us here at Recombobulation Area HQ:

1) We are hosting a LIVE PODCAST next week Tuesday, April 14, to celebrate our favorite made-up holiday of the year, Milwaukee Day. We’ll be joined by Angela Lang of BLOC and Matt Wild of Milwaukee Record and a few more special guests at Anodyne Coffee’s Walker’s Point Roastery for this free event.

Details here:

This event is also happening on the same day as our biggest sale of the year, when we offer 41.4% off all new subscriptions to celebrate the city we call home, here in the 414.

2) We are currently conducting a READER SURVEY, so we’d really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to fill this out. It will help The Recombobulation Area become an even better publication.

3) On Saturday, April 11, at Comedy Sportz, Dan Shafer will be joining the monthly Laughing Liberally Milwaukee event, with live comedy and more.

Find more details about the event here and get your tickets in advance here.

Hope to see you Saturday at 8 p.m.!

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer and at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social.

This column originally ran on Feb. 20 as a column available for paid subscribers. We’re dropping the paywall for it here today.

Subscribe so you don’t miss any of our newsletters.

Subscribe now

A couple reminders for our readers: 1) We’re hosting a live podcast event on Tuesday, April 14 — Milwaukee Day!

Details here:

Share The Recombobulation Area

… and 2) We’re also conducting a reader survey! Take a couple minutes to fill this out and help us be an even better publication:

Over the last 15 years, the most consequential politician in the state of Wisconsin has been Robin Vos. In an Assembly floor speech on the afternoon of Thursday, Feb. 19, he announced he will not be seeking re-election in November, retiring from the Assembly at the end of his term.

For the good people of Wisconsin, this is true cause for celebration.

The enormity of what Vos’ pending retirement means for state politics in Wisconsin cannot be overstated. Vos is the longest-serving Assembly Speaker in state history, and his tenure has spanned two multi-term governors, a time of tremendous political upheaval in the state. Pull any thread — be it in the Walker years of trifecta Republican control, or in the Evers era of divided government — and you’ll find your way back to Robin Vos.

That is not a compliment. The era he’s presided over has been destructive and damaging for Wisconsin, and he’s been at the heart of it all. Wisconsin is unequivocally worse off for his years of leadership in the state. His calculating, power-consolidation-at-all-costs approach has held the state back time and time again. His clear disdain for his opposition, lacking even a baseline level of respect, is abhorrent. The way he’s deployed a politics of dismissive cruelty to blue cities like Milwaukee has been repulsive. His stubborn refusal to act at a moment of genuine crisis in 2020 was cataclysmic, and is one of endless examples when he’s put politics over people. He’s been a singular force against good governance throughout his time as Assembly Speaker. The way he operates is the antithesis of everything politics should be.

Share

So often when it comes to the actions of Republican Party politicians of this era, there’s a question of whether it’s malevolence or incompetence behind their decisions. All too often, it’s both. For Vos, it has always been the former. He understands the ins and outs of state government as well as anyone, has continually demonstrated that he knows exactly how each lever of power can be pulled, and yet, he chooses the unabashedly malicious path he’s taken. In many ways, this makes his actions all the worse.

Just look at his record. In an October 2024 column, I listed the myriad of ways the Assembly Speaker has acted against the interests of the people of Wisconsin and ripped this state apart at the seams.

There was the Michael Gableman saga, where Vos empowered the former state Supreme Court justice to conduct a sprawling, off-the-rails, scandal-plagued, multi-million dollar review of the 2020 election, and produced no evidence of election fraud. There was the aforementioned trip to Brazil during the special session on child care, and the myriad of gavel-in, gavel-outs on issues from abortion to gun violence prevention to criminal justice reform to education funding. There’s the constant refusal to expand Medicaid, making Wisconsin the only state in the Midwest to do so, depriving the state of billions of dollars and making health care access worse in the process. There was his action in singularly blocking a bill to expand health care coverage for new moms. There was his stubborn refusal to act on the outdated and unclear 1849 abortion ban that went into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned. There was the lame-duck session where Vos and legislative Republicans stripped powers from the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general. There were the threats to impeach new Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz before she even heard a case. There was the tremendous failure of the Foxconn project, located right in his own Assembly district, not just a one-off failure, but the culminated goal of the entire right-wing takeover of Wisconsin’s government. There was the refusal to fund lead pipe replacement because he said too much money would go to Milwaukee. There were the many laws passed benefiting landlords and undermining renters (while he himself is a landlord). There were the years of refusal to address the state’s broken shared revenue system, coupled with the refusal to allow Milwaukee to generate new revenue, defunding local government in the city and in communities all over the state. There’s the endless refusal to legalize even medical marijuana in a reasonable way, much less decriminalize it for recreational use. There was that ridiculous pandemic election stunt, where he showed up to work the polls dressed head-to-toe in personal protective equipment. There’s been the constant, regular overnight sessions, with votes happening in the dead of night, or the countless number of times he’s kept members of the opposition party in the dark on when they’d need to show up to the Capitol next, or the endless stories of disrespectful behavior. There’s the decision to make every other year one where the legislature takes a nine-month break from legislating. The Gerrymander. Act 10. On and on and on. This is a long paragraph, and it just scratches the surface of the depths of what Vos has done in his time as Assembly Speaker.

Share

The 24 hours that preceded his retirement announcement seemed quite fitting, and emblematic of the Vos approach. He prepared to hold the final floor session of the year in mid-February, rushing to meet the imaginary deadline he himself set to finish the session early and take a nine-month break from legislating. Two spotlight bills — on expanding healthcare for new moms and for coverage for additional breast cancer screenings — were not on the agenda, despite having overwhelming bipartisan support and having passed the Senate. Vos had buried them in an obscure committee, and was dug in on obstructing them. But Assembly Democrats and Democratic leader Greta Neubauer went all out to force a vote on both, tying each to every last bill on the agenda. Republicans left to caucus, and after several hours, Majority Leader Tyler August and Vos himself were spotted at a fundraiser at the Madison Club, one hosted by the Jobs First Coalition where his wife, Michelle Litjens Vos, is the top fundraiser. Leaving mid-session to fundraise with lobbyists instead of taking a vote to help new mothers is just perfectly, on-the-nose quintessential Vos — because that’s who he really works for.

His legacy from a more national perspective might be more remembered in the context of his rocky relationship with President Donald Trump — some of the headlines on Vos’ retirement announcement reflected on how he “clashed” with Trump amid the president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But even that overlooks the role Vos played in appeasing and often fueling the election deniers who sought to toss hundreds of years of American democracy in the trash. He may have angered Trump into some fiery comments — and prompted him to support a primary challenger, inviting vitriol from the far right — by not doing the impossible when it came to the election results. But it was Vos who was calling committee hearings to question the results just days after the election, and it was Vos who hired Gableman for his sprawling, anti-democracy review of 2020 in the first place. And while the Assembly Speaker has since characterized hiring Gableman as his biggest mistake he’s ever made, Vos still deserves endless criticism for trying to play both sides, dragging our politics into the gutter along the way, never truly taking accountability for the mess he created. He knows better and yet he still does worse – that’s the Robin Vos way.

Share The Recombobulation Area

While Vos’ time in leadership stretches to the early 2010s, Vos’ reign in many ways crested in the years post-Walker into the 2020s, when he was elevated to being the most powerful Republican in the state and was routinely at odds with Democratic governor Tony Evers, working to obstruct him at seemingly every turn. The Republican approach in Madison then turned from Walker’s dim malignance to Vos’ calculated malice. Because of how he had consolidated power in the legislative branch — and because of the ultra-gerrymandered maps that cemented Republican control and made him and his caucus unaccountable to voters — he was still the one holding just about all of the cards in state politics.

It’s been the way he’s played that hand that’s been truly shameful. Wisconsin politics are broken, and if you were to write a list of the reasons why, Robin Vos’ name is at the very top. He is chiefly behind the toxicity, the gridlock, the incessant disrespect and dismissiveness of anyone not on his side that has poisoned this state for a generation.

It is my sincere hope that we can turn the page on the despicable Vos era the moment he heads for the exits for one final time, and that 2027 can bring a new dawn in Wisconsin. Because the greatest obstacle to progress in this state has been Robin Vos, and he is going to be gone from his perch as the most powerful lawmaker in the state. A top priority for whoever takes the reins next should be to rip out, root and stem, as much of the Vos era as possible.

Refer a friend

In his final speech, Vos said something that suggests he still doesn’t get it. “We debate in public, we answer to our voters. We live with the consequences of our actions, right or wrong,” he said.

This may be who Robin Vos imagines himself to be, but it is not who he is. He is no statesman to be revered; he’s an arsonist unwilling to acknowledge he’s the one holding the matches and gasoline.

He hasn’t lived with the consequences of his actions or answered to voters really at all. He’s worked to undermine the will of the people and bend the political universe to his own benefit time and time again. When Walker lost in 2018, he moved to strip the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general of their powers. We all know the mess he created with the Gableman affair. When Janet Protasiewicz won in 2023, flipping the balance of power on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, he threatened to impeach her before she had ever even heard a case. He routinely blocked legislation that had overwhelming support. He rarely let any Democratic bills have so much as a public hearing. He stood in the way of any kind of healthy debate, acting in midnight sessions and going months without acting at a time of genuine crisis. These are not the actions of a man who respects democracy and the will of the voters, they are that of a power-hungry wanna-be tyrant who has snarled and scrambled and tried to snuff out anything in his way. He did this with power that was never truly earned, but built on some of the most egregiously gerrymandered maps of any state legislature in the nation.

Robin Vos is less the shadow governor he seems to imagine himself to be, more a mad king who Wisconsinites have never truly supported.

It’s fitting, too, that he’ll be heading for the exits just in time for the first election to be fully held following the fall of Vos’ gerrymandered maps. The Assembly’s last election happened entirely under the new maps, but only half of the Senate was on the ballot in November 2024. The other half is up in November 2026, and this is the first time in a generation that Democrats will have the opportunity to win control of the state legislature — Assembly and Senate.

Perhaps Robin Vos is not really built for a world where he actually has to compete on merit, be accountable to the voters, and not have the game board tilted in his favor. With the first fully post-Gerrymander election looming in November, I suppose you could say Robin Vos chose a moment to retire when he would be incredibly safe to go out.

There are reports indicating that Vos is still going to be active in running the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee (RACC) for the 2026 fall elections, which means there’s still time to give Vos the electoral comeuppance he has long evaded through years of gerrymandered maps. If voters flip the Assembly this fall, Vos will be handing the Speaker gavel over to a Democrat in his final act in state government. That’s the ending he deserves.

For over 20 years in office and more than 13 years as Assembly Speaker, Robin Vos has represented the worst of our politics. Turning the page on this regrettable era couldn’t happen soon enough. Wisconsin will be better off once Robin Vos is no longer in power. Good riddance.

Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer and at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social.

Subscribe now

The Recombobulation Area has bee around for more than six years now, and as we’ve said from the beginning, this publication is not just about the columns you might read or podcasts you might listen to, it’s about the community we’re building with our subscribers — with you.

As part of that mission, we want to hear from you. We want to know more about who you are, and about what you want to see (or not see) here at The Recombobulation Area. Learning more about you is going to help us do an even better job covering news and politics in Milwaukee and Wisconsin — as we plan for the 2026 midterm elections and beyond.

So, we are humbly requesting that you all take a few moments and complete our 2026 Reader Survey.

Fill out our 2026 Reader Survey here.

Because The Recombobulation Area is a reader-supported publication, your feedback is just that much more valuable. We really do appreciate each and every one of you, and we want you to be part of the community that forms the future of this publication. It has been a couple years since we’ve conducted one of these reader surveys, and much has changed in that time, so we really want to hear from you now, in 2026. So, thank you so much in advance for filling out this survey!

If you have any questions about this (or anything Recombobulation Area-related), you can message me directly here (and at dan.shafer@civicmedia.us).

…and one more time, just in case you missed it: Here is the reader survey.

Share The Recombobulation Area

Refer a friend

Also, just a quick reminder:

We will be offering our biggest sale of the year coming up on April 14, Milwaukee Day! All subscriptions will be 41.4% off as we celebrate the 4-1-4. We’ll also be hosting a special LIVE PODCAST on Milwaukee Day at Anodyne Walker’s Point to celebrate the city we call home.

It is free to attend. Details here:

RSVP on Facebook here. Hope to see you there!

Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.

Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.

Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.

Give a gift subscription

Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!

Get 30% off a group subscription

Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer and at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social.