According to an AMBER Alert issued this week, Elijah Vue has been missing from Two Rivers, Wisconsin since Tuesday.

Authorities are continuing to search rivers and waterways in the area for his whereabouts in Manitowoc County, and local landfills and properties are also being searched.

Katrina Baur, identified as Elijah’s mother, allegedly left the child at the home of Jesse Vang for “disciplinary reasons,” according to prosecutors.

According to WTMJ in Milwaukee, the charging documents in the case remain sealed, but prosecutors read portions of the documents in open court Friday.

“She intentionally sent that child for disciplinary reasons for more than a week to the residence,” Jacalyn Labre, district attorney for Manitowoc County, told the court. “She was aware of the tactics used and the lack of care provided. This was an intentional thing by her.”

Prosecutors also allege that Baur made misleading statements to police about her whereabouts since Elijah went missing. Both Baur and Vang have been charged with child neglect, with more charges possible in the case.

Vue is described as having sandy-colored hair and brown eyes. He stands 3-feet tall and weighs 50 pounds. He was last seen wearing gray sweatpants, a long-sleeve dark-colored shirt, red and green dinosaur shoes, and has a birth mark on his left knee.

Searches of rivers and waterways are underway in Manitowoc County in Wisconsin. Local landfills are being searched as well.

Police are asking anyone with information to call 911, or to call Two Rivers police at 844-267-6648.  

Police also say that there has been a “fake video” showing the recovery of a minor by officers, but that the video does not depict Elijah.

As a result, officers are warning the public not to fall victim to financial scams surrounding the case.

The boys, ages 8 and 6, were taken last Friday to a hospital in critical condition after first responders pulled them from a retention pond in Sun Prairie, police said.

Sun Prairie police Lt. Ryan Cox said Monday morning that one of the boys died over the weekend. Assistant Police Chief Shunta Boston said later Monday that the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office had confirmed that the second boy had died, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

Messages seeking information on whether autopsies had been completed on the boys and if they had been identified were left Tuesday with the medical examiner’s office by The Associated Press.

The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents, which oversees UW-Madison, UW-La Crosse and 11 other regional campuses, voted unanimously during a hastily convened closed meeting Wednesday evening to fire Gow.

After the vote, Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman and regents President Karen Walsh issued statements saying the regents had learned of specific conduct by Gow that subjected the university to “significant reputational harm.” Rothman called Gow’s actions “abhorrent” and Walsh said she was “disgusted.” But neither of them offered any details of the allegations.

Gow told The Associated Press in a phone interview Thursday morning that regents had discovered that he and his wife, former UW-La Crosse professor Carmen Wilson, had been producing and appearing in pornographic videos.

He maintained that he never mentioned UW-La Crosse or his role at the university in any of the videos and the firing violated his free speech rights.

“My wife and I live in a country where we have a First Amendment,” he said. “We’re dealing with consensual adult sexuality. The regents are overreacting. They’re certainly not adhering to their own commitment to free speech or the First Amendment.”

Gow also complained that the regents never told him what policy he violated and he was never given a hearing or other opportunity to present his case. He said he’s contemplating a lawsuit.

“I got an email last night saying I was terminated,” Gow said. “I wish I would have had the opportunity to have a hearing. When reasonable people understand what my wife and I are creating, it calms them down.”

Gow had planned to retire as chancellor at the conclusion of the spring 2024 semester and transition into a role teaching communication courses. But Rothman said Wednesday evening that he planned to file a complaint with UW-L’s interim chancellor, Betsy Morgan, seeking a review of Gow’s tenure.

Rothman said in an email to the AP on Thursday morning that Gow failed to act as a role model for students, faculty and the community and mistakenly believes the First Amendment equates to a “free pass to say or do anything that he pleases.”

“Good judgement requires that there are and must be limits on what is said or done by the individuals entrusted to lead our universities,” Rothman wrote.

Rothman added that Gow served at the pleasure of the regents and was not entitled to any specific process.

“That should be abundantly clear to him,” Rothman said.

Gow took heavy criticism in 2018 for inviting porn actor Nina Hartley to speak at UW-La Crosse. He paid her $5,000 out of student fees to appear. Ray Cross, then UW system president, reprimanded him and the regents refused to give him a raise that year. Gow said then that he was exercising the system’s free speech policies.

Gow and his wife star in a YouTube channel called “Sexy Healthy Cooking” in which the couple cooks meals with porn actors. They also have written two e-books, “Monogamy with Benefits: How Porn Enriches Our Relationship” and “Married with Benefits — Our Real-Life Adult Industry Adventures” under pseudonyms. Their biographies on Amazon contain links to their videos on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and a pornographic website.

According to the university, a white supremacist group carrying flags emblazoned with swastikas and “other Nazi symbols” marched from the State Street Mall to the state Capitol around noon.

The Madison Police Department said there were around 20 people marching with the group and that no weapons had been displayed during the march.

The University of Wisconsin Police Department said it hasn’t heard of any reports of incidents or arrests by the MPD stemming from the march.

Campus officials were not notified of the march ahead of time, the university said. Law enforcement is currently monitoring the situation.

Read the full story at NBCNews.com here.

Jessy Kurczewski, 39, of Franklin, told investigators she gave Lynn Hernan a water bottle filled with six bottles of Visine in 2018, according to a criminal complaint. A Waukesha County jury found her guilty Tuesday of first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of theft in connection with Hernan’s death, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Kurczewski’s attorneys did not speak with reporters following the verdict.

Hernan was found dead in her Pewaukee condo in October 2018 with crushed medication on her chest. According to a criminal complaint, Kurczewski called police and said her friend wasn’t conscious or breathing. Kurczewski said she was a family friend and had been checking on Hernan daily. She had said there was a possibility Hernan was suicidal.

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The Waukesha County medical examiner ruled Hernan’s death a homicide after discovering tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient in Visine, in Hernan’s system.

When investigators told Kurczewski that Hernan was poisoned and the scene was staged to look like a suicide, she said it was what Hernan wanted and she must have staged her own suicide, according to the complaint. Kurczewski later told investigators she brought Hernan a water bottle loaded with six bottles’ worth of Visine, according to the complaint.

Detectives also eventually concluded Kurczewski stole $290,000 from Hernan.

Kurczewski is set to be sentenced Dec. 7. The homicide charge carries a mandatory life sentence. The theft charges each carry a maximum five years in prison.

Now, state lawmakers are making it somewhat official.

A bipartisan resolution declaring the brandy old fashioned as the official Wisconsin state cocktail won approval Thursday in the state Assembly.

It’s a resolution, not a bill, so even if passed by the Senate the brandy old fashioned won’t make it onto the list of other official state symbols that include milk as the official beverage, kringle as the official pastry, and corn as the official grain. Getting that level of recognition, enshrined in the state’s “Blue Book,” requires introduction of a bill, a public hearing and then the signature of the governor.

Only two states have gone that far: both Alabama and Virginia have whiskey as their official state spirit.

Some efforts to declare official state symbols in Wisconsin, like Colby as the official cheese, have run into opposition. The Colby proposal, around since 2019, has been shredded by those concerned that naming just one official cheese would hurt the sales, or reputation, of others.

But the old fashioned resolution will have a much smoother path. Because it is a resolution, and not a bill, it carries no weight of law. The Legislature can adopt it without a hearing or any public input.

So far this year, the Assembly has passed more than two dozen resolutions for everything from condemning the Hamas attack on Israel to proclaiming June as dairy month.

For the unfamiliar, the old fashioned cocktail in just about every place other than Wisconsin is traditionally made with a whiskey, like bourbon, sugar and bitters.

But in Wisconsin, brandy usually replaces whiskey — and it’s most often poured over a mixture of muddled cherries, orange slices, sugar and bitters. Depending on how sweet or sour the imbiber likes it, the concoction is then topped with a lemon-lime soft drink, sour mix, club soda, or some combination.

It is typically garnished with a cocktail cherry and orange slice, but is also sometimes served with olives, pickled mushrooms and even pickled brussels sprouts.

Democratic Rep. Ryan Clancy, in a pun-filled and lighthearted speech, said that adding savory ingredients to an old fashioned, like pickled vegetables, is an “abomination” that should be a felony offense.

“I felt stirred to speak today as a father, as a bartender, as an American,” Clancy said. “I need to be on record as saying there is only one acceptable style of drink — the brandy sweet old fashioned.”

The Wisconsin variation came about post-World War II when liquor distributors in Wisconsin found a cache of around 30,000 cases of quality brandy that they sold, which became more popular than the bad whiskey that was sold during the war, according to the book “Wisconsin Cocktails.”

“How have we not done this before — passed a resolution making the brandy old fashioned the state cocktail,” said the measure’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Jon Plumer before the vote. “There’s a thousand things in the state of Wisconsin that make us special, and this is just one of them.”

Plumer said that skeptics of the brandy old fashioned shouldn’t knock it until they try it.

“For you whiskey folks, I’m sorry if you’re offended,” he said to laughter during debate.

An employee at the Janesville Goodwill made the discovery while conducting inventory Friday morning, according to the Janesville Police Department.

The store and surrounding area were evacuated as a bomb squad was called in to remove the small bomb and ammunition.

“Employees quickly followed safety protocols by informing store and donation center management and safety teams who then evacuated the building out of precaution for shoppers, donors and employees,” Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin said in a statement to WKOW-TV.

The store and donation center resumed operations shortly after 1:30 p.m. Friday, the statement continued.

Bomblets are part of cluster bombs which contain multiple explosive submunitions. Used during battle, the bombs can be dropped from planes or fired from the ground. Janesville police were trying to determine who left the bomblet and ammunition at the Goodwill store.

Janesville is about 76 miles (122 kilometers) southwest of Milwaukee.

The low wing plane was found submerged in a pond in Kossuth Township, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Milwaukee, the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook.

The male pilot was alone in the aircraft, the sheriff’s office said. His name was not immediately released.

The Manitowoc County Joint Dispatch Center had received a call from the Chicago Center Air Traffic Control Center shortly before 10 a.m. that the plane had not arrived at its destination, the sheriff’s office said.

The sheriff’s office, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.

No, not Marty McFly and Doc Brown — although there are many parallels to the scene in “Back to the Future III” where the two remove the time machine from a cave in hopes of restoring it to full working condition.

“This does remind you of that scene,” said Michael McElhattan, who recently unearthed a dirt-and-dust covered 1981 DeLorean with just 977 miles on it from the darkened corner of a Wisconsin barn where it had long sat.

This car doesn’t run on plutonium, it doesn’t have a flux capacitor, it doesn’t travel to various decades. But it most certainly took McElhattan back in time.

“The car is just as it was in 1981,” he said. “Nothing has been updated or changed, it’s an extremely original example. It was an absolute time capsule.”

‘It changed the trajectory of my life’

The phone rang on the afternoon of September 27 at DeLorean Midwest – a shop owned by McElhattan in Crystal Lake, Illinois that specializes entirely in the repair and restoration of DeLoreans.

McElhattan had first began working at the shop when it opened in 2007 after applying for a job listing he saw in the newspaper that was seeking a DeLorean technician. McElhattan, who had shop experience and an associate’s degree in automotive technology, had gained a familiarity with the DeLorean a decade earlier after his parents were convinced to buy one for his brother while the family attended an auction.  

McElhattan got the job and went on to spend nine years as the shop’s lead technician. He was then promoted to shop manager and in 2016 became the business’ owner with his wife Suzanne. He estimates that around 1,250 DeLoreans have been serviced at his shop in the 17 years he’s been there, including a dozen or so time machines.

“Looking back, the only reason my brother owned that car was to put me where I’m at,” said the 46-year-old McElhattan. “He loved the car, but he did very little with it, drove it I’m guessing under 1,000 miles in the 15-plus years he owned it.

“Had he not purchased that car, I probably never would have replied to that ad in the newspaper. My connection to a DeLorean and being familiar with the car was the reason I had enough confidence to even respond to that ad. It changed the trajectory of my life.”

It was his destiny. Or as George McFly would say, his “density.”

Now let’s go back to the future to answer that September phone call at his shop.  

It was from a DeLorean owner in Albuquerque, New Mexico who was looking to sell his car. For McElhattan, who was surrounded by about 30 of his customer’s DeLoreans in his shop, the thought of traveling to see the car or purchasing it sight unseen and trailering it 1,300 miles seemed an unwarranted logistical challenge.

“Then he said the car is at his uncle’s barn in Dousman, Wisconsin,” McElhattan said, referring to a town just over 60 miles north of his shop. “And he mentioned it only had 977 miles.”

Great Scott!

Only about 9,000 DeLoreans were produced between 1981 and 1982 amid eager anticipation for its debut, making the car itself a rare classic. Finding one that’s been driven fewer than 1,000 miles? Almost nonexistent.

“When he mentioned the mileage,” McElhattan said, “I was pretty motivated to go take a look at it.”

‘The barn find of all barn finds’

McElhattan and one of his technicians, Kevin Thomas, went to see the car the following week, becoming a modern-day 1885-version of Doc and Marty. They even documented it, not with photographs like Marty, but on their YouTube channel DeLorean Nation.

The DeLorean – for years, if not decades – had been inside a barn on a secluded 60-acre residential property, as if waiting to be discovered by time travelers…or car enthusiasts hoping to restore an original to its 1980s showroom glory.

Surrounded by a lawnmower, an ATV and a Dodge pick-up truck, the DeLorean was nestled in the corner of the barn, covered in dust and debris. All four of the car’s tires were flat, its rims sunken into the gravel.

The tires were dry-rotted and cracked but had no treadwear, and the stamping on the Goodyear NCTs proved they were factory originals.  

“These are the tires that went around the test track in Ireland where they were built,” McElhattan said.

The muffler had minimal browning, the body had no sun damage, the front bumper, which typically warps slightly by the headlights when driven regularly, was perfectly flat. The original parts and cosmetic details helped confirm that the car traveled no more than the 977 miles listed on its odometer.  

“This was the barn find of barn finds,” said Thomas, a Wisconsin resident who owns two DeLoreans, one of which he built into a replica time machine. “People are always looking for barn finds like these, and you hardly ever actually find one. This was the quintessential barn find that any classic car enthusiast dreams of.”

Except for the mice living inside the car.

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‘We can make an excellent car out of it’

When McElhattan and Thomas opened the DeLorean’s gullwing door, they noticed its original interior was fully intact but covered in mouse droppings, the rancid smell of which overpowered any musty odor a long-unused car might produce.     

“We opened the door and the first thing I saw was a mouse running across the center console,” Thomas said. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! What is going on in here?’ We’ve never come across a car that had living rodents in it. There were mice crawling all over it.”

But they were crawling on what was a very structurally sound and entirely original DeLorean in need of professional detailing and McElhattan’s shop’s expert restoration.

“We can make an excellent car out of it,” McElhattan said.

So, he negotiated a price on site, received the title to the car and began the process of removing it from the barn.

“We had to unearth the thing,” McElhattan said.

Like Doc and Marty, they had keys to the DeLorean, but that were of no use for a car that would not start.

McElhattan and Thomas used a portable air compressor to fill the tires. After two failed attempts using the ATV to tow it, they used the Dodge pick-up truck to remove the DeLorean from the barn, the sun reflecting off its stainless-steel body for the first time in years.    

They then placed the car onto an open trailer, just like Doc and Marty after they removed the DeLorean from the cave where Doc said it had been for 70 years, two months and 13 days.

“Obviously this one hadn’t been there quite that long, but it sure looked like it had been,” Thomas said. “It was definitely reminiscent of that. As a fan of ‘Back to the Future,’ you look at the car and see it sitting there, your mind just automatically goes straight into that scene.”

‘Connecting with your past’

If the Barn DeLorean was a customer’s car, getting it back on the road would be a roughly six-month project for McElhattan. Being that it’s his own car, he expects it will take a year.  

“It’s a bit of a case of the shoemaker’s children go without shoes because with 30 cars in the shop, the customer cars come first,” he said. “But we do have a plan for this car.”

The first part of that plan has already been completed by letting it air out and ensuring that all mice have vacated.

“The mice are gone now and they’re not using this poor car as their toilet anymore,” McElhattan said. “The eviction has been done.”

Next is making sure the engine has not seized. The plugs will be pulled, the cylinders will be lubricated, the battery will be replaced and the engine will  – probably, hopefully – run for the first time in a long time.

“I’ve done enough of these that there’s a good chance of it coming back to life,” McElhattan said.

Then comes a thorough wash at a professional detailing facility, with the entire interior being taken apart to be cleaned and, if the odor is fully eliminated, reinstalled. Finally comes whatever mechanical repairs are needed to get the car up and running.  

“I’m going to, of course, try to keep this car as original as possible,” McElhattan said.  

With the story of the DeLorean Barn Find having gone viral and garnered public interest, McElhattan and Thomas plan to document each step of the car’s restoration on YouTube so viewers can travel back to 1981 with them.

“That’s what old cars are about for everyone, they bring you back to a certain time,” McElhattan said. “It’s so much about connecting with your past.”

And your future.  

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The man, who was shirtless and had a holstered handgun, approached the governor’s office on the first floor of the Capitol around 2 p.m. Wednesday, state Department of Administration spokesperson Tatyana Warrick said. The 43-year-old man said “he would not leave until he saw Governor Evers” so he could talk about “domestic abuse towards men,” Capitol police said in a bulletin sent to lawmakers and their staffs.

Evers was not in the building at the time, Warrick said.

A Capitol police officer sits at a desk outside of a suite of rooms that includes the governor’s office, conference room and offices for the attorney general.

The man was taken into custody for openly carrying a firearm in the Capitol, which is against the law, Warrick said. Weapons can be brought into the Capitol if they are concealed and the person has a valid permit. The man arrested did not have a concealed carry permit, Warrick said.

The man was booked into the Dane County Jail but later posted bail.

He returned to the outside of the Capitol shortly before 9 p.m., three hours after the building closed, with a loaded assault-style rifle and a collapsible police baton in his backpack, Warrick said. He again demanded to see the governor and was taken into custody.

The man said “he did not own a vehicle and it is likely he has access to a large amount of weapons and is comfortable using them,” police said in the bulletin sent to Capitol workers.

Capitol police named the suspect, but court records show that no charges have been filed as of midday Thursday. The Associated Press normally does not name suspects until they are charged and efforts are made to get comments from them, their lawyer or other representative.

Madison police reported Thursday that the man was taken into protective custody and taken to the hospital. A spokesperson for the police department did not return an email seeking additional details.

“Capitol Police took control of the situation and so it’s over,” Evers told reporters Thursday.

He declined to comment on what security changes may be enacted for him or the Capitol building.

“I never, ever talk about what my security detail does or what they’re planning on doing,” Evers said. “But anytime something like this happens, obviously they reevaluate.”

The incident is just the latest in a series of violent threats against public officials.

Evers, a Democrat, was on a hit list of a gunman suspected of fatally shooting a retired county judge at his Wisconsin home in 2022. Others on that list included Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Whitmer was the target of a kidnapping plot in 2020.

Warrick said no immediate changes to security in the Capitol or for the governor were planned. The public has free access to the Capitol daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. There are no metal detectors.

A Brown County judge sentenced Taylor Schabusiness, 25, for the February 2022 killing of Shad Thyrion, 24. A jury had convicted her in July of first-degree intentional homicide, third-degree sexual assault and mutilating a corpse.

Schabusiness had pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, but jury also found that she wasn’t mentally ill when she killed Thyrion.

Prosecutors said Thyrion and Schabusiness had smoked methamphetamine in the basement of Thyrion’s mother’s Green Bay home before Schabusiness strangled, decapitated and dismembered him. She then left parts of his body throughout the house and in a vehicle, authorities said.

Schabusiness was arrested on Feb. 23, 2022, after Thyrion’s mother called police to her house after she discovered her son’s head in a bucket in the basement.

Brown County Circuit Judge Thomas Walsh said Tuesday before announcing her sentence that “the offense in this case can’t be overstated,” the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported.

“You seem to run out of superlatives. Where the victim’s remains are cut up? These actions are foreign. They shock the community; there aren’t really words for it,” he said.

Schabusiness’ defense attorney, Christopher Froelich, told the court she would speak on her own behalf before Walsh sentenced her. But when the judge asked Schabusiness if there was anything she’d like to say, she replied simply, “No, there isn’t.”

“She’s not a monster,” Froelich told the court, adding that at age 25 there’s still time for his client to be rehabilitated, WBAY-TV reported.

In February, Schabusiness attacked her previous attorney during a hearing before a deputy wrestled her to the courtroom floor.

Multiple flamingos were spotted at a beach along Lake Michigan on Friday, something that has never happened in Wisconsin, according to a report from WTMJ, the NBC affiliate in Milwaukee. The long-legged birds were seen at South Beach in Port Washington, about 27 miles north of Milwaukee.

So many people had to see the feathered friends for themselves that parking near the beach became an issue, prompting police to post a message on Facebook.

“Our guests at south beach have caused a large migration of photographers, wildlife enthusiasts, and onlookers to the area,” the Port Washington Police Department said in a Facebook post, in part. “This has overwhelmed the parking at south beach…”

It’s believed that the flamingoes ended up in Wisconsin after escaping Florida when Hurricane Idalia formed in late August.

Anyone who wants to catch a glimpse of the flamingos doesn’t have long.

They’ll likely return to their habitats after temperatures drop, experts said.

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Even last year, as Republicans won two seats on the state Supreme Court, North Carolina’s congressional delegation split evenly between Democrats and the GOP.

But it’s the Republican Party that is making the decisions in the state, thanks to recent seat gains in the legislature and aggressive stances from GOP lawmakers. It has passed voting changes over Democrats’ objections and this week could vote to wrest power from the governor over how the state’s elections are run.

In both cases, Republicans are expected to override the governor’s veto thanks to their legislative supermajorities.

Those major changes will come on the heels of similar power plays by the Republican legislative majority in Wisconsin, another battleground state where the GOP has lost a series of statewide races.

Republican lawmakers there are trying to fire the state’s nonpartisan elections director and are considering impeaching a newly elected justice on the state Supreme Court. Her victory earlier this year gave the court a liberal majority that could strike down the Republican gerrymander that has given the party its outsized statehouse clout. Wisconsin voters have elected Democrats to all but one of the statewide executive offices that are decided on a partisan basis.

While both parties engage in gerrymandering, the dynamics in North Carolina and Wisconsin go beyond mere redistricting fights and offer a vivid illustration of how Republicans are attempting to maintain power regardless of their level of support among voters. The moves could give the GOP disproportionate influence over everything from partisan redistricting to the certification of next year’s presidential election.

“The fact that these are both purple states is ironically what leads to the brass knuckles politics we see in Wisconsin and North Carolina,” said Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University. In both states, he said, Republican politicians feel “they need to act because they could legitimately lose power.”

Republicans in Wisconsin and North Carolina are aided by their parties’ geographic distribution during statehouse elections. Democrats are clustered in two metro areas of each state — Milwaukee and Madison in Wisconsin, and Charlotte and the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina. That makes it more likely that even fairly drawn legislative districts covering urban areas will be overloaded with Democrats, leaving fewer of the party’s voters to compete elsewhere and giving the GOP an edge in the remaining seats.

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In North Carolina, even with the congressional delegation splitting evenly last year, Republicans won close to a supermajority of seats in the state legislature. They achieved that status this year when a Democratic House member switched her party.

Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at North Carolina’s Catawba College, said less than 15% of the precincts were competitive statewide in 2022.

“It doesn’t take much creativity to tilt districts one way or another,” he said.

The GOP-controlled North Carolina General Assembly had tried to tilt districts more aggressively, drawing maps that favored them even more. Their plan was struck down by the Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court as an illegal gerrymander.

But Republicans are now in the majority on the court, which has signaled that the legislature is clear to draw the districts to more aggressively favor the party next year. That could lock in their supermajority status for several more election cycles.

That’s occurring as the legislature muscles through two election bills that are propelled partly by Republican voters’ lingering beliefs of Trump’s lies that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election. One bill would end the state’s three-day grace period for mailed ballots arriving after Election Day and loosen poll-watching rules in a way that critics worry could lead to intimidation of voters.

The other is potentially more consequential. It would strip the governor of the power to appoint members of the state election board and give that authority to the legislature.

Bill proponents say having leaders of both major parties picking equal numbers of board members would promote bipartisanship and consensus election policies.

But critics say having a board split evenly between the two parties would lead to gridlock, creating a situation where the stalemates would be settled by the Republican-controlled legislature or the Republican-dominated courts — a possibility that could include next year’s presidential contest.

The legislation also could lead to the possible ouster of the state’s respected elections director just months before the presidential election. There have been no widespread problems or concerns with voting in North Carolina under her watch.

“I’ve spoken out against these moves that are not about election security,” Cooper told reporters this past week. “They are only about keeping and gaining power for Republicans.”

Republicans contend the legislature should have more supervision of voting and other key regulatory functions. A bill already vetoed by Cooper would erode his appointment powers to boards that set electricity rates, make environmental policies and build roads.

“The legislature is the elected body closest to the people of North Carolina and has the ability to recruit a qualified, diverse roster of appointees,” Republican state Sen. Warren Daniel, a sponsor of the broader appointments bill, said recently.

That’s been a theme of North Carolina governance for centuries. The state has stood out for having an unusually strong legislature and weak governor, who was the last in the nation to be able to veto legislation, only gaining that power in 1997.

“Our state was founded with the notion that the legislative branch would be the branch with the most authority,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters in June. “Our state’s not set up with three separate co-equal branches. It was clearly contemplated and spelled out in the (state) Constitution that the legislative branch was to have the most authority because it’s the closest to people.”

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That stands in sharp contrast with Wisconsin, where until recently the Legislature acted like a fairly typical law-making body. But since Republicans won the statehouse in 2010 and drew heavily gerrymandered maps that guaranteed their party’s control of both chambers, the Legislature has become increasingly confrontational with the states’ Democratic governor, Tony Evers.

Republican lawmakers blocked Evers from installing many appointees on state boards. Last week, the state Senate voted to fire the state’s nonpartisan election director, drawing an immediate legal challenge. After voters overwhelmingly elected a Democratic-backed justice to the state Supreme Court earlier this year, flipping the majority from conservative to liberal for the first time in 15 years, the Legislature threatened to impeach her — even before she had heard a case.

Last week, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos offered to drop the impeachment if Democrats agreed to a new redistricting process he cast as nonpartisan, something Evers rejected as a sham proposal. To Dale Schultz, a former Republican state senator, the sharpness of Evers’ rejection symbolized the depths to which Wisconsin politics have plunged.

“Nobody wants half a loaf; they’d rather starve,” Schultz said. He reserved most of his scorn, however, for the Legislature’s maneuvers.

“We see increasingly desperate measures to hang onto power,” he said.

___

Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writers Scott Bauer and Harm Venhuizen in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.

Wisconsin maritime historians Brendon Baillod and Robert Jaeck found the 156-year-old Trinidad in July off Algoma at a depth of about 270 feet (82 meters). They used side-scan sonar to hone in on its location based on survivor accounts in historical records.

“The wreck is among the best-preserved shipwrecks in Wisconsin waters with her deck-house still intact, containing the crew’s possessions and her anchors and deck gear still present,” states a Thursday news release announcing the Trinidad’s discovery.

The 140-foot-long (43-meter-long) schooner was built at Grand Island, New York, in 1867 by shipwright William Keefe, and was used primarily in the grain trade between Milwaukee, Chicago and Oswego, New York.

But it was carrying a load of coal bound for Milwaukee when early on May 13, 1881, it developed a catastrophic leak after passing through the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal. It sank about 10 miles (16.1 kilometers) off the coast of Algoma, “taking all the crew’s possessions and the captain’s pet Newfoundland dog with her,” the news release states.

Captain John Higgins and his crew of eight survived and reached Algoma, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) north of Milwaukee, after rowing for eight hours in the ship’s yawl boat. Higgins believed the Trinidad’s hull was damaged a few days before the sinking as it passed through ice fields in the Straits of Mackinac.

After discovering the Trinidad in July, Baillod and Jaeck reported their finding to an underwater archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society who arranged for the site to be surveyed with an underwater vehicle that verified the vessel’s identity and documented historic artifacts, according to the news release.

A three-dimensional model of the ship has been created to allow people to explore the site virtually. Baillod and Jaeck plan to work with the Wisconsin Historical Society to nominate the site to the National Register of Historic Places.

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Leo Burt was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list immediately after the 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall and remains the last fugitive sought by the FBI in connection with radical anti-Vietnam War activities.

The bombers parked a stolen van packed with fertilizer and fuel outside the university’s Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall and lit the fuse in the early morning hours of Aug. 24, 1970. The bomb attack, which was the nation’s most powerful until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, killed 33-year-old graduate student Robert Fassnacht, who was doing research in the middle of the night. It also injured other people and caused millions of dollars in damage. The bombers fled to Canada.

Three of the four wanted men were captured in the 1970s after trying to live underground. They were convicted, served short prison terms and resumed their lives.

Burt, who grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, came to Wisconsin on an ROTC scholarship and joined the rowing team, vanished. One former prosecutor called him “Wisconsin’s state ghost.”

The FBI received tips and alleged sightings from all over the world for decades, often spiking around anniversaries of the bombing. Some theorize that Burt is dead, while others compare him to D.B. Cooper, the hijacker who disappeared after parachuting out of an airliner with $200,000. There was even a theory in the 1990s, proven untrue with Theodore Kaczynski’s arrest, that he may have been the Unabomber.

The FBI continues to offer $150,000 for information leading to Burt’s arrest.

The FBI’s Milwaukee field office on Thursday released the photos that envision Burt as a 75-year-old man. The photo was done in conjunction with the 53rd anniversary of the bombing, which was last week, said FBI spokesperson Leonard Peace.

In his photo from 1970, Burt is wearing glasses and has a full head of dark, curly hair. In the new age-processed depiction, he is mostly bald and shown with and without glasses.

Madison attorney Lester Pines, 73, was a UW student at the time of the bombing. As a young attorney in 1975 he was part of a team that defended one of the bombers.

“If the FBI is correct, Leo Burt’s visage has changed much worse than mine has,” Pines said in reaction to the updated photo simulation. “I guess that Leo has not taken good care of himself, if he’s even still alive.”

His oldest son, Joey Wurzelbacher, said his father died Sunday in Wisconsin after a long illness. His family announced this year on an online fundraising site that he had pancreatic cancer.

“The only thing I have to say is that he was a true patriot,” Joey Wurzelbacher — whose father had the middle name Joseph and went by Joe — said in a telephone interview. “His big thing is that everyone come to God. That’s what he taught me, and that’s a message I hope is heard by a lot of people.”

He went from toiling as a plumber in suburban Toledo, Ohio, to life as a media sensation when he asked Obama about his tax plan during a campaign stop.

Their exchange and Obama’s response that he wanted to “spread the wealth around” aired often on cable news. Days later, Obama’s Republican opponent, U.S. Sen. John McCain, repeatedly cited “Joe the Plumber” in a presidential debate.

Wurzelbacher soon faced intense media scrutiny and acknowledged that he didn’t have a plumber’s license, saying at the time he didn’t need one because he worked for a small plumbing company owned by someone else.

Wurzelbacher went on to campaign with McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, but he later criticized McCain in his book and said he did not want him as the GOP presidential nominee.

His sudden fame turned him into a sought-after voice for many anti-establishment conservatives, and he traveled the country speaking at tea party rallies and conservative gatherings.

He also wrote a book and worked with a veterans organization that provided outdoor programs for wounded soldiers.

In 2012, he made a bid for a U.S. House seat in Ohio, but he lost in a landslide to Democrat Marcy Kaptur in a district heavily tilted toward Democrats.

Republicans had recruited him to run and thought his fame would help bring in enough money to mount a serious challenge. But he drew criticism during the campaign for suggesting that the United States should build a fence at the Mexico border and “start shooting” at immigrants suspected of entering the country illegally.

Wurzelbacher returned to working as a plumber after he gave up on politics, his family said.

Funeral arrangements were pending. Survivors include his wife, Katie, and four children.

Associated Press writer Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

Republicans chose Milwaukee for the first debate and for the national convention in just 11 months largely because of Wisconsin’s well-earned status as a swing state. Four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point here, with Donald Trump winning narrowly in 2016 before losing by a similar margin in 2020.

“Everybody needs to be prepared for all-out war as usual,” said longtime Republican strategist Stephan Thompson.

To participate in Wednesday’s debate, the Republican National Committee required candidates to meet donor and polling thresholds and sign a pledge to support the GOP candidate in the general election. Trump, the frontrunner who faces criminal charges in four separate cases, says he will not attend.

Those expected to be on the stage include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Vice President Mike Pence, ex-Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Michigan businessman Perry Johnson also say they have met the requirements to make the stage. The official lineup is still coming together because candidates have until Monday evening to provide evidence to the RNC that they have qualified.

The first GOP primary voters will weigh in on the nomination in less than five months, when Iowa holds its Jan. 15 caucus, followed by other early states in February. The eventual nominee is expected to face President Joe Biden in November.

Wisconsin will be one of the biggest toss-ups in the general election. It’s a distinction held by a shrinking but often-shifting number of places, as former swing states like Ohio and Florida become more reliably Republican and Virginia and Colorado more Democratic. That leaves Wisconsin along with Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada as among the most competitive states that could decide the presidency.

In a sign of Wisconsin’s importance, Biden traveled to Milwaukee last week to talk up his work to create manufacturing jobs. On Sunday, his campaign announced it is spending $25 million to run ads in seven states, including Wisconsin, to counter Republicans as they debate. The ad buy includes the campaign’s first investments in Hispanic and Black media, the campaign said.

Wisconsin’s status as a top electoral target dates back more than 20 years.

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore carried Wisconsin by a scant 5,700 votes, or just .22% of the total votes cast. That makes Biden’s win in 2020 by nearly 21,000 votes, or a .56% margin, look like a blow out. Two other races — John Kerry’s .38% margin of victory in 2004 and Trump’s .77% win in 2016 — were also razor close.

And there’s no sign of Wisconsin becoming any less evenly divided.

Democrats have been able to chip into the once-reliably conservative Milwaukee suburbs that saw GOP support drop in the Trump era. Democrats also capitalized on population gains in Dane County, home to the liberal capital city of Madison and the University of Wisconsin.

The Democratic moves have been able to help offset Republican gains made in rural areas during the Trump era.

“Wisconsin has almost the exact mix of urban, suburban and rural populations that are needed to maintain a competitive status,” said Anthony Chergosky, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse political science professor. “It all adds up to a state that is highly contested politically but a state that does not look like it did 10, 20 or 30 years ago.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, whose district includes Madison, noted Republicans chose Wisconsin to be the first state to launch its early voting effort, embracing a tactic long used by Democrats but that Trump and others in the GOP shunned and falsely asserted was rife with fraud. Trump also now is encouraging early voting.

Democrats in Wisconsin are headed into the 2024 presidential season feeling emboldened.

They have won 14 of the past 17 statewide elections, including Biden in 2020, Gov. Tony Evers in 2022 and Janet Protasiewicz in April. Her victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race took majority control of the court away from conservatives for the first time in 15 years, with major decisions looming on abortion access, redistricting and voting rules.

Republicans have had wins, including reelecting U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson last year, picking up a congressional seat and increasing majorities in the state Senate and Assembly. But those gains were overshadowed by the losses in the presidential, governor and Supreme Court races, Thompson said.

In addition to the presidential race, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin is up for reelection to a third term next year. And both sides are preparing for the possibility that the new liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court orders new legislative maps and forces every current lawmaker to stand for election.

On the presidential race, DeSantis was showing strength this summer while he struggled nationally.

Trump was favored by 31% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents surveyed, while DeSantis was at 30% in a Marquette University Law School poll released June 29. But in a head-to-head matchup, DeSantis was favored by 57% and Trump by 41%.

Since that poll was done, Trump was indicted for a third and fourth time and DeSantis shook up his campaign as he struggles to chip into Trump’s support nationally.

Wisconsin Republicans are more divided on Trump than the past two times he ran. Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in 2020, and his repeated lies about the outcome in Wisconsin and calls to decertify the results, alienated him from many top Republicans.

“He’s kind of like a warm beer,” the Democrat Pocan said of Trump. “He’s not exactly what we strive for here in the state. I just don’t think there’s a lot of growth potential for him should he be the Republican nominee.”

DeSantis, during a July fundraising swing to Wisconsin, attracted more than a dozen Republican state lawmakers to an event, including former Gov. Tommy Thompson, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and Tim Michels, the 2022 Republican candidate for governor. The hosts included Republican mega-donors Dick and Liz Uihlein, who donated to efforts to get Trump elected in 2016 and 2020.

“Wisconsin Republicans are going to think about one, is this somebody who can beat Trump in a primary and two, can they beat Biden?” Thompson said. “At the end of the day, people here just want to win. Plain and simple.”

___

Associated Press writer Sara Burnett in Chicago contributed to this report.

The proposal comes amid a wider push by state lawmakers to roll back child labor laws and despite the efforts of federal investigators to crack down on a surge in child labor violations nationally.

Under current law, 14- and 15-year-olds in Wisconsin are prohibited from working most jobs unless they have permission from a parent or guardian and have verified their age with the state Department of Workforce Development. The department can revoke youth work permits at any time if it believes a child’s safety is being threatened.

Sen. Cory Tomczyk and Reps. Clint Moses and Amy Binsfeld, the Republicans sponsoring the bill, called youth work permits “needless administrative barriers that slow down the hiring process.”

“It’s important that young people have the opportunity to work without having to endure excessive government regulation,” they said in a statement asking other lawmakers to cosponsor the bill.

The bill continues to require employers to keep their own records of employees’ ages and hours worked, but without work permits verified by a state agency, companies caught violating child labor laws can more easily claim ignorance.

Earlier this year, the Labor Department fined Wisconsin-based meat packing contractor Packers Sanitation more than $1.5 million for employing at least 100 children, some as young as 13, to clean dangerous equipment such as bone saws and skull splitters in plants across the U.S. The company claimed it wasn’t aware that those workers were minors but said it has since taken steps to improve the way it verifies employees’ ages.

State lawmakers across the country, largely Republicans, have in recent years embraced legislation that would allow kids to work longer hours and in more hazardous occupations. Many such bills were proposed as solutions to worker shortages, but advocates against child labor have decried the measures as needlessly endangering children.

Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law in March eliminating permits that, similar to those in Wisconsin, required employers to verify a child’s age and obtain a parent’s consent.

Sanders later signed separate legislation raising civil penalties and creating criminal penalties for violating child labor laws, but advocates worry that eliminating the permit requirement makes it significantly more difficult to investigate violations because there are fewer records of where kids are being employed.

Earlier this year, Wisconsin Republicans proposed allowing children as young as 14 to serve alcohol in restaurants and bars. If that bill passed, Wisconsin would have the lowest such limit nationwide, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

The work permits bill proposed Friday follows little more than a month after a 16-year-old boy in northern Wisconsin died while working at a sawmill. Initial reports suggest that Michael Schuls was performing work allowed by state laws when he was killed by a wood-stacking machine, but his death and the deaths of other teen workers this summer have brought increased attention to child labor rules.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is unlikely to sign either of the Wisconsin proposals into law if they pass the Republican-controlled Legislature. He vetoed a bill last year that would have let 14- and 15-year-olds work later hours during the summer.

Evers’ Republican predecessor, former Gov. Scott Walker, signed a bill in 2017 that removed work permit requirements for 16- and 17-year-olds.

From his Fitchburg home in suburban Madison, Anderson must exit his 47th Assembly District, pass through the 77th District, reenter the 47th District, then head north through the 48th District to finally reach a cluster of homes assigned like a remote outpost to his district.

Unusual? Yes. Inconvenient? Yes.

Unconstitutional? Perhaps.

Though the Wisconsin Constitution requires legislative districts “to consist of contiguous territory,” many nonetheless contain sections of land that are not actually connected. The resulting map looks a bit like Swiss cheese, where some districts are dotted with small neighborhood holes assigned to different representatives.

Wisconsin’s nationally peculiar practice of detached districts is cited as one of several alleged violations in a recent lawsuit seeking to strike down current Assembly and Senate districts and replace them before the 2024 election.

Like similar cases in states ranging from North Carolina to Utah, the Wisconsin lawsuit also alleges partisan gerrymandering is illegal under the state constitution’s guarantee of equal protection and free speech.

Though such claims have had mixed results nationally, Democrats hope the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s new liberal majority will deliver a resounding rejection of gerrymandering that has given Republicans a lopsided legislative majority.

But the challenge to noncontiguous districts could provide judges a way to decide the case without ever addressing whether partisan gerrymandering is illegal.

“It could be that this gives the court a completely neutral basis for deciding the maps are no good,” said Kenneth R. Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.

Wisconsin’s Assembly districts rank among the most tilted nationally, with Republicans routinely winning far more seats than would be expected based on their average share of the vote, according to an Associated Press analysis. In other states, such as Nevada, Democrats have reaped a disproportionate advantage from redistricting.

Most states are guided by at least four traditional principles for reshaping state legislative districts after each decennial census. Those include districts being nearly equal in population, compact and contiguous and following the boundaries of cities and counties. “Contiguous” generally is understood to mean all parts of a district are connected, with some logical exceptions for islands.

In some states, mapmakers have gotten creative by using narrow strips of roads or rivers to connect otherwise distinct parts of a district. But few have gone so far as Wisconsin in treating contiguous as a loose synonym for “nearby.”

Wisconsin’s detached districts are ”profoundly weird,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Marymount University Law School in Los Angeles who created the All About Redistricting website.

Anderson’s legislative district, for example, includes more than a dozen remote territories scattered around the Madison area that are disconnected from the district’s main portion in Fitchburg, McFarland and Monona. That makes door-to-door canvassing particularly challenging for Anderson, who uses a wheelchair that must be repeatedly loaded and unloaded from a van.

The situation also is confusing for his remote constituents whose neighbors are represented by someone else, Anderson said.

“It just doesn’t serve the people that live in those little bubbles to not have the same kind of community cohesion and interests being represented,” he said.

Gabrielle Young, 46, lives in one of the “land islands” Anderson represents. But until she was contacted by lawyers filing the redistricting lawsuit, Young said she had no idea Anderson had to travel through another district to campaign in her neighborhood. Young agreed to serve as a plaintiff in the lawsuit alleging the disconnected districts violate the state constitution.

“I could have gone the rest of my life living here not realizing it was happening, but that doesn’t make it OK,” she said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Among other things, the lawsuit cites an 1892 case in which the Wisconsin Supreme Court stated districts “cannot be made up of two or more pieces of detached territory.” Yet the practice proliferated over time, with 55 of the 99 Assembly districts and 21 of the 33 Senate districts now composed of disconnected portions, according to the lawsuit.

“Clearly, at some point, things sort of went awry,” said Mark Gaber, senior director of redistricting at Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based group that helped bring the lawsuit.

“It seems pretty clear to me that you have to enforce the words as they are written,” Gaber added.

That has not always been the case.

In 1992, a federal judicial panel considering a Wisconsin redistricting lawsuit essentially endorsed detached legislative districts. Wisconsin’s Democratic-led Legislature and Republican governor had failed to agree on new districts following the 1990 census. The court was left to pick among various plans submitted by the parties. Republican plans proposed districts with literal contiguity, but the judges opted for a Democratic approach that did not.

The federal judges said legislative districts containing disconnected “islands” of land were similar to towns that had been legally permitted to annex noncontiguous areas.

“Since the distance between town and island is slight, we do not think the failure of the legislative plan to achieve literal contiguity a serious demerit,” the judges wrote in 1992.

The political roles are reversed 30 years later. Republicans, who now control the Legislature, proposed Assembly and Senate maps with disconnected districts that the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted last year. Democrats, who control the governor’s office, are backing the legal challenge.

“The districts are constitutional because they are legally contiguous,” Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said in a statement to The Associated Press alluding to prior court rulings. He declined further comment.

Though contiguity requirements have a long national history in redistricting, they have not always been explicitly defined, thus leaving room for interpretation, said Micah Altman, a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose specialties include redistricting.

Criteria such as contiguous and compact districts must be balanced with other principles, such as distributing the population equally and not splitting municipalities and counties among districts, he said.

“Turning one knob on the system makes you have to turn down the other knob at least a bit,” Altman said.

In the case of Anderson’s district, the disconnected sections likely have not made much difference in the partisan composition of his voters. Anderson is a Democrat, and so are the majority of Madison-area voters.

But redistricting experts say there still is potential for politicians to rig the map to their favor by drawing remote sections of districts.

“When you allow mapmakers to draw districts that are noncontiguous, you give them even more flexibility to perpetrate abuse,” Levitt said.

The incident is another blemish for the southeastern Wisconsin city, which endured days of protests three years ago after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, who is Black, during a domestic disturbance. A white Illinois teenager named Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people during a night of unrest, killing two of them, an incident that became a flashpoint in the national debate over guns, vigilantism and racial injustice.

The hit-and-run crash happened on July 20, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported this week. Police said that witnesses told them they saw two Black men and a Black woman flee toward an Applebee’s restaurant. One witness said the woman was carrying a child, according to police.

An Applebee’s employee told officers that some “suspicious people” who may have been involved in the crash were in the restaurant and directed officers to two people, including a Black man holding a baby.

The officers tried to take the baby from the man and arrest him. The man yelled that he hadn’t done anything wrong and officers should let him go. The video shows that after the officers removed the baby from his arms, they threw him to the ground and an officer began punching him as he ordered the man to put his hands behind his back.

Officers then discovered the people responsible for the crash in the restaurant’s bathroom.

Police said the man who was punched wasn’t responsible for the crash but tried to leave in defiance of officers’ orders and resisted them.

Lt. Joseph Nosalik, a spokesperson for the Kenosha Police Department, didn’t immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press inquiring about the race of the officer who appeared to punch the man.

Kenosha found itself embroiled in a days-long protest in August 2020 after Officer Rusten Sheskey, who is white, shot Jacob Blake, who is Black, during a domestic disturbance. Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, fatally shot two men and wounded another, saying he had been attacked and fired in self-defense. A jury acquitted him of homicide and endangerment charges in November 2021.

Leaders of Kenosha, a nonprofit that describes itself online as advocating for transformative and restorative justice, held a news conference Wednesday to call for charging the officers involved in the Applebee’s incident.

“It just doesn’t seem that anyone was a voice of reason that had a uniform on,” said Tanya McLean, executive director of Leaders of Kenosha.

She said officers acted out of fear, just as Sheskey did.

“We don’t want to stand here and have these conversations about people being harmed when they’re simply having a meal with their family,” she said.

A Rotorway 162F helicopter and an ELA Eclipse 10 gyrocopter collided shortly after noon local time at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, authorities said. The aircraft belonged to individuals attending the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual fly-in convention in Oshkosh but were not involved in the air show, a statement from the organization said.

The association, citing the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office, said two people were killed and two injured. The injured were taken to a local hospital and were in stable condition.

The association said further information would be released as additional details are confirmed. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.

Separately, a plane earlier Saturday crashed into Lake Winnebago near Oshkosh, killing two people, according to the sheriff’s office. The NTSB is also investigating that case, which involved a single-engine North American T-6 aircraft.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, speaking in a round of interviews Friday on Wisconsin conservative talk radio, did not refute reports of his actions or back down from what he did.

Van Orden used a profanity to describe the pages as lazy and and another to order them off the floor of the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday night, according to a report in the online political newsletter PunchBowl News. The pages were laying down to take photos in the Rotunda, according to the publication.

“I’m not going to apologize for making sure that anybody — I don’t care who you are and who you’re related to — defiles this House,” Van Orden said on “The Jay O’Donnell Show.” “It’s not going to happen on my watch, man.”

Van Orden said he was protecting the integrity of the Capitol Rotunda because it served as a field hospital during the Civil War and it’s where presidents have lain in state upon their deaths. He said the young people he confronted were “goofing off” and that Democrats were making it an issue.

“Would this be an issue if those young people did not have political connections?” Van Orden said on “The Jay Weber Show.” “Why do you think this is an issue, pal?”

A former Navy SEAL who was outside of the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, Van Orden also appeared to embrace the presence of alcohol in his office the same evening he encountered the pages. Images were posted on social media showing bottles of liquor and beer cans on a desk in his office. Van Orden said on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, that the alcohol was from constituents.

And his spokeswoman Anna Kelly posted: “As the Congressman says, once you cross the threshold to our office, you are in Wisconsin!” She followed that with a beer mug emoji.

Van Orden represents Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, a GOP-leaning jurisdiction that comprises parts of central, southwestern and western Wisconsin, including moderate exurbs of Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

On Thursday evening, just before the Senate left for its August recess, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rebuked Van Orden’s behavior and thanked the pages, high school-age students who serve as helpers and messengers around the Senate. Several of the pages were sitting on the Senate floor at the time, smiling and nodding as dozens of senators stood and gave them a standing ovation.

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Without mentioning Van Orden by name, Schumer said he was “shocked” to hear about the behavior of a member of the House Republican majority and “further shocked at his refusal to apologize to these young people.” He noted that Thursday was the final day for this class of pages.

“They’re here when we need them,” Schumer said. “And they have served this institution with grace.”

McConnell said he associated himself with Schumer’s words. “Everybody on this side of the aisle feels exactly the same way,” he said.

When asked about McConnell’s rebuke, Van Orden said Friday “I don’t know what it was because I honestly have not tracked any of this stuff.”

Van Orden was elected to Congress in 2022 after a losing bid in 2020. He has insisted that he did not enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and on Friday again condemned those who did, calling them “buffoons.” That didn’t stop fellow Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat, from invoking the Jan. 6 attack in criticizing Van Orden.

“Wonder if he told that to his fellow insurrectionists, who were beating police officers on the same ground?” Pocan said on X.

Rebecca Cooke, a Democrat who is running to challenge Van Orden in 2024, called him an embarrassment and a hypocrite. She called Van Orden a “serial harasser” and referenced an incident in June 2021 when Van Orden was upset about a display of LGBTQ+ books at a southwestern Wisconsin library and yelled at a teenager who was working there.

“For someone to perhaps drunkenly, and definitely belligerently, yell at these kids for enjoying our nation’s Capitol is just stupid,” Pocan said Friday. “He would be best to say it was stupid and just move on.”

The Brown County jury deliberated less than an hour before convicting Taylor Schabusiness, 25, of homicide, third-degree sexual abuse and mutilating a corpse in the February 2022 killing of Shad Thyrion, 24, news outlets reported.

Authorities say she strangled Thyrion at the Green Bay home he shared with his mother, sexually abused him and dismembered his body, leaving parts of it throughout the house and in a vehicle.

In his closing argument, Brown County District Attorney David Lasee called the case “bizarre.”

“This is strange. This is unnatural — but in no way is it unclear,” Lasee said. “She did cause Shad Thyrion’s death.”

Defense attorney Christopher Froelich said the case was “a puzzling, unclear collection of facts.”

“Was this an accidental death? Was there intent to kill Shad Thryion? It’s foggy, it’s cloudy, it’s hard to figure out,” Froelich said.

The trial now moves into a second phase to determine whether Schabusiness was mentally ill and should be sent to a mental institution or should go to prison.

Following her arrest, Schabusiness had a not guilty plea entered on her behalf by the court and a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity entered by her former attorney.

Brown County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Walsh ruled in March that Schabusiness was competent to stand trial.

In February, Schabusiness attacked her previous attorney during a hearing before a deputy wrestled her to the courtroom floor.

Gerrit Marshall, a retired television broadcast engineer from Madison, prevailed Saturday night at Sloppy Joe’s Bar, a frequent hangout of Ernest Hemingway when he lived in Key West during the 1930s.

“This is the best birthday I have ever had,” said Marshall, whose birthday falls just one day after the July 21 anniversary of Hemingway’s birth.

On his 11th attempt, Marshall triumphed over nearly 140 other entrants in the contest that featured two preliminary rounds and Saturday’s finals.

Competitors in sportsman’s attire, most emulating the rugged “Papa” persona Hemingway adopted in his later years, paraded onstage at Sloppy Joe’s before a judging panel of previous winners.

Marshall said he shares several characteristics besides appearance with Hemingway, and has written both nonfiction and short fiction.

“Like Hemingway, I have a love of the outdoors; I love fishing one heck of a lot,” he said, citing catches of walleye and northern pike in Wisconsin waters, as well as angling for tarpon in the Florida Keys.

He said, however, that he can’t match the late author’s tally of four marriages.

“I only have one wife, but that doesn’t matter — that’s all I need,” said Marshall.

As well as the contest and other festival events, the look-alikes focus on raising scholarship funds for Keys students. Hemingway Look-Alike Society president David Douglas estimated that they amassed close to $125,000 during the 2023 festival.

Hemingway Days salutes the vigorous lifestyle and literary legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning author, who wrote enduring classics including “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “To Have and Have Not” while living in Key West from 1931 until late 1939.

Sixteen jurors were selected Friday for the homicide trial of Taylor Schabusiness, 25, following the judge’s ruling that the Green Bay woman was able to help in her defense, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported. Four of the jurors will serve as alternates.

Defense attorney Christopher Froelich told the court he disagreed with that ruling.

Schabusiness is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and third-degree sexual assault in the February 2022 killing of Shad Thyrion, 25.

Authorities say she strangled Thyrion at the Green Bay home he shared with his mother, sexually abused him and dismembered his body, leaving parts of it throughout the house and in a vehicle.

Since her arrest, Schabusiness has had not guilty pleas entered on her behalf by the court and a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity entered by her former attorney.

Brown County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Walsh had ruled in March that Schabusiness was competent to stand trial. He asked the jurors Friday to report to the courthouse on Monday morning for opening statements in a trial that’s expected to last a week.

In February, Schabusiness attacked her previous attorney during a court hearing before a deputy wrestled her to the courtroom floor.

“I’m devastated that the board decided to terminate my contract and remove me from my classroom, but I am a teacher at my core and no school board can take that away from me,” the 44-year-old educator tells TODAY.com.

“Tonight I have an achey breaky heart but tomorrow I’m gonna get up and keep fighting for what is right,” she added in a tweet. “Thanks for all the love!”

TODAY.com reached out to the Waukesha School District Board of Education for comment, but did not hear back at the time of publication.

The Waukesha School District Board of Education voted on July 12 to terminate Tempel, NBC affiliate WTMJ of Milwaukee reported.

Tempel spoke to TODAY.com in March, after she voiced her opposition to the Waukesha School District’s decision to ban her elementary school students from performing the Miley Cyrus-Dolly Parton duet.

“It’s just a really good song about peace, love, appreciating diversity and getting along, and my students liked it so much,” Tempel told TODAY.com at the time.

“When I told them, they were just so sad,” she added. “They kept asking: ‘Why? Why?’ It was really hard — I had to say I didn’t know.”

A statement from the Waukesha School District’s public relations and communications office in March confirmed that the song was reviewed by a central office administrator.

“They determined that the song could be deemed controversial in accordance with the policy,” the statement said, adding that the decision was “fully supported by the Superintendent” but that “at no time was the Board of Education involved.”

After Tempel publicly disagreed with the decision, Superintendent James Sebert asked for an investigation into the educator, citing the “hundreds” of phone messages and emails he received as a result of her social media posts, as reported by NBC affiliate WTMJ of Milwaukee.

During the July 12 meeting, WTMJ reported, Sebert said the way Tempel publicly disagreed with the decision “was in direct violation of multiple board policies.”

After the vote, Tempel’s attorney told WTMJ they were disappointed with the outcome but added that they “have everything we need in terms of a factual basis to file a First Amendment claim.”

“I’m a citizen teacher with First Amendment Rights,” Tempel tells TODAY.

“Now every student that I’ve been privileged to teach knows that when I taught them that in this country every person has a voice and the right to be heard, I meant it,” she adds. “Last night I slept so well because I know I have done nothing wrong.”

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Wisconsin lawmakers enacted statutes outlawing abortion in all cases except to save the mother’s life in 1849, a year after the territory became a state. The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion nullified the ban, but legislators never repealed it. Then, the high court’s decision last June to overturn Roe v. Wade reactivated the statutes.

Republicans and their conservative allies across the country praised the reversal, but the decision energized Democratic voters. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers parlayed anger over the ruling into a re-election victory in November. The issue figures to be front and center again in the state as the 2024 presidential campaign ramps up.

The state’s Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, has vowed to restore abortion access. He filed a lawsuit in Dane County days after Roe v. Wade was overturned, seeking to repeal the ban.

Kaul argues that the ban is too old to enforce and that a 1985 law that permits abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb supersedes the ban. Three doctors later joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs, saying they fear being prosecuted for performing abortions.

Kaul has named district attorneys in the three counties where abortion clinics operated until the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade as defendants. One of them, Sheboygan County’s Republican district attorney, Joel Urmanski, filed a motion seeking to dismiss the case in December.

Urmanski maintained that it’s a stretch to argue that the ban is so old it can no longer be enforced and that the 1985 law and the ban complement each other. Since the newer law outlaws abortions post-viability, it simply gives prosecutors another charging option, he contends.

Kaul’s attorneys have countered that the two laws are in conflict and doctors need to know where they stand.

Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Schlipper explained in a written ruling denying Urmanski’s dismissal motion that she interprets the 1849 law as prohibiting people from killing fetuses by assaulting or battering the mother. The law doesn’t apply to consensual abortion, she wrote.

That means the doctor plaintiffs could ultimately win a declaration that they can’t be prosecuted for performing abortions and hence the case should continue, Schlipper wrote.

Andrew Phillips and Jacob Curtis, two of Urmanski’s attorneys, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the decision.

The ruling means that the lawsuit will continue in Schlipper’s courtroom. Regardless of how the judge ultimately rules, the case carries so much weight for the future of the state that it almost certainly will rise to the state Supreme Court, which is exactly where Democrats want it.

Liberal justices will control the court with a 4-3 majority after progressive Janet Protasiewicz is sworn in on Aug. 1. She stopped short on the campaign trail of saying how she would rule on a challenge to the 1849 ban but said repeatedly she supports abortion rights.

Evers tweeted Friday that Schlipper’s decision to allow the case to continue is “good news and a critical step” toward restoring reproductive rights.

Sturgeon Bay police officer Andrew Crabb was nearing the end of his overnight shift on the morning of June 25 when he spotted smoke coming from a barn at a farm. He stopped, dashed across a field and entered the barn, finding the cows trapped and mooing in distress.

“Once I realized what was going on inside that barn, I realized the gate didn’t get undone and those cows were not going to make it,” Crabb told Fox News Digital. “So I ran in there and got the gate and then got them out. And I didn’t have to really encourage them too much. They knew exactly what they needed to do once that gate was open.”

Crabb said the cows “made a beeline” out of the barn and joined the rest of the herd in the pasture. He said the three cows had been kept in the barn overnight because they were deemed “prone to escape.”

Police body camera video shows Crabb entering the barn, with flames near the animals. After he removes a chain from the gate, Crabb says “come on guys” and the cows quickly make their way out of the barn.

“Thankfully, everyone was safe!” Sturgeon Bay police said in a post on the department’s Facebook page.

Crabb said an all-volunteer fire brigade was able to “save the majority” of the barn.

Michael Schuls died Saturday at a pediatric hospital in Milwaukee, two days after officers responded to a call about an unresponsive teenager at Florence Hardwoods, Florence County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Teresa Chrisman said Thursday.

His death comes as lawmakers in several states, including Wisconsin, are embracing legislation to let children work in more hazardous occupations, for more hours on school nights and in expanded roles, including serving alcohol in bars and restaurants as young as 14.

A news release from the sheriff’s office said the teen died after an “industrial accident” but Chrisman said Thursday that Schuls’ cause of death and details of his injuries were not being released because of the ongoing investigation.

Florence County Coroner Jeff Rickaby said an autopsy was performed Thursday morning but it will likely be weeks before Schuls’ cause of death is determined because laboratory results and other information are still pending.

A GoFundMe account set up online for Schuls’ family said he was “working at Florence Hardwoods when horrible tragedy struck.” The teen was on life support before he died, according to the account’s creators.

“Our small community is in absolute shock,” the post says.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating and has made a referral to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division for possible child labor violations concerning hazardous occupations, the Labor Department’s regional director for public affairs, Scott Allen, told Wisconsin Public Radio.

Florence Hardwoods has no comment on the boy’s death while it is under investigation, company office manager Jordan Davis said Thursday. The company is located in the town of Florence, near the border with Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Green Bay.

In Wisconsin, minors are prohibited from working in all logging-related occupations, including jobs involving the operation of sawmills, according to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.

The state’s labor standards prohibit children under 18 from entering a sawmill building and also bar them from felling trees, cutting up fallen trees, collecting or moving logs and using a chainsaw, among other tasks.

The roller coaster’s cars got stuck near the top of a loop around 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the Crandon International Offroad Raceway. Rescue workers arrived to find eight passengers hanging upside down from their safety harnesses. Firefighters used ladder trucks to reach them, securing each one before releasing their over-the-shoulder safety bars, the Crandon Fire Department said.

It took nearly three and a half hours to get all the passengers down. One person was taken to a hospital.

According to the fire department, a ride operator said something broke down mechanically on the coaster, which had been inspected by the state.

The state Department of Safety and Professional Services is responsible for reviewing plans for amusement parks and inspecting rides in Wisconsin. Spokesperson John Beard said in an email that the agency is investigating and dispatched an inspector on Monday to the scene in Crandon, a city of about 1,700 northwest of Green Bay. He had no further information on possible findings.

NBC affiliate WJFW reports the roller coaster at the Forest County Festival abruptly stopped mid-ride on Sunday, leaving festivalgoers stuck for three hours.

Emergency responders rescued the passengers and they were taken to the hospital to be checked out.

“There is a mechanical failure with the ride where it became stuck in the upright position,” said Capt. Brennan Cook, Crandon Fire Department. “The ride was recently inspected by the state of Wisconsin here on site, and at this time we don’t have any other information.”

Videos shared on social media show several people hanging from the stalled roller coaster as rescuers climbed the attraction to free them.

Sunday’s incident at the Crandon International Off Road Raceway was the latest in a string of roller-coaster mishaps in recent days that serves as a reminder of the risks that sometimes arise with amusement park rides.

A roller coaster at Carowinds amusement park in North Carolina shut down last week after a visible crack in the support beam. Video footage of the popular Fury 325 — known as a “Giga coaster” due to its dramatic height of 325 feet— showed a key support beam bending with the top visibly detached as cars packed with unsuspecting passengers whirled by at speeds of up to 95 mph.

The park, which straddles the North Carolina and South Carolina line, closed the ride late last week as questions swirled about how the crack occurred. Those answers remained largely unknown as state investigators were on site in Monday morning.

Last month, a roller coaster train derailed in Sweden sending some passengers plunging to the ground in an amusement park accident that left one dead and nine injured, police and park officials said.

Industry experts have been quick to counter that millions of Americans hop on roller coasters, Ferris wheels, water slides and many other rides without ever experiencing issues. They note injury rates are extremely low.

A 2021 survey compiled on behalf of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions found “0.9 injuries per million rides,” said Caitlin Dineen, the group’s spokesperson. That year, more than 1,200 ride-related injuries were reported out of the typical 1.7 billion rides that take place each year across 400 locations in North America.

“Safety is the top priority for the global attractions industry,” Dineen said. “An excellent safety record is in the best interest of the industry, and leaders within it are committed to providing safe and secure attractions for all their guests and visitors.”

But sometimes deaths do occur on an amusement park ride.

In 2022, Orlando’s International Drive district removed a towering 400-foot ride after it was directly linked to the death of 14-year-old Tyre Sampson — a Missouri teen who fell to his death while on the ride the year prior.

Sampson, who lived near St. Louis, Missouri, was visiting Orlando during spring break when he died.

An initial report from outside engineers hired by the Florida Department of Agriculture said sensors on the ride had been adjusted manually to double the size of the opening for restraints on two seats, resulting in the teen not being properly secured.

The cut comes in reaction to Republican anger over diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs on the system’s 13 universities. Republican leaders have said the $32 million is what they estimated would be spent on those programs over the next two years.

“They need to refocus their priorities on being partners on developing our workforce and the future of the state, and we’re hopeful that they’re going to be ready to do that as we move forward,” Republican state Rep. Mark Born, co-chair of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee, said at a news conference.

The university system could get the $32 million back at a later date if it shows how it would be spent on workforce development efforts, and not diversity, equity and inclusion programs, lawmakers said. The GOP plan also aims to cut more than 180 diversity, equity and inclusion jobs on UW campuses.

Democratic Rep. Evan Goyke called the plan “garbage” before the vote. “You are sending such a painful message to communities of color, people of color around Wisconsin,” he said.

The cut comes despite warnings from UW President Jay Rothman of tuition increases and possible campus closures if the system’s budget was cut.

Rothman said in a statement that the cut “will diminish student access and affordability at our public universities. This is a missed opportunity and a significant setback to Wisconsin’s efforts to win the war for talent.”

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, a former member of the UW Board of Regents, threatened to veto the entire state budget if the university’s budget was cut. Evers has said that cutting the university’s budget given the state’s surplus would be “irrational.”

Republicans earlier this month rejected the university’s top building project — a new engineering building on the flagship Madison campus. Born left open the possibility that the project could be funded later, saying discussions about that would continue.

University leaders asked for a nearly half-billion dollar funding increase, citing financial difficulties stemming from a decadelong tuition freeze and inflation.

Evers proposed a funding increase of more than $300 million for the university system, an amount that already had university leaders saying they would have to consider raising tuition to make up the difference from what they requested.

The Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget-writing committee passed the cut along party lines Thursday before finishing its work on the two-year spending plan. The budget bill heads to the Senate and Assembly for votes next week, before going to Evers who can sign it, veto it or make partial vetoes.

Democrats on the committee slammed the cuts for UW as the latest in a series of budget decisions they say will hurt the state’s economy.

“We reject the entire concept of what they’re doing, that the university system would be cut at a time of surplus,” Goyke said. ”I don’t see in the budget any initiatives that will catch the attention of young people to either come here or to stay here.”

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has been the loudest critic of the university’s diversity efforts, saying at the state party convention on Saturday that he was embarrassed to be a UW alum because of it.

He called DEI “the single most important issue that we are facing as a people, as a nation and as, really, humanity.”

Vos calls the efforts a waste of taxpayer money that only sow racial division.

“For people on the left, (DEI) has become their new religion,” Vos told reporters last week. “They no longer go to church on Sunday, but boy, are they trying to make sure that everybody is evangelized on campus, that there’s only one acceptable viewpoint. That’s not what I think taxpayers should be funding.”

The university should not be “forcing these students to view the world through a lens of race, gender or economic class just to obtain one of these degrees,” Republican state Rep. Alex Dallman said when announcing the cut.

“UW System ought to be teaching them different things, such as critical thinking and problem solving, teamwork and collaboration, professionalism and communication skills,” Dallman said.

Rothman, speaking after a WisPolitics.com event prior to the vote, said at times that DEI efforts can sometimes go too far. Last month, Rothman ordered campuses to stop asking job-seekers to supply statements on their applications describing how they would support equity and diversity.

UW—Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said Thursday she fully supports the school’s DEI employees. They “play a critical role on campus” by supporting veterans, students with disabilities, students of color and first-generation students, Mnookin said in a statement.

The fight reflects a nationwide cultural battle over campus diversity efforts. Republican lawmakers this year have proposed more than 30 bills in 12 states to limit diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in higher education, an Associated Press analysis found in April.

The court’s conservative majority ruled 4-3 that Marshfield police had grounds to search the driver of a vehicle that smelled like marijuana, overturning lower court rulings that said officers couldn’t be sure that what they smelled was not CBD, a legal, marijuana-derived substance. The scents of CBD and marijuana are indistinguishable.

Two officers searched Quaheem Moore in 2019, who was alone in a vehicle that smelled like marijuana when he was pulled over for speeding. Moore told police that a vaping device he had contained CBD and that the car was a rental belonging to his brother. Police did not smell marijuana on Moore.

Moore argued in court that police had no reason to believe he was responsible for the smell.

To justify searching someone, police need enough evidence to believe that person has likely committed a crime. When they obtain more evidence through an illegal search, it’s not allowed to be used in court.

Moore was never charged with possessing marijuana, but officers charged him with possessing narcotics when they discovered small bags of cocaine and fentanyl in his pocket during their search.

A circuit court judge and an appeals court had previously moved to disqualify the drugs that police found, saying the search wasn’t legal.

Justice Brian Hagedorn, who issued Tuesday’s opinion on behalf of the court’s conservative majority, wrote that because Moore was the only person in the car, police could reasonably assume he “was probably connected with the illegal substance the officers identified.”

Tuesday’s ruling referenced a 1999 Supreme Court decision that said officers were justified in arresting a driver because they linked the smell of marijuana from his vehicle to him. That opinion said that the “unmistakable” smell of a controlled substance was evidence that a crime had been committed.

But the court’s three liberal justices called that ruling into question, saying it was outdated and did not account for the subsequent legalization of substances that smell like marijuana. They also said officers did not have strong evidence that Moore had caused the odor in the car he was driving.

“Officers who believe they smell marijuana coming from a vehicle may just as likely be smelling raw or smoked hemp, which is not criminal activity,” Justice Rebecca Frank Dallet wrote in a dissenting opinion.

Moore’s attorney, Joshua Hargrove, warned that the ruling could allow police to base searches on unreliable conclusions and never be held accountable in court. “This opinion could subject more citizens engaged in lawful behavior to arrest,” he said.

The ruling comes as Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin continue to fight over legalizing marijuana.

Republicans who control the Legislature have rejected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ attempts to legalize recreational and medical marijuana. But GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said in April he was working on legislation to legalize medical marijuana as soon as this fall.

Marijuana has been legal in neighboring Michigan and Illinois for years and will become legal in Minnesota in August under legislation passed last month.

Friday evening’s fatal shooting occurred after deputies from the Vernon County Sheriff’s Office were sent to a residence in Genoa for a welfare check, the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation said in a statement.

When deputies arrived, a man was leaving the home. Deputies made a traffic stop but the man began to speed away with a deputy hanging on to the side of the vehicle, authorities said.

A deputy then fired and hit the man, who was pronounced dead at the scene, the department said.

It was not immediately clear whether the deputy being dragged was also the deputy who shot the man.

No officers were injured in the incident, said DCI, which handles investigations of critical incidents involving officers.

When the 911 call came in on June 9, she could hear children screaming “Mom” and wondered if their mother was suffering an emergency. 

But then she looked up the call’s coordinates and realized that it was her 17-year-old daughter Emma on the other end of the line shouting their address, Anderson told NBC affiliate WGBA in Wisconsin. Those were her kids, telling her that her house was on fire.

“Hold on, Mom will be there soon,” she told them.

Anderson’s 12-year-old son Landon heard glass breaking and was able to escape and wake his sister and her friend who were asleep in a camper. 

“I’m unbelievably proud of them,” Anderson told WGBA. “They did exactly, my son especially, he did exactly what he was taught… and that’s a lot to put on a 12-year-old.”

The family is safe but their pets died in the fire.

“My son is taking it very, very difficult,” Anderson said. “He wishes he would have gotten the pets out in time. I’m just reminding him every day how lucky I am that he’s here today.”

The fire in Forestville, which investigators believe was started by an electrical cord, destroyed all of their belongings, according to the family’s GoFundMe. 

“It’s probably just tragic irony that the person who helps us help others, that day needed help,” Southern Door County Fire Chief Rich Olson said. 

The measure, hammered out in secret the past five years largely between Republican lawmakers and the multi-billion dollar alcohol industry, is moving quickly through the GOP-controlled Legislature. It was introduced on Friday and was scheduled for a public hearing on Tuesday. The Legislature is expected to pass it in two weeks.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration has also been involved with negotiations.

Most of the changes would not be noticeable to average alcohol consumers in the state, those who worked closely on the bill said.

But the creation of a new division to oversee liquor laws could lead to the enforcement of largely ignored current laws, like a ban on the shipping of liquor or beer directly to a customer made popular through “beer of the month” clubs and nationwide mail-order catalogs that feature hard-to-get bourbon or other spirits.

“The public will have a better sense that the laws governing alcohol will be enforced uniformly and fairly,” said Scott Stenger, a lobbyist for the Tavern League of Wisconsin.

The fact that all tiers of the industry are welcoming greater enforcement “sends a very powerful message” about the need for more clarity, Stenger said.

Those who worked on the measure with Republican legislative leaders say now is the time to update laws in a state that saw the birth of beer-giant Miller in Milwaukee and in recent years has seen an explosion of smaller craft brewers, like New Glarus Brewing Co. which makes Spotted Cow and other beers available for sale only in Wisconsin.

The bill affects every level of the state’s alcohol industry governing the licensing, producing, selling and distribution of beer, wine and liquor. The so-called three-tier system, created in the 1930s, has been eyed for changes for years, but policy makers and the alcohol industry have been unable to reach agreement.

The three-tiered system was designed to prevent monopolies so the same entity could not produce and sell alcohol at the wholesale and retail levels. But the system has been criticized for years for not keeping up with changes in the industry, including the explosion of smaller craft breweries, the popularity of wedding barns and other innovations.

The bill would require venues that sell or allow alcohol at special events, known generally as wedding barns, to either get a permit or alcohol license to operate legally. The measure would also allow for craft breweries to sell products from other out-of-state breweries. Wineries could open earlier in the morning, at the same time as bars, to sell their products. The bill would also create new guidance for contract brewing, winemaking and distilling, a growing segment of the industry.

The proposal addresses issues that have become a “daily pain in the butt for retailers,” said Brandon Scholz, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Grocers Association.

“It’s a long time coming,” Scholz said.

Perhaps the biggest change is creating a new division within the state Department of Revenue to regulate and oversee regulating the alcohol industry and enforcing the law. One of the loudest targets of criticism under the current system was the lack of a dedicated state office to interpret and enforce regulations.

Enforcement “went to hell” in recent years, as key personnel overseeing alcohol laws retired, said Stenger, with the Tavern League. Wisconsin is one of only a handful of states that doesn’t have a dedicated office charged with enforcement of alcohol laws, he said.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who fought attempts to make piecemeal changes over the years and instead encouraged those involved to take a wider view, said he hoped to pass the measure on June 21. Vos said he was optimistic that the governor would sign it into law.

A wide array of those in the alcohol industry are registered in support, including Kwik Trip, Molson Coors Brewing Co., New Glarus Brewing Company, the Wisconsin Craft Beverage Coalition, the Wisconsin Grocers Association and the Wisconsin Wine and Spirit Institute.

Vos said it has wide support because “everybody gets something out of this and it doesn’t do harm to anyone else.”

The Milwaukee County Zoo shared about the “tragic accident” on Thursday, writing that one of its male zebras, “Stuart,” passed away on Wednesday morning. “Stuart” was starting his time in the habitat that day, running and chasing impalas, which are also housed in the same exhibit.

“Stuart,” then at one point, then hit a “wire containment fence pole,” according to zoo officials. The zoo’s veterinary team immediately responded, but despite their efforts, the zebra didn’t survive its injuries.

“This tragic accident is a heartbreaking loss for the animal care team, and for everyone who cares about the Zoo’s animals,” the zoo added in its news release. “The focus now is on the wellbeing of the impalas and the ostriches who share the habitat.”

“Stuart” was born in 2018 at the Hemker Park and Zoo in Minnesota and arrived at the Milwaukee County Zoo in 2019.

Noah’s Ark, located in Lake Delton just outside Wisconsin Dells, will open for its 45th season on May 27, with the debut of the new “Chameleon” attraction headlining the fun.

The Chameleon transforms the park’s existing Flying Gecko attraction, seating up to four guests and featuring eight speakers and 74 color-changing lights.

The ride, recommended for children and families, takes guests on a 520-foot long plunge through a vibrant overload of sounds and colors that guarantees a different ride experience every time.

To make matters better for those hoping to visit the park this coming week, temperatures are expected to be in the 80s by the end of the weekend, with 90-degree highs possible in the middle of next week.

More information on what Noah’s Ark has to offer for the upcoming season can be found on their website.

Joseph Garrison, 18, and others allegedly stole roughly $600,000 from 1,600 accounts on an unnamed sports betting site. Garrison surrendered to authorities in New York on Thursday and faces six charges including unauthorized access to computers and wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced.

If convicted of all the charges against him, Garrison could be sentenced to up to 57 years in prison.

Prosecutors alleged that Garrison and others used credential stuffing attacks, which entail using stolen usernames and passwords from previous data breaches, to access accounts on other platforms. According to the criminal complaint against Garrison, hackers accessed roughly 60,000 accounts on the sports betting website.

About five months before the sports betting website was hacked, Garrison told investigators from the Madison Police Department that he had taken part in previous credential stuffing attacks, according to the complaint.

The federal defender representing Garrison declined to comment on the case.

Garrison was released on bond Thursday and prohibited from using internet devices other than his phone and computer, which the court will monitor.

The list analyzed the 150 most populous metropolitan areas in the country, using quality of life, job market, affordability and desirability metrics in their methodology.

Coming out on top of the list was a moderately-sized Midwestern city that may leave many Chicagoans with a bad taste in their mouth.

U.S. News & World Report named Green Bay as the best place to live in the nation, citing a revitalized downtown, simultaneous big-city and small-town feel with a “thriving entertainment and arts scene.”

Green Bay stood alone among Midwestern cities being ranked highly, as the rest of the list’s Top 10 featured locations outside of the region.

While not quite cracking the Top 10, iconic Midwestern college towns Madison, Wis. and Ann Arbor, Mich. made the cut for the Top 15, being ranked 11th and 14th respectively.

Below is a full look at the Top 10:

• 1. Green Bay, Wisconsin
• 2. Huntsville, Alabama
• 3. Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina
• 4. Boulder, Colorado
• 5. Sarasota, Florida
• 6. Naples, Florida
• 7. Portland, Maine
• 8. Charlotte, North Carolina
• 9. Colorado Springs, Colorado
• 10. Fayetteville, Arkansas

Illinois was not given much love in the rankings, with the highest ranking for any metro area in the state being 54th for the Quad Cities region, including Moline and Rock Island in Illinois in addition to Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa.

Here’s a look at where other Illinois cities ranked:

• 70. Peoria
• 123. Chicago
• 133. Rockford

A look at the full U.S. News & World Report rankings can be found here.

The suspect fled into woods and was found dead from a gunshot wound, the state Department of Justice said.

No names or other details were immediately released.

The deputy was shot early Saturday evening in Glenwood in St. Croix County, about 60 miles east of Minneapolis.

A jury convicted Marcus Randle El in January of two counts of first degree homicide and other charges in the February 2020 shooting deaths of 27-year-old Brittany McAdory and 30-year-old Seairaha Winchester in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Although Randle El’s convictions resulted in two automatic life sentences, Rock County Judge Barbara McCrory said Wednesday that he will be eligible to petition for early release and extended supervision after 60 years, WISC-TV reported.

McCrory noted that it is not a guarantee that if Randle El does eventually seek early release that his request would be granted.

Prosecutors argued that Randle El, who was a wide receiver for the Wisconsin Badgers from 2004 to 2007, killed Winchester after suspecting that she was informing police of his drug dealing and that he killed McAdory to eliminate her as a witness.

Investigators said that while they did not have a murder weapon directly linking Randle El to the slayings, surveillance footage and text messages tied him to the crimes.

The defense argued the state did not meet its burden of proof and called just two witnesses. Randle El declined to testify in his own defense.

He is the brother of former Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver Antwaan Randle El.

Under current law, only workers age 18 and above can serve alcohol to customers in Wisconsin. The bill would broaden that to workers ages 14 to 17. They could only serve to seated customers, not drinkers who are at the bar itself.

The current age limit on serving alcohol “causes workforce issues due to an establishment’s underage employees only being able to do part of their job,” the bill sponsors Sen. Rob Stafsholt, of New Richmond, and Rep. Chanz Green, of Grandview, said in a memo circulated Monday seeking cosponsors.

They said their idea “creates a simple solution” to the state’s workforce shortage problems in the food and beverage industry. The bill requires the licensed operator of the bar or restaurant be on the premises and supervising.

Although no one under the age of 21 can legally drink alcohol, those under 21 — including minors of any age — in Wisconsin can drink in bars and restaurants if they are with their parents.

If the proposal passes, Wisconsin would have the lowest age limit for workers allowed to serve alcohol, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

The measure is a long way from becoming law. It must pass the Senate and Assembly, both controlled by Republicans, and be signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. His spokesperson Britt Cudaback mocked the proposal Monday, listing numerous initiatives Evers has proposed to address the state’s workforce shortage issue including building more housing and funding schools, before forwarding a message detailing the Republican bill.

Under current law, only workers age 18 and above can serve alcohol to customers in Wisconsin. The bill would broaden that to workers ages 14 to 17. They could only serve to seated customers, not drinkers who are at the bar itself.

The current age limit on serving alcohol “causes workforce issues due to an establishment’s underage employees only being able to do part of their job,” the bill sponsors Sen. Rob Stafsholt, of New Richmond, and Rep. Chanz Green, of Grandview, said in a memo circulated Monday seeking cosponsors.

They said their idea “creates a simple solution” to the state’s workforce shortage problems in the food and beverage industry. The bill requires the licensed operator of the bar or restaurant be on the premises and supervising.

Although no one under the age of 21 can legally drink alcohol, those under 21 — including minors of any age — in Wisconsin can drink in bars and restaurants if they are with their parents.

If the proposal passes, Wisconsin would have the lowest age limit for workers allowed to serve alcohol, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

The measure is a long way from becoming law. It must pass the Senate and Assembly, both controlled by Republicans, and be signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. His spokesperson Britt Cudaback mocked the proposal Monday, listing numerous initiatives Evers has proposed to address the state’s workforce shortage issue including building more housing and funding schools, before forwarding a message detailing the Republican bill.

Hook’s Cheese Company, a renowned cheese producer out of Mineral Point in southwest Wisconsin, is offering the extravagant cheddar starting on May 15, while accepting pre-orders now.

The 20-year white cheddar is sold at such a high price due to the time and labor behind the two decades of aging for the unique cheese.

According to NBC affiliate WMTV, the cheddar will debut at an event operated by the Mineral Point Chamber of Commerce on May 8.

This is the third time the 20-year cheddar will be offered by Hook’s, with all 450 lbs. of the cheese selling within two days during the most recent offering in 2015.

Those interested in pre-ordering the cheese can fill out a form here.

The train derailed in Crawford County at about 12:15 p.m. Two of the train’s three locomotives and an unknown number of cars carrying “freight of all kinds” derailed on the eastern edge of the river, BNSF Railway spokesperson Lena Kent said.

All crew members were accounted for, with one receiving a medical evaluation, she said.

Crawford County Emergency Management Specialist Marc Myhre told WKBT-TV that about 20 BNSF Railway cars were involved.

Two cars went into the Mississippi River, but neither contained hazardous materials, Kent said. Some of the containers that derailed on shore contained paint and lithium ion batteries, and a boom was being placed in the impacted area, she said.

“The volumes involved don’t pose a risk to the river or the communities,” Kent said.

BNSF will work with local and state agencies as appropriate, she said.

The main track is blocked in both directions and an estimated time for reopening the track was not available, Kent said. BNSF had personnel at the scene and the cause of the incident was under investigation.

The Crawford County Sheriff’s Office said on its Facebook page that there was no need to evacuate.

The Federal Railroad Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates safety across the nation’s railroads, tweeted that it was sending a team to the site to gather information and help local emergency workers.

Gov. Tony Evers tweeted that he was briefed on the derailment and is getting regular updates from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, the Department of Natural Resources and state emergency management officials. His spokesperson, Britt Cudaback, said in a short telephone interview that it wasn’t clear if any environmental contamination has happened.

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources spokesperson Katie Grant did not immediately respond to an email asking if the derailment has resulted in any environmental contamination.

The derailment comes almost three months after a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Officials there decided to release and burn toxic vinyl chloride from five tanker cars to prevent a catastrophic explosion.

Hundreds of people had to evacuate in Raymond, Minnesota, last month after a BNSF train hauling ethanol and corn syrup derailed and caught fire.

According to the Raptor Education Group, a Wisconsin-based non-profit organization, the “loon fallout” occurs when ice develops on the bird’s bodies as they fly at high altitudes in cold temperatures.

As ice develops on their bodies, the accumulating weight incapacitates the birds’ ability to fly, leading to them seemingly falling out of the middle of the sky.

Residents who are encountering fallen loons are encouraged to contact a local wildlife center, and are asked not to release the loons to small ponds, as there is not enough space for the birds to then take flight.

Loons can be difficult to handle, and have sharp beaks that they use for their defense. The loons can be transported in Rubbermaid-type containers with air holes on the top.

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For now, the group of lawmakers — whom Vos declined to name — are working only among Assembly Republicans to build enough support, and he hopes to introduce the plan this fall. Vos has long backed some form of medical marijuana program, but no bill has ever received a vote in either the GOP-controlled Assembly or Senate.

Vos said he remains steadfastly opposed to legalizing recreational marijuana and does not want to create a medical program that would be a precursor to that. Wisconsin remains an outlier nationally, with medical marijuana legal in 38 states and recreational marijuana legal in 21. The push for legalization in Wisconsin has gained momentum, as neighboring Illinois and Michigan allow recreational use while Minnesota and Iowa have legalized medical use.

“We are not Illinois. We are not California. We are not Colorado,” Vos said in an interview. “We are a state that’s at best purple. And purple is not legalization of recreational marijuana.”

Vos’s announcement that Republicans have been working on a deal he hopes can pass the Legislature comes on April 20, or “420 Day,” marijuana’s high holiday. Advocates for pot legalization planned to announce a “Grass Routes Tour” that will make four stops across the state to promote cannabis legalization.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard, who is leading the fight for full legalization, cast doubt on Vos’ intentions.

“We’ve seen this story before — but actions speak louder than words,” Agard said in a statement. “Session after session, the Speaker has come forward with empty promises but no tangible steps toward any form of legal cannabis Wisconsin.”

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed full legalization of marijuana in his state budget, an idea that Republicans vowed to reject. Last April 20, a Republican-authored bill creating a medical marijuana program received a public hearing, the first time any such bill made it that far in the GOP-controlled Legislature.

However, the bill died in committee.

Senate Republicans have been less open to pot legalization than those in the Assembly. But in January, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said a bill to create a medical marijuana program could pass this legislative session — as long as regulations are put forward to ensure it’s for those in serious pain.

Sixty-four percent of Wisconsinites support legalizing marijuana for any use, according to October polling by the Marquette University Law School. More than 80% of Wisconsinites supported the idea of a medical marijuana program, according to 2019 polling.

For one teen in Rock County, Wisconsin, utilizing a large amount of farmland was the best way to get the question across in unique fashion.

According to NBC affiliate WMTV, Ryan Hazeltine, a junior at Parkview High School in Orfordville, used his family’s tractor to spell out “PROM?” in the middle of the field.

The entire effort was eyeballed by Ryan, with no measurements involved in the creation of the work whatsoever, according to WMTV.

Ryan revealed the final product to his girlfriend using drone footage, with sophomore Abby Anderson instantly saying “yes” upon the big reveal.

“A couple of people have told me that I have set the standard too high to ask their own girlfriends,” Ryan told WMTV.

Parkview High School’s prom is scheduled for Saturday, May 6.

Six-year-old Jaxon McDonald was sleeping in the same room as his mother April, and he awoke in the night to a strange sound. The sound – which Jaxon described as sounding “like a zombie” – was actually the sound of his mother having a seizure.

“It sounded like she was going to throw up,” Jaxon said.

He immediately jumped out of bed and alerted his three sisters.

“He was like, ‘something is wrong with Mommy,'” sister Morgan McDonald said.

Another sister, Kendra, then ran out of the house and down to her grandparents’ to get help while the others called 9-1-1 and stayed by their mom’s side.

“I told [my grandmother] it’s an emergency, something is wrong with my mom,” Kendra said.

“I come over here and I look in the bedroom — and [April] was having a seizure,” said April’s mother, Charlene Thomas.

Doctors who examined April after the event ended up finding a large mass — the size of a tomato — on her brain. Her family said she had been suffering from intense headaches for months. The 35-year-old was actually supposed to see a neurologist in just a week.

After discovering the tumor, doctors put April into a medically induced coma and were able to surgically remove most of the mass from her brain. Now awake and able to walk and talk on her own, April is on her road to recovery — with thanks to the team effort by her quick-thinking children.