Month: April 2025

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent weighed in on America’s tariff negotiations with other countries during a late Monday afternoon appearance on “Kudlow.”

Bessent told host Larry Kudlow that Trump is “better than anyone at giving himself maximum leverage, so what he has done is we outlined the tariffs on April 2 and then gave countries several days to think about it.”

“As I advised on many shows on April 2, I suggested that the foreign officials keep your cool, that you do not escalate and come to us with your offers on how you’re going to drop tariffs, how you’re going to drop non-tariff barriers, how you’re going to stop your currency manipulation, how you’re going to stop the subsidized financing, and at a point, President Trump will be ready to negotiate,” he explained.

During his appearance, Bessent defended the Trump administration using trade deficits in its calculus for determining reciprocal tariffs on imports from some foreign countries. He also noted that “academic studies have shown that it’s the non-tariff trade barriers that are the real problem in the U.S. having free and fair access to these markets.”

We Energies is asking state utility regulators to approve special rates for data centers that would require those users to pay for infrastructure built for their developments.

In an application with the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin this week, the utility outlined rate proposals for customers that are expected to need enough energy to power hundreds of thousands of homes each year.

It’s the first attempt to craft a rate structure for data center-scale customers in Wisconsin. Data centers are among the most “energy intensive” types of buildings, using 10 to 50 times more energy per floor space than a typical commercial office building.

Several data centers have been planned within We Energies’ service territory. Microsoft is developing a more than $3.3 billion data center campus in Mount Pleasant, with additional plans for another site in Kenosha. Data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure has another project planned in Port Washington.

Under the proposal, customers with a load of at least 500 megawatts, enough energy to power more than 300,000 homes annually, would agree to be responsible for costs related to new resources that the utility builds to meet their demand.

Resource agreements with those “very large customers” would be “effective for the depreciable life of the resource, except for wind or solar resources which will have a term of 20 years or more,” We Energies said in its application.

We Energies asked regulators to approve the proposal by the end of the year. The utility has already applied to build new generation resources to support Microsoft and other industrial development in southeast Wisconsin. The state commission is reviewing plans for more than $2 billion in natural gas infrastructure, including new plants in Oak Creek and Kenosha County.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley was elected by the Court today to serve as chief justice, effective May 1, 2025. She succeeds Chief Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler in this role. Justice Bradley was first elected to the Court in 1995 and will leave the Court after serving three full 10-year terms on July 31, 2025. Justice Bradley has indicated she will step down as chief on June 30, 2025, after two months in the role.

“It is a tremendous honor to be elected by my colleagues as the leader of this great court,” said Justice Bradley. “It has been my life’s goal to honor the rule of law, enhance access to justice, and serve the 5.9 million people who call Wisconsin home. Serving as Chief Justice enables me to further those goals. The court system is full of wonderful staff and justices, from the circuit court to the appellate Court to our Supreme Court. So I deeply appreciate the opportunity to serve as the administrative head of this august institution.”

In anticipation of Justice Bradley’s retirement, the Court elected Justice Jill J. Karofsky to become Chief Justice as of July 1, 2025. Justice Karofsky was elected to the Court in 2020 and will serve the remainder of the two-year Chief Justice term until April 30, 2027.

Pursuant to Article VII, Section 4 (3) of the Wisconsin Constitution, the chief justice of the Supreme Court is the administrative head of the judicial system and exercises administrative authority pursuant to procedures adopted by the Supreme Court. In this role, the chief justice works with fellow justices, the director of state courts, chief judges and other administrators to ensure the courts operate efficiently.