News of the Day

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday it would use the “least changes” redistricting plans submitted by Governor Tony Evers as Wisconsin’s congressional and legislative district maps for the next decade. In the 4-3 decision, conservative swing Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote that of all the plans submitted, Evers’ plan best complied with criteria laid out by the court and met all the requirements of the Wisconsin and United States constitutions.

Choosing Governor Evers maps over competing plans submitted by Republican members of Congress and the Legislature was, under the circumstances, a win for Democrats. In the Legislature, it could mean the difference between simple Republican majorities and supermajorities that could override any governor’s vetoes.

While the state Supreme Court’s say is typically final in the state court system, Justices Ziegler and Roggensack took the unusual steps of suggesting appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, suggesting Evers’ plan amounted to a racial gerrymander.

Compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act, or VRA, is likely to be a key part of any future litigation. Evers’ map creates seven majority-Black districts, one more than the 2011 map. Hagedorn wrote that Evers’ map gives minority voters better representation. “The risk of packing Black voters under a six-district configuration further suggests drawing seven majority-Black districts is appropriate to avoid minority vote dilution,” Hagedorn wrote.  However, Ziegler wrote the creation of a new majority-Black district was premature, arguing no clear violation of the Voting Rights Act was shown by Evers.

It would be unusual, though not unheard of, for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s redistricting ruling.  The map could still be challenged on a more limited basis in an ongoing federal lawsuit brought by Democrats. That case had remained largely dormant while the state lawsuit proceeded.

The United States imports Russian oil, but it is not highly dependent on the country for its supplies.

In 2021, the U.S imported an average of 209,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and 500,000 bpd of other petroleum products from Russia, according to the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) trade association.

This represented three percent of U.S. crude oil imports and one percent of the total crude oil processed by U.S. refineries. By contrast, the U.S. imported 61 percent of its crude oil from Canada, 10 percent from Mexico, and six percent from Saudi Arabia in the same year.

According to the AFPM, imports of Russian crude oil have increased since 2019, when the U.S. imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry. U.S. refiners also temporarily boosted Russian imports last year after Hurricane Ida disrupted oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will tell lawmakers Wednesday the central bank will likely hike interest rates later this month with inflation “well above” the central bank’s target range.

The Fed chief is set to tell members of the House Financial Services Committee that bank officials “expect it will be appropriate” to raise the baseline interest range from its current level of zero to 0.25 percent, according to prepared remarks released ahead of Powell’s appearance before the panel.

“We understand that high inflation imposes significant hardship, especially on those least able to meet the higher costs of essentials like food, housing, and transportation. We know that the best thing we can do to support a strong labor market is to promote a long expansion, and that is only possible in an environment of price stability,” Powell will say.

The Fed slashed interest rates to near-zero levels in March 2020 as the emerging coronavirus pandemic derailed the global economy. The Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s monetary policy panel, is on track to hike interest rates at the conclusion of its meeting on March 15-16, almost two years to the day it cut rates to current levels.

Powell will highlight the rapid recovery of the U.S. economy from the depth of the pandemic-driven recession, including the record-breaking gain of 6.7 million jobs in 2021 and economic growth of 5.5 percent. The Fed chief credited the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines along with substantial fiscal and monetary support deployed by the federal government in 2020 for the swift rebound.

Even so, the speed of the recovery also fueled a rapid rise in prices as it ran up against stubborn pandemic-related obstacles, Powell will note.

“As a result, employers are having difficulties filling job openings, an unprecedented number of workers are quitting to take new jobs, and wages are rising at their fastest pace in many years,” Powell will say.

“Demand is strong, and bottlenecks and supply constraints are limiting how quickly production can respond. These supply disruptions have been larger and longer lasting than anticipated, exacerbated by waves of the virus, and price increases are now spreading to a broader range of goods and services.”

U.S. retailer Target has announced it will adopt a minimum wage system that will pay company employees up to $24 an hour.

In a statement on Monday, the Minneapolis-based retailer said that the new minimum wage will range from $15 to $24, depending on the job and local market. The system is also part of Target’s plan to spend an additional $300 million on its labor force, which includes expanded access to health care coverage and an enhanced benefits package for employees.

Some of Target’s rivals, including Best Buy, have raised their hourly minimum wages for employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Costco raised its hourly minimum wage from $16 to $17, and Amazon’s starting wage is $15 an hour, with an average starting wage for transportation and fulfillment jobs of $18 per hour.

Walmart boosted its hourly minimum wage for employees to $12 an hour, raising the hourly wages for more than 565,000 store workers by at least a dollar as well, the AP noted.

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Monday in a case that could limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to regulate climate change.  At issue in the case is the extent to which the agency can pursue climate regulations that have broad impacts on areas such as the power sector.

Two coal companies, as well as a group of states led by West Virginia and North Dakota, are challenging a lower court ruling that tossed a Trump-era rule governing power plants.

That Trump rule loosened regulations surrounding climate change when compared to the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP), which sought to reduce releases of greenhouse gases through improved efficiency measures, as well as the adoption of more natural gas and renewable energy, as opposed to coal.

The Supreme Court stayed that plan, preventing it from taking effect, in 2016. And the Trump administration replaced it with the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, which still sought efficiency improvements, but excluded the switch to cleaner fuels.

But as the Biden administration is working on its own regulations for power plants, the states and coal companies are seeking to limit its authority to do so.

They have argued that a key provision in the Clean Air Act only allows the EPA to regulate the pollution sources themselves, rather than setting broader standards that could change the makeup of the country’s power supply.

“They have the ability to regulate a source, and so for instance that could be the coal fired power plant, and that could be for heat efficiencies or items within the power plant,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey told The Hill in an interview. But, he added, they can’t “go so far afield” and create a system that could “impact consumer demand or force rewrites of the power grid.”

Attorney General Josh Kaul, as part of a bipartisan coalition of 49 attorneys general, has called on the Federal Trade Commission to adopt a national rule to target impersonation scams.

Attorneys general serve as the front-line defense against impersonation scams, seeing first-hand the pervasive problem these acts create for consumers, small businesses, and charities in their states. “It’s encouraging that the FTC is taking this issue up,” said AG Kaul. “Imposter
scams are a leading source of consumer fraud around the country, and FTC rules would help efforts to hold scammers accountable.”

As illustrated in the letter, impersonation scams take on many forms:

Impersonation of government entities: Fraudsters claim to be from or affiliated with a government agency to persuade victims of the urgency to provide payment to obtain licensing or certificates in document preparation or regulatory compliance scams.

Business impersonation: These are scams in which fraudsters claim to be working directly for an actual business or as a third party endorsed by the business. Common examples include tech scams in which the imposters claim they are contacting the victim on behalf of companies such as Microsoft or Apple to assist with a ransomware or technology issue.

Person-to-person deceptions: Grandparent scams, romance scams and others use personal information to make a connection with victims. Whether claiming a grandchild is in urgent need of money or creating a fake profile to gain the trust of someone on a social media or dating site, these impersonation scams account for thousands of complaints to attorneys general each year.

“There is a pressing need for FTC rulemaking to address the scourge of impersonation scams impacting consumers across the United States,” the letter states. “A national rule that encompasses and outlaws such commonly experienced scams discussed [in our letter] would assist Attorneys General and their partners in reducing consumer harm, maximizing consumer benefits, and holding bad actors to account.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service found the total amount of land in Wisconsin farms was 14.2 million acres last year. That’s 100,000 acres fewer, or a less than 1 percent decline, from 2020, but it’s the first decrease in the amount of land in farms since 2017.

Heather Schlesser is an agriculture educator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension in Marathon County. She said the state has seen many producers transition out of dairy farming, which requires a lot of land for growing feed.

“They were transitioning out of dairy, making that decision to retire because they’re getting older. Or maybe they’re still younger, but they’re switching into beef production,” Schlesser said. “You can only do that for so long before you’re like, ‘You know what, I really don’t need this land. I don’t want to deal with the renters anymore. There’s no one new coming on the farm.’ And then they’re just deciding to sell it off.”

Some land is sold to other producers, especially the largest farms in the state. The amount of land farmed by producers earning at or above $500,000 annually grew by almost 4 percent from 2020 to 2021.

But for farms around urban areas, land is often sold to individuals looking to transition out of city living or looking for recreational land for hunting.

“They want to be close enough to that downtown center so that they don’t have a long commute to get to work, where they’re still close to the cultural centers and everything that town has to offer,” she said. “But they want that country feel.”

Schlesser said urban sprawl is not a new trend for the state, but it may have been more of a factor in 2020 after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 2000, no state has seen a larger decline in the proportion of all employees who are union members than Wisconsin. While private sector union membership in the state has declined for decades, 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 likely contributed to a much steeper decline in public sector unions in recent years. Today, the vast majority of Wisconsin’s public sector union members are employed by K-12 schools.

New data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show nearly all states have seen a decline in the concentration of their workforce that is unionized over the last 20 years, but none more so than Wisconsin.

In 2000, 17.8% of all employed Wisconsinites were members of a union – the 10th-highest concentration in the country. By 2021, that number fell to just 7.9%, putting Wisconsin at 28th among states and below the national average of 10.3%. The 9.9 percentage point drop since 2000 for Wisconsin was the largest nationwide by nearly three percentage points, and substantially more than the national drop of 3.1 percentage points.

The 55.6% decline in the rate of union membership in Wisconsin over the same time period ranked second highest in the country, behind only South Carolina (whose overall membership was lowest nationwide in both 2000 and 2021).

Forum research finds that a combination of legislation aimed at curtailing public unions’ authority and broader national trends impacting
private union membership may help to explain Wisconsin’s drop-off.

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) is accepting applications for new export expansion grants through March 18, 2022.

This grant aims to accelerate the growth of Wisconsin dairy, meat, and crop product exports. Applicants must be a not-for-profit organization, located in Wisconsin, and currently serving or have the ability to serve Wisconsin agribusinesses. Wisconsin agribusiness associations, technical colleges, universities, and economic development organizations are encouraged to apply.

Projects can receive grant funds for up to two years in duration, with an option to request an additional year. Grant awards will range from $25,000 to $50,000. Matching funds are required at 20 percent of the grant award and can be cash or in-kind. Eligible project expenses include, but are not limited to, travel associated with trade promotion activities, event promotion, marketing materials, advertising, subscriptions, contractor fees, and translation services.

DATCP will use a competitive review process to select the most qualified projects. Selected projects and work will begin in May 2022.

Grant information and application materials are available at
https://datcp.wi.gov/Pages/Growing_WI/WisconsinInitiativeForAgriculturalExports.aspx.

The Biden administration will suspend or delay new federal oil and gas leasing following a court ruling against the process by which it calculates the social cost of climate change, the administration announced Saturday night.

On February 11, Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana, a Trump appointee, blocked the administration’s method of calculating the social costs associated with greenhouse gases, the primary driver of climate change. The Biden administration had returned to Obama-era calculation methods, with plans to develop its own in the future.

In his ruling, Cain blocked federal agencies from considering findings from the White House Interagency Working Group, which had been tasked with devising new metrics based on the Obama-era calculations. It also bars the administration from considering the global impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, one of the major distinctions that made the Obama estimates far higher than the Trump administration’s.

In a legal filing Saturday evening, the Justice Department asked the court to stay the injunction, citing the likelihood that its appeal of the decision will succeed.

“From President Nixon on, every President has imposed some internal Executive Branch requirement for federal agencies to assess the costs and benefits of major government actions,” the filing states. “The injunction further calls into question the authority of the past three Administrations to provide standardized guidance to agencies on appropriate methods of estimating the social cost of greenhouse-gas emissions.”

In the meantime, “work surrounding public-facing rules, grants, leases, permits and other projects has been delayed or stopped altogether so that agencies can assess whether and how they can proceed,” the filing states.