The spring election on April 1, 2025 will determine the balance of power on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and conservative candidate Brad Schimel spoke about his positions. In the 2023-24 school year, the state changed how it scored standardized tests for 3rd through 8th grade students, state Sen. John Jagler authored a bill to change the scoring system back. Tariffs placed on Canada and Mexico by President Donald Trump were paused, but if reinstated, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce CEO Kurt Bauer said they would cause harm to the state’s economy. Another order by Trump halted refugee resettlement, and if that policy remains in place, World Relief vice-president of advocacy Matthew Soerens said he hopes it is reversed.
 

Brad Schimel
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate

• The April 1 election for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide whether it will have a conservative or liberal majority over the following year. Schimel, a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge who identifies as a conservative and is affiliated with Republicans, is running against liberal Susan Crawford, a Dane County Circuit Court judge affiliated with Democrats. Schimel described his judicial philosophy as being an originalist – deferring to how the Constitution was written.
• Schimel: “I’ll tell you that my philosophy basically is that I approach my role as a judge with great humility. I respect the separation of powers that the Legislature sets the laws, not the judge. I approach it with humility too, towards the litigants that appear in front of my court. I respect that they are entitled to their day in court, that they’re entitled to have somebody that’s going to listen to them all the way to the end of the case before I go deciding or making up my mind on things.”

State Sen. John Jagler
R- Watertown

• Chair of the Wisconsin Senate’s education committee, Jagler authored a bill to require the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to revert its standardized tests in 3rd through 8th grades to the scoring model used in 2019-20. The agency hadI changed how scores were assessed in the 2023-24 school year, and more students tested as proficient in reading and math.
• Jagler: “The way that they have blown up the scoring system — we can’t go back and look, we can’t see how the kids from the COVID pandemic, those kids that were kindergarten, 1st grade. Are they catching up, the kids that are almost entering the workplace? The 7th graders who are now high school juniors and seniors, where are they? Have they caught up from that last year? We can’t track that data anymore.”

Kurt Bauer
President and CEO, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce

• The 25% tariffs that President Donald Trump placed on Canada and Mexico starting Feb. 1 were subsequently paused by his administration for a 30-day period. However, because of Wisconsin’s robust trade with both nations – but especially Canada – Bauer said he was relieved when the president pulled back on the tariffs.
• Bauer: “I think the pause is good. I’m concerned the retaliatory tariffs would be rough on Wisconsin. We are a manufacturing state. We are an agricultural state. We make things, we process things, we grow things and we export them around the world. Canada’s our number one trading partner. We have positive trade with them right now. The second largest is Mexico and then China. So all three are on the chopping block. They account for about 50% of Wisconsin exports. So this could have a very significant impact on the state of Wisconsin and our manufacturing and agricultural industries.”

Matthew Soerens
Vice-president of advocacy and policy, World Relief

• World Relief is a Christian non-profit refugee resettlement agency that in Wisconsin operates in the Fox Valley and Chippewa Valley. The organization resettled more than 1,800 refugees from all over the world in Wisconsin in 2024. When President Donald Trump suspended resettlement via an executive order issued on his first day in office, refugees ready to travel to the U.S. had their flights cancelled, including those World Relief were helping move to Wisconsin. Soerens said the order harkened back to what Trump did in 2017.
• Soerens: “So I think we were aware of this being a possibility of suspending refugee resettlement. And in cases where it was family reunification, where we’ve got somebody in Wisconsin who was waiting to be united to a loved one, I think we would have at least shared that we’re concerned that this could be a possibility. But that doesn’t do anything to change the devastation when a family that in some cases might have been waiting for a decade apart, often with their loved ones stuck in a refugee camp overseas, and that travel had to be canceled. We are hopeful and prayerful that the president will resume refugee resettlement after the initial 90-day suspension of resettlement that was announced on his first day in office.”

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