With the announcement that Wisconsin’s longest serving Assembly speaker will retire from office, Here & Now’s Zac Schultz described how Robin Vos maintained an iron grip on Republican lawmakers. Immigrants pursuing citizenship are increasingly being targeted for deportation, and Community Immigration Law Center attorney Grant Sovern said the legal process for representing clients is in a state of emergency.

Zac Schultz
Senior political reporter, PBS Wisconsin

• Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos will not seek reelection in 2026, leaving a power vacuum in the state Legislature. Vos served as Speaker for 13 years, and represented a district in Racine County for 22 years. Schultz explained Vos’ strength as Speaker.
• Schultz: “He is the longest serving Assembly speaker in state history, and that did not come without him learning how to consolidate power within his own party, within his own caucus in the Assembly. He had a lot of nicknames from both friends and foes: “Boss Vos,” the “Shadow Governor.” It was basically known that nothing could become law without him saying yes and signing off and allowing it to come to the floor in the Assembly — and he controlled that chamber for quite a long time.”

Grant Sovern
Attorney and President, Community Immigration Law Center

• The federal government’s mass deportation blitz and firing of numerous judges has caused a crush for the immigration court system and the lawyers who represent refugees, people seeking asylum, and others pursuing green cards and citizenship. Immigration attorney Grant Sovern called it an emergency on two fronts.
• Sovern: “On one side, there are just so many more people being picked up than there ever have been before. I mean, it appears that there’s some sort of quota that ICE and Border Patrol have to reach. So it’s just an unbelievable, unprecedented volume of people that we have to address and we have to get to them quickly. If we don’t find them within a day or two days, or at the most three, they get moved to a facility away from their family, away from a lawyer who can help them in a jurisdiction that’s often much more difficult. But on the second side, the government is just changing the rules. Every day, every week, something that lawyers have to find out about when you’re in court and waiting for a hearing, and they’re just changing rules that make due process almost impossible for anybody to get.”

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