The Gender Health Clinic at Children’s Wisconsin hospital in Milwaukee canceled a transgender teenager’s appointment — the first reported case of a Wisconsin hospital pausing gender-affirming care after President Donald Trump signed an executive order blocking funding for hospitals that provide such treatment.

UPDATE (9:47 a.m. Feb. 7, 2025): On Friday, after Wisconsin Watch published this story, the teen’s parent received a call from Children’s informing her that the appointment would be rescheduled for Friday afternoon.

A group of families and doctors have sued the Trump administration in federal court over that order and another, saying they are discriminatory and the health care order unlawfully withholds funds.

Children’s Wisconsin did not respond to multiple emails and calls, including three pages sent to the spokesperson on duty. Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, said he contacted Children’s on behalf of a constituent Wednesday and has also not received any response, which he characterized as unusual.

Clinics in several states across the country have reportedly suspended care for transgender youth in response to the order, which sought to end gender-affirming care for patients under 19 years old at any facility receiving federal funding.

On Wednesday, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and 14 other attorneys general denounced Trump’s order as “wrong on the science and the law.” In a joint statement, they noted that a recent court order affirmed the Trump administration cannot halt funding through administrative memos or executive orders. 

“This means that federal funding to institutions that provide gender-affirming care continues to be available, irrespective of President Trump’s recent Executive Order,” the statement said. “We will challenge any unlawful effort by the Trump Administration to restrict access to it (gender-affirming care) in our jurisdictions.”

But the Milwaukee clinic — one of only two dedicated pediatric gender clinics in Wisconsin, along with one at UW Health in Madison — had already canceled an appointment, Wisconsin Watch has learned.

On New Year’s Eve, Milwaukee-area mom Sarah Moskonas received a long-awaited message: The clinic had approved her 13-year-old daughter for hormone therapy.

The family felt ecstatic. The approval was almost a decade in the making. Her daughter has seen a therapist specializing in gender identity since she was five or six and has been a patient in Children’s gender clinic for four-and-a-half years. She has been on puberty blockers for about three years. Starting hormone therapy was the culmination of numerous conversations, therapy sessions, doctor’s appointments and blood tests on the lifelong journey of helping Moskonas’ daughter live as her true self. 

“She’s very aware of what her therapy looks like and what the implications could be long term and what are the upsides and what are the possible drawbacks,” Moskonas said.

After receiving approval from the clinic to move forward, they scheduled a “consent appointment” for Feb. 3, when both parents would provide informed consent on behalf of their daughter to take the next step in treatment.

But on Jan. 28, Trump issued the executive order, one of several that have targeted transgender people with demeaning, inaccurate language.

Moskonas said she received a call Jan. 31 from her daughter’s clinician informing her that Children’s Wisconsin could not provide her daughter with hormone therapy. The discussion turned to whether it was because of Trump’s order.

“Essentially … the answer was yes, this was because of the executive order,” she said.

Moskonas provided electronic health care records showing the appointment was scheduled before Trump’s inauguration and canceled after the executive order.

New York Attorney General Letitia James warned hospitals that ceasing treatment for transgender youth would violate the state’s anti-discrimination law. 

Moskonas wants Kaul to take a similar stand and provide clear direction for Wisconsin hospitals.

The state Department of Justice referred Wisconsin Watch to Kaul’s joint statement and did not respond to a follow-up request.

Sarah Coyne, an attorney specializing in health care regulation at Quarles in Madison, said that hospitals are likely pausing care “as a risk management strategy” and it’s “not clear how all of this will play out in the long run.”

Craig Konnoth, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said that federal court rulings applying to Wisconsin have held that transgender discrimination is a prohibited form of sex discrimination and that it is illegal to turn away transgender patients under the Affordable Care Act.

After Children’s gender clinic canceled the appointment, Moskonas contacted elected officials, including Clancy. She called clinics in Madison and Chicago to see if they would provide care.

A spokesperson for UW Health’s clinic told Wisconsin Watch it was evaluating the order.

As Wisconsin Watch has previously documented, gender-affirming care like the kind Moskonas’ daughter has received is considered the only evidence-based care for children and adults with gender dysphoria, and it is endorsed by every major medical association in the country. Research has consistently shown that it improves mental health outcomes for trans youth.

Sarah said her daughter “knows who she is better than most adults I know.” Gender-affirming care has allowed her to live authentically as herself and flourish emotionally.

“My wife and I have assured her that we are not giving up,” Sarah said. “We are not accepting no for an answer.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Children’s Wisconsin hospital reinstates gender-affirming care for trans teen after canceling in wake of Trump’s executive order is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Moments before 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow opened fire inside her Madison, Wisconsin, school, killing two people and herself last month, a social media account believed to be hers posted a photograph on X showing someone sitting in a bathroom stall and flashing a hand gesture that has become a symbol for white supremacy. 

As news about the shooting broke, another X user responded: “Livestream it.” 

Extremism researchers now believe that second account belonged to 17-year-old Solomon Henderson, who police say walked into his high school cafeteria in Nashville, Tennessee, on Wednesday and fired 10 shots, killing one classmate and then himself. Archives of another X account linked to him show that he posted a similar photo to Rupnow’s in his final moments. 

While there isn’t any evidence that Rupnow and Henderson plotted their attacks together, extremism researchers who have tracked their social media activity told Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica that the two teenagers were active in the same online networks that glorify mass shooters, even crossing paths. Across various social media platforms, the networks trade hateful memes alongside terrorist literature, exchange tips on how to effectively commit attacks and encourage one another to carry out their own.

The researchers had been tracking these networks for months as part of work looking into growing online extremist networks that have proliferated across gaming, chatting and social media platforms and that they believe are radicalizing young people to commit mass shootings and other violence.

The researchers’ analysis found only a few instances in which Rupnow and Henderson appeared to interact directly. But in the hours, days and weeks that followed the Madison shooting, Henderson appears to have become fixated on Rupnow. He boasted on X that Rupnow and him were “mutuals,” a common internet term for following each other, and shared another post that said, “i used to be mutuals with someone who is now a real school shooter ;-).”  

The researchers, who have collaborated with counterterrorism organizations, academics and law enforcement to prevent violence by tracking how extremist networks radicalize youth online, agreed to share information as long as they weren’t named out of concerns for their physical safety. The news outlets vetted their credentials with several experts in the field.

It’s impossible to know with complete certainty that online accounts belong to particular people without specialized access to devices and accounts from law enforcement. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department has acknowledged the existence of two documents they believe Henderson created, both of which contain details about his social media accounts. Other researchers and groups — including The Anti-Defamation League, Canadian extremism expert Marc-André Argentino and SITE Intelligence Group — have also determined these likely belong to Henderson. 

The extremism researchers linked accounts to Rupnow, who went by Samantha, by tracing her activity across multiple social media profiles that revealed common biographical details, including personal acquaintances and that she lived in Wisconsin. On the bathroom post, one person the account regularly interacted with referred to Rupnow by her nickname, “Sam.” Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica were able to verify the social media posts and the connections between the accounts by retracing the researchers’ steps through archived social media accounts and screenshots.

On Thursday, ABC News cited law enforcement sources in reporting that a social media account connected to Henderson may have been in contact with Rupnow’s social media account. The information reviewed by Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica details their suspected connections and interactions. Nearly all of the accounts that researchers have linked to Rupnow and Henderson have now been suspended.

A Madison Police Department spokesperson said the agency knows Rupnow “was very active on social media” and it is “just starting” to receive and review documents from tech companies.  The Nashville police said they had nothing further to add beyond their previous statements.Rubi Patricia Vergara, 14, and Erin West, 42, were killed at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison. Josselin Corea Escalante, 16, died at Antioch High School in Nashville. Both attackers also killed themselves. 

Rupnow and Henderson both had multiple X accounts, the extremism researchers told Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica. At the time of her attack, Rupnow followed just 13 other users. Two of those accounts have been linked to Henderson.

In November, Rupnow shared a post from Henderson, which appeared to wish a happy Veterans Day to the man who killed more than a dozen people at University of Texas at Austin in 1966. 

After the Madison attack, someone wrote to Henderson and others on X, saying that one of their “buddies” may have “shot up a school.” Henderson told another user, “I barely know her,”  and said he had never exchanged private messages with her. Later, in a 51-page screed that Nashville police are examining, he emulated and praised several past attackers including Rupnow and said, “I have connections with some of them only loosely via online messaging platforms.”

After Rupnow’s shooting, Henderson called her a “Saintress,” using a term common in the networks, and posted or reshared posts about her dozens of times, celebrating her racist, genocidal online persona and the fact that she had taken action. On one platform, he used a photograph of her as his profile picture. In his writings, he said he scrawled Rupnow’s name and those of other perpetrators on his weapon and gear.

The online networks the two teenagers inhabited have an array of influences, ideologies and aesthetics. To varying degrees of commitment and sincerity, they ascribe to white supremacist, anti-Semitic, racist, neo-Nazi, occult or satanic beliefs.

In this online world, the currency that buys clout is violence. This violence often involves children and teenagers harming other children and teenagers, some through doxing or encouraging self-harm, others, like Rupnow and Henderson, by committing mass attacks in the nonvirtual world. 

“This network is best described as an online subculture that celebrates violent attacks and radicalizes young people into committing violence,” said one of the violence prevention researchers. “Many of the individuals involved in this network are minors, and we’d like to see intervention to give them the help and support they need, for their own safety as well as those around them.”

Members of some of these communities, including Terrorgram, 764 and Com, have engaged in activities online and offline that have led to convictions for possessing child sexual abuse materials and sexually exploiting a child and indictments for soliciting hate crimes and soliciting the murder of federal officials. The cases are pending, and the defendants have not filed responses in court. This month, the U.S. State Department designated the Terrorgram Collective as a terrorist organization, saying “the group promotes violent white supremacism, solicits attacks on perceived adversaries, and provides guidance and instructional materials on tactics, methods, and targets for attacks, including on critical infrastructure and government officials.”

When details of the Nashville shooting began to emerge, researchers realized they had seen some of Henderson’s accounts and posts within the network of about 100 users they are tracking. They had previously reported one username of an account belonging to Henderson, as well as others within the network to law enforcement and filed several reports with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. 

They had not been aware of Rupnow’s accounts before her attack, but were able to locate her within the network after the fact, discovering she had regularly interacted with other accounts they had been following.

Alex Newhouse, an extremism researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said these subcultures have a long history of lionizing and mimicking past attackers while goading each other to enact as much violence as possible — even by assigning “scores” to past attacks, something Henderson engaged with online. “The Antioch one is very obviously copycat,” Newhouse said.

Although Henderson’s diary indicates he had been contemplating an attack for months prior to Rupnow’s, her shooting drew his attention. Hours after, he retweeted another post that said: “There should be a betting market for which rw twitter figure will radicalize the next shooter.” (RW stands for right wing.)

However the two teens entered this online subculture, their writings reveal despair about their personal lives and the world around them and expressed violent, hateful views.

After the Madison shooting, a separate social media user noted their association and tweeted at the FBI, accusing Henderson and others of having prior warning. They “need to be locked up,” the poster said, “no questions asked.”

The FBI declined to comment. But after Henderson’s attack, social media users returned to the tweet: “hey so this guy literally just ended up calling a future school shooter a month ahead of time and the FBI did nothing about it.”

If you or someone you know needs help:

• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
• Text the Crisis Text Line from anywhere in the U.S. to reach a crisis counselor: 741741

If you or someone you know has been harmed online, you can contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST or https://report.cybertip.org/.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Madison and Nashville school shooters appear to have crossed paths in online extremist communities is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Phoebe Petrovic is a Wisconsin Watch investigative reporter and a fellow in ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. Her reporting on extremism was also funded by the Poynter Institute. She hosted a discussion on extremism reporting at a live Zoom event on Jan. 29. You can watch the full video here.

On the day of President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the violent, far-right street gang known as the Proud Boys marched down the streets of Washington, D.C. Hours later, the new president pardoned or commuted the sentences of their leaders and some 1,500 others for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, struck salutes on stage that neo-Nazis online celebrated (and Musk later downplayed). And in a nod to the Christian nationalists who boosted his campaign, Trump declared the United States would only recognize two sexes, despite science finding it’s not so simple.

It’s clear, today, that extremism reporting matters more than ever. But even just a couple of years ago, I struggled to get pitches accepted on the influence of extremist figures. Once accepted, though, one story turned into a series, each unraveling the thread of increased Christian nationalist influences on politics and, particularly, elections. 

I spent the first six months of 2024 investigating Matthew Trewhella, a militant pastor known in the 1990s for his anti-abortion activism.

Trewhella had a reputation for public stunts that raised eyebrows and generated letters to the editor. He had urged an audience to buy their children rifles for Christmas. He even defended the murder of abortion providers. Surely, someone with that record would be a political pariah today, right? But the investigation found that Trewhella’s manifesto of open defiance has influenced Republicans across the country, at all levels of government.

Like others on the Christian right, Trewhella has called for defying the separation between church and state, arguing that officials must answer to God’s law first and the Constitution second. School board members, county officials, state legislators, congresspeople, even former members of Trump’s Cabinet, we found, had praised “the doctrine of the lesser magistrates,” which Trewhella claimed gave them biblical permission to disobey or defy any law, policy or court opinion. For his part, Trewhella dismissed the extremism label, telling me only those with “mundane, self-absorbed lives” would consider someone like him an extremist.

In that first story, I reported on a conservative activist who had used the doctrine as the basis of a nationwide tour, in which he said elections officials should refuse to certify equipment and results on the basis of debunked conspiracy theories. I recounted how a state senator marshaled the doctrine when urging electors to refuse certification. And I discussed the idea’s embrace by some members of the constitutional sheriffs movement, who were also stating their intent to investigate elections.

Reporting that first story, narrowly focused on one person and his impact, revealed the larger theme that would become the subject of the series: the Christian right’s influence on elections. 

It was a defining feature of the 2024 presidential election, one Trump acknowledged during his inaugural address when he claimed: “I was saved by God to make America great again.” 

The stories reported for Faith in Power, for the most part, took one small aspect of it at a time. We looked for gaps in the national conversation and dug into what we found, building on previous work as we went along. I had read dozens of stories about the potential intervention of poll watchers, for example, but few on poll workers. Yet soon after discovering one self-described Christian nationalist recruiting poll workers, I noticed more, and further reporting revealed a pattern.

What made this worth an investigation was not their Christianity, as one critic claimed, but rather their regurgitation of election conspiracies, disdain for the separation of church and state, and stated goal of helping Trump win office. It was the combination of prophecy and proclamations — that Trump had a divine mandate to become president — and the way they used that to enlist support from hundreds or thousands of people on the ground.

To report these stories, to get the theology and context right, required extensive reading. We decided, in the end, to try to help memorialize what we learned and transform it into a more permanent resource for readers in a “guide” to Christian nationalism. It’s not a traditional investigative piece, but rather a meta-report that helps orient the public, helping to explain how we got to the point where the investigations we broke about poll workers or sheriffs claiming a divine right to disobey the government was even possible.

As the new administration takes office, I’m reflecting on the political trends of the last decade. First, media rushed to cover the “Alt-Right.” Then, the coverage seemed to subside. But the movement didn’t disappear — its ideas just became integrated into the larger political right. Same, too, with conspiracy theories about elections being rigged. Once Trump won, the skepticism about elections seemed to vanish overnight. A focus on “extremism” may go the same way. As those who attempted a violent insurrection get pardoned and walk free, extremism has moved from the margins to the mainstream and taken power. It’s up to journalists to draw the public’s attention to what they do with that power.

As extremists move into the mainstream, reporting on them is more important than ever is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Every year Wisconsin Watch produces some of the best investigative journalism in Wisconsin, and this year was no exception. We exposed a judge abusing his power to benefit a coworker, revealed how AI is helping the state catch illegal manure spreading, catalogued every book ban request in all 421 school districts and found state prisons hiring doctors with disciplinary histories.

But what made this year particularly special was the introduction of the Forward newsletter. Each week the Wisconsin Watch state team produces shorter stories about what we expect to be the big news and trends in the days, weeks and months ahead. It’s something our local media partners asked for and our state team reporters delivered.

As the year winds down, we gave each state team reporter the assignment of picking a favorite story written by another member of the team (Secret Santa style!). Here were their picks:

Conservative talk radio continues to be a powerful political tool in Wisconsin

To some, radio is a source of entertainment and information from a bygone era. They’re mistaken. Hallie Claflin’s deeply reported, authoritative story illustrates the immense and continuing influence of talk radio — especially conservative talk radio — in Wisconsin politics. The rise of former Gov. Scott Walker, the toppling of a Democratic mayor in Wausau and the deaths of certain bills in the Legislature can all be tied, at least in part, to advocacy or opposition from conservative talk radio hosts. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the state’s most powerful Republican, makes regular appearances on broadcasts and described talk radio as being “as powerful as it’s ever been.” This story is worth your time as you look ahead to 2025.

— Jack Kelly

Why we investigated Wisconsin Pastor Matthew Trewhella

Phoebe Petrovic’s profile of militant, anti-abortion Pastor Matthew Trewhella, her first investigation as Wisconsin’s first ProPublica local reporting network fellow, was an engaging read. But I especially liked the companion piece she wrote. It’s a reader service to do this kind of story when we do a large takeout on a person or subject unfamiliar to most readers. It also might drive readers to the main story when they learn more about why we did it. It puts the readers behind the scenes a bit and has the potential to make readers feel more connected to Wisconsin Watch.

— Tom Kertscher

Here are some claims you might hear during tonight’s presidential debate — and the facts

Tom Kertscher does an amazing job with all of his fact briefs, but my favorite has to be a compilation that fact-checked presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump right before their September debate. Over the past few races, presidential campaigns have been full of misinformation. Debates are a vital time to show the reality of candidates and their beliefs. Tom’s story made sure people could accurately judge the claims both candidates were making. I learned about many new and important topics across party lines like Trump’s for-profit college, Harris’ claim about tracking miscarriages and accurate deportation statistics.

— Khushboo Rathore

DataWatch: Wisconsin incarcerates more people than its prisons were designed to hold

Khushboo Rathore’s DataWatch report detailing that the state’s prison population was at nearly 130% capacity stood out as one of my favorite pieces this year. Not only did this short story shed light on severe deficiencies in Wisconsin’s prison system, it also presented the findings in a digestible format that helped readers understand overcrowding in prisons through striking data. It’s one thing to report that Wisconsin prisons are overwhelmed, and it’s another to have the numbers that show it. This piece has the power to reshape future conversations about statewide prison reform, which is what our work here at Wisconsin Watch is all about! 

— Hallie Claflin

Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear high-profile abortion rights case, draft order shows

Jack Kelly has some of the best sourcing this newsroom has ever seen. He’s such an affable people-person, and it enables him to get coffee with anyone and everyone and build legitimate relationships that result in wild scoops, like this one. It’s a testament to his brilliance as a reporter.

— Phoebe Petrovic

Forward: Our picks for favorite politics stories of the year is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Earlier this month, subscribers to the Wisconsin Law Journal received an email with an urgent subject: “Upholding Election Integrity — A Call to Action for Attorneys.” 

The letter began by talking about fairness and following the law in elections. But it then suggested that election officials do something that courts have found to be illegal for over a century: Treat the certification of election results as an option, not an obligation. 

The large logo at the top of the email gave the impression that it was an official correspondence from the respected legal newspaper, though smaller print said it was sent on behalf of a public relations company. The missive was an advertisement from a new group with deep ties to activists who have challenged the legitimacy of recent American elections. 

The group, Follow the Law, has placed ads in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin news outlets serving attorneys, judges and election administrators — individuals who could be involved in election disputes. In Georgia, it ran ads supporting the State Election Board as its majority, backed by former President Donald Trump, passed a rule that experts warned could have allowed county board members to exclude enough Democratic votes to impact the presidential election. (A judge later struck down the rule as “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”) 

In making its arguments about certification, Follow the Law has mischaracterized election rules and directed readers to a website providing an incomplete and inaccurate description of how certification works and what the laws and rules are in various states, election experts and state officials said.

“Anyone relying on that website is being deceived, and whoever is responsible for its content is being dishonest,” said Mike Hassinger, public information officer for Georgia’s secretary of state. 

Certification is the mandatory administrative process that officials undertake after they finish counting and adjudicating ballots. Official results need to be certified by tight deadlines, so they can be aggregated and certified at the state and federal levels. Other procedures like lawsuits and recounts exist to check or challenge election outcomes, but those typically cannot commence until certification occurs. If officials fail to meet those deadlines or exclude a subset of votes, courts could order them to certify, as they have done in the past. But experts have warned that, in a worst-case scenario, the transition of power could be thrown into chaos.

“These ads make it seem as if there’s only one way for election officials to show that they’re on the ball, and that is to delay or refuse to certify an election. And just simply put, that is not their role,” said Sarah Gonski, an Arizona elections attorney and senior policy adviser for the Institute for Responsive Government, a think tank working on election issues. “What this is, is political propaganda that’s dressed up in a fancy legal costume.”

The activities of Follow the Law, which have not been previously reported, represent a broader push by those aligned with Trump to leverage the mechanics of elections to their advantage. The combination of those strategies, including recruiting poll workers and removing people from voting rolls, could matter in an election that might be determined by a small number of votes. 

Since Trump lost the 2020 election, at least 35 election board members in various states, who have been overwhelmingly Republican, have unsuccessfully tried to refuse to certify election results before being compelled to certify by courts or being outvoted by Democratic members. Last week, a county supervisor in Arizona pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for failing to perform election duties when she voted to delay certifying the 2022 election. And last month, the American Civil Liberties Union sued an election board member in Michigan after he said he might not certify the 2024 results. He ultimately signed an affidavit acknowledging his legal obligation to certify, and the ACLU dismissed its case. Experts have warned that more could refuse to certify the 2024 election if Trump loses. 

Follow the Law bills itself as a “group of lawyers committed to ensuring elections are free, fair and represent the true votes of all American citizens.” It’s led by Melody Clarke, a longtime conservative activist with stints at Heritage Action, a conservative advocacy organization, and the Election Integrity Network, headed by a lawyer who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. 

This summer, Clarke left a leadership position at EIN to join the Election Transparency Initiative, a group headed by Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official. The two groups work together, according to Cuccinelli and EIN’s 2024 handbook.

The banner ads that appeared in Georgia and Wisconsin outlets disclosed they were paid for by the American Principles Project Foundation. ETI is a subsidiary of a related nonprofit, the American Principles Project. Financial reports show that packaging magnate Richard Uihlein has contributed millions of dollars to the American Principles Project this year through a political action committee. Uihlein has funneled his fortune into supporting far-right candidates and election deniers, as ProPublica has reported.

Cuccinelli, Clarke and a spokesperson for Uihlein did not respond to requests for comment or detailed lists of questions. Cuccinelli previously defended to ProPublica the legality of election officials exercising their discretion in certifying results. “The proposed rule will protect the foundational, one person-one vote principle underpinning our democratic elections and guard against certification of inaccurate or erroneous results,” Cuccinelli wrote in a letter to Georgia’s State Election Board.

The most recent ads appear to be an extension of a monthslong effort that started in Georgia to expand the discretion of county election officials ahead of the November contest.  

In August and September, Follow the Law bought ads as Georgia’s election board passed controversial rules, including one that empowered county election board members to not certify votes they found suspicious. As ProPublica has reported, the rule was secretly pushed by the EIN, where Clarke worked as deputy director.

Certification “is not a ministerial function,” Cuccinelli said at the election board’s August meeting. The law, he argued, “clearly implies that that board is intended and expected to use its judgment to determine, on very short time frames, what is the most proper outcome of the vote count.”

However, a state judge made clear in an October ruling the dangers of giving county board members the power to conduct investigations and decide which votes are valid. If board members, who are often political appointees, were “free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge” and refuse to certify election results, “Georgia voters would be silenced,” he wrote, finding that this would be unconstitutional. The case is on appeal and will be heard after the election.

Despite that ruling, and another from a different judge also finding both certification rules unconstitutional, Follow the Law’s website section for Georgia still asserts that a State Election Board rule “makes crystal clear” that county board members’ duty is “more than a simple ministerial task” without mentioning either ruling. The state Republican party has appealed the second ruling.

In a Telegram channel created by a Fulton County, Georgia, commissioner, someone shared what they called a “dream checklist” for election officials this week that contains extensive “suggestions” for how they should fulfill their statutory duties. The unsigned 15-page document, which bears the same three icons that appear on Follow the Law’s website, concludes, “Resolve all discrepancies prior to certification.”

On the same day the Georgia judge ruled that county board members can’t refuse to certify votes, Follow the Law began running ads in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin legal publications. The communications argued that certification is a discretionary step officials should take only after performing an investigation to ensure an election’s accuracy, largely continuing the line of argument that Cuccinelli pushed to Georgia’s election board and that the lawyers took before the judge. “Uphold your oath to only certify an accurate election,” said banner ads that ran in WisPolitics, a political news outlet. Another read: “No rubber stamps!” WisPolitics did not respond to requests for comment.

In Pennsylvania, the ad claimed that “simply put, the role of election officials is not ‘ministerial’” and that election officials are by law “required to ensure (and investigate if necessary) that elections are free from ‘fraud, deceit, or abuse’ and that the results are accurate prior to certification.”

Follow the Law has also directly contacted at least one county official in Eureka County, Nevada, pointing him to the group’s website, according to a letter obtained by ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch.

Follow the Law’s ads and website overstate officials’ roles beyond what statutes allow, state officials in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin said. 

The group’s Wisconsin page reads: “Canvassers must first ensure that all votes are legally cast and can only certify results after verifying this.” But officials tasked with certifying elections are scorekeepers, not referees, said Edgar Lin, Wisconsin policy strategist and attorney for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that works to protect the integrity of American elections. Lin and other experts said officials ensure the accuracy of an election’s basic arithmetic, for example, by checking that the number of ballots matches the number of voters, but they are not empowered to undertake deeper investigations.

Gonski said that in addition to overstating certifiers’ responsibilities, Follow the Law’s messaging underplays the protections that already exist. “Our election system is chock-full of checks and balances,” Gonski said. “Thousands of individuals have roles to play, and all of them seamlessly work together using well-established procedures to ensure a safe, accurate and secure election. No single individual has unchecked power over any piece of the process.”

Ads in the Wisconsin Law Journal and the Legal Intelligencer in Pennsylvania also presented the findings of a poll that Follow the Law said was conducted by Rasmussen Reports, a company whose credibility the ad emphasizes. But Rasmussen Reports did not conduct the poll. It was conducted by Scott Rasmussen, who founded the polling company but has not worked there in over a decade. 

Both the company and pollster confirmed the misattribution but did not comment further. The Wisconsin Law Journal and ALM, which owns the Legal Intelligencer, declined to comment. 

Sam Liebert, a former election clerk and the Wisconsin director for All Voting is Local, said he wants the state’s attorney general to issue an unequivocal directive reminding election officials of their legal duty to certify. 

“Certifying elections is a mandatory, democratic duty of our election officials,” he said. “Each refusal to certify threatens to validate the broader election denier movement, while sowing disorder in our election administration processes.”

Editor’s note: This story originally misstated the profession of a representative for Richard Uihlein. The representative was a spokesperson, not a lawyer.

Do you have any information about Follow the Law or other groups’ efforts to challenge election certification that we should know? Have you seen Follow the Law ads or outreach elsewhere? If so, please make a record of the ad and reach out to us. Phoebe Petrovic can be reached by email at ppetrovic@wisconsinwatch.org and by Signal at 608-571-3748. Doug Bock Clark can be reached at 678-243-0784 and doug.clark@propublica.org.

This reporting was supported in part by funds from the Poynter Institute with help from the Joyce Foundation.

Election skeptics are targeting voting officials with ads that suggest they don’t have to certify results is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

In recent years, the Christian right has become an increasingly powerful force in American politics. The belief that God has called on conservative Christians to rule over society has extended into all levels of government, from school boards to the White House. Many pundits call this movement Christian nationalism. But while it may seem like a phenomenon born out of our current political moment, it represents the culmination of various movements with roots that trace back decades. The more extreme elements didn’t just materialize a few years ago. They’ve been there from the start.

The new Christian right

In the beginning — in this case, the 1970s — some Christians feared their influence in society was waning. The Supreme Court had outlawed school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings and had legalized abortion.

In response, religious figures began to organize around the idea that they had a duty to bring Christianity back into public life. Several Christian-influenced organizations, including Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and James Dobson’s Family Research Council, were soon formed and went on to shape Republican policies for decades to come. Evangelical Protestants of different denominations joined forces and united with conservative Catholics, like Paul Weyrich, the founder of the think tank the Heritage Foundation, to advance their shared political goals. Under the banner of “pro-family politics,” the New Christian Right movement fought against abortion access, feminism and gay rights as attacks on traditional family values.

Evangelicals become a voting bloc

The National Affairs Briefing Conference, Dallas, Texas, Aug. 22, 1980

Inside a red-rimmed sports arena, more than 15,000 evangelicals gathered with conservative activists to discuss how to get Christians more involved in politics.

They had come to an event known as the National Affairs Briefing because the evangelists Billy Graham and Bill Bright reported that God had issued each of them the same warning: America had only 1,000 more days of freedom. After speaking with the pair, televangelist James Robison said God had urged him to host a conference that would “refocus the direction of America.” 

The sea of believers roared as Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan took the podium. 

“This is a nonpartisan gathering, and so I know that you can’t endorse me,” Reagan said. “I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing.”

The moment underscored an important shift in American politics, helping to cement evangelical Christians as a reliable conservative voting bloc.

But while Reagan took the spotlight, backstage in Dallas, Robert Billings, a Reagan campaign adviser who had helped found the Moral Majority, nodded to a less prominent visionary: R.J. Rushdoony, the father of a more extreme movement known as Christian Reconstructionism.

“If it weren’t for his books, none of us would be here,” Billings remarked, as recalled in an essay by Gary North, an economic historian and Rushdoony’s son-in-law.

“Nobody in the audience understands that,” replied North.

“True,” said Billings. “But we do.” 

The New Christian Right today

The conversation at the National Affairs Briefing shows the early influence of previously obscure elements of the Christian right that have surfaced in recent years. Other groups and figures that emerged in that period remain influential. Robison and Dobson became spiritual advisers to former President Donald Trump, helping him gain support among religious voters.

The Heritage Foundation recently crafted Project 2025, a plan to concentrate executive power and promote far-right policies should Trump win the presidential election. Trump has disavowed the plan, though some members of his administration worked on it.

The idea that Christians should be in power has become a central mission of today’s Christian right, but the idea was taking root decades ago. In remarks strikingly similar to today’s rhetoric, Bob Weiner, founder of a major ministry focused on college campuses, said in 1985, “We should be the head of our school board. We should be the head of our nation. We should be the senators and the congressmen. We should be the editors of our newspapers. We should be taking over every area of life.”

Christian Reconstructionism

As Billings and North noted backstage at the National Affairs Briefing, the New Christian Right owed a lot to another movement, known as Christian Reconstructionism. The fundamentalist movement held that all aspects of society, including government, education, economics and culture, should conform to a strict interpretation of the Old Testament. Though less recognized, Reconstructionism heavily influenced the more mainstream New Christian Right and its aspirations for Christians to infiltrate systems of power.

Up until the 1970s, the way many evangelicals believed the world would end gave them little incentive to get involved in politics. When the rapture came, the faithful would ascend to heaven, leaving the troubled world behind. That sense of remove began to fade due to the influence of Reconstructionists, who, by contrast, believed they had to build God’s kingdom before Christ would return — which required political action.

The movement’s founder, Rushdoony, received less acknowledgement from politicians, in part because of his extreme views, which included justifying slavery, denying the Holocaust and endorsing the death penalty for homosexuality and adultery. But with Reconstructionists’ prolific writings about what Bible-centered institutions should look like, including Rushdoony’s 1973 book, “The Institutes of Biblical Law,” adherents provided instruction manuals for the modern Christian right. Reconstructionists wanted to eliminate public education by slowly dismantling it, and they led the way in developing Christian schools and promoting homeschooling. Thanks in large part to that leadership, their principles spread.

Reconstructionists join forces with other evangelicals

Lincoln Memorial, July 4, 1986

Amid the swampy summer air, scores of evangelical preachers and Christian leaders crowded onto the stone steps of the Lincoln Memorial to sign “A Manifesto of the Christian Church.” The document detailed their beliefs and the policies they would promote, such as fighting abortion, homosexuality and the teaching of evolution as a “monopoly viewpoint in public schools.”

A group called the Coalition on Revival had brought representatives from many denominations to the memorial. Its mission: to “rebuild civilization on the principles of the Bible.” Founder Jay Grimstead anticipated they’d have more political success by uniting evangelicals across denominations and persuasions. 

“Christians are everywhere, and we’re going to exert our influence in all walks of life,” Grimstead bellowed to the crowd.

The Coalition on Revival helped evangelicals set aside their differing end-times beliefs and move toward political action by focusing on Reconstructionists’ ideas for reshaping society. Positions articulated in the manifesto, such as denouncing the “state usurpation of parental rights,” foreshadowed some of today’s policy debates.

Christian Reconstructionism today

Reconstructionism developed two related concepts that spread beyond their movement and that influence many Republican leaders today: dominionism and a “biblical worldview.”

Dominionism holds that God calls Christians to rule over all aspects of society. A biblical worldview is a theocratic framework for seeing all of the Bible as a strict blueprint for structuring society, as opposed to merely guiding individuals. 

Today, Reconstructionism’s influence is evident in assertions that the government should fall under biblical law, blurring the lines between church and state. It continues to drive Protestant Christian education and anti-abortion activism, including efforts to criminalize getting or performing an abortion.

New Apostolic Reformation

In the 1980s, as evangelicals became more active in politics and megachurches sprang up across the country, some charismatic Christians — a subset of Protestants who incorporate supernatural elements like faith healing and prophecies — were increasingly moving away from traditional denominations and into independent churches. Those churches were connected by informal networks in which some leaders were considered apostles and prophets. The shift captivated C. Peter Wagner, a seminary professor who specialized in helping churches grow. He considered it the biggest change in Christianity in centuries, called it the New Apostolic Reformation and helped it flourish.

Starting in the late 1990s, Wagner held seminars to shape its tenets and cultivate new leaders. Key to his success was his partnership with Cindy Jacobs, a spiritual leader considered a prophet by some, who helped Wagner understand the world of charismatics.

NAR leaders adopted dominionism and promoted it to their followers. They also advanced the idea of “strategic spiritual warfare,” in which church leaders directed prayers to battle demons they believe control physical territory and influence world affairs. The rapid growth in independent charismatic churches has helped NAR become a formidable political force on the right. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee in 2008, attended a church that frequently welcomed NAR leaders to give guest sermons. But the NAR rose to national prominence in 2016 after its leaders united behind Trump.

A prayer call at the Capitol insurrection 

United States Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021

The mob stormed the Capitol. They beat police officers, smashed windows and flooded inside, disrupting the certification of the 2020 presidential election. Outside, on the steps and the scaffolding set up for the inauguration, the crowd seethed. The air filled with tear gas and shouts of “1776” and “Hang Mike Pence.” A gallows loomed on the lawn. 

And on a stage by the southeast corner of the Capitol, a group of people looked on, blowing shofars and speaking in tongues. They raised their hands toward the sky as they prayed. While some of their followers joined the assault on the building, these leaders of the NAR stayed put, battling in the spiritual realm. One man intoned that he saw a massive serpent with its tail over the Senate and asked God to dispatch angels to yank the demon out. 

Flags rippled throughout the crowd: U.S., Confederate, Gadsden, militia and Trump flags — and one used by the NAR. White with a green pine tree and the words “An Appeal to Heaven,” the flag became associated with the movement thanks to Dutch Sheets, an NAR leader known as an apostle, who began promoting it in 2013. Colonists had flown the flag during the American Revolution. The NAR sees it as a symbol of spiritual revolution, a visual prayer for God to create a truly Christian nation. One rioter used the flag to push past police. Another entered the Capitol wearing the flag as a cape. Police later recovered it, soiled with blood and mace.

Sheets had not traveled to Washington, but as the riot raged on, he led a prayer call online with several thousand people listening. Someone held a phone to a microphone so Sheets’ words could ring out at the Capitol. 

“We ask you, by your spirit, to hover over the Capitol now and bring order from the chaos,” he said. “This violence, and the spirit of violence and the spirit of wrath, does not produce righteousness. We take authority over it now.”

Jacobs later posted on social media that she condemned “what happened inside the Capitol.” In a statement provided by his ministry, Sheets said, “Those conducting the gathering were concerned when the unrest began. They asked me to join them in praying for peace and protection for all present.”

The NAR today 

In the United States, the NAR has become a driver for pro-Trump, far-right policies that promote a Christian worldview in government. Although not an NAR leader herself, Paula White-Cain, Trump’s personal pastor of over 20 years, has been instrumental in connecting NAR leaders to Trump through her roles in his campaign and administration.

Just as Reagan recognized the political possibility of evangelical voters in the 1980s, powerful Republicans like House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have aligned themselves with the NAR today. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew the Appeal to Heaven flag at his beach house, and Johnson displayed it outside his office. In September, Johnson joined White-Cain on a prayer call and told the audience that God had chosen Trump to be president a second time.

Seven Mountain Mandate

The NAR helped popularize the concept that Christians should conquer the seven spheres of society: family, religion, government, arts and entertainment, business, education and media. The idea took off in the 2010s when Lance Wallnau, a pastor considered an NAR prophet, repackaged the concept as the Seven Mountain Mandate. Wallnau wrote he learned about the concept when Loren Cunningham, an evangelical leader, told him that God had separately given Cunningham and Bright the same seven arenas in a message decades before. It was an evolution of Reconstructionists’ dominion theology. 

Wallnau has popularized the mandate into a powerful framework for conservative evangelicals to influence all aspects of society by taking “territory” and, as he told an audience in September, “penetrating the systems and the culture and the organizational environment of what’s around you in a community.” The mandate has guided some Christians as they built media empires, Christian schools and businesses, and as they sought elected office.

Wallnau gets out the vote for Trump

Monroeville, Pennsylvania, Sept. 28, 2024

On a hot fall day, a couple hundred evangelical Christians sporting shirts and hats with Trump slogans and Bible verses gathered on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. For hours, they communed inside a cavernous convention center. They worshiped. They sang. They swayed and spoke in tongues. They listened as speakers shared prophecies and conspiracy theories about election integrity. They spoke of the devil and demons and their individual mandate to cast out the forces of evil by voting for Trump. At midday, the Republican nominee for vice president, JD Vance, graced the stage, lending the event the campaign’s imprimatur. 

It was the fifth stop of Wallnau’s swing-state Courage Tour, which blended charismatic Christianity, conspiracy theories and conservative politics in an effort to deliver Trump back to the White House.

Years earlier, during the 2016 campaign, Wallnau visited the then-candidate at Trump Tower. He claimed that after he left, God told him to read Isaiah 45: “Thus says the Lord to Cyrus, His anointed, whose right hand I have held — to subdue nations before him.” 

Just as God had chosen the heathen Persian emperor Cyrus to restore the Jewish people from exile, Wallnau wrote in an October 2016 op-ed, God had chosen Trump to restore conservative Christians’ cultural power.

“I believe the 45th president is meant to be an Isaiah 45 Cyrus,” he wrote. 

Wallnau and others saw it as a prophecy that justified evangelicals’ support for Trump, a twice-divorced man with a history of adultery, who bragged about sexual assault and whom hundreds of people said had cheated them in business dealings. Wallnau’s prophecy played a critical role in coalescing evangelical voters behind Trump.

The Seven Mountain Mandate today

Wallnau has advised a Christian-right charity called Ziklag, whose 2024 objectives include mobilizing Republican-leaning voters in swing states. Ziklag, whose members are influential and wealthy Christian families, has a long-term goal of elevating conservative Christians into positions of power so they can radically change American society. In the education mountain, for instance, Ziklag wants to “take down the education system as we know it today,” one official said, according to records obtained by the news outlet Documented, and a document obtained by ProPublica and Documented says the group would promote homeschooling as a “fundamental right.” 

The New Apostolic Reformation opposes transgender rights and views abortion as a form of child sacrifice that empowers demons. When Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children, Chief Justice Tom Parker, who has expressed support for the Seven Mountains framework, issued a concurring opinion citing the Bible.

Leading up to the 2024 election, Wallnau has held tent revivals in swing states aimed at registering and mobilizing conservative Christians to vote and to serve as poll workers.

ProPublica reporter Mollie Simon contributed research.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Sources:

“Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction” by Julie J. Ingersoll

“Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy” by Frederick Clarkson

“The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy” by Matthew D. Taylor

“The Radical Mind: The Origins of Right-Wing Catholic and Protestant Coalition Building” by Chelsea Ebin

“Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right” by Sara Diamond

“Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate” by Lance Wallnau and Bill Johnson

Original interviews with many of these authors

This reporting was supported in part by funds from the Poynter Institute with help from the Joyce Foundation.

The genesis of Christian nationalism: How the religious right came to influence the 2024 election is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance’s appearance at a far-right Christian revival tour last month may have broken tax and election laws, experts say.

On Sept. 28, Vance held an official campaign event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, in partnership with the Courage Tour, a series of swing-state rallies hosted by a pro-Trump Christian influencer that combine prayer, public speakers, tutorials on how to become a poll worker and get-out-the-vote programming.

Ziklag, a secretive organization of wealthy Christians, funds the Courage Tour, according to previously unreported documents obtained by ProPublica and Documented. A private donor video produced by Ziklag said the group intended to spend $700,000 in 2024 to mobilize Christian voters by funding “targeted rallies in swing states” led by Lance Wallnau, the pro-Trump influencer.

Even before the Vance event, ProPublica previously reported that tax experts believed Ziklag’s 2024 election-related efforts could be in violation of tax law. The Vance event, they said, raised even more red flags about whether a tax-exempt charity had improperly benefited the Trump-Vance campaign.

According to Texas corporation records, the Courage Tour is a project of Lance Wallnau Ministries Inc., a 501(c)(3) charity led by Wallnau. There have been five Courage Tour events this year, and Vance is the only top-of-the-ticket candidate to appear at any of them.

Wallnau has said that Vice President Kamala Harris is possessed by “the spirit of Jezebel” and practices “witchcraft.” As ProPublica reported, Wallnau is also an adviser to Ziklag, whose long-term goal is to help conservative Christians “take dominion” over the most important areas of American society, such as education, government and entertainment.

The Vance campaign portion was tucked in between Courage Tour events, and organizers took pains to say that Wallnau’s podcast hosted the hourlong segment, not the Courage Tour. Two signs near the stage said Wallnau’s podcast was hosting Vance. And during Vance’s conversation with a local pastor, the Courage Tour’s logo was replaced by the Trump-Vance logo on the screen.

An email sent by the Courage Tour to prospective attendees promoted the rally and Vance’s appearance as distinct events but advertised them side by side:

But the lines between those events blurred in a way that tax-law experts said could create legal problems for Wallnau, the Courage Tour and Ziklag. The appearance took place at the same venue, on the same stage and with the same audience as the rest of the Courage Tour. That email to people who might attend assured them that they could remain in their same seats to watch Vance and that afterward, “We will seamlessly return to the Courage Tour programming.”

The Trump-Vance campaign promoted the event as “part of the Courage Tour” and said Vance’s remarks would take place “during the Courage Tour.” And although the appearance included a discussion of addiction and homelessness, Vance criticized President Joe Biden in his remarks and urged audience members to vote and get others to vote as well in November.

Later in the day, Wallnau took the stage and asked for donations from the crowd. As he did, he spoke of Vance’s appearance as if it were part of the Courage Tour. “People have been coming up to us, my staff, and saying we want to help you out, what can we do, how do we do this? I want you to know when we do a Courage Tour, which will be back in the area, when we’re in different parts of the country,” he said. Asking for a show of hands, Wallnau added: “How many of you would like to at least be knowing when we’re there? Who’s with us on the team? If we have another JD Vance or Donald Trump or somebody?”

An employee of Wallnau’s, Mercedes Sparks, peeked out from behind a curtain. “I just wanted to clarify: You said they came to the Courage Tour,” Sparks said. “They didn’t. For legal reasons, the podcast hosted that. It was very separate. I don’t need the IRS coming my way.”

Despite the disclaimers, Vance’s campaign appearance at the Courage Tour raises legal red flags for several reasons, according to experts in tax and election law.

Both Lance Wallnau Ministries and Ziklag are 501(c)(3) charities, the same legal designation as the Boys & Girls Club or the United Way. People who donate to charities like these can deduct their gift on their annual taxes. But under the law, such charities are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS.

Internal Ziklag records lay out how the Courage Tour could influence the 2024 election. “Our plan,” one private video states, “is to mobilize grassroots support in seven key swing states through large-scale rallies, each anticipated to attract between 5,000 and 15,000 participants. These ‘Fire and Glory’ rallies will primarily target counties critical to the 2024 election outcome.” Wallnau said he later changed the name of his swing-state tour from Fire and Glory to the Courage Tour, saying the original name “sounds like a Pentecostal rally.”

Four nonpartisan tax experts told ProPublica and Documented that a political campaign event hosted by one charitable group, which is in turn funded by another charitable group, could run afoul of the ban on direct or indirect campaign intervention by a charitable organization. They added that Wallnau’s attempt to carve out Vance’s appearance may not, in the eyes of the IRS, be sufficient to avoid creating tax-law problems.

“Here, the (Trump) campaign is getting the people in their seats, who have come to the c-3’s event,” Ellen Aprill, an expert on political activities by charitable groups and a retired law professor at Loyola Law School, wrote in an email. “I would say this is over the line into campaign intervention but that it is a close call — and that exempt organization lawyers generally advise clients NOT to get too close to the line!”

Roger Colinvaux, a professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, said that regulators consider whether a consumer would be able to distinguish the charitable event from the political activity. Does the public know these are clearly separate entities, or is it difficult to distinguish whether it’s a charity or a for-profit company that’s hosting a political event?

“If it looks like the (c)(3) is creating the audience, then that again is potentially an issue,” he said.

Ziklag, Wallnau and the Vance campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a former director of the IRS’ exempt organizations division, said there were past examples of the agency cracking down on religious associations for political activity similar in nature to Vance’s Courage Tour appearance.

In the 1980s, the Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart used his personal column in his ministry’s magazine to endorse evangelist Pat Robertson’s campaign for president. Even though the regular column, titled “From Me to You,” was billed as Swaggart’s personal opinion, the IRS said that it still crossed the line into illegal political campaign intervention. Swaggart had also endorsed Robertson’s campaign for president during a religious service.

In that case, the IRS audited Swaggart’s organization and, as a result, the organization publicly admitted that it had violated tax law.

Phil Hackney, a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh who spent five years in the IRS’ Office of Chief Counsel, said the fundamental question with Vance’s Courage Tour event is whether the 501(c)(3) charity that hosted the event covered the cost of Vance’s appearance.

“If the (c)(3) bore the cost, they’re in trouble,” Hackney said. “If they didn’t, they should be fine.” The whole arrangement, he added, has “got its problems. It’s really dicey.”

And even though Ziklag did not directly host the Vance event, tax experts say that its funding of the Courage Tour — as described in the group’s internal documents — could be seen as indirect campaign intervention, which federal tax law prohibits.

“The regulations make it clear that 501(c)(3) organizations cannot intervene in campaigns directly or indirectly,” Samuel Brunson, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago, said. “So the fact that it’s not Ziklag putting on the event doesn’t insulate Ziklag.”

Potential tax-law violations aren’t the only legal issue raised by Vance’s appearance.

Federal election law prohibits corporations from donating directly to political campaigns. For example, General Motors, as a company, cannot give money to a presidential campaign. That ban also applies to nonprofits that are legally organized as corporations.

Election experts said that if the funding for the Vance appearance did come from a corporation, whether for-profit or nonprofit, that could be viewed as an in-kind contribution to the Trump-Vance campaign.

Do you have any information about Ziklag or the Christian right’s plans for 2024 that we should know? Andy Kroll can be reached by email at andy.kroll@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 202-215-6203.

This reporting was supported in part by funds from the Poynter Institute with help from the Joyce Foundation.

JD Vance campaign event with Christian right leaders may have violated tax and election laws, experts say is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Right-wing strategists still talk about what happened in Detroit in 2020, when poll watchers stood outside the absentee ballot counting center, banging on windows and shouting “Stop the count!” Conspiracy theories swirled that those volunteers had been kept out while something corrupt was unfolding inside. In fact, at one point the facility held almost double the number of permitted poll watchers of both parties.

But the theories continue spreading four years later. “They kick people out that are observers, and they put cardboard over the window, and you’re supposed to trust what’s going on behind the cardboard?” Lance Wallnau, a leading Christian right influencer, said at an Arizona tent revival in April.

Ahead of the 2024 election, activists have taken steps to get closer to the action. A coalition of activists on the political right, many of whom have promoted false claims about election fraud, is recruiting poll workers to administer the process themselves rather than watching from the outside. The groups are urging people to work at their local polling stations and to report perceived irregularities to those groups’ external hotlines — something that could risk violating the law.

“Poll watcher is the person where you get kicked out if chicanery happens,” Mercedes Sparks, who works for Wallnau, said at the same tent revival, explaining the recruitment initiative. “If you’re a poll worker, you’re the one doing the chicanery, so you can lock the door. You can kick everybody out.”

Sparks said by email that her remarks were a “lighthearted joke” and that she and Wallnau “make it clear that everyone must follow election laws.” Wallnau did not respond to multiple calls, emails or a list of detailed questions.

The politicized effort to recruit poll workers is concentrated in at least six swing states. ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch reviewed dozens of hours of trainings and presentations, some closed to the press, in which activists discussed their plans.

Activists, including Wallnau, have told recruits they can be a “spy in the camp” or “Trojan horse” on Election Day. But while elections officials in more than a dozen swing-state counties said safeguards are in place to prevent interference, they and elections experts warned of a bigger threat: delegitimizing the process. If poll workers report their experiences to groups with a history of spreading false claims about election fraud, they may help further distrust in the system and results.

“I would be concerned about a repository of alleged fraud like that being used as fodder for misinformation,” said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “If it’s used to perpetuate conspiracy theories and false narratives about our election system, I think you could end up doing a lot of harm.”

The Republican and Democratic parties have historically recruited poll workers, and almost every state legally requires some amount of partisan balance. Ahead of 2024, Republicans have accused officials in five Michigan and Wisconsin cities of unfairly overlooking their nominees and overstaffing polling places with Democrats. The challenges in Flint, Michigan, and Madison, Wisconsin, were dismissed (one by a court, the other by the Wisconsin Elections Commission), and Republican applicants in some places have since filed the required paperwork and signed up; other challenges are ongoing.

What’s newer is groups outside the parties making concerted efforts to recruit poll workers themselves. The Election Integrity Network, founded by Cleta Mitchell, a former lawyer for ex-President Donald Trump, began enlisting poll workers during the 2022 midterms. Now, more groups have joined it. These include True the Vote, whose claims formed the basis of the widely debunked and eventually retracted film “2000 Mules,” which claimed to show election fraud, and The Lion of Judah, a group aspiring to be the “Christian version of the NRA” that is traveling to swing states with Wallnau to recruit conservative Christian poll workers.

Late last month, Trump’s vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, lent Wallnau’s efforts credibility by appearing at a tour stop in Pennsylvania.

It is unknown how many poll workers these groups have recruited, in part because they aren’t saying and in part because election offices don’t ask people about their motivation.

“You have a clear admission publicly of what the game is, that they fundamentally assume that our election systems are corrupt, and so they believe that it is their job to corrupt them in their own direction,” Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, said of Sparks’ remarks. 

Taylor, whose new book documents the role of Christian right leaders like Wallnau in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, said the “propaganda value” of having someone inside the voting system, who “presents quote unquote evidence of election fraud that does not stand up in court, that is completely debunked later on,” is still enormous and bad for democracy.

‘Stand up. We’re going to induct you.’

Historically, campaigns, parties and advocacy groups have enlisted volunteer poll watchers to observe the process and flag concerns. In 2020, hundreds swarmed ballot-counting centers in states where the vote was close. On social media and in unsuccessful lawsuits, Trump claimed Republican poll watchers had witnessed fraud or were denied the chance to observe, fueling conspiracy theories that the contest had been stolen from him.

But poll watchers can only look and, in some states, raise challenges. Poll workers, on the other hand, are paid to help to physically administer the election. As temporary government employees, they may register voters, check identification, issue ballots and assist with equipment. In Arizona this year, they’ll also help hand-count ballots or the envelopes for absentee ballots returned on Election Day. Until this week, they were going to hand-count ballots in Georgia too, but a state court judge blocked the rule.

That direct access to the voting is exactly what the activists are promising. In May, Wallnau brought his Courage Tour to a massive white tent an hour outside Detroit. He moved among the crowd, clasping his arms around believers as they swayed together to worship music. Later that day, he summoned them to their feet as he issued a holy assignment: to serve as poll workers.

“Who here is bothered about the election integrity issue?” Wallnau asked. “Who is interested in obeying God, election integrity and getting paid to do it? All right, stand up. We’re going to induct you.”

Dozens in the crowd stood, heads bowed and arms raised.

“I pray for an anointing. Angels will go with them, and they’ll expose the hidden works of darkness,” Wallnau said. “They’ll be led to discover whatever nefarious things are being done by the darkness.”

Wallnau did similar recruiting in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, directing attendees to Lion of Judah. The organization, which features Trump prominently on its website, offers a free course titled “Fight the Fraud,” with modules detailing poll workers’ basic duties and helping people find their local elections offices so they can apply as well as email templates to streamline the process. It tells students that “election workers matter now more than ever” because the “threat of election fraud is a serious concern” and “what happened in 2020 can never happen again!”

At a Wallnau event outside Pittsburgh last month, Greg Pontinen of Murrysville, Pennsylvania, said he decided to register as a poll worker after speaking with an activist soliciting support for administering elections by hand-counting paper ballots.

“It just seems like there’s a lot of controversy, and there’s a lot of people that have been in a lot of anguish over the last election, of improprieties and rigged elections,” he said. “I think if you have oversight on that, you have less chance of that, and I think that’s a firsthand chance for me to actually watch for that.”

Although Lion of Judah’s course notes that poll workers “must be impartial and follow strict guidelines to maintain the integrity of the electoral process,” it also instructs workers who “encounter any type of voter fraud” to email their hotline with “any proof if available.” Joshua Standifer, founder of Lion of Judah, has referred to his strategy as a “Trojan horse.” On stage in Michigan, he agreed as Wallnau told the crowd: “When they kick everyone else out, you’re the spy in the camp.”

Standifer said in an interview that by “Trojan horse,” he means his program is a way to place principled Christians where they might not otherwise be. And he described the hotline as a tool to reassure whistleblowers that they’re “safe” and supported, as well as to ensure problems get “dealt with either officially or in the court of public opinion.”

But state laws often detail a strict chain of command poll workers must follow on Election Day, including when they encounter possible issues, and prohibit the sharing of private voter information. By reporting information outside the polling place, elections workers risk violating their oaths of office or even state law, said Lauren Miller Karalunas, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice who has reviewed poll worker statutes in 11 swing states.

“Our objective is to encourage Christians to engage peacefully, ethically, and legally within the system,” Standifer said by email. “Any suggestion that we are encouraging inappropriate behavior is simply false and part of an ongoing effort to discourage Christians from participating in civic processes.”

Like Lion of Judah, True the Vote has established a repository to receive complaints and concerns from poll workers on Election Day: an app called VoteAlert. The platform asks users to submit information and to specify if they are poll workers because “it helps us to better anticipate a way in which to potentially support or find resources for you, if you’re serving,” founder Catherine Engelbrecht said during a virtual training in September. The app includes a disclaimer that users agree to follow federal and state laws limiting the ability to record in polling places.

She said her team vets every report before posting it on its platform. However, the public feed included a report that a polling place in Delaware held a bake sale enticing people to vote for certain candidates, which would be illegal. The post contained a photograph that a reverse image search revealed was at least seven years old.

Engelbrecht said she would review details about the bake sale report but otherwise declined to comment. The organization said by email the post “was part of our beta testing period” before its app launched. After the ProPublica-Wisconsin Watch inquiry, the group removed the post.

Many of those recruiting poll workers have connections to Trump or his allies. Lion of Judah’s most recent Tennessee annual corporation filing, obtained through a public records request, was submitted by Miles Terry, an attorney whose law firm partner represented Trump in his first impeachment proceeding. Terry did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

Mitchell, who leads Election Integrity Network, served on Trump’s legal team during his attempts to overturn the 2020 election result. Since 2022, EIN has promoted becoming a poll worker, directing people to “become part of the election apparatus” in their communities. EIN affiliates in Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin have made efforts to recruit and train poll workers in 2024. Mitchell and another EIN leader did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

During a June livestream on the video-sharing platform Rumble, former Trump Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli directed an audience of about 10,000 to EIN’s website to sign up as poll workers. What “can make the most difference without changing the laws,” Cuccinelli said, “is getting more of our folks inside the polling places, not as poll watchers, but as election officials, the ones who actually sign people in in the poll books, the ones who actually count the ballots.” Reached by phone, Cuccinelli said he takes every opportunity to encourage people to become poll workers and often refers them to EIN for training.

His remarks came during regular “election security” livestreams hosted on Rumble by Florida businessman and local Republican Party leader Steve Stern. Stern declined an interview.

In April, Christina Norton, director of election integrity for the Republican National Committee, told the livestream audience that its poll watchers and workers were the “heart of this mission.” When they encounter problems on Election Day, Norton said, they should “immediately report that issue back to the Republican headquarters, back to our war rooms, and then we are able to answer, mitigate or escalate these problems to resolve them in real time.” An RNC spokesperson said Norton meant that only observers should contact the war room but did not respond to requests for clarification and whether the request asked workers to break the law.

The worry is not disruption but distrust

Poll worker recruits could try to disrupt the process by challenging voters’ eligibility to cast ballots. There have been isolated instances of more extreme interference. In June, an Arizona election worker was charged with stealing a magnetic security key to a vote-tabulating machine, and, in 2022, a Michigan worker was charged with copying voter information onto a personal flash drive. The Arizona worker is awaiting trial, while the Michigan worker’s case was dismissed, though the dismissal is being appealed.

But elections officials across the country said there are a number of provisions to prevent poll workers from interfering with voting and ballot counting.

Zach Manifold, elections supervisor in Gwinnett County, Georgia, outside Atlanta, explained that poll workers must receive official training and swear an oath of office — procedures statutorily required in most states — and can be dismissed for impropriety at any time.

“I always tell people, if you’re skeptical of the process, you should be a poll official, because — spoiler alert for them — it’s a really tough job, a really long day, and they work really hard, and there’s a lot of safeguards in place,” Manifold said.

Temporary workers, for instance, are often assigned to work on teams of at least two. And there are detailed processes for documenting who touched vote-related material and when. Administrators also try to pair new workers with experienced ones and strive to staff members of both parties at the polls.

“During our training, that is a pretty big point that we hit home is that when you are an election worker, you are nonpartisan,” said George Guthrie of the Washoe County Registrar of Voters in Nevada. “You’re there to essentially do a job, and that job is to make sure people have the opportunity to vote.”

Some administrators also noted that they and their staff will be vigilant for workers with ulterior motives. “If you’re going there to disrupt, it’s going to be obvious very quickly, and you’re going to be removed, and if it’s something that’s criminal, you’re going to be prosecuted,” said Jerry Holland, supervisor of elections in Duval County, Florida, home to Jacksonville.

Despite Election Day safeguards, some groups also suggest that they could use poll worker testimony in lawsuits challenging the electoral process. United Sovereign Americans, a group that claims to have identified widespread voter fraud, has shared such a plan on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.

“We’re not saying, like, hey, maybe we’ll file a lawsuit down the road,” founder Marly Hornik said on the show. “We’re saying we already have attorneys writing these lawsuits. What we need is your reports to fill in as those are going to constitute the exhibits.”

In an interview, Hornik said her group is nonpartisan and insisted it is not seeking to disrupt the election. But it is planning to request injunctions stopping the certification of election results in some states.

“We’re not disrupting the election,” she said. “The officials who are supposed to run a legitimate process are refusing to do so.”

Attorneys at the Institute for Responsive Government and the Brennan Center said these efforts will likely fail. The Brennan Center has filed an amicus brief in opposition to a United Sovereign Americans lawsuit in Maryland; that suit has been dismissed and the group is appealing.

Beyond the courts, elections administrators and experts point to the broader risks of introducing misconceptions or falsehoods in the court of public opinion.

David Levine, an elections administration consultant, has studied how Trump and others have taken advantage of human errors in service of election fraud narratives, leading to threats and harassment. That warning was borne out both by Special Counsel Jack Smith and a congressional investigation, which have laid the blame for the Capitol violence with the falsehoods spread by Trump and his team.

“Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of this is that when you tell people that there could be fraud around every corner, you certainly can trigger them,” Levine said. “If people who are recruited and receptive to these claims become election workers, and their preferred candidate, or candidates, do not win, they can become very angry, and, as we saw in 2020, take matters into their own hands.”

Anna Clark, Mary Hudetz, Andy Kroll, Megan O’Matz, Doug Bock Clark of ProPublica contributed reporting. Mollie Simon of ProPublica and Ava Menkes of Wisconsin Watch contributed research.

This reporting was supported in part by funds from the Poynter Institute with help from the Joyce Foundation.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

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Why we did this investigation

In the fall of 2022, I noticed a pastor and his church appearing in local news coverage for their anti-LGBTQ+ protests. Looking closer revealed Pastor Matthew Trewhella’s startling history. And digging even deeper, I noticed an untold story: his broader influence on modern Republican politics. 

Key takeaways

• A few decades ago, Wisconsin Pastor Matthew Trewhella was known as a militant anti-abortion activist. Today, he’s got a different reputation: thought-leader on the far right, increasingly welcomed by Republicans.
• Trewhella helped to rehabilitate his reputation through his 2013 self-published book, which uses a 16th-century Protestant doctrine to argue that government officials have a God-given right and duty to defy laws, policies or court opinions deemed “unjust or immoral” under “the law of God.” 
• He’s preached this doctrine to county Republican parties and local groups across the country, even to the National Sheriffs’ Association, a preeminent law enforcement organization.
• His book has influenced Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions. At least 10 measures across the country specifically refer to lesser magistrates. One of the earliest, issued in 2019, was authored by a county commissioner who has described reading Trewhella’s book as a “turning point” for him.
• A prominent booster of debunked election claims is using Trewhella’s book to disrupt future elections.

Some important context

• In the cast of characters who might influence the upcoming election, he’s not rallying crowds like Steve Bannon, the former Donald Trump strategist, or Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA. Trewhella is more behind the scenes, providing a religious justification for some far-right policies and causes. 
• Trewhella says that he promotes nonviolence. But after an activist killed an abortion provider in 1993, he signed a document describing the murder of these doctors as “justifiable.”
• In a brief interview, I asked Trewhella about his reputational shift over the decades. He responded: “Most people will always only care about three things in life: me, myself and I … It’s only because of their mundane, self-absorbed lives that they would think someone like me is an extremist. That’s my answer.”
• Trewhella did not respond to over a dozen attempts to set up a second interview. He did not answer written questions by email and refused a certified letter containing them.

The big picture

Trewhella’s rise helps illustrate the growing influence and power of the Christian right in Republican politics.

Key quotes

“All of those county commissioners and mayors and whatnot who are entertaining this stuff, they’re putting people’s lives and the entirety of civil order at risk by playing footsie with Matt Trewhella.”

— Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, which studies threats to democracy and human rights, who has tracked Trewhella for decades

“I think that the public needs to know that he’s a dangerous theocrat, who would fundamentally alter the United States in irreparable ways that would harm many, including women, people of color and the LGBTQ community.”

— Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which tracks the far right 

What are some details that didn’t make it into the story?

• Trewhella has given sermons about violence, saying that pacifism is “heresy” and that “violence is a tool.” After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, he gave a sermon entitled “A Gathering of Patriots” where he said: “Tyrants must be confronted with force or violence at times because that is the only way to defeat them and to cause their harm and their injustice to others to stop.”
• Timothy Bachleitner, a member of Trewhella’s church, serves as the chair of the Republican Party of Fond du Lac County. Reached by phone, Bachleitner said Trewhella gave his blessing before Bachleitner sought the position and that he has brought the doctrine into his role.
• Trewhella is focused on counties. He organized a conference called “County before Country” with the goal of “expanding God’s Kingdom through Christian localism.”

This story took a lot of research. What else do you want to share about this subject? 

Some Republican operatives in Wisconsin questioned why we were doing this story. They said that Trewhella was old news from the ‘90s. That’s not what our reporting showed. We found him cited by county commissioners, state lawmakers and former Trump officials, all in the past several years. In our home state of Wisconsin, the Republican Party of Waukesha County, the heart of the state’s Republican politics, has invited Trewhella to speak twice and promotes his teachings and book on its website, although its leaders downplayed the link when asked for comment.

“I just can’t imagine that they’d support this person,” said Bill Kruziki, a former Republican sheriff in Waukesha County, Wisconsin. “You can quote me on this: I think it’s a shame they do that.”

The reporting process itself was one of the most interesting I’ve had. One of my first steps entailed sending records requests to local officials who served in areas where Trewhella had given presentations. Within days, Trewhella had obtained a copy of the request and shared it on his social media profile and email newsletter, writing: “The wicked are trembling!”

And in the final stages of the reporting, I requested an interview with Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, who cited Trewhella when defending his calls to ignore federal law that violated “God’s word.” An aide denied my request and included in his email “a brief gospel exhortation,” urging me and my readers “to turn from sin, run to Christ, trust Him, and enjoy fellowship with him forever.”

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Wisconsin Pastor Matthew Trewhella has an affable routine when he’s trying to persuade government officials to abolish abortion, ignore gun laws and question election results.

The 63-year-old opens his talks with a photo of “Trewhella nation”: his wife of over 40 years, their 11 home-schooled children and dozens of grandchildren. He cracks jokes. He quotes history and scripture. He floats secession as a regretful possibility. With half-rim glasses and collared shirts, Trewhella looks and sounds more like a professor than a provocateur.

But when addressing his congregation at an Embassy Suites in suburban Milwaukee, he sneers and shouts, deriding his enemies as wicked dogs, whores and tyrants. 

“When you see sodomy running rampant, when you see women in government, when you see men behaving like effeminate little squirrels, judgment is in the land,” Trewhella said during a 2020 sermon. 

Last year, he said homosexuality should be treated as a crime, noting that the Bible called for the death penalty for “the filth of sodomy.”

For much of his public life, Trewhella has made a career of denouncing the law while railing against abortion and gun restrictions. Twenty years ago, that made him a political pariah. His reputation for blockading abortion clinics, calling for churches to form militias and defending the murder of abortion providers was so extreme that two state chapters of Right to Life, the anti-abortion group, condemned him. 

But today, the world has changed. He has been invited to speak by local Republican parties and other groups across the country. He gave a prayer breakfast sermon to one of the nation’s preeminent law enforcement associations. And a prolific booster of election conspiracy theories has used his work as the basis for a campaign to disrupt elections. 

Trewhella’s ability to tailor his message for different audiences has helped. He’s gracious to the women who introduce him at political events but tells his congregation that the idea of women in government is “sickening” and “perverse.”

In the cast of characters who might influence the upcoming election, he’s not rallying crowds like Steve Bannon, the former Donald Trump strategist, or Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA. Trewhella is more behind the scenes, providing a religious justification for some far-right policies and causes. With the political establishment shifting, he exemplifies how in this splintered landscape, even the most fringe figures can become influencers.

Trewhella gained his newfound acceptance with a self-published 2013 book, “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates,” which relies on a theory developed by 16th-century Calvinists seeking holy justification for fighting political oppression amid the religious wars of the Protestant Reformation. Trewhella has applied it to today’s political battles, writing that government officials have a divine “right and duty” to defy any laws, policies or court opinions that violate “the law of God.”

To him, that means outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage, or even violently resisting the government if necessary, noting in his book that there are times when men “must redden their swords.”

In recent years, Trewhella’s teachings have popped up in legislatures and local boards as the Christian right has increasingly influenced Republican politics. A Missouri state representative applied the doctrine when he proposed banning abortion in 2020, when Roe vs. Wade was still in effect. Commissioners in western North Carolina invoked it when they declared their county a “gun sanctuary” to protest state laws.

Former President Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has praised Trewhella’s book several times, extolling it as a “masterful blueprint showing Americans how to successfully resist tyranny.” And a member of Trump’s 2020 campaign legal team, Jenna Ellis, cited Trewhella’s work as a solution to government overreach in her 2015 book advocating for a biblical interpretation of the Constitution.

Trewhella’s acceptance into more mainstream circles has surprised extremism researchers who have tracked him for decades. It’s important to pay attention to a man “creating the ideological rationalizations for these ideas,” said Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a nonprofit that tracks the far right.

“I think that the public needs to know that he’s a dangerous theocrat who would fundamentally alter the United States in irreparable ways that would harm many, including women, people of color and the LGBTQ community,” Burghart said.

In Wisconsin, Trewhella has forged a close relationship with the Republican Party of Waukesha County, the stronghold for state GOP power. His book is the only one the group promotes on its website. Twice in the past two-and-a-half years, the party has invited him to speak at events, including one where he addressed local candidates. A young leader in Trewhella’s church gave the opening prayer at a county GOP dinner, and the party paid that member to do political canvassing just a month after he was charged in state court for calling in a bomb scare against an LGBTQ+ event. The member is awaiting a plea hearing in August and said his lawyer advised him not to comment.

During a speech to the Waukesha GOP last year, Trewhella focused on how local officials were best positioned to safeguard Americans’ most cherished freedoms.

“You may have to do things in the future you’re not authorized to do,” Trewhella told them. “The country is breaking apart. Counties are becoming important in the process. Counties may secede from one state and join an adjoining state as things break apart. Several adjoining counties may end up leaving a state and forming their own state. Remember, this happened during the Civil War.”

The Waukesha GOP chair declined to comment through executive director Kathy Pape, who wrote in response to repeated interview requests, “We are done with this.” 

Approached near a suburban strip mall at one of his regular anti-abortion street protests in May, Trewhella smiled when asked by a reporter about his reputational rehabilitation. Dozens of his followers spread out at an intersection beneath a punishing sun, handing out pamphlets and displaying 5-foot signs of aborted fetuses.

“Most people will always only care about three things in life: me, myself and I,” he said. “It’s only because of their mundane, self-absorbed lives that they would think someone like me is an extremist. That’s my answer.” He chuckled and returned to his flock.

Trewhella’s transformation

Trewhella tells his own life story in biblical terms: A fallen man finds redemption. Trewhella said he wrote it all down in a 23-page conversion testimony after his 5-year-old son asked him, “Dad, when are you going to write a book where you can tell us how you went from being a bad guy to a good guy?” 

Growing up in a Catholic family, Trewhella wrote, he was forced to attend “nearly unbearable” Sunday Masses. He described his mother as a “classic merciful mom” and his father as “short on words and quick on corporal punishment.” When Trewhella was 11, his parents divorced, which he called an “ugly thing” that “removes all innocence.”

As a bad guy, Trewhella wrote, he joined a Detroit gang and “dealt drugs, stole cars, firebombed houses, robbed businesses, burglarized homes, fought other gangs, and fenced stolen items to the Mafia.”

Then, he said, he landed in an evangelical rehab program at 17 and had an epiphany during church.

“Understand, I had told the shrink at the psyche ward just three days earlier that I would burn down more houses when I got out of jail,” Trewhella wrote. “But sitting there — I saw my sin for how truly reprehensible it was. I was in the presence of a holy God.”

As a good guy, Trewhella got married, graduated from a Pentecostal college and, in 1989, founded Mercy Seat Christian Church in the Milwaukee area. 

He also became one of the nation’s most militant anti-abortion activists. He joined the so-called rescue movement, in which activists blockaded clinics. In 1990, he founded his own organization, Missionaries to the Preborn, whose members chained themselves to cars parked in front of clinic entrances.

Trewhella racked up arrests and jail time for misdemeanor convictions, though other charges were dropped. By 2007, the group took credit for permanently closing down six of eight Milwaukee clinics.

Trewhella has professed nonviolence. But after an activist killed an abortion provider in 1993, he signed a document describing the murder of these doctors as “justifiable.” Around the same time, Planned Parenthood recorded Trewhella urging churches to form militias and telling parents to teach their children to assemble weapons blindfolded: “This Christmas, I want you to do the most loving thing. I want you to buy your children an SKS rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition.”

A man who reportedly used Trewhella’s group’s address on his driver’s license shot and killed a physician who performed abortions in 1998. The group fundraised for the families of people imprisoned for anti-abortion violence, according to a 2001 book. And Trewhella wrote that in 2003 that he visited a man awaiting execution for murdering an abortion provider, saying that “when abortion is outlawed,” future generations would view the man “as the sanest and bravest man of our age.”

It all made Trewhella persona non grata. Republican politicians disregarded him. Wisconsin Right to Life said Trewhella’s group had scant support from “the mainline right-to-life people.” Vermont Right to Life called his group’s statements “disturbing.” And by the time Trewhella’s group announced a tour through Montana in 2001, the state’s Right to Life organization warned its supporters to steer clear.

“They’re really out there,” Steven Ertelt, head of the Montana group, said at the time. “They know we won’t give them the time of day.”

After Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica’s initial interview with Trewhella, the pastor did not return more than a dozen calls, emails and text messages seeking a follow-up interview. The news organizations tried to speak with Trewhella at another protest and at his church service, but he was not there. He did not respond to emailed questions and refused receipt of a certified letter containing them.

Through his anti-abortion militancy, Trewhella came across an idea that would give him a religious foundation for his crusade: the doctrine of the lesser magistrates.

For years, the theory had circulated among Christian Reconstructionists, who believe that all of society — including government, education and culture — should follow their strict reading of Old Testament law. Its adherents included some of the most violent members of the rescue movement. 

Trewhella recalled in an interview first encountering the lesser magistrates doctrine during a talk by a minister in 1990. It drew from the Bible to claim that those vested with political power could actively resist tyranny on behalf of the people — including, in extreme cases, with lethal violence.

“Immediately that made sense to me because I was very involved on behalf of the preborn,” he said. Then, at a 2007 prayer meeting, the spirit moved Trewhella to do more. “I just felt from the Lord,” he said, “that I should write a book on the doctrine of the lesser magistrates, make a website for it, teach it to the government officials and the people of America.” 

The obsession led him to a 1550 German Lutheran text called the Magdeburg Confession, which he claims is the doctrine’s first formalization. Trewhella commissioned an English translation, releasing it in 2012. 

The next year, he self-published his book, in which he beseeched readers to deploy the doctrine against “abhorrent” issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. The back cover called it “a hopeful blueprint for freedom.”

Trewhella’s embrace

After his book came out in 2013, Trewhella hustled. He used his blog and talks to spread the doctrine across the religious right. He seized on controversy and the attention it brought.

Often, he veiled the more extreme elements of his philosophy in American patriotism, asserting that the doctrine influenced framers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In interviews with half a dozen academics, including conservative, Christian professors of government and religion, all but one disputed Trewhella’s claim. Two leading scholars on the revolutionary period and constitutional law said they had never even heard of the doctrine. All of them considered its application in modern-day America inappropriate and dangerous. But to those of a certain political or religious persuasion, Trewhella has proved convincing. 

The book helped Trewhella attract the ear of high-level officials. 

In 2015, in a remarkable turnabout, Republican lawmakers welcomed Trewhella to the Montana Capitol for a sermon in which he discussed the doctrine. 

“The federal government has already attacked and abridged liberty; they are now in the process of plundering the American people,” he said. “The phalanx of laws created by the state to invade our domestic affairs, disarm the people, seize our property and harass our persons all point to the growing tyranny in America.” 

Trewhella’s message resonated in the rotunda and in the nation’s politics, coming in the period between the Tea Party’s rise and Trump’s election.

That speech, Trewhella later said, helped put his book “on the map.”

In 2017, Kentucky’s then-Gov. Matt Bevin met with Trewhella and Operation Save America, an abortion abolition group now run by Trewhella’s son-in-law. 

“We were able to pray for him and challenge him with the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate and the abolition of abortion,” a group blog post said. “He told Pastor Matt Trewhella and the rest of us that he read the book and has passed it to others.” Bevin did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In 2019, Missouri state Rep. Mike Moon, now a state senator, helped run a conference on the doctrine of the lesser magistrates, where Trewhella spoke. A few months later, Moon introduced a bill to completely outlaw abortion in the state, leading Trewhella to claim credit on social media. Moon and his office did not return repeated requests for comment. 

Trewhella’s ideas also gained favor among gun rights activists as a wave of counties declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” some of which state that local law enforcement will not act on any gun laws they deem unconstitutional. The hard-line Gun Owners of America has consistently cited Trewhella and his book in its support of such resolutions. At least 10 resolutions across the country specifically refer to lesser magistrates. One of the earliest, issued in 2019, was authored by a county commissioner who has described reading Trewhella’s book as a “turning point” in his leadership.

“It gave me the foundation I needed as a county commissioner to be the big brother to protect my constituents,” Dr. Dan Eichenbaum, a Republican in Cherokee County, North Carolina, said on his podcast. In an interview, Eichenbaum said his Second Amendment resolution inspired several other jurisdictions to take action. He said he was not aware of the details of Trewhella’s anti-abortion activism, including that Trewhella had defended the murder of abortion providers. “I can’t make excuses for that,” he said.

Like many leaders on the right, Trewhella suddenly found a much larger audience when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. As some people questioned public health measures like masks and vaccines, they began looking for ways to resist government officials they saw as trampling their rights.

They found answers in Trewhella, who pumped out short-form videos and spoke on conservative podcasts and other platforms.

“In light of the tyrannical acts by the state regarding COVID-19, we are rebooting our efforts,” he posted on social media in April 2020. 

The doctrine appeared in local meetings in Indiana and Tennessee as officials challenged public health measures. Andy Ogles, then-mayor of Maury County, Tennessee, south of Nashville, invoked the doctrine when he took steps to allow unvaccinated health care workers to keep their jobs. Ogles is now a Republican member of Congress. His office did not respond to requests for comment. 

Frustrated by pandemic measures like restaurant closures and masking in schools, Republican activists in Ottawa County, Michigan, west of Grand Rapids, invited Trewhella to speak several times. In 2022, one group that invited him, Ottawa Impact, helped flip the county board of commissioners to Christian control.

Since then, the board has tried to fire its health administrator and declared Ottawa a “constitutional county.” The largely symbolic resolution states the board will not enforce any measure that it believes infringes on constitutional rights.

Trewhella called Ottawa “a blueprint for counties across America.” 

Two Ottawa Impact founders denied that Trewhella influenced their work. But that sort of denial is common: When asked about their relationship with Trewhella or his ideas, people often distance themselves or are reluctant to give him credit.

In Wisconsin, the Waukesha GOP’s grassroots outreach director, Keith Best, said he had “never even heard the name” Trewhella. But Best promoted his county party’s event with Trewhella on social media four times.

The relationship dismays former Waukesha County Sheriff Bill Kruziki, a Republican who held office from 1994 to 2002. Kruziki knew of Trewhella from his protests, which included distributing pamphlets saying “Never disarm!” to high school students after the 1999 Columbine shooting.

“It would have been very surprising” for the Waukesha GOP to have invited Trewhella to any event back in the 1990s or 2000s, Kruziki said. “I just can’t imagine that they’d support this person,” he added. “You can quote me on this: I think it’s a shame they do that.”

Challenging elections

Last spring, conservative activist David Clements made the 44th stop on his “Greater Magistrates Tour” in northwestern Wisconsin. The tour, which took its name from Trewhella’s book (revising it to promote the voters as “greater” magistrates), blended Christianity and conspiracy theory to encourage disrupting future elections.

As about 200 people listened on, Clements ran through the familiar debunked claims about the “rigged” system, urging attendees to demand their local officials withhold certification of voting machines and results. Using Trewhella’s playbook, Clements said, they might save their country county by county.

Referring to certain voting machine vendors, Clements told the crowd, Jesus Christ had been resurrected to “restore you to a place where there are no tears, there is no suffering, there are no Dominion or ES&S machines.”

Throughout his tour, Clements had the company of some of the nation’s most prominent election denialists, including Bannon and Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow. Joe Oltmann, an activist who concocted the baseless claim that a Dominion Voting Systems employee had rigged the election, appeared several times. Oltmann has hosted Trewhella on his podcast and told his Telegram channel that Trewhella’s book is “required reading for all freedom minded Americans.”

Clements said he would only do an interview if Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica allowed him to record a video and broadcast it in its entirety. Oltmann had similar terms. The news organizations did not agree, and neither Clements nor Oltmann answered written questions.

Trewhella’s name has previously come up in attempts to challenge the 2020 election. Pennsylvania state Sen. Cris Dush, a Republican who led a legislative investigation into election results, called upon the doctrine of the lesser magistrates when he “urged people to take action against the certification of presidential electors,” the Pennsylvania attorney general said in a court filing.

In an interview, Dush said the doctrine resonated with his military training, which permitted him to disobey an unlawful order.

Extremism researchers and pro-democracy groups say Trewhella’s influence on attempts to disrupt elections is particularly concerning because he claims some of his most vocal supporters have been sheriffs. 

Sheriffs wield significant law enforcement power in much of America. Some have claimed they have the power to seize voting machines should they believe there’s fraud. A faction known as “constitutional sheriffs” claim that within their jurisdictions, they have the sole authority to interpret the constitutionality of state and federal laws. Leaders of the movement have promoted election conspiracies and urged sheriffs to investigate possible fraud. They have also celebrated Trewhella, name-dropping him at conferences and giving his book to attendees.

Trewhella also spoke last year at a prayer breakfast at a conference held by the National Sheriffs’ Association, which represents thousands of law enforcement officers across the country. Trewhella said he spoke at their invitation. 

The organization did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But former Daviess County, Kentucky, Sheriff Keith Cain, a past board member who coordinated the prayer breakfast, said by email that Trewhella had asked to give the sermon after registering a booth. Cain said he requested Trewhella stick to spiritual matters.

Trewhella did not abide.

He told a group of about 40 — each with a complimentary copy of his book placed in front of them — that sheriffs are “ministers of God first” and must defy laws, policies or court opinions deemed “unjust or immoral” under the law of God.

“America is languishing under the blithe compliance of the lesser magistrates,” he told them. “The filth of Sodom is paraded down the streets.” 

Now, with a presidential contest looming, what worries Frederick Clarkson, an extremism researcher who has tracked Trewhella for decades, is not the pastor’s influence on who wins, but the impact he’ll continue to have on state and local politics.

“There’s a tectonic shift that’s gone on in American public life and politics,” he said. “All of those county commissioners and mayors and whatnot who are entertaining this stuff, they’re putting people’s lives and the entirety of civil order at risk by playing footsie with Matt Trewhella.”

Mollie Simon of ProPublica contributed research.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

The Gospel of Matthew Trewhella: How a militant anti-abortion activist is influencing Republican politics is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has waged a crusade against DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — practices in higher education and state government, including withholding raises from Universities of Wisconsin employees until the system agreed to freeze DEI positions. Records obtained from Vos’ office show one of the groups that has informed his thinking on this topic is the right-wing Claremont Institute.

The New York Times Magazine has described the think tank as “a nerve center of the American Right” which considers the nation embroiled in a “cultural civil war.” 

Among records Wisconsin Watch obtained from Vos’ DEI files is a report published by the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, which the Times characterizes as dedicated to fighting “wokeism” in American institutions, particularly higher education. The report details activities at two Alabama universities and concludes that “administrators are transforming universities into institutions dedicated to political activism.” 

One of Claremont’s founders, Larry Arnn, chaired former President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission, a counterpoint to the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which documented the centrality of slavery to the nation’s founding.

The institute’s affiliates and former fellows include activist Christopher Rufo, who has fought against attempts to acknowledge systemic racism. Wisconsin Watch has previously documented how Rufo’s ideas fueled hyper-partisan division in the small town of Kiel, where bomb threats disrupted civic life in spring 2022. Other fellows have included U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro and Jack Posobiec, who promotes white supremacy and disinformation.

John Eastman, the ex-Trump lawyer facing disbarment and criminal charges for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, has been with the institute for 30 years, founding and directing its Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.

Truth Sandwich: Who’s behind Robin Vos’ DEI crusade? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

This story includes references to sexual assault of a minor and mental health issues.

Last March Outagamie County Judge Vincent Biskupic ordered a man convicted of sexually assaulting a minor to pay $150,000 in restitution to the county to reimburse for mental health services, even though the county said it didn’t want to request any money in part because seeking it could “revictimize the victim.”

Eight months after sentencing, the victim died unexpectedly. She had just turned 18.

Her case got further than the vast majority do. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, just 31% of sexual assaults are reported, 5% of perpetrators are arrested and just 2.8% of cases end in felony convictions.

But the process proved painful. Assistant District Attorney Julie DuQuaine told the judge the teenager’s mental health plummeted after trial, saying she suffered “complete deconstruction.” 

About a month after trial, as part of sentencing, which included eight years in prison and 12 years of extended supervision, Biskupic had to decide how much, if any, restitution the perpetrator, Patrick Tully, should pay.

Restitution is supposed to make a crime victim “whole.” The victim or prosecutor could have asked for restitution in the case, but neither did. Instead Biskupic ordered the $150,000 restitution  — a huge amount for any offender — be paid to the county during sentencing, even after the county initially declined to request any amount. 

A law professor, a former Supreme Court justice and an attorney who litigates crime victim’s rights issues reviewed court records at Wisconsin Watch’s request, and the State Public Defender’s Office reviewed the circumstances. They described Biskupic’s approach to restitution as “unusual,” “odd” and even “improper.” 

“This judge seems to be a very activist judge,” said John Gross, a clinical law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “He seems to want to insert himself into the resolution of cases in ways that are often not appropriate, or at the very least, not authorized by any statute.” 

Gross also raised concerns the restitution order, which directed money to the county that supported the victim after the assault, could set a dangerous precedent in which judges or district attorneys could use restitution to fill government coffers.

Biskupic declined an interview through his judicial assistant, saying the case is ongoing. The deputy corporation counsel also declined, and DuQuaine did not return a request for comment. 

Not taking no for an answer

Although state law requires judges to order restitution, barring “substantial reason not to do so,” the prosecutor bears responsibility for documenting losses resulting from a crime.

Through court orders, Biskupic twice prompted DuQuaine to submit information that might inform a restitution request, later specifying she should work “directly with the county human services office and corporation counsel office” to determine amounts.

The county’s deputy corporation counsel, Dawn Shaha, declined to “request restitution for the County” in a letter, writing: “It would not be feasible for the County to parse out specific amounts directly attributed to this assault, and we believe submitting an arbitrary amount could ultimately end up revictimizing the victim in this case.”

Although Shaha said by phone she would consider questions sent via email, she ultimately declined.

Outagamie County Health and Human Services Director John Rathman told Wisconsin Watch in a written response to questions that the judge’s request was not “routine.”

Gross, former Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske and Legal Action of Wisconsin attorney Patrick Shirley all said Biskupic’s restitution inquiry should have stopped when the county declined to request it.

“They might be entitled (to restitution), but they are waiving it and saying ‘We don’t want it,’ ” Geske said. “I question whether a judge ought to be ordering restitution to somebody who says they don’t want it.”

But records show Biskupic did not take no for an answer, ordering Shaha to determine how much money the county had spent on the survivor’s care at private facilities since her assault, even after Shaha voiced her aversion in open court. 

Transcripts show he even directed the prosecution to call in a social worker to testify, whom he then questioned directly.

At the hearing, Biskupic said his inquiry did not seek “the benefit of one side or the other,” saying that Tully’s sentence might benefit if the survivor were “doing well and stable.” But if she had struggled, requiring hospitalization, then the prosecution’s failure to provide that information “creates a void that I think is contrary to the victims’ rights law.”

“There’s a legitimate inquiry to be made by a judge about potential restitution that they should order under the statute,” Gross said. “But then there’s inserting yourself into the adversarial process to a degree where you seem to be advocating for one side.”

Biskupic’s backstory 

Biskupic’s judicial practices have attracted scrutiny before. 

In 2021, Wisconsin Watch and WPR exposed his tendency to stretch the conventional bounds of sentencing authority by crafting arrangements not spelled out in state law, such as his own form of probation separate from the Department of Corrections. About two dozen legal experts had varying opinions on its propriety, alternatively describing it as legal, a gray area and unauthorized.

The revelations came during the reporting for “Open and Shut,” a seven-part investigative podcast series that scrutinized Biskupic’s record as Outagamie County district attorney.

The series showed Biskupic using his broad discretion to push boundaries as a judge and prosecutor, as far back as the 1990s.

A review of Outagamie County circuit court data over the past five years shows defendants seek to substitute Biskupic for a different judge at a rate only second to Judge Mark McGinnis, whom Wisconsin Watch has reported also has a record of overreaching his authority. 

Violating her privacy

Shirley said the judge’s insistence on determining restitution intruded upon the survivor’s privacy. 

“Victim privacy, especially in the context of mental health, is really important,” Shirley said. That’s because sexual assault entails a “loss of agency,” and many of his clients have felt “re-victimized by a process that exposes their mental health records or details of their mental health struggles.”

Biskupic instructed the prosecutor to retrieve records about the survivor’s wellbeing from a separate, juvenile case and referenced it again at the hearing.

“It’s odd that the court’s doing this, and it raises some red flags to me that this isn’t coming from the victim herself,” Shirley said. “I feel like she should have input in that both intuitively and legally.”

On the first day of sentencing, which the survivor did not attend, the prosecutor said that while she had contacted the survivor’s social worker, asking her to share information “if there’s anything (the survivor) wants us to know,” she had received nothing back. The survivor “did not want to share it, or she didn’t have any information to share,” DuQuaine said. 

The survivor attended the second day of sentencing, but she did not wish to speak.

“Often people with very good intentions, who want to see (survivors) protected, can end up being, shall we say, paternalistic,” Shirley said. “People that are trying to do good things for them and protect them and look out for them end up cutting off their agency.”

To the county, not the victim

In Wisconsin, bond money posted by a person convicted of a felony gets applied to restitution and payments of the judgment. Tully’s father, Andy Tully, said in an interview he posted a total of $250,000 in bond on his son’s behalf, confirmed by court documents, and he had anticipated recouping it if his son complied with all conditions. If the judge had stopped his restitution inquiry after the county declined to request it, Tully’s father might have gotten more back.

Instead, Biskupic ordered Tully to pay $10,000 toward the survivor’s future therapy costs, citing a statute that allows for additional restitution up to that amount for “necessary … psychiatric and psychological care and treatment” in “sexually motivated” crimes. 

He also ordered Tully to pay $150,000 to Outagamie County to reimburse for “past payments” it made on the survivor’s behalf for “counseling and treatment” at private contracted facilities following the assault. The county estimated her treatment so far had cost more than $252,000 and that future treatment could exceed $100,000.

“This is a huge amount of restitution,” Geske said — a sentiment echoed by Gross and Shirley. Data on restitution figures in sexual assault cases was not readily available, but Gross noted the figure exceeds the maximum fine allowed for the crime by $50,000.

Rathman, the county human services director, said it was possibly the first court order he had seen requiring repayment for county services rendered to a victim.

The attorneys consulted by Wisconsin Watch had varying opinions on its propriety. Geske said the case law Biskupic cited in the hearing and orders supported his actions, noting judges have broad discretion. Shirley and the State Public Defender’s Office said it fell into a gray area. Gross considered it unauthorized.

“This is a really slippery slope to go down,” Gross added. “The last thing we want to do is have a precedent out there where courts can just pile on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt in the guise of it being restitution for people who are already being convicted of crimes.” 

Wisconsin prisons pay incarcerated people pennies an hour for their labor. After they leave prison, it becomes harder to find a job, and they may remain on probation longer due to inability to pay high restitution costs. 

An appellate court could determine whether Biskupic’s ruling fell within the bounds of the law, but Tully has not appealed. Records show Biskupic scheduled a hearing to determine whether funds from the $10,000 amount should be disbursed for any therapy accessed after sentencing.  The prosecutor informed the court the victim had died. A hearing is set for Jan. 22.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

In ‘unusual’ move, Wisconsin judge Vincent Biskupic orders man to pay restitution that county didn’t seek is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.