Listening, Leading, and Legislating: News from the 23rd

March 24, 2025

Floor Sessions

Last week the Assembly hosted the State of the Tribes event and held  two floor sessions with bills that were more for political purposes than the people’s priorities. In just the past two weeks, I held weekly constituent office hours, two budget listening sessions with Senator Jodi Habush Sinykin, a town hall with Congresswoman Gwen Moore, and will be attending many more as a member of the Joint Finance Committee. Unfortunately, the issues that I am hearing about from Wisconsinites bear little resemblance to the bills being brought forth in the Assembly.

Tuesday’s session started off with a resolution honoring friend and former colleague Jonathan Brostoff, who tragically died by gun suicide in November. I had the honor of reading a letter from Jonathan’s family to the members of the State Assembly urging legislators to take up suicide prevention legislation. As of this email, I have yet to hear back from my Republican colleagues. The measures are in the Governor’s budget. If they are removed by the Republican majority we will offer them as stand-alone bills and keep fighting for these common-sense gun safety laws. 

The Assembly also considered AB 24, which would punish local sheriffs that do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Aside from imposing significant unfunded mandates on local sheriffs, the bill would reduce by 15% the county’s shared revenue payments for the following year. I trust our local law enforcement leaders to do what’s best for our communities. I voted against the bill for many reasons, but in particular the last thing we should be doing is cutting funding for public safety at a time when these departments in our district need more resources, not less.

Even more troubling was a series of bills targeting transgender youth (AB 100, 102, 103, 104). While most elected officials agree that there is a youth mental health crisis, the Republican majority seems to be perfectly fine with proposing bills that harm some of our state’s most vulnerable young people. Public hearings for bills prohibiting teachers from using student-preferred names and pronouns and restricting access to gender-affirming care lasted for more than six hours, with the vast majority in attendance and online testifying in opposition with heartbreaking personal stories. Taking personal decision-making away from those closest to young people - parents, doctors and teachers - is wrong. I voted no on these harmful, ill-advised proposals but they passed the Assembly mostly along party lines.