Brian Dake

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday adopted Republican-drawn maps for the state Legislature, handing the GOP a victory just weeks after initially approving maps drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

The court reversed itself after the U.S. Supreme Court in March said Evers’ maps were incorrectly adopted, and came just as candidates were about to begin circulating nominating papers to appear on this year’s ballot without being sure of district boundaries.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court had adopted Evers’ map on March 3, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it on March 23. The high court ruled that Evers’ map failed to consider whether a “race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny black voters equal political opportunity.”

Evers told the state Supreme Court it could still adopt his map with some additional analysis, or an alternative with six majority-Black districts. The Republican-controlled Legislature argued that its map should be implemented.

The Wisconsin court, controlled 4-3 by conservatives, sided with the Legislature.

“The maps proposed by the Governor … are racially motivated and, under the Equal Protection Clause, they fail strict scrutiny,” Chief Justice Annette Ziegler wrote for the majority, joined by Justices Patience Roggensack, Rebecca Grassl Bradley and Brian Hagedorn.

The Legislature’s maps, they wrote, “are race neutral” and “comply with the Equal Protection Clause, along with all other application federal and state legal requirements.”

Hagedorn, a conservative swing justice, initially backed Evers’ map but reversed himself once the matter came back before the court. In a separate concurrence, he wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court decision required the state court to adopt a race-neutral map, and the Legislature’s maps “are the only legally compliant maps we received.”

The court’s three liberal justices — Jill Karofsky, Ann Walsh Bradley and Rebecca Dallet — dissented. Karofsky, writing for the minority, said the Legislature’s maps “fare no better than the Governor’s under the U.S. Supreme Court’s rationale.”

Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) Secretary Randy Romanski and Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation Secretary and CEO Missy Hughes announced yesterday the creation of the new Wisconsin Agricultural Export Advisory Council (WAXC). This council will help guide the initiatives created through the Wisconsin Initiative for Agricultural Exports (WIAE), a collaborative project between DATCP and WEDC to promote the export of Wisconsin’s agricultural and agribusiness products.

The council includes international trade experts from WEDC and DATCP, state legislators, and agriculture organizations and agribusinesses representing crop, dairy, and meat products. The council will meet at least twice per year, and the first council meeting will take place at 9 a.m. on May 4, 2022 at the WEDC headquarters, 201 West Washington Avenue, Madison, WI 53703. These meetings are open to the public, and are
expected to have virtual attendance options.

Wisconsin agricultural exports reached an all-time high of $3.96 billion in 2021. Through the WIAE, DATCP is working collaboratively with WEDC to build on that momentum by promoting Wisconsin agricultural products in the international marketplace.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is initiating an enforcement program that identifies employers who failed to submit Form 300A data through the agency’s Injury Tracking Application (ITA). Annual electronic submissions are required by establishments with 250 or more employees currently required to keep OSHA injury and illness records, and establishments with 20-249 employees classified in specific industries with historically high rates of occupational injuries and illnesses.

The program matches newly opened inspections against a list of potential non-responders to OSHA’s collection of Form 300A data through the ITA and reports all matches to the appropriate OSHA area office. If the area office determines that the establishment on the list is the same establishment where the inspection was opened, OSHA will issue citations for failure to submit OSHA Form 300A Summary data.

In addition to identifying non-responders at the establishment level, the agency is also reviewing the 2021 submitted data to identify non-responders at a corporate-wide level. This corporate level review is being conducted for the nation’s largest employers.

OSHA developed the program in response to recommendations from the Government Accountability Office to improve reporting of summary injury and illness data.  The initiative will begin in early April.

The agency is also posting ITA data as part of its electronic recordkeeping requirements for certain employers. By mid-March, 289,849 establishments had submitted their OSHA Form 300A information.

Today the United States Postal Service filed notice with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) of price changes to take effect July 10, 2022. The new prices, if approved, include a two-cent increase in the price of a First-Class Mail Forever stamp from 58 cents to 60 cents.

The proposed prices, approved by the Governors of the U.S. Postal Service, would raise First-Class Mail prices approximately 6.5 percent. The proposed Mailing Services price changes include:

Product                                                        Current Prices                Planned Prices

Letters (1 oz.)                                                  58 cents                         60 cents
Letters (metered 1 oz.)                                   53 cents                         57 cents
Letters additional ounce(s)                              20 cents                        24 cents
Domestic Postcards                                       40 cents                        44 cents
International Letter (1 oz.)                              $1.30 cents                  $1.40 cents

The PRC will review the prices before they are scheduled to take effect. The complete Postal Service price filing with prices for all products can be found on the PRC site under the Daily Listings section at prc.gov/dockets/daily.

More than half of U.S. households paid no federal income taxes in 2021, a temporary spike attributed to massive COVID-19 relief spending in the form of tax credits and stimulus payments.

A recent analysis from the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimated that 57% of Americans paid no taxes last year. While that’s down slightly from last year’s 60%, it marks a significant increase from the 44% recorded before the pandemic began.

The increase stems from the pandemic-driven surge in government spending, including three stimulus checks, expanded federal unemployment aid and the expanded child tax credit.

Because the stimulus checks were designed as refundable tax credits, they significantly reduced tax liability in both 2020 and 2021, the analysis said. And in some cases, the checks flipped some households from paying income tax to not doing so.

Essentially, no household making less than $28,000 paid federal income tax last year, nor will a majority – about 75% – of those making between $28,000 and $55,000. Among middle-income households, about 43% paid no federal income tax.

Still, while many households did not pay federal income tax, most Americans still owed payroll or state income taxes. The study shows that about four out of five individuals paid at least one of these taxes. Nearly everyone paid the government in another form, whether through state and local sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes or state income taxes.

The United States Supreme Court ruled March 23 that redistricting maps for the state legislature created by Governor Tony Evers under a Wisconsin Supreme Court-ordered “least change” requirement contain a racial gerrymander. The nation’s top court sent the maps back to the state’s top court, and ordered it to hold proceedings to fix these maps or approve different ones.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to overturn the “least change” congressional maps submitted by Evers and approved by a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, meaning those new district boundaries will be in place for the fall 2022 election.

The issue at the heart of the legislative maps is whether it was lawful to expand the number of Milwaukee-area Assembly seats with a majority of Black voters. In the maps approved in 2011, there have been six districts with a majority of Black voters. The maps submitted by Evers would increase that number to seven districts, by adjusting the lines and lowering the percentage of Black voters in each district to just above the 50% mark.

After the Wisconsin Supreme Court approved the governor’s “least change” legislative maps, Republican lawmakers and a conservative legal group asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in, saying the Evers maps illegally used race as a primary factor in drawing the district lines.

The issue of the legislative maps now returns to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which may pursue a number of options.

“On remand, the court is free to take additional evidence if it prefers to reconsider the Governor’s maps rather than choose from among the other submissions,” stated the U.S. Supreme Court’s order.

Essentially, the Wisconsin high court can ask parties to submit a revised version of the Evers maps that would keep the number of majority Black districts at six, or it could reverse its earlier decision and choose the maps submitted by the Republicans in the state Legislature, which contained six black districts in Milwaukee.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday stayed a district judge’s injunction against President Joe Biden’s social cost of carbon, reinstating the metric used to measure the climate impacts of rulemakings and projects.

The social cost of carbon, which is used by the federal government when issuing regulations, approving infrastructure projects or taking other actions, is an estimate of the present and future damages resulting from emitting one ton of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Climate activists hope a higher estimate will significantly increase the value assigned to pollution reductions, which in turn will help justify stronger climate regulations.

The stay allows EPA, the Departments of the Interior, Energy and Transportation and other federal agencies to resume using the interim SCC figures in rulemakings and other decisions. At least one major rule, regarding emissions from heavy-duty trucks was published without quantifying its climate benefits because of the injunction.

The stay is pending a fuller appeal of the injunction, but the order issued on Wednesday indicates the appellate court is not amenable to Louisiana’s arguments.

The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it would raise interest rates for the first time in three years as policymakers look to cool red-hot inflation.

The widely anticipated move – that the Fed would raise rates by 25-basis points – brings to an end the ultra-easy monetary policy put in place two years ago to prop up the economy through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The rate liftoff, which puts the benchmark federal funds rate at a range between 0.25% and 0.5%, is likely just the start of a series of increases intended to curb runaway inflation.

New economic projections released after the meeting show that policymakers expected six more, similarly sized increases over the course of 2022 after consumer prices hit a 40-year-high. It marks a considerable shift from just six months ago, when half of the central bankers believed interest rate increases were not warranted until at least 2023. Fed officials also expect inflation to remain elevated, ending 2022 at 4.3% – far above the Fed’s annual target of 2.3%.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A federal judge in Louisiana on Friday shot down President Biden’s interim estimates on the social costs of greenhouse gas emissions, dealing another judicial blow to the administration’s climate agenda.

A 2021 executive order directed agencies to use an interim metric that estimated costs to society that would come from burning carbon in environmental permitting and regulatory decisions. But Louisiana, Alabama, and eight other states “sufficiently identified the kinds of harms” needed to block the metric’s use, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana ruled.

“The Court agrees that the public interest and balance of equities weigh heavily in favor” of ordering the administration to disregard the calculations Judge James D. Cain Jr. wrote in the opinion.

States challenged the temporary cost, claiming Biden didn’t have the authority to issue such a significant decision without notice-and-comment rulemaking. They also claimed that its use in decisions would hamper their economies through higher costs and more stringent standards.

The Justice Department unsuccessfully tried to argue that the states’ claims were premature until the metric was actually used in a decision. The DOJ said it’s “reviewing the decision” and declined to comment further.

The court did make it clear that it was ruling on whether Biden had flown against administrative procedures with his interim metric and not on “the scientific issues regarding greenhouse gas emissions, their effects on the environment, or whether they contribute to global warming.”