Hi Folks,

Kirk Bangstad here from the Minocqua Brewing Company.

Here’s a recording of last night’s Up North Podcast with Patti Vasquez, Ben Cominos, Jon Shelton and me talking about rogue Wisconsin sheriff’s who work with ICE and the current fight to make sure Wisconsin’s budget surplus goes to our public schools.

If you can’t watch the entire show, here are a few of the most important snippets:

First, we discussed which county sheriffs in Wisconsin were working with ICE. The chart above outlines which Wisconsin counties are doing what with ICE, and here’s quick clip sharing how Sheriffs might be violating both citizen’s and immigrant’s 4th amendment rights to reasonable search and seizure.

We then discussed how these counties are being essentially bribed to work with ICE through training bonuses and jail funding.

The pic above shows the funding bonuses available to county law enforcement officers who partner with ICE, and the clip below details the funding that county jails get to detain people that look like immigrants—be it American citizens or migrants alike.

Here’s the take away from all of this:

We need to remove the sheriffs who partner with ICE from office in next November’s elections, and the Minocqua Brewing Company is willing to help any group from these 19 Wisconsin counties recruit and help elect sheriff candidates who refuse to work with ICE. If you want our help in Brown, Calumet, Fond du Lac, Manitowoc, Marquette, Outagamie, Sauk, Sheboygan, Washington, Winnebago, Wood, plus newer additions Dunn, Green Lake, Walworth, Kenosha, Marathon, Kewaunee, Waukesha, Dodge, Lafayette Counties, please email us at [email protected].

Next up, we heard from Senator Chris Larson last week that Democratic Governor Tony Evers is currently negotiating with Republican leaders Robin Vos and Devin LeMahieu to spend down our projected $2.5B surplus in tax relief instead of funding our chronically underfunded public schools. Here’s a clip of Jon explaining who wrongheaded that is:

Jon went into the details of why public schools have been underfunded for years. If you want to learn why, I encourage you to read Senator Larson’s piece he wrote for our platform last Saturday.

Long story short, anyone who cares about public education in Wisconsin should be contacting Governor Evers and demanding that he leave the surplus alone and stop negotiating with Republicans when we have the opportunity to spend it more wisely with a Democratic legislative majority in 2027.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company. We gotta keep pushing to get rid of fascist Sheriffs and fund our public schools—one beer at at time.

And speaking of beer, we JUST RELEASED a new maibock in support of Wisconsin’s public schools called “School House Bock.” As always, a percentage of the profits of everything we sell goes back into political action through this Substack page and through our Super PAC that works to keep Wisconsin blue.

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