Welcome to our weekly DC Wrap, where we write about Wisconsin’s congressional delegation. Sign up here to receive the newsletter directly.
Quotes of the week
Rebecca Cooke wants to defund the police. She wants trans surgeries for children. She wants men in women’s locker rooms and on their sports teams. She wants to open the borders and provide free medical care for illegal aliens. This is not who we are here in the 3rd Congressional District.
– U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, attacking his Democratic opponent on CNN.
Every time you do an interview, it’s obvious why you’re afraid to debate anyone. I don’t know if you actually are starting to believe your lies or you just don’t know the diff.
– U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Town of Vermont, commenting on Van Orden’s interview on X.
This week’s news
— U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil says he’s “encouraged” by the slim majority of senators who voted to pass his congressional stock trading bill.
But that wasn’t enough to advance the Stop Insider Trading Act, which failed to clear a procedural hurdle in the Senate yesterday in a party-line vote, 53-47.
“Unfortunately, Senate Democrats filibustered this commonsense ethics reform,” Steil, R-Janesville, wrote on X, while vowing to continue his work to pass the bill.
The bill would bar members of Congress and immediate family members from buying new individual stocks and requires members to provide notice when they sell stock.
But it allows for trading other securities and does not require members to divest of their current holdings.
Democrats have argued the bill does not go far enough to curb congressional stock trading.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, in a statement said the bill fell short by letting members keep stocks they already have and letting the president and vice president continue to trade stocks.
“Wisconsinites deserve a real ban on this kind of corruption, and this is just what I support and what we need to become law,” she said.
Dems also have criticized the addition of a provision that would add new photo ID requirements to vote, a measure several Dems have called a “poison pill.”
Senate Dems yesterday also blocked a bill that pushes states to curb energy price hikes tied to new data centers.
The Ratepayer Protection Act would require states to consider a framework to shield ratepayers from data centers’ energy costs. It passed with near-unanimous support in the House earlier this month, including every member of Wisconsin’s House delegation.
But Senate Dems have said the bill does not go far enough to protect Americans from rising power prices.
Baldwin in a statement called the bill “toothless” and an effort to “sell the American people a bad bill of goods and take them for fools.”
— The U.S. Senate voted down an effort by Baldwin to overturn a Trump administration rule she says is a “backdoor attempt” to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins joined Dems in an unsuccessful attempt to undo the rule using the Congressional Review Act, in a 48-51 vote.
The rule, finalized in May, will put into place stricter verification requirements and eliminate standardized plan mandates for insurers. It also establishes new health care plans, some of which have higher out-of-pocket costs or lack dedicated networks of doctors and hospitals.
AG Josh Kaul joined a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general in July filed a lawsuit to vacate the rule.
“This misguided policy, which Republicans and the president own, will jack up out-of-pocket costs and deductibles on millions, pile on red tape, and reduce coverage for essential things like addiction treatment, hearing aids and more,” Baldwin said on the Senate floor Monday. “This policy makes people pay more for worse care.”
— Wisconsin’s U.S. senators both voted yea on a bill overhauling the college sports landscape.
Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, and Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, were part of a bipartisan group approving the Protect College Sports Act on Monday by a vote of 77-22.
The bill would create a new, wide-ranging federal rulebook dictating everything from healthcare protections for college athletes to caps on name, image and likeness payments and rules preserving smaller sports at schools dominated by men’s football and basketball.
It also would grant the National Collegiate Athletic Association and College Sports Commission limited antitrust protection to shield them from lawsuits when enforcing the new rules.
“This bill is a step in the right direction to help stop the chaos, compensate student-athletes fairly, and support our sports programs at our universities for generations to come,” Baldwin said in a statement.
Baldwin also authored an amendment to the bill aiming to ensure college students’ right to file civil suits in state court for personal injury or similar claims; that passed 96-1.
Johnson’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Opponents of the bill, which include labor unions and the NAACP, argued the bill unfairly places limits on athletes while giving the NCAA significant institutional power.
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, who played football at Stanford as a tight end, was among the bill’s most vocal critics.
The bill now goes to the House, though that chamber is not slated to return until after the midterms.
— Dem 3rd CD candidate Rebecca Cooke has sent GOP rival Derrick Van Orden a cease-and-desist letter demanding he stop posting AI deepfakes of her to make it seem like she made comments she’s never said.
Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, mocked the request in a post on X late yesterday with the image of a “Hurt Feeling Report.”
“Please have this done in triplicate and submit to the circular file for review,” Van Orden added.
The letter from Cooke’s attorney to Van Orden via his campaign email pointed to an Aug. 4 video that the congressman posted on X that purported to show Cooke on the campaign trail in Eau Claire with former President Joe Biden behind her.
The letter calls the video “pure fiction” and states she never made the comments attributed to Cooke. The ad had Cooke saying she seeks “to take advantage of as much corruption as possible and give every illegal alien free healthcare.”
“You are airing this false content to attempt to fool the voters of Wisconsin into believing she said something she did not to harm her reputation for your own political gain,” the letter states.
Attorney Ben Staffed added the campaign planned to monitor Van Orden’s X account for future misuses of AI to defame Cooke.
— The DCCC, making its first financial commitment in southeastern Wisconsin’s 1st CD through a joint buy with Mitchell Berman, knocks GOP incumbent Bryan Steil for more than doubling his net worth while in Washington, D.C.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said the ad will air in the Milwaukee and Madison markets starting today.
As of last night, AdImpact had tracked a $271,000 joint buy from the committee and Berman, an emergency room nurse from Raymond.
Read more in Thursday’s AM Update.
This post was updated at 8:11 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026 to add additional news items.
Posts of the week
ICYMI
Spectrum News: Still no debate set in Wisconsin’s most closely watched congressional race
AP: Democrats eye Wisconsin Republican incumbent as congressional map expands in hopes of a blue wave
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Tom Tiffany’s call for reliable energy includes nuclear power and coal
Spectrum News: Wisconsin Senator holds hearing focused on how hospitals handled COVID
CNN: GOP congressman fighting for seat in toss-up Wisconsin district leans in on Trump
Wisconsin State Farmer: Wisconsin farmers look to Congress for farm bill certainty
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Tom Tiffany campaign blocks Journal Sentinel reporters from event
WEAU: Derrick Van Orden holds press conference discussing his view on data centers
WKOW: Sen. Baldwin’s ‘For the Fans Act’ would give Wisconsin fans free access to Packers games on TV
WEAU: Baldwin introduces bill to keep federal agents from polling places
