The biggest data centers planned for Wisconsin, the Microsoft project in Mount Pleasant and the Vantage project in Port Washington, are not a threat to local water systems or to Lake Michigan — a fact opponents either can’t believe or won’t admit.

Microsoft last week called off its plans to develop a second Racine County data center campus in the Village of Caledonia after a public hearing at which one opponent said, “This company, whoever it is, they want our land, they want our water. They have no commitment to our community. They’re in it for profit only.”

In Port Washington, Mayor Ted Neitzke is clearly nettled by the mishmash of false or selectively chosen information about water. The opposition has coalesced, remarkably, around an anti-business video screed by Charlie Berens, a video and standup comedian normally known for his genial takes on Wisconsin culture. 

Legislation touted by its sponsor as the logical follow-up to a bipartisan law signaling support for new nuclear energy in Wisconsin got its own hearing in front of an Assembly committee this week.

The new bill, AB472, is a grab-bag of measures. A largely supportive train of witnesses offered even-toned objections to differing parts, but opposition was muted at most — a remarkable development in a state that repealed its moratorium on new nuclear plants only nine years ago.

The bill, said sponsor Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers), addresses start-up costs, in part by adding a tax credit for the first 19 years of a nuclear power plant’s operation, its value determined by how much power a plant produces.

Sortwell termed it “a long-term investment in our baseload generating capacity,” referring to the sort of power plant that operates predictably at a given output.

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Wisconsin taxpayers ought to be rooting hard for conservatives to hold the line during this current federal government shutdown and let the pandemic-era super-subsidies for the Affordable Care Act run out at the end of the year.

As subsidies will cost an estimated $450 billion over the next decade, Democrats in Washington have fallen back on old defenses of Obamacare, telling horror stories that aren’t tethered to fact.

The number of Wisconsinites enrolled in health insurance purchased through an Obamacare “exchange” reached 313,579 in 2025, the highest number since the system of subsidized coverage began in 2014, data from the Kaiser Family Foundation show.

Obamacare opened in Wisconsin in 2014 with around 139,800 individuals enrolled. Enrollment climbed until 2017, reaching a peak of 242,863. Enrollment declined gradually to 191,702 in 2021.

A pandemic-era measure, the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, signed by President Joe Biden in 2021, temporarily increased the size of subsidies and added subsidies for households earning more than four times the upper limit of poverty. These “enhanced credits” reversed the enrollment trend.

According to the state Department of Transportation, Wisconsin has 115,930 miles of public roads.

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