Wisconsin Democrats secured a trifecta in state government for the first time in decades, and we don’t have to look far to how their first months of ‘governing’ will go. We can look to other states that have flipped to a Democrat trifecta and the list of Democrat bills introduced in 2025 to see just how far they will move Wisconsin to the left.
This preview paints a picture of systematic dismantling: Wisconsin’s distinctions as a Midwestern state of work, savings, and family stability replaced by the governing model that has been tested and failed in California for over a decade.
The Transformation Starts With Ideology
Democrats might begin their trifecta with putting their ideology directly into state statute. 2025 AB 314 does what its authors call a complete “re-write of all of state statute to incorporate gender neutral terminology.” The summary is explicit: replacing “mother” with “pregnant person” and “father” with “other natural parent” throughout Wisconsin law. Meanwhile, AB 220 adds “gender identity” and “gender expression” as protected classes, making it illegal to prevent biological men from using women’s restrooms. And AB 316 mandates a $4 million taxpayer-funded program to train school counselors and social workers on “LGBTQ rights.”
These are not edge cases or symbolic bills. They are foundational ideological battles for Democrats. Wisconsin’s existing legal code would be rewritten. Schools would be required to teach an ideology. And importantly, parents would lose standing to object.
Wisconsin Democrats are following the same playbook that California used: stack the legal code with protected categories, fund trainers to enforce compliance in schools, and move the center of what counts as normal so far left that dissent becomes illegal discrimination. It works. California schools now teach gender ideology as curriculum standard. Parents who object face legal jeopardy. And bills like what were proposed in 2025 by Democrats are what started it all.
Then Come the Economics
Once Wisconsin Democrats implement their social ideology, they will next attack Wisconsin’s economy. AB 1028 gives every municipality the power to impose a local wealth tax on anyone earning over $1 million. AB 1029 brings back Wisconsin’s death tax with rates up to 20%. AB 464 restores prevailing wage requirements, automatically raising construction costs on every public project. AB 470 repeals Right to Work, forcing workers into unions whether they choose membership or not. And that’s not to mention the dozens of attempts to raise taxes on businesses to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The cumulative effect is purposeful. High earners will leave. Employers will be forced to lay off hardworking Wisconsinites. Construction projects become unaffordable. Labor costs spike. Wisconsin’s competitive advantage in business, the one thing that has kept the state stable while neighbors struggled, evaporates seemingly overnight.
The Welfare State Expands by Design
AB 186 spends a quarter million dollars studying a taxpayer-funded “guaranteed jobs” program for $20-an-hour jobs to “low-income Wisconsinites and formerly incarcerated individuals.” AB 889 creates a $50 million state employment program for climate-related work. AB 857 establishes a $10 million “climate change scholarship” program. AB 879 launches a half-million-dollar tree-planting initiative against “urban heat islands.”
These are not investments. They are an expansion of the welfare state, under the guise of “feel good” pilot projects. Each creates a constituency paid from the public purse to advocate for its own expansion. California has built the world’s most expensive welfare state this way. Add layer on layer of programs, each with a budget line and a constituency, each justified as addressing a crisis. Wisconsin Democrats have already shown they would replicate this model from tree planting all the way to “free” child care. And it doesn’t end there.
The consistent thread: create dependence paid for by hardworking taxpayers.
The State Media Machine
AB 1205 creates a taxpayer-funded income tax credit for newspaper subscriptions. AB 1206 creates $40,000 fellowships in journalism at UW Madison. AB 1207 directs $21 million in grants to local journalism and media projects. California built the same system. Fund the outlets that will cover you favorably. Cut off the ones that won’t.
California Is a Cautionary Tale Wisconsin Can Still Avoid
California was the world’s fifth-largest economy. It is now the gateway to American decline. Homelessness has metastasized. Business is fleeing. Schools cannot teach reading. Utilities fail in hot weather. Criminals face no consequences. California’s decline is not unique. It’s a pattern of blue states choosing tax hikes, spending sprees, and growing government dependency, and facing economic decline or stagnation as a result.
Wisconsin is not California yet. Wisconsin still has fewer regulations, lower taxes, stronger family structures, a culture of work. But the path back, once California’s model has been imported under a Democrat trifecta, is extremely long.
What Wisconsin Democrats have introduced in the past is not an abstract idea. It is a comprehensive blueprint for transformation. Written legislation, that together construct a state where ideology trumps biology, government controls employment, elections are too complex to monitor, and dissent is illegal.
Wisconsin voters should understand what a Democratic trifecta would do, because Democrats have told them.
