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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce Fact Briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

Yes.

Nine out of 446 bills with a Democrat as the first author got a hearing in the Wisconsin Legislature in the 2025-26 session.

The nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau provided statistics that confirmed most of the numbers in a social media post about the fate of bills introduced by Democrats, who are in the minority.

Nine Democratic-led bills got a public hearing, one of the first steps to becoming law. Those included enhancing perimenopause and menopause education, grants for AEDs in child care centers and free state park access for veterans and Gold Star families.

The LRB confirmed that no bills with a Democrat as the first author became law. That doesn’t take into account three laws where the Assembly or Senate version of the text passed, but a Democrat led the companion bill in the other chamber, such as a bipartisan law that expanded the missing child alerts system. 

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Hope Karnopp has reported on politics for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel since 2023. She covered the 2024 presidential campaigns in Wisconsin and was on the ground at the RNC and DNC. She previously was a Wisconsin Watch reporting intern. Hope is originally from Green Bay and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.