SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
In addition to data centers, things like education, healthcare, immigration are also top of mind for Wisconsin voters. And since Wisconsin is a swing state, its politics can indicate what unfolds nationally. To get a sense of the big issues affecting life in the state, I sat down with the hosts of the Swing State Of The Union podcast from member station WUWM. They are Sam Woods and Joy Powers. And since Wisconsin is America's dairy land, I started by asking about the state's agriculture industry. Joy Powers explained that the Trump administration's aggressive tariffs have farmers feeling lots of pain.
JOY POWERS, BYLINE: You know, farming is probably the biggest industry impacted by tariffs specifically, and there's so many different costs that are rising for them. We're talking about diesel prices, fertilizer, feed, seed. Everything is up. And so as these costs are rising, they've become more and more dependent on subsidies. There are a lot of subsidies for farmers.
PFEIFFER: Tons of government subsidies.
POWERS: A lot. And yet, they've remained largely stagnant right now. We specifically spoke with the dairy farmer Darin Von Ruden. He talked about the fact that most of these subsidies go to the much larger farms. For the average family farm, they represent a much smaller part of their budget. And so they're getting hit both on the front end and the back end, and Von Ruden explains why this sometimes invisible pain really doesn't reach the consumer in the way that it does the farmers.
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DARIN VON RUDEN: I think the biggest thing is all of the expenses that dairy farmers incur on a regular basis that is not really understood by the general public, you know, especially when they see the milk shelves are full most of the time, dairy products are full, there's usually plenty of ice cream to eat. So just don't understand that real cost of what that product is.
POWERS: Von Ruden is both a dairy farmer himself, a second-generation dairy farmer, and he's the president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union. And so he's heard from a lot of folks who are trying to exit the dairy industry. This is a cultural industry here in Wisconsin.
PFEIFFER: They just don't want to do it anymore. It's too hard.
POWERS: They can't afford to.
PFEIFFER: Healthcare is another thing that affects people of all ranges, whether you're a relatively comfortable retiree or someone who struggles to get health insurance or has no health insurance. In Wisconsin, like in many other states, many hospitals have been shrinking or closing, whether they're in urban or rural areas. How is that playing out in the state?
SAM WOODS, BYLINE: So our future story for our healthcare episode follows the closure of a labor and delivery unit in rural Wisconsin. And after this unit closed, the closest hospital that someone could give birth at was about 40 miles away. And we talked to someone who was very involved in trying to keep that labor and delivery unit open but ultimately failed in that effort. And she gave birth about three weeks later in her home, opted for a home birth, and was on the verge of death.
More broadly, though, there's a spectrum of hospitals that exist. So this hospital is kind of on the poorer end of the spectrum. This hospital sees a lot of patients that are either uninsured or on Medicaid. And of course, with about $1 trillion in cuts from Medicaid coming from the Big Beautiful Bill, a main funding source for these especially rural hospitals that serve kind of low-income patients. The money to go around here is drying up.
PFEIFFER: So in terms of both Medicaid insurance for patients, but also revenue for hospitals, it's a double hit.
WOODS: Yes.
PFEIFFER: We hear about affordability all the time now. Economic issues are huge. People feel in their everyday lives in so many ways - grocery store, gas station, et cetera. When you've talked with voters, with residents, what do you hear from them about their biggest concerns about costs?
POWERS: Yeah. You know, it didn't matter the topic that we were talking to people about - you know, if we went there to talk with them about healthcare, if we went there to talk with them about immigration reforms, if we went there to talk with them about data centers - everybody had money on the mind. We spoke with Matt King from the food bank here in Milwaukee, who talked about just the increased need that he's seen at the food bank.
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MATT KING: Prices have gone up all around us, and wages that working families are receiving have not been able to keep up with the high cost of living. And so that's what we're seeing is more and more people coming to seek food assistance, in particular young families who are feeling the strain and then also older adults who are on a fixed income. And meanwhile, the cost of everything around them has gone up.
POWERS: It's one of these issues that really goes across every other layer of problems.
PFEIFFER: Politically, Wisconsin is always a much-watched state. A lot of times, what plays out politically here is an indicator of what's going to happen in the rest of the country. A lot of local and regional issues here often end up being national issues. As you've talked to voters, what are the issues that you think are most going to influence them as they decide who to cast votes for these midterm elections?
WOODS: I think it's a couple of things. As Joy mentioned, affordability is probably the main one, and a lot of folks we talk to kind of define that in, I need to afford basic needs. It's a lot being put on individual people's shoulders in Wisconsin.
PFEIFFER: That is Sam Woods and Joy Powers. They are hosts of the Swing State Of The Union podcast at WUWM in Milwaukee. Thanks to both of you.
WOODS: Thank you.
POWERS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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