Friday, March 27, 2026
Racine-based Burn Pit BBQ coming to Wisconsin Walmart stores in April
Business grew out of pandemic-era hobby
Burn Pit BBQ, a small Racine-based barbeque seasoning business, is moving into the world's largest brick-and-mortar retail chain.
Walmart will carry Burn Pit BBQ's garlic seasoning and Memphis-style barbeque rubs at 70 Wisconsin stores starting April 19. It's a dramatic expansion for a business that grew out of a pandemic-era hobby.
Founders Ben Kreple and Greg Fischer, former soccer teammates at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, bonded after graduation over a shared love for grilling.
"It was a way to continue to get our families together," Kreple told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Racine residents saw more neighbors fire up their backyard grills, some for the first time. So, they started a blog offering recipes and tips.
"When Greg and I first started grilling together, we would reach out to ask questions, and there'd be times you'd get trounced on for asking certain questions," Kreple said. "Our vision was to have something for the newer, beginning grillers to feel free to ask questions."
Soon, Kreple and Fischer began experimenting with their own recipes. They opened an online store, Burn Pit BBQ, in 2020.
Burn Pit BBQ specializes in barbeque sauces, seasonings, and hot sauces. Sauces and seasonings run $12 per bottle, and hot sauces cost $15 per bottle.
The business boasts all-natural ingredients and gluten-free options. Kreple and Fischer said they wanted to offer a healthy, Wisconsin-made option for new grillers and enthusiasts alike.
After a couple years of online sales growth, Burn Pit BBQ expanded to a few local retailers. Among them are Metcalfe's Market in Wauwatosa, Butcher Block Meat Market in Oak Creek, and Harry Hansen Meat Service in Caledonia.
Walmart's Open Call program provided an opportunity
Last spring, a friend made Kreple and Fischer aware of Walmart's Open Call program, which invites small businesses to pitch for a chance to put their products on the retail giant's shelves. They applied online and were invited to meet with a buyer at Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.
"We got 30 minutes to pitch our brand and our products, and after that 30
minutes, we were told that they'd like to give us a shot," Fischer said.
The pair run Burn Pit BBQ with the help of partner distributors and co-packers, but this new expansion has them looking bring on more people in the next few years. If all goes well, they hope to grow regionally.
"We want to focus on our backyard," Kreple said. "That's always been our goal – focus really heavily on Wisconsin, where we're from, and the Midwest."
Kreple and Fischer, both of whom served in the U.S. military, also host an annual "Back Yard Bash" fundraiser at Greendale's Explorium Brewpub to support local veterans' organizations. The event has raised more than $30,000 since it began five years ago.
"Being a veteran-owned business, it's very important for us to continue to remember our service as well as those that have served and continue to serve," Fischer said.
During this period of rapid growth, Kreple and Fischer want to keep accessibility central to Burn Pit BBQ.
Each online product description offers a rundown of flavor profile and which meats are best paired with it. Burn Pit BBQ's blog posts weekly recipes and grilling advice.
It's a part of helping others continue to bond over the grill, they said.
Francesca Pica can be reached at fpica@usatodayco.com.
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Conservative activist convicted in voter-fraud case
From: The Washington Post:
In Wisconsin, Harry Wait said he set out to expose the potential for voter fraud. He ordered mail ballots in the names of others — and got charged with felonies.
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| Harry Wait, a conservative activist, waits to meet with other HOT Government group members in 2022 at a bar in Racine, Wisconsin. (Alex Wroblewski/For The Washington Post) |
By Patrick Marley
MADISON, Wis. — Conservative activist Harry Wait said he ordered ballots in the names of prominent local politicians four years ago to expose the risks of voter fraud.
Prosecutors determined he was right that voter fraud was an issue — but they believed he was the culprit.
On Tuesday night, a jury convicted Wait of one felony count of identity theft and two misdemeanor counts of election fraud, according to online court records. The jury acquitted him on a second identity theft charge. He faces a maximum penalty of seven years in prison but is unlikely to receive a punishment that severe.
The verdict came as President Donald Trump and his allies put a focus on the dangers of voter fraud and pressed Senate Republicans to abandon the filibuster and pass legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to cast ballots.
Voter fraud is rare, and Wait’s case shows that those who try to uncover it can pay serious consequences if they push legal limits.
Wait, a 71-year-old retired business consultant, is the president emeritus of a group in southeastern Wisconsin known as HOT Government, which Wait says pushes for honest, open and transparent leadership. Wait has spent years railing against the state-run website that allows Wisconsin voters to find their polling places and order mail ballots.
He used that system in 2022 to request ballots in the names of State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the most powerful Republican in the state, and Cory Mason, the mayor of Racine, Wisconsin, and a Democratic former state lawmaker.
Wait asked for the ballots to be sent to his home and then announced he had done so, saying he was highlighting a flaw in the state’s voting processes that bad actors could exploit to cast ballots for other people. The state Justice Department launched an investigation and charged Wait.
One of the municipal clerks who received a request from Wait sent him a ballot; the other did not. Election officials have said that actions like Wait’s are extremely rare and that they would have quickly caught on to them even if he hadn’t disclosed what he did. The state tracks where ballots are sent and investigates when voters question whether someone tried to vote in their name, election officials said.
Wait has said the ease with which he ordered ballots shows the state’s online portal is vulnerable to mischief. In the four years since he was charged, he has said bringing the issue to light was worth the criminal charges.
“I’d do it again in a heartbeat, because to save the republic, soldiers have to draw blood and blood be drawn,” Wait told The Washington Post in 2022.
On Wednesday, Wait said he would appeal his conviction but was prepared to pay a price for his actions.
“What I’m afraid [of] is that any whistleblowers that are coming down the road that have this information are going to be scared to do it,” he said.
Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the state’s bipartisan Elections Commission, said Wisconsin’s online voter portal is set up to balance access to the ballot and voter security. Voters who don’t like the state’s election policies should contact legislators instead of committing a crime “as some sort of stunt for personal aggrandizement,” she said.
“I hope the message [the verdict] sends is, ‘If you break election laws, you will be caught and you will be convicted,’” Jacobs said.
Wait’s supporters have lauded him as a hero. At rallies, some have worn “Free Harry” T-shirts and others military-style dog tags with Wait’s name, the date he ordered ballots and the designation of “patriot.” On Monday and Tuesday, his backers posted video updates about his trial and filled the courtroom in Racine.
Wait got involved in reviewing election practices after Trump lost the 2020 election. Reviews have repeatedly found the results were correctly tallied, but Wait has said he believes the election was rigged. Trump, too, has continued to falsely claim that election was stolen, and his administration recently seized ballots in Georgia and election data in Arizona as it investigates.
Wait is not alone in facing legal consequences. Three months after Wait ordered ballots in the names of others, Milwaukee’s deputy elections director created three false identities to request that military ballots in their names be sent to a state lawmaker. The elections official, Kimberly Zapata, said she was trying to identify a flaw in the state’s systems. Zapata, who was quickly fired, was convicted in 2024 of absentee-ballot fraud and misconduct in office, and sentenced to a year of probation.
In Colorado, former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters (R) is serving a nine-year prison sentence for conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and other crimes related to a scheme to copy voting machine hard drives. In Michigan, two attorneys and a former state lawmaker face charges related to efforts to obtain voting machines.
From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/24/activist-voter-fraud-mail-wisconsin/
Caledonia woman reported missing has been found dead, police say
Steven Martinez
been found dead.
Police early Wednesday, March 25 issued a missing endangered person alert for Kari Nelson. Authorities cancelled the alert about 9:20 a.m., saying Nelson's body had been found.
Nelson was last seen about 6:30 p.m. March 24 leaving her house to pick up medication from a Meijer in Oak Creek. She never returned home.
Police found her car around 10 p.m. that night in Bender Park. Her cellphone was inside the vehicle, the alert said.
Police issue missing endangered alerts when a missing person does not meet critera for certain missing alerts, like an Amber Alert, a Silver Alert or a critical missing alert, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice.
Racine County activist Harry Wait found guilty in voter fraud case
Molly Beck
MADISON - A Union Grove man who illegally requested absentee ballots to make a statement about election security was found guilty of election fraud by a jury.
Harry Wait, a leader of a Racine County-based group known as H.O.T. Government that promotes false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, was found guilty of two counts of misdemeanor election fraud and one count of identity theft by a Walworth County jury on Tuesday, March 24 after a two-day trial.
Wait was charged by Attorney General Josh Kaul in 2022 after he posed as Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Racine Mayor Cory Mason to request their absentee ballots in order to show violations of the law are possible.
The jury found him not guilty of a second felony identity theft charge. He faces up to seven years in prison.
Wait is a leader of a Racine County group that focuses its advocacy on the false election claims, including that President Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that Wisconsin's elections are rife with fraud.
"I'm glad I did it. I would do it again in a heartbeat," Wait told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel when he was charged in 2022.
According to the criminal complaint, an investigator with the Wisconsin Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation alleged Wait requested eight ballots but all but two individuals gave him permission to do so.
The charges came two months after the state DOJ launched an investigation into the scheme to commit election crimes by Wait and others who believe former Trump did not lose the 2020 election.
Ahead of the charges, Wait freely spoke about the crime and contacted former Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling and others about his actions.
In one email to Schmaling, Racine County District Attorney Patricia Hanson, Vos and others, Wait said, "I stand ready to be charged for exposing these voting vulnerabilities when I ordered Mason's and Vos's absentee ballot online, all without providing a photo I.D. or identifying myself."
Schmaling did not arrest Wait and instead publicized the plot on social media as being helpful in rooting out vulnerabilities in the state election system and blamed the Wisconsin Elections Commission, calling on commissioners to remove a way voters can easily request ballots online.
Wait has become a minor celebrity among those in Wisconsin and beyond who do not believe President Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has praised Wait's actions, calling him a "white hat hacker."
Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes. Recounts financed by Trump, nonpartisan state audits, and a study by a conservative legal firm have confirmed the result and did not find widespread voter fraud.
Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Monday, March 23, 2026
Evers signs bill that shores up FoodShare while banning sugary food
Jessie Opoien
MADISON – Wisconsin will bar FoodShare recipients from using benefits to purchase candy and soft drinks under legislation signed Monday by Gov. Tony Evers.
The bill, which the Legislature sent to the governor with bipartisan support earlier this month, also provides funding and additional positions requested by Evers' administration to ensure the state is not penalized under new federal requirements implemented under President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" last year.
In a statement announcing he had signed the bill into law, Evers championed the approval of those resources for the state Department of Health Services but did not address the new restrictions on purchases for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
"In spite of the chaos at the federal level and the continued attacks on our FoodShare program, I am proud of the work my administration has done over the past year to ensure our kids, families, veterans, and seniors across our state receive the resources they need to access basic food and groceries," Evers said in a statement. "As long as I am governor, I will continue to do everything in my power to protect Wisconsin families and taxpayers from the harmful decisions of the Trump Administration."
Evers' administration estimated last fall that Trump's sweeping tax and spending law would cost the state $284 million over the span of its enactment and in August requested nearly $70 million to cover the implementation of the new requirements for SNAP.
The federal program, administered at the state level and known as FoodShare in Wisconsin, provides low-income families with cash assistance to purchase certain foods at authorized retailers. It is subject to work requirements.
The federal law imposed new work requirements and shifted more of the administrative costs onto states. It also subjects states that make too many overpayment or underpayment errors to hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties.
The bill recently passed both chambers of the Legislature with bipartisan support, emerging from the Assembly with a 71-22 vote and the Senate with a 25-8 vote.
Under the bill, DHS must request a waiver from the federal government to enact the ban on sugary purchases. The federal government has approved similar waivers in nearly two dozen states, allowing them to implement these bans as two-year pilot programs.
Bill author Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, said the policy will redirect benefits toward healthy foods in an effort to improve health outcomes.
Under the bill, DHS will be required to contract with a nonprofit organization to develop a platform with a database of eligible products to be implemented by retailers. The bill requires nonprofit organizations to partner with a technology firm that is "experienced with this state's Medical Assistance enterprise data warehouse and data analytics reporting system" to administer the platform.
The database could include an optional public-facing inventory of eligible products under the law.
The DHS funds requested by the Evers administration were attached as an amendment to the bill as the Assembly neared the end of its work last month.
"I think people should have the ability to make those choices when they're getting their food, but at the end of the day (this funding) is the one that's really important," Evers told reporters March 18 in Milwaukee when asked about the funds being attached to the purchase restrictions. "So was happy to do that. It's one of those things that we call compromise in the Legislature and the governor's office, so this for sure takes precedent."
SNAP recipients living in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture earlier this month over similar purchase restriction policies implemented in their states.
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs argued they or their family members rely on the restricted foods to manage health conditions such as diabetes and allergies, or to obtain energy boosts needed in their daily lives.
The lawsuit said the federal government exceeded its legal authority by approving waivers without conducting "reasoned decision-making" and seeks to void the waivers.
Jessie Opoien can be reached at jessie.opoien@jrn.com.
Is Wisconsin losing millions to states where cannabis is legal?
Madeline Heim
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel collaborated with Wisconsin Watch to develop this fact brief. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Gigafact program, newsrooms across the U.S. that deliver bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read more about our methodology atjsonline.com/FactBriefMethods.
Yes
Cannabis isn’t legal in Wisconsin, so residents are purchasing it in states where it is, generating tax money for those states.
Wisconsin borders three states with legal recreational cannabis: Michigan, which legalized it in 2018; Illinois, which legalized it in 2019; and Minnesota, which legalized it in 2023.
Illinois tracks cannabis sales by in-state versus out-of-state purchasers. A 2023 analysis from Wisconsin’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau found that Illinois collected $36.1 million in tax revenue in 2022 from out-of-state residents who purchased cannabis in counties bordering Wisconsin.
About half of cannabis sales in 2022 at dispensaries in Illinois counties that border Wisconsin were to out-of-state residents, the analysis found.
Michigan and Minnesota do not track nonresident cannabis purchases.
In Michigan, marijuana tax revenue is shared with local governments and tribes, as well as the state’s School Aid and Transportation funds.
This fact brief responds to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Ballotpedia, Michigan Proposal 1, Marijuana Legalization Initiative (2018)
National Public Radio, Illinois Governor Signs Law Legalizing Recreational Use Of Marijuana
Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management, Cannabis law
Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, Illinois adult use cannabis monthly sales figures
Legislative Fiscal Bureau, Illinois Marijuana Tax Collections on Sales and Estimated Wisconsin Residents
Email with Jim Walker, public information officer, Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management
Email with David Harns, public relations manager, Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency
Michigan Department of Treasury, Adult-Use Marijuana Distributions Based on Marijuana Revenues Collected in Fiscal Year 2025 February 2026
Michigan Legislature, Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marihuana Act (excerpt)
Sunday, March 22, 2026
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Friday, March 20, 2026
Racine mayor proposes renaming Cesar Chavez Community Center
Holly Gilvary
RACINE — Mayor Cory Mason is proposing that the Common Council consider renaming the Cesar Chavez Community Center to the Dolores Huerta Community Center.
He made the proposal Thursday after Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farmer Workers alongside Chavez, accused Chavez of sexual assault.
A New York Times investigation Wednesday found Chavez also groomed and sexually abused young girls who worked in the movement.
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| Mason |
A resolution to rename the community center will be introduced at the Common Council meeting April 20.
The Cesar Chavez Community Center is on Racine’s north side at 2221 Douglas Ave.
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