Morning Headlines - Tuesday, Apr. 28, 2026

Start your day informed with today’s must-read headlines from around Wisconsin and the world. And don’t forget to check out our Meme of the Day at the end for a little humor to go with your news!

U.S. and World Headlines

The Data Center Water Crisis Isn't Real

By day, Andy Masley was working as a director for an effective altruism community in DC. By night, he was writing blogs for his Substack The Weird Turn Pro, such as: “A failure to take violence seriously is bad.”

But last January, Andy noticed something curious. When he’d passively mention using ChatGPT at parties, people would respond: “Don’t you know how bad that is for the climate?”

“And I would try to suss out what they meant by that,” Andy told us in an interview.

Using Claude, some back-of-the-napkin math, a guiding desire for things to make sense, and his background as a high school physics teacher (“explaining how much a watt hour is turns out to be really useful,” he told us), Andy identified a concerning pattern: the country’s top papers, from Bloomberg to The Washington Post, were stoking fears with almost certainly wrong or woefully misleading statistics about data centers’ water use.

So he wrote about it — at length.

Trump Assassination Attempt Sparks New Wave Of Unfounded Conspiracy Theories

A fresh wave of conspiracy theories is rolling through social media across the country following Saturday night’s attempted assassination of President Trump at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner.

The unfounded theories largely capitalize on short video snippets of those in the room and initial breaking news reports filed moments after a gunman tried to breach a ballroom at the Washington Hilton with Trump and hundreds of other government officials and members of the press inside.

Judge In Musk V. Altman Seats Nine-Person Jury. Opening Arguments Start Tuesday

The jury was seated in Musk v. Altman, with opening arguments to follow.

Elon Musk’s lawyers said in January that their client should receive up to $134 billion in “wrongful gains” at OpenAI.

The trial lands as Musk prepares to take SpaceX public in what’s likely to be a record IPO, and as OpenAI gears up for its own expected public offering.

Mexico Captures Cartel Leader With $5 Million U.S. Bounty On His Head

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Mexico's most powerful criminal enterprise, suffered another blow Monday when the Mexican military captured one of its top leaders in the northwest of the country, two months after the cartel's leader was killed.

Audias Flores Silva, also known as "El Jardinero," or The Gardener, was seen as a possible successor to the killed leader and the United States had a $5 million reward out for information leading to his arrest.

Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce Breakup Rumors Spread Following Viral Post

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce faced new breakup chatter after an X (formerly Twitter) post claimed they had quietly split.

The pop superstar and Chiefs tight end have not issued any official update. So, the claim remains unverified at the time of writing.

Still, the viral post stirred fresh attention because recent reports had pointed the other way. Talks of wedding planning and engagement still continue to dominate the couple’s public timeline.

Wisconsin Headlines

Minocqua Brewery Owner Gets National Attention For Trump Post

Wisconsin’s most infamous brewery owner is making national headlines after he weighed-in on the latest attempt to kill President Trump.

Minocqua Brewing owner Kirk Bangstad took to X Saturday, saying he is disappointed that he couldn’t give-out free beer.

"Well, we almost got #freebeerday. Either a brother or sister in the Resistance needs to work on their marksmanship or he faked another assassination to get a positive news cycle,” Bangstad wrote.

Brewing Hate: Kirk Bangstad’s Long History Of Deplorable Behavior

In the quiet heart of Wisconsin’s Northwoods, where lake living and traditional small-town communities thrive, one man has turned a local brewery into a weapon of toxic political warfare, personal vendettas, and alleged financial self-dealing.

Meet Kirk Bangstad, owner of Minocqua Brewing Company and self-styled progressive provocateur. To his dwindling band of online supporters, he’s a brave resistor against “MAGA bullies.” To anyone with common sense and a respect for decency, he’s a textbook example of a professional grifter, a relentless troll, and a genuinely toxic piece of work whose antics have poisoned community relations, wasted court time, and, most damningly, exploited the goodwill of donors who thought they were funding “progressive” causes rather than subsidizing one man’s ego, legal bills, and lifestyle.

Cartel Member Sentenced To 22 Years In Federal Prison For Fentanyl Trafficking

Brad D. Schimel, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, announced that on April 24, 2026, Jose Cardenas-Salcido (age 43) was sentenced to twenty-two years of imprisonment, followed by five years of supervised release, by United States District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller.

Judge Stadtmueller previously found Cardenas-Salcido guilty of the following crimes after a bench trial in January 2026: distributing at least 400 grams of fentanyl; unlawfully using a communication facility to commit a felony; attempting to obstruct justice using physical force; and attempting to corruptly persuade a witness to offer influenced testimony in an official proceeding.

During the trial, witnesses described how Cardenas-Salcido supplied pills containing fentanyl to lower-level distributors selling in the Milwaukee metro area. Cardenas-Salcido and his collaborators sent their fentanyl through the mail before a shipment containing over 5,000 pills was intercepted by law enforcement in October 2022, and investigators later learned that Cardenas-Salcido was the source of those drugs. The evidence also showed that the defendant was an admitted member of the Sinaloa cartel, with familial connections to it.

These Platforms Allow Users To Speculate On Sports. So Why Aren’t They Illegal In Wisconsin?

Last week, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit against five different prediction market platforms alleging that they facilitate illegal sports betting in Wisconsin.

Platforms such as Kalshi, Polymarket and Robinhood allow users to buy and sell “event contracts” that pay out based on the outcomes of real-world events like elections, wars and sporting events. And the platform collects a fee for every transaction made.

The lawsuit comes just weeks after Gov. Tony Evers signed a bill legalizing statewide sports betting — with the requirement that the computer servers that host the betting are located on tribal lands in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Tennis Sends Both Teams To NCAA’s For First Time In 27 Years

Wisconsin tennis is sending both teams to the NCAA Tournament in the same season for the first time in nearly three decades.

The Badgers’ men’s team earned an at-large spot in the NCAA men’s tennis bracket, marking the program’s first tournament appearance since 2017.

Head coach Danny Westerman says his group is “gritty” and “hungry,” with a roster that returned key pieces from last season and still feels it has something to prove heading into postseason play.