Author

Ruth Conniff

Ruth Conniff

Ruth Conniff is Editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner. Conniff is a frequent guest on MSNBC and has appeared on Good Morning America, Democracy Now!, Wisconsin Public Radio, CNN, Fox News and many other radio and television outlets. She has also written for The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. Her book "Milked: How an American Crisis Brought Together Midwestern Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers" won the 2022 Studs and Ida Terkel Award from The New Press.

Scrabble tiles spell "vote"

What’s going on with the voter purge?

By: - January 9, 2020

A conservative group’s lawsuit demanding that more than 200,000 voters who may have changed address be purged from the voting rolls in Wisconsin has set off a race to state and federal courts by parties on both sides of the issue. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), which brought the original lawsuit, the […]

Trump pushes Iran sanctions, Senate to vote on war powers

By: - January 8, 2020

In a live, televised address to the nation on Wednesday, President Donald Trump responded to missile attacks by Iran on U.S. military sites in Iraq by announcing tougher sanctions, vowing that Iran will never get nuclear weapons, and praising his administration’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, claiming that U.S. military power is […]

Thousands of people gather outside of the Wisconsin state capitol building during the 2011 Wisconsin Budget Protests.

Our Wisconsin Revolution’s new director: We’ve got to create a new kind of politics

By: - January 8, 2020

Our Wisconsin Revolution, the statewide group that grew out of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, announced this week that it has hired its first executive director, Mike McCabe. The announcement comes as national attention is increasingly focused on Wisconsin, which is widely seen as a critical state in the 2020 presidential election. But McCabe is […]

Gov. Tony Evers standing outside

Gov. Tony Evers on the legislature, the lame duck and ‘what I was elected to do’

By: - January 2, 2020

Gov. Tony Evers doesn’t wish he’d done things any differently during his first year. “No, not really,” he says when asked the question during a year-end interview with the Examiner at his Capitol office. “I suppose I could use a better choice of words from time to time.” Other than that, Evers feels he’s done […]

Secretary-designee Crim inspects a rollercoaster (photo courtesy of DSPS)

Dawn Crim plays a long game 

By: - December 24, 2019

Dawn Crim toured Europe as a college basketball player, and served as an assistant coach at Penn State and the UW-Madison before Gov. Tony Evers chose her to lead the Department of Safety and Professional Services. That sports background has served her well in her new job, she says. “If you think about a basketball […]

COMMENTARY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - DECEMBER 19: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks as former Vice President Joe Biden listens during the Democratic presidential primary debate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. Seven candidates out of the crowded field qualified for the 6th and last Democratic presidential primary debate of 2019 hosted by PBS NewsHour and Politico. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A smaller, whiter, meaner Democratic debate

By: - December 20, 2019

Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang got unprecedented air time in the sixth and final, seven-person Democratic debate in Los Angeles on Thursday night. Yang lamented the fact that he was the lone remaining person of color on stage (but predicted Cory Booker would be back), and made good use of his time by talking about […]

USMCA neon sign

USMCA passes on bipartisan vote, Rep. Pocan votes no

By: - December 19, 2019

The House of Representatives voted today  to ratify a massive trade deal with Mexico and Canada, allowing both House Democrats and the Trump administration to declare a legislative victory on the day after the House voted to impeach the president.  The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which […]

marijuana plants

Sean Duffy’s former chief of staff sells pot

By: - December 18, 2019

Chief of staff to former Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy is now working for a company that produces marijuana products. Pete Meachum, who worked for Duffy before the Congressman resigned in September,  is now senior director for government affairs at the Cronos Group, according to a report in the insider government affairs publication Legistorm.  Cronos Group, […]

Members of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera and allies at a press conference on the bill imposing penalties on sanctuary cities (Photo courtesy of Voces de la Frontera).

Anti-sanctuary legislators warn of dangerous ‘criminal aliens’

By: - December 18, 2019

A small group of Latino Wisconsinites, some in suits and ties, some in jeans, and some wearing T-shirts with the logo of the immigrant-rights group Voces de la Frontera, filed into the State Capitol Tuesday, for a hearing on a bill that would make it illegal for cities and towns to refuse to cooperate with […]

March against voter suppression, via Flickr

Push to purge Wisconsin voters goes to court Friday

By: - December 13, 2019

Update: On Friday afternoon Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Paul Malloy ordered the state to purge the rolls of voters who may have moved. He also denied the League of Women Voters’ petition to intervene in the case. In issuing a writ of mandamus, the judge took the strongest action he could take, ordering the state to immediately comply […]

children at school looking at a computer

Report: millions wasted on Wisconsin charter schools that closed or never opened

By: - December 10, 2019

A new report by the Network for Public Education, a group founded by public-education advocate and former U.S. Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, provides extensive, state-by-state data on waste in the federal charter schools program.  In Wisconsin, 46% of charter schools that received federal start-up grants between 2006 and 2014 shut down or never opened […]

COMMENTARY
Joe Biden in New Hampshire in September 2012. (Photo by Marc Nozell, CC By 2.0)

Biden’s run-in in Iowa is not a good sign

By: - December 6, 2019

It’s not a good sign when your candidate starts doing pushups on the campaign trail to show that he’s fit for office. Just ask former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who dropped and ripped off 50 for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board during a contentious Republican Senate primary in 2012, right before he went on to […]