Author

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.
Nicholson drops out of GOP governor’s race
By: Ruth Conniff - July 5, 2022
On Tuesday, Republican candidate Kevin Nicholson announced he is dropping out of the primary race for governor. Nicholson, a Marine Corps veteran and self-described “political outsider,” was the choice of 10% of Republican voters polled by the Marquette University Law School Poll last month, compared with 27% for construction company executive Tim Michels and 26% […]
GOP gubernatorial candidates on emergency contraception
By: Ruth Conniff - July 5, 2022
Wisconsin’s Republican gubernatorial candidates celebrated when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, eliminating federally protected abortion rights at any stage of pregnancy. All of the GOP candidates support Wisconsin’s 1849 felony abortion ban, which remains on the books, making all abortion illegal, even in cases of rape and incest. The only […]
Bad news Wisconsin women: The state Legislature is now in charge of your body
By: Ruth Conniff - June 27, 2022
Knowing it was coming did not make it any less of a kick in the gut. On Friday the highest court in the land officially revoked women’s status as full people. The Court made history, as Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan wrote in their scathing dissent, “rescinding an individual right in its […]
Wisconsin leaders react to Supreme Court decision eliminating abortion rights
By: Ruth Conniff - June 24, 2022
Wisconsin politicians reacted swiftly to the news on Friday that the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned the precedent set by Roe v. Wade, which had established a federally protected right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. Republicans, who earlier this week refused to take up Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ call to repeal Wisconsin’s […]
Michael Gableman, Ron Johnson and ‘The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight’
By: Ruth Conniff - June 24, 2022
It was a very different Michael Gableman who appeared in court on Thursday from the sneering, bombastic, defiant Gableman who was slapped with a contempt order for his performance in a different Dane County courtroom a week ago. Last Friday, after Gableman mocked attorney Christa Westerberg and denounced Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington, proclaiming […]
Republicans leave Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban in place
By: Ruth Conniff - June 23, 2022
Republican leaders of the Senate and Assembly gaveled in and out of a special session called by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in less than 30 seconds Wednesday afternoon, rejecting the governor’s call to discuss repealing Wisconsin’s 173-year-old abortion ban, which does not include exceptions for cases of rape or incest. Anticipating that the Republicans would […]
Sen. Ron Johnson tried to transmit Wisconsin’s fake electoral votes
By: Ruth Conniff - June 21, 2022
Text messages between staff members for Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and then-Vice President Mike Pence show that Johnson tried to hand over fake electoral ballots for Donald Trump from Wisconsin and Michigan to Pence ahead of the certification of the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021. Wisconsin was one of seven states won […]
Needed: Some courageous Wisconsin Republicans
By: Ruth Conniff - June 20, 2022
It is just astounding that Wisconsin Republicans continue to push their “election integrity” nonsense, even as the world watches the dramatic Jan. 6 hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives, presenting compelling evidence that then-President Donald Trump riled up a violent mob with false claims of “election fraud” and attempted to steal the 2020 presidential […]
Gableman’s contempt and the destruction of democracy
By: Ruth Conniff - June 11, 2022
It’s not really a coincidence that, the morning after the first, explosive public hearing by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman — the man appointed by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to lead the partisan probe of the 2020 election in Wisconsin […]
Wisconsin’s starring role in the Jan. 6 insurrection
By: Ruth Conniff - June 9, 2022
Wisconsin is “Ground Zero” in the fight to defend democracy, according to Brad Woodhouse, co-chair of the Defend Democracy Project, a nonprofit group based in Washington, DC, whose mission statement declares that its “one objective” is “that American voters determine the outcome of elections.” “Wisconsin is one of the most important, fought-after, battleground states. There’ll […]
Abortion care on wheels
By: Ruth Conniff - June 7, 2022
As the nation braces for a decision that could come any day from the U.S. Supreme Court ending federally protected abortion rights — and making abortion a crime from the earliest stages of pregnancy in some states — women’s health care advocates have been thinking outside the box about ways to protect abortion access. Here’s […]
Raising a red flag on Memorial Day
By: Ruth Conniff - May 30, 2022
As a national holiday, Memorial Day is meant to bring us together. Even if we differ on the politics that led our country into the many wars the U.S. has fought over the years, I can appreciate my neighbors who raise a flag, hands on hearts, at the veterans’ memorial at the local park. It’s […]