Purple States
Trump says he’ll announce Supreme Court pick by Friday or Saturday
President Donald Trump said Monday that he would announce a replacement for the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by either Friday or Saturday. During a morning interview on “Fox and Friends,” the president said the administration wanted to pay its respects to Ginsburg, who died Friday night from complications with cancer, before […]
Anti-Trump ad by Republican group airs in Wisconsin
An ad seeking to persuade Republicans not to vote for Donald Trump went up on cable television stations in Wausau and La Crosse Tuesday. The ad, titled “Mourning in America,” contrasts Trump with Ronald Reagan, and has generated more than 20 million impressions on YouTube and prompted an angry rant on Twitter from Trump. “More […]
Tough times on the farm
All in all, 2019 was a terrible year for farmers across the Midwest and so far 2020 doesn’t look much better. Bad weather, trade wars and low prices due to oversupply all contributed to the grim economic news, even before the COVID-19 pandemic began wreaking havoc with export markets. “Agriculture has been in a pretty […]
Electoral math for toss-up Wisconsin in a “disorienting” week
This week’s Cook Political Report shows Wisconsin to be where we’ve come to expect our state to be for the 2020 presidential election — a true toss up. The report, which divides the states into “solid,” “likely” and “lean” for Republican and Democratic states, keeps a running tab on where it predicts the electoral college […]
After Super Tuesday, a brokered convention?
What happens if no clear winner emerges from the primaries and the surviving Democratic presidential candidates go all the way to the convention with the race still up in the air? A contested convention in Milwaukee is a real possibility. “Right now it doesn’t look like anyone is on an obvious path to have the […]
Who do voters in Wisconsin — or Pennsylvania or Michigan — want for president?
In a week with a rise in confirmed cases of coronavirus and a sharp drop in the stock market, along with a tragic mass shooting at the Molson Coors brewery in Milwaukee, the fact that Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading by a solid margin in Wisconsin — a state he won in the 2016 primary […]
Report blames gerrymandering for blocking Medicaid expansion
Partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts has been blamed for many things — polarization, voter suppression and more. A new report issued Monday by the liberal group Center for American Progress links it to another issue: stalled legislation that would expand health care coverage, primarily accepting federally subsidized Medicaid expansion offered under the Affordable Care Act […]
Outlook on manufacturing jobs murky but losses appear stemmed
Donald Trump’s vow in 2016 to revive Rust Belt manufacturing may get some of the credit for his razor-thin surprise victory in Wisconsin, but four years later, the real impact has been murky at best. On the one hand, manufacturing in the Dairy State appears to be holding up better than in many of its […]
What Wisconsin could show the nation
Editor’s note: Today, together with our sister publications in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania we are kicking off a series of news stories and commentary to bring you an on-the-ground view of our politically divided states, the issues that matter most to people here, and what’s missing in reports from the national media who parachute in for the […]