Author: Scott Bauer

Tammy Baldwin’s third term? Why Democrats may have a more difficult time in 2024 to keep the Senate

Democrats celebrating a successful effort to keep control of the U.S. Senate will soon confront a 2024 campaign that could prove more challenging. The party enters the next cycle defending 23 seats, including two held by independents who caucus with Democrats. That is compared with just 10 seats that Republicans hope to keep in their column. Adding to the potential hurdles is that some 2024 contests are in states that have become increasingly hostile to Democrats, including Montana, Ohio and West Virginia. Other Democratic-held seats are in some of the same hotly contested states that were at the center...

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Kenosha judge allows father of victim killed by Kyle Rittenhouse to proceed with wrongful death lawsuit

A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled on February 2 that a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the father of a man shot and killed by Kyle Rittenhouse during a protest in 2020 can proceed against Rittenhouse, police officers and others. The father of Anthony Huber, one of two men shot and killed by Rittenhouse, filed the lawsuit in 2021, accusing officers of allowing for a dangerous situation that violated his son’s constitutional rights and resulted in his death. Anthony Huber’s father, John Huber, also alleged that Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, conspired with law...

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Fake elector for Trump gloats over Wisconsin GOP’s success of suppressing minority voters in Milwaukee

A Republican member of Wisconsin’s bipartisan elections commission on January 11 stood by comments he made crowing about depressed turnout among Black and Hispanic voters in heavily Democratic Milwaukee, saying he would not resign as a fellow commissioner and others have called on him to do. Commissioner Robert Spindell, who also served as a fake elector for former Republican President Donald Trump, said his comments sent in an email to about 1,700 people in December were not bragging about voter suppression. “I will not stand for that,” Spindell said in an interview. “The last thing I want to do...

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Candidates for partisan-backed Wisconsin Supreme Court say party politics will have no influence

Partisan-backed candidates running for a seat that will determine whether conservatives or liberals have majority control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court said at a January 9 forum that they would not let party politics influence how they rule. But the two liberal candidates made clear where they stand on hot-button issues, speaking out against the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling that made abortion legal, as well as the state Supreme Court’s approval of Republican redistricting plans. Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow and former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly are running as...

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Documents show Senator Ron Johnson pushed for GOP-controlled Legislature to pick Trump’s electors

The former chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party said Republican Senators Ron Johnson spoke to him weeks before Joe Biden assumed the presidency about having the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature, rather than voters, choose Wisconsin’s presidential electors, according to newly released documents from closed-door testimony to the House January 6 committee. Johnson, in a statement on January 3, said he had no recollection of the conversation with Andrew Hitt and accused the committee investigating the 2021 Capitol insurrection of attempting to “smear” him by selectively releasing text messages. “I have no recollection of the phone call referenced in the texts,...

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Governor Tony Evers meets with Mayors of Wisconsin’s five largest cities to discuss changes in local funding

Governor Tony Evers met with the mayors of Wisconsin’s five largest cities behind closed doors for about an hour on January 4, one of the first official acts of his second term. The meeting took place as Governor Evers and the Legislature weigh making substantial changes to how local governments, including cities, are funded. Cities, counties, towns and villages are hoping a record-high budget surplus approaching $7 billion will give policymakers the freedom to increase funding and perhaps change the formula used to determine how much money local governments get from the state. The mayors of Milwaukee, Madison, Racine,...

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