Author: Syndicated

The first U.S. census to allow all households to participate online is facing another unprecedented challenge, the looming threat of disinformation through social media. As 2020 draws closer, federal officials fear foreign governments and internet trolls could use Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to spread rumors and propaganda to derail the constitutionally mandated count with at least 10 years’ worth of implications on elections around the country. Results from the head count of every person living in the U.S. are used not only to determine the distribution of congressional seats and Electoral College votes among the states but also...

I won’t pretend to know Jesus more than any other man. But based on what I learned from reading the Bible for many, many years, I have to believe Jesus would care more about how you treat your neighbors than what you call a tree. – Senator Chris Larson Republicans who lead the Wisconsin Assembly voted on November 12 to call the state Capitol evergreen a Christmas tree and formally recognize National Bible Week, two moves that willfully ignore the Constitutional separation of Church and State, while ignoring life-saving legislation on gun safety. The 64-30 vote on naming the...

On November 13, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal brought by the Comcast Corporation that could roll back historic civil-rights laws and make it harder for victims of discrimination to take legal action. Comcast is appealing a decision made by the Ninth Circuit to allow a $20-billion lawsuit, brought by Entertainment Studios Networks, to move forward. Media mogul and comedian Byron Allen owns Entertainment Studios Networks; he sued Comcast for refusing to carry any of the cable networks his company owns. He alleged that Comcast’s refusal was racially motivated and sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 —...

Mildred Fish-Harnack was a Milwaukee-born, University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate and the only American woman executed on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler. Architect John Dubrow first learned about her from the book called, “Resisting Hitler: Mildred Fish-Harnack and the Red Orchestra.” Mildred met German scholar Arvid Harnack at the University of Wisconsin. They married and returned to Germany in 1929. Soon, Hitler had seized power. The Harnacks, along with a circle of friends, formed a Nazi resistance network providing German economic and military secrets to the Americans and Soviets. Arvid and Mildred were put on trial in December 1942....

The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009. Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51%...

The 2020 census is critical for all states. One important reason? It determines how much money each state gets from the federal government for the next decade. In 2015, the federal government distributed more than $675 billion annually to individual states. The logic is the more people, the more resources. But Wisconsin has a problem: for years a number of people have not been counted. How much exactly is each individual worth in terms of federal dollars? Calculations differ by state agency, but the department of public instruction said about $1,500. That’s not chump change, especially when you consider...