Author: Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels donated nearly $200,000 of his own money to anti-abortion groups in Wisconsin and New York in 2020, according to tax documents. Michels and his wife made the donations through their charitable organization, the Timothy and Barbara Michels Family Foundation. In all, that foundation donated $1.66 million that year. Michels and his wife gave $50,000 to Wisconsin Right to Life and $25,000 to Pro-Life Wisconsin in 2020. Pro-Life Wisconsin is opposed not only to abortion, but to all forms of contraception. The Michels foundation also gave $100,000 to Avail NYC, a New York-based crisis...

Fifty thousand visitors and $200 million in economic impact — these are the estimates two years before the 2024 Republican National Convention is set to take place in downtown Milwaukee. The estimates were widely cited during the city’s push for the convention in May. Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said the convention would be an “economic infusion” to the city during a press conference. But some experts believe that the economic impact estimate is likely too high, pointing to studies that have researched past political conventions. After the 2020 Democratic National Convention moved to a virtual event because of the...

Logan Rachwal was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Growing up, he loved to play baseball. As a college student, he enjoyed writing poems, drawing and cooking. He was just 19-years-old when his mother, Erin Rachwal, received a phone call from one of Logan’s friends on the night of February 14, 2021. It was Valentine’s Day. The friend told her Logan would not wake up and asked Rachwal to call 911. Rachwal learned from campus police that her son had died of a drug overdose. Hours earlier, after an argument with his girlfriend, Logan had taken a pill...

As enslaved people sought freedom in Canada in the mid-1800s, some passed through Wisconsin on the Underground Railroad. The secretive nature of the operation makes it difficult for historians to fully track, but existing records show how Wisconsinites lent a helping hand to those fleeing slavery in the South. The state has one remaining authenticated stop along the path to freedom that is preserved and open to the public. The Milton House, about 35 miles southeast of Madison, is the state’s shining example of the lengths Wisconsin abolitionists went to hide, protect and transport people who were once property....