Author: Wisconsin Examiner

Melody McCurtis is one of three Wisconsin voters who say they were deprived of their right to vote in the chaotic April 7 election, and are now suing the Wisconsin Elections Commission in federal court. The lawsuit, filed Monday morning in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin by the voters, along with two advocacy groups — Disability Rights Wisconsin and Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC) in Milwaukee — asks the court to “ensure that all Wisconsin voters will be able to freely and safely participate in the upcoming August and November elections.” The plaintiffs...

Wisconsin has been re-opened for business. Forcibly reopened, it turns out, by Republican legislative leaders and four state Supreme Court justices. In a messy decision filled with incendiary language and spurious claims, the court overturned Safer at Home by “torturing the plain language” of a state statute, as Justice Rebecca Dallet put it in her ringing dissent, in order to give the Legislature more political power. The chaotic reopening of the state — with some counties issuing their own stay-at-home orders and then rescinding them, citing confusion about the law — is crazy and sad. It is also part...

Republicans appear to be going all-in on the idea that some of us will have to suck it up and die in order to get the economy restarted. Can they win in 2020 with this message? Party leaders at both the state and national level seem to think so. President Donald Trump made his pitch for reopening the country, even if it leads to more infections and deaths, during a visit to a mask factory in Phoenix on May 5, “Will some people be affected? Yes,” Trump said. “Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to...

The legal authority to enforce Wisconsin’s “Safer at Home” order was ripped away by the 4-3 state Supreme Court ruling on May 13. On the following day, the Department of Health Services (DHS) and Governor Tony Evers vowed to press ahead with a voluntary approach to reopening the state’s economy while, seeking to curb the virus responsible for COVID-19. “We cannot let the court’s ruling undo all the work we have done and all the sacrifices Wisconsinites have made over these past few months,” Evers said at a media briefing. “The Supreme Court may have changed the rules for...

It is understandable that people who are out of work during the pandemic are getting restless. In fact, plumbers, electricians, and HVAC and janitorial staff are allowed to operate as “critical trades” under “Safer at Home” order by Governor Tony Evers. But it is not clear that the governor has the power to make customers let heating installers into their homes, or for that matter, to quickly ramp up business and restore our economy to health as the toll of the virus continues to mount. But Governor Evers, like other Democratic governors around the country, has become a convenient...

A growing series of COVID-19 outbreaks in American meatpacking plants, including in Wisconsin, is putting a spotlight on dangerous working conditions that employee advocates have been complaining about for decades. State officials reported on April 29 that Brown County has set up two isolation facilities for people who may have been exposed to the novel coronavirus that causes the disease — many of them because of outbreaks in local meat production facilities in and around Green Bay. Meanwhile, critics including Governor Tony Evers and several advocacy groups are pushing back on action by President Donald Trump that would pressure...