News
After inaction by legislature Attorney General Kaul files lawsuit to block Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law
Governor Tony Evers and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul announced on June 28 a new lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s criminal abortion ban. The lawsuit comes just days after the U.S. Supreme Court released a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization...
With ruling against abortion rights the U.S. Supreme Court lost its last shred of Constitutional legitimacy
On Friday, June 24, an extremist majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overruled more than 50 years of legal precedent, taking away a previously recognized fundamental right for the first time in the court’s history. In doing so, it unleashed the full force of a...
A Radical Ruling: The impact of Dobbs goes beyond the issue of abortion and the decision to overturn Roe
By Linda C. McClain, Professor of Law, Boston University; Nicole Huberfeld, Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law and Professor of Law, Boston University; and Morgan Marietta, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass Lowell After half a century, Americans’...
Reggie Jackson: The racial imbalance of Milwaukee’s 2022 Residential Property Assessments
There has been little said by most elected officials about the readily apparent racial imbalance in the latest assessments of home values in Milwaukee. Overall, the city wide increase was 17.77%. By far the largest increases were in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods,...
Wisconsin school district accused of “false balance” over rejection of book on Japanese internment
A school board in southeastern Wisconsin has rejected a book recommended for use in a 10th-grade accelerated English class due in part to concerns that it lacked “balance” regarding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The Curriculum Planning...
Rhetoric that robs society: Why it would cost the Federal government nothing to cancel student debt
Conservatives love to talk about how expensive canceling student debt would be. In the words of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, federal student debt cancellation, even when means-tested, is “regressive, inflationary, expensive and would likely do...
All doctors prosecuted for performing abortions in Wisconsin will be offered clemency by Governor Evers
Governor Tony Evers said he would offer clemency to doctors who are prosecuted for performing abortions in Wisconsin. The statement came during an abortion rights rally at the Wisconsin Democratic Party convention on January 25 in which the first-term governor told...
Trump-appointed Supreme Court majority overturns Constitutional right of women to have an abortion
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 24 overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that established abortion as a constitutional right. The decision by five of the Court’s nine justices will allow each state to set its own abortion laws, leading to a patchwork of access...
A post-Roe future: How Wisconsin will navigate a tangled chain of abortion laws dating back to 1849
About 50 abortion rights supporters stood on the bridge over the Wisconsin River into Sauk City on a sunny Saturday morning in mid-May. They held signs reading “CHOICE” and “PROTECT ROE v. WADE” and cheered when passing cars honked in support. Jennie Klecker brought...
Freshwater Quality: Lots of unfinished work after 50 years of effort to restore the Great Lakes
By Daniel Macfarlane, Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainability, Western Michigan University The Great Lakes cover nearly 95,000 square miles and hold over 20% of Earth’s surface fresh water. More than 30 million people in the U.S. and Canada rely on them...
Milwaukee to join cities nationwide in measuring the “urban heat island” effect from climate change
Milwaukee is measuring how extreme heat affects the city, hoping to avoid major heat-related fatalities that occurred across southern Wisconsin in 1995. On one 90-degree day this summer, volunteer citizen scientists with weather sensors attached to vehicles will...
Global Burning: How the fossil fuel industry earns revenue from authoritarianism and climate change
By Eve Darian-Smith, Professor of Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine Around the world, many countries are becoming less democratic. This backsliding on democracy and “creeping authoritarianism,” as the U.S. State Department puts it, is...
