Privacy dismantled: How MAGA minions are quietly repurposing federal data for mass surveillance
By Nicole M. Bennett, Ph.D. Candidate in Geography and Assistant Director at the Center for Refugee Studies, Indiana University A whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board reported an unusual spike in potentially sensitive data flowing out of the agency’s...
From Abuja to Irpin: Milwaukee’s Sister Cities Day celebrates international ties built through people
City Hall came alive with music, dance, and heartfelt stories on May 16, as Milwaukee marked its 2025 Sister Cities Meet and Greet Day, honoring the relationships that continue to grow between Milwaukee and its seven international partners. From Abuja to Irpin,...
Judge Hannah Dugan maintains her innocence in plea to a Federal magistrate over ICE’s obstruction claim
Judge Hannah Dugan, a respected Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge, is at the center of a federal prosecution that legal experts and civil rights advocates are calling an alarming escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against judicial independence....
Habeas corpus: The thousand-year-old legal principle for defending rights that Trump’s regime wants to end
By Andrea Seielstad, Professor of Law, University of Dayton In some parts of the world, a person may be secreted away or imprisoned by the government without any advanced notification of wrongdoing or chance to make a defense. This has not been lawful in the United...
Republican revival of failed Reaganomics pushes Milwaukee seniors toward hunger and despair again
The last time the American public watched their elderly parents eat dog food to survive, Ronald Reagan had just swept into office, and a Republican-led economic crisis was gutting the middle class. Four decades later, the same party, driven by Trump’s nationalist...
Arbitrary Social Security demands create barriers in rural communities without mobility or internet
Veronica Taylor does not know how to turn on a computer, let alone use the internet. The 73-year-old cannot drive and is mostly housebound in her mountainous and remote West Virginia community, where a simple trip to the grocery store can take an hour by car. New...
A health puzzle: Four years of long COVID research paints an unsettling medical picture
By Ziyad Al-Aly, Chief of Research and Development, VA St. Louis Health Care System. Clinical Epidemiologist, Washington University in St. Louis Since 2020, the condition known as long COVID-19 has become a widespread disability affecting the health and quality of...
The true total of COVID-19 deaths remains elusive after 5 years and lacking data further hobbles research
By Dylan Thomas Doyle, Ph.D. Candidate in Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers struggled to grasp the rate of the virus’s spread and the number of related deaths. While hospitals tracked cases and...
Science over fiction: Why funding cuts to NIH will hit pro-Trump rural areas of red states hardest
By Prakash Nagarkatti, Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, University of South Carolina; Mitzi Nagarkatti, Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, University of South Carolina The National Institutes of Health is the largest federal...
Milwaukee Independent reaches 80 Gridiron Awards after earning 9 more with 2 for Korean diaspora series
The Milwaukee Press Club, the oldest active press club in America and known for honoring excellence in the field of journalism, announced the winners of the 95th Annual Gridiron Awards on May 9. Milwaukee Independent earned nine awards for its 2024 submissions,...
Chemical analysis finds mislabeled tattoo inks contain ingredients that can cause serious allergies
By John Swierk, Assistant Professor, Chemistry, Binghamton University, State University of New York Tattoos are an incredibly common form of permanent self-expression that date back thousands of years. Most tattoo artists follow strict health and sanitation...
Flawed assumptions about cultural tattoos used to deport Venezuelans under Trump’s gang crackdown
By Beth C. Caldwell, Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School The United States deported 238 Venezuelan men on three flights to El Salvador on March 15, claiming that they were members of the Tren de Aragua gang that originated in Venezuela. Immigration officials...
