Author: Reporter

Overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating affirmative action in higher education had been leading goals of the conservative legal movement for decades. In a span of 370 days, a Supreme Court reshaped by three justices nominated by President Donald Trump made both a reality. Last June, the court ended nationwide protections for abortion rights. This past week, the court’s conservative majority decided that race-conscious admissions programs at the oldest private and public colleges in the country, Harvard and the University of North Carolina, were unlawful. Precedents that had stood since the 1970s were overturned, explicitly in the case of...

The “rage giving” did not last. Abortion access groups who received a windfall of donations following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade one year ago say those emergency grants have ended and individual and foundation giving has dropped off. After the Dobbs decision, some major funders of abortion access also have ended or shifted funding from organizations working in states where abortion is now banned, said Naa Amissah-Hammond, senior director of grantmaking with Groundswell Fund, which funds grassroots groups organizing for reproductive justice. Women’s health and foster care nonprofits, who expected increased demand in areas where access...

Republican legislators announced a bill on September 18 that would devote more than $614 million in public funding to repair and renovate the Milwaukee Brewers’ stadium, placing the financial burden on Milwaukee municipalities, and costing far more than taxpayers spent to build it more than two decades ago. Under the proposal, the state would give the team $60.8 million next fiscal year and up to $20 million each year after that through 2045-46. The city of Milwaukee would be forced to contribute a total of $202 million and Milwaukee County would kick in $135 million by 2050. “The Milwaukee...

More than one year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court rescinded a five-decade-old right to abortion, prompting a seismic shift in debates about politics, values, freedom, and fairness. Twenty-five million women of childbearing age now live in states where the law makes abortions harder to get than they were before the ruling. Decisions about the law are largely in the hands of state lawmakers and courts. Most Republican-led states have restricted abortion. Fourteen ban abortion in most cases at any point in pregnancy. Twenty Democratic-leaning states have protected access to abortion. Here is a look at what’s changed since the...

Archaeologists have exhumed the remains of one person and plan to exhume a second set as the search for victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre resumes in a Tulsa cemetery. The remains are among 22 sets found during the current search in Oaklawn Cemetery, but are the only ones found in simple, wooden caskets as described by newspaper articles, death certificates and funeral home records, Oklahoma state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said. “That basically suggests that we had a number of adult male individuals that were supposed to be buried in simple, wood coffins,” Stackelbeck said. One set was...