Author: Wisconsin Examiner

When then-President Donald Trump held the first White House press conference in 2017 to tout the prospect of a massive television flat-screen factory for the Taiwan manufacturer Foxconn coming to Wisconsin, Madison writer Lawrence Tabak was immediately intrigued. “If nothing else, as a Wisconsin taxpayer, I was concerned that this was going to be a major spending event for all of us who live in Wisconsin,” Tabak said. It also had a deja-vu quality. Two decades earlier, Tabak had written a takedown for The Atlantic on the endless building spree of convention centers from one city to the next,...

The Supreme Court is weighing potentially sweeping changes to the right to an abortion, after two hours of arguments on December 1 over a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court’s conservatives, who hold a 6-3 majority, appeared through their questions to be sympathetic to Mississippi’s arguments that its law should be upheld—and they also seemed open to the possibility of undoing other precedent-setting abortion cases. Supporters of the Mississippi law argued not only that it should be upheld, but that two key cases that have determined when a woman has the right...

Everyone should be a journalist. The problem is, few people understand what journalism really is, yet everyone with a social media account is a self-styled journalist these days. Hence the rampant embrace of myriad crackpot beliefs. We are all familiar with these fact-free notions that have stained our collective consciousness like red wine on white shag carpet. For instance: 911 was an inside job, or the moon landing did not happen. Beliefs such as these are essentially harmless. They can even be debated at your family holiday gathering or local bar and elicit nothing more than polite nods and...

In 2012, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) suspension rate for Black students was 85% of the district’s total suspensions. Today little has changed according to a report presented to a school board committee on October 5. This is despite a January 2018 agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to reduce the disparity between Black students and students of other races in suspensions and other disciplinary actions. This is not to suggest that MPS hasn’t tried to improve. In fact, the district has dramatically decreased suspensions as a main tool for managing school climates. Suspensions...

About 30 parents, students, teachers, and community members gathered outside the Waukesha school administration building on October 27 to announce that they were delivering a letter to the superintendent objecting to his policy of removing pro-LGBTQ signs from schools. One student stated, “We have suffered in more ways than I can count.” She outlined how bullying and belittling of students like herself has increased, and she is enduring slurs and gay jokes from fellow students. “With the rise in bullying, many of us don’t feel safe.” While the administration has stated that the schools need to get back to...