Author: Wisconsin Examiner

Ahead of the first hearing of the January 6 Select Committee I had the opportunity, due to my more than 40 years in law enforcement, to share my thoughts as part of a panel discussion about what had happened on that terrible day, and what I expected to come from the hearings. I shared that I felt bewildered that so many citizens who purport to support democracy would attempt to overturn an election. That so many elected officials, including some county sheriffs and others in positions of power, had urged their supporters to do so. After watching the first...

Over the past few weeks, the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend has opened two new exhibitions by indigenous artists to the public. On July 23, the museum opened Ho-Chunk photographer Tom Jones’s first major retrospective, which features 120 photos from sixteen bodies of work over 25 years. Curator Graeme Reid said MOWA has worked with Jones for the past 13 years, and that a constant thread in Jones’ work is the interaction between White and Indian culture. Jones’ series “Studies in Cultural Appropriation” examines the fashion industry’s use of Native American designs. It includes an image...

He was from out of state but garnered an enthusiastic following in Wisconsin. The media mocked him with unflattering stories and cartoons, and he mocked them back. His campaign message exploited ethnic and racial tensions, and he capitalized on rural and urban divisions. And he divided his own political party as well, with long-reaching effects. Fifty years before Donald Trump upended politics in the U.S. and in the Badger State, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, an ardent proponent of racial segregation, threatened to do the same, and Wisconsin was a key element to his political success. In the end,...

With abortion now unavailable in Wisconsin, Wisconsin’s second largest county announced Thursday plans to expand its reproductive health clinic and step up contraceptive services, including providing long-acting contraception. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin and Illinois affiliates of Planned Parenthood are teaming up to expand abortion availability in Illinois where the procedure’s legality remains secure — and deploying Wisconsin-based doctors and nurses to help do that work. At Planned Parenthood of Illinois’ clinic in Waukegan, 10 miles south of the Wisconsin state line, “We’ve seen a tenfold increase in patients from Wisconsin,” said Jennifer Welch, president and CEO Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin....

Witnesses told a U.S. House committee on Wednesday that pregnant patients who cannot obtain abortions will face higher mortality rates if they are forced to carry their pregnancies to term. “It is essentially a death sentence,” Michele Bratcher Goodwin, the chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California, told lawmakers. Democratic state legislators from Michigan and Georgia added that Black and low-income pregnant patients would suffer under the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion. “Simply put, we would be outlawing access to (health) care,” Renitta Shannon, a member of the Georgia state...