Author: Wisconsin Public Radio

A group of disabled Wisconsin residents are looking to overturn a Wisconsin law keeping people who collect Social Security Disability Insurance benefits from also receiving unemployment funds after getting laid off. The class-action lawsuit seeks compensation for benefits they would have been able to receive over the last six years. The ban took effect in 2013, but a 2015 revision removed loopholes from the law. Social Security Administration data indicated that 172,778 Wisconsinites benefited from the SSDI program as of the end of 2019. The lawsuit also seeks compensation for people who received unemployment, but were then forced to...

As more evacuees from Afghanistan arrive at Fort McCoy, government officials say they are focused on meeting medical needs and helping Afghans through the immigration process. A U.S. State Department official and a senior Army official representing Task Force McCoy spoke with local press on August 2 under the condition they not be named. The State Department official said just over 7,000 evacuees from Afghanistan had arrived at Fort McCoy, which is located in Monroe County, at the time of the press conference. By August 3, that number had grown to more than 8,000 people at the base. The...

Temperatures across the world are expected to rise past a level that scientists had hoped to avoid through drastic cuts in carbon emissions, according to a new report from a United Nations panel on climate change. Scientists say many changes from past and future emissions will result in irreversible changes for centuries to come. The report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis found that it was “unequivocal” that humans are responsible for widespread and rapid changes in warming of the earth’s atmosphere, oceans and land. The frequency and intensity of heat waves and rains are expected to escalate...

Two Democratic U.S. senators from the Midwest brought their party’s push to make voting easier and end congressional gerrymandering to Madison on August 25. During a roundtable discussion at the Urban League of Greater Madison, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, and Tammy Baldwin, D-WI, talked about the path forward for two federal election bills, one of which passed the Democratically-controlled U.S. House on Tuesday with no Republican support. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore voting rights protections that have been dismantled by the U.S. Supreme Court. The measure is named for the late Georgia congressman who...