Author: Wisconsin Public Radio

Many Wisconsinites have personal reasons for plopping giant triangles of yellow foam on their heads at every Wisconsin sporting event — from football to baseball, but many forget the origins of the uniquely Dairy State tradition. It all started with taunts from Chicago sports fans in the 1980s. Bears, Cubs, and White Sox fans were not the first group of people to use the term “cheesehead” disparagingly. The Nazis called Dutch people “cheeseheads” or “kaaskop” — meaning stupid or dense — while invading their country during World War II. “Our lovely neighbors to the south from Illinois have been...

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has invited President Donald Trump to host next year’s meeting of leading industrial nations in Milwaukee. In a letter to the president, dated Sunday, Barrett wrote hosting the 2020 Group of 7 meeting in Milwaukee “would be an opportunity to show the world America’s Fresh Coast — a Great Lakes city that is growing in this strong economy, reinventing itself through innovation and investment, and building on its established high quality of life.” In the decades since the G-7 was organized, the United States has hosted meetings in a number of locations, but never in...

Not long after Foxconn Technology Group announced plans to build a massive manufacturing facility in southeast Wisconsin, the tech giant began making promises to share its model for economic development across the entire state. But 18 months after purchasing its first building in downtown Milwaukee, there is little evidence that what Foxconn calls its innovation centers are moving forward. In addition to Milwaukee, innovation centers have been announced in Green Bay, Eau Claire, Racine and Madison. Development directors in those cities say Foxconn now appears to be focused on its main manufacturing campus in Mount Pleasant. Foxconn officials didn’t...

A new bill in the Wisconsin Legislature would extend state benefits to Hmong veterans of the Vietnam War. The legislation would change the state’s definition of a veteran to include Hmong people who served in the CIA and U.S. military in Laos between 1961 and 1975. The change would make them eligible for state veteran benefits like education grants, financial aid and funeral honors. Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling is an author of the bill. At a press conference on October 15, she said the cost of expanding benefits is still undetermined because the exact number of Hmong vets...