Milwaukee’s looming fiscal cliff and the lack of an agreement on shared revenue at the Wisconsin Capitol have earned the city a credit downgrade.
Fitch Ratings on Wednesday downgraded Milwaukee’s credit from A to Triple-B+, with a negative outlook.
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Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has risen in the polls to a top 5 candidate. Now the Ohio businessman and political outsider has secured a spot on the Republican National Committee debate stage.
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Two Midwest members of congress have joined forces on a bill aimed at creating transparency and accountability for U.S. taxpayer money handed out in China and Russia.
U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) and U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) have introduced the Tracking Receipts to Adversarial Countries for Knowledge of Spending (TRACKS) Act requiring every penny from a government grant paid to any organization in China and Russia to be tracked and publicly disclosed.
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Democratic state Reps. Tod Ohnstad and Tip McGuire are pushing legislation that would make it a felony for school staff or volunteers to create an intimidating or hostile environment by sexually harassing students.
In addition to seeking to close a gap in the state’s criminal statutes that currently do not extend to all variations of sexual misconduct that some students have faced in schools, the bill would expand protections that now exist for public school students to all those who attend private schools.
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Geologists and mining experts say Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula may provide a solution for an obstacle facing the electric vehicle transition.
Minerals are needed, and this area has them.
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The latest snapshot of Wisconsin’s housing market isn’t all that great, although realtors say there are signs things are improving.
The Wisconsin Realtors released their April 2023 report on Thursday, and it shows that both sales and home inventories are down, while prices are up.
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U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI-06) and his subcommittee have opened an investigation into the Biden administration’s decision to end familial DNA testing at the U.S. Mexico border.
DNA testing is a key tool used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to prevent fraudulent entry of migrants posing as family members — critical in targeting child trafficking, according to security officials.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially launched his presidential campaign Wednesday, ending months of speculation and ratcheting up what promises to be an intense battle for the Republican Party nomination.
DeSantis enters the race as a top tier candidate, but still lagging far behind frontrunner Donald Trump, according to just about every poll out there.
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A glitchy start to the Ron DeSantis campaign, Tim Scott fires back at “The View,” Vivek Ramaswamy takes on Target, and Nikki Haley gets a CNN Town Hall.
There’s no rest for the weary on the expanded presidential campaign trail.
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Wisconsin’s new state budget will include millions more for farmers across the state, including more than $6 million for clean water projects.
The budget writing Joint Finance Committee last week added $16 million to the being-written state spending plan.
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Liberals talk a lot about equity — until it comes to funding popular parental school choice programs.
A new poll by the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Foundation finds voters overwhelmingly believe there should be equitable funding for public, choice and charter schools.
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Oklahoma state superintendent of schools Ryan Walters repeated Saturday that teachers’ unions are “Marxist” and “terrorist” organizations that are not advocating for students or teachers, but seeking power and financial gain for their leaders.
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Wisconsin is looking to set aside $125 million for PFAS (Polyfluorinated Substances) contamination abatement across the state.
The budget-writing Joint Finance Committee (JFC) on Thursday agreed to create a trust fund to help local communities deal with PFAS in their local water supplies.
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The threat Wisconsin may see less money over the next two years is not deterring one budget reform group from pushing for “historic” tax reform.
The Institute for Reforming Government this week released its Playbook for Income Tax Relief in Divided Government.
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The people who knew and loved Milwaukee Police Officer Peter Jerving fully understand the perils of policing.
Jerving, 37, was fatally shot by a robbery suspect in the line of duty on Feb. 7, the first of four officers killed on the job in the past few months.
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In need of quiet solitude not long ago, I did the obvious: I got on Milwaukee’s streetcar, The Hop.
It did not disappoint: In all, five people Hopped on, then off, as we trundled 2.1 miles across downtown.
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University of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman said the “war for talent” is driving his vision for the school, which he says is necessitating both a tuition increase and a request for $200 million more in the next state budget.
Rothman told WisPolitics’ Newsmakers program that Wisconsin must do both in order to compete in that war.
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Wisconsin state tax collections over the next three years are projected to come in more than three-quarters of a billion dollars lower than expected, according to a new report from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Republican lawmakers say the revised projections further underscore their efforts to remake a more fiscally responsible biennial budget out of Democrat Governor Tony Evers’ big-spending proposal.
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The Wisconsin Elections Commission has been hit with an order from a Dane County judge ordering it to rehear a complaint filed against Republicans tied to the false slate of electors the party submitted in 2020.
Judge Frank Remington said he will formally issue a written decision next week or shortly thereafter.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Metropolitan Nashville Police Department have refused to release the manifesto and related documents of the Covenant School killer, citing spurious reasons for their denials.
But is a shadowy Department of Justice unit billing itself as “America’s peacemaker” behind the information freeze? Some say the disclosure dance has all the markings of the Community Relations Service.
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It seems TikTok just can’t quit its creeping ways.
U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08), chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is seeking answers from the controversial video hosting site on allegations of ongoing censorship and monitoring of individuals, including those who view LGBTQ-related content on the platform.
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Lauri Badura lost her son Archie to an accidental fentanyl overdose in 2014. Back then, she had no idea what the synthetic opiod was.
Now, the Oconomowoc activist who has committed her life to fighting the scourge of the deadly drug knows better than any that “fentanyl is America’s new ‘F’ word.’”
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As the Biden administration goes about the legally suspect quest of federalizing get-out-the-vote efforts, more than a dozen U.S. senators are asking for an accounting of the “Promoting Access to Voting” campaign.
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Leading corporate woke warriors Nike and Adidas, which have made virtue signaling an art form, are now facing more questions about benefitting on the backs of forced laborers in China.
Lawmakers on the House’s Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party want answers.
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The focus at the Wisconsin Capitol has, so far, been on sending more money to local governments across the state. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says that’s going to change.
Vos on Friday told News Talk 1130 WISN’s Jay Weber that Republicans are working on a plan to use about $3 billion of Wisconsin’s record $7 billion surplus on tax cuts.
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Republican leadership is blasting Governor Tony Evers for threatening to kill a bill that would boost state shared revenue and bail out financially troubled Milwaukee.
The liberal governor, however, isn’t the only critic of the legislation that pours hundreds of millions of dollars of new taxpayer revenue into Badger State towns, villages, cities and counties.
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The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee this week jettisoned 545 of liberal Governor Tony Evers’ budget proposals, packed with higher taxes on businesses and individuals and growing government initiatives.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business advocate, is applauding the Republican-controlled budget-writing committee for trimming Evers’ bigger government budget plan.
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Teenagers as young as 14 could soon be allowed to serve alcohol to seated customers in bars and restaurants if a measure being advanced by a pair of state GOP lawmakers passes.
Current law allows only workers 18 and older to perform such duties, and “causes workforce issues due to an establishment’s underage employees only being able to do part of their job,” Sen. Rob Stafsholt, of New Richmond, and Rep. Chanz Green, of Grandview, said, as they are now pushing the bill and seeking more cosponsors.
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Young people in Wisconsin could soon face a social media curfew that places restrictions on their accounts during overnight hours.
Introduced by State Rep. David Steffen, “Wisconsin’s Kids Online Safety Act,” which follows similar plans recently enacted in such conservative states as Utah and Arkansas, would be in effect between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
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A new report finds Badger State homeowners pay nearly a half-billion dollars annually in property taxes to fund Wisconsin’s technical colleges, a figure expected to grow in the next biennial budget.
But in Wisconsin there are no directly elected members to authorize these taxes, creating a system of “taxation without representation,” according to the study from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL).
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Wisconsin’s coronavirus emergency is ending, but the state’s public health managers are continuing to urge people to get vaccinated and “take care of their health.”
Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services on Wednesday said the state will be transitioning away from its emergency footing as the Biden Administration prepares to end the national coronavirus emergency on May 11.
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Star Tribune CEO and publisher Steve Grove has apologized for the “pain” caused by a cartoon that made some readers feel “targeted and mischaracterized.”
Mike Thompson’s debut cartoon for the paper featured a man telling his wife: “Broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer at all hours will make Minneapolis too noisy.”
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Republican lawmakers this week unveiled a shared revenue plan that would boost state funds for counties and municipalities and give authority to fiscally troubled Milwaukee and Milwaukee County to set and boost sales taxes.
But will taxpayers around the Badger State be forced to pay for Milwaukee’s mistakes?
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While President Joe Biden has preemptively declared the House debt-ceiling bill dead on arrival, U.S. Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI-06) remains hopeful the budget-slashing proposal will bring big spender Biden to the negotiating table.
“Some people question the will of Republicans to fight for a conservative bill. In my first eight-plus years in congress this was the most conservative bill that we have passed yet,” Grothman told The Wisconsin Daily Star on Thursday’s edition of the Vicki McKenna Show.
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The Star News Network’s attorneys have filed a new case with the U.S. Department of Justice demanding the Federal Bureau of Investigation turn over Nashville mass shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s manifesto. The Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) on Wednesday filed an administrative appeal with the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy after the FBI twice rejected The Star News Network’s Freedom of Information Act requests, seeking the expedited release of the documents.
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Wisconsin’s Republican congressional delegation wants answers from federal health agencies following recent revelations of a biosafety lab incident at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The so-called gain-of-function experiments at Wisconsin’s flagship public university shine a brighter light on the same scientific practices used in a lab in Wuhan, China that are suspected of unleashing the COVID-19 pandemic on the world.
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The House Judiciary Committee will continue to seek answers from Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on his “bizarre” prosecution of former President Donald Trump, U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI-05) says.
Fitzgerald, a member of the powerful committee, said Bragg’s decision to drop his lawsuit against the Republican-led Judiciary Committee is a victory for the committee and its chairman, U.S. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH-04).
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Public Opinion Strategies is out with yet another poll showing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis faring better against former President Donald Trump, this time in battleground Wisconsin. But just who is paying for the polling that paints a picture of DeSantis’ presidential strength despite Trump’s significant lead in primary polls remains unclear.
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Wisconsin Senators want to take away a strategy that some local governments have used to keep public information under wraps.
The State Senate on Wednesday approved SB 117, also known as The Open Government Protection Act, with a simple voice vote. The legislation would force local governments to pay the legal fees of people who sue over open records requests, even if the local government doesn’t technically lose the case.
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The Sun Prairie Area School District failed to protect four freshman girls from being exposed to the genitals of an 18-year-old biological male — identifying as a transgender woman — who was showering in the girls’ locker room, according to a Milwaukee-based public service law firm.
In a letter to the woke Madison-area school district, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) alleges the “alarming incident” in early March not only violated the girls’ privacy rights, but district administrators’ “completely inadequate” response continues to put Sun Prairie students in further danger.
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The latest allegations that Antony Blinken “played a role’ in duping the public on the Hunter Biden laptop story shows just how deep the Biden administration corruption runs, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told The Star News Network in an exclusive interview.
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As the Wisconsin Legislature considers sweeping tax cuts, a new report finds a flat tax would yield substantial benefits for all.
The report, published by the Badger Institute, notes single-rate reform to Wisconsin’s costly progressive tax system would spur faster economic growth, creating more jobs and more investment — all while lowering the burden on Badger State taxpayers.
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As he moves closer to a presidential campaign announcement, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has scheduled a trip to the Badger State next month.
DeSantis, who is expected to officially launch his run for the White House after the Florida legislative session ends in early May, will speak at the Republican Party of Marathon County Lincoln Day Dinner on May 6.
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U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI-06) led a congressional hearing this week seeking answers on how the Biden Administration could lose track of more than 85,000 unaccompanied children it allowed to illegally enter the U.S.
Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the Offie of Refugee Resettlement, had a hard time answering basic questions, highlighting the administrative nightmare behind President Joe Biden’s disastrous border policies.
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Republican lawmakers at the Wisconsin Capitol want to stop local governments from paying people just because.
A plan at the Capitol, AB 146, would ban local governments across Wisconsin from using public dollars to pay for a guaranteed income program.
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Minneapolis has become the first major city in the United States to allow the Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast over speakers five times per day, year-round, including in the early mornings and late evenings. The Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously Thursday – during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – to approve an amendment to the city’s noise ordinance that would allow the “adhan” – “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” call to prayer to be sounded every day, year-round, five times daily.
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Nearly every U.S. state recognized increased backlogs for new Social Security disability benefit applications since 2019, And the Great Lakes states were no different.
In fact, Wisconsin’s backlog more than doubled, ranking in fifth nationwide for increased backlogs. From 2019 to 2023, Wisconsin’s backlog grew 130 percent, with an increase of 11,500 backlogged applications. It has the fifth highest backlog increase in the nation.
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There was one group at Wisconsin’s budget hearing pushing for less. Americans for Prosperity warned Wisconsin lawmakers about spending too much of the state’s record $7.1 billion surplus.
Americans For Prosperity Wisconsin this week waited through hours of requests for more money at the legislature’s public budget hearings to make the simple case to spend less.
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Two Wisconsin lawmakers, looking to stop school shooters before they have a chance to take more innocent lives, have introduced a bill that would allow teachers and staff members to carry firearms on school grounds.
State Representatives Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) and Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee) recently introduced a bill that would create an exception to the state’s prohibition on guns at schools.
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The U.S. State Department’s sluggish passport processing system is making applicants wait months for their passports. U.S. Representative Bryan Steil (R-WI-01) is demanding answers — and action.
Citing increased demand, the State Department has expanded processing times for passport applications and renewals. It’s now taking agents about three months to process routine passports, and seven to nine weeks for expedited international travel permits.
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