Free Republic

In late August, during the second week of school in Burlington, Wisconsin, Melissa Statz heard children in her fourth grade class talking about Kenosha. A couple of students had seen burned and boarded-up buildings in the nearby city, but they didn’t know the details of the protests that filled the streets after a police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back on Aug. 23. One student asked Statz, 30, if she knew what was going on in Kenosha, which is a half-hour drive from Burlington, a town of 11,000 that is 89 percent white. Statz thought this...

Image from La Crosse County website, cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- La Crosse County, Wisconsin may have engineered a new event, the cheap ammunition event. Ammunition has often been accepted at gun turn-in events, though it is not paid for. Some excellent deals have been found for ammunition at these events. The event will be held at 3202 Berlin Drive, La Crosse.  It appears to be the local landfill, from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday, the 24th of October. The La Crosse event is specifically organized to collect unwanted ammunition. The county states it often...

MADISON, Wis, — A small but steady stream of masked UW-Madison students stopped by voter registration tables outside the unions last week to perform their civic duty. Madison City Clerk's office employees helped them through the paperwork, sanitized their used pens and talked among themselves as they waited for the next students to filter into the fairly empty tents. The vibe at Wisconsin's largest university in this battleground state just 20 days out from the Nov. 3 election bore little resemblance to the campus atmosphere in the lead-up to the 2018 election when organizers passed out puppies, arranged celebrity visits,...

MILWAUKEE — The Trump campaign initially planned to hold Saturday's rally at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport - but the airport denied the request. An airport spokesperson tells TMJ4 News that the airport's director notified an unidentified tenant that all special events that are "non-aeronautical in nature" are in violation of its lease with the airport. Such an event would also be in violation of the City of Milwaukee's ban on large public gatherings. "The concern for the Airport is the impact to airline flight operations, as the event originally planned for Saturday morning would require a ground stop, resulting in...

Voters in battleground state Wisconsin have cast more than 1 million absentee ballots well over a week before Election Day. Just a day after the Tuesday start of early voting, almost 80,000 Wisconsinites had cast their ballots in person, though they won't be opened until Election Day, as they are still considered absentee. An influx of mail-in absentee ballots, particularly in Milwaukee and Madison -- which historically lean blue -- arrived even before the 11-day early voting period began and are considered largely responsible for the high voter tally two weeks before Election Day.

Days before the State of Wisconsin denied Foxconn's request for state tax credits - in the form of direct payments from the state to Foxconn's bank account - related to the "factory" built by the world's largest contract tech manufacturer in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. The project was announced shortly after President Trump's upset election victory, but quickly ran aground as reporters complained that the facility being built by Foxconn bore little resemblance to the enormous Gen 10.5 LCD factory the company had promised. In fact, the factory isn't even big enough to serve as a smaller Gen 6 LCD...

President Trump and Joe Biden (D) are deadlocked in battleground Wisconsin, a Susquehanna Polling and Research survey released Wednesday showed. “If the election for President were being held today, would you vote for Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, Joe Biden, the Democrat candidate, or Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian Party candidate?” the survey, fielded October 16-19 among 500 likely general election voters, asked. Trump and Biden garnered 45 percent each, reflecting a three-point loss for the former vice president, who held a slight lead in the survey’s September 23 poll. In that survey, Biden saw 48 percent support to President Trump’s...

Gov. Tony Evers implored residents to take action to turn around the weeks-long surge in coronavirus cases in Wisconsin or else the economic consequences on businesses would be dire.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden responded to Sen. Ron Johnson's (R-Wis.) claim that his son Hunter Biden had profited off of their family name, saying the GOP senator should be "ashamed." Biden in an interview with WISN 12 News accused Johnson of launching a "last-ditch effort" to smear his family before the election, saying there was no legitimacy "whatsoever" to Johnson's claim. “It's the last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family," Biden said, comparing it to efforts by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to dig up dirt on the former vice president. Johnson, chairman of the...

The cast of the 70s and 80s sitcom Happy Days will reunite in an eleventh hour virtual fundraiser to raise money to support the Democrat Party of Wisconsin’s push to flip the Badger State for Joe Biden in November. “The most important election of our lifetimes is right around the corner and Wisconsin is a must-win swing state,” tweeted Happy Days star Ron Howard on Monday. “So, I’m thrilled to announce a #HappyDaysReunion to support [Wisconsin Democrats] on Oct 25. Chip in any amount to attend.”

Secret Service records appear to provide verification of documents regarding conflicts of interest regarding former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and other member of the Biden family. That's according to leading Senate Republicans investigating the matter. The senators, Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), are also questioning representations made to them by the Secret Service regarding its protective detail to Hunter. In a new letter to Secret Service Director James Murray, Johnson and Grassley outline how records they previously obtained from the Secret Service line up with, and seem to provide verification of, newly-public emails about Hunter...

BARRON COUNTY, Wis. -- A Barron County judge has ruled that a temporary restraining order against Gov. Tony Evers' order restricting indoor capacity in Wisconsin bars and restaurants be lifted, meaning that it is once again in effect. Earlier this month, Gov. Evers ordered new restrictions limiting indoor capacity to 25 percent at all bars, restaurants, and stores statewide. Many business owners complained their businesses won't survive. The Tavern League of Wisconsin sued, and last week Sawyer County Judge Don Yackel temporarily blocked the order with a restraining order. Monday, Judge James Babler removed the restraining order, arguing the plaintiffs...

Less than three weeks out from the Nov. 3 presidential election, during an interview with the Cap Times, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren touted the importance of Democratic candidate Joe Biden winning Wisconsin and the White House in a high-stakes election where "lives are on the line." The Massachusetts Democrat played up the stakes in this battleground state in Democrats' effort to oust President Donald Trump, describing it to attendees at a Madison drive-in get-out-the-vote event Saturday as one that lies "at the intersection" of this election. Slamming Republicans for “trying to steal a Supreme Court seat” ahead of the election...

President Donald J. Trump will deliver remarks on supporting law enforcement at an event in Muskegon, Michigan and at a Make America Great Again Rally in Janesville, Wisconsin on Saturday, October 17th, 2020.

Tapping on his cellphone with a sense of purpose, Kevin Mathewson, a former wedding photographer and onetime city alderman in Kenosha, Wis., did not slow down to fix his typos as he dashed off an online appeal to his neighbors. It was time, he wrote on Facebook in late August, to “take up arms to defend out City tonight from the evil thugs.” One day earlier, hundreds of residents had poured onto the streets of Kenosha to protest the police shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake. Disturbed by the sight of buildings in flames when he drove downtown, Mr. Mathewson decided...

Why has Marc Elias, the Democratic National Committee’s election lawyer, filed more than 50 lawsuits around the country challenging state election laws in advance of next month’s presidential election? Elias says he’s fighting against “voter suppression.” But most of the state laws he’s challenging have been in place for years — including when he was the legal adviser to the John Kerry and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns. Why is Elias suddenly asking courts to overrule state election laws and count ballots that come in after Election Day, or force states to have unattended ballot collection boxes? Someone who knows Elias...

Man charged with firing handgun just before alleged Kyle Rittenhouse shootings A man has admitted being first to open fire at the Kenosha protests in the moments before accused teen gunman Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly shot and killed two people and seriously injured another, according to court documents. Joshua Ziminski, 35, and his wife “both admitted” to detectives that he “fired off a ‘warning shot’ into the air” during the Aug. 25 protests in Wisconsin, according to a criminal complaint obtained by The Post. Attorneys for Rittenhouse have called the gunshot a “pivotal moment” that left the 17-year-old alleged militia member...

Once solidly Democratic blue-collar communities in western Wisconsin that broke for Trump four years ago could hold the key to this crucial swing state. LA CROSSE, Wis. — La Crosse, a college town in western Wisconsin 365 miles down the Mississippi River, is surrounded. Once the capital of a rural, Democratic voting bloc that dominated the southwestern quarter of the state, the 2016 election left La Crosse County alone, hemmed in on every side by counties that flipped red for Donald Trump. The populist, working-class-focused remaking of the Republican Party Trump and his allies led that year saw a shift...

A Sawyer County judge has, for now, blocked Gov. Tony Evers' latest order to curb the spread of coronavirus by limiting public gatherings and the number of customers bars and restaurants may serve at one time. The order from Judge John Yackel knocks down the order at a time of record hospitalizations, new cases and deaths — and after bars and restaurants have lost a massive amount of revenue as customers stay away while the pandemic rages on in the state. It leaves much of the state without any restrictions on public interaction at a time when the virus is...

A Wisconsin judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked an order from Gov. Tony Evers’ administration limiting the number of people who can gather in bars, restaurants and other indoor places ... The Democrat governor's order, issued by the Evers-appointed state health secretary Andrea Palm last week, limited the number of customers in many indoor establishments to 25% of capacity. Gatherings in indoor spaces without an occupancy limit were limited to 10 people. The order does not apply to colleges, schools, churches, polling locations, political rallies and outdoor venues. The Tavern League of Wisconsin, the powerful lobbying group for the state’s 5,000...