The director of partnerships will serve as an ambassador of Wisconsin Watch's mission, focusing on the Green Bay and Fox Valley areas. Wisconsin Watch seeks director of partnerships for northeast Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism ..read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes Three weeks ago, I stood in the middle of the packed Sherman Middle School gymnasium in Madison as hundreds of President Joe Biden’s most passionate supporters’ cheers rang throughout the campaign stop. Confined to a small press area, I watched as people passed “Let’s Go Joe” signs between one another while exuberantly chanting “four more years,” just 16 days before the sitting president dropped out of the race.  Last week, I walked among red, white and blue-spangled crowds with thousands of former President Donald Trump’s biggest supporters filling out Milwaukee’s ..read more

Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims. Yes. Vice President Kamala Harris was once ranked the most left-leaning U.S. senator, though the organization that did so has stopped rating lawmakers based on one year. Wisconsin GOP chair Brian Schimming made the claim July 23, 2024. In 2019, GovTrack.us, a nonpartisan Congress tracker, rated Harris, a California Democrat, the most liberal senator. I ..read more

Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims. Yes. Former President Donald Trump agreed after his 2016 election to pay $25 million, including $21 million to reimburse students, to settle three lawsuits alleging fraud by his for-profit Trump University. Trump did not admit to wrongdoing in the two California class-action lawsuits and a suit brought by New York’s attorney general. “Each suit alleged that Trump University us ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes The recently wrapped Republican National Convention in Milwaukee rolled out the red carpet (literally!) for local Wisconsin media outlets — the first arrangement of its kind at a national political convention. And by most accounts, “Wisconsin Media Row” was a success. Over the four-day nominating event, delegates and elected officials — most of them from Wisconsin — made their way to the western concourse of the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena where they found a bustling collection of the state’s newspaper, radio, TV and online journalists.  Each of the 24 participatin ..read more

Reading Time: 6 minutes Erica Kochanski has been paying attention to the Waukesha School Board since moving to the school district in 2021. That was the same year the board gained national attention for deciding not to participate in a federal program that would have provided free school lunches to families. The district has since gotten notice for its handling of LGBTQ+ issues. But it’s the district’s recent decision to attend a School Board Summit sponsored by the conservative law firm the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, or WILL, that has upset Kochanski ..read more

Reading Time: 4 minutes A roaring crowd of battleground state voters greeted Vice President Kamala Harris in Wisconsin on Tuesday as she opened her Democratic political case against Republican former President Donald Trump. In the November election, she said, “it’s a choice between freedom and chaos.” “In this campaign, I promise you, I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week,” Harris said. “We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead.” Harris arrived in the Milwaukee area having locked up nomination support fr ..read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes Three political newcomers — a former entertainer, a recent college graduate and a longtime district resident — are grappling for Wisconsin’s 40th Assembly District after incumbent Rep. Dave Considine, D-Baraboo, decided not to run for reelection.  The new faces on the ballot include:  Brad Cook, 50, of Pardeeville, is a Realtor who serves on the Columbia County Board of Supervisors and worked 24 years as a volunteer firefighter. He says he is a “rural guy” who relates to the district. Karen DeSanto, of Baraboo, is the former CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of W ..read more

Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims. No. While about 65,000 migrants are being sheltered in New York City hotels, tent dormitories and other shelters, they are not housed in luxury hotels. Eric Trump said in a speech at the Republican National Convention, “illegal immigrants are housed in the most expensive hotels in New York,” but Sean Hennessey, a hotel industry adviser, told the New York Times it is primarily two-star hotels ..read more

Reading Time: 4 minutes Angelique Sharpe now sadly knows firsthand how frequently police interactions can turn deadly for Black men.  Her brother, Samuel Sharpe Jr., was shot and killed on North 14th and West Vliet streets in Milwaukee on July 16 by Columbus, Ohio, police officers who were in the city to work at the Republican National Convention. Police treat Black men “like their lives are just disposable,” she said. “He was ambushed from behind.” According to the Milwaukee Police Department, five officers opened fire on Sharpe Jr. after he ignored orders to drop two knives he was carry ..read more