Reading Time: 9 minutes During the 2023 harvest season, one of Jake Lieb’s tractors quit working. A week later, his combine stopped working, too. Both were new — and he was locked out from making any repairs himself because of software restrictions embedded in the machines. Instead, a technician from John Deere was dispatched to diagnose and repair the problems. While waiting for the technician to come out, Lieb fired up a 20-year-old tractor he hadn’t used for harvesting in years. Crops are vulnerable to the weather, and had he not, Lieb could have lost at least a day of harvest. Some of the ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a lower court ruling that declared some delivery drivers for Amazon were employees as the state argued, not independent contractors as the online retail giant contended. The court, in a unanimous decision, said the appeal was “improvidently granted,” meaning the Supreme Court should not have reviewed the case. That decision dismissing the case, issued after the court heard oral arguments, leaves a 2023 Wisconsin appeals court ruling against Amazon in place. That ruling found that drivers in the Amazon Flex progr ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes FlexRide Milwaukee celebrated its 50,000th ride in January. But although the program continues to be in high demand, its future is unclear.  Launched in 2022, FlexRide Milwaukee is an on-demand transportation service that provides affordable transportation to inner-city residents who work in Franklin, Oak Creek, New Berlin or Menomonee Falls. After serving only 11 riders in its first month, FlexRide now averages 4,000 rides each month, said Dave Steele, executive director of MobiliSE, which operates FlexRide with financial support from various city ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here. In 1966, Jesús Salas led the historic march of migrant farmworkers from Wautoma to Madison, in the process helping organize Wisconsin’s first farmworker union. He went on to become a leader in Latinx community organizations throughout Milwauk ..read more

Reading Time: 6 minutes Walmart, the largest retailer in the United States, is no longer selling Milwaukee Tool-branded gloves on its online marketplace  — responding to allegations that a subcontractor for the Brookfield, Wisconsin-based tool company relied on forced Chinese prison labor to manufacture certain models of gloves.  “We looked into the allegations regarding the gloves in question, and we made a decision to de-list those from the marketplace,” Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart’s chief sustainability officer, told shareholders during a virtual meeting on May 31, according ..read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press. Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature voted early Friday to end funding for a pandemic-era child care subsidy program over the objections of Democrats and child care providers who argued that the move would be devastating for needy families and the state’s economy. The GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee, which writes the state budget ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press. The Wisconsin Legislature on Wednesday passed a bipartisan plan to prevent Milwaukee from going bankrupt that also sends more state aid to every community in the state, a long-sought-after funding increase agreed to by Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. The measure is part of a larger deal struck by Evers and Republican le ..read more

Reading Time: 8 minutes News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and Wisconsin Watch that addresses the issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at News414’s website and see a selection of News414 stories here. Unpaid bills often put Elizabeth Brown in the position of choosing between which of her family’s needs should get priority, a struggle familiar to many Milwaukeeans. Brown, 43, is in many ways the face of poverty in Milwaukee.  She is stuck in a ..read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter and donate to support our fact-checked journalism. A coalition of Mississippi River mayors is celebrating the Senate approval of a lower river basin plan. At their annual meeting in St. Louis during the week of Sept. 15, members ..read more

Reading Time: 13 minutes The news in early 2021 that Oshkosh Corp.’s defense subsidiary had secured a multi-billion dollar federal contract to build up to 165,000 postal trucks elicited a mix of pride and relief among Oshkosh, Wisconsin residents.  Since the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has ordered fewer tactical vehicles, and employment has dropped at the corporation’s Oshkosh assembly plants.  So the 2021 announcement allowed the military contractor to tout a swords-into-plowshares pivot that would support at least a thousand more middle-class jobs for Wisc ..read more