It's been a grim week, more depressing than usual if that's possible. So I want to start with something sort of fun, at least for those of us not easily snookered by the vast grifting of the Trump family and the regime it heads. So, about that wonderful, made-in-America phone Trump and his older sons announced with great fanfare on June 16, 2025, the 10-year anniversary of Trump's golden escalator ride to announce his bid for the presidency.

Actually, Trump Mobile announced both a cell phone service — "a transformational, new cellular service designed to deliver top-tier connectivity, unbeatable value and all-American service for our nation’s hardest-working people" — AND a gold-plated T1 phone. Don't you just love all the hyperbole? Here's how the phone is described: "It is a sleek, gold smartphone engineered for performance and proudly designed and built in the United States for customers who expect the best from their mobile carrier." And then here's what happened (Press Release: Introducing TRUMP MOBILE, June 16, 2025). Naturally followers of the Trump cult signed up.

Now, a year later, "the company behind Trump Mobile, T1 Mobile LLC, quietly updated its preorder terms and conditions to clarify that it 'does not guarantee that a Device will be produced or made available for purchase'" (Yahoo!Finance, May 11, 2026). Here's Ari Melber covering the story on The Beat. You can watch the segment on Instagram, complete with a spitting-mad Trump supporter having a conniption!

The Hill quotes the International Business Times estimating that approximately 600,000 phones have been preordered with a $100 deposit for each one. That adds up to a princely sum of $60 million the company is holding with no commitment to make the phones! Yahoo!Finance captures the response of would-be customers: "Purchasers like tech content creator Carter Ryan, who goes by CarterPCs online, were quick to call out the company’s vague language. 'I’m paying $100 for the chance to maybe give you more money in the future, if you decide to make the product that I’m paying for in the first place?' he said in a post on TikTok."

The saga of the phone provides a preview, of sorts, for the Iran war. Just yesterday AlJazeera announced that Trump claims 'not long' before war ends. But we've heard this song before. On April 21, three weeks ago, PBS News noted that "President Donald Trump has made contradictory statements about the timeline to end the war. He has repeatedly declared victory and then later threatened Iran." A few days after hostilities began on February 28, Trump claimed the war was intended to last four to five weeks. On March 9, he averred the war would be over "very soon." And that he thinks the "war is very complete, pretty much." Over and over, he has declared victory, only to renew his saber-rattling. So now it's mid-May and we're still at war with no end in sight, pretty much! We may not be dropping tons of bombs every day, but our naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is, by definition, an act of war. Politifact has put together a lengthy timeline of the repeated pattern. Maybe peace in our time is just another version of Infrastructure Week.

Meanwhile, despite Trump and Hegseth repeatedly claiming the US has reduced the Iranian military to rubble, the New York Times reports that "U.S. Intelligence Shows Iran Retains Substantial Missile Capabilities." Intelligence assessments "show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities." Iran has "roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile, according to the assessments. That stockpile encompasses both ballistic missiles, which can target other nations in the region, and a smaller supply of cruise missiles, which can be used against shorter-range targets on land or at sea." Faced with information undermining the assurances Trump and Hegseth have repeatedly provided, Trump declared that any suggestion that the Iranian military was still viable was "virtual treason," whatever that means.

Turning now to developments in Wisconsin, we got word that Governor Evers and the GOP leadership in the state can "announce deal attaining 50 percent special education reimbursement and securing over $600 million for K-12 schools, tens of millions of dollars in property tax relief, eliminating income tax on tips and overtime, and providing up to $600 in direct support payments for working families" (Evers Press Release, May 11, 2026). The money for these appropriations is to come from "a small portion of the state’s readily available state surplus, the balance of which also increased since the 2025-27 state budget was enacted last summer, leaving billions of dollars remaining and available in the state’s checking and savings coffers for the next biennial state budget and to respond to any pressing state challenges in the interim."

As reporting in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel indicates, though, the bill is not certain to pass. For one thing, the putative Republican candidate for governor, Tom Tiffany, has made his opposition clear. Ditto some "Democratic lawmakers and candidates for governor." With money coming out of the surplus, it's evident that the investment in kids and K-12 schools, in property tax relief statewide, and in help for working families represents one-time patches to long term problems. And while Robin Vos touted the bill as a compromise, it does not address these issues in a serious, long-term way.

TAKE ACTION

Now that the April election is behind us, it is not too early to start work on the partisan primary that will take place on August 11. (See rresults of the Supreme Court election in the North Shore and Ozaukee County.) I want to stress how important it is for everyone to do something to turn out our voters. The only way we are going to be able to win the struggle for democracy in this country is to make our voices shout, to pump up the volume, as it were. Partisan gerrymanders fall apart if enough people are determined to defeat them by voting to overcome them. In the same way, turning out as many voters in the primary as possible will help determine who is best positioned to win the governorship and to control the Assembly and the state Senate. As you are probably aware, Grassroots North Shore is holding a forum for candidates for governor on Sunday, May 17, at Nicolet High School, from 2:00 - 4:00pm. There are a few spaces left. So if you want to come, hurry up and register!

Grassroots North Shore is also beginning its effort to reach voters ahead of the primary, leafletting at the houses of strong Democratic women who have missed one or more of the last four primaries or spring elections — in other words, the elections that seem less important than presidential ones or even midterms. And because Ozaukee County is more difficult terrain in which to deliver print material by hand, we will be phoning and texting strong Democratic women there too. And we need your help! To learn more about what we are undertaking and to put your hand up to participate, email Nancy Kaplan or Norma Gilson. We will begin phoning by early June, finishing our calls in time for people to request absentee ballots and doing the leafletting beginning in mid June. Please sign up!

Take a trip to Madison on Tuesday, May 26, to protest Tom Tiffany's vote to cut funds for healthcare to pay for billionaires' tax cuts. That's what the Big Ugly Bill Tiffany and other MAGAites in Congress did last year. SEIU and a host of other organizations are going around the state to highlight the issue and to define Tom Tiffany as a danger to working families in Wisconsin. The protest will take place at the Madison Club, 5 E Wilson St in Madison from 11:00am - 12:30pm. Sign up.

Let's start with some good news! The Cook Political Report ratings on the congressional districts in Wisconsin has Congressional District (CD) 1, where Republican Bryan Steil is the incombent, as just barely Lean Republican with a Partisan Voting Index (PVI) of R+2. Congressional District 3, where Republican Derrick Van Orden is the incumbent, is rated as a Tossup even though its PVI is R+3! Dave's Redistricting site has a tiny 1% Republican advantage for CD 1 and a 0.4% Democratic lean in CD 3. Given the record of Democrats in special elections both last year and this, these districts should flip from red to blue.

CD 6 — where Glenn Grothman is the incumbent — has a PVI of R+8, but it might be flippable as well since the Democratic over-performance (the vote total compared to the vote for Kamala Harris) has been nearly 10 percentage points! (Dave's Redistricting, however, shows a 15.6% Republican make-up!)

We can see this dynamic, this shift toward voting blue, playing out in a number of ways. For example, a substantial part of Grothman's district is in Ozaukee County where Chris Taylor won by 3.3% and in Sheboygan County where she won by 0.9 percentage points! Harris's vote percentage in Ozaukee County was 43.9%. In Sheboygan County, the Democratic ticket garnered 41.7% of the vote. So by this calculation, Taylor over-performed by 9.4 percentage points in Ozaukee County and 9.1 percentage points in Sheboygan County.

And then there's the statewide view: Harris lost by less than 1% but Taylor won the state by approximately 20%! To be sure, the electorate for an April election differs from the electorate for a November election, especially if it's a presidential election year. But one other way to judge where we are with Wisconsin voters is to look at overall voter enthusiasm. Harry Enten, the CNN pollster, tweeted that

The latest ABC News poll finds the same 5 point gap between registered voters who "would vote for the Democratic candidate if midterms were held today" and those who say they would vote for the Republican. This poll, however, does not look at likely voters. The article goes on to provide some comparisons with earlier mid-term elections. "Before the last midterms, in an April 2022 ABC/Post poll, registered voters were split about evenly between the two parties and Republicans won Congress. In an April 2018 ABC/Post poll, Democrats led by 4 points and Democrats went on to win the House in November." The story also notes that "independents prefer Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives by a wide margin."

Of course Louisiana v. Callais, the recent Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act but left it standing as a kind of zombie idea, is not part of the good news. Far from it. WUNC, a public radio station housed at the University of North Carolina, headlines its story about the decision this way: "Supreme Court paves the way for largest-ever drop in Black representation in Congress." WISN12 News explains the potential impact of the ruling: "Experts say the decision paves the way for Republican-controlled states to eliminate minority-led districts, which often favor Democrats, potentially swaying the balance of power in Congress."

We've seen a version of this movie before. Just three years ago, this same Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, and beyond. NPR's account points out that the decision is "likely to cause ripples throughout the country.... Ultimately, effects will be felt in every aspect of the nation's economic, educational, and social life — from the Rooney rule that requires a minority applicant be considered in all NFL coach hiring decisions to employment and promotion decisions, DEI programs in schools and workplaces, and much more."

So what was the impact? A study published in January 2026 and described in a March 24, 2026 article in Future Ed found that "In fall 2024, high-achieving underrepresented minority (URM) students in the first class to enter college after the SFFA ruling—Native American, Hispanic, Black, or Pacific Islander students with SAT scores above 1300—were up to 10 percentage points less likely to enroll at highly selective public and private colleges (those with pre-pandemic acceptance rates below 25 percent). Across the roughly 74,000 students enrolled at those institutions, this translates to 2,800 fewer URM students and 2,150 more non-URM students." (Emphasis added.)

In other words, the change in intentions (as in considering race and diversity in admission policies) turned out to have a significant impact on outcomes. In 1982, Congress understood that fact and amended the Voting Rights Act, which had required those bringing vote dilution cases to prove racial motives behind electoral maps, to authorize those bringing such cases to prove disparate impacts or effects. As Justice Kagan's dissent demonstrates at length, "The new Section 2 [as amended in 1982] repudiated the intent requirement and adopted a 'results test'" (see page 59 of the whole pdf document, page 15 of the dissent). She goes on to point out that Congress has the specific power to legislate means to oppose procedures that result in discrimination — not just discrimination that is intentional but also that which is the outcome of actions. "So even though the Fifteenth Amendment itself barred only intentional discrimination, Congress could enact legislation extending to discriminatory effects."

So Callais turns §2 on its head. Or rather returns it to the state it was in from 1965 to 1982. During that period and again now, vote dilution cases will have to show racial motives, a nearly impossible job since all a legislature needs to do is claim a race-neutral justification for the electoral maps it draws that just happen to dilute the power of minority citizens' votes.

A site called Governing paraphrases a New York Times analysis that concludes Democrats stand to lose 10 seats in the US House. But that's just at the federal level. "In 10 state legislatures across the South, Republicans could gain more than 190 seats currently held by Democrats, most of them Black representatives in majority-minority districts, according to an analysis released in December by voting rights groups Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund." And so just the way we saw elite educational institutions bleaching after the ban on affirmative action, we are facing the bleaching of American government at all levels.

The fight for racial equality will now have to be fought again at the very basic level we thought we had secured so long ago. Reforming the Supreme Court will have to be the prime battlefield! And our best offense is in our numbers. Turnout in 2026 and in 2028 will matter more than ever. Please commit to joining the fight, starting now and running through the tape, as it were.

TAKE ACTION

WisDems Voter Protection:
This week’s Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais represents a dark moment for American democracy. By further weakening the Voting Rights Act, the Court has made it harder to ensure fair representation, especially for Black and Latino communities whose voices have too often been targeted for exclusion. But if this ruling clarifies anything, it’s this: the fight for voting rights is inseparable from every other fight for justice. And it raises the stakes for all of us, right here, right now.

If the stakes are higher than ever, then so is our responsibility to meet them. This May Day, the call isn’t just to stand in solidarity. It is to take action. Join us, and let’s protect the vote together.

Poll Observers are the eyes and the ears of our team on the ground on Election Day and are the last line of defense against instances of voter suppression and a crucial resource for voters. Sign up to be a Poll Observer for the August 11th Primary.

Hotline/Ballot Cure Interest Forms are now LIVE!
Are you interested in being a resource for voters for the August primary and the November general election? Want to help absentee voters cure their mail-in ballots so that their votes will count? Be a hotline/ballot cure volunteer for Wisconsin! After you fill out this form, our team will reach out to take you through the next steps. Hotline and ballot cure volunteering is 100% virtual and can be done from anywhere in the country.

May Day is upon us. Do you have a plan for tomorrow? Most Grassroots North Shore supporters are no longer employed. And most of us don't go to school anymore either. So what can YOU do to support the Day of Action? Here in Milwaukee, SEIU and Voces de la Frontera are jointly sponsoring a Day without Immigrants. You should demonstrate solidarity with them by joining the march and rally beginning at the Voces offices, 733 W Mitchell St, Milwaukee, at 10:00am Friday morning.

I also urge you to go to MayDayStrong.org and sign the Pledge to refrain from any shopping on Friday even if you cannot stay home from school or work or can't march with Voces. The general nationwide theme is "It's Workers Over Billionaires." Here's how the national site describes the effort: "On May 1, 2026, workers, students, and families rally, march, and take action across the country to demand a nation that puts workers over billionaires, with many refusing business as usual through No School. No Work. No Shopping." Make this your first Action Item of the week!

Your second Action Item for this week is to download, circulate, and sign nomination papers for one candidate in each race for which you are a valid elector. You can sign ANY STATEWIDE CANDIDATE's nomination form. For congressional districts, state senate districts, and assembly districts, you must be an eligible voter in that district! Here's the 2026 Elections web page with all the nomination papers I've been able to acquire. The Democratic Party wants to know about your efforts. Please report the pages and numbers of signatures you're gathering. Also remember to get the nomination papers back to each candidate's campaign as soon after May 18 as you can. The forms are due in Madison at the Wisconsin Election Commission offices in Madison by 5:00pm on June 1. And candidates need some time to collate and check all the forms for correctness before turning them in.

Hot off the presses! Wednesday morning, as I was writing this newsletter, the MAGA justices in the Roberts Supreme Court (SCOTUS) just issued a ruling that effectively guts the 1965 Voting Rights Act by striking down the Louisiana electoral map. The 6-3 decision said "that Louisiana’s new majority-minority district violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution" (New York Times, April 29, 2026). The three dissenters — Justices Brown Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayer — "argued that the justices had taken the final step to dismantle the landmark civil rights law." The majority opinion, written by Justice Alito of course, claims that the ruling is a limited one "that preserved a central tenet of the Voting Rights Act." The logic is really tortured: in the new framework "challengers will need to show proof a state 'intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race'" [emphasis added].

Here's my limited understanding: CRACKING minority populations — that is, diluting a minority community's vote by breaking it up into two or more districts based on race — remains unconstitutional, but PACKING minority voters into a single district to provide them with the power to elect their preferred candidate is now constitutionally ok-dokey as long as it's not based on race. It's permissible to dilute minority power or conversely to concentrate it as long as the district lines are drawn to protect incumbency OR based on partisanship. Say what?

The effect of the ruling in Louisiana, whose population is approximately one-third Black, is that the state's effort to create a second majority-minority district, so that two of the state's six representatives would reflect the composition of the state, must be thrown out. The one remaining majority-minority district — the one that has been packed with minority voters — could remain as is. Or IT COULD BE CRACKED so that Republicans can eliminate it all together. The congressional representative who was recently elected to the second majority-minority district now struck down by SCOTUS gets right to the heart of the matter: "the practical effect is to make it far harder for minority communities to challenge redistricting maps that dilute their political voice."

Now all eyes are on Florida where the legislature met Tuesday in special session to consider new maps (AP, April 27, 2026). Governor DeSantis believes the map he proposed before the SCOTUS decision came down — maps that seek to eliminate four districts held by Democrats and dominated by minorities who, mirabile dictu, regularly vote for Democrats — would pass muster with SCOTUS because it corrects what DeSantis calls "legal infirmities" similar to the Louisiana map the court just struck down. The gerrymander the new map proposes is based, not on race, but on partisanship, the MAGA GOP claim. This in light of the fact that the four Black congressmen currently representing Florida constituents will no longer be in the next congress. One is running for governor and the other three are either seeking higher office or simply not standing for re-election!

Despite the new ruling and the proposed maps that seek to eliminate Democrats' districts, all might not be smooth sailing in Texas and elsewhere: "By aggressively targeting Democratic-held districts, Republicans may have weakened some of their own safest seats" (Newsweek, April 28, 2026). The problem has a name: the Dummymander. The Atlantic recently had an article about it: The Revenge of the Dummymander (link shared as a gift). We all know how pernicious partisan gerrymandering is. But sometimes it can go awry. As The Atlantic article explains, "Dummymander is the term that the political scientists Bernard Grofman and Thomas L. Brunell coined for what happens when a gerrymander backfires, hurting the party that it was designed to help." The gerrymander doesn't work when voters do not behave as expected. In Texas, the GOP is now worried that the Latino voters who shifted substantially toward Trump in 2024 have now returned to the Democratic fold. But the new map that attempts to draw five new Republican districts were predicated on the voting data from 2024. And that could mean a big swing and a miss.

As usual, it's been a very eventful week. The redistricting referendum that just passed in Virginia cannot be certified yet because a case trying to kill the new maps is pending before the Virginia Supreme Court. The issue the plaintiffs brought is not constitutional but rather procedural: "a Republican legal challenge contends the General Assembly violated procedural rules by placing the constitutional amendment before voters to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. If the court agrees that lawmakers broke the rules, it could invalidate the amendment and render last week’s statewide vote meaningless" (AP, April 27, 2026). The justices heard oral arguments on Monday but have not yet ruled in the case.

In other news, Jimmy Kimmel got his licks in early, before the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, when he pre-roasted the Trumps and their entourage on Thursday night. Here's the YouTube clip of that monologue. The jokes were pretty pointed, I have to say, but the fake cut-away shots were priceless. Of course the First Lady and the President have both called for Kimmel to be fired, again. But the whole fracas was upstaged by a would-be assassin carrying a shotgun, no less, trying to rush the ballroom where the event was being held. Fortunately no one was killed, or even seriously injured. But it surely has not escaped anyone's notice that the attempted security breach has become the latest bullet-proof reason to build Trump's hideous White House ballroom.

A three-year extension of FISA section 702, the provision that allows the intelligence community to spy on American citizens' communications with foreigners, passed the House on Wednesday. The provision expires tonight but it's unlikely to pass the Senate in its current form. First, the House-passed ban, which includes a provision permanently banning the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital currency, "is so divisive across the Capitol that it has stalled a major affordable housing package for months." And second, "privacy hawks on both sides of the aisle are demanding new guardrails to prevent the federal government from conducting warrantless surveillance on its own citizens" (Politico, April 29, 2026).

Finally, I want to recommend that you read state Senator Chris Larson's 2025-26 Session Wrap-Up. He begins by pointing out that a legislative session covers two years, or 24 months. But that "the current Republican majority has shrunk [it] to about 14 and a half months. The 2025-26 Legislative Session effectively ended on March 19, after which no new bills could be introduced." After recounting some data about the number of Democratic bills introduced in each chamber, the number that were included in a public hearing, and the number that were ultimately passed into law, he concludes "just 1.1% of Democratic bills got so much as a public hearing this session, and none became law." The rest of the piece discusses the big wins — and there were some, like the Postpartum Medicaid Extension and Gail's Law — and the big losses. At the very beginning of his missive, Larson wryly points out that "Wisconsin has — at least in theory — a full-time legislature." A perfect example that we don't always get what we pay for!

As always, your Action Items this week should include a visit to 5 Calls. Some of the items you might consider include Oppose the ICE and CBP Budget Reconciliation Funding Bill, No War With Iran, and Reform FISA Section 702 to Stop Government Surveillance.

         Polls show that millions of Americans want both accountability and affordability.  Not one or the other: both.   Pouring all energy into accountability risks looking blind and unresponsive to the economic pain of high prices and the prospect of even higher prices as the impending war-related supply shocks move through the economy. But a focus only on affordability risks appearing unwilling to confront malfeasance and criminality, and repeated violations of the US Constitution. 

         That requires a two‑team strategy—a public, unmistakable commitment to pursue accountability and affordability simultaneously.

         Team Accountability should be led by the people already known for constitutional backbone and investigative grit:   people associated with rule‑of‑law commitments and the willingness to confront misconduct in office when others stayed silent. Their mandate would be to reopen every major abuse that has been buried, stalled, or smothered: the Epstein matter, the undisclosed documents of the Mueller investigation, the buried Jack Smith files, the violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, voter suppression and enrichment via crypto and tariff manipulation.  The activity of this team would send a message that the country is done pretending that the last decade of misconduct never happened.

         Team Affordable must be just as visible and just as relentless. Its mission:   climate resilience, and long‑term economic security.  Their charge would be to   restore the infrastructure investments launched under Biden, restore research funding at universities and at NIH and NASA, confront K–12 math and English proficiency gaps, strengthen the Affordable Care Act with a public option, rebuild renewable‑energy -- solar/wind/battery -- momentum, modernize the electric grid and invest in carbon capture.   

         These initiatives can be partially financed by a windfall profits tax on fossil‑fuel companies. These firms were earning healthy investment returns when oil was $60 a barrel. With prices now hovering near $100, there is a compelling case for capturing a portion of those extraordinary gains and directing the revenue toward affordability strategies—stabilizing grocery and rental prices, supporting farmers, and helping households manage rising heating and energy costs.

          This two‑team structure delivers a blunt message to voters:   defend the law and preserve the Constitution while delivering policies that matter to families. Not one or the other—both.  

Happy Earth Day, everyone!

Another Tuesday, another electoral victory! We have the momentum — the BIG MO as they say. As you probably know, Virginia voters agreed to adopt the new — but temporary — congressional district maps the legislature proposed to override the maps drawn by an independent, nonpartisan commission after the last census. The new map provides Democrats with the opportunity to win up to five additional congressional seats, leaving just one for Republicans to hold. The new map will be in place only until the next decennial census in 2030, at which point the nonpartisan commission will again draw the congressional district maps in a nonpartisan way in 2031.

The map Virginia adopted yesterday is, as the New York Times puts it, "one of the country’s most aggressively gerrymandered congressional maps." (As usual, the link to the Times story is gifted to get you past the paywall.) The article goes on to note that the "party’s newly combative approach extends beyond redistricting as it has felt a new urgency to regain power in Washington." Both its "qualms over dark money" and its more compromising posture in previous funding battles have been overridden by the need not to "bring a stick to a knife fight." The referendum passed by only by three percentage points, possibly because the "issue seems to have unsettled some Virginia voters" and because the NO campaign relentlessly focused on Democrats' past positions vehemently opposing gerrymandering.

Wisconsin's process for developing its electoral maps makes it impossible for us to do the same, even though in our evenly divided state our congressional delegation includes six Republicans and only two Democrats. That's why two groups have brought lawsuits seeking the opportunity to draw new maps before the 2028 election. One of those lawsuits was dismissed on March 31. It argued that "the state’s congressional maps were an illegal partisan gerrymander." The other lawsuit — "challenging the congressional maps on the basis that they illegally dampen the competitiveness of the state’s congressional elections" — will probably go to trial next year (Wisconsin Examiner, March 31, 2026).

Meanwhile, as the result of an earlier case about maps for legislative districts, we have much fairer maps and have a solid chance of winning majorities in both the state Senate and in the Assembly. As a sign that the state's Republicans recognize that a sea change is coming, we are seeing lots of current office holders deciding not to run again, most notably both leaders of the two houses. The list in the Assembly includes:

• Robin Vos, the longest serving Speaker of the Assembly (AD 33)
• Scott Allen (AD 82)
• Robert Brooks (AD 59)
• Rick Gundrum (AD 58)
• Dave Murphy (AD 56)
• Jerry O'Connor (AD 60)
• Kevin Petersen (AD 57)

The senators hanging up their hats include:

• Devin LeMahieu, Majority Leader (SD 9)
• Rob Hutton (SD 5)
• Jesse James (SD 23)
• Steve Nass (SD 11)
• Van Wanggaard (SD 21)

Two of the retirees in the Senate — Rob Hutton and Van Wanggaard — are on the Grassroots North Shore hit list for the fall election. In addition, we will be targeting two Assembly Districts in the Milwaukee area — AD 21 (Jesse Rodriguez) and AD 61 (Bob Donovan) — and three Congressional Districts — CD 1 (Bryan Steil), CD 3 (Derrick Van Orden) and CD 6 (Glenn Grothman). We plan to connect with grassroots groups in those areas so that we can work together on phoning and sending postcards once the primary is over.

Our elections page has now expanded to provide you with access to nomination papers for many of those running for various offices. The top part of the page includes a link to information about absentee ballots and drop boxes for some communities plus the date of the August primary, registration information for students, and the results on the Wisconsin Supreme Court election (including the number of percentage points in the community's movement toward the progressive candidate, Chris Taylor). At the very bottom of the elections page, you will find a link to the online information candidates have provided.

I will be adding the online information for our target list of candidates in the coming days. Obviously, you cannot sign nomination papers for any of them unless you happen to live in their districts, but if you're interested in finding out about the people who want to run for those seats, be sure to check back in a week or two.

For me, the biggest surprise in this part of the election cycle is the number of people who would like to be on the primary ballot contesting for the nomination to run against Glenn Grothman in the 6th Congressional District. Ballotpedia lists eight Democratic candidates, but one of them informed us that he needed to bow out of the race to deal with an urgent family matter. In addition to the seven candidates on the Democratic side, there are two independents (and one Republican!) listed. I urge people who live in the 6th Congressional District to look at the online information about the candidates BEFORE you decide to download, circulate, and sign nomination papers for a candidate. Keep in mind: you can sign only ONE NOMINATION FORM for each office. And you must be a resident of the district the candidate is running in.

Most offices have many fewer people aspiring to be the nominee, and I know of no other races where there are candidates running as Independents as well as others running as Democrats. Between now and when nomination papers are due at the Wisconsin Election Commission on June 1, there may be some additions and/or subtractions. I'll try to keep up and let you know. You can also use the Ballotpedia index to Wisconsin elections. Ballotpedia provides a questionnaire to candidates and posts responses when they receive them. If you click on the "Click Here" link next to the race you are interested in, you will see a list of candidates for that office. If a candidate has submitted answers to the Candidate Connection questionnaire, you will see anext to the candidate's name. Clicking on that will take you to that person's responses.

On a final note about our upcoming election, make sure you RSVP for our Governor's forum on Sunday, May 17, at Nicolet High School (6710 N Jean Nicolet Rd, Glendale). Seven candidates will participate: Mandela Barnes, Joel Brennan David Crowley, Francesca Hong, Missy Hughes, Sara Rodriguez, and Kelda Roys. Kathleen Dunn, a retired radio talk-show host of 44 years, will moderate the forum.

Whether or not you can attend the forum, you can help whoever wins the primary in August execute a robust campaign in the 84 days between the primary and the general election. Governor Evers in conjunction with the Wisconsin Democratic Party has set up the Governor Readiness Project, "a new initiative to prepare for the general election — starting now before we even know who our nominee will be." Not only will the initiative make sure the candidate has the resources need to run a competitive campaign, it will also provide technical support. As The Cap Times put it, "The goal is simple: Put together a ready-made campaign to hand off to the Democrat who wins the August 2026 primary."

Finally, I will leave you with some new data from my new favorite politics guru, G. Elliot Morris: "Trump's job approval has fallen to a new low" in the poll in the field from April 10 - 14. His net approval (approval minus disapproval) is now -26, or 35% approval and 61% disapproval. That's 17 points lower than when the tracker began in May 2025. "His net approval on prices and inflation has fallen to -46, worsening every single month of 2026: -31 in January, -35 in February, -40 in March, and now -46 in April. Just 26% of Americans approve of the way he is handling prices, while 72% disapprove. More than half of all respondents (56%) strongly disapprove." Morris shows that Trump's approval on every issue but one is underwater. He ends this most recent Strength in Numbers post with this: "Trump’s numbers have now declined in every wave of our poll this year. And while his support bounced occasionally in 2025, it has never increased two months in a row. Overall approval has dropped from 40% in January to 35% in April."

Before I start on the newsy bits, here are two events of note coming up quickly. First is a May 1 Day of Action. In Milwaukee and in Madison, Voces de la Frontera will hold its annual Day without Immigrants event. Here, there will be a rally at 10:00am at the Voces Offices (733 W Historic Mitchell Street). At 11:00am participants will march to the Federal Building (517 E Wisconsin Ave) for a program there. In Madison, the rally will take place at 12:00pm at Library Mall (715 State Street) followed by a march to the State Capitol at 1:00pm.

The more general May 1 Day of Action is themed "It's Workers Over Billionaires." Here's how you participate: No Work. No School. No Shopping. That's the essence of the action. Here's how the organizers describe the purpose of the event: "We are a network of hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of working people coming together with a common purpose: standing together against the billionaires waging a war on working people." The demands are straightforward:

• Stop the billionaire takeover corrupting our government.
• Protect and defend Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs for working people.
• Fully funded schools, and healthcare and housing for all.
• Stop the attacks on immigrants, Black, indigenous, trans people, women and all our communities.
• Invest in people not wars.

To find events in your area, visit the MayDayStrong website.

And on Sunday, May 17, Grassroots North Shore will hold a forum for the Democratic candidates for governor. It will take place at Nicolet High School (6701 North Jean Nicolet Road, Glendale). The event will be moderated by Kathleen Dunn, a veteran of 44 years as a radio talk show host. The doors will open at 2:00pm; the program will begin at 2:30pm. As space is limited, please do yourself a favor and RSVP.

Here's some startling good news to get us going today. "In a Fox interview that aired on Wednesday, President Donald Trump effectively admitted that the ongoing Republican campaign to rig electoral maps in their favor to avert a wipeout in this year’s midterm elections has been a spectacular failure" (Daily Kos, April 15, 2026). Of course, his rambling interview was filled with lies — he had "the greatest opening year" and "the greatest economy ever." Some anchor in reality is better than none, I suppose.

Now for some not-so-wonderful news. In his Morning Memo at Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz writes, "The descent of the Justice Department into a crude weapon wielded by an erratic authoritarian is gathering speed and quickening the threat to America’s fraying democracy in ways that we all feared but hoped might be kept at bay for a bit longer." He cites four judicial events from yesterday:

1. The DOJ abandoned the seditious conspiracy convictions of a number of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers whose sentences had already been commuted. But now the DOJ seeks to wipe the slate clean.
2. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that District Judge James Boasberg could not investigate the contempt of court for the DOJ and ICE's failure to follow a judicial order that would have prevented 100+ Venezuelans from being deported to El Salvador in spring 2025.
3. Prosecutors in US Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office showed up unannounced at the Federal Reserve headquarters to try to undermine the Fed's independence.
4. The Trump DOJ released its so-called weaponization report attacking President Biden's Justice Department.

For the details on these, read the whole thing. TPM is always worth a look.

And on the sex scandal(s) beat, here's the latest. The collapse of Eric Swalwell's campaign and probably his career too has been swift. Yesterday, he resigned from congress, having already halted his campaign for governor of California amid a widening sexual assault scandal. It's all too familiar by now. But here's what puzzles me. Knowing that these allegations were just waiting to be discovered, why he nevertheless thought he could run for governor without being exposed escapes my understanding completely. What sort of reasoning leads a man to think that the scandal would never occur? The only thing holding the Epstein victims back from more openly implicating Donald Trump, it seems, is fear. Maybe Swalwell — and Tony Gonzales too — believe they are similarly immune, when clearly they are not. So what differentiates the "Epstein class" from these miscreants, I wonder. And will we ever see the full Epstein files? Keep watching the skies, I guess.

In Wisconsin, our legislature held a special session to deal with gerrymandering in the state. Except the session didn't actually happen. As Wisconsin Public Radio has it, "a special session of the Legislature to consider banning partisan gerrymandering came and went Tuesday. But it’s not gone for good." instead of quickly gaveling a session in and immediately gaveling it out again, this time "they didn’t adjourn — they just postponed." Republicans say they're "working toward a thoughtful solution to partisan gerrymandering." Governor Evers counters: “Lawmakers either want to ban partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin or they don’t. It’s that simple. If lawmakers fail to take a public vote on this basic question, then Wisconsinites have no choice but to assume their lawmaker’s position on this issue.” Maybe a little star gazing on this issue is in order.

Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is chock full of stories and pictures of last night's thunderstorms and possible tornados, but I could not find a single article about the legislature's lack of action on gerrymandering yesterday. A wonderful headline today, though, almost makes up for that neglect: "GOP lawmakers hire private lawyers to defend spending on private lawyers." The piece begins "Republican leaders will pay private lawyers up to $550 an hour in taxpayer money to represent the Legislature in a lawsuit challenging them over that very practice: using taxpayer money to hire private attorneys." Irony and cynicism abound.

Meanwhile, we're in the seventh week of our ugly war with Iran and in the midst of a pretend ceasefire. This afternoon the New York Times announced that "Stocks Approach Record High as Wall St. Looks Beyond War." The first paragraph says it all: "The S&P 500 approached a fresh record high on Wednesday, reflecting investors’ optimism that a peace deal would be reached before the war in Iran could inflict significant damage on corporate America, even as a spike in oil prices has led to a gloomier economic outlook." The operative phrase here is "inflict significant damage on corporate America." I think what we're seeing is the effect of gaping wealth inequality in this country. Later in the article, the Times acknowledges that "some market watchers have been perplexed by the recent rally" since the Strait of Hormuz is like a straight jacket on the world's economy and "high oil and gas prices have been feeding into rising U.S. inflation and tumbling consumer confidence."

The preliminary data for April 2026 from the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers show that we are pretty unhappy. "Consumer sentiment sank about 11% this month, extending a decline that began with the start of the Iran conflict, and is currently about 9% below a year ago." Measured at just 47.6, confidence in the economy has hit a historic new low. Nevertheless stocks surge.

Let's end on an upbeat note. Senator Baldwin issued a press release a few days ago to announce that she "and her colleagues Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) ... will force the Senate to vote again to end the war in Iran." See the full press release. May the force be with them.

Here's the rest of the newsletter I sent on Wednesday, April 8, with the list of events and some Take Action posts. But before we get to that material, I have a couple of bits of information to add about elections past and future.

Let's begin with what just happened today in Hungary. Autocrat Victor Orban went down to a landslide defeat. Péter Magyar's party looks like he will win at least 2/3 of the seats in Parliament, making him the next Prime Minister of Hungary with a supermajority so that much of the damage Orban did to Hungary's democracy can be undone! May it be a harbinger for our elections in the fall.

I also want to mention that a Democrat, Alicia Halvensleben, won the election for mayor of Waukesha City — apparently she is the first Democrat to win that seat since 1964!! The surprisingly good news from our April election just keeps coming.

I also need to add two important events to this missive: The Worth Fighting For Wisconsin monthly meeting is on Monday, April 13, on Zoom at 7pm. Greta Neubauer, minority leader in the Assembly, and Jodi Habush Sinykin, subbing for Senate Democratic Leader Dianne Hesselbein, will be discussing the strategies for winning the majority in both houses, and of course the governor's race as well. Plus Ben Wikler, former chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, will also appear to discuss his forthcoming book — This Is the Plan: How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy. His book promises to show what individuals and small groups can do to build a future in which democracy thrives. You should definitely sign up for this event.

Then on Wednesday, April 15, Wisconsin SEIU is sponsoring a rally — Tax Day: Protest Tom Tiffany's Healthcare Cuts. The event will take place at 11:00am at the GOP Milwaukee Field Office, 2244 N Dr. Martin Luther Kind Jr. Dr in Milwaukee. Tiffany, a MAGA Republican who is currently the representative of Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District, voted to cut healthcare to help fund tax cuts for billionaires. And this year he's running to become Wisconsin's governor. We cannot let that happen. AccuWeather predicts temperatures in the low 60s and unfortunately rainy. Bring your umbrellas and raincoats. As the organizers say, our voices are stronger together. Join in!

TAKE ACTION

Milwaukee Voter Project: Be an MVP! The Milwaukee Voter Project is up and running and we need your help. Since the beginning of November 2025 we have had fewer than twenty people volunteer to work shifts registering voters at the DMV offices. Most weeks we are lucky to fill only two or three of the 65 shifts we have available. There are two important elections remaining in 2026:
               •  August 11- primary for partisan offices
               •  November 3- general election for partisan offices
We would like to get as many volunteers as possible trained and reaching out to voters during this important election cycle. You can sign up through May 30!

We have updated our processes and recommend that anyone who has not worked with us since 2024 watch two videos: the DMV training video AND the MYVOTE training video. These videos can be found on the 'training' tab on our MilwaukeeVoterProject.com website. And you can sign up for shifts for registering voters or for VOTER RECOVERY shifts on the Shifts tab on our website. Have questions or need more information? Call 262-617-9877 or email [email protected].

5 Calls: Here are some of the worthy topics you might want to use to call Senator Johnson, Senator Baldwin, and your Representative.
               •  No War with Iran;
               •  Impeach Trump;
               •  Impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth;
               •  Oppose Healthcare Cuts to Fund ICE and Illegal War;
               •  Protect Our Public Lands.

For the next six days, the only thing that matters — locally at least — is the upcoming election for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice. Early in-person voting ends in most North Shore suburbs, Ozaukee County municipalities, and Washington County municipalities on Friday, April 3. Contact your municipal clerk for dates, times, and places. In Milwaukee, early in-person voting also takes place in several locations on Saturday, April 4, and Sunday, April 5. If you have not voted yet, please do so this week! Otherwise, plan to vote on Election Day, Tuesday, April 7, from 7:00am to 8:00pm.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin is organizing plenty of Get Out the Vote Canvassing with a number of candidates for the Democratic nomination for governor. This is a great opportunity to meet and hear from them AND to do a little electioneering! Here's a list of who will be where as we knock the last doors in our communities.

• Chris Taylor in Milwaukee's West Side, Saturday, April 4 at 12:00pm;
• Joel Brennan in Tosa, Saturday, April 4 at 12:00pm;
• Joel Brennan in Riverwest, Saturday, April 4 at 3:00pm;
• David Crowley in Glendale, Saturday, April 4 at 3:00pm;
• Kelda Roys in Bayview, Saturday, April 4 at 3:00pm.

• Sara Rodriguez in Milwaukee's West Side, Monday, April 6 at 9:00am;
• Missy Hughes in Tosa, Monday, April 6 at 3:00pm

And to close out the campaign, Chris Taylor will kick off the canvass at the Bayview office of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County, 2999 S Delaware Ave in Milwaukee, on Tuesday, April 7, at 12:00pm!

Please sign up to do some canvassing as we run through the tape at the finish line of this election. It will certainly be a low turnout affair. Which is why we need to urge people to vote in this one. Already, the rate of early and absentee votes lags well behind where it was a year ago when Susan Crawford was running. Here's a list of canvassing staging locations for the Get Out the Vote end game:

• Brown Deer, April 4, 5, 6, and 7
• Fox Point/Bayside, April 3, 4, and 6
• Glendale, April 3, 4, and 6
• Germantown, April 2, 4, 6, and 7
• Grafton & Cedarburg, April 4, 6, and 7
• Lakefront, April 4, 6, and 7
• Mequon, April 2, 4, 6, and 7
• West Allis, April 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7
• Whitefish Bay, April 3, 4, and 6

People don't seem to feel the same sense of urgency about this election that they felt a year ago when the balance of the court was in the contention, but they should. With a solidly liberal majority currently on the court, what's the big deal this year? There's a lot less money sloshing around this race — and no Elon Musk to act as villain. Yet, a little reflection reveals that electing Chris Taylor solidifies control of the court until at least 2030, when the next census takes place. That means protecting fair maps, voting rights, and reproductive rights — not to mention election challenges emanating from the 2028 elections!

Campaigns are always interesting windows into the character of candidates. So I was thrilled when I accidentally received a post card from the Lazar campaign. I thought I'd share with you the way her campaign portrays her opponent and herself. The photo of Judge Taylor speaks volumes, as does the characterization of her as "The Activist."

Although Judge Taylor has been on the bench since 2022, the Lazar campaign pronounces her a "career politician" and fails to note that she is a sitting judge. She's depicted in a clearly darkened photograph, microphone in hand and no judicial trappings in sight. Adding that she worked for Planned Parenthood is simply a way of saying that she supports reproductive rights without having to come out and say directly that Maria Lazar is opposed to abortion!

Meanwhile, the Lazar campaign portrays the candidate in a bright light, smiling, in front of what appears to be a library of law books. The card uses her title and proclaims that she has "12 years of Honorable Judicial Experience" without providing a clue about her judicial philosophy, let alone her ideology.

The headline above the two pictures reads "TWO RECORDS. ONE CHOICE." The reverse side of the card, however, reveals a great deal about Lazar's views: "Wisconsin's Supreme Court is our last line of defense. The Madison political machine is spending millions to install a career activist who will put her partisan agenda first." The reference to the "Madison Machine" is simply code for lefties we don't like. And of course, there's an appeal for a donation complete with QR code.

As for the money race, the financial reporting for February 3 through March 23 came out on Monday. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel put it on March 31, "Chris Taylor outraising, outspending Maria Lazar in Supreme Court race." Their analysis shows "Taylor and her supporters have outspent Lazar and her backers 15-1." It's no wonder the Republican party, which paid for the Lazar campaign piece I received, is so eager to funnel donations to their candidate!

It's pretty late in the cycle, but the two candidates are going to debate on April 2 — that's tomorrow — from 7:00 - 8:00pm on WISN 12 News. Even if you've already voted, it is worth watching I should think.

In no election, no matter how small, can we afford to sit on our hands. So please, get busy. If you cannot canvass, you can make phone calls, send texts, talk to like-minded family and friends, urging them to get out and vote.

And thus endeth the lesson!

Our demented leader plans to address the nation tonight. Any bets on whether he rambles on about his ballroom, about rogue judges, about the pens he uses? Will he declare victory in Iran and leave? Does he think the price of gasoline will magically decline Thursday morning if he announces that he's won? After all, according to his highness, the war has already achieved regime change: "President Trump on Sunday suggested that 'regime change' in Iran had been achieved because so many of its top leaders have been killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks, as he sought to show progress in a war that has entered a second month." So said the New York Times on Monday.

Today, though, the story is a little different. Here's the Times' headline: Trump Seeks to Redefine ‘Regime Change’ in Iran War. The flip-flopping stars in the story: "Regime change has occurred in Iran. Or it hasn’t. It is a goal of the war. Except it isn’t. Those are some of the dizzying messages that have come from President Trump and his aides in recent days. The phrase 'regime change' has flown from lips this week like fighter jets crisscrossing the Persian Gulf" (March 31, 2026). Maybe it's time for some regime change here at home.

Let's end this report with some really good news. CNN Politics looks at the two special elections in Florida that took place on March 24 and finds that they "provided more evidence that the Democratic success in elections since Donald Trump’s return to the White House rests not just on a motivated base but also on winning over Republicans and independents." To get at the reasoning, I need to quote the piece at some length.

We have the wind at our backs. So do something good for your soul, your community and your country.

TAKE ACTION

5 Calls has you covered for a number of highly urgent matters. As always, the site provides information about each subject, contact numbers for the relevant officials, and a script you can use or modify. Here are two salient issues right now.

• Oppose Healthcare Cuts to Fund ICE and Illegal War
  
  
• Say No to War with Cuba

MoveOn has a petition asking senators to block the nomination of Casey Means, who is not a doctor, to the post of Surgeon General. Sign it.

In remarks ahead of his Thursday address to the nation on the Iran war, Donald Trump told a White House audience that the federal government cannot afford to fund Medicare, child care, and other domestic programs because of the wars he wants to pursue.

That raises a fundamental question: what are the most immediate threats facing everyday Americans? Is it a lack of military strength—or is it access to healthcare, the affordability of food, and the rising cost of living?

A strong military may stir patriotic pride, but it does little to address the daily vulnerabilities people actually face at home. Unless these expanded military ambitions are paired with a willingness to ask more of those at the very top, the burden will fall on domestic priorities that directly impact Americans’ well-being.

Our national security should not come at the expense of our economic and social stability.

As voters across Wisconsin consider school referendums this spring, much of the public conversation will focus on taxes, borrowing, and whether residents “with no kids in the schools” should have to pay. These debates are familiar, and they often miss the central economic fact that should guide every homeowner’s thinking: the quality and reputation of a community’s schools are directly capitalized into the value of its homes. A referendum is not merely a question of public spending. It is a question of protecting the equity in one’s single largest asset.

         Wisconsin is not an average state when it comes to public education. It consistently ranks among the top systems in the country, trailing only a few states like Massachusetts and Connecticut.   Within Wisconsin, communities like Whitefish Bay and the Arrowhead School District have built reputations that extend far beyond the Milwaukee metro area. When a high school is ranked number one or two in a state known for excellence, that distinction becomes part of the village’s identity—and part of every homeowner’s property value.

         This is not a matter of civic pride. It is how markets behave. Homebuyers do not simply purchase a structure; they purchase a location, and the most important feature of that location—especially for buyers of multi‑bedroom, family‑oriented homes—is the school district. Realtors know this. Appraisers know this. Economists have documented it for decades. When school quality rises, home values rise. When school quality slips, home values fall. The mechanism is straightforward: demand follows reputation.

         Even residents who have never set foot in a school building benefit from this dynamic. A retired couple living in a four‑bedroom home may not personally use the schools, but the next buyer almost certainly will. That buyer’s willingness to pay is shaped by their perception of the district’s strength. If the district is seen as slipping—whether because of aging facilities, declining performance, or a sense that the community is no longer willing to invest—buyers look elsewhere. And when buyers look elsewhere, prices soften.

         The financial stakes are not subtle. A typical referendum might increase a homeowner’s taxes by a few hundred dollars per year. But a decline in school quality can easily reduce a home’s market value by tens of thousands of dollars. A five to ten percent drop in value is not unusual when a district’s reputation erodes. For a $600,000 home in Whitefish Bay, that represents a loss of $30,000 to $60,000—far more than the cumulative cost of most school bonds. In purely economic terms, the referendum is not a burden; it is a form of insurance.

         Some residents argue that they should not have to pay for schools because they no longer have children enrolled. But this misunderstands the nature of the asset they own. A home is not a static possession; it is a claim on future demand. The next family who considers buying it will evaluate the same factors families have always evaluated: safety, community, and above all, educational opportunity. Whether a homeowner personally values the schools is irrelevant. The market does.

         Others frame school borrowing as a “gift” to the district. But the more accurate description is that it is a capital improvement to the neighborhood. Just as a city invests in roads, parks, and utilities to maintain livability, a community invests in its schools to maintain desirability. A high‑performing school district is   foundational for local property values.   If one district signals retreat while another signals commitment, families vote with their feet. Once a district loses its competitive edge, restoring it is far more expensive than maintaining it.          Whether one has children in the schools or not, the financial health of the district and the financial health of the housing market are inseparable. A community that invests in its schools is investing in itself.   

Before we get to the delicious news from the latest polls, I just need to remind you in case you haven't given it much thought:

NO KINGS THIS SATURDAY!
MAKE YOUR PLAN NOW — AND BRING A FRIEND!

The main event is being held at Washington Park at the bandshell (1859 N. 40th Street, Milwaukee) from noon to 3:00pm. Speeches are scheduled to begin at 1:00pm. Here's a map of the Park.

No Kings rallies and marches are a joyous and peaceful way to celebrate our freedom to assemble and to protest: NO KINGS and NO WAR IN IRAN. If you don't already have a sign to bring, or you just want to make a new one, there will be a sign making station at the Park. If you want to do it in advance, here are some ideas!

The venue is bigger than the last one to make sure there's room for everyone. Plan to attend! But be forewarned: there is very little parking nearby. So why don't you RIDE THE BUS with Grassroots North Shore? We are chartering as many school buses as we need, but first we need YOU to do TWO things:

1. Make a reservation so we will be sure to be able to accommodate you.
   
   
2. Pay $10 PER RIDER to defray the cost of the rental.

If you have already reserved seats on the bus but have not paid for every person, including yourself, who plans to ride with us: DO IT NOW please.

Find other solutions to the parking problem — including some parking suggestions if you are driving and route information if you want to take public transportation — on the pdf we are providing. Of course, you can carpool with friends. Or consider using UBER or LYFT!

If you can't make it to Washington Park, there are other No Kings rallies scheduled around the area. Each one has a different time. So click the link for the one you might like to attend to find out the details.

• Shorewood
• Grafton
• West Bend
• Brookfield
• Greenfield

Now for some news. The new Marquette poll came out yesterday. Although many likely voters claim they are still undecided, Chris Taylor leads Maria Lazar by 8 points. The degree of uncertainty is a bit disquieting but on a hopeful note, self-reported independents favor Taylor by 9 points. "Registered voters have become somewhat more familiar with both candidates since October, though more than 60% continue to say they haven’t heard enough to have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of each candidate." Good news but no excuse for letting up. Run through the tape, always.

Unfortunately, the candidate debate originally scheduled for tonight has been postponed because Judge Taylor is recovering from kidney stones. No new date has yet been set for it. We hope she recovers soon. Kidney stones are no joke!

So here are some numbers to get you in the NO KINGS mood from Strength in Numbers: "President Donald Trump has had a bad month of news cycles (again). His new war against Iran is one of the most unpopular ever. The national average price of a gallon of gas is now $3.96, according to AAA — up over a dollar from $2.93 before the U.S. war in Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026. That price is now higher than at any point since 2022." The poll shows a 6-point margin in favor of Democrats on the generic ballot question. Moreover, he writes, "the party out of power has gained an average of about 5 points between February and November in modern midterm cycles. If that pattern holds — and the starting point is already D+6 — Democrats would be looking at a margin well into wave territory by Election Day."

Have a look at the approval-disapproval graphs on key issues from G. Elliott Morris' substack:

In more bad news for our malevolent leader, Emily Singer (staff on Daily Kos), headlines today's post "Men propelled Trump to the White House. Now they're turning on him." Harry Enten, the CNN data guy, put it this way in a March 24 post: "Trump won in 2024 because of men. They are abandoning him right now. He won men by 13 pt in 2024, but his net approval is now -7 pt with them. Men under 45: Trump won by 5 pt in 2024. Now he's 19 pt underwater with them." You can see his segment — and enjoy his high energy reporting style — in a post on The Daily Beast. It's 3+ minutes of WOW and worth a watch.

In other just-desserts comeuppance, NBC News is reporting that the activist who pushed 2020 election fraud claims was convicted of election fraud. And guess where this happy event occurred: right here in Racine, Wisconsin! "A jury convicted a Wisconsin man of election fraud and identity theft for requesting the ballots of Republican state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Democratic Racine Mayor Cory Mason without their consent." Huzzah!

Finally, despite Aileen "Loosey" Cannon's judicial order sealing the report from Jack Smith's investigation of the purloined classified documents our wannabe dictator took when he left the Oval Office in 2021, MS NOW reports that "Trump appeared to have business motive for keeping classified documents, Jack Smith finds." Here are the first two paragraphs of the news item:

Read the whole thing. It's mind-blowing!

TAKE ACTION

Campus Voter Engagement Volunteers Needed

Alerting students to upcoming elections is very rewarding. Volunteers will be informing students about the Supreme Court Election and providing them with information on registering to vote, early in person voting on the UWM campus and other city locations, and candidate information. Your job will be handing out flyers and holding a very quick conversation with students as they dash by to their next class. We need volunteers to work at UWM the week of March 30 – April 3 and April 6 and 7. A shift is approximately 1 ½-2 hours, and the work is outdoors (weather permitting) since we are handing out partisan flyers and need to stay on public sidewalks and Spaights Plaza at UWM. Please let Norma Gilson know if you can participate at [email protected], 414-588-1241.

Get Out the Vote: Early in-person voting began yesterday!

Pedal to the metal, folks.

• Brown Deer, March 28 and 29 plusApril 4, 5, 6, and 7
• Fox Point/Bayside, Saturday March 28 plus April 3, 4, and 6
• Glendale, Sunday March 29 plus April 3, 4, and 6
• Germantown, Early Vote, Sunday March 29
• Germantown, GOTV, April 2, 4, 6, and 7
• Grafton & Cedarburg, Early Vote, Sunday March 29
• Grafton & Cedarburg, GOTV, April 4, 6, and 7
• Lakefront, Saturday and Sunday March 28 & 29 plus April 4, 6, and 7
• Mequon, Early Vote, Saturday and Sunday March 28 & 29
• Mequon, GOTV, April 2, 4, 6, and 7
• West Allis, Saturday and Sunday March 28 & 29 plus April 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7
• Whitefish Bay, Saturday and Sunday plus GOTV days March 28 & 29 plus April 3, 4, and 6

Grassroots North Shore is co-sponsoring a virtual meeting between the Democratic National Committee and various grassroots groups, including Swing Leftand the Swing Blue Alliance. This is the first time that I can recall that the Democratic Party is meeting with grassroots groups. So I hope Grassroots North Shore supporters will sign up to make sure we have a good showing and to find out how the party intends to "Flip the House." The event is scheduled for Wednesday, March 18, at 7:00pm Central Time. And just FYI, both Derrick Van Orden (Wisconsin CD3) and Bryan Steil (CD1) are on the flip list.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! NO KINGS 3 is coming on March 28! And we need YOU! Not only do you need to attend a rally, either the main one in Milwaukee at Washington Park from 11:00am - 3:00pm or one of the other smaller gatherings around the city (see the list below or visit nokings.org for a complete map) but you also need to DO SOMETHING MORE. Grassroots North Shore needs volunteers to work the crowd. The goal is to persuade others to step up, to go beyond attending protest rallies and marches. Here's what you'll do:

1. chat with attendees and thank them for coming;
2. hand them a flyer and encourage them to find ONE action they can do to make a difference in their communities;
3. ask them to follow the flyer's QR code to sign up for an action then and there.

SIGN UP to volunteer.

If you cannot canvass (or even if you can), PLEASE DONATE to fund the sound system, the port-a-potties, the garbage cans, and some extra screens so everyone in the crowd can see and hear the speakers.

Here's a list of other rallies around Milwaukee. The times vary so check with and sign up for the rally you want to attend.

• Shorewood
• Grafton
• West Bend
• Brookfield
• Greenfield

While we're in the midst of one campaign for a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, comes news that Justice Annette Ziegler plans to retire in August, 2027, at the end of her current term. Which means in spring 2027 when there is yet another election for the court, the seat will be open! Defeating a sitting justice has been next to impossible. So it is to our advantage to have another open seat next year.

Although Annette Ziegler did not cite the change of the court's ideological make-up, as Rebecca Bradley did when she announced that she would not run again, Wisconsin Public Radio notes that "her tenure was not without its disputes with what recently became a liberal majority on the court. In 2023, after Justice Janet Protasiewicz took the bench, flipping the court’s ideological stance for the first time in 15 years, Ziegler accused her liberal colleagues of going “rogue” and undermining her authority as chief."

Now we're only weeks away from this spring's election. Early in-person voting begins March 24 and ends in most of the suburbs on April 3. You can check your community's website for days and hours. You can also still request an absentee ballot at MyVote.WI.gov. You may be able to return it through a drop box (again, check with your community's clerk for more information). If you use the postal service, be sure you do so as early as possible, because the mail has been slower than in the past. And the new process for postmarking mail means that your ballot will not necessarily be postmarked the day you put it in the mail! See the postal service's explanation and what you can do to ensure your ballot is postmarked appropriately here.

In these last few weeks before Election Day, it is vital that we contact as many supportive voters as we can! That's why the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has organized canvasses all over the state. Below you will find a list of staging locations together with dates and times. But NOTE: there is a special canvass at the Glendale staging location (6563 N Crestwood Dr, Glendale 53209) you won't want to miss: former White House chief of staff and former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel will cheer us on and knock doors with us starting at noon on Sunday, March 15. Sign Up to attend.

The City of Milwaukee has been preparing for ramped up immigration enforcement with a trio of proposals for its "ICE Out MKE" campaign. Two of three proposals — one of which "declared opposition to ICE activity in the US" and the other of which called on "Milwaukee Police to intervene if anti-ICE protesters’ rights are violated" — have been passed by the Council and were signed by Mayor Johnson on March 6. The third proposal would prohibit ICE from using City-owned property for any of its activities (620WTMJ Radio Station, March 9, 2026).

The internet at my house has been spotty lately. And while I can't make a direct connection between its sporadic failures and the illegal war we are waging in Iran, CNBC (March 11, 2026) notes that "Data centers have already been targeted. Iran’s wave of retaliatory attacks hit AWS facilities in the UAE and Bahrain, causing banking, payments, enterprise and consumer services to experience outages." The article begins "Tech companies have been funnelling billions of dollars into AI infrastructure projects in the Middle East over the past few years, drawn in by cheap and readily available energy and land, alongside local government support." Data centers in Wisconsin threaten to raise utility rates and use huge quantities of water to keep the servers cool. Let's hope our legislature takes heed before it is too late.

This just in: "Trump says he’ll tap Strategic Petroleum Reserve to cut energy costs" (CNBC, March 11, 2027). Meanwhile "The International Energy Agency has ordered the largest release of government oil reserves in its history in an effort to calm the oil price shock triggered by the US-Israeli attacks on Iran. All 32 members of the world’s energy watchdog agreed unanimously to release about 400m barrels of emergency crude, a third of the group’s total government stockpiles and more than double the IEA’s previous biggest release, the IEA said" (The Guardian, Middle East Crisis Live, March 11, 2026).

Not everything is grim, though. A new satirical statue of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein has appeared on the National Mall. On Tuesday, the third golden statue appeared "depicting Donald Trump and the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as doomed lovers from the movie Titanic" (The Guardian, March 11, 2026). I think you'll want to see it.

There is also a "Jeffrey Epstein Walk of Shame." It was "installed last weekend in Farragut Square, a public park close to the White House, naming and shaming public figures associated with the late child sex offender and trafficker" (MEDILL ON THE HILL, March 4, 2026). The installation consists of stars — modeled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — "featuring prominent politicians, billionaires and celebrities tied to Epstein. Each star carried a QR code that directed visitors to specific entries in the Epstein files or news articles detailing their connection to him."

"Hurry up, please. It's time." That's from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. And it begins "April is the cruelest month." Let's make sure it's not cruel this year: get your absentee ballot, plan to vote early in person, see what's on your ballot at MyVote.WI.gov. And then get busy!

TAKE ACTION

Campus Voter Engagement Volunteers Needed: Alerting students to upcoming elections is very rewarding. Volunteers will be informing students about the Supreme Court Election and providing them with information on registering to vote, early in person voting on the UWM campus and other city locations, and candidate information. Your job will be handing out flyers and holding a very quick conversation with students as they dash by to their next class. We need volunteers to go to the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) during the week of March 23-26 and possibly April 6 and 7. We need volunteers to work at UWM the week of March 30 – April 3 and April 6 and 7. A shift is approximately 1 ½-2 hours, and the work is outdoors (weather permitting) since we are handing out partisan flyers and need to stay on public sidewalks and Spaights Plaza at UWM. Please let Norma Gilson know if you can participate at [email protected], 414-588-1241.

From Indivisible: Tell your Members of Congress: End Trump’s illegal war with Iran. Trump’s war has already cost the lives of US servicemembers, at least 1,000 Iranian civilians, and others caught in the crossfire throughout the region. Democrats' efforts to end it with a War Powers Resolution failed last week, but the fight is far from over. The regime will soon ask for billions more of taxpayers' money to continue their bloodsoaked recklessness. Use the link above to email your Members of Congress, then call your senators and your representative and demand they refuse to fund Trump's war.

March is for MARCHING FORWARD. And there is so much to do that I am going to devote the bulk of today's newsletter to the many civic engagements and volunteer possibilities in our area, beginning with the needs of Grassroots North Shore. Followed by some newsy bits.

First up, Campus Voter Engagement Volunteers Needed: Alerting students to upcoming elections is very rewarding. Volunteers will be informing students about the Supreme Court Election and providing them with information on registering to vote, early in person voting on the UWM campus and other city locations, and candidate information. Your job will be handing out flyers and holding a very quick conversation with students as they dash by to their next class. We need volunteers to go to the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) during the week of March 23-26 and possibly April 6 and 7. We need volunteers to work at UWM the week of March 30 – April 3 and April 6 and 7. A shift is approximately 1 ½-2 hours, and the work is outdoors (weather permitting) since we are handing out partisan flyers and need to stay on public sidewalks and Spaights Plaza at UWM. Please let Norma Gilson know if you can participate at [email protected], 414-588-1241.

Second, Canvassing in your area: The latest Marquette poll finds that two-thirds of voters say they are undecided about the race for the Supreme Court. You can make a dent in that number! Here's a list of opportunities. So put on your running shoes or just a comfortable pair for walking so you can start turning out the vote. Here's the canvassing schedule for the North Shore and some parts of Milwaukee. Please sign up for one or more shifts in a location near you.

• Canvass in Fox Point/Bayside, Saturdays: March 7, 14, 21, & 28.
• Canvass in Glendale, Sundays: March 8, 15, 22, & 29.
• Canvass in the Lakefront, Saturdays: March 7, 14, 21, & 28.
• Canvass in Shorewood, Saturdays: March 7, 14, 21; Apr 4.
• Canvass in West Allis, Saturdays: : March 7, 14, 21, & 28.
• Canvass in Whitefish Bay, Saturdays: March 7 & 21.

Attend the next meeting of Worth Fighting For Wisconsin on Monday, March 9, at 7:00pm. Why? Anat Shenker-Osorio from ASO Communications is the featured speaker. Anat is a researcher and campaign strategist par excellence. Many of us have attended her monthly (now bi-weekly) Movement Briefings for years, learning how to frame issues and use winning narratives. WFFWi (and North Shore Maps before it) use her messaging advice, as do thousands — probably hundreds of thousands — of people around the world. Also, Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor will talk a bit about herself and her campaign for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This discussion will be STRICTLY NONPARTISAN!. Join the virtual meeting!

Some other NO KINGS events in our area:

• NO KINGS SHOREWOOD, 2:00-3:30pm. RSVP for specific directions.
• NO KINGS BROOKFIELD, 10:30am - 12:00pm. RSVP for specific directions.
• NO KINGS GREENFIELD, 10:00 - 11:30am. RSVP. Rally at S 76th St and W Layton Ave, Greenfield.
• NO KINGS WAUKESHA, 1:30 - 3:00pm in Cutler Park, 321 Wisconsin Ave, Waukesha. RSVP.
• NO KINGS GRAFTON, 10:00 - 11:00am. RSVP. Rally at North and South sides of Washington St (between Port Washington Rd & Cheyenne Ave), Grafton.

Support Chris Taylor for the Supreme Court: MAKE A SHORT VIDEO explaining why you are voting for Judge Taylor and what this election means to you. (If you can do a selfie, you can make a short vertical video!) As you know, hearing from friends, family and neighbors is the best way to motivate others to vote. Videos like these are incredibly impactful — an easy way to make a big difference in this election! A Better Wisconsin Together, the organization putting this effort together, will send you talking points. They'll use the videos in social media around the state to drive turnout for this crucial election. (NOTE: You will be identified by your first name only.) To get started, just send a quick email to [email protected] for more details.

Souls to the Polls: Free Rides to the Polls 2026. We need you to show up! Free and fair elections are the foundation of a healthy democracy, but they only work when people actively participate and protect them. Showing up — whether to vote, volunteer, advocate, or support voter education — ensures that every voice has a chance to be heard and that the rules of our democracy are applied equally to all. The stakes could not be higher in this election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. We need in-person poll drivers and volunteers in the Virtual Call Center to make calls to voters and answer our hotline to schedule and dispatch rides to vote. Together, we can make voting accessible to all those who want their voices heard. Please complete a short form to let us know where your skills, interests, and passion fit best.

Milwaukee Voter Project: MVP needs to fill a third of its shifts at various DMV sites. Please donate some time to help us reach more voters. Even if it is only one shift it will make a difference. Shifts are 2 hours long and the MVP will train anybody who is new to this project. Sign up for one or more shifts on the DMV Signup Genius.

League of Women Voters Volunteers Needed - Be an Election Observer! Help the League monitor Wisconsin's elections. We are seeking volunteers to be trained as Election Observers and placed in polling places in specific areas around the state. You don't need to be a League member to volunteer for this &mdassh; although we'd love to have you join us!

The Election Observation Program works

• to be sure there is no disenfranchisement;
• to monitor the voter experience - including registration and showing ID<;/li>
• to monitor the absentee ballot counting process;
• to track any problems that can be fixed in future elections.

The LWV is currently recruiting Election Observers for the April 7th Election. Sign up by March 16th to volunteer. Join us! Let’s celebrate the freedom to vote in 2026! More information and sign up.

Also the League has yard signs for just $24. Buy one with a donation to the League of Women Voters.

Finally, Grassroots North Shore has placards to put in car windows (or house or apartment windows). Displaying a placard or a yard sign doesn't substitute for more substantive engagement. So by all means show your support as you drive around town, but be sure to lean in to one of the many ways to get more engaged I have noted above. To get a placard, all you have to do is contact the person who lives nearest to you. and has some signs to give away.

The placards are 17"x14". Here's what they look like:

Here's where you can get yours:

• Karin Adelmann, [email protected], Fox Point.
• Mark Gennis, [email protected], Mequon.
• Cheryl Maranto, [email protected], Glendale

Just send an email to get the address and to arrange a time to pick one up. 

Another placard that might tickle your fancy is available for download and printing. It's an homage to the lockeroom sign in the beloved Ted Lasso TV series. Perfect window dressing! Enjoy.

Also note that today, March 4, is the last day to BUY TICKETS to the Annual Gala of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County on Sunday, March 22 at the Italian Community Center (631 E. Chicago Street, Milwaukee). The special attraction this year is a 2-hour happy hour featuring the Democratic gubernatorial candidates! All the candidates. One room. Two hours to actually talk to them. Tickets start at $100 for an individual attendee. A sponsorship is $150 and includes an individual ticket plus a $50 donation. You can be listed as a Host for $250. And you can purchase a table of 10 seats for $1000. Doors open at 4:00pm. Please RSVP names and dietary needs by March 4th to Brady Coulthard.

Newsy Bits

In his Recombobulation Area analysis of the latest Marquette poll — which found that 66% of Wisconsin registered voters were undecided in this two-person race for the Supreme Court seat — Dan Shafer notes that "President Donald Trump’s net job approval [in Wisconsin] just reached another new low for his second term, and has been on the decline since his return to office. It’s at a net minus-10 now, nearing his lowest mark overall in the poll across his two terms." And this poll took place before he began bombing Iran, a move that does not have a lot of American support. Let's see how low he can go.

My favorite data substack, G. Elliott Morris's Strength in Numbers has a new poll showing that Trump's SOTU “pivot” to affordability didn't work. Among Americans who watched the speech, 57% thought our orange overlord mostly focused on topics other than the issues that mattered most to the respondent. And those respondents were not wrong. "According to an analysis of Mr Trump’s speech by Strength In Numbers, the president spent just 13% of his time Tuesday night talking about affordability, jobs, and health care — the top 3 issues voters say they care about today. In comparison, he spent 24% of his SOTU address on immigration, including deportations and mentions of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, and 20% on foreign policy." Here's a complete view of respondents's answers to the question which issues are most important to them compared to which issues Trump focused on in his 108 minutes of the speech:

And last, a reminder that the Milwaukee County Democratic Party is holding a series of events in their Bay View office — 2999 S Delaware Ave, Milwaukee — to provide an opportunity for people to meet the gubernatorial candidates one at a time. Here's the list of all the meetings. Be sure you save the dates and times for the candidates you want to meet.

• Francesca Hong, Sunday, February 22, 1:00 - 2:30pm
  
  
• Kelda Roys, Thursday, March 5, 6:00 - 7:30pm
  
  
• David Crowley, Saturday, March 7, 12:00 - 1:30pm
  
  
• Missy Hughes, Wednesday, March 11, 6:00 - 7:30pm
  
  
• Joel Brennan , Monday, March 16, 6:00 - 7:30pm
  
  
• Mandela Barnes, Wednesday, March 25, 6:00 - 7:30pm

Robin Vos, the longest serving Assembly Speaker in Wisconsin history, will not be running for reelection this year! Yippee!!! Here is Dan Shafer's quick summation in his substack The Recombobulation Area (February 20, 2026 ). "The era he’s presided over has been destructive and damaging for Wisconsin, and he’s been at the heart of it all. Wisconsin is unequivocally worse off for his years of leadership in the state. His calculating, power-consolidation-at-all-costs approach has held the state back time and time again. His clear disdain for his opposition, lacking even a baseline level of respect, is abhorrent. The way he’s deployed a politics of dismissive cruelty to blue cities like Milwaukee has been repulsive. His stubborn refusal to act at a moment of genuine crisis in 2020 was cataclysmic, and is one of endless examples when he’s put politics over people. He’s been a singular force against good governance throughout his time as Assembly Speaker. The way he operates is the antithesis of everything politics should be." About Vos's retirement, he says: "For the good people of Wisconsin, this is true cause for celebration." Amen to that!!

Vos decided to close up shop for the remainder of the year, ending the legislative session last week. And he was determined to bury a bill extending postpartum care to lower income mothers, keeping it bottled up in committee even though it had already passed the Senate. Democrats used an arcane strategy that threatened to up-end the legislative calendar but Vos finally relented at the urging of several Republicans who were also sponsoring the bill — and perhaps in a sign that with his retirement pending he no longer held an iron grip over his caucus. The measure passed! (ProPublica, February 19, 2026). Dems used the same strategy for a bill on insurance coverage for breast cancer screenings, and got that one passed too! Now Vos can go home and watch the paint dry: there will not be a regular legislative session for the rest of the year.

Nevertheless, in his State of the State address Governor Evers "announced he will be signing an executive order calling the Wisconsin State Legislature into a special session later this spring to pass a constitutional amendment banning partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin" (WisPolitics, February 17, 2026). More happy, happy, joy, joy!!

To amend the Wisconsin Constitution requires two successive state legislatures to pass it. Then it goes to the people for a referendum. So this effort has a ways to go. And Governor Evers will no longer be in office if the legislature manages to pass the proposed amendment. And that makes it all the more imperative that we elect Democrats to the governorship and provide Democratic majorities in both the Assembly and the Senate in November. So get your skates on so you can start now with turning out the vote for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April and support for the Democratic ticket in the fall! Here's the canvassing schedule for the North Shore and some parts of Milwaukee. Please sign up for one or more shifts in a location near you.

So I have to say a word about the Trump show last night. You know — the State of the Union address that took more than 100 minutes to deliver. I did not watch it. You may not have either. My word about it, nevertheless, is peeyew. Apparently he avoided some subjects like ICE and Epstein. Instead he lied his way through, claiming that "this is the golden age of America." He "bragged about tax cuts for billionaires, claimed 'no inflation' and said 'prices are plummeting downward,' bragged about how all his job creation was in the private sector (conveniently ignoring that the country only created 181,000 jobs in all of 2025), and claimed he secured $18 trillion in new investment—a number so ludicrous that the libertarian CATO Institute called it 'mostly fake,' 'wildly exaggerated,' and 'ridiculous'" (Daily Kos, February 25, 2026). Kos sums up like this: "He was nasty, rude, divisive, and as always, full of lies."

In an admirable bit of snark, a headline in today's The Guardian reads "‘Nobel prize for fiction’: Trump’s State of the Union provokes polarized reactions." In her opinion column in The Guardian today, Moira Donegon notes "Trump has lost the ability to entertain. Sadly, he hasn’t lost the ability to offend." And that's all the time I intend to devote to his fantasies.

And once again, the courts, however slowly, are pushing back on some of the regime's most noxious policies. Just today a Federal Judge Finds Third-Country Deportations Unlawful (the link is shared to avoid the paywall). "The ruling amounts to a sweeping repudiation of one of the administration’s most aggressive deportation policies, one in which immigrants are flown to distant places to which they have no ties, including Eswatini, Rwanda and Ghana."

Now it's time to get busy!

TAKE ACTION

On February 1, Grassroots North Shore hosted a fabulous webinar focused on the role of the courts in preserving our democratic republic, featuring three renowned litigators: Jeff Mandel founder, president and general counsel at Law Forward; Mary McCord from Executive Director of Georgetown Law's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP); and Paul Kiesel from Speak Up for Justice. If you missed it or just want to refresh your memory, you can watch it on our YouTube channel.

There are so many depredations emanating from the Trump regime that you could probably attend a different demonstration every day from now until 2028! And now that the weather in Wisconsin is a bit more hospitable for big outdoor crowds, it's time to get engaged. So here are two coming right up.

First, there will be Stand Up for Science rallies all around the country on Saturday, March 7. You can find the nearest one on the website. When I looked last week, the nearest one will be in Madison — sign up for it here. There may be one in Milwaukee too. Check it out.

Second, the next NO KINGS rally is scheduled for March 28 in Washington Park in Milwaukee. I'll have more details closer to the date but right now make sure you mark your calendar and plan to attend. Also, staging big rallires is not cost free. If you can afford to give a few shekels, here's where to go: nokingsmke.com.

Prepare for ICE incursions: Help save children and hardworking parents from DHS and ICE incarceration!

Kathleen Blake is offering a flyer you can use to host your own Whistle & Zine packet construction party. You can download it here. She will supply the whistles and a pdf of the zine (instructions). The flyer is intended for anyone – neighbors, church friends, Zentangle enthusiasts, gardening clubs, or family projects. Let's create positive change! She has listed locations that urgently need DROP-OFFS of whistle packets. Call her for addresses. Spread the word! Use the space at the top right for your DIY party details. Get others involved!

We provide the whistles and zines; you simply enjoy the company of friends while contributing to the safety of our neighbors and loved ones. Order your materials today: Kathleen@[email protected].

From the national Indivisible weekly newsletter: Join the week of action to halt ICE/Border Patrol terror. Members of Congress return to DC tomorrow; this will be a critical week in our fight against new ICE and Border Patrol funding without meaningful guardrails and a stop to the violence in our communities. Groups are encouraged to organize nonviolent rallies outside congressional offices, and everyone should use our call and email tools to keep up the pressure on their Members of Congress.

The Milwaukee County Democratic Party is holding a series of events in their Bay View office — 2999 S Delaware Ave, Milwaukee — to provide an opportunity for people to meet the gubernatorial candidates one at a time. Here's the list of all the meetings. Be sure you save the dates and times for the candidates you want to meet.

• Francesca Hong, Sunday, February 22, 1:00 - 2:30pm
  
  
• Kelda Roys, Thursday, March 5, 6:00 - 7:30pm
  
  
• David Crowley, Saturday, March 7, 12:00 - 1:30pm
  
  
• Missy Hughes, Wednesday, March 11, 6:00 - 7:30pm
  
  
• Mandela Barnes, Wednesday, March 25, 6:00 - 7:30pm
  
  

Americans are understandably frustrated with the cost of living. In the aftermath of the pandemic, prices for nearly everything — groceries, rent, cars, insurance — surged in a short period of time. Inflation peaked around 10 percent in 2022, and although the inflation rate has since returned to something closer to normal, the elevated price level remains. People still feel squeezed because their paychecks have not fully recovered the purchasing power they lost during the spike. The frustration is real, and it has a clear economic explanation.

         Much of the public debate has been clouded by a basic misunderstanding of inflation itself. Inflation measures the rate at which prices rise, not the price level. When inflation falls from eight percent to three percent, that does not mean prices decline; it simply means they are rising more slowly, i.e., rising at 3% per year instead of 8% per year. The only way to make prices fall broadly is through deflation — a sustained drop in the overall price level — and both economic principles and experience  show that deflation is only accomplished by constraining the economy into severe recessions. Promises to “bring prices back down” ignore this reality. Once a price shock occurs, the economy cannot simply be  unwound.

         The pandemic created enormous supply‑side disruptions: factories closed, shipping networks broke down, labor markets shifted abruptly, and consumer demand changed overnight. These shocks produced a rapid jump in prices. What did not kept pace was the wage rate.  Even though pay has recently been rising faster than prices, for many it still has not fully closed the gap created by the initial surge. The result is a lingering loss of purchasing power compared to pre‑COVID conditions.  

         The responsible goal for policymakers is not to push prices back to 2019 levels. It is to foster policies that raise purchasing power so that Americans can afford the lives they built. That requires supporting productivity growth, easing supply constraints, and avoiding policies, such as broad tariffs, that unnecessarily raise household costs. It means focusing on long‑term labor‑market strength rather than chasing the illusion of price-level rollback.

Our Wisconsin legislature seems to be wrapping up business this week and ADJOURNING for the rest of the year! Meanwhile, Governor Evers in partnership with the Democratic Party is raising money to hand over to the campaign of whoever wins the Democratic primary on August 11. Named the Wisconsin Governor Readiness Project, it aims to build a war chest and the campaign infrastructure the winning candidate will need to hit the ground running on day one of the general election campaign. The donation page has high preset amounts on it but you can type in whatever you can afford. Because the Governor is right: "In 2026, we need to protect the progress we’ve made by electing a Democrat who believes in supporting working families, strengthening public schools, and protecting our rights and freedoms" (WisDems website, September 22, 2025). We need to make sure we elect a state government that works for us. Please give what you can.

And just FYI, Grassroots North Shore will be holding a forum for the gubernatorial candidates at Nicolet High School on Sunday, May 17. Save the date in your calendar now so you don't miss it. Kathleen Dunn (a longtime radio host and inductee into the Milwaukee Media Hall of Fame) will moderate the event. The forum will take place from 2:00 — 5:00pm. Other details will be finalized and announced soon. But you can sign up now!

Most of our communities did not have a primary for the nonpartisan election that will be held on April 7. But that does not mean the election isn't important. The ballot is usually filled with candidates for city, town, or village boards and judges. You can preview your ballot at MyVote.WI.gov. While you're there, make sure you check your registration. And plan to request an absentee ballot! It's becoming increasingly important to vote early, whether by absentee ballot or during the early in-person period before each election. For April's election, early voting in most communities will take place weekdays from March 24 through April 3. Check your own municipality's website for specific information where you live.

Why does voting absentee or voting early in-person matter so much this year? We've all heard our loathsome leader bloviate about nationalizing the 2026 elections, or even calling them off altogether. He threatens to issue an executive order to forbid mail-in ballots (which he himself uses to vote in his south Florida district)! Of course the executive branch of the federal government has no role in the administration of elections. The US Constitution assigns that power to the states, although Congress can pass some regulations to make the system more uniform across all the states. In many areas of the country, election officials are preparing for a range of possibilities. "While many Republicans brush off the president’s threats, election officials are rushing to organize meetings and conference calls to prepare for scenarios in which Trump might use federal agents, troops or MAGA-aligned local officials to interfere in elections" (MSNOW, February 9, 2026). Voting absentee or early in person makes crowds at the polls less likely and can reduce the amount of time voting is interrupted by challenges to voters.

One of the ways those of us who probably don't live in areas that could be subject to ICE, National Guard, or other federal agents seeking to intimidate voters — most likely in densely urban and Democratic areas like Milwaukee — is to vote early and then volunteer to be an observer at polls where such threats might materialize. As a citizen of the state you can observe at ANY POLLING LOCATION. The League of Women Voters has an excellent Election Observation Program that has been running since at least 2016. The League will train volunteers who must be available on election day for two-hour shifts. You can begin for the April 7 election if you sign up by March 16. Start at the League's page for volunteer opportunities and the click the link to Sign Up Today!

Why is electing Chris Taylor so vital? After all, when we elected Susan Crawford in a landslide last year, we produced a liberal leaning court for the first time in forever. And we definitely want that to last! The next justice to be up for re-election is Rebecca Dallet, one of the key defenders of our freedoms. Her election will take place in April 2028. So Chris Taylor is our insurance policy keeping the court in the hands of those who have brought us fair maps, will ensure reproductive rights, and protect the rule of law. The liberal majority, with Chris Taylor, holds the court through the next census. And that could be vital for ensuring that the legislature draw fair, nonpartisan election maps.

Taylor's opponent, Maria Lazar, has tried to make herself sound like a reasonable and fair-minded judge. But she just isn't. American Bridge 21st Century spells it out: "Maria Lazar is running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court with a record that shows she is unfit for Wisconsin’s highest court. Throughout her career Lazar has repeatedly taken positions and issued rulings that narrowed fundamental rights, favored political power over fair representation, and discounted harm to victims and voters."

Here are a few key issues:

• Supports extreme abortion positions;
• Supports gerrymandered maps;
• Makes decisions (since overturned) aiding election deniers.

In contrast, Judge Taylor

• Supports reproductive rights and freedoms ;
• Spent 10 years in the state Assembly championing progressive issues;
• Supports the right of workers to unionize.

Finally, you've probably seen the news that the FCC leaned on CBS who told Stephen Colbert in no uncertain terms that he could not air an interview with Jim Talarico, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Texas. Naturally what happened next is that the segment was posted on the CBS YouTube channel and "aired" in its entirety there. The FCC can bluster all it wants about stuff using the public airways, as CBS does. But not the Internet. And now the results are in: How the GOP’s latest media meddling is a major self-own shows interest in Talarico skyrocketing, both nationally and in Texas. (Scroll down to see the graphs.) And it's not just googling. CBS Austin reports the Talarico campaign raises $2.5M in 24 hours following 'Late Show' appearance. Early voting in the primary began yesterday. The primary will be held on March 3. We'll be watching!

I've repeated the links to sign up for this weekend's canvasses in the North Shore. None were listed for Ozaukee County. So if you are able, please sign up to alert voters to the coming election and its importance to the future of our state. Below the box for the canvass stations is a box of dates the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County is holding for the public to meet gubernatorial candidates one at a time. It's an up close and personal way to hear directly about issues that matter to you. You should go!

TAKE ACTION

5 Calls: This site makes it dead simple to call your Senators and your Representative on key issues of the day. The site provides an explanation of the issue, phone numbers for your Reps, and a script to follow. This week, we are urging you to make calls on the following issues:

• No funding deal for the Department of Homeland Security, the department in which ICE, CBP, and other immigration organizations are housed, until meaningful guardrails for ICE, CBP, and other similar organizations are implemented in the funding bill.
  
  
• Claw Back the $170B Slush Fund for ICE and CBP. Congress must immediately claw back the tens of billions of dollars being used to terrorize and murder people across the United States at the expense of government programs that keep our communities safe.
  
  
• Demand Full Epstein Case File Release and Public Hearings. Congress must demand the DOJ release all files as mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, call for public hearings on the released files’ contents, and hold the DOJ accountable for shielding perpetrators.
  
  
• Impeach Attorney General Pam Bondi!

Epstein just won't die! So, some Congressional Representatives have been able to look at the Epstein files with the redactions removed if they personally traipse to the Department of Justice to view them. They are not permitted to take any electronic devices into the room with the computers that display the files, but apparently they can take notes. This morning's Daily Kos feature — Abbreviated Pundit Roundup — features images of Tuesday evening's New York Times front page to show how much real estate the newspaper devoted to Epstein-related matters: six top stories in all.

If like me you are getting a bit tired of how much the Epstein matter still dominates the news, you might be amazed at how far the scandal reaches. The BBC News has a half-hour program explaining how the files are impacting a range of countries. The presenter notes that there are now investigations in 10 countries! If you have the time, it's worth a listen. The sex trafficking now seems to be the least of it, or at least coexists with financial and political revelations. The web of powerful people revealed in these files so far has recently overtaken more salacious stories. Reports of whose names are in the email exchanges are always careful to explain that social relationships with the convicted sex offender is not itself a crime. But oh what these files reveal about elites and their behind-the-scenes activities, events and relationships they have desperately wanted to remain hidden.

Big surprise! Bad Bunny has now become the great dividing line between MAGA and the rest of us. Yahoo News proclaims Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Gets ‘Awful’ Reviews From MAGA and Most of the Internet. On the other hand, Time leads with Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Was an Exuberant Act of Resistance: "Bad Bunny’s halftime show was a fierce act of resistance, and a triumph on many levels. It was an exuberant exercise in spectacle, stagecraft, choreography and camera work; you could have not understood a single word and still had a blast." The opposing views certainly speak to our political and cultural moment. Another article on Yahoo News, MAGA Civil War Erupts Over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Show, says it all.

Yesterday there were several national notices of important election issues. The New York Times analysis notes that the affidavit authorizing the search of the Fulton County Georgia Election offices said the "FBI criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, Presidentially appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity." It goes on to say "many of the claims in the affidavit refer to long-held — and consistently debunked — conspiracy theories about elections in Georgia, including arguments about fraudulent and duplicate absent ballots, election-machine tabulator tapes and missing ballot images. The claims often focus on small administrative errors or easily explainable abnormalities as evidence of fraud." The NYT article is gifted to you to avoid the paywall.

Kyle Cheney, alas on X so I will not link to it, notes that "A federal judge in Michigan has rejected the administration's attempt to obtain the state's voter rolls. Judge Hala Jarbou, a Trump appointee, said the law does not require the state to turn them over." The judge — chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan — dismissed the case. NBC News points out that this is the "the third time a court has tossed a lawsuit by the Trump administration in its efforts to obtain voter registration lists from the states."

The Trump regime's losses in courts keep piling up. No doubt you've already heard the acting U.S. Attorney for DC Jeannine Pirro tried and failed to get a grand jury "to indict Democratic lawmakers over a video urging members of the military and intelligence communities not to comply with unlawful orders" (NBC News, February 10, 2026). The story goes on to list other failures to indict Trump's political enemies like James Comey and Letitia James, who the U.S. Attorney's office tried and failed to win an indictment with TWO DIFFERENT grand juries! And a jury trial acquitted the man who threw a Subway sandwich at a federal officer, also in DC. The piece ends with this observation: "It’s very rare for federal grand juries to say prosecutors failed to meet the probable cause threshold for an indictment." Looks like it's getting more common lately.

As we look toward the fall elections, it is helpful to keep an eye on the big picture. Here's an NBC News take on how current Senators and Representatives are seeing the fall outcome: Members of Congress are fleeing the job at a historically high rate. "Fifty-one House members and nine senators have decided not to run for re-election, the most retirements from Congress this century." In 2018, a year when Democrats gained 40 seats in the House, 34 Republicans decided not to run again. The picture is a bit complicated by the fact that some who are choosing not to run for their House or Senate seats have decided to run for a different office — for governor, for example, or for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

In other election news you might have missed, Analilia Mejia has won the latest special election primary — in New Jersey. She bested a large field that included a former Representative, Tom Malinowski. Mejia is described as a "progressive activist" who "ran on a platform of affordability for the working class, including more funding for child care and raising taxes on the highest earners" (The 19th, February 10, 2026). The seat became open when Mikie Sherrill was sworn in as Governor of NJ. It's not a competitive district, so Mejia is expected to win the seat. But she'll have to do it all over again for the fall election!

And that's the news portion. Now it's your turn to get engaged. The two boxed items just below are both concerned with upcoming elections and provide you with opportunities to help knock on doors in your neighborhood and to meet some of the gubernatorial candidates ahead of the August primary. After that come our weekly ACTION items and then a really long list of area events. Get busy!

TAKE ACTION

5 Calls: This site makes it dead simple to call your Senators and your Representative on key issues of the day. It always provides an explanation of the issue, phone numbers for your Reps, and a script to follow. This week, we are urging you to make calls on the following issues:

• Oppose the SAVE America Act - HOUSE VOTE THIS WEEK. This bill would hinder millions of eligible Americans, including married women who changed their name, from registering to vote by requiring citizens to present a birth certificate or passport in person to register and again when they go to the polls.
  
  
• No Continuing Resolution (CR) for the Department of Homeland Security, the department in which ICE, CBP, and other immigration organizations are housed. This would cut off funding for DHS until appropriate restraints on ICE and CBP are implemented in law.
  
  
• Claw Back the $170B Slush Fund for ICE and CBP. Congress must immediately claw back the tens of billions of dollars being used to terrorize and murder people across the United States at the expense of government programs that keep our communities safe.
  
  
• Demand Full Epstein Case File Release and Public Hearings. Congress must demand the DOJ release all files as mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, call for public hearings on the released files’ contents, and hold the DOJ accountable for shielding perpetrators.

Saturday, March 7

Monday, March 9

Tuesday, March 18

           As Wisconsin heads into another governor’s race, we can expect that faculty tenure will once again be dragged into the political arena. It’s an easy target—often caricatured as a cushy system that protects “lazy professors” with lifetime job security. That talking point gets applause, but it gets the issue completely wrong.

            Tenure isn’t about protecting people who don’t work hard.  It’s about protecting the integrity of research itself.

What Tenure Actually Does

            True, research is produced by people, and so protecting research means protecting the people who conduct it. That’s the heart of tenure. But here’s the part that rarely enters the public conversation: academic disciplines are global communities. A physicist or economist or Shakespeare scholar isn’t judged primarily by colleagues on their own campus. Their work is evaluated by experts around the world.  Hiring, promotion, and salary decisions depend heavily on outside reviewers—people who aren’t part of the university, the state, or   political system. That global peer‑review process is what guides quality and credibility.

            University administrators—department chairs, provosts, chancellors, system presidents, and boards of regents—play important roles, but they are not the ones who determine whether a piece of research is groundbreaking or trivial. They can’t. No single campus contains the expertise to evaluate every field.  Weakening tenure would shift that authority away from worldwide experts and toward politicians, political appointees, and administrators. That’s a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of people who are not equipped to judge scholarly work.

Academic Freedom Strengthens Research Quality

            Academic freedom is another concept that gets tossed around without much understanding. It means the freedom to choose research topics, decide how much time to devote to them, and—especially in the STEM fields —determine how to pursue and fund that work. Without academic freedom, research becomes vulnerable to political pressure. The topics that would survive would be the ones politicians approve of, not the ones that advance knowledge within a discipline.

Teaching and Research Strengthen Each Other

            Critics often claim that research distracts from teaching.   The opposite is often true. The best teachers are frequently active researchers. Their enthusiasm for and knowledge of their subject spills into the classroom. Students feel that energy.  Moreover, working with research professors creates hands‑on learning opportunities; undergraduate and graduate students work as research assistants, gaining experience that greatly enhances what they get from classes and textbooks.

What’s at Stake for Wisconsin

            Some candidates have proposed eliminating or significantly weakening tenure. If that happens, the UW System—already strained by years of tight budgets—will struggle even more to hire and retain top faculty. Talented scholars have options, and they will choose institutions where their work is protected and valued.

            And here’s the irony: if tenure supposedly encourages laziness, how has Wisconsin produced not one but two top‑tier research universities as classified by the Carnegie Foundation?

• UW–Madison ranks among the top five universities in the nation for federally funded research.
• UW–Milwaukee, though much smaller, is recognized by the Carnegie Foundation as an R1 research university—a distinction reserved for institutions with the highest quality research activity.

These achievements don’t come from a system that rewards complacency. They come from a system that protects rigorous, world‑class research.

            In the upcoming gubernatorial race, voters should recognize that tenure is a safeguard—one that keeps research independent, protects academic freedom, and helps Wisconsin compete for the most productive faculty.   Weakening it would not make our universities stronger or more accountable. It would make them less competitive, less innovative, and less capable of serving the state.

So much is going on, and the news items come so quickly on top of each other, that I am going to begin the newsletter with actions you need to take RIGHT AWAY.

TAKE ACTION

For residents of the city, the ACLU warns that "the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission is holding a meeting Thursday night, and the Milwaukee Police Department’s proposed use of facial recognition technology (FRT) is on the agenda. Despite overwhelming local public opposition regarding FRT’s racial bias, the inevitability of wrongful arrests, and the ongoing weaponization of surveillance by the federal government against immigrants and protesters–MPD still wants to use FRT on Milwaukee residents."

This notice comes too late for you to attend the meeting tonight but not too late for you to contact your Milwaukee Common Council representative. The Milwaukee Turners provides email and phone scripts you can use. The ACLU provides an online form and an editable message that will be sent to your Alderperson and the Mayor.

Indivisible asks EVERYONE to call their Senators and Representative "to insist on real guardrails that put an end to ICE and CBP’s lawless thuggery and get them out of our cities. We can’t settle for insufficient reforms like body cams -- we’ve all seen that Trump’s goons are perfectly happy to gas, tackle, and kill innocent people on film."

• Call your Senators with phone numbers and script.
• Call your Representative with phone number and script.
• Email your members of Congress with contact information and message.

New Postcard Project:  GRNS has been contacted by Swing Blue Alliance from Boston, MA.Their  project is to send 60,000 postcards into WI for the Supreme Court election.  The cards are nonpartisan (not mentioning Judge Chris Taylor) but  express democratic values and are being sent to low turn-out Democratic voters  in Congressional District 3 (seat held by Van Orden). The goal is to boost Dem turnout for the Spring Election of low turnout voters for all three elections:  April 7, Primary - August 1, and General Election -  11/3

Here are the details:

• HOSTS  find  group of friends  to share an order of 12 packets of cards - 25 cards per pack.  
• The message is mostly preprinted with a simple handwritten sentence required.
• Cards, address labels  and instructions will be mailed to  the host to give to the group and the postcards must  be mailed on March 21, 2026.
• Cost: of the Packets of 25 cards = $5.25, Stamps, $15.25, Shipping $16.95. Total per pack = $262.95 The idea is to share the cost with your group.  
• The host will communicate with the project coordinators from Swing Blue Alliance to sign up for the project and place an order.  
• If we have at least two people willing to be Hosts for this project, GRNS will cover the cost.  It would be great if there were more Hosts and groups and if the cost can be covered by the groups.  

If you are interested please contact Norma at [email protected] or 414-588-1241.

The National Campaign for Justice also urges us to tell Congress: "Pass systemic reforms that restrict ICE from terrorizing our cities and reallocate funding to invest in healthcare instead." Here's what the National Campaign for Justice recommends — but you can do your own thing once you fill out the form on the right-hand side of the screen and then click the button to "start writing."

"As Congress negotiates DHS funding, lawmakers must move beyond minor reforms and impose real restrictions that protect people and communities. That means

• Cutting ICE funding enough to restore expired ACA subsidies and Medicaid cuts passed in 2025.
• Banning ICE raids at schools, hospitals, courts, day cares, and houses of worship.
• Prohibiting the arrest or detention of children and ending the use of kids as leverage.
• Stopping CBP from assisting ICE far from the border.
• Requiring a warrant before entering any home or private business.

Congress has the power to do this right now. What happens next depends on public pressure."

Now for the Newsletter!

Worry about the upcoming mid-term elections is ratcheting up in part because Steve Bannon announced on his War Room podcast on February 3rd "that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will be deployed to swarm polling places during the upcoming midterm elections" (Truthout, February 5, 2026).

That provocative boast coincided with Trump's call for "Republican officials to 'take over' voting procedures in 15 states, though he did not name them. 'The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’ he said. 'We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting'" (New York Times, gift article, February 3, 2026).

The White House tried to walk back the assertion, but Trump was doubling down, saying on February 4 "that he believed the federal government should 'get involved' in elections that are riddled with 'corruption,' reiterating his position that the federal government should usurp state laws by exerting control over local elections."

So now what? CcatSun at Daily Kos (February 5, 2026) lays out how the Trumpistas plan to steal the midterm election and then offers a nascent plan to counteract the unconstitutional moves:

Deep in a long article about this dangerous development, CNN gets around to noting that the US Constitution "tasks individual state legislatures with determining how congressional elections are to be held." The article goes on to state "Crucially, the Constitution provides no avenue for a president to decide how elections are run. So regardless of what Trump means by nationalizing the elections, it is not something that he has the power to order on behalf of the executive branch alone." As January 6. 2021, has demonstrated, however, Trump is willing to do ANYTHING to control elections. As with so many issues these days, it's up to us to stop any illegal effort to intimidate voters or suppress voting.

Wiser and more learned heads than mine will no doubt be addressing how we can thwart this looming disaster, but meanwhile those who can should definitely volunteer to be observers at the polls, especially in areas where people may be at risk of detention by ICE and CBP, even if they are US citizens entitled to vote. The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin has extensive information about how their program for election observers has functioned in the past. At the end of the piece, there's a link you can use to learn how you can become an Election Observer with the League.

The storied Washington Post, whose former motto was "Democracy Dies in Darkness," has, it seems, entered its own twilight as The Guardian's headline announces "Mass layoffs fuel fears of ‘death spiral’ at Washington Post" (February 5. 2026): "Nearly one-third of the entire company – which stood at 2,500 employees in late 2023, before a round of buyouts – was axed."

Clearly the shape of journalism, once dominated by newspaper and television businesses, is changing dramatically. Many star journalists, like Jennifer Rubin (formerly an opinion columnist for the Washington Post), now have individual substacks or have gathered into collectives like The Contrarian, a venture started by Rubin and Norm Eisen, or The Bulwark. The result, of course, is the same kind of fragmentation we see with video streaming services. Of necessity, all of these authors and collectives need subscribers. And the result is that it becomes ever more expensive to read all the views that're fit to print.

Finally, our own beloved Ben Wikler is publishing a book — THIS IS THE PLAN: How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy, to be available as an old fashioned paper book, an ebook, and an audio book narrated by Ben himself on July 21. You can pre-order it now. According to Wikler, the book shares the story of how "a state that was (fairly recently) categorized as a “democracy desert” is now a toss-up for a Democratic trifecta in the 2026 midterms. To hear Wisconsin’s story, told from the inside, is to realize that there’s a way out of this mess. The book shares that story—and then applies its formula to a national plan to win elections, remove democracy’s saboteurs from office, and make America work for all of us."

There's so much more to cover, but I can't get to everything today! So I'll just finish up by pointing out that Saturday, February 7, is an especially event-full day. There are so many events that I could not add all the area canvasses that are happening around Milwaukee. The best thing you can do to find events near you is to go to mobilize.us, and use the filters to type in the area where you live and the date. You will get a list of events happening more or less near you. Plan to participate in SOMETHING, if not on the 7th, then on a day that's convenient for you.

And a last note: a number of rallies and marches are taking place in the next week or two. Rallies and marches are energizing and demonstrate to us that we are not alone. But attending them is no longer enough to create the kind of change we will need to begin the work of repairing the world. I urge you to move outside your comfort zone and to engage in the organizing we need to do if we're going to get to the other side of the deluge.

Hear from the Democratic Candidates on May 17th

Our moderator will be Kathleen Dunn