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Author: gbump

DHS warns about 2024’s cyberthreats

The Washington Post

The uncertainty of not having a nonpartisan elections leader in a paramount state is worrying, experts said. “The elections commission is training clerks around the state and issuing guidance, so to have uncertainty about who the top administrator is going into this crucial election season, I think is a real problem,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and director of its Elections Research Center.

Senate voting today to fire elections chief, setting the stage for a legal fight heading into the 2024 elections

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“The effort to remove Wolfe appears to be almost entirely partisan and not based on facts about her actions or authority,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. “Trump supporters in particular who distrust Wolfe have blamed her for many things over which she does not actually have responsibility.”

Camp Randall unveils new creative food options

NBC-15

University of Wisconsin Athletics Executive Chef Marlene Duke says some of the items will be open to all Badger fans, while some will be a little more exclusive.“It’s a new era, as we’re saying, right?” Duke said. “So with that being said, we want to raise the bar as far as what we’ve been seeing in our kitchens.”

Community comes together to support UW-Madison student who suffered brutal attack

NBC-15

The RCC Sexual Violence Resource Center created a GoFundMe stating the student is still fighting for her life in the hospital. Organizer Dana Pellebon said the goal is to help the survivor and her family focus on healing rather than worrying about bills during her recovery. Pellebon said crime victim insurance could eventually cover some costs, but immediately after a sexual assault or rape, it is hard for the survivor to work while they try to recover from a traumatizing event.

Wisconsin Weighs Ousting Elections Official as Control of Voting Gets Partisan

WSJ

“It’s a serious problem to not have seasoned trusted leadership in place well before the election gets under way,” said Barry Burden, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who added that the nation will be watching the state in the 2024 presidential contest. “It’s a battleground state. It’s maybe the battleground state.”

How Agtech, Data Collection Are Changing Farming Methods

Business Insider

Soon, they’ll need even more help. The average age of a farmer is 57.5 years old, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s most recent estimates. With older farmers about to retire, estimates indicate that young people won’t be able to fill the gap; A 2022 survey conducted by The National Young Farmers Coalition and the University of Wisconsin Survey Center found that this is primarily because land is so expensive.

Wisconsin Republicans Are Taking Desperate Steps to Subvert Fair Elections in 2024

Mother Jones

“The idea that she should recuse here is itself a legal stretch,” says Robert Yablon, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative. “And the idea that then a failure to recuse would be impeachable also seems like a stretch. I’m not aware of any other judicial impeachment anywhere in the country that was premised on a non-recusal from a case involving campaign supporters or campaign statements.”

Graduate workers meet to organize for more pay, respect

Daily Cardinal

Their demands include raising graduate assistants’ annual stipend to $50,000 from its current average of around $23,000. “We need to reframe the narrative,” Flowers-Morgenstern said. “It shouldn’t matter what the university thinks of our demands. What matters is that graduate students need to be making $50,000, and the school can afford to pay us.”

Opinion | America Already Knows How to Make Childbirth Safer

The New York Times

Dr. Tiffany Green, a professor at the school of medicine and public health at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said she believes the effort to reduce maternal mortality should focus not only on care received in hospitals, but on the social and economic conditions faced in general by Black women. The United States should consider using federal civil rights law in cases where racial bias severely hurt the care a patient received. “If you think bias is a fundamental driver of these iniquities then you have to hold providers accountable,” Dr. Green said.

More school districts are bringing back or adding police. Experts say it may not help

USA Today

“The best evidence that we have to date shows no deterrent effect of where gun violence happens in schools or where weapons are brought to schools… Similarly, when a shooting does happen in a school, those shootings, actually, on average have been more deadly in schools with police,” said Ben Fisher, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who recently reviewed dozens of studies on the effects of police in schools.

Republicans threaten to impeach newly elected Wisconsin supreme court judge

The Guardian

Ryan Owens, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin who ran for attorney general as a Republican in 2021, defended the calls for Protasiewicz’s recusal, arguing that she was too explicit about her policy views during the campaign.

“Candidates who are running for justice shouldn’t go to the levels that she did when campaigning,” he said. “In the short term, it might gain you votes, but in the long term, you put the court’s credibility at risk.”

Joan Louise Schuette

Wisconsin State Journal

Beginning in 1972, Joan was Program Advisor and Volunteer Services Coordinator for the Wisconsin Union, retiring in 1980.

Kathleen Smith Irwin

Wisconsin State Journal

After working for the State of Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau she landed her “dream job” as an attorney for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Staffing shortages, complex requests blamed for delays in getting public records in Wisconsin

Wisconsin State Journal

UW-Madison saw a similar records backlog after the onset of the pandemic, when local and national media, advocacy groups, parents, and local and state officials sought records related to the university’s response, according to UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas.

“Issues of high interest, which can develop at any time, tend to generate a large volume of complex requests that can impact completion times.” Lucas said in a statement.

Laura Dresser on the state of working in Wisconsin in 2023

PBS Wisconsin

Wisconsin job numbers reached a record high in July, at more than 3 million. However, a new report from COWS – High Road Strategy Center says beneath the bigger picture is a troubling decline of women participating in the workforce, falling below 60% for the first time since the late 1980s. Laura Dresser, associate director at COWS, dives deeper into the report’s numbers.