Author: knutson4

Kathryn McGarr, an associate professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is also affiliated with the Department of History, pointed out the regional differences too, and then that there has been a shift since the Civil War for both of the parties. One example is the stance on equal rights.

“At the time of the Civil War, most members of what was then called the Democratic party supported slavery, and most members of what was then the newly formed Republican Party were anti-slavery,” she wrote in a December 28, 2023 email. “But what each party stood for has shifted dramatically over time, with the biggest realignments occurring in the middle of the Twentieth Century over civil rights. So someone like the segregationist senator Strom Thurmond was a Democrat until 1964 when he switched affiliation to the Republican Party.”

“Ranked choice voting doesn’t have an obvious partisan advantage in places where it’s been implemented. It hasn’t helped the Democrats or the Republicans in any consistent fashion,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But it’s become sort of a folk wisdom in Republican circles that ranked choice voting is a plan by Democrats to help them do better in elections and to hurt Republicans. I don’t know where that has come from exactly.”

Howard Schweber, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, said the lawsuit is essentially moot because he believes the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately have the final say.

“There’s no question that this issue is going to go to the United States Supreme Court, so all of this is kind of performative,” Schweber said.

In order to get the U.S. Supreme Court to look at the case, the Legislature and its allies will need to make the argument that there was a violation of federal law. That’s because, explained Rob Yablon, University of Wisconsin Law School professor and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative, the core legal claim in the case — contiguity — is a matter of state law.

The case brought to the court argued the maps violate Wisconsin’s Constitution because some legislative districts include pieces of land that are not connected. “The Wisconsin Supreme Court has the last word on state law questions,” Yablon said.

Over the last few decades, Wisconsin and the U.S. have seen divorces lead to a growing rate of equal joint custody of children, instead of one parent gaining sole custody. We talk to Quentin Riser, an assistant professor of human development & family studies at UW-Madison, about how this shift has affected families and the child support system.

Susan Ridgely is a professor of religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said Francis has wanted to portray the church as welcoming since early in his papacy. She pointed to his symbols of service, such as washing the feet of young inmates.

The declaration is a “natural extension” of Francis’s olive branches to a changing world, she said. “That’s a major step towards kind of an openness of the church and an acknowledgment that people reaching out for God should get that blessing through the church,” she said.