A Liberal Lives In Wisconsin

     The data is in, and vaccines save lives, potentially millions in the United States alone. People who were fully vaccinated and boosted were 41 times less likely to die from COVID than people who were not fully vaccinated and boosted, and people who were boosted were six times less likely to die than people who were fully vaccinated but not boosted.      The good news is that Americans are buying into anti-vaccine bullshit less and less as the weeks progress. One important piece of news is that over 90 percent of seniors, the age group most vulnerable to COVID-19, are at least partially vaccinated. Nationally, America achieved a rate of 70 percent of adults getting at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19 in August 2021. Now, America is on track to get 90 percent of people over 18 at least partially vaccinated, with the number currently standing at 88 percent. A good goal would be April 5th: it's achievable, and it would mean that 90 percent of ad...

     Vladimir Putin hoped that his invading Ukraine would divide Western allies and pave the way for his joining China in recreating a Soviet Union-like New World Order while making him extraordinarily loved at home. It appears he's failed on all counts. Russia's economy had been pitiful at best for 15 years. The Great Recession cut its GDP by eight percent, so Putin decided to distract from financial difficulties by launching military aggression against the nation of Georgia. In 2014, as the nation still had not yet recovered and as an anti-Putin government was swept into power in Ukraine, Putin invaded Crimea, prompting a wave of sanctions that cut Russia's GDP by two to three percent. That meets the definition of a successful sanctions regime; however, while Russia's GDP was essentially stunted from growing, the nation's economy learned to work around these sanctions. In 2020, yet another recession hit and Putin needed more nationalistic pride, so he turned to th...

     America has talked about energy independence for decades and, since 2007, inched ever closer. Under President Biden, it finally happened. In 2021, the United States produced more oil than it consumed, and higher prices for gas did not, as pundits claimed, impact this. Trump warned that the United States would "lose its energy independence" and false claims arose in May 2021 that the U.S. was no longer energy independent, with some outright lying and saying that the United States was energy independent during the Trump administration: it was not. In 2020, the U.S. did finally produce more oil than it consumed, but only because of the sharp decline in oil consumption. In 2021, the United States produced an average of 300,000 more barrels of oil a day than it consumed even as travel returned to pre-pandemic levels.      Even better news is that the United States is not reliant on oil from the Middle East. In 2021, 51 percent of oil that was imported came ...

     During the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Russia, not China (China has no moral high ground, but they do not share blame for this particular issue), launched a disinformation campaign to help Donald Trump get elected and defend him from his impeachment for withholding military aid from Ukraine while spreading conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.      Online, they've also been responsible for harboring cybercriminals responsible for the SolarWinds attack in December 2020, the Colonial Pipeline attack in May 2021, and the JBS attack the following month, among numerous others. Each time, Russia has refused to take responsibility. Each time, Russia has not condemned these acts. Each time, Russia has emboldened these criminals. And that's when we give them the benefit of the doubt.      Russia has committed serious human rights abuses at home and abroad. At home, Russia poisoned the leader of its sole opposition mo...

     The NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act, or the military budget) for 2022 was far from everything people wanted. However, it was an important starting point in the fight against sexual assault and harassment in the military, making sexual harassment in the military a crime and creating an independent reporting, reviewing, and discipline process for acts of sexual harassment and assault. President Biden also signed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, which bans forced arbitration for these claims in employment and allows women to go through the legal system to have their voices heard, perhaps the biggest win the #MeToo movement has seen. These are not the only laws combating sexual harassment set to pass: the House has passed the Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act, which would alleviate concerns for one of the bigger fields this is an issue in, and the Improving VA Accountability to Prevent Sexual Harassment and Disc...

     February 2022, Black History Month, has been a historic month for marijuana legalization in the United States. This is fitting, because the War on Drugs launched by Richard Nixon on June 18th, 1971, was really launched ahead of his 1972 election campaign, the Watergate campaign, as a war on the people of color who hated everything he stood for.      In 2021, New Jersey, Arizona, Montana, New York, Virginia, New Mexico, and Connecticut legalized marijuana; the St. Regis Mohawk and Crow Native Americans did the same; Colorado and Oregon increased the legal amount of marijuana that can be possessed; Louisiana decriminalized marijuana; and more.      In February 2022, Mississippi became the 37th state to legalize medical marijuana. The Senates of Georgia and South Carolina have passed medical marijuana bills this month. In Delaware, the House approved a bill to legalize recreational marijuana. A bill to legalize marijuana in Rhode Island is ...

     The past year has seen major progress made in the fight to expand abortion access across the world. Only 65 nations have legalized abortion on request out of nearly 200 around the world. However, the first nations to legalize abortion on request, the 15 nations that formed the Soviet Union, did not do so until 1955. Today, 67 years later, 65 nations have legalized abortion on request, which averages out to about one nation a year. This includes much of Asia, Europe, and North America, and even a few nations in Africa; at least one nation has legalized abortion annually since 2018.      One area where abortion on request is rare but where progress is being made quickly is Latin America. Latin America is the last place on Earth where total abortion bans-- bans on abortion whether or not the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest, risks killing or disabling the mother, or whether the fetus will be born impaired or into destitution-- are near ubiquitous. ...

     Governor Evers has always sought to protect the vulnerable from violence, particularly women and children. While his efforts for children in the education and criminal justice system are noteworthy, they are expounded upon elsewhere, and this seeks to highlight a few examples of Governor Evers working in other ways to stop blatant discrimination and abuse.      In 2019, Evers removed Wisconsin National Guard troops from the U.S.-Mexico border and joined a lawsuit challenging the state of emergency President Trump declared. This approach, done previously in several other states and later repeated in several more, succeeded in stopping President Trump's border wall and in removing Wisconsin's support for the cruel isolation and abuse of children fleeing violence in Latin America.       With regard to the Wisconsin National Guard, Tony Evers partnered with Senator Tammy Baldwin, Attorney General Josh Kaul, and state legislators to secu...

     In October 2018, Linkin Park's "In the End" hit a billion views on YouTube, becoming their second music video to do so just months after "Numb" hit the milestone and just in time for Hybrid Theory 's 18th anniversary. A tremendous milestone, but not the end: it now has 1.33 billion views. Nor is it the only popular video from the iconic album alone. As of February 2022, the music video for "Papercut" has 215 million views, the music video for "One Step Closer" nearly 140 million, that for "Points of Authority" nearly 35 million, and that for Crawling nearly 345 million. Combined with the audio for other songs that did not have music videos created, not only did the album as a whole surpass two billion views, it surpassed 2.2 billion views. Considering the album has gotten over half a billion views in the past year alone, it should surpass three billion views relatively soon.      22 years later, this album is still doing we...

     There's only one Republican-appointed judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and he will retire effective March 31st, giving President Biden the chance to make the First Circuit Court of Appeals one that is unanimously controlled by Democrats. That won't be the only court: the Western District of Washington, the Western District of Wisconsin, the District of Nevada, the District of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Western District of Arkansas are a few examples; it will be, however, the only circuit court to be controlled unanimously by Democrats.      This is a symbolic victory for Democrats in the fight to flip America's federal court system, from the district courts to the local D.C. courts to the territorial courts and, yes, the circuit courts, better known to most Americans as appeals courts. Flipping these courts is a bigger challenge than flipping the district courts, territorial courts, and D.C. courts, which, as I have highlighted b...

     The legal process seeking accountability for the murder of George Floyd is far from over. Having been sentenced to 22.5 years in prison in Minnesota while still facing state tax charges and looking at a potential 20 to 30 years in prison for federal charges for his murder of George Floyd and brutal assault of a black child, Derek Chauvin's life is effectively over. We need to ensure the same is true of wastes of oxygen Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane as they face a federal trial that could be settled within a matter of days and a state trial set to begin in June.       Meanwhile, however, police are still killing people. Kim Potter was just sent to prison for killing Daunte Wright while the homicide of Amir Locke is still under investigation. These three killings all occurred in Hennepin County, Minnesota, over the course of 20 months. At the state level, some reforms have been made. The following states have passed some degree of po...

       The federal bench is a coequal branch of government, and molding it is one of the president's greatest responsibilities. The U.S. district courts, circuit courts, and Supreme Court have the power to determine whether or not any legislation or executive action the president passes is constitutional or not as well as to issue rulings on things like immigration and LGBT2SQIA+ rights.      America's district court system, at least, is now leaning to the left. On February 1st, 2022, the Senate confirmed Bridget M. Brennan, Charles E. Fleming, and David A. Ruiz to serve as judges on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. This was consequential for a number of reasons: all three were historic firsts for the court in terms of professional and personal diversity, and the confirmation of three judges secured a Democratic majority on the court. More broadly, however, district court judges appointed by Democrats now outweighed district c...

     Democratic platforms are, for the most part, overwhelmingly popular. Younger generations, especially, are moving left, as are people of color, who will soon comprise the majority of Americans. Gay rights are as popular as racial justice; trans rights are now supported by the majority; the right to organize has built on a decade of increased support to reach its highest level since the Nixon administration; the climate emergency is recognized by three out of four Americans; 70 percent of Americans support a woman's right to choose; the supermajority support things like paid leave, universal childcare, and a $15 minimum wage; nearly every American supports at least decriminalizing marijuana; the death penalty continues to die; and on and on and on. Our biggest obstacle since the 1990s has been people feeling that "both parties are the same," that there is no real choice.      Last month, the FBI raided the home of Representative Henry Cuellar, the last ...

     There are a lot of metrics by which to measure a president's impact on the federal judiciary. President Biden is appointing the most qualified judges since Washington, the most diverse judges of any president in history, the most liberal slate of judges in history, and the most judges who have had jobs like public defenders and civil rights attorneys of any president in U.S. history, and he is flipping dozens of courts in the process and, as a consequence, America's district and circuit court systems if not its Supreme Court.       One part of this is a game of numbers. I've already mentioned how, for the first time in years, judges appointed by Democrats outweigh those appointed by Republicans. I've already mentioned President Biden's impact on Washington, D.C.'s courts and on the district court system. Now, in terms of sheer numbers, it has become apparent that President Biden may have an advantage as well. During his four years in office, Donal...

     In April 2019, Governor Tony Evers withdrew Wisconsin from a multistate lawsuit, California v. Texas , designed to strike down Obamacare and strip healthcare from more than 30 million Americans, including hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites. His decision paid dividends in June 2021, when the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare in this lawsuit, the third time it did so.      In Wisconsin, Governor Evers vetoed state legislators' attacks on reproductive healthcare, earning Evers a "baby murderer" insult from Donald Trump. At the same time, he established task forces on issues like women's healthcare and healthcare equity, which helped produce recommendations for the state's budget. These provisions secured nearly $1 billion in extra funding for rural healthcare expansion, veteran's health, student mental health programs, addiction treatment, expanded dental access, and more. He also secured a ten-year extension of SeniorCare, expanded telehealth services, ...

       Ron Johnson,      As much as you hate to admit it, you accomplished nothing for Wisconsin for 12 years and then tried to make your name in the 2020 election. Nonetheless, your political career is over. You decided to side with terrorists in an assault on democracy so heinous that it literally inspired a series of coups across Africa and Asia.      You said that the terrorists who killed five people, including Officer Brian Sicknick, did not cause you fear, but that Black Lives Matter protestors would have. You spread baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud and then blamed people who told the truth for enraging a select few who could not accept it. You blamed Nancy Pelosi and Mitt Romney for the assault on the Capitol and claimed there was no violence and no weapons, contradicting everyone but yourself.      After all this, you had the nerve to try to block a stimulus bill with 70% public support by making the...

       If your record of public service is any indication, Mr. Vos, I am assuming your three wives are not the ones in the wrong. Married at 32, you were divorced by Amy after two years and Samantha after nine years. Now, Michelle is number three. I must say, I rarely see this among anyone but members of the same party that claims to stand for family values. What did you do to fail so badly so many times?      I hope the third time will be the charm for you, Mr. Vos. It may cool some of the crazy you have stored in that weasely body of yours.

       Many people think that there is no grey area between getting involved in politics and running for president, but that is simply not true. People of any race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or skill set can get involved. Click here to learn more: 1. Jobs are available in almost any arena, from full-time jobs in merchandising, membership, and writing to part-time jobs canvassing via phone or door-to-door. 2. Local offices like city council member and village president can be attained with enough signatures to get on the ballot and enough handshakes to get votes. 3. Campus and community captains can be trained to organize local demonstrations, meetings, events, fundraisers, and other work. 4. Official membership can be purchased for $5 to $5 million a year. You could be a single parent, a student, a retiree, or a multibillionaire and still have a chance to make a difference. 5. Wearing merch, writing elected officials, and even sharing social media posts ...

     The president appoints federal judges, and President Biden has appointed a record 84 federal judges in his first year in the White House. However, even less known than this important role is the fact that the president appoints judges to the courts in Washington, D.C., the Superior Court and Appeals Court of the District of Columbia. In this regard, President Biden is on track to have the largest impact on local D.C. courts in American history.      Since taking office on January 20th, 2021, President Biden has appointed three judges to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia: Rupa Ranga Puttagunta, Kenia Seoane Lopez, and Sean C. Staples have all been confirmed to serve 15-year-terms on the court. Ebony M. Scott, D.W. Tunnage, Adrienne Jennings Noti, Kendra D. Briggs, Carl Ezekiel Ross, Errol Rajesh Arthur, and Leslie A. Meek have been appointed to fill vacancies, all of which were left by George W. Bush appointees. Four more vacancies will ope...

     Today, Tammy Baldwin marks a milestone event: her 60th birthday! She is one of few people in the U.S. government who can seriously argue that she has spent the supermajority of her years fighting for what is right for her constituents and for the nation as a whole.      The class valedictorian of Madison West High School, Baldwin earned a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1989 and began a private law practice. During this time, she served on the Madison Common Council from 1985 to 1986 and the Dane County Board of Supervisors from 1986 to 1993. After this, Baldwin moved to the Wisconsin Assembly from 1993 to 1999. One of few openly LGBTQ politicians at the time, she made the issue of LGBTQ rights her priority, opposing President Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and proposing same-sex marriage and same-sex civil unions.       From 1999 to 2013, Baldwin served in the U.S. House of Representatives, the first open lesbian...

     Of the "Sedition Caucus" of far-right representatives who participated in the insurrection on January 6th, they're all dangerous. Representative Scott Fitzgerald organized Wisconsin's fake elector plot; Lauren Boebert is a gun fanatic who makes hateful remarks about every group of people possible; Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened high-level Democrats; Andrew Clyde called the insurrection a "normal tourist visit" even after being photographed screaming in terror at the events of the day; Jim Jordan, the Larry Nassar-type assistant wrestling coach, spoke with Donald Trump at length the day of the insurrection; Mo Brooks spoke at the Ellipse immediately before the violence broke out; Paul Gosar was censured for a video depicting graphic violence against President Biden and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez; Matt Gaetz is a child sex trafficker; etc.      However, Madison Cawthorn is arguably the most dangerous. The youngest of the group, this North Carolina repre...

     When Tony Evers ran for governor in 2018, he made it clear that securing equality for hundreds of thousands of black Wisconsinites would be a priority of his administration. He selected Assemblyman Mandela Barnes as his running mate; in 2019, Barnes became the first black lieutenant governor in state history.       In 2020 and 2021, Governor Evers raised the Juneteenth flag above the Wisconsin State Capitol Building in Madison while delivering numerous speeches and releasing videos commemorating the annual event marking the functional end of slavery in the United States; Juneteenth would be recognized as a federal holiday the latter year.      In 2020, Governor Evers met with Jacob Blake , a man shot in the back by police officers in Kenosha, and his relatives as President Trump rode through Kenosha in his motorcade to cater to people like white supremacist, domestic terrorist murderer Kyle Rittenhouse. While Blake's would-be-assass...

     On August 26th, 2021, Ty Garbin, the first man to plead guilty in the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, was sentenced to 75 months in federal prison. Garbin, whose main role in the October 2020 plot, against primarily Whitmer but also Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and others, was letting seven other men use his property for weapons and tactical training. Upset over the mask mandate and stay-at-home order in Michigan, they plotted to kidnap her from her summer home, hold her for ransom, and kill her if the ransom was not met.      Now, on February 8th, 2022, a second guilty plea has been secured. Kaleb Franks, 27, pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping, a felony punishable by up to life in prison but that would likely carry a sentence of anywhere between five and ten years in exchange for cooperation. The cooperation of Franks as well as that of Garbin is crucial for one main reason: the defense of the other 12 defendants is...

     America's economy has made remarkable progress since President Biden took office. Nearly 7.5 million jobs have been created as unemployment rates near a return to their pre-pandemic levels. Unemployment insurance claims have dropped to levels near a 60-year low. America's GDP has grown 5.7 percent, the fastest rate since 1984. New manufacturing jobs have reached a 30-year high, farmers are feeling more relief with the end of the Trump trade wars, and small business applications are up 30 percent over pre-pandemic levels. Even with inflation, Americans have more money in their pockets today than they did a year ago thanks to investments like the American Rescue Plan Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and, for the first time in January, real wage growth was in the positive, outpacing inflation.      However, inflation is still an insidious threat to working families, and the White House has taken action and will be taking action to comba...

     Donald Trump is a lifelong crook, from Trump University to the Trump Foundation and now the Trump Organization. The idea that this behavior would stop when he was given the power of the presidency is absurd. Donald Trump, in his attempts to overthrow the government between November 2020 and January 2021, is guilty of no less than five federal crimes.      Donald Trump's executive order demanding the military seize voting machines is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prevents the military from enforcing domestic policies unless expressly authorized by Congress; in this case, an obvious attempt occurred without authorization. Violations of this law are a misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in a federal prison.      In terms of his actions on January 6th, Donald Trump clearly violated the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. After January 6th, the Department of Justice used a novel legal strategy to get prison sentences for nonviol...

He dodged the draft. During his stint in law school, his conscription was deferred. After graduation, Giuliani was initially eligible for the draft. However, after clerking for a judge, he was reclassified as an essential civilian before being relisted as eligible AGAIN. However, he pulled a high draft number as was not called into service. He switched parties to get a job for Ronald Reagan. Rudy Giuliani was initially a Democrat who campaigned for Robert Kennedy. However, less than a month after Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, he switched his party affiliation to Republican to get a job as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He accidentally married his cousin. Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, a woman he had known since they were children, in 1968. However, they split up in 1975 and got a marriage annulment in 1983 after Giuliani discovered that they were second cousins. He cheated on his second wife and broke up with her via press conference. While married to...

     I like to think of Joe Biden's presidency as a return to normalcy. People criticize this, saying that a president needs to have more of a talking point than undoing the legacy of their predecessor. Here's the thing: it's not just Donald Trump's legacy that needs correcting. For 20 years, since that fateful day those towers fell on 9/11, America has been hurting.      In his first year, President Biden brought an end to the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, wars that had cost thousands of lives (not including the tens of thousands permanently left with physical injuries and hundreds of thousands left with severe trauma and also not counting the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed and millions displaced) over the better part of 20 years and 19 years, respectively. These are far from the only less-than-savory results of the post-9/11 era: Islamophobia has yet to dissipate, the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs for Afghanistan and Iraq are still in place, the PATRIOT ...