Monthly Archives: January, 2021

(The Center Square) – There is another call for lawmakers in Madison to gut an emergency order and mask requirement from Gov. Tony Evers.

Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, on Friday said the governor once again overstepped his authority when he extended his emergency order until mid-March.

“The time has come for the Wisconsin Legislature to stand up for civil liberties and put an end to the excessive actions of Governor Evers to control the people of this state with unending Covid-19 emergency declarations,” Nass said in a statement.

Gov. Evers on Friday added 60 more days to his emergency order and mask requirement. By the time the order expires in the spring, Wisconsin will have been under a mask requirement in one form or another for nearly a full year.

Nass is asking the State Assembly and the State Senate to officially cancel the governor’s order.

“I will be offering a joint resolution that would immediately end the new emergency declaration and any orders issued from it. Wisconsin law allows the duly elected members of the Legislature, by joint resolution, to end any emergency declaration,” Nass said.

Gov. Evers has officially issued three emergency orders dealing with the coronavirus.

“The people of Wisconsin have been living with Covid-19 for almost a year now,” Nass said. “They are more than capable of determining for themselves and their family what steps are appropriate in their daily lives without the heavy hand of Evers.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the governor’s Safer at Home order back in May. That ended the first mask requirement in the state. The court has yet to rule on challenges to the governor’s emergency orders; specifically whether the governor or the secretary of the Department of Health Services has the power to extend the orders indefinitely.

Nass has asked for lawmakers to act before. But Republican leaders at the statehouse have been reluctant to call for the legislature to override the governor. There’s no indication Nass’ latest request will go anywhere.

Among all the bad policy coming out of Springfield, Ill., let’s celebrate the occasional glimmer of good sense.

But first, some background:

Illinois’ legislature passed legislation on policing and related matters last week in the dead of night. The 764-page bill passed the state Senate at 4:49 a.m. after being introduced and distributed to the members at 3:04 a.m. Only a few legislative insiders could have possibly known what was in the bill before voting; the rest of the legislature, first seeing the measure upon its introduction, voted blind.

Only after the Democrat majority passed the bill are we learning what’s in it – and there’s little that’s good.

The legislation has been assailed as radical and anti-police for good reason. Consider, for example, this nugget from page 50: Under current law, a complaint filed against a police officer is required to be supported by a sworn affidavit from the person filing the complaint and provides that anyone filing false information shall be referred for prosecution. The bill eliminates both the requirement for the sworn affidavit and referral for prosecution for false complaints.

This and other provisions declare open season on law enforcement. Weakening law enforcement further in a state already riven by soaring crime rates unleashed by lax prosecution of basic criminal laws will make Illinois a more dangerous and less attractive place to live.

But, one provision in this bill reflects an idea that needs to be constantly reinforced: Government should help its citizens, not hurt them.

I have argued elsewhere that Illinois government has become predatory – that it focuses on raising money to serve the people in government instead of focusing on serving the general public. A predatory government weighs heaviest on those who earn the least. Examples of predatory policies include the myriad fees, fines, rules and gotchas imposed – and the absurd penalties applied for minor infractions of this web of rules.

A young friend of mine, a high school graduate working his way into a skilled trade, would drive to visit his girlfriend. He earned about $13 an hour. Sometimes, he didn’t have money in his pocket for tolls and he didn’t have credit to get the transponder that would cut his toll costs in half.

Let’s pause for a moment: People with credit (i.e., those with more money) pay lower tolls on the highway than people with poor credit (i.e., those with less money). Why not charge folks who need to stop and pay cash the same amount as the folks who can drive through the toll with transponders?

Back to my story: My friend did not pay about $30 in tolls. Shame on him -- but note that the tolls that are small for many were more than he could afford on a daily basis. His minor infraction, which he ignored because he didn’t have the money anyway, turned into $2,500 in fines, as well as a suspended license — which led to the loss of his job — before I got involved.

While the Illinois Tollway authority has since then significantly reduced some of its penalties, government for people with low to moderate incomes is often Kafkaesque: a small mistake in dealing with government or error in judgment leads to cascading consequences that bear no proportion to the original mistake.

While not unique to Illinois, this is particularly true there because of the state’s financial crisis. Making government work for ordinary citizens is a secondary concern for leaders obsessed with finding money to fund the over-promised, under-funded public pensions.

The folks running our government, who campaign on imposing a $15 minimum wage on small businesses, have legislated a system of taxes, tolls, fees and fines that lower income residents can’t afford. And, as in the case of my friend and others, our government routinely forces people into debt and out of jobs in its search for revenue.

Is “safety” a reason or just a rationale for red light camera tickets? Are high highway tolls and gas taxes fair to those who make less? These and other petty revenue collection devices that then require enforcement hammer the less well-off. A bankrupt state that forces its own citizens into bankruptcy is a predatory state.

The good news in this bad bill is that motorists would no longer lose their licenses as a consequence of unpaid red light and speed camera tickets. That’s a small but important win for the people of Illinois, but what of the tickets themselves and the exorbitant penalties and fees that accompany this policy? Why not abolish these as well?

We need a thorough rethinking of all aspects of our government. We need leaders looking for ways to help people rise instead of holding them down or shaking them down.

PS: The young friend of mine I mentioned above recently moved to Texas. Why? He aspires to start his own business some day and he believes it’s easier to do that in Texas than in Illinois.

Wisconsin came in 13th highest on a new ranking measuring migration growth among the states based on one-way U-Haul truck traffic leaving or entering their borders last year.

California displaced Illinois as the state with the biggest net loss of U-Haul trucks in 2020, the moving company reported. And Wisconsin was ranked 41st in U-Haul’s 2019 migration growth study.

Both Texas and Florida had the most net gains in U-Haul truck traffic from 2016 to 2019 before they were displaced by Tennessee in 2020, the company said. What makes Tennessee attractive is its business-friendliness and low taxes, according to U-Haul.

Those states with the most migration growth are ranked based on net gains of one-way U-Haul trucks entering the state vs. trucks leaving their borders during a calendar year. More than 2 million one-way trips are logged by U-Haul every year, the company reported.

The annual ranking tracks truck traffic moving among its 22,000 truck- and trailer-sharing locations. U-Haul sees the data as a gauge of which states are attracting residents from outside their borders.

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U-Haul Ranking of Migration Growth Among States

2020 RankState2019 Rank1Tennessee122Texas 23Florida14Ohio75Arizona 206Colorado427Missouri 138Nevada 249North Carolina310Georgia 1611Arkansas 2312Indiana913Wisconsin 4114Oklahoma 1415South Carolina416West Virginia2217Utah818Kentucky 3719Montana 2620Minnesota 1521Kansas 1822Alabama 623New Hampshire 3124Iowa 3025South Dakota 2826Vermont 1027Delaware 2128Virginia 3929Maine 3330Idaho 1131Mississippi 2532Nebraska 1933Wyoming 2734Alaska 1735Rhode Island 3536Washington 537North Dakota 3238Washington, D.C.3839New Mexico 3640Michigan 4841Pennsylvania 4642New York 4343Connecticut 3444Louisiana4045Oregon 2946Maryland 4547Massachusetts4748New Jersey4449Illinois 5050California 49

Source: U-Haul International Inc.

“One form of freedom governs another just as one limb of the body does another.”

– Karl Marx

“Section 230” is a buzz word that has been bandied back and forth lately between the new left and conservatives in Washington D.C. It is a statute to shield internet companies from legal entrapment. It allows people to freely post most anything on the internet, from intimate stories about their lives, to political issues. So why all of the fuss over 230 lately? If it protects Big Tech from liability for content uploaded to their social media platforms, then why should there be any controversy over it at all?

Section 230 was passed in 1996 to assist internet startups. With print media censoring more news, Congress viewed the internet as a new free speech forum. The law was an olive branch to internet providers so they could remove lascivious content considered harmful or not proper for the young. In return, they would provide an open public uncensored forum for all social and political discourse. The internet would become a true haven for free speech on political, social and intellectual topics.

For the past four years, Section 230 transmuted from a harbor for free speech into a gift for big tech companies to circumvent the first amendment, and censor “free speech” for political gain. What legally is the privilege to expurgate lascivious content “only” has been judicially contorted by the courts to unintentionally provide Big Tech bulletproof immunity from all arbitrary censorship.

Section 230 is a gift that keeps on giving to Big Tech-owned social media platforms to engage in viewpoint discrimination at an unprecedented rate. Mega broadband corporations openly and freely abuse Section 230 daily, by determining what news, information and perspectives we can access, read, hear and post. The FCC has turned a deaf ear to abridgements of our rights to free speech.

“One sign of Napoleon’s greatness is the fact that he once had a publisher shot.

– Siegfried Unseld

A small number of Big Tech giants are now controlling the flow of most information in our society, “aided by government policy.” The left defends this practice claiming these private companies are exercising their First Amendment rights. Yet their argument is overtly flawed. They conveniently ignore that these companies agreed to abide by a law passed as a “privilege” to “allow” free speech.

Within hours after the Oct. 14 New York Post article on Hunter Biden and emails discovered on a laptop appeared on Twitter, users received a dubious message if they tried to share the story: “The link has been identified as harmful.” Facebook banned the story completely. Ultimately, social networks demoted it to “questionable news” until their fact-checkers verified it after the election.

Liberal Big Tech giants hoped by blocking the story they would stop people from reading it; which is an example of their arrogance. Nonprofit and small “fair and honest” social news sites had the story posted within hours. The Blaze, Epoch Times, News Max, Franklin and other truth-seeking for-profit and nonprofit news sources were informing millions of readers about the truth and the facts.

The Post called this an act of “modern totalitarianism, carried out by Silicon Valley dweebs.” The article ended up being the most-debated news story in the nation for weeks and is still a top story in the legitimate news today. Congressional leaders vowed to extract anti-conservative testimony on bias from Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, and other “Big Brothers” at Facebook and Twitter.

Big Tech has gifted unlimited power to censor all information in our free society by the government. If Google suppresses content, it does so for 90% of the global news market. When Twitter banned the critical news about the Bidens a month before the last election, it totally reshaped the national news narrative. Facebook admitted they use their resources to influence voters and the elections.

The ultimate impact these companies have is shaping independent thought by limiting our access to truthful reporting. This dictates consumer behavior, compromises election integrity and controls and censors freedom of speech. By forcing their liberal politics on society, they empower tyrannical rule within our free society.

“Take away freedom of speech and liberty dries up.”

– George Orwell

Georgetown University law professor Rebecca Tushnet wrote, “The broad leeway given to Internet companies represents power without responsibility." One Fox reporter said, “The original purpose of 230 was to facilitate the development of free speech forums, not to censor freedom of speech.”

Only one case of abuse of the Section 230 privilege has been prosecuted. Backpage.com, well known for its adult personals, has been charged by an Arizona federal grand jury over alleged prostitution and child abuse. Major digital-rights groups spent years defending their right not to take down child abuse posts.

Section 230 has turned into a Teflon shield, not to protect internet free speech, but to censor it.

Michael Beckerman of the Internet Association openly admits Section 230 “is not blanket amnesty for internet censorship,” but only mentions their obligation to monitor “sex trafficking.” And, he says, without Section 230 protections, providers would resort to more free speech censorship, not less.

This is the type of warped logic that has allowed Big Tech to censor free speech around the globe.

Cato said, “Patience is a virtue and a vice.” When Twitter and Facebook, along with Tiktok, PayPal, Discord, YouTube, and Google, banned Donald Trump, celebrities of all stripes and all free world leaders condemned every U.S. Big Tech CEO!

”Beware the fury of a patient man.”

– John Dryden

A CNN reporter tweeted, “When five companies control all online speech, this is a major problem.” Fox News host Greg Gutfeld scorched social media and the far left. “What makes us different from you is we don't play favorites like you do, we are outraged about your double standards.” He went on, “Americans do not need lectures from hypocrites or liberal media pundits on anything we do!”

Leftist Emily Ratajkowski, a "woke" celebrity who backed Socialist Bernie Sanders in 2016 and in 2017 praised Planned Parenthood, also defended Melania Trump after a New York Times reporter called our first lady a "hooker." She said. “They insulted our entire nation!" She attacked Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook for believing that they had the “absolute power” to block Donald Trump’s accounts.

France’s Bruno Maire said, “Digital regulation should never be done by any digital oligarchy.” Germany’s Angela Merkel agreed, “Banning any elected president or anyone from the right to free speech by any corporate executive of any digital company is very problematic to our free world!”

Unprecedented power by tech industry giants threatens our republican self-government. Congress must amend Section 230 to outlaw all censorship of legal, ethical, social and political discourse on internet forums. This must apply to everyone who operates public internet access controlled by the FCC, or they will lose their license.

“The real, radical cure for the censorship would be its abolition; for the institution itself is a bad one, and institutions are more powerful than people.”

– Karl Marx

During the first nine months of 2020, state tax revenues in Wisconsin came in at 8.2% below the same period a year earlier, the 13th greatest decline among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Tax Foundation.

Comparing just the second and third quarters of 2020 with the same period a year earlier, the state tax revenues in Wisconsin were 13% lower. This time period reflected the first six months when the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing in the United States.

Nationwide, state tax collections from January through September were down 4.4% – or a total of $37.4 billion – compared to the 2019 revenues, the Tax Foundation reported. Local revenues, however, were up $29.8 billion in 2020 over the same period in 2019, revealing the stability of local tax sources such as the property tax and, in some cases, the sales tax, the study found.

A total of 10 states recorded higher revenue collections during the first three quarters of 2020, while such revenues were down by double digits in nine states during the same period.

The Paycheck Protection Program, as well as $535 billion in federal aid to state and local governments, helped to maintain employment levels and income tax revenues during the pandemic, the Tax Foundation study concluded.

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State Tax Revenue Changes in First 9 Months of 2020

RankStateQuarters 1 to 3 of 2020Quarters 2 & 31Alaska-25.80%-28.70%2Connecticut-25.40%-36.90%3North Dakota-22.70%-37.40%4Hawaii-16.70%-26.00%5Washington-15.60%-27.00%6Iowa-13.60%-20.70%7Massachusetts-12.60%-19.40%8New Mexico-11.70%-14.40%9Michigan-11.60%-3.30%10Maryland-9.30%-15.00%11Wyoming-9.00%-8.50%12West Virginia-8.50%-11.90%13Wisconsin-8.20%-13.00%14Florida-8.00%-13.80%15Texas-7.20%-11.80%16Oklahoma-7.00%-9.20%17Arizona-6.30%-7.80%18Rhode Island-6.00%-11.10%19New Jersey-5.70%-9.50%20Oregon-5.00%-4.00%21District of Columbia-4.50%-7.50%22Minnesota-4.20%-5.70%23Nevada-4.20%-8.00%24Pennsylvania-4.00%-7.10%25Utah-3.90%-9.10%26California-3.60%-6.90%27South Dakota-3.10%-7.30%28New York-2.70%-7.00%29New Hampshire-2.30%-5.40%30Louisiana-1.90%-4.20%31Missouri-1.60%-4.20%32Virginia-1.50%-4.00%33Mississippi-0.90%-3.10%34Colorado-0.80%-3.00%35Indiana-0.60%-3.70%36Kansas-0.50%-5.70%37South Carolina-0.40%-3.30%38Delaware0.00%-1.30%38Ohio0.00%-2.60%40North Carolina0.10%-1.10%41Kentucky0.40%-2.20%42Maine1.20%-0.90%43Georgia1.60%-0.30%44Tennessee2.30%-1.50%45Montana2.90%-0.70%46Nebraska3.20%0.10%47Vermont4.40%1.50%48Alabama4.50%3.60%49Arkansas6.40%6.80%50Illinois7.80%3.20%51Idaho12.20%10.20%

Source: Tax Foundation

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s public health boss is heading to Washington, D.C..

The incoming Biden administration on Monday announced Andrea Palm will become a deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Palm has been the secretary-designee at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services under Gov. Tony Evers.

The governor on Monday thanked Palm for her time, and her role in Wisconsin’s coronavirus response.

"Andrea Palm is a public servant through and through,” Gov. Evers said in a statement. “She's been a critical part of our administration and a consummate professional who has done an extraordinary job helping lead our state during an unprecedented public health crisis.”

Palm worked in Washington, D.C. as part of the Obama Administration. This is a return to the nation’s capital for her.

Palm will leave Wisconsin with a complicated legacy.

Republicans at the Capitol have been unhappy with Palm for how she’s handled the state’s coronavirus efforts. There was some talk at the statehouse of not confirming Palm as DHS Secretary.

Former DHS Secretary Karen Timberlake, will serve as interim secretary starting next week. Timberlake headed DHS under former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle.

(The Center Square) – Lost amid the national headlines of a second impeachment pf President Donald Trump last week was a transition of power at the state level that deserved barrels of ink and far more pixels – not only in Illinois, where it occurred, but across the country.

Illinois state Rep. Michael Madigan lost his bid for what would have been 40 years in legislative leadership when Emanuel “Chris” Welch (D-Hillside) on Wednesday was voted in by his peers along party lines and became the first Black Speaker of the House in Illinois history.

The Madigan story is a cautionary tale that should be written into U.S. history books to inform future generations about how absolute power corrupts absolutely.

On his way to establishing a U.S. record for tenure by a legislative leader, Madigan, an old-school Chicago Democrat, ruled with one-sided leadership that, over 38 years, ran a once-proud state – unchecked – into irreparable financial ruin.

Madigan was a king who steamrolled the state’s solvency for the benefit of the cogs in his machine and to retain his power. His reign was ended only after Illinois House Democrats no longer could risk supporting him. And even then, Madigan hung around in contention to retain his role last week with 50 of the 60 supporters he needed for another turn at the wheel.

A federal corruption probe into ComEd isolated Madigan as the dealmaker who traded patronage jobs for favorable legislation and rate increases to help the energy producer survive its struggling nuclear power plants. Two of his cronies, and two former ComEd executives have been indicted.

Madigan, who neither has a cell phone nor an email account, hasn’t been charged with a crime. A grand jury continues to investigate. If anyone benefited from the chaos wrought by COVID-19, it was Madigan, who shaved off about 70% of the legislative calendar in 2020 and kept the entire legislature at bay and off the job arguably to shield himself from public scrutiny.

But, even here in Illinois, news of Madigan’s ouster from leadership barely registered with most people – and in some markets didn’t even make the front page of newspapers.

Therein lies a fundamental problem that isn’t on its way to being repaired. We don’t teach civics in our public schools. Kids don’t know the difference between a state representative and a U.S. representative let alone know who represents the districts where they live. These same people grow up and become adults who complain about government but cannot connect the dots between government expansion and the fundamental reasons their tax burdens are twice the size of neighboring states.

We have raised generations of mopes who are barely equipped to rage against their washing machines let alone bad government.

There are no term limits in Illinois. Madigan became chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois and became not only the pivot in Springfield but the kingmaker who funded campaigns and sent a steady stream of lackeys there to do his bidding.

His House rules called for him to unilaterally call the bills that were to be voted upon and none that he didn’t want. That made bipartisan legislation impossible and effectively neutralized the minority party Republicans for nearly four decades.

The Madigan Rules were akin to playing basketball against the Harlem Globetrotters with one exception: In basketball, the team that is scored upon, by rule, gets the ball and the chance to in-bound it after each basket. Here in Illinois, the game is make it, take it.

And Madigan did of plenty of taking, mostly from taxpayers who will feel the pain of his leadership long after our children’s children are eulogized by their children.

Under his leadership, the state’s finances cratered. Costs exploded. Billions of dollars were borrowed at crazy, near-junk rates. Pension systems were raided to pay for anything and everything except pensions. Estimates of the unfunded pension obligations created under his leadership range between $137 billion and $250 billion – a hole that may never be filled and continues to grow deeper despite tax increase after tax increase.

The truth is that all government is local, and local government has far more influence on the lives of Americans than the federal government. Worse, state government is a murky mystery for far too many.

The Center Square has written more than 600 stories about Madigan over the past three years alone. Our reporters chronicled his unbalanced budgets, the #MeToo scandals that were unresolved by an inspector general (because he cleverly omitted having one and the claims expired), the gerrymandered maps that he drew, and a litany of other political shenanigans that would require a forest of trees to lay out in full.

Some of that drama finally ended last week. But rest assured there will be decades of drama here still to come.

When asked if his plans for his new role, the newly ordained Welch, whose committee passed on an opportunity to investigate Madigan in December, said that he’d, “possibly make a lot of changes.”

Welch also praised Madigan's tenure.

After all, Illinois is still Illinois.

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ILLINOIS

New Illinois House Speaker Emmanuel “Chris” Welch is the first Black speaker in Illinois House history, taking the gavel away from Michael Madigan, the state's most powerful politician. Until Wednesday, Madigan held the spot for all but two years since 1983. In a statement closing out the 101st General Assembly, his last as Speaker of the House, Madigan wished Welch “all the best.”

Policing in Illinois could look different after a sweeping criminal justice bill was passed by lawmakers in Springfield. House Bill 3653, which passed by a 60-50 vote, will change use-of-force guidelines, require body cameras for every police department in the state, end cash bail, and strip collective bargaining rights relating to discipline from police unions. The Senate passed the bill in the early morning hours of Wednesday by a 32-23 vote.

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Elsewhere in America...

TENNESSEE

Tennessee will be the first state in the nation to receive federal Medicaid funding in a lump sum. Gov. Bill Lee signed a 10-year TennCare block grant authorization into law Friday after the Tennessee Legislature passed it last week, giving the state more autonomy on administering its Medicaid program. The federal government currently funds a portion of TennCare’s costs, regardless of fluctuations each year. Under the block grant, however, the state would receive federal funds in a lump sum, providing for more flexibility in managing the funds. State officials believe the block grant also will result in cost savings for the program.

NORTH CAROLINA

Wilmington residents David and Peg Schroeder sued the city after it enacted a short-term rental ordinance that capped the number of properties that can operate as rental homes in the same area. The couple sought legal help from the Institute for Justice and won its case when a New Hanover County Superior Court judge declared the ordinance "void and unenforceable." Wilmington officials, however, have continued enforcing the policy and delayed revisions to it by at least three months.

FLORIDA

State Sen. Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, filed legislation last week that would require social media websites to provide individual and business users notice that the website has suspended or disabled a user’s account with some recourse available to restore the account. Burgess characterized the bill as an “innovative and timely piece of legislation” that “originated from numerous constituents facing issues by these monopolized monster social media companies right in our own backyard.”

VIRGINIA

A Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy poll released last week showed a majority of Virginia residents supported measures to provide financial support for parents who opted to enroll their children in alternative education systems while the state's schools remain closed. The poll found that 61% of registered voters would support giving parents a portion of the state’s K-12 funding to use for home, virtual or private education if public schools remain closed for in-person classes. And 51% of respondents supported Gov. Ralph Northam giving new federal relief funding for education directly to parents for purchasing education technology and materials, private school tuition and home education.

PENNSYLVANIA

Pennsylvania lawmakers dismayed by Gov. Tom Wolf’s apparently limitless power following his declaration of a state of emergency are moving closer to amending the state constitution to put a check on that power. Lawmakers tried other tactics to constrain Wolf in 2020, including passing bills targeting specific orders, but he vetoed those bills – even when they passed on a bipartisan basis. Now, if the Legislature approves the constitutional amendment, voters will get a chance to weigh in on the issue.

NEW YORK

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivered a State of the State address spread over the course of four days and capped it with a proposal to spend tens of billions of dollars on infrastructure building in what he called a “new New York.” Among his goals are revamping Penn Station, Pier 76 and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City in a $51 billion investment that he says would create 196,000 jobs.

NEW JERSEY

State lawmakers in the Garden State are moving toward the creation of a commission that would focus on the high number of rules and regulations in the state that can serve as a drag on the economy. The New Jersey Business and Industry Association has come in favor of the creation of the commission, saying it would make the state “more responsive to its residents, more accessible to people and small businesses that do not always have the opportunity to impact government, and more transparent to all taxpayers.”

OHIO

Ohio took a step toward criminal justice reform when Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law that favors treatment over jail time. The legislation, applauded by both Republicans and Democrats, requires judges to hold a hearing if a defendant applies for intervention and claims drug or alcohol abuse was a factor leading to the crime.

INDIANA

Overflow crowds of concerned citizens filled the hallways of Indiana’s Capitol as the legislature held a hearing on a bill that would stop employers from making people get a vaccine as a condition of employment. The bill, introduced by Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, adds a freedom-of-conscience provision to Indiana law, affirming the right of citizens to opt out of vaccines for pretty much any reason.

KENTUCKY

A special committee created to review an impeachment petition against Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has given him until Jan. 22 to respond in writing to the claims against him. Meanwhile, the committee has also received a similar petition against a state lawmaker. Committee Chairman state Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, sent the formal invitation to Amy Cubbage, Beshear’s general counsel, in a letter dated Thursday.

LOUISIANA

A New Orleans social worker has sued Louisiana Department of Health leaders, arguing that denying her a license violated her constitutional rights. Ursula Newell-Davis, founder of Sivad Home and Community Health Services, is not challenging the need for the license itself, but the state’s “facility need review” policy, which requires certain types of providers to show their services are needed before they can get a license to practice and receive taxpayer dollars through the state’s Medicaid program.

TEXAS

Texas state lawmakers convened last week to begin the 87th Legislative Session. The legislature is expected to address the state’s $1 billion 2020-2021 biennial budget shortfall, police funding, and a long list of other measures in less than five months.

ARIZONA

In the wake of a ballot initiative giving Arizona one of the nation's highest top marginal income tax rates, Gov. Doug Ducey announced in his state-of-the-state address that he plans to ask lawmakers to cut income taxes. The lame-duck governor said he wants to "think big" in terms of lowering the state's tax burden and restore Arizona's reputation as a destination for people seeking an affordable place to live.

COLORADO

Colorado lost its bid to be the permanent headquarters to U.S. Space Command on Wednesday, a move the state’s leaders say is politically motivated and will cost taxpayers. Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs – where the Space Command has been temporarily headquartered – was one of the six locations being considered, but Redstone Arsenal in Alabama was selected “based on factors related to mission, infrastructure capacity, community support and costs to the Department of Defense.” Space Command would have accounted for an estimated $104 million in earnings and $450 million in economic activity in Colorado.

WASHINGTON

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee unveiled his latest capital gains tax proposal as part of his 2021-2023 proposed budget last month, which would tax the sale of stocks, bonds, and other assets at a rate of 9% on capital gains above $25,000 for individuals and $50,000 for joint filers. Opponents of a capital gains tax argue that it stands little chance of holding up in court and note that new taxes are unnecessary when state revenue is forecast to be relatively strong for the near future.

Chris Krug is publisher of The Center Square. Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and regional editors J.D. Davidson, Derek Draplin, Cole Lauterbach, Delphine Luneau, Brett Rowland, Jason Schaumburg and Bruce Walker contributed to the column.

(The Center Square) – In its 44th annual National Migration study, United Van Lines found that migration to western and southern states from northern states has been a prevalent pattern for the past several years.

According to the study, which tracks the company’s exclusive data for customers’ 2020 state-to-state migration patterns, the greatest percentage of people moved to Idaho, with an inbound migration of 70 percent.

The greatest percentage of people left New Jersey, with an outbound migration of 70 percent. New Jersey has held the top outbound spot for the past three years.

States with the top inbound migration last year following Idaho, were South Carolina (64%), Oregon (63%), South Dakota (62%) and Arizona (62%).

States with the top outbound migration following New Jersey, were New York (67%), Illinois (67%), Connecticut (63%) and California (59%).

United Van Lines conducts a survey examining the reasons why their clients moved to different states. In 2020, it found that 40 percent moved for a new job or job transfer. More than one in four (27%) moved to be closer to family, a significant increase from the previous year.

For customers who cited COVID-19 as a reason for their move, top reasons were concerns for personal and family health and well being (60%) and a desire to be closer to family (59%). Others moved as a result of changes in employment status or work arrangements (57%), including the ability to work remotely, and 53% expressed seeking a lifestyle change or improvement of quality of life.

Minnesota led the list of states people moved to be closer to family (41%). Wyoming led as the primary destination for those seeking a lifestyle change (nearly 29%). More people migrated to Nebraska for a new job or job transfer than any other state (72%), and more people moved to Idaho due to the cost of living than any other state.

(The Center Square) – The National Rifle Association announced on Friday it seeks to file for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. It’s part of a move the pro-Second Amendment rights organization is taking to restructure as a Texas-based organization and leave New York, where it has been incorporated for about 150 years.

The NRA filed the paperwork in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas. A news release from the organization claims it is in its “strongest financial condition in years,” and pledges to offer a plan to fully repay claims from all valid creditors.

In its filing, the group estimated both its assets and liabilities to be between $100 million and $500 million.

In a separate letter posted on the NRA website, CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre cited the “toxic political environment” in the Empire State for the reorganization.

“The plan can be summed up quite simply: We are DUMPING New York, and we are pursuing plans to reincorporate the NRA in Texas,” he stated.

In August, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the organization. The suit said LaPierre and other current and former executives did not live up to the fiscal responsibilities for the NRA, tapping into millions in reserve funds to pay for lavish personal expenses.

James issued a caustic statement in response to Friday’s news.

“The NRA’s claimed financial status has finally met its moral status: bankrupt,” she said. “While we review this filing, we will not allow the NRA to use this or any other tactic to evade accountability and my office’s oversight.”

In November, the group agreed to pay a $2.5 million fine after state regulators determined the NRA sold an insurance plan that violated state law. That plan covered legal costs for individuals who face legal costs for cases where they claim self-defense.

The NRA countersued immediately in response, saying the Attorney General’s actions were politically motivated.

The association also was banned from selling insurance plans in the state for five years after the investigation uncovered it earned commissions on nearly 30,000 policies to New York members even though the NRA was not licensed to sell them in the state.

Reincorporating in Texas means the NRA will be in more-friendly confines. More than 400,000 of the approximate 5 million members live in the Lone Star State, and the organization has scheduled its 2021 annual meeting in Houston.

In addition to the corporate restructuring, the company said it's contemplating relocating some of its operations to Texas or other states. That includes its headquarters currently located in Fairfax, Va. A committee will consider those options, and the NRA also announced the hiring of former 3M executive Marschall Smith to serve as its chief restructuring officer.

President Trump’s last days in office offer a final opportunity to declassify critical information on the Russia investigation that engulfed his lone term.

Voluminous public records – including investigative reports from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Congress and the Justice Department’s inspector general – have established that Trump and his associates were targeted with a baseless Russian collusion allegation. The fraudulent claim originated with the Hillary Clinton campaign, was fueled by a torrent of false or deceptive intelligence leaks, and was improperly investigated by the FBI, potentially to the point of being criminal. Despite these disclosures, key questions remain about the origins and the spread of the conspiracy theory.

Before he leaves office on Jan. 20, Trump could use his declassification authority to help clear up some critical issues of the Russiagate saga.

The FBI says it opened its Trump-Russia investigation on July 31, 2016 after learning of a potential offer of Russian assistance to junior Trump campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos. It later emerged that the offer came from a Maltese academic named Joseph Mifsud, whom U.S. officials have suggested was acting as a Russian cutout.

Mueller’s team depicted Mifsud as having extensive contacts with Russia. Yet Mifsud’s closest public ties had been to Western governments, politicians, and institutions, including the CIA, FBI, and British intelligence services. Despite Mifsud’s central role in the investigation, the FBI conducted only one brief interview with him in February 2017. The Mueller team later claimed that Mifsud gave false statements to FBI agents yet, conspicuously, did not indict him for lying. The FBI’s notes on the interview show that Mifsud denied having any advance knowledge of Russian hacking.

Why didn’t the FBI grill Mifsud about his sources, methods and contacts? What other efforts, if any, were made to surveil him?

A highly placed Kremlin mole was the main source of the core claim in CIA Director John Brennan’s hastily produced 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA) that Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 election to help defeat Clinton and support Trump.

The ICA’s claim was widely portrayed as the consensus view of U.S. spy agencies, but in reality it was the conclusion drawn by a small group of CIA analysts, closely managed by then-Director Brennan. Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations revealed that Brennan overruled two senior analysts who disagreed with it.

Multiple outlets have already outed the mole, Oleg Smolenkov, and the circumstances of his exit from Russia in June 2017. This supposed betrayer of the Kremlin’s secrets was found to be living under his own name in a Virginia suburb.

After the FBI’s collusion probe got underway in July 2016, it purportedly did not rely on the Steele dossier, a series of opposition-research memos prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. In his testimony to Congress in July 2019, Mueller claimed that the dossier was “outside my purview.”

Yet the FBI did extensively rely on the Steele dossier, most egregiously to obtain a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.

There may be more evidence, as suggested in recently declassified documents, that the Steele material played a bigger role in the Mueller investigation than previously known. Further declassification could shed additional light on whether Mueller’s disavowal of Steele aligns with the conduct of his investigators.

In June 2016, CrowdStrike, a private company, accused Russian government hackers of infiltrating the Democratic National Committee’s servers. This assessment was presented as direct evidence of Russian interference in the presidential election and was later endorsed by the FBI and Mueller’s team.

CrowdStrike’s highly consequential allegation has been contradicted by subsequent disclosures. Like Steele, CrowdStrike was a Democratic Party contractor whose version of events dovetailed with the Clinton’s campaign’s apparent desire to muddy Trump with Russia connections. In a stunning admission, U.S. prosecutors told a court in June 2019 that CrowdStrike had submitted reports of a forensic analysis of its servers to the government in draft, redacted form.

The Crowdstrike reports would indicate whether the FBI and Mueller’s team were on solid ground in asserting Russia hacked the DNC and stole its emails.

Given the importance of the hacking allegation, and if its evidence is non-classified, why shouldn’t Trump direct the U.S. intelligence community to release all of it?

The January 2017 ICA assessed “with high confidence” that a Russian intelligence agency, the GRU, “used the Guccifer 2.0 persona” to release the stolen DNC files. In its July 2018 indictment of GRU officers, the Mueller team also strongly suggested that Guccifer transferred the stolen DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

The special counsel’s final report, issued in March 2019, quietly acknowledged that it “cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries” – an admission that it has no hard evidence that Guccifer 2.0 was WikiLeaks’ source. It does not identify who those intermediaries might have been. Also missing from Mueller’s account is the evidence used to identify Guccifer 2.0 as a Russian intelligence front.

The Russia investigation remains a bitterly partisan issue, but it’s worth remembering that in November 2016, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta called on the U.S. government to “declassify information around Russia’s roles in the election and to make this data available to the public.” His purposes were different, of course. Nonetheless, disclosing such information now would give Americans a fair understanding of an unprecedented investigation into a sitting president – as well as the conduct of the intelligence officials who it carried out.

The economy was bad, and the White House planned to go big. On the day the mammoth $800 billion Recovery Act became law, however, the new president took care to stress how his administration would keep a close eye on every dollar going out the door. This task of providing oversight, Barack Obama announced at the bill’s 2009 signing ceremony, would go to Joe Biden.

“To you, he's Mr. Vice President,” Obama quipped to a room that included more than one skeptical Republican lawmaker. “But around the White House, we call him the sheriff.”

In a few days, the country will call him Mr. President. A decade later, Biden confronts a deeper economic crisis, this one brought on by a global pandemic, and the incoming executive has proposed a $1.9 trillion stimulus package meant to buoy families and communities and small businesses as his administration pushes to step up distribution of the coronavirus vaccines.

All that old sheriff has to do now is get Congress to come together – in the middle of another bitter impeachment fight. But in announcing the initiative Thursday evening, Biden didn’t mention the partisan battle currently consuming Capitol Hill. Instead, he emphasized in a prime-time speech that the dark winter he warned about during the campaign had arrived. COVID cases are spiking across the country. The economy is faltering. The nation, the president-elect argued, simply can’t afford not to act.

Yes, it will be expensive. Perhaps remembering the fights over the 2009 stimulus, Biden didn’t shy away from that fact. With interest rates low, he said it was a great time to borrow even though it guarantees adding more to the ever-growing national debt. Just a few minutes into his remarks, he said that “deficit spending” wasn’t just in order. It was “more urgent than ever” to make “smart fiscal investments.”

“The return on these investments – in jobs, in racial equity – will prevent long-term economic damage and the benefits will far surpass the costs,” Biden argued before adding that top economists had concluded that spending more now to spur the economy would ensure “our debt situation will be more stable, not less stable, if we seize this moment with vision and purpose.”

First, the president-elect requested $400 billion in additional funding to address the health crisis. According to his plans, the money would be spent rushing the vaccine into the arms of Americans at community vaccination sites nationwide, scaling up testing and tracing to track and contain the disease, and investing in the infrastructure and supplies needed to reopen schools safely.

Once made safe for students and staff, Biden wants the majority of American students from kindergarten through eighth grade back in the classroom in his first 100 days. He also promised to lay out a vaccination plan “to correct course and meet our goal of 100 million shots by the end of our first 100 days.”

Second, Biden requested $1 trillion in family relief. The biggest item in this spending bucket: a $1,400 per-person check (a payment to be added on top of the $600 already agreed to by lawmakers). He wants housing assistance and nutrition assistance, more money for subsidized child care, an extension of unemployment insurance through September, and a $3,000 tax credit for every child under 17 years old. What’s more, the incoming president wants a $15 minimum wage: “No one working 40 hours a week should still be below the poverty line.”

Finally, the president-elect will ask Congress for an additional $440 billion to provide relief for small businesses and to shore up struggling state and city and tribal governments.

Biden proposes no less than $15 billion in direct grants as well as $175 billion in government-backed lending for small businesses. He promised that the focus would be on “Main Street,” with particular emphasis on ensuring that “minority-owned small businesses and women-owned small businesses finally having equal access to the resources they need to reopen and rebuild.”

He also promised emergency funding for essential workers like municipal firefighters and police, warning that “the people putting their lives at risk are the very people now at risk of losing their jobs.”

Biden offered a broad sketch of the rescue package in his 25-minute address while his team passed along a 17-page fact sheet to fill in more of the details. It will be up to Congress to put flesh on these legislative bones. While Democrats hold the Senate after their twin victories in Georgia, their grasp is tenuous. The chamber splits 50-50, meaning that Vice President-elect Harris would cast tie-breaking votes. But power-sharing will still be a fact of life in the chamber and the incoming president didn’t offer details about how the ambitious agenda would become more than an aspiration. Biden wasn’t short on soaring rhetoric, however.

“We didn't get into all this overnight. We won't get out of it overnight, and we can't do it as a separated and divided nation,” he said. “The only way we can do it is to come together.”

This, along with the outlined spending, was enough to have congressional Democrats cheering.

“House and Senate Democrats express gratitude toward and look forward to working with the President-elect on the rescue plan,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Pelosi said in a press release. The pair heralded the spending as “the right approach” and a sign that Democrats “have a partner at the White House that understands the need to take swift action to address the needs of struggling communities.” Even the party’s most prominent progressives were impressed with the dollar amount. Democratic-socialist Bernie Sanders, Biden’s 2020 campaign rival, released a statement calling the plan “much needed” and pledged to work with his colleagues in Congress to get it passed.

Republicans were predictably unimpressed. Rep. Kevin Brady, the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee, said Biden had “launched yet another economic blind buffalo that does nothing to save Main Street.” The Republican Study Committee, the largest GOP caucus in the House, tweeted that the stimulus checks alone in the plan “cost as much as the inflation adjusted cost of World War I.”

This sudden rediscovery of the dangers of too large a national debt harked back to the Obama days when the GOP prided itself on being the party of fiscal responsibility. Congressional Republicans regularly warned then that the Democrat in the White House was a profligate spender mortgaging the future of generations to come. It’s an old conservative chestnut that Republicans only seem to remember when Democrats occupy the Oval Office: Under President Trump, the debt ballooned by $7.8 trillion.

Familiar with those old arguments, Biden moved to head them off Thursday evening. “I know what I just described will not come cheaply,” he said. “But failing to do so will cost us dearly – the consensus among leading economists is we simply cannot afford not to do it.” This won’t be his only spending plan either. He promised that this $1.9 trillion initiative is an opening bid to Congress with more spending to come later.

As the first legislative priority of his administration, the plan will test the new president’s deal-making acumen. Biden seems comfortable in the role. He didn’t balk at debt and deficits the last time he was in the White House. He hasn’t gotten skittish in the last four years either, as he heralded the first multi-billion-dollar spending package he managed. “We will be responsible with taxpayer dollars, ensuring accountability that reduces waste, fraud, or abuse,” he promised, “like we did with the Recovery Act during the Obama-Biden administration.”

(The Center Square) – When can people in Wisconsin expect to get the coronavirus vaccine?

Republicans at the Wisconsin Capitol asked that question of the Evers Administration time after time on Thursday. The Assembly Committee on Health pressed the Department of Health Services as to why the state is so slow in getting the vaccine into people’s arms.

“It seems to me that the process that’s in place is overly bureaucratic and and cumbersome,” Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, R-New Berlin said.

DHS Assistant Deputy Secretary Lisa Olson said it’s not the process. She blamed Wisconsin’s second-slowest in the Midwest rollout on the federal government and a lack of doses.

“We very much want to be moving faster,” Olson told lawmakers. "Folks are moving as quickly as they can during the course of the week.”

Sanfelippo said wanting to be faster is not good enough. He wants Wisconsin to actually be faster in distributing the vaccine.

"We need to tell the public here's the day when we expect to do this group, here's the date when we expect to do that group,” Sanfelippo added. “The minute we get a vaccine from the federal government it should be in and out the next day and in someone's arm."

DHS reported on Thursday that doctors have administered 195,152 of the 373,100 doses that have been sent to the state. Wisconsin has been allocated 607,650 doses, but many of those have not yet been shipped.

The Centers for Disease Control reported on Thursday that Wisconsin has vaccinated about 2.4% of its population. The national average is 3.1%. The CDC ranks Wisconsin 40th in the nation when it comes to vaccinations.

Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, has been critical of Gov. Evers and how his administration has handled the vaccine rollout for weeks. He told News Talk 1130 WISN’s Jay Weber on Friday that the delays all come from the governor’s office and it’s overly planned process.

“Rather than making a decision months or weeks ago, they determine group-by-group who gets the vaccine once a week,” Wanggaard said. “And then they ask for public comment. And then the next week the [vaccine] subcommittee makes a decision to finalize the previous decision. And then it goes to someone else to review, and is sent back to the subcommittee. And then someone else makes the decision. And then the process repeats.”

Wanggaard said, instead, Wisconsin needs to follow the lead of other states that have established broad guidelines and let local public health departments, hospitals, or even pharmacies offer the shots.

(The Center Square) – The federal deficit in the first three months of the budget year is 60.7 percent higher than over the same time period as last year, a record-breaking $572.9 billion.

The deficit surged as a result of Congressional spending of $3.5 trillion in 2020 in response to the coronavirus, although critics note that spending on pork barrel programs that had nothing to do with the virus increased and also drove the deficit. At the same time, revenue declined because of ongoing state lockdowns.

The Treasury Department reports that the deficit is $216.3 billion higher than the same October-December period in 2019.

A record in spending for the period represented an 18.3 percent increase of $1.38 trillion, while at the same time revenues fell 0.4 percent to $803.37 billion.

In the month of December alone, when Congress passed, and President Donald Trump signed, several spending bills, the deficit reached a record $143.6 billion.

The shortfall for the 2020 budget year, which ended Sept. 30, reached an all-time high of $3.1 trillion.

Due to ongoing state lockdowns, millions of Americans are still out of work, and tax revenues also dropped, while at the same time, the demand by states for federal financial support dramatically increased.

The Treasury reports that outlays in December were a record $489.7 billion; receipts were $346.1 billion.

The December total excludes the $900 billion COVID-19 spending bill, which included $600 payments to individuals, extended unemployment benefit programs, and directed hundreds of millions of dollars to programs overseas, about which critics also complained.

From October to December 2020, unemployment benefits totaled $80 billion. During the same time period last year, they totaled $5 billion.

Prior to the $900 billion spending bill, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that 2021’s deficit will total $1.8 trillion, and remain above $1 trillion every year though 2030.

(The Center square) – The Centers for Disease Control has published several fact sheets and information online to inform health care administrators about the COVID-19 vaccine, including a list of people who should not take it.

On Thursday, the CDC reported that Texas has administered more doses than any other state so far.

On the CDC website, fact sheets for health care providers administering the vaccine and for recipients and caregivers are provided, along with full prescribing information, instructions about vaccine storage, and adverse event reporting.

Both the CDC and Pfizer-BioNTech, which produced and distributed the first approved COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S., state multiple times that the vaccine “has not been approved or licensed by the FDA.” It has been authorized for emergency use by FDA under an Emergency Use Authorization for individuals 16 years of age and older.

A six-page fact sheet for health care providers states that the vaccine is not approved by the FDA, is an experimental vaccine, has not undergone the same type of rigorous testing as other FDA-approved drugs, some who participated in clinical trials were given less doses than those who are receiving the doses today, the long-term side effects are unknown, and receiving the vaccine is completely voluntary.

The website warns professions not to administer the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to individuals with known history of a severe allergic reaction (e.g., anaphylaxis).

It also states, “Appropriate medical treatment used to manage immediate allergic reactions must be immediately available in the event an acute anaphylactic reaction occurs following administration of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.”

The immunocompromised, including individuals receiving immunosuppressant therapy, may have a diminished immune response to the vaccine, the fact sheet states.

Because there is no available data on the effects of the vaccine administered to pregnant women, the CDC states “there is insufficient evidence to inform vaccine-associated risks to those who are pregnant” or want to become pregnant.

Data is also not available to assess the effects of the vaccine on breastfed infants or on milk production/excretion.

Health care providers are told that they “must communicate to the recipient or their caregiver, information consistent with the "Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers" (and provide a copy or direct the individual to www.cvdvaccine.com to obtain the Fact Sheet) prior to the individual receiving Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.

Nationally, the total number of people initiating vaccination (first dose received) is 11.1 million people, the CDC reports. Among them, 1.2 million live in long-term care facilities.

As of Thursday, California has distributed the most vaccines of any other state, 3.5 million, compared to Texas’ 2.1 million. But Texas has administered the most doses of any state, more than 1 million, roughly 25,000 more than California.

More than 1 million Texans have received at least the first of two doses of the vaccine, the CDC reports.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Texas leads the nation, one month to the day the first doses arrived at vaccine providers in the state on Dec. 14.

“Texas is leading the way for our nation once again,” Abbott said in a statement. “This is the biggest vaccination effort we have ever undertaken, and it would not be possible without the dedication and tireless efforts of our healthcare workers. We still have a long road ahead of us, but Texans continue to prove that we are up to this challenge.”

(The Center Square) – On Thursday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, in which WILL asserted state courts should handle the state’s new political map rather than federal courts.

“It is going to wind-up in some court, somewhere,” WILL President Rick Esenberg told News Talk 1130 WISN’s Jay Weber Thursday. “The Constitution of the United States commits this job to state legislatures, it commits this job to the states,”

Esenberg said it is a question of federalism, not court shopping.

Wisconsin has divided government, and that means there will most likely be no agreement on a new political map based on the 2020 Census.

“History tells us when there are different parties, the legislature is Republican and the governor is Democrat, they don’t agree,” Esenberg explained. “The [map] then goes to the courts.”

Wisconsin’s last political map, drawn in 2010, faced several legal challenges in federal court. A federal judge eventually ordered lawmakers redraw two Milwaukee-area legislative districts (the 8th and 9th). The map was in legal limbo almost until the spring elections in 2012.

Esenberg specifically asked the Supreme Court to create rules that will keep the redistricting lawsuits, which he says are almost certainly coming, in state court. Esenberg said outside of the federalism/balance of government argument, there is an issue of time that the court has to consider.

“All of this has to be done in time so that next spring, April, 15 2022, so people who wish to run for the state legislature can get their nomination papers circulated,” Eseneberg said. “They need to know where the districts are. They need to know where they live.”

Esenberg added his request is not trying to game the system with Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. While the court has a 4-3 conservative majority on paper, the Supreme Court’s rulings this year have reflected both sides of the political spectrum.

“Yes, it’s true there are four justices who you might call conservative, but that doesn’t mean that they vote for whatever Republicans want,” Esenberg said. “Likewise, there are three justices who you might call Left-progressive, but that doesn’t mean that they vote for whatever Democrats want.”

There is pushback to the idea of keeping redistricting in state courts.

Fair Elections Project Director Sachin Chheda told the Wisconsin Supreme Court it is risking its credibility by considering WILL’s request,

“If you adopt this rule, it’s my humble view that you’d be seen as a partisan body. The rule is presented by the state’s top right-wing lawyer and a partisan activist former Speaker of the State Assembly,” Chheda said. “Since I’m myself often a partisan activist, I understand where they are coming from.”

Chedda then said any legal challenge to the maps will likely end up in federal court, so there’s no need to try and stop that.

“The federal courts have a well-established process and tremendous experience in redistricting litigation. Three times in the last four decades, federal courts have drawn the maps and done so very competently,” Chheda said.

(The Center Square) – New unemployment claims soared to nearly 1 million last week, the latest sign that the U.S. economy continues to struggle to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to U.S. Department of Labor data released Thursday, about 965,000 workers filed for first-time benefits the week ending Jan. 9. That's an increase of 181,000 new claims from the prior week, when 784,000 workers filed new claims.

During the same week in 2020, before government restrictions were put in place to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, 207,000 new claims were filed, less than a quarter of those filing for initial benefits last week.

Continued claims, which include those who have filed for benefits at least two weeks in a row, were at 5.3 million in the week ending Jan. 2. Continued claims data lag new claims by a week.

"The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment ratewas 3.7 percent for the week ending January 2, an increase of 0.2 percentage points from the previous week's unrevised rate," the labor department reported.

The world is slowly approaching a full year of coronavirus lockdowns. The pandemic and the crushing lockdowns that followed caught many by surprise and off guard. Yet, while most recall the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic as somewhere in late February or early March, the World Health Organization (WHO) knew about this virus well before then. And, given their early reaction, it’s no wonder this crisis has lasted as long – or been as destructive – as it has.

As early as Jan. 14 of last year, the WHO triumphantly tweeted to its roughly 8.8 million followers, “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China.”

Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳. pic.twitter.com/Fnl5P877VG— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 14, 2020

This, as we all know, was about as false as can be and was not the end of the story.

However, this tweet is not entirely worthless. It is a perfect encapsulation of exactly what is wrong with the WHO. It demands blind trust on issues of public health, despite a track record of being tragically wrong. It defers far too often to the regime in Beijing rather than to the facts or the best interests of global health. There is very little doubt that the collective trust the world placed in the WHO in the early days of this crisis cost thousands of lives and millions of jobs across the globe.

Seeing the lack of leadership at the WHO, President Donald Trump threatened to pull United States taxpayer funding to the WHO in April. The president then later followed up in July by withdrawing the U.S. from membership in the WHO, effective immediately. It was too little, too late to save the U.S. from the consequences of the WHO’s misinformation on coronavirus, but these decisions may very well avoid similar catastrophes in years to come. Yet, despite this, President-elect Joe Biden has promised to rejoin the WHO on day one of his administration.

This would be a monumentally foolish decision. While Biden claims that Americans are “safer” when America is in the WHO, the more than 386,000 Americans who have died would beg to differ if they had the chance. Weeks before the virus came to our shores, the WHO claimed – without caveat – that there was no human-to-human transmission. This lulled leaders into a false sense of complacency and prevented key planning that could have taken place. WHO leaders did this to please the top brass in Beijing.

Even a cursory analysis of the WHO’s track record on coronavirus will show that they are far more a political entity than a public health organization. When Dr. Li Wenliang first raised red flags about the fact that human-to-human transmission was, in fact, very possible, he was censured aggressively by the Chinese regime. He was accused of “spreading rumors” and eventually died of the virus himself. When asked about the treatment of Dr. Li, the executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, Michael Ryan, said merely, “There is understandable confusion that occurs at the beginning of an epidemic.” Striving further to absolve the Chinese authorities from responsibility, he added, “We need to be careful to label misunderstanding versus misinformation; there's a difference.”

In late March, once the scope of the pandemic and Chinese misinformation was evident, WHO officials doubled down on their defense of China’s handling of the virus. WHO Senior Advisor Bruce Aylward refused to answer questions regarding China’s response compared to Taiwan’s relatively successful approach. When asked by Yvonne Tong, a reporter for the Hong Kong media outlet RTHK, if Taiwan’s success would lead the WHO to reconsider their stance disallowing Taiwan from becoming a member nation, Aylward stalled in silence for over ten seconds. He then claimed he hadn’t heard the question and asked to move on to a different one. When Tong repeated, Aylward hung up. When Aylward and Tong got reconnected, he actually referred to Taiwan as an “area of China” and claimed China had done a very good job with the virus, before hanging up again.

It is clear that the WHO is intent on making itself a political entity that is serving the interests of some of its more authoritarian members, namely the Chinese government. Their flailing response thus far should be enough to strip them of any credibility on the coronavirus or any other public health matter. Not only this, but the WHO has tried to skirt any responsibility by smearing any and all criticisms of their response as attempts to “politicize the virus.”

Biden, who fashions himself as a champion of science, decency and truth, should keep the U.S. far away from this hopelessly corrupt organization.

(The Center Square) – The U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump over comments he made prior to a violent invasion of the Capitol exactly a week ago.

It's the second time in 13 months the president faces a trial in the U.S. Senate, though he is expected to be out of office before a potential trial ever takes place.

The vote of 232-197 was mostly along party lines, though some Republicans joined Democrats to impeach. Trump becomes the first president to ever be impeached twice.

The single article, with 190 co-sponsors, reads, in part: “In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”

There were 10 Republicans who sided with the Democrats, led by U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican in the House. The others were Fred Upton and Peter Meijer of Michigan, Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state, John Katko of New York, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Tom Rice of South Carolina, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio and David Valadao of California.

The move to impeach came after Trump spoke to supporters Jan. 6 outside the White House as the House and Senate met in joint session in the Capitol to certify each state’s Electoral College votes declaring President-elect Joe Biden the winner of the Nov. 3 election.

Trump told the crowd he would not concede and that he knew “everyone would be making their way over to the Capitol to protest peacefully and patriotically" and they should “give our Republicans the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back this country.”

Thousands of people later descended on the Capitol and hundreds breached the doors, entering the building and sending lawmakers into hiding. Democrats said Trump’s words “incited an insurrection.”

During the two hours of debate before the vote was taken, most of the comments from the floor broke down along rhetorical party lines.

Democrat Rosa De Lauro of Connecticut, for example, said Trump “unleashed horrific violence” on the Capitol, while Democrat Kathy Castor of Florida called Trump’s words and actions “the most depraved betrayal of the Constitution by a president.”

Republican Dan Bishop of North Carolina, on the other hand, said the Democrats did not “specify any inciting language” that led to the breach of the Capitol.

Republican Tom Cole of Oklahoma said the current process moved too quickly with no hearings or witnesses.

“They are rushing to divide us rather than unite us,” Cole said. “We should find a new way forward to celebrate a new president rather than impeach an old president.”

The Capitol and the area around it were heavily fortified with fences, blockades and National Guard soldiers Wednesday in an effort to prevent any similar actions. No crowds were seen gathered outside before the proceedings began.

Tuesday night, the House voted 223-205 in favor of a non-binding resolution asking Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, which would entail him and Cabinet members to vote on Trump’s fitness to remain in office.

Kinzinger of Illinois, who also voted for impeachment, was the only Republican to vote in favor of the resolution.

Pence declined, sending a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying, “I urge you and every member of Congress to avoid actions that would further divide and inflame the passions of the moment.”

It is unclear now when the impeachment charge will be forwarded to the Senate, which does not return to session until Jan. 19, one day ahead of Biden’s inauguration. Several Democrats have suggested waiting at least 100 days so that Biden will have at least three months to focus solely on his legislative agenda.

Trump was acquitted by the U.S. Senate in January 2020 after being impeached by the House in December 2019. If he is convicted, it would prevent him from ever holding federal office again.

(The Center Square) – Calling-up the National Guard may protect the Wisconsin Capitol in the short term, but one state senator says there needs to be a more permanent fix.

Sen. Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, on Tuesday sent a letter to Gov. Tony Evers and the state’s legislative leaders pressing for more security, and a better Capitol security strategy.

“I am writing today to urge you to take security in the Wisconsin State Capitol seriously," Feyen wrote.

"The building has been closed to the public since March 2020 but now is the time to formulate and execute stronger security measures in our most treasured Wisconsin building,” Feyen said. “ I am urging you, as the leaders in both houses and the Governor, to make the State Capitol as secure as possible for all of those working and visiting.”

Feyen said the Capitol simply has too many open doors, more than 10, and doesn’t have any security checkpoints or or barriers.

Feyen said the need for enhanced security was proven just last week at the U.S. Capitol.

“In the wake of the Washington, D.C. unrest, the overtaking of the U.S. Capitol, and the FBI warnings that violence and unrest is possible at all 50 statehouses, now is the time to act!,” Feyen wrote. “We cannot wait until an elected official, an employee, or a visitor to Madison is hurt or killed before we take action.”

Gov. Evers on Monday activated the Wisconsin National Guard to protect the statehouse from potential protesters next week. Feyen said that’s fine, but added Wisconsin has leaned on the guard for a lot these past few months. He said Gov. Evers has called-on the guard for everything from security to coronavirus testing to working the polls on Election Day.

Feyen also said Gov. Evers vetoed a provision in the last state budget that would have assessed Capitol security.

“The time is now to harden up the security and provide a safe environment for all those that visit, have business in the capitol, or call this building their workplace,” Feyen said.