The Progressive Midwesterner

Brian Hagedorn, the far-right candidate in the open-seat Wisconsin Supreme Court election to be held April 2, has lost the endorsement of the normally right-wing Wisconsin Realtors Association. This is in response to the fact that Hagedorn founded a school that discriminates against the LGBTQ community: BREAKING: Wisconsin Realtors have UNENDORSED @judgehagedorn after revelations that he founded a school that discriminates against the LGBTQ community. https://t.co/mgnOjpMbDy — Democratic Party WI (@WisDems) February 21, 2019 Hagedorn's track record of bigotry proves that Hagedorn cannot be trusted to decide cases that appear before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a fair and impartial manner. Hagedorn's opponent is Lisa Neubauer, currently the Chief Judge of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, and she is running for Wisconsin Supreme Court to continue her track record of being a principled jurist who upholds the rule of law, not bigotry.

Only two members of the South Dakota House of Representatives (one Republican, Kevin Jensen, and one Democrat, Doug Post) voted against South Dakota House Bill 1191 (HB1191) , legislation that, if enacted, would legalize industrial hemp, but not marijuana, in South Dakota. As of this writing (February 17, 2019), the legislation is currently pending before the South Dakota State Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee . Despite the overwhelming support for industrial hemp in South Dakota, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is a staunch opponent of HB1191 and claims, without facts or evidence, that legalizing industrial hemp in South Dakota would effectively legalize marijuana in South Dakota: (South Dakota Gov. Kristi) Noem reiterated her opposition to legalizing industrial hemp in 2019 during her weekly press conference, saying she has "very real concerns" about passing House Bill 1191 during this legislative session. "I believe if we move ahead with ind

For the first time in U.S. history, the sitting President of the United States is going to declare a national emergency for purely political reasons. Donald Trump is going to declare a national emergency in order to build a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border despite the lack of any legitimate basis to declare a national emergency. Already, Democrats in Congress are strongly opposing Trump's abuse of emergency powers. For example, Bobby Rush, who represents the Chicago-area 1st Congressional District of Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives, has announced that he will co-sponsor a resolution, which is expected to be introduced by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, that, if enacted, would effectively nullify Trump's national emergency declaration: If @realdonaldtrump declares a national emergency to fund his border wall, I’m prepared to introduce a resolution to terminate the President’s emergency declaration under 50 U.S.C. 1622. (National Emergencies Act) #F

Do y'all remember when President Donald Trump and then-Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker promised people in Southeastern Wisconsin that a giant liquid crystal display (LCD) factory by electronics manufacturer Foxconn was going to bring massive amounts of jobs to Wisconsin? Well, Walker was voted out of office by the people of Wisconsin last year, and Louis Woo, a special assistant to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, is saying that Foxconn may not build the giant factory that Trump, Walker, and Foxconn promised after all: When Terry Gou, founder and CEO of the (Taiwanese) manufacturer Foxconn, came to Wisconsin to celebrate his company's first American factory, he was in a Midwestern state of mind. “This is our home, my home, Wisconsin,” he told an audience including then-Governor Scott Walker in 2017, citing Walker's strong family traditions as a reason he was so eager to work in the state. The deal guaranteed 3,000 factory jobs for Wisconsin workers with Walker and President Trum

According to the National Partnership for Women and Families , only four U.S. states (California, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island), as well the District of Columbia, currently have paid family leave programs, with two other states, Massachusetts and the State of Washington, set to implement paid family leave programs in the near future. Now, legislation has been proposed in two states, Illinois and North Dakota, to create paid family leave programs in those states. There are some differences between the Illinois proposal and the North Dakota proposal, but both proposals would require private-sector employers with at least 50 employees to provide paid leave for employees who take leave because of the birth of the employee's child and to allow the employee to care for a family member who is seriously ill. In Illinois, Illinois State Representative Mary Flowers (D-Chicago) has proposed a paid family leave act here in Illinois (Illinois HB0009). Here is the synopsis of the p

Far-right political commentator Laura Ingraham, the host of the far-right Fox News program The Ingraham Angle who grew up in Glastonbury, Connecticut, openly criticized U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who was born in Somalia and immigrated to the United States when she was 12 years old, for the way that she talks : On Thursday’s episode of her show — which became a podcast earlier this month — Ingraham mocked the accent of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who couldn’t speak English when she came to the U.S. at the age of 12 after living in a refugee camp during Somalia’s civil war. Ingraham claimed that one of the first Muslim women ever elected to Congress “sounds like Rizzo on Grease ” and “doesn’t sound like Minnesota.” Spoiler alert...not everyone from the Upper Midwest sounds like Amy Klobuchar. I don't sound like what a lot of people would consider a typical Illinoisan, so I'm not going to criticize Omar or anyone else for the way they speak the English language. Also, for I