The Progressive Midwesterner

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...

I'm going to limit myself to not more than two North Dakota-related blog posts on The Progressive Midwesterner this year, but this is a blog post that I would encourage elected officials from across the country to read, as they may be able to learn how to use social media more effectively as an elected official. North Dakota State Representative Karla Rose Hanson (DNPL-Fargo), the Assistant Minority Leader of the North Dakota House of Representatives, has proposed, as of this writing, five bills in the current session of the North Dakota State Legislature. Two of Hanson's bills are proposals to have the North Dakota State Legislature meet annually instead of every two years. One of Hanson's bills would, if it were to become law, implement a pretrial services pilot program in three of North Dakota's judicial districts. Another of Hanson's bills would allow North Dakota taxpayers to voluntarily contribute to a veterans' services fund. Another of Hanson's bil...

U.S. Representative and white nationalist Steve King (R-IA) has been stripped of all of his committee assignments by an unanimous vote of the steering committee of the House Republican Conference in response to disgustingly bigoted remarks that King made, which were published by The New York Times in an article by the Times 's Trip Gabriel: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?...Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?” Those words are not mine, and they are not those of Gabriel. Those words are those of Steve King. Before I explain the significance of Steve King losing all of his committee assignments, I will directly address King's offensive remarks. There are major reasons why white nationalist, white supremacist, and Western civilization are offensive terms. Those terms are all offensive because they are used to describe a political system in which...