Top Shorts
KFF Health Minute
Thu Jun 11
KFF Health Minute
Thu May 28
Join The Club
Keep up-to-date with the latest local news.
Clips
“It’s not America’s Dairyland — it’s America’s data land.” That’s Charlie Berens Saturday night in Eau Claire, in front of hundreds of Wisconsinites. His warning: *”We are being mined for our data…”* The event was organized by neighbors — grassroots groups GLNU and GROWW — for people who say they’re being left out of decisions about data centers in their own communities. @charlieberens : ”You just do the best you can for other people. Everyone in this room, they have something to add.” What’s the #datacenter situation where you live?
Every corporation is chartered by a state — and states set the rules. Hawaii just rewrote theirs: no corporate money in elections. Montana is collecting signatures to follow. A dozen states are watching. #ThomHartmann #DarkMoney #CitizensUnited #Hawaii #Democracy
Rick Smith grew up in a housing project on the west side of Cleveland. When the neighbor got a #union job at Ford, even an eight-year-old could see what changed: food at the end of the month, better clothes, secondhand bikes for the kids — and eventually, a move out of the neighborhood. New research from the Center for American Progress finds the typical union household holds about twice the #wealth of a non-union household — roughly $250,000 more. #unionstrong
Amery. Port Washington. Small Wisconsin towns are asking big questions about data centers — and they’re not waiting for permission to get answers. On Nite Lite, organizer Blaine Halverson told Pete and Greg how it usually starts: agreements first, public hearings later. His message — small towns don’t have to face billion-dollar lawyers alone. 🗓️ Uniting West Wisconsin — Saturday, June 13, Chippewa Valley.
$500B from Medicare. $900B from Medicaid. Ten years. That’s the CBO score on the bill Derrick Van Orden voted for. In WI-03, Mayo Clinic Osseo is on the at-risk list. Next ER: 24 miles. Asked about it in Sparta, he said, “I just wish they knew what they were talking about.” A paramedic. A retired doctor. They did.
The grocery math for new parents in Wisconsin might be getting harder. 🍎 The U.S. House passed a spending bill cutting WIC by ~$200 million. For breastfeeding moms, monthly fruit + veggie benefits could fall from ~$52 to $13. For little ones, $26 to $10. Who relies on it here? More than a quarter of all Wisconsin kids under five — and the largest group of users statewide are white women in Milwaukee, Madison, and Marathon counties. The kicker: every $1 in WIC returns about $2.48 in future savings. Tell us what you’re seeing in your community. 👇
President Trump flew into Wisconsin farm country Friday. The visit was about tariffs and gas prices. Outside, hundreds showed up to be heard. Inside Custer Farms: a 45-minute roundtable on the economy, border security, the war with Iran and the midterms. Outside: about 300 near the airport, more than 150 at the event.
Quick — which candidate for Wisconsin governor was a former CDC intelligence officer who was on the first plane into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? That one stumped the room on this morning’s Gubernatorial Match Game. Brian’s guess — Mandela Barnes — didn’t land, and Jamie took the point. The answer, straight from her campaign site: Sara Rodriguez.
9 in 10 voters agree corruption is the #1 problem in politics. 📊 Not 9 in 10 Democrats. Not 9 in 10 Republicans. 9 in 10 voters — period. → 83% want the president barred from financial conflicts of interest → 81% want an ethics watchdog with teeth → 79% want money out of elections Thom Hartmann breaks down the new Brennan Center poll — and why he calls Citizens United one of the most corrupt Supreme Court decisions ever. #Corruption #MoneyInPolitics #CitizensUnited #BrennanCenter ThomHartmann CivicMedia
Hospital costs up 140%. Wages up Only 83%. The Wisconsin healthcare math doesn’t add up — and one UW-Madison report shows why. Hospitals here charge private insurers some of the highest rates in the country. Just over 1 in 10 Wisconsinites skipped a doctor visit they needed because they couldn’t afford to go. #Wisconsin #Healthcare #WorkingFamilies #WisconsinNews #Daybreak
*”I’m going to need you not to say that out loud.”* That’s host Michelle Brown on Say Something Real — right after Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley calls Wisconsin’s rebate check a gimmick. His reason: if you didn’t earn enough to file income taxes, you didn’t qualify. The families squeezed hardest by gas, groceries, and rent were the ones the rebate couldn’t reach.
Should the public own half of AI? Bernie Sanders thinks so. His case in three lines: 🏛️ Our research built it. ⚡ Our power grids run it. 📚 Our data trained it. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Ellison are pouring hundreds of billions into AI — and standing to take home the trillions while up to 100 million American jobs are on the chopping block. The American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would take a 50% stake in OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI and route the dividends back to the people who actually made the technology possible. Alaska does it with oil. The question is whether we do it with AI — or hand the keys to four billionaires.
Watch
How Wisconsin Built the Greatest Show on Earth • 23 hours ago
Did Van Orden Cut Medicare? Yes • 6 days ago
