DJ Ferguson didn’t get a COVID-19 shot. He was concerned about side effects and the rapid rate in which the vaccines were developed.
That decision cost him his place in line for a desperately needed heart transplant.
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Billing it a “breakthrough budget,” Governor Tony Evers rolled out a massive two-year spending plan on Wednesday that would dump billions more taxpayer dollars into a host of new programs, raise taxes by $1 billion-plus on businesses, deliver a sweetheart deal to the Milwaukee Brewers, and gobble up much of the state’s historic $7.1 billion surplus.
At approximately $104 billion, Evers’ budget proposal is the first to break the $100 billion mark and comes in at about $13 billion more than his 2021-23 plan and more than $16 billion higher than the current budget he signed into law in June 2021.
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A former U.S. ambassador to China says President Joe Biden’s handling of the recent spy balloon affair has been a “disaster.”
Ambassador Terry Branstad, former longtime Iowa governor and President Trump’s top diplomat in China, tells The Iowa Star the Chinese Communist Party “respects strength” and the only thing Biden has shown them is weakness. He said it’s the latest in a long line of foreign policy blunders by the administration.
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Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is blasting Norfolk Southern Corp. for its handling of a Feb. 3 train derailment that spewed Hazardous chemicals in in East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania state line.
In a letter to Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan Shaw, Shapiro excoriates the railway for acting unilaterally, failing to establish a Unified Command, and creating confusion that resulted in a general lack of awareness for first responders and emergency management of Norfolk Southern’s response.
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The city of Green Bay is doubling down on its legally dubious policy on bugging City Hall, and it appears a lawsuit is in the offing.
In response to a warning letter from the Wisconsin State Senate, Green Bay’s Chief of Operations Joseph Faulds has issued a statement asserting the city will continue its audio surveillance, but it will provide notice about the recording devices.
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An Attorney representing the Wisconsin State Senate sent a letter this week to Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich demanding he immediately disable the audio recording devices planted in city hall. The letter also demands the city destroy all illegally obtained audio recordings.
“This surveillance activity is not only disturbing. It is unlawful,” writes Ryan J. Walsh, the attorney representing the lawmakers.
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Governor Tony Evers is getting pushback again for his latest plan to freeze out Wisconsin’s popular parental school choice program.
The Democrat, as he did in his last budget plan, is proposing to freeze enrollment in schools participating in private school choice program beginning in the 2024-25 school year at 2023-24 levels.
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Former Green Bay City Clerk Kris Teske watched as her election office was effectively taken over by liberal voting activists.
Emails show the clerk growing ever more concerned as the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL) and its network of liberal groups insinuated themselves into Green Bay’s election administration in the days leading up to the hotly contested 2020 presidential election.
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The Iowa Star has learned that an unidentified man threatened to drive his Jeep into the suburban Des Moines venue where Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was holding a rally Saturday evening.
The “scruffy and big” man, according to police incident reports obtained by The Star, “declared that he was god, and stated he would drive his vehicle through the bar doors.”
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U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said ‘maximum transparency” from the Biden administration is critical after the U.S. military shot down yet another unidentified flying object over the weekend — this time near Wisconsin airspace.
The incident marked the fourth aerial vessel struck down over North American airspace since Feb. 4, when U.S. fighter jets liquidated a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
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The longest-serving governor in U.S. history says the Democratic National Committee made a huge mistake in turning its back on Iowa.
Terry Branstad, a Republican who served a record six terms as Iowa governor, tells The Iowa Star the DNC decision to cast aside the Hawkeye State’s preeminent position as host of the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses will prove costly.
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Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake made her second stop in her two-day trip to Iowa with a message to conservatives in the kick-off caucus state: Back candidates who put America and election integrity first.
“First of all, you know who I’m supporting for president,” Lake told some 250 people at a standing-room-only rally at the District Venue in Ankeny, Des Moines’ largest suburb.
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Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy now says his office will review all criminal cases involving the former police officers accused in the brutal beating death of Tyre Nichols.
He may have no other choice.
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As Gov. Tony Evers prepares to introduce his next biennial budget proposal, his administration can’t say how they have allocated a significant portion of the federal COVID aid Evers has nearly complete control over.
And as the governor calls for billions more in education spending, a new report shows there’s a massive amount of federal education aid the state has yet to approve for spending.
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Listening devices have been installed in areas around the Nashville District Attorney’s office, according to news reports. The revelations come as similar recording devices are popping up in other government buildings across the country in what privacy experts say is a troubling trend of citizen monitoring.
District Attorney Glenn Funk’s team did not dispute the findings of a NewsChannel 5 investigation, the news outlet reported.
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Documents from Tennessee’s law enforcement regulatory and training agency are shining more light on the concerning conduct of the former Memphis Police officers involved in the Jan. 7 traffic stop that body cam video shows ended in the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols.
A report filed with the Tennessee Peace Officers Standards and Training (P.O.S.T.) Commission that sought the officers’ decertification includes a statement from Officer Justin Smith, who insists he used departmental training during Nichols’ arrest.
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The BadgersVote initiative “strives to provide University of Wisconsin–Madison students with everything they need to know in order to participate in their elections,” according to organizers. But is the campus-wide “public service” campaign really just a Democratic Party Get-Out-the-Vote effort underwritten by a taxpayer-funded university, a nonprofit research center, and liberal activist groups?
For some, the university-nonprofit partnership feels a lot like the Zuckerbucks scandal of 2020.
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The installation of audio recording devices at Green Bay’s City Hall without the general knowledge of the public is “unsettling,” more than likely illegal and an “egregious breach of privacy,” Green Bay-area lawmakers tell The Wisconsin Daily Star.
“Whether this is sheer incompetence or malevolence, it might be impossible to overstate just how jaw-droopingly brazen a violation of civil rights [this is],” said state Sen. Andre Jacque (R-De Pere.) He added that Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich and other city officials have exposed the city and themselves to “criminal and civil liabilities” for “snooping on citizens.”
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President Joe Biden paid a call on Wisconsin Wednesday, touting job creation and boasting that the Big Government agenda he laid out in this week’s State of the State address will get the nation’s economy humming.
But the president’s cheerleading tour conflicts with the realities on the ground for Badger State businesses dealing with higher prices, supply chain issues and labor shortages.
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While he made time to attack Republicans during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden failed to note his handling of the Chinese spy balloon affair. A new poll might just explain why the Democrat avoided the topic.
More than 63 percent of voters say they disapprove of the Biden administration’s handling of the spy balloon episode, according to the poll conducted by The Trafalgar Group for Convention of States Action.
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A Tennessee Republican lawmaker is pushing another bill that would give illegal immigrants a taxpayer-funded break on college tuition — a move, according to one immigration reform advocate, that sends the message that the Volunteer State is turning a blind eye to the law.
State Senator Todd Gardenhire’s (R-Chattanooga) bill is being sold as an inducement to deal with Tennessee’s teacher shortage.
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One of the former Memphis Police officers charged in last month’s brutal beating death of Tyre Nichols used his personal smartphone to take photos of the handcuffed and bloodied black man, according to records released on Tuesday.
The latest revelations shine the spotlight back on rumors being investigated by The Tennessee Star that Officer Demetrius Haley and his fellow Scorpion Unit law enforcement colleagues were targeting Nichols because of a relationship he allegedly had with Haley’s ex-wife.
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Records obtained by The Star News Network show Green Bay city officials installed at least three audio recording devices in City Hall — without notifying the City Council or the public.
Alderman Chris Wery, who represents Green Bay’s 8th District, described the secret recordings as the kind of “Big Brother stuff” found in a George Orwell novel.
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Demanding that the Biden administration “trust the science,” U.S. Reps. Tom Tiffany (R-WI-07) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO-03) are reintroducing a bill calling on the re-populated gray wolf to be removed from the Endangered Species List.
The Trust the Science Act also would require wolf populations to be managed by states, not by “one-size-fits-all” federal government regulations.
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The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project has again asked for all governors to proclaim Feb 6. Ronald Reagan Day in honor of the 40th president’s birthday. Once again, Gov. Tony Evers has refused to do so.
The liberal governor, however, has been glad to issue all manner of proclamations celebrating everything from Tamil Language and Heritage Month to Transgender Day of Remembrance.
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A long-time Memphis law enforcement source tells The Tennessee Star rumors about guards at the Shelby County Division of Corrections being involved in street gangs have been circulating for years, although he knows of no correction officer implicated such a crime.
“There have always been rumors about that, but they’ve never been substantiated that I know of,” the official with knowledge of the Shelby County criminal justice system told The Star. “The joke in Memphis criminal justice has long been the jailers are one step ahead of being in jail themselves.”
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Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, chair of the House’s new committee on China, warns that a Chinese spy balloon spotted over U.S. airspace this week is the latest proof of the threat the People’s Republic of China poses at home.
And it won’t be the last time the communist nation attempts to mock and embarrass the United States under the Biden administration’s weak foreign policy, says Gallagher (R-WI-08).
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A former Memphis law enforcement agent who says he worked patrol with two of the officers accused in the brutal beating death of Tyre Nichols took to TikTok to blast the officers’ conduct.
Brandon Williams, who now lives in Dallas, says he was an officer with the Memphis Police Department between 2016 and 2021.
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The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision last year ending federalized protections for abortion under Roe v. Wade hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from promoting abortion abroad.
A group of Republican senators is reintroducing a bill that would permanently enact and expand existing prohibitions on the use of U.S. foreign assistance to pay for the performance or promotion of abortion services overseas.
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Nearly half of the University of Wisconsin System students who responded believe administrators should ban the expression of views that some students feel cause harm to certain groups of people, according to an extensive survey on campus freedom of speech released Wednesday.
Some 68 percent of those surveyed say students should report an instructor who says something in class deemed harmful to certain groups.
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Investigators are looking into a rumored connection between Tyre Nichols and the wife of one of the former officer charged in his murder, the Shelby County District Attorney’s office now tells Newsweek.
The revelation comes after a Memphis Police Department spokeswoman told The Tennessee Star there was no evidence to support rumors of Nichols’ involvement with the wife of ex-cop Demetrius Haley.
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The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s Delaware beach home Wednesday amid the 46th president’s ongoing documents scandal.
FBI officials said the search uncovered no new classified documents, but government watchdogs are calling on the Justice Department to widen its net amid concerns the Biden administration has been less than forthright about the records quest thus far.
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In his state of the state address last month, Gov. Tony Evers boasted about Wisconsin’s low unemployment rate. What the Democrat failed to mention is Wisconsin’s dismal labor participation rate, a number that underscores one of the biggest economic challenges facing Badger State businesses.
“Our labor force participation rate is worse today than it was at the bottom point of COVID when our economy was shut down,” said Scott Manley, Executive Vice President of Government Relations for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.
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Facing allegations of a cover-up, the city of Memphis says it will release all audio and video recordings in the deadly Tyre Nichols traffic stop.
“The City is preparing to release these recordings publicly upon completion of the administrative investigation, which is expected to occur in the next few weeks,” Jennifer Sink, Chief Legal Officer for the city of Memphis, said in a statement. “
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A new federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) rule on pistols with stabllizing braces faces a Second Amendment lawsuit filed on behalf of disabled veterans.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) filed the complaint Tuesday in the U.S. Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division.
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On January 15, the Memphis Police Department issued a statement on its “internal investigation” into the death of Tyre Nichols — five days after the 29-year-old black man died. MPD said it “was important to take swift and deliberate action to maintain transparency, accountability, public trust, and legitimacy amongst our community.”
But the troubled police department has had a host of transparency troubles surrounding the brutal beating of Nichols at the hands of five black police officers – and a history of closed government offenses.
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The video showing five Memphis Police officers brutally beating Tyre Nichols following a traffic stop appears to be the latest example of a law enforcement agency known for police misconduct and corruption.
While the Mississippi River city has been working to clean up its dirty reputation, Memphis has long struggled with issues of police brutality and criminal cops.
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Protesters gathered in Milwaukee over the weekend to condemn police brutality following the release of video showing the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols by Memphis Police officers.
Unlike the scenes of looting, violence and whole city blocks in flame that accompanied the anti-police protests during the long, hot summer of 2020, the demonstrations in Milwaukee and elsewhere were mostly peaceful.
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A Wisconsin resident has filed an ethics complaint with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission alleging Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice candidate Janet Protasiewicz violated the state Code of Judicial Conduct
Randall R. Cook, a citizen and GOP supporter from Barron County, filed the complaint Monday asserting that the Milwaukee County judge has “announced how she will rule on issues that will likely come before the Supreme Court, such as abortion and the constitutionality of Wisconsin’s legislative maps.”
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The fiscal hawks are sticking to their guns.
On Friday, Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and J.D. Vance (R-OH) joined 22 of their fellow Republican senators in a letter warning President Joe Biden that they will not vote for increasing the debt ceiling without structural reforms to the federal government’s budget and debt problems.
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A Milwaukee County Supervisor has resigned under a cloud of misconduct in office allegations.
Supervisor Dyango Zerpa, who represents the county’s 14th District, is leaving to “pursue other opportunities,” his attorney Michael Maistelman told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Maistelman did not return a call from The Star News Network seeking comment.
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The national left is all in on Wisconsin’s crucial Supreme Court race, a contest that will not only determine whether conservatives or liberals control the high court, but the fate of Gov. Tony Evers’ liberal agenda and, possibly, the 2024 presidential election.
Conservative Supreme Court candidate Daniel Kelly, a former justice on the court, says the race is about the very survival of the constitution and the rule of law.
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In a show of pro-life solidarity, 47 Republican U.S. senators are re-introducing a bill that would establish a permanent prohibition on federal funding for abortion, replacing the current restrictions with a single, government-wide standard.
The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, the lawmakers say, attempts to clean up inconsistent and haphazard policies that have regulated federal funding for abortion.
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Fiscal hawks in the Senate reiterated their demands for fiscal reforms and spending cuts Tuesday as they voiced their support for House Republicans to lead the heavy-lifting on addressing the nation’s debt ceiling crisis.
“We have an opportunity to stop the madness, and it’s incumbent on the Republican majority in the House and Republicans in the Senate to use every lever point we have,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) at a press conference on the debt ceiling and runaway spending.
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On this National School Choice Week, a new study by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty shows parental choice programs continuing to outperform public schools, particularly in the state’s largest city.
“Apples to Apples: Accessing Wisconsin State of Education”, accesses Badger State educational performance across public, charter, and private voucher schools.
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Looking to improve transparency and efficiency at the state’s troubled Parole Commission, state Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) has released the “Parole Transparency Act.” The bill, according to Wanggaard, aims to ensure victims can be involved in and informed about the parole process.
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In his fifth State of the State address Tuesday evening, Gov. Tony Evers began laying out how he plans to use Wisconsin’s $6.6 billion surplus, pitching a spending bender of big government initiatives already with a price tag to date of around $1.3 billion. But there’s more to come. Evers is still constructing his biennial budget plan, set for release in a few weeks.
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Last week, a woman was filling up her vehicle at a convenience store in the 2700 block of Madison’s E. Washington Avenue when a “man pointed a gun at her face and demanded she give him the keys,” according to the Madison Police Department incident report.
A man.
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After Gov. Tony Evers finally relented and ordered TikTok banned from state government devices, Wisconsin’s Republican congressional delegation asked University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman to follow suit. A UW System spokesman on Wednesday said the schools will follow part of the lawmakers’ request and restrict TikTok from UW System-owned devices.
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The organizers of a Milwaukee-area event on the dangers of woke indoctrination say they’re working with local law enforcement after receiving a number of threats.
Meanwhile, a theater in suburban Chicago has canceled a “reforming sex education” event after reportedly being bombarded with threats.
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