Wisconsin
Here are Wisconsin Watch's top 10 most read fact briefs
Reading Time: 4 minutes
On Sept. 24, 2022, Wisconsin Watch published its first fact brief. It marked a new partnership with Gigafact, a nonprofit network of nonpartisan local, regional and expert newsrooms that fact-check and verify influential claims circulating online.
In the two years since, our more than 500 fact briefs stand out from other fact-checking efforts. We tackle questions that can be answered yes or no, and each brief is limited to 150 words.
Politicians and other news outlets have pointed to our fact briefs as an authoritative check on misinformation being injected into the public discourse. Online readership has spiked for relevant fact briefs during this summer’s political conventions and two presidential debates.
Bill Adair, founder of PolitiFact and author of “Beyond the Big Lie,” has spoken highly of Gigafact.
“In the years that we’ve been studying the rise of misinformation, we’ve realized there simply aren’t enough fact-checks to counter all the falsehoods,” Adair said. “Gigafact is addressing this head-on with a wonderfully simple approach that should yield a dramatic increase in fact checks.”
At Wisconsin Watch, we can report that Adair’s prediction turned out to be true. Fact briefs have been some of the most widely read articles that Wisconsin Watch has produced.
Here in reverse order is a countdown of our top 10 most read fact briefs.
10. No, Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz as a Milwaukee County judge did not release Darrell Brooks on bail before his deadly Waukesha Christmas Parade attack.
Milwaukee County Court Commissioner Cedric Cornwall approved Brooks’ release on $1,000 bail on Nov. 5, 2021.
On Nov. 21, 2021, Brooks drove a Ford Escape through the parade. The attack left six people dead and injured more than 60.
The claim about Protasiewicz was made during the campaign leading up to her election to the Supreme Court in April 2023.
9. No, Wisconsin’s constitution does not “clearly” say the Wisconsin Supreme Court chief justice administers the Supreme Court.
Wisconsin’s constitution says: “The chief justice of the Supreme Court shall be the administrative head of the judicial system and shall exercise this administrative authority,” but adds “pursuant to procedures adopted by the Supreme Court.”
8. Yes, you can collect unemployment in Wisconsin if you get fired.
It depends on the circumstances. Employees may not receive unemployment benefits if they get fired for “violating reasonable requirements of the employer.”
7. No, a law Tim Walz signed does not allow a child to be taken away from parents who don’t consent to “sex changes.”
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance of Ohio made the claim while campaigning in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Walz, the Minnesota governor and 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate, signed legislation allowing Minnesota courts to take temporary jurisdiction in a child custody dispute between parents in another state if one wants a child to obtain “gender-affirming care” in Minnesota.
The law does not change when the state can take custody away from parents or enable the state to take away custody in connection with such care.
6. No, “just about every law enforcement agency in the country” had not endorsed Donald Trump for president in early 2024.
Former President Donald Trump made the claim in an April 2024 Milwaukee radio interview.
As of early that month, few law enforcement organizations had announced endorsements in the 2024 presidential election.
Police unions — not law enforcement agencies such as police or sheriff’s departments — endorse candidates.
In early September, the Fraternal Order of Police, the country’s largest lobbying organization representing more than 350,000 law enforcement officers, endorsed Trump. In response, about 100 law enforcement officials endorsed Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
5. Yes, Donald Trump suggested rules in the U.S. Constitution could be terminated in response to election fraud.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made the claim during a 2023 Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, drawing attention to Trump’s false claim.
Trump said in a 2022 social media post: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
4. Yes, individuals under age 21 can legally drink alcohol in a bar in Wisconsin if they are with a parent.
Wisconsin’s legal drinking age is 21, but people under 21 can legally drink alcoholic beverages in establishments such as taverns and restaurants if they are with their parents, guardians or spouses of legal drinking age.
However, establishments can refuse to serve underage people.
3. No, Tim Walz didn’t sign legislation requiring female hygiene products to be installed in boys’ bathrooms.
Walz signed a Minnesota law requiring public schools to provide free menstrual products to “all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12 according to a plan developed by the school district.”
The Minnesota Education Department told Wisconsin Watch: “Each school district should have its own plan to comply with the legislation. (The department) has not directed schools to provide these products in boys’ bathrooms.” Some schools have stocked them in unisex bathrooms instead.
2. No, the U.S. has not “lost” seven embassies during Joe Biden’s presidency, the most under any president.
U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., made the claim about embassies, the official headquarters for U.S. diplomats and government representatives serving in foreign countries, at the 2024 Wisconsin Republican Party convention.
Under Biden, three U.S. embassies — in Afghanistan, Belarus and Sudan — suspended and have not resumed operations, each following unrest in those countries.
1. Yes, the U.S. debt increased by $7.8 trillion during Trump’s presidency
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made the attack in an interview with the conservative Wisconsin Right Now website as he was competing with Trump and others for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
The federal debt was $27.8 trillion when Trump left office, $7.8 trillion higher than when he entered.
The debt — borrowing done when the government spends more than it takes in — is a result of decisions made by a president and Congress during a president’s term, but also by decisions made by previous presidents and Congresses.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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(WLUK) — Wisconsin State Patrol troopers are teaming up with truckers to better spot dangerous driving behaviors.
The annual Trooper in a Truck initiative kicks off next week in Wisconsin.
Troopers will ride along with with semitruck and bus drivers to use the higher vantage point to spot dangerous driving behaviors, especially near commercial motor vehicles.
Troopers will be looking for risky driving behaviors, including distracted driving, speeding, following too closely and seatbelt violations. When an officer identifies a violation from the truck or bus, they will radio to patrol cars in the area for appropriate enforcement action.
Drivers can expect to see Trooper in a Truck enforcement in the following areas:
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- Monday, July 13: Eau Claire
- Tuesday, July 14: Waukesha
- Wednesday, July 15: Madison
- Thursday, July 16: Green Bay
- Friday, July 17: Wausau
New Wisconsin athletic director Shawn Eichorst, who spent the last eight years at Texas, believes his new and old schools have much in common.
Both are well-regarded research universities in state capitals that belong to major conferences and have relatively similar enrollments.
He also pointed out one difference.
“There’s swag at Texas, right?” Eichorst said Tuesday during his introductory news conference. “There’s 30 million people in Texas. We’ve got swag, too, but we have a little humility with that deal. We need to get our shoulders up. We need to feel good about what it is that we’re doing.”
Wisconsin could gain more of that Texas swagger if its football program gets back to winning the way it did the last time Eichorst was employed in Madison. Eichorst, who most recently worked as a deputy athletic director at Texas, received a five-year deal worth $1.6 million annually, with provisions for increases and incentives. He was hired 2½ months after Chris McIntosh left to become the Big Ten’s deputy commissioner for strategy.
Eichorst worked at Wisconsin from 2006-11 when Barry Alvarez was AD and Bret Bielema was leading the football program. He followed that up with stints as an athletic director at Miami (2011-12) and Nebraska (2012-17) before Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte hired him in 2018.
He returns to Wisconsin with the Badgers coming off back-to-back losing seasons in football, a notable fall for a program that had 22 straight winning seasons from 2002-23. Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell has gone 17-21 after posting a 53-10 record with one College Football Playoff appearance in his last five years at Cincinnati.
Eichorst hasn’t worked with Fickell before but said he’s encouraged by their initial conversations.
“Obviously he’s won every place he’s been,” Eichorst said. “My expectation is more of me than him, meaning I need to pour into him, learn more about his program, how he has things set up, how his athletes are taken care of, how we’re supporting that endeavor. And then we can figure out, as we move along, what that might look like.”
Football struggles led to Eichorst’s downfall the last time he was an athletic director.
He fired Nebraska coach Bo Pelini in 2014 and hired Mike Riley, who had gone 93-80 in 14 seasons at Oregon State. Eichorst was dismissed shortly after Nebraska suffered an early-season loss to Northern Illinois in 2017. Riley was fired at the end of that season after going 19-19 in three years.
When Eichorst’s hiring was announced last week, he spoke about how much he had grown from that Nebraska stint. Wisconsin interim chancellor Eric Wilcots led the search and has emphasized Eichorst’s accomplishments at Texas, which has won the Learfield Directors’ Cup all-sports standings five times in the last six years.
Texas ranked anywhere from fifth to ninth in the Directors’ Cup standings in the five years before Wilcots’ arrival. Texas’ football team went a combined 23-27 from 2014-17 but has made two College Football Playoff appearances in the last three years.
“Everybody looks at the end result of what we did at Texas,” Eichorst said. “When we got there in 2018, we weren’t very good in a lot of areas. And that didn’t change overnight.”
Eichorst said one thing that has caught his attention about Wisconsin is the overall quality of its head coaches.
“You’re going to be as good as your coaches,” Eichorst said. “That’s it. If you have an elite group of coaches who are working together and uniting and galvanizing and learning from one another and taking it out to their individual programs, I think you can start to build something special. I go back to Texas. We built a room of really elite head coaches and put them at the top of everything we did to help guide us.”
Eichorst said this job is particularly important to him because of his Wisconsin roots. He was born in Lone Rock, about 45 miles northwest of the Madison campus.
He treasured his previous stint at Wisconsin and says he believes this school “represents everything that is great about higher education and college athletics.”
“Nobody will work harder for Wisconsin athletics,” Eichorst said. “I love this state, and I love everything that it represents. The passion is there. You can see it. I don’t have to make it up. I’ve lived it. It’s in my heart.”
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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports
Wisconsin
South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, officials in standoff with homeowner over year-round skeleton display
The city of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has ordered a homeowner to take down his year-round giant skeleton display or face fines, but the homeowner is standing firm and refusing, even as the deadline to remove the display has passed.
Now there’s a skeleton standoff.
The city cited ordinance violations in their order for Sean Oster to dismantle the lawn decorations. The notice specifically references “large Halloween decorations being displayed not during the appropriate time of year.”
Oster was also ordered to make other improvements to his property.
But Oster has refused to take down the display, which is re-dressed as the year goes on and is currently sporting a Fourth of July theme. The Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, has come to his aid, saying the city’s actions violate Oster’s First Amendment rights.
City administrators declined to comment, citing a pending investigation. Neighbors have been divided by the display; some say they’re fine with it, and think it brings fun and positivity to the neighborhood, but some others want to see it removed and say the lawn should be kept up better and more consistently.
Oster said he’s hoping to reach an agreement with the city, and said he’s corrected all other violations outside of the display.
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