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In Wisconsin, rare bipartisanship to ease path to the polls

Wisconsin has taken a small but symbolically resonant step to speed access to the voting booth, thanks to some rare bipartisanship by a state election regulatory agency.

At a time when efforts to purge the voter rolls have made headlines in several politically red states, purple Wisconsin is going the other way in time for 2020, when its 12 electoral votes will be intensely contested. President Trump carried the state by a scant 22,000 votes last time, the first GOP nominee to win there in eight elections.


All six members of the state Elections Commission – two Republicans, two Democrats and two independents – voted Tuesday to make it more difficult to cull the roster of voters. People who appear to have moved within the state will now have as long as two years to update their registrations.

Until now, the deadline was only one month. And before the 2018 midterm election, elections officials applied that rule by sending postcards to 308,000 voters – 11 percent of the entire registration list—saying state records indicated they had moved and so their franchise was being deactivated.

The decision caused long delays at some polling places, with reports of hundreds who'd recently moved deciding to give up rather than wait to file a new voter registration. (Wisconsin is among the 18 states that permit people to register on Election Day.)

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A person in a military uniform holding a gavel.

As the Trump administration redefines “Warrior Ethos,” U.S. military leaders face a crucial test: defend democracy or follow unlawful orders.

Getty Images, Liudmila Chernetska

Warrior Ethos or Rule of Law? The Military’s Defining Moment

Does Secretary Hegseth’s extraordinary summoning of hundreds of U.S. command generals and admirals to a Sept. 30 meeting and the repugnant reinstatement of Medals of Honor to 20 participants in the infamous 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre—in which 300 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children were killed—foreshadow the imposition of a twisted approach to U.S. “Warrior Ethos”? Should military leaders accept an ethos that ignores the rule of law?

Active duty and retired officers must trumpet a resounding: NO, that is not acceptable. And, we civilians must realize the stakes and join them.

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Yes, They Are Trying To Kill Us
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Yes, They Are Trying To Kill Us

In the rush to “dismantle the administrative state,” some insist that freeing people from “burdensome bureaucracy” will unleash thriving. Will it? Let’s look together.

A century ago, bureaucracy was minimal. The 1920s followed a worldwide pandemic that killed an estimated 17.4–50 million people. While the virus spread, the Great War raged; we can still picture the dehumanizing use of mustard gas and trench warfare. When the war ended, the Roaring Twenties erupted as an antidote to grief. Despite Prohibition, life was a party—until the crash of 1929. The 1930s opened with a global depression, record joblessness, homelessness, and hunger. Despair spread faster than the pandemic had.

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