Ruth Conniff, Wisconsin Examiner

Outrage as Wisconsin Republican fans the flames following Kirk murder

Fruitless thoughts and prayers. Familiar calls for de-escalating toxic partisanship. Promises to do something about the teen mental health crisis, violent video games, the epidemic of alienation and hopelessness. By now we are all accustomed to the ritual reactions to routine incidents of horrific gun violence that plague our country like no other wealthy nation on Earth, where firearms are the leading cause of death for children.

But if the usual, feckless responses to gun violence are maddening in a country that can’t get its act together to pass even marginal, commonsense gun safety measures, the reaction of Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden to the hideous assassination of rightwing provocateur Charlie Kirk this week was downright reprehensible.

As soon as the news broke that Kirk was shot while on stage at Utah Valley University, Van Orden began a stream of increasingly unhinged social media posts blaming Democrats and the media for the murder and declaring “the gloves are off.”

“The leftwing political violence must stop now,” Van Orden tweeted. In another post he wrote, “The left and their policies are leading America into a civil war. And they want it. Just like the democrat party wanted our 1st civil war.”

Contrast that with the statements from other Wisconsin politicians.

Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said, “there is no two ways about this: political violence has no place in America. I am keeping Charlie and his family in my thoughts in this truly horrifying moment.”

Van Orden’s fellow Wisconsin Republican, U.S. Rep. Tony Wied said, “There is absolutely zero place for political violence in our country.”

“Violence against anyone because of their political beliefs is wrong. Violence against others is wrong,” Gov. Tony Evers said. “Violence is never the answer for resolving our differences or disagreements. Wisconsin joins in praying for Charlie Kirk and the Utah Valley community and first responders.”

None of those statements mollified Van Orden, who told reporters in the U.S. Capitol that “every one of you” is responsible for Kirk’s death.

Reposting a news clip of Democratic Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who called for the nation to de-escalate political violence and come together, Van Orden wrote, “Too late. You have sown the wind.”

“I am not sure they understand what they have done,” Van Orden ranted. “They missed in Butler, but it is on now.”

Never mind that in Butler, Pennsylvania, the would-be assassin who targeted President Donald Trump was a registered Republican. Or that, as Van Orden spewed accusations against Democrats and journalists, the identity of the shooter who targeted Charlie Kirk was still unknown. When a reporter pointed that out to Van Orden, he replied, “You know what? Knock it off.”

Actually, it’s Van Orden who needs to knock it off.

Seizing on political violence to try to stoke more political violence is as dangerous as it is disgusting.

Far from recognizing the human tragedy for all of us as our country descends into this nightmare, Van Orden capitalizes on murder, whether the victims are liberals or conservatives, imposing the same crude narrative about a war with violent leftists every time.

After the horrible double murder of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, Van Orden falsely characterized the suspected shooter, a right-wing religious fanatic whose list of intended targets included Democrats and abortion providers, as an anti-Trump protester who “decided to murder and attempt to murder some politicians that were not far Left enough for them.”

He seems to revel in the prospect of more violence. Unfortunately, his tone is matched by Trump, who issued his own threatening statement, politicizing the attack and claiming that it is part of a pattern of leftwing attacks on conservatives. “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now,” Trump said. “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence.”

Of course, it is Trump who has a long history of inviting political violence against Democrats and members of the press. Van Orden is copying him by escalating that rhetoric in Wisconsin.

Online, Van Orden’s belligerent posts got mixed reviews. Some people demanded that he explain what he means when he says “the gloves are off,” condemning him for encouraging hooliganism. “So you plan on using this to start Civil War II?” one person posted. “You don’t think things through before you say them.

You people fantasize about killing your fellow Americans like it’s a full-time job.”

Others celebrated his statements. “No other way to fix it at this point,” one of Van Orden’s followers replied to his post. “We need a 2-3 day national purge. We do business with whatever is left of the left.” Appended to the comment was a GIF celebrating Kyle Rittenhouse for shooting Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha.

It’s unlikely that Van Orden, who has been unwilling to face his own constituents at an in-person town hall will actually lead the violent attacks against his fellow Americans he fantasizes about online. But feeding that violent fantasy is clearly inspiring for some people. And that’s exactly why it’s got to stop.

This swing state's spring elections are a test of MAGA's nihilism

Wisconsinites voted for Donald Trump by a narrow margin in November. Does that mean a majority of voters here want to cancel farmers’ federal contracts, shut down Head Start centers across the state and turn loose Elon Musk to feed federal agencies into the woodchipper while hoovering up private citizens’ financial information?

The new Trump era is putting Republican nihilism to the test. In our closely divided swing state, the first official indication of whether Trump voters are developing buyers’ remorse will come, fittingly, on April Fool’s Day.

In the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, candidate Brad Schimel has received Elon Musk’s endorsement and is benefitting from a huge ad buy by Musk’s political action committee. And while some Republicans have expressed qualms about Trump and Musk’s assertions that they have unchecked power to ride roughshod over judges and the U.S. Constitution, Schimel has, notably, sided with Trump and Musk against the courts.

Last month, Schimel took to Vicki McKenna’s rightwing talk radio show to denounce the prosecution and sentencing of the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol after Trump lost in 2020, saying juries in Washington, D.C., were too liberal to deliver a fair verdict. Recently, on the same talk radio program, he criticized federal judges for blocking the ransacking of federal agencies by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), accusing the judges of “acting corruptly” by daring to issue temporary restraining orders.

The race between Schimel and Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford will determine the ideological balance of the Court and, it seems, whether a majority of justices believe in the integrity of the court system at all.

Also on the April 1 ballot is the race for state schools superintendent, which pits a lobbyist for the private school voucher industry against a defender of public schools — an existential choice as the growth of schools vouchers is on track to bankrupt our state’s public school system and enrollment caps on voucher programs are set to come off next year.

The ideological struggle over the future of our state was on stark display this week as Gov. Tony Evers presented his budget plan — an expansive vision that uses the state surplus to boost funding for K-12 schools and the University of Wisconsin, health care, clean water and rural infrastructure, and leaves a cushion to help protect communities against what Evers called the “needless chaos caused by the federal government” under Trump.

In a familiar ritual, Republican legislators immediately shot down Evers’ plan, denounced it as “reckless spending” and promised to throw it in the trash and replace it with a stripped-down alternative based on austerity and tax cuts.

“Wisconsin voted for Donald Trump and his agenda to cut spending and find inefficiency in government,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos declared.

But did they?

It’s not clear that most Wisconsinites wanted what Trump and Musk are delivering — cuts to health care and veterans’ services, the claw-back of infrastructure projects, mass firings at the park service and the chaotic suspension of promised federal funds for child care and other essential services in Wisconsin.

For generations, Republicans have complained about “red tape” and “big government” and promised “freedom” and lower taxes to constituents who liked the sound of all that. Under Trump, we are seeing anti-government ideology reach its full, unchecked fruition. Trump’s No. 1 private donor, the richest man in the world, is laughing all the way to the bank. He’s using his access to trillions of dollars in taxpayer funds to cancel food programs for poor children and to bolster federal contracts that enrich himself.

This, in the end, is what privatization is all about — taking the collective wealth of millions of people who contribute to maintaining a decent, healthy society and concentrating it in the hands of one very rich, self-interested man.

The long-term, existential struggle between private wealth and the public good in Wisconsin includes the fight over whether to fund public schools or give away money to subsidize the tuition of private school families. It includes whether to be the second-to-last state to finally offer 12 months of postpartum Medicaid coverage to new mothers — something even our Republican legislators support, minus Vos. The two sides of our divided government are locked in a battle over whether our universities, public parks, infrastructure, clean water and affordable housing are a boondoggle or something we ought to protect.

Given what’s happening to our country, Wisconsinites will have to think hard about which side they’re on.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.

CNN hosted a fact-free debate — and the losers are voters

Well, that was awful.

I think I speak for millions of citizens who would rather not live under a deranged dictator when I say that watching the first presidential debate was an agonizing experience.

Biden fulfilled the caricature of a dodderer who lacks vigor and mental acuity, speaking in a weak voice, coughing, mixing up names and giving answers that devolved into jumbled word salad. At one point he inexplicably abandoned what should be his strongest subject (the rollback of abortion rights) to dwell on crimes committed by immigrants — serving up red meat for Trump, who was delighted to pounce on his favorite false narrative that Biden has facilitated a massive influx of violent criminals pouring across the southern border.

Los Angeles humor writer Drew Janda summed it up well on X:

“Biden: look, the fact is, we can’t… we don’t… look. Here’s the deal. And this is no foolin’.

Trump: there are ten billion Guatemalans attacking the Lincoln Memorial right now.”

Trump lied fluidly. Politifact’s live fact-checkers went into overdrive trying to keep up with all the falsehoods he spewed.

But the absolute worst performance of the night came from CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who gave Trump a complete pass on all those whoppers.

When Trump claimed that “every reasonable anchor” has debunked the story that there was a riot by violent white supremacists in Charlottesville, anchor Jake Tapper said only, “Thank you, President Trump” and moved on.

The moderators gave the same response when Trump said that the federal government was behind his felony convictions in the New York hush money trial — a state-level prosecution in state court that had no connection to the Biden administration or federal prosecutors.

They gave the same response to Trump’s preposterous claim that “everybody wanted” Roe v. Wade overturned and that before it was overturned, Democrats were allowing “after-birth” abortions.

Trump also lied repeatedly about sanctioning the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, saying that he had nothing to do with it and that he tried to send in 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol. The violence committed by his supporters was all Nancy Pelosi’s fault, he said, because she didn’t accept his offer of help, and, he added, she has admitted as much in a documentary film.

As Politifact’s fact-checkers explained, it’s a lie Trump has rehearsed many times: “This remains False. In a brief video, Pelosi said, ‘I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more,’ referring to U.S. Capitol security, not the National Guard. No member of Congress has the authority to activate the District of Columbia National Guard. Only the president, defense secretary and U.S. Army secretary do. Records show that Pelosi approved a Jan. 6, 2021, request to seek support from the National Guard and pushed to get National Guard troops to the U.S. Capitol when their deployment was delayed by hours that day.”

Those examples barely scratch the surface of the nonstop 90 minutes of lies spewed by Trump — about the economy (which was far from “the greatest in history” in the Trump administration — wages and GDP went down), jobs numbers (which have improved dramatically under Biden), the spike in border crossings (which started on Trump’s watch, not Biden’s), crime (which has gone down, not up, under Biden) and the “pants on fire” claim that “millions of immigrants” have come to the U.S. illegally from “jails, from prisons, from insane asylums, from mental institutions.” Giving Trump a platform to spread hate and lies and providing no check whatsoever was a gross dereliction of journalistic duty by CNN.

As much as the debate worried Democrats and progressives, who watched a glib, invigorated Trump appear to chew up a wan-looking Biden, that impression was made much, much worse by a journalistic outlet that let Trump lie and get away with it.

Biden got in a few good jabs. “I’ve never heard a president talk like this before,” he said, pointing out how Trump has disparaged U.S. veterans, called the U.S. a country in decline and pledged to use the power of the federal government to go after his political enemies.

Biden spoke honestly, if softly. But it should have fallen to the moderators to hold the candidates accountable.

If the press can’t do that now, as a convicted felon runs for the presidency, soon it will be too late.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and X.

How lawless MAGA Republicans are trying to overthrow democracy

These are not normal times. Still, as Will Bunch observed in a powerful column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, out of force of habit, laziness or just plain denial, a lot of journalists continue to treat the Republican presidential contest as if it were a regular political event instead of the lawless authoritarian movement it really is.

The Republican party has been hijacked by Donald Trump. His enablers here in Wisconsin are part of a destructive cabal that is undermining democratic institutions and the rule of law.

That’s the context around Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Annette Ziegler’s denunciation of the “rogue lawlessness” of the new liberal court majority for daring to set procedural rules.

Ziegler’s claim that the court’s 4-3 liberal majority has staged a “coup” and conducted an “illegal experiment” by choosing a new administrator of state courts and changing some procedural rules is demonstrably false. In a calm, clear email response grounded in reality and the Wisconsin Constitution, Justice Rebecca Dallet explains why Ziegler is wrong.

The Wisconsin Constitution clearly states that a four-person quorum of justices constitutes a majority for the conduct of the court’s business, including setting internal operating procedures. The chief justice exercises “administrative authority pursuant to procedures adopted by the supreme court.”

Ziegler doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

From one angle, this looks like a tempest in a teapot. Dueling late-August memos about internal court procedures don’t generally rise to the level of headline news.

But the battle for control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court by a right-wing minority that lost its power in the recent spring election is part of a bigger plot by MAGA Republicans to flout the will of the voters and entrench minority rule

Take this week’s seemingly unrelated AP story about the right-wing groups preparing to gut the federal government if they succeed in getting Trump reelected. Project 25, funded by the Heritage Foundation and fueled by former Trump administration officials, “is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s second term,” AP reports. The idea is to “gut the ‘administrative state’ from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing.”

The Project 25 handbook includes a suggested purge of tens of thousands of federal employees, replacing civil service jobs with patronage positions, stopping the FBI from working to curb the spread of misinformation and stepped-up prosecution of anyone who helps provide abortion pills by mail. It’s scary stuff.

Anti-government rhetoric has been a Republican staple for decades. But the willingness to spread lies, destroy democratic institutions and subvert elections to hold onto power is something new.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has threatened to launch impeachment proceedings against Justice Janet Protasieiwicz unless she recuses herself from a challenge to the Republicans’ gerrymandered voting maps. By stating the truth during her campaign that the current maps are “rigged” to give Republicans a disproportionate legislative majority — an observable fact with which a federal court, a majority of Wisconsin voters and even Vos himself have agreed — Protasiewicz opens herself up to “corruption” charges if she doesn’t disqualify herself, Vos says.

The impeachment threat, like the caterwauling by the Chief Justice, is absurd. The judicial branch, as a coequal branch of government, has its own recusal rules. Those rules do not require justices to recuse themselves from cases because of remarks they made during a campaign. If the Legislature intervenes and impeaches a justice who follows the rules, it violates the separation of powers among the branches of government. But the emboldened right-wing majority in the Assembly might give it a try anyway, as The Washington Post reports, in order to set up a process by which the Republicans can block a gerrymandering lawsuit that could diminish their power. The point would not be to convict Protasiewicz of anything, just to gum up the workings of the Court long enough to slow down a challenge to the gerrymandered map.

A successful impeachment vote in the Assembly would force a justice to stop hearing or weighing in on cases until the Senate holds a vote on removal from office. Given the Senate’s track record of delaying confirmation hearings for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ nominees, it’s easy to foresee the foot-dragging that would ensue, at least until the 2024 election is over.

Stop calling them ‘conservatives’

On the same day the dueling memos between the new Wisconsin Supreme Court majority and the power-grabbing right-wing minority came out, the Senate held a public hearing on whether or not Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe should be allowed to continue in her job. The hearing went forward against the advice of legislative attorneys and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, who have held that the Senate does not have the power to remove Wolfe. It featured MAGA cult members Michael Gableman, who was fired as head of the Legislature’s bumbling “investigation” of the 2020 election, and Racine County election conspiracy theorist Harry Wait, who is facing criminal charges for making fraudulent absentee ballot requests.

One thing Gableman, Wait and Chief Justice Ziegler all have in common is that they supported Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election results in Wisconsin. Had a lone conservative on the court, Brian Hagedorn, not voted with the liberal minority, Trump’s challenge would have been upheld.

Ziegler joined team MAGA — and very nearly made the Wisconsin Supreme Court the only forum in the nation to allow Trump’s spurious challenge to the election results to move forward.

Let’s stop calling these people “conservatives.” The Republican Party has devolved into a cult of personality, working to install a strongman in the White House who has been charged with 91 felonies and who could easily be convicted and sentenced before the 2024 Republican convention in Milwaukee. It’s a real possibility that Trump could deliver his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination from prison.

Wisconsin is going to play a key role in the next election, and defending democracy and justice in this state is going to be critical to preventing our country’s slide authoritarianism.

To protect the elected majority on the state’s highest court, theoretically, Protasiewicz could seek an injunction against the Legislature and prevent them from impeaching her in violation of her free speech rights.

In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court held in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White that the First Amendment protects the rights of candidates for judicial election to announce their views on disputed legal and political issues. The opinion written by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia,

Time is of the essence, though. That lawsuit would have to be filed promptly to head off the Legislature’s impeachment delaying tactic.

Another possibility is that Protasiewicz, if impeached by the Assembly, could resign. Then Democratic Gov. Evers could appoint another justice to take her place. Evers could choose someone like former Democratic Rep. Chris Taylor or progressive Judge Everett Mitchell. The new appointee would finish out Protasiewicz’s term, which runs until 2027. Protasiewicz could then run against MAGA Justice Rebecca Bradely in 2026. Given the outcome of recent Wisconsin Supreme Court races, it seems likely she’s win again.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Department of Justice should file charges against Wisconsin’s fake electors – one of whom, Robert Spindell, is still serving on the state elections commission.

The only way to defeat the sheer chutzpah of the right-wing attack on democracy is by fighting back just as aggressively. Our future depends on it.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.

Wisconsin’s Trump enablers are still undermining democracy

Wisconsin’s Trump enablers are still undermining democracy

Even as Trump snubs the Republican Party by refusing to attend the debate in Milwaukee this week, his corrosive influence continues to permeate Wisconsin.

The list of Wisconsinites named in Trump indictments keeps growing. It now includes the current chair of state Republican Party, Brian Schimming, who was involved in the fake electors scheme and still defends it. Schimming worked with Wisconsin lawyer Jim Troupis to organize a group of MAGA Republicans to cast fraudulent Electoral College ballots for Trump after Biden won Wisconsin. Then Republican Sen. Ron Johnson tried to hand off those fake ballots to Vice President Mike Pence during the electoral count. Johnson has defended himself by saying he didn’t spend that much time on the effort, taking the novel position that, as John Nichols describes it, there’s a “five-second rule” for sedition.

As the charges mount against Trump and the people who tried to help him steal the 2020 presidential election, MAGA contempt for the truth and the rule of law is continuing to undermine our democratic institutions right here in Wisconsin.

Not only were we among the handful of states where Trump enablers participated in the fake electors scheme, Trump-friendly justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court very nearly decided in favor of his attempt to have 221,000 ballots thrown out in the state’s two most Democratic counties. A single principled vote by conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn blocked Trump’s ham-handed effort to overturn the election results just an hour before the Electoral College cast Wisconsin’s 10 votes for President Joe Biden.

That’s the backdrop to current efforts to prevent the new, liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court from taking control.

The definitive win by liberal-leading Justice Janet Protasiewicz last April was a national news story because it was seen as a bellwether for the 2024 election. The rebuke of right-wing candidate Daniel Kelly by a hefty margin in the statewide race was interpreted as voters’ rejection of our draconian 1849 abortion ban as well as a threat to Republicans’ grip on the state and, by extension, national politics.

So, following the lead of the biggest sore loser in American history, state Republicans have been throwing a hissy fit. It started with Kelly’s absurdly ungracious non-concession speech on Election Night. Then came Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ threat to impeach Protasiewicz if she dares to weigh in on the gerrymandered map that gives Vos and his party disproportionate power. Conservatives on the court who have become the minority, meanwhile, have been burning up the rightwing talk radio airwaves fulminating about how unfair it is that they are no longer in charge of court procedures.

So accustomed are right-wingers in this state to minority rule that they are absolutely outraged by the consequences of losing a democratic election. Like Trump, they have contempt for the will of the majority of voters and are doing their best to hang on to power by brute force.

In a podcast interview with the right-wing MacIver Institute, Justice Rebecca Bradley said of the liberal court majority’s moves to take control of the court calendar and appoint committees to review other procedural matters, “I am not going to follow these proposed rules because they were adopted in violation of our rules and procedures. And I cannot follow them because I would be violating the constitution if I legitimized them by following them.”

That’s patently false. As I’ve already written, Right-wingers’ claims that a “rogue majority” is violating the constitution by making new rules doesn’t stand up to a simple reading of the clause they cite, Article VII Section 4 of the Wisconsin Constitution: “The chief justice of the supreme court shall be the administrative head of the judicial system and shall exercise this administrative authority pursuant to procedures adopted by the supreme court.” (Emphasis added) The same section clarifies that “any 4 justices shall constitute a quorum for the conduct of the court’s business.”

Bradley says she will only follow administrative decisions made by the chief justice, not those of the majority. That’s a clear violation of the constitutional clause cited above.

The conservatives’ temper tantrum isn’t just unseemly. Given revelations about the coordinated effort in the states to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, it’s downright ominous. As Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro explained in his memo to Troupis on the fake electors, having lawsuits that called into question election results was a critical piece of the Jan. 6 criminal conspiracy to reverse Trump’s 2020 loss.

Bradley’s refusal to go along rules set by the majority on the court is another effort to sabotage the smooth functioning of democratic institutions and cast doubt on a process society depends on.

“Her rhetoric is just plain reckless, her threats and courting of the right-wing media are blatantly partisan, and it looks like she’s working with Robin Vos and the Republican Legislature to do everything they can to undermine the will of the voters and keep their hold on power (that they lost because voters decided),” says Mike Browne, deputy director of the progressive research and communication group A Better Wisconsin Together, which spent a lot of money supporting Protasiewicz. Bradley and Ziegler appear to be laying the groundwork to fight, undermine, delay and litigate anything the majority does, Browne adds.

But they still don’t have the majority on the court. At the end of the day, the majority has the power, under the Wisconsin Constitution, to make decisions without them. As the new majority prepares to take up a gerrymandering case that could give Wisconsinites fair maps, Vos is insisting that Protasiewicz’s use of the word “rigged” to describe maps during her campaign means she must recuse herself.

That’s another deliberate misreading of the court’s rules. Judges don’t have to recuse themselves from cases because they’ve expressed an opinion. They should recuse themselves from cases involving their campaign donors, to avoid the appearance that they’ve been bought. But in 2017 the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority — including Justices Ziegler and Bradley — rejected a recusal rule supported by the court’s liberal justices that would have taken judges off cases involving their donors. Since then, the conservatives have regularly ruled in favor of the same business interests that helped get them elected.

To complain now that it is somehow compromising that Protasiewicz dared to openly talk about her views on gerrymandering — views that are shared by a majority of Wisconsin voters, is ridiculous.

So is the shrieking from Bradley about the sanctity of court rules. Back in 2017, I watched the last open meeting held by the Supreme Court on its rules and procedures, in which the odious then-Justice Michael Gableman, supported by Bradley, closed court proceedings to public scrutiny. Bradley and Gableman maneuvered the rule change past the liberal minority, after keeping them in the dark about the whole plan.

Do not for a minute believe these people when they tell you they are the guardians of constitutional government or the rule of law. They are part of a lawless cabal that will stop at nothing to hold onto power — will of the majority be damned.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.

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