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Evers renews statewide mask mandate

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Milwaukee kids IMAGE: MaskUpMKE.org

Governor Tony Evers has declared a new public health emergency in Wisconsin, and a new statewide mask order, due to recent surge in COVID-19 cases among young people. Eighteen to 24-year-olds have a case rate five times higher than any other age group.

“We continue to learn more about this virus, but what we do know is that we are facing a new and dangerous phase of the COVID-19 pandemic here in Wisconsin,”  Evers said in press release. “We are seeing an alarming increase in cases across our state, especially on campus.”

Evers’ office noted that last week, eight Wisconsin cities were listed among the top twenty cities in the United States where COVID-19 cases were rising fastest, and six of those eight cities have University of Wisconsin System campuses.

Both orders are effective immediately and will expire after sixty days or with a subsequent superseding order. The governor’s previous mask order was set to expire on Monday.

Senator Duey Stroebel (Photo: Stroebel for Senate)

At least two Republican state Senators expressed outrage over the governor’s action, and demanded immediate legislative action to rescind the orders.

“A statewide approach to COVID-19 has always been a bad idea,” said Senator Duey Stroebel (R-Cedarburg) “I firmly believe local governments, businesses and families will achieve better results if they are able to evaluate their needs and act accordingly rather than following a one-size-fits-all directive from Governor Evers. The Legislature must convene and rescind this unlawful order to ensure our communities have that option.”

“Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has enabled the continuing illegal conduct of Governor Evers in issuing repeated emergency declarations and a failed statewide mask mandate,” said Senator Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) “The Legislature has the constitutional and statutory authority to call an extraordinary session and put an end to the improper actions of the Governor.”

The leader of Republicans in the state Senate gave no indication that he’s planning on calling lawmakers to Madison, to peel back the mask order.

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court made it clear that if Governor Evers wishes to continue to impose sanctions, mandates, and restrictions on the citizens of this state, he must work with the legislature to do so. That has not happened,” said state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau). “Governor Evers’ order is moot, illegal, invalid, and almost assuredly headed for litigation.”

 

 

COVID-19 vaccine trial still on hold in Wisconsin following review in UK

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A planned trial of a COVID-19 vaccine is restarting in the UK.

That drug trial, run by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, was halted last week after a participant in the United Kingdom had an adverse reaction to treatment. Independent agencies and UK health officials signed off on restarting the trial after an investigation.

The trial is being rolled out in regions of the world where COVID-19 has hit the hardest. UW-Health will be testing the new vaccine on around 1600 people here in Wisconsin.

UW-Health spokesperson Emily Kumlien says that they aren’t restarting their portion of the trial until after the FDA clears the drug for use again.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks at community event in Kenosha

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Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden made a stop in Kenosha on Thursday to hear from community members at Grace Lutheran Church.

Biden spent much of his time at the event hearing from Black leaders, and hearing about the struggles they’ve had to deal with in Wisconsin. Porsche Bennett of Black Lives Activists Kenosha also told Biden that her community is tired and sore and angry from the way that people have been treated for years and decades.

Biden agreed, and said that Wisconsin and American both have to deal with what he called the “original sin” that lead to 400 years of racial inequality.

“Cause this is the first chance we’ve had in a generation, in my view, to deal and cut another slice off of institutional racism.” 

One thing that brought him back to the campaign trail, according to Biden, was his reaction to seeing the hate and vitriol at the white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville in 2017.

“Remember what you saw on television, their veins bulging, their hate filled speech, chanting the same antisemitic bile that was chanted on the streets of Germany in the 30s.”

Biden called out President Trump for his pivot to talking about Law and Order following months of protests over police brutality. 

“There’s a lot of folks that have thought ‘well the President has made a lot of strides with his law and order strides there’, that ‘boy over his convention, he’s really made inroads’. He hasn’t. Not at all.”

Biden also said he’ll be pushing for 15 dollars an hour minimum wage, more funding for schools in poor districts, police reform, and bail and felony reform, and that he can do it with one change. 

“The generic point I’m making is there’s so much we can do, so much we can do by eliminating the tax cut for the top one tenth of one percent, which is one trillion, 350 billion dollars, which has done nothing to help anybody.”

Biden also had a chance to talk with the family of Jacob Blake, who was shot in the back by Kenosha police last month.

This is the first time a confirmed Democratic presidential candidate has made a stop in Wisconsin since 2012.

UW-Health to take part in testing for new COVID-19 vaccine

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University Hospital in Madison will be taking part in Phase 3 testing of the new COVID-19 vaccination.

Dr. William Hartman with UW-Health says the vaccine is coming out of research at Oxford University. 

“The fact that it’s gone so fast has to do with the amount of people, the amount of resources that have really been devoted to this project.”

Sixteen hundred people will be tested here in Wisconsin, and they’ll be monitored over the next two years. “”Over the next months and the next couple of years we’re going to track them very closely so that we see who develops coronavirus and so that we’re also able to help them if they develop symptoms,” says Hartman.

Hartmann says he’s expecting the vaccine to test well, for the most part, and that Oxford has a long standing history of creating successful vaccines.

“We’re working on the shoulders of the giants that have come before and produced all of those. And so we’ve learned from what they’ve done, what works, and what doesn’t work.”

People interested in learning more about participating in the study can do so by emailing [email protected], calling the hotline at 608-262-8300 or 833-306-0681, or by visiting https://www.c19vaccinestudy.com/

 

Milwaukee leaders on the DNC – and Trump’s visit to Wisconsin

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Mayor Tom Barrett

“We’ve been forced to deal with reality.” That from Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, on this week’s virtually all virtually all virtual Democratic National Convention which opens Monday in the city.

“It’s not going to be the four day extravaganza . . . and we were looking forward to that,” Barrett told the CBS Evening News. “There’s no way we’re going to sugar coat that. That was really something we were excited about.”

With constraints in place due to coronavirus, only a handful of participants will actually be in downtown Milwaukee’s Wisconsin Center this week.

Along with the reduced number of participants, the DNC will likely see relatively little protest activity, compared to what was originally expected.

“This is largely a virtual event,” said Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. “But there is no doubt in my mind that the sheriff’s office as well as the Milwaukee Police Department are going to everything they can, to not only make sure that we have a safe DNC, but also making sure that those who are exercising their 1st Amendment rights can do so safely as well.”

President Donald Trump hopes to upstage his opponents on Monday, with a campaign stop in Oshkosh.

County Exec David Crowley

“It is a media stunt,” said Crowley. “This is showing that he’s willing to come here, and I think this is all that this is about. This is a distraction about what is going to be happening here with the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County.”

Trump will make a campaign stop at Wittman Airport in Oshkosh. DNC speakers for Monday — all delivered remotely — include Wisconsin Congresswoman Gwen Moore, U-S Senator Bernie Sanders, and former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Virtual or not, Barrett said the DNC will serve as a contrast to President Trump’s handling – some would say mishandling – of the global coronavirus pandemic.

“You’re going to see the Democratic theme of ‘we’ve got to take this seriously.’ And on the Republican side, you’ve got obviously a president who wants to talk about everything else,” the mayor said. “Joe Biden has never made fun of masks. He’s never belittled health care experts, and he’s never called it a hoax.”

And Crowley said Milwaukee still hopes the DNC will serve as a platform to tout efforts by the city and the county to address issues of racial equity, health disparities and gun violence, which has been declared a public health crisis.

Baldwin and Evers among Wisconsin delegates to speak at DNC

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Several members of the Wisconsin delegation will speak during the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee next week.

The COVID-19 pandemic has whittled the number of actual participants from thousands to dozens. Governor Tony Evers, Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, Congresswoman Gwen Moore, and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett will address the convention from the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee.

Senator Tammy Baldwin will speak Thursday night, prior to Joe Biden and running mate Kamela Harris accepting their nominations.

In addition, two Wisconsin women will share their stories – an elementary school teacher impacted by the pandemic and a retiree whose family relies on the Affordable Care Act.

Big Ten moving fall sports to the second semester of 2020-21 (AUDIO)

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Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez

The Big Ten Conference pulled the plug on the fall sports season on Tuesday, making the decision to move football and all other fall sports to the second semester due to ongoing concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said they just believe collectively there is too much uncertainty at this point in time in our country to really encourage student-athletes to participate in fall sports.

“One of the things we promised ourselves was that this was going to be a fluid situation, a day-to-day situation,” Warren said.  “And we would be in a perpetual state of observing, gathering information and we could do everything we possibly could to have fall sports.

“And I’ve said it from the first day that I started at the Big Ten, that the health and wellness, both physical and mental, of our student-athletes was going to be at the top of my list.”

The Big Ten wasn’t alone in making such a move.  The Pac-12 postponed fall sports through the end of the year. [Read more…]

Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission removes Alfonso Morales from police chief position

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Alfonso Morales has been removed from his role as Milwaukee’s police chief.

The Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission has demoted Morales to a captain rank, and promoted Assistant Chief Michael Brunson to acting chief.

Morales had come under fire ever since he was hired in February of 2018. Members of the Commission called on him to fire one of the officers involved in the violent arrest of Milwaukee Bucks player Sterling Brown.

When the Black Lives Matter protests started this spring, Morales was called in front of the commission for the use of tear gas and pepper spray on demonstrators. He was called to make sweeping changes to the department.

Morales says the commission didn’t give him enough time to comply with the requests.

Monday COVID-19 numbers: Lowest number of new infections in several weeks

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The Department of Health Services is reporting that just 404 new cases of COVID-19 have been detected on Monday. That’s around 5.6% of all tests that came in since Sunday. One more person has died from the disease.

Additionally, new studies are showing that a majority of the deaths due to COVID-19 have been in Wisconsin’s elderly population, with no reported deaths among children and teenagers.  Only 49 of those victims were people under the age of 50.

No, President Trump cannot delay the election

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President Donald Trump’s suggestion on Twitter, that the November election might need to be delayed, is being batted down by political scientists and members of both political parties.

“There’s simply no ambiguity, that a president simply does not have any authority to do this,” said University of Wisconsin political scientist Ken Mayer, when asked asked about the president’s latest musings on his favorite social media platform.

Only Congress has that authority, and that’s not happening. Wisconsin politicians of both parties, including U-S Senator Tammy Baldwin and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, were quick to condemn Trump.

“There is nobody, or nobody responsible or nobody honest, who will tell you anything other than that this is something flatly, emphatically, end of story, period, no question at all, (the) president can’t do,” Mayer said.

Ken Mayer

Mayer also noted that Trump likes to use Twitter to deflect attention from unpleasant news.

“The fact that we’re talking about this rather than the Commerce Department releasing the worst quarterly economic news ever, gives you some idea of why Trump does this.”