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Get the latest news and research from Badger Institute
- Facts to help you decide whether Wisconsin children should be eligible for donor-funded education scholarships
- Food co-op seen as viable, more likely option than government-funded grocery store in Milwaukee
- Public school leaders look forward to possible private donations for scholarships
- Why did New Richmond’s bathroom policy make girls give way?
- Restoring accountability in Wisconsin government
- Wisconsin eventually will opt in to donor bonanza for schools, business leader predicts
- Building on the Wisconsin higher-ed reform model
- Wisconsin students who struggle with reading are let down by unenforced literacy reforms, say advocates
Browsing: Culture/Politics
When it comes to UW-Madison faculty in social sciences and the humanities, the odds of finding a Republican donor are just 1 in 530.
Gov. Tony Evers granted a new tranche of pardons, bringing the total number of persons pardoned under his tenure to a record 1,264. His immediate predecessor, Gov. Scott Walker did not granting a single pardon during his term in office.
The Badger Institute takes a look at which U.S. state capitals command the largest and smallest share of their state’s population.
The two major political parties in the United States each have hosted 26 conventions since the year 1924. Here’s where they’ve been held:
Sociologist Brad Wilcox is telling young people to marry because it will make them happier. “People who embrace the core values and virtues associated with marriage are more likely to flourish both in marriage and in life.”
According to federal statistics, the marriage rate in the United States returned to prepandemic levels in 2022. While this may be true for the country, we wanted to look at the figures for Wisconsin and neighboring states.
We live on land that was made free by the more than 1 million Americans who died defending it. Certainly none of them wanted to die, but our imperfect country was given a chance to stick around and overcome its flaws because they were willing to do so.
Show your progressive friends the facts and ask this: If you’re not willing to pay to fight climate change, who do you think should?
In Wisconsin, total fertility rate peaked in 1960 and sharply declined shortly after, falling below 2 in the early 1970s and only approaching it in recent years before turning downward again.
The Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted 6-4 to instruct the state auditor to find out what has come of Gov. Tony Evers’ 2019 order to make “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI, a central feature of agencies’ plans and to corral every state employee into “mandatory equity and inclusion training.”
If Wisconsin families ever needed adults in authority to show some grit by standing up for century-old institutions with proven records of helping children grow into happy adults, now is the time.
In both of the two most recent legislative sessions, Wisconsin legislators introduced just over 2,300 bills and saw less than 12% enacted.
When the president tells borrowers not to bother paying back what they owe, it isn’t relief in the way medicine relieves your pain — it doesn’t alter any painful underlying causes. It isn’t forgiveness in the divine sense, metaphysically washing away the stain. The stain remains in the form of blood-red ink on the federal books.
At the national level, recent studies show that small businesses are not contracting with the federal government as frequently as in the past. And those that do are becoming more concentrated in a handful of congressional districts around Washington, where rent seeking is the norm.
The law does not allow Wisconsin to give anyone a free ride based on racial identity such as being Native American. So instead, UW-Madison is basing the cost waiver on membership in one of 11 federally recognized Wisconsin tribes.
A look at the 20 most populous Wisconsin cities in either the 1960 or the 2020 census. The outliers tell a story of places either falling behind and pulling ahead of the state’s overall growth.
A formal agreement passed by the regents says that UW-Madison will seek philanthropic support to create an endowed chair that will focus on conservative political thought, classical economic theory or classical liberalism, depending on the donor’s interest.
Saying they “have not given up on a colorblind society,” Wisconsin Republicans have filed a bill to remove race-based considerations from an array of UW System and technical college financial aid programs.
In a speech to the Badger Institute Thursday night, Congressman Mike Gallagher, the Green Bay Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, issued a clarion call for America to rearm and stockpile critical munitions, issued a stark warning about authoritarian regimes and terrorist groups across the globe and said the future is still up to us here in America “but won’t be much longer.”
Don’t sign up for the webinar if you can’t stand black conservatives calmly discussing policy. Don’t stop by the woman preaching sexual continence if you don’t want to hear it. Or offer a convincing alternative

