Socialism is having a politically effervescent moment: From a self-professed socialist winning New York’s mayoralty to leftist members of Wisconsin’s Legislature forming a “Socialist caucus” for the first time since 1931, the soft-core version of Marxism is gaining prominence.

One marker: A member of that caucus, Rep. Francesca Hong of Madison, has led a crowded Democratic Party primary race for governor in three runs of the well-regarded Marquette Law School poll. She identifies as a Democratic Socialist, as do many of her ideological soulmates who seek office.

She is running in a state where socialists have had more success via democracy than perhaps any other, albeit a century ago. Friendly media outlets frequently refer to Wisconsin’s 20th-century dalliance with socialism — especially Milwaukee’s, where socialists held the mayor’s office for 38 years between 1910 and 1960, a fact so well known that it long since has worked its way into pop culture.

Wisconsin’s largest school district, amid a fiscal crisis, should close 25 underutilized school buildings to free up wasted resources, says a Milwaukee-based education advocacy group — even as the Milwaukee Public Schools has discussed, then put off, talk of closing just five buildings.

The issue is “worse because we’ve punted this can down the road,” said Colleston Morgan, executive director of the advocacy group, City Forward Collective, to the Badger Institute. “It’s going to require some boldness and some political courage frankly at a scale that we have not seen from this district up until this point in time.”

“This is a governing structure for the school system which has been unwilling to deal in reality for a very long time,” he said.

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Grade inflation isn’t just a problem for colleges or employers fooled into thinking they’re getting an exceptional student when they’re getting an entirely average one instead.

Grade-inflating high school teachers have a negative impact on students’ future test scores, student enrollment in post-secondary education, graduation from associate’s degree programs, odds of employment, and even future earnings.

Wisconsin congressmen Bryan Steil, Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, and Tom Tiffany introduced federal legislation Monday that would effectively eliminate the vehicle emissions test requirement for Southeastern Wisconsin drivers. 

The proposed Fair Air Standards Act would amend the Clean Air Act to establish a procedure by which an ozone non-attainment area may be redesignated as an attainment area if certain requirements are met.

Tiffany, also a Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor, commented in a corresponding press release, “Because of outdated federal rules, hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin drivers in seven counties are forced to complete emissions tests every two years just to renew their registration. Wisconsin families should not be punished with costly and time-consuming mandates because of pollution drifting in from Illinois and Indiana. Four decades later and with cleaner vehicles on the road, it is time to end this non-attainment zone mandate and stop burdening drivers with a system that cannot prove it works.”

There is ample cause to question the value of vehicle emissions testing. In a comprehensive investigation in October 2023, the Badger Institute found scant evidence that the program had ever improved air quality in the southeastern part of the state.

The program, run by a contractor at an annual cost of $2.6 million paid with a one-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax, has not been audited for performance of any kind since 2002, the investigation found.

The downtown Milwaukee streetcar branded as “The Hop” is seeing its post-pandemic recovery fade, with just-released ridership figures from January and February down again from previous years.

January and February ridership in early 2024 reached nearly 35,000 on average between the two months. It has fallen since to around 25,000 in early 2026, a drop of about 28 percent.

On the whole, the system’s ridership appears to have stalled. Ridership crested at 44,393 average monthly riders in 2024 and retreated to 41,213 average monthly riders in 2025 — still well short of the pre-pandemic monthly average of 63,455 riders.

As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Democratic candidate for governor Sara Rodriguez indicated that, if elected, she would complete her first state budget “behind a curtain” prior to being sworn in.

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