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Richard Moore: Livestock producers in the bureaucratic crosshairs
DATCP is proposing fee increases on livestock producers, dealers, truckers, and others. Some of the proposed fees would rise by as much as almost 1,700 percent.

Mike McCabe: Reverse engineering
There’s a reason it’s called doomscrolling and not hopescrolling. Social media algorithms favor doom over hope, lies over truth, hate over love.

Christina Lieffring: Finding a refuge for the unhoused
With regressing attitudes towards unhoused people and winter looming, Madison and Dane County need to embrace imperfect solutions.

David Blaska: Disagreement is not evil in a working democracy
My fellow Republicans lose the argument when they call our political adversaries schoolyard names like “Demon-rats.” Progressives might be more credible if they would dial back the hyperbole.

Charlie Sykes: The rough beast slouches closer
A murder that brings out our best … and our absolute worst.

John Torinus: Mr. President: fewer words, more actions on Ukraine
Trump not only failed to end the Russia-Ukraine war, he has made things much worse with his soft, equivocal stance. He spouts off but shows little backbone.

Bill Kaplan: Big Beautiful Act bad for Wisconsin
The GOP-led congressional passage of the Big Beautiful Act is already an unpopular fiasco. The bill is polling badly because most Americans, including Wisconsinites, know it’s bad for them.

Rinn O’Rourke: Investing in families means protecting Head Start
As someone who walks into families’ homes every week, I can tell you: The need is great, and the stakes are high. Our children deserve more than political uncertainty. They deserve a Head Start.

Michael Lucas: Do not give in to evil
Mr. Kirk’s virtue laid in his willingness to pursue honest, peaceful, open debate with people of all sorts. He embodied one of the most crucial aspects of real Liberalism; an aspect which has allowed Western civilization to flourish. But with his death, now his admirers, and especially his opponents, are all the worse for having to live without him.

Dave Cieslewicz: Heroes and victims
It’s possible to be repulsed by an act without canonizing its victim.

Michelle Bryant: 9/11: Twenty-four years later
The evolving threat to American security

Dave Zweifel: Chicago on edge over Trump threats
I was in Chicago last week while Donald Trump was making noises about sending federal troops to “declare war” on the nation’s third largest city — apparently his idea of how to tackle crime.

Paul Fanlund: A single word to sum up Cap Times Idea Fest 2025? ‘Timely’
Nine months into a second Trump term that seems grimmer than most of us anticipated, Idea Fest presented some of the nation’s best minds exploring aspects of the national crisis.

John Nichols: Don’t let AI become tool to deny benefits
The notion that AI technology could be programmed — for reasons of profiteering or politics — to deny or delay care for Medicare and Medicaid recipients has U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan concerned.

WisOpinion: ‘The Insiders’ weigh in on whether Wisconsin will join the mid-decade redistricting push
The WisOpinion Insiders, Chvala and Jensen, take up congressional redistricting and whether Wisconsin will follow Texas, California and Missouri to create new partisan districts. Sponsored by the Wisconsin Counties Association and the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.

David Blaska: Free speech and the Constitution took a bullet
Charlie Kirk was engaged in free and open debate on the issues of our time where it mattered most: on our blinkered college campuses.

Scott Walker: Mourning Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk was a great American. He was passionate about his faith, family and freedom. Although his death is tragic, his legacy will live on; it must live on.

Emily Tseffos: We have to say ‘enough!’ and have the courage to mean it
Less than 48 hours in, while we have seen examples of condolences or grief, too much of the discourse following Mr. Kirk’s death has amounted to points scored in an endless online game.

Ruth Conniff: After Charlie Kirk assassination, Van Orden fans the flames
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.”

Patrick McIlheran: Tony Evers’ puzzlingly swift rejection of more education money
Could governor soften his view of new federal channel for donors’ generosity?

WisOpinion: ‘The Insiders’ analyze the race for state schools superintendent
The WisOpinion Insiders, Chvala and Jensen, analyze the race for state schools superintendent between incumbent Jill Underly, Sauk Prairie Superintendent Jeff Wright and Wauwatosa education consultant Brittany Kinser. The three are to face off in a Feb. 18 primary, with the general election set for April 1. Sponsored by the Wisconsin Counties Association and the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.
Rewind: Your Year in Review
WisconsinEye Host and CBS 58 Capitol Reporter Emilee Fannon and WisPolitics.com Editor JR Ross review the top stories of 2024 in state politics.