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David Blaska: Does Trump help or hurt Tiffany?
That Democrats have any chance at all there is owing and due to fear and loathing of Donald Trump.

Tom Still: Focus is back on Wisconsin’s decentralized election process
While no system is perfect, the decentralized administration of all elections in Wisconsin comes with multiple checks and balances – mainly because much of the work is done by ordinary people in cities, counties, villages and towns. These supervised poll workers are largely volunteers accountable to their own communities.

Michael Lucas: LeMahieu: Two more senators’ support would send surplus deal to governor
The surplus deal, which failed to pass in the Senate last month, may not be dead.

Patrick McIlheran: Why did New Richmond’s bathroom policy make girls give way?
School district now faces lawsuit and federal investigation

Dave Zweifel: Paying tribute to Wisconsin’s ‘last progressive’
Among my collection of books on Wisconsin’s famed Progressive Party and the family of “Fighting Bob” La Follette is one by professor Patrick Maney, an acclaimed historian and accomplished author who grew up in Wisconsin and recently retired from the history faculty at Boston College.

Jake Leigh: We must do everything in our power to keep families together
As an evangelical Christian, it is important to me that our immigration policies do everything they reasonably can to keep families together. But it’s not just me.

Bill Barth: For engaged (and, maybe, enraged) citizens
If the kind of journalism practiced at 60 Minutes — and plenty of lesser-known outlets in cities and towns across America — dies or becomes hopelessly flaccid, America will be weaker. Standing up to power is hard to replicate.

Scott Walker: Good riddance to CBS News’ Scott Pelley
The firing is a step toward restoring public trust in media.

Jamie Stiehm: After Trump, we can never go back to the past
The Founding Fathers had plenty of flaws. But they would never believe this would come to pass in the republic they cherished. They had standards. They would weep with me. All in time for the Fourth of July, the nation’s 250th birthday.

Missy Hughes: Self-serving politicians undercut surplus spending deal
Both sides of the aisle in this governor’s race chose their ideological corners over the people they want to lead.

Dan Shafer: Tom Tiffany is unfit for office
The presumptive GOP nominee in the race for governor is an election denier, and seeking to overturn the results of a free and fair election is extreme in a way that goes beyond policy disagreements.

Bill Marsan: Wisconsin’s transmission debate needs facts, not false choices
Transmission development should never be about a race to the bottom. Transmission is long-lived, critical infrastructure, and the hard part isn’t submitting low-cost bids. It’s delivering projects on time and maintaining a regulatory structure that holds people accountable for decades after the press releases stop.

Nina Chat: Making Wisconsin classrooms open to parents will benefit students
Open classrooms can connect all the parents, students and teachers as one family.

Cavalier Johnson, Howard Fuller, Gregory Wesley and JoAnne Anton: DPI failing Milwaukee students by holding reading funding
State schools superintendent reverses course and says DPI lacks authority to support the Milwaukee Reading Coalition at all. That directly contradicts the guidance provided in previous year.

Gregory Humphrey: Why America’s 250th birthday doesn’t feel like 1976’s celebration
For a nation that once threw itself a year‑long Bicentennial bash — tall ships crowding New York Harbor, wagon trains converging on Valley Forge like a Norman Rockwell recreation — the silence today is deafening. And it is very sad as we prepare to observe the semiquincentennial.

Natalie Eilbert: On the tyranny of screens
Screens are unavoidable, and can be used for good, but only if we change our doom-spiral routine.

Dan Knodl: Order matters
One of the most important lessons from the last several decades of criminal justice policy is surprisingly simple: communities are safest when laws are enforced consistently and wrongdoing is addressed before it escalates.

Kalvin Barrett: License plate recognition technology bolsters rural safety
Modern ALPR systems, when implemented responsibly with strong policies and oversight, can significantly enhance safety while protecting the constitutional rights of citizens.

Mark Belling: The great escape
I don’t know if Ted Oswald will get his commutation but it’s a sure bet a lot of crooks will. Evers wouldn’t have given himself the power to commute if he didn’t intend to use it.

Gregory Humphrey: Wisconsin’s fiscal surplus should be used on big ideas
Tax refunds may feel good for a moment, but big ideas and statewide investments pay dividends for generations.

WisOpinion: ‘The Insiders’ debate who will pay the political price for rising energy costs
The WisOpinion Insiders, Chvala and Jensen, discuss which party has a better message on energy costs facing voters in the 2026 midterm election. Sponsored by the Wisconsin Counties Association and the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.

Rewind: Your Week in Review for July 31
On this week’s episode of “Rewind,” WisPolitics.com’s JR Ross and Wisconsin Public Radio Capitol Reporter Anya van Wagtendonk discuss Mandela Barnes dropping out of the Dem primary for governor, how candidates performed during Tuesday’s debate, an appeal court upholding Act 10 and more.