WPR Reports: Recent Episodes
Wisconsin Public Radio
"WPR Reports" features in-depth investigations from Wisconsin Public Radio's award-winning news team. The current season, "Mapped Out," is a six-part series debuting in September 2021 that will give the lowdown on how redistricting has shaped the balance of political power in Wisconsin and let listeners know what the next set of maps could mean.
A challenge to Wisconsin’s abortion ban could already be making its way to the state Supreme Court. The law was first passed in 1849 and went back into effect last June when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In our half-hour special “How We Got Here: Abortion in Wisconsin Since 1849,” Bridgit Bowden […]
A challenge to Wisconsin’s abortion ban could already be making its way to the state Supreme Court. The law was first passed in 1849 and went back into effect last June when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In our half-hour special “How We Got Here: Abortion in Wisconsin Since 1849,” Bridgit Bowden […]
The Cuban exiles who arrived in Wisconsin in 1980 as part of the Mariel Boatlift have become family to one another. They are Wisconsinites. But their hearts remain in Cuba, and they want to visit their homeland one more time - if they can find a way.
Some Mariel refugees made questionable decisions while adjusting to life in the Midwest in the 1980s. They've all faced discrimination. And all of them have tried to move forward as their pasts continue to haunt them.
The Cubans who immigrated to the United States during the Mariel Boatlift have left Fort McCoy. Some found homes in Wisconsin and got jobs. Some started families. But first, they had to find sponsors.
Fort McCoy was one of four U.S. military installations that housed Cuban refugees after the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. Almost 15,000 Cubans lived there that summer and fall while waiting to connect with family members or find sponsors.
People who left Cuba to come to the United States as part of the Mariel Boatlift in 1980 share their experiences of traveling across the sea and their first memories stepping ashore in Florida.
The Cuban revolution promised people a better life: free health care, schools and subsidized housing for everyone. But this came at a cost - and some weren't willing to pay the price. So they began leaving the country in the 1960s, and it all came to a head in 1980.
When Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959, some feared the shift to communism and left almost right away. Decades later, the changes brought on by the revolution would also lead to almost 15,000 Cuban refugees coming to Wisconsin as part of the Mariel Boatlift of 1980.
Enrique More has roots in La Crosse. He's been a part of the city's music scene for decades, most notably playing with Mr. Blink. Wisconsin is his home. But it didn't feel much like home when he first got here, when he was one of a handful of Cubans to settle in La Crosse after arriving in 1980 as part of the Mariel Boatlift.
In 1980, nearly 15,000 Cuban refugees were sent to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. They left their homes as part of the Mariel boatlift mass exodus. In this podcast, meet the Cubans who stayed in Wisconsin and find out what their lives have been like as they live in legal limbo.
When people look back at Wisconsin's redistricting cycle of 2021, they might wonder how the Republican-led Legislature came out on top again, despite repeated and significant setbacks.
The new redistricting maps proposed by Republican leaders in the state Legislature are based on the old maps approved in 2011. And while it may have been obscured by the partisan bickering that greeted the proposal, an important question emerges: Can the map that helped Republicans cement their majorities for the past decade be reused for the next 10 years?
In Wisconsin, it's the job of the Legislature and the governor to handle redistricting every decade, and pretty much no one thinks they're actually going to do it this time around. With split control of state government, things are likely headed to court, but which court and when are still open questions.
It's one thing to talk about the power of political redistricting in the abstract, but what does it look like in practice? Over the last decade, Wisconsin's map has let Republicans pass landmark conservative policies, keep a tight grip on the state budget, reshape government agencies and mothball issues despite public support.
The legislative maps that Wisconsin Republicans drew a decade ago are still standing. But an effort that started in a Milwaukee teahouse and snowballed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court very well could have changed the whole game of redistricting — in Wisconsin and nationwide.
Some districts split towns apart. Others packed all the votes in a city together, or stretched to join urban with suburban. But taken together, Republicans’ 2011 legislative maps did one thing: changed the game in Wisconsin politics.
2011 was a frenzied, historic year in Wisconsin politics, with massive protests over GOP legislation gutting the state's public employee unions. But at the same time, quietly, behind closed doors, Republicans were drawing maps that would cement their power for a decade.
Wisconsin is the quintessential purple state, and yet the Legislature is very red. Why? It’s partly because of redistricting, the process of drawing district lines every decade. It’s not something most people learn about in civics class, but the way those maps are drawn and who draws them can have an enormous impact on who wields political power.
In 2011, Wisconsin's legislative redistricting process included secret meetings, deleted documents and a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. "Mapped Out" is an investigative series debuting in September that will give the low-down on the state's redistricting past and get ready for redistricting present.