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Milwaukee County is reaching out to senior citizens in two Milwaukee zip codes with large numbers of low-income Black and Latino residents, in hopes of getting more of those older individuals their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. The outreach is going to the 53206 zip code on Milwaukee's north side, and 53204 zip code on the near south side.

On Thursday, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said the goal is to remove barriers to access.

It's been four months of nearly non-stop controversy for Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. He has been a key supporter of former President Donald Trump's claims of voter fraud and has gone a step further to question whether the U.S. Capitol protestors in January were armed, and whether some of them were not Trump supporters.  

An art exhibit exploring what it means to be Latinx in the United States, opened Friday at Latino Arts, Inc. on Milwaukee’s south side. It’s called "Hyphenated Americans," and it features the works of 17 Latinx artists from Milwaukee.

The goal of the exhibit is to show that Latinx cultures are not monolithic.

Visitors can expect to see paintings, digital artwork, and photography. There’s artwork hanging from the walls and in the center of the gallery.

State health officials gave a little more insight Thursday on when people under 65 with pre-existing conditions will be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Deputy Department of Health Services Secretary Julie Willems-Van Dijk said as of Thursday, nearly 60% of people age 65 and older in Wisconsin received one or more doses of the vaccine, as part of group 1A.

Districts across the state started to vaccinate teachers Monday, as part of group 1B.

The CDC has recommended people age 16-64 with preexisting medical conditions be part of phase IC.

Wisconsin Republicans are reviving efforts to pass a resolution to call a convention of the states to consider making changes to the U.S. Constitution.

A Wisconsin Assembly committee held a public hearing Wednesday on the proposal, which is identical to one that passed the Assembly last session. It died in the Senate.

The full Legislature in 2017 passed a resolution that allowed for calling a convention to consider a balanced budget amendment. The latest proposal is more expansive.

Lake Effect essayist Barbara Miner has been writing about her experiences throughout the pandemic. Miner, a local writer, photographer, and producer has been vaccinated and has a new outlook on the pandemic. She reflects on it in her essay, “Waiting.”

I have spent much of the last year waiting. But I didn’t realize how profoundly COVID had shaped my sense of time until, during the dark days of the fall, I picked up Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” Perhaps, I thought, the play might offer some perspective.

Around 47,000 doses of the newly approved Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine are expected to arrive in Wisconsin next week. While health officials are pushing the positives of the vaccine — it’s only one dose versus two and the fact that it can be shipped anywhere because it only requires refrigeration and not ultra-cold storage — some people have concerns.

This legislative cycle, Republicans around the country have proposed hundreds of bills that would restrict access to voting, taking aim at issues like absentee voting, voter registration and disability access. Wisconsin Republicans are part of that trend, releasing their plans as well.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Adam Carr from the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service has joined Lake Effect to talk about community events in Milwaukee. The list includes a wide array of things to enjoy, both virtually and in-person, this March.

This month every event is based around learning more about the Milwaukee community.

Erich Lichtblau-Leskly was one of around 140,000 Jewish people forced into Theresienstadt, a ghetto-labor and transit camp, by the Nazis during the Holocaust. While facing the horrors of imprisonment and working as a slave in the camp, Leskly created art to document life in Theresienstadt.

In 2019, a woman came forward to the Milwaukee Police Department reporting that in 2014 she had been raped and possibly drugged by Kalan Haywood Sr., a prominent real estate investor. But as the Milwaukee Police Department conducted their investigation, the woman — identified only as Jane Doe — claimed her rights were being violated as the department failed to notify her about important developments in the investigation.

Updated 10:39 a.m.  

Within the next two weeks, Milwaukee plans to vaccinate all educators living or working in the city who want a shot.

The Milwaukee Health Department announced Tuesday that it expects to receive 17,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses between March 1-15 that will be used for school and childcare workers. Volunteers from Children's Hospital and Medical College of Wisconsin will help staff the clinics. 

Linda Halley is general manager of Gwenyn Hill Farm in the Town of Delafield. "Gwenyn" means honeybee in Welsh. Halley says the name is a nod to generations of people who farmed this lush valley, starting back in 1842.

Although most live shows have been put on hold by the pandemic, Milwaukee bands are continuing to release new songs — and Matt Wild has listened to most of them. Wild is one of the co-founders of Milwaukee Record, which describes itself as an online source for music, culture and gentle sarcasm. 

Professional artists have been some of the hardest hit by the economic shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many theaters, museums, performance halls and other communal arts spaces have been closed for almost a year and artists have had to get creative to find ways to bring the arts to Wisconsinites virtually.

Milwaukee’s rivers have slowly been revitalized through a variety of cleanup projects in recent years. But, the estuary — the area in which the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnickinnic Rivers meet Lake Michigan — is still one of the most environmentally degraded sites on the Great Lakes due to contamination caused by decades of industrial waste.

The estuary has a federal designation as an “area of concern.”

But change is coming. Years of planning has led to a massive $400 million cleanup project.

In 2005, long-lost letters from the famed Pabst and Best families, written from 1841 to 1887, were found at Pabst Farms in Oconomowoc. Once discovered, they were moved to the basement of the Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee and the content of those letters wouldn’t be known until 15 years later.

A big name came up last week as a possible candidate for Republican U.S Sen. Ron Johnson’s seat next year.

Longtime Democratic Congressman Ron Kind of La Crosse indicated he might run. Kind narrowly won re-election to his House seat in November, beating his Republican challenger by only two percentage points.

In this week’s Capitol Notes, Marti Mikkelson asks JR Ross of wispolitics.com if he thinks Kind can beat Ron Johnson — if Johnson decides to run for a third term.

President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed the House of Representatives over the weekend with the backing of all three Wisconsin House Democrats, and none of the state's five Republican Representatives.

The spotlight this week, and maybe next, will be on the U.S. Senate. Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin is expected to vote for the measure, while it's predicted Republican Ron Johnson will oppose it.

When it comes to discussing politics, especially controversial topics, it can be difficult to leave a conversation without feeling the need to shout at the top of your lungs and become uncivil.

For many people, they feel that American discourse has lost the civility it is supposed to have.

Bill Keith is the co-author of the book, Beyond Civility: The Competing Obligations of Citizenship and a professor of rhetoric at UW-Milwaukee.

On Feb 1., the democratically-elected government of Myanmar was taken over in a military coup. The southeastern Asian country, also known as Burma, has dealt with political instability since 1948, when it declared independence from British rule.

This is the same military which for decades has been persecuting a Muslim ethnic minority in the country who call themselves Rohingya. Since the 1990s, over a million Rohingya have fled the country and become refugees around the world.

Local health officials are optimistic Wisconsin is on the road to increased supply of the COVID-19 vaccine. They say that’s the only way to get shots in the arms of more high-priority groups.

Production is ramping up all over the country on the two vaccines already approved by the FDA and in use. But a new Johnson & Johnson vaccine is expected to receive emergency use authorization possibly as early as this weekend.

Greenfield Health Director Darren Rausch said additional doses of the COVID-19 vaccine are necessary to meet demand.

A Milwaukee alderwoman wants the city to adopt a “universal basic income” pilot program.

The proposal by Ald. Chantia Lewis would supplement low-income families’ wages, so they’re making a living wage. She says cities across the country are beginning to experiment with universal basic income programs, and she wants Milwaukee to do the same.

Wisconsin health officials are creating a statewide COVID-19 vaccination schedule for school employees, in an effort to prioritize underserved communities.

>>Wisconsin Educators And Childcare Workers Next In Line For Vaccine, Beginning March 1