The Fall of Wisconsin

For more than a century, Wisconsin has been hailed as a “laboratory of democracy”: a bastion of progressive ideas and government, cradle of the labor and environmental movements, and birthplace of the famed Wisconsin Idea, which championed expertise in the service of the public good. But following a Republican sweep of its state government in 2010, Wisconsin’s state laws protecting labor unions, the environment, voting rights, and public education were dismantled—and, in perhaps the biggest shock of the 2016 presidential election, the state went for Donald J. Trump. The Fall of Wisconsin is a deeply reported, riveting account of Wisconsin’s century-old progressive legacy and how the state became a testing ground for national conservatives bent on remaking American politics. Kaufman reveals the “divide-and-conquer” strategy that Governor Scott Walker and his allies designed for Wisconsin, which has become a blueprint nationwide. And he chronicles the remarkable efforts of citizens who continue to fight back, from local Democratic politicians exposing the role of dark money in the state, to the head of a Chippewa tribe battling an out-of-state mining company, to Randy Bryce, the ironworker whose long-shot run for Congress helped drive Speaker of the House Paul Ryan from the race and has galvanized national resistance to Trump.

Presented in partnership with the Madison Institute and the UW Center for the Humanities