University of Wisconsin-Madison
Since 1892 dailycardinal.com
Thursday, February 6, 2025
l
A SHUCKIN’ GOOD TIME
IT’S TIME TO DRAW THE LINE
The cob-inspired musical grows for one week at the Overture Center.
To save college football, the sport needs to set new rules. It needs a commissioner.
+ ARTS, PAGE 8
+ OPINION, PAGE 5
Legislative Black Caucus honors Black History Month By Gabriella Hartlaub SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER
The Wisconsin Legislative Black Caucus recognized Black History Month in a ceremony at the Capitol on Tuesday. Speakers at the event included Caucus Chair Sen. Dora Drake, D-Milwaukee, Vice Chair Rep. Sequanna Taylor, D-Milwaukee, and other community leaders. “Black History Month is American History Month,” Drake said in her opening statement. The event mainly focused on the contributions of Black Wisconsinites, including
those of Attorney Lloyd Barbee, Vel Phillips and Linda Hoskins, the president of the Dane County Branch of the NAACP. Featured in the event were scholars from One City Schools, a local nonprofit organization that provides “high-quality educational opportunities for young children,” according to the Madison Chamber of Commerce. One City School operates a preschool and an elementary school in Madison. Students from the elementary schools performed drumming to kick off the event and after the speeches. “Our future is wrapped up in the future
of our young people,” said Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde, D-Milwaukee. “We want to create a world that’s best for them, including a world that has clean land, air and water.” Beyond the more famous names in Wisconsin’s Black History, the resolution introduced by the caucus recognized Black Wisconsinites who contributed to the state. These included Paul Higginbotham, the first African American judge to serve on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals; Shakita LaGrant-McClain, the executive director of the Milwaukee County Department of Health
and Human Services and Marcia Anderson, a retired senior officer of the United States Army Reserve from Beloit, Wisconsin, who was the first Black woman to become a major general. “Black history is about learning the truth of our collective experience in this country, this world, and creating movements that will hold the United States accountable,” author and educator Linetta Alexander Islam told the crowd gathered in the Capitol Rotunda. While the event marked the achievements of those in the past, speakers also noted the future of advocacy and Black culture. Continue reading @dailycardinal.com
spent UW-Madison students troubled by Millions in Supreme Trump’s gender executive order Court race By Ty Javier SENIOR STAFF WRITER
DRAKE WHITE-BERGEY/THE DAILY CARDINAL
By Ellie Huber STAFF WRITER
Transgender and nonbinary students at the University WisconsinMadison feel angry and terrified of future impacts of President Donald Trump’s executive order only recognizing “two sexes.” Trump issued an executive order Jan. 20 requiring the federal government to only recognize genders “male” or “female,” removing other options like “X” or “other.” The U.S. government will only recognize someone’s sex assigned at birth, rejecting the idea of “gender identity” in the name of protecting cisgender women from transgender women. The order states those “who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers.” Sex and gender are often used inter-
changeably, but “sex refers to the biological differences between males and females whereas gender refers to the differences between males and females that are determined by cultural and societal factors,” according to a paper by Eleanor Fish, an immunology professor at the University of Toronto. There is no evidence that trans women are a threat to cisgender women, according to UW-Madison sociology professor Cabell Gathman. Data shows that transgender people are four times more likely to be “victims of violent crime” than cisgender people. “[The executive order is] not really protecting women,” said Eden Shimon, a nonbinary UW-Madison junior studying genetics and genomics. “The order said federal agencies have to remove extensive public health data related to transgender and LGBTQ+ communities from their websites. A lot of it is really critical information on HIV prevention and contraceptive guidance — a lot of that pertains to women.” Statistics related to transgender and LGBTQ+ communities have already been removed from resources like the nonprofit Trevor Project and
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but these resources can still be accessed through archives like the WayBack Machine, which is how data will be linked in this article. Sex vs. gender Trump’s order claims biological sex is determined immediately “at conception” and belongs “to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell” or the sex which “produces the small reproductive cell,” essentially saying those with a uterus and ovaries are female and those with a penis and testicles are male. While embryos’ sex chromosomes are determined at conception, sexual differentiation doesn’t take place at conception. During early development the gonads of fetuses are undifferentiated and all female. Other sexual characteristics are developed in the womb, but “sex differences develop and change across the lifetime,” according to the Institute of Medicine Committee on Understanding the Biology of Sex and Gender.
Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general, faces off against Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford in an attempt to flip the court’s 4-3 liberal majority. If Crawford wins, liberals will maintain their 4-3 majority until at least 2028. The current liberal majority was established when Janet Protasiewicz, who campaigned largely on the issue of abortion rights, won her election to the court in April 2023. The race that year blew past national spending records in a judicial contest, with more than $51 million spent on both sides, based on a tally by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. The group, which tracks spending on campaigns, is estimating that a new record will be set this year. Wisconsin Supreme Court races are officially nonpartisan, but political groups often support their preferred candidates. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin has endorsed Crawford, while Schimel has backing from conservative lawmakers like U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden. Recent January campaign finance reports showed Crawford raised $2.8 million from individual donors since getting into the race, compared to $2.0 million for Schimel. The two candidates in this year’s race have raised more money so far than at the same point in the 2023 campaign. Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-linked conservative PAC, has already poured $1.2 million into independent expenditures supporting Schimel, according to a Daily Cardinal analysis of campaign finance reports. In comparison, Americans for Prosperity only spent around $820,000 advocating for conservative candidate Daniel Kelly in total during the previous contest. Independent expenditures are spending that advocates for or against a candidate through communications such as advertisements — without coordination with any candidate, their campaign or political party. Political Action Committees (PACs) can receive unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, labor unions and other PACs, unlike official campaigns with spending limits. Spending by the Democratic and Republican parties and PACs is expected to far exceed what the candidates spend. The winner of the April 1 election will serve a 10-year term on the bench.
“…the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”