WJI's Daily Reads for Mar. 29, 2022

La Crosse Tribune: Clerks dealing with legal uncertainty regarding absentee ballots.

Wisconsin Examiner: How inequitable policies affect homicides in Milwaukee.

Dr. Stephen Hargarten, a professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin and founding director of the Comprehensive Injury Center, says there may not be one clear explanation for the homicide jump in 2020.

“I think it’s a constellation of things that are bubbling up with people’s economic situation, relationship situations, interpersonal relationships,” Hargarten told Wisconsin Examiner. In 2020 the pandemic produced anxiety, workforce shutdowns and the related economic strain. Then came protests and unrest in response to the shootings of Black people by police. All of those helped set the stage for a spike in homicides, Hargarten says. And understanding homicide as a public health problem, he adds, is “critically important.”

Wisconsin Examiner: Wisconsin high court allows Sen. Ron Johnson to file brief in drop-box case.

NPR: Judge over records dispute says Donald Trump likely committed a crime.

"It's enormously significant," said Jonathan Shaub, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law. "This is a thorough judicial analysis that, I think, it's difficult to sort of just brush aside, and it will give the committee's statements that there have been crimes some credibility."

Shaub noted that the charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, which the judge found Trump "likely" committed, has been brought against many Jan. 6 riot defendants.

The Hill: House of Representatives this week may pass bill to legalize marijuana.

“This Congress represents a sea change,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus.

“What we have seen is that the majority of people now realize that the war on drugs failed,” Blumenauer told The Hill. “Drugs are more accessible and cheaper and more potent and dangerous. Nobody won this war, except people who were involved with the drug dealers themselves.”