Saturday, September 14, 2024
Teen Accused of Murdering Mom a Year After Dad's Killing
Journal Times debuts new comics, puzzles and features
Mike Boyd
A new lineup of comics and puzzles debuts today in The Journal Times — and we’re thrilled to have you take a look.
You’ll notice our refresh includes bringing back beloved comics, adding features that might be brand new to you, and replacing others that were previously in our pages.
Our new print portfolio is loaded with favorite classics “Blondie,” “Beetle Bailey” and others, as well as a new Sheffer Crossword, King Classic Sudoku and more.
The Sunday edition’s offerings include “Dennis the Menace,” “Carpe Diem” and others.
We’ve also enhanced the comics and games on our website by adding two platforms that promise to grab — and keep — your attention.
Visit journaltimes.com and you’ll find:
- Comics Kingdom, which includes 145 updated strips and timeless vintage comics, including “Dick Tracy,” “Popeye” and “Prince Valiant.”
- Puzzle Palace, a showcase of 19 interactive crosswords, word games and other tricky brain teasers including Diagonal Sudoku, Word Sleuth and Dynamic Doublecross crossword.
Subscribers also can unlock our robust E-edition, a digital replica of the newspaper available on mobile devices and computers, at journaltimes.com/eedition.
Our E-edition allows readers to print off puzzles to complete and will have a new slate of extra comics as well, including “Candorville,” “Mary Worth” and other titles.
Look for the “E-edition” and “Puzzles” buttons on the top menu bar of our website’s homepage.
There’s a lot to be excited about.
Funny pages, horoscopes and crosswords have been a staple of newspapers for generations, providing fun, comfort and entertainment to readers of all ages.
Over the years, we’ve come to learn that our loyal readers and subscribers steadfastly rely on us to provide the best and most current offerings available. And we’ve continually transformed to meet those needs while always working to reach and engage with new readers.
Today’s changes allow us to continue the crucial mission of investing in essential and memorable journalism for our communities. That’s a commitment our journalists take seriously every day.
We’re extraordinarily honored to play that role.
We’ll also continue to cover the stories that impact our community, such as the missing Waterford woman who was found after a three-day search; the four new businesses that opened in downtown Racine; the business park that was approved for the former South Hills golf course; high school sports; public safety, crime and courts; and the latest happenings at Racine Unified and other area school districts.
We appreciate your support of local journalism. And we thank you for reading
New mural equating swastika, Star of David defaced with black paint, then quickly restored
Sophie Carson
A woman on Friday smeared black paint over a new mural on a prominent street corner that blended the Star of David with a swastika.
Bearing the words, "The irony of becoming what you once hated," in all capital letters, the mural suggested Jewish people were carrying out a new Holocaust in the Israel-Hamas war. On Thursday Milwaukee Jewish leaders called it "horribly antisemitic" and said it held all Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government. They also said it was particularly hurtful and dehumanizing to make any connection to the Holocaust, a systematic, state-sponsored execution of 6 million Jews.
WITI-TV (Channel 6) interviewed a woman named Sara Ninham midday Friday who said she vandalized the mural because she didn't like seeing a swastika. She did not mention the Israel-Hamas war or express any religious or political stances in the interview.
"The hate. Who puts a swastika (up)?" Ninham told the reporter. "To me, this is just promoting more violence. I get trying to raise awareness, but we've got kids that play over here. In such a short time, this was the fastest that I could try to get rid of it."
On her Facebook page, the woman posted a video holding up her hand covered in black paint.
"No the (expletive) they didn't just put a swastika on the corner of my block. I (expletive) handled it," she said in the video.
Ihsan Atta, who owns the building at East Locust and North Holton streets where the mural is displayed, said he expected vandalism. He is Palestinian-American and wanted to raise awareness about Israel's devastation in Gaza, which he considers to be geocidal and akin to the Holocaust.
He defended the image to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Thursday, arguing the swastika is "equivalent" to the Star of David because, he said, the star is used not only as a religious symbol, but a political symbol.
After some news coverage Thursday, Atta thought that would be all. He took satisfaction in getting more news coverage Friday because the mural was defaced.
"The whole point is to have exposure, to bring awareness, and she helped with that, so I appreciate her for that," he said.
Atta said security footage shows Ninham squirting black paint over the mural then smearing it around with her hands. He has filed a police report against her alleging vandalism and property destruction.
The artists who made the mural will work on cleaning and repairing the mural in the coming days, he said. But by late afternoon Friday, the black paint already appeared to be mostly wiped off the mural.
The pro-Palestinian mural replaced a well-known mural of Breonna Taylor, who was killed by Louisville police.
Prior to the defacing of the mural, the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation released a statement Friday saying the mural was the latest in a "staggering uptick in antisemitic rhetoric and misinformation."
The council said a recent public discussion hosted by the federation on "Civility in our Times" was targeted. Non-Jewish panel members, the council said, were sent emails with misinformation and antisemitic tropes. And participants found fliers on their cars claiming the federation and council were Islamaphobic and considered students who participated in spring protests "terrorists."
In Friday's statement, the council said neither it, nor the Jewish Federation, makes Islamaphobic comments.
Sophie Carson is a general assignment reporter who reports on religion and faith, immigrants and refugees and more. Contact her at scarson@gannett.com or 920-323-5758.
Friday, September 13, 2024
Microsoft's been a 'comeback project' since Foxconn fell short
Microsoft has raised its data center goals and plans
Microsoft's pledge to spend billions on a data center in Mount Pleasant spells a comeback story for a business park where tech giant Foxconn had once said it would create 13,000 jobs.
The value of Microsoft's project could in time top $10 billion given the amount of land it controls in the village's Wisconsin Innovation Park.
In May, the company announced it would spend $3.3 billion by 2026 to build a first phase of the project, a threefold increase from the $1 billion it initially said it would spend.
The $1 billion dated to early 2023, when Microsoft bought its first 315-acre parcel in the business park and unveiled plans for two data center buildings. Then, in December the company bought an additional 1,030 acres.
Microsoft is building its data center on land that Foxconn was initially expected to use for a $10 billion LCD manufacturing plant that in 2017 then President Donald Trump touted as the "eighth wonder of the world."
Neither the investment nor the 13,000 jobs Foxconn promised materialized.
Here's how the Foxconn and Microsoft stories have so far played out
State spent $1.4 billion on Foxconn business park
To bring Foxconn to the state, Mount Pleasant, Racine County and the state spent $1.4 billion to develop a business park. The state wheeled out nearly $3 billion in subsidies based on the company's promise that it would spend $10 billion to build a large-screen LCD manufacturing operation that would create 13,000 jobs.
Foxconn quickly scrapped that plan.
The company's investment goal in Mount Pleasant was reduced to $672 million under a revised tax credit agreement negotiated with Gov. Tony Evers in 2021 that recognized Foxconn would not come close to what it initially promised. That agreement reduced the company's maximum state subsidy from $285 million to $80 million.
Microsoft includes AI training for business and tech leaders
Microsoft's push in southeast Wisconsin includes not only data centers but a multimillion-dollar investment in training programs that will teach business and technical leaders how best to adapt AI and transform work culture, support start-up businesses, prepare hundreds of students for careers as data center technicians, and provide boot camp-style training for more than 100,000 people who need new skills to work in the artificial intelligence economy.
The effort builds on Microsoft's previous investments in business and workforce development in Wisconsin and brings in many of the same partners, including the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Connected Systems Institute, the Green Bay Packers and the Titletown Tech business development center, the Madison startup accelerator gener8tor, United Way and Gateway Technical College.
Microsoft also intends to open an AI Co-Innovation Lab lab at the Connected Systems Institute to help Wisconsin manufacturers, entrepreneurs and other business connect with Microsoft AI experts for guidance on implementing AI technology to grow their businesses.
Mount Pleasant officials said Microsoft's rapid pace reflects a partnership in which Microsoft is bringing its experience from the more than 300 data centers it has built worldwide.
Foxconn says it employs about 1,000 manufacturing workers
Foxconn has confirmed it now employs about 1,000 people in Mount Pleasant who make data servers. Foxconn has called its Mount Pleasant plant "a key manufacturing site" in a global operation that makes about 40% of the world's data servers.
The servers produced in Mount Pleasant by Foxconn Industrial Internet, a business operation of parent company Hon Hai Technology Group, are used in data centers operated by large-scale cloud management companies.
Large banks of the servers support information storage, online video platforms, phone apps and other big-data functions. The heart of each server is a printed circuit board that, depending on customer requirements, can contain thousands of electronic components.
In addition to data servers, Foxconn in Mount Pleasant has also made microinverters, a key electronic component of home solar energy systems, for Enphase Energy.
Reporting for this story was from Karl Ebert, Ricardo Torres and Tom Daykin of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Pro-Palestinian mural blending Star of David, swastika draws outrage of Milwaukee Jewish leaders
Sophie Carson
A new mural on a prominent street corner suggests Jewish people are carrying out a new Holocaust and intertwines a Star of David and a swastika.
The mural carries the words, "The irony of becoming what you once hated," in all capital letters.
Milwaukee Jewish community leaders Thursday decried it as "vile" and "horribly antisemitic."
"This mural is not intended to actually change anything on the ground (in Israel and Gaza). It has no capacity to do that. It's only meant to be hurtful to our Holocaust survivors who see it," said Miryam Rosenzweig, president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
The mural is posted on a building at the corner of North Holton and East Locust streets owned by Ihsan Atta, a Palestinian-American landlord who is the registered agent for the property management company Fala7 Investments LLC.
The mural replaced one on Breonna Taylor that was well-known to those in the area. Taylor, a Black woman, was shot and killed in her home in 2020 by Louisville police during a botched raid. The police killings of Taylor and George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked nationwide protests about police violence. Another prominent mural of Floyd on a building also owned by Atta remains at the corner of East North Avenue and North Holton Street.
Atta told WTMJ-TV in June that he was planning to replace the Taylor mural with a pro-Palestinian one to call attention to the Israel-Hamas war. He told the Journal Sentinel Thursday that he kept the Taylor mural after removing it and plans to either give it to Taylor's family or hang it somewhere else in the Riverwest neighborhood.
Rosenzweig said the mural aims to "scare the Jewish community, to threaten them, and to harass and intimidate." It also denies the atrocities of the Holocaust by equating it to the Israel-Hamas war, she said.
"It's very much trying to blame all Jews," Rosenzweig said, adding that a key antisemitic trope is blaming all Jewish people for the actions of the Israeli government.
The new mural includes images of drones, bombed-out buildings, women wearing head coverings carrying children, an apparent mass grave and an empty swing set.
Rosenzweig said the mural aims to "scare the Jewish community, to threaten them, and to harass and intimidate." It also denies the atrocities of the Holocaust by equating it to the Israel-Hamas war, she said.
"It's very much trying to blame all Jews," Rosenzweig said, adding that a key antisemitic trope is blaming all Jewish people for the actions of the Israeli government.
The phrase on the mural is found in some pro-Palestinian art and online memes. Atta said he created the idea for the mural in collaboration with some local tattoo artists, and he argued it was not antisemitic to compare the Holocaust and Israel's devastation in Gaza. The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of 6 million Jews.
"The fact that (Rosenzweig) says that it relates the Holocaust to what's going in Gaza is exactly the point. It is what's going on. It is a holocaust that's going on," Atta said. "For her to say that it's comparable, she's absolutely right."
Atta has previously compared Israel to Nazi Germany. Two days ago he reposted a meme on Instagram that attempted to draw similarities between Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He argued that it was OK to combine the Star of David and swastika symbols because, he said, the star is used not only as a religious symbol, but a political symbol. It is found on the Israeli Air Force insignia.
"The swastika, to me, is equivalent to the Star of David," Atta said.
Atta also disagreed with the concept that Jewish residents could feel threatened by the mural. He said he thought Jewish people "should be able to relate" to how painful a genocide is for a population.
"I think the only people that are being threatened are the Palestinians," he said, whose perspective he argued was being stifled on the global stage.
Atta is the brother of two prominent local Muslim leaders: Othman Atta, executive director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee — the state's largest mosque, and Janan Najeeb, president of the Milwaukee Muslim Women's Coalition.
Since the mural is on a privately owned building, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation is not planning to take any steps to try to have it removed, Rosenzweig said.
"For those who see this imagery, I would ask you to stand up against this level of hate — to see it for what it is — as you would stand up for hate against anyone," she said.
Sophie Carson is a general assignment reporter who reports on religion and faith, immigrants and refugees and more. Contact her at scarson@gannett.com or 920-323-5758.
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Microsoft continues amassing Racine County site. Latest buy includes $43 million for 160 acres
Tom Daykin
Microsoft Corp. has made one of its largest ever Racine County land purchases − adding 160.3 acres to a site it's amassing north of its Mount Pleasant data center campus.
The software developer bought five parcels, at 12123 Louis Sorenson Road, from Peter Zenner Family Farm LLC for $43,462,548.
Also, Microsoft bought 5.9 acres, at 12800 Louis Sorenson Road, from Randall and Louise Borgardt for $7,339,000.
That's according to deeds posted online Thursday by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
The company has made a series of purchases since May, with several of those transactions recorded this summer.
The Zenner and Borgardt transactions come one week after Microsoft bought 1 acre, at 12827 Louis Sorenson Road, from Ronald C. Smith for $900,000.
The purchases now total 473.9 acres − with the company spending $106.8 million, according to deeds.
Those additional tracts will "support data center construction already underway in the area," said Bowen Wallace, Microsoft vice president of datacenters/Americas, in a July statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The company in December bought just over 1,000 acres of nearby farmland that's being developed for data centers. The three transactions totaled nearly $176 million.
The land purchases on Louis Sorenson Road are north of Durand Avenue/Wisconsin Highway 11. Most of Microsoft's development is initially planned for south of that highway.
Microsoft says it will spend $3.3 billion by 2026 to build the initial phase of its data center development. Much of the investment is driven by growing demand for artificial intelligence-related applications.
Tom Daykin can be emailed at tdaykin@jrn.com and followed on Instagram, X and Facebook.
Massive Microsoft data center brings new promise - and water and energy challenges - to Racine County.
Not long ago, politicians and local officials began calling a huge piece of Racine County property — formerly farmland and suburban homes in the village of Mount Pleasant — “Wisconn Valley,” a nod to Silicon Valley.
The centerpiece of this vision, announced in 2017 and heralded by then-President Donald Trump, was supposed to be Foxconn, a high-tech manufacturing company based in Taiwan. For $3 billion in state tax credits, southeastern Wisconsin would get 13,000 new jobs that paid decent factory wages. Since then, Foxconn dramatically scaled back its plans, agreed to far lower tax credits, and about 1,000 people are said to be doing contract assembly work.
Now there’s a new tech project slated for the area, a Microsoft data center. Microsoft’s land will take up 1,347 acres so far. That’s more than 2 square miles. The first stages of the massive complex are under construction just east of Interstate 94 near where the highway crosses Braun Road and will take years and billions of dollars to develop.
In May, Microsoft announced it would spend $3.3 billion by 2026 to build a first phase of the project. That amount could be ultimately be three times that amount, and the company continues to buy additional parcels in the area.
At the project's launch in May attended by President Joe Biden, Microsoft Corp. president Brad Smith said the company understands the importance of forging positive relationships with communities where it builds projects, and said the data center will “under promise and over-deliver.”
But the data center will have far fewer jobs than even the scaled-down Foxconn operation nearby. State and local officials celebrated Microsoft’s massive investment, and the state extended a sales tax exemption for the project. The plan has stirred new tension between Mount Pleasant and the City of Racine, which originally collaborated to assemble more than 1,000 acres of land into the Foxconn industrial park and build crucial water and sewer systems.
There also are deep concerns about the power and water demands tied to the Microsoft project, which is one of the largest data centers now under construction in the U.S. Such data centers are being built throughout the world as part of the next generation of technology with artificial intelligence at its core.
Here’s what to know about the Racine County project.
Data centers help power everyday technology
Most people think of data centers, collectively, as “the cloud.” If all data centers suddenly went dark, you'd quickly notice — you couldn't stream movies, use online documents, or access social media, for example.
Behind the scenes, though, the cloud is a real place — or real places. Each data center is a collection of thousands of computers, across one or more buildings. Data centers typically have no windows, and they’re surrounded by a high-security fence or wall. Buildings are connected to the outside world by fiber-optic cables that crisscross the country and the globe.
Thousands of data centers exist in the U.S., run by companies including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Google. Microsoft operates more than 300 in 34 countries, and built its first in 1989 in Redmond, Washington.
In the U.S., data centers are clustered in northern Virginia, Georgia, Washington, Oregon and Texas. Large facilities, like the one Microsoft plans for Mount Pleasant, are known as "hyperscale" in industry terms.
Data center expert Aaron Wemhoff said that location is crucial.
"There are definite issues with data centers getting the resources they need to function without impacting everyone else around it," said Wemhoff, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Villanova University.
How many people will work at the Microsoft data center in Mount Pleasant?
Microsoft said it expects about 300 people to be working at the site by 2026 — a mix of contractors and permanent staff. The company has said the number of jobs could ultimately grow to about 2,000. Permanent jobs at data centers include a variety of roles, from security guards to technicians and engineers.
Most average-size data centers operate with just a few dozen people. The state of Virginia tried to study economic impact of the industry. The state's report said "data centers continue to become more efficient through automation, which means fewer jobs are necessary." The state ran into industry pushback when it tried to impose a threshold of 50 employees on new data centers.
"Politicians tend to romanticize the investment," said Nicolas Diaz, an architect and PhD candidate in Chile, where data centers have proliferated and activist movements have sprung up to oppose them due to their water consumption. Diaz works with a collaborative of researchers called FAIR to study AI's impact.
Why is Lake Michigan water so important to the new Microsoft site?
If you've ever felt your laptop or phone get hot to the touch, you've experienced a basic fact about computers: they heat up. When there are thousands of servers packed into a warehouse-like building, it's important to keep equipment cool so that it continues to work. For some data centers, that means industrial-sized fans or air-cooling technology. Other data centers use evaporating water to cool the interior of the warehouse, much like a giant swamp cooler. Some use both. Microsoft's data center in Mount Pleasant will use both air- and water-based cooling systems, although the company has declined to provide details about the design of the system.
Researchers are racing to find ways to reduce the water consumption of data centers, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence, which uses chips that need more cooling power. Microsoft’s own work to reduce water usage is cutting-edge.
If Microsoft’s new data center uses methods similar to other facilities, it will likely use millions of gallons of water each day, but it's unclear exactly how much. Foxconn was approved to use 7 million gallons of Lake Michigan water per day, returning a portion of that to the lake.
How might Microsoft's data center affect the surrounding area?
Innovative tech firms have transformed parts of Wisconsin before. For example, Epic Systems, which makes medical software, has fueled vibrant growth since 2002 in Verona, outside Madison.
But it's unclear how Microsoft's new data center will change the surrounding area, because it will involve far fewer workers than a company like Epic, which employs about 13,000 people.
The Microsoft development could even hurt the city of Racine, Mayor Cory Mason said.
"Instead of having people move to the area to live and work, what you've got is a lot of resources being put into that technology zone, which is having some firms disinvest from the city of Racine to move closer to that zone,” he said. “It's really a deal that backfired on us."
Mason said the data center and similar development will entrench patterns of segregation and poverty by concentrating funds in the suburban part of the county — not unlike discriminatory practices known as redlining, which kept Black Americans from accessing real estate wealth in the 20th century.
The city is intensely segregated, Mason said, and the data center won't provide regional gains that could be more fairly spread out.
"This Microsoft deal is redlining in the 21st century," Mason said. "It virtually ensures that low-income folks and impoverished folks are going to remain segregated and lower class."
How much electricity will the data center use?
The U.S. Department of Energy says that data centers are energy intensive, using 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building.
Microsoft has declined to share how much power the site is projected to use, and information about costs has been kept out of public documents for now.
Despite the electrical infrastructure already extended to the site, there’s more left to be built. The Citizens Utility Board customer advocacy group has asked the Public Service Commission to cap project costs. Microsoft has said in a letter to the Public Service Commission that the company is committed to “paying its own way.”
“The devil is in the details,” says Tom Content, executive kdirector of Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin, and specifics haven’t yet been released.
Building new infrastructure could mean cost increases for consumers, says Content.
Two new gas-fired power plants are now requested for the region. We Energies is asking for 1.3 gigawatts of new gas generation. One gigawatt can power 100 million LED bulbs, or 9,000 electric cars. That's enough energy to power about 950,000 homes.
These plants are needed in part because of growing energy demand in the region from data centers, said Ciaran Gallagher, energy and air manager of the nonprofit Clean Wisconsin.
The new power generation is related to “economic growth in the I-94 corridor. Microsoft is a big part of that,” said Dan Krueger, executive vice president of planning at WEC Energy Group.
This energy use is also a point of contention for environmental advocates such as Clean Wisconsin. "Data centers, including this Microsoft one, can be low carbon, but only if new renewable energy, new wind and solar, is built to supply that new demand," Gallagher said.
We Energies is scheduled to close older coal plants, which will reduce the grid’s carbon footprint, and Krueger says that the new natural gas plants being proposed will run only 10% to 20% of the time. “We have some of the most aggressive CO2 reduction targets in the country,” Krueger says.
Microsoft has said some energy will come from renewable sources such as solar power.
Climate change is contributing to a wide range of problems, including much stronger hurricanes and tornadoes, and life-threatening temperatures. In Wisconsin, climate change has already contributed to more dangerous and damaging floods. That includes property-damaging flash floods along the North Branch of the Pike River, which is part of the watershed adjacent to the new data center site.
Based on available information from the company, data center expert Wemhoff believes that Microsoft is doing a good job of using natural resources wisely. “They appear to be one of the most responsible companies in the industry regarding the impact of data centers on the environment," he said.
What can we learn about data centers from other areas?
In Northern Virginia, a corridor known as Data Center Alley has replaced longstanding horse farms and rolling pastures, and is now within a stone's throw of Gettysburg, a national park and historic site.
Towns and locals can learn a lot from what's happened there, said Julie Bolthouse, director of land use for the Piedmont Environmental Council in Virginia.
"The amount of power that they're asking for, the transmission lines and substations — it's a whole new world, and we need to be asking questions we didn't used to ask," Bolthouse said.
The area’s energy utility, Dominion, plans to build eight new “peaker” plants, or natural gas-powered plants that will fire up when demand is high, such as on a hot summer afternoon. Virginia has planned for a zero-carbon grid, and this decision has flummoxed climate activists.
Bolthouse also points to hidden risks that towns should be ready to address. For example, police and fire departments should be ready to handle potential emergencies at the site, and navigate the center’s labyrinthine corridors. Or if a data center powers up its diesel backup generators — sometimes dozens — the fumes could affect sensitive groups.
As part of its extensive commitment to reducing its climate footprint, Microsoft has a goal of moving away from diesel backup generators by 2030, and its fact sheet about the Mount Pleasant data center says it will use a “renewable biofuel” for this purpose.
The U.S. Department of Energy may play a role in planning for data centers and energy use. On Aug. 12, it released a brief with a range of strategies for planning and mitigating the spike in energy demand.
Will more tech companies build data centers in Wisconsin?
There are already many data centers in the Midwest. The Great Lakes region is one of the world's most important sources of freshwater, and other data center clusters are currently located in areas such as Arizona, Georgia and Texas that are hotter and drier. That means the Midwest is becoming even more attractive to tech companies, as they seek the plentiful water and land in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. In late March, media outlet The Information reported that Microsoft and OpenAI were planning a $100 billion data center dedicated to AI, and that it would be built within the U.S., but the exact location has not been announced.
The potential for future data centers is part of why Mason is raising concerns now, before the area builds additional infrastructure.
Mason said: "There's a lot of land available here. There's a lot of water available here. There's people who want to work hard to achieve the American dream. If we do this right, everybody wins."
Mason notes that the city, particularly its Black residents, has long endured large disparities in employment, wages, wealth and health, when compared to nearby areas such as Mount Pleasant that are wealthier and mostly white.
"The hope and promise of the Foxconn deal was to shrink that disparity," Mason said. "There is no reason for us to have that kind of disparity when one of the richest companies in the world is investing billions of dollars here.”
Lindsay Muscato was a 2023-24 fellow with the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University. Marquette University and administrators of the program played no role in the reporting, editing or presentation of this project.