(NBC News) Wisconsin is now one of the nation’s new Covid-19 hot spots with an explosion of new cases, but the response to the pandemic has been stymied by political trench warfare between the Democratic governor and the Republicans who control the state Legislature.
In the last two weeks, as Gov. Tony Evers has battled GOP lawmakers, the state’s coronavirus cases jumped by 50 percent and the 33,403 new infections in that time is more than any other state besides Texas and California, the latest NBC News figures revealed Wednesday.
Adjusted for population, Wisconsin’s new case rate of nearly 20 percent is the highest in the nation just after North and South Dakota, the figures show.
“Wisconsin has become the poster child for how things can go wrong,” Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told NBC News.