Author

Ruth Conniff is Editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner. She formerly served as Editor-in-chief of The Progressive Magazine where she worked for many years from both Madison and Washington, DC. Shortly after Donald Trump took office she moved with her family to Oaxaca, Mexico, and covered U.S./Mexico relations, the migrant caravan, and Mexico’s efforts to grapple with Trump. Conniff is a frequent guest on MSNBC and has appeared on Good Morning America, Democracy Now!, Wisconsin Public Radio, CNN, Fox News and many other radio and television outlets. She has also written for The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. She graduated from Yale University in 1990, where she ran track and edited the campus magazine The New Journal. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband and three daughters.
Kelly’s bitter concession in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race marks the decline of minority rule
By: Ruth Conniff - April 11, 2023
This commentary originally appeared in the the Wisconsin Examiner. Daniel Kelly, the losing candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, gave a remarkably bitter concession speech last week that could serve as an epitaph for misogynist minority rule in Wisconsin. Kelly refused to congratulate Janet Protasiewicz, who emerged as the clear winner less than an hour […]
Ron Johnson’s push to ban abortion
By: Ruth Conniff - September 20, 2022
This commentary originally appeared in the Wisconsin Examiner. Sen. Ron Johnson is a famous flip-flopper. Take his recent wriggling on the bipartisan same-sex marriage bill for which Wisconsin’s other senator, Democrat Tammy Baldwin, has been busy rounding up Republican votes. Back in July, when the bill passed the House, Johnson said he saw “no reason […]
The rightwing assault hits close to home
By: Ruth Conniff - July 19, 2022
A version of this commentary originally appeared in the Wisconsin Examiner. It’s pretty hard not to take it personally when the highest court in the land erases your humanity. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has rolled back a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion, the power of the state reaches right […]
Abortion care on wheels
By: Ruth Conniff - June 7, 2022
This story originally appeared in the Wisconsin Examiner. As the nation braces for a decision that could come any day from the U.S. Supreme Court ending federally protected abortion rights — and making abortion a crime from the earliest stages of pregnancy in some states — women’s health care advocates have been thinking outside the […]