Wisconsin battles rapid rise in Covid cases amid partisan disputes over safety

Over the past seven months, as the coronavirus pandemic first pummeled the nation’s coastal states then swept toward the country’s rural heartland, political battles have often stymied public health efforts to tamp down outbreaks and gain control of a fast-spreading virus. Perhaps nowhere else are those forces colliding in a more dramatic fashion than in Wisconsin – a state that has been cripplingly unable to reach consensus on how to…