You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime,
anywhere.
Caller text, the number is the same.
It's 855-752-4842-855-75CIVIC.
Leave a comment on the live stream.
We are currently streaming on Facebook, YouTube, and the platform that we still call Twitter.
Wonderful show for you today, including a nice long chat with Civic Media's very own Jim Santel, host of Amicus, a law review.
You can catch that every Saturday from 9 a.m.
to 11 a.m.
here on Civic Media.
You can also catch up with them if you haven't.
If you don't have the chance to listen to it live, you can always go ahead and download the free Civic Media app if you want to stream it live, but you can also listen to it by going to civicmedia.us slash shows where you look for Amicus's show page.
You can download episodes, catch up as you go along, and that way you can be informed because I'm telling you, every episode is like a mini trip to law school.
gets you the information you need.
It's very detailed, but it's also very palatable.
You can understand it even if you haven't graduated and gone to work in your first firm.
That's Amicus Allarview, Saturdays on Civic Media 9 to 11.
Jim will be here in after the 930 News, and we're going to be talking about a lot.
He always sends me a big long list.
It's the biggest news coming out of the world of law, including
Steve Bannon information with regard with regard to the DOJ as well as it looks like the looks like some complaints coming in about legal information and magistrate judge.
You gotta wait for Jim.
You gotta wait for Jim.
He can make this work.
I'm just a guy who listened to him.
I'm not a lawyer.
I'm lawyer at Jason.
So he will be here after the 9 30 news and then at 10 35 we will be talking about these last
A couple of weeks of winter, the temperatures are creeping up there right now.
The Civic Media mid-morning weather balloon has it clocked at Radio Park here and we're seeing it at 38.
What do you guys have up there in Madison right now?
By the way, Dom Lee is on the boards in Madison right now.
Good morning, Dom.
How are you?
I'm doing pretty good.
And yeah, it's not too chilly here either.
I'm just pulling up the Madison weather right now.
It's 34 here as well.
So yeah, it's getting up there.
I'm so excited.
I'm so
excited,
Craig.
I am.
So we're hitting those last few weeks of, let's see here, we got a little more.
Today is the 10th.
We have 40 days until spring.
40 days until spring.
We are getting closer and closer.
Before you know it, we'll be springing ahead with those clocks.
The days will be getting longer.
Well, they're already getting longer anyways, but they'll get way longer.
People will complain that we have daylight savings time.
I'll be like, I don't really care.
I like when it's light out at 830 at night.
So you can just leave me alone with this, this who we argument.
But 40 days until spring, what do you do?
What are you watching?
What are you reading?
What are you doing in these last weeks before we get out there and the snow is melting and the sun is out there.
It's warmer.
But what are you doing to close out those winter weeks?
You're reading books.
So you're watching TV shows, movies, that kind of thing.
I want to know about that 1035.
And if we have time, we might talk about Dominic's, uh, high school prom and it'll be funny.
I promise you that much.
He doesn't have a choice.
And then at the end of the show, we will be giving you a handy tip from Greg.
It's always a great tip.
It's usually as much a tip for me as it is for you, but we'll do that together at the end of the show.
But right now we're going to be talking about a story that is in the New York times right now.
Uh, Lisa Friedman and Maxine, Josie Lowe, Josie Lowe, I think it's Josie Lowe.
My apologies for mispronunciation if that's the case.
Published this yesterday.
Headline reads, Trump allies near total victory in wiping out US climate regulation.
We talked a lot about this last 2024.
It's because it's 2026.
In 2024, we talked a lot about this with regard to a specific piece of literature, if you will, called Project 2025, which was essentially the playbook they've been running since January 20 of last year.
is their way of completely reworking, reshaping, and dismantling the things going on at the federal level, which will trickle down to the state level, which trickles down to the local levels, which trickles down to your kitchen table where you live, how you can afford things, what's available, how you can access certain things, whether it's healthcare, social safety nets, all those things are in that book.
It goes from the very economic to the environmental to the social to the
Getting in the business of your marriage and how many babies you should or shouldn't have.
It's all there in that 900 page tome that we talked about at length in 2024 that folks were like, I don't think that's a real thing.
That's not a real thing.
It's not real.
It is real.
It's absolutely real.
It's available to buy.
We read portions of that book on the air back in the day, but it's being enacted.
And part of that is an environmental policy section.
And that environmental policy is to a policy section is basically to strip away as much environmental policy in the federal government as possible.
And one thing they are very close to doing is getting rid of something called the endangerment finding.
This is very simply put.
It's a very broad topic or it's a very detailed topic.
But here's how The New York Times describes it.
The endangerment finding has been around for since 2009.
And it is what has determined that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases are supercharging storms, wildfires, drought, heat waves, and sea level rises, and are therefore threatening public health and welfare.
It required the federal government to regulate these gases.
which resulted from the burning of oils, gas, and coal.
For the past, since the Obama administration, there has been a definite push towards curbing our relationship to oil, to expanding our usage and dependency on green energy, to further regulating those who work in the fossil fuel business to make sure what they are doing is
I don't want to say it's as friendly as possible for them or as we would like.
Shell's got to make money.
BP's got to make money.
They've got a job.
They're doing their thing.
I'm not going to get into the nuances of shut it all down and switch over to windmills.
That's a bigger conversation that no one in this country is prepared to have.
This finding the endangerment finding determined a carbon dioxide methane and other greenhouse gases were basically causing a lot of climate change issues and therefore work to be regulated and In the first Trump administration they worked.
I would not in earnest to try to get rid of these.
I think they worked in the same vein that a lot of administrations would work to try to dismantle policies I would say in more of a traditional method
And when that didn't work on his four year break, he decided to recruit some different people.
I should say the team around Donald Trump.
I don't really think personally that Mr. Trump, President Trump has any real, he doesn't really care about the environment.
He doesn't really care about anything, but the people who have surrounded him do.
And this book, Project 2025 is their guidebook.
just probably one step below the Bible.
And I'm not being funny when I say that.
It's for real true.
But there are a group of people, there are four of them, Russell T. Vote, who we've talked about.
He is in charge of the Office of Management and Budget.
Jeffrey B. Clark, he is a high-profile ally.
And there are two other people, Mandy Gunasekara and Jonathan Brightbill.
All four of these individuals have worked their tails off to get enough information to delegitimize the climate science that's been researched and put out there that helped create the endangerment findings.
So basically what they're doing is they have worked to delegitimize this entire thing so they can now
strip it away and get rid of it, which would then create the ability for these companies to do whatever they want.
I want to know what you think, because this is, yes, this is at a federal level.
I get it.
This is Washington news.
This is happening, you know, a thousand plus miles away.
But this is going to trickle down to your lives.
It already has the way they're stripping away policies.
The EPA, they have a guy in charge of the EPA.
His name is Lee Zeldin.
He is not a guy who is a friend of the environment.
He is a guy who is a friend of Trump.
And if you are a friend of Mr. Trump, that means you do what he says.
And it's about stripping away all power within the EPA.
And that is absolutely dangerous.
Climate change is real.
Global warming is real.
I'm not saying anything controversial here.
When I listen to, when I listen to network meteorologists, whose job it is to research the weather, talk about climate change in a way that's scientific and not political.
Climate change is real.
The majority of scientists who research this say it's real.
But what they have done is managed to get these individuals into the office who deny this fact fact.
And it's made it their goal.
to get rid of this finding, the endangerment finding.
They spin it as, what are they, let's see, I like what they call it here.
They called it a Leninistic plot to seize control of the economy and its climate alarmism.
And it's, let's see here, they want to dismantle the climate initiatives to do that because yes, a Leninistic plot and allow businesses to flourish, allow businesses to business.
And there's a problem within that.
We're going to talk more about on the other side of the commercial, but I would love to hear from you 855-752-4842.
855-757.
You can leave a comment on the live stream.
We are streaming on Facebook, YouTube, the platform.
We still call Twitter.
It goes on to say, in revoking that determination, the Trump administration would erase limits on greenhouse gases from cars, power plants, and industries like that generate the planet warming pollution.
Unlike the swings.
Unlike the swings in federal policy that have come before, that were routine when administration's changed hands, getting rid of the endangerment findings could hamstring any future administration's efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emission.
And I think that's the important thing to remember as well, is I think that a lot of people can say, well, just go back and change it.
No, when you get rid of the findings, I have to assume you have to start from scratch.
You can't just go back and say, oh, put it back the way it was.
As it says here, could hamstring any future administration's efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions also brings in the problems with lobbyists and problems with business?
We'll talk more about business.
And I want you to think about that where you think who the big bad is on this one.
But we're going to talk more about that on the other side.
Jean from Eau Claire is on the line right now.
Jean, good morning.
How are you doing today?
Well, I'm hanging in there.
Thank you so much.
You guys are doing a great job.
I appreciate you.
You know, people need to wake up here.
Remember, things are done by laws.
you know, and regulations.
That's what keeps us safe and doing a lot with our legal system and now they're doing a lot with our regulations.
People need to wake up.
We need to vote them out.
We can't tolerate this because you can't change this back overnight.
It'll be too late.
Come on, guys, wake up.
Have a good day.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thanks, Gene.
And Gene brings up a good point.
During the first administration, during the first administration of President Trump,
The people he had at the EPA, even at the end, felt that this was a baseless advance.
That getting rid of the endangerment findings wasn't worth doing.
Because back in that first administration, he had people who had somewhat of heads on their shoulders.
Well, they're all gone now.
Now they're full of yes men, second vans, and people with their own agenda.
And that agenda is Project 2025.
That's the greatest hit.
I'm bringing it back from the old days.
It never went away.
It has been implemented at great speed and they are going to continue to do that.
It is 2026.
It is a mid-year election year.
We have a shot at making sure that we can protect the democracy by getting out and voting.
We'll be talking a lot about voting over the next few months.
So don't go anywhere.
We're going to keep talking about this article.
I want to keep hearing from you about your thoughts on
Stripping away some of the most fundamental findings that protect our environment for ourselves, our kids, our grandkids and going forward.
You're listening to Civic Media mid mornings here on the
Civic Media Network.
Don't go anywhere.
Stay tuned and stay close.
Welcome, welcome back to Civic Media, mid mornings here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
My name is Greg Bach, your host, your buddy, your pal, your believer in you and all the things you can do because you can accomplish anything when you put your mind to it.
You're listening to us right now.
Whether you're watching on the live stream, we are on Facebook, YouTube or the platform we still call Twitter or you're listening to us live on the radio or on the Civic Media app.
Get that Civic Media app and take us anywhere in the world.
It's very, very handy, dandy app.
You can listen back.
You can listen to shows.
You can listen to music.
You can get your news.
all right there on the civic media app.
It is absolutely free.
Still ahead after the 9 30 news we have Jim Santel host of amicus a law review going to be here talking about all the biggest news coming out of the world of law.
And we will also be talking about what you're doing in these last 40 days of winter before spring has sprung.
Are you hunkering down finishing indoor projects?
Are you watching movies reading books?
Are you reading movies and watching books?
I have no idea you do what you want to do because it's winter and we're all
all just waiting for that nice warm day.
But all that's still ahead.
We were talking right now about an article in the New York Times that was put out yesterday entitled Trump allies near quote, total victory in wiping out US climate regulation.
They have worked on getting rid of something called the endangerment findings, which is basically the baseline that allows the EPA and the administration to regulate the harmful
whether it's greenhouse gases, whether it's carbon dioxide, methane, other greenhouse gases, what they have found to be the key causes of the warming climates, they've made it a public threat and a threat to public health and welfare.
And this endangerment finding has been the bedrock of the policies that are based on that.
Well, the Trump administration, by way of Russell vote, Jeffrey Clark and two other individuals,
are working to get rid of that finding.
And they've been doing this for a while.
After the first Trump administration, they spent the next four years coming up with policies, draft language for executive orders that would allow President Trump or whomever they could get into office to come in and simply scrap whatever is on the books right now.
The money for their research was partially funded by the Heritage Foundation.
It's the same people who authored Project 2025.
And two things I want to talk about before we head to the news is, one, in this article, they make it clear that this is not in an interest to businesses.
Like, I'm sure the businesses can take advantage of what could happen here, but it's not big business behind them saying, yes, do it, twisting their mustaches and tying imaginary women to railroad tracks.
This is...
It says here in the article, I think this is very interesting to point out, is with regard to who is behind this and why they are doing this, it says by a gentleman named Neil Chetrogie, who is a Republican who actually led the Federal Energy Regulation Commission during the first Trump administration, he said conservative activists have helped sustain the fight against the endangerment finding even after businesses backed out, because what happened was over time,
Businesses got on board.
They started complying.
They started changing the way they do business.
They started.
working more with green energy and those types of things.
I'm not saying they can't go back and they won't go back.
A buck is a buck and a bottom line has to be met and shareholders have to be happy.
But this isn't the big evil corporations.
This is conservative activists working to get rid of a baseline finding that helps protect our environment, your environment, your kid's environment, your grandkids environment, your great grandkids environment.
And I just want you to remember that this is not about
business.
This is about ideology.
And that is also as dangerous in my opinion.
And as a reminder, as it says in the article, and it'll be the article will be in the show notes.
If this happens, it will make it harder for future administrations to go back and fix the problems that this is going to create.
It has been mainly put forth by people who call climate change a hoax or a con job, which is exactly what President Trump has referred to climate change as.
So he has gathered feelings more than fact.
And I
I feel like they had an idea on facts versus feelings, but their feelings on climate change is not fact.
Scientists have spent a very, very long time researching this information, coming to where we were at just in 2009.
And now they're about to undo it.
And that's all because of the people in office right now, because of a book like Project 2025.
I think that's...
very important to always reiterate that Project 2025 never went away.
And it always was a thing.
And just as a really quick, you know, aside, one of the individuals here, I want to look it up right now here, just getting it for you, because it was up there and now it's gone.
There we are.
Jeffrey Clark, who's one of the authors of this, one of the people who worked at the Heritage Foundation to help create those white papers that allowed them to create policy that would scrap the EPA's power.
He was pardoned by President Trump in 2020 as a result of him being arrested and indicted on overturning the Georgia election results in 2020.
Mr. Clark was facing criminal investigation in connection with Mr. Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
President Trump preemptively pardoned Mr. Clark in November and the Georgia case was dismissed.
I want you to remember that as well.
Those are the people.
who are writing the policies, which will affect our lives, will affect possibly our gas prices, our energy prices.
We have an election coming up.
We have a chance.
I can't say that it will reverse course, but we have a chance to put something down and stop this.
Stem the tide.
You have to get out and vote.
Myvote.wi.gov.
Find out who's running in your district, whether it is the Congress, the governor,
council, county board, dog catcher.
Find the people who represent your values and put them in office.
Help get them in office, because if we have any chance, it's right now, it's this year, and they are trying to take that away from us right now with regard to the SAVE Act and the MEGA Act.
We cannot let them harm our right to vote.
It is guaranteed in the Constitution, and I will not, I'm sorry, we
can do better and we will do better.
But my vote dot wi dot gov.
When we come back after the news, Jim Santel will be here to talk about all the important information coming out of the world of law.
So don't go anywhere.
Grab a snack.
Get hydrated.
Come on back.
You're listening to Civic Media, mid mornings here on Civic Media.
Stay tuned.
Stay informed and stay close.
Welcome back to Civic Media, mid mornings here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
My name is Greg Bach.
your host, your buddy, your pal, your knower of all things, the rock band Pink Floyd.
I'm serious.
I could talk for the next five hours about them and you wouldn't hear the same thing twice.
You're listening to us on the Civic Media Radio Network.
We are here with you today.
If you want to be part of the conversation, do it.
Call text 855-752-484-2855-75 Civic.
We have a comment on that live stream.
We are currently streaming on Facebook, YouTube and the platform.
We still call Twitter.
PJ on the live stream says Roger Waters is an amazing, is amazing in concert.
If you can't hear what we were listening to, it was Pink Floyd's Echo off the album metal, which came out the, the, the release before dark side of the moon and they went super duper famous.
I'm a huge Pink Floyd fan.
We were talking about that during the secret show.
If you want to be part of the secret show, listen to the live stream.
There you go.
See all here, all for you today.
Lots of great stuff still ahead, 1035.
We're in the last 40 days of winter.
I don't know what that means if that's a religious thing, but the last 40 days of winter, what are you doing?
Doing small projects inside, you're getting ready to go outside, are you reading books, watching movies, catching up, sleeping?
Let us know.
Call, text, comment on the live stream, text us through the Civic Media app.
You can do that, grab the app, open it up, call text, leave a voice message.
Love to hear from you, love to know what you're up to.
But yeah, we're having a really...
We are having a good time today, Dom.
You know what?
In all of the stuff that's going on, there's always so much news that's newsing at our faces.
It's important to make sure that we have some glimmers of hope, and that hope doesn't have to come from the leaders who consistently fail us, because I don't have a lot of hope in them.
I have hope in the people who are listening.
I have hope in the people.
around me that I love and care about who care about and love me.
I'm being dead serious right now.
That is where my hope is.
That is where my connection is.
And my hope lies in our first guest this morning, our only guest this morning, which is the host of amicus a law review, Mr. Jim Santel.
He is a former US attorney, current practicing attorney.
amicus is on nine to 11 every Saturday here on civic media.
You can catch it live on the air, catch it on the app or go back to civic media dot us slash shows, download episodes and get yourself
some Jim Santel in your life because every episode, I think we're up to episode 186 or seven, depending on where Jean is on our count.
But we want to, um, we want to talk about all the stuff going on in the world of law, Jim.
Good morning to you.
How are you today?
Are you a big pink Floyd fan?
Absolutely, I suspect if I looked around a bit, I could find my LP still and pull that out.
And you know, whether it's Pink Floyd or something else from the 70s, you know that they are successful throughout the ages when some of their music appears on what?
on automobile ads, right?
How often do
things get recirculated and people say, wow, that's great music.
Yes, did you know that that's 40, 50 years old?
And now a commercial America is taking it up and mainstreaming it and selling us all good products.
So there
we
are, right?
We're selling a good product with music you like.
Well, now, especially with artists who are selling their entire catalogs, like to their record labels or to private equity firms, and they're going away with like half a billion dollars, but then
You know, I might hear a Bruce Springsteen song plugging socks.
Who knows?
You never know.
But before we get into the topics that you brought to the table today, I wanted to touch back on something we were talking about during the first half of the show this morning.
And that was an article regarding the the EPA and Donald Trump's attempt to basically strip away the power of the EPA to get rid of what's called the endangerment.
findings, which is the baseline that allows them to find to create policies that reign in irresponsible usage of fossil fuels.
That article will be in the show notes as well if you want to read more about that.
But something that I forgot to mention, and something you wanted to touch on upon as well with two separate points.
The first is, if this does go through, which it's poised to do, it looks like it's going to happen.
There's no there's no real threat to the endangerment findings being stripped away.
it can still go to court.
And the thing that the article lays out is that in their original attempt during the first administration, one of the reasons why the endangerment findings did not get stripped away or erased was because the courts kept saying, you're wrong.
You can't do this.
This has no standing.
You're out of here.
They kept losing court battle after court battle.
So if they get through with this, they still probably have to face the courts.
And that may be the wall that keeps those endangerment findings secure for the moment.
It doesn't alleviate us from keeping our eye on this.
It doesn't alleviate us from, it still means we need to get out there and vote for the people who have our values.
But I wanted to state that really quickly that if the endangerment findings are taken away, the courts could still save us, essentially, as they've been doing for the past year and some change.
There was something else that
There was something else, Jim, that you wanted to bring up as well regarding this matter.
And it's basically an incarnation of exactly the point that you just made.
This is not a reversal of that.
But there are groups called the Environmental Defense Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Isn't that a great title, right?
We are scientists and we are concerned.
Exactly.
And we're scientists, so we know what we're talking about, right?
And I think they do.
They do, right?
That's our continuing theme, you and I, as we always talk about how we need to rely upon experts.
So you're meant to be perfect in the scientific method.
obviously is always involving, but scientists know what they're talking about, right?
And so they go to their lawyers and they say, gee, what's going on inside the Trump administration.
And just last week, and maybe one of the first cases of the sort that you just talked about, Greg, go into court and appears before Judge William Young.
He's a district court judge in Massachusetts.
And again, this doesn't solve the problem, but he looks at the Constitution, small C, the creating of this group.
that basically rescinded the endangerment finding and says that the secretary of energy, his name is Chris Wright, I think you mentioned him already, when putting together the five researchers that came up with this notion that climate change isn't happening, global warming, all that's made up.
and basically says this in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, probably the same year in which Led Zeppelin and others were releasing great music in this country.
Basically, the judge says that the group was put together improperly.
Why?
because they failed to hold open hearings, assemble viewpoints on this, and the panel, which was called the Climate Working Group, therefore did not follow what's called the administrative law.
Now, what you do with that is the next question, especially
in
administration that basically is inclined very much every day, not to follow what judges say, but it is exactly the first kind of thing of exactly what you just said, Greg, which is the courts are still our bastions.
And they're the ones who are still the strongholds against this kind of thing.
The whole area is called administrative law.
The whole idea we talk about this a lot is before you can make changes and regulations and the ways in which the laws are implemented, you have to have public comment.
How often do we hear about that?
And you have to have an opportunity to let your government know about whether you think this is, and everybody to your great point, everybody can participate in that.
You don't have to be a scientist.
You don't have to be a lawyer.
You
don't have to be a wonderful lawyer.
a journalist to involve yourself in this, you can simply write in and say, you know what, I think this is bad.
That's the public comment that was missing and putting all this together and judges now identified that flaw.
And you don't even have to go out of the house.
You don't have to go to Washington or to your state capital.
Now they make it.
You can you can you can submit your public comments to websites.
So you can get it's it's the same as writing an email or a letter to your representative.
They allow this to still happen.
And yes, that is it.
They violated the bureaucracy.
They violated the processes.
And that when you say 1972, while I still think of an album like metal or maybe Led Zeppelin three, I think also of the clean air.
act and the Clean Water Act, and that's all tied in.
A bunch of legislation that was working to protect our environment passed by wait for it, Richard Nixon.
But that's where my hope also is.
My hope is in the course that they just simply go, well, you did this incorrectly.
You can't go back and do it again.
and come back and see where we're at.
But right now, what you've done here is garbage.
You've violated all of these things.
And then on top of that, too, you brought up something very interesting, Jim, is that, you know, neither one of us are scientists.
I mean, I have a degree in political science, which I guess technically makes me a scientist.
But these decisions or these findings are not arrived to lightly or quickly.
climate science research like this is exhaustive things done over decades and decades using as you said the scientific method which I think is perfect in its design is how you reach your conclusions or at least your findings but I heard someone once say that when it comes to things like this or I'll throw out another very controversial topic the theory of evolution when people want to talk about it's just the theory whatever
what these scientists are doing is they're not trying to prove that climate change or that their findings are right.
They're trying to prove them wrong so they can find better science to back it up.
And these majority of scientists who said climate change is a thing, global warming is a thing, call it what you want, but it's still something that's affecting us.
There's nothing else we can do.
And I will end my little rant on this.
These scientists on the whole,
Art becoming billionaires on this and that's the other thing they always want to spin is that like they're they're they're in they're in the pocket of Big green energy.
Yeah.
Well, how many of them own boats?
How many of them own 15 men like they don't have oil money.
They have Doctor money scientist money, which usually isn't a lot of that but still this notion that there's somehow this cabal of scientists making billions of dollars off to the green new deal is ridiculous.
It's just like
They just care about their job and the environment.
So I'm sorry.
Again, talking a lot.
We're talking to Jim Santel.
I will let him speak eventually because, you know, I'm that kind of guy, but he is the host of amicus, a law review.
It's on every Saturday from 9 to 11 a.m.
And we're talking about all the big news coming out of the world of law.
You know, what I'm going to do, Jim, because we got you for a little while today.
Cindy is on the phone right now.
Cindy Napleton is on the phone.
What say you today, Cindy?
How are you doing?
What's going on?
Good we'll have a couple of things first of all I am involved with the Union of Concerned Scientists and we've been doing a lot of online petitions to the congressmen and the senators So, you know, they're very active But what I wanted to ask Jim was I know this the save actors on the block this week and that stupid make elections gage me again Are coming on and I'm just wondering if these things pass are they allowed to be repealed?
if after November we get a
full House of Democrats.
Jim, before you get into that, I want you to give, let's come back with that after the break because we can get into the save and to the mega act.
Thank you very much, Cindy, for calling because I don't want to have to cut you off because we only have a couple more minutes before we have to run and pay some bills.
But that's a great question.
We talked to Sam Lybert from all voters, all voting is local yesterday about this matter.
So, Jim, I would love to have your thoughts.
I'm sure you've had one or two thoughts.
on these topics going since they've made themselves present in the world.
All right, absolutely.
And so again, you've got it just right once again, that this is legislation and two things can happen with it.
Cindy, I think is onto something here and that's something big, which is number one, a new Congress, even if the Congress imposes says this is this is in perpetuity, a new Congress playing with the 120th Congress.
on January 2nd of 2027, they can repeal.
And they do regularly repeal legislation that can very much happen.
And to our point that we're talking about in connection with climate change and Cindy's good involvement with the Union of Concerned Scientists, you can also go into court, right?
Just because the Congress passes something doesn't mean that it cannot be challenged in court.
And courts can find it either unconstitutional and inappropriate delegation of authority, all kinds of things.
And so it's not the final word.
But it's a big step, right?
If the Congress passes legislation, the President signs it, there is hoopla, and the law has changed for whatever period of time that law may be in effect.
And that's the big point there.
And the other small comment I'll make about climate change and all this is just to your point about money.
These scientists are the same ones who are being attacked by virtue of the fact that the administration is pulling away all the funding, of course, for universities where they
are.
That's the
other attack on them.
Welcome, welcome back to Civic Media, mid mornings here on Civic Media.
You are listening to us live on the radio or on the live stream or on the app.
Wonderful to have you here.
Thank you for sharing your time with us today.
We are currently on Facebook, YouTube, the platform we still call Twitter.
If you're on the app, I hope you, if you're on the app and you're somewhere like, like outside the Midwest, like we're in Wisconsin, you can hear us all over the app, but like mainly in Wisconsin.
Let us know where you're at.
We've gotten text messages from Vienna, from New Zealand, we've gotten some from Italy.
It's really, really cool when we hear people listening to the app.
and texting in where their location, especially the fact you're taking us with you on your vacation, which means the absolute world to me.
But yeah, and then also if you want to call or text 855-752-4842-855-75 civically a comment on that live stream.
And then also, yeah, we just love to have you here after the 1030 news, we are going to be talking about the last few weeks of winter and what you are doing to get by projects, nothing, getting them shorts ready, getting those
Fantastic t-shirts out of storage, but yeah, what are you doing in the last few weeks of winter?
Love to hear from you on that topic before we get back to Jim Santel and all the news coming out of the world of law I got an important call here Jim.
It's very important whistler is on the line He wants to tell us something very very important with regard to a topic that we've been touching on this morning
Hey whistler Hey Jim, how you doing man?
We're doing well now that you're on the on the broadcast.
Yeah, welcome to the show.
I heard there's a there's a band that you like.
What's the band you like?
Yeah, the band I got into Pink Floyd back in 1971.
There you go.
First album I bought was called Metal.
Mm-hmm.
And the song echoes.
23 minutes.
It starts off like raindrops.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Absolutely beautiful.
Wonderful.
They've changed so much in their recording.
Yeah.
In other words, you know, I love them.
I still love them.
I still do,
too, my friend.
I joined the military.
Awesome.
Thank you very much, Whizzer.
Here's Colin from Richland Center.
Thank you for joining us.
I have that same album.
I think I have two copies of metal.
And one of my biggest regrets ever is that I was not allowed to go see Pink Floyd in 1994 and what would be their last world tour ever.
But I'm not bitter.
I don't bring that up at Thanksgiving.
But we have more important things to talk about.
And that's because we have Jim here.
He is the host of Amicus, a law review every Saturday from 9am to 11am.
Catch it live on the air live on the app or catch up by going to
civicmedia.us slash shows where you can find all of our programs and get the back issues and get what I believe is a mini law school in two hours every week and find out what's going on and not only the news from the world of law but how the processes you know what entails the processes to either bringing us to those decisions or reversing them if you will but we were talking before we went to the break about the SAVE Act and the MEGA Act which are two separate bills that seek different
that have different nuance points with them, but seek the same means, Jim, you probably say, that's basically to restrict, suppress, and intimidate voting.
That's what they're looking at.
And they're tying it in the bow of, what do they call it?
Voter integrity.
Election integrity.
Right, this notion that once again, we've got to correct this horrible problem that we have in the United States, which is voter fraud.
And finally, we're wrestling with all this because all these people are voting
who are not eligible to vote.
They're not citizens.
And of course, the predicate for that is simply wrong.
We know that that's not the case.
We know that that has been litigated in court.
And so it's disingenuous from the very start.
But we're going down this road because apparently it attracts some portion of the population.
The big takeaways on this, of course, it is voter suppression.
It's an attempt to keep people from voting.
Some of the research on, again,
There are two, maybe even three bills.
They've got some variations in them.
But the big focus on this is there's some estimates of as many as 21 million people who would otherwise vote would be denied access to it.
And one of the big ways in which most of these.
bills would would accomplish that would be to require all sorts of documents including including proof of citizenship but a proof of citizenship how many of us have that at the ready and the notion of course is once again that people of color
and especially women who have changed their names who are no longer the name that appears on their birth certificate.
What do they do when they're trying to establish their entitlement to vote?
There are all kinds of other aspects of it.
The one that especially attracts me negatively is that if you illegally, if you're a polling person and you're providing assistance on polling day, which I do and I know many of your listeners do as well, and you happen to make a mistake.
Number one, it's pretty difficult to make a mistake, but
you inappropriately permit somebody to vote, that sort of thing.
There can be criminal penalty, a legitimate mistake that you make.
That kind of thing is going to chill people from coming in the first place.
Would prohibit universal mail voting.
All voters to submit an application in order to receive a mail vote.
Places like California, you get one in the mail.
All these things trying to reduce access to voting and
The overall impact of it, again, is huge in terms of simply chilling, voting.
Again, passes get signed as soon as 2026.
It is, it is quite nefarious and it is, it is, should be a focus of everybody's attention as I know it is for all your listeners.
And as a reminder to folks out there, you know, and this is something we can talk about when we come back after the news is the fact that
That 21 million isn't 21 million Democrats 21 million liberals 21 million people of color.
It is 21 million people and Those 21 million vote for different people and they will be affected as I've been saying we've been saying for so long these policies while being enacted against whether it's blue cities or Democratic governors or mayors there are folks who vote for Republicans who are independent libertarians who
will be affected by policies, especially these.
And they can't do this.
This is messing.
And don't let them sell it as election integrity.
Don't let them sell it as we're protecting the vote.
This is a solution in search of a problem.
We're going to talk more with Jim Santel on the other side of the news.
Don't go anywhere.
Grab some water, grab some snacks here on the civic media, mid morning show.
I'm Greg Bach.
Stay tuned.
Stay close.
The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
