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Good morning to everybody in all the places along the network.
It's fun to say that all up and down the network.
I feel like Larry King.
Oh, Claire, hello.
8-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2 is how you get ahold of us, 8-5-5-7-5-CIVIC.
There is talk that Ghislaine Maxwell wants clemency.
How much information do you think she would have to give?
for you to say yes to clemency.
That's the question we want to know from you.
Yes, Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, did not answer questions from House lawmakers on Monday.
She was supposed to be giving a deposition.
She kept pleading the fifth.
She did, though, say...
that if President Trump ended her prison sentence, she was willing to go testify that neither he nor former President Clinton had done anything wrong in their connection with Epstein.
And I'm sure Bill Clinton is like, don't let me in with your garbage.
I'm going in to prove.
I'm going in to prove myself that I did nothing wrong because nobody's accused me of doing anything wrong.
This, at least to me, smacks of, hey, I'll keep my mouth shut if you.
Yeah.
that's exactly
But the House Oversight Committee really was looking for answers about how Epstein was able to abuse underage girls for years while moving among all these really powerful political and business figures.
And while both Trump and former President Clinton spent time with Epstein in the past, neither at this point has been credibly accused of any wrongdoing.
Now, during the closed door deposition,
yesterday, Maxwell's attorney said in a statement to the committee that Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump.
Now, he did say that they're innocent and Democrats said that it was a pretty brazen effort by Maxwell to have Trump and her prison sentence.
And she tried this before.
She has tried this before.
And this is where it gets a little surprising because Trump has not ruled out granting Maxwell any sort of clemency at this point.
Republicans pushed back on the notion, though, quickly and Rose basically saying this this
shouldn't happen, right?
And there was a little bit of more news from last night.
We'll get into that in just a few minutes, but Republican Representative Ana Paulina Luna.
Um, she's a little bit of a firestorm.
I guess that's putting it, uh, lightly as far as, as what she's like and what her politics are like.
She actually went to social media and said, no clemency.
You comply or face punishment.
You deserve justice for what you did.
You monster.
No, she was also outside stopped by reporters last night outside of the Capitol.
Uh, and they were asked about some of these comments she made and what, you know, if, if what her thoughts were on.
Maxwell asking for clemency.
Um, and here's what she had to say.
Cut three, please.
You said that you do not support at all.
Elaine Maxwell getting any clemency for her testimony.
And why is it important for her to be held accountable?
Well, because according to the files that we all saw, she was engaged in the trafficking and also rape of young women and potentially children.
I don't think that she deserves any special treatment.
She's a monster.
a
Here's the thing, when someone manages to unite Marjorie Taylor Greene, Anna Paulina Luna, Nancy Mace, and even the US Supreme Court in agreements as to whether or not you are a monster and should be serving a 20 year prison term, it's going to start raising an obvious question,
at least
The survivors really sent a statement to the committee yesterday basically saying the same thing that she was not on the periphery as she claims.
She was central to this entire operation.
And again, pleading for justice, which...
I can't believe Justice is still being denied to these formerly young girls, now women.
It's even Lauren Bulbert.
honest,
sees a whole different way than the rest of us.
I haven't had the fun she's had.
No, no.
Sometimes it's very boring.
But yeah, so people are... It's still hard for me to fathom...
defending or covering this because that's what's that's what's coming out from everybody who sees these because now congresspeople could go in and read the unredacted they have to they can't bring their phones they can't bring this or that they can take handwritten notes and they can read them and what we're hearing from a number of them is that there's still redactions that are there to protect people and Pam Bondi saying well if all these names were released it would crumble the government okay crumble it
Yeah, let's go.
All right.
I would rather have to start building the government again than live with the knowledge that there's alleged pedophiles running the country.
You mentioned the victims and the statement they put out.
Really, even entertaining this idea of clemency or even teasing it for Ghislaine Maxwell, it's literally a slap in the face to these women.
She has, as you mentioned, been repeatedly identified as a predator.
She was not a bystander.
She was not some sort of minor player in the abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein.
She was a central figure in this entire operation that exploited these children, now women.
Honestly, if you're even thinking about it, if you're even toying with the idea of granting this woman clemency, and you're getting this much backlash from your own party, the reaction alone should tell you that that is toxic, it's unacceptable, and these victims, these survivors deserve much more than even the thought of entertaining an idea like this.
or those
He talked about it then, and at that point he didn't, I don't really know her, I haven't really talked to anybody about it, but he, it's more...
theatrics.
Yes.
To get people worked up.
It's more, let me distract from the fact that I'm going, people are going to find out that I mentioned 3,800 times in these files by having them focus on am I going to let Ghislaine Maxwell out of prison.
It is, I can't imagine, and if you have a daughter, if you have any females in your life, and I know it's hard because I'm not saying I can do it fully.
Try to put yourself in their place.
We are so intent on protecting the powerful that we are throwing victims, children, to the wolves.
For some reason, our first response is always, don't believe the alleged victims.
and me just saying alleged puts it in there too.
Don't believe the victims.
Don't believe the girls.
Don't believe the women.
There has to be another reason.
Sometimes people are just
vile.
And the fact that it is one of the most painful, personal things you will ever go through, at least it was for me, would basically be any reason to never want to lie about it.
Because who wants to make those things up?
Nobody can make those things up.
And I will say that what we're hearing from the documents was not even in comparison to my story.
But there is no reason for anybody to ever make that up because it's painful, it's hard, it never leaves you, it required.
years of me talking and going through therapy just to be able to actually trust anybody again, right?
So there's no reason to want to ever lie about that.
Now, what I think is interesting about this entire case is just yesterday.
Along with all of this, Congress members were granted access to the unredacted files on Epstein.
Lawmakers like Thomas Massey from Kentucky and Representative Ro Khanna from California identified six men whose names and photos were redacted without any clear just legal justification.
Jamie Raskin and a couple other Ohio representatives talked about the fact that as they were going through these files, there were victims as young as nine years old.
Nine years old.
So a nine year old you're telling me is just gonna make this stuff up, right?
They're gonna have the imagination and they're gonna be able to even understand what happened to them to just make these things up.
And we're talking about potentially, you know, dangling this carrot of clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell.
No, no, absolutely not.
That is a personal attack on...
basically all of us by thinking we are stupid enough to be okay with that in this country.
Yeah, good morning.
Yeah, my ex-wife struggled with mental illness and addictions for her entire life, and she was abused as a young child.
So those scars just never leave, you know, even when you have healthy relationships with other people in your life.
And
Being as generous as possible to Donald Trump, which I'd hesitate to even do, that if he was aware that this stuff was going on, he did nothing to step up and defend those girls back at the time when Epstein and his cohorts were doing this stuff to young women.
It's been possible for people in Trump, in Epstein's orbit, not to be aware of what was going on.
So Donald Trump, for that matter, is just as guilty as the worst of the abuses.
If indeed he wasn't an abuser himself, which I think he probably was based on the testimony I've heard, sworn testimony.
If he was innocent of all this stuff, he would be suing those women because he does not want to go before the court and have to testify there because they would eat him alive.
Exactly.
we
appreciate the call and yeah, we know how litigious the president can be You know, we're being sued we as a country are being sued for ten billion dollars by our own president So we know he loves to go to court or he loves to threaten to go to court and Mark's point is good those scars Never leave
Any childhood trauma, and I can't imagine the scars that are left from any sort of sexual abuse or physical abuse.
That baggage is too heavy for anybody to have to carry.
For me, luckily, I had a great support staff, a support team, and I'll never speak for anybody else, but they run deep.
When we're talking about some of these files, though, that the lawmakers saw yesterday, it's interesting because Jamie Raskin was the first one to come out and say that there's one foreign official, there's a well-known retired CEO, and a Sultan.
who are also named in these particular documents that lawmakers are now going through.
I think the next few weeks could be interesting as they continue to go through those.
It is 7.19 right now.
You're listening to Civic Media Mornings.
I'm Jamie Martenson.
and this is the Civic Media Network.
And I'm Brian Noonan, and despite our neighbors in Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota having access to legalized cannabis, Wisconsin continues their prohibition.
No legal cannabis in this state will last week.
Democratic lawmakers gathered at the Capitol to announce their latest attempt to change that, to legalize recreational cannabis here in the state.
Representative Darren Madison said across the country, the cannabis debate is over.
40 states in Washington DC have legalized cannabis in some form.
Well, we've got to figure out what's going on in Wisconsin.
So we reached out to Jay Seltoffner.
He's the founder of the Wisconsin Cannabis Activist Network, the largest grassroots cannabis reform organization in Wisconsin.
He was recently appointed to the advisory council for the Wisconsin Coalition for Cannabis Reform, and he is also the chair of the Legislative Affairs Committee for that.
Jay, thanks for being here.
you'll have the info so let's start with at this point what is the level of support in wisconsin among voters for the legalization of cannabis
overwhelming support, you know, going back to our historic referendums in 2018, in which we had city and county wide referendums on there, the numbers just keep growing, depending on if we're asking, you know, the percentages vary, whether we're asking about, should we decriminalize, should we use medical marijuana?
We even noticed some difference in support, whether we say recreational or adult use, but we're somewhere in the names of like 83%
for medical marijuana if we combine most of the polls, somewhere near 70% for recreational.
Wow.
That's overwhelming.
Yeah.
You know, loss of tax revenue, economic benefit, jobs, the civil liberties issue of it comes into play too, as far as, you know, using hemp as the low hanging fruit for prosecuting minorities or even using the smell of hemp yet to conduct searches in the vehicle.
So the hemp program in Wisconsin has kind of created a substitute for recreational marijuana.
So we've had the last, you know, since 2022, we've kind of
I want to say a double-edged sword, although we haven't had legalized cannabis under a state program.
The federal program was filling the void there under the hemp program for both medical and recreational people.
So that industry is charging general sales tax.
So we do see an economic impact there when we look at nationwide studies.
Obviously, the federal hemp ban is in big news here too.
So we were starting to
feel some of the benefits of legal marijuana under the hemp program, which is currently under threat.
Yes.
So interesting enough.
I mean, we could pull
you know, sometimes those numbers, you know, people use numbers and statistics and, you know, try to manipulate them all they want.
I go back to like a 1934 article in popular mechanics that talked about hemp being a billion dollar crop in 1934.
So if it was potentially a billion dollar crop then, I can't imagine what it is now when we look at all of the true benefits from it from, you know, not only the things you mentioned,
job creation, taxation, you know, we may have hundreds of millions of dollars of additional tax revenue from the state just from point of sale tax.
We have to remember the change in the model of prohibition also is going to result in a savings to the state of Wisconsin, our public defender's office, you know, some of the entities that are involved in defending
drug stuff in court, those entities are going to need less money in the budget.
So we can't just look at, oh, there's a boom here.
There's a savings also.
When we do all of those numbers together, again, the numbers are staggering and overwhelming.
And Jay, you mentioned a little bit about the legal system.
What does the legalization actually mean for law enforcement and the court system across the state?
Does it actually alleviate some of the cases that we would see end up in our court system?
Yeah, very much when we look specifically at like the state public defender's office.
Those are going to be our largest group of you know law enforcement slash tax paying entity
that deal with that low level possession.
So they've definitely requested less money each budget cycle if we would decriminalize marijuana.
Definitely on the time resources end of it, it would allow our officers to focus on much more serious things also.
The interesting thing is when we talk about officers who live on the border, like the Marinette Menominee situation up in Wisconsin.
I mean, they know full fact how many, you know,
cars drive across the border each day to purchase the product.
They've done numbers saying it would be statistically impossible for our police force to actually enforce the laws of simple possession with the amount of traffic that comes through our state.
prohibition?
They don't have a lot of argument to stand on.
Some of the stuff that they keep throwing up is the gateway theory that cannabis use leads to harder drugs, which is not true.
They keep saying that our law enforcement can't handle legalization, which again is not true.
They definitely hammer on the drug driving thing a little bit more that's gonna increase drug driving.
If our officers aren't equipped to handle policing,
um drug driving now in specifically marijuana uh then we're not equipping them to do so and through the drug recognition expert programs uh i believe our law enforcement can fully handle legalization so um they definitely lean to some of their own constituents you know so within that republican party maybe if we look at their specific donor base you know their top um 80 percent of their funds might come from you know only 20 percent of those donors some of those donors might be against it
and so they're following a lead from there.
Welcome if you want to get involved in the program.
We'd love to hear from you.
855-755-CIVIC.
That's 855-752-4842.
We've been spanning the globe in search of...
good news we haven't found it but uh let's turn our attention a little closer to home jim we have a few stories about things that are happening in wisconsin first of all uh there have been a lot of research cuts under this administration and if you're not a researcher you might say well
Well, it is a big deal and UW Madison has lost at least $27 million in federal research funding since this administration began cutting or delaying grants and federal
Federal funding fell about 17 percent, which is a lot of money if you are a research university like Madison is and other research universities across the country.
But let's focus on right down the street at UW Madison.
And school officials call this a bit of a double whammy with fewer new grants and existing projects also being terminated.
Some of these grants have been reinstated through court challenges, but the losses for the university remain significant.
In fact, the university has worked with Wisconsin congressional delegation to protect some major programs, and Congress has actually blocked some proposed cuts to science agencies.
So you've got the staffing cuts at federal agencies, which are slowing the research.
You've got tighter immigration rules, which have reduced international students and threaten the university's ability to recruit some top talent.
The H1B visa program is under threat, and that's a proposed $100,000
fee per visa that would cost UW-Madison about $4.3 million annually.
So obviously, school leaders warn that this impact could ripple through innovation.
It could cause detrimental factors to health care and also to the state's economy, not just to Madison because UW has several entities.
all over the state that also help in some of this research.
I mean, for a party that's all about state rights, Brian, they don't really seem concerned, do they?
And it goes to an isolationist mentality.
It doesn't matter.
Plus, they fear research.
They fear science.
Madison is right in our backyard, but then expand that out throughout the country think of if this is happening in Madison It's happening at all these other big research universities It means those the people who would be coming to research from other countries It means people who would be getting paid to research here are not doing it They're taking their research elsewhere, and it just puts America on a declining.
Yeah
plain to falling behind the rest of the world.
Again, instead of leading, with the illusion of saving money, we are putting our country more at risk.
And again, you could say that it falls under national security, and I believe it does.
If you are leading in research, whether it's mechanical research, health research, anything,
you're going to lead.
At this point, the administration seems content with making us followers and trailing along the rest of the world when it comes to research.
And we know they, like I said, they don't like medical research.
That's for sure.
Anything that challenges their status quo is not welcome.
Science is a collaborative field, and turning inward really just puts any sort of long-term competitiveness and even the country's credibility and our system's credibility's at risk.
Isolationism has always been a fear with this current administration.
When they came into office in 2024, that was also...
2025.
Has it been one year or two years?
How long have they been in office?
It feels far
Good for you for reaching out to the younger demographic.
That's I I have issued the younger demographic I had pushed them to the side because they are smart alecky kids and I you know I don't have smart alecky kid references.
I just have voices of my head doing battle.
It's
it now, whatever Pete Hickseth calls
You can teach people things that they, if you have enough,
intelligence, you can parse out what makes sense to you and what doesn't.
But at least you're exposing yourself to ideas and theories and how other people think.
And that's what that's another reason that they don't like colleges.
It's not instructors doing all this quote unquote indoctrination.
It's the fact that all of a sudden young people are being exposed to ideas that they may not have heard at home and meeting people that they may not have experienced in their neighborhood.
And
The world indoctrinates you.
Yes,
No, so that is what they're trying to do.
They are really doing their best to indoctrinate us, and most of us are too smart to buy into it, and that infuriates them.
It does.
Because they don't have the mental capacity to debate it or argue it.
Here's what we believe.
What do you base that on?
Nothing.
Just believe it.
We said
We said so.
All right.
Well, I don't listen to you.
You're not the boss of me.
Well, we've destroyed all kinds of relationships with foreign countries that we depend on also for research.
And that
in
hand is also destroying
our national security.
Nobody wants to share anything with us anymore.
seeing
Since we commandeered all that oil.
Dick, thank you for the call.
Thank you for calling.
We appreciate it.
Anybody else wants to jump in?
You know the number, and if you don't, I'll give it to you because that's the kind of guy I am.
8-5-5-7-5.
Civic 8-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2.
In other Wisconsin news, oh, this is good news.
No, it's not.
It's
Governor Evers has gone after the Trump administration because they have denied Wisconsin's appeal for federal disaster relief to repair roads, bridges, parks, and other public infrastructure that was damaged by the historic flooding in August.
Remember that?
Sure.
Some of you are still dealing with that damage.
So is the state.
Are we going to get help?
No, no, why?
Because we have a Democratic governor.
Oh, is that the real reason?
Yes.
Yes.
Is that the reason they're telling us?
No.
most
presidents before our current administration will basically put out some sort of disaster declaration and sign over funding
for the recovery efforts before that natural disaster even hits because they want to be able to hit the ground running and start helping and rebuilding infrastructure and helping homeowners or whatever it may be, business owners.
But FEMA says without any sort of explanation that they're just not going to cover what happened in Milwaukee.
There was an estimated $26.5 million in damages across six different counties during that.
historic flooding.
Evers warned that the ruling is going to leave local taxpayers on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in rebuilding costs.
Milwaukee County executive David Crawley said that this denial undermines public trust and he has pledged to work with state and local leaders to find alternative funding.
Now this is more of the talking up both sides of your mouth because we want the federal government to run the elections but we want the state to handle all the disaster relief and he had threatened this
He had threatened this before.
Again, if somebody tells you what they're going to do, you better believe them because if you don't, you're going to be caught.
And that's what, unfortunately, Wisconsin is caught in and other places are caught in because they said they're not going to...
Why should we help blue states?
They don't back, they don't vote for us.
Why should we help them?
But
But that doesn't matter because he believes that those voters will stay loyal.
No matter what, no matter what happens, he believes, and I don't know if that's true with Republican voters.
We'd love to hear from you.
If your property, if your area was damaged by this, and all of a sudden your government is not going to help because of who your governor is, to me that doesn't seem right.
But I think it's fascinating that in 2025 alone, states like Arkansas, West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, they all face denials also, or major delays in FEMA disaster assistance after tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, fires and windstorms.
And yes, there was some democratic leaning states in there as well.
But the ones I just listed,
Do not, they're either very purple or they vote very, very Republican in almost every election.
So I think it's an interesting take for this administration to say, we're just not going to help you.
We're just not going to help you.
We're not going to give you infrastructure.
We're not going to allow businesses to reopen or for you to get back into your homes.
That's fine.
You don't need those things.
and when you're when you're at your lowest you will accept help from just about anybody and I yeah I would wager that that may be some of the thinking I don't know for sure that just an opinion you probably have your own opinion you can always share it with us uh but listen Jamie I've uh
We need we need some sort of boost before we
And I'm Brian Duned.
We'll talk about that on the Civic Media Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,
civicmedia.us.
spent like 300 bucks at Costco, yes, this is what you get.
Here's the five that I have left.
Go nuts, kids.
yeah,
fantastic.
catering.
yeah.
That's when we went and visited Carbondale last year, and Debbie and I went out, six bucks for a pitcher.
I'm like, whoo-hoo!
I've never even... It's a bargain!
There you go.
I'm going back to school.
I'm going to be Rodney Dangerfield.
Do a triple Lindy off of something.
But that's great if you're in a college town, you're spending no money.
If you're going to buy a Farfag Nugget or a Flugerschlafer or something from IKEA with their impossible to follow directions because it's stick figures from another land.
It's like Legos for adults.
Oh my god.
It's
studio.
can't.
News
And that's why that's the other part, you know, buns and hot dogs.
It's the ongoing debate.
Why do we have eight buds and six?
Yeah, blah, blah.
But you have to have the right size.
That's why like
like a sausage roll.
Usually it fits the bratwurst fits in there perfectly.
Or when you're making like Italian sausage, you can cut the bread to fit the thing.
Hot dog buns never really fit the hot dog.
And I don't like the I don't like the hanging over part.
don't have
Fine.
Again, I'm not really sure what meat we're using, but we don't ask the questions because when you're on the fifth floor of Ikea and you're, you know, still trying to parse through the warehouse to go pick up your stuff, you need a little sustenance because you know you're going to be about in there five hours.
So earlier in January, Ike actually released a plant-based sausage.
This features kale, lentils, quinoa, onion, and carrot.
It's designed to replicate the flavor, look, and texture of a traditional meat dog.
No, it's not.
Nobody's buying that.
It is available
globally and they are selling it as well at their bistros and you can also get take-home packages.
They're about 16 ounces for $7.49.
But you're not fooling anybody that this is a hot dog.
And I get it for the vegans out there.
I totally
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