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.
This is Where Wisconsin Wakes Up.
It's Daybreak with Brian Noonan and Jamie Martinson.
Here are your hosts, Brian and Jamie.
Glad you're here.
I'm Brian Noonan.
If you want to get involved in the show at any point this morning, we'd love to hear from you, especially if you were involved in any more storm activity last night.
The number, of course, is 855-75 Civic.
855-7524842.
Man, things got dicey over in the Milwaukee area
Unfortunately, there's going to be a lot of cleanup that's going to be happening.
You've seen communities have to evacuate certain areas, certain people, some communities just in general, if they're right along the river, which leads to the fact that the governor declared a state of emergency in response to all of this flooding yesterday.
Governor Evers signed executive order number 289, that sounds very official, declaring that state of emergency as communities across the state
are experiencing and really just trying to recover from severe storms, the power outages, the record rainfall, the flooding.
all of it expected to continue throughout the week.
Now, I believe I was looking at the forecast earlier.
Did I actually see like a little sun icon somewhere on the forecast?
I got a little excited.
I was like, ooh, it's not a rain cloud with thunder and lightning bolts coming out of it.
It looks like it could actually rain again.
Hopefully those are on the way out, and then we start seeing some of that sunshine.
And I think that's what most communities are hoping for right now.
If you're anywhere along the rivers, if you're in Milwaukee, I think at this point, you're just hoping for a little bit of sunshine.
So you get a reprieve, maybe like a couple of days to just catch up, perhaps, because it's been
as
getting that money because now the state and the community itself in the county are having to help with those recovery efforts and we're talking millions of dollars that have been lost
in that recovery effort.
Hopefully, now here's the thing too, Mark Wayne Mullen now in charge of DHS has basically backed off a lot of Kristi Noem's policies on who could get money, how it was dispersed, the amount.
And so maybe perhaps that's the good news.
We'll keep our fingers crossed that any state, Wisconsin otherwise gets what they need in these recovery periods.
I
It's like one property or half a property.
I don't know, but $100,000 is a crazy low amount of money when you're talking about the types of destruction that some of these natural disasters actually bring.
I believe in Milwaukee County, they're asking for about $26 million to aid in the recovery for homeowners, businesses, the roads, the infrastructure, because there was so much damage last year.
year during that flooding period.
basically the state line up through Milwaukee and up north toward Port Washington and everything, it is, they're gonna need a lot more.
Yeah.
Because things got really, really crazy again last night.
And we're gonna talk about this later.
But who builds a dome stadium that's not waterproof and weatherproof?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
There's a reason you've built a dome, and I dig the retractable roof.
I think it looks cool.
It was the first
and
The elements didn't get in as the points were to pass.
And you can try to be a Homer all you want.
And again, this is not a blast on the Brewers.
It's just a design flaw that somebody should have brought up at the beginning.
Why am I the only person in the world with common sense?
Why am I the only one who looks at it and goes, hey, this is really cool.
We're going to be able to close it to keep rain and stuff out, right?
Well, yes and no.
You'll be able to close it.
Like that would have been the thing, and writing all the stories I'm reading it says, it was not designed to keep out rain.
What are we doing?
What is the point?
Why don't you just put a colander over the top or one of those shade screens like they do out at a picnic?
And yeah, the rain will come through, but oh, it's shady.
I don't care, I'm still
Is that like, I feel like that's a sheep mentality that we have, right?
Because, well, they drove in it, they're stuck, but I'm gonna keep going as well.
No, no, what you should do is see what is going wrong in front of you.
And then again, with the old adage, turn around, don't drown, and then find a different way back.
We're going to talk about it later this morning at 830.
Our WAUK reporter is going to join us, Stu Waddles.
He'll give us the latest because I know Kenosha Racine last night.
They also had dramatic weather.
And here in Madison, it was another one of those nights where you were just sitting there and all of a sudden you heard that rumble of thunder in the distance.
And within about five minutes, it was just a complete downpour.
So winds picked up again and no warnings attached to it last night, but of course we saw a lot more rain in Madison as well.
And so if you're listening this morning in any of these portions of the state, we wish you the best.
I know that there are emergency situations at the county level too.
There's a lot of sandbagging that's happening.
There are
crews
That
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get
I'm Brian Noonan.
Have you ever relocated for a job or on the flip side, has your company moved?
And they said, well, you can move with us and keep your job.
And you just went, no, where I live is more important than this job.
85575 Civic 8557524842.
I'm asking this because, you know, the administration has been cutting a lot of
A lot of benefits and money for national parks in the Forest Service because the outdoors are just one big oil field and we don't need national parks and things.
A union leader representing federal Forest Service employees in Wisconsin says workers may have to move
because of the Trump administration's plan to shutter regional offices.
The Forest Service announced that the agency is moving its headquarters to Salt Lake City and closing nine regional offices, including the one in Milwaukee.
Administrative and technical support
people in those offices are going to shift to six to shift operational service centers, one of which is going to be located here in Madison.
The overhaul will also include 15 state directors to oversee operations in one or more states, while the president of the union said that re-structuring mostly affects Milwaukee area employees, but about 50 of those may be affected and
They can continue working, Jamie, but they've got to relocate.
They've got to move.
So uproot your whole family because the government has decided we're going to consolidate the Forest Service.
Because moving across the country is not exactly cheap.
I mean, that's the question I guess I would have in all of this.
And here's the thing.
We have already lost so many federal workers in this state, about 2,400 total.
And so now we're potentially adding more onto that, seeing more closures of our federal offices.
So I think that's also a bigger conversation in all of this.
But at the same time, asking people to uproot just so they can keep their jobs with absolutely no sort of support to do so is
That's a bold move, and one that I would not expect from this particular government.
I mean, these are the types of things that they do.
They make situations impossibly hard for people all the time.
But I mean, we've had to relocate for jobs all the time, and we have an economy right now that jobs aren't really plentiful, right?
And that's another thing I think about.
Jobs aren't
and everything
have to
Wisconsin has already gone from about 31,000 federal jobs down to about 28,000 federal jobs, just since this administration took over a year ago.
I mean, literally just over a year ago, this state has already seen a loss of about 2,000 jobs or more, which that's not an insignificant number of people who are unemployed or had to go find other jobs or had to decide to retire or were forced out because of this administration.
And when you think about cuts to our forestry services as well,
I mean, that's kind of a backbone of the economy here in Wisconsin.
And so that's a little off-putting for me as well.
I mean, that's tourism, logging is a huge industry in certain parts of the state, outdoor recreation, small businesses are built off of those things.
Northern Wisconsin, I think of Northern Wisconsin especially because they depend on those forests.
And now we're looking at services that are gonna be cut to the point where
Is anybody going to be around to help take care of those or be facilitating what brings people to the area because of the Forest Service?
Let's be honest about what's happening.
They want more land to be able to do more things like drilling, mining, fracking.
They would love to be able to resurrect some of those coal plants and all of that, and they need more land to do those things.
Cole is never coming back.
No, it's not.
But he keeps placating to the people who own those facilities who continue to donate to him.
And you're right, it's not.
Because a lot of PAs have gone to a cleaner energy source.
It's not coming back what they donate.
And then this administration continues to placate to those donors, which is why you're starting to see some of the things like our forestry, our outdoor services being
affected by this federal government.
I mean, they want to allow hunting on national forest lands.
things.
Clean it out.
Only white men should be allowed on the planet.
All right, do you support banning members of Congress from trading stocks?
Why, why not?
Let us know.
8-5-5-7-5 Civic, local guy still making a ton of money with those stocks.
Speaking of money.
That is prize at all.
Well, it's daybreak.
I'm
Brian G. Jamie, and this is the Civic News.
Now back to Brian and Jamie.
We always appreciate it.
It's 635 right now.
You are listening to the Civic Media Network.
And if you happen to be in Wausau, listening on WXCO or in Eau Claire on 93.5 the tap or in La Crosse on WLCX, we are glad that you decided to join us this morning.
I am Jamie Martinson.
I'm Brian Noonan.
Do you support banning members of Congress from trading stocks?
Why?
Why not?
Uh, that's, that's what we're wondering.
85575 Civic 8557524842.
We talk about this all the time.
And this is not a partisan issue because you've got people on both sides of the aisle who seem to be making a lot of money.
And I think, uh, it would also, you know, we heard it.
that pete hexeth's broker bought a lot of military stocks right before the war started and we've somehow other people are making a lot of money on trades and bets that seem to have inside information and this so this is a problem that has been going on for a while and it's been debated for a while
Well, a 2023 University of Maryland study surveyed about 3000 registered voters that showed that most Americans support banning members of Congress and their families from trading stocks and individual companies.
So they the claim is and the worry is as I've kind of mentioned that lawmakers are privy to information that the general public may not have like, hey, we're starting a war in about 27 minutes.
So why don't you
I don't want, I'm not casting aspersions at one side or another, but of course I am.
But, um, yeah, so that's happening.
And listen, I know there's Republicans going, what about Nancy Pelosi making all this?
Yes, she's a good two.
She's a member of Congress.
I would say no, you don't get to do this.
And no, you don't get to use third parties.
You don't, you don't get to profit from any sort of stock move while you are in office.
That's just, that should be it.
Yeah, that should be it.
And the Stock Act, a federal law passed in 2012, requires members of Congress to disclose their trades within about 30 days of the purchase or the sale of stock.
But the penalty for filing a disclosure late is 200 bucks.
So if I've made,
I don't know,
Representative Tony Weed, he of course represents Wisconsin's eighth district, and he is a freshman congressman, elected just a couple years ago, 2024.
He's actually no stranger, Brian, to stock trading.
In fact, the Republican represents the northeastern portion of the state, and his investment activity consistently outpaces Wisconsin's other congressional representatives.
No other
House members.
So we're talking Pocann, Wenmore, Fitzgerald, Derek Van Orden, Glenn Grossman, Brian Stylen, Tom Tiffany have filed periodic transaction reports in the last year.
But you've got Tony Weed.
He's a businessman man from Depeer.
He was elected to his seat by a wide margin a couple of years ago.
He formally owned a gas station chain in the Green Bay area.
And
he has
is
why you can you can find all of this out for yourself the disclosure law only Laws only require that members report report ranges.
They don't have to even give you exact values So members of Congress are periodically required to file reports with the clerk of the house about 45 days after they their spouse or their dependent children buy or sell some sort of
a financial asset worth more than $1,000.
Weed's most recent report filed in March is five pages long, at least 25 separate transactions.
His largest single transaction was a purchase of between $500,000 and $1 million in US Treasury bills, which is a low risk, low reward investment.
My gosh.
That's also
I love that.
I love that they only have to give a range.
The difference between 500,000 and a million.
Parker, you're a young man with a quick mind, correct my math.
That's about a half a million give or take.
I do believe you're spot on there, Brian.
Thank you.
That is, you know, math, not my strong suit.
It's amazing.
This
We are not given the same information.
And when we are sitting here as voters, as constituents, and everybody is trying to just pay their energy bill, they're trying to make ends meet with groceries, pay their house payments, pay their rents, and we've got people representing us in...
In Congress, both sides of the aisle, 200 bucks if I have a $1.6 million transaction and 25 pages of them at that.
What is happening?
It is one of those subjects that all of us, I don't care how you vote, you should want more.
from your elected representatives.
You should expect more from them, and not in the way of money, because they're making plenty of this.
But don't we
You're rich.
You're rich to begin with with your chain of glass stations.
Good for you for being a businessman and making all this money.
There comes a point where, though...
Even if it even if you're not doing anything wrong even if let's say let's say everything is above board, and I'm not just talking about about weed I'm talking about everybody in in Congress Let's just say you're you know your broker is making moves Talk about Pollyanna
and everything's a bubble.
You're not using any of the crucial information that you have access to that the rest of the world does not know.
For example, most of us didn't know we were going to start a war because there was no reason to start a war, so we didn't know.
Now, I'm going to allege and I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to say that Pete Hegseth did use classified personal information to make these stock purchases
an hour or so before the war started.
There's no other, nobody's that lucky.
Right?
This was a thing that was happening during COVID, too, if you want to go back, because I know this current president- That was 2020, Jamie.
I don't like to think that's far back.
This current administration likes to go back to 2020 all the time, so I am, too.
So we saw this during COVID.
When Congress was making trillion-dollar decisions, there were dozens of lawmakers, both parties, we'll point that out again, that had invested in companies tied directly to the pandemic response.
So we're talking-
What
At least 13 senators and 35 House members held shares in Johnson & Johnson, at least 11 senators and 34 House members had stock in Pfizer, and some even had Moderna.
So at the same time, Congress was passing nearly $6 trillion in relief bills and billions more for vaccine development, even if every single one of those trades was technically legal.
Obviously, there's a problem.
You also had Congress members all of a sudden putting money into face masks and ventilators and those full suits that they would have to wear in the hospitals.
and
We're either going to be fired, maybe even worse, because in some cases, that could look a little bit like light insider trading.
But we're $200 fine for our elected representatives to take that information and do exactly what you and I would be fired for doing.
million.
if you've got
Yeah.
Alicia for Wisconsin says that she 100% supports banning anyone who makes policy and laws from buying and trading stock also goes on to say that she would like to point out that weeds predecessor Gallagher didn't from what she's checked out, didn't do this kind of trading while in Congress.
So we appreciate those comments.
If you want to.
chime in this morning, 1-855-752-4842, 1-855-75 Civic.
Now in
fairness, Jamie, we should say this again was from the Badger Project Analysis and we'd staff send an email to the Badger Project in January and they said that the congressman's trades are solely managed by an independent financial advisor
and that weed complies with all ethics laws and guidelines.
Anybody who uses a financial advisor, they're independent.
Unless you're doing this.
At the end of the day as voters, we have...
the right to know if the decisions being made by our representatives, like Tony Weed, like Ron Johnson, are being made for the public good or for their personal portfolio.
Because we don't get those choices as voters.
should just mind their own business about.
We'll talk about it after this on the Civic Media
Network.
We hope you are having a great morning.
Hopefully the weather in your area is sunny today and areas can start drying out because boy, oh boy, it's been, it's been wet.
And we're going to talk more about that throughout the morning and talk about the flooding and weather situation throughout the state.
This is Daybreak on the Civic Media Network.
I'm Jamie Martenson.
And I'm Brian Noonan and if you want to share how things are, where you're at, if you got floods, if you escaped the storms and you were fortunate, whatever's going on in your area can always touch base with us, 855-755-CIVIC-855-755-248-42.
Two conservative groups have once again decided that they need to villainize a group of citizenry.
especially children that are in the LGBTQ plus community.
Now you may recall last week there was a Supreme Court decision that upheld conversion therapy in Colorado because of a free speech decision by the Supreme Court.
And if you're not familiar with conversion therapy, it's basically you take a kid who identifies in the LGBTQ community and you
quote unquote have talk therapy with them to convince them that they are not gay.
They are not trans.
They're not by whatever, however they're identifying, whatever they're feeling, whatever they are, you're trying to convince them otherwise.
Well,
So that passed in Colorado.
Now these conservative groups here in Wisconsin are like, hey, wait a minute, we're going to take legal action against state administrative administrative rule that prohibits so-called conversion therapy for LGBTQ children here if the rule is not repealed following that Supreme Court decision last month, striking down the Colorado law.
Officials with Governor Evers office have said the March 31st ruling from the nation's highest court doesn't likely doesn't apply in Wisconsin because unlike Colorado and more than 20 other states with similar laws, Wisconsin's ban is part of an administrative rule that classifies conversion therapy or intervention by a licensed marriage in family, therapist, counselor or social worker to try to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity as unprofessional conduct.
So
So the governor and the state of Wisconsin and these other states are saying this is not a free speech issue, this is a professional medical issue, and so too bad.
Well, Wisconsin Family Action and Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty have called for the rule to be rescinded.
And Jamie, we're all familiar with Wisconsin Law and Liberty.
They're actually suing La Crosse right now over the city's ordinance that bars conversion therapy.
The case has been pending before the U.S.
District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin for more than three years.
And to be clear, the Supreme Court sided with the Christian counselor in an eight to one order.
So even the liberal leaning justices thought that free speech had been
that free speech had been affected in this particular case.
And I think the law raises the question of free speech concerns, and the judges at that point in time agreed and sent it back to the lower courts to decide if it meets any sort of legal standard that few laws pass.
I do find it interesting though, when we talk about these types of cases and these types of groups,
They're conservative groups who are pushing to overturn this ban, saying that it violates free speech.
Free speech obviously matters.
It's the first part of the first amendment
I should say of the
There we go.
Words will come to me.
But these groups are arguing for free speech while going to court to remove protections that prevent harm to minors.
And to me, that's when it starts getting a little hypocritical, right?
Because at the same time that these groups in the Supreme Court are saying, oh, these laws ban talk therapy, it violates the First Amendment.
They're also stepping into someone else's life, especially the private life of a young person and saying, we should be allowed to change who you are.
That's not...
That's not just speech at that point.
That's a complete intervention of the whole person.
And that's completely changing, trying to change somebody's mind.
And it just seems hypocritical to scream about free speech, where you're essentially not allowing someone to have
their voice.
It's appalling to me, it's gross to me, and I hate, I hate that we even have to talk about cases like this, and groups like this who...
The people who want to control us the most are the ones who, as you said, are all for smaller government.
We don't want to be involved.
Government should be hands-off, and yet when it comes to people's
Gender or their sex life or anything else or women's bodies.
They have to be involved and You don't have to understand what an LGBTQ plus child or young adult or a grown adult is going through You don't have to understand that but you don't have to also get involved and try to stop them from being who they are It's not it's not up to you.
It's not your business and yeah, it's not
We have rules in place to prevent these kind of things because if you look back historically These kind of conversion camps are very very dangerous.
They led
to suicide.
They led to all kinds of things because Being gay or being anywhere in that group is not a choice And I you know, oh, what are you crazy liver?
No, I'm just a an empathetic guy who has gay friends and it dated trust me
I'm guessing most people would not choose a life that is it's much it's much easier now than it used to be sure but it's still not well look we have to talk about this story so it's still
I mean, and as you rightly point out, this is a bigger pattern that we're starting to see because these groups are literally trying to push their values through the courts and saying that their interpretation of rights should override any sort of protection that's put in place for others.
Free speech is one thing, but when you're using that argument to literally justify practices that can cause harm, as you rightly point out, Brian, especially to kids,
That's where we have to look deeper into the conversation and about what's happening and how we're starting to see things change in a drastic, dangerous direction.
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.