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Wisconsin wakes up here.
Back to Daybreak with Brian and JB.
I'm Brian Noona.
Don't forget we have some new social media pages.
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It is Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
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Same handle.
Why would we change our name?
That would be confusing.
So it's Daybreak with Brian and Jamie there.
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I wonder what their faces look like.
Well, then.
By all means, YouTube and Facebook, we are streaming on both of those platforms every morning.
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Because perhaps you're somewhere where you don't have access to the radio or your TV or your computer.
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You can take us everywhere.
Reading is fundamental.
That's right.
All the other platitudes.
That's right.
Time for some headlines from the Iran War.
The United Arab Emirates announced Tuesday it will leave OPEC effective May 1st stripping the oil cartel of one of its largest producers while the announcement doesn't
change anything regarding the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, it could help lower oil prices after the war if the UAE increases its production capacity.
Brent Crude Oil traded over 50% higher than its pre-war price yesterday.
military said Tuesday in a social media post that it boarded and released a commercial ship in the Arabian Sea east of the Strait of Hormuz that was suspected of heading for Iran.
The command said it has now redirected 39 vessels since the start of the blockade on ships going to and from Iranian ports.
And finally Iran offered to end its chokehold on the strait if the US lifts its blockade on the country and ends the war in a proposal that would postpone discussions on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program that according to two regional officials US President Donald Trump seems unlikely to accept the offer however and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to rule out any deal that excludes Iran's nuclear program and just
a reminder.
We did have a nuclear deal before, correct, Jamie?
It's a wake-up call in more ways than one.
Time for some sh** you need to know.
Well, speaking of the war, Pete Hegseth faces a second day of...
hearings today.
He is going to get grilled again by Democrats on Capitol Hill.
The senators are taking their shot at him today.
They get their first opportunity to confront or praise the Pentagon chief over his handling of the war.
If you watched any of his testimony in the House yesterday, depending on what side of the aisle the House member questioning him came from, he was either the second coming of
every military genius known to man or the most inept goofball who needed to resign that you've ever run into.
I'll let you decide which side you want to put him on, but Hexeth battle with Democrats and a few Republicans yesterday during a nearly six-hour house
Armed Services Committee hearing where he faced sharp questioning over the war's costs and dollars lives and the diminishing stockpiles of critical weapons and if you watched any of this you saw he was as demure and full of courtesy and cooperation as all other Trump administration members that have had to
testify in front of Congress.
He was smug, he was arrogant, he was screaming at House members, but that's just Pete being Pete.
The Armed Services Committee is going to hear a similar presentation on the Trump administration's 2027 military budget proposal, which would boost defense spending to a historic $1.5 trillion.
Hag Seth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Cain, will again stress the need for more drones, missile defense systems, and warships.
They're now also likely to face tough questions about American troop levels in Europe after President Donald Trump yesterday leveled a new threat.
against NATO ally Germany Suggesting he could soon reduce the US military presence in the country as he feuds with Chancellor Frederick Mars MERS over the Iran war sidebar that came after a 90 minute phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin 90 minute phone call with Putin the same Putin whose country was giving our troop Placements to Iran just
Yeah, I don't know if there's a connection.
I'll let you decide.
If the Senate hearing is similar to yesterday's in the House, Republican senators may focus on the details of military budgeting and voice support for the operation in Iran.
Democrats, however, are expected to press for answers on strategy in the conflict.
Now in a tenuous ceasefire and a Hegseth firing of top military leaders, he refused to answer questions on how much longer the war would last or how much more it would cost.
When questioned about that he immediately made Rokana was Representative Rokana was questioning him about the cost and Instead of answering he would just he just kept shouting.
What is the cost of Iran having a nuclear weapon?
What is the cost?
But then he also said that their Nuclear capabilities have been obliterated right contradicting himself.
So it has been
Same old song and dance for anybody.
Their testimony usually has little substance or fact based with it, and because a lot of this administration is unqualified to hold the positions that they do, he was a weekend Fox anchor, right?
I know.
That's what Pete Hegseth did.
I mean, let's be realistic.
He has some time in the National Guard, and he was a weekend anchor on Fox News.
That is his qualifications for being in charge of the Department of Defense.
So when you have to sit in front of senators and representatives who are fully prepared, who have fully analyzed, who understand the budgets, who understand the military, and they start asking you questions, it simply evolves into some sort of performance art, is what happens.
but a
knew
exactly what this was going to look like and that, you know, while some of these cabinet members may have been qualified to do something in the administration, they were probably very unqualified to be...
the head of some sort of cabinet and department.
And that's essentially what we're seeing.
And I'm just, here's the thing.
I remember when Senate hearings used to be boring and nobody used to tune into
them.
I
It was just
Debate right, but we don't have that because to debate you both sides need to have their facts both sides need to be well informed and in these cases One side is well informed and whether you agree with the Republicans on the on the committees or not They're informed the Democrats are informed
the people from this administration that sit before those committees are not.
They have a list of talking points and God forbid you go any deeper with your questioning.
You will expose them as the doltes that they are.
at,
And these are proven facts.
These are photos that have been proven to be sitting on the table in front of these cabinet members during these processes.
And this is just how this administration works.
I miss boring government.
I miss boring government where they were just operating and we would get mad about a few different things.
That's what I miss.
Those
In fact, we got to bring it right back here to South Dakota.
Going back to my childhood roots because we were talking about that.
Back to Wisconsin.
The federal government is suing the state of Wisconsin.
It's in response to a lawsuit that Wisconsin...
and filed last week.
Attorney General Josh Call is going after companies state officials believe are exploiting loopholes around gambling.
Now, the lawsuit names five companies, including Kalshi Poly Market, Robin Hood and Coinbase.
Call says because those prediction markets let people make investments tied to the outcome of sporting events, it's basically a way around sports gambling laws.
However, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission says probably didn't know that was actually
says that it is already regulating those companies.
The agency argues Wisconsin's lawsuit is now interfering with federal law.
The commission has filed similar lawsuits in response to actions other states have taken, including New York and Arizona.
Okay, so here's my question.
If this lawsuit is going to interfere with federal law, then why isn't federal law doing something to regulate
it, right?
a
And it's because we know...
Attorney General Josh Call, he doesn't, he's not putting up with anything.
He's filing lawsuits all the time.
So, all right, let him come, let him see.
I would imagine maybe it's part of that intimidation move where you, all right, well, we're gonna sue you back.
Okay, sue me back.
on Daybreak, I'm Brian Noonan.
I'm Jamie Larson.
This is the Civic Media Network.
Everybody welcome into swipe or say I'm going to read some pop culture headlines and Jamie and Brian are going to have to decide to either stay and hear more or swipe on to the next one in the event of a tie.
Producer Parker gets to be the tiebreaker.
Story number one, pop stars ex-boyfriend speaks out to clear his name.
So he just appeared on a podcast this past weekend and said, I'm not asking for people to become my fan and like me because that's not normal either, but I'm asking for people to stop assuming and also just stop jumping on this narrative and attacking me and dragging me down in any way you can involving my parents who are no longer with me.
Just absolutely disgusting and vile.
There's videos on TikTok literally going, I hate him.
Wow.
I mean, he's got a point.
Fans, take things just a little too far.
and Sabrina
I think there's a strong faction of people that right now, actually, this is a really good point you bring up, Brian.
Right now, the internet split between Michael Jackson defenders and people pointing out a lot of flaws with the new movie.
So there's that's one male artist.
I think Chris Brown also has a sector of fans that really defend him.
But you're right, for the most part, male artists don't really get that.
And Barry Kogan's an actor, so I think people just disassociate him with his roles.
So the Wall Street Journal has reported that Amazon is discussing a potential reboot of The Apprentice, the show once hosted by Donald Trump before becoming the president twice.
Talks are reportedly in the early stages as the reboot isn't inactive development.
However, the person that is that they are eyeing for the role is Donald Trump, Jr.
to carry on in his father's footsteps.
media network.
Local news, community stories and the conversations that matter most.
Now more daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
Yesterday, the U.S.
Supreme Court's conservative majority handed Republicans their biggest victory yet in the perpetual battle to control the House of Representatives and state houses across the country.
The 6-3 ruling effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act's requirements.
requirement that districts be drawn to give minority voters a chance to elect representatives of their choosing.
Joining us now to discuss the court's decision and the impact it will have is Devin Ombres.
He's a senior director of courts and legal policy for the Center for American Progress.
Devin, thanks for being here this morning.
We appreciate your time.
Can you give us a little background on the case that led to the court's decision yesterday and the legal basis for the decision that they made?
Sure, Louisiana Calais versus Calais has been going on for several years at this point and the court actually heard the case last year and decided to punt again to this year with a new question.
It came down because
Louisiana after the last census redrew their districts in a way that a lower federal court found violated section two of the Voting Rights Act because Louisiana has about 33% of their population are black people and they only had one district that was majority minority controlled for Congress and so the court said
This is unconstitutional under the Voting Rights Act.
You have to redraw it.
And so they redrew a second map.
And about three years ago, this very Supreme Court said that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is constitutional.
We're not going to rejigger the rules.
And so based on that, that's why the map was redrawn to get a second majority minority district.
Three white people said that this is discriminatory against us.
and sued the state.
The state defended it.
Last year, they defended it.
And then the court said, we're not going to rule on this.
We're going to punt till next year, rework the question, and hurt it again.
And this time, they said, oh, no way, even though Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is amended in 1982 says that it is discriminatory effect that matters, we're going to change all of the law, all of the originalist tinkering,
all of our analysis on this and say that you must prove discriminatory intent in drawing lines for congressional and state legislative maps and turn everything on its head, our originalism, the Constitution, the very law
who was being discriminated against in this Louisiana case, those three people, and they proved that they were able to prove that, how do they prove that they're being discriminated against?
Were they in those districts?
This is what I don't get for the Supreme Court to reverse themselves and show that there had to be intent to discriminate.
Where was
that intent?
They didn't even take up that question.
They didn't even answer it on that question.
And also, I'm 99.99999% sure that the Voting Rights Act wasn't written in a racially neutral manner.
It was intended to prevent white folks from discriminating against black and brown folks.
So this is basically reversing every argument made under the 14th, 15th amendments and the VRA.
And these three white folks said,
know you're actually discriminating against us.
But the court didn't even touch that in this decision.
They said that Section 2 of the VRA does not require proportional representation.
So even though more than a third of Louisiana's population is black, the VRA doesn't require that they have to have two out of six districts represented by people where represented by
uh districts where a majority of the voters or a large percentage of the voters are black and therefore the state can gerrymander based on politics and race doesn't they're almost saying that race doesn't matter anymore in gerrymandering it's it's a very weird and technical decision but they say that black people vote for democrats but we're gerrymandering on the basis of
partisanship, not race, and therefore the fact that they're black and good for Democrats doesn't matter.
We get to gerrymander anyway.
Devin, I want to take a step back for just a moment because for anybody who's listening to this this morning and completely appalled but doesn't really understand maybe the history or the context of this, explain to us in the simplest terms what essentially the Voting Rights Act did and why it started essentially.
Because I think that's being missed for a lot of people in some of this because this Louisiana case has been going on for so long at this point.
I mean, so the Voting Rights Act was passed in the 1960s because Black people in the South were incredibly discriminated against post-reconstruction with Jim Crow.
I think in Mississippi, 6% of the Black population was registered to vote.
And there were poll taxes, there was violence, there was blatant discrimination.
And Congress finally said, we recognize that this is a major problem.
And we need to fix it.
And so they created section five of the Voting Rights Act that said that required districts that had previously discriminated against to draw lines that were racially appropriate so that black people and brown people could have a chance of electing their preferred representative.
And that got struck down 10 years ago.
Justice Roberts wrote the opinion on that.
And at the time, Justice Ginsburg said, you're throwing away your umbrella in the rain.
This has worked.
This has worked.
And we're getting rid of it.
And that's exactly what they're doing again.
Section two of the Voting Rights Act has allowed representation, allowed black and brown people to vote for the people they prefer.
And this is, again, throwing the umbrella out in the rain, because it is projected that
Southern states could redraw up to 25 black and brown majority districts out of Congress.
They could draw out over 191 state legislative districts and they can do it in ways that they say are that this Supreme Court now says if you say it's based on partisanship and not on race that is perfectly permissive and the only way that you can prove
that is a violation of section two is if somebody writes an email that says we are only doing this based on race that's the only thing that will allow or that will prove evidence that violates section two it's just absolutely wild
if there are if they're redrawing it allegedly on just partisanship how do you account for people of the other party in that state who now have no
representation, whether they're black or white.
If you're in a Republican state and they're drawing all the districts to favor Republicans, where is someone supposed to go if they live in that state?
Well, the Supreme Court four or five years ago in a case called Rucho said that partisan gerrymandering, though unconstitutional, is not justiciable, which means we can't touch it.
We're not allowed to discuss it.
So the only way to overcome that is just sheer masses to the polls.
And let's see, Louisiana has already delayed their primaries based on the decision yesterday so that they can redraw their maps.
Florida passed yesterday.
Yes, they were ready.
They passed.
They drew four Democrats out of Congress yesterday.
But the kicker is...
I think you've seen some discussion about this.
It's called dummy Mandarin where you draw so many seats in your favor that it dilutes even your voting base and you could end up losing more seats than you intended.
So I think there is a concern among folks in Texas.
There is a concern among Republicans in Florida that these new districts are so skewed as to really limit
the voting base in in those states and in potential wave years which 2026 could be as gas is now passing four dollars
and
fifty cents a gallon and companies are getting billions of dollars in tariff rebates but the american people are not that people are fed up and you're gonna end independence and could break the opposite way and you could see a very very high turnout among democrats and it could end up backfiring
So I mean, that's the hope, but it takes a lot more effort to overcome that when you have to overcome three, four point deficits in every district as opposed to actually having districts where people are, where there's a battle of ideas and people get to select their representatives rather than representatives getting to select.
their voters, which is exactly what's happening now.
He is the senior director of courts and legal policy for the Center for American Progress, americanprogress.org, if you want to check out some of his work.
We're already seeing this tit for tat in redistricting, right?
We've seen this nationally.
Is this, in your opinion, going to, and you already mentioned Florida being on the ready yesterday, we've talked a bit about some of the other states, how is this going to accelerate that trend?
And for the midterms coming up in November,
Some states are probably somewhat safe.
But what does this look like beyond for 2028's presidential election in your mind?
So for folks way smarter than me have already opined on this.
But for 2026, Georgia, Tennessee, potentially Missouri could redraw.
For most of the other states, it would require rerunning an election.
And that's going to be a hot mess if that happens.
And it's going to be really hard to do.
But in 2028,
in 2030 it is going to really really it could really really skew the way that congress is made up because it's going to give all the other southern states the ability to redraw and then you're going to see a race on the left in in blue states to completely redraw and i think we could we could all just disarm democrats in congress have been pushing for a national ban on partisan gerrymandering
For a decade, I wrote about this a decade ago and how it can actually be functionalized.
And all the Democrats have voted for it.
They've been putting it up a long time ago.
The Republicans have not.
And it would nice to be able to see a real battle of ideas rather than a battle of who can draw the best maps.
So it's really going to screw up congressional representation and state legislative representation, especially in the South, moving forward.
It's been in place for a long time, but you need some bipartisan support, especially in the Senate.
And folks in the Senate recognize that they have, you know, it's in their own interest not to do it because power seeks power and that's what they're doing.
About a
I don't want to throw a big question at you, Devin, but with about that minute left, what is a misconception right now as people listen to this coverage and how this plays out?
What is some sort of misconception that you want to make sure people understand about what's happening right now that maybe they're not getting the full grasp of right now?
Sure.
I think the one thing that people need to understand is that this Supreme Court is incredibly partisan, and Justice Roberts and Justice Alito have been fighting their entire careers to end the Voting Rights Act, and that the only way out of this, the only way to actually bring about a stable, multicultural, and true democracy is Supreme Court reforms.
That's where we need to be looking.
Supreme Court reforms 100%.
And I think gerrymandering, there's two original sins in this country.
Slavery, gerrymandering.
You get rid of gerrymandering and a lot of things improve.
Network.
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And if you're new to Wisconsin and you maybe say, what?
Sporkies and Drinkies are the highlighted award-winning food and drinks.
Sporks, you know, because you use a sport.
Right.
And drink.
If I have to explain what drink he means to you, I don't want to hang out with you.
You and I are not going to be friends.
But the four drinkies at eight Sporky finalists are from a wide collection of vendors, both new to the state fair and returning contenders.
The winner will be chosen by a panel of local celebrity judges on August 4th.
One day, I hope to be part of that panel.
And it's not just for bragging rights.
They say, according to the longtime MC from WISN12TV in Milwaukee, it can bring in as much as $150,000 in surge business for the place that wins in the sporkies and drinkies.
And I always try
because all the years I've been working in Wisconsin, I always then try to find these sporkies and drinkies when
have
Oh, no, I was looking at that too.
That sounds amazing.
I'm always going to go with something a little bit more sweet.
So I looked right away at the sweet lemon berry cheese curds from from the Saz's barbecue.
Ellsworth Creamery White Cheddar Cheese Curds fried and tossed in a cinnamon sugar mix before
being
pleasure.
one, but
Or how about some cookie butter coffee float, vanilla ice cream with cookie butter infused iced coffee combined in a biscoff cookie rimmed cup and then topped with cookie butter drizzle and a biscoff cookie.
I mean, come on, biscoff cookies are amazing.
I love them on my Delta flights, but like that.
Come on, I'm down.
Like, go in the evening, sun starts to set, then it's not quite as sweaty, it's still a little warm, so you still feel like you can go get your Tilt-A-Spirits from the zipper club, but at the same time, it's not quite as sweaty because the sun's not beaten down on you.
You've got to plan these things out.
balls are topped with
Yours, I don't know why he doubts you, but
We'll see what happens.
Hour 3 coming up, so if you're listening on WMDX, sayonara suckers, no, we miss you.
We want you to stay with us.
We'd like you to follow us on the free Civic Media app or YouTube or Facebook.
So you can do that.
If not, enjoy Stephanie Miller and we will talk to you tomorrow, but we'll talk to everybody else.
After the news, this is Daybreak.
I'm
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